by Ann Marston
Kerri dismounted to check the girth of her saddle. It was a good idea, so I slid off Rhuidh to check his girth. The last thing we needed was a loose strap dumping us onto the ground in the middle of a troop of hostile Maeduni.
Kerri settled herself back into the saddle and drew her sword. “Ready?” she asked.
“In a moment.” I slipped the halter off the stallion and stuffed it into my saddle pack. The stallion would follow us. I needed both hands free and Rhuidh didn’t need another horse tethered to him to hamper his movements. I made doubly sure the heart bundle was securely fastened behind my saddle, then mounted. “Ready,” I said.
The horses picked their way carefully across the stream. It was only a few paces wide, and barely deep enough to cover their hocks, but the stones were round and smooth, and none too firmly rooted in the stream bed.
On the other side, Kerri gave me a tight, fierce grin and flexed the wrist of her sword hand before raising the blade to the ready position. I drew my own sword and nodded to her.
Rhuidh leapt forward eagerly as I put my heels to his flanks and leaned forward across the pommel of the saddle. The black mare, fleet as a hawk, sure-footed as a dancer, was half a length ahead as we rounded the bend, Kerri bent low across her neck. Rhuidh, neck stretched into the gallop, tail streaming, flew close behind.
The cliff curved away from the track and the trees closed in on the right. A mounted Maeduni soldier, little more than a black shadow detaching itself from the shade of the trees, sprang onto the track long seconds too late to intercept the mare, but in plenty of time to meet the sweep of my sword as Rhuidh thundered past. The startled horse, suddenly riderless, shied violently and blundered into another horse, dumping the second rider onto the road.
Ahead, a third Maeduni, overconfident when he saw that Kerri was a woman, urged his horse into the middle of the track, a grin of anticipation stretching his lips back over his teeth. The mare, neat-footed and deft, swerved to the Maeduni’s left, opposite his sword hand. Opposite Kerri’s sword hand, too. Leaning sideways in her saddle, Kerri flipped the hilt of her sword into her left hand and swept it out in a vicious backhanded arc. The blade sliced through the Maeduni’s throat, half severing his head.
Another rider leapt out of the trees, sword raised, riding straight at me. There was no time to swing my sword. I lowered it and used it like a lance. The point went into the Maeduni’s belly. I nearly lost my seat and my grip on the hilt as he went down. I was off balance as I jerked the blade free, but Rhuidh never missed a step, dancing sideways to place himself firmly beneath me. He kept his pace smooth and steady as I pulled myself back into the saddle.
Then we were through the ambush and running free down the track. Kerri turned to take a quick glance over her shoulder, her hair flying wildly around her face. She held up four fingers, and I nodded. Only four of them in pursuit behind us. But one of them was the General. I smelled the characteristic reek of his own unique magic, strong and nauseating.
I bent lower, murmured encouragement to Rhuidh. His ears twitched and his stride lengthened.
The stench of magic suddenly thickened and intensified. I snatched a look over my shoulder and saw the General gather his magic. Nausea churned sharply in my belly and I wondered if I might be quick enough this time, and lucky enough, to catch it on the blade of the sword and reflect it back at him.
But the magic wasn’t aimed at me. The dull red bolt sailed over my head, well above me. Perhaps the General wasn’t strong enough to use it against a man. But he was certainly strong enough to use it against rock and earth. Only a few lengths ahead of Kerri, a great fissure opened across the track, at least two man-lengths wide, perhaps three.
Kerri had no time to prepare the mare properly. I saw her bend farther forward and touch the mare’s neck. The mare’s nostrils flared, displaying the red interior, and she gathered herself, muscles in her hindquarters bunching and flexing. She launched herself across the void, Kerri clinging to her back. For a moment, horse and rider appeared to hang suspended in midair, the horse stretched gracefully, the rider hugging tight to the extended neck. One forefoot, then the other, landed on firm ground on the far side of the chasm, hind feet following easily and Kerri was safely across.
I bent closer to Rhuidh’s neck, whispering to him. We would not cross so easily or effortlessly. I was at least five stone heavier than Kerri, and Rhuidh had never liked jumping anything, let alone a gulf like the one ahead. But neither he nor I had any choice. I doubted I could have stopped him in time to prevent us from tumbling into the abyss. As we approached, I saw the dizzying depth to the chasm. I leaned forward, flat against Rhuidh’s mane, praising his competence, his strength, his fine courage. His muscles bunched under my thighs as he gathered himself. He launched himself into the air and I closed my eyes, not daring to look, hardly daring to breathe. Then, because I couldn’t stand not knowing, I opened my eyes again. We were not going to make it. Rhuidh simply didn’t have the strength to bridge a gap that wide.
The jar as his forefeet hit the ground nearly unseated me. They scrabbled on the very edge of the lip of the gulf, then his back feet landed half a pace ahead of his forefeet. He lunged forward desperately, found purchase, and surged onto firm ground. We were across and safe. An instant later, the bay stallion landed gracefully behind us.
Kerri had reined in a short distance down the track, her face white and drawn, and turned the mare to watch me. Relief wiped her face clean of all expression for a moment before it widened into a broad grin. Rhuidh pulled up beside the mare, panting and blowing, but dancing with the pride of his breathtaking accomplishment. I slid to the ground to see the General sitting his horse on the far side of the chasm.
“Next time, Tyr,” he shouted. “Next time, you will be mine.”
I sheathed the sword that was still clutched in my hand. “Or you will be mine, General,” I called back.
He turned his horse and rode back down the track.
XXVIII
We came at last to the Clanhold. Its forbidding grey granite walls rose from the top of the steep rise like another of the rugged crags that surrounded it. News of our coming had preceded us. By the time we rode into the courtyard, they were waiting for us on the broad stone steps leading to the entrance of the Great Hall—Rhodri, Cullin’s brother, and his wife Linnet and their three sons, Brychan, Landen and Tavis, now grown to men; Gwynna, straight and slim as a lance, with Elin, Wynn and Maira at her side; Medroch, the Clan Laird, standing straight as a sword blade a little apart from the rest. None of them moved, none of them said a word as someone took the reins of my horse and I dismounted, the heart bundle held cradled in my arms.
I stood for a moment at the foot of the broad steps. My eyes met Gwynna’s. I saw pain and grief there behind the stoic mask she had impressed upon her features. I could not bear to look at my foster sisters. They were not so well-schooled as their mother in shielding their emotions. Elin, taller than her mother, and graceful as a young willow tree, held young Keylan securely in her arms. At only three, he had no concept of what was happening. He looked at me, laughing, and reached out to me. Elin quieted him gently. I turned away and mounted the steps to stand before Medroch. Silently, he held out his arms and I placed the heart bundle into them.
“I have seen your son home, Medroch dav Kian dav Keylan,” I told him formally, keeping my voice steady only with an effort. “I have seen my foster-father home to his Clanhold, as I so swore to him when he died in my arms. I wish it duly noted that I have discharged my obligation as his liegeman in this duty.”
Medroch’s eyes flicked to the bundle he held, and for the briefest fraction of a heartbeat of time, his pain flared in the grey depths. Then he looked back at me. “It is so noted,” he said, his voice clear in the silence. “You have my acknowledgment of my debt to you in this matter.” He paused. When he spoke again, his voice contained the barest suggestion of a tremor. “Will you further serve my son by keeping vigil with him on this night of his hom
ecoming? You were unable to stand vigil with your father. Will you stand it with your foster-father?”
I barely managed to hide my startled surprise. The keeping of the vigil was for a man’s nearest relative—father, brother or true-son. Not foster-son. It was Medroch’s right, his privilege, or Rhodri’s. Offering it to me was an honour I had not expected. I went to one knee on the worn granite.
“I gladly accept this duty and this honour,” I said, my voice sounding hoarse and raw in my own ears.
Rhodri stepped forward and held out his hands. I placed mine in his and let him raise me to my feet. “You are well come home, Kian dav Leydon ti’Cullin,” he said.
Turning his hands in mine, I bent and touched my forehead to them, then stepped back and went to Gwynna. She held out her hand. I took it and raised it to my lips. It trembled in mine.
“Ti’vata,” I said, straightening up again. “I am sorry to bring you such evil tidings.”
“Kian, my son,” she said and smiled. It cost her an effort. “I am only happy that he had you to perform this service for him.” She looked over to where Kerri stood alone at the foot of the steps. “Will you present your companion to us?”
Kerri came forward, and I presented her to my grandfather. Medroch extended his hands to her and smiled.
“You are doubly welcome here, Kerridwen al Jorddyn,” he said quietly. “Both as friend to my son and grandson, and as kinswoman to my friend, Kyffen of Skai.” He presented her to Rhodri and Linnet, then to Gwynna.
I turned to Elin and held out my arms for Keylan. She handed him over, then smiled at Kerri and murmured a polite greeting before following Medroch and the rest of the family back into the Great Hall. Keylan came to me with a bubble of delighted laughter, his small, chubby arms tight around my neck, warm against my skin. I shushed his laughter gently, then brushed a few copper-gold curls out of his eyes. Brown-gold eyes, like mine. I saw Kerri notice those eyes, then glance quickly from me to Elin. At fifteen, she was as beautiful as her mother with Cullin’s green eyes, her hair her own shade of rose gold, ruddy and gleaming as it rippled down her back.
“Yours?” Kerri asked softly.
“Mine,” I confirmed. “Elin is his aunt. She’s my sister.”
Kerri reached out to stroke a gentle finger down the child’s cheek. Keylan regarded her for a moment with that frighteningly grave solemnity of the very young, then turned his head and rested his cheek on my shoulder.
“I didn’t realize you were wed,” Kerri said. “Or that you had a family.”
“Nennia died birthing Keylan,” I said. “We had only one season together.”
“I’m sorry. Did you love her?”
“No,” I said, remembering the slender and timid girl. She was as elusive and gentle as a springtide fawn and as trusting as any young thing never exposed to hurt or betrayal. I had made a special effort to treat her tenderly, and she had responded shyly to that tenderness. The day Cullin and I left to meet another merchant train, she had demurely told me she thought she might be with child. Before I came home again, she was dead and Keylan was nearly a season old. “In time I might have,” I said, cupping Keylan’s head in my hand. “But we met for the first time the day we were wed. I was fond of her. I believe she was fond of me.”
“You never once mentioned her. Or the child.”
“Aye, well. Cullin didna speak much of Gwynna and his girls, either,” I said. “It’s a private thing, ye ken. For home only.”
“In,” Keylan said imperiously, pointing toward the door. “In.” So we turned and went into the Great Hall.
***
I dressed that evening in a new kilt and plaid, one containing the narrow golden-yellow stripe of a younger son of the house of the Clan Laird. Servants hovered in the chamber, but I shooed them out and replaited the braid by my left temple myself. For Cullin, I twisted a thong of black dyed leather into it. I was just fastening it with a ring of hammered copper that nearly matched the colour of the braid itself when someone knocked on the chamber door and Rhodri came in. He, too, wore kilt and plaid, but with the broader gold stripe of the eldest son in it. The ruby in his ear flashed and sparked in the torchlight.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
I nodded.
He held open the door and inclined his head, waiting for me to preceed him into the corridor. We walked together down the flagstone hall to the steps leading down to the Great Hall where the rest of the family waited. Just before we started down the steps, Rhodri put his hand on my arm.
“Kian,” he said quietly. “I want you to know that I think my father’s choice was wise. You are the one to hold vigil.”
All I could do was thank him.
They were all there as we descended the steps and came out into the Great Hall. Medroch stood by the hearth, the heart bundle on an ornately carved table at his elbow. Gwynna and the girls stood to one side with Linnet and her three sons. Kerri was there, dressed in a simple but elegant green gown, a plaid pinned across her shoulders by a plain silver brooch. I glanced at Gwynna, who was pale and expressionless, and wondered if she had given Kerri the plaid to wear. It was an odd gesture. The tartan was only for kin, and I wondered briefly if Gwynna was expecting Kerri to come into the family as a prospective kin-daughter.
Medroch waited for me to approach him. Slowly, with infinite care, he turned to the heart bundle on the table. He unbuckled the wide leather belt and untied the two cords that held it together, then slid the great, two-handed sword out from beneath the bindings. Holding it balanced across the palms of his hands, he moved to face me, straightening his arms to offer me the sword.
“This is the sword of Cullin dav Medroch dav Kian,” he said quietly. “To you, Kian dav Leydon ti’Cullin, is the keeping of this weapon now entrusted. It is yours to offer in service to Clan Broche Rhuidh.”
I held out my hands and Medroch placed the sword across them. I walked slowly across the Great Hall to face Gwynna. She held out her hands.
“I charge you with the care and keeping of this sword until I have need of it and come to claim it,” I said.
“I accept the charge,” she replied.
I placed the sword into her hands. It was heavy, but Gwynna bore its weight with the same quiet strength she bore her grief.
When I returned to face Medroch again, he had unwrapped the plaid, exposing the folded parchment. I watched as he placed it into a carved marble box. He secured the box with wax, then drew the signet ring from his finger and sealed the box, pressing the signet into the hot wax. He stepped back.
“See him home, Kian,” he said. “And see him safe through the night.”
As I picked up the box, a piper began to play, so softly at first it was little more than a whisper of sound through the Great Hall. I turned away from Medroch to see Rhodri was the piper. He wheeled slowly and led me out of the Great Hall, the eerily melancholy wail of the pipes becoming sweet and poignant in the dark of the night.
Each phrase Rhodri played had meaning. As a weaver gathers the threads of a tapestry to weave an image, so Rhodri plaited the musical phrases together to tell those who knew how to speak the language of the music the story of Cullin’s life. Medroch was in the music, as was Rhodri himself and my father Leydon, and Gwynna, and Elin, Wynn and Maira. I was there, too. The sum of his life was a unique melody, hauntingly beautiful and powerful.
***
We came to the small circle of stones tucked into a fold of the side of the mountain. Seven columns of smooth-hewn stone rose to half again the height of a man. In the centre stood a pillar set on a plinth, chest high, flat and polished on the top. Beyond lay the crypts where generations of the people of Broche Rhuidh lay in niches carved into the mountain to receive them.
The wail of the pipes faded behind me, then ceased as I walked slowly between two of the standing stones and placed the box on top of the pedestal. As I stepped back, Rhodri came forward and placed his hand on the box.
“Be welcome at the end of you
r journey, Cullin dav Medroch dav Kian,” he said softly. “I leave with you your ti’rhonai to stand vigil and to see you safely home.”
“I shall guard his journey,” I said quietly.
Rhodri nodded, then walked quickly away. I didn’t watch him go. Instead, I knelt in front of the pedestal, then sat back on my heels and drew my sword, holding it across my lap. The naked blade gleamed softly in the faint light of the stars, the runes deeply etched and prominent against the bright metal. I reached for the deep well of quiet within myself and emptied my mind as I raised my eyes to the small box above me.
I loved him. Now, I knelt and let that love settle around me like a warming cloak in the chill of the night.
I do not know what I expected to happen as I knelt there, eyes fixed unwaveringly on that polished and carved marble box. Memories of Cullin filled me. I saw him again as I had seen him that first night at the squalid inn near the Isgardian border in Falinor. His laughter rang softly in the air around me. Images of his face, illuminated by hundreds of campfires in places all over the continent, swirled through the night. I saw him again as he drilled me in swordplay, demanding my best and receiving it because he expected nothing less. I saw him with Gwynna and his daughters, love and pride glowing in his eyes and softening his features. And I saw him, cloaked in sorrow, as he told me of the birth of my son and the death of the young wife I hardly knew.
Time passed. It may have been one hour, or ten, or a hundred. Gradually, I became aware of a heightened sense of hushed silence in the night. All senses suddenly cracklingly alert, I straightened, still on my knees, but no longer relaxed. My hand slid slowly up the blade of my sword, the etched runes distinct and defined beneath the pads of my fingers, until I grasped the hilt firmly.
The air by the pillar began to effervesce gently, like the water of a mineral hot spring, sparking with thousands of tiny points of light. It swirled, still fizzing softly, then suddenly coalesced, and Cullin stood there, whole and complete, and looking no older than I. Hand resting on the marble box, his face lit with laughter, he looked down at me as I gaped in astonishment. It was his shade I stared at, I knew, but he appeared solid enough to reach out and touch.