She opened her eyes with a start to see Lochlan bending over her. “There’s a healing cave just over there with a place to sleep, a hearth, already stocked with salves and bandages and such. I’ll start a fire in it, see what I can find in the way of food. The larder looked bare when I checked it. Are you all right?”
She nodded. The heat and the steam and the easing of the pain were all making her sleepy.
“Are you cold?” His gaze flickered down, then up.
“No,” she replied, wondering why he’d ask that. “Not at all.” She flicked a few drops of water in his direction.
“Keep that up and I’ll dunk you again.” He turned on his heel, and she glanced down. Her nipples were hard and erect. She lay back against the smooth slope, fitting the back of her skull into the special depression carved out for just that purpose. The water crept up around her hips, lapping at her waist. With the ugly gash below the water, her skin was ivory in the purplish twilight. The wet fabric clung to her uncomfortably and she considered removing it. But there was nothing else within reach to cover herself, not even a towel.
She closed her eyes, listening to him moving about, smelled the smoke of the fire, heard the snap and sizzle of frying meat. Steam surged around her, cushioning as a cloud, and she relaxed once more into the memory of the last day they’d been friends.
He had kissed her, there, under the tree, reaching for her as naturally and as hungrily as a man who wasn’t quite certain he’d been invited to the feast. She remembered how he’d rolled on top of her, pressing her back into the thyme, letting her feel the rock-hard ridge pushing against her own swelling mound. “You think about that, tomorrow, when you choose,” he whispered in her ear. And then he’d gotten up and he’d run away.
She had not seen him again, except on the playing fields, from the stands. She had been so intent on him she had not seen Meeve watching them both. She was Meeve’s oldest daughter. It was her right to choose second. It had not occurred to either Lochlan or Morla that Meeve would choose him. Morla remembered her mother’s slow stroll down the long line of men, smiling, stopping here and there, to cup a groin or rub her hand up and down a biceps, smooth an errant curl, or pinch a smooth-shaven cheek. She stopped before Lochlan, her fingers dancing over his chest, turning as if to pass him by, then stopping. And now, so many years later, somehow Morla knew exactly what it was. His nipples had hardened. Meeve looked at him, enchanted. Morla watched, dumbfounded, as her mother took Lochlan’s hand, cupped it around her breast, and spoke the ancient invitation. Morla blinked away the memory and looked up to see Lochlan had returned.
“I found something to eat. It’s not much. Can you come, do you think?”
“If you help me.” She raised her arms.
“I found some robes—they may not fit, but they’re dry and clean, at least. You put one on and I’ll dress that wound.”
To his credit, he didn’t flinch when it came time to put a bandage on, but she could see that the still-wife was right. The water had eased the burning, but the flesh was still oozing. As he gently turned her leg, he said, “There’s water in a flask over there—it’s got a silver tinge to it. I think it’s the stuff the druids make. You know, the silver-water—what the bards call water of life?”
“You think that’ll help?”
“I think it could cure it.”
“Then get it—”
“Morla, you know how bad it was when the water hit the wound? This’d be ten times worse. The way it was explained to me, its like cauterizing a wound with a red-hot blade. I’ve experienced that. It’s enough to make a man shit. I don’t think I can do that to you.”
Morla stared at him. “This is why Nuala said I needed a druid?”
“I’m sure of it—they’re the only ones who distill the stuff, the only ones who can.”
“Then why should we wait?”
Lochlan nodded at the low bed on which she lay. “Look, Morla—see those rings—those leather ties? That’s to hold you in place. I know what it’s like.”
“You have to.” She reached out and hit him with a weak fist. “I’ve borne a child—three days I was in labor—and then he was stuck for nearly three turns of the glass with his head half hanging out of my bottom. Get the water. I can’t stand this pain anymore. Please. It’s getting worse again already. I can’t spend all night with my leg in the pool.”
“What if—what if it makes you worse?”
“Then you leave me here and ride to Deirdre—” She broke off, grimacing. “Or cut my throat with one clean slice. You’d not let your horse suffer this way.”
That seemed to decide him. He got to his feet, retrieved the flask. For a moment, he hesitated, and then set to work, tying her securely to the bed. When she was bound, arms and legs, he placed a small pad of dried cudwort between her teeth. “Bite down on this,” he said. He poured the water from the flask onto the wound, and she gasped, arched her back and stiffened as the first drops seared all the way to the bone. The world turned red, then white, then finally, blessedly, black.
At some point, Bran realized that day and night had different meanings in Faerie. The rising and setting of the sun wasn’t a marker of time passing, but more like a melody that repeated in simple tones that rose and fell according to a preordained pattern. He lay, watching the sky begin to darken, the colors and the shadows begin to shift. He turned his head and looked directly into Loriana’s green eyes. There was an intensity in her expression that took his breath away, and he remembered that TirNa’lugh was considered a dangerous place and that even the oldest and most experienced of druids never went there alone. He remembered Morla and Lochlan and he knew they must be very worried. He remembered how he’d felt after the last time he’d been here, how sick and faint and weak, and he remembered what Lochlan said about the sidhe. “Maybe I should go home,” he whispered. “You know, back to my own world. I can come another time, right?”
But Loriana sat up and looked around, frowning. From somewhere deep in the wood, he heard the shrieking of what sounded like hundreds of birds, and suddenly the highest branches of the trees began to shake and sway as if a great wind was blowing through. Bran felt no wind, only a great deep sadness.
“Is there something wrong?” he asked as Loriana pressed her hands to her mouth, and her eyes grew wide. She appeared to be listening to something, something he could only dimly perceive as a vibration. “What is it?” he whispered as above them the trees began to dip and sway even more violently. A huge flock of birds rose screaming and took off in a dark cloud toward the east.
“It’s the trees,” Loriana whispered. “The Forest House, my father’s house—where we all live—” Her face crumpled. “The Forest House is burning.”
14
From his hiding place, Timias in goblin guise watched the Hag pull her stick through her enormous iron cauldron. She muttered as she stirred, low words that he couldn’t quite hear, but the sense of which made the ruff on the back of his neck stand up while his tail coiled and uncoiled up and down his legs as he rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, trying to find a smooth place big enough on which to stand. But despite his cramped limbs, his cold flesh, his empty belly, his gaze was riveted not on the shrunken creature crouching over her cauldron, but on the three stones that supported it—three stones, not four.
One was black, one was white and one glowed a pale green, the color that wreathed the trees of Faerie every spring. It drew his attention, for the images flickering across the surface appeared to pulsate in a manner inconsistent with glints and shadows thrown by flames. Even from this distance, he could see shapes, recognize outlines that looked like trees, and shadows with arms and heads and legs moved across its surface like clouds across a sky. Murkier shadows moved within the pearl and the surface of the obsidian sparkled with red and orange glints. There was something about the way the light flashed and glimmered off the surface that fascinated his goblin nature. The way it moved, he thought, reminded him of the way t
he goblins danced in Macha’s halls. His claws tightened around the pouch as his mind began to churn.
The Mem’brances of Trees spoke clearly of the Hag’s four globes, that within each pulsed the spark that enlivened every expression of the element within both worlds. The gremlins proved that this was literally true. If he could get his hands on the one that represented the sidhe, coupled with the power inherent in the shattered globe…A new idea began to form, an idea so radical he felt his ruff rise on the back of his neck and his tail quivered in its coil. There was a way to make certain that the druids and their silver never came into Faerie again and he could use their own magic to do it. Their own magic, used in an entirely unexpected way. Provided of course, he could get the globe away from the Hag and escape with his life. As much as he hated his goblin skin, he had recognized its advantages in finding his way here. He would have to hope it would offer similar advantages in getting out.
Timias leaned closer, trying to see how tightly the globe was wedged under the cauldron and if it truly was one of only three supports, when the long claw on the end of his toe dislodged a pebble, sending a shower of debris cascading down the rocks.
The Hag stopped chanting and stirring. Her head came up, and she looked around, sniffing audibly, the hairs on the end of her nose quivering like the gremlin’s ears. “Child?” she whispered. “Child, is that you?”
Is that you? She’s been expecting me? he wondered, startled. There was something in the Hag’s voice that made him want to run to her, embrace her, wrap his arms around her and never let her go. But something else kept him rooted into place and he clutched the crystals harder, anchoring his awareness into them, so that he could draw upon their power in the way the druids did.
“You know I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.” She paused and sighed. “A very long time, indeed.”
There was something of Macha in her, only worse. He felt the voice under his skin, under his nails, in his spine and all the way through his limbs into the marrow of his bones where it began to burn, igniting a longing so great he had to bite his tongue to keep from gasping aloud.
“Don’t be afraid, child. This is your home. This is where you belong, down here with me. Maybe that seems quite extraordinary to you, after all you’ve seen. But surely you feel it, too, don’t you child? You can’t really feel you belong up there, do you, child? Up there, in the world above?”
It was a hard word the way she said it, the syllables short as the thud of an ax. He felt them in his breastbone.
“You realize it, too, don’t you, child?” Her breath steamed in the still air. “Didn’t you ever feel you didn’t quite…belong?”
Even with the energy of the crystals, Timias found the lure of her voice nearly irresistible. It wasn’t just the voice, he thought. It was the tidal wave of emotion that was sweeping across and into him, flooding every pore, every empty, broken place with something that felt like liquid light. It probed his deepest, most intimate recesses, and he shook and shivered as she continued, low and wooing as the softest wind’s caress: “It’s because you don’t.”
How does she know that? he wondered, and almost immediately, the Hag chuckled as if she read his mind. “I can read your needs, child. I carried you in me—don’t you realize that? Who’d you think your parents were, child? The sun and the moon? The rain and the wind? The earth and the sea? Well, you were right.” She cackled again, and the sound echoed around the vaulted ceiling like the shrieks of a flock of crows even as the import of what she said finally shattered his resolve.
“Are you saying you’re my mother?” The child who can’t be slain by hand of woman, hand of man, the child of Herne and the Hag. Shock made him step into her view. “M-my mother was killed by goblins—”
“That was just a story the sidhe-king made up.” The Hag turned and he saw her eyes were blank gray discs set in a face as mottled as a week-old corpse. She drooled when she smiled and held out her hand. “He could only tell you what he knew.”
Revulsion raced through him and he took a step backward. No, he thought, this wasn’t—couldn’t be—happening. It wasn’t possible. He was having some strange kind of dream, induced by the crystals, perhaps, or the gremlins or maybe even the druids.
“Maybe you think it’s impossible.” She chuckled, a sound that made his hair stand on end and he realized he had changed from goblin to some odd mixture of all three races—leathery skin and hair gray as a goblin’s, a long beard like a mortal, but with a body tall and slim and supple as a sidhe. And a tail, a goblin tail that flickered and curled and coiled around his legs, betraying his every emotion. “The world wasn’t meant to hold something like you. And now you’re back, finally where you belong.” The cauldron was starting to simmer faster and she smiled as she stirred.
“But I—but I want to stay there,” he heard himself blurt.
He was not prepared for the wave of disappointment that swept through him. It took him aback, but hardened his resolve.
She drew back her black lips and hissed, and he saw the long yellow teeth at the back of her mouth. The knuckles of her hands whitened as she clutched her stick. It occurred to him that this creature was very powerful and therefore very dangerous and that she could force him to stay. But she wouldn’t. He stared into her reddish eyes and realized that this hideous creature loved him. She bent over her cauldron, muttering. “Don’t worry. I can’t make you stay. I can’t make anyone do anything. I can only…stir the pot. But—” she looked over her shoulder and her eyes glittered green “—you’ll stay with me awhile, won’t you? Now you’ve come, surely you won’t just run.” She chuckled again softly.
“I—I—” He hesitated. What he really wanted was the moonstone globe, but he wasn’t quite sure how to get it away from her. “I’ll stay awhile if you give me some answers.”
“What do you want to know?” Her voice was once again low and silky, and the skin crawled on the back of his neck.
“Why did the sidhe-king raise me?”
“That was all your father’s doing,” the Hag answered. “I had no part of it—I wanted you here, with me. But your father insisted. He thought you were beautiful. He thought you belonged in Faerie.”
I do belong in Faerie. I want to belong in Faerie and I want to stay there, Timias thought. “So…does that mean Herne is my father? Just as the trees remember?”
“Oh, yes. That’s all true.”
“The trees say you have four globes. But I see only three.”
She hissed and glanced at him over her shoulder, the hair on the end of her nose quivering. “I had a fourth globe, once. But it broke.”
“What happened?”
“You’re interested in the beginnings of things,” the Hag answered. “That’s good, that’s very good. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“But you were expecting me? You knew I was coming?” Talking to her made his bones melt.
“All things find their way to me eventually,” she whispered, her voice as lulling as the sound of the wind sighing in the trees of the Forest House on a summer afternoon. “But you’re mine. You found your way more easily than most.”
“That’s why I can change? Even into goblin flesh?” Timias asked.
She shrugged and gave him that ghastly grimace. “You needn’t worry about that anymore. You can stay here. With me.”
“But I don’t want to stay here,” Timias said. He glanced around the cold dank space, jagged edges and slippery rocks, tried to imagine never going back to Faerie again, never seeing Loriana again and decided he could never let that happen. Especially now, now when the answer was so very close.
“Look at the globes.” Her voice was soft, wooing. “They’re very beautiful—I’ve spent ages just watching them. Maybe you’d like to look at one up close? One’s for the goblins, black as night. One’s for the mortals, wet and white, and one of moonstone for the sidhe, who flit and sing and live in trees.”
The singsong rhythm of her voice forced him to shake h
is head and bite his lip hard enough to draw blood just to clear his head.
“Tell me, what do you think of them?”
“They’re beautiful,” Timias agreed, hedging sideways.
“Which one do you like the best?”
“The moonstone,” he answered without thinking.
“Ahh, that’s my favorite, too.” She gave him another of her ugly smiles and he cringed. If she tries to touch me, he thought, I will vomit. “Really?” Timias managed.
She cackled and drool spooled into the cauldron. “Come and have a closer look, child. Have a look in my brew—I’ll let you see what we’re stirring up next.”
Crystal smooth and crystal strong, you still all to me belong, add your smoothness to my hands, that they will do what will commands…that I may do what I command…Silently he repeated the words as he crept closer, examining how the globes were set into the rocks that surrounded the fire pit. They were just wedged.
The Hag smiled and beckoned.
Warily, he crept closer. The images in all three spheres leaped and spun, enticing and teasing. In the moonstone, he thought he saw Loriana, her mouth open, tears in her eyes. She was speaking to someone, pointing into the distance. Wisps of black smoke blew across her face. He stumbled a little, and cut his foot, and the Hag’s eyes flared red as his blood trickled to the ground.
“Come, child, look in the brew.”
A puff of steam belched up, and in it, he thought he saw a tree on fire, a living tree engulfed in flame. The thin wail of its agony penetrated to its core. He looked at the Hag and he saw she was weeping.
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