The old woman raised her head, and her outer layer of shawls fell away to reveal a small black cauldron, about the size of a large cat, cradled in her arms, almost like a child. She clutched it to her breast as if it were more precious than gold, arms quivering with the effort. “My cauldron…I was stirring my brew, you see…and someone came along and now my cauldron…”
“It needs a patch?” Catrione reached for the cauldron, but the old woman turned away, and a few drops of whatever it held splashed out, directly into her eyes. The hot liquid seared her, and she frantically wiped her eyes on her sleeve, blinking furiously. When she looked up, the forge was momentary blurry. Catrione blinked hard and her vision cleared. The night had gone absolutely silent and the flames in the two torches she’d lit above the anvil stood straight up.
“Are you all right?” Cwynn asked. “Here, this is clean water.” He held out a wet rag, and she dabbed it at her eyes.
“Don’t touch my cauldron.” The old woman’s chin was tucked so low against her sunken chest it made her look like an owl. She took a couple steps closer and the smell that rose from her was worse than a charnel pit.
The watch bawled midnight; from somewhere close by a woman moaned and a child cried. An owl hooted in the rafters. An acrid combination of the odors of old sweat and stale urine drifted from the folds of the old woman’s garments. She smelled all too human to be anything but what she was.
Cwynn turned with his stump tucked inside his tunic. “So what happened to your cauldron, old mother?”
“Someone took my globestone. Once I had four, then I had three.” Her striated face gleamed with tears but the smell that drifted off her clothing was enough to turn Catrione’s stomach. “Now I’ve only two and I can’t keep it all balanced with only two. I need a third. Please, you have to help me.”
“She’s talking about a set of stones, round stones, the old women use to balance their cauldrons and keep their food hot and their feet warm—oh, there’s a thousand ways they use them,” Catrione said. She sighed inwardly. The last thing she needed was a thief loose. She’d have thought her father would’ve at least seen his men kept some kind of order, but she hadn’t asked him. “Good Cailleach,” she began, choosing her words with care as pity warred with impatience. “King Fengus’s men are here. Go find the captain of the watch—tell him Cailleach Catrione told you to seek him out, and ask—”
“Please,” the old woman whined.
Cwynn dug Catrione in the ribs. “You can rig her something, right?”
Catrione turned and looked up at him. “Are you serious?”
“How’s she supposed to eat?”
“She’s supposed to eat with the others—”
“I can’t stir the pot without losing half my brew at every turn,” the old woman whimpered.
“We can’t have that,” said Cwynn before Catrione could either speak or move. He reached around her, took the cauldron out of the old woman’s hands, and set it on a table. “Now then. What do you think, Cailleach? Is there something you can make to take the place of a globe?”
Catrione felt the hair go up on the back of her neck. The old woman pushed her black cap back, and Catrione could see the dirt crusted in her wrinkles, saw the bits of crusted saliva flaking on her lips. No, there was nothing of the OtherWorld about her at all. She clearly wasn’t going away. Drool spooled down the old woman’s chin and Catrione felt a chill of revulsion.
“Please,” whined the old woman, even more loudly. “My brew’s getting cold.”
Catrione threw Cwynn a face. “This will slow us down—it has already.”
“Can’t you just do it? Figure out something?”
“Like what?”
“Oh—I don’t know.” He looked to the old woman. “How big’s this globe-stone of yours, old mother? Big as my head? Bigger?”
Catrione turned to Cwynn, feeling as if a veil of unreality had suddenly descended on the forge and that she stood on one side of a thin membrane while he and the old woman stood on another. It was possible for her to hear them, see them, even smell them, but somehow she felt as if she’d stepped into some other place, separate and apart from the reality in which they stood. She stood, dumb, watching Cwynn’s fingers weave through the air, his stump tucked into his shirt. Unbelievably, she saw him reach into his pack and hold out the apple from the Summerlands.
In the reddish light of the forge, it glowed. Catrione hissed as he handed it to the old woman with a smile and a flourish. His hand and stump sketched a design in the air before her; he pointed over her shoulder at the half-made tools on the table across the smithy. What do you think you just did? We need that apple, she wanted to scream, but somehow, she couldn’t.
The old woman seemed to condense into a lump beside the door, and somehow Catrione found herself bending over the anvil, her hair tucked up, her sleeves rolled above her elbows, wearing a smith’s long apron. She looked up at Cwynn with a scowl but he only smiled serenely back. As if from a great distance, she heard a voice chanting, “Wise the one who keeps me fed, he’s the one who keeps his head.”
And without feeling as if she were actually doing anything at all, Catrione watched herself tap and hammer, shape and form a three-legged contrivance, on which sat a rounded metal plate. Somehow she found time to adapt the garden rake to the harness, too, for to her amazement, Cwynn was already fitted with the contrivance. The tines of the rake gleamed silver as Cwynn handed over the tripod and the plate to the old woman, and Catrione wondered exactly when she’d melted silver and how, for there didn’t seem to be any evidence of molten metal anywhere at all.
The old woman unfolded herself, pressing Cwynn’s hand—and his new hook—to her face, kissing both flesh and metal. She fumbled inside her voluminous layers and pressed something into his hand, something wrapped in what looked like a dirty scrap of the roughest kind of linen. Catrione lifted the leather apron over her head, then dropped it as Cwynn gasped. “What’s wrong?” she asked. The old woman, like the night itself, was gone. The sky was streaked with gray; she could hear the cocks crowing all over the compound. They would have just enough time to get away.
“Do you know that old woman?” His face was gray as the ash in the forge and Catrione realized she’d lost all sense of being behind a membrane. “Have you ever met her, ever seen her before tonight?”
“No, of course not. She’s one of the refugees. Why? What did she give you?”
He held up a flat disk on a leather cord, a disk that gleamed a dull and unmistakable yellow. “This.” He handed it to Catrione, and she turned it over in her hands, recognizing it as a druid-disk at once. “This is the thing I lost—the thing my grandfather gave to me, before I left Far Nearing.”
“This very one? Are you sure?”
“Can’t you read it? See what it says?”
“Hold that lantern close.” Catrione squinted down at the spiraling lineages, at the stones, set at intervals she recognized. The hair on the back of her neck prickled and gooseflesh rose on her sweat-drenched arms. Deirdre had one just like it.
“It’s what I said it is, isn’t it?”
Frozen, Catrione nodded, even as her thoughts tumbled over each other, one after another, a twisting jumble she had no time to decipher. She pushed the disk back into his hand. “Don’t lose it this time.” She looked around the smithy. Her eyes were getting blurry, and she had to blink several times to clear them. It was getting close to dawn. “I think we should go now.” She had to blink again as her vision clouded over once more.
“We should go that way.” Cwynn pointed to the left of the forge.
“Why?” asked Catrione, astonished he should be so sure.
“I see that white dog again. And he’s wagging his tail.”
16
Morla woke up tied to a pole. A blinding pain throbbed in her right temple, and her limbs were cramped and constricted. She was lying on her side on a pile of the tanned skins of animals she didn’t recognize. She was inside a large ten
t that reeked of the same cloying perfume that clung to Meeve. A girl, not much older than a child, was sitting on the other side of the tent, cross-legged on a low pile of cushions, stitching something large and silky. The girl startled when she saw Morla looking at her, gabbled something in a language Morla didn’t recognize, jumped up and ran out of the tent.
Morla shut her eyes as a wave of nausea and dizziness rolled through her. Her tongue felt swollen and plastered to the top of her mouth, her lips dry and cracked. Wherever she was, at least she was alive. Lochlan was most likely dead. The memory of the way the warriors had converged on him, weapons drawn, flashed before her eyes. The tent flap opened behind her and a rush of warm fresh air helped clear her head momentarily. She heard a man’s sharp voice, hurried responses. Boots stalked into her line of vision, and her head was picked up by the hair. She stared into the eyes of a dark-eyed, dark-haired, olive-skinned Lacquilean.
He regarded her with that same impersonal appraisal as the others she remembered at Eaven Morna—as if she were a dead thing, not a living creature. He looked over her head and shrugged. Behind her, Morla could hear other male voices.
“Adiado.” Even Morla recognized the tone of dismissal. The Lacquilean in front of her pulled her upright, but didn’t untie her bonds, and another set of boots stalked around the pole. A lean-looking warrior stared down at her, hands on hips. He nodded at the other man.
“You say you’re Meeve’s daughter.” The first speaker’s Brynnish was nearly perfect, and it frightened her somehow that he could speak her own language so perfectly and she knew nothing of his.
She tried to speak, but her dry tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
The warrior nudged the first man and nodded at a pitcher. With a grimace, as if he begrudged it, he held the pitcher to her lips and let her drink. It was a vinegary sort of wine that made her choke and spilled down her chin. She wiped her face against her shoulder and turned back to face them both. “I’m Morla,” she replied. “Morla of Dalraida.”
“One of the twins.” He rocked back on his heels, as if that answered the question.
“Who’re you?”
He smiled at that, cocked his head a little, as if to say he hardly thought she was in the position to ask anything, then rose to his feet and addressed the warrior in their own tongue. She understood her mother’s name, she understood the words Ardagh and Eaven Morna. But nothing else.
“You!” Morla twisted over her shoulder. “Who’re you? Where am I? Where’re you taking me?”
Both men only looked at each other, ducked outside and let the tent flap fall behind them, leaving Morla alone in the suffocating tent. Her belly rumbled and the pressure in her bladder felt near to bursting. She let her head fall back against the pole, closed her eyes and tried to marshal her thoughts into some semblance of order. They were still in Brynhyvar, she thought. And the one, was he at all familiar? She racked her brain, trying to remember his face, but she’d not spent much time beneath her mother’s roof. And the ones she did remember…they all looked alike. They had some plan for her. And given what Lochlan had told her Meeve had done to the ambassador and his company…her thoughts dissolved into a wave of despair. The tent flap opened again, and the girl scampered back in, this time carrying a basket and a bucket of water.
She stole quickly into the room, bent down, untied Morla’s hands and offered her a flask. Without any other thought, Morla ripped off the cork and chugged down the contents, then indicated her most immediate need. The girl pointed to a jug in the corner, then turned her back.
Morla stumbled when she tried to stand. Her legs were still tied, and when she tapped the girl on the shoulder, the girl shook her head, big brown eyes wide. Morla pointed to the jug. “How do you expect me—”
The girl slapped a hand across Morla’s face, shook her head, and looked at the tent flap. Morla grimaced. The girl motioned Morla to stay still, then retrieved the jug, helped her to squat over it, then replaced it while Morla slumped back down. The girl held out the bucket and a towel. Morla washed her hands and face, then reached for the loaf of bread and heel of cheese the girl offered. Without thinking, she crammed one after the other into her mouth. “Who’re you?” she muttered with her mouth full of bread and cheese.
“My name’s Sabrys,” the girl whispered back in flawless Brynnish. “You’re in a camp, just to the west of Ardagh. My master intends to take you back to Lacquilea and give you to the Senex, to use as they will.”
Morla stared. She hadn’t really expected the girl to respond. “H-how do you know this?” She leaned down. “Where do you come from? How…how is it you know my lang—?”
“I come from a far-off place, on the edge of the Desert of Jebrew. I know this because I heard my master and the captain talking. I know your language because I listen. My master is…was the ambassador’s secretary. We were out of your mother’s castle before the feast was even served.”
“He doesn’t know you know how to—”
Sabrys held up her hand. “Be quiet!”
“You have to help, Sabrys. You have to help me to escape.”
The girl looked back at her as if she had grown another head. “I have to do no such thing. I won’t let you starve, won’t let you live in filth—this is my tent he means to keep you in, after all. But I can’t help you escape. It’ll be my head if that happens. And the master isn’t kind.” She dropped her eyes and sat back. “Finish, please. He’ll be back.”
Morla put the bread down. She wasn’t hungry anymore. A sick sense of abandonment swept over her. Lochlan had murmured to a still-wife where they were going—she’d overheard the brief exchange herself. So they wouldn’t be missed, neither of them. The bower Lochlan had made was off the road, too. It was unlikely anyone would notice his body. Tears filled her eyes.
“Don’t cry,” whispered Sabrys. “It won’t get you anything, believe me. Keep your eyes open, your mouth shut. And listen. That’s how I survive.”
Morla handed back the bread and cheese, but took another swig from the flask.
“You’ll see.” Sabrys got to her feet, tucked the food back into the basket, and placed the basket beside her cushions. She took the bucket. “I don’t intend to wait on you. Once he’s sure you won’t run away, I’ll show you how things are done. I heard the master say you’re a queen’s daughter. Just so we understand each other—so am I.” Before Morla could react, Sabrys tied Morla’s hands behind her back around the pole. “If anything, they go harder on you for it.”
“I’m getting out of here,” Morla said.
Sabrys shrugged and shook her head. “Don’t show Master defiance. They mean to degrade you, in every way possible. Master will look for the least excuse.” She picked up the bucket and left the tent, leaving Morla to contemplate whether taking her own life might be preferable.
“…seen him before, Chief, I’m sure of it.”
“This is Meeve’s plaid, isn’t it, Chief?”
The voices coming from very far away roused Lochlan from his stupor. He opened his eyes and saw a man’s boot less than a handspan from his face. He drew a deep breath and tried to get up. Pain flared through the back of his skull, and he collapsed with a groan, hardly having moved at all. But it was enough.
Another voice, high above, said: “Would you watch where you’re walking, you big oaf? You nearly stepped in the poor fellow’s face.”
Hands reached for him, turned him over, and a flask was put to his mouth. Sunlight stabbed his eyes and he blinked. From far away, he thought he heard his horse screaming in protest. A rough voice said something Lochlan couldn’t hear and a unshaven face peered down at him. “Is that you, Fengus-Da?” Lochlan muttered. “No one’s managed to kill you yet?”
“Not yet, boy. Everyone’s waiting for you to do it. Looks like someone had quite a go at you.” The burly chief squatted down beside him, hawked, then spat over his shoulder. “What’re you doing out here, Lochlan? Where’s Meeve? Where’s the rest of the Fiachna?”
The drink revived him enough to explain, without details, what had happened. When Lochlan paused, Fengus stared out over the hills. “So you never got a chance to see how many there are?”
“We can track ’em, Chief,” piped up one of Fengus’s younger knights.
“Can you ride, lad?” Fengus looked down at Lochlan. “We can patch you up a bit, but you’re not far from a druid house—the White Birch Grove where m’daughter is. We just left there—If you can’t ride with us we can—”
Lochlan grabbed Fengus’s sleeve. “And there’s druids there?” He struggled to sit up. “You say you been there, and there’s no blight?”
Fengus stared down at him. “None that I saw. They’re all half out of their silly heads for fear of goblins but no blight. And aye, there’s druids. A whole gaggle of ’em, a dozen or more, at least.”
“I’ll go to Ardagh with you.” Lochlan touched the back of his head gingerly. He could feel an enormous bump but no blood. “But, please, send one of your men back there. And tell them that Bran—Meeve’s son, her youngest—has been taken into TirNa’lugh and they need to send druids after him—Connla put a ward on him herself—”
“Connla’s dead,” said Fengus. “At least that’s what my daughter seemed to think.” In a few terse sentences, Fengus described the slaughtered camp.
Lochlan stared as his horse was brought up. The animal snorted and threw its head back in greeting. Slowly he got to his feet, numb with the news. “Maybe that explains it, then,” he muttered, thinking that at some point, the trixies seemed to have stopped bothering Bran. “He’s there, then, I’m sure of it. Please, Fengus-Da, if you’d be a friend to Meeve, send a man back and ask the druids to fetch her son. He’s her baby and—”
“In your charge.”
“Exactly.” Their eyes met in perfect understanding.
“All right, boy.” Fengus clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You sure you’re all right now?”
“Let’s put it this way,” Lochlan said as he grasped the bridle and the reins and hoisted himself painfully into the saddle. I’ll feel a lot better when I know both Morla and Bran are safe.”
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