The Awakening

by Roberts, Nora

  That not only took Aisling’s man, the father of the children, away, and while she carried another, but left the work of the farm solid on her and Harken’s shoulders.

  It troubled him, and always did. Always would.

  “Morena’s helping Harken shear sheep. Do you—”

  “Less talk, more riding.” Merlin leaped into a gallop.

  She rolled her eyes, but followed.

  A lot different from bumping along in a cart behind a plodding horse, she thought. While speed held its thrill, he gave her no time to enjoy the scenery, and she worried Bollocks would fall too far behind.

  “We have to slow down. The dog’s following, and we’re too fast for him.”

  “Tell him where we’re going.”

  “I don’t remember how to get there.”

  “Bloody hell, woman.” He slowed, but only to a canter. “Put the image of the place in his mind. He’s been there with Marg, he’ll find his way.”

  “I don’t know how you expect me to do so much at once.” She put the dog and his welfare first, slowed to a walk. When he caught up, she brought her memory of the graveyard, the big stone ruin, the field of sheep, all she could bring back into her mind, then pushed it toward Bollocks.

  He wagged that skinny whip of a tail, and trotted off in his happy way ahead of her.

  “It might be too far for him to walk. I should’ve stopped at Nan’s, left him with her.”

  “Gods, woman, he’s descended from demon dogs. There’s no need to coddle him. And there, you see, he’s cutting time and distance by leaving the road. No fool is he. Now use your knees, take the reins in one hand, and draw your sword.”

  When Keegan drew his, she came perilously close to one of her old panic attacks. “No, wait.”

  “An enemy doesn’t wait, but looks for weakness. And that’s what you’re showing. Defend!”

  He killed her before she unsheathed her sword.

  “Reins with your left, sword in your right. Again.”

  She got the sword free, but dropped the reins. Keegan had them back in her hand with a flick of his.

  “I want to learn how to do that. How did you toss them back up?”

  “I willed it. Stop talking and defend. Use your knees to guide the horse.”

  She tried, even managed a weak block, but the strike skewed her balance, and nearly dumped her off the horse. But she felt the push of air, like a shove of a hand, right her again.

  She wanted to ask how he’d done it, but she couldn’t catch her breath. And he killed her again.

  She sat, winded, under a pretty summer sky, trying to shake her hair out of her eyes while Keegan scowled at her.

  “Pitiful. Your seat, your sword arm, your focus. Your horse is a weapon as well, but you don’t use him. Ah well, we’ve given the dog a bit of a lead, so we’ll go on.”

  Sheathing his sword, he turned his horse, then left her in his dust.

  She started to complain. She’d only learned to ride—at all—a few weeks before. And she’d first picked up a sword after that.

  But it reminded her time was running out. The summer wouldn’t last forever.

  Incensed, she stretched her mount into a gallop. She’d never have caught the stallion, but Keegan slowed his pace just enough.

  See how you like it, she thought.

  She gathered the reins, drew her sword.

  “Defend!” she shouted.

  Later, she’d admit she caught him completely off guard, and still his sword all but leapt into his hand. With the reins in her hand she punched out—but with power.

  It knocked his sword back just enough for her to follow through with her own.

  He had a hell of a grin for a dead man, she thought, and wanted to curse him for it as he made her want to grin back.

  She liked the power of being pissed off.

  “Much less pitiful,” he told her.

  Far from mollified, she shot her sword home, and rode ahead.

  “You’ve gone beyond the turn!” he called out, and she heard the laughter in his voice.

  “Bollocks, bugger it, bloody hell,” she muttered. And with her exit spoiled, turned her horse around and followed him.

  She died three more times on the journey, once to the cheerful applause of a towheaded toddler bouncing on his mother’s hip.

  It touched her to see the dog lying beside the garden she’d helped plant over her father’s grave. He sat up as they approached, but stayed beside it.

  “I’ll take the horses to the stream. They’ll want water, and you’ll want some moments alone with your father.”

  First the grin, now simple kindness. Any hope of rebuilding her temper faded.

  “Thanks.” She dismounted, handed him the reins.

  “This area’s well patrolled now, so you should have no worries.”

  “All right.”

  “But don’t be pitiful. Come with me then.” He snapped his fingers at the dog. “And you’ll have yourself a swim.”

  So he left her by the grave with the flowers blooming, a lovely carpet spread in front of the stone.

  For a moment she stood in the light breeze gathering herself, and her thoughts.

  “I know more of what you did and why. A lot more. I’m learning from Nan, and I won’t give up that part of me ever again. The part you gave to me. I wish I could talk to you, really talk to you the way we used to. I understand why you didn’t tell me, but now that I know . . .”

  Crouching down, she traced her fingers over his name.

  “You had your heart in two worlds. I think—no, I know it’s the same for me now. And duty, on both sides.”

  Straightening, she looked up, the stones in the grass, the hills rising. She could hear the wind whisper through the grass, rumble through the ruin where the Pious had once walked.

  She heard sheep bleating, and Bollocks’s happy bark.

  “You would never have left here if not for me. Your heart was never on the other side, but I was. God, I don’t want to let you down. I’m going to try with all I am not to let you down.

  “I love you,” she whispered. “I miss you. I’m not the only one,” she said as she looked over toward the stream where Keegan stood, his back to her while the horses drank.

  She walked through the grass, around the graves, past the ruin that made her spine tingle.

  She glanced toward the old building, toward the opening. A wide one, she noted, and imagined the two thick doors that had once closed it off.

  Closed what walked there in.

  Something still walked there—she felt that in her bones.

  She kept her distance as she made her way to Keegan.

  “I’ll take the horses now. You’ll want some moments, too.”

  He said nothing at first, just looked at her in that way he had. Straight on and searching. “I do, aye. Thanks for that.”

  He handed her the reins. “There’s a buck, a big one, twelve-pointer, through the trees there toward the south a bit. He might move enough for you to spot him. He’s a beauty.”

  He knew that tingle in the spine near the ruin, as he’d felt it many times before. As he knew the whispers that sounded through the archways, along the curve of stairs.

  He knew the pulse, like a thick heartbeat, in the air.

  And sometimes, some trembling times, through that pulse came the screams of the tortured, and the unanswered pleas for mercy.

  Another day he might have gone in, taken Breen with him. To see what she felt, what she heard.

  But not this day.

  He saw though the sky held clear, clouds and gray gathered up in the north. There’d be a storm that night.

  He wouldn’t mind it.

  He sighed as he looked down at Eian’s grave.

  “She’s doing better than I believed she would. A ways to go, for certain, but she’s doing better. Better yet when she remembers she has a spine and a spirit. I remember her mother, but I think the one who reared her on the other side became a differe
nt sort. I’m sorry for that—for you, for Breen, but that’s what we have, isn’t it?

  “Gods, Eian, I’d give a limb for your counsel. The bloody politics could make a sane man mad as a hatter. Thank those gods for my mother and her cool and clever head. I’ll need to take your daughter to the Capital when she’s ready. And what they’ll make of her I couldn’t say.”

  He glanced over to where she stood, as he had, with her back to the graveyard.

  “She’s full of twists, your daughter. It seems to me the power in her’s ripe one minute, green the next. But I can tell you she doesn’t stop. Once she’s stepped to the line, she keeps going, so there’s that.”

  As Breen had, he crouched, traced a finger over Eian’s name.

  “I can’t fail you—my greatest fear in the world is failing you. I give you my oath, taoiseach to taoiseach, man to man, Fey to Fey, I’ll give my life to protect her. And not only because she’s the key in the lock, but because she’s yours.”

  Rising, Keegan slid his hands into his pockets before he said the rest. “She’s beautiful. I’ve tried not to notice, but I’ve eyes in my head, after all. When that spirit flashes, she’s more beautiful than any I’ve known. So, well, there you have it.

  “Be at peace.”

  He walked back to Breen.

  “I saw the buck,” she said without turning around. “He’s magnificent. It made me wonder how you know it’s a buck or a were in deer form.”

  “Fey recognizes Fey, and none would nock an arrow till they looked. Those from outside who live among us only hunt with a Fey beside them. This is the law.”

  “And you make the laws.”

  “The council makes the laws, and the taoiseach is part of the council. The law such as this has held for a thousand years, and will hold a thousand more. But we’re not here to talk politics and policy. We’re here to train. The field across the road will suit.”

  When he took the reins to lead the horses, she fell into step with him. “If I don’t know the laws, I might break one.”

  When he turned his head, she thought she saw amusement rather than impatience. Maybe.

  “Do you intend to kill someone who is not an enemy of the light? Or take what’s not yours? Cause deliberate harm to someone or their property? Force yourself on another? Will you misuse an animal?”

  “None of those are in my current plans. Is that it?”

  He used stones to weigh the reins, leaving the horses free to crop at the grass on the side of the road. “There are laws within the tribes recognized by all. The casting of a spell, the use of magicks to cause harm, to steal, and so on.”

  “What are the punishments?”

  “They should befit the offense.”

  “But how do you decide?”

  He didn’t sigh or curse, as he might have liked to do. Because she’d been in the right. She needed to know.

  “For most minor issues—squabbles between neighbors, craftspeople, lovers—I would hear them, or my mother who stands for me would hear them, and judge.”

  “And for serious issues? For rape or murder?”

  “We’re a peaceful people.” He looked out across the fields and saw a young boy and his dog herding sheep. “Such offenses are rare. So rare I have never held a hearing or made a judgment on them. And I thank the gods for it, for the punishment is banishment. If my judgment is guilty, they’re sent to the world of dark. Some say death is kinder. They may be right.”

  “Did my father ever banish anyone?”

  Impatience eked through. “Why don’t you know this?”

  “Because no one tells me.” She kept her eyes on his. “Will you?”

  Keegan gestured to the wall, then sat himself. He watched the boy and the dog and the sheep. The breeze carried the boy’s song, sweet and clear.

  “This is who we are.” He nodded toward the boy. “Tending the land, the animals, each other. Honoring our gifts and embracing the light. But there are some who harbor darkness within. After you were taken, after you were brought home again, we learned Odran had help. Yseult and three others. Two tried to hide in plain sight—you know this meaning?”

  “Yes.”

  “When their complicity was discovered, they were held while your father and those he chose pursued the others. Yseult and the third fled. She escaped, but the third Eian hunted down.”

  “He—he killed him?”

  Keegan looked at her, cocked his head as he heard the horror in her voice clear as bells.

  “I have no doubt the temptation for that was great. But he was taoiseach, and he held the law. It’s said the man—Ultan was his name, and you’ll find no one who carries that name since—surrendered. It may be—it surely is—that no one would have faulted the taoiseach if he’d ended Ultan’s life, but Eian O’Ceallaigh held the law.”

  How odd and wonderful, Breen realized, to sit here on a stone wall in sunlight and summer breezes with a man who carried a sword as others did a briefcase. To hear his voice, often so abrupt, slide into the music of storytelling.

  And the story he told was hers. Hers and her father’s.

  “What did he do—my father?”

  “He brought Ultan back, and to the Capital, where they held the trial for the three captured. Because my father was killed, and these three were complicit, my mother took us to the trial, to show how justice and the laws worked.”

  Widowed, Breen thought, with three young children. Grieving, surely grieving. “It must’ve been hard for her. Painfully hard for her.”

  “She’s strong, my mother. And wise with it. It helped to see the taoiseach in the Chair of Justice, to hear the words, to watch the laws work.

  “Two begged,” he continued, “and wept, and claimed they’d been bespelled. But there are ways to find the truth of that, and these were lies. Ultan, a believer in the radical wing of the Pious, remained defiant. Odran was a god, and as a god, was the true ruler, the true law. And the child—you—his to do with as he wished. You were an aberration, the mix of many, neither pure nor natural.”

  “Is that how they think? The Pious?”

  “It’s how many of them came to think.” He looked back at the ruin. “And those who didn’t believe as they believed they killed, tortured, enslaved, all in the name of the gods—whichever god suited them. It’s a bloody and shameful mark on our history, and most are gone, have been gone for hundreds of years. A story for another day.”

  “All right. Did my mother go to the trial?”

  “Eian brought her, and you, to the Capital for safety, but she remained secluded with you in her chambers.”

  “Not like your mother,” Breen murmured.

  “I know no one like my mother but herself.” He smiled a little as he said it, and Breen saw love.

  “And so the trial lasted a full week, for the crimes and the punishment were dire. We had rooms there in the castle as well. One day your father brought you to where we stayed. I think to get you out a bit, but also to show us what our father had died for.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Old enough to note how you clung to Eian. But you went to my mother when she held out her arms. You went to her, and you stroked her hair as if to comfort. And I remember that well, for you did give her comfort.”

  “I don’t remember. Some things come back to me in flashes and blurs. But I don’t remember any of this.”

  “We do,” he said simply. “On the day of judgment, your father said, for all to hear, that the three had brought dark to Talamh. They had conspired with a fallen and condemned god to steal the most precious of all things: a child. Conspired to bring harm, even death, to a child when we are bound, in every way, to do all in our power to keep our children safe, to tend them in all ways, to teach them the right and the wrong, and to give them love and joy.

  “By this most grievous sin of all sins, they had caused the death of good men and women and left families grieving. He looked at me when he said this, not with anger, but sorrow.”

&nbs
p; He paused a moment. “I remember that look. In it, I saw our grief was his grief, and more, sorrow for the judgment he was duty bound to give. So the three were banished, and when the taoiseach brought down his staff to seal the judgment, to end the trial, not a sound was made, not a word spoken.”

  The shepherd boy crested the hill and moved out of sight.

  “I had thought I would feel triumph. My father had been avenged, and I would feel triumph. Instead, I felt a kind of relief, and I thought, as I looked at Eian, how hard it all was to lead, to be the one to judge. And while the judgment was right and just, I learned that day there is often no joy in the right or the just. How I would never want to sit in that chair or hold the staff.”

  “And now you do.”

  “The irony has never been lost on me.” He rose. “Now you know, as best I can tell it.”

  “I appreciate it.” She pushed off the wall. “You helped me see him, here.” She looked back at the grave. “I get little flashes of him in Talamh. Carrying me over a field at the farm, playing music by the fire. But most of what I remember of him is on the other side.”

  “You’re welcome. Now.”

  He started to conjure a wraith.

  “Wait.” Not even a damn minute to settle her emotions. “I want to conjure one.”

  He continued to form a gargoyle demon with teeth and claws like razors.

  “Kill this one first.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  With time ticking down, Breen poured all her energy into honing her skills, learning the craft, focusing her power. Day after exhausting day.

  She spent a few pleasant hours on a rainy day in Marg’s workshop making charms, brewing potions and balms. The fire simmered, gold and red, the air swirled with fragrance, and her power beat like a pulse—natural and steady.

  She assumed, due to the downpour, Keegan would either cancel her session or move it indoors.

  Instead, she found him waiting, drenched and hatless, in the usual spot.

  “You’re late.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “Is it? Send your dog over to Aisling’s. The children would enjoy the visit.”