Twice Upon A Time (The Celtic Legends Series)

by Lisa Ann Verge

  But this was no dream. The whole clan had witnessed his entombment. She’d have to tell him the truth.

  All of it.

  He said, “You’re chilled to the bones.” He rose to his feet and glanced in confusion around the rocky drumlin. “When we return to the ring-fort, you’ll tell me why we’re here. Where’s my horse?”

  “There will be no going back to the ring-fort, Conor.”

  “It’ll be warm there. We’ve a kingdom waiting for us.”

  She winced. There’d be no kingdom for either of them now. “Do you remember nothing of the night past?”

  A wary uncertainty lurked in the depths of his gray eyes. “I’d rather be hearing the truth with a horn of mead in my hand and a blaze of fire at my feet.” He reached for her hand. “Come—”

  She shrieked at his touch. He released her and then stared down at her palm. “By the Dagdá.” Conor glared at the oozing, blistered mess. “Who did this to you?”

  “I did it last night,” she cried. “I seized the head of a torch to rouse myself from a nightmare. The nightmare of seeing you buried in that tomb.”

  He swayed back a little, glanced at the burial mound, and then shook his head. “Lass, the pain of this wound has stolen your wits—”

  “If I could close my eyes and make the truth disappear, I would.” With her good hand, she jerked up Conor’s sleeve and ran a finger down the knitting of a deep slash, healed as if he’d received it weeks—not days—ago. “Look to your own wounds and try to remember whence they came.”

  Conor raised his forearm to examine the scar, then his gaze drifted to the fine linen tunic he wore, and the beaten golden belt slung around his waist. Absently, he ran his hand along his abdomen, and Brigid saw his fingers pause over the layers of linen wrapping she’d wound around him so the congealed blood of his wounds wouldn’t stain his fine clothing.

  One eye twitched with the return of the violent memory. “Leinstermen,” he blurted. “A flock of them.”

  “Aidan and the others found you near a stream in the western woods.”

  “Flann wanted the babe—my son—raised as his own.” His skin flushed ruddy. “Your father sent the Leinstermen to kill me.”

  A shock bolted through her body. She remembered her father’s soft words of only days ago and recognized them as the plans of a desperate man. A shudder of cold terror rippled through her. When it passed, with it went the last remnants of the little girl who yearned for the love of her own father.

  Conor’s gaze drifted to the opening of the tomb. “Brigid, this thing cannot be.”

  “It cannot,” she whispered. “But it is.”

  “This is not the way of men.” He shook his head. “A warrior dies by the sword—”

  “And so you did.”

  He pounded his chest. “How can I breathe, then, how can I live?”

  “No man knows the way of the world. Yes,” she interrupted, before he could warn her again, “Yes, I willed you alive, I did. But it was no magic of mine which dragged you breathing from that tomb.”

  “Such things I saw.” He turned away from her and buried his fingers in his hair. “No sooner do I remember them than they are gone from me.”

  “You’ll remember less as the hours pass, until you’ll vow it was naught but a dream.”

  “Perhaps it was.”

  “Listen to me.” She placed her good hand on his back. “Have you not sat in the feasting halls of your people more times than a man can count, and listened to the bards recounting the history?”

  “What has that to do—”

  “The Sídh live among us, even now, as they have since the world began—only their world and ours are drifting apart, and the doors between them are hidden and more difficult to find. That’s why some of our people forget that they are as real as we are.” She traced the swell of his arm as she stepped in front of him. “As real as you are, Conor. Have you not guessed the truth after all these years?”

  “You’ve been listening to the idle talk of old women.”

  “You were conceived by the Samhain fires.”

  “You said yourself there’s many a child born ten moons after the fires who knows not his father’s name.”

  “I said that before I knew you were the man of my vision.”

  His jaw locked. The silver of his eyes sharpened upon her. “You’ve kept secrets from me, woman.”

  “Aye, and well I have, for I see you would not have believed me until now. I told you once that the Sight is vague when it comes to seeing one’s own way. Do you remember that you were prepared to battle that man of my dreams—that man of the Sídh? That man was you, Conor, though it took me long to figure it out, because it was my fate as well. Your father was one of the Sídh. In your veins runs fairy blood.”

  “You’re speaking madness.”

  “Cú Chulainn himself was the son of the god Lúgh—born of a mortal woman and a fairy man. He, like you, was an Ulsterman.”

  “That’s but a tale told to pass a long night.”

  “There are grains of truth in all the old stories. It is said that my own mother’s mother carried fairy blood in her veins—and thus it runs even in my blood, diluted though it is.”

  “The world is not as it was in ages past.”

  “The world will always be as it is, and the ways of men cannot truly change it, no matter how hard they try.” She told herself that it was nothing but Conor’s stubbornness which made him doubt so many of the ancient truths. Soon, he would accept what and who he was. “Well-matched, we are. We belong to a more ancient time than this. Me, born with the Sight which men have come to fear, and you, born of fairy blood—immortal, like one of the Sídh.”

  There. The words were spoken. She backed away from him to give him space to think on what she’d just said. She found a dry, rocky spot near the edge of the burial mound and huddled down, watching Conor’s stiff, thrown-back shoulders as he stood immobile. Acceptance would have to come from within.

  Awkwardly, using her teeth and her good hand, she tore a length of linen from the hem of her tunic and wrapped it around her burns. The red orange dawn had faded into a winter sky. Brigid shivered. Her cloak was soaked from a night in the mist and drizzle, and now there was no Otherworldly magic to keep her warm. Through some trick of the thin morning air, she heard the high, sharp voices of the clan Morna rising from the ring-fort, far beyond the ridge.

  As she tucked the edge of the linen around her hand, she turned her mind to worldly things—to the future that stretched before them, to the child who fluttered in her womb. She laid her bandaged hand on the tumescence of her abdomen, feeling, for a moment, a stab of sorrow for the fairy-blooded child she would birth into this unbelieving world.

  Suddenly, Conor dropped his cloak off his shoulders and strode to the opening of the tomb. She rose trembling to her feet as his determined steps brought him right to the gaping opening, for if he entered those dark caverns and stepped through into the Otherworld, she could not follow. But he faltered near the portal, as if some invisible force warded him back. She watched his fists whiten.

  He turned his back to the burial mound and strode toward her. A strange glow flushed his cheeks. A wild light shimmered in his eyes. She felt the waves of power radiating from his big body. She went cold from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet as he strode right past her, toward the east.

  “Come,” he commanded. “We go to Morna.”

  Eight

  “Are you mad, Conor?”

  Conor heard Brigid’s words and ceased his mindless dash towards the eastern horizon to swivel and face her.

  “Mad? Aye, I’ve a touch of madness.”

  His head still swirled with gossamer images. He could not shake the perfume of exotic smoke-fires from his nostrils. Vague, sylphlike forms slipped through his memory, then dispersed like mist. The melody of a sweet, high singing haunted him, for the remembrance of it came in short bursts, and then faded into silence. Even when he looked upon
Brigid, with her swirling eyes and her swirling cloak, it was as if a sparkling hung between them.

  He gripped her arms and felt again the firm warmth of her—she was human, she was real—he could hold onto her until the clinging fingertips of the Otherworld faded.

  “I’ve a belly full of wounds that should have left me dead. And I’ve a wife giving credence to the gossips of my youth. And now I’ve no choice but to believe you.”

  Her shoulders softened in his grip. “Och, Conor, I thought you’d deny it.”

  “Would that I could.” He gazed beyond her to the swell of the burial mound, to the door to his father’s house—his true father’s house. “Now I understand why I’ve the look of a man of five-and-twenty winters when I’ve seen nigh forty. Now I know why my sword always slices so true.”

  The names of warriors of the old tales rang in his head: Cú Chulainn, Finn McCool, the Fenians, the three sons of Usnach. Since his youth he’d held those names up like mirrors, hoping to find his reflection within. He’d always felt the burn of a different fire in him, brighter and hotter than all the other men he knew. Now he had a name for it.

  So it was true, what he’d suspected all his life. He was destined for some greater fate than any mortal man.

  He said, “Why are we standing here, freezing in the dawn on some ancient sacred place, when I’ve a kingdom to see to? Come.” He pulled her along. “To Morna.”

  She dug her heels into the clay. “There will be no going back, Conor.”

  “Let any man stop me.”

  “Only yesterday eve the people of Morna buried you in that tomb. Do you think they’ll be rising with shouts of joy when they see you walking and breathing like any mortal man?”

  “They’ll be falling to their knees.”

  He heard her gasp, but his mind was already over the ridge, beyond the ring-fort, to other kingdoms, to the kingdom of all Erin.

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  Her cold, angry words stopped him. She stood like some fairy-wraith, her bandaged hand held like a babe against her chest.

  “They’ll destroy you, Conor.”

  He barked a laugh. “They can’t.”

  “There are many ways to die while even the body lives.”

  “Would you have me hide like a coward from the ignorant?” He gestured to the east. “There is our kingdom.” He spread his arms. “This is our world.”

  “The blind, ignorant and frightened will always destroy what they do not understand.”

  “Cú Chulainn himself was the son of the god Lúgh—”

  “Don’t mock me.”

  “You, my wife, should welcome this, for I am proof that your ways and your beliefs are true.”

  “They will call this my witchery, the devil’s work—even as you first did.”

  “They will see sense soon enough.”

  “There’s no teaching the closed-minded.” She seized his arm and tugged it to hold him back. “You must trust me, Conor. I know what it is to be different from all others—”

  “I won’t race away from a battle.” He met her swirling eyes. “You are my queen. Have you no courage for this?”

  “It’s not courage we need but wisdom. You’ll rue this day for as long as you live. I know the minds of men.”

  “Men’s wills are like lake-reeds, they bend with the wind. I shall come back to them like a storm.” Then he stopped long enough to drag her full against his body, crushing the soft curves of her, the new and tender fullness of breast, the hard round of her growing belly. “You bear the seed of kings, wife. You will stand beside me—proud and defiant—for you are vindicated.”

  Her lips, swollen and red, lay open to him. He seized their bounty, and took, and took—for this was his woman, who’d restored his manhood in every sense. He held her head steady until he was drunk on the taste of her, salt-woman and morning mist. Her hair screened their faces from the eyes of the world. He supped on her until the rigidness of her shoulders eased and her spine melted against his embrace.

  The sap of life rose in him, hot and undeniable, and she yielded to him with the softest of moans. She blossomed beneath his kiss, all sighs and surrender. His knees scraped against the solid earth. He braced one hand on the cold rock and eased her down. Beneath her tunic lay hot skin and moist eagerness, living flesh whose spirit no fairy could match. The moon-dark tides raged as they’d never raged before. There was no art to this loving, no tenderness, for she bucked beneath him as eager as he, their loving naked beneath the great, gray, rumbling dome of the morning sky. He sought the core of her and filled her with the hard, hot length of his need. She cried out at the union. The void filled, the yearning quenched, for this was the joining of spirit and flesh.

  Heart still hammering, Conor pillowed her head on his arm and gazed down upon his woman. He thumbed her cheek where the bristle on his jaw had rasped her skin pink, then kissed the hollow beneath her cheekbone. Her breath came hot and fast by his ear.

  “Yield to me, woman,” he whispered, pressing their joined bodies still closer. “Stand by my side at Morna.”

  With a sigh, her arms tightened around his shoulders. “So be it.”

  ***

  Brigid plodded beside her husband, trying to match his long, purposeful stride. Conor marched onward, oblivious to the gray fog which rolled in around them. He plowed a path straight to the ring-fort. She battled with the urge to seize him, stop him, and rage until he saw sense, but she knew it would be in vain.

  From the moment Conor had lain with her atop the rocky drumlin, she knew there would be no swaying the will of this king. When he raged over her like the fury of winter storm, filling her with him, then stared down at her, his gray eyes glowing brighter than any metal forged in fire—willing her to acquiesce—she found herself wondering if perhaps he could mold fate in his strong hands. Maybe the brute force of his own personality could sway the hearts and minds of a whole people to see the world in the old way. In his all-loving embrace, she found herself believing the unbelievable.

  And so she had surrendered.

  Now she sensed that for all his eager lovemaking, she’d lost a part of him this day. She’d surrendered him to a dream of greater glory. That must be the way of it for the wives of great men. They never owned the whole of the man, for part of his soul belonged to conquest, with all its masculine camaraderie and honor and glory—things that women were blissfully denied, and thus could not fully understand.

  The pounding of horses’ hooves emerged from the mist. Brigid scanned the ridge and saw the murky shape of a rider and two horses cresting over it. Conor stopped, legs spread, directly in the rider’s path.

  She recognized the rider. It was one of her father’s loyal men, stern-faced and dependable. Come to fetch her from the door of the tomb, no doubt. Come to fetch the bearer of the heir to the safety of his side.

  The rider reared back his horse and opened his mouth to say something, but his lips fell slack. The wispy fog parted long enough to cast a single ray of sun upon Conor’s glowing regalia. She moved around him to press against his side and felt the rider’s gaze fall to her and then, again, disbelieving, to Conor.

  “Back to Morna for you,” Conor bellowed. “Have the ring-fort readied for my return.”

  With a spray of earth and a flash of crossing hands, the rider was gone before the words were fully spoken. He and his horse stumbled with haste and disappeared below the slope. With a reckless laugh, Conor followed the path of uprooted earth. The mischievous mist granted them teasing glimpses of the circular fortress as they worked their way down the slope. Amid the thatched-roofed dwellings, dark figures swarmed. The earth began to rumble beneath her feet and shouts came to them amidst the fog. She forced her shoulders straight and her chin high. For all the good it would do in the end, they mustn’t sense her fear.

  Aidan rode far ahead of the clan. His horse’s hooves shot sparks off the rocky ground as he skidded it to an abrupt stop, splattering clumps of wet sod at their feet.
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  Aidan’s eyes fixed in disbelief. “By the Dagdá.”

  “You come empty-handed to your king’s side? No horn of mead for me, foster-brother?”

  Aidan’s hazel gaze swung to her. “Not even in death could you let him be, witch?”

  “I’ll forgive you for the shock of this.” Conor lifted his foot from the boulder and planted it on solid ground. “But I won’t let you set loose your tongue on my queen again—”

  “Cease this!” Aidan’s stallion stamped and skittered back, flattening its ears against its head. “He died a warrior’s death, yet you reach your rotten fingers beyond the grave and drag him out of Tír na nÓg.”

  “You’ve known Conor all your life,” she said, “and you never saw the truth.”

  “I know enough to curse the day you wove your spell of enchantment around him.”

  The wind picked up and snapped Aidan’s cloak over his shoulders. A white rod gleamed where it was tucked into his belt—the white rod of kingship.

  Conor saw it and said with dangerous softness, “You did not wait long to get yourself crowned, foster-brother.”

  “Fetch this creature away, witch,” Aidan commanded, “or you’ll see his blood run red anew—”

  “Enough!” Conor’s voice cut sharp. “Shake the mead fumes from your head and look upon me.”

  “I see what cannot be—”

  “How many times,” Conor interrupted, “did you mock me as a child of the Sídh? It should be no shock to you that the legend is true.”

  The words gave Aidan pause, but only for a moment. “It’s the witch speaking through your rotting body—”

  “Last night you accused me of killing him,” she interrupted, “and now you accuse me of bringing him back from the dead.”

  “You couldn’t control him in life.” Spittle sprayed Aidan’s mustache. “So you resurrected this creature to take his place—”

  “It’s the power of the gods you’d put in my hands!”

  “I will not give the king’s rod to this mockery of a man and have you rule this kingdom through him—”