Keeper Of The Light

by O'Kerry Janeen

  Rioghan watched the blond from across the cave, waiting for the outburst sure to follow such criticism. But the woman only looked down at the straw and fidgeted with the ends of her plain leather belt. “It is true,” she whispered. “I have learned, now, what can happen. And I do not ever want it to happen again.”

  “Yet you have lived this way since you were barely out of your childhood. Why should you suddenly change your ways now?”

  “Rioghan,” the woman said, still looking down, “you did not see the shame of it yesterday. You did not see Sabha’s face as she cursed us, nor hear the crowd’s laughter when they realized what she had done. I cannot ever let that happen again.”

  Slowly Rioghan nodded. “It seems to me that nothing but good can come from keeping the two of you together. If it means you and Airt can make a life together—and stay together—then I will help you.”

  Coiteann closed her eyes and breathed a great sigh of relief. “I thank you. We both thank you.”

  Rioghan moved to the far end of the cave, where she kept wooden boxes and leather bags filled with many fine and rare things, and began to search through them to see what might suggest itself for this task.

  She began with a length of slender iron chain, but knew that this charm would require far more. Binding. That was the thing needed here. The binding and confining of the wearer of the charm, holding and preventing her from reaching out to any other man, and keeping her love only for one.

  Binding required weight and power and impenetrability. It would require things of the earth, the heaviest and strongest of the four natural elements. Water and air had force, but could contain nothing on their own. Fire would only destroy anything it tried to hold. This task needed the power of the earth.

  She found a box of small stones. Some were shining crystals of startling beauty, clear and glittering even in the low light of the cave. Some were duller and heavier, some were rounded and others flat on one side…but all still seemed too light, too ordinary.

  Beneath it was another box, this one containing odd, small shapes of various metals. There were little lumps of shining gold and larger pieces of green-tinged copper and rusty-black iron.

  Rioghan took out one of the pieces of iron, but quickly put it back. She had never much liked iron; it always felt cold and dead and surprisingly brittle, even for all its weight and supposed strength. And if left alone for only a season or two, it would turn to rust and dissolve into nothing.

  What was this?

  In with the pieces of gold and copper and iron was a large lump of smooth metal with a silvery black finish. Rioghan lifted it out and instantly thought back to the day the Sidhe had brought it to her, as they often brought odd or interesting things they came across that they had no immediate use for. It seemed that she might very well have a use for this now.

  It was the metal called luaidhe, heavier than any other, yet soft enough to be easily pressed into whatever shape might be desired. It was perfect.

  “Give me three long strands of your hair,” Rioghan said. Coiteann walked close, ran her fingers through her blond mane, and handed over the strands of hair. Rioghan lifted out the luaidhe piece and carried it, along with the iron chain and the strands of Coiteann’s hair, to the entrance of the cave. Brushing aside a little of the straw on the floor, she took one of the loose, flat stones from the hearth, set it on the bare earth of the cave floor, and placed the heavy piece of metal on the stone.

  Now the soft, silvery black rock was in direct contact with the earth. Pressing down on it with another hearthstone, Rioghan began to whisper, under her breath, words in the oldest of languages…words that only the Sidhe, and a few others, still knew.

  Soon the piece was smoothed and flattened into shape. It was of a size to cover the palm of her hand, and its silvery black finish was attractive; yet it was heavier than any stone or any piece of metal she had held.

  Rioghan wrapped the strands of Coiteann’s blond hair around the flat, heavy piece, and then wound the slim iron chain over and around it all. As she did the winding she continued to whisper softly, eyes half-closed, working by feel, her hands slowly moving lower and lower to the earth as she did, as though the luaidhe piece were becoming too heavy to hold.

  At last, using both hands, she raised it up and looked at it. The soft, glowing, heavy lump of metal, dug from the heart of the earth and shaped to Rioghan’s will, was now itself bound up with Coiteann’s hair and iron chain. Slowly she got to her feet, feeling weighed down simply by holding the thing in her hands.

  She held it out to Coiteann, who took it without hesitation and then held it up, eyeing it closely.

  “Give it to Airt,” Rioghan said. “Tell him to hold it close between his hands, place a kiss upon its surface, and then place it around your neck so that it rests over your heart. Once he does this, he should then give you a kiss with all the sincerity he possesses—and you must do the same for him. Once you have both done this, you will be bound to him for as long as you live.”

  “Thank you, thank you,” Coiteann said softly, tucking the amulet and chain into a bag she carried at her belt. “You have done more for me this day than you know.”

  “Go in peace, Coiteann,” Rioghan said, stepping back to let her pass. The woman hurried outside and ran with light footsteps to search for Airt.

  The afternoon was cold and gray and still. Donaill, restless with the short days of winter, walked with his brothers, Irial and Lorcan, across the quiet grounds of the fortress toward the gates. All around them, gray-white smoke from the hearth fires of the houses rose up to join the cold sky, as did the white clouds of their breath on this unusually cold day.

  “Donaill,” called a young feminine voice from behind them. “Donaill!”

  The three men turned to see Coiteann hurrying over to them. “Well, now,” said Irial, leaning over to Donaill. “You are the one in her favor today?”

  “I suppose it is time for her to move on to a new man,” added Lorcan. “After what happened this morning with Airt.”

  Donaill laughed. “I can tell you only one thing about Coiteann’s next conquest: it will not be me. I have decided to look elsewhere.”

  “Oh, just as we thought! Well, that lady is a strange one, but I cannot say she was not a pretty sight at the feast. Maybe you—”

  “Donaill, I am so glad I caught you before you left!” said Coiteann, running breathlessly up to him. She seemed not to notice that two other men stood beside him.

  “We are just going out for a bit of hunting before dark,” Donaill answered patiently, with a polite smile. “What can we do for you?”

  She walked up close in front of him and smiled brightly, as if she had never been so pleased to see any man. “I have something to ask only of you, not of your brothers,” she said softly, and reached out to smooth and straighten the edge of his heavy red cloak where it lay over his chest.

  Donaill stood motionless. At last she withdrew her hands, and spoke again. “I do not need to tell you that I have not held a place of high honor among the people of Cahir Cullen,” she began. “Everyone knows what happened yesterday between Airt and Sabha and myself. I can never let such a thing happen again.” She sighed. “Airt and I hope to make a life together. I wish to be respected as his wife, not laughed at as a…a…”

  She looked up Donaill, and tried to smile. “I wish to make peace with all those whom I might have offended. I wish to start with you.”

  “With me?” He shrugged, and laughed a little. “Why with me? You have not offended me, Coiteann.”

  She hung her head again. “I believe I have offended everyone here, at one time or another. And I wish to start with you because you are the highest- ranking man here, save the king, and I fear to approach him.”

  Donaill smiled. “Again, I will ask you: what can I do for you?”

  Her face lit up. “Oh…you can let me perform some humble service for you. Let me change the straw on the floor of your house. Let me sweep the ashes from your
hearth. This will let you see that my intentions are real, and are not just words. You will see that I mean to follow them up with actions.”

  Donaill glanced at Irial and Lorcan. “I would have to ask my brothers. The three of us share the house.”

  “Oh, but that is good; that is even better! I could do this for all three of you while you are out hunting. When you return, you will find that all is done, and maybe a little extra, too.”

  His brothers shrugged. “This is for you to decide, Donaill,” Lorcan said. “You are the one who was asked.”

  Donaill could only laugh. “Coiteann, if this will help you, then go ahead and sweep my hearth if you wish,” he said. “We will be away until dark. If changing the straw on the floor of my house will help you to be a respected wife, then I am pleased to let you do it.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you,” she said fervently, looking straight into his eyes. For a moment Donaill looked back at her, and saw in her eyes a kind of coldness and determination that was somehow disquieting.

  But he assumed it was merely the determination of a long-scorned woman who had finally decided to raise her station in life. “You are welcome,” he said. “We will be back at dark.”

  He and his brothers turned and continued on their way to the gate, leaving behind a smiling Coiteann.

  Chapter Seventeen

  As night fell, Donaill and his two siblings walked slowly back across the grounds of Cahir Cullen. All of them were wet and muddy from the afternoon’s hunt through the cold rainy woods, but quite satisfied with their catch of five hares. The beasts dangled from a leather cord thrown over Irial’s shoulder.

  They left four of the hares with the servants, to be prepared for the king and his family, and took the last one back to their house. They pushed the door open, and the three of them paused. “Well, Donaill,” Irial said, “perhaps you should let Coiteann offend you more often.”

  They walked inside. A fire glowed in the newly swept hearth. A single beeswax candle had been lit in a stone dish over each sleeping ledge. The floor was thick with fresh, clean straw. And lined up on the hearthstones were three large wooden plates filled with hot wheaten flatbread with butter, chunks of boiled beef with salt, and watercress in hot meat drippings. Three cups of heated honey wine, each with a little wisp of steam rising up into the cold air, rested beside each plate.

  “Well, I’m not going to complain about it,” said Lorcan. “I think our brother was most kind to allow Coiteann to do this for us.”

  “I was just trying to help the lady by giving her what she asked for,” said Donaill. “Maybe she is not as shallow as we thought.”

  “Either way, the food looks good,” said Lorcan, and all of them laughed and set down their weapons. They picked up their plates and cups and sat down together in the fresh straw to eat the hot food and drink down the delicious steaming honey wine.

  At last, when he could eat no more, Donaill set aside his plate and stood up. Taking the still-warm cup of wine, now half full, he moved to his sleeping ledge. There he found that the furs had all been smartly shaken out and neatly placed, and the straw-stuffed leather cushions beaten into fresh shapes and invitingly arranged on the furs. And there was one more thing laid out on the ledge—a new linen tunic, dyed to a deep shade of black.

  He lifted it up and looked at it by the candlelight. The dye work was quite good and even, he noted, but the thread itself had been spun a little coarsely. The weave was loose here and there, the stitching rather uneven.

  He guessed that Coiteann must have made the tunic herself. She was the one whose task it was to make the dyes and add the color to newly spun wool and linen yarn before it was woven into cloth, so perhaps she was a bit awkward with the unaccustomed weaving and sewing. She had certainly gone to a lot of trouble just to impress him, he thought with a little grin. Had she even woven it in one day?

  Well, a little unevenness did not trouble him. He was glad enough to strip off his wet and dirty hunting tunic and wet leather breeches and boots, and put on the fresh, dry tunic—though he reminded himself that he must not wear this tunic when next he saw Rioghan. It might upset her to know that he had done a kindness for Coiteann, that he had allowed her into his house and accepted a gift from her. Women often found it difficult to understand such things and thought that any little gesture meant far more than it actually did. Things were going very well between him and Rioghan, and he wanted to make sure they stayed that way.

  Donaill drank down the rest of the wine and then lay back on the cushions with a sigh, pulling the fur covers up over his shoulders. It had been a long day. The warmth and the food and hot honey wine worked together to bring fatigue rolling over him. The last thing he remembered was the empty cup of wine falling from his hand to the clean straw below.

  The moon was nearly full this winter night, but fortunately for Coiteann its light was hidden by low, thick clouds. No one noticed her in the darkness as she walked across the yard and slipped into Donaill’s house, carrying a pair of leather bags—one large and one small.

  The beeswax candles had long since burned out. The hearthfire burned low. And on the sleeping ledges, three men snored deeply, each one with an empty wine cup lying below him in the straw where he had dropped it.

  She smiled in the darkness. The wine she had prepared especially for them had done its work…and now she would finish hers.

  Near the fallen cup, also carelessly dropped to the straw, were Donaill’s clothes—and his sword belt. Tracing along the length of the belt, she came to his jet-handled dagger and pulled it out of its thick leather sheath.

  She stood over him with the dagger in her hand.

  “Now you will become mine, and not hers. Never hers,” Coiteann whispered, and moved toward the sleeping man in the darkness.

  At dawn the next morning, two servants trudged across the cold, misty grounds of Cahir Cullen and called up to the watchman over the gate, “Let us pass!”

  Slowly one of the tall, heavy gates moved open enough to let the two men slip out. “What is your task?” asked the watchman, closing the gate again behind them.

  “We’ve been sent to bring Rioghan,” the first servant said.

  “One of the king’s men requires her attention,” said the second.

  “What’s wrong with him? Which one is it?”

  The first one shrugged. “We were not told,” he said. “We know only that we are to bring her, because she will want to see what has happened to this man—even though there is nothing she can do to help him.”

  Coiteann watched the servants go out through the gate, and smiled to herself. She looked forward with vast enjoyment to Rioghan’s arrival. There was quite a surprise waiting for her at Cahir Cullen this day.

  Rioghan ran down the tangled path to Cahir Cullen faster than she ever had before. Her black cloak flew out behind her, the leather bag bounced on her shoulder, and her two dogs trotted steadily by her side. The servants had long since been left behind to travel along the road instead of on the difficult forest path.

  You will want to see what has happened to this man…though there is nothing you can do to help him.

  They would not tell her who it was. They said they did not know. And perhaps they didn’t. At any rate, it did not matter now. Rioghan knew it could be only one man.

  What did they mean, there was nothing she could do to help him?

  The path flew by beneath her feet. At last she pushed her way through the final barrier of brush and saw the gates of Cahir Cullen.

  Gasping for breath, her heart pounding from more than just the run, Rioghan shifted her leather bag from her shoulder to underneath her arm and walked through the open gates. And there before her, walking calmly and looking as smug as Rioghan had ever seen a woman look, was Coiteann.

  “Who has sent for me?” Rioghan whispered, as her dogs stood silent and glaring by her side.

  “Why, I sent for you,” Coiteann answered. Her voice was sweet as honey, but Rioghan saw that now
she made no effort to hide the coldness in her eyes. “There is one here whom you will wish to see. Come with me.” She started to take Rioghan by the arm, but when the dogs growled and raised their hackles she let go. “Come with me,” she said again, beckoning to Rioghan and still smiling, and Rioghan followed her toward the houses.

  Servants walked the grounds, going about their usual tasks in the faint late-morning warmth. It seemed to be a day like any other at the fortress. But Rioghan’s anxiety only increased with every step she took, as she realized where Coiteann was leading her.

  “Why do you walk to Donaill’s house?” Rioghan asked, her heart still hammering. “Who is there who needs my help?”

  “I told you,” Coiteann answered, walking along as lightly as if she were on her way to the king’s own feast, “there is no one here who needs your help. Merely one for you to see.” She pushed open the door of Donaill’s house. “And here he is.”

  Slowly, pushing her cloak back from her head and brushing her damp hair away from her face, Rioghan stepped inside the house. A quick glance around the shadowed room showed her that the king’s champion’s brothers still slept—though Donaill sat up on the furs on the edge of the sleeping ledge, his head down, his feet in the clean new straw.

  “Here is your morning meal, just as I promised,” Coiteann said with a bright smile, reaching for the plate of bread and honey and boiled apples on the stones of the hearth. “Are you feeling well this morning, my lord Donaill?”

  He looked at Coiteann for a long time, and then slowly smiled at her. “I seem to still be feeling the effects of your very good wine,” he said, rubbing his head. “But I can say that it is very good to see you, Coiteann.”

  He did not notice Rioghan at all. She could only stand and stare at the two, barely able to breathe, stand just a few steps away and be no closer to Donaill than if she were still at Sion.