The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One

by Jules Watson

  Pity shone now in Fola’s eyes. ‘There you are wrong. You are our Sister. You must know that nothing can change that. You cannot change that – however hard you try.’

  Rhiann could not answer.

  ‘The Mother brought you here,’ Fola said. ‘Why did She do this? To cause you pain? To hurt you?’

  ‘She hurts if She chooses. She brings pain and death. You, of all people, know why I left.’

  Fola shook her head. ‘And if you had stayed, you would have learned more than this.’ Her soft voice bared a hint of impatience. ‘She brought you because it is time to come home. You know this.’

  Rhiann drew a deep breath. ‘It seems that everyone is sure of this except me. Do I not have a choice?’

  ‘Of course! If you ask me to, I will walk away and leave you here tonight. But before I do, I have a message from Nerida. Will you hear it?’

  At the sound of that name, Rhiann was flooded with shame … and yearning.

  ‘She said this: tell our Sister that I know her heart is sore, that she feels she failed us, that we failed her. This may be true, but there are other, truer things; deeper than betrayal, deeper than shame. Love, forgiveness, faith. Ask her to heed the call, if only for one last time.’

  Stricken, Rhiann stared over Fola’s shoulder, at the shattered moonlight on the wind-blown waves, the dark shadows of boats on the sand, their masts creaking.

  ‘That is the message,’ said Fola. ‘Though I have one of my own.’

  Rhiann brought her gaze back to Fola’s face, and saw the entreaty there.

  ‘Please come with me, Rhiann. We have missed you so. Just come for one night, that is all. If you wish to leave then, no one will stop you.’

  ‘But there is too much pain there for me,’ Rhiann whispered.

  ‘Then how will it be healed? You know the lore. Running away does not heal such pain; facing it does. With those you love. And who love you.’

  Rhiann felt herself wavering. So many nights she had dreamed of singing in the Stones, and sharing barley cakes around a dawn fire. Each time she had woken with tears on her face.

  Little seal, came Fola in her mind. Exile yourself no more. We want you back. You want to come. Who is punishing whom?

  Rhiann hesitated. Could she really go back to the bleakness of her heart without them, now she was so close? Surely the melting, which began with Eremon, made that choice unbearable. She reached out and clasped Fola’s hand, and with the warm fingers in her own there was no turning back, though a great fear leaped into her heart. ‘I will come.’

  ‘Then you are not so far gone as I feared,’ Fola returned, with a grin.

  Eremon, however, was not happy about Rhiann leaving alone in the middle of the night.

  ‘As you can see, there are only two horses,’ Rhiann said to him, fastening the straps of her pack to one of the saddles. After hugging Rhiann hard enough to squeeze the breath from her lungs, Caitlin had retreated inside with Conaire. She, at least, did not question Rhiann’s actions.

  ‘But why not wait until morning?’ Eremon held her bridle, his face in darkness.

  ‘The weather is clear, and it is not far.’ Rhiann looked up at him. ‘I know I have not explained it well, Eremon, but this is … a hard thing I do. They are calling me, and I must go. I must go now, before my fear stops me again.’

  In the moon-shadow of the walls, Eremon leaned in and pressed his lips against hers for a moment, softly. ‘We will be at the broch soon. Come to me when you can. I need you.’

  ‘I will.’ She was surprised at the kiss. ‘I will come, soon. But first I have things I must do.’

  He helped her on to the horse, and stood back, as she followed Fola up the path that led into the dark of the hills behind. At the last, she looked back, but he was swallowed by the shadows of the houses, and she could only press her finger to her lips in the chill night air.

  Chapter 73

  Crossing the island in the dark was easy for Rhiann; she knew every one of the hundred tiny lochs that sprinkled the peat-cloaked plain, and every ridge and rock outcrop, from the rolling hills of the north to the mountains rearing in the south. Fola could not contain her questions about Rhiann’s life and marriage and unexpected arrival, but though Rhiann answered, her heart was full of scents and sights that were at once so familiar, yet now so foreign.

  By the time they smelled the sea again, the moon was swollen, close to the horizon. A full moon on Beltaine, Rhiann thought, and suddenly shivered, before shaking it away. We will attend the rite, we will talk with the leaders, then we will be gone …

  But she could not lay to rest the foreboding that there was more waiting for them than this.

  She saw the path of silver glittering far out in the Loch of the Seals first, and then a glimpse of torch and firelight among the priestess lodges, crouched in the lee of a headland. Fola halted her horse.

  ‘The Stones,’ whispered Rhiann, coming alongside, trepidation deepening to fear. ‘I can still feel the Stones …’

  Fola twisted in her saddle. ‘Did you think you would not? Once you have been trained to hear, to feel, it never goes away. They welcome you, as we do.’

  And Rhiann remembered again the lore as she had been taught it, so many years ago.

  This island is not about what you can see. It is about what you can feel. Rivers of power run beneath the land, and where they meet, the gateways stand: the sentinels.

  A track skirted the lodges, rising to the headland and the black fingers that reared up from its crown. ‘Do you want to go and see them?’ Fola asked. ‘I don’t mind waiting for a moment.’

  Rhiann nodded and nudged the horse up the short, sandy path. And then, there they were, reaching up like a circle of dancers, in supplication to a starred sky. Built by the Old Ones so long ago that their birth was lost to memory, they were in the form of a great cross, with spreading arms, and a circle at the centre.

  The night had grown colder now, close to dawn, and in the stillness the only sound was Rhiann’s breath, rasping in and out in a cloud of mist.

  Here, at these Stones, the lives of the Sisters were about tending, and propitiating with rite and offering. They kept the balance of the Source as well as they could. But the Mother’s creatures still died for no reason. She glanced north, to where the broch lay out of sight over the hills. Her loved ones still died.

  Why?

  There was no answer from the Stones. She knew what they would say, though, for many times she had asked the same question of the elder Sisters, a question that grew more and more urgent after the raid. And the answer was always the same, until she wanted to hear it no more.

  There is a pattern in the cloth of Thisworld that we cannot glimpse. Each act is a thread in that pattern, even when it brings grief and pain. The Mother weaves for all her children, but we only see the nearest threads. One day, though, we will see it entire, and then we will weep tears of joy, not pain.

  She turned the horse to nose its way back down the path to the main track, her heart leaden within her. She knew this lore well, but she had lost the faith. Would the Sisters see that she had lost it? In this most holy place, her lack of trust, her sundering from the Goddess, would feel like a blight to those who had trained here all their lives, untouched by the outside world.

  Then she straightened her shoulders. This was who she was – all of it; broken and blighted and damaged. Perhaps she was not even fit to cross the doorway any more. But it was time to try.

  She and Fola rode down into the sheltered dell where wizened rowans and hawthorn murmured together, and the little cluster of stone houses huddled like old women before a winter’s fire.

  Fola took the horses away, and Rhiann stood alone with her thoughts for a moment in the yard before Nerida’s lodge. Her heart was hammering now, and she breathed deeply to quiet it, gathering her warmth there in the way she had been taught. The way I was taught here.

  Then Fola was back, taking her hand, drawing her inside.

  The a
ir in the room was close, as if the fire had been burning high all night. The flames lit the unadorned walls, the sparse benches, the narrow bed with its faded wool blanket. Nothing would suggest that a great priestess lived here, yet everything was just as Rhiann had last seen it – when she hurled those bitter words at one she had loved with all her heart.

  And there she was, Nerida, alone in her rush chair before the fire. She had aged in only three years. She sat lower in her chair, though straight, and her grey braids had faded to snow-white. Yet her blue eyes were still clear and unfilmed, and beneath their pure gaze, words failed Rhiann.

  The awkwardness only lasted a moment. For in that gaze there was no shade of recrimination. None at all. And then Eldest Sister reached out her hand.

  Before she knew she had done it, Rhiann threw herself at Nerida’s feet, her face pressed into the soft, wrinkled palm. Nerida neither moved nor spoke, as the thaw took hold of Rhiann’s heart, the ice crumbling, and three years of being alone were released in a flood of salt-tears: three years of an aloneness so complete that she ached with it from the moment she arose to the moment she fell asleep.

  In the midst of it all she realized she had buried her face in Eldest Sister’s lap, her knees cold on the stone floor, and the old hand was stroking her hair. Where it moved, she was bathed in warmth, like the glow of sun on her head, and the warmth seemed to draw the poison from her heart.

  It was not so hard, after all, Rhiann heard then in her mind. You are very stubborn, but that is not so ill. You will need it, that strength.

  Rhiann looked up, wiping her face. Could you always speak to me like this? Even then?

  It was as if Nerida held the deepness of the night sky in her eyes: sapphire pools lit with the sparks of ancient wisdom. Yet Rhiann felt a very human smile in her heart. You are not the only one who has grown these last years.

  And Nerida spoke, and her voice was wind across the sea-grass.

  ‘So you come at last then, child, to lay down your burden in the same place you took it up.’

  Chapter 74

  Rhiann opened her eyes to a lattice of low, worn roof beams and a rough plaster wall: a sight she thought for ever lost to her. She pushed herself up on her elbows, and slowly blinked. Her eyelids were swollen, and she was bone-tired, and yet energy sang through her heart.

  Generations of girls had stared at that ceiling, wondering, if they were new-arrived, what would befall them. And later, reliving the wonder of their first rites: fertile Beltaine, the heady joy of Lughnasa, the scent of bonfires at Samhain.

  Her own memories welled up then, and she sank back on the pillow. The horse races with Fola over the plain; dancing on the beach at dawn.

  And then, in slipped an image of Rhiann and Elavra, her foster-mother, shelling beans on the doorstep of the broch. For once the memory lingered, and she did not push it away. She let it flower … the salt on the air, the faint bleats of sheep, and Marda and Talen’s laughter as they played on the pale beach until late in the night.

  The images started to rush headlong through her mind, one after the other, and just as the time of blood and pain grew closer, Fola’s laughter rang out on the other side of the bed-screen.

  ‘Wake up, sleepy! It is only two days until Beltaine and we have much to do; you’ve missed the sun’s greeting already! Hurry!’

  In the clear sun the cluster of white lodges, yellowed by the salt air, looked smaller to Rhiann’s eyes. But the faces that crowded around her were the same: old friends asking questions and exclaiming at the change in her, while new girls peered at her curiously.

  Rhiann looked around. ‘Where is Brica?’ she asked Fola. ‘I expected to see her.’

  ‘Brica? Ah, yes. She went back to her own people, Sister, on the north coast. She did not wish to serve us here any more.’ Fola shrugged. ‘You will see her at Beltaine – the whole island will be there!’

  Nerida was seated on a bench against her lodge, soaking the early sun into her old bones. Next to her was Setana, the second eldest and the sisterhood’s clearest channel for the Mother. The people of the broch thought Setana touched in the head, for she said odd things, and laughed when others were silent. But these were part of her gift: to be so open she must stand with one foot in the Otherworld and one foot in this. It was reflected in her features: wild, fey eyes shone from a child-like face, broad-cheeked and rosy with sun.

  Both Sisters had spent their whole lives serving the Goddess on this very island. Many festivals had wheeled under their aegis, many babes had been born into their steady hands, many a soul had found comfort in their ministrations during their last hours in Thisworld. They were part of the very soil, as strongly rooted here as the Stones themselves. And as the others dispersed to their duties, the activity swirled around Nerida and Setana as if they were twin rocks in the middle of a rushing torrent.

  Rhiann’s return, though momentous to her, had to be put aside this day, for with Beltaine so near there was much to do. But this is how she would have it anyway: she was still exploring this new openness, and after her unburdening wanted only to immerse herself in the rhythms of her old home.

  Following Fola to the dairy, she paused to glance up at the Stones crowning the headland above, their surface, made of a strange rock, glittering in the sun. Already the Otherworld energies were being gathered there by the earth singers, who, with their chants, drew the Source up from the river of power beneath.

  Behind the ordinary scenes of the lodges, of goats being milked and grain being ground, a pressure was growing in the air. Rhiann could sense it swirling around her, and in the churning of the milk and pressing of cheese, she felt it increasing, until it beat on her temples like blood throbbing on a hot day.

  The older priestesses did not break from their duties, only exchanged knowing glances.

  But the maidens looked sidewise at each other, and wondered who would be picked to lay with the Stag at the Beltaine fires.

  Eremon had never seen one of the famous brochs of the north. As he and his men climbed the track to the massive stone tower, perched on a ridge above a shining sea-loch, he marvelled that such a dwelling had been built here, at the edge of Alba.

  Yet of course, he was interested in this broch for more reasons than how it was built. He pulled up his borrowed horse as they reached the gate to the broch wall, and gazed down a narrow glen to the sea, where a glimpse of shingle shone through the encroaching tide.

  This was where Rhiann’s nightmare began. This was where she saw her family slaughtered.

  This day, the sun sparkled on the water, bathing the hill that rose above the broch, patterned in heather and moss, and catching the thatched roofs of the village that spilled down the slope below it. But despite the fairness of the day, he was swept by a feeling of utter desolation. For in truth, it was here that he had lost Rhiann. If she had not been so torn by what happened, perhaps her hatred of warriors would not have stood between them at the beginning, and soured what could have turned into something else.

  When he ducked in under the massive lintel, and climbed the stairs to the first floor hall, he was still blinded by the afterglow of the sun. But when his eyes cleared, he was faced with perhaps a score of men seated on hearth benches, already deep in their ale. They wore checked cloaks, and the pelts of different beasts, and their ornaments were shell and shale and copper.

  As one they stopped speaking among themselves. Eremon watched the black eyes fall on his shining sword and the gold torcs that his men still wore, for they clasped the neck tightly, and no sea could wrench them free. Yes … despite their faded, salt-stained clothes, they still had enough presence to make a man think. And Nectan’s message would have presented them well. So he hoped.

  Nectan stepped to his side. ‘Lords,’ he said, ‘this is Eremon mac Ferdiad of Erin.’

  Eremon bowed his head, and the kings of the western tribes nodded.

  ‘You are welcome,’ one of the men said, rising. He was only a few years older than Eremon, bu
t stocky, with wind-blown cheeks and a drooping black moustache. A cape of seal-skin covered his shoulders. ‘I am Brethan, the chief here, now that Kell and his kin are gone. Nectan says that you are the bonded man of Rhiann, foster-daughter of Kell and Elavra.’

  Eremon nodded.

  ‘You come from Calgacus the Sword,’ another man remarked.

  ‘Yes. I am war leader of the Epidii now. The Epidii and the Caledonii have become allies against the invaders – the Romans.’ As he spoke, Eremon pulled the boar stone from his neck and held it up to the light. ‘Here is the token of Calgacus himself.’

  Brethan beckoned, and a young druid, hovering in the shadows, came forward, scrutinizing the symbols before nodding his assent. ‘It is as he says.’

  There was a general murmuring, but already Eremon could sense, from the slowness of their voices, that it would take a lot for these men to be galvanized into hot words and deeds.

  ‘I think you have much to tell us,’ Brethan said now. ‘But the kings arrived only this morn, and we must deal with our own business first. Later, we will hear your plea.’

  Setana rapped her staff on Nerida’s doorpost and entered without waiting for an answer. Nerida sat at her fireside, as she liked to do alone after the sun greeting, drinking her morning brew of honeysuckle for the aching bones and chills of age. In the fire, she saw many things.

  ‘I must speak to our girl Rhiann,’ Setana declared.

  Nerida looked up, blinking. ‘Why?’

  Setana smiled and clapped her hands. ‘Because She wants her, Sister.’

  Nerida shook her head, and rested the ash cup on the hearth-stone. ‘She asks much of us, Sister, and much of Rhiann. She is fragile still.’

  ‘Yes!’ Setana whispered. ‘Oh, yes! But a man has softened her heart.’