Heart's Blood

by Juliet Marillier

  It’s done. He has his army.Waves of nausea sweep through Aislinn, but now she can’t seem to move at all. Her head is swimming, she feels as if there’s an iron band around her chest. I can’t breathe, she wants to say, but her voice won’t work. Not just the lack of air, something else. The heavy stillness is creeping up her body, she cannot move so much as a finger. She tries again to speak but her tongue is frozen, her jaw stiff, her throat rigid. She tries desperately to show Nechtan with her eyes that something has gone wrong. Help me. Nechtan, help me.

  At last Nechtan’s eyes meet hers.Thank God, now he will undo whatever fell charm has fallen on her, and save her. Help. Help.

  He looks at her, and his face shows only the triumph of the experiment, the grand plan executed without flaw, the tool of his future greatness delivered into his hands. In a sudden moment of chill insight, Aislinn understands. Your essence will bring them forth, he told her. Her essence . . . her life . . . this is the price of the power he craves.The white robe, the wreath, his reluctance to touch her . . . A sacrificial victim, young, beautiful and pure. Her body still as if encased in stone, her labored breath rasping in her chest, Aislinn looks into Nechtan’s eyes and sees the bitter truth. He has known all along that she would die, and he doesn’t care. He has used her, and now he will discard her without a second thought.

  But wait, the charm, the counterspell . . . she has it, she knows it, all she need do is speak the words and this can be undone . . . Through the fog fast filling her mind, Aislinn struggles to find what she needs, to whisper on a faltering breath the words that can save her: . . . sinigil . . . mitat . . . She almost has it . . . sigilin . . . oileg ...The fell warriors are becoming brighter, heavier, more solid: a formidable army. They stretch, regard their own limbs, stare at one another, perplexed. Erap . . . sinigla . . . egur . . . egrus . . . Too late. The charm has slipped away. Fixing her dying eyes on the man she has loved, the man she has worshiped with every fiber of her being, Aislinn speaks in her mind words her lips cannot form: I curse you! One hundred years of ill luck attend you, one hundred years of sorrow, one hundred years of failure! You think to discard me like rubbish to the midden, but you will not be rid of me. I will haunt you. I will shadow your steps and those of all you hold dear, I will torment your family for generation on generation. Let the army you so desired be a burden and a misery to you and yours! With my last breath I curse you!

  As everything blurs and fades around her, as the last shreds of clarity leave her mind, Aislinn sees Nechtan’s expression change, his transcendent triumph muted by the first trace of doubt. Something . . . something wrong . . .

  A scream, a crash, and I came back to myself. I dragged my gaze from the mirror, lifted my head, looked straight into her eyes. She stood facing me across the table, her veil slightly askew, her gown a touch less than immaculate.

  “Give me my book.” Her voice was precise and clear; each word rang a warning bell.

  Gearróg. Orna. Where were they? What had happened while I was absorbed in the vision? The chamber was bright with morning light. How long had I sat here, staring into the mirror, while down the hill the battle raged?

  A moan from near the doorway. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gearróg curled up on the floor, his arms tight over his head. Just like last time; just like the day when Anluan left the hill, and the host went mad, and I nearly died. I looked the other way, and there was Orna, sprawled motionless on the flagstones near the inner door, one arm outstretched, the fingers limp. My mind filled with terror, for the three of us and for Anluan’s army, even now out beyond the safe boundary. I rose to my feet, clutching the little book against my breast.

  “Give me my book.”

  When I did not reply, Muirne turned toward the cowering Gearróg and lifted her hand, pointing. His whole body jerked, and a febrile trembling gripped him. “You killed them,” she said. So changed was her voice it might have been a different person’s, for the tone was that of a sorcerer pronouncing a fell charm. “Your wife, your children, you killed them in a fit of jealous rage, all gone, all drowned, your little boy, your baby, all gone under the water . . .”

  “Nooo!” moaned Gearróg. “Lies, those are lies!”

  “You did it.” Muirne was calm, calm and cold. “Why do you think you’re here with the rest of them? The stain of it’s on you forever.You’ll never—”

  “Stop it!” I found my courage. “Leave him alone!” A moment later, the true significance of what I had just witnessed dawned on me and for a moment left me wordless with shock. “It’s you,” I breathed. “The whole thing, all of it, the voice, the frenzy . . . you used what he taught you, and then . . . Aislinn, this is truly evil!”

  “Give me my book or I’ll break the host as I’ve broken your guard here. I’ll snap their minds like twigs! I can do it! Give me my book or I’ll make sure your precious Anluan never walks back up this hill.They’ll be carrying him home on a board, as dead as that woman on the floor there.”

  My heart was cold. Orna dead, for the sole misdemeanor of standing up to this twisted spirit?

  “You love Anluan,” I said.“Why would you want to kill him?Why would you kill Irial? Isn’t a hundred years of vengeance enough for you, Aislinn?”

  Her eyes narrowed.“Give me what is mine, Caitrin,” she said.“You are a fool to doubt me. I can wreak utter havoc among the host. I’ve done it before. Clever reader that you are, you should know that already.”

  Though I still stood frozen, my mind had begun to work very quickly indeed. With Gearróg crouched helpless on the floor, why didn’t she snatch the book from me? Stall for time, said the voice of common sense. Make her talk. I must distract her, delay the moment when she would set the frenzy on the host. Anluan must win his battle.This must not end, yet again, in mayhem, chaos, retreat, failure. Once Anluan stepped back within the boundary of the Tor, she would lose her ability to wreak such havoc. In Nechtan’s writings, in Conan’s, that had always been the pattern of it.

  “How do you do it?” I asked, my voice shaking.“The—the frenzy, the voice? How can you control so many of them at once? Was it your doing every time the host disobeyed Nechtan, every time they ran amok under Conan’s leadership? How could you become so powerful, Aislinn?”

  That little smile passed over her lips, the smile of superiority, of entitlement. “I’ve had a long time to perfect my craft,” she said, and I saw that I had chosen just the right turn of conversation to keep her talking. “I was always apt, quick, clever. He loved me for that.” The smile vanished. “He did not love me as he should have done.”

  “But how can you speak to all of them at once, telling each one something different? You seem to know just what memories will most torment folk. Even I felt the touch of it, and I am a living woman.” I selected my words carefully. “It seems to me that you are as powerful as Nechtan was.”

  Her lips curved again. “More powerful. Believe me, Caitrin, there is a way into any mind, if only one knows how to look for it. Here on the Tor, all bend to my will.”

  Not quite all, I thought. While Anluan was within the boundary and in control of the host, his power outweighed hers.There was not a shred of doubt in my mind that if he had not been here to keep me safe she would long ago have ensured I was sent away, or worse. She would have pushed me from the tower, to die as Líoch had done. She would have left me shut in the library, to perish by fire as poor Emer had.

  “Give me the book, Caitrin. Don’t keep me waiting.” Her voice had acquired a new edge; she was no longer calm and controlled. She lifted a hand, and in it was Orna’s carving knife.

  My heart juddered in panic. I ran through the words of Nechtan’s invocation in my mind: Legio caliginis appare! Appare mihi statim! Resurge! I was fairly sure I could remember it correctly. I knew the image of the pentagram within its snake-formed circle. I could remember the words Nechtan had used at the beginning, addressing the elemental spirits. Even without the book, I might be able to give Anluan what he needed to end
this. If I could stay alive long enough. “I don’t understand why you tried to kill Anluan,” I said, “but I do know I could just as easily have been the one who drank the poison first. There’d have been nobody to find Irial’s notebook and read the antidote if I’d been lying there unable to speak. I can’t give you back your book without a promise of good faith.”

  I backed away from the table that stood between us, but I could not go far, for a set of shelves stood behind, effectively boxing me in. Chances were she’d still stick the knife into me, even if I gave up her treasure.What to do, with Orna lying there, perhaps dead, perhaps needing my help, and Gearróg now ominously silent? From down the hill noises still came to my ears, a great roaring as of many voices raised together in a war cry or perhaps a song; the thunder of hooves. “The Tor!” someone shouted, and “The Tor!” screamed a hundred voices in response. Cry of comradeship or call to retreat, I did not know which it might be.

  I held Aislinn’s eye and spoke as calmly as my hammering heart would allow. I must keep her attention off the host.“You were cruelly wronged, I saw that in the mirror just now. Nechtan failed to recognize your strength, your ability, your potential. I understand why you punished him so. But Irial . . . he was a good man. He never sought to use the host for ill, and I don’t believe he was unkind to you.Why would you kill him? Why would you kill Anluan, who wants only the best for Whistling Tor? I thought you loved him.”

  “Love, hate,” Aislinn said, and as she moved around the table towards me, knife in hand, she held my eyes with hers, “little divides them. Nechtan’s heirs are weak. They cannot match his lofty aspirations, his genius, his . . . his beauty.”

  Holy Saint Patrick, after everything, after the callous betrayal, after the long, long time of suffering, she still had tender feelings for him. Even as she worked to perpetrate the curse she had laid on him and his, she cared for him. It was a notion of love so warped that it sickened me, and I could find nothing to say.

  “I had hopes for Irial,” Aislinn said, taking another step towards me. The point of the knife was an arm’s length from my heart, and shaking. That icy calm was deserting her. “I learned much from him, and taught him in my turn—don’t look so startled, Caitrin, I know far more of herb lore than one man could learn in his lifetime. But in the end, Irial disappointed me. He loved unwisely. He dared to be happy. Irial wanted a future for Whistling Tor that was . . . not allowable. As for Anluan . . .” Her eyes softened, then as quickly turned to flint. “You sealed his fate when you opened his mind to hope,” she said. “At Whistling Tor, there can be no hope. The curse forbids it. He will lose his battle. He will know despair again. As for you, meddling scribe, you thought to change what had been sealed with a dying breath.Why should you survive?”

  The slightest of sounds from the garden doorway. I looked past Aislinn and saw the ghost child standing there, her hair thistledown pale in the sunlight from beyond. Her eyes were wide with fright as she glanced from me to Aislinn to the prone Gearróg. She clutched her small bundle with both hands. “Catty?”The little voice wobbled with uncertainty.

  Aislinn turned towards the child. I saw her freeze. “Where did you get that?” There was such venom in her tone that I shrank back as if from a blow. It was the embroidered kerchief that had done it, one of her trophies, taken from the secret place. The next leap of logic was lightning quick. “You, you puny wretch, you abomination, you told her where it was! I’ll make you sorry—”

  “Here, take your book,” I said, and threw it high over Aislinn’s head.

  It crashed to the flagstones near Irial’s corner. The child was gone in an instant, out into the garden. As Aislinn moved to recover her treasure a figure loomed up behind her, all bunched muscle and furious eyes.The knife clattered to the floor.They fell together, her wildly thrashing form pinned by Gearróg’s strong arms. Specters they might be, but the fight was violent and real, her desperation against his force.

  “You killed them!”Aislinn screamed, her voice now ragged and hoarse.

  “Your little boy, your baby—”

  “Hold your filthy lying tongue!” Gearróg had one hand on her throat, the other holding her arms above her head as he knelt across her struggling body. “It was an accident! An accident! Don’t spit your poison in my ears!”

  “Make him stop,” Aislinn gasped, and her eyes rolled towards me.“Call your brute off or I’ll see to it that the Normans come up the hill as easily as that kinsman of yours did, the one you weren’t sensible enough to go off with! I’ve done it before and I can do it again. All it needs is a word, a snap of the fingers—get your filthy hands off me, pig! Don’t just stare at me, do it, Caitrin!”

  Perhaps I was staring; her veil had come off completely as Gearróg grappled with her, and her hair spread out across the library floor, long, shimmering, the hue of ripe wheat in sunshine. I recalled, uncomfortably, how Nechtan had longed to touch it.

  “It was an accident,” Gearróg said again, and such was the difference in his tone that my heart skipped a beat.“I didn’t do it. It was an accident.” What had been furious denial had turned to stunned recognition. He remembered now, and knew this was true. Something had changed here, changed profoundly.

  New figures in the doorway: the wise woman of the host, and behind her the two others who had gone with her to the garden to wait. They crossed the library to kneel by Orna. As Aislinn quieted in Gearróg’s grip, more and more folk came in to stand around us, watchful, expectant. There was no doubt, now, that what we could hear from down the hill was a song. It sounded out through the brightening air of morning, jubilant, strong, not quite in unison: “Swing your swords proudly, Hold your heads high, Brothers together, We live and we die!” Someone shouted: “Lord Anluan!” and many voices answered: “Lord Anluan! The Tor!”

  “It’s over.” Gearróg might have been witnessing a miracle, such was the wonder in his voice. “They’ve done it.”

  And at the same moment, the wise woman said,“I’m sorry; we cannot help her.” She laid Orna’s still form down and stood to face me.“Her neck is broken. A quick passing and a valiant one.”

  It was too much to take in.The battle won. Orna killed. Perhaps, when the men came back up the hill, we would learn of more losses, more brave souls who had given their lives so that Anluan could win back his own ground and theirs. Strangest of all, Aislinn quiescent on the library floor, no longer spitting insults, no longer struggling.

  “Tonight is All Hallows,” the wise woman said.“A hundred years since the accursed chieftain of Whistling Tor first called us forth.” She turned her shrewd gaze on me. “Did you find what you sought?”

  “It’s in her book,” I said, and as I spoke, suddenly Aislinn moved, writhing like an eel, slipping from Gearróg’s grasp, diving across the library to seize her journal. She rose wild-eyed, with the book clutched in her hands. Her golden hair was dishevelled, her clothing disordered. Gearróg lunged towards her. “No!” I said, obeying some impulse I hardly understood, and he halted in his tracks.

  “But—” Gearróg protested as Aislinn opened the little book and started, with feverish strength, to rip each parchment page from its stitching, tear it up and drop it onto the flagstones.

  “Leave her be, Gearróg.” I could almost hear her thoughts. Though her face was a frozen mask, they were in her eyes as she wrenched apart what she had held close for a hundred years, the cherished repository of her secret knowledge. How dare you overlook me? How dare you speak as if I were invisible? I am a sorcerer. I am powerful. I will destroy you. I will destroy you all. And at the same time, the voice of a girl just come to womanhood, a voice of longing, yearning, promise: Look at me. See me. Love me. It seemed to me that she had been caught up in her own curse: she had loved, hated, lost each one of them in turn.

  Tiny scraps of parchment, here two words, here only one . . .They lay all around her, scattered like the fallen leaves of autumn’s first gale. Aislinn took the empty covers of her book and tore them in two
. “He can’t do it now,” she said with perfect clarity, her eyes on me. “There’s no banishing the host without the spell. You won’t end this so easily.” She turned and walked out into Irial’s garden, and the folk of the host moved back to let her pass.

  I stood numb, watching her go. Gearróg was opening and closing his hands, as if he needed to do some damage with them. “Are you all right?” I asked him.

  “Yes. No.You going to let her go, just like that?”

  “For now.” It seemed Anluan had won his battle. Once he was back on the hill and learned the truth, he could hold her in check. And it was All Hallows’ Eve. “She’s wrong,” I said. I looked over at the wise woman, and she gazed calmly back at me. “It doesn’t matter that she tore up the book. I think Anluan can do this without it.”

  Gearróg’s eyes widened. “You mean . . .”

  “If what she wrote in her little book really is the counterspell, he can use it. I believe he can release you all.”

  He sank to a crouch, his hands over his face.

  I knelt down beside him. “You’ll be with them again, Gearróg,” I said quietly, laying my hand on his shoulder.“The ones you loved; the ones you lost. I truly believe it. Now come. I have another task for you.”

  We did not go back by the inner door, but made a solemn procession through Irial’s garden. The women of the host went in front, and then came Gearróg with Orna in his arms. I walked last. Not alone; the ghost child crept in from a corner of the garden, embroidered bundle in hand, to walk close beside me, brushing against the skirt of my borrowed gown. Suddenly I felt the full weight of this. If the counterspell worked, we would be saying goodbye to all of them. Cathaír. Gearróg. The little girl. Eichri. Rioghan. A catalogue of tears.

  As we went through the archway something made me turn to gaze back over the empty garden. The cool autumn sunlight lay on a drift of fallen leaves, the empty birdbath, a blanket of moss softening the stone seat. A lone bird sang in the bare branches of the birch. And down by the stillroom there was a shifting and a folding. I saw nothing moving, but I had the sense that someone had stepped back, set down a burden.This garden had always felt like a safe place. It came to me that someone had kept watch over it, someone who had loved all that grew here. He had lingered beyond his time, knowing there was a duty to be done, a guard to keep; after all, he had seen his son become a man.The unseen tenth in the circle: the invisible presence revered by all. Here, not by the compulsion of a fell charm, but by his own selfless choice. He had been a good man, deserving of eternal rest, but love had held him here until he knew his son would be safe. I fixed my eyes on the place where a rake rested against the stillroom wall, with a hat hooked over the top of it that surely had not been there when I first entered the garden, and I whispered,“Farewell, Irial. Go home to your Emer. I will watch over him now.”