Blade of Fortriu

by Juliet Marillier

  “He might not leave, even so,” Ana said slowly. “He believes in his own guilt. He’s afraid of what he might do. He lacks faith in himself.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “I don’t what?”

  “Your faith in him is astonishing. Evidently. you’ve decided he is innocent, for all his own doubts on the matter.”

  There was a silence.

  “He’d be here by now, wouldn’t he?” Ana’s voice was small. “If he was coming, he’d be here.”

  “Who knows? The decision was not ours but his. We left the way open.”

  “And if he isn’t here, it’s because he didn’t want to come with us.”

  Faolan said nothing. He watched as tears began to fall, dripping from her pale cheeks to the blanket. He remembered Drustan’s mouth against her hair, and hardened his heart. “I couldn’t say. I hardly know the man. I do know that if I’d been in his situation, I’d have been out and away the moment I got the chance. I’ve no idea how Drustan’s mind works. They say he’s crazy. Maybe it’s true. Maybe he prefers being locked up.”

  “No,” Ana said, sniffing. “He loves the sun. He loves the forest and the open air. Nobody could prefer a dark, damp place like that, and shackles. Why hasn’t he come?”

  “Maybe he thought sending his creature was enough.”

  She said nothing. Her eyes were desolate.

  “Ana?”

  She looked at him.

  “How did this come about? You and him? Deord told me you met the two of them. But that was only once. How—”

  “There’s a place. A place where you can whisper and hear each other. I used to talk to him. We found it by accident, Ludha and I. Ludha … Faolan, we have to go back! Alpin punished her. She’s in danger and it’s my fault!”

  Faolan thought of Dovard lying senseless in the kennels, another innocent victim who would likely get a beating or worse for letting the prisoner escape. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said. “They’re all under Alpin’s thumb. Try to intervene now and he’ll just add you to his list of miscreants to be dealt with. I’m sorry.”

  “But—”

  “Use your wits, Ana. You can’t go back. What we must do is wait for Deord, and then try to get home to Fortriu. Deord can help us; he’s strong and capable. Once we’re beyond Alpin’s reach it should be easier to procure supplies. It’s time to go home.” He thought of Bridei, who might by now be on his way to Dalriada; Bridei, who did not know that Alpin was already in league with the Gaels.

  “On foot?” Ana asked. She took the crossbill on one hand and used the other, as a child would, to scrub the tears from her cheeks.

  “Now you know why I insisted on the boots,” Faolan said. “It’ll be slower, but easier in a way; we can use tracks Alpin wouldn’t think of.”

  She said nothing. Perhaps she heard the truth behind his briskly confident words: that it was a long way over difficult terrain, and that the only path he knew was the one they could not take. That the man who could be most help to them was the one he hoped would never come back.

  “Ana?” He couldn’t hold his stupid tongue; he had to ask her.

  “What?”

  “You and Drustan; what did … how is it … how did you … ?” Gods, he sounded like a stumbling youth of fifteen, half out of his wits over some village sweetheart. He wished he had never clapped eyes on her. She had made him care about her; she had made him feel again. She had left him exposed and wretched, weakened by the crack she had opened in his heart. She had woken his darkest memories and made him weep, and hate, and love. He wanted to be the old Faolan again, the one folk described as hard and heartless, a man incapable of emotion. “Forget it,” he said. “I’d better take a look outside. If anyone decided to come up, we wouldn’t hear them over the water. Chances are Deord hasn’t fooled the whole of Alpin’s party; if they’ve split up, they won’t have much trouble following our tracks. I don’t suppose you still have that knife I gave you?”

  Ana grimaced. “It wasn’t something I anticipated needing on my wedding day, Faolan.”

  Despite all, he found himself smiling. “I can think of a few good uses you might have put it to. There’s another here, smaller. Take it. With luck there’s nobody out there. But you need to be prepared.”

  She eyed the little knife in its leather sheath, drawing it out to reveal an immaculately clean blade that looked, lethally sharp.

  “Deord’s,” Faolan said. “Now don’t do anything stupid, I need your help with this.”

  “Stupid,” she echoed. “Such as slashing my wrists, you mean?” There was a silence; only the water gave voice. Then Ana said, “You don’t really know me very well, do you, Faolan? I honor life, even when it brings cruelty and sadness. Go on, then. If you must look outside, look. And try not to get yourself killed. It seems as if you’re the only friend I have left.”

  IT SEEMED TO Broichan that he could feel a poison working its way through his body, devouring it as a canker does a rose or a worm an apple, from the inside out. It was a long time since an enemy had struck at him with a clever dose of toxic ingredients, a brew even the king’s druid had not detected until the symptoms began: crushing headaches, a voiding of the bowels in watery flux, crippling pain in the joints. He had endured these privations without complaint, for he was strong in self-discipline. It was the fogging of the wits that was the hardest. In those first days after that long-ago attempt on his life, his mind had been unable to hold its concentration for more than a snatch at a time. No sooner had he grasped a thought, an idea, than it was gone. He’d struggled to remember even the learning that lay deep in his bones, hard won over the nineteen years of the novitiate: the druidic teaching, the tales, the prayers and ritual. Even tree lore had deserted him in that dark season when he’d fought the alien substances in his body and begged Bone Mother not to take him yet, not with Bridei’s education scarcely begun, and Fortriu’s very future dependent on it. The goddess had heard him; she had spared him to return to Pitnochie and his small foster son. Bridei was a man now, with a son of his own. He was king of Fortriu. And Broichan knew Bone Mother had not revoked the sentence of death all those years ago, merely delayed it.

  Death, of course, should not be feared, but awaited with a certain wonder. To die was to step across a threshold into a new world, unknown, unimaginable. There was a whole realm of learning to be had in the experience. This journey should be greeted with hope and anticipation, especially by a druid. Broichan remembered the old man, Erip, who had tutored Bridei in more worldly matters than those covered by the druid’s own lessons. Erip had been ready to die; he had seemed to step through the doorway even before his last breath left his body. And Erip, though a scholar of some erudition, had been no druid. He had faced Bone Mother fearlessly; she had taken him with kindness. His had been a gentle passing.

  Broichan could not see such an ending for himself. The pain that racked his body might perhaps be dulled by soporific draughts. The mist that rose to enshroud his mind, to deny his intellect its true exercise and to cripple his control of the craft of magic, that was the element truly to be feared. These symptoms were familiar to him. It seemed to him the poison administered long ago had not left his body, but had lain dormant all these years, biding its time before it struck again. So he believed; he could not think of any other possible cause for his malady, and he was learned in the healing craft. He would take no draughts; he had ordered Fola sharply to stop trying to be helpful. He must keep the last spark alive. He must not lose what fettered powers remained to him. There was a child to be taught. And there was Bridei, far down the Glen now with no seer by his side to advise him.

  That had been the hardest cut of all: to watch his foster son, the young king he had made, ride out to war and not to be there by his side, ready to protect him in ways the most able of bodyguards could not. Who but the king’s druid could cast an augury on the eve of battle to determine whether to advance or hold back? Who else could employ the tools of divinatio
n as they traveled, and pass down the wisdom of the gods? Without that guidance, the great victory over the forces of Dalriada depended entirely on the judgments of men, and those were unreliable even when the men were good, clever, courageous, and steeped in lore, as Bridei undoubtedly was.

  It was pride that had held Broichan back from summoning some other druid from the forest to take his place by Bridei’s side: pride and a pathetic hope, for up till the day of the king’s departure, he had prayed that he might be well again and strong enough to go with them. Because of that, Broichan had sent the man he loved like a son out to face the Gaels without proper safeguards. He had undertaken to watch from afar, using the tools of divination. He had not told Bridei, or Fola, or anyone that even this now seemed to be beyond him.

  He bolted the door of his chamber from the inside, lit a lamp from the candle he carried and went to the oak chest for his scrying mirror. It was a fine piece, a gift from his old teacher: round in shape, fashioned of polished obsidian and bordered with creatures wrought in silver, owl, marten, frog, otter, dragonfly. A lovely thing. He planned to show it to Derelei soon and see what the child made of it. If the boy possessed Tuala’s raw talent as a seer, he should soon begin to be guided in this art, so its development would be gradual and controlled. He was so young … How long, the druid thought, just tell me how long I have, so I can plan for him. A year? Two? A season only? It was unthinkable. Not to see Bridei achieve his great victory, not to see the true faith restored throughout Priteni lands, not to see his small charge grow and flourish and learn … How could he bear it? But bear it he must, if it was the gods’ will. Obedience was at the core of Broichan’s being. Obedience had seen him enact the Gateway sacrifice year after painful year until Bridei declared an end to that observance. Obedience kept him on his knees night after night, listening for the voices of the gods while cold and pain turned his body to a living hell. Obedience stopped him from seeking help … Perhaps not. He could hear Fola’s crisp voice, saying something about pride, about arrogance, about thinking he knew best. To seek help was to discover, perhaps, that he was beyond help. This he feared above all.

  Broichan unwrapped the mirror from its covering of soft woolen cloth and held it between his palms, not touching the polished surface. He slowed his breathing, willing it not to catch in his throat. The deepest breaths made his lungs burn like a blacksmith’s fire; he made his body relax into the pain, let agony flow through him unheeded. He gazed at the dark obsidian with eyes unfocused—that, at least, was not difficult today—and let his mind drift. He banished, one by one, the thoughts and images that tangled and twisted in his head: Bridei, the battle to come, Derelei growing up at court without him, so vulnerable, so easily exploited. All the things he had not done, and now would not have time to do … He breathed them away into oblivion, out of the shadowy chamber where the lamplight was barely sufficient to cast a faint glow on the equipment of his craft, set out precisely on stone shelves: his herbs and remedies, his scrolls and inks, his oaken staff standing in a corner. And the more secret objects, those he could recall the child Bridei staring at in wonder the first time his foster father had let him enter the private chamber at Pitnochie. Part of Broichan wanted to pack it all up and go back there now. There, he could stop pretending and just let it happen. Mara would tend to him, his cook Ferat would try to tempt his failing appetite, Fidich and the others would accept the druid’s presence calmly and continue to ensure the smooth running of household and farm. At Pitnochie he could die in his own place, among his own folk.

  The lamp flickered, making Broichan blink. It was a reminder. Put Pitnochie out of his thoughts. Put all of it out … Float … Let the conscious mind go … Let vision blur … Forget the ever-present fear that today, yet again, his power in this would fail …

  He sat there a long time. In upper corners of the chamber spiders spun webs and in lower ones beetles fossicked. Within the walls mice went scurrying about their business. A vision came at last, not on the dark surface of the mirror itself but straight to his mind, a vision that was the clearest he had been granted for many moons. He had hoped to see Bridei or the other Priteni leaders, or the Gaels, or a pattern of events or objects that might be construed in a way that was useful. What came was unexpected.

  A man was running through dense forest. He made good speed, remarkable speed for one of such stocky build. The runner was broad of shoulder, deep of chest, and bald as an egg. There was a pack of hunting hounds on his trail, and following them a group of horsemen armed with bows and spears and knives. They were uniformly big men, with heads of shaggy hair and beards to match; they wore fur cloaks and their broad faces bore intricate tattooing. Warriors of the Caitt. The fugitive was marked with battle counts on one cheek, done in the same mode as the others. He was one of their own. He bore knives at his belt but no other weapons. His features showed nothing of the terror of the hunted: he appeared calm and controlled. Broichan could tell he was regulating his breathing, husbanding his strength for the confrontation to come. Someone had given this man remarkable training.

  The vision changed and changed again. Always the runner: now balancing on a log across a deep gorge, now hurtling down a steep, rocky slope at a pace that put limbs in danger of snapping and brought a shower of stones after him. He did not seem overcautious about making noise; it was almost as if he wanted to draw the pursuit after him.

  Dogs and horsemen closed on him; their leader found another way around the gorge and a path that bypassed the steep incline. The hounds sighted the runner and gave voice. The leader raised a horn to his lips. In this man’s eyes Broichan read a thirst for blood and, although he could not hear, the druid’s mind could guess what this chieftain was shouting to his men. “Hold back the dogs! He’s mine!”

  They cornered the bald-headed man against a rock wall; he had seized a fallen branch and was sweeping it before him at waist height, this way, that way in a savage arc. The dogs could not get near him, and their keepers went in at the chieftain’s command to fix ropes to the baying hounds’ collars and drag them slavering away. The warriors made a loose semicircle around the trapped man, keeping their distance from that swinging branch. The man’s arms were corded with muscle; Broichan recognized the phenomenal strength required to hold a thick length of damp timber at that height and control it thus. He watched as the leader gave another command and four of his company set arrows to bow strings.

  The druid opened himself to the voices in his vision. There was no sound in the quiet chamber where he sat with his mirror, for this was an image in his mind only, conjured by his readiness for what the gods offered him at this particular moment. The mirror he used as a tool to detach the mind from the myriad thoughts that crowded it, to clear it of distractions the better to make room for the visions he might be granted. To hear as well as see required a deeper level of concentration; slowing his breathing further, Broichan found it.

  “Where is she?” demanded the leader of the hunting party, his voice harsh with fury. “Where have you taken her?”

  It was clear the cornered man had no intention of replying. He simply continued to fend off the attackers with his branch, while keeping an eye on the archers.

  “Hold off!” the leader barked at his men, and the bows were lowered slightly. “I need his answers first, then you can have your sport. Put that thing down, scum, and speak to me! Where’s Ana? Where’s the wretched Gael, and where’s my brother? By all the gods, how could you set Drustan free? Haven’t I provided you with food and shelter and a steady supply of silver pieces these seven years past? I trusted you, and you let that murderer out!”

  The branch continued its steady sweeping motion; it was the only thing separating the fugitive from his attackers. He spoke now, levelly, as if he had not just run the race of his life. “I’m ready to fight. Set your men against me one by one, or two by two. If you want to make an end of me, let it be in fair combat. Would you hunt a man down like vermin?”

  “Vermin is wha
t you are, and it’s I who will choose the manner of your death. Answer my questions and you can have your fight. It’d need to be three at a time, I think; the men know your reputation. Fail to answer and your end will be slower. And it will hurt more. Now tell me! Where’s Ana? Where’s her godforsaken turncoat bard? And where’s my brother, you treacherous apology for a servant? Where’s he flown off to?”

  When there was no response, the leader gave a nod to his archers. A red-fletched arrow left the bow, whirring across to skim the trapped man’s shoulder, for he had ducked just in time. Another nod; a second missile, this one more skilfully aimed in anticipation of a move. It took the quarry in the left arm, lodging deep in the well-developed muscle. The fugitive grunted; he could not reach to draw out the shaft without putting down his makeshift weapon.

  “Where are they? Where have you hidden them? Speak up, my patience is running short.”

  “Somewhere in the forest,” the fugitive said calmly. “If you search for long enough, you may find them. Or they may slip from your grasp, Alpin. I care nothing for any of them. Weakling bards, golden-haired ladies, what are they to do with the likes of me? As for your brother, he’s served his penance, poor wretch. I doubt you’ll ever. see him again.”