“The witch is aye humorless,” he said to Dubhain. “An ye go to her, ye’ll lose me, ye silly creature, and what would ye do, then? Ye’d fair pine away.”
“Never!”
“And I’d win.”
Dubhain’s nostrils widened. “Win what?”
“Why, what is there ever to win? Which of us is the more clever. Even if you drag me down— ’t will never be my fault. Ye’ll have failed, Dubhain. Ye’ll have failed, and that makes me aye the better of us, and the cleverest.”
“Out on ye!”
“Brave Dubhain. Did I say ye were not brave, or strong? Clever, now ... perhaps.”
“No perhaps, man.” Another swig from the jug, and a glimmering of the eyes, but the fires were banked now and a wicked smile danced across Dubhain’s face. Dubhain had thought of something— Caith knew that look— something most likely at his expense; but Dubhain was with him now, wholly.
“You’ll not get the chance at me,” Caith said, nailing it down completely. “If that’s what ye’re thinkin’.”
“Ha!” quoth Dubhain.
Now best that bid, he thought at the lady of Dun Glas. He’s mine!
Pay for it, he might: and Dubhain knew what he was about, too, but never dare to rub that in. It would undo all the good he had done and send Dubhain’s mind scurrying after mischief he could do instead. Dubhain would not be bound to a good deed, not Dubhain, no.
But when the rabbits were mere piles of bones, and when the twins had made their nest under Firinne’s blanket on the other side of the fire, Caith lay down to sleep at Dubhain’s side in full confidence that Dubhain’s thoughts now were all bent on pranks to play on him, and not dream-traveling to Dun Glas.
Dubhain ran a finger over his arm, which Dubhain knew he hated.
Dubhain leaned close and whispered: “Pretty baggage, the lass is. And never a wicked thought i’ your mind, pretty Caith. That’s nae like you.”
“I’ve troubles enough.” He tossed onto his side, disquieted. “And if I don’t sleep, wight, we’ll be the slower tomorrow and you’ll be carrying me.”
“Oh, shall I?”
He lifted his head and cast an angry glance over his shoulder. “I make you a bargain. A truce. A truce for seven days.”
“Nay, ye’re a clever man. Ye’d fling yourself to the beastie for spite an’ win that way. Why say ye ye’re th’ clever one? Nae clever as ye think, man.”
Caith sighed, on the verge of tears, he was so weary, so scant of sleep, and so exasperated with the creature. He lay flat on his back with his eyes shut. “I’m no challenge to you tonight, ye feckless spook. Far too easy a mark. Set to. Do your worst. For a prank, why, damn Nuallan, too. I’d at least have that satisfaction.”
Dubhain punched his arm, not gently. “Dinnae jest on that matter, man. ’T is nearer than not tonight.”
“No jest, thou scapegrace. ’T was the Sidhe damned me, so damn them, and master Pure and Noble first o’ the lot. Kill me or let me sleep dreamless tonight. Either would come welcome.”
“Ye should nae jest, man. There’s powers abroad. And the little Sidhe hae fled this place.”
“Then guard my sleep. And let me sleep, or I shall only grow more fey and more strange than I am.”
A second blow to his arm, which he felt dimly. “Thou fool! Take it back, what ye said!”
“Dear Dubhain. Dear, sweet Dubhain. Bless the good Sidhe, then, root and branch, bless that fool Dubhain, and deliver us from Dun Glas.” His senses were fading. He saw the dark, the true dark, which held no ghosts. One could wonder how Nuallan fared, but he would not leave this dark and this peace to know. “A few hours. Tomorrow’s all to find. Mind the fire. Don’t dull my sword. Break the branches o’er your knee, and toss them i’ the fire, there’s a good lad....”
Dubhain’s hand slipped over his, Dubhain’s fingers closed on his. Dubhain spelled him to sleep then, as Dubhain could, when Dubhain would.
Dubhain whispered, last, in his ear, “Caith, my bonny, damned prince, he hae heard them. Wi’ blood they called, and in the great ocean he hae turned his face aboot. He is caught, too, and cannae help himself. Roses, ye say, black roses...”
Chapter Nine
There was dark about; dark and the clasp of Dubhain’s hand on his, though Dubhain himself seemed fast asleep, and the fire was down to a sullen heap of embers.
But something was amiss. Caith could not tell what had waked him at first— he had dreamed, he thought, of something threatening standing near him, and felt a lingering impression of something cold and wet having touched his cheek just before he waked, but that could well be the dream.
Then he heard a soft snuffling, like a dog smelling after a scent, pass above his head and close to his hair.
He lay still and undefended on the ground, while his heart thumped and the sweat started on his skin. He squeezed Dubhain’s hand— Dubhain should not be asleep, certainly not this deeply asleep, and it was no stray dog that searched their camp. He feared to make the slightest move.
It went off into the dark, then circled back near him a second time. He could hear it breathing, but its feet made no sound on the leaves.
Right against his ear, the panting came, and again that cold, wet touch, this time at the side of his jaw.
He remembered the intruder in the keep, the face going to white bone before his eyes. He scarcely dared breathe. He feared what he might see if he looked at it and he feared what it might provoke if he made even the slightest movement. He stared into the night sky above the branches and listened to the sound move away from him again.
Then he squeezed Dubhain’s hand, hard, the second time, and whatever was in their camp slunk away into the rocks and the woods. He could feel the lifting of the terror like a weight from his chest.
He sat up and feverishly poked a stick of wood into the coals, and then another. In a moment both took fire, and light spread out, throwing the trees into stark relief against the night.
It gave a circle of light where they were, but it blinded his eyes to the hostile things that might prowl the dark shadows beyond that circle.
But now Dubhain lifted his head and sat up, blinking. Caith looked at him, and beyond, and saw, off at the limit of the light, four small rabbit skulls, gnawed clean.
“Macha!” he swore, on the drawing of a breath, and tucked his knees up and hugged his arms about himself, the sight afflicted him so.
“What?” asked Dubhain.
“The skulls. The thing from the keep, Dubhain, the mastiff dogs...”
Dubhain cast a glance where he waved his hand, then shook his head. “ ’T is gone back there, then. It forgot where it was. Nae matter.”
“ ‘Nae matter,’ ye feckless wight! We’ve camped above some grave or other. Murder happened here!”
“Pish. And ye’re affrighted, my bluidy prince?” Dubhain gave him a second, sidelong glance, and grinned, while Caith rubbed his arms against the chill. “A mastiff dog, ye say. And murder in this place.”
“I don’t know. Something drew it. Or it means death to come. I don’t know why I think so. It hasn’t the feeling of the Sight. Maybe it spoke to me.”
“Who, the dog?”
“Out on your jokes! More than the dogs, Dubhain! I told you ’t was more than the dogs up there! Their master’s run mad with ‘em, d’ ye ken? And you were fast asleep. I couldn’t wake ye. Or were ye pretending th’ while?”
Dubhain had no answer for that question, and sullenly avoided looking at him or answering. Dubhain would never admit to fault or failure, and Dubhain had slept through the visitation by no choice of his own: Caith suspected so, at least. Few the powers that could do that to a Sidhe, and that was as troubling as the haunt itself.
Meanwhile the twins were stirring awake. Ceannann sat up and looked around, and Firinne sat up, leaning on her elbow and looking at them.
“A ghost,” Caith said surlily, still unnerved, and in no mind to drop off to sleep again in this place.
&
nbsp; “Wi’ a taste for rabbit,” Dubhain added, with a nod at the pile of skulls.
The twins scrambled up in dismay, and Ceannann went and looked at the skulls, and gave a visible shudder. Firinne joined him, wrapping the blanket about both their shoulders.
“Let’s be going,” Caith said, rising to his feet. He had no disposition even to shut his eyes again this close to the keep. He had far rather make progress out of Gleann Fiain, walking toward the sea as they were. He longed to find this selkie father the twins were seeking— or not. Anything but sit and wait for the lady’s beast, or for the ghosts to overtake them in this haunted place. An uneasy wind was rising, whispering in the trees. He might not even have noticed it without the ghost brushing close to him, but the whole of nature in this place felt disturbed now, perhaps from the blood— perhaps from what the blood had attracted.
Not even Dubhain argued against going, and, none gainsaying, Caith kicked apart the coals of their fire— kicked them into the little burn, to be sure of them on what had begun to be a windy night.
The embers hissed, the fire in them drowned, and steam went up in the dying light— so far gone was even the starlight, now, with oncoming cloud, that the dark was deep indeed, under the trees.
“Swallow that,” he said to the witch who read the rivers, who had tried to draw him into her power— the witch, and her bloody, eldritch gods—
Foolish gesture, he thought then. To spoil a stream was not lucky.
He stood there blind, with the choice made, the light all drowned, and wondered if they were at all wise to go haring off into the dark— or if his gesture just now, at which all the Sidhe about the place would take high offense, had been any great offense to the lady.
He hoped it had been. He hoped it gave satisfaction to the little Sidhe who had been frightened away from their places in the valley— deserted of the small ones, Dubhain had said it was: deserted of both bright and dark.
That was Caith the fool, justifying his temper after he had done a thing, and now facing a night and a walk darker than he had thought.
But Dubhain’s eyes saw in the dark with no trouble at all. “Come, man,” said he, and Caith picked up the whisky jug, the only thing of their booty they had saved, but Firinne’s blanket, and followed without question, a perilous step across the little stream he had defiled.
Perhaps the lady of Dun Glas was sleeping at this hour. Perhaps she had not noticed his deliberate challenge.
Or perhaps she had.
* * *
The wind was at their backs around the low shoulder of the mountain, a broad, broad mountainside, tangled with whin and rough with rock, and slow going in the dark. Caith stumbled and felt his way— while Dubhain and Firinne and Ceannann had all gotten to the fore of him, and the gap between them grew wider and wider.
Lose me, he thought angrily, leave me to be eaten by ghostly dogs, will ye? You’ll be sorry, Dubhain, you’ll have no butt for your jokes but Ceannann, and the lad’s a sullen, ungrateful sort.
“Ye deserve each other,” he called out into the dark.”But I have got th’ jug, ye damned traitor!”
As he scraped the skin off the side of his knee, and burned his hand on the heather he seized to hold him.
Just then Dubhain turned up in front of him, a shadow against the shadow of the mountain, his eyes glowing a faint red at their bottom edges. Dubhain had nothing to say to him, however, only awaited his coming in chilling silence.
“Run me a race across the mountain, will ye?” Caith muttered, but still Dubhain said nothing, his mood seeming as dark as his shadow, and as chancy as the night around him.
It even occurred to Caith to wonder if what stayed for him and reached out a hand to haul him up was Dubhain at all.
But it felt like Dubhain’s hand, dry and warm, and it let him go again— taking the cumbersome jug as it did, and immediately swung off ahead of him, leaving him to bash his shin on the next projecting rock and drag his hair under an overhanging tree. He could not see Firinne and Ceannann— ahead of them, again— and now he wondered in cold doubt whether that had been Dubhain at all.
He was relieved, then, to see the pale banner of Firinne’s hair up ahead, Firinne and her brother well ahead and still going, oh, aye, while he and Dubhain— he prayed it was Dubhain— kept their own pace behind them.
It was not what he would have advised, spreading out like this, rushing like fools, but Dubhain’s silence encouraged no objection, and Dubhain’s eyes glimmered with ghostly red fire when Dubhain caught his arm to haul him over a difficult and blind step, and drew him close on a narrow, flat stone.
What is the matter with ye? Caith almost asked.
Then the red was more than a little, and Dubhain said in a low voice, “Steady, my prince.”
“D’ ye know where we’re going?”
“To hell, my prince. A bluidy piece o’ work.”
He thought Dubhain was laughing at him. He saw that narrowing of the glimmering red fire. But it was not a pleasant warmth, and not a pleasant joke. Dubhain might be Seeing ahead of them. He was thinking of mischief, perhaps, drinking from the jug, and enjoyed scaring him ... but Dubhain in his darker moods was more honest, and the whisky made him fey.
He was thinking of that when he put his foot wrong, and slid off the mountain. He made a wild reach at brush and rocks, breathless with fright as he skidded. But he had no time to plead. Dubhain’s strong hand closed on his wrist, Dubhain’s dark voice said, “Nae sae fast, my prince,” and drew him smoothly upward, as if his were a child’s weight, until he set his feet on safer ground.
No jest nor jape Dubhain had for him after that, and that was most unlike the wight. Dubhain only walked ahead of him, sometimes a shadow in his sight, sometimes out of sight altogether, leaving him alone on the mountain— he could scarcely see the twins ahead of them, and that but seldom. They were far in the lead.
He grew desperate, fearing he was losing all hold over Dubhain, or over them, and struggled to go as fast as he could, reckless of the steep slope.
“Dubhain!” he whispered into the dark and vacant air. “Dubhain! Come back here!” But call aloud he dared not. He only kept going as best he could, and trusted the mountain not at all.
* * *
The skinned knee had time to stiffen long before the sun began to light the sky at their backs— before the mountains above and about them took on shape against the sky, and the greys turned slowly to heathery purples and oranges on the hills and to faint gold in the heavens.
Then Caith could see Dubhain, between him and the twins. Even when his desperate effort overtook the wretch, Dubhain said not a word, and the twins stayed far ahead of them.
But once the air had warmed a bit, and when there was light in the sky, Firinne sat down to rest in a place with a view down over the loch, far below; and Ceannann, too, sat down.
Thank the gods, Caith thought, more than glad to overtake them and to sink down beside them. He was utterly winded, and once he had sat, hardly had the strength to stir.
But Dubhain, having set down the jug at Ceannann’s side, stood looking thoughtfully out over the valley, the distant mountain and the loch far below them. He had a pebble in his hand, idly tossing it, and then—
— hurled it down the stony slope, where it dislodged another, and skipped and tumbled down toward the loch.
“Dubhain!” Caith protested.
A second pebble followed.
“Dubhain, forbear! Come sit.”
A third, magic threes. Caith did not like that, and got up and went over to Dubhain. “Come, sit ye down,” he said, gently resting a hand on Dubhain’s shoulder. “Talk to me. Fair Dubhain. I’d have your advice....”
Dubhain gave that aversion of the head and hunching of the shoulders that meant refusal and evasion. Then he lifted his face and the whites of his eyes showed in his mop of mane. Another voice than Dubhain’s said:
“Silver in the waning moon,
iron then becomes.
&nbs
p; Ask then the ransom of the Sidhe.”
“Moragacht!” Firinne breathed, leaping up at his back.
Caith caught Dubhain by the elbow and shook him, poised precariously above the loch as they were, little removed from the way the pebbles had gone.
“Dubhain, come back to me. By the geas we neither choose, Dubhain, ye damned, contrary wight, hear me!”
Dubhain went vague and grim, and seemed to have spent whatever had come on him, but there was disquiet on the twins’ faces. They both looked as if they might bolt on the instant. “’T is a fit,” Caith lied. “He has these. — Come, come, Dubhain, wise Dubhain, talk to me.”
Waning moons, he thought distractedly. The moon was in its waning course, last night, a crescent, and what was this about silver and iron?
The power of the Sidhe and the power of the banished gods?
It was the waning of the year, autumn days spinning down and down toward that hinge-point of nights, that letting down of bars between the several realms...
Macha, he did not like the thoughts that stirred in him. The days ahead were too fraught with unstable powers, and came the witch now, reaching out to touch them here in the sunrise, at the hour when they ought to have been safe, outside her lands—
More, she touched the one of them they needed most to have steady.
Dubhain blinked at the dawn sky, then shook himself, dark hair obscuring his face, and staggered so that Caith put out a hand to prevent him falling off the mountain, foolishthought.
Dubhain walked barefoot a little distance from them on the precarious slanting stone, and set his back to them all, a grim figure against the sky and the mountains, shoulders hunched and arms folded.
Damn the witch, Caith thought angrily, and went out on that perilous slant himself, for the witch had touched Dubhain— even embarrassed Dubhain, who had no shame. It was a kind of perverse innocence in Dubhain, and the witch had no such right to deal with him like that.
Faery Moon Page 27