Dubhain had made a curiously careful point of it that he had come at Nuallan’s summons, and that it was Nuallan’s bidding he was doing— which he had thought mildly strange of Dubhain, then, but he had written it down to Dubhain’s reluctance to carry him at all....
Into arrow-shot of the witch’s men, and hellish pain. Then he had called Dubhain, and Dubhain had finally found his way to him ...
Once in dread, once in pain, once in bitter anguish...
A third calling yet to make? Macha, what worse was there to face than the cellars of Dun Glas?
What worse, O gods, had he deserved, in the balances of magic?
He was not to any point of anguish yet, not as the fay measured anguish.
Everything they had found here spoke of sudden calamity, the nets rotting on their frames and the door and the shutters shut.
And was this fair land all vacant, and was all there had ever been here this one solitary fisherman?
This river might be, for all that he could tell, some rustic borderland of faery itself, where the Sidhe, bound by the geassi of their own magic, could leave only clues and signs of the mortal world. Things of faery matched their counterparts in the mortal world at very odd points; and every choice regarding those counterparts was fraught with consequence.
In sudden fear that he might have strayed over some such boundary unawares, he looked back toward the hut— but there, still, was the hut as it had been, with the lamp-light escaping its weathered seams.
It was a Place, at least, in the desolation of this shore.
And he was in it without Dubhain, who would keep the dreams away, and— without Dubhain— who would walk with him on the road he was damned to travel?
And what creature in the world would he ever believe absolutely safe from the curse he bore ... save only Dubhain?
He had nowhere to be but this. He had no direction now, but this, until he got Dubhain back.
Rubbing his arms to warm them, he found himself walking aimlessly, helplessly back to the abandoned shanty.
So there was worse to come.
Once in bitter anguish....
Ask why it was on him to suffer the pains of hell for this vain, this feckless pair of fools.
Ask why a lord of the Sidhe lay in prison tonight in Dun Glas.
Had the Great Sidhe some penalty of his own to pay?
Had some balance of the world gone askew, and did it come down to Caith mac Sliabhin to shove it back in true?
Belief, courage, both were faltering. Dubhain had warned him. And could say no more on ’t, in the way of faery warnings.
Damn him.
He gathered up his resolve, ducked through the door of the hut, and gave a turned shoulder to Ceannann, his anger was so dark and so murderous. He gave a shrug to Firinne when she asked where he had gone.
“Oh, down talkin’ to the river,” he said, “an’ th’ air an’ all.” Worse than Dubhain, to whom mischief was as natural as drawing breath, he had to tread the brink of a killing anger, and he lacked Dubhain’s innocence. He had to remember the greater danger, that not only did his anger get the better of his sense, the worse thing was ... he enjoyed it when it had him.
Either his fey saying or the look on his face put a silence on the pair. They were quiet, and seemed a little afraid of him.
“There’s driftwood about,” Ceannan ventured to say. “We cannot light the hearth inside, but we might have a fire out there.”
Oh, aye, Caith thought, a bright brave fire glowing into the night, smoke on the wind. They could wave banners while they were about it. Let the witch know where they were, had she any doubt of it.
And it was one of the twins who offered the notion, them with their Luck, and their doom.
A fey dark mood was on him, the while. He shrugged. “Do as ye will. Make your fire. I’ll watch, I.”
* * *
Ceannann, like Dubhain, did nothing by halves. He built his fire large, out of scattered logs, and a driftwood fire cast its warmth and light about. It was good at least to warm one’s bones, while the beast, if ever it ventured out of the walls of the glen, had not found them yet.
The mice and the foxes had gotten whatever food stuffs there had been, so the fire was all their comfort, but it was comfort, and Caith settled on a stray stone beside the hut, warmed if not fed, and trying not to imagine what might come.
But come it might, with that fire to hasten it.
If they were very lucky, they might catch a fish or two for breakfast. He did not want to know what might be swimming in that water now.
He had a sip of whisky.
If the ghost from Gleann Fiain had not followed them, and if no fisherman-ghost was haunting the shanty, they might, he almost began to hope, pass at least one peaceful night, and make the sea by tomorrow night ... if they dared leave this place.
And if a cruel-humored, prankish Sidhe could only hear a man and turn up, after all, safe and free and with some plausible, feckless excuse for his absence, he could sleep the sleep of his life tonight.
Perhaps it was not the day for the third Calling. Perhaps the curse might bide awhile, and the bitter anguish might be some other day.”If ye’d find us a pair o’ fat salmon, Dubhain, we’ve a fire goin’. D’ ye hear me, ye wicked wight? I feel sorry for ye. I hae th’ whisky. D’ ye want it?”
“Where would he be?” Firinne asked, when he said that aloud. “Where can he have gone?”
He gave a shrug. “Where he pleases. Chasing the fay of some spring, the lascivious fellow.” The firelight warmed the stone and thatch of the abandoned hut to a lived-in look. Worn-out nets held the weathered thatch down, in the common country way. The net of ropes that depended about the head-high eaves had for their weights, of all things curious, fishing floats of green glass, that shone like bubbles behind Firinne’s pale hair.
Perhaps it was the whisky. In that firelight glow, he recalled how he had been drawn to her in the cottage, that morning she had leaned so close.
Bargaining for what? he wondered nastily. What could she want of me?
Safety? Hers, and Ceannann’s?
With whom she shared a bed at night.
Padraic’s recollection of standing at the foot of their bed— that was, of all Padraic’s memories, the most persistent, fraught with omen and the imminence of Padraic’s own dying.
It had struck the same grating note in Padraic as sounded in his own sensibilities, whenever the twins, as they did now, would look at him at the same moment— as they had begun, ever since the ruin, to do more frequently— either more frequently, or he had, with Padraic’s sensibilities, begun to notice it, since.
Wrong, his instinct clamored when he saw those two blond heads turn, all in the same instant. Unnatural.
And sharing the bed, mingling that golden hair, two who were no longer children.
No one had succeeded in separating them, not their nurse, not their mother, not their mortal father, and, so far, not Moragacht nor the Sidhe. A child, the lady of Gleann Fiain had wanted; twins, Moragacht had promised her— one child.
But they could not be separated.
Before or after their birth, someone ... some power had bound the twins as they were bound— making impossible the witch’s demand, and damning all of Gleann Fiain into that bloody bargain.
But could not he break it? Gi’ the bloody beast one of them, break the witch’s geas and end this thrice-seven-year curse?
A man might come between them, the thought arrived unbidden, considering Firinne leaning near the fire.
He could, and take no harm. His blood moved faster in him, and he conceived a righteous, temper-ridden notion of setting nature right and breaking the unnatural bond that some fool or some magical force had set on two children.
Let the powers at work in Gleann Fiain test damnation for damnation— curse for curse, let the witch of Dun Glas try his curse for bloodiness and persistence. He was damned to wander, for his father’s damnable sin; and Dubhain was damned to
go with him, for one good act, which his kind must never commit.
Stay them? Bind them, when Nuallan himself had proven unable to bend that curse?
Oh, aye, he had something about him more powerful than Lord Nuallan.
Let the witch find out whose was the greater force.
Separate those twain, and let the witch get her due?
He might not have existed at all in their small world, the two of them talking together, making their plans together: what wanted doing, they evidently considered themselves quite enough for, and so long as they were enough, and so long as he did not speak to them, evidently they needed not notice he was with them.
Share the shanty with them tonight? His thoughts were too dark for that ... too dark and too dangerous, and he did not like the fact that his temper was bounding leagues ahead of his reason, and settling on Firinne, and now regarding Ceannann as a hindrance. This turmoil of anger and frustration had been going on in him ever since the keep, all during the descent from the hills. And it was mad. He knew in all good reason that his imagination of having Firinne was mad— and what was mad?
Faery had a great deal to do with what was mad, and notions that popped up to the surface of a man’s thoughts like some old rotten thing from out of the depths?
They were suspect. They were more than suspect. Especially that notion that he could, by the oldest and most primitive magic a mortal could make, shatter the geas that bound the twins. When did a sane man match magic with the old gods— which was what was afoot here. The bloody gods. The gods that wanted blood.
Granted, rending Firinne from Ceannann might even break the witch’s curse— if the breaking of the draiocht did not blast the man that did the deed.
But a geas and a magic thrice seven years strong was nothing to attempt on a belly full of whisky and at such a— a man could not but think— intimate risk.
More?
The two of them got up, as one, and walked toward the door of the hut, never looking at him, hand in hand.
It disturbed him to see it— no less for the thoughts that muddled through his brain— not of his own making, he strongly suspected it. The wind had risen, fluttering the fire, making the shadows jump. And it was sensible they go in.
But hand in hand, and walking as in a dream?
He flung himself to his feet, the whisky jar still in hand. He was stiff from the cold stone and unsteady, and caught himself against the doorframe, blocking their path.
“On his way, your father is,” he said, confronting them. “So Dubhain says. And if he should come tonight, how shall we know him? Fins, has he? A seal’s coat?”
“We have no idea,” Firinne said solemnly; and Ceannann, holding her shoulders:
“Our mother would never tell us that part.”
“I wager she did not.” It was low-spirited to say. It was the whisky in him. There was his father’s cruelty in him, unstoppable when his anger was up. Ceannann shouldered past him in disgust and pushed Firinne ahead of him, inside.
More, Ceannann jerked the door to, on its one surviving leather strap, shutting him out in the wind and the night.
As a barrier to him, it was nothing. As a rebuff— it was everything.
Drunken fool, it said. Keep away from us. And her.
Well, damn them and good night, Caith thought, leaning against the house stones, and feeling the heat muddled inside him.
Give him no Firinne to draw his mind down forbidden paths all night.
Give him no Ceannann to provoke him.
Give him his sword, and a clear space, and a good fire with a clean sea wind about him, instead of a musty thatch shedding spiders and mouse droppings on his head.
And if the witch’s beast should come clattering out of the river, by the Badbh, the twins’ luck hitherto had been potent enough to save them, and it had been fatal to those standing near them. So he intended to look entirely to his own safety this night. Damn them both.
Once in bitter anguish...
Grief, did it mean? His grief?
That might be a long time coming. He had nothing. He had no one but Dubhain. Those he did love were far out of reach, and safe from him. The witch would not reach them.
She could not. They were his bargain with the Sidhe. They were the bond that held him in exile, and the Sidhe would never let that be broken. The world of faery would shake, at the breaking of their given word.
Was that at risk?
He thrust another stick into the coals and watched it take fire, then took another sip of whisky, and held nothing on his mind than the leaping flames for a moment. It was all he wanted to think on.
But his blood kept racing, and he sat half-mad with angers and suppositions and fears for things to come ... he did not even know where he had gotten them or why he entertained them, but they tumbled like rocks in the river, over and over again, turning and moving and giving him no peace.
Crack! crack! crack! He took up a small stick of driftwood and broke it in pieces, casting them one after the other into the fire to watch them catch fire and burn.
The roar of the river and the snap and flutter of the fire were the only sounds now. The hut was still. And as sleep eluded him, the silence grew lonelier, his own prospects more frightening. His thoughts drifted to wondering what Dubhain was about, and what the Sidhe might yet ask of him and what he could force on them.
A pebble shifted, across the faint glare of the fire. His eyes lifted as instantly as his heart thumped. Two red shimmerings a little brighter than the dark showed above the fire-glow, becoming part of a dusky, familiar face.
“Dubhain, damn you!” All his calculations and his defenses went tumbling down, and left only temper ... which with Dubhain was never the best course.
He expected laughter, then, and some foul trick at his expense, but if Dubhain was here, anything was welcome.
Dubhain whispered, “He answereth, man, he maun answer the bluid the twain hae shed. They hae had that much for true. Bluid is the binding of him an’ heart’s bluid is the binding of me. Call me the third time, my prince. I hae nae ither means to return t’ ye.”
“A third time. A third time, is it?” Fear settled sickly cold in the pit of his stomach. But anger welled up after it. “And who hae laid this on me? Was ’t you, was this your damned joke, after all, Dubhain? Aye, then set to, draw blood and be done! I need ye, ye damned wight! I own ye the cleverer, I flatter ye. Anything ye wish, I will grant tomorrow, but leave me not alone tonight to deal with this thing!”
“My doing? Nay, my damned prince. I would ’t were.”
“Damn you to hell, then, Dubhain! — No! Wait! Stay!”
“Invoke me wi’ more passion than that, man, and use your wits, this time, such as they may serve ye....”
The red glimmering faded on the other side of the smoke and on that fading word, there was nothing to see, not the least shadow of Dubhain’s presence.
Disconsolate, he sank back down again, hearing only the rush of the river.
Oh, far too much now he wanted to believe that Dubhain’s jokes and Dubhain’s treacheries found their limits in Dubhain’s own conscience.
He so longed to believe that, in their years together, Dubhain had felt some love for him beyond the geas that bound them, that he had felt some remorse for his wicked humors?
Oh, aye, but that was what had damned him from faery, for crimes against his wicked nature. ’T was a sin for Dubhain to do good.
And so many things were mixed up in the wight.
Would he be free of his curse when he’d made himself wicked enough, and that in the company of Caith mac Sliabhin— who was damned himself, and growing worse.
Macha, was that too much to ask of the gods, once, that someone was sorry for what happened to him, now and again in a lifetime of paying for a father’s ungodly sins?
But every moment of compassion damned Dubhain the worse.
He raked his fingers through his hair and flung back his head. It hit hard against the stone
wall of the hut— which hurt, and reminded him of a stone flung by Guagach’s banks, and a sharp pain, that stone a gift from one who loved him..
That was the reminder Dubhain gave him of his own character— the honesty Dubhain was compelled to show him, like any good Sidhe ... or any wicked one.
Oh, aye, whoever lived by magic was bound to such little honesties. It kept the Sidhe pure. It kept their hands clean when the difficulties came. It let them work their spells on a mortal, fallible man— and it gave a creature like Dubhain all the power of his wicked innocence.
Whatever was afoot out there in the dark, Dubhain would skip by it. Dubhain would light-foot it out of trouble.
Damn the wight!
The door scraped, softly, opening. A pale shape whispered out of the doorway, and loomed over him the other side of the smoke, him with the tears seeping in his eyes from the crack on his skull.
“Was someone here?” Firinne asked. “Has the Sidhe come back? I thought heard you talking to someone. Or did I dream it?”
He was in no pleasant mood, nor willing to wipe his eyes with Firinne to witness it. “Oh, aye, come and gone,” he said sullenly, in as faint a voice as might not disturb the night and wake Ceannann inside. “Wi’ a troop o’ the faery. Go back to sleep. ’t was nothing. I only thought I heard something.”
With a rustle of her petticoats she came around the fire, looking down at him, but he would not look up at her.
“Quarrels among us now are the witch’s doing,” she said, sinking down, gathering her skirts between her knees, a shadow touched with firelight from behind. “We should not quarrel, us.”
Every word she spoke seemed to hang in the air, weighted with Necessity and omen. Her coming out here gave him no easier feeling at all about Dubhain’s skiting off the way he had— if he had not dreamed his ever being there.
He set his jaw and looked away, as plain a hint as he could give that he wished she would go back inside.
“Perhaps,” Firinne said softly, “if we laid out little gifts for the Sidhe, he would come back. I have a good copper pot.”
Faery Moon Page 30