Firebrand (36 page)

‘Have I taught you nothing?’ he growled. ‘Don’t bring that curse on yourself. If anyone is to kill her it’ll be me.’

‘Such arrogance!’ cried Kate angrily. ‘Such presumption!’ She rose to her feet.

‘Lilith has no hold on Seth!’ yelled Conal. ‘He’s no part of her!’

Kate glanced at Lilith, held out her hand, and Lilith stepped forward. She walked down one step, two steps towards me. I stared, confused.

Lilith unwound her elaborately braided hair. The ribbons fell away, and the strings of pearls, and the silky tumble of hair fell around her face, and she smiled.

Conal backed away. I just stared, feeling nothing at all. Lilith’s hair was streaked and striped and glossed with silver. Her face was clear and unlined, alive with youth, but my mother was months from death.

‘I have a message for your mother, Cù Chaorach.’

‘Lilith,’ he said, and put a hand on my rigid arm. ‘Don’t do this. Gods. Don’t do this.’

‘Your mother wants to die, Cù Chaorach, doesn’t she?’

‘Lilith.’

‘But she doesn’t have the devotion to die.’ Lilith half-turned to smile back at Kate; the queen walked down the steps to stand behind her, never taking her eyes off Lilith. ‘Bound or not, Leonora does not have the
need
to die. The courage. She does not have the
love
.’

‘It’s love keeping her here, Lilith!’

‘Not for Griogair. For someone who doesn’t exist yet! That’s not
love
, it’s self-importance. It’s not good enough, Cù Chaorach; not good enough. I have the courage. I have the love. I’m going to him.’

‘
Lilith!
’

‘How much headstart will she give me, Conal?’

Lilith stepped back into Kate’s arms, and Kate’s fingers ran once through my mother’s hair, then drew it aside. She kissed Lilith’s neck, and pressed her cheek against hers, and then she kissed her greying hair.

‘No,’ said Conal.

‘Tell her, Cù Chaorach.’

Kate’s arm slid round Lilith, holding her in a close embrace. Smiling, Lilith closed her eyes, but not for long. She opened them again to look straight into mine, then tilted up her chin. The blade in Kate’s hand flashed across her proudly raised throat.

Blood spat from it in a broad spray. There was no avoiding it. My mother’s lifeblood was in my eyes, and my hair; it was in my mouth and some of it had run into my throat. I’d swallowed, convulsively, before I could even think about dodging it or wiping it off or
spitting it out. Lilith’s eyes were locked on me as they went dead, but she was still smiling, and she didn’t fall. Kate cradled her in one blood-soaked arm as she looked up at me and Conal.

‘You’re mine,’ she murmured. ‘It’ll be a long time coming, but your lives belong to me. Both of you.’ Sweeping Lilith’s body into her arms, she passed my mother as if she was a featherweight into the arms of Skinshanks. It shivered with pleasure at the touch of death. ‘It will be worth the wait, Cù Chaorach, Murlainn. My patience is limitless.’

‘You ask too much, Kate,’ he hissed. ‘For
nothing!
’

She came down the steps again to stand close to him, her voice soft and deadly. ‘I don’t object to a war here and now, Cù Chaorach.We shall fight, and I do not care if every fighter in the place dies. I will sacrifice every single one: yours and mine. I loved Lilith, you know that. You’ve seen now that I have no compunctions. You have far too many. Now take your exile, and don’t ask me again for promises. You’ll get none.’ Her lovely lip curled in a snarl. ‘You. Have. No. Choice.’

‘No. But he does have me.’

At last, at last, a spark of true terror in Kate’s eyes. It was gone in an instant, but I know I saw it. I saw that first, and then I saw the raven gliding in circles above Kate, I saw its black-marble eye and heard its cackling scornful laugh. It landed on Leonora’s outstretched arm as she stopped between her son and me.

Well, well. It was a learning curve: all these detested enemies I was suddenly finding I liked. I’d certainly never been happier to see this witch. Though where
she’d sprung from, the gods alone knew, because Conal looked as shocked as Kate did, and so did the fighters who thronged the door and the passageway beyond. Aonghas actually rubbed his eyes and made his mouth an O. Comedian.

‘So,’ said Kate, recovering her composure. ‘We’re going for death, and the destruction of this dun. Am I right?’

Leonora sighed, flicked specks of cobweb and earth from her coat, and tickled the raven’s throat. ‘You’ve never been right in your life.’

I rolled my eyes. I hoped this wasn’t going to come down to a brief catty exchange of views, and a bloodbath to follow.

‘I’ve just explained to your sainted son,’ said Kate, ‘that I have the advantage of complete ruthlessness. I’ll sacrifice this dun and everyone in it.’

‘No, you won’t. Not if my son goes into exile, and I go with him.’

I actually couldn’t breathe. I thought someone had kicked me in the gut. From the look of him, Conal felt exactly the same.

Leonora’s sweetness was very like Kate’s.

‘Can we talk?’

* * *

Only four people ever knew what happened in those negotiations between Kate and Leonora. They spoke quietly, reasonably, like old friends discussing their childhood, and no-one else, I’m certain, overheard.
That was an advantage for both sides. At the time it was. Later I wondered.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Leonora,’ Kate told her.

‘I should hope so. You wouldn’t be much of a Sithe queen if you didn’t.’

Kate gave a low laugh. ‘That’s disingenuous of you, Leonora, to say the very least. Now, I’ve been where you have been, and seen who you have seen, and I know all that you know.’

‘Do you indeed?’

‘She told me everything. She told me all she told you, Leonora.’

‘That surprises me.’ Leonora raised her left hand to the raven, and it rubbed its beak affectionately against her skin.

‘It shouldn’t. I had so much help from Skinshanks. It’s very persuasive.’

‘So the prophet’s dead now?’ Leonora sounded regretful, but not exactly devastated.

‘Of course she is. And you won’t find it.’

‘The Stone?’

A chill crept down my spine, as if a Lammyr had walked on my grave.

‘The Stone,’ agreed Kate. ‘The Bloodstone.’

‘Oh, but I will. I’ll have the heir of Griogair Dubh at my side, and that’s the key, it seems. I can’t imagine he’ll ever be at yours.’

Conal grinned.

‘So you find it.’ Kate shrugged. ‘Then I’ll take it from you.’

‘You can try,’ I remarked.

Kate smiled at me. This time the chill in my spine made me shiver, visibly.

‘The prophet had a few things to say about you, too, my little bastard. Little cursed one. The one who would drink the blood of his own mother. One day I’ll tell you what else she said, since she was obviously so reliable. Splinter-heart, winter-heart, lover-killer.’

There were a lot of dark night-things walking on my grave, now.

Kate tossed her head, dismissing me and my ill-starred future. ‘Did you listen carefully to the old prophet, Leonora? She gave no word to say the Bloodstone will save the Veil. Nothing to indicate it will
preserve
it. It will decide the Veil’s fate, that’s all. Griogair’s heir will find it, and the fate of the Veil will be determined. Not by the finder, you understand. By whoever holds it at the right time. So be my guest.’ Kate wagged a playful finger. ‘Take your son and find the Stone, and don’t come back till you do.’

‘The dun,’ gritted Conal. ‘If this is up to me, I want guarantees.’

‘Oh, she won’t destroy this dun,’ said Leonora coolly. ‘You see, it’s the only thing on earth that matters to me more than the Veil. I don’t want civil war, but I can be ruthless too. Kate will not destroy Griogair’s dun or his people. If she dares to try in our absence, I’ll come back here and destroy her. And she knows it. Don’t you, Kate, dear?’

Kate’s eyes glittered, her face frozen with fear and hate. ‘So, Cù Chaorach.The survival of your dun and
your clann depends entirely on your exile. For as long as it takes to bring me what I want.’

‘And the autonomy and security of my dun is guaranteed?’

‘Till your mother dies,’ said Kate.

‘Till I die,’ agreed Leonora, smiling. ‘Watch me live.’

‘Must I?’

‘Oh, yes. For a very long time.’

‘Though you saw what Lilith did?’ Kate’s laugh was rippling and lovely, but brittle. ‘You were here, weren’t you, Leonora? You saw, you heard. You know what she has done to you.’

Leonora gave a shrug, though from where I stood, there seemed to be a weight of lead on her shoulders.

‘Yes. It makes no difference. I live on, and so does the dun.’

‘Only if your son and all his blood relatives leave for the otherworld.’

‘Agreed. And while we’re gone, you will not cross the border of the dun lands. You or any of your allies.’

Kate licked a fingertip, and held it high, shutting one eye as if testing the wind speed.

‘What a dangerous woman you are, Leonora. You know what makes you so dangerous?’

Leonora only lifted an eyebrow. The raven tilted its head at Kate.

‘You do want to die, that’s the thing.’ Kate’s smile looked real this time. ‘You’d actually prefer to die.’

Leonora smiled too.

‘It gives you insane courage, a deathwish like that.’ Kate tapped her fingertips against her cheek, then
pointed first at Conal, then at me. ‘But it makes you very dangerous to them too, doesn’t it? How long will it be before you give in to the call?’

‘Watch me live,’ said Leonora.

‘You can stay,’ I told Catriona. ‘You don’t have to come. You’re happy here and you’re safe in the dun. You can stay.’

It was only words. She knew it and so did I.

‘With you,’ she said. ‘That’s where I’m happy.’

She ran her fingertip across the healed scar on my chest. I kissed her. ‘Good.’

If I’d known. If I’d known. Would I have left her there?

* * *

I pitied Conal. Oh, when I think how I pitied him. He had to leave his lover, and I did not.

He wouldn’t take Eili, wouldn’t let her come with him, because he said the otherworld would kill her, just the air of it. She was bound to her own world as she was to a lover, and besides, she was already in possession of another male soul. Her loss would destroy Sionnach. His would ruin her. Both of them were tied to one world by the only names they owned: taking them out of it would kill them both. Conal refused to bind to her.

‘When I come back for good,’ he said as she wept into his chest. ‘Then.’

‘What do you mean,
for good?
’ I’d overheard him, and I had my misgivings.

‘You think we won’t come back?’ He was almost savage. ‘I won’t stay away from here. Nor will you. We’ll see it again, Seth.
Often
. One day we’ll come back for good, but before then, oh gods, we’ll see it again.’

‘As long,’ said Leonora dryly, ‘as Kate never sees
you
.’

* * *

On the banks of the watergate, Reultan wept bitter tears, but she was bound to Aonghas, and of course she followed him. She’d have followed him to the gates of Hell; and in the end, I suppose she did.

I watched Leonora go into the little loch, and I watched my brother. Closing my eyes, I imagined them stepping out into the rain-soaked forested wetland, green and lovely, drenched in the colours of bank and tree and sky. I thought that perhaps life in the otherworld would not be so bad. The watergate on that side was beautiful; there was no better place to arrive.

We’d go east, Conal said, where people did not know us. We’d settle on the shores of an eastern firth, and live quietly behind the dwindling Veil, and we’d hunt for Leonora’s damned Stone, and when we couldn’t bear our exile any more we’d creep home for a time like thieves.

Kate’s patience was limitless. So, said Leonora, was hers.

Under the bluest Sithe sky, streaked with tattered cirrus and paling to infinity, I twined my fingers into Catriona’s and smiled at her. She touched my lips with gentle fingers, and I kissed her. The day could not have
been crueller in its loveliness, so I would not look at the stunning sky and the moor. I looked only at Catriona as I led her into that watergate, and she looked at me, and we went to our fate together. That at least we did together.

I wasn’t looking at her by the time we surfaced and I shook the water from my hair like an otter. Her fingers were still wound into mine, tight and curled, but I was distracted, and shocked, staring at the woodland that was not a woodland. I was looking at bleak moor, and ancient stumps, and a grey sullen sky, and my feet sucked in boggy ground as I waded out of the watergate into our new life. It was changed, so changed. Catriona seemed loath to follow; she was slow, and stumbled at my side, and I tightened my hand on her curled fingers.

Ahead of me Conal had turned on the bank and was looking at me, and I thought there was horror in his eyes, and grief. Aonghas had much the same look. Leonora and Reultan? It was strange, and foreign: their faces held nothing but pity. I laughed.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘It’s not so bad. New beginning and all that.’

Then Catriona stumbled again, and I had to turn to catch her as she almost fell to her knees in the sodden ground. Her fingers still felt strange, knotted and bony, and when she looked up at me, I knew that my mother must be laughing at me now, from wherever she was burning.

I lifted my lover into my arms and buried my face in her wrinkled neck and wept.

I don’t know how often, in the so-many years since, I’ve tried to remember my lover’s weary wicked grin and the touch of her dry wrinkleskin fingers on my cheek.

Thirty years, if she’s lucky
. I remembered Conal’s brutal prediction. She hadn’t been lucky, of course. She’d met her stepfather, and the priest-Lammyr, and Conal, and me.

I watched my tears dribble into her white seal-skin crop of hair, then pressed my cheek against it. It still felt the same: silky.

~ Don’t cry, she said.