Haunting Warrior (38 page)

And then she remembered Ruairi, his voice husky with want, telling her he’d dreamed of her before he had come here. But she was not a beauty that men desired. They feared her. Feared her ability to see death.

“The White Fennore was not just a woman, of course,” Red Amir went on. “She herself had powers that the Priest had never imagined.”

“What kind of powers?” Ruairi asked.

“She saw death,” Leary answered, speaking to Ruairi, but his gaze lingered on Saraid’s face. He knew, she realized. He knew that she was the keeper of death’s secrets.

“She saw death?” Ruairi repeated woodenly. “What’s that mean?”

“She knew who would live and who would die.”

“Was she ever wrong?” Saraid asked, despite her vow to keep quiet.

“No,” Leary said. “She was never wrong. Her gift came to her from the gods. It traveled from their hearts to hers.”

Like jugglers handing off apples with a twitch of the wrist, the story was caught up by Mahon Snakeface.

He said, “She would try to change what she saw, but every effort failed. The blacksmith she saved today would only burn to death tomorrow. The fisherman she coaxed ashore in the morning would slip and fall on the way home, cracking his head against a stone instead of drowning out at sea. And so it went for years. Death, she could not escape. Death, she could not prevent.”

Saraid swallowed the burn of tears in her throat. They spoke of her own despair, her own failings. Ruairi’s hands had chilled and the soothing touch stilled. What was he thinking?

“Did it make her crazy?” Ruairi asked softly.

“Yes. Eventually,” Mahon answered. “The High Priest, who loved her beyond anything else, urged her to keep silent about what she saw, to tell only him. She loved Brandubh as well and trusted him with her secrets and so she did as he bade. He wanted to protect her, fearing that the people would turn on her, but he was also jealous. Her gift was true and pure, but his was not so exact, and the people had lost faith in him. A terrible drought had come to them and his sacrifices, his pleas to the gods for rain, had gone unanswered.”

Red Amir effortlessly caught the story and continued. “While his power diminished, the White Fennore’s seemed to grow. But because the High Priest had told her to keep silent about what she saw, she suffered through each death alone. Soon it became too much for her. She begged Brandubh for relief, and so he made for her a Book. Its covers were seamlessly hewn from the skin of bear and adder, engraved with an awl made from the bones of the white stag, adorned with jewels washed in sacrificial blood and silver smelted by sacred fires. The pages were of the finest vellum, formed from the skin of countless stillborn boars and bound by threads woven from the sinew of seal. It was a thing of power before it was ever used.”

The words echoed throughout the meadow, and Saraid shivered at the foreboding they caused. It seemed some part of her knew what would come next, though she’d never heard this story. Ruairi put his arm around her and scooted her closer to him. His warmth seeped into her, down to the bone, but it could not dispel her fear. That was a living, writhing thing that wormed its way through her body, clenching the muscles tight, constricting around her chest until it was hard to breathe. She looked away from the black pits of Red Amir’s eyes and saw that Tiarnan, Michael, and Liam had silently joined them sometime during the tale and now listened with horror. They must see, as she did, the parallel between the White Fennore and Saraid. Two women who saw death. Two women, condemned by a gift they didn’t want.

And what of the High Priest? What of Brandubh, the man who could commune with the air, the earth, the animals between? Was that not what Ruairi himself did? She had felt it when she’d flown out of her body across the forest in his care, hovering on wings that did not exist.

She glanced at Ruairi, noting the stiff set of his jaw, the lowered lashes glinting in the sun, hiding his thoughts. She wanted to reach out, to speak to his mind again. But she was afraid of what she might reveal if she opened that passageway. He was far too attuned to her as it was and even now he faced her, lifting those gold-tinted lashes, drowning her in the blue of his eyes, the heat of his gaze.

It was Leary who continued the telling now. “The Book was a work of love and power and madness. No one knows if the High Priest meant it as a gift or as a curse, though his jealousy consumed him. For now the White Fennore was a danger to him. The drought continued and people died. Though she never spoke of it, she began to make runic inscriptions in her terrible Book, and the people knew that she recorded the messages of death in those symbols. They thought that to write something down gave it power, and so they believed that she not only knew death’s secrets, she shared them. She called them. She caused them.”

Saraid caught her breath.
Death’s secrets.
She’d always thought of the visitors who came to show her their fate as just that . . . death’s secrets. On the tail of that, another thought came to her. When Colleen of the Ballagh had come to deliver her message, Saraid had said she would write it down and what was Colleen’s response . . . Saraid struggled to remember. She’d said, no, because that had not gone well for them in the past.

“Still,” Leary went on, “they were too afraid of Brandubh, of the White Fennore herself, to act on their suspicions. But then she saw the king’s death and she could keep quiet no more. She took her terrible Book to him, showed him her runes, told him they spoke his death. The king, in his terror, had her locked away, and he called to the High Priest, who performed a cleansing ceremony, but the king feared this would not be enough, and so he ordered a sacrifice of the most sacred kind. A human sacrifice. A gift to the gods of something so prized, they would forgive whatever offense the people had committed to warrant this punishment.”

“They sacrificed the White Fennore?” Ruairi said and the words seemed to come from the depths of him, emerging rough and sharp and painful.

Leary nodded. Mahon said, “But as the keeper of death’s secrets, she knew her own fate. Knew that the man she loved, Brandubh the High Priest, would betray her and be the one to sacrifice her to the gods. As she was led to the sacrificial stone, she refused to release the Book. She held it in her arms as she offered her life, and when the High Priest shed her blood, she cursed him forever. All of the people who had come to watch her die were struck blind as she damned him and damned them all. Only the few who had believed she should be spared, and so did not come to see her end, were left whole. Many of the people who were blinded ran from the circle in terror, killing themselves in their panic. Others lost their minds with their sight. Only a few could retell the horror of what had happened, and even then they could only recount the moments before their sight was taken. What is known is that when it was over, all that remained of the High Priest Brandubh and the White Fennore was the Book, sealed by one of her runes.”

He paused, looking at the symbol on Ruairi’s chest then at its mate on the leather tie hanging from his neck. “It is said that the Book is all powerful and that it can be used, but only at a great price.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before. So what did they do with the Book?” Ruairi asked.

“Three men took it to a place unknown to hide away forever. They were never seen again.”

Ruairi drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. Exhaustion shadowed his eyes, and a gold-flecked stubble darkened his face. He rasped his hands against the short beard.

“No one knows where the Book of Fennore was taken,” Leary said. “It faded into legend and then myth.”

“Until Cathán Half-Beard came,” Tiarnan said bitterly, speaking for the first time.

“Yes,” Leary answered, giving her brother an opaque look that somehow conveyed his censure. “But do not forget it was Oma, your mother, who brought the Book to our world and with it, Cathán Half-Beard.”

Ruairi’s head lifted at that. “She brought it from where?”

Leary stared at Ruairi long and hard, and Saraid saw the wall Ruairi tried to erect around him. She saw his guilt and dread in the shadows of his eyes. He knew exactly where Oma had found the Book—clasped between father and son in the cavern beneath the castle ruins.

“We do not know where Cathán or the Book were when Oma found them. We know only that she did. Saraid can tell you why.”

Slowly, Ruairi looked at her with shock. “You knew this?”

She nodded. “About my mother, yes. Last night, when they came, they told us.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

Saraid could not meet his eyes. She looked down at her clenched fingers. “There wasn’t time.”

Ignoring their avid audience, he took her chin and turned her face to his. His eyes were bottomless as they searched hers, and this time she knew what he looked for. He wanted the truth—truth she couldn’t bear to reveal. She didn’t want to see the fear, the distrust that came to all eyes that looked upon the keeper of death’s secrets. But in Ruairi’s probing gaze she saw only hurt and disappointment.

“How did Cathán get the Book?” Tiarnan demanded. “Y’ said my mother brought them both. Cathán has always said he had it when he came and she took it away from him. So is that the truth?”

The three men nodded in unison.

“Well how did he get it in the first place?” Tiarnan said. “How did he find it?”

“He didn’t,” Ruairi answered, finally looking away from Saraid, leaving her bereft. “It found him. That’s how it works.”

“This is true,” Mahon said, snake eyes steady as they watched Ruairi. “And do you know why it found him?”

Saraid’s breath caught in her chest and held as she waited for Ruairi to reply.

“No, I don’t,” he said.

“I do not think you speak the truth, Ruairi of Fennore,” Leary said.

That got Ruairi’s attention. He glared at Leary. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“Does the man who claims he did not see the cliff still die when he falls off it?” Leary asked.

“That depends on whether or not he can fly,” Ruairi answered.

Saraid watched the three men shift uneasily and suddenly something new occurred to her. These men had come to follow Ruairi, to serve him even. But that did not mean they had no fear of him. She could see it now as he looked from one face to another. They were all afraid of Ruairi.
Why?

“The history lesson has been great,” Ruairi said, interrupting Saraid’s thoughts. “But I still don’t see what any of this has to do with Saraid. You haven’t answered my question yet—what does it want with her?”

“To escape the curse of the White Fennore, of course.”

“Of course,” Ruairi said dryly.

“That which lives inside the Book must regain its humanity,” Leary said. “But when the White Fennore trapped the High Priest, a part of her was trapped as well, and she fights to keep him entombed in her pages.”

“Saraid,” Ruairi repeated impatiently. “What does it want with her?”

“It cannot just take her,” Leary said. “She must come willingly. In sacrifice.”

Ruairi turned to Saraid, his face pale, his eyes sparking with anger. “You told me you’d never seen it before. Was that the truth?”

“Yes,” she said, hating the doubt she saw on his face.

“Then what do they mean?”

“You will find the Book, as you have come to do,” Leary went on. “And it will work through you to get to her.”

Ruairi cursed on a deep breath and shook his head.

“I won’t listen to any more of this insanity,” Tiarnan told them, pushing to his feet. Michael and Liam stood as well.

Eamonn had still not joined them, and Saraid could only assume he’d stayed behind with Mauri. She loved all of her brothers, but Eamonn’s desire to wound Tiarnan in this way was unforgivable.

Tiarnan said, “We’re going hunting. When the stories have ended, I’m sure yer bellies will start to growl.”

Several men from the gathering joined the hunting party without being asked. It would take them all to feed so many mouths. They left without another word, but the look Tiarnan gave her as he walked away made her heart ache. He was afraid, she realized. Afraid for her.

After a moment, Ruairi stood, tugging Saraid’s hand so she rose as well. His restless gaze roamed her upturned face for a long moment, and once again she felt that he was trying to see inside her. He wouldn’t like what he found, though. What would he think when he learned that she was as wretched and cursed as the ancient White Fennore?

When Ruairi spoke, his voice was hard and deep. He looked the three men in the eye, letting them know that he meant what he said.

“You guys think what you want. I’ve touched the Book before. There’s nothing on heaven or earth that would make me want to do it again. I’ll find it, because evidently that’s what I’m here to do. But I won’t give it the chance to ‘work through me.’ I sure as hell won’t let it come near Saraid.”

“It may not be your choice to make,” Leary said.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Ruairi said. “I just made it my choice.”

T
IARNAN led them north as the sun hit its zenith, a ragtag line of three men, a boy, two women, a prisoner—if that’s what Rory was—and Leary’s small army behind them. He gave the air of a man with a bigger plan, but Rory guessed Tiarnan was lost—mentally, emotionally, most likely physically. Saraid’s brother couldn’t stop himself from glancing back to where Eamonn rode at the end of the line with Mauri next to him. Eamonn had become Mauri’s knight in shining armor and Tiarnan the villain in just one day.

From the start, something about Eamonn had irked Rory. It went beyond his aggressive and disrespectful attitude, but Rory still couldn’t put his finger on the exact reason. Perhaps it was Eamonn’s relationship to the other brothers. The others acted like a unit, moving with one mind, working for a greater good. Even the kid. But Eamonn seemed to have his own agenda, and when you had to depend on someone to watch your back, that was never a good thing. Now he was swooping in like a vulture, picking up the shattered pieces of his own brother’s love life and capitalizing on his failures. It was no wonder Tiarnan looked like a man already defeated.