The Dark Mirror (61 page)

Faolan
did not seek to fill the great silence with idle talk; his presence was unobtrusive, efficient, accepting. They had warmed up the horses, then galloped them along the wet sand from Caer Pridne to Banmerren. It was not a true contest, but they had challenged each other, all the same; Snowfire had relished the opportunity to stretch himself, underused as he was these days.

At the western end of
the bay, the walls of Fola’s establishment rose high among the softening shawl of undergrowth, the groups of wind-shaped pines that made this headland not fortress, but haven. The gates were of heavy iron and were shut fast. It was not possible to see what lay behind them, for the place was set out with a screening wall not far within, probably to deter such curious eyes as his own. The rule forbidding
any man save a druid from entering this realm sacred to the Shining One was well known. Even to think of breaking it was to offend the goddess. For a man who might be a contender for kingship to entertain such a notion was both sacrilegious and foolish. A king must be flawless in his loyalty to the gods. With his intellect, Bridei understood this only too well. His heart, however, beat fast
with a longing to breach the wall, to find her, to know the truth.

He could not see the oak tree Ana had mentioned. He did not know on what side of this enclosed place there might be a small tower chamber suitable for one young woman on her own. Close by the school compound was a sprawling assemblage of farm buildings, stables, a barn, a long, low dwelling house. Sheep grazed in walled fields;
there was a track down to the tidal flats beyond. Bridei could imagine Tuala there, stooping for shells, her dark hair wild, her skirts tucked up, her small bare feet imprinting the pale sand with tracks as delicate as a tern’s . . .

They rode by, passing to the west across dunes and flats, traversing swamp and heath, stopping to look out over a sandbar that curved across the mouth of a limpid
bay where, this morning, a vast flock of geese was flung across water and shore like a living shawl. The voices of the birds filled the remote place with their strange, honking music. It was a reminder that the
year was almost come to its end; winter visitors, these, whose sojourns in Fortriu came from Gateway to Maiden Dance, before they flew off to summer in other climes.

“It is less than one
turning of the moon until the ritual,” Bridei said, his eyes on the movement of the geese, a wondrous, ever-changing pattern.

“Mm,” said Faolan. “Will Broichan keep the king alive long enough?”

Bridei shivered. “I pray daily that he does.”

“They say Drust is holding on for that purpose,” the Gael said. “His lungs fail him; it is a constant battle for breath. He wishes to perform the ceremony
one last time; to pay his dues to the Nameless One before he must step beyond the veil.”

“One does not speak of such matters aloud.”

“Ah. But I am not one of you.”

“All the same. If you live among us and accept our silver for your services, you should heed such prohibitions. This is a god whose rituals are dark and secret. There is peril even in the mention of them.”

Faolan looked at him curiously
“You realize, I presume, whose responsibility this particular observance will be next year, and for many years to come?”

“Yes. It is not something I dwell on. The gods make certain calls upon us, according to our position in society. If we love them, as any true son or daughter of Fortriu must, we obey. No more need be said. Besides, I am not king yet. At this stage I am only one among several
possible candidates.”

“You know what the ritual entails?”

“Didn’t you hear me, Faolan?”

There was a silence. Then Faolan rose to his feet, heading to the tethered horses. “We cannot ride all the way to your beloved mountains; not today,” he said. “But there is fine moorland, gentle hillocks, secret folds of the land, a river to ford if we ride inland from here. Shall we go on?”

“Places for
ambush? Boltholes for hired killers?”

“Maybe. As I said, today is for leisure, and to assess the lay of the land. We must hope this dry weather continues so we can do it again.”

THEY RODE UNTIL
the sun was at its peak, giving the horses their heads over the moor, leading them cautiously across the stony ford; when this river
was in spate, the passage would be perilous indeed. At length they came to a
place of gentle grass-clad hills and narrow, treed valleys. They traversed a moss-coated plank bridge over a gurgling stream, and rode along one such glen to find it broadened to fields. Farther down stood a grove of tall trees, dark, bare elms and spreading oaks in the last of their russet autumn raiment. Bridei touched
Snowfire’s neck, halting him, and Faolan reined his horse to a stop. Beneath these guardian trees, sheltered and secret, three round cairns lay, each encircled by a ring of standing stones.

“It is a place of the goddess,” whispered Bridei, dismounting. He could feel the breath of the Shining One in every corner of this sanctuary; there was a stillness here beyond the ordinary quiet of wild places,
a sense of both profound serenity and powerful warning. “As men, we can go no closer,” he said.

Faolan got down from his horse. “You may wish to stay a while, all the same,” he said. “Where we cannot go, others can. Move back a little, here, up the rise where there is more cover.”

“What do you mean, others can?”

Faolan was already leading their two mounts back behind the bushes; now he took
a packet from his saddlebag and proceeded to settle himself on a flat stone. He was, of course, a Gael, and deaf to the voices of the old gods of Fortriu. Possessed by a powerful need to be gone from that place, a women’s place, Bridei was nonetheless aware that the day was half over, that they still had to ride all the way back and that he was extremely hungry.

“I mean what I say,” he said,
sitting beside the Gael and accepting a wedge of cheese, a slab of oaten bread. “No closer; and we should leave here when we’ve eaten. I am glad that I have seen this. I’ve heard tell of this place. Those chambers are very old, a construction of the ancient ancestors. Generations of women have conducted their deep rituals here and offered prayers of reverence to the goddess in her triple form. A man
should not set foot among the cairns; even if I did not already know this, I can feel it in every bone of my body.”

“Ah, well,” said Faolan, munching steadily, “a man must still have his dinner; your goddess would surely not grudge us that. Plenty of time. I have mead in this flask; here.”

Autumn was well advanced, but here on the hillside above that secret place of circle within circle the
sun had a warmth in it that belied the season. The horses were content to crop the grasses. Faolan sat quiet, eyes tranquil, pose relaxed. The food was excellent, the mead of fine quality; Bridei suspected it was from the king’s personal supply. His headache was almost
imperceptible now. A kind of peace crept over him that he had almost forgotten, that sense of deep contentment that came only
in the quiet of the outdoors, and then but rarely. He was, after all, the smallest of creatures before the immense, the wondrous tapestry of living things; his own concerns were dwarfed by it. It existed in eternity, strong and sure. The heart of the gods beat in every darting meadow bird, in each gold-brown leaf that spiraled earthward from the oak’s dark branches, in every drop of dew and grain
of sand, in pebble and waterfall, broad lake and high tor. The same heart beat in him; here in this place of sanctuary he could feel its steady rhythm, linking him intimately to the life of the Glen and of the land of Fortriu, the land whose leader he might all too soon become. His back resting against the trunk of an elm, Bridei closed his eyes. The retreat of the headache was a blessing, a gift.
He had not realized how much it weakened him until now, when it was almost fled.

“
BRIDEI
?”

The tone alerted him instantly; it was a warning, making silence imperative. His eyes sprang open. The shadows had moved; the sun had edged toward the west. He had been asleep, and for some time. His limbs were seized by cramp; wincing,
he struggled to a crouch. Faolan was peering down the hillside between the bushes. He had a finger to his lips. Following his gaze, Bridei saw that they were no longer alone. A number of cloaked and hooded women moved now between the ancient stones, stooping here and there, while others walked farther afield on the banks of the little stream close by. He shut his eyes tightly and turned away.

“The ritual is finished,” Faolan murmured. “It’s safe to look. I waited to wake you until it was done. Now they’re just walking about chatting and gathering herbs.”

“This is wrong; disrespectful,” whispered Bridei. “Spying on women . . . I will not do it. Why did you bring me here? I don’t want to see this.” Yet within him something clamored to be heard, something he fought to suppress:
perhaps
she’s here, so close . . . If I don’t look now, she’ll be gone, and it will be too late
. . .

“Would you lie to me? I think you do want to see. I don’t know which of these girls is the friend whose absence caused you to look at Banmerren’s
walls as if they were a defensive barrier to be stormed, but I think I could hazard a guess. Is she a rare, small creature with skin like snow and tresses
dark as a crow’s wing?”

It became, then, impossible for Bridei to keep his eyes closed, his head turned. He looked, and on an instant found her, down by the water where several girls were picking stalks of an autumn-flowering plant and laying them in rush baskets. Tuala was at a little distance from the others and had taken off her enveloping cloak and laid it on the bank nearby. She held a frond
of foliage in her small hand and was staring at it as if she hardly knew what it was; as if she had lost track of the task entirely. The coal-black curls had escaped their binding and sprang in wild confusion about her delicate features . . . Her hair, her lovely long hair, it had been chopped short, falling scarcely to her shoulders. Who would do such a thing? It made her look different, older.
Older . . . She wore a plain skirt and tunic, blue like her cloak and belted in gray. Was it really only a year since he had seen her? The stark simplicity of the garments served only to reveal that she was no longer the slight child of their last meeting. She remained slender and small, but her figure had acquired subtle curves and sweet contours; it was a delicate poem of young womanhood. And
yet, Tuala was herself, from the rosebud lips to the winged brows and cascade of untameable, silky hair. She stood out among these other girls like a young owl in a flock of pigeons.

He must have made some small sound. Black Crow only knew what Faolan could read upon his face. Bridei put both hands up to mask it; in that moment, all of Broichan’s training had deserted him. Self-control? He felt
as if his heart were splitting apart. It was all he could do not to break from cover, to run down the hill and . . . and what? Terrify all of them? Commit an act of utter sacrilege, offending the gods most bitterly? Ask Tuala to throw away the life of peace and purpose the Shining One had offered her and follow him instead to an existence of whispered conspiracy and constant guards and knives in
the dark?

“We must wait now.” Faolan pushed him back to sit on the stone, himself remaining crouched. “To be seen here would be disastrous for your future. We must wait until they are gone. Then we will ride and talk. You shed tears. She is a beguiling creature, that much I see plainly. In the tales of my homeland many such women appear. They are both beauteous and perilous.”

Bridei made a graphic
gesture indicating an intention to slit the Gael’s throat for him if he did not stop talking, and Faolan, who was smiling,
obliged with silence. Below them, half glimpsed through the bushes, the women gathered their tools, their cloaks, and set off in orderly file for the long walk home. Despite himself, Bridei moved to look again, just for a moment more. Tuala was at the end of the line, by herself,
although the others walked in pairs. She kept turning to look back; one slender white hand came up to brush the curls from her face, and they fell in a defiant tangle back across her brow Her eyes were shadowed as if she, too, had been troubled by her dreams.