The Well of Shades (32 page)

He looked across the fire at the two of them: Eile sitting cross-legged in her borrowed gown, an old one of Líobhan’s, with her hair
touched crimson by the firelight and her green eyes forbidding him to be sorry for her; Saraid with the shapeless doll cradled in her arms. “You’re not a burden,” he said. “Eile, I want you to promise me something.”

Her eyes took on the wary expression of a creature scenting danger. “And what would that be?” she asked.

“I want a promise that from now on you won’t call yourself roadside rubbish
or slut or any such name. If your daughter hears that often enough she’ll start to believe it, not just of the mother she loves and trusts, but of herself. I don’t want to hear it ever again.”

Her features tightened. “So you’re telling me how to bring up my child now, are you? What gives you the right to do that?”

He drew a slow breath and let it out, reminding himself how young she was. “If
I wanted to be cruel,” he said, turning the fish over the flames, “I’d answer that a substantial payment in silver gives me the right to tell you anything I like.”

“So what am I?” Her response was quick as a slap. “Your slave or your friend?”

“I would not make such a suggestion to anyone but a friend,” Faolan said. “To Saraid, you are the best person in the world, good, brave, beautiful. I expect
we all believe that of our mothers when we are small. She doesn’t have much, Eile. Let her keep that.”

He expected another reproof, another challenge, but she was silent. When he looked up from his cooking, he saw to his amazement that she was crying. Saraid edged across to lean against her mother, mouth drooping in sympathy.

“It’ll never be all right,” Eile whispered. “Sometimes I forget to
think about it, like on the farm when it sometimes felt like we belonged there, and when we were on the boat. I liked that. It made me feel like a new person. Then it all comes back. He sullied me. Dirtied me. That’s never going to wash away.”

“Dalach’s dead,” said Faolan. “That time is over. Some things you never forget, however hard you work at it. But you can put them behind you. You can say,
yes, it was bad, so bad it nearly made me give up. But I didn’t give up. I’m strong. I’m alive. And then you can go on
and make something of the rest of your life. Not easy, but possible for someone like you.”

“Is that what you did?” She scrubbed a hand across her cheeks. “After your brother died?”

He thought about this. “Not exactly. I tried to block it out; shut it away. For ten years I thought
I’d done that. I lived a life, performed certain tasks, honed certain skills. Earned my silver. In all that time I never told the tale of Fiddler’s Crossing. Until last autumn. Until I met your father.”

“You told him?”

“Not exactly. I told… someone else. Someone who challenged me to confront the past. So, you see, I’ve only been following my own advice for a short time. I may be ancient in your
estimation, but in this matter of starting life anew, I’m not far ahead of you.”

“Feeler,” said Saraid, “Sorry’s hungry.”

“It’s almost ready, Saraid.” Let Eile not ask him about Ana. Not now, sitting here by a little fire in the darkness; not now when the sweetest and most bitter memory was stirring deep inside him. “Deord did have advice for me,” he said. “He challenged me to live my life well.
He told me not to waste the opportunity his bravery had won for me. I’m still not sure what that meant. I had thought survival was good enough. I had thought it the best I could manage.” He lifted the fish from the fire, laid it on a flat stone, divided it with his knife. “Careful, Saraid,” he said. “It’s hot.”

Over the makeshift meal he taught Eile the words for
fish
and
thank you
and
knife
in the Priteni tongue. Saraid wanted to learn, too; he taught them
doll
and
eat
and
good night
. When the child was asleep, rolled in her good woolen blanket from Fiddler’s Crossing with Faolan’s cloak over the top, he and Eile sat by the fire while the moon rose into the velvet dark and stars emerged on the high arch of the night sky. It was bitterly cold; beyond the circle of firelight things
stirred and rustled in the dense undergrowth.

“Everything’s big here,” said Eile, huddling deeper into her cloak. “Tall mountains, huge trees, lakes that take all day to get across. It makes me expect to meet giants.”

Faolan wondered if he should mention the Good Folk, and decided against it. “The folk at White Hill are quite normal,” he told her. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I didn’t
say I was afraid!”

“My error.”

“All the same, kings and queens… I’m not accustomed to grand folk like that. Your sister Áine was bad enough. I didn’t seem to be able to open my mouth without saying the wrong thing.”

He did not answer.

“Faolan?”

“Mm?”

“What am I supposed to do when we get there? Be a servant? Scrub floors, wait on tables?”

Faolan was reluctant to confess that he had not
really thought this out. “It won’t be like that,” he said. “As the king’s bodyguard, I suppose I could be called a servant of sorts. I do a job; he pays me. But I’m also…” He would not say,
I’m his friend
. To do so was to acknowledge something he had long deemed an impossibility. “Bridei trusts me,” he said. “I’m close to him.”

“You haven’t answered the question.”

“It depends on what you want
for yourself and for Saraid. Education; training in some kind of work, maybe. A place to settle. I have a couple of possibilities in mind.” He had thought Drustan and Ana might take Eile in, along with the child. She was Deord’s daughter, after all, and Deord had been Drustan’s only friend for the seven years of incarceration. They would want to help, if they were still at court. Part of him hoped
profoundly that they were not. Still, it would solve this problem neatly. “I have some friends I believe would welcome you into their household. Or there’s a school for young women, not very far from White Hill. You could go there, if you
wanted. The third possibility is that Tuala—the queen—could find you a position at court.”

“What about you? Where would you be?”

He stopped himself from telling
her that was irrelevant. His bag of silver had made it relevant, whether he liked it or not. “I’m at court sometimes. More often I’m away. My duties require me to travel.”

“Guarding this king, you mean?”

“I’m one of three personal guards. I do other things as well.”

“What things?” She fixed her gaze on him. The firelight flickered in her green eyes.

“Things. I don’t discuss them.”

“Uh-huh.
I guess those extra duties wouldn’t include being a bard. That’s what Líobhan told me you once were. It’s a bit hard to believe.”

He felt his mouth twist in a smile. “You won’t hear me singing at White Hill. These days, I turn my talents elsewhere.”

“Mm. I don’t suppose you earned all that money as a musician, unless you were really good.” Then, after a silence, “You know you said once you were
unlucky in love? Who was the woman? What was she like?”

“It’s old history. I don’t talk about it.”

“Was she the person you told your story to? The one who made you go back to Fiddler’s Crossing?”

“It’s none of your business, Eile. We’d best get some sleep; if the rain holds off, we’ll make an early start in the morning.”

“Your voice goes different when you talk about it,” Eile said quietly,
moving away to lie down beside Saraid. “As if it still hurts. Was she beautiful?”

He settled on his own side of the fire. Eile was too acute. Her questions were like little knives. Best give her some answers now, if only to stop her digging deeper. “Like a princess in a song,” he said. “In fact, she really is a princess, cousin to the king of the Light Isles. She was a hostage at the court of
Fortriu for a number of years.
That’s not as bad as it sounds; she was there to ensure her cousin’s loyalty to King Bridei, who is his overlord. Ana was treated more as an honored guest than as a prisoner. Last summer I escorted her on a journey to marry a chieftain of the Caitt. It all got very complicated. Now she’s betrothed to someone else, a highly suitable man whom she loves. And that, as
far as you’re concerned, is the end of the story.”

“It doesn’t sound as if it is,” Eile said softly. “You’re still angry and hurt, I can hear it. You still love her. Did you and she—did you ever—?”

“That’s not the kind of question a young woman asks a man who’s nearly old enough to be her father,” Faolan said repressively.

“I’m just asking because… well, I…”

Something in her tone, reticent,
delicate, made him ask, “What’s wrong, Eile? What is it?”

“I just don’t understand how…” The words seemed to escape her lips in a rush. “It’s just that… well, it’s so vile, brutal and hurtful, what men and women do together, I can’t understand how it can go with… with what you call love. Surely as soon as you lie together, as soon as you do it, it must destroy those tender feelings. It can’t
be otherwise. Yet I remember Father and Mother… They were always so kind to each other, even after Breakstone when he was so changed… Maybe I’m trying to remake the past, so it’s the way I wish it had been. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you that. It was wrong. Forget I said it.”

Gods, how could he respond to this? What did he know of such matters, with his own twisted history following him
like an unlucky shadow? For a little, confusion and embarrassment halted his tongue. Then, glancing at her tight, wounded features, he found words. “What was between you and Dalach wasn’t the usual way of it, though there are plenty of men like him who’ll take their satisfaction when and where it suits them, with no regard to a woman’s feelings. That’s why I don’t want
you traveling on your own.
You’re prey to the unscrupulous. But it’s not always that way; there are other folk like your mother and father, Eile. Folk like my sister and her man. Some young fellow will come courting you one day, and you’ll discover that for yourself. It can be a… a loving thing, a thing folk take pleasure in.” It felt completely wrong to be offering her advice on such a matter. But there was nobody else.

“I don’t believe you,” she said. “How could any woman enjoy that? I expect if you were fond of the man you could put up with it, but that’d be all. It’s repulsive. It makes you feel unclean.”

“I’m telling the truth, Eile.”

“You’re a man. What would you know?”

Her tone was bleak. It made him feel old and tired. “Good night, Eile,” he muttered, settling as best he could on the hard ground. He
did not expect to sleep, but after a long time sleep came, and with it a tangle of disturbing dreams.

W
ITH THE CLEARING
of the weather White Hill began to fill up with visitors. Bridei had called a great gathering to thank and reward the chieftains who had played a part in last autumn’s victory. Such formal recognition was necessary to maintain balance and unity within
the kingdom of Fortriu. Songs must be made, gifts given, each carefully selected according to the recipient’s social standing, contributions, and character. Bridei’s two councillors were busy. Aniel was working on the gifts while Tharan and his wife, Dorica, ensured the practical arrangements for the anticipated influx of guests were flawless.

Meanwhile Bridei considered the issue of what to
do if Carnach failed to appear. To have his chief war leader and close kinsman turn against him would be not simply distressing but dangerous. It would open possibilities for
the future that were unthinkable. Carnach was popular, successful, influential. He bore the blood of the royal line. Should anything happen to remove Bridei from the kingship of Fortriu, nobody was in any doubt as to who
his successor would be.

Chieftains from every corner of Fortriu began to arrive with their wives and sometimes their children. Morleo and Wredech, Uerb and Fokel, all were there by the time the buds began to open on the beeches.

A messenger rode in from Caer Pridne one afternoon. Seeing him coming, Garth sought out the king, who was closeted with Aniel and Tharan.

“Thank the gods,” Tharan said.
“Word from Carnach at last.”

But when the fellow came in to deliver his message, it was to announce the imminent arrival, not of the chieftain of Thorn Bend, but of another, still more powerful leader: Keother of the Light Isles, Bridei’s vassal king and cousin to Ana. Keother had made landfall at Caer Pridne that morning and would be riding for White Hill in a day or two, when the women in his
company had recovered from the rigors of the sea voyage.

“Women?” queried Aniel, gray eyes sharpening. “What women?”

“There were several, my lord. I wasn’t given all their names; some are serving maids. One is the Lady Breda, Keother’s cousin.”

“I see.” Bridei considered the issues this news raised, not least the fact that Ana’s kinsman was unaware she had spent the whole winter at Pitnochie
with Drustan, and that the two of them were not yet handfasted. “Thank you for bringing this news to us so promptly. There will be food and drink for you in the kitchens and a bed for the night in the men’s quarters.”