[Celtic Legends 01.0] Twice Upon a Time

  Twice Upon a Time

  By

  Lisa Ann Verge

  "Step down Marylyle Rogers, you've been unthroned!" -The Talisman

  "An enthralling tale of magic and enchantment and a love story that transcends time. Utterly wonderful!" -RT Book Reviews

  "A love story that transcends all boundaries." -The Medieval Chronicle

  AN IMMORTAL LOVE

  Legendary warrior Conor of Ulster defies his people to make the beautiful, exiled Brigid of Morna his queen—until a shattering act of treachery destroys their world. Driven to the ends of the earth, Conor lives a thousand lifetimes in the fading hope that—one day, somehow—he’ll find Brigid once again…

  Finalist Best Time Travel -RT Book Reviews

  One Of The Year's Best Reads -The Reader's Voice

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  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek

  About The Author

  Dedication

  Prologue

  France, 1223 A.D.

  It was a time for dying.

  Conor stood apart from the others as the ocean roared against the cliff below. Cold seeped into his tunic and drained the heat from his blood. A cluster of villagers huddled in the lee of a thatched-roofed church as the cleric muttered wind-stolen words to the wooden cross and then, ceding the battle to the coming storm, made the final sign of the cross. The villagers mimicked the motion and then rustled like a flock of ravens as they turned away.

  With a heavy heart, Conor watched them disperse. Go, then, go while you can. Go to your hot stew and your loaves of thyme bread. There’s never time to mourn the dead while the business of the living continues.

  His footsteps crunched across the ground. The grave diggers paused, their shovels dribbling sod. Conor pitched to one knee and clutched a handful of soil. He crumbled it between his fingers and sifted it into the pit.

  Sleep easy, my old friend. May the sun shine warmly on your face.

  The church bell clanged from the bell tower and echoed through the fog.

  If you find her where you’re going, tell her to wait for me at the doors of Tír na nÓg one more time again.

  The villagers’ gazes weighed upon his bent head. It was long past time for their suspicion and fear, he supposed. He should have known better than to linger in this tiny hamlet until all his seafaring friends lay scattered in the ground beneath him, their flesh eaten, their bones dust. But she had taught him too well. A healer could not leave a single man suffering. So he had stayed to ease the pain of the passing of the last of his companions.

  Yet still he lived, still he lived—if one could call such an existence life. No warm hearth glowed for him in the village at the base of the cliff. No soft-voiced woman peered out a crack in the door, or strained her ears for his footfall. No grandchildren sprawled on the hearth to plead for stories. And now there was no longer anyone with whom to swap tales while the rain seeped through the thatched roof. No one with whom to reminisce about voyages to Venice and Rome, to Assyria and Egypt. No one with whom to share a simple meal or a simple memory.

  It was a good time to die.

  Conor heaved his broad-shouldered frame to its full height, not bothering to stoop and waddle as he had for so many years. Let the wind scour the ash from his hair. Let the sea mist cleanse his face and hands to uncover his unlined skin. Men saw what they expected to see. If today they finally saw him as he was, there was nothing he could do to disguise the truth. That was the way of the world.

  His fog-soaked cloak snapped behind him as he turned his back to the grave and strode toward the view of the sea. The milky vapor engulfed him in an odd, welcoming warmth. He paused at the tip of the cliff and squinted toward the white-capped sea carving the shores of Marseille. Above, rain-burdened clouds jostled in the sky. Soon, he thought, the twilight between light and dark would come. Soon, the mist would be neither rain nor seawater, nor river nor well water. It would be the time between the times, as the Druids had once taught him, when the walls between the worlds grew thin.

  He would choose a sea death today. He would row his fishing boat into the tempest and challenge the water’s fury. He closed his eyes, imagining the course of his coming death. The sting of liquid salt gorging his lungs. The flex and stretch of his muscles as he struggled against the inevitable suck into the ocean’s womb. The last white-hot flash of agony before the blood stopped pulsating in his temples and an unearthly warmth and darkness cradled him in silence.

  Then he would see the light. He would approach it, drawn irresistibly to the glow of love and warmth and joy, like the welcoming arms of some primordial mother. He would hear the birds singing and the outline of a tree would emerge—a silver tree bathed in golden light. He would hear the bells, tinkling like fairy music. And he would know that this was Tír na nÓg, the beloved Otherworld.

  He would race toward that music, race toward her, thinking this time it would be different, because hope was a tenacious plant which grew back no matter how many times it was cut. But just when he glimpsed the edge of her robes, just when he saw the tips of her fingers, outstretched for him, just when he detected the fragile scent of rainwater and honeysuckle that had always clung to her hair—that door would slam shut.

  Then he would awaken, buried in the chill earth with dirt clogging his nostrils and a winding sheet stifling his movements. Still smelling her, still sensing her presence, clinging to the feeble threads of the memory until the screams of his earthly body stripped him of the last fiber and left him with a different agony. Cold. Hunger. Pain.

  Wretched life.

  Conor swathed his cape around his body and spun away from the cliff. He plodded through the cemetery, past the half-full grave. He no longer mourned the dead. His old friend had slipped through the door to a land of warmth and peace and pleasure. Now Conor mourned for himself, for the hell the gods had forced upon him—the loneliness, the deceit, the fear in the eyes of men. It would always be like this. He would fool himself that he could be like other men, but then another lifetime would pass, the lies would begin, his disguise grow thinner, his friends die one by one. He would try once again to leap the precipice that kept him from where he belonged, only to find himself earthbound again, forced to leave for another place, another existence, like dozens of lives before, all the same.

  All but one.

  A bolt of lightning cracked open the sky. Rain pelted his shoulders and sluiced down the riverbed of his face. He had relived that single life until the fabric of the memory frayed like a storm-chewed fishing net. He wished he could forget. But the memories seized him in moments of distraction. Such was the fate of a man whose heart lay in the grave.

  He would never lose himself like that again, no matter where the road took him in the years ahead. For now he understood: He would have been better off if he had never known her. He would have been better off if he had never given away the full of his soul.

  But it had been his
first life, and he had been too young and too ignorant to guard his heart.

  He had loved before he knew he was immortal.

  And thus forever alone.

  PART ONE

  Ireland, 513 A.D.

  Chapter One

  "What’s this? Are you hiding from me, on such a fine, soft morning?” Brigid searched for movement between the trunks of the oaks. “Where is your sense of fair play? You can see me, but to my eyes, you’re no more than will-o’-the-wisps.” She tilted her head in challenge. “Now, an honest race, that would be more sporting of you than playing hide-and-seek in the glade.”

  She raked up the hem of her tunic and darted into the forest. The dawn nudged away the night, spraying the glade with silver light. Silence hovered over the woods but for the patter of her feet and her laughter.

  But she sensed that she was no longer alone. She pretended she didn’t notice their presence, for they were shy creatures. She skimmed along, avoiding the slick surface of rocks and the moss-edged pools of rainwater. She kept her ears perked for the tinkling of their voices. Her hair clung to her face and shoulders and swept heavily along her back as she teased the creatures deeper into the woods. Soon they grew bold enough to dart from the shelter of ferns and nestle in tufts of tall grass. She heard their light footfalls amid the litter, pattering like raindrops trickling off the palms of fresh leaves.

  “I knew you couldn’t resist, not on a day like today.” She spoke her challenge to the skies, so as not to frighten them away. “Come, let’s see how swiftly you can race with me to Lough Riach!”

  She bolted down the slope, setting her sights on the iron-gray surface of the lake. She sensed the Sídh quick on her heels, tumbling and rolling after her as fast as their fairy wings could take them. She bounded from tree root to tree root, squealing as she sprinted through a puddle and splattered her legs. Her thick woolen cloak, sopping with gathered moisture, dragged upon her shoulders. Without a thought she twisted the brooch which pinned it around her, letting the cloak tumble upon the grass. She dashed forward, lightened, exhilarated because she knew she was winning.

  “There! I’ve beaten you all!” She gripped the bark of an alder tree which leaned over the lake. She whirled to look behind her. “Shall we race again?”

  A bush shivered, then stilled. A single leaf drifted down from above. Empty mists eddied on the forest floor and the predawn forest rang with silence.

  She sighed and planted her fists on her hips. She had been too bold. Now they had hidden again, as skittish as field mice beneath the shadow of a hawk. When would they learn that she was not like the others? Brigid of the Clan Morna was not afraid of the Sídh—and the Sídh had no reason to be afraid of her.

  “You’re like frightened old women.” Brigid crouched by the edge of the lake. She peered at the fog-shrouded outline of the opposite shore. “And with me, who’s known you for near one-and-twenty years. It makes no sense, I tell you.”

  So she sat as quiet and still as she could, waiting for the little people to return. Her mother had told her that in the old days, these creatures mingled with mortals as boldly as if there were no veils between them. But since the churches and monasteries began sprouting atop the open altars of the Druids, it was as if the doors between the worlds had been sealed with stone and daub. Without the flux of air and light between them any longer, they drifted apart. Now it was only in times like this, in the misty uncertainty between night and day, when the Sídh dared to step through the veils. It was her own good fortune that she could still sense the Otherworldly rustling and hear the Sídh muffled voices. Most people she knew had long been struck deaf and blind.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, summoning her wavering patience. Here she was chiding the Sídh for their skittish ways, when it was she who had lost her senses. What was she doing prancing about like a fey child long before dawn, so far from the protection of her hut? All night she had tossed and turned, as anxious and fretful as a caged thing, and this morning she’d woken with a fire in her blood, with no sense to it at all. She’d sooner stop the rain from falling, or the wind from blowing over the hills, than sit quietly in her smoky hut among her herbs and her spindles on a morning like this.

  Something is going to happen.

  The knowledge had hovered on the edge of her consciousness for days. The certainty tingled in her fingertips. And now the Sídh sensed it too, for they’d gathered again, their presence like the buzzing of bees. Brigid opened her eyes and imagined she could see them sparkling as they swarmed around her.

  “So you’ve returned.” She slapped her hands free of soil as she stood up. “I won the race—and fairly—so I’m owed a prize. I’ll have no more of your mischief. It’s past time for you to be showing me what’s been putting this burn in my blood.”

  Suddenly, a vision flashed through her head, a vision of a glen full of foxglove.

  “Foxglove is it? Oh, you’re cruel to toy with me.” She strode back to where her cloak lay on the ground and then whirled it over her shoulders. “But if foxglove is my prize, then so be it. Let no one say that Brigid of the Clan Morna is ungrateful.”

  Out of the woods, a feeble ringing sounded. The tenuous music beckoned her to a fresh-bloomed thatch of foxglove. She plucked her fill and absently knitted the blossoms into a chain, but the haunting melody did not stop. The thin sound thickened and grew louder, until she could distinguish the distant beat of drums and the hollow whine of reed pipes. It was fairy-music, played within a fairy castle, siphoning through the veils to lilt on earthly air.

  She tucked the fragile chain of blossoms in a calfskin bag that hung over one hip, realizing there was more to her prize than foxglove. “So will you finally lead me to the door of the Otherworld, my old friends? Will you finally welcome me in?”

  The melody was vaguely familiar, part of an ancient, sacred ceremony—Brigid couldn’t remember which one, for her priestess-training had ended when her mother died, leaving her with only a half-knowledge of the old ways. But Brigid’s thighs and her arms, her feet and her fingers, the curve of her back—they all remembered the dance. She whirled deeper into the forest, swaying her way closer to the melody.

  Then the music stopped as if an iron door had slammed shut in a mead hall.

  Her skirts wrapped around her legs as she faltered. Disappointment washed over her. Would they always lead her close enough to scent the perfume of their smoke-fires, only to slam closed the door?

  “Nay, lass, don’t stop.”

  The voice echoed around her. She cast her eye over the woods. She suddenly realized that she’d been led into the midst of a perfect circle of oaks. It was a sacred altar of the Druids, overgrown and tangled with honeysuckle vines and thick with underbrush.

  Between two of the hallowed oaks she glimpsed a man’s hazy silhouette.

  She stilled her urge to run. “Come forward and let yourself be known, by the gods.”

  He stepped out of the mist. He wore a purple, knee-length cloak that hung loose from broad shoulders. He didn’t come any closer, but planted one foot on the risen root of a tree. He tossed the folds of his cloak back to reveal an embroidered linen tunic stretched taut across his chest—a chest which bore the musculature of a man used to swinging the iron sword that hung from his hip.

  This was no ordinary man. To call this creature a man was like to call a chieftain’s best hunting dog a common cur. Still, she was trained from the moment she came to live in these woods to be cautious of all visitors.

  She asked, “Why are you sneaking up on a lass with nary a ‘good day to you’?”

  “It’s not yet day.” He made a sparse gesture toward the paling sky. “The night still hovers over us.”

  “Just because the moon’s still showing her face doesn’t mean you should lurk in the bushes. My life nearly left me at the sight of you.”

  “But your wits stayed sharp, I see.”

  “A tongue is a woman’s only weapon.”

  “Sheathe it
, lass. You’ve no reason to be afraid of me.”

  She narrowed her gaze on him. He spoke the Irish, but with a strange and unfamiliar accent. Clearly he was a warrior—the scratched bronze scabbard of his sword told her that. Yet she knew that no human warrior, much less a king, would wander unattended at such an hour, and she heard no others about.

  Her heart gave a sudden, treacherous leap. Her mother had once told her that the Sídh were just like humans, so much so that if one dared to nudge aside the veils, you could pass one of them in the woods and think him as mortal as yourself. She wondered if this magnificent creature was not of this world, but had somehow wandered through a tear in the veil to bathe in earthly light.

  “Who are you?” She jerked her head to the woods around them. “What business have you here?”

  “You don’t know me?”

  She squinted at his features in the dim light. She knew every man within a day’s ride of Lough Riach, for she had tended most of them through sickness or war wounds. And no woman could forget a man like this. He was not handsome. The bones of his face thrust beneath his skin—a sculpted, merciless jaw, high, exotic cheekbones. His brows, as black as a beetle’s back, slashed over deep-set eyes. His hair was his best feature, for it flowed dark and thick and rich with auburn highlights to his shoulders. Yet it didn’t seem to matter that he did not have the refined features of the most handsome of men. A life force crackled around him.

  She said, “I’ve never seen the likes of you.”

  “I’m a cattleman, from a clan to the north.” He spread his arms regally, as if they stood within the circular walls of the royal ráth at Tara, and not in the midst of the woods. “I’m traveling to Clan Morna. I’ve a fine bull, the finest in Connacht. I’m looking to set him free on a new herd of fresh young cows.”

  So he starts with a lie. She eyed the braided golden torque set around his neck, a sign of great wealth and power. A fist-sized, jeweled brooch cleaved to the breast of his cloak. If this man was a simple cattleman, then she was the legendary Queen Maeve herself.