Twice Upon A Time (The Celtic Legends Series) Read online

  Did he ever truly love her? Or was she just a pretty thing to be petted?

  Now she watched him run his fingers across his brow, and then pause to look at the soft heap of linen lying beside him in the rushes. With gnarled fingers he picked up the swaddling-clothes she’d been smoothing into softness before he arrived.

  “I cannot remember,” he murmured, running his hand across the weave, “when last I touched a babe’s swaddling clothes.”

  Then she suddenly understood why he was here, and the understanding sent a wash of cold through her blood. He’d come for the babe. Not for her, not for the sake of her dead, abandoned mother, but for the child in her own womb—her son.

  The spindle rolled off her lap and clattered on the paving stones. “The herbs have done their work, I’m thinking,” she said. “You’ll be missed at your own hearth fire—”

  “Child—”

  “I’ll be hearing no more of that word. I’m your queen now.”

  “I’ve no right to call you that, I know.” He worked himself to his feet. “Of all women living, it’s you who’ve I’ve wronged the most.”

  She stood stiff, waiting for some softness in him, something other than his careful, sly, calculating words that talked around his guilt but never about forgiveness. She stood stiff even as someplace deep inside began to bleed.

  “Your child will be all that is left of the line of Morna.” His gaze fell upon the blanket, which somehow she had snatched from his hands. “He will be the grandson I stopped hoping to see. I’d ask you but one small thing—”

  “The child is mine and Conor’s—you won’t have a part of him.”

  “Will you be making the same mistakes as me, then?”

  I’ll never deny him—as you have denied me. The words swelled to her throat, but with the heat and anger rushed the tears—these wretched tears, simmering so close to the surface these days. She choked down the words and turned her back to him. She would not let him know her weakness. He saw her as nothing but a vessel for his dreams of immortality. If she’d not conceived a son to carry on his line, her father would never have appeared at her door.

  “I see it was a hopeless thing,” he wheezed, “coming here to you.”

  “Had you truly come for me, father,” she said, the word bitter on her tongue, “I’d have welcomed you with open arms.”

  She closed her eyes to squeeze back the pain. A cool draft kissed her cheek, and at first she thought—good, he is leaving—but as she opened her eyes, she noticed that no mid-morning light bleached the firelight from the room. The breeze came from nowhere, and it churned the steam from the cauldron into little whirlwinds. The moist-rich fragrance of moss burst in the air like flowers in sudden full bloom. She had a moment of dizziness, as if she were transported into the midst of the sacred circle of oaks. She wondered why a fairy wind visited her now, when in all these past months of loneliness she’d ached for the scent and she’d never caught a single whiff.

  “Think kindly of your poor father,” he said. “Stay in Morna until the child is born, so I may gaze upon his face but once.”

  She only half-heard him, for a low moan had begun to filter through the cracks in the walls. It was a mournful sound, soft and sorrowful, broken by muffled sobbing—as weak and reedy-thin as the wailing of the wind. But she was not fooled. She’d heard this Otherworldly dirge before, but never did it float so thin in the air, and she wondered if it was the vaulting of walls around her which hushed it so, or because the person for whom the bean sí keened hung onto life by the thinnest of threads. Twice before, she’d heard this lament, but louder and brash and screeching. Once for her mother. Once for Niall.

  And the anger drained away from Brigid like mead from a torn bladder. She turned to face her father, but the room was empty. In her distraction, he’d left her alone.

  She tucked the soft linen under her arm. She would go to her father later, reconcile with him in some way before she left for Tara. She had no love left for the man who’d abandoned her, but she would not have his last memory of her be one of bitterness. The bean sí had sung again for another member of her family.

  Her father would be dead within the week.

  ***

  The deeper Conor rode into the woods, the denser the forest’s canopy became. The moonlight which filtered through the boughs soon paled and faltered, until nothing but faint opalescence pierced the webbing. He nudged his mount faster, grateful that he knew the way well. Beyond this wood, through a few more valleys lay the lands of Lough Riach—and Brigid.

  A slow grin crossed his features. The wind sang high and wild through the trees. Dry leaves scattered down, buffeted by contrary breezes. The scent of moss sifted up from fissures in the ground and billowed in the air. Aye, the worlds brush close against each other this Samhain’s Eve. How his men must tremble on that windswept hill where they’d insisted on camping this night, while he made his way back to Morna alone. But Brigid would love these woods. Tomorrow, he would take her to that grove of oaks, where they could celebrate life in the season of darkness.

  A war cry pierced the night. Jerked out of his musing, Conor tightened his grip on the reins and scanned the black shadows around him, cursing his inattention, cursing the constant rustling of the woods which had dulled the edge of his senses.

  Swords flashed where once there was darkness. Black shapes hurled themselves at him as he scraped his sword to the ready. His sword found steel; still more steel; then cold fire sliced the flesh of his thigh. His steed screamed and bucked, then reared around and flashed its hooves. Conor swung his sword at the shadows, but there were too many and they yanked him off his mount. He roared his own war cry, and knew, even as he stumbled somehow to his feet, even as his sword found flesh, even as blood lust brought on the fighting rage and the figures reared away from the lethal arc of his sword, that it was all but over, for he’d felt the taste of steel in his belly and the acid burning of his life’s-blood pouring over his skin.

  One of the men laughed, hacked Conor’s own sword out of his grip, and placed the blade on Conor’s throat. The rancid stench of his breath blasted in Conor’s face.

  “King Flann thanks you for filling the witch’s belly.” The man twisted the blade. “He’ll be raising his grandson to take his place as the rightful King of Morna. The king has no more need of you.”

  Conor thought he heard Brigid weeping.

  Seven

  A frigid wind scoured the hillock. A royal burial mound swelled on the drumlin’s height. Four white-robed Druids hefted a bier upon their shoulder and carried Conor’s body into the tomb. The women’s keening vied with the howling of the wind.

  Brigid stood apart from the others. The wind wrestled with the weight of her saffron cloak until it wrenched the wool from her white-knuckled grip. The folds battered her legs and jarred the bells upon her girdle. The gusts whipped hair across her face but she let the damp tresses blind her. She needed no eyes to see. The funeral ritual unrolling before her was nothing but a strange, vivid dream. From the moment she first laid eyes upon her husband’s waxen face, she’d become an observer, detached, silent within some deep place inside herself. Those deep gouges in his belly and those lifeless gray eyes—they were nothing but an illusion.

  Conor couldn’t be dead.

  For if he were, the ground would tremble, the skies would tear open and thunder, the very stones would scream at his passing. She herself would have hovered over his death scene like Morrígan the Raven. She would have felt the slice of steel through her own flesh. The Sight could pierce through all veils, and it had never failed her, not with her mother, not with Niall, and never with Conor, who was spirit of her own spirit, heart of her own heart.

  And yet how vivid this dream seemed. She smelled the salt-sea upon the westerly wind and she sensed tremors of cold shaking her body. Trickery, she reminded herself. Above the western horizon, fingers of translucent clouds cringed against the encroaching night. Samhain approached. It was the flux and f
low of magic in the furtive wind which caused such strange nightmares. Soon she would awaken and discover that the bondswoman had let the fire dim to embers, and that Conor had stolen the wolf pelts again.

  Amber torchlight suddenly pooled around her.

  “It’s a woeful day, child.”

  She smelled the musky scent of his hair and wondered what her father was doing in this dream.

  “Weep, child.” He curled bony fingers into her shoulder. “Weep as a woman should, and keen as a wife must.”

  Wasn’t it like her father to chide her in his sly little way, to remind her of her duty, even in her dreams. Well, she’d have none of it. Soon I will awaken, for its Conor’s hand on my shoulder. Soon he’ll shake me from my tossing and turning and end this strange nightmare.

  “You cannot stand here as mute as a stone,” her father insisted, as his fingers dug deeper into her flesh, “not while your husband lies dead in his tomb.”

  He is not dead. You and all the others are caught in this sticky web of a dream, too. Can you not smell the magic in the wind, or have you lost the nose for it? Can you not tell that Conor is only sleeping?

  “By the Dagdá isn’t this a foul sight.”

  And now Aidan, she thought, as she glimpsed him marching across the hill toward her.

  “So the daughter has reconciled with the father,” Aidan snapped, mud splattering on his tunic with each heavy stride. “And my foster brother the king not yet cold in the ground.”

  His anger penetrated to her calm, silent place. It flowed off him like waves of heat from cooking stones.

  King Flann’s hand slipped off her shoulder. Brigid felt a strange urge to seize it, because surely that was Conor’s hand.

  “It’s often the folly of an old man,” her father said, “to wait too long to right his wrongs.”

  Aidan ignored him and pierced her with his fury. “Have you nothing to say, woman? The greatest warrior who ever lived has died—though the world would not know it by the stillness of his wife’s tongue.”

  She blinked at him from between her windblown hair.

  “Did your witchery finally wear thin?” Aidan’s gaze fell to her belly. “Or is it just that you have no need of him anymore?”

  In this place of her imaginings, Conor no longer stood between them, thus Aidan’s tongue held no fetters. Here, she had no tongue to answer him back. For a moment, she wondered if Aidan had commanded the Druids to bring this dream upon them both, just so he could speak his mind without fear of reprisal.

  Och, Aidan. You could never bear the thought that he might love me more than you.

  It was as if he read her thoughts, for suddenly his hatred blazed into flames. “He loved you not, woman. He had an eye for that cleft between your legs—but it was no more than that between you.”

  “Hush, man.” King Flann stepped between them. Her father’s step could be spry in her dreams. “It is his wife to whom you speak—”

  “Wife.” Aldan spat the word at her feet like a cherry pit. “You married him just long enough to get yourself a belly full of child.”

  Absently, she ran a hand over the slight swell of her abdomen.

  “Those cursed eyes of yours won’t blind me to the truth.” A muscle jumped in Aidan’s ill-shaven cheek. “Conor never sired a single child upon a thousand women—it doesn’t take a fool to know it’s not the king’s child in your womb.”

  Conor, Conor, wake me from this madness.

  “Enough.” Flann straightened, giving form to the sagging bulk of his fine woolen cloak. “Have you both no respect for the dead?”

  Aidan looked upon Flann as he would look upon a clump of manure clinging to the hem of his cloak, then he whirled his back to both of them and bellowed for his horse. The Druids filed out of the burial mound. The crowd rustled, glancing uneasily eastward, where the first dusky fingers of Samhain crept over the land.

  Her father’s moist breath warmed her ear. “You must keep your senses clear, child. Aidan is Conor’s foster-brother. The men will choose him for king tonight.”

  Would it never end, this foolishness? Would the dream grow still more raveled?

  “You must think of the child,” he whispered, “the child who will be king someday. I can help you, if you’ll let me.”

  She turned to him and let the wind scour her hair from her face. She let her father see her eyes as they truly were. The shadow called Flann stumbled back. His yellowed skin paled. The torch slipped from his grip. She saw the torch fall, and she knew then what she must do to end this enchantment. She reached for the head and grasped the flaming bulge as it tipped toward her. For a brief moment she looked down upon the fire in her grip and felt the corrosive singe—and then a scream launched from her throat.

  Her knees jarred against the earth. The torch clattered and rolled a few paces away. She clutched her wrist and stared at the reddening skin of her palm and fingers. Through the blurry haze of pain she thought—Aye, now it’s over, and I’ll wake to find the ashes of the hearth fire on my hand—but she looked up and tears of pain froze on her cheeks. The villagers turned toward her. Her father stood pale-faced. She cried out no, but it was a choked word, hoarse and half-swallowed. She glanced over to see the burial mound against the red-streaked sky.

  This was not a dream.

  Conor is dead.

  No. No no no no no no no—

  She rose to her feet and slipped upon the grass. She shoved the keening women away from the tomb. Her fingernails pierced flesh. She told them to cease their wailing, to leave, leave, leave the king in peace—let him sleep in peace. Brigid saw herself mirrored in their eyes—her hair uncombed, her clothes still streaked with her husband’s blood, her eyes wild, deep-socketed, fluxing with madness. Their keening died in shrieks. The woman scattered. Even the Druids in their white robes blanched and stumbled away, until she stood alone on the hill, the pregnant surge of the burial mound behind her.

  Perhaps she was mad. She grasped her temples and collapsed to her knees. He is not dead. Her heart screamed it, though her mind battled with the evidence of her eyes. One of the Druids had left a torch sunk into the earth and the fog dispersed its amber glow around the entrance to the tomb. She looked at that entrance, and then she headed toward it, intent on searching for Conor among the old bones of long-dead kings, intent on lying down and pressing her body against him to impart some of her living warmth into him and to hear his heart beating again in his chest—for he was not dead—then, in that moment, the last ray of sunlight disappeared beneath the western horizon.

  Samhain rolled over her like a dark wind. A salt-sweet, humid fragrance billowed from the yawning opening of the tomb, like the sleep-laden breath of the earth. It stopped her cold. She sensed the odd tilting of the horizon and the hushed whisper of the parting veils. Then she remembered that these ancient burial mounds were the doors to the Otherworld. They were sacred places, not to be breached but by the highest of Druids—and the dead.

  She hesitated, uncertain, hearing through the howling of the wind a low moaning. Brigid looked around her, sensing rather than seeing the fairy-woman near, just beyond the circle of light. Her faint keening worked upon Brigid’s whirling thoughts like a lullaby on a child.

  A bean sí always sang as a warning—thus the one for whom she sang must still be alive.

  Conor was not dead.

  Brigid sank to her knees. Her Sight rang true, it had never failed her. The bean sí had wailed these past three nights, a soft, weak, airy sound. She’d known it was the death-song of an old man or a young child, not of a warrior. Not of a king. Conor’s bean sí would gnash and screech and shatter the very walls between the worlds.

  Brigid wrapped her cloak around her and drew close to the torch. The bean sí continued her song in the darkness. Brigid let it lull her into sleep, knowing that somehow, in this season between the seasons, in this most magical of nights, light would rise out of darkness, and life out of death.

  ***

  Brigid wok
e to the heat of a human hand on her shoulder. Then she looked up into the face of her husband.

  She blinked to make sure her sleep-laden eyes weren’t playing tricks upon her. The first pale fingers of dawn streamed across the sky, streaking red the tangled shag of his hair. She saw his precious breath fogging between them. His gray eyes were dull, uncertain, turned inward, even as he tugged a damp strand of hair off her cheek and wrapped it around his finger.

  “Mo shearc,” he whispered in a raw voice. “I won’t let you fade away like the other shadows of this night.”

  She threw herself against him. “You won’t be rid of me so easily, mo rún.”

  His arms banded around her—warm, hard, tight, living. Otherworldly mist clung to his cloak, she could smell it, but when she turned her head she heard beneath the layers of wool and linen a heart beating strong and sure.

  Laughter rumbled in his chest. “None of the pleasures of the fairy lands can match the feel of you in my arms, woman.”

  “Is that where you’ve been, then,” she said, cursing her shaking voice, “sipping nectar from bluebells, whilst your wife waits for you to come home for Samhain as you promised?”

  “It was the fairy lands, I think, but it all fades now.” He shrugged his mighty shoulders then pulled away to look at her face. “It’s your fault. My head was so full of the thought of you that I paid no mind to my wanderings.”

  She dug her fingers into his arms. His gaze still wandered strangely inward. He did not fully understand what had happened. It was said that’s how it happened. Vagueness clung to a man after leaving the Otherworld, and the memories dimmed soon after. In a thrice Conor would think he’d done nothing more than dream it. In that way, the knowledge of the world beyond would not seep through the doors, and the powers would remain secret and safe from all but those who truly understood.