[Celtic Legends 01.0] Twice Upon a Time Read online

  The playing of the game seemed to please her, so the next afternoon he arrived with a brandubh board, made of mother-of-pearl with enameled pieces in dark blue and rich green. She ran her cool, white hand over the board in silent reverence, and then tilted her head and challenged him to a match.

  “For wagers,” she added, settling down in the yellow pool of her cloak. “Niall and I always played for wagers. The loser would milk the cow or go amid the thorns to seek rowanberries.”

  “I’m not a boy to play for trifles.” He tossed his sword in the grass. He ran his gaze over her body as he wanted to run his hands—and wondered for the thousandth time when she’d grant him the liberty. “The sweat of a cow’s udder won’t be found on the forehead of the rí ruirech of Morna.”

  “You’re a proud breed to scorn honest labor.”

  “I’m a warrior, not a slave.” He leaned on the bulk of his arm. “If we play for wagers, let them be worthy of the name or let’s not do them at all.”

  “Very well.” She picked up the first piece and rolled the enamel between her fingers. “Let the winner decide the price of losing, then.”

  His blood rushed, for she had lost two games of fidchell they had played the day before. He met her gaze and held it. “It’s a dangerous weapon you put in my hands, lass.”

  “Every sword has two edges. Are you willing to risk the weapon turned upon yourself?”

  He dropped the dice into her cupped palm and set himself to the task of winning. As the afternoon progressed, the dappled shade stretched until it licked the edge of the board itself. Conor grudgingly admitted that the lass knew the lay of the board and played the pegs with craft and stealth—better than many a man he’d challenged in Ulster. But he was shocked when she plucked out his last peg with a throaty laugh.

  “For a man of such famed skill in war, Conor, this game seems to have gotten the best of you.”

  He stared, stunned. “It’s not natural that a woman should know so well the way of battle.”

  “My own grandmother fought with the men of Morna against the O’Neill before I was born. She was the finest swordswoman in all of Connacht.”

  “Did she teach you brandubh?”

  “Nay.” Brigid shrugged. “My brother taught me. He used to practice with me before he played the game with the other boys. It’s not fitting for the king’s son to lose to sons of common cattlemen.”

  “Nay, nor for a king to lose to a woman.” He rose up on his hand. “So what work will you charge me to, lass? The first three trials of the sons of Tureen?”

  “Woodcutting. My stores are low, and winter not three moons away.”

  He stood to his full warrior’s height. “You have the champion of the O’Neill to do your bidding and you set him to cut wood?”

  “Aye.” She gathered the game pieces from the grass and pegged them in the board as she scanned his broad shoulders. “You’ve the strength for it, don’t you?”

  He spread his broad-palmed hands. “These hands know better the feel of a sword hilt, lass. I’ll find you a boar to slay, a wolf to kill.” He waved toward the hut. “I’ll summon slaves to do such work—”

  “It’s you I will see with an axe in hand.” She gathered her cloak and rose to her feet, tossing the length of her hair over her shoulder. “It will do you good to sweat like a common man.”

  “A man earns his pride—”

  “Do the men of Ulster pay their wagers, Conor? Would you have me think that the over-king of Morna is not a man of honor?”

  She said it with a twinkle in her eye and a smile lurking at the corners of her lips and he knew he was defeated. He strode to the hut and snatched the axe leaning by the woodpile, then marched out deeper into the woods. Stripping off his cloak, he took to the woodcutting with ill humor, but he chopped until the pile of logs topped the roof of her hut.

  As sweat soaked the embroidered neckline of his tunic, he sank the axe blade into the last piece of timber. He turned to find her hovering over a pot of stirabout.

  “Another game.”

  She lifted one pale brow. “I could use someone to fix the thatching—”

  “Another game.”

  He dropped into the flattened grass on one side of the board.

  She sighed and took the bowl of stirabout off the fire. “Och, it’s a fine thing to have such a strong man to do my bidding.”

  When the game ended, he found himself twisting prickly hay in his hands and braiding it into ropes, with the stench of rot and moss in his nostrils as he strapped the heavy thatch upon the roof of her hut. Below, in the slanting light, she frolicked about like a calf in springtime, weaving herbs into the thatch to keep away the fleas.

  Conor cursed as the rope of thatch slipped through his hands and left a spray of splinters in his skin. Her laughter mingled with the tingling of the bells on her girdle.

  He frowned down at her. “Fine spirits you’re in now, lass.”

  “You’re as clumsy as a woman ten moons gone with child.” She covered her smile with her hand. “Perhaps it was a mistake setting you to the thatching. This poor work won’t even keep out the sun.”

  “It will serve you right, for setting a warrior to it.”

  “Oh, it’s worth the soaking my pallet will get with every rain, just to see you huffing and ruddy-faced and all twisted with fallen pride.”

  He growled down at her, but at the sight of the smile gleaming behind her hand, he suddenly realized how ridiculous he must look, draped in his tricolored cloak, his gold torque beaded with dirt and sweat, clinging to the rotted thatch of a hut and snarling like a dog. She was right to be laughing at him so, a king brought so low by a woman’s wiles. And he got something out of it, at least. Seeing him work stole the barbs from her tongue and loosened its root, for she’d been as voluble as a child all day.

  His lips stretched in a rueful smile.

  “When you’re finished with this, Conor, we’ll play again, so you can get your chance at vengeance.” She clutched a handful of herbs from the pile at her feet and massaged them into another length of the thatch. “I’ve butter to churn and berries to collect and roots to dig—”

  “My next gift to you will be a slave.”

  “And what do I need with a slave,” she teased, “when I have you to do my work for me?”

  “I’m not such a fool to play you again.”

  “Have you no courage?” Her cloak slipped off her shoulder, exposing the pearly flesh of her collarbone. “The way of the dice surely won’t always be with me—”

  “The way of the dice had nothing to do with it.” He pulled tight the sinew with which he tied the thatch to the roof. “It was magic you used.”

  “Are you accusing me of cheating?”

  His gaze slipped over her, lingering on the shape of her legs beneath the caress of her tunic, the golden bracelets that encircled her right upper arm, the cascade of hair over her shoulders, the tilt of her firm breasts. He met her eyes and knew she felt the smolder in his gaze. “The price of my winning would have been high, lass.”

  Her cheeks blossomed with fresh color. “I’ll have no one say that Brigid of the Clan Morna has no honor—I use no magic in the playing.”

  “Maybe no chants, but it was magic, of a sort. A man can hardly concentrate on war or war games, when there’s such a sight as you so near.”

  “As if it’s my fault you can’t keep your eyes to yourself.” She tossed her head, and the golden balls clattered against one another. “What would you have me do? Play with my cloak over my head?”

  “I’d rather lose at brandubh.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to do that,” she said, as she bent down to clutch another handful of herbs. “If you’ll stay for another game.”

  And in that moment, as she lifted her face up to his, the sun illuminated the hope lurking in her swirling green eyes. Conor suddenly saw clearly what he'd only glimpsed before. He’d been so fevered for lust that he hadn’t seen the simple truth. The lass had
lived in these woods since she was barely a woman.

  She was as lonely as a swan that’d lost her mate.

  The next afternoon, he strode into the clearing and surprised her bent over a bubbling cauldron. The folds of his cloak wiggled beneath his arm. He released the gift and out shot a fox-colored creature who planted his huge wet paws on Brigid’s shins.

  “One of the bitches had a litter a while ago,” Conor explained. “This one’s just weaned. My gift to you.”

  She lifted the wolfhound pup in her arms and buried her face in his fur. Out lolled a wet pink tongue which tasted her from chin to temple. Brigid laughed, and the sound tinkled like fairy music in the clearing.

  “Precious, he is.” She ruffled his fur by the scruff. “This is the finest gift you’ve given me, Conor.”

  The expression she granted him had more force than a hundred sword strokes. He wondered at her power, that she could make a king of warriors, a king’s champion, feel as awkward and ungainly as a newborn colt.

  That afternoon, as the sun shone like an ember between the leafy boughs of oaks, he rose to his feet and drew Brigid up with him, leaving the sleeping pup in a circle of trampled grass. A softness cushioned Brigid’s mouth, but an uncertainty lingered in her eyes.

  “Come back with me,” he said.

  “Back?”

  “Aye. To the ring-fort of Morna.” He traced the curve of her cheek. “You’ve never heard the harp strings of my bard, nor his stories.”

  “There’s a fine thing,” she said, quietly, without venom, “having me, of the tribe Morna, sitting and listening to some Ulster bard rave about Connacht defeats.”

  “My bards know also the sorrows of Deirdre, and of the trials of the sons of Tureen.”

  The knowledge gave her pause. “Do they know the story of the swans? Of the children condemned to live on the earth for hundreds of years?”

  “Aye. The Children of Lir.” He rubbed the pad of his thumb against the pulse leaping in her throat. “They tell that tale better than all the rest. Not a warrior in the whole of the mead hall is left with a dry eye.”

  The light that had entered her eyes when he gave her the wolfhound pup flared bright, brighter now than he’d ever seen. He wanted this lass by his side, sharing the champion’s portion from his dish, drinking mead from his horn, her ears filled with the strumming of gilded harps. He cupped his hand around her neck, and then slid his other hand around her waist. Her spine yielded to him

  His head filled with the scent of her, sweet honeysuckle and clean, tart rainwater. “You need only to say yes, lass, and there’ll be a place for you by my side.”

  She arched her neck higher, so the bristle of his chin scraped her forehead. “Will you bring me back here, Conor, after the stars have risen?”

  “Nay.”

  He’d never bring her back to this sagging hut of warped wattle and caked daub, to live alone as an outcast. He’d wrap her in fine, brushed wool the color of jewels, lay her in pallets stuffed with gosling’s down, and have bondswomen wash and brush and plait her hair until the color rivaled the sunlight. He’d summon every bard in all of Erin to fill her head with tales, her days with laughter, just so he could gorge himself on the sound of it.

  And aye, aye, he’d taste his fill of her. He’d feel her soft, open thighs against him, feel the tight, heated wetness of her core, feel her young, firm breasts pressed between them. He’d feel her long, supple body thrashing in passion with his every stroke, and he’d coax cries from her until she grew too hoarse to cry out anymore.

  A hot rush of blood filled his loins. “It’s long past time you laid down with me, woman.”

  Her silence filled his ears. Above, a breeze tossed the leaves and exposed the fragile spines to the dying rays of the sun. For one, brief moment, he sensed her softening like the crumbling of a riverbank in a flood. Then she drew away, and it was as if the night wind snuffed out the last of the sunlight.

  “I cannot go, Conor.”

  His hands, empty of her warmth, curled into fists. How long could a starving man survive, teased with the scent of food, before his need broke all bonds?

  “You can go with me, if you willed it.”

  “Nay.”

  “I am the over-king of Morna. No priests and no petty chieftain can stop me from bringing you in.”

  “What would I be, if I went with you? Not a member of the clan. Not an Ulsterwoman.” The point of her chin tilted higher. “They will think me your whore.”

  “I’d kill the man who dared—”

  “—to speak the truth?” The bells of her girdle chimed as she stepped out of his reach. “Though you see me as nothing but an outcast, I was born the daughter of a king. I won’t be shaming my clan, or myself, in such a way.”

  He stood in the clearing with his chest heaving, his palm flexing over the hilt of his sword. He didn’t know how to battle with wisps and mists. Give him an enemy to fight, and he’d dispatch him before sweat could bead on his brow. But this was a war with a woman as lithe as a fairy-child, and as mercurial as the winter wind. Each time he thought he held her in his arms, he found himself holding nothing but air teased with the fragrance of her—and craving the feel of her in his arms all the more.

  “Go now, Conor.” She swept up the puppy and hugged him close to her breast. “Go now and do not come back. For here’s the truth: I can never yield to you.”

  “Yes, lass, you will.”

  “I cannot.” Her lashes swept down, casting faint shadows on her cheeks. “I’ve been shameless to tease you so. It has been so long since a man has looked at me without fear in his eyes, that I dared to trifle with you when I have no right to do so.”

  A roar clenched in his chest. “Who dares to challenge my claim to you?”

  “Fate itself.” Her gaze rose to his face. “I’ve known this all along: My destiny is with another.”

  Now he understood. The lass was bound by the message of her visions. The hilt of the sword burned against his palm. His fingers clenched in anticipation.

  Suddenly, he had an opponent to fight.

  “You’d best practice your fidchell tonight.” He whirled toward the break in the woods that led to where his horse grazed. “For come tomorrow, we’ll be playing again.”

  “Don’t you understand?” She followed him through the clearing, clutching the pup to her chest. “You can never win.”

  “Do you think I became the rí ruirech of Morna by leaving the field of battle?”

  “This is no mortal foe you face.”

  “If it is the gods I must battle, then so be it.” He grasped a handful of her hair and watched it shimmer through his fingers. “I’ll be here when he comes for you. One-on-one combat will determine the winner. And you will be my prize.”

  Chapter Four

  The cow lowed as Brigid dragged her hand down the beast’s udder. A thin stream of milk steamed into a bowl. The cow stamped her back hooves, circled her snout in the air, and flicked her ears. Her eyes loomed white.

  “Easy, now,” Brigid murmured, petting the cow’s side as she aimed the last of the milk into the froth. “We’re nearly done.”

  The wooden bowl scraped against the ground as Brigid slipped it from beneath the cow. Hitching the rim to her waist, she stood up with the bowl at her hip. Wind burrowed under her hair and tinkled the golden balls woven into her plaits, and then the wind gusted again, stronger, as if to set the balls pealing anew.

  She smiled and struck the cow on the rump. The beast bolted down the hill.

  “You’ll find sweet summer grass on the banks of the lough,” Brigid murmured, “but on a day like this, you won’t be able to shake the fairy wind from your nostrils.”

  She headed up the winding path, the milk eddying in the bowl as if invisible fingers toyed with the foam. The breeze leached from the very womb of the earth and billowed around her knees. Mists curled up from the sod, wound about the furrowed bark of the trees, then dripped like mother’s milk to the turf. High in t
he oaks, the leaves rustled as if a thousand birds nested deep in the verdure.

  Brigid kept her eyes to the path while the Sight writhed within her like a caged thing. She caught snatches of acrid scents and lost them before she could find the source. Strange, unearthly images glimmered on the path before her, and then dissolved into fog. The dawn had long ceded to the brighter grays of morning, yet the Sídh still roamed thick. This was why she loved Lughnasa—and Beltane, Samhain, and Imbolc. On such days, the walls between the worlds thinned, the veils separating human from inhuman mingled and parted. Brigid sensed the closeness of the Otherworld like the heat of a kiln’s stones.

  A finger of sunlight broke through the haze and buttered the stones of the path. The fairy wind ebbed. Brigid felt the first prickle of certainty the Sight had granted her all morn.

  Conor would visit today. Again.

  The very air she breathed sizzled through her and set her skin tingling. She stopped in mid-stride as a heat swelled like the tide. Conor once spoke of enchantment, and she began to believe it was true. She trembled each night with hot and cold, like a woman beset with the ague. She waited each day for the sound of his footfall on the path…and found herself beset with a young girl’s dreams.

  She hitched her skirts over her free arm and set her mind back to the path. It was foolish to want what couldn’t be. It was dangerous to tease destiny, for her fate still lay with the fairy-lover of her dreams. Even if Conor somehow bent fate to his bidding and won her as his prize, it was folly to yearn for what he offered her. Though she was highborn, no Ulster over-king would take an outcast to wife, a woman with one cow to her name, when beautiful daughters of rich men preened and pranced for him in Morna. Aye, Conor wanted her—desire raged like a flooded river in his eyes—but she feared it was the piquancy of the chase that lured him here each day. She was another tribe to conquer, another herd of cattle to steal, a woman promised to a formidable opponent, and thus a woman wanted all the more.

  For despite all his bold threats to battle her lover from the Sídh, Conor had offered her nothing more than a warm place in his bed.