Dreaming the Hound (24 page)

His head rocked sideways and it became apparent that he was weeping; slow, thin tears had already coursed their tracks on his cheeks. His gaze, clearly meant for Valerius, was directed a half turn too far, so that he stared instead at the blank side wall of Airmid’s hut.

‘Oh, gods, Bellos …’ Valerius knelt. He passed a hand in front of the over-bright gaze. When nothing happened, he moved his head so that he looked the boy straight in the eyes. ‘Bellos? Can you see me?’

The world grew cold in the small hiatus where there should have been an answer. Valerius felt the small rush of nausea that used to come whenever Corvus had been wounded. ‘Oh, gods,’ he said again. ‘Bellos, I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t.’ A pale hand fumbled for his and, finding it, gripped gently, as if Valerius, and not the boy, were injured. ‘Just get me inside and give me the wormwood or whatever other unspeakable concoction your Hibernian healer left behind and all will be well.’ Bellos’ grin was more certain this time. ‘I’ve had all afternoon to think about this. Luain mac Calma talks to the gods as the rest of us talk to our horses. They tell him everything that happens or might happen in the world. He must have expected it. He’ll have left something that will work.’

Luain mac Calma may have conversed daily with the gods, but they did not see all futures, nor tell him all of those they saw. Amongst the many wax-plugged bottles and beakers of his pharmacy, nothing had properties that could restore sight to the suddenly blinded.

Valerius knew that, but he searched anyway, because it was expected of him and it gave hope, which was necessary. On exactly

that basis, he poured out a half-measure of dried and ground goose grass which was good only for an inflammation of the eyes, not true blindness, and mixed it with dock roots and gall to make it taste bad to hide the vervain and poppy which would buy an untroubled sleep.

He succeeded only in part; Bellos drank as he was asked to, but in the waiting time before sleep, while Valerius laid clods of wet wool on his hair to leach out the blood, he said, thinly, ‘If mac Calma left nothing, then there is nothing we can do, is there?’ Then, when Valerius gave no answer, ‘Perhaps you could put in more poppy next time? I could bear life as a boy who has poor use of his legs. I am not at all sure I want to live it as a man who is both crippled and blind.’

They were in a dreamer’s hut, where, more than anywhere, words have power. With his left hand, Valerius made the sign to ward against evil. ‘Don’t say that. You fell and hit your head and it’s bleeding within the bone as well as outside. When the bleeding stops, you will see again.’

‘And the pain in my head will be less? I hope so. You should have put in more poppy anyway. There wasn’t enough to draw a veil over this.’

Bellos was wrong: the poppy was sufficient to buy him dreamless sleep; and he was right: in the morning, the pain in his head was no less and he was still blind.

‘We need mac Calma.’

Valerius said it, because Bellos would not. He had carried the boy to the midden to relieve himself and fed him and washed him and their life was as it had been in the first days, except that this time Bellos’ mind was alive and active and, when not crushed by the pounding ache within it, he could think and speak clearly. Now, he said, ‘We may as well need snow in summer. Unless I have lost more time than I know of, our god-favoured dreamer isn’t due back until the end of next month.’

‘Perhaps not, but we can summon him, or, rather, Efnis can. He is Elder of Mona in mac Calma’s absence - there must always be one so designated on the island, to hold the dream of the ancestors. There are ways for one dreamer to speak to another if the need is strong enough.’

Bellos stared dry-eyed at the place he believed Valerius to be. ‘Efnfs won’t call mac Calma for you.’

‘No. But he may call him for you. I can ask. At worst he can only say no.’

XIV.

‘No.’

‘Efnis, Bellos is not your enemy. He is as much a victim of Rome as any man or woman of the tribes. He was sold into slavery when he was six years old. He was sold again nightly in a brothel in Gaul for the next four years. He was kicked in the head trying to foal the red mare because he didn’t want to wake me and he fell because he was trying to fulfil Luain mac Calma’s ludicrous requirements so that we could leave your precious island and go back to Hibernia. If he isn’t healed, we may never leave. Is that what you want?’

Valerius stood at the entrance to the great-house, as close as he had ever been to the heart of Mona’s dreaming. Oak uprights as wide as his arm and twice his height stood as door posts on either side. The carvings on them made his head spin as they had done once in his childhood. To avoid them, he looked straight ahead, towards the fire trenches and weapons, the warriors and dreamers within.

Eight warriors stood around him in a part-circle and the waves of hate were as tangible as any he had felt on a battlefield in a burning village. Some of them were not much older than Bellos. It was possible that Valerius had, indeed, burned their homes and hanged their families.

Efnis stood in the centre. He had been a quiet lad in his youth, thoughtful and open-hearted, and the boy Ban had cared for him and cherished his presence. He had not imagined him ruthless, but then, he had not imagined it of himself and had become so, for a time.

The man who faced him was more than ruthless; Efnis embodied a power that gave life to the door carvings simply by his presence. The gods of his people walked with him and through him and they were not inclined to pity. His eyes looked through Valerius as if they had never met except in battle.

‘No,’ he said again. ‘Luain mac Calma is not yours to whistle to heel like a hound. If the boy dies, it is your loss, not ours.’

Valerius caught the fraying edge of his anger and held it. When one has no power, temper is a luxury not to be indulged. He said, ‘The loss would be also mac Calma’s. If Bellos dies, I am free to go

and our year together will be less than half over. I doubt very much if he would have subjected you to our presence through the winter had he not wished me to remain beyond spring.’

‘Nevertheless, I will not summon him. If the gods wish the boy dead, he will die. If not, he will live. If he is blind, he is still alive and that will suffice.’

If he is blind… Valerius had not mentioned Bellos’ blindness to the dreamer. Efnis could only have known from some other source.

Valerius’ anger did rise then, whitely, so that he felt the pressure on his cheekbones and behind his eyes. He stared at the warriors surrounding him and they matched him, hate for hate. Not caring to conceal the challenge, he said, ‘Did you make this happen, any of you?’

Three warriors stepped forward, hounds straining at the leash. The death of the red-haired woman clung to them, demanding vengeance in kind. Valerius felt the pull of battle as a rising tide in his blood. For Bellos’ sake, he fought it. ‘Efnis, did you make him blind?’

The dreamer shook his head. ‘No. But mac Calma said that if the boy fell it might happen. He has fallen and you are here asking our help when you have not approached the great-house in six months. Why else would that be so?’

‘Did mac Calma leave instruction for what I should do if such a thing came about?’

‘No.’

Valerius opened his mouth and shut it again. There was a change in Efnis, a barely perceptible softening of his voice. He had not said, ‘I’m sorry’ - he could not do so in such company - but the words had been there for one desperate to hear them.

Dry-mouthed, fearing to believe, Valerius said, ‘Then, without help from the Elder, what would you do in my place?’

The ghost of a smile crossed Efnis’ features. ‘I would dream, what else? It is my training. And my birthright. I would find a place of god-given power and I would use everything I could find there to help me.’ His gaze slid past Valerius towards the hut that lay down near the river: the dreamer’s hut which had, for nearly twenty years, contained and moulded Airmid’s god-given power.

Valerius caught himself at the last minute so that he did not turn to look. The movement became instead a jerky sweep of his cleaner hand through his hair. He did it without thought and did not know how much of the boy Ban he had been showed in that move. He said, ‘Let me be clear. In my place, you would dream to mac Calma to call him back?’

Efnis leaned one shoulder against the gate post and the forefinger of his left hand traced again and again the shape of a running horse that was carved at the level of his heart. This time his smile was open for everyone to see, and it was not kind. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I am more arrogant than that. If I needed help, I would dream to ask the gods for a healing. But if mac Calma had not taught me how to do that, then yes, I might dream to the Elder of Mona himself and ask for his help. It would be almost as good.’

I would dream. It is my birthright.

The words danced in the flames of a birchwood fire. Familial faces resolved and dissolved beside them, casting shadows in the smoke. Efnis smiled intermittent encouragement from the heart-fire but would not speak. Theophilus, physician to the legions, shook his head and laughed at the fantasies of barbarian minds; Xenophon of Cos, physician to emperors, did not laugh but neither did he offer advice. Longinus Sdapeze smiled a greeting, a cavalry officer with not the slightest hint of dreaming about him, and later, with old barriers burned to ashes, Corvus appeared and sat for a while, watching the long trail of the dead who had followed him.

The ghosts of Valerius’ past did not arm themselves with anger as they had once done. Eceni and Trinovante, Roman and Gaul, they came and went, dispassionately, nodding curtly to the man who had slain them, but not hurling curses or promising an eternity of retribution. It might have been easier if they had done; none of them was a dreamer, none of them knew how to summon a dreamer, or if they did, they were not prepared to share their secret.

If you had stayed with your people, would you have become a smith, do you think, or a healer?

My sister was to be the dreamer. I was going to be a warrior.

It is my birthright.

And mine also.

He believed it, because he wanted to. Through the cold and sweating night, Julius Valerius, who had been born Ban of the Eceni, son of a dreamer - son of two dreamers - and childhood

friend to several others, drew on every memory of his youth while he held or burned or drank or prayed over every god-touched item in Airmid’s hut in an increasingly desperate effort to call any of those, living or dead, who might help him to reach the gods or, as a close second best, Luain mac Calma.

He failed.

‘You’re trying too hard.’

‘What?’

‘You’re trying too hard.’ Bellos spoke sleepily from beyond the smoke. He sounded amused but there was no telling how long he had waited, lying awake, until he was sure he could sound so. ‘I know nothing about dreaming but all night I have listened to you shouting down the dream-paths of the poppy and I don’t think the gods are brought closer by shouting. The apprentice who brought the oat bannocks says that the gods speak only into silence.’

Valerius felt the motion of his mind crash into rock. He stared across the fire at the boy. ‘What apprentice?’

‘There’s a girl of the Caledonii who has come twice now. Her people have not suffered under Rome and so she doesn’t hate us as much as the rest and it seems she has an affection for bedridden boys with blond hair and blue ey— Don’t be like that. I’m not a whore any more. She brought me oat bannocks and a hound whelp that wanted to play, that’s all.’

‘Really? How very disappointing for both of you.’ Valerius’ head swam. Facts collided and fell out at random. He said, ‘Let me get this straight. You spoke about dreaming, with a dreamer of Mona, who did not try to peel your skin from your back? Was this before or after you had the poppy?’ The certainties of his winter faltered and then disintegrated as his stomach, his mouth and his flooding saliva registered the single most important fact. ‘You have been hoarding oat bannocks and you didn’t tell me?’

‘I’m not hoarding them. Yes, I spoke to a dreamer. It was before I fell and I hadn’t taken any poppy. We talked of the whelp, and she said that when hounds sleep and dream by the fire, they are visiting the lands of the gods. She didn’t offer to show me how to follow them. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the bannocks. I was saving them for a celebration when I’d stood and matched you two strokes.’ His voice faltered only a little and recovered its humour as he fumbled in his pocket, then: ‘Here catch.’

It was not a bad throw for a blind youth, and not a bad catch for a man who had sat awake through the night. The bannock became only mildly singed in the heart of the fire and possibly the

better for it.

Valerius said, ‘Are there any more?’ and then, when Bellos nodded and held up a single finger, ‘Put it next to the fire to warm it. I think there’s some honey left somewhere,’ and so, for a moment, the world was no bigger than a meal remembered with joy from childhood, washed down with stream water and eaten in the first light of the morning sun.

Presently, thinking, Valerius said, ‘I don’t understand why Macha didn’t come through the fire with the other ghosts. For ten years, she haunted every sleeping dream and too much of the days. Why, when I need her, does she stay away?’

‘Because you need her, perhaps? It does not seem to me that your mother’s haunting was designed to help you in your times of need.’

‘No. But she didn’t kill me, or drive others to kill me, and there were times when she could have done.’

Valerius lay on his stomach, his head pillowed on his forearm, staring into the fire. ‘If the bannock-girl would help you, I could go to Hibernia to find mac Calma.’

‘If you will give me two days to learn, I can find where everything is in the hut and I won’t need anyone’s help. I can move to the midden and back and there is food enough for a month unless you’ve eaten it all in the night while I was asleep.’

It was a poor attempt at humour. Valerius ignored it. ‘No. I can’t leave you alone. What if you were to fall again?’