Keeper Of The Light (2 page)

“I am Donaill, champion to King Bran of Cahir Cullen. This is my brother Irial, and another warrior, Beolagh. Now…might we know your name?”

She nodded at his answer, still surrounded by her milling pack of enormous black and gray dogs. She dropped the black cloak’s hood back from her head. “My name is Rioghan.”

By the stars and by the distant light of the fire, Donaill saw a young woman with smooth, fair skin, strong, determined features, and large green eyes. Black hair cascaded over her shoulders and most of the way down her back. As she clutched her heavy black wool cloak close around her, Donaill saw that her hands and wrists and throat were bare of any jewelry; she had only a circular bronze pin inlaid with shining black jet to fasten the garment. Yet her eyes were so bright, so jewel-like, that they seemed to be more luminous than any adornment she might have worn.

“Rioghan,” he said. He could not take his eyes from hers, and found himself wondering why.

Perhaps it was just the surprise of seeing such a fair face and youthful figure when he had been expecting someone old and withered. Perhaps it was just the strangeness of this wild and lonely place, with its menacing dogs and brooding stone circle and ancient, Sidhe-built, mysterious mound.

Or perhaps it was her eyes meeting his with equal fearlessness and equal curiosity. Donaill had never seen any woman with eyes so large and bright, whose gaze held such an intensity.

She did not respond, but went on looking steadily up at him. Her pack of monstrous dogs stayed close around.

“I must confess, I thought you to be an old crone. I did not expect to see a beautiful young woman.”

She kept right on staring at him. “Do you not know me, Donaill?” She took a step forward through the sea of her protectors. “You have seen me often at Cahir Cullen.”

He gazed down at her and shook his head. “I recall only a silent figure in black, coming to care for the women from time to time. But that is all.”

Rioghan took another step forward. “It is true that I come most often in the night, but you have seen me many times. I know you, Donaill, though I am not surprised that you do not know me. You were always busy in that high place that all important men occupy, and so you took me for just another servant. You have
seen
me many times, but you have never
looked
at me.”

Donaill started to speak…but found that no words were at hand. His horse shifted beneath him.

Rioghan reached down to stroke her dogs. “You say I am needed at Cahir Cullen. Yet there is no woman there whose time is near, so far as I know.”

“You are right. This is not about a birth. But it is about a woman.”

The midwife frowned, drawing her soft, dark brows together. “Is this woman ill? Is she hurt? Can your druids and physicians not help her?”

“They have tried. But she has lost her reason and will not speak to anyone. The other women asked that you be sent for. Will you come and help?”

“What woman is this?”

“It is Sabha.”

“Sabha…”Rioghan stood straight and folded her hands once more. “I will come. Please wait here for me.”

As the three men watched, Rioghan returned to her cave, briefly pushing the hangings aside so she could enter. Beolagh leaned forward as far as he could, straining to catch another glimpse of her crystal and gold in the firelight. Donaill turned to glare at him until, reluctantly, the man sat back.

Rioghan soon emerged from the cave. She carried a small black leather sack in one hand, and with the other signaled to her dogs. They parted to let her pass, though two remained close at her side—one huge black beast whose collar was plated with gold, and another with a dark gray coat and a collar of bronze.

Donaill moved his horse so that it stood alongside a fallen tree, thinking to let Rioghan stand upon its trunk and then slide behind him on his horse. But she walked up alongside him, reached for his hand, and swung up without any further ado.

The group turned their mounts back into the starlit woods. Rioghan’s two dogs followed closely.

The horses trotted as quickly as they were allowed through the silent darkness of the forest, eager to get back home. Rioghan tried to think only of the task ahead of her, but such was difficult to do when she was forced to sit so close behind Donaill and hold him tight around the waist.

She did know who he was, as she knew of most of the men at Cahir Cullen. If nothing else, she knew them as the husbands of the women whose newborns she helped bring into the world. But she felt quite certain that this man, Donaill, had no wife.

It seemed strange to her that he remained unmarried. Donaill was the king’s champion, the best warrior at Cahir Cullen, and would surely be the object of many a young woman’s affections. He was tall and handsome, with light brown hair and clear blue eyes, and his easygoing manner almost made one forget the power in his broad shoulders and well-muscled arms.

Even now he felt as strong and unmoving as one of the standing stones in the circle outside Sion. He seemed not to notice Rioghan’s sudden tight hold on his waist when, at last, the horses burst out of the forest and took up a gallop toward home.

Rising before them, in the center of a wide meadow, surrounded by the tall black silhouettes of widely spaced holly trees, was the circular earth-and-stone fortress of Cahir Cullen. Its tall wooden gates opened as they approached, and the three warriors cantered their horses inside. Rioghan’s two dogs stayed right along with them.

There were some twenty round houses, made with heavy wicker framework thickly covered with clay, scattered across the torchlit fortress grounds. As always, Rioghan could not help but think of how insubstantial they seemed compared to the cave that was her own home. Donaill jogged his black stallion in and out among the houses until he reached one near the rear of Cahir Cullen’s curving inner wall. Quickly Rioghan slid down to the ground.

“Thank you,” she said, looking up at him. She could see him better now in the soft light of the torches. His fine features and strong jaw were quite familiar, for she had indeed seen him before at this place; but it was strange to see those same blue eyes and warm smile directed at her.

“You are most welcome,” he said. “Thank you for coming here to help us.” And with that, he reined his horse in a half circle and rode away.

Rioghan took a deep breath, lifted her black leather sack to one shoulder, then turned toward the house, signaling her dogs Scath and Cogar to stay outside.

Two women opened the door as she approached it. “Rioghan, we are so glad that you are here,” the first one said, reaching out to take her by the shoulder.

“Please, come in, come in,” said the other. “She is here, but we do not know what to do for her.”

Rioghan followed them into the small round dwelling. A low fire burned in the central hearth, and a scattering of flat stone lamps held flickering flames of light.

Three other women waited inside, two of them sitting on one of the fur-covered sleeping ledges and another standing near the main fire. All of them were clearly anxious. “Here,” said the one at the hearth, and gestured toward the floor.

Rioghan stopped. She kept her face very still and calm, but could not stop the cold feeling in the pit of her stomach.

The young woman, Sabha, lay curled up like an infant on a bed of thick, clean straw. Someone had placed a blue-and-green plaid cloak over her, but she seemed not to notice. “Airt,” the woman whispered in a shaking voice. “Airt…”

“Airt is her husband,” one of the others informed Rioghan. “But he is here at Cahir Cullen. He is well; nothing has happened. The men took him away from the house when she would not respond to him. He is nearly as distraught as she.”

Rioghan nodded. “They have been married barely two years. Sabha has been a great help to me whenever I have come here.” She glanced around at the others, then nodded toward the door. “Please go now. Leave me with her. I will do what I can.”

The women all looked at each other, and then, each with a final kiss for Sabha, they left the round house and quietly closed the door.

Rioghan moved to sit down in the straw beside her patient. Throwing back the blue-and-green wool cloak covering the younger woman, she leaned down to speak to her. “Sabha, come now and help me. Help me to understand what has happened to you. Come now; sit up—sit up; there, that’s it. Sit beside me and tell me what has happened.”

The two of them sat together against the sleeping ledge, though Sabha slumped over so that her head rested on Rioghan’s shoulder. “Let me help you,” Rioghan said again. “Tell me what has happened.”

But Sabha would say nothing except her husband’s name, over and over again. She seemed not to know that anyone else was there.

Rioghan reached beneath the neckline of her own black wool gown and lifted out a slender chain of gold. The chain was Sidhe made, delicate and beautiful, and hanging from it was a long, slim pendant of polished crystal.

Holding the pendant with one hand, Rioghan sat up and placed her other hand on Sabha’s head, smoothing the woman’s long dark hair back as she did. “Now, Sabha,” she said softly, “show me what you wish me to know. The crystal of seeing will allow me to see it, too. It will show me what you wish me to know. It will show me all that I
need
to know.”

“Airt,” whispered Sabha, and Rioghan closed her eyes.

Into her mind came the image of a house—this very house, Rioghan realized, for the arrangement of doors and windows and ledges was identical. The same bunches of dried primrose and red clover hung on the wall near the window, the same dented bronze pan rested beside the hearth, and the same gray-black tunic lay in the straw near the head of the sleeping ledge.

On that ledge, lit now by the pale, filtered light of the late-afternoon sun, were the same fur cloaks stitched together from the skins of badger and hare, and the same soft leather cushions stuffed with straw…but on those furs lay a slender blond woman, naked in the cold winter air, moaning in pleasure and grasping her lover’s back as the young, dark-haired man kissed her hard on the neck, pinned her down, and mounted her.

There were no gentle caresses, no words of love between the pair. They grunted and groaned and coupled like animals.

Rioghan realized that there was something strange about this man: there was a faint discoloration to his bare skin, a grayness, as though something unclean, something poisonous, had come over him. She frowned, even as she kept her eyes closed—and then, in her vision, the door of the house opened and Sabha walked inside.

Rioghan could feel rather than hear Sabha’s wail of despair. The man in these images was her husband, Airt, and on this day he had brought another woman into their house and the furs where they slept.

Rioghan released the crystal. “Oh, Sabha,” she whispered, and held the other woman like a child. Sabha collapsed with her head on Rioghan’s lap, clutched her around the waist, and wept at last.

Chapter Two

Rioghan lifted a small bronze cauldron from the fire and placed it on the hearth. The water inside was boiling. Opening her black leather bag, she took out a handful of dried white-and-yellow flower heads and added them to the pot. A brief search of the house yielded a clean wooden cup and a little honey.

After the flowers had steeped for a time, she poured some of the cauldron’s mixture into the cup, added some honey, and stirred it with a slender wooden paddle.

Sabha still lay in the straw, though now she wept instead of chillingly calling her husband’s name. Rioghan carried the steaming cup over to her and sat down on the carpet of straw. “Sabha,” she said, giving the woman a little shake. “Sabha, sit up now. I have brought you something to drink—and I must ask you a question.”

Slowly Sabha opened her red and swollen eyes, and then she sat up to look at her visitor. “Rioghan,” she said. “Oh, Rioghan—what has he done?”

“I know, I know. I have seen it all. You need not tell it again. Here…drink this.”

Sabha took the cup and sipped at the strong, sweet tea. In moments the cup was empty, and she allowed it to fall to the straw and roll away. She turned back to Rioghan. “You said you wanted to ask me a question.”

Rioghan reached out and took Sabha’s hands. “This thing your husband has done…I can tell you it was not his choice alone. I could see the touch of dark magic on him. This woman, whoever she is—”

“Coiteann.” Sabha’s voice held the utmost contempt. “She is the servant who makes dyes, and spends all her working time over the reeking dye pots. She is—”

“I know what she is.” Rioghan glanced again at the dingy, gray-black linen tunic beside her on the straw. It looked as if it had been dyed with some noxious substance: soot, perhaps, or even a little blood. “Not one who is so powerful that she could take him against his will. She used just enough of the dark side of power to persuade him to bring her here, instead of to some hidden place in the forest as he would have preferred. That is why he brought her into your house and into your bed.”

Sabha closed her eyes. “But why here, why in the late afternoon? They both knew that I would be returning from the hall at just that time!”

Rioghan shook her head. Fury burned inside her. “Dear Sabha. This woman did know, though she made your husband forget. She
planned
for you to find them together. She hoped you would divorce your husband and leave him free to marry her.”