Shapeshifter (15 page)

Far Doirche turned his horse to face her. “Did I mention we are married?” His smile was mischievous and tender. “I imagine there will be plenty of teasing and toasts for my lovely new bride.” The smile vanished, and the green eyes bored into her. “You will play the part of the happy bride. You will say and do nothing to suggest you are held against your will. You will not mention your singing or my powers…” The instructions continued, boxing her into a narrower and narrower space until there was nowhere to step but along the Dark Man’s path.

DONAL’S HOSPITALITY was so warm and genuine that it broke Sive’s heart. A minor chieftain in a remote corner of the country had cause to welcome any allies he could get, but their welcome went far beyond the requirements of politics.

“My friend!” he exclaimed, clapping Far in a warm embrace. “I am delighted you have joined us. And this”—he offered Sive his hand and bowed low over it—“this must be your beautiful lady. Welcome, my dear, and know that we are at your service. If there is anything at all you need for your comfort, you have only to say the word.”

Sive was murmuring her thanks when Donal’s wife Marga bustled in. More introductions and kind words, and then Marga said, “But where is the Lady Sive’s retinue? Have you not brought your women?”

Far Doirche’s smile was a perfect picture of embarrassed apology. “We intended to, of course, but didn’t Sive’s maid fall on her ankle the night before we left? It is not broken, we think, but very swollen and painful. Sive, who is very tenderhearted, as you will learn”—and here his green eyes fell fondly upon her—“insisted her second lady stay to care for her injured sister.”

This brought gasps of sympathy and indulgent chuckles, along with the immediate offer of a woman to attend Sive throughout her stay.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Far Doirche briskly. “We’ll manage very well with Oran, here, if you could just lend the Lady Sive someone to help with her hair and toilet?”

Unlike the handful of other guests, they were given a room of their own, whether in deference to their recent marriage or to Far’s esteemed status, Sive didn’t know. Far had been holding Sive so tight against his body that she feared he would take her the minute they were alone, but he cast her from him as soon as the door closed. Striding to the storage chest, he fished out a blanket and tossed it at her.

“I don’t imagine you will sleep well sharing a bed with me,” he said. “And we must have you looking your best. Perhaps you and Oran can draw lots to see who gets the pallet by the hearth, and who the floor.”

DINNER WAS A QUIET AFFAIR. Apparently most guests were due to arrive on the morrow, when the feasting would begin in earnest.

“If you are asked to sing tonight, you will sing prettily, no more. You will give no hint of your voice’s power,” Far Doirche had commanded. It was a relief to know that nothing would happen yet; still Sive knew that the Dark Man was only biding his time.

It was hideous, eating and talking with these people and being unable to warn them of what was to come.

“Sive, you are lovely, but so thin!” exclaimed Marga. “Far Doirche, you must feed her up.”

Marga’s own figure was rather solid, Sive observed, a shape more common among mortals than her own people. A great wave of longing swept over her—for Finn, for her house on the Hill of Almhuin, for all the friends and servants who had welcomed her. For her child.

“Lady Sive? Are you well?” Marga was peering at her, round blue eyes under brows furrowed with concern.

Sive felt the corners of her mouth lift—a death grin, it felt like, rather than a true smile, but apparently it looked real enough, for Lady Marga’s face lit up in relieved response.

“Of course,” Sive heard herself saying. “I’m so sorry— I was just cloud-walking. A little tired from the journey, I suppose.”

“I quite understand,” said Marga. “Here—try some of this.” She pressed a silver goblet into Sive’s hand. “My own recipe, very reviving. Oh, and have some honey babies.” She winked, leaned in and whispered, “You must build up your strength, for when you have a green-eyed honey baby of your own.”

The thought made Sive weak with nausea. Yet she felt her cheeks dimple and blush, and her hand reached for the rich sweet and popped it into her mouth.

THE NEXT EVENING some twenty guests filled Donal’s cramped feasting hall. A small gathering, not many more than would assemble for any ordinary meal back in Sidhe Ochta Cleitigh, but as much care had been put into this event as for any great feast. The room glowed with the soft light of many candles, fixed into elaborate wrought-iron chandeliers suspended from the ceiling. The candlelight was reflected in the gold and silver plates, the metal inlay on the ceiling, the jewels of the women and the gleaming armbands and torcs of the men. The guests were richly arrayed in colorful silks, flowing sleeves, intricate hairstyles, sweeping cloaks.

Sive’s dread grew with each bite of their elegant dinner. How many times, in the bogs and gloomy forests, had she yearned to be in just such a place, surrounded by the lighthearted chatter and bright, beautiful company of a feast night? And now she walked among her people as their betrayer, her return an evil mockery of her dreams. In her head she screamed out a warning to them all, cried to them to flee, to stuff their ears, to cast her out. And still she ate and smiled and nodded and chattered with the rest.

Soon enough the moment came. Donal had invited a harpist to entertain his company, but that would not forestall what was to come. It was common for guests to take a turn, and sure enough, as the last sweet chord of the harp’s latest tune lingered in the air, Lady Marga turned to Sive and said, “You have a lovely voice, as we learned last night. Would you favor our guests with a song?”

Sive Remembers

Even as I felt the pretence of a modest smile jerk at the corners of my mouth and felt my head nodding assent, I was determined to defy him. Had I no will of my own? I was not like Oran, taken by the Dark Man as a young boy, beaten and terrified into submission until he could conceive of no alternative. I was strong from my years in the wild. My son was dead or gone—free, either way, of Far Doirche’s grasp. There was nothing binding me to life, and I would let him crush my brains before I sang to these people.

A great hand scooped me from my seat and propelled me toward to the front of the hall. I did not fight it. My hope was to take Far Doirche by surprise, to feign compliance but keep going, right through the small doorway to the side which the harpist had come through. The harpist smiled his welcome and I nodded in return. But my mind was all on the doorway behind him, and on hardening myself against the Dark Man’s will.

I had not taken two steps past him when the pain stabbed into my head—skewers behind my eyes, fire burning through my skull. This was not the simple barrier that had kept me from the latrine—it was the Dark Man’s fury that fell upon me, his rage at being crossed.

I fell to my knees, clutching my head. My face was slippery with sweat and tears. A terrible noise ripped the air—my own tortured screams. It was as though he was flaying me from within. My mind scrambled after something, anything, to hold on to. Finn swam into blurry focus—my Finn, so courageous and proud—but the Dark Man cast him out with a lash of fire.

Then came Oisin, my beautiful shining boy, and in my anguished sight it seemed to me he stood untouched by Far Doirche’s wrath and called to me. I clung to that image—clung with all my strength—until with a roar Far sent a curtain of fire leaping up between us, and I lost my senses.

When I opened my eyes I was standing beside the harpist, looking out over a roomful of smiling, relaxed people. The harpist was running his fingers experimentally over a tune, his eyebrow raised in inquiry. I ran my hand over my hair, amazed to find my forehead dry, my braids perfectly in place. I heard my own calm reply. I understood then that what I had just experienced had passed between myself and the Dark Man alone. No one had heard me cry out or seen me writhe on the ground. No one had noticed anything in the least amiss. There was that moment of stillness that alerts an attentive audience that the performers are about to begin, and then a cascade of plucked notes rippled over the harp and ended in my opening chord.

And I sang. With no more will than a child’s doll, I sang until every man and woman in the room was overcome with peaceful drowsiness, and slept. I sang while Far Doirche went out to the place where he had hidden his hazel rod and brought it into his friend’s feasting hall and touched it to each sleeping head. Though it seemed to me that I wept and pleaded, cursed and shouted, the voice that poured out of me was warm and sweet as honey.

The next day Donal’s guests joked about how strong Marga’s mead must be, for none could quite remember my singing or even taking themselves to bed. And each time Far Doirche spoke, I saw the deep luster of their eyes become dull and they would hasten to do his bidding.

“A promising trial run,” he said as we left Donal’s house. But I was filled with a horror so deep the ocean itself could not drown it.

I had done wrong to bargain with the Dark Man. It was folly to put my child’s life above the hundreds he would now enslave. But what mother could count any price too high for her own child? Even now, the only hope remaining to me was that Oisin lived.

NINETEEN

T
hey had hardly returned when Far bustled away again, to Sive’s intense relief. He left Oran with a long list of chores, some so strange and sinister-sounding—replenish the crows, grind more bone—that Sive did not dare ask their meaning.

“I’m off after greener pastures,” Far announced cheerfully, as though the entire household shared his enthusiasm.

Sive had been in numb despair through the long, wet ride home, unable to face any thought at all. Now, with Far Doirche’s paralyzing presence gone, her courage returned.

There had to be a way out, if only she could find it. Long into the night she paced the house, or sat slumped against the wall, knees drawn up and head cradled in her arms. She tried to recall every comment she had ever heard about the Dark Man. She reviewed everything she had learned about him during her long captivity—his pride, his secrecy, his indifference to women. Was there a weakness she might make use of ? She tried to summon her father’s cleverness, to look at her plight with the bright, curious eyes of a magpie. She confronted head-on the question that had haunted her these past years—why had nobody found her? Was her father even searching for her anymore? He would have been barred from entering their secret valley, she realized, just as she and Oisin had been barred from leaving it. For all she knew, the Dark Man had been able to shield it from sight entirely. But now—would word not get out that Far Doirche had taken a wife? Would Derg take up the search again? It was a long string of ifs to hang her hope on—too long. If word of her existence reached Derg, if he found her, if he presented Manannan and the other Old Ones with proof of Far Doirche’s treachery, and if they stood against him…how many people, by then, would be under the Dark Man’s spell?

She could not wait for her father, or anyone else. It was her voice. She must find a way to still it.

It was late, the deep silent black of night, when Oran clumped through the back door. In the weak light of his lamp, Sive saw how his shoulders slumped with fatigue. Yet when he saw her awake, he came and sat beside her, setting down the lamp so it flickered and danced before them.

“I went to the cave,” he announced. “The barrier is down. Your son is not there.”

Sive was silent. She could find no words for the gratitude welling up in her heart. It did not mean Oisin was alive—she knew that well. But it was enough for her to believe he was.

She rested her hand on Oran’s arm and squeezed in silent thanks. She thought again about the long oppression he had endured, and the risks he had taken to help her, and realized she had misjudged his strength.

“Oran,” she murmured. “I must never sing for him again.” He nodded gravely. He had seen as well as she where the Dark Man was headed.

“Yet wherever I turn, I can find no escape.” She peered at his pale face. “Can you help me think?”

The light flared, catching the deep shadows under his eyes, his gaunt cheeks. He looked exhausted.

“You’re tired,” she said. “I should have realized. You’ve already made that long journey for me. Perhaps tomorrow—”

Now it was his hand on her arm, staying her. “Sometimes fatigue brings odd ideas that escape a person in daylight. Tell me what you have tried already.”

Sive summarized her day’s long, unhappy wandering.

“So,” Oran concluded, “you cannot kill yourself because it is forbidden. You cannot leave this place without permission. You cannot change to your deer form. By the time word reaches your father or Manannan that Far has you, he will have an army of men at his disposal. And I will add that, in all the years of your captivity, there has been no word that I’ve heard of Finn setting foot in Tir na nOg, which makes me think the Dark Man has managed to bar its doors against him.”

He sighed, running his hand through his dark hair and over his face. But Sive had an idea, a good one.

“Oran!” She paused, unsure of how to put it, and then said it directly, remembering that he had not flinched away from talk of suicide. “
You
could kill me.”

He shook his head. “Forbidden.” And then smiled sadly. “Also, I am not at all sure that I could bring myself to do it.”

Oran stood up, stretched and yawned. “I’m going to fall asleep at your feet. Let’s brew this overnight, and perhaps our dreams will whisper an answer.”

SIVE HAD NO DREAMS. She lay stiff on her pallet all night, her mind racing over the same dead-end roads, her belly in turmoil. By dawn, she was as drawn and pale as Oran.

Oran skipped breakfast to catch up on his chores, refusing to allow Sive to help. She was limited, in any case, to the house and the path to the latrine. And so, again, she roamed the close confines of Far Doirche’s dark walls, wrestling with her fate. Only as the sun neared the top of the sky did she find some relief in building up the kitchen fire and filling the hanging pot with water to boil barley. By the time Oran returned the house smelled of grains and cabbage and the tiny wild onions she had found growing in a fragrant patch beside the path.