Son of the Shadows (41 page)

One day soon, Son

, I said silently, feeling that at some level he understood me, one day we're going down there, and maybe we'll get out of this for a while. Find ourselves some space. If we're lucky we might see a bird or a frog. I need to breathe deep. I need to see beyond stone walls

.

I had asked Aisling already, as politely as I could, and received the answer I expected. "Don't you ever go out?" I'd said. "Doesn't it drive you crazy being shut up all the time?"

Aisling raised her brows at me. "People do go out," she said, puzzled. "It's not a prison. Carts bring supplies, and the men ride across on patrol. There's more movement when Eamonn's at home."

"And I suppose every cart is searched from top to bottom going in and out," I said dryly.

"Well, yes. Don't you do that at Sevenwaters?"

"Not if it's our own people."

"Eamonn says it's wiser. You can't be too careful these days. And he did say—"

She paused.

"What?" I asked, looking her in the eye.

She reached up to smooth her red curls behind her ear, looking slightly abashed. "Well, Liadan, if you must know, he said he preferred if you and Niamh did not go out while you're here. There is no reason for you to venture beyond the walls. We have everything here that you could possibly want."

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"Mmm." I did not like the thought of Eamonn making rules for me, especially now that there was no possible chance of a marriage between us. Perhaps, after what had happened to me, he believed me incapable of staying out of trouble.

"Don't take me wrong, Aisling," I said. "Your hospitality is not to be faulted. But I miss Sevenwaters. I

miss the forest and the openness. I don't know how you and Eamonn can live here."

"It's home," she said simply. And I remembered Eamonn saying once, It will not be home until I see you standing in the doorway with my child in your arms

. I shivered. The goddess grant there would be chieftains at Tara with marriageable daughters, and that Eamonn would make his intentions known to them. There should be many a girl with no reluctance to warm his bed and give him an heir, once he put word about that he was looking.

Many days had passed, and the moon had shrunk to a mere sliver of light. When I got home, I would have to apply myself to sewing, for my gowns were getting uncomfortably tight over my breasts. I sat with Niamh day by day, and she failed to notice any change in my appearance. I could not tell her. How could I find the words, when she held in her poor, confused mind the guilt of not having conceived a child for Fionn after three moons, of not even succeeding in that most basic requirement of a good wife? I said to her it was early days, and not every bride bred straight away. Besides, now that she would not be going back to Tirconnell after all, surely it was better that she was not carrying Fionn's son or daughter.

"I wanted to bear Ciaran a child," she said softly. "More than anything. But the goddess did not grant it."

"Just as well," I retorted, finding it hard not to lose my temper with her. "That would really have set a stir among the Ui Neill."

"Don't joke about it, Liadan. You cannot hope to understand how it feels to love a man more than anything in the world, more than life itself. How wonderful it would be to carry that man's child within your body, even if the man himself is—is lost to you." She began to cry, very quietly.

"How could you know of such things?"

"How indeed," I muttered, passing her a clean handkerchief.

"Liadan?" she asked, after a while.

"Mmm?"

"You keep saying, I need not go back to Fionn, I need not go back to Tirconnell. But where am I going?"

"I don't know yet. But I'll work something out, I promise. Trust me."

"Yes, Liadan." She spoke with a meek acquiescence that terrified me. For time was fast running out for us. The men would not stay in the south too long, with winter approaching and their own lands to attend to. By the time the moon was half full again, they would be here, and in truth I had very little by way of a plan. Niamh could not simply come home, not without explanation.

So she must go somewhere else, somewhere she could be taken before Fionn returned. She must be kept in hiding, for a while at least.

Later, perhaps, the truth might be told, and she could come back to Seven-waters. A Christian convent

would be the best place, perhaps in the southwest, somewhere away from the coast and safe from the

Norsemen's raids, a place where they did not know the name of Sevenwaters. There was no place where they did not know the name of Ui Neill, but maybe that part could be kept quiet. If someone could just provide sanctuary for a while, if Fionn could somehow be convinced that she was gone forever, if... I

lost patience with myself quickly, knowing I was getting nowhere, realizing if I did not come up
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with a practical plan very soon, we would run out of time. It was becoming obvious I could not do this alone.

A promise was a promise and could not be broken. I thought Niamh was wrong. How could the alliance be more important to Liam or Conor or my father than Niamh's happiness? Surely her bruised body and shadowed eyes were too high a price to pay for the future support of the Ui Neill, for all their wealth and their great band of fighting men? But I had given her my word.

Besides, there was more to it than the alliance. There was the secret they were all keeping from us. There was something bigger behind this that we did not understand, something so terrible it seemed to me I must act with the greatest caution lest I

bring alive the evil they spoke of with hushed voices and haunted eyes.

One thing was clear to me. I had to get Niamh out before the men returned, and there was nobody in the household whose help I could enlist. They were all Eamonn's men and women, and Aisling's, and no secret would be kept from their young master and mistress. Besides, wasn't every cart searched? I

thought about disguises, and abandoned the idea, knowing the close watch on all traffic in and out meant we would be immediately detected. My mind whirled with plans, each more unlikely than the last.

When it was dark of the moon, I could not light my special candle, for it still stood in my chamber at

Sevenwaters. But after Niamh was sleeping, I lit another and placed it near the window, and I sat by it through the time of darkness. And now, as I drew Bran's image into my mind, he was no longer sitting under strange trees, but pacing restlessly to and fro in a more familiar setting, a lantern casting shadows on the cunningly constructed walls, the arched roof and ancient ritual stone of the great barrow that had sheltered us, so long ago it seemed. There were others there with him, and they were disputing something, and he was impatient. I felt his sense of urgency, the anxiety that drew a frown between his dark brows, the tension in his hands. But I could not hear their words. I did what I always did on those dark nights, when I knew he tried, above all things, to remain awake. I reached out to touch his mind with my own, to let him know he would never be quite alone, not now; to remind him that even for an outlaw with no past and no future, each day could be lived well. But tonight, my own dark thoughts intervened, my concern for my sister, my growing panic at not having a solution for my problem, with time so short. These things got in the way, and I could not tell if I did him any good or not. I stayed awake all night.

That much I could do for him. It was not possible to see his image all the time in my thoughts, but it came to me now and then, striding out of the barrow, leaving his friends behind; standing in the darkness there, staring down at his tightly linked hands. Later, sitting cross-legged not far from where we had made our little fire with pine cones when Evan was dying and I had told him his last story.

Sitting with his shaven head in his hands, and the smallest of lanterns to keep away the darkness.

I'm here

, I told him.

I'm not so fur away. Just wait a little longer, and dawn will come

. But I had to work very hard to silence that other voice within me, the one that was clamoring, Help! I need you

!

Nobody could help me here at Sidhe Dubh. There seemed no way out. Unless . . . unless you were a cat, maybe.

It was worth a try, I told myself as I slipped quietly down the covered way, just after dawn next morning.

The skills I had learned in the forest of Sevenwaters served me well. I thought I passed by the guards unseen. I needed the lantern, for the side tunnel was narrow and the floor an uneven jumble of broken rocks. I went past the empty cells, feeling again the cold breath of fear that
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lingered in their shadowy corners. I ventured farther down, and the track became narrower and steeper, and water trickled down the walls so that I was walking in a streamlet. And then, abruptly, the water went gurgling away underground, and the passage seemed to end; there was an unbroken wall ahead of me, though light still

filtered in from somewhere. A dead end. But the cat had got in. I set the lantern down and moved forward, touching my fingertips to the wall. My shadow loomed in front of me, huge in the lantern light.

And I heard them: familiar voices, quiet, deep, so deep they were almost below hearing. Words spoken with a slowness that seemed ancient, as if it came from the very stones themselves. They were not, after all, fled with the coming of man; they had merely gone deeper underground, biding their time. I stood still, listening, awaiting their bidding.

Down.

I squatted on the ground, wondering what to look for, what to feel for. A trapdoor? A secret way? Some sort of sign?

Down.

Think, Liadan, I told myself, shivering. I moved along the rock floor, following the base of the wall with my hand, feeling for any sign, any clue as to what I must do.

Good. Good.

My hand touched something, a metal object that was wedged under a protruding stone. My fingers curled around it. It was a key, large, heavy, ornately wrought. I rose to my feet. The lantern light showed me the same unbroken stretch of rock wall before me, the same featureless walls on either side. There was no sign whatever of a door. I lifted the lantern high, low, examining every surface there was. I could not find the smallest sign of an opening, no crack or crevice into which this key might be fitted. My heart sank.

Go back

, said the voices.

Back

.

What were they telling me, I wondered grimly as I made my reluctant way out of the underground passage and into the house again. That I must stay at Sidhe Dubh and let things take their course? That had been their advice at the place of the great barrow, and look where it had got me. Ancestors or no ancestors, I began to wonder if they knew what they were doing.

The Fair Folk had told me not to heed these old voices, that they could be dangerous. Still, the Old Ones had given me a key. A key was, at least, a start.

That evening Aisling told me, very politely, that it might be better if I did not go down into those underground parts of the fortress anymore. "My master at arms is concerned about your safety," she said rather formally. I could see she was embarrassed at having to set out rules for a friend. Things had been easy between us at Sevenwaters. Indeed, sometimes we had seemed more like sisters than Niamh and I

were. But here she was mistress of the house, and I sensed there was little point in argument. It shocked me that she had learned of my explorations; I had been so careful.

"I do find it difficult to be so—so cooped up," I said.

"Still, those old passages and chambers are not safe," Aisling replied firmly. "I know Eamonn would not wish you to be at any risk. Please don't go down there again."

This was an order, kindly expressed, and I knew I must accept it. My options appeared to be rapidly dwindling as time passed. It was drawing ever closer to the day when Eamonn and Fionn must return from Tara, and I had not even a shred of a practical plan. Indeed, I was beginning to doubt very much that I could keep my promise to Niamh. But I was her sister. I could not let her return to Tirconnell and to a husband who valued her so little. I had seen the look in her eyes. I
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knew she meant it when she said she would loll herself rather than go on. I must get her out before they returned. Somehow , I must find a

way.

I did not know, in the end, if the solution was one I discovered for myself or if the Old Ones nudged me in the right direction. Perhaps we thought alike, being of the same line. It was early morning, just after dawn, and Niamh was sleeping, curled tight under her woollen blankets, her cropped hair bright on the pillow. My nights had been increasingly restless. I lay awake pondering solutions, all of them equally impractical. I lay open-eyed, considering the risks of telling the truth to Sean or to my father or to Conor, and deciding I could not do so. My father had taught me that a promise must never be broken. Besides, I could not be sure of what they would do. There was just a possibility they might believe the alliance more important than Niamh. I could not risk telling and finding Fionn's strategic worth outweighed his disregard for my sister. So I must find my own solution. But there was no way out. What did the Old Ones expect me to do? Fly?

At dawn I rose and dressed, selecting one of my looser-cut gowns, and wondering how big my belly would have to grow before Niamh noticed the change in my appearance. Our clothes had been stored in an ancient wooden chest that was set in an alcove to the room we shared, a recess over which a tapestry hung to reduce the draft. I rummaged in the chest for a shawl, since the morning was cool, and as I stood up to wrap it around me, I felt momentarily faint. I put out my hand against the timber-lined wall of the alcove to steady myself. My fingers touched something.

There was a marking on the wall, a tiny crack in the surface of the wood. It was too dark to see what it was. I fetched a candle and peered more closely.

A tapestry for the draft, I thought. Where there is a draft, there must be an opening. My hand followed the crack all the way around, a square the size of a small man or woman, bending. A door. It was covered all around its margins with tiny carven marks, Ogham signs like the one my Uncle Finbar wore around his neck on an amulet. But Eamonn's ancestor was surely no druid.