Son of the Shadows (48 page)

but she had little to do. Before my son had passed the span of one moon in this world, he had heard the tale of

Bran the Voyager in its entirety. How much of it he understood, there was no way of telling.

Mother now spent most of the day lying on her bed or on a pallet set out in the sheltered garden where she could rest when the weather was fine and smell the scent of healing herbs. She liked to have little

Johnny tucked in beside her so that she could stroke his soft curls and listen to the small noises he made and whisper stories to him. My father hovered, a grim-faced presence, watching over her night and day.

Liam sent for Sean, who had traveled north on unspecified business.

Conor came first, with a number of his kind, white robed and silent, treading soft as forest creatures.

They settled quietly into the household as if for a lengthy stay. Conor went straight to see my mother, spending some time by her bedside in private. Then he came to see me and to inspect the child.

"I hear," he observed, watching me as I bathed my son in a shallow copper bowl, "the women came close to warfare over which of them would assist at this birth. There has been much talk of this child.

They were all eager to help him into the world."

"Really?" I said, gathering up the slippery form of my son and wrapping him in a cloth I had hung to warm before the fire.

"Too much talk, you think?" My uncle's eyes were more serious than his tone.

"Their tales serve to explain what they cannot, or will not, understand," I said, laying the neatly cocooned

Johnny against my shoulder. "Truths that are too hard to accept."

"That is so of some tales," Conor agreed. "But not all, surely."

"Indeed no. It is as you yourself said once: The greatest tales, well told, awaken the fears and longings of the listeners. Each man hears a different story. Each is touched by it according to his inner self. The words go to the ear, but the true message travels straight to the spirit."

My uncle gave a grave nod. Then he said casually, "Why did you give your son a name for a Briton?"

I was weary of lying. Father would probably tell him that part anyway. Surely there would be no reason to make a connection.

"He is named for his father," I said, stroking my son's damp curls and hoping Conor would leave before I

had to feed the child.

"I see." He was apparently unperturbed.

"With respect," I replied, "even an archdruid does not see everything. But that is his name."

"What plans have you for the future, Liadan?"

"Plans?"

"You intend to grow old here, looking after your father and Liam in their advancing years? You wish to take her place?"

I looked at him. There was a deep gravity about his calm features; the conversation had layers of meaning I barely understood.

"Nobody could take her place," I said quietly. "We all know that."

"But you would come close," Conor replied. "Folk would respect you for it. Already they revere the child, and you have always been a favored daughter of this house."

"Favored. Yes, I know. You were very cruel to Niamh when you sent her away. Cruel and unfair."

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"Our decision must have seemed thus to you," said Conor, still calm, but believe me, there was no other choice. Some secrets can never be spo ken; some truths are too terrible to be revealed.

Now she is gone, and you wish to lay blame, perhaps, for her tragic fate. But her marriage was not the cause of that;

and it is not enough, I think, simply to accuse your father, or Liam, or myself. There were far older things at work here."

I was furious, but could not answer him, bound as I was by promises of silence. It became very hard to maintain the shield on my thoughts. And he was trying to read me, there was no doubt of that. Subtle as his probing was, I could feel it.

"Excuse me," I said, turning my back. "I must feed the child. Perhaps I will see you later at supper, Uncle."

"He can wait a little longer, I think. He seems more interested in his fist right now. You're a strong girl, Liadan. You guard your mind with great skill. Very few can withstand me."

"I've been practicing."

"Difficult, isn't it, to contain so many secrets? I have a suggestion for you, something to think about."

I said nothing.

"Your abilities are quite—significant. Already you have an advanced mental control and an excellent grasp of logic and argument. Then there are your other gifts, which you have barely begun to exercise.

Wait until the boy is a little older, weaned from the breast perhaps, able to walk, A year maybe.

Then come to join us in the nemetons and bring him with you. We could use and develop your skills. You will be wasted in the domestic scene, able as you are. And Johnny—who knows what he might become, with the right training? What they say about him could be no more than the truth."

I turned to face him, gazing straight into his deep, wise eyes.

"You made Niamh's choice for her, and it was wrong, more wrong than you will ever know.

Perhaps you seek to replace Ciaran, an apt pupil. A great loss to you, I imagine. But you will not order my future as you did my sister's. Johnny and I make our own choices. We need no guidance."

He seemed unoffended, despite my blunt speech, as if this were exactly what he had expected.

"Do not make up your mind so quickly," he said. "The offer remains open. The child should stay in the forest. Whatever you decide, do not forget that."

A. few days later, another uncle arrived, in a style all his own. Despite the talking bird on his shoulder, and the three seamen who accompanied him, and the comely young woman by his side, Padriac still managed to make his way right to the edge of the settlement without Liam's sentries detecting his presence. Liam was quite put out, but the joy of reunion after so long soon wiped away any other feelings. Padriac's weathered skin and twinkling blue eyes, his dimpled smile and long plait of sun-bleached, brown hair drew the women's eyes, for all his six and thirty years. His female companion made brows rise and tongues wag, for she was much his junior, and her skin was the delicate golden brown of peppermint tea, and her black hair was fuzzy as sheep's wool and braided in neat, tight rows.

She wore colored glass beads, white and green and red, and her dark feet were bare under a striped robe. Padriac introduced her as Samara, but he did not clarify if she was his wife or his sweetheart or merely his shipmate. Samara did not talk. She flashed her white teeth in a grin that reminded me painfully of Gull's. For still, even now, there had been no word. My sister had indeed vanished, and her rescuers with her, as surely as if they had walked off the edge of the world.

There was only one person I thought might help me, and that was the uncle who was not there. I
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did not know if he would come, not even to bid his sister a last farewell. Finbar was a creature of the margins, poised delicately between one world and the other. In all the long years since he had walked away from

Sevenwaters into the night, not once had he come back. Not for the funeral rites of his two brothers, Diarmid and Cormack, both slain in the last great battle for the Islands. Not for my birth and Sean's, not for Niamh's. Not for the day his father died and Liam became lord of Sevenwaters. Probably he would not come now, for he could see Sorcha, and talk to her, with no need to be present by her. Such was his bond with his sister. But I wished that he would come, for I had many questions for him. If I could just know if Niamh and Bran were safe; then I might bid my mother farewell with a lighter burden on my conscience. For if my lies had not won freedom for my sister, if my silence had not protected the man who had risked his life to help me, then I might as well have told my family the truth all along and let that be an end of it.

The house was full, and yet there was a profound quiet over Sevenwaters, as if even the woodland creatures hushed their voices, awaiting my mother's passing. At dinner, things were a little livelier. We were a strange, ill-assorted company, the druids calm and dignified, speaking quietly and eating sparingly;

the seamen demonstrating a healthy capacity for our good food and, particularly, our fine ale, and keeping up a flow of banter that made the serving women blush and giggle at their work.

At the head of the table sat the uncles: Liam, serious as ever, with a weariness about his features that was something new; Conor on his right, thoughtful in his white robe; and on the left, the irrepressible Padriac and his lovely, silent companion. Padriac did most of the talking; he had many adventures to recount, and we listened appreciatively, for his stories of distant lands and the strange folk who dwelt in them took our minds off the sadness that had fallen over our household. Sean had not yet returned.

Father no longer sat with us for meals. I think he feared to lose even a moment of Mother's remaining time. As for Sorcha herself, she had accepted long ago that this spring would be her last in this life. But I

could see that she was not at ease; there was one burden that she was unable to put down. I wrestled with myself in silence, sitting by her bedside one afternoon with her delicate hand in mine and my father standing in the shadows watching her.

"Red." Her voice was very soft; she was saving what strength she had, using her healer's knowledge to buy her a little more precious time.

"I'm here, Jenny."

"It won't be very long now." Her words were little more than a sigh. "Are they all here?"

My father was unable to speak.

"Sean is not yet returned, Mother." My own voice wobbled dangerously. "All of your brothers are here, all but. . ."

"All but Finbar? He will come. Sean must be home by dusk tomorrow. Tell him, Liadan."

There was a certainty in her words that silenced me. There was no point in saying, you may have longer than that. She knew. My father came to kneel by the bed, to place his big hand over hers. I had never seen him weep, but now there were traces of tears on his strong face.

"Dear heart," Sorcha said, looking up at him, her green eyes huge in her tiny, shadowed face. "It is not forever. I will still be here, somewhere in the forest. And whatever my bodily form may be, I will always hold you close."

I made to get up and leave them alone, but Mother said, "Not yet, Liadan. I must speak to you both together. It won't take long."

She was very tired; her skin had a pallid sheen, and her breathing was labored. Neither of us bid her save her breath and rest. None of the family ever told Sorcha what to do.

"There have been secrets," she said, closing her eyes briefly. "The old magic is at work here, the
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old sorcery that closed its evil hand on us once before. It tries to divide us, to destroy what has been so well guarded here at Sevenwaters. Perhaps not all secrets can be told. But I want to say to you, Daughter, that whatever happens, we trust you. You will always choose your own path, and to some your choices

.will seem wrong. But I know you will follow the way of the old truths wherever you go. I see this in you and in Sean. I have faith in you, Liadan." She looked up at Father again. "We both have faith in you."

Iubdan waited a moment before he spoke, and I wondered if, for the first time in her life, she had read

him wrong. But what he said was, "Your mother's right, sweetheart. Why else have I let you make your own choices all along?"

"Now go, Liadan," Mother whispered. "Try to speak to your brother. He should hasten home."

I went down across the fields to the margin of the forest, for the house was full of sorrow and I needed trees and open air. I wanted a clear head and an uncluttered mind, not only to try to reach my brother, but to make a difficult decision. Sorcha was dying. She deserved the truth. If I told her, I must tell my father as well. They had said they trusted my choices, but surely even they would recoil in horror at the thing I had done this time. If Father went to Liam with my story, then any good my lies had done would be instantly for nothing. If she still lived, my sister might be tracked down and brought home. Perhaps they would try to return her to her well-respected husband. Then the whole truth would come out, and the alliance would be shattered. As for the Painted Man, Eamonn would hunt him down and exterminate him like some feral creature in the night; and without him his men would go back to the dispossessed, fugitive lives they had known before he gave them names and a purpose and the gift of self-respect. My son would never know his father, save in tales as some kind of monster. Then our family would indeed be destroyed.

The prospect chilled my blood. And there were the Fair Folk. You must not risk the alliance, the lady had told me. One could not lightly disregard such a warning. But my mother deserved the truth, and in her own way she had asked me for it. The question was not so much did they trust me, as did I

trust them? Bran had dis

II

I

missed trust once as a concept without meaning. But if you could not trust, you were indeed alone, for neither friendship nor partnership, neither family nor alliance could exist without it.

Without trust, we were scattered far and wide, at the mercy of the four winds with nothing to cling to.

At the edge of the forest, I sat down on the stone wall that bordered the outermost grazing field and made my mind still. This was difficult, for my thoughts were filled with urgency.

I need a sign, a due.

Why isn't Finbar here'? Him I could ask without fear

.

I slowed my breathing, and let the small sounds of the forest and farm fill my mind. The rustle of spring leaves on beech and birch; the calling of birds; the creak of the mill wheel and the gentle splashing of the stream. The plaintive voices of sheep. A boy addressing his flock of geese: Get up there, stubborn creatures, or I'll give you what for; the gander's honking response. The sound of the lake water lapping the shore; the sigh of wind in the great oaks. Whispering voices high overhead that seemed to say, Sorcha, Sorcha. Oh, little sister