The Greener Shore (21 page)

She appeared to me one more time. Briga as an old woman. A crown of silver hair; a tiny body that had folded in upon itself. Yet the same bluebell eyes. Nothing could dim the spirit that looked out through them. It was the same spirit I had recognized so long ago, and loved from the first moment. But the love I had felt then was nothing compared to the love I felt now. The tracks of time had inscribed her face with a beauty so great it shook me to the core.

Youth is the bud; age is the blossom.

I reached out toward my Briga. She was life itself.

And she spun away, away.

“Bring her back!” I screamed.

The final darkness closed over me.

chapter
XII

L
IKE BIRTH, DYING IS NOT A SIMPLE PROCESS—EVEN WHEN IT
appears instantaneous. The newborn encounter a bewildering array of fleshly experiences as they enter this life. The newdead have to traverse the mysterious landscape that separates Thisworld from the Other.

Frequent adjustments need to be made along the way.

Influenced by the arcane East, the Order of the Wise had been as concerned with afterlife as with living. Our sacrificers had conducted rites of passage to ease the young into life and the old out of it.

The druids of Hibernia had developed along different lines. No sacrificer was available to guide me to the gates of the Otherworld and see me safely through.

If I had no choice but to die alone, I was determined to do it well.

Meanwhile, my insatiable curiosity explored the condition of dying. There was a sensation of lightness, a promise of weightlessness that was very tempting. At least death would have its compensations. When I entered the Otherworld I would throw off the leaden bonds of flesh. With them would go not only pain, but volition. I could drift wherever the Pattern took me.

My spirit would be free.

Still partially anchored to my body, I yearned outward. Almost immediately I was met by a sound that was not music but greater than music, a harmonic emanating from the Source of All Being. The darkness took on texture and formed itself into a spiral, the most sacred configuration in the cosmos, the dance of the sun and the stars. I was carried on the surface of the spiral like a leaf on a whirlpool. Darkness above and below and around me. One deep note ringing through me. Ecstasy!

Movement ceased; I floated. The darkness turned crimson. The experience was strangely familiar. Was it something I once dreamed? Or something I remembered?

I must not let myself be afraid. Rix was never afraid.

Rix. Briga. Ainvar.

Think, head!

Three is the number of fate.

With a sickening swoop I dropped toward a lake of light. Toward, not into. Beings swam upward from the light. They moved; I moved. Yet in opposite directions. We did not communicate with one another.

They passed me and were gone.

The light was no longer below me but ahead of me, glimpsed through the thinnest of membranes. The light was warm and soft, pulsing in rhythm with that singular continuous note. If I could reach it my fractured self would be whole again.

While I struggled forward the light melted into a shimmer of rainbow colors. Surely the great gates lay just ahead. One bold stride would carry me through.

I was confused. Was Briga on the other side? Or was she still in the place I was about to leave?

As a druid I had been taught that each life contains one test to pass, one task to complete, and one lesson to learn. Which was this?

Think, I commanded my head.

I had last seen Briga as an old woman. She must be waiting for me in the Otherworld by now. One bold stride and…

A furious female voice—not Briga’s—shouted from somewhere behind me, “This is your fault, Ainvar! I could kill you!”

You can’t kill me, I thought smugly, if I am already dead.

I gathered myself, relieved that the moment had finally come. Now all the mysteries would be solved and all the questions answered.

Yet something was holding me back. Invisible hands clutched me and pulled me. How dare they! I fought as hard as I could, but to no avail. If this was my test, I was failing. Despair was added to my agony.

The pain was a ferocious beast that gnawed and tore at my vitals. I would not be allowed to escape. Grimly, I set myself to endure the worst that living had to offer. At the final extremity there is nothing else to be done. Perhaps this itself was the test.

Drawing on the strength my spirit had accrued in a hundred forgotten lifetimes, I waged my solitary battle.

A voice that sounded like Briga’s murmured in my ear.

The pain flared in a final burst of excruciating agony. Then it faded.

I was alone in a vast silence.

The Two-Faced One. The three faces of Briga. Three, not two, is the number of fate.

“Briga?” I whispered. And opened my eyes.

She was sitting beside me.

For a moment I could see all three Brigas, the young, the mature, and the old. Then they melted into one and there she was, the living breathing woman.

“I’m here, Ainvar,” she said.

My face felt as if I was smiling at her. I hope I was. But before we could speak, my eyes closed of their own accord and I fell into sleep. An easy, healing sleep, as warm as Briga’s arms around me.

When I awoke again I realized that the wheel of the seasons had turned. I had fallen ill during a golden autumn. Now a cold, blue light filtered in through the open doorway, heralding the onset of winter.

Briga bent over me, tucking blankets around my shoulders. “How do you feel, Ainvar?”

“Better.” My voice was weak and my chest was still sore, but there was no pain.

Had I left it behind at the gates? I tried to remember the gates but they were fading from my memory. The entire experience was vanishing like a pattern etched in the sand, then deliberately rubbed out.

Rubbed out by whom?

My senior wife’s voice interrupted my musings. “You have visitors,” she said. “They wouldn’t wait any longer, they want to see for themselves that you’re getting well.”

Looking past Briga, I saw that the lodge was crowded with people. All three of my wives and most of our children were there, together with Sulis, Keryth, Grannus, Teyrnon, and Damona, the Goban Saor. Everyone I loved.

Except…“Where’s Cormiac?”

“You should be asking ‘Where’s Labraid?’” cried an angry voice. Brushing past Briga, Onuava bent over me. Her face was crimson, her breasts were heaving with emotion.

Briga said, “Not now, Onuava, Ainvar’s not strong enough yet. I said you could see him only if you behaved yourself.”

“Would that make any difference tomorrow or the next day? Labraid will still be lost to me.” Onuava’s voice skittered on the brink of the condition the Greeks called “hysteria.” “I’ve been robbed of a king’s son!” she shouted at Briga. “You couldn’t possibly understand what that meant to me! I’m no one now, not even the wife of a chief druid because that wretched Ainvar isn’t the chief druid anymore.”

The Goban Saor caught my third wife by the elbows. It took all his considerable strength to turn the big woman around and march her out the door. Over her shoulder she screamed, “You shouldn’t have done what you did, Briga! This is Ainvar’s fault. You should have let him die!”

As the Goban Saor led her away, her cries increased in volume until they were diminished by distance.

“I’m sorry about that,” Briga said to me.

“Obviously something’s very wrong. What’s this about Labraid and where’s Cormiac Ru?”

Lakutu tugged at the sleeve of Briga’s gown. “We do not know the worst,” she said, “but Ainvar will imagine the worst unless you tell him.”

“You must, Briga,” Sulis chimed in. “He won’t be able to rest otherwise.”

Keryth added, “None of it is your fault, Ainvar. You have to believe that.” Her words were enough to make me feel guilty even before I heard the whole story.

Briga gave me a wooden cup containing cool water, then sat down beside me. “Drink this slowly, Ainvar. It will do you good.”

Keeping my eyes on her face, I sipped obediently.

“After you collapsed,” she said, “I could not wake you up again. I tried everything I knew but it was no use.”

“Briga sent for me, of course,” Sulis interjected. “Yet even I could not restore you. We finally decided it would be best just to let you sleep and hope the illness would wear itself out.”

Briga said, “Lakutu and Onuava took turns sitting with you, but I was here all the time.”

“I knew,” I told her.

“We women were not strong enough to tend you by ourselves, so I asked Cormiac Ru to help us lift you and keep you clean.”

“I’m surprised he was willing, under the circumstances.”

“Oh, Ainvar, you know how he is. He was angry because you made me cry, but when he realized how ill you were he was very upset. Like me, he never left your side—until the day you cried out, ‘Bring her back!’ Cormiac thought you were calling for Maia. He convinced himself that seeing her again would save you, so he’s gone for her.”

“He
what
?”

“He went to bring Maia back, and Labraid went with him.”

I could not take this in. “Labraid? He’s just a child.”

“He’s facing into his fifteenth winter, when he must be counted a man—as he reminded his mother when she shouted at him and tried to stop him. But no one ever stops Labraid from anything he wants to do, you know that. I’m only surprised Cormiac was willing to take him along.”

chapter
XIII

I
WAS NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO WORRY ABOUT THE TWO OF THEM
simultaneously. My spinning thoughts concentrated on the Red Wolf. “Cormiac can’t be gone, Briga! It’s not possible.” He had become a fixture of our lives, as certain as the sun. Whatever else might happen to us Cormiac was always there.

“Well, he is. Look around.” Jumping to her feet, my senior wife circled the lodge, pretending to seek the Red Wolf in one ridiculous place after another. “Is he in the hen’s box? He is not. Is he hanging from the cloak peg? He is not.” My Briga could be playful, it was one of her most endearing qualities. She might almost have been playing a joke on me. But when she turned back to me and reiterated, “He’s gone, I tell you,” there was no mistaking the pain in her voice.

“This makes no sense, Briga. Cormiac would never leave you, not for anything.”

Her shoulders slumped. “That’s where you’re wrong, Ainvar. No one is ours to keep forever. Not in this life.”

I spent long days and nights lying on my bed while Briga fussed over me and made me drink vile-tasting potions. When I held my hand in front of my face, the skin was so thin as to be translucent. If I turned over on my side my bony knees pressed painfully against each other. But at least I was alive.

We could not be so sure about the Red Wolf and Labraid Loingseach.

They had set out together with their swords in their belts and their faces resolutely turned toward the east. Briga had done her best to dissuade them but it was no use. I was not surprised; when the Red Wolf made a decision he never turned back. But the problems were insurmountable. To begin with, how and where would they acquire a boat? The Plain of Broad Spears was well inland; Maia, wherever she might be, was on the other side of the sea.

Recalling that vast expanse of turbulent water made my stomach churn.

Labraid’s arrogance was such that he might truly believe he could challenge the sea and win. Cormiac Ru had a wiser head, but he was impelled by his heart. By the time I knew they were gone, they probably both had drowned.

To grieve is to surrender to death. I knew death was not final, but still the loss of the Red Wolf was heart-wrenching. Briga felt the same, though she kept her pain to herself and put on a hopeful smile for my sake.