The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) (77 page)

Diorbhail’s words stopped him cold.

“— still think that about me and Master Curran?”

“No,” Morrigan said. There was silence. Then, “I never thought it. I was out of sorts. But it
was
you in the water. It
was
Curran. It was.”

“Aye,” Diorbhail said. “I’ve seen her too, that woman… and that man. They may have been us… once. But long ago.”

“Still… it was hard to see. To know he loved you. Don’t deny it. I have eyes in my head. He loved you. Eleanor’s not here to tell me I’m being daft. It may not make sense, but it feels real.”

“Believe me.” Diorbhail’s voice was so low Curran had to step closer to the window to hear her. “I would
never
… nor would he. He’s never taken the mushroom. He has no memories… like we do.”

“Why not, though? We remembered things before we used the mushroom. Why doesn’t he, if he was there with us in other lives?”

“It could be that bits and snatches come to him, like they have for you, and me, and Eleanor. The mushroom is what hones it. Maybe he does see things, but he can make no sense of them. Maybe he hasn’t told anyone.”

“He did tell me something, once. On our wedding night.”

“What?”

“It was a dream he said he had. Something about a child, and a choice he made.” After a moment, she added, “Eleanor isn’t sure what we’ve had are memories, mind. She said they could be nothing, fantasies created by the spirit in the mushroom.”

Curran heard Diorbhail make a growling sound. “She wearies me with her arguments and doubts. She knows the truth as well as well as we do, but like a man, she refuses to accept.”

“I want to take it again. I want to see
more.
”

“I took some from her when she wasn’t looking. I brought it. I’ll give it to you, but we’ll need to be away from everyone else, including Master Curran, for a whole day. What excuse can we give?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”

* * * *

Diorbhail opened the bothy door. She and Morrigan stepped inside, both taking a moment to let their eyes adjust to the dimness.

“That was nice.” Morrigan kept her voice low, for Olivia was asleep in her arms. “Sitting in the sun, out of the wind. But it made me sleepy.”

“Why not lie down?” Diorbhail looked around the bothy’s interior. Something was wrong.

“I think I will.” Morrigan lay on the narrow bed she shared with Curran, tucking Olivia next to her, and yawned.

Diorbhail covered her with the blanket. “I’m going for a walk,” she said. Morrigan nodded and closed her eyes.

As Diorbhail straightened, she smelled a trace of Curran’s shaving soap. She stood in the center of the bothy, examining every corner, her instincts alert.

He was not there. But he had been. Her gaze rested on the small leather valise Morrigan had given her. It was not where she had left it. She sighed as she crossed to it.

The drawstring bag holding the dried mushrooms was gone.

* * * *

Jasper leaped up at Diorbhail’s appearance. He took her elbow as though she were a grand lady, and led her into the lighthouse. “Aye, Mr. Ramsay said he wanted to explore our tunnels again. He went down oh, about an hour ago. Would you like me to search him out for you?”

“Tunnels? What tunnels?”

“Did he not tell you? I took him down to see them earlier today.” At the shake of her head, he continued. “Underground passages. Ancient things. There was a fortress here long ago, and we suspect they were secret ways in and out.”

Diorbhail hesitated. “Would you allow me to go down alone? I need to speak to Mr. Ramsay about a personal matter.”

He looked disappointed, but obediently showed her the trapdoor and assisted her down the steps. “Take care,” he said as she started off. “The ground is quite uneven. If you don’t return by the time the tide rises, I’m coming for you, no arguments.”

“Thank you,” she said, lifting the lantern and turning away.

* * * *

Diorbhail had known there was something different about this place since she was a child. If she had to name it, she would say the veil between worlds was thin here, like a cloud, obscuring yet easily torn. There were legends about the air, about how pure it was. When she stood on the cliffs and looked into the sea mist, she could almost see the other lives she’d lived, without any aid whatsoever. Voices and names floated to her on the wind; she felt them seep into her bones.
Rhalanise. Inis Tearmann
.

How had she never heard of these tunnels? Donald had always been close-mouthed. She remembered him from before; he’d once showed her how to bake bread; but when she got pregnant she’d stopped coming over to the Cape. She was too ashamed, and fearful his quiet kindness would turn into something else, like it had with all the others.

She stood at the point where the three tunnels converged, trying to decide which direction to try first.

Curran would be unprepared for what the mushroom could do. In this magical place, it would be far more potent. It might rip the veil and open long-buried trenches into the past.

She found him in the sea cavern, sitting near the edge, too close for her comfort. His legs were drawn up to his chest, his arms wrapped round them. His shoulders were slumped in a stance so strikingly vulnerable it made her feel as though her heart was being shredded. He wasn’t looking out to the water but had his forehead pressed against his knees. Though the light was dim, she saw him trembling.

Diorbhail waited until she had some semblance of control over her emotions then she set the lantern on the shingle and approached.

Lifting his face from his knees, he glanced at her without surprise then stared at the rolling sea. He was weeping. She knelt beside him.

“I’ve seen the stoning,” he said. His voice was breathless, his pupils enlarged, as Morrigan’s had been when she’d used the mushroom. “Like I was there.”

In his hands was a bone with a dark claw at one end. It was a seal bone, a toe from a front flipper. Diorbhail had seen many, growing up.

“Did you take it all, Master Curran?” she asked, gripping his forearm.

He smiled, yet tears continued to build and spill down his cheeks. “Aye.”

She was frightened. There had been enough mushroom in the bag for three people.

He blinked repeatedly. He grinned then frowned, and his hands restlessly turned the bone, over and over.

“Why couldn’t I stop them?” He faced Diorbhail, his expression achingly puzzled. “I fought the Saxons. They were fearsome warriors, but I was never defeated. I was Arcturus’s friend, his champion. But when it mattered most, I failed.”

The tears in his eyes made them intensely blue, like no blue Diorbhail had ever seen. They were familiar. Beloved. She swayed towards him.

“Selene,” he whispered.

Next thing she knew, he’d grabbed her and was kissing her, the desperate kisses of a long lost lover.

“I left you,” he was saying. She could hardly hear him through her own need. “I left you, and… our baby. Oh, Selene.”

Vaguely she realized he was on top of her, drawing up her skirts.

“No… no,” she said weakly. “I promised.”

“I’ve missed you. I need you. Selene.”

Diorbhail remembered lying with the boy in her village. She’d known it was wrong, that he wasn’t the one for her. As clearly as she had known that then, she knew Curran was the right one.

Morrigan’s husband.

She felt herself rising to his caresses, losing all sense but immediate, overwhelming eagerness. His mouth was everywhere, on her neck, over her breast.
Selene
, he said. She knew the name was hers, long ago, somewhere, in some other place and time. Curran, in thrall to the mushroom, must be seeing that place. Diorbhail was torn between wanting to know what he was seeing and simply wanting to join with him, to cast aside questions and problems.

Help me,
she thought, not knowing who she cried out to, only knowing she could not do what was necessary on her own.

A new sound invaded their delirious breathing— a shrieking, demanding, imperative call. It pulled her back to the cave. To her vows.

She put her hands against Curran’s collarbones. He didn’t respond immediately. She had to shove him hard before his eyes opened and he blinked again, almost as though he didn’t quite recognize her. He propped his hands on either side of her, pushing himself up.

There was movement off to the side, but it was not the lighthouse keeper. It was an owl, a wee, wee thing, skittering and fluffing its wings, crying insistently as if to say
Do not ignore me!

Curran stared at it as well. His breathing was labored; he blinked and squinted as though he couldn’t focus. He faced her again. His gaze roamed over her. He frowned and rolled off.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not myself.” He rubbed his eyes.

She wanted to weep. “Thank you,” she said to the little owl. It stopped its mad pacing and tilted its head. Then it flew away.

She sat beside Curran, not touching him as the hours passed and he traveled in and out of vision, speaking then falling into long silences. “Rosabel,” he said once, then a moment later, “Rosabel, stop asking me.” He wept as though his heart was breaking, and she felt hers break too.

The tide crept higher, splashing just below the lip of the cave, but Curran showed no sign yet of returning to his unaffected self.

“Is she his lover?” he asked. “Aodhàn’s? Has she… has she given herself to him?”

“No, Master Curran,” Diorbhail said with conviction. “Morrigan is yours. She is faithful to you.”

She wasn’t completely certain of this, but surely she would know. There was something between Morrigan and Aodhàn, and it was disturbing, but… no. It hadn’t gone that far.

Not yet.

He slumped and didn’t move or speak for so long she began to doze, sedated by the continuous murmur of the sea. She jerked into wakefulness when he said, after a long silence, “What seems the end is only the beginning.”

She clasped his forearm; deep shudders ran through him. How she wished he hadn’t taken the mushroom without talking to her. She could have given him a little, just enough to help him remember, not to crash over him like an avalanche.

“The mark… of the bull’s horns. Velchanos. The god’s mark. Wherever she sends me, I will wait… I will wait for you, Aridela.” He breathed in ragged gulps of air.

“Master Ramsay?” She spoke low to keep from startling him. “Curran?” It made her feel strange, trembly and daring, to use his given name.

He faced her but his stare held no recognition. “Where are you?” After a moment, his eyes squeezed closed. “What have I done?”

“Come back,” Diorbhail said urgently. “You’re in Scotland. Can you hear the sea? Everything is fine… you’ve a bonny wife and daughter. Be at ease, my love.” She stroked his hair. After a moment, he rested his cheek on her shoulder and held her, and seemed to find peace.

A half hour later, he woke at last. He was embarrassed and shocked to be holding her in such an inappropriate manner.

“I… I don’t remember coming here,” he said, his gaze veering away. He blushed endearingly.

Oh, how she loved him. Severing it was like slicing off her hand.

Neither of them must ever suspect.

* * * *

The next day, Curran asked Morrigan to walk with him on the cliffs. He held her hand and asked, “Are you better?”

“Aye,” she said. “I don’t know what it is about this place. It’s affected me in ways I cannot explain. I am sorry, Curran. You’ve married a madwoman. My brother used to say I was cursed by the color of my hair. I’ve always felt strange and wrong, with my dreams, the way I faint. My head seems to separate from my neck and float away. Everything echoes, then I wake up and time is gone.”

He’d asked Eleanor not to tell Morrigan about the condition she suspected was causing the swoons, headaches, and dizziness. She’d called it “concussion.” Curran wanted to think about it first and how it might affect her.

So he said, “Strange? Aye, indeed, if you mean rare or extraordinary.”

She smiled. “You always know what to say.” But unlike other times, when she’d sounded almost annoyed by that, now she sounded grateful.

They walked on as the sun burnished the water to crimson tips broken up with deep black troughs.

“Diorbhail says my dreams are memories of other lives I’ve lived,” she said. Her gaze was anxious. “She says I’m coming close to the end, and that’s why I’m having more of them; that’s why they’re becoming stronger.”

Curran breathed in deeply. The secrets were building into a precarious, leaning tower. Yet he said nothing. He hadn’t had time yet to try to make sense of all that had happened to him the day before. He put his arm around her and said, “Maybe we should go.”

“Well.” Her smile brought out the dimple in her left cheek. “It’s your turn. Where to?”

He thought awhile. Since they’d left Kilgarry their lives had been rough and dirty, their food garnished with sand. They’d been hounded by mayflies, and spiders were too often discovered in their bedding. Real bathing had been impossible. Plus there had been a great deal of rumination. He was ready for a complete change of scene.

He grinned. “You’re going to need a ball gown.”

Inside, as she returned his smile and demanded to be told what that meant, he thought,
I will follow you, my Morrigan, wherever you want to wander
.

CHAPTER THREE

“YOU ARE TO
blame and you know it.” Seaghan’s feet were squarely planted, fists on hips. His face bore a dull red tinge and his lower jaw protruded. “Curran is not the fool you think him.”

Aodhàn sighed and stared out the open door. The old tic beneath his eye, that flaw he carried into every life, fluttered annoyingly. “I know,” he said. But it didn’t matter if he defended himself or agreed: Seaghan wasn’t listening.

There was fear beneath the anger in his friend’s stance. Glenelg’s previous laird had destroyed the entire township on a whim. Could a provoked Curran Ramsay do the same? Curran, the man with no enemies? Who would have thought he could strike— or nearly strike— his young wife? The gossip wasn’t clear on that point. He’d packed up his family and carried them off to an unknown destination. There had been no word since until today, a letter in Morrigan’s hand, briefly informing Beatrice and the others where they had been, and that they were now on their way to London.
We don’t know when we’ll return,
it said. Fionna had shared the letter with Seaghan, and Seaghan had told Aodhàn the gist of it, right before blaming him for the entire mess.