The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One (66 page)

‘Oh, I am sorry,’ Rhiann gasped, holding the other’s arms for balance, trying to remember her name. She found she did not know it, for the girl was not memorable; small and brown and timid. Yet Rhiann was immediately arrested by the look that flashed over the Orcades queen’s face before the mask of civility came down. It struck Rhiann in her breast, like a physical blow: hatred, almost violent hatred, with a searing undercurrent of pain.

Rhiann suddenly remembered that she had seen that same look on this girl’s face at the feast. She dismissed it then, but now … Rhiann struggled to find something to say, but Maelchon’s queen squirmed free, all dignity forgotten, and slipped away.

‘Wait!’ Rhiann hurried after her. She could not imagine why this girl would hate her, but she must pursue an answer. Eremon said that her husband was very powerful, and such undercurrents and their source could affect the prospects of an alliance.

When she reached the corner of the granary, the girl had disappeared among the twisting pathways, rapidly turning to mire under spattering rain. Rhiann paused there, the water trickling down her cheeks, her mind racing. She must speak to her. Eremon would agree that at this time, all such occurrences should be explored. There was too much at stake.

The next day she tried to find the girl again, but it proved harder than she had supposed. ‘Where may I find your queen?’ Rhiann asked the maidservant in the Orcades lodge.

‘We heard there is a sacred spring in the hills over the river, lady. I think she is there, with the healing waters.’

Rhiann walked away, thoughtful. Well, the men would stay in council all day. She may as well pay a visit to the shrine herself, and perhaps meet the lady in question on the way.

Didius was still sunk in misery, and would not respond to her jests with even a hint of a smile, so she and Caitlin went alone. The leaf-bud rains had swelled the river, and the yellow water plucked at their horse’s legs as they crossed the ford. Deep in the woods on the other side, Rhiann couldn’t see far ahead, but she could feel the voice of the spring calling to her; a tugging of the Source from within the earth.

When the call grew stronger, Rhiann pulled Liath up in a grove of ash trees and slipped to the ground. ‘I would like to go on alone,’ she said to Caitlin, drawing a pouch from her saddle-pack. If Maelchon’s wife was there, she might not speak before anyone else.

‘With all these rough men about, Rhiann, that may not be safe,’ Caitlin replied, frowning.

‘It is just up that little glen, there, see? I won’t be long.’ Rhiann could not resist teasing her. ‘I will scream loudly if anything happens.’

Caitlin rolled her eyes, and slid to the ground. ‘If you are doing anything Otherworldly, cousin, then I’ll keep my distance. But I’ll watch with an arrow on the string, nevertheless!’

On a blanket of moss and slick, brown leaves, Rhiann walked as the Sisters trained her to do, eyes closed, completely silent, while the soles of her feet sensed the path. The stream from the spring leaped among the rocks beside her, but a deeper note rang behind its joyous chatter.
Come, sister
, it seemed to say.
I welcome you
!

As the glen narrowed and steepened, she opened her eyes, and there the pool lay, formed in a bowl of rock, fringed by trees that fluttered with scraps of offering cloths. But she was not alone – and nor was Maelchon’s queen.

The girl stood, her slight frame enveloped in the arms of her guard, her head on his chest. She was weeping, her thin shoulders shaking, and as Rhiann watched, the man stroked her hair tenderly and murmured in her ear.

Just at that moment he saw Rhiann, and stiffened, and the girl, feeling the movement, raised her head. Rhiann had seen that pinched face transfigured by hatred; now terror leaped into it. ‘You!’ she gasped.

Rhiann instinctively raised her hand as if warding off a blow. ‘I am sorry. I did not know that anyone was here …’

But the girl rushed to Rhiann’s side and fastened on to her arm, her face streaked with tears. In the light of the open clearing, Rhiann realized she was no more than fourteen years old.

‘Do not tell him what you have seen! Oh, please do not tell him!’ she cried.

‘Your husband? Why would I tell him anything?’

Yet the wild fear did not leave the Queen’s face, and Rhiann was struck with pity. She touched her fingers where they gripped her dress. ‘I said I will not tell him,’ she repeated.

Some of the tautness left the girl then, and she stepped away from Rhiann, wrapping her arms around her thin body, her tears overflowing once more.

Rhiann felt helpless in the face of such pain. ‘What has happened?’ she asked, holding out her hand. ‘How can I help you? What can I do?’

‘Nothing!’ The girl cowered. ‘You have already done so much! No one can help me, except Rawden here, and only when we can steal away. When
he
is away.’

Rhiann recognized the fear and loathing in her voice, and tried another tack. ‘What is your name, lady?’

The girl sniffed, catching her breath. ‘Dala.’

‘I am Rhiann.’

‘I know who you are.’ The words were sharp.

‘Why do you hate me so?’ Rhiann asked, not knowing what else to say. ‘I have never met you, but believe me, I will do anything I can to help.’

‘If you don’t speak, she may tell
him
about us,’ the guard broke in, his voice sullen.

Dala buried her face in her hands. ‘Your hair really is the colour he described.’ Her voice was muffled. ‘And your face. So beautiful, he has said, over and over again. Not like me …’

Rhiann shook her head. Had they confused her with someone else? ‘But I have not met the King!’

‘Yes, you have!’ Dala raised her face. ‘He saw you on the Sacred Isle, when he was looking for a wife, three years ago. He asked your family there for your hand, and was refused outright. It tortures him still!’

Rhiann frowned. Many people came to Kell’s broch on the island. Vaguely, she remembered a stranger from the far north who stayed with her foster-father for some days. The man had ridden past her as she walked with Talen and Marda in the hills, but as she was living with the Sisters by then, she never took a meal with him, and did not note his name or features. He left abruptly, she did remember that. And that Kell spoke harshly of him after he had gone. But no one ever told her he had wanted her, or that he had been refused.

Dear Goddess! But how could this matter to anyone so many years later? And why was Dala so torn? It could not be jealousy, for she hated the man, obviously.

‘Yes, yes, you refused him,’ the girl babbled on. ‘And so in the end he took me instead!’ She burst into a fresh bout of sobbing.

This girl has been driven mad
, Rhiann thought. She could feel the fragile sanity of her, like an eggshell around a storm of pain.

When the wild sobs had quietened, Rhiann touched Dala’s shoulder. ‘You must trust me. I do not understand what I have done to you, for I was young, and was never even presented to your husband. But … he hurts you?’

‘In every way you can imagine.’ Dala’s voice was despairing. ‘In your refusal, you condemned me to a life of terrible pain, but it does not end there! Even now the image of you inflames him, and he … he … uses me so terribly, imagining it is you.’ She clenched her hands, her nails digging into her palms.

Sickness rose sharp on Rhiann’s tongue. ‘By law your husband cannot treat you like this. Where is your family, your clan?’

Dala shook her head mutely, tears falling on the tarnished brooch that fastened her cloak. ‘I am of the Caereni. My father is dead. And the rest of them … they are too afraid of my husband to protest. They were well rewarded for giving me to him.’

‘Then why does no one in the Orcades help you?’ Now Rhiann’s voice shook with anger. The girl looked up at the fierce tone. ‘What about the druids, Dala? The council? The priestesses? His nobles? Someone must stand up to him; a king cannot rule this way!’

‘He does,’ the girl whispered. ‘He controls everyone. He banished all the druids and priestesses except one, Kelturan, though he is now dead. The nobles have been driven out or killed, one by one. He rules alone, with only his warband to support his violence. And they are trained to loyalty when young; he has built their strength over many years.’

Rhiann squeezed Dala’s shoulder, and released her, drawing herself up. ‘It was well that we met, for I will let no woman be treated this way, especially not when I am the unknowing cause of your pain.’

A flash of hope lit through the distrust on the girl’s face.

‘I am the Ban Cré of the Epidii, and I will do all I can to help you. From this day you are under my protection. Yet I ask you one thing only. You must stay with him and act as if nothing has happened until the end of the council. It is only a day or two more. Then … trust me.’

Dala, her cheeks hot and streaked with drying tears, looked at Rhiann for a long time. ‘I don’t know why, but I do trust you,’ she said at last. ‘I hated you for so long, because you caused my pain. But perhaps you will save me, too. Perhaps this is the way it should be.’

Rhiann smiled. ‘You are wise beyond your years. It is balance, a sign that the hand of the Mother is in this.’ She gestured to the dark pool of water. ‘And we were drawn together by Her spring, do you see? Let us now make our offerings, and then you should return. Wait for me to act.’

Rhiann sought out Eremon as soon as she returned, for he was in their
lodge, shaving in a bronze basin. She quickly told him what had happened.

‘That is a strange story,’ he offered, laying down his knife and splashing the stubble from his face.

Then he stood up, flicking water over her, and she frowned and handed him a linen towel. ‘It is a terrible story.’ She was still angry.

‘This Maelchon has stayed silent so far, but Calgacus said he is very powerful.’ Eremon’s voice was muffled as he rubbed his hair with the towel. ‘He holds territory on the north coast as well, I hear.’

‘I know he is powerful,’ Rhiann snapped. ‘But I am not leaving that child to be tortured by him!’

Eremon began to rub down his bare arms and chest, and Rhiann flushed and fixed her eyes on the door hanging. It was embroidered with a golden eagle in full flight.

‘Rhiann, I agree the story is sad, and the part about you … very disturbing. The sooner we are away from here, the better. But Maelchon would make a formidable ally. And the prospects of an alliance with the other kings, based on what I’m hearing, are not good.’

‘I knew you would say that!’ Rhiann was furious. ‘It does not matter that he rapes her and hurts her, and kills people! He has power, and that is all that matters, is that it?’

‘No, that is not it.’ He looked more closely at Rhiann. ‘I’m just saying not to overreact. He is obviously not a good man … he is a disturbed man. But he may still prove a valuable ally. You will not endanger that, will you?’

Rhiann put her chin up. ‘What he does to her is wrong, by our laws. In my position I have a responsibility to do something about that. But I will wait until the end of the council.’

Eremon’s brows drew together, but she held his gaze defiantly. At last he sighed, throwing down the towel to take up a fresh tunic. ‘Then that is the best I can ask.’

At the feast in the camp that night, Rhiann shrugged deeper into her cloak, her eyes on two men wrestling in the firelight. All around her people were laughing, calling out encouragement or abuse, lamenting their betting losses. The smell of roast boar and burning peat were close in the air, and she found herself drifting to the edge of the crowd, to where the dark woods hovered, dampness creeping from their skirts.

And when she felt the pressure of eyes on her back, she knew what she would find when she turned. She could ignore Maelchon, but she was far too angry for that. He bullied everyone around him, yet she would not be cowed.

So she did wheel around, raising her eyes to his, her shoulders straight. The aura about him now was like a roiling thundercloud. She
glared, unafraid, and suddenly he smiled, raising his mead-cup to her. His teeth glinted.

By his side stood Dala. She glanced at Rhiann, shivered and lowered her eyes, then followed her husband as he disappeared into the crowd.

Chapter 66

T
he deliberations continued for another day, but it was clear that the kings had fallen into two factions. The smaller, consisting of Calgacus, the Taexali and Vacomagi kings, and Eremon himself, continued to push for co-operation.

The arguments went back and forth for hours, and just when a few of the chieftains were at last wavering, unsure, the King of the Orcades finally lumbered to his feet.

Eremon had watched him at both feasts, and seen his black head close in with the most vociferous opponents of the alliance, including the Creones King, he who had told Eremon to keep his nose out of their business.

‘I have listened carefully.’ Maelchon stroked his beard, his hand on his sword. ‘And it is plain that the danger to us in the north is slight. The danger from the
Romans
, that is.’ He paused, looking around at his northern neighbours. ‘Far more dangerous are the ambitions of those southerners who seek to rule over the rest of us.’