Twice Upon A Time (The Celtic Legends Series) (7 page)

“A man earns his pride—”

“Do the men of Ulster pay their wagers, Conor? Would you have me think that the over-king of Morna is not a man of honor?”

She said it with a
twinkle in her eye and a smile lurking at the corners of her lips and he knew he was defeated. He strode to the hut and snatched the axe leaning by the woodpile, then marched out deeper into the woods. Stripping off his cloak, he took to the woodcutting with ill humor, but he chopped until the pile of logs topped the roof of her hut.

As sweat soaked the embroidered neckline of his tunic, h
e sank the axe blade into the last piece of timber. He turned to find her hovering over a pot of stirabout.

“
Another game.”

She lifted one pale brow. “I
could use someone to fix the thatching—”

“Another game.”

He dropped into the flattened grass on one side of the board.

She sighed and took the bowl of stirabout off the fire. “Och, it’s a fine thing to
have such a strong man to do my bidding.”

When the game ended,
he found himself twisting prickly hay in his hands and braiding it into ropes, with the stench of rot and moss in his nostrils as he strapped the heavy thatch upon the roof of her hut. Below, in the slanting light, she frolicked about like a calf in springtime, weaving herbs into the thatch to keep away the fleas.

Conor
cursed as the rope of thatch slipped through his hands and left a spray of splinters in his skin. Her laughter mingled with the tingling of the bells on her girdle.

He frowned down at her. “Fine spirits you’re in now, lass.”

“You’re as clumsy as a woman ten moons gone with child.” She covered her smile with her hand. “Perhaps it was a mistake setting you to the thatching. This poor work won’t even keep out the sun.”

“It will serve you right, for setting a warrior to it.”

“Oh, it’s worth the soaking my pallet will get with every rain, just to see you huffing and ruddy-faced and all twisted with fallen pride.”

He growled down at her, but at the sight of the smile gleaming behind her hand, he suddenly realized how ridiculous he must look, draped in his tricolored cloa
k, his gold torque beaded with dirt and sweat, clinging to the rotted thatch of a hut and snarling like a dog. She was right to be laughing at him so, a king brought so low by a woman’s wiles. And he got something out of it, at least. Seeing him work stole the barbs from her tongue and loosened its root, for she’d been as voluble as a child all day.

His lips stretched in a rueful smile.

“When you’re finished with this, Conor, we’ll play again, so you can get your chance at vengeance.” She clutched a handful of herbs from the pile at her feet and massaged them into another length of the thatch. “I’ve butter to churn and berries to collect and roots to dig—”

“My next gift to you will be a slave.”

“And what do I need with a slave,” she teased, “when I have you to do my work for me?”

“
I’m not such a fool to play you again.”

“
Have you no courage?” Her cloak slipped off her shoulder, exposing the pearly flesh of her collarbone. “The way of the dice surely won’t always be with me—”

“The way of
the dice had nothing to do with it.” He pulled tight the sinew with which he tied the thatch to the roof. “It was magic you used.”

“Are you
accusing me of cheating?”

His gaze slipped over her, lingering on the shape of her legs beneath the caress of her t
unic, the golden bracelets that encircled her right upper arm, the cascade of hair over her shoulders, the tilt of her firm breasts. He met her eyes and knew she felt the smolder in his gaze. “The price of my winning would have been high, lass.”

Her
cheeks blossomed with fresh color. “I’ll have no one say that Brigid of the Clan Morna has no honor—I use no magic in the playing.”

“Maybe no chants, but it was magic, of a sort. A man can hardly concentrate on war or war games, when there’s such a sight as you so near.”

“
As if it’s my fault you can’t keep your eyes to yourself.” She tossed her head, and the golden balls clattered against one another. “What would you have me do? Play with my cloak over my head?”

“I’d rather lose at
brandubh
.”

“You’ll have plenty of time to do that,” she said, as s
he bent down to clutch another handful of herbs. “If you’ll stay for another game.”

And in that moment, as she lifted her face up to his, the sun illuminated the hope lurking in her swirling green eyes.
Conor suddenly saw clearly the working of this woman’s mind. He’d been so fevered for lust that he hadn’t seen the simple truth. The lass had lived in these woods since she was barely a woman.

She was as lonely as a swan
that’d lost her mate.

The next afternoon, he strode into the clearing and surprised her bent
over a bubbling cauldron. The folds of his cloak wiggled beneath his arm. He released the gift and out shot a fox-colored creature who planted his huge wet paws on Brigid’s shins.

“One of the bitches had a litter a while ago,”
Conor explained. “This one’s just weaned. My gift to you.”

She lifted the wolfhound pup in her arms and buried her face in his fur.
Out lolled a wet pink tongue which tasted her from chin to temple. Brigid laughed, and the sound tinkled like fairy music in the clearing.

“Precious, he is.” She
ruffled his fur by the scruff. “This is the finest gift you’ve given me, Conor.”

The expression she granted him had more force than a hundred sword strokes. He wondered
at her power, that she could make a king of warriors, a king’s champion, feel as awkward and ungainly as a newborn colt.

That afternoon, as the sun shone like an ember between the leafy boughs of oaks, he rose to his feet and drew Brigid up with him, leaving the sleeping pup in a circle of trampled grass. A softness cushioned Brigid’s mouth, but an uncertainty lingered in her eyes.

“Come back with me,” he said.

“Back?”

“Aye. To the ring-fort of Morna.” He traced the curve of her cheek. “You’ve never heard the harp strings of my bard, nor his stories.”

“
There’s a fine thing,” she said, quietly, without venom, “having me, of the tribe Morna, sitting and listening to some Ulster bard rave about Connacht defeats.”

“M
y bards know also the sorrows of Deirdre, and of the trials of the sons of Tureen.”

The knowledge gave her pause. “Do they know the story of the swans? Of the children condemned
to live on the earth for hundreds of years?”

“
Aye. The Children of Lir.” He rubbed the pad of his thumb against the pulse leaping in her throat. “They tell that tale better than all the rest. Not a warrior in the whole of the mead hall is left with a dry eye.”

The light that had entered her eyes when he gave her the wolfhound pup flared bright, brighter now than he’d ever seen
. He wanted this lass by his side, sharing the champion’s portion from his dish, drinking mead from his horn, her ears filled with the strumming of gilded harps. He cupped his hand around her neck, and then slid his other hand around her waist. Her spine yielded to him

His head filled with the scent of her
, sweet honeysuckle and clean, tart rainwater. “You need only to say yes, lass, and there’ll be a place for you by my side.”

She arched her neck higher, so the bristle of his chin scraped h
er forehead. “Will you bring me back here, Conor, after the stars have risen?”

“Nay.”

He’d never bring her back to this sagging hut of warped wattle and caked daub, to live alone as an outcast. He’d wrap her in fine, brushed wool the color of jewels, lay her in pallets stuffed with gosling’s down, and have bondswomen wash and brush and plait her hair until the color rivaled the sunlight. He’d summon every bard in all of Erin to fill her head with tales, her days with laughter, just so he could gorge himself on the sound of it.

And aye, aye, he’d taste his fill of her. He’d feel her soft, open thighs against
him, feel the tight, heated wetness of her core, feel her young, firm breasts pressed between them. He’d feel her long, supple body thrashing in passion with his every stroke, and he’d coax cries from her until she grew too hoarse to cry out anymore.

A hot rush o
f blood filled his loins. “It’s long past time you laid down with me, woman.”

Her silence filled his ears. Above, a breeze tossed the leaves and exposed the fragi
le spines to the dying rays of the sun. For one, brief moment, he sensed her softening like the crumbling of a riverbank in a flood. Then she drew away, and it was as if the night wind snuffed out the last of the sunlight.

“I cannot go,
Conor.”

His hands, empty of her warmth, curled into fists. How long could a starving man
survive,teased with the scent of food, before his need broke all bonds?

“
You can go with me, if you willed it.”

“Nay
.”

“I am the over-king of Morna. No priests and no petty chieftain can stop me from bringing you in.”

“W
hat would I be, if I went with you? Not a member of the clan. Not an Ulsterwoman.” The point of her chin tilted higher. “They will think me your whore.”

“I’d kill the man who dared—”

“—to speak the truth?” The bells of her girdle chimed as she stepped out of his reach. “Though you see me as nothing but an outcast, I was born the daughter of a king. I won’t be shaming my clan, or myself, in such a way.”

He stood in the clearing with his chest heaving, his palm flexing over the hilt of his sword. He
didn’t know how to battle with wisps and mists. Give him an enemy to fight, and he’d dispatch him before sweat could bead on his brow. But this was a war with a woman as lithe as a fairy-child, and as mercurial as the winter wind. Each time he thought he held her in his arms, he found himself holding nothing but air teased with the fragrance of her—and craving the feel of her in his arms all the more.

“Go now,
Conor.” She swept up the puppy and hugged him close to her breast. “Go now and do not come back. For here’s the truth: I can never yield to you.”

“
Yes, lass, you will.”

“
I cannot.” Her lashes swept down, casting faint shadows on her cheeks. “I’ve been shameless to tease you so. It has been so long since a man has looked at me without fear in his eyes, that I dared to trifle with you when I have no right to do so.”

A roar clenched in his chest. “
Who dares to challenge my claim to you?”

“
Fate itself.” Her gaze rose to his face. “I’ve known this all along: My destiny is with another.”

Now he understood
. The lass was bound by the message of her visions. The hilt of the sword burned against his palm. His fingers clenched in anticipation.

Suddenly, he had an opponent to fight.

“You’d best practice your
fidchell
tonight.” He whirled toward the break in the woods that led to where his horse grazed. “For come tomorrow, we’ll be playing again.”

“
Don’t you understand?” She followed him through the clearing, clutching the pup to her chest. “You can never win.”

“Do you think I became the
rí ruirech
of Morna by leaving the field of battle?”

“This is no mortal foe you face.”

“If it is the gods I must battle, then so be it.” He grasped a handful of her hair and watched it shimmer through his fingers. “I’ll be here when he comes for you. One-on-one combat will determine the winner. And you will be my prize.”

The cow lowed as Brigid dragged her hand down the beast’s udder. A thin stream of milk steamed into a bowl. The cow stamped her back hooves, circled her snout in the air, and flicked her ears. Her eyes loomed white.

“Easy, now,” Brigid murmured, petting the cow’s side as she aimed the last of the
milk into the froth. “We’re nearly done.”

The wooden bowl scraped against the ground as Brigid sli
pped it from beneath the cow. Hitching the rim to her waist, she stood up with the bowl at her hip. Wind burrowed under her hair and tinkled the golden balls woven into her plaits, and then the wind gusted again, stronger, as if to set the balls pealing anew.

She smiled and struck the cow on the rump. The beast bolted down the hill.

“You’ll find sweet summer grass on the banks of the lough,” Brigid murmured, “but on a day like this, you won’t be able to shake the fairy wind from your nostrils.”

She headed up t
he winding path, the milk eddying in the bowl as if invisible fingers toyed with the foam. The breeze leached from the very womb of the earth and billowed around her knees. Mists curled up from the sod, wound about the furrowed bark of the trees, then dripped like mother’s milk to the turf. High in the oaks, the leaves rustled as if a thousand birds nested deep in the verdure.

Brigid kept her eyes to
the path while the Sight writhed within her like a caged thing. She caught snatches of acrid scents and lost them before she could find the source. Strange, unearthly images glimmered on the path before her, and then dissolved into fog. The dawn had long ceded to the brighter grays of morning, yet the
Sídh
still roamed thick. This was why she loved Lughnasa—and Beltane, Samhain, and Imbolc. On such days, the walls between the worlds thinned, the veils separating human from inhuman mingled and parted. Brigid sensed the closeness of the Otherworld like the heat of a kiln’s stones.

A finger of sunlight broke through the haze and buttered the stones of the path. The fairy wind ebbed. Brigid felt the first prickle of certainty the Sight had granted her all
morn.

Conor
would visit today. Again.

The very air she br
eathed sizzled through her and set her skin tingling. She stopped in mid-stride as a heat swelled like the tide. Conor once spoke of enchantment, and she began to believe it was true. For she now welcomed her brother’s murderer and her father’s nemesis to her home. She trembled each night with hot and cold, like a woman beset with the ague. She waited each day for the sound of his footfall on the path .. . and found herself beset with a young girl’s dreams.

She hitched her skirts over her free arm and
set her mind back to the path. It was foolish to want what couldn’t be. It was dangerous to tease destiny, for her fate still lay with the fairy-lover of her dreams. Even if Conor somehow bent fate to his bidding and won her as his prize, it was folly to yearn for what he offered her. Though she was highborn, no Ulster over-king would take an outcast to wife, a woman with one cow to her name, when beautiful daughters of rich men preened and pranced for him in Morna. Aye, Conor wanted her—desire raged like a flooded river in his eyes—but she feared it was the piquancy of the chase that lured him here each day. She was another tribe to conquer, another herd of cattle to steal, a woman promised to a formidable opponent, and thus a woman wanted all the more.

For despite all his bold threats
to battle her lover from the
Sídh
, Conor had offered her nothing more than a warm place in his bed.

Och, but the
spirit of Niall forgive her, she wanted Conor here. How he filled the clearing! His laughter shook the very trees. He crossed wits with her with the same bright, teasing ease which he would cross swords with a foster-brother. She felt like a flower closed against the world—and Conor was the sun, coaxing her to open up, tempting her to show her face to his warmth. Even as she struggled and fought, she felt herself bursting into full bloom.

A flash of red fur bolted from around the hut, tumbled down the slick path, and wrapped itself around her legs with a low, frightened moan. The trembling wolfhound pup lifted liquid eyes to her face.

“Hush, precious.” Brigid dipped down to trail her fingers through his coat. “It’s nothing but the whispers of the Otherworld. They mean no harm to you.”

The pup trotted around her ankles as she poured half the milk into the butter churn standing behind her hut, and half of what remained into a wide-necked bladder she had tucked into her girdle of bells. She tilted the bowl to her lips and let the froth slide down her throat. The pup yipped piteously, until Brigid
laid the wooden bowl on the ground and let the wolfhound lap up what remained.

“The light of
morning becomes you, lass.”

For a moment Brigid wondered if he were just another specter conjured by her unruly Sight, but then the boughs parted and bathed him in a bolt of light. His
dark hair glistened with moisture, as if it was newly washed, and the ends twined against the twisted rope of gold encircling his neck. Garnets flashed from his fist-sized brooch, and from the pounded gold girdle cinching his tunic at the waist. His scarlet cloak flapped against his calves with the force of the breeze.

She bent over to pick up the bladder of milk so that her hair would slide forward and veil from him her
blush. “You’re brave to be walking about on Lughnasa morning.” She hugged the milk-warmed skin to her midriff. “Did you not fear you’d lose the path and wander into the Otherworld?”

“Perhaps I have.” His treacherously handsome smile widened, as he slid his gaze down the length of her body. “No fairy-queen could weave a stronger enchantment than who I see before me.”

“You’ve the mists in your eyes.” She flipped several gold-tipped plaits over her shoulder, trying in vain to stanch a swift rush of pleasure. “You’ll whistle another air, Conor, once I’ve set you to your task.” She gestured to an axe whose blade was buried in one of the logs of the woodpile. “You’ll need that today.”

“More woodcutting then.”

“Aye.”

“That proves your magic, to have a king rising at the crow of the cock to do a slave’s work at a maiden’s bidding.”

“It was you who demanded another game yesterday eve.”

“
Aye, and I’ll demand another again.” His shadow fell upon her with all the power of a Druid’s hand. “Fate will be upon us both soon enough. It’s only a matter of time before the dice turn my way.”

“Don’t be holding your breath
. I won’t have you passing out at my feet for lack of air.”

She
brushed past him into the hut, wondering how he could treat the inevitable battle with such levity, when it would undoubtedly mean his death. She understood little of the way of warriors, and the day was too fine and bright to dwell on that which she couldn’t change. Better to continue on as they had these past days, pretending that nothing had changed, that fate, in the end, would somehow turn a kind face.

She tugged a flagon half-f with
mead from its hook on the wall and replaced it with the bladder of milk. She tossed the mead in a basket of woven rowan bark, added the
fidchell
board, and then dribbled in hazelnuts and yew berries and a loaf of barley bread. Conor’s shadow darkened the doorway.

“Are you mad, woman?”
Conor hefted the ball of fur. The puppy licked his froth-flecked muzzle and lolled out his tongue. “You’re feeding milk to the spawn of the most ferocious wolfhound in Erin?”

“The pup wanted it.
” The air thickened with Conor’s presence within the small confines of the hut. “I’ll not deny him.”

“I brought the pup to defend you, and you raise him on cream and honey.”

“It’s only you I need defending from, and he licks your boots as if you’re his sire.”

“There are other dangers in
these woods.”

“Aye.”
  She hurried by him into the open clearing. “I’ve avoided them well enough these seven years.” She eyed the axe and then glanced at the pup in his arms. “Will you be cutting wood with the wolfhound, then?”

“Not much good he’ll be at that, or anything els
e, until you start cutting his teeth on raw meat.” He set the pup on the grass and then jerked the blade out of the wood. “Feed a wild creature milk and he’ll grow as tame as a lamb.”

“Then perhaps you should have a sip.” She headed towards the forest highe
r on the hill. “Of the two of you, it’s you who more needs the taming.”

His
yelp of laughter echoed through the clearing. The sound buffeted away the mists. Suddenly the sunlight poured down around them like amber rain, and Brigid wondered why it always seemed that Conor carried the daylight upon his shoulders.

“You’ll be hoping in vain, lass.”
He settled the axe handle on his shoulder and fell into pace beside her. The pup yipped and leapt around their feet. “It’s been one-and-thirty summers since I suckled from a breast for milk.”

The innuendo r
obbed her of breath. “If you have one-and-thirty summers, then I’m the Morrígan.”

He swept down in
mock obeisance. “Then Hail, O raven-queen of war.”

She tried not to grin.

“Do you think a man could rise to a kingship without seeing ten or fifteen years of battle?”

She squinted at his skin, stretched across his wide-boned face. No lines fanned out at the corners of his startling
silver eyes. No gray salted his rich auburn locks. Yet she had been hearing about Conor of the O’Neill since she was a little girl. How like Cú Chulainn, that legendary Ulster warrior who once battled against Connacht. Though the warrior of yore had lived barely thirty summers, he had never grown a beard.

Cold fingers slithered up the back
of her neck. It was said that Cú Chulainn had been the son of Lúgh of the Long Arm, a god and one of the
Sídh
.

“You’re not the first to think me too young to hold a crown, but I’ve battle scars enough to prove my mettle.” He petted the hilt of his bronze-sheathed sword.
“And the iron to prove my words.”

“The years have barely touched your face.”

A gleam lit his eye. “Aye, and there’s no less life a-burning in me for the wear of time, either.”

“It explains
why you keep coming back here. There’s no bringing to heel an old and grizzled hound.”

“Haven’t you yoked me well enough
? You’ve got me doing your bidding as easily as a Briton slave.”

“It’s
your honor that sets you on my path so early. I beat you in
brandubh
yesterday at sunset, and you’ve yet to pay the price.”

“Aye.”

“You see? You can put reins on a horse, but that doesn’t mean you can ride him.”

“If you’ll be wanting a ride, lass
—”

“And there you go again
. All the milk from all the cows on all of Erin couldn’t tame you.”

“You don’t want a man who can be tamed.
We both know that.”

Their gazes met
and her bones softened like beeswax left in the midsummer sun. He had no right to stare through her with those clear gray eyes. Ruthless, he was, to seek her out and seduce her, when a thousand women would go willingly to his pallet, when he knew she was destined for another, when he knew that her heart yearned for more than just the merging of their hungry bodies. Could he not see how she lived on the edges of the world? Could he not see how strongly she ached for a place she could belong—a place she could call home?

Could he not see the danger?

He said, moments later, “If it’s wood you want, lass, we’ve passed enough good oak for that.”

She sho
ok her head. “It’s a special wood I seek. You’ve a pyre to build on the top of this hill.”

“A Lughnasa fire?”

“Aye.”

“There’s no need of
that. My own Druids are lighting fires near the ring-fort.”

“
That won’t do any good.” She hitched up her tunic as the path steepened. “Your men will go, I’m sure, but my people are too full of fear to dare.”

“Then they won’t
come here.”

“
They come every year. They may be Christian now, but their Celts’ blood still hears the call of the fires.”

She stopped and peered around
the bristling young tree trunks until she found what she sought. “There.” She dropped the basket upon the moss. “That yew and oak, the ones twined with woodbine. That’s the sign of the gods’ blessing. Those trees must be sacrificed for the fires.”

Conor
’s mood had darkened. He wrestled off his mantle and then tossed his brooch atop it. “Let’s be done with it, then.”

The yew and the oak had trunks no thicker than the span of a man’s hands. With five or six strokes of the axe, the oak creaked, snapped, and thudded to the forest floor. She sensed
anger in the stiff line of Conor’s shoulders as he whirled around to the yew, and there was a fierceness in his swing, but she held her tongue. It was disrespectful to speak at the cutting. When the yew crashed to the earth, golden light flooded down from the hole left in the canopy.