Seer of Sevenwaters (45 page)

I turned away again and walked back toward the men.
Oh, Ciarán,
I thought,
I need your wisdom now. But I am glad you are not here to see me come to this.
And it seemed to me his voice murmured in my ear, wise and calm as always:
In all experience, there is something to be learned. In deepest sorrow, wisdom is found. In the well of despair, hope rises.

Men slept, rolled in anything they could find that was tolerably dry. The rock shelf made a hard bed, but these warriors were used to taking their rest where and when it was offered, and they were bone weary. Those who were to form the rescue party were ordered to rest first, Cathal and me included. He lay down and closed his eyes, his dark cloak spread over him. Perhaps sleeping; more likely not. I knew I would not sleep.

Four men stood guard around us, three of them facing the bay with spears in hand. Gareth paced. I found I could not look at him. I saw the logic in what Cathal had told me, but I could not accept it. This was Gareth, Johnny’s beloved, a man who always put others’ needs before his own. A joker; an arbiter; a peacemaker. The captain who had ordered his crew not to save a comrade’s life was worlds away from the man I knew. A familiar friend had, in an instant, become a stranger.

“Sibeal,” Gareth said now, speaking in an undertone so as not to disturb the sleepers, “if you’re going with Cathal, you must lie down and rest.”

I ignored him, moving to sit a short distance away from the others. Further down on the rocks, Svala still crouched. She was humming a mournful little tune, over and over. I settled cross-legged, my hands palm upwards on my knees. I closed my eyes. Gareth said nothing more.

I needed all my strength to achieve a meditative trance. My body was tight with grief; sorrow was in every part of me. It beat in my heart and ran in my veins. In my mind, over and over, Felix dived off the boat, graceful as a swallow, and vanished under the water. I called upon my training. I called upon the discipline that had been so hard-won. I breathed. I banished my tears. I thought of Ciarán’s wise eyes, his measured voice, his reassuring presence. And of Finbar, long gone but still present in spirit, a power for good. After a long time, when at last I was ready, I prayed.
Help me be strong enough. Help me survive this.
And then the hard part.
Lead them kindly on their journey, guardian of the great gateway. They were fine men, the two of them. Gull, warrior and healer, beloved of his family, a friend of utmost loyalty, a lamp of goodness to all who knew him. And Felix . . .
Breathe, breathe
. . . And Felix, so strong in heart, so gentle yet so brave . . . Morrigan, I pass him over to you. But oh, if his hand were still in mine I would fight to keep him, I would fight like a she-wolf to win him another chance. Manannán, you took him too soon. Surely it was not his time.
Despite my best efforts, a tear spilled.

It had been so long since the gods had granted me answers that I was shocked when a voice spoke in my mind, a voice as powerful as a thundering waterfall and as quiet as a sleeping child.
Would you challenge the gods, Sibeal?

Why would it be the gods’ will that Felix should die before he completed his quest?
If it were possible for the mind’s speech to be brittle with fury, mine surely was.
The runes said he could do it! They spoke of a mission fulfilled! If I had known, I’d never have encouraged him to undertake the voyage, never!

The mission can still be fulfilled.

I was supposed to go on and rescue the survivors without Felix. Well, I was doing that. As soon as the rest period was over, we’d be setting off.

He was never for you
, said the voice.
You are promised to the service of the gods, Sibeal. Your destiny is a higher one than his could ever be. You know this.

I let the words sink inside me, reminding me of what I had long known to be true. This knowledge had guided my steps since I was a small child. Was this the gods’ answer to the question,
why
? Why was he taken from me? Because he did not fit into the picture. Because he was a complication.

“Oh, no,” I breathed. “No! That’s wrong! It’s more wrong than I can say! To sacrifice him so you can secure my loyalty . . . I will not stand for that!” Ciarán would have been appalled; to address the gods thus was akin to putting one’s neck on a chopping block. I did not care. “If this is what being a druid requires, then I renounce that life! I am not yet sworn to it.” I was shivering, shocked, held halfway between the calm of the trance and furious recognition of a betrayal that set my deepest convictions on their heads.

Did not you once promise you would do anything, anything at all, if he could survive?

“But he didn’t survive,” I muttered aloud. “He wasn’t even allowed to live for long enough to find his friends and make good his promise to his brother. Don’t toy with me—this is cruel.”

Wait, Sibeal.
The voice was calm and grave. Beyond being offended by my disrespect; beyond caring about something as trivial as human love.
Only wait.

“Sibeal? Are you all right?”

My eyes sprang open at the sound of a real voice. Cathal had come over to sit a short distance away. His dark eyes were full of concern.

Still caught in the trance, I could not answer. I shook my head, then closed my eyes and fought to recapture the pattern of my breathing. I must quiet the storm of feelings that had no place in a meditative mind. I must let it go. I must let him go. I must . . .

“I can’t,” I said, opening my eyes again. “I can’t accept this. Cathal, we should go now. Now, right away.” I tried to get to my feet, but my head reeled and I sank back down again. “Danu preserve me,” I muttered. “I’m as weak as a newborn lamb.”

“Did you eat?”

“I wasn’t hungry.” While the men had downed their hard bread and dried meat I had sat apart. It had occurred to me that I might never want to eat again.

Cathal went off then, while I continued to stare out over the water. I had never challenged the gods before. I had never refused their counsel. I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down into a vast empty space that was my future.

“Here.” Cathal was back, bearing a cup of water, a smallish lump of the rock-hard bread, a piece of cheese. “It may be a long climb. It will surely be taxing and dangerous. Even the most spiritual of folk can’t undertake such a challenge on an empty stomach. Come on, Sibeal. I’ll break it into mouthfuls for you.”

His kindness disarmed me, and I found myself accepting each small piece as he passed it over, and managing to chew and swallow.

“You must be missing Clodagh,” I said quietly.

A curt nod. After a moment he said, “More than I can possibly tell you.”

“You don’t say, ‘more than you could understand,’ as Clodagh might. She was quick to challenge me when I told her the life of the spirit was higher and better than the life of the flesh, marriage and children, family and home hearth.”

Cathal dipped a piece of bread into the water and passed it to me. “Today, I know you can understand,” he said. “I’m sorry, Sibeal. We’re all sorry, even if we don’t speak of it. On a mission there’s no time to grieve. We lay our fallen to rest with what respect we can manage, then we put our feelings away inside and get on with what must be done. When we return home, our wives and mothers do their best to pick up the pieces.”

“They can’t be laid to rest,” I said, my throat choked with tears. “They’re out there somewhere, floating with the weeds and the fish, eyes open on nothing, just like most of
Freyja
’s crew.”

“And I wonder,” Cathal said, “whose hand is behind it?”

I swallowed the last mouthful of bread, then took a sip of water. I did feel slightly better. “The gods told me to wait,” I said. “For what, I don’t know. But I can’t wait. It’s like that day when I was drawn to the little cove to find Felix. And the day when I was too late to save Rodan from falling to his death. I feel a pull, a need to go. How long before the men are sufficiently rested?”

“You were sitting there a considerable while. We can leave soon, I think.” His gaze had moved to the shore, where the party that had gone along the water’s edge could be seen returning, spears in hand. If they had found drowned men, they were not bringing them back. “He’ll rest those fellows next. We must leave soon or we risk being caught up among the crags after nightfall.” He glanced skyward. “We’re far north. At this time of year we won’t have true dark, but the place is full of pitfalls. We’d be fools to climb in the half-light. And if we find these fellows, we may have to carry them back.”

“Cathal,” I said.

“Mm?”

“Thank you.”

“Any time. I’ll have a word with Gareth, see if we can move things along.” He hesitated. “Felix was a fine man, Sibeal. Some time, you’ll want your moment to scream and shout and cry your rage to the sky. It’s hard to hold it all in. Even if you’re a druid, I suppose.”

“I thought I could. I thought I could deal with anything.”

“Nobody’s as strong as that,” he said.

And then we were walking, climbing, edging our way across precipitous slopes, traversing cracks that opened on subterranean shadow, scrambling up small mountains of broken boulders. Following instinct; my instinct. Nobody knew where to go. Felix had stayed on
Freyja
for his whole visit to the serpent isle, tending to a sick man. Knut had been on the shore, close to the point where they’d beached the vessel; he had seen only the general direction in which Paul’s party had first headed, and that was the path we took now.

I’d intended to try once more with Svala, in the hope that she might tell us where to search. But the look on her face had warned me not to come close. She was angry, frustrated, poised on the verge of some violent action, I was sure of it. I need not touch her to feel it. Her urgency was twin to mine, but without a better understanding I could not help her.

We were a party of eight. If there were indeed three survivors, as Cathal’s vision had indicated, and if none was fit enough to return on foot, we would leave some men there and come back for help. Gareth had not been prepared to send more than eight, and I understood his reasons. The group that stayed behind must keep watch not only over
Liadan
but also over the unpredictable Svala and the white-faced, shivering, tethered Knut.

Besides, the monster was still out there in the waters of the bay. From time to time it rose just enough to reveal a glint of brilliant scales, the curve of its back, the claws of one great forelimb before it sank again beneath the water. Waiting. Svala and the creature were both waiting. Now that I had challenged the gods, now that I had, more or less, told them I was disappointed in them, perhaps I would never again have the ability to read Svala’s thoughts. Perhaps I would never find out what she had lost and so desperately wanted back. What might she do if she believed I had failed her? Beneath my sorrow, my shock, my need to get the mission done, fear lay like a cold hard stone.

The pace was fast, even when adjusted to accommodate my shorter legs. Cathal led the party. Sigurd was the only other among our number whom I knew at all well. Nobody wasted time on talk. The men advanced, grim-faced, getting on with the job that had to be done. All were armed. I had seen Svala looking at the axes and cudgels and knives. Her eyes had narrowed as the other party came back along the shore with spears in hand, spears that would have been used against the serpent had it struck. It seemed to me fighting a creature of such size would be entirely futile. Still, I understood why they would try. In that moment at
Liadan
’s rail, I would have leapt in to save Felix, even though I knew I was not strong enough to rescue him, or even to survive the attempt. Sometimes the only choice was to fight.

Time passed.
Liadan
and her crew had long ago dropped out of our sight, and we were moving along a ridge high above the bay. At a certain point Cathal called a halt and ordered us to rest our legs. A water skin was passed around, and I drank gratefully of its brackish contents. Sigurd and Cathal were talking together, scanning the island all around, looking for possible paths through terrain that seemed devoid of any softness, for it was all rock and scree, with not a scrap of green.

“Sibeal?” Cathal lifted his brows. “There’s no sign of a path. Whatever we decide, the going will be at snail’s pace, and the day is passing. What do your instincts tell you?”

I stood up to get a good look around. My instincts were pulling me in the least likely direction, toward a set of tower-like pinnacles surmounting a vertiginous rock stack to the west. On this unlikely castle roosted many birds. The air above it was alive with wheeling shapes. From where we stood we could not see the stack’s base, only its jagged crown.

“There,” I said.

“You’re joking.” Sigurd looked at the place, looked at me again. “You’re serious.”

“It’s a fair distance,” Cathal observed. “Are you sure, Sibeal? I’d judge we’ve barely time to get there and back before it’s too dark. Wouldn’t it make more sense to continue in this direction, following the natural curve of the bay?”