The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy (62 page)

Minna’s other hand closed the circle to cup his face, pierced by the horror in his eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she whispered, for that is what came to her. ‘It doesn’t matter any more.’

And the Source was there in her, a warmth pouring through her hands and heart, taking all her own hurts and grief and guilt with it.
It does not matter.
The light spoke with its own power, streaming through Minna as her soul simply stood aside, bowing to the Lady in surrender.
All can come before the Goddess, their Mother, and lay down their hurts and be healed. Lay them down now, my child, and be free.

Minna knew Cian could not hear the words, but this was an ancient love that came through her, an old power from the time before speech, and so it flowed directly into his soul.

He gulped back a cry, as if he were being strangled, and suddenly he sank on his knees before Minna in the wet grass and flung his arms about her waist. His sobs were dry and hoarse, pulled up from his bowels.

Shaken by his grief, Minna clasped arms about his head and held it to her belly and chest. She turned her cheek on his crown, staring into the heart of the red sun as it rose now through the trees, and her tears for him ran into his hair.

Then the sun blurred into flame, and in its heart Minna saw visions.

It wasn’t like with the soldier, when the voices of the Sisters whispered what to say. Now, she simply knew, as if she had always known, that love and surrender to the greater good, the sharing of burdens for others, opens the spirit-eye. And a heart who has so given, and so surrenders, can flower into grace and thereby see the greater vision.

Something poor Brónach had not understood.

So Minna saw a small boy, and by his side a graceful mother holding his hand, as a father and three brothers rode off to war, their spears held proudly. And the hills behind were Alban. At the head of the army rode a Dalriadan king, and a young prince beside him with dark hair.
Cahir
, Minna cried. War-horns pealed over the warriors’ heads, for the father and brothers were being called to battle on the old king’s behalf.

Then the picture fractured and there were only vague snatches: a warband of Picts clashing with Dalriadans in a valley, a terrible slaughter, more lurid for having been imagined by the boy, where the loch waters ran red. Then the cold light of actual memory as the father and brothers were burned on one pyre together, their shields placed over the rents in their flesh, as the old king watched with no emotion on his face but regret. And in the heart of the boy, rage was kindled, stoked by grief.

Minna saw the mother and the small boy walking away from their home, then, its burning roof dwindling behind them, swallowed by the hills. A confused sense came of time passing, and finally she glimpsed the mother, the life leached out of her body by pain until her face was only a skull covered with skin. So the cold winter took her.
Mamaí
, the boy whispered over her, brokenly.
Mamaí.

‘You are Dalriadan.’ Minna spoke into Cian’s thick hair.

He stiffened, his heart struggling as his thoughts darted about inside her like sparks.
He tried to hate them all, Dalriada and Picts … his father died for the wealth of one, at the hand of the other. But no matter how many he kills it does not get better, only worse … and now he can’t … he can’t do it any more … He had run out of killing.

She closed her eyes, and pressed her lips to his brow. ‘Peace,’ she whispered. ‘You don’t have to.’

He went entirely still. ‘No?’ His voice was muffled in her clothes.

‘No. But speak of those you have slain, and there you will find absolution.’ She rested her chin on his head, as if bracing them both for what would come.

And so in that new dawn, with the sun shafting golden through the mist, Cian surrendered up to Minna every black deed and every blow, and every man maimed and killed. Though it had only lasted a few moons, it still amounted to a tangled hill of bodies.

It was daylight by the time he finished, and then there were no more tears to shed.

Chapter 58

B
reath rattling. Fever streaming. Pain lancing across his chest.

Cahir felt the litter of branches beneath him, his hand curled into claws among the hacked leaves. Voices floated about him.

‘We should stay here and care for him as best we can.’

‘But the Picts could come back.’

‘Yes, yes, they might. We must get him north,
now
. The druids are not far away.’

‘But I don’t think he can be moved. Look at him!’

‘I don’t care … we have to. Hurry!’

The burning came again, and the ceaseless heaving of Cahir’s belly so that nothing but bile leaked weakly from the side of his mouth. And how fast his heart pounded, like the hooves of a wild horse, a mad stallion. He gulped at the air, his breathing shallow and swift.

The black night wheeled around him and torches flamed above his head, as the litter lurched along a rough track. A tracery of tree branches was lifted against the lightening sky.

‘… get him north …’ the murmurs came.

North. Home. Alba
.

In silence Cian took Minna over a high plateau and then down defiles so narrow she could put a hand on each side; then through hidden groves of ash and birch, dappled with sunlight.

Though Cian did not speak, her own pains had faded now to dull aches, the scratches, bruises and cuts soothed by the light that had filled her body. Her skin felt as if it glowed, and she looked down at her hands in the shadows of the trees and wondered.

They stopped at the edge of a spur of forest that flowed from the moorland plateau, reaching up a long vale to the Wall. At the head of the vale, Minna could see a faint blur of smoke over the dark line of stone. He hadn’t even asked her if she wanted to return to Alba. He seemed to know.

When Cian slid from the horse, he lifted a face that was not ashamed of his weeping, as she had feared. ‘We do not have long. They might come after us in the daylight, but you are close enough here to reach the Wall safely, and the Albans hold that still.’

There were depths in his gaze that had not been there before; now tears had come, and release, she saw a wisdom being forged by pain. Always finely modelled, his features were no longer fey and insubstantial, but settled, harder somehow. The lines by his mouth and brow and sorrowed eyes showed his beauty as she had never seen it before. He was a man now, not a boy.

‘Minna, I must know why. Why you were here. Why … this …’ His hand sketched helplessly in the air. He had felt the change in himself, the light of grace, and must be wondering what had wrought it.

Slowly, she slipped to the ground and sat down on a fallen log in a shaft of sun. Yes, she owed him that telling and, most of all, why she would not escape from Dunadd with him.

By the time she finished, Cian was squatting in the bracken at her feet, his hands cupped around his nose, his eyes closed. ‘Gods.’ He shook his head, as if trying to decide what question to ask first. ‘You are telling me you were born in Alba before.’

‘Yes.’

He looked out over the woods, spangled with dew. ‘The many-born,’ he said under his breath. ‘So you are Dalriadan.’

‘As are you,’ she returned softly.

He acknowledged that with only a bleak smile, gesturing out towards the Wall, where the air still smelled of smoke. ‘But
you
brought all this about? You?’

A fleeting guilt came, but the Mother’s grace still filled her and she was able to touch it and let it go. ‘Not only me, not really. Cahir felt the pressure to heed his ancestors, but he’d lost his way. And then I was sent the visions to bring him back … to make him remember She heard the passion creeping into her voice and trailed away, her face burning.

He turned to stare at her, and her chin went up a little, unconsciously. She hadn’t told him all of her story with Cahir, because … well, she wasn’t sure why it was so hard. ‘You see, Cahir and I had to do this together. To be one; to help Alba break free of Rome.’

Cian’s brows rose. You may well have accomplished that, at least,’ he said, with a spark of grim humour. ‘The northern forces are in disarray, the Dux dead, the Wall taken. The fine Roman army is left scurrying about the hills like starving rabbits.’ He dropped his chin, and when he spoke again his voice was low. ‘So … do you love him, then?’

‘Yes,’ she said simply, her gaze resting on the top of his black head. ‘He asked me to be his
lennan
.’

Cian blew out his breath, then glanced up, his blue eyes very bright. ‘Well, well. When first I saw you in Eboracum, who would have thought that one day you’d be a Dalriadan queen, and me a poor sod in the Roman army?’

‘Queen?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Near enough.’ Unexpectedly, he reached out and hesitantly touched her cheek. Then she knew he had changed for ever. ‘And does he love you in return?’ he asked softly.

‘Yes,’ she breathed.

He absorbed that. ‘Then I’m glad you found what you wanted, Tiger.’

‘As can you.’ She grasped his hand. ‘Come home with me.’

He pulled back. ‘No.’

‘They are your people – they are good people. They will understand; Cahir will, if I explain.’

Slowly Cian uncurled to his full height. ‘That boy is dead, Tiger: I turned my back on Dalriada long ago. There’s no going back for me, not after what I’ve done … the Alban blood I’ve shed.’ He rubbed his palms unconsciously on his thighs. ‘Once you’ve given up anything soft inside you to kill a man, you can’t find it again.’

‘That’s not true!’ She leaped up. ‘Cahir isn’t like that – he is a warrior, but he is gentle, and he can love.’

He regarded her bleakly. ‘Then that’s why he deserves you.’

Speechless, Minna could only turn when he took her arm and pulled her around, pointing. ‘Hurry now. If you take Brand with you you’ll get to the Wall swiftly enough.’

‘Take your horse? But you need him.’

He shrugged. ‘I will have to go south now, perhaps to one of the walled towns, or over to Gaul.’ He patted the horse intently. ‘Some bastard will only spear him, like they did Ruarc’s black, or kill me to get him. He’ll be safer with you.’ He left a last stroke on the pony’s neck.

‘I can’t do that. I can’t leave you all alone.’

‘Gods, you’re stubborn!’ He pulled her to him in frustration, and now it was him holding her head, his hands buried in her hair. ‘Take the damned horse – let him get fat on good Alban grass.’

Tears sprang to Minna’s eyes, as an unexpected emptiness opened inside her. ‘I cannot bear never to see you again, to think you might be dead.’

He freed a hand and tilted her chin. You have a life to lead, Tiger. I don’t have any part in that, I can’t.’

‘Why not?’ she cried angrily. There had been too much loss. ‘Why not start again and come home?’

Cian silenced all her questions by bowing his head and taking her mouth in a brutal kiss, hard with need and frustration. She was so dumbfounded she did not pull away, until he straightened, his eyes a brilliant blue. ‘That’s why,’ he said huskily, and gave her a little push. ‘Now go.’ There was a plea in his gaze. ‘And let me go, too.’

She was rooted to the spot, her face aflame. ‘I can only go if you accept you always have a home with us; that you have a place to lay your hurts down if you need it. If I thought you had no one … if I thought of your loneliness …’ Her voice cracked.

He stared into her, then shook his head. ‘Through many cold nights, I wondered why I couldn’t forget your eyes. Now I know it’s because you see right inside, and you accept people, as no one did you.’

‘Then why did you not confide in me?’ she whispered.

His brow creased in pain. ‘My blindness lost me that chance.’ Suddenly, he bent for her foot to lever her to the horse’s back. ‘Hurry now.’

She gazed down, torn by her need to get to Cahir, and her grief for Cian. Still she could not make her legs move until in the end Cian lifted her up at the waist, touched her lips with his fingers and gave the pony a slap on the rump.

Desperately clinging to the saddle as the little horse jogged down the slope, Minna was spared the pain of another look back.

After four terrible days, Cahir’s mysterious sickness was finally abating.

He could barely sit up now to hold his side and croak out orders, but though it burned like fire, he had to. He had an army to lead. The gods needed him yet.

His stricken men had brought him to a deserted fort just south of the Wall. There the scattered Dalriadan army soon reformed in strength, its campfires starring the meadows outside.

For the first two nights a druid had dosed him with foul-tasting things and bathed his skin. Cahir had looked at death through agonized eyes, watched it coming as his body ran with sweat. The wound – so slight, so glancing – burned even as he shivered.

But death did not release its dark blade on that final arc towards him.

The druid shuffled about, muttering it must have been a strong poison indeed on Gede’s blade, perhaps something from the spine or tendril of a foul sea-creature, or the wolf’s-bane he had heard tell of from Gaul and Germania, though the Pict king would have had to source it from over sea …