Heart's Blood

she wants to say, but her voice won’t work. Not just the lack of air, something else. The heavy stillness is creeping up her body, she cannot move so much as a finger. She tries again to speak but her tongue is frozen, her jaw stiff, her throat rigid. She tries desperately to show Nechtan with her eyes that something has gone wrong. Help me. Nechtan, help me.

At last Nechtan’s eyes meet hers.Thank God, now he will undo whatever fell charm has fallen on her, and save her. Help. Help.

He looks at her, and his face shows only the triumph of the experiment, the grand plan executed without flaw, the tool of his future greatness delivered into his hands. In a sudden moment of chill insight, Aislinn understands. Your essence will bring them forth, he told her. Her essence . . . her life . . . this is the price of the power he craves.The white robe, the wreath, his reluctance to touch her . . . A sacrificial victim, young, beautiful and pure. Her body still as if encased in stone, her labored breath rasping in her chest, Aislinn looks into Nechtan’s eyes and sees the bitter truth. He has known all along that she would die, and he doesn’t care. He has used her, and now he will discard her without a second thought.

But wait, the charm, the counterspell . . . she has it, she knows it, all she need do is speak the words and this can be undone . . . Through the fog fast filling her mind, Aislinn struggles to find what she needs, to whisper on a faltering breath the words that can save her: . . . sinigil . . . mitat . . . She almost has it . . . sigilin . . . oileg ...The fell warriors are becoming brighter, heavier, more solid: a formidable army. They stretch, regard their own limbs, stare at one another, perplexed. Erap . . . sinigla . . . egur . . . egrus . . . Too late. The charm has slipped away. Fixing her dying eyes on the man she has loved, the man she has worshiped with every fiber of her being, Aislinn speaks in her mind words her lips cannot form: I curse you! One hundred years of ill luck attend you, one hundred years of sorrow, one hundred years of failure! You think to discard me like rubbish to the midden, but you will not be rid of me. I will haunt you. I will shadow your steps and those of all you hold dear, I will torment your family for generation on generation. Let the army you so desired be a burden and a misery to you and yours! With my last breath I curse you!

As everything blurs and fades around her, as the last shreds of clarity leave her mind, Aislinn sees Nechtan’s expression change, his transcendent triumph muted by the first trace of doubt. Something . . . something wrong . . .

A scream, a crash, and I came back to myself. I dragged my gaze from the mirror, lifted my head, looked straight into her eyes. She stood facing me across the table, her veil slightly askew, her gown a touch less than immaculate.

“Give me my book.” Her voice was precise and clear; each word rang a warning bell.

Gearrog. Orna. Where were they? What had happened while I was absorbed in the vision? The chamber was bright with morning light. How long had I sat here, staring into the mirror, while down the hill the battle raged?

A moan from near the doorway. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gearrog curled up on the floor, his arms tight over his head. Just like last time; just like the day when Anluan left the hill, and the host went mad, and I nearly died. I looked the other way, and there was Orna, sprawled motionless on the flagstones near the inner door, one arm outstretched, the fingers limp. My mind filled with terror, for the three of us and for Anluan’s army, even now out beyond the safe boundary. I rose to my feet, clutching the little book against my breast.

“Give me my book.”

When I did not reply, Muirne turned toward the cowering Gearrog and lifted her hand, pointing. His whole body jerked, and a febrile trembling gripped him. “You killed them,” she said. So changed was her voice it might have been a different person’s, for the tone was that of a sorcerer pronouncing a fell charm. “Your wife, your children, you killed them in a fit of jealous rage, all gone, all drowned, your little boy, your baby, all gone under the water . . .”

“Nooo!” moaned Gearrog. “Lies, those are lies!”

“You did it.” Muirne was calm, calm and cold. “Why do you think you’re here with the rest of them? The stain of it’s on you forever.You’ll never—”

“Stop it!” I found my courage. “Leave him alone!” A moment later, the true significance of what I had just witnessed dawned on me and for a moment left me wordless with shock. “It’s you,” I breathed. “The whole thing, all of it, the voice, the frenzy . . . you used what he taught you, and then . . . Aislinn, this is truly evil!”

“Give me my book or I’ll break the host as I’ve broken your guard here. I’ll snap their minds like twigs! I can do it! Give me my book or I’ll make sure your precious Anluan never walks back up this hill.They’ll be carrying him home on a board, as dead as that woman on the floor there.”

My heart was cold. Orna dead, for the sole misdemeanor of standing up to this twisted spirit?

“You love Anluan,” I said.“Why would you want to kill him?Why would you kill Irial? Isn’t a hundred years of vengeance enough for you, Aislinn?”

Her eyes narrowed.“Give me what is mine, Caitrin,” she said.“You are a fool to doubt me. I can wreak utter havoc among the host. I’ve done it before. Clever reader that you are, you should know that already.”

Though I still stood frozen, my mind had begun to work very quickly indeed. With Gearrog crouched helpless on the floor, why didn’t she snatch the book from me? Stall for time, said the voice of common sense. Make her talk. I must distract her, delay the moment when she would set the frenzy on the host. Anluan must win his battle.This must not end, yet again, in mayhem, chaos, retreat, failure. Once Anluan stepped back within the boundary of the Tor, she would lose her ability to wreak such havoc. In Nechtan’s writings, in Conan’s, that had always been the pattern of it.

“How do you do it?” I asked, my voice shaking.“The—the frenzy, the voice? How can you control so many of them at once? Was it your doing every time the host disobeyed Nechtan, every time they ran amok under Conan’s leadership? How could you become so powerful, Aislinn?”

That little smile passed over her lips, the smile of superiority, of entitlement. “I’ve had a long time to perfect my craft,” she said, and I saw that I had chosen just the right turn of conversation to keep her talking. “I was always apt, quick, clever. He loved me for that.” The smile vanished. “He did not love me as he should have done.”

“But how can you speak to all of them at once, telling each one something different? You seem to know just what memories will most torment folk. Even I felt the touch of it, and I am a living woman.” I selected my words carefully. “It seems to me that you are as powerful as Nechtan was.”

Her lips curved again. “More powerful. Believe me, Caitrin, there is a way into any mind, if only one knows how to look for it. Here on the Tor, all bend to my will.”