Heart's Blood

She seemed to shrink inside herself, her eyes narrowing, her lips tightening. Maybe she really did understand and was so afraid she denied the truth even to herself. “You’re wrong,” she said. “Push Anluan into this and you will bring down disaster on him and on all of us at Whistling Tor.”

“Muirne, I do know a little about the Normans, having lived in the outside world before I came here. Further east, they already rule wide stretches of territory.They’ve built strongholds and moved their own people in. And they have a different way of fighting, a way that is hard for our leaders to combat.They will come to Whistling Tor, and if Anluan doesn’t go down and speak to them, they’ll be back with an army. Then he really will lose everything.You can’t want that to happen.”

She looked me straight in the eye, and I knew I had miscalculated, for the expression I saw was the one that had frosted her features the very first time I met her, when she had tried to dismiss me before I was even hired. “You are not interested in these Normans, Caitrin. You care only about your own needs. Thanks to your interference, Anluan is exhausted, troubled, racked by doubt.Thanks to your foolish words of hope, he dreams of a future he cannot have.You have wrought untold damage here through sheer ignorance.You must not ask more of him. He has been wise to set himself apart, so he cannot be tempted by your voice, your foolish arguments, your ... Caitrin, I have lived here for a long time. I know Anluan. I know Whistling Tor. The chieftain must not step off the hill. That is the simple truth. As for your suggestions, he is better off without them, believe me. He bears sufficient burdens already.” She turned to go.

“Muirne, wait!”

“Yes, Caitrin?”

“I want the best for him,” I said quietly.“We all do. I don’t believe I’m being selfish.”

She smiled; her eyes remained cool.“Don’t let me keep you from your work,” she said, and walked away.

My work. Just as well she did not know the reason I had worn the motley garment made from women’s magic. Just as well she did not know what work awaited me in the library this morning. I needed answers, and time was short.Today I would use the obsidian mirror.

My heart raced. A clammy sweat of dread made my hand slip on the latch as I closed the inner door of the library. Which document to use? Did I really want to see the host unleashed, the bloody mayhem of that attack on Farannan’s household, with its rending and devouring? Try that, and I would no doubt learn once and for all that there was no taming the host. If there had been an account of the experiment itself, that would have been my choice, but thus far I had discovered no record of it, only accounts of the time leading up to that fateful All Hallows, the breathless anticipation and tense preparations, then Nechtan’s flat observations, set down considerably later, on the aftermath of his failure.

I walked across and shut the other door, the one that opened onto Irial’s garden. I stood at the window awhile looking out and trying to steady my breathing. I wanted to stay right where I was, gazing on the lovely place that Irial had made in the center of his dark world. But there was no time.

Back at the work table, I crouched to open the chest. There was only one item in it: the cloth-wrapped bundle that was Nechtan’s mirror. I lifted it out. It did not feel like a dead weight, but alive, vibrant, dangerous. I set it on the table beside me, still shrouded. My fingers refused to choose a document. I closed my eyes, took a leaf and turned it face up before me. I drew back the covering that concealed the dark mirror. In the light from the window, the creatures wrought on its rim blinked and stretched, waking to another revelation.

Something rouses him from his reverie. Not a sound, not a movement. He’s alone in the workroom with only the wretched grimoires for company. Nonetheless, his hackles rise; he’s alert suddenly, not to danger, to ... what? Something’s wrong; something’s happening that he must stop. He’s gone, a voice whispers in his ear. She’s taken him away.

He strides across the dim chamber to the door, wrenches uselessly at the handle, remembers the bolt, slams it open, takes the steps three at a time.Along the hallway, out the tower door, across the garden in the gloom of a wet autumn afternoon, slipping on fallen leaves, yelling for his serving people as he goes.

Down the hill, whispers the voice. Down the path.You may yet stop them.

He’s quick on his feet, fit and strong despite all those years hunched over his books. It helps him now. He spots Mella from a vantage point halfway down. She’s moving slowly; she has the boy by the hand, and her maidservant walks in front with a bundle under her arm. Conan is hanging back, dawdling.

“Make haste, Conan! Quickly!” Mella’s voice trembles with fear.“Come, I’ll carry you.”

As she stoops to lift the boy, Nechtan gives a little cough. Mella turns, looks back up the hill. Her face blanches; her eyes go wide.

“Not another step,” says Nechtan. “Release my son’s hand. Do it, wife.”

As he hastens towards her down the winding track he clicks his fingers, and in his mind he summons what he needs.The dark forest darkens further. Swirling forms manifest beneath the trees.

Mella’s running, the child in her arms. The maidservant is almost out of sight, further down the path.

“Halt!” Nechtan roars, and Conan starts a thin wailing.Why hasn’t the boy’s mother taught him self-discipline? This is a future chieftain of Whistling Tor. “I said halt!”

Mella trips; she and Conan go sprawling on the wet path. The cries become shrieks. In a few long strides Nechtan is beside them. He reaches down, seizes his son by one arm, hauls him to his feet. “Be silent!” he orders, and when Conan does not seem to understand, he gives the child a shake. Conan clenches his jaw; the screams turn to stifled whimpers. The boy has some backbone, after all.

Mella rises to her knees. She clutches her son around the waist, holding on grimly. “Let him go, Nechtan!”

Nechtan’s grip tightens on the child’s shoulder. He eyes his wife with displeasure. Now she, too, is crying, ugly red eyes against skin pasty with fear.

“Where were you going?” he inquires.

“Away. Away from this cursed place! Nechtan, let Conan go!”

She seems unaware of the things that are gathering around them, the rustling, shadowy beings that people the woods on either side of the track.

“Answer me, Mella.Were you leaving me? Did you intend to quit your responsibility as lady of Whistling Tor without a backwards glance?”