Heart's Blood

guard yelling back at him.Then we came outside and saw the smoke.”

“Anluan defied Lord Stephen’s emissaries? He refused to give in to their demands?”

Magnus turned a very level look on me. I wondered that I had not noticed before how like his eyes were to my father’s. “What else did you expect?” he said simply.

“So it’s war.”

“When he thought he’d lost you, it seemed to me for a bit that he’d give up the fight. I was wrong. He won’t step back from this now, Caitrin, not after rallying the host, not after making that speech of defiance to the Norman councillors. If war comes to Whistling Tor, we’ll fight and fall under the banner of a true leader.”

The afternoon passed. I coaxed the ghost child to perch on the end of my bed, with my shawl wrapped around her. Magnus raised his brows but made no comment. I wondered that he did not go off to attend to his usual work, but I did not ask. His strong, quiet presence made me feel safe, and I wanted him to stay.

Olcan came up to see me, Fianchu by his side and apparently none the worse for wear.The forest man had a long look at the mirror on my wall, the one I had brought down from the tower, but he made no comment on it, merely nodded sagely as if its presence in my bedchamber was exactly what he would have expected.

At a certain point I heard Rioghan calling from down in the garden, and Cathair came to the door again.

“I’m wanted down there.” The young warrior had his eyes downturned, his head tilted away, as if he didn’t want me to notice him.“Permission to leave my post?”

“Go,” Magnus said.“You’ll be asked to give your account of what happened, no doubt, along with the rest of them. Tell the truth; that’s all you need do.”

“Cathair,” I put in,“is all well with you? How is Gearrog?”The image of my guard writhing in pain, hands pressed over his ears, was strong in my mind. It hardly seemed consistent with the story that he had broken down a locked door to save me not long afterwards.

Cathair gazed fixedly at the wall. “We’re not worthy of your interest, lady. Nor your compassion.We failed.”

A moment’s silence. “Because a voice tormented you, gave you intolerable pain, made the men crazy?” I asked him quietly. “I saw you doing your very best to control them up there, Cathair. I saw how Gearrog wrestled with it. From what Magnus tells me, no lasting harm was done. I did think I heard singing, as if you men were making an effort to hold together against difficult odds.”

“That was the old fellow, Broc. He pulled us out of it. Fact remains, when the frenzy came on us the men broke ranks, lost their discipline.”

The frenzy. Nechtan had used the same word, describing the host running amok in its bloody attack on Farannan’s people.Whatever this was, it had been here a long time. “You kept to the hill and nobody was hurt,” I said. “You achieved what you agreed to at the council.”

“You were hurt.” Still he would not look at me.“We couldn’t help you; couldn’t see or hear straight.We can’t put the blame on the frenzy. If a man loses his courage in battle, if he doesn’t stick to his post, he’s got nobody to blame but himself.”

Magnus cleared his throat. “Go and account for yourself to Rioghan, lad. He’s a councillor of long experience, he’ll weigh things up fairly. Lord Anluan was angry before. He said things he may possibly regret later. He’ll realize in time that he took a calculated risk, as we all did, Caitrin included. If things didn’t turn out quite as he hoped, at least part of the responsibility is his. Go on, now. As for the future, our chieftain’s just committed us to war, and if we’re not to repeat today’s errors, we need to put all our strength and skill into working out how.”

“My lady,” Cathair muttered, then turned on his heel and was gone.

“Anluan was angry? What exactly did he say to them?”

“You know how he can be,” said Magnus. “Tore into them for not coming to your aid; told them they were worthless and wayward, and a lot more of the same.They just stood there and took it.This frenzy, I’ve heard them talk of it before. The voice, some of them call it. Either it gives you a blinding headache, or it fills your mind with bad things from your own past. Or both at once. It’d be hard work staying at your post and keeping alert while that was playing havoc in your head.”

“Where do you think it comes from, this voice?” Snippets from the documents started to come back to me. Sweet whispers; I must not heed them. A voice, yes, but it hardly sounded like the same phenomenon. Night by night a whispering in my ear. It tempts me to despair. “It must be very powerful if it can disable the entire host all at once.” I wondered, not for the first time, if Nechtan could have left an enchantment that continued its fell work long after his death. “Were Rioghan and Eichri stricken by it?”

“Only to the extent of a headache. Muirne was more badly affected. A pain that drove out all reason, that was how she described it.”

Muirne had suffered the same pain as Gearrog? That was not what my memory told me. But then, she had been behind me when he fell, and then she’d disappeared. I should give her the benefit of the doubt, at least. “I would like to speak to Muirne, Magnus. Do you think she would come up here?”

“She was looking a bit shaken. Leave it till later, that’s my advice.You shouldn’t be doing anything but resting, Caitrin. Lie down again.” He glanced at the ghost girl, huddled under the shawl with not much more showing than wisps of white hair and frightened eyes.“I don’t suppose she saw how the fire started?”

“I sent her away.The voice drove Gearrog a little mad. I was afraid for her; she’s so small.”

Magnus folded his arms and gave me a shrewd look. “So Gearrog did hit you,” he said.

“Not me. He struck out at something he thought was there. He had a kind of convulsion, a fit. I happened to be in the way.”

“Mm-hm.”

“It’s true, Magnus. I saw how all the men were behaving, Gearrog included. This thing is powerful.” I lay back on the pillows, considering what I had learned. Nechtan had been so sure he had got things right. He’d been so careful in his preparations. But somehow the great experiment had gone awry. I saw the aftermath, the wayward