Deception's Princess (Princesses of Myth) (35 page)

Kee-kee-kee! Kee-kee-kee! Kee-kee-kee!

Until that moment I had no idea that it’s possible for a man to run away without actually
running
. No warrior worthy of the name would ever
flee
danger, especially when his fellow fighters
were there to witness such a shame. Still, all of Morann’s men managed to take themselves elsewhere, and quickly, before the last echo of my kestrel call died away. As their torches retreated across the meadow, back toward their camp, I rushed to the portal, rested my hands on the white stone, leaned forward, and craned my neck to watch them go.

I followed them at a safe distance, but it was hard to hold myself back and go slowly. I burned with eagerness to know if the rest of my plan had worked. I had the answer soon enough, when I heard their shouts of outrage and surprise up ahead.

A dozen fighting men are more than a match for three, but one man can single-handedly defeat all twelve just by holding his sword to the throat of their king. That was exactly what I saw Ruadan doing when I arrived.

He grinned when he saw me. “Well, my lady, it worked.”

I lifted my chin. “Did you ever doubt me?” He had the wisdom and the courtesy not to answer that.

“Never, Princess.” Devnet came forward to greet me, rubbing his wrists, now freed from their bonds. “I’m in your debt forever.”

I hugged him close. “You owe me nothing. All this happened because you were trying to help me.”

He shrugged. “If we keep pulling threads, trying to see which ones make the pattern, we unravel the cloth and are left with nothing but tangles. Let’s have no more talk of debts.” He cocked his head and studied my ash-smeared hair and face. “On second thought, you
do
owe me the tale of how you contrived my rescue. May Lugh give me the art to do it justice!”

The bard’s words were poetry, but poetry could wait. I had practical matters to settle. I took Daire aside and gave him his
instructions. I knew my orders for Morann’s men would be followed more readily and with less balking if they came from his mouth, not mine. He sent the warriors on their way, letting them know that their king’s continued health depended on their obedience. They took torches to light their road and left. A few cast speculative backward glances at me, in all my smudged splendor. At least two raised their eyebrows, realizing how they’d been deceived. One smiled.

Morann’s servants were sent home with his men, but not the charioteer. Daire relayed the command that he take Ruadan back to Cruachan. “I don’t care that it’s still dark—you’ll get started now,” he told the driver. “As for you, Ruadan—”

“I know, I know,” Ruadan drawled. “Tell Lord Eochu what’s happened and have him and our warriors meet us on the way home. The Fir Domnann fighters are gone, but no sense trusting that they’ll stay away.” He nudged the charioteer. “Let’s go.”

Ruadan’s departure left Daire and Caílte to share the duty of standing watch over Morann. “You should let Devnet and me help you, or you’ll both be too tired when morning comes,” I said.

“With respect, Lady Maeve, could you or our bard cut a man’s throat if it came to that?” Daire asked.

I couldn’t say yes and stay honest, but Devnet had a good answer: “If Lady Maeve and I stand watch together and Lord Morann’s throat needs cutting, I think that we could find enough nerve
between
us for the job.” Daire and Caílte exchanged doubtful looks, but conceded.

Lord Morann made himself a nest of curses and went to sleep. “Do you think we scared him?” Devnet whispered to me. I giggled.

As we sat together, keeping watch over our captive king, Devnet asked me to tell him how I’d come to spearhead his rescue. I did so, leaving nothing out, not even the strange attraction that had brought me over the threshold of the gateway mound.

“I was frightened at first,” I said. “But when I saw my Ea’s shape fly across the moon, I remembered her courage and went on.”

“Ea?”

And all at once my heart opened and the sorrow and loss I’d carried there so long came pouring out. I told my friend about Ea and Odran, about the crannog and the joy I’d found there in healing helpless creatures, about the cold brutality with which Master Íobar had slain them, about how the slingstone that sent Ea to her death shattered me as well. Every word was a knife that opened an old wound. A few tears trickled down my cheeks, but I couldn’t have the comfort of weeping out my grief for fear of waking Daire and Caílte.

“I wish you could have seen her, Devnet,” I said. “When we go home, I’ll show you the hood I made for her. It’s my one remembrance.”

“A hood?”

“We had to keep the smaller animals safe from her. A bird that can’t see won’t fly. It was my idea.”

“Clever. In my travels, I saw some hawk trainers using the same thing to control their birds.”

“Hawk trainers?” I wiped away my tears.

He nodded. “In the East, I met three people who’d taught raptors to hunt for them. They set them after small game birds. I hear that in some lands it’s a common thing.”

“I don’t know if I’d ever have wanted Ea to chase game for me,” I mused. “But I enjoyed watching her fend for herself. She was wonderful in flight.”

“How do you know your Ea was a
she
?” Devnet asked.

“Male kestrels have blue-feathered caps. Odran told me so. Females have wide black stripes across their tails to set them apart.”

“I thought you were going to say they wore more jewelry,” Devnet teased. “When I was in the north, I met one pretty winged lady who owned a bracelet made of fire.”

“What?”

“Oh, don’t be alarmed, it didn’t blaze too high—how could she fly, wrapped in flame? The fire was trapped in a braid of hair, made captive by its beauty. I asked her master what she’d done to earn her enchanted talisman and he said that he’d found her wearing it. Whenever he tried to remove it, she snapped at him, so he let it be.”

Our bard went on to describe how the falcon’s master discovered her while on a far-ranging hunt of his own. He took an immediate fancy to her, for even though she was badly wounded, she had a bold spirit that attracted him. At the price of some unavoidable damage to his fingers from the bird’s beak and talons, he brought her back to the stronghold of Dún Beithe.

I recognized the name. “That’s where Lady Íde’s cousin rules.”

“Lord Artegal, yes, and the young man I met is his son.”

I begged Devnet to tell me more. He was glad to do so, for what bard ever turned down an invitation to talk? He spoke about how the fallen falcon’s rescuer tended her, earned her
trust, then taught her to hunt for him. I interrupted his account many times, posing question after question, but though I listened greedily to his responses, I was in a daze.

It’s Ea
, I thought.
How many kestrels wear a red braid? It must be her!
My heart longed to believe in the impossible: that she’d escaped death, that the druid’s slingstone had only wounded her, that some merciful power had brought her into the care of a good person with the wit to heal her.

My spirit knew that somehow I had to find out if what I believed was true.

It was a good thing that Daire woke up and told us to get some sleep. I’d become too engrossed by the thought that Ea might still be alive, and distraction makes a bad sentry. I didn’t think I’d be able to close my eyes, but I was exhausted and sleep claimed me.

We took the homeward road at sunrise. Morann walked with his head down and his shoulders hunched, saying nothing. Daire and Caílte alternated staying as close to him as his shadow. From time to time, Devnet would sing to entertain us.

“Before we reach Cruachan, I must finish creating the tale of how Lady Maeve saved me,” he declared. “Every detail of her heroic exploits must be accurate.” He turned to me with an innocent expression. “Now remind me, Princess. When I was attacked by that flying plague of fanged squirrels and you used a wild boar to bludgeon them all to death, did you pick the boar up by its front legs or its hindquarters?”

“By its tail,” I tossed off in reply. “And shame on you for not remembering.”

I spoke with a lightness I didn’t feel. Now that Devnet was safe and there would be no further threat from Morann, my
memory fell back to the moment I heard Caílte cry out the words that sent me wandering to the threshold of the Otherworld:
This is why Kelan died!

What did he mean? I would not let the sun set until I had an answer.

The next time Daire took over as Morann’s guard and Caílte dropped to the rear of our group, I fell into step beside him. “I want to talk to you.”

“That’s a change,” he muttered, keeping his eyes straight ahead.

“I heard you last night, Caílte,” I said. “Before I spied on Morann’s encampment, I watched yours. I was behind a tree when you spoke of Kelan’s death. You made it sound as if it didn’t happen because of your stupid quarrel over the hero’s portion.”

“That was years ago. With respect, it doesn’t concern you, Princess.”

“I decide what concerns me.”

He tightened his jaw and kept silent. A wall had dropped between us. I intended to tear it down.

“He haunts you, doesn’t he?” I asked in a low voice. “You see his face when night finds you far from home. Aren’t you afraid this will grow worse, with time? What will you do when the day comes that his face never leaves your sight, when you can’t look anywhere, waking or sleeping, without seeing him, when—”

Caílte stopped dead and clutched my arm. “Have mercy, Princess.” He spoke in a half-strangled whisper. Sweat beaded his brow. “Don’t ill-wish me more than I already suffer. Do you think I
wanted
to kill him?”

“He said you didn’t merit the hero’s portion. You could have laughed it off. You could have made him pay for the insult with a beating.”

“I wish I could have done that.” Caílte’s face fell. “I swear by my sword arm, I wish I’d had a choice. If I hadn’t found cause to challenge him that night, it would have happened some other time. It had to be. If I’d refused, someone else would have done it, and badly. Kelan didn’t deserve to die by butchery. I gave him a warrior’s death, quick and clean. I don’t regret that.”

“Why did he deserve to die at all?”

Caílte spoke softly. “He failed the first duty of every man who serves the High King: He didn’t protect Lord Eochu’s greatest treasure. He taught a king’s beloved daughter skills that put her in harm’s way.”

“I don’t understand what—”

“The dog, Princess,” Caílte replied. “That savage wolfhound you fought off to save young Kelan’s girl and the baby she carried. Your father called me to him after the lad admitted he’d been teaching you how to use weapons. The king had me meet him outside the ringfort, where no one could surprise us or overhear. I never saw him so enraged, not even when he dueled his enemies and the battle madness possessed him. His words are burned into me here”—he touched his brow—“and here.” He touched his heart.

Don’t tell me any more, Caílte!
I thought, suddenly afraid of what I’d stirred up.

“What did he say?” I asked. Afraid or not, I had to know.

“He said that if Kelan hadn’t meddled, hadn’t taught a girl things no girl needed to know, you wouldn’t have deceived yourself into thinking you could fight the beast. You’d have
run away, like a sensible girl, and gotten yourself out of danger. He said he was going to put an end to your ridiculous fancies of taking up a man’s weapons by putting an end to the man who encouraged them.”

“Why—” I could hardly find breath to speak. “Why did he need
you
to kill my friend? Why didn’t he do it himself?”

Caílte smiled sadly. “You’ve answered that yourself, Princess. Kelan was your friend. You’d never forgive the man who killed him, and your father has always needed your love and goodwill. You’re his daughter, but until your brothers were born, you were also his future, the lady of Connacht, the prize that all of us saw shining just beyond our reach—”

The hero’s portion
, I thought.
The bone to tempt the High King’s hounds and keep them close and loyal. Is that what I was to Father? Is that who I am?

“How do I know you’re not lying, Caílte?” It had to be asked.

“What would I gain by deceiving you? I could give you my word of honor that everything I’ve told you is so, but would you accept it?” He laughed like the cawing of a crow. “Ask your father for the truth, Princess. Run and ask him why he let Kelan think he’d been pardoned when the lad’s punishment waited for him in the shadows. And when you learn that I
have
told you the truth, ask him how he’ll reward me for it.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s time I took the payment I deserve for what I’ve done. Let it come. I’m tired of seeing that blameless boy’s face everywhere I turn. I’m tired of fighting phantoms. I’m tired of living with evil dreams.” He looked at me steadily. “Tell the king what I’ve told you, my lady, and let me sleep.”

C
AÍLTE GROANED IN
his sleep all night long, struggling with Kelan’s ghost. At least he could close his eyes. I lay wide awake, staring into the star-hung branches above me. My mind was filled with what that tormented man had told me before Daire called him away to take a turn herding Lord Morann.