Keeper Of The Light (10 page)

She listened closely, but the shadows said nothing more. There was only the faint rustling in the brush on either side of her from time to time, and the sounds of Scath and Cogar trotting at her heels, until at last she left the forest and returned to the clearing of Sion, this time walking into it from the other side.

All was silent and still; all was as she had left it. The pack of dogs came to greet her with wagging tails and lowered heads, and then they lay down again just outside the cave. The hearthfire still burned low, and her cup of tea still rested on the stones.

Rioghan sat down beside the hearth and reached for the tea; but when she tasted it, she found that it had grown cold. She set it aside and folded her hands beneath her black cloak, listening to the silence of the starlit forest and thinking of how it had looked from high atop the mound of Sion.

Chapter Seven

Five nights went by, five quiet and uneventful nights that brought little sleep and more long walks for Rioghan…and more cold cups of tea.

On the sixth night, by the time the three-quarter moon was high overhead, she thought that perhaps she was ready for sleep. But just as she gathered her soft leather cushions and threw back the furs on her sleeping ledge, her dogs began to growl outside.

Scath and Cogar, always by her side, instantly got to their feet and stalked to the entrance of the cave. Their heads were held low and their hackles were raised. Rioghan followed them out across the darkness of the clearing, her heart pounding, fearing the worst, knowing it could be only one thing.

She went to the strip of woods that separated the clearing of Sion from the clearing of the stone circle, and there she saw six men on their horses ride in from the deep forest path and knew that she was right.

“Midwife!” shouted Beolagh, dragging his horse to a stop. “People of the Sidhe! Listen to me! I know you can hear me!”

“
Madra! Madra!
”
whispered Rioghan urgently, and her snarling dogs turned away from the intruders and crowded back around her in the cover of the brush and towering pines. So far the men had made no move to approach her cave, and she did not want to risk any more of the dogs unless she had no choice.

“I know you can hear me,” Beolagh said again, trotting his horse around the stone circle as his five men sat still and watched from the center. “We are not here to harm you. I gave my promise to the king’s champion, and we will not attack you—not unless provoked. Neither will we take your gold by force.”

Rioghan kept hold of Scath’s collar and continued to listen. Though she could not see them, she knew that the Sidhe hid all around her in the forest, waiting, just as she waited.

Beolagh halted his horse. “But hear me well: you, midwife, and all the Sidhe who live here have long enjoyed the protection and bounty of Cahir Cullen—especially the protection of the king’s champion, Donaill, who quite recently came to your aid!

“Donaill made us promise not to take your treasure by force—and so we will not. But he did not say we could not accept it if you chose to give it to us!

“It is long past time that you should give something in return. Sharing your gold with us is the least that you can do! We know that you have no use for it! There is no reason why you should not share it with us!”

He rode his horse around the stone circle, trying to peer into the dark woods. The only sounds were the snorting of the horses and the low growling of Rioghan’s dogs. No one gave Beolagh any answer.

“All right then!” The warrior pulled his horse around and circled it in the other direction. “Since you choose to be selfish and ungrateful, and take what we so kindly offer while giving nothing in return, we have no choice but to persuade you another way!”

As he rode, he pointed his iron sword at each of the nine standing stones. “We will not take your gold, but we have made no promises about this place. If we do not find our share of the gold waiting for us within this circle by the time of the next new moon, we will pull down this circle stone by stone, and leave each to lie in the mud until the grasses grow over them!”

Rioghan’s jaw dropped in horror. Surely they would not do such a thing—they would not dare to touch the ancient stones, this sacred circle, this place that the Sidhe relied upon so much—

“We have our own much larger circle, far to the north of Cahir Cullen! There the stones are tall and straight and perfectly aligned. This small and crudely set place is of no interest and no use to us. It will trouble us not at all to pull it down, not if it will teach a lesson to animals who try to hoard men’s gold! I will tell you again: leave the gold for us at the dark of the moon, or this is the last you will see of your circle!”

Beolagh laughed again, looking back at his men, but in an instant was clutching at his horse’s mane as the animal whirled in fright. It had been startled by the appearance of a small figure in black right in front of it—a figure with two dogs, one gray and one black, on either side.

“You will never touch this stone circle,” Rioghan said to him, her voice low and ominous. Beolagh struggled to right himself in his saddle even as her dogs snarled up at him. “Not now, or in a fortnight from now at the dark of the moon. It has been here as long as—or longer than—the circle that the druids of Cahir Cullen use.”

“We care not whether it was built when the world was new, or built the day before yesterday!” Beolagh shouted, now sitting upright on his horse once more.

“This circle is smaller and simpler than your own, it is true,” she went on. “Its stones are not so polished, nor so straight, nor so tall. Yet it is perfectly accurate and has helped the Sidhe to survive since, indeed, the world was new. It allows them to know the seasons to the day, and the correct times to plant and to harvest, and better know their place in the natural world. It is like a home to them.”

“I do not doubt that it is!” Beolagh laughed. “Animals need no proper homes! They do not need a roof or walls, only a mud floor surrounded by half-fallen stones!” He laughed again, as did all of his men. “If we pull this one down, then you can build another!”

Her dogs snarled and bared their teeth. Rioghan held tight to their gold- and bronze-plated collars. “You know well that it could never be rebuilt. It was built by the people of magic, those from the northern islands now destroyed in the great flood. They alone had the power to move such stones into place, and they are long gone. It could never be rebuilt.”

“Then leave the gold, and you will not have to concern yourselves with rebuilding it! Just leave the treasure here, and we will not trouble you again!” As final emphasis to his words, Beolagh cantered his horse to one of the tall standing stones and struck it hard with his iron sword.

The sword shattered.

With a look of surprise, Beolagh forced his horse around and shouted angrily to his men. All of them rode back into the forest down the dark and narrow path, and the very stones of the circle seemed to tremble from the thundering hoofbeats of their horses.

When all was quiet again at last, Rioghan sighed and let go of her dogs’ collars. They raced about and rejoined their pack, all of them roving back and forth across the stone circle and the strip of forest and the clearing in front of the cave. As the beasts roamed and explored and secured their territory, the Sidhe came out of the shadows to stand beside Rioghan.

“Surely they do not mean to pull down our circle!”

“Would they have such power?”

“Would they dare, even if they did?”

Rioghan shook her head. “Never have I known anyone to bring down any standing stone, yet I suppose it could be done. A few of the most ancient have fallen of their own accord, if the earth has grown too soft and wet to support them. If Beolagh and his men are determined enough, I suppose they could find a way, and not even the dogs could hold them off forever.”

“We cannot let them do this!”

“We would die to protect this place!”

“It is our home; it is the sacred circle!”

She looked at them all in the faint moonlight. “I have no wish to let them destroy this place. I have sworn to protect it, for you are my family and this is my home…yet I cannot—I will not—see any of you harmed in trying to save it. Perhaps…perhaps we should go and search for another place, farther away from the fortresses of men. There are other places, other stone circles—”

“Donaill…”

“Donaill…”

“Donaill…”

Rioghan blinked and looked at the Sidhe’s fine faces as they stared at her. “Donaill?” she asked. “Why do you believe Donaill would help us to save this stone circle?”

“He would help you.”

“He came to you before.”

“He came to you as soon as you asked.”

She shook her head and tried to smile. “Dear ones…he did come in response to an immediate threat, when I feared our lives might be in danger. I have some value to Cahir Cullen as a midwife and a healer, and so they would send their king’s champion to help such a one—and since you are my people, that protection might, at least sometimes, extend to you as well.

“But do not forget: to the Men, Sion is a place of farmers and herdsmen and the Sidhe. These things are simply not the concerns of the great and important warrior men of Cahir Cullen. Indeed, they had never even set foot here before being forced to come on a cold dark night when a servant could not be sent—and they would still have no interest in it whatsoever if they had not caught sight of the gold.

“And this should be no surprise to any of us. Do such men spend their time among the cowsheds of the fortress, or up in the mountaintop pastures with the sheep, or helping to grow the barley in the fields? Of course they do not. And that is all Sion is to them: a place where the Little People live and work, and no concern of theirs.

“The king’s champion did come when it appeared that lives might be in danger. But this stone circle means nothing to those who live at the fortress of men. There is no reason why Donaill, or anyone else there, should trouble themselves to help us save it.”

“Yet Donaill has seen the view from atop Sion in the starlight.”

“And he has seen you for what you are.”

“He would help you to preserve your home.”

Rioghan hesitated. “If I go and ask him—and he says he cannot help in front of his people, because he does not wish to go against them in public—we will be left more vulnerable than ever.”

“We have little left to lose.”

“We must have help, for there is no doubt those Men will come again.”

“You must ask Donaill for his help.”

She looked at them, and smiled in resignation.

“Perhaps you are right. I will go to the fortress tomorrow, and I will ask him—but I cannot promise you anything.”

At dawn the next day, surrounded by cloudy sky and soft mist from the forest, Rioghan stood before the huge wooden gates of Cahir Cullen with Scath and Cogar by her side and her leather bag hanging from her shoulder. In the surrounding grove of tall holly trees, their glossy green leaves and red berries the only bright spots against the pale morning, were several of the Sidhe. They had accompanied her from the safety of the woods and would await her here until she chose to return.

The watchman on the platform over the gates had seen her approach, and stood watching her now. “Midwife,” he said, leaning on the rail with both hands. “Do you wish to enter? I have not been told of your coming. Does someone here have need of you?”

“They do not,” she answered, her black cloak drawn up over her head to form a hood. “But I have need of them. I am here to speak to Donaill, the king’s champion.”

The watchman regarded her a moment longer, then gave her a brief nod. “Wait there,” he said. In a moment the enormous gates swung open for her, their iron hinges creaking only a little.

Rioghan walked as quietly as she could across the misty grounds of Cahir Cullen, keeping her two dogs close. There was all the early morning commotion that always happened in such a large settlement—servants heading toward the gates, some with clean empty buckets to fetch water and some with old battered ones filled with refuse; a few winter cows, those spared the slaughter at summer’s end, bawling to be milked; other servants shouting out orders to one another; craftsmen hammering metal and wood in the armory; women calling out to each other from the doorways of the round white houses; and children and dogs running and playing in the light of the early morning.

Though she kept her eyes down and looked neither right nor left as she walked, Rioghan was well aware of the curious stares and sudden silences that followed her across the grounds. Most saw her only at night, if they saw her at all, for she preferred to arrive under the cover of darkness and leave again at dawn; but this was not always possible, and since the people of Cahir Cullen normally saw her only in times of childbirth or tragedy, there were whispers along with the stares.

“Why is she here?” they asked one another.

“What has happened?”

“Why is she here?”

By way of answer, Rioghan walked straight to one of the round houses. In a moment Sabha opened the wooden door to gentle rapping. “Rioghan! Oh, Rioghan, I am so glad to see you, though I fear to ask why you are here. Come inside, come inside…”