Ravenmarked (The Taurin Chronicles) (33 page)

Igraine’s stomach roiled at the sight of the two crumpled Taurin guards.
I insisted on Taurin guards, and my insistence got them killed.

The guard helped her down the corridor and several flights of winding stairs to a clean, cool room furnished with comfortable chairs, a table, and several cots. Repha Felix was already there, as were several lords and ladies who had been in the castle for court matters. Felix came to her side and helped her to a chair. “Highness, are you all right?”

She nodded. “I’m fine. I just want to know what’s happening.”

“As do we all.” Repha Felix pulled a kerchief from his pocket and put it against Igraine’s neck where the man’s blade had stung her. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“No, but my leg throbs. What do you know?”

“Little. I left your chambers to retrieve some more poultice for your leg. Before I could return, everything was in chaos. The men were racing out of the castle toward the outbuildings. One of them brought me down here.” He dabbed at her neck. “It’s not deep. You are very fortunate, highness.”

She closed her eyes. “Kerry’s man said the sayas and the kirons are all dead.”

“So I heard.” He lifted her hand to the kerchief. “Hold this on your neck while I check your leg.”

She leaned back in the chair and held the kerchief. “Sayana Muriel, all those women, the kirons—who would attack people of peace and service?”

Felix said nothing. He treated her leg with fresh poultice and propped it on a chair. The cut on her neck had stopped bleeding, but he dabbed a strong-smelling ointment on it and gently pressed a wad of linen over the ointment. He gave her a goblet. “Something for the pain,” he said.

She shook her head. “I want to stay awake.”

“It won’t make you sleep.” He offered the goblet again. “Drink, highness.”

She took it and sipped, but when Felix turned away, she set the goblet next to her and leaned back to wait.

The door opened, and a guard brought a wan-looking Cormac in. Looking at him in the faint light of the room, Igraine was certain that he had lost weight in the last weeks.
Where does he go so often? And why is he so sickly? What’s he hiding?

“My lady, are you all right?” Cormac asked.

“Everything will heal with time. Do you know what’s happening?”

“No. I don’t know anything.” He found a seat away from the rest of the crowd and leaned over to put his head in his hands.

Time crept by as they all waited for news. One of the guards was able to bring some food, water, and wine for the group. Igraine, still aching from her wounds and the poison, rested on a cot. Cormac remained in the same position.

Felix knelt next to Igraine and picked up her goblet. “You didn’t finish this.”

“I didn’t need it.”

He frowned, but he set the goblet aside. “May I check your wound again?” he asked, gesturing to her neck.

She nodded. “You asked me earlier where I got the stone around my ankle. Why did you want to know?”

Felix replaced the linen on her neck and looked around at the other people in the room. He pulled a chair close to Igraine, his back to the others. When he spoke, his voice was barely more than a whisper. “It’s an animstone. They are very rare. They are found in the mountains beyond Sveklant.”

“I wear a rare stone,” she said, dropping her voice to match his. “I fail to see why that’s significant. I’m a royal lady. I’ve owned many rare stones.”

“You say your mother gave it to you?”

“She made me swear never to remove it.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it and took a deep breath. “Does your mother have magic blood? Or your father?”

She scoffed. “No one in my family has magic blood,” she said, her voice rising. Felix gestured her to speak more quietly. She rolled her eyes and lowered her voice. “Magic is a foolish notion—myths and legends from tapestries woven hundreds of years ago and stories written by the earliest men.”

“Not myths.” He leaned forward. “The animstones are often worn by people of magic blood who wish to suppress their magic for a time. The stones were formed at the creation. No one knows exactly what they are. Some say they came from the world before this one. The Sidh queen wears one in her crown that augments her magic, but for other Sidh, the stones suppress the talents.”

The Sidh queen?
“Are you saying I must be Sidh?”
There are no Sidh.
But doubt started to creep in. Felix spoke with assurance.
Even if he’s wrong, he speaks as one who believes what he’s saying. What if he’s right?

“There are two magicked races—those who have elemental talents, like the Sidh, and those who wield supernatural gifts, like the Syrafi and Ferimin. You don’t have the look of someone with Sidh blood. It runs true. If you were Sidh, you would be dark. But the Syrafi—I don’t see how it’s possible.” He paused. “Whatever you do, lady, you must not let the king or Cormac find out. If they knew—”

At last, the door opened, and Logan, Ronan Kerry, and three of Ronan’s guards entered the room. Logan’s face was drawn, tired, and grim. Ronan Kerry shadowed him, arms crossed and face equally grim. Igraine sat up on her cot to hear what they had to say. Ronan spoke. “My lords and ladies, the castle is secure. Most of you can return to your rooms. My men will escort you.”

“Can you tell us anything yet?” a lord asked.

“I need to speak with her highness and Lord Rowan before I can tell you anything more.” The guards led the lords and ladies back to their rooms in the castle, and Ronan turned to Cormac. “Lord Rowan. We need to speak.”

Cormac nodded and took a deep breath. “Yes. What have you discovered?”

Ronan put one hand on Logan’s shoulder. “Tell them.”

Logan’s eyes flickered from Cormac to Igraine and back. Two guards entered the room, and Logan removed his sword, the gold cord around his livery, and his insignia of rank. He placed them all on the table. “It was me. I surrender myself to your mercy, Lord Rowan.”

Chapter Twenty

The One Hand holds all that was, is, and will be.

— Proverb of the Tal’Aster Sect

“He’s a Mac Niall?” Mairead gasped. Connor groaned in her lap. “He’s Culain Mac Niall’s son?”

The woman with the gray braid—
Rhiannon, he said
—stepped closer. “He didn’t tell you?”

“He tells me as little as possible,” Mairead said. Connor made another sound that sounded like an attempt at a laugh, but it turned into a cough and painful spasm against Mairead’s legs. He rolled his head and spit blood. Her chest tightened.
Please, Connor. Please don’t die!

“Well, he’ll need some healing, I expect. Let’s get him to my house.” Rhiannon knelt and touched Connor’s forehead. “I can’t carry you, boy. Can you walk?”

Mairead felt his head twitch in a small nod against her lap. She and Rhiannon helped him to standing. Her legs shook as she lifted his weight, but she gritted her teeth.
He needs me. I can do this.

His knees buckled, and he stumbled. “Damn it—can’t. I can’t.”

Mairead tightened her grip around his torso. “Connor. Lean on me.”
Alshada, please—please don’t let this be the end for him. Please help us!

His knees buckled. “I can’t.” He turned his head. She swallowed bile at the sight of his swollen, battered face. “Mairead, I should have—” He coughed.

She put two fingers on his lips. “No more. Let us help you.”

His good eye turned glassy, and he grunted. “Mother,” he whispered. He fell.

Mairead knelt next to him and pulled him close on her lap again. “Connor, please,” she whispered.

The hair on her arms rose. She lifted her eyes to see orange and yellow stone braids weave a small hillock next to them. Mairead had to blink several times. The smallest and most beautiful woman she’d ever seen emerged from the hillock, hands on hips and mouth drawn into a tight line. “What happened?”

His mother!
She didn’t have time or inclination to think of manners and how to greet the tiny queen appropriately. “We were attacked,” Mairead said. “I got free, but he—” Her voice choked and she composed herself. “Please, can you help?”

“Your house is nearby?” Maeve asked Rhiannon.

“Just a few hundred paces.”

Maeve nodded. “Lead me. I can bind him in air and bring him along.”

Violet threads wound around Connor’s body, and he sighed in relief as the braids lifted his body off the ground. Rhiannon led the group toward her house.

Mairead stifled a gasp.
She’s carrying him on the air. How is this possible?
She stepped next to Connor’s body, stretched out flat on thin violet strands that she could only barely see in the darkness, and took his good hand.
Focus on Connor, not the magic. Not the Sidh queen. This is about Connor.

“Mairead,” Connor whispered.

She squeezed his hand. “I’m here.”

“You’re safe?”

She nodded. “I’m safe. I’m here. We’ll help you.”

They stepped through the forest to a small cabin, and Rhiannon opened the door. “There’s a bed behind the curtain. Put him down and let’s see what we have,” she said. Maeve brought Connor’s body to rest on a soft mattress behind a patchwork curtain. Rhiannon started to prod the welts and rising bruises on his torso.

Mairead put a hand over her lips, but a sob escaped.

“Now, lass—he’ll be all right, yes,” Rhiannon said, but there was doubt in her voice. She pressed on his belly, sides, and chest. He grunted.

“How bad is it?” Maeve whispered.

“Bad. He bleeds inside, too. I can treat broken bones, bruises, but the bleeding?” She shook her head. “We can only wait it out. Unless you can conjure some skill with healing.”

“I have no talent for it,” Maeve said, her voice on the edge of panic. “I’ll call the Sidh ladies.”

“No.” Connor opened his eyes. He tried to sit up, but fell back and moaned. “Mother, they’re looking for you. Don’t risk—”

“Is there any other way?” Maeve asked, her voice rising and all royal composure gone.

“I don’t know of any,” Rhiannon said. “We could wait out the night, see how he is tomorrow, but by then it could be too late.”

Tears spilled onto Mairead’s cheeks and down to Connor’s arm. He turned his head toward her and opened his good eye. She sniffed. “I’m sorry, Connor. I should have trusted you,” she whispered.

His eye fluttered closed, and he lay motionless.

Mairead gasped. “Connor, don’t—don’t let it take you.” She shook his hand, but he’d faded, leaving behind a bruised, battered husk.

“He lives, but not for long,” Rhiannon said. “The Sidh are safe here. Call your healers, Maeve.”

Maeve’s eyes turned glassy, and gooseflesh rose on Mairead’s arms. A translucent blue braid skimmed her ankle, and she jumped. Within moments, violet, green, and orange braids swirled around the room. The violet braids deposited a small woman dressed in sheer sky blue silk. A second woman stepped out of a thin waterspout and waved the liquid out the window amid green braids. Rhiannon’s dirt floor undulated for a moment, and then a third woman slid up from a pile of soil the size of a molehill. She gestured the dirt back into place. All three women turned to Maeve.

The Sidh queen pointed at Connor. “My son,” she said, her voice cracking under the regal authority. “Heal him.”

The Sidh women pushed Mairead out of the way. “He asked me to stay,” Mairead said.

“He can’t know now, lass,” Rhiannon said, her hands on Mairead’s shoulders. “Come. You need tea. You can’t wait on a thing like this without a cup of tea, no.”

Mairead’s eyes burned with desperate tears.
Alshada, don’t take him—don’t let me lose him.
She let Rhiannon lead her to a small table near a hearth, and the older woman put a kettle over the flames.

Maeve sat at the table as well. “Mairead.”

Mairead closed her eyes. A memory returned.
I’ve been in this woman’s presence.
“You know me.”

The queen didn’t speak. Rhiannon moved small pots and jars around behind them as she prepared tea and food. The Sidh magic in the air raised the hair on Mairead’s arms as the healers ministered to Connor.
I’ve felt it before, even before the night Connor took me away.
“You were there when I was anointed,” Mairead whispered. “You saw—you watched. I felt you there.”

Maeve’s mouth was drawn into a somber line, and her brown eyes brimmed with tears. “Macha Tor is the most sacred place on Taura. I was crowned there, as were all of the Sidh queens back to the creation of the world. For a human to be crowned there—such things are felt in the web. I sensed a ripple, and I responded to it.” Her hands remained folded in her lap. The deep mauve silk she wore shimmered in the pale light from the hearth, and the murky gray stone in her silver circlet caught the light and sparkled. “You were so small,” she whispered. “Such a pretty child, with your blond curls and your rosy cheeks. I wanted a daughter, and when I saw you—” She pursed her lips and shook her head, composing herself. “Do you know who anointed you?”

Mairead shook her head. “I thought it was just a vision or perhaps one of the Syrafi.”

“It was Alshada himself. Muriel prostrated herself, but you danced up to him without fear, without worry. And when he knelt and wiped the oil across your forehead, you giggled. He said your line would bring peace to Taura.”

Alshada himself. And she was there.
“How old was Connor then?”
Fool. Of all the questions you could ask, that’s the one you choose?

Maeve gave her a wistful smile. “Eleven, perhaps twelve. Old enough to prefer his father’s company, young enough to still want his mother’s attention.” She took a deep breath. “What happened to my son?”

Mairead told her everything from the time they met the kiron and his companions to the point when Maeve arrived, leaving out the details of their kisses and intimate conversations. “I don’t know what they wanted with him—why they didn’t just kill him,” Mairead said.

Rhiannon doled tea leaves into three cups. “Well, it’s clear, don’t you think? He said they wanted the Sidh. They wanted you because you’re Queen Brenna’s heir.”

The reliquary—that’s why.
“They needed me to carry the reliquary,” she whispered, her heart racing. “And they wanted Connor to help them find you,” she said to Maeve.

“How do you know she’s the heir?” Maeve asked Rhiannon.

She poured water over the tea leaves and brought over bread and cheese. “I see things, you know. Hidden things. I see a crown on the girl’s head and black wings around the lad. Always have, yes.”

Mairead closed her eyes and put her face in her hands. “This is my fault. I asked him to bring them along. I convinced him to let them travel with us. If he dies because I was an idiot—”

Maeve reached out and put a slim hand on Mairead’s arm. “I think he is stronger than you think.”

“He’s a Mac Niall.” Mairead couldn’t look at Maeve. “You were Culain Mac Niall’s mistress.”

A hint of humor tinged the queen’s voice. “A plain way to say it, but accurate.”

Mairead opened her eyes. “And you?” she asked Rhiannon.

“I was his nanny, yes. I delivered him, in fact. I ministered to the lady when she nearly died. Now I can minister to him in his pain. The earth brings her will around, yes.”

“Forgive me, Rhiannon, but how did you come to be here? Just when we needed a safe place?” Mairead asked.
What if this is another Syrafi illusion, like Donal and Aileen’s farm? Will healing work if it’s all an illusion?

The old woman shrugged. “I live, I hunt, I heal here. You came to me. Coincidence, perhaps.” She bustled away.

Time passed with agonizing sloth. The Sidh healers stayed behind the curtain, the vibrations and aura of their magic hovering around the small rooms. Mairead couldn’t stand the wait with Maeve’s eyes on her. “I need some fresh air,” she said, and walked out of the cabin before the other women could respond.

Once outside, she wished she had her cloak. The autumn chill hit her full on after the warmth of Rhiannon’s cabin, and her breath hovered before her when she exhaled. She wandered toward a small barn near the cabin. Against one outside wall was a stack of chopped wood under a short overhang. She sat on the ground near the wood, drew her knees to her chin, and fell into shaking, gasping sobs. She couldn’t even form the words to pray.
What if I never get to tell him how I feel? If he wakes up, I’ll tell him. If I can figure out how I feel.

When her sobs at last started to abate, she lifted her head and tried to compose herself. A barn cat sidled next to her, rubbing her legs and purring, and Mairead lowered her knees to give the orange tabby a place to nestle. The cat kneaded her legs and curled up in a warm ball, and the autumn chill didn’t seem as bitter. Mairead stroked the cat’s ears and head idly. She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. She leaned against the woodpile and closed her eyes as the cat warmed her.

“Mairead.”

She startled, disturbing the cat, and turned to see Rhiannon. “Is he all right?” She stood quickly. The cat mewed a complaint. “Are they done?”

“No. We should go get your things, yes?” Rhiannon stared at the cat. “You think she is one of you, eh?” The cat mewed and sat down to lick one paw. “Heh. The lioness knows, yes.” She strode away, and Mairead hurried after her.

The bodies were stiff when Mairead and Rhiannon arrived at the camp. Wolves and other wild dogs called to each other in the distance, but the fire had kept them away. Flies were already gathering, and the horses whickered and stamped nervous hooves at the sounds and smells. Mairead turned her face away from the bloody scene. She picked up blankets and packs and put them on the horses. “What about the animals that belonged to the kirons? I mean—”

Rhiannon took the reins of the wagon team. “I’ll take them. Leave them, and the wolves will get them.”

When everything was packed, Rhiannon stamped out the remainder of the fire. They left the wagon. “Leave the bodies,” Rhiannon said. “Food for wolves and crows and worms, they are. Let the earth care for her own.” She walked past Mairead toward her cabin.

Faced with the prospect of leaving, Mairead finally stopped and stared at the dead bodies in the faint moonlight. “I killed those men,” she said. Rhiannon stopped and put a hand on her shoulder. “I killed them. Six of them. How could I do that?”

“He taught you, eh? He’s good. His reputation is well-deserved.”

Mairead shuddered. “How could he be caught so off-guard?”

“Distraction? No man is perfect, even a raven.” She waited. “You want to offer up prayers, eh?”

The question was an honest one, if brusque. Mairead shook her head. “I can pray from your cabin.”
And I don’t know if I can offer prayers for these.

They walked in silence, Rhiannon directing them through the forest, her eyes fixed ahead as she walked. Her graceful frame picked over brush, and her pale gray dress stood against the dark of the forest as a faint beacon. The moon cast dim shadows through the trees, and soon, Mairead saw the light of Rhiannon’s small cabin ahead.