Twixt Firelight and Water (3 page)

‘All my life. My name is Conri.’

‘Mm.’ He acknowledged it with a courteous nod, but did not offer his own in return. After a moment he added, ‘Why would you buy me a drink, Conri?’

My heart thumping, I said, ‘You’re a stranger in these parts. I imagine you may be here for a particular reason.’

‘You imagine correctly.’ I could almost see his mind working. He needed information, but speaking to the wrong person might put his whole plan in jeopardy. ‘What kind of trade do you ply?’ He glanced at my hands.

‘I’m a musician. Soon to be wed. We’ll be travelling to live with kinsfolk in the north.’

He nodded. This answer seemed to satisfy him. ‘Know all the locals, do you?’

‘Most. Are you looking for someone?’

‘A child. A boy.’

‘I see.’ I traced a finger around the rim of my ale cup, thinking he must indeed be tenacious if he thought to pit his human skills against her uncanny ones, his honest strength against her overweening ambition. ‘A small boy or a bigger one?’

It was in my voice, no doubt: the knowledge. The fear. When he spoke again his tone was hushed, so nobody else could hear, and there was an edge in it. ‘He’d be five years old by now. Red hair; pale skin; unusual eyes, the colour of ripe mulberries.’

‘Your son?’ I kept my own voice down.

‘Never mind that. Have you seen him?’

I thought of my mother’s wrath. I thought of Ciarán with my gift in his hand and his eyes full of shadows. ‘There is a child who meets that description living nearby,’ I whispered. ‘But there are ... risks. High risks, my lord.’ Oh, how his eyes came alight as I spoke! The selfsame look had kindled on my brother’s small face when I told him we were kin, and died when I bade him farewell.

‘How do I know I can trust you?’ Ciáran’s father asked.

‘I might ask you the same question,’ I said. ‘But I will not. I think the two of us want the same thing: for the boy to be safe. Where would you take him? How could you keep him out of danger?’

He looked at me. I saw the strength written in his face, and the suffering. ‘If I tell you,’ he said, ‘those who seek to harm him can get the answers from you and hunt him down. So I will not tell. But there is a place where he can be protected, and I will take him there. His father and his brothers will keep him safe.’

‘Brothers?’ I echoed, somewhat taken aback to think there were more of us out there.

The stranger glanced towards the unglazed window of the inn. I had thought this a solitary journey, a father’s lonely quest to claim his lost son. But this man was no fool. He’d brought reinforcements. The two of them were standing out the front waiting for him, youngish men made very much in his own mould, with pale, intense faces, keen eyes, unsmiling mouths. Weaponry of various kinds hung about them. The father hadn’t needed to carry a pack; each of his sons bore one. His sons, but not hers. There was no touch of the uncanny on these hard-faced warriors.

‘Half-brothers.’

It was not a question, but I thought it needed an answer. ‘I only have one half-brother,’ I said. ‘Promise me he will be safe, and I will show you where he is.’ Fear dripped through me like ice water. ‘But understand the danger, for all of us.’

‘Oh, I understand.’ His voice was like iron. ‘You are her son?’

I would not answer so direct a question. ‘I will show you,’ I said. ‘The best time is early morning, not long after dawn. You must be prepared to leave quickly and travel swiftly. At present she is not here, but she may return at any time. Weapons such as those your sons bear will not help you in this struggle.’

‘Come,’ he said, rising to his feet.

The two sons were wary; everything about them spoke distrust. I bore some resemblance to my mother, and while I did not know their story, I imagined she had wrought havoc amongst their family. Unsurprising, then, that they did not warm to me. But they did their father’s bidding and a plan was made. We would camp out in the woods overnight, close to the cottage. We would move in before dawn and take him. They had horses stabled nearby, and could travel swiftly. And they had one or two other tricks, they said, but nobody told me what those were.

I prayed that my mother’s visit to the south would be a lengthy one, though I knew Ciáran’s training would call her back soon; her methods required that the student not be allowed time to mull over what she was doing to him. If she discovered this plan, all of us would be caught up in her fury. By Danu’s sweet mercy, it was a risk indeed.

‘We must make a pact of silence, Conri,’ the nobleman said when the four of us were out of doors, under the trees, working out how it would unfold. ‘Neither I nor my sons here will mention your name, whatever pressure is applied to us. None of us will say how we found the boy. In return, you will not speak of what happened. You will cover our tracks as best you can. You will do all in your power to avoid laying a trail. If you love your little brother, and it seems to me that is so, you will do what you can to ensure he is not hurt.’

Not hurt? Ciarán had already been hurt so badly the scars of it would be with him all his life. ‘I will honour the pact,’ I said. ‘As I said, I’m to be married at Lugnasad. We won’t be making our home here.’

‘I wish you joy,’ he said quietly. ‘Now take us close to the place. We must remain in cover until it’s time.’

I wondered what Lóch would think when she came home and found the cottage empty. I’d have to invent a story to cover my overnight absence. It felt wrong to lie to her, but she could not know the truth. If this worked, if Ciarán escaped, my mother would be brutal in her efforts to track the perpetrators down. The thought that her touch might reach my sweetheart curdled my blood and froze my heart within me.
Let the sorceress stay away. Let us be gone when she returns.

* * * *

I think Ciarán knew. His eldritch abilities were exceptional. As the first dawn light touched the leaves of the rowans, a small form slipped out the cottage door, a hooded cloak concealing his bright hair. He moved across the open ground as swiftly as a creature evading predators, which, in a way, was exactly what he was. I glanced at the father’s face, just once, and saw the glint of tears. The nobleman squatted down as the child approached us where we stood under the trees. Ciarán stopped two paces away, a tiny, upright figure, preternaturally still.

I think the father was intending to re-introduce himself, to reassure, to explain quickly the need for silence and flight. After all, his son had been a baby when they last met.

‘Papa?’ The small voice was held quiet. The child understood that this must be covert.

‘I’ve come to take you home, Ciarán.’ The grimmest of warriors could not have kept his tone steady at such a moment. ‘We must go now, and as quietly as we can. Shall I carry you?’

Ciarán shook his head. He put a hand in his father’s, as if they had been parted only from twilight till dawn, and they set off side by side. At the rear, uneasily, came the two brothers and I.

It felt as if I scarcely breathed while we made our way out of the forest and along the lake to the place where their horses were stabled. I waited at a distance while they retrieved the beasts; the fewer people saw me in their company, the fewer could make a link if my mother came asking. They mounted. Ciarán was seated before his father in the saddle.

‘Thank you,’ the nobleman said gravely. ‘I understand what you have risked for him. I am in your debt.’

‘Ride safely,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose we will meet again. Goodbye, Ciarán.’ I saw, looking at him, that while he was my mother’s son, a child with more than his share of the uncanny, he was also a human boy of five, scared, excited, almost overwhelmed by what had happened. ‘The blessing of Danu be always on you, little brother.’

He allowed himself a smile. ‘And on you, Conri,’ he said, and they rode away. Perhaps Ciáran’s father did not understand that an ordinary human man could not break a sorceress’s protective charm, however strong and determined he might be. But I understood, and I recognised in that moment that without the innate talent of the child himself, this rescue mission could never have been accomplished.

* * * *

Lugnasad morn: the dawn of our wedding day. The cottage had been promised to a local family down on their luck; they had paid only a token sum for the use of it. The grandmother had traded her house cow for a creaky cart and an ancient horse. I doubted either would last as far as our destination, the place where these cousins lived. Nonetheless, as soon as the hand-fasting ritual was over we were heading north. We would make camp by the wayside, and our wedding night would be spent under the stars.

Lóch sent me out of the house while she put on her finery. It was a surprise, she told me with twinkling eyes. I had seen her gown already. In a tiny cottage, there is little room for secrets. But I kissed her and went outside anyway. We had a small supply of good hay we’d kept aside to give the horse a strengthening meal before we started out. I’d take that down to the field, not hurrying over it. By the time I got back Lóch would be ready.

One moment I was standing by the dry-stone wall, feeding the horse by hand. The next I was flat on my back, held immobile in the grip of a spell. I could not move so much as my little finger. I looked up and into my mother’s eyes.

‘Where is he?’

There was only one feeling in me, and that was terror — not for myself, not for Ciarán, who should be well away by now, but for Lóch. I didn’t make a sound. I couldn’t have told my mother what she wanted anyway. The charm she had set on me made every breath a mountain to climb. Speak? Hardly.

‘Where is he, Conri? Tell me!
Vanished in the night,
his keepers said. A child of that age does not wander off on his own.’ Her face was a spectral white, her eyes wine-dark. Her voice scourged me. ‘Speak, Conri! What did you see? Who came? Which way did they go?’

I lay mute, staring up at her like a dullard who cannot understand plain words. With a very small part of my mind, the part I was able to shield, I willed Lóch not to come out and look for me.

‘What is the matter with you, wretched boy? While you tend to horses like a feeble-minded farmhand, and no doubt waste day after day on your endless hummings and tinklings, my son has disappeared from under your nose! You fool, Conri, you stupid, treacherous fool! Tell me! You must know! Tell me who has taken him!’ She relaxed her spell a little; she wanted me capable of speech.

If I lied, she would recognise it instantly. If I told the truth she would be off after them in the blink of an eye. My silence could win them precious time. I lay there, looking up at her, and spoke not a word.

‘Come.’ My mother clicked her fingers. Now I could move. I could move in one direction only, and that was after her. A good thing. She led me away from Lóch, away from the grandmother, away from the cottage and into the forest. She led me, a dog on an invisible chain, across the margin and into the Otherworld. We stood in the shade of the oaks, the sorceress and I, and in my mind I offered an apology to my little brother, and another to his father, and my regrets to the two hard-faced men who were Ciáran’s half-brothers. I had not particularly liked them, but I had respected them. I had seen the bonds of family there, a phenomenon previously unknown to me. I hoped those bonds were strong enough to withstand a sorceress’s fury.

‘Very well, Conri.’ My mother’s face was calm now. She knew I could not run, not with her spell on me. She knew how easily I had bent and broken before her punishments in the years of my growing to a man. ‘I can ensure you never set your fingers to the harp strings again. I can turn you into a twisted, crippled apology for a man. I can do this between one breath and the next. There is one way you can save yourself, and that is by telling me what you know. Now, Conri. Right now.’

My heart thudded like a war drum; my skin broke out in cold sweat. She didn’t know about Lóch. Somehow, all summer long, she had been so engrossed in her new project, honing her human weapon, that she had taken her eyes right off me. She had not seen that I had fallen in love. She had threatened my hands; she had threatened my body. She had not used the threat that I most feared. Oh gods, if only I could be strong, both Ciarán and Lóch might be spared my mother’s wrath.

I drew a deep breath. ‘I know nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all.’

I expected pain, and she delivered it. I put my teeth through my lip; I bloodied my palms with my nails. At a certain point I lost control of my bladder, ruining my wedding clothes. The sun rose higher. The Lugnasad ritual would be starting, and Lóch would be cross with me. I tried not to think of her. The most probing, the most penetrating charm my mother could devise must never find the small, safe place where my dear one was hidden, deep in my heart.

My mother must soon come to believe I had nothing to tell her, surely. I had never held out so long before. Always, eventually, I had delivered what she wanted once the punishment reached a certain level. Back then, I had not had Lóch to think of. Or my brother. I was starting to understand about family. As I writhed, I allowed hope in.
Soon she’ll give up on me. She’ll leave me here and head off to wherever she gave birth to him, and I can creep back over the margin. Lóch will forgive me. We can be wed tomorrow ...

The sun rose higher still. The harvest ritual would be over; the folk of the village would be celebrating with mead and games. Lóch would be upset, worried.