Tuala had already looked at the pattern and formed her own opinion as to its meaning. It had taken her only a moment. This was something at which she had a natural ability, similar to her ease with scrying: the answers seemed to spring to her mind fully formed almost before she asked the questions. She held her silence. Later, when she and Bridei were alone together, she would tell him what the gods had said.
A select group looked on as Broichan and Fola circled the table, peering closely at the lie of the rods. Each short length of birch was carved with ancient symbols; each had its own range of meanings. For every casting there was a wealth of possible interpretations. The true skill of the seer lay in teasing out which of these was right for the question being posed. The gods of Fortriu were complex creatures and their counsel seldom came in plain, unambiguous terms.
Fola had brought her assistant, Derila; it was fortunate that both had already been in attendance at White Hill for the councils. Apart from these two, the druid, and Bridei himself, the only other people present were Bridei’s bodyguard Garth and the old scholar Wid, who leaned on his staff as he squinted at the rods in the fitful light. Wid had never claimed to be a conduit for the voices of the gods. His expertise was in worldly skills such as the reading of men’s eyes and their gestures, the interpretation of the silences between their words. Both Bridei and Tuala had learned from him. In time he might teach Derelei; Derelei who was now spending part of every afternoon in Broichan’s company, and had a tendency to fall asleep at night singing to himself in a manner that set shadows dancing oddly in the corners and frogs hopping out from the wood basket.
“It’s quite obscure,” Fola said. “A pair of pathways, by my interpretation, each of which then branches further. For the life of me I cannot decide which is predominant. It is all dogs and birds; not an army in sight. What do you say, old friend?”
The moonlight had turned Broichan’s face ghostly pale. Tuala could see the lines there, more lines than a man of his age should have. He was not yet old. “I see death in this,” he said. “But that is to be expected. Our question dealt with war, and wars are not won without the loss of life. I agree, Fola, birds do seem to the fore. The eagle is lying from east to west; that can only be taken as a positive sign. The shadow lies behind him. Ahead is … ahead is a choice of paths, and here the message becomes a challenge to interpret.”
“It is chaotic, perhaps, simply because wars are ever thus.” It was the young priestess, Derila, who spoke. She had risen quickly through the ranks of Fola’s wise women and was well respected for her scholarship. “I see both sun and moon in the west. Despite the fact that the eagle is hemmed in by these other rods, I would take that placement as a sign that both the Flamekeeper and the Shining One favor a move on the Gaels.”
“I agree with your interpretation, Derila.” Bridei bent to examine the pattern more closely. “But I see nothing here that clarifies whether the endeavor should take place now or later.” He glanced at Tuala over his shoulder. He would not ask her to comment.
“Tuala,” said Fola, “in this company of friends, won’t you give us your opinion? You’re young and keen-eyed. Perhaps you can see something we can’t.”
Broichan opened his mouth, then shut it like a trap.
“I’m too close to this,” Tuala said, suppressing a shiver. She kept her voice calm, for she had learned under Queen Rhian’s tuition to school her tone and her expression. “What wife, given the opportunity to pronounce on such a question, would not offer the interpretation most likely to keep her husband at home and away from harm? You are adept. Perhaps all that is needed is some time for thinking.”
“There is no time!” snapped Broichan. His display of irritation was uncharacteristic, and Bridei glanced at him in surprise.
“There is tonight, at least,” the king said quietly. “If we can find no more answers here, then let each of us seek the wisdom of the gods alone a while, and see what comes to us. Tomorrow, after we speak together again, I will make my decision.”
LATER, WHEN THEY were alone, Tuala told Bridei what she had seen: a sure sign from the Shining One that he must go now and, to balance it, the undeniable indication that in doing so he would be taking a risk far greater than any of them could calculate. “There was something hidden,” she said as they stood before the fire in their private quarters, “something we were not meant to see. Perhaps it is still obscure even to the gods. But whatever it is, it’s perilous beyond the dangers inherent in the nature of armed conflict. I wish you could take Faolan with you.”
“You think this sign means personal danger for me? That surely is preferable to the kind of peril that might strike my forces: a great storm, perhaps, or a plague, or the leaking of critical information to our enemy.”
“Don’t sound so pleased,” Tuala said dryly. “You may care little for your own safety. Others place a higher value on your life.”
“If I thought it would win back the west for Fortriu,” Bridei said, “I would lay down my life with a light heart.”
“Without you they could not succeed,” said Tuala. “You are their heart, Bridei. You are the Blade of Fortriu. I know there are other strong leaders, men who would step up in your place, Carnach in particular. But it is you whom these men love. It is you they will follow to the death. The goddess sets you a difficult test here. She wishes you to place yourself in peril. By doing so, you may win back our lost territories. Or you may lose all, and be remembered as a king of five bright summers. I could not say this in front of the others. But it seemed to me the rods did show two pos- sible paths, and that each of them begins the same way: with a movement to the west by summer’s end. You asked the gods the wrong question. They are not offering any choice in the timing of your venture, only the knowledge that, before the leaves fall from the oaks, you will triumph or you will die.”
THE MOON WAXED and waned again; the days began to rush by, each blurring into the next. With every sunrise Ana knew with sinking heart that her handfasting to Alpin was one day closer. She found herself thanking the goddess for every day on which the druid yet again failed to arrive; she found herself praying he would never come.
Alpin was trying to make her feel at home. He presented her with gifts, breakfasted with her every morning, and made an effort to moderate his language, not always successfully. Ana tried to conceal the fact that his touch still turned her cold and that his conversation either bored or offended her. With grim determination she endured his kisses, averting her face so they did not reach her mouth. She listened patiently to his rambling accounts of great stags hunted and fierce enemies routed. She ate sparingly of the enormous meals and took steps to improve the comforts of the sewing chamber and of her own quarters. It would be essential to retain some private space once she was married: without a retreat from Alpin she would surely go mad. She determined to put Drustan and Deord and that whole sorry mess to the back of her mind and just make the best of things.
There had been no opportunity to speak to Faolan alone. The only time she ever saw him these days was at the supper table, and since Alpin had threatened any man who so much as looked at her, Ana made an effort to avoid her bard’s eyes. So far he had not been commanded to sing. She began to think Alpin had forgotten about him, and was glad of it, though she would have welcomed a chance to seek Faolan’s advice, had it been possible. On their shared journey he had become a friend. She knew she could trust him; rely on him. She suspected that, at Briar Wood, she was going to be short of friends. And she wanted to ask him about Breakstone Hollow.
She tried to forget her unfortunate foray into spying and its distressing aftermath. It wasn’t as if there were nothing else to keep her occupied. A wedding outfit must be made, along with other garments for herself and a fine new tunic for her future husband, with an embroidered border of dogs that Ana had undertaken to fashion with her own hands. Ludha was doing the fine work on the wedding dress, having completed the baby gown. The look in her maid’s eyes as she handed over the t
iny, exquisitely finished garment told Ana, with no need for words, that Ludha understood her mistress’s ambivalence about the impending marriage.
The birds kept coming. A series of tiny gifts came with them: a delicate flower, a wispy gray feather, woolen threads from a blanket, intricately plaited into a small circle like a ring. Ana resisted the temptation to send something in return. The man was a murderer, and she had sworn to keep out of this. Sometimes the hoodie or the crossbill or the wren simply flew in to perch on windowsill or chair back and watch her a while bright-eyed. Sometimes, when Ludha was absent, Ana caught herself talking to these visitors and made herself stop, for it seemed to her that such conversations amounted to speaking to Drustan, and that she was playing with fire if she did so.
The design for Alpin’s wedding tunic just would not come right. Ana worked a series of samples on small squares of linen in order to perfect the dog motif, but the stitches would not flow and the small hounds came out snarling and repellent. Ludha observed and held her tongue, though it was plain that she was bursting to offer assistance. This bride had offered to fashion her husband’s outfit with her own hands. The symbolism in that gesture was quite clear, and Ana must not be seen to fail in the task. Grimly she continued to produce one unsatisfactory design after another until, on a particularly warm afternoon a full turning of the moon after her arrival at Briar Wood, she and Ludha took their handiwork out to a small, secluded courtyard on the upper level of the fortress, a place reached by a flight of stone steps whose narrow, precipitous nature meant most of the women did not go there at all, despite the attractions of a vista of trees and a sheltered, sunny space in which to work and talk.
The two of them settled in a companionable silence, each claiming a stone bench for herself and her workbasket. The songs of a multitude of birds could be heard from the reaches of Briar Wood, over the walls. Ludha began to hum under her breath, a tune Ana recognized as a tale of lovers parted long and delightfully reunited at the end; no doubt the girl had her absent archer, Foldec, in mind. Next time Ludha reached the chorus Ana joined in, singing a lower voice. Ludha smiled with delight and launched into another verse.
For a little it became possible to set it all aside: the marriage, the appalling prospect of sharing Alpin’s bed, the whole future spent by his side, in the company of his oafish friends. Drustan and his malady; the murder of the innocent; the shutting away behind stone walls and iron bars. Bridei and his vital treaty. Faolan, whose safety was much on her mind; Faolan to whom she was forbidden to speak alone. Ana sang on, and as she sang her hands plied needle and thread and she fashioned another small motif on another minute square of cloth. This time the image was not that of a dog. The threads were scarlet and dark brown, and the bright-eyed creature looking back at her from the linen, when song and embroidery were done, was a crossbill carrying in its beak a strand of russet hair. Ana stared at it; she had shocked herself. Her instinct, as Ludha glanced across, was to thrust the little square into her basket, to hide it as if it were incriminating evidence. She suppressed that. She had nothing to feel guilty about, nothing at all.
“What a sweet design!” Ludha exclaimed, coming closer to look. “That would be lovely on a little shirt for a child. It could go on the breast, and you could pick up the red in the border.”
“Mm,” said Ana noncommittally, selecting a pale thread to hem the edges of her tiny creation. Her mind was not itself today; it was playing dangerous tricks, for the infant she had instantly pictured in such a small shirt had a head of flaming auburn hair and eyes bright as stars. “I should be making dogs, but I just can’t get them right. And time’s passing, Ludha. It’s passing all too quickly. That druid could be here anytime now.”
“The bird is lovely,” Ludha said quietly. “You have such a gift, my lady. May I show you something I’ve been working on?”
“Please do.”
Ludha took a neatly folded strip of cloth from her own basket. “I did this at night, by candlelight. Of course, you need not use my design, but I thought it might help. It’s not my place, I know, but …”
And there it was, the dog design, perfectly executed and entirely pleasing, with a noble regularity to it that would be exactly Alpin’s preference for this depiction of his kin symbol. Spirals and cross-hatching linked the small canines into a balanced and flowing border. It was a sample only, two dogs, three links, but it could be plainly seen how well this would look on the red-dyed fabric of the bridegroom’s new tunic.
Ana let out her breath in a sigh.
“I hope you’re not offended, my lady, it’s just … I could see how this was troubling you. It happens to me sometimes. I know I can do something, but I just can’t get started on it.”
Ana smiled. “I’m not offended, I’m most grateful, Ludha. If you are prepared to let me use your design, I’ll start working on the border tomorrow.”
Ludha gave a nod. “You know how there are three birds?” she said, watching as Ana’s needle turned a corner on the tiny square. “You could … that is, if you wanted to …”
“Mm,” said Ana, thinking it was just as well the two of them were alone today in this out-of-the-way part of Alpin’s stronghold. “Just for my own enjoyment, of course. You realize that, matters being as they are, such designs could never appear on the garments of any infant at Briar Wood.”
“No, my lady. Although it seems a shame, doesn’t it?” Then, as Ana completed the hem and bit off the thread, “Do you know the song about Big Fergal, who was a sort of giant, and how he tamed the Monstrous Worm?”
“I used to sing it with my sister, a long time ago. You start and I’ll see how much I remember.”
What with the singing and the sunshine and the privacy of the upper courtyard, Ana’s mind grew calmer as her hands began to fashion a second little square, this time in hues of black and gray. It was toward the end of the third ballad, the tale of a girl who fell in love with a toad, that her spine began to prickle and her needle stilled. She looked at Ludha, frozen on the opposite bench. Their voices faltered, leaving only that of the third singer, whose deeper, more hesitant version of “The Maid of the Mere” was reaching them, impossibly, from somewhere beneath the flagstone flooring of their sanctuary. As they stopped singing, this voice went on a little, “and so she sighed, alas for me! My love lies in the shadowlands.” Then, as the singer realized he was the only one left, he, too, fell abruptly silent.
Ana cleared her throat. Ludha had both hands over her mouth, as if too shocked to let herself utter a word. Rapidly, Ana performed some calculations relating to the position of various apartments at Briar Wood and the movement of the sun. She looked out over the wall once more and saw, framed by the upper branches of the elms, a vista of rising ground crowned by a single majestic oak. Birds rose and settled in its spreading canopy. She swallowed. “Ludha?” It was a whisper.
“Mm?”
“What apartments lie beneath this court?”
“Just storage rooms, my lady. A closed-off part of the house. And …”
“And Deord’s quarters. Just beneath us.” It must be so; even had her quick estimates of distance not made this evident, she knew whose voice that had been, a voice she heard nightly in her dreams. The grilled roof of Drustan’s enclosure must lie below and to the west of them, concealed by the high parapet wall on that side of the courtyard. The sleeping quarters must be almost directly under them. Some quirk of construction made it possible to hear quite clearly, for all the considerable difference in height. Ana’s heart was making a nuisance of itself, pounding as if she had run a race. She felt the flush in her cheeks. Common sense said quite clearly, Pack up your work and go; do so in silence. In her hands she still held the little square on which the form of the hoodie was half-stitched, its neat plumage glossy in her best silk thread. She stroked the bird image with a finger that was not as steady as it should be.
“My lady!” hissed Ludha, jerking her head toward the steps. She had gone pale; fear was in her eyes.<
br />
“Not yet, Ludha,” Ana said. “We are safe here a little longer. Let us finish the song, at least, and reunite Linia with her warty sweetheart. Where were we?”
“So she went out on a fair spring morn …” Ludha sounded as if she were singing through clenched teeth, but she had picked up her work again and begun to sew with grim determination.
“When birds flew swift from tree to tree …” Ana sang, wondering why there was a lump in her throat and tears in her eyes.
“And pricked her finger on a thorn …” came the hesitant voice from below, not a resonant, well-formed tone like Faolan’s, but that of a man who has almost forgotten how to make music, so long has it been since he had either the inclination or opportunity.
“And shed her blood so all could see,” sang the three voices together, blending in a sweet sound that rang across the sunny court. The ballad went on to tell how Linia won back her lover by a little self-sacrifice and a smidgeon of well-directed hearth magic. As they worked their way through it, Ana pinpointed the spot where the third voice could be most clearly heard, a crack between flagstones and inner wall, and when they were done she moved to kneel by this narrow aperture.
“Drustan?” she asked softly. Ludha was staring, either aghast or impressed, Ana could not tell which.
“Ana?” His tone was uneven. Perhaps he had believed she would run away; would never return, once she knew he was there.
“Where are you?”
A pause. “Where would I be but here?” he said.
“Where exactly? Is Deord there?”
“I am in the sleeping quarters. I heard you singing. And talking. I’m sorry if I have offended you …”
“Deord?”
“Fetching water. I will know when he returns. The gate creaks.”
Then, abruptly, Ana found herself lost for words. The only question in her mind was, Did you do it, did you really kill them? This could not be spoken, not thus baldly. Not at all.