“Please,” Fola said, “do come in. We need to talk to you, Broichan and I. We won’t trap you into anything; we understand your decision to shun the scrying bowl. It will remain darkened unless you decide otherwise, Tuala.”
Tuala came into the chamber, closing the door behind her. Knowledge of what lay under that dark swath of fabric made her jittery and nervous. Even through the thick covering the scrying bowl called to her, filling her with the longing for knowledge. She had become accustomed to averting her gaze from rain puddles; to avoiding lakeside walks. The truth was, her seer’s gift was so powerful it was more torment than blessing.
She spoke to fill a silence that felt alive with danger. “I’m planning to leave in a day or two. I need to be at White Hill. There’s so much to do—”
“You would not consider leaving Derelei here a while?” Broichan’s voice was quiet; he looked weary, the lines showing deep and stark on his face.
Tuala had not considered what her departure would mean for the druid. “Derelei needs to be with me,” she said. “He’s still very little; his lessons can wait until you are better, surely.”
It was but rarely that Broichan allowed folk to see anything on his features beyond a mask of stern calm. Now, suddenly, he looked bereft.
“The child is weaned now, isn’t he?” Fola put in. “You could leave him here with the nursemaid. If you’re worried about his safety, they could all stay, Garth and his wife, too.”
“And leave Ferada with three little boys running around just when her first students are about to arrive?” Tuala managed a smile, but she felt a deep unease. What had they seen for Derelei, these two wise visionaries? “He’s in danger, isn’t he?” she blurted out. “You’ve seen something. Tell me!”
Broichan sighed. “I spoke to you of one vision, a powerful and disturbing one. But my command of the scrying mirror is not what it was. That moment of clarity was like one bright flower in a field of dead and drying stalks. I see fragments, moments, fleeting and impenetrable.”
Tuala looked at Fola.
“Unfortunately, the Shining One has not chosen to send me what I need of recent times,” the wise woman said. “She has drawn a veil across her fair face and left me in shadow. Tuala, we two old friends together have discussed the limited knowledge the gods are allowing us. What we have seen concerns us deeply. We have grave misgivings. But we are powerless to act unless the scrying bowl yields up more answers than we are able to summon.”
Tuala had to force herself to ask. “If you’ve seen danger for Derelei, you must tell me. I can set more guards in place, I can—”
Fola’s expression brought the flood of words to a halt. “Broichan asks for Derelei to stay here chiefly because he can’t bear to let the child go,” the wise woman said quietly. “Broichan will mend better if he has Derelei close by and can continue teaching him. But you’re the child’s mother, you must decide. It’s not Derelei who concerns us. It’s Bridei.”
A cold hand closed around Tuala’s heart. “Tell me,” she said.
“As I explained,” Fola went on, “the images are vague and disjointed. Both Broichan and I have believed for some time that there is a shadow over Bridei, a threat of some kind beyond the usual dangers of war. Because we cannot summon exactly what we need to the scrying bowl, we cannot go further than that. I saw a huge wildcat stalking him; Broichan glimpsed a strange bird of prey swooping down on him. In another vision I saw Ana with a burning brand in her hand, fighting a pack of wolves.”
“What?”
“Unlikely, and more the kind of fantasy a new young student of the craft will imagine she sees in the water than an image that would reveal itself to these old eyes, I know. When I add that she was clad in a very short gown and had an improbably beautiful young man by her side, you will no doubt tell me I am in my second childhood. But there it was.”
There was a brief silence.
“If we can find out what the danger is,” Broichan said, “we have at least some chance of intervention. You know this, Tuala. You and I, together, have taken action to save him once before.”
She nodded. It had been the only time the two of them had shared any sort of understanding in all the years of Tuala’s growing up in Broichan’s house at Pitnochie.
“You want me to do it again.” She heard the fear in her own voice, and the longing.
“It will be quite safe here,” Fola said. “You’re in a place of sanctuary, behind closed doors, with old friends. Powerful old friends. Nothing of this will be spoken by either of us outside these walls. If we need to tell Aniel or Tharan, if we need to dispatch a messenger, we will say the vision was Broichan’s. I know you haven’t attempted this since the day Bridei rode to Pitnochie to fetch you back. I think the time has come when you must attempt it again.”
Tuala nodded, eyes pricking with tears. “I saw that there was danger for him,” she said. “Before he left, when Broichan cast the augury. Victory or death: those were the possibilities. I explained it to him. He chose to go.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Broichan’s voice was a shocked whisper.
Tuala looked at him. “There was no need for both of us to shred our hearts with worry,” she said. “What the augury told was like your visions, fragmentary, unspecific. He will take extra care. He’ll make sure his guards are vigilant. I could not tell him what the danger was, the source of the threat or when it might come. There was nothing any of us could have done.”
“I should have gone with him,” Broichan muttered.
“No,” Tuala said gently. “Your best place is here with Derelei; and with me.” She took a deep breath. “All right, I’ll do it. Just this once. It’s so long since I’ve tried, I may have no more success than you, but …” She drew the cloth away from the bowl, which was already full of clean water. The chamber seemed to darken further, but the vessel itself was filled with light, with color, with a dazzling confusion of images. Tuala bent to look.
The vision consumed her immediately. She was barely aware of the others moving to stand by the table, each of them taking one of her hands and joining their own to make a circle around the copper bowl. Fola’s hand was small, warm, and relaxed; Broichan’s long fingers were cold, the joints bony, but his grip was reassuringly strong. In the water Tuala could see him in a younger form, a dark-haired druid in his prime, walking deep in the forest with his oak staff in his hand and his eyes distant, as if he were in trance. Tuala could not be sure if what she witnessed was a spirit journey, a voyage of the mind carried out during long meditation, or a physical venture into the wildwood.
She knew the place. It was above Pitnochie, near a waterfall called the Lady’s Veil. The season was early spring; the freshest of green leaves sprouted on the bending boughs of the beeches, and on the great oaks buds were still swelling, awaiting the releasing touch of warmer days. The light slanted down between the trees, dappling the druid’s white robe and setting a gleam on his dark plaited hair. White. When had Broichan ever worn white? This must be the time of Balance, and the druid going off for his three days of lonely vigil under sun and stars, the secret days of his spring equinox observance. Broichan had done this faithfully for year after year. Exactly what the practice entailed, none but druids knew. Privation, fasting, endurance: all would likely be part of such a solitary rite.
But in this vision, Broichan was not alone. From behind the beeches, half concealed in that pattern of light and shade, someone was watching him. Tuala caught a glimpse of a pale gown, a delicate white hand, a drift of dark hair; there was a shimmer, a ripple, a shifting of the air. The druid was suddenly still, halted in his tracks, listening. After a moment he went on and, as he vanished along the path under the trees, someone darted after him, someone small and slender yet womanly in shape, someone with locks as black as soot and eyes wide and light as the touch of the sun on a forest pool. Someone who bore a disconcerting resemblance to herself.
Before Tuala had a chance to blink, let alone begin working
out the implications of what she had just been shown, another set of images took the place of the first. The bowl was suddenly full of twisting, tangling bodies, of cutting and thrusting, blocking and evasion, of mouths stretched wide in scream of agony or primitive challenge, of sword and spear and club, swift arrow and deadly knife. A great battle; the pattern of it was ever-changing, a swirling, capricious, devouring tide, and the most able strategist in all Fortriu would have been hard put to say what orders the men followed, or which of these two armies had the upper hand.
Tuala was in no doubt that she was witnessing the great culmination of Bridei’s venture, an engagement of massive scale and decisive strategic importance. She had asked the goddess to show her a true picture and to reveal the nature of the threat to Bridei. Past experience told her the Shining One would show her what she needed or nothing at all.
There were familiar faces to be glimpsed here and there in the melee: Uven with a bandage around his arm; Carnach on horseback, shouting orders; Talorgen wielding a great sword two-handed, with blood on his tunic. Enfret lying wounded and Cinioch trying to drag him to the shelter of a small grove of willows. The battle raged up and down the banks of a broad, shallow stream; many of the struggling, grappling men were up to their knees in the water. Tuala saw at least one man finished off when his opponent simply held his head under. The stream flowed red. The warriors fought on a carpet of fallen comrades. Later, there would be great fires. Tuala muttered under her breath, Bone Mother, take their hands. Grant them peace, although there was no knowing if what she saw had already taken place, or was even now unfolding. Perhaps it was yet to come.
At last she saw Bridei and her breath stopped in her throat. He was down; wounded, perhaps already dying. The conflict swirled around him, but there was a little space where he lay, as if the king of Fortriu had fallen unnoticed and might perish in the midst of the field of war, the goddess taking him with no more ceremony than she did any other combatant. But Bridei was not quite alone. A young man with a look of the Caitt, a very big young man with piercing blue eyes, was kneeling over him, an arm behind Bridei’s shoulders. His guard, helping him up. Or holding him as he died. It was hard to remember this was only a vision, both less and more than simple truth. She must breathe; she must concentrate. She must not lose sight of him.
The water seemed to swirl, and suddenly Tuala was looking at the two of them from the other side. Bridei was white as chalk, his hands clutched at his chest, and the young man was trying to move the tight fingers, he was trying to check the king’s injury, he was … Tuala turned cold. The youth had a knife gripped in his own hand, and the point was at Bridei’s breast. The guard was not helping his patron, he was killing him. Bridei’s fingers were clutched around the other’s wrist; the pallor, the strained expression were those of a man pushing back against certain death. The moment his grip weakened, the knife would pierce his heart.
Tuala gasped in horror, and the image on the water began to fragment and disappear. “No …” she whispered. “Not yet …” She sought desperately to fix on something, anything that would give her the when and where and who without which there would be no way at all to save him. A group of trees, a contour of distant peaks, a cloak, a banner, the color of eyes, of hair … The water settled once more, and the vision was gone.
The others released her hands. Without a word, Broichan set the dark cloth back over the scrying bowl. Fola slid a stool in place behind Tuala and helped her to sit. Broichan set a cup of water before her. Then they waited. Each had long experience in this craft and knew not to rush the seer, even when the knowledge she had to impart was of vital importance.
Tuala could not stop shivering. After a moment she blurted out the tale, not the earlier part with Broichan, for that could wait, but all she had seen of battle, blood and murder. She forced herself to recall the scene in as much detail as possible, for if they could at least fix on the place, that might provide a clue to the time. As for the man who had held a knife to her husband’s heart, the youth with strange light eyes that hardly seemed to see his victim, she would remember him for the rest of her life.
“He looked like a bodyguard,” she said. “He wore a tunic with the royal colors, just as Breth and Garth and Faolan do when they go into battle by Bridei’s side. It seemed … it seemed to me that he was someone Bridei trusted. That would explain how he had got so close. And then …”
“You say this young man was of the Caitt? One of Umbrig’s men?”
“He had that look. He was certainly young, but powerfully built. He looked very strong. Bridei has immense strength of will, but I don’t think he could …”
“This may well be yet to come,” Fola said quietly. “It’s early yet for Bridei’s forces to be engaging in such a major battle. Did you say Talorgen was there? That must surely not come yet, but a little later, for Talorgen was to move in by sea. Bridei must first take Galany’s Reach and another settlement to the south. I think we do have a little time.”
“If they kill him,” Tuala said with a feeling like a heavy stone in her belly, “the armies will lose their spirit. Carnach is an able leader; so are Talorgen and the others. But you know, and I know, that none of them can take Bridei’s place. He is the Blade of Fortriu. He is their hope and their inspiration. They trust him. They will ride into the jaws of death for him.”
“So,” Broichan said, “we have an enemy who is either highly intuitive, or who has been given some intelligence that he’s putting to effective use. Someone’s decided the simple way to defeat the Priteni is to remove their leader. Someone’s recognized just what Bridei is. The Caitt, you say. I don’t see Umbrig letting a traitor slip into his ranks. The fellow’s astute. A bodyguard. Surely Bridei wouldn’t put a new man in at such a critical time. Where was Breth, I wonder?”
Neither of the women offered an answer, for the likeliest explanation was one nobody wanted to voice.
“Can we reach him in time?” Tuala’s mind was racing, searching for possibilities. It was a long journey down the Glen, and the place of this engagement seemed beyond King Lake. She thought she had glimpsed a great body of water in the distance, a wide shining that must be the western sea. The scene in the vision did not match what Bridei had told her of Galany’s Reach, which would be the place of their earliest encounter with the enemy. “I know a man cannot walk or ride there easily, and that finding them could be difficult. And dangerous. But perhaps there is another way.” She glanced at Broichan.
“Curse this weakness!” the druid said bitterly. “There was a time when I could have made the journey in the space of a day; traveling by paths unknown to ordinary men. I could have employed charms of concealment and transformation. Now I am reduced to a powerless shell of what I was. I cannot even attempt it, Tuala; I doubt such skills will ever be within my reach again. And Uist, alas, is no longer with us. Of all the brotherhood, the two of us were the only men who ever achieved mastery of such journeys, save for the one who taught us, and he is long departed.”
“Fola?”
The wise woman spread her hands helplessly. “I may be quick for an old crone, but not so quick as that. Ordinary walking is the best I can manage, and I don’t have the ear of wild creatures as some do. If we had Uist’s mare, now that would be a solution. But Spindrift vanished when the old man left us. Wherever she went, she’s beyond our summoning.”
“Tuala,” Broichan said, “have you any source of help you can call on that we might not know of? This is beyond the abilities of men. The quickest message Aniel or Tharan could dispatch would not reach Bridei in time unless this is to occur much later than I believe it will. We must act immediately. If you know any other solution, I hope you will tell us.”
Tuala swallowed. “I hadn’t planned to speak of it,” she said. “But I see that now I must. I did have some … visitors … when I was younger. Two of them; folk from beyond the margins, a girl and a boy. They came often, but not at my bidding. They played a dangerous game with us, me and Brid
ei; both of us came close to death that night at Pitnochie when Bridei and Faolan brought me home from the forest. We talked about it later. We thought maybe it was all for the purpose of testing our strength: his fitness to be king, mine to stand by his side. I suppose we passed the test.”
Broichan said not a word, only watched her, his dark eyes unreadable. After a little, Fola said, “And now? Do they still visit you? Would they help you, if you asked?”
Tuala felt her lips twist in a bitter smile. “They’ve never done my bidding before. I think they are more friends than foes, to the extent that their kind can understand such concepts as friendship. I haven’t seen them for years. Sometimes I hear whispers. They were in the oak tree, just before. But perhaps that was only my memory playing tricks.”
“They no longer come to you, you say.” Broichan’s tone was almost hesitant. “But they visit Derelei.”
Tuala nodded, a lump in her throat. “I think so, yes. I’ve heard him trying to say their names. How did you know?”
“My powers of observation are not so dulled that I cannot detect what is clearly one half of a conversation, even if the speaker has not quite mastered language. The invisible presences to whom your son speaks are not imaginary friends, but real ones. At least, one hopes very much that they are friends.”
“He needs protection from their cruel tricks.”
“They may intend the best for him, as it seems they did for you and for Bridei. I have already begun to teach him such safeguards as he is able to employ. Such folk are illattuned to human ways. Their purposes can seem obscure. Often enough, they do the work of higher powers. The Shining One has had a hand in Bridei’s future, no doubt of it.”
Tuala glanced at him, thinking of the vision she had seen, the one she had not spoken of. An idea was simmering somewhere in the back of her mind, a crazy idea she could not quite dismiss. Perhaps the goddess had had more of a hand in matters than anyone had ever realized. “I can’t summon them,” she said. “They only come when it suits them, not at my call.” She remembered that terrible journey home to Pitnochie, all by herself at Midwinter, a flight whose ending would have taken her out of the mortal world forever, leaving Bridei behind. How had Gossamer and Woodbine ever persuaded her to consider that? “But I can try.”