Heir to Sevenwaters (55 page)

The river calmed. The eerie turbulence subsided; the surface became as still and glassy as a forest pond. I stood swaying on the log bridge, my chest heaving, my gown sodden, as the water level went down until it was no deeper than my ankles. The place grew quiet save for that odd rustling overhead. On the bank Mac Dara stood like a statue in pale marble, staring with disbelief at his son, who now looked up toward the trees on the far side of the river.

I followed Cathal’s gaze. There were figures swarming in the ancient willow, running out along the branches, as nimble as squirrels. They passed and passed again, working with fingers like twigs, pale and slender. And on the near side, others performed the same work, weaving, making, throwing out ropes of vine and creeper to span the waterway from side to side. So quickly they wove! Their craft was a thing of deep magic, conjured from earth and air, and my breath caught in my throat as I watched them. In the twinkling of an eye they had a third rope across the river, and a fourth. With those supports, and with the water low and calm, a confident man or woman might reasonably attempt a crossing even by night.

I saw Mac Dara raise his arm, then lower it again as Cathal said, “No, Father.
Till waves are calmed by human hand,
remember? Thanks to my mother, that brave woman whom you so wronged, I can claim human blood. And thanks to her I have a certain knack with water. You are too late. The charm is undone.”

Cathal stepped down to the riverbank. As he moved, a small figure cloaked in gray emerged from the forest higher up. One hand supported the silver dog mask that covered its face; in the other it was carrying Cathal’s pack. Mac Dara did not stir as he watched the creature scramble down to stand beside his son at the water’s edge. On the opposite bank, I could see the hedgehog-dwarf anchoring a rope, and the being that looked a little like a rock passing something up to the folk in the trees, and the owl-faced creature perched on a low branch, apparently giving instructions. My breath caught in my throat.
Till ancient foes in friendship stand.
Cathal had done it. He had won their trust, and he had broken the spell.

“Thank you,” he said to Dog Mask, taking the pack. “Please convey my deepest gratitude to all your kind. Without your aid, and without theirs,” glancing up at the folk of the trees, who were finished their work of making and now clung half-concealed in the foliage, bright eyes observant, “I could not have made my way out from this place. I owe you a debt.”

Mac Dara was no longer trying to hurl bolts of fire. He stood preternaturally still, and his face was as white as chalk. His eyes were desolate. He looked as my mother had looked when we told her Finbar had been stolen. I understood, in that moment, that love is not always simple; that choices can be right and wrong at the same time. Even now, with hope springing high in my breast and home so close I could almost smell it, I knew that look of desolation would remain forever in my mind. He opened his mouth to speak, and I cringed, expecting a curse, a charm, some final malign attempt at sorcery. But all he said was, “I was wrong.” Not an apology; he was incapable of that. An acknowledgment that his son was indeed everything the father had hoped he might be, and that the moment of realization had come too late. The spell was undone. There was no remaking it.

“Goodbye, Father,” Cathal said. “I’ll be going home now. You underestimated me. In all the long time you have held me here, I have spent every single moment preparing to leave. I have learned new skills; I have put into practice those I acquired in the human world, such as the ability to make alliances and to judge who can be trusted. And I have begun to learn the lore and craft of my mother’s line. There was one thing you failed to understand. For me, hope never died.” He looked up into the trees. “I won’t forget how you helped me,” he said, and the strange folk there bowed their heads to him as if he were a king.

He stepped onto the bridge, turning his back on the Otherworld. Our hands on the guide ropes, we walked across, and the water was so tranquil around our feet that I could see little glinting fish beneath the surface, illuminated by the moonlight.

“Farewell,” came the voice of Dog Mask, but when I glanced back I could not see the little creature on the bank, only Mac Dara, black cloak, white face, lips set grim as death, and above him in the willows, the forms of the tree folk with their curious draping garments of leaves and cobweb and moss, their strange faces and drifting hair. Just for a moment I saw her, high in the branches—a creature very like myself in build, a small, graceful woman whose eyes were big and bright in the dim glow of the invisible moon, and whose body seemed made from all the loveliest fragments the forest could offer. In a sling on her back she bore a child wrapped in a woolen shawl, and as she passed she lifted a hand to me in greeting and farewell. Then she swung up into the canopy and was lost to sight.

In other circumstances I would have found the crossing terrifying, for the submerged bridge was still slippery and the vine ropes provided only flimsy support. Now I walked over with my head high and my back straight, like a warrior after a long and well-fought battle. Just before we reached the other side, I remembered something.

“Right foot first, Cathal,” I said.

“Of course,” came his voice from behind me, shaky now, whether with laughter or exhaustion I could not tell.

The bridge did not quite span the river. It ended at the old willow, and we clambered down, not onto dry land but into knee-deep water floored with round stones that shifted under our feet. When I slipped and almost fell, Cathal caught me. When he teetered, on the verge of losing his balance, I steadied him. As we stepped out onto the shore, right foot first, the forest before us sprang into light, dawn rays slanting sudden and golden through spring foliage, birds caroling overhead, flowers raising tiny, bright faces from the dappled shade beneath the oaks. My cheeks were suddenly wet with tears, and when I looked up at Cathal, he too was weeping.

“We’re home,” I said. “We’re finally home.”

He wrapped his arms around me, holding me close. “You know,” he whispered, “I said once I’d tell you how it felt to cry with you watching. It feels good. It feels better than I could ever have imagined.” A pause. “Clodagh, did you really promise my father your firstborn child?”

“Not exactly,” I said shakily. “I worded it carefully.
If
I conceived a child last night after lying with you, and
if
it was a boy, I would give him up when he was seven. Your father agreed, on the proviso that if you proved incapable of the act—that was what he expected—I would lie with him the next night and give up any son resulting from that union. Don’t look like that, Cathal. If I hadn’t had some kind of plan, Mac Dara wouldn’t even have let me see you. He certainly wouldn’t have allowed us time alone together.”

Cathal gave a low whistle. “What possessed you to take such a risk? You’ve become worse than I am. And what’s all this about being incapable? Did you believe my time in that place would have unmanned me?”

“Of course not,” I said. “But I thought you’d be able to show self-restraint. Knowing the story of your mother, I imagined it would be important to you that we waited until we were married before sharing a bed. All along I had faith that if I could reach you you’d be able to get us safely out.”

“By all the gods,” he observed mildly. “In view of our past history, your belief in me is astonishing.”

“I believe in the man you are,” I said, realizing how utterly exhausted I was and how many aches and pains there were in my body, yet knowing I was happier than I had ever been in my whole life. “I love that man, with all his tricks and oddities.”

“It’s actually not true, you know,” he observed.

“What isn’t?”

“That I wouldn’t want to lie with you before we were married. Last night was a close shave, closer perhaps than you realized.”

I found myself blushing. “I did realize, Cathal.”

“But you’re right, all the same,” he said. “It would be correct to wait. That may not be what we want, but it’s what we should do. We still have some challenges ahead of us, Clodagh. Your father . . .”

“He’ll come around to the idea.”

“I am the kind of man who would never be on his list of prospective husbands for his precious daughters.”

“Shh,” I said, halting and standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “You’re the son of a prince, aren’t you? You’re eminently well qualified. We’d best keep walking. I’m not sure how much longer my legs will go on supporting me.”

Just once I looked back, but if the Otherworld had existed on the far side of that river not so long ago, there was no sign of it now. On either side of the waterway the forest was bright with springtime; on either side the morning sun shone, the flowers bloomed and the trees stood proud in their new season’s raiment. Somewhere high above us a bird was singing as if its heart might burst with joy.

“Nobody to meet us this time,” I murmured as we climbed a rise and looked around us for clues as to exactly where we were. “And it looks as if Fiacha’s gone straight home.” We reached a spot where a fallen tree lay across the path, and without saying a word we sat down close together with our backs against it. After all, there did not seem to be such urgency to walk on, to get to Sevenwaters, to explain ourselves. Right now, all we wanted was to be here, the two of us together, away from the rest of the world. The immensity of what had happened was beginning to sink in. It set a silence between us. I felt the tension in Cathal’s body, and when I glanced at his face I saw that there was a struggle going on inside him.

“It was a long time, wasn’t it?” I said eventually. “And it will probably take a long time to come to terms with it. Seven turnings of the moon, that was what your father said. But maybe it was more. I saw Becan. He’d grown a lot.”

“It was long,” said Cathal. “And I’m tired. But that will pass. Clodagh, before we move on there are some things I must tell you; some things you need to know.”

“Tell me, then,” I said. “You could start by explaining how you managed to be there, with the tree folk, at precisely the right time. Did Fiacha lead you? And what is he, exactly?”

“I cannot tell you what the crow is,” Cathal said. “An ancient, powerful being of some kind, that is all I know. Yes, he led me to the portal, but my instincts would have drawn me there anyway, as they did the day I brought you into the Otherworld.”

“As for what you did . . . I can’t think what to say about that. There is one question I have to ask.”

“Ask, then, Clodagh.”

“If Mac Dara cast the original spell, including the part about calming the waves, what on earth possessed him to intimidate me by stirring up the river? Surely it would have been far safer to despatch me home through a tunnel like the one those smaller folk use to move between worlds. He should have chosen a place with not a drop of water in sight.”

“Ah,” said Cathal. He was avoiding my eye now. “I was waiting for you to ask about that. In fact, my father didn’t make those waves. I did.” And as I stared at him, not knowing if what I felt was admiration or horror, he added, “I’m sorry you were frightened. It was the only way I could think of to break the spell and get us out: to make the waves first, then calm them. My father wouldn’t have dreamed I could do that. I never let him see me learning anything worthwhile. I never showed him I had any natural aptitude for magic. As for the other part of the charm, the ancient foes, I already had those; they had long since become friends and allies. Their capacity to conceal themselves more or less anywhere, to merge and blend, made it possible to win them over without my father’s knowledge. They took the first step; that surprised me. It was on your account that they did so, Clodagh. Your courage impressed them deeply. As for the waves, there was a difficult moment when I realized you had lost the ring, but Fiacha has excellent eyes.”

“It may take me a little while to forgive you,” I said, managing a smile. “And you’ll never be able to pretend to me again that you are an ordinary warrior, with no hint of the uncanny about you. No wonder your father looked stunned. How did you learn something so powerful?”

His grip tightened on my hand. “I had a memory, an old memory from childhood,” he said, “of walking on the shore and feeling I could change the form of the waves if I thought about it hard enough. I befriended the Old Ones; it took time and patience. They brought me the story of my mother and steered me down the path to learning. But I am only a beginner, Clodagh. I never, ever intended Mac Dara to take you away. When you used the concealment charm, he was too quick for me. What he did not realize was that I could call in help when I needed it. I didn’t waste my time in the Otherworld. Not only did I study hard, I formed alliances with those who were unhappy with my father’s rule, and there were many. The Old Ones acted as gobetweens. Early on, the tree folk made me a promise of help; they believed they owed me, because you had cared for Becan. I fear they may pay a high price for coming to our aid. But they understood that risk. Clodagh, I can travel in new ways now; I can track my father as he tracks me. Fear gave wings to my feet, knowing he had taken you. Fiacha led the way. I alerted my friends; they came to my aid as they had promised. As for those tricks with the river . . .” For a moment he sounded very young and not at all sure of himself. “I’m so sorry you had to endure that. I had intended that we would cross together. Every part of me wanted to rush down and pluck you to safety. It took all my strength to stay where I was and to keep his eyes on me. I have to tell you that I was not certain my spells would work. You could have been burned. You could have drowned.”

“I had the cloak,” I said, not liking the shadow that had appeared in his eyes. “I had the ring.”

“All the same.” He sounded unconvinced.

“I thought the tree people were not strong enough to combat Mac Dara’s magic,” I said. “I’m sure Dog Mask implied that.”

“On their own they could not stand against him,” said Cathal. “But in the end they were not on their own. They were with me.”