Rioghan got up. Her fear was rising but her anger flared right along with it.
Donaill moved to stand between her and Beolagh. “She is my honored guest, and that is all you need to know,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “If you so much as cast another glance in her direction or dare to trespass at her home ever again, you will answer to the king’s champion. And if anything should happen to that stone circle, I will come looking for you.”
Beolagh ignored him and tried to push his way past Donaill to glare at Rioghan again. “She hides her identity the way she hides her gold! Those things are meant to be shared, but she keeps them all to herself!”
Donaill shoved him back a step. The hall had fallen silent, and everyone sat watching them. Beolagh refused to be deterred. “I saw her trick with the wand and the rocks just now. And that’s not all I’ve seen her do! When once my men and I rode past that mound where she lives, she made the stones of the circle shake and move! We thought they were going to walk right out of the earth and crush us all!”
Donaill’s mouth began to twist. From all around them came ripples of laughter. Beolagh’s face began to flush red beneath his dark beard. “I think it was your own shaking that you saw, and nothing more,” Donaill said, chuckling.
The others at the boards laughed even louder—but Rioghan did not join them. She was horrified by the situation in which she found herself. She’d been having such a fine time, lulled by the wine and the food and the warmth and the company, and most of all by Donaill and his flattery. Now here she was, trapped and exposed by an enemy, with no place to hide and no way to defend herself.
What had she been thinking?
Beolagh was not finished yet. He pointed at Rioghan yet again and roared, “Such power belongs to the druids, not to a madwoman like her! Not to one of the Little People! You are the king’s champion, Donaill. What were you thinking when you brought one of them here to the king’s hall to sit among us?”
Donaill said nothing…and neither did Beolagh, for he was occupied with the process of toppling over like a tree, struck a tremendous blow by Donaill’s right fist. His eyes glazed and he staggered a step, and then another, and then he went crashing down into the straw right beside the cauldrons on the floor. His flailing hand struck one of the flat bronze pans, flipped it over, and sent its steaming contents flying straight into his face.
He did not notice the thick coat of milk and honey sticking to his face and beard, for he was quite unconscious. The last thing Rioghan heard as she fled the hall was the uproarious laughter of everyone there.
Donaill left Beolagh lying in the straw, made a brief apology to his king for spoiling the last course of the feast, and hurried out into the cold night to search for Rioghan.
He had thought she would return to Sabha’s house, but the place was dark and no one answered his knock on the door. Then he heard a man’s voice calling his name.
“Donaill! Here!”
It was Lorcan, his brother, waving to him to come toward the front of the fortress. “She’s leaving,” Lorcan said, and pointed at the gates.
Donaill saw a small figure making its determined way across the darkness of the grounds, with two huge dogs following on either side. He smiled. Apparently she’d stopped only long enough to grab her own black clothes and ever-present leather bag from Sabha’s house and toss them over her arm, for she still wore the fine new attire the other women had given her. Her gray mantle was easily seen in the light of the torches.
“Rioghan!”
She paused…then kept going without looking back—but it was enough to let him catch up to her. “Rioghan, please,” he said, just as one of the front gates swung partly open to let her through. “Will you not stay among us tonight?”
She shook her head, staring at the ground and refusing to look at him. “I cannot,” she whispered.
He reached for her shoulder. “I am so sorry. One day I will have to teach Beolagh a lesson he will not forget. But until then—”
She whirled around the instant his hand touched her mantle, and now she looked straight at him. “You tell me I should live here among you. You would have me live among men such as that?” Her green eyes flashed with anger and distress. “The Sidhe are kind and the dogs are loyal. I can think of no better place to live than the one that I have now.”
Donaill was pleased to see that the small sprig of holly from their place at the feast was still caught in the gold brooch that fastened her mantle, though undoubtedly it was the farthest thing from her mind. “Someday I hope you will want to live here,” he said gently, but she only tightened her jaw and raised her chin.
“To your folk, I will always be one of the Little People—and it is clear they have no place among the noble men and women of Cahir Cullen.”
She took a deep breath and struggled to regain her composure. “Again, I thank you for your hospitality. But it will not be this night that I stay among you.” She turned and slipped out through the gate, which closed again as soon as she and her dogs had gone.
Lorcan walked up to stand beside Donaill. “You could not persuade her to stay?” he asked.
“Not this time. This is more than she is accustomed to.”
“Pity. She did look quite lovely tonight. Perhaps you should have tried a bit harder.”
Donaill grinned, then turned to walk back toward the hall. “Oh, I will not stop trying,” he said. “But it’s like taming a wild creature. You must be prepared to let it run free when it wishes, so that it does not feel trapped. She’ll be back. I’ll make sure of it.”
Chapter Twelve
A few more days went by, gray and quiet days that Rioghan spent working as busily and intensely as she ever had. On one long afternoon when a cold, misty rain kept her inside her cave, sorting and patiently crushing and preparing her many herbs and remedies, she looked up to see the faces of Mil and Ceo at the entrance to the cave.
“Come in, come in!” she said, cleaning her hands with a linen rag and walking over to greet the two Sidhe women. “Is everything well with you?”
“It is,” said Mil. She was the older of the two visitors, a little bent with age and with hair almost white. “We just wanted to see you and perhaps pass the afternoon with you.”
“In truth,” said Ceo, smoothing back her own dark hair, which had only a little gray in it, “my mother is worried for you after your adventure at Cahir Cullen. You were a guest there at the feast a few nights ago, were you not?”
Rioghan smiled, and walked back to the bench where she had been working. “I was. And though the day started out well, it did not end so, I am afraid.”
“We know.” The two Sidhe came over and sat down in the straw beside her low bench, watching as Rioghan continued her careful sorting of a great stack of plants. “You work so hard, dear Rioghan,” said Mil. “Winter is meant to be a time of rest after all the work of the harvest.”
“To say nothing of the time spent preparing and storing food and firewood and warm clothes and furs to last until the spring,” added Ceo.
Rioghan shook her head, gazing down at her herbs and flowers. “I have no time at all for rest. Indeed, I fear it, for these days I have far too much to occupy my mind.”
Her guests waited patiently, expectantly, sympathetically, so after a moment Rioghan went on. “It seems that if I stop working for more than a moment, I think first of Donaill and the feast and the time I spent as a friend—not just a servant—of the women of Cahir Cullen. Then, in a heartbeat, I swing instantly to the same helpless anger I felt at being insulted and threatened by a drunken lout like Beolagh.”
“Did Donaill not defend you?” asked Ceo.
“Oh, he did. He did. He dropped Beolagh unconscious to the floor at the first hint of an insult.”
Mil gave her a slow smile, her eyes twinkling. “No harm will ever come to you so long as he is near. Of that I am quite sure.”
Rioghan smiled back at her, but her mouth was tight. “I am sure of it, too. But there is something else about him that concerns me far more.”
Ceo frowned. “What troubles you, lady? Do you not like him?”
“He likes you very much,” opened Mil.
Rioghan came out from behind her bench and sat down across from them in the clean, warm straw. “I
do
like him,” she began. “And yet it is impossible for me to believe that I could ever be more to him than a temporary prize to be shown off at a feast.”
She shook her head. “To a man like him, I am but a mysterious woman whom he, the charming and irresistible Donaill, has managed to win where all the other men have failed…and, once conquered, I will only find myself set aside and forgotten as he moves on to his next pretty challenge… Or it could be far worse.”
She gazed off into the distance as her visitors remained silent, and after a moment made herself go on: “He might well be content to let me stay with him, and we might marry and be happy together…but then one day I would begin to realize that I was not the only woman in his life.
“I would find that he was perfectly happy to have me as a wife, but that he also saw no reason why he should not keep company with any other woman he chose when I did not happen to be around…and that he would see no reason to share this small and unimportant part of his life with me.”
“Ah, Rioghan, I understand your fears,” said Mil. “But such things happen to many women, and you must simply—”
“It happened to one of my sisters. It happened to Sabha. It happens to women every day.” Rioghan got to her feet and resumed her work at the bench. “But it will never happen to me.”
Mil and Ceo looked at each other. Rioghan knew they would try to persuade her that Donaill was not such a man, and that she should—
There was a noise near the entrance to the cave.
Rioghan looked up just in time to see Scath and Cogar fly out of the straw and bolt outside.
She hurried over to peer worriedly out past the cowhide hangings on her door. All of her dogs had gathered on the far side of the clearing, at the strip of forest between Sion and the stone circle, but they were all quietly eager in their watch of whatever held their attention in the trees. They frisked and whined and trotted back and forth, and a few even wagged their tails.
“Rioghan!”
The call reached her across the rain-damp ground of the clearing. It was only a single word, but she knew instantly the voice. “Donaill,” she whispered.
Though he could not possibly have heard her, the king’s champion rode into the clearing as if she’d invited him, and her dogs fell back from the feet of his black stallion to let him pass. Rioghan pulled on her heavy black cloak and stepped out into the rain.
Cath trotted up to her, his broad hooves splashing on the sodden earth of the clearing. Donaill looked down at Rioghan and gave her a smile as bright as the sunniest summer day, though the rainwater dripped from his light brown hair and soaked his dark red cloak. “Good day to you, Lady Rioghan! It is lovely weather, would you not agree?”
“It is what one might expect, some twenty days before midwinter,” she answered, wondering what he could possibly want, and why he was so happy on such a dreary day. “Is there someone at Cahir Cullen who needs my help?”
“At Cahir Cullen? All is well there, my lady. You are not needed today—or rather, I should say that your midwifery is not needed. You, Rioghan, are always welcome there…and needed, as well.”
She raised her chin to look at him, and stepped close enough to place her hand on Cath’s wet black shoulder. “I will come if my help is needed, but that is all. I have no reason to go there otherwise. So Donaill, please tell me why you have come to Sion this day.”
He grinned down at her again. “Only to bring you a message. I will be gone from Cahir Cullen for a few days, and I wanted you to know this before
I left.”
Rioghan withdrew her hand. “Gone?”
“Only for a few days…three, perhaps four. I, and a few other men, are riding to Dun Orga at the request of King Bran.”
She frowned. “Why would the king order you to travel there now? The days are short and gray and wet. The nights are long and cold and filled with winter-hungry wolves. What is at Dun Orga that cannot wait for spring?”
He laughed. “I agree with you: the spring would be far better—but there is a new king’s champion at Dun Orga, and our king wishes to have his own champion there to remind Dun Orga of who truly has the greatest warriors.”
He sat back on his horse, beaming, to let her admire him. No doubt he thought she would be impressed by the sight of his iron sword and the jet-handled dagger fastened to his belt, by the heavy gold bands around his wrists and the twisted gold torque at his throat; but she could only stare up at him in disbelief. “You would make such a journey in the cold and wet of winter, just to impress another warrior with your prowess?”
“Why, I am not just a warrior, Lady Rioghan. I am the king’s own champion! And I mean to impress not just the champion of Dun Orga, but their king and all their warriors as well. There is not one of them who can stand up to me, and I intend to remind this new warrior of that. There is no better way to keep the peace than a perfectly timed show of prowess.”
Rioghan sighed, then caught hold of Donaill’s stallion’s reins just behind its chin. “In that case, leave Cath here with me. I will see that he is kept warm and fed and protected from wolves, as all horses should be in winter.” Cath swung his great head around to lip at her black cloak, as if in agreement with her, but Donaill only laughed again.