He came to her, took her face in both his hands, and leaned down to kiss her gently. Rioghan reached up to him, taking him in her arms and losing herself in the feel of his broad back and strong arms and soft, gentle mouth.
Yet his kisses did not remain soft for long. They became more insistent with each passing moment, even as Rioghan felt the rising passion within herself strengthening to meet his own. It seemed that as he grew stronger, she grew more yielding, ever softer and more pliant, raising her face to his until her head fell and her long black hair covered his hands. She leaned back against his strong embrace so that her entire body was open to his, and pressed up warm and soft against the iron hardness of his chest and hips and thighs.
It seemed that the light of the candles faded away. There was only cool darkness and rapid breath, and strength she had never before imagined holding her upright on swaying legs. Strong fingers pulled the golden brooch from her cloak and let the black wool fall heavily to the rushes on the floor of the cave. Next her leather belt was loosened and pulled away, and then her boots untied and slipped off.
With sudden gentleness and care, the half-rings holding her black wool gown and linen undergown were eased away, and the gowns allowed to fall down off her shoulders and slide down to the floor on top of the cloak.
Quickly, for the midwinter air was cold, those same strong arms lifted her up through the dim light as though she had no weight at all, placed her on the softness of the cushions covering the sleeping ledge, and covered her with thick furs.
A small sound in the rushes told her that Donaill had unpinned his heavy red cloak and let it drop. Without needing to see him, she knew that he was taking off his belt and boots and breeches and tunics. Then his tall heavy body was beside her on the furs, close and hot, and as hard and strong as the very stone of the cave itself.
Yet despite all his strength, despite his urgency and rapid breath, he was gentleness itself as he raised himself over her. “Rioghan,” he whispered, a dark shadow in the soft light of the candles. “Beautiful dark-haired lady, Rioghan who is to be my wife…let me show you the love I have for you, and will always have, now and always; let me show you how we can truly become as one and never be separated again.”
In answer she reached up and slid her arms up over his back, stroking the smooth, hot skin of his shoulders and pulling him close, so close, yet still not close enough. She was beginning to feel the insistent hunger of her own body, which told her he could never be close enough.
Just as she was the one growing more eager, more anxious, more insistent, Donaill eased back from her slightly, and she could feel him smiling down at her in the darkness. Slowly, slowly, he lowered his head until his lips hovered just above hers, until she arched her back to reach for them, until she was the one who pressed her mouth to his and returned his long and loving kiss.
Even as he kissed her, Donaill began to caress the bare skin of her body, tracing over every rise and curve and every tender place, moving so gently, so carefully, so deliberately, that even through her own haze of heat and emotions and desire Rioghan knew he did not forget that never had she been touched in such a way by any man.
At last Rioghan felt as open and yielding as the soft earth when it is warmed by the summer sun; and when she could wait no longer, she pulled Donaill to her, so that his comforting weight pressed down upon her, over her and around her and finally deep within her, and Rioghan knew, as she held him close and wrapped her arms and legs around him, that she would never feel incomplete again.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The following morning, a gray mist lay still and silent on the grounds outside Sion. It seemed to invade even the cave itself, hanging on the damp ground and clinging to the bare walls. “It is so sad to see it this way,” Rioghan said, as she stood near the entrance and looked back inside her home. “So empty, so alone.”
Donaill smiled at her as he buckled on his sword belt. “It will not be this way for long,” he said, walking toward her. “By tonight, some of the Sidhe will be living here as you did. This fire will never go out.” He nodded at the hearth, where neatly banked coals glowed beneath their covering of ash.
“I know that. They will care for it well. Yet…the walls—I wish…” She fell silent, and smiled up at him. “Let us go home.”
He stood before her, sliding his hand beneath the long dark hair behind her neck and gently kissing her forehead. “I am so sorry, dear Rioghan, that all of the beautiful things that should be here have been lost. I promise you—I will not rest until I find this treasure and return it to its rightful place. The fault was entirely mine.”
“Oh, Donaill, it was not. They would have succeeded one way or another. They were determined to take the beautiful ancient things of the Sidhe for their own selfish reasons, the way a child might take another’s plaything—never realizing the value of what they have stolen.”
“Yet I should have done whatever was needed to prevent such a loss. Most of all I should never have let myself be tricked and enslaved by one not fit to clean the mud from my boots.”
His face grew dark at the memory of it, and Rioghan reached up to touch his cheek. “Do not think of it again,” she said. “It is over now…and you and I know that it will not ever happen again.” She smiled. “The Sidhe are the masters of creating beauty where there is none. And we will help them, you and I.”
She took her hand away and started to walk from the cave. “Please, Donaill. Take me home.”
He smiled back at her, and nodded. Together they walked across the misty clearing with Scath and Cogar alongside, and started on the road toward Cahir Cullen—toward home.
Three days later, two riders left the fortress in the early morning light and walked their horses—one black, one gray—along the road toward Sion. With them was a shaggy pack pony carrying as many large woven sacks as could be tied to its saddle. Two huge dogs trotted alongside the horses and roved in and out of the forest’s edge. The gray and black dogs were easily seen against the grass and the holly and the pine trees, for on this particular morning all was lined with pure white frost.
“Rioghan, I fear there will be no food, no wine, no linen, and no woolen cloth left at Cahir Cullen,” Donaill said with a laugh, as his black stallion snorted and broke into a high, prancing trot in the cold morning air. “You have brought it all for the Sidhe!”
“Oh, there is still a little left,” said Rioghan, smiling up at him from the back of her small gray mare. She wore the same clothes she had worn on the night of the feast—the gray linen gown with the green woolen dress over it, a belt of gold links, and the mantle of silver-gray and deep green with just a few lines of bright red. “And I will be glad to prepare all the bread that I can bake and all the meat that I can dry, and weave all the cloth I can weave, if it will help the Sidhe and reassure them that they will always have our protection.”
Donaill smiled sympathetically, and eased Cath back to a walk so that the pack pony could keep up. “I know you have always felt close to them. They are your family, in many ways.”
“They are. But there is another reason. They were the ones who helped me to break the curse that rested on you. Without their help you might have been lost to me forever, no matter how much love I had for you.”
Donaill could only gaze at her, and try to coax the slow pack pony on a little faster.
The rest of the journey was a peaceful one. The horses walked calmly along the good road, and gradually the mist began to burn away as the brightening sun broke through the cover of cloud.
Though it had been only three days, Rioghan’s heart leaped as she once again approached Sion. She loved her new life with Donaill, her husband, and their fine house at Cahir Cullen; but this would remain a special place for her, she knew, for all the rest of her days.
There seemed to be a special brightness, a certain gleaming light, coming from the clearing in front of the cave…but she supposed it was just her eagerness to see her old home again, and a reflection of the love she would always have for it.
Then they rode into the clearing. Donaill and Rioghan stopped their horses and stood very still.
The clearing did indeed shimmer with light, for on every frost-lined branch of pine hung beautiful things of gold and bronze, copper and crystal, moving gently and flashing bright in the early-morning sunshine. There were plates and discs large and small, cups and armbands and torques and rings, and figures of all sorts of animals, turning in the slight wind almost as if they were alive.
The horses snorted a bit and shied away when asked to move forward, for dapples of light danced across the frosty grass, and the very trees glittered in their eyes. “How is this possible?” Rioghan said under her breath, glancing quickly from branch to sparkling branch. “All of their treasure has returned…and like this!”
“Let’s find out,” Donaill said, and persuaded Cath to step into the clearing. The pack pony and Rioghan’s gray mare followed him closely.
As the horses walked toward the entrance to the cave, three of the Sidhe came out past the cowhide hangings. All, it seemed, of the others appeared at the edge of the forest. And the happy gray and black dogs came bounding up to greet their former mistress and romp with Scath and Cogar.
Rioghan slid down from her mare and gave the reins up to Donaill. She walked toward the cave, toward Luath, and could not help but smile. “So beautiful!” she said, almost laughing. “I am so happy that it has been returned to you! How has this happened?”
Luath walked forward and took both of her hands. “A man has brought it back to us.”
“A man? How could this be?”
Luath nodded toward the forest’s edge. “This man.”
Rioghan and Donaill turned—and there, just within the cover of the trees, was a man standing beside a horse. When he saw that they were staring at him, he led the animal forward and came out into the open light of the clearing.
“Airt,” Rioghan said softly.
He walked toward them, stopping only a short distance away. “I had hoped you would be here on this day,” he said. “I knew you would return soon, and I hoped to see you again before I left.”
“You have done this?” Rioghan asked, glancing around at the bright, shimmering clearing.
He smiled. “I have. I knew where Beolagh hid it, and it was little trouble to bring it back to its rightful owners. It was the least I could do to try to make things right again.”
Rioghan nodded, watching his face. He was somber, but there was a peaceful feeling about him as well, as though he had come to a decision and was determined to carry it through. “You said you are leaving?”
“I am. I am on my way to Dun Orga, there to win back Sabha no matter what it takes.”
Now it was Rioghan’s turn to smile. “That will be a difficult task,” she said. “But it is a worthy goal.”
He nodded, his face serious and still. “I understand that now. I was a fool to try to collect women the way some men try to collect pieces of gold. I should have considered myself lucky to have one woman who truly loved me, instead of taking pleasure in having two forced to live in jealousy and tension and pain while they competed for my attentions. That is the dark side of love. I would much rather have the light once again.”
She reached out and gave him a gentle embrace. “Go with the light, then, Airt,” she said. “And tell Sabha for me that she might do well to consider you once again.”
“I thank you, Lady Rioghan. I hope that Sabha and I will see you again one day.”
She stepped back, and in the gleaming silence of the clearing Airt mounted his horse and rode away into the forest.
There was a soft footstep behind her. Rioghan turned to see Luath standing there, looking all around him at the shining, glittering trees. “Do you approve of this ritual, Lady Rioghan?”
“Ritual, Luath? Tell me about it. I have not seen such a thing before—but neither have I seen anything so beautiful, so magical.”
The Sidhe started to walk slowly across the clearing, and Rioghan walked with him. “When this man, Airt, returned our treasures to us, we found they had all been badly used. These beautiful things had been stolen, hidden, and used in trade to get that which should be freely given. And so we have hung them outside, in the pure light of the newly returning sun, to celebrate both its return and the return of our treasure…and to allow the gold and bronze and copper and crystal to regain their purity once more, to become as they were when the Ancient Ones made them so very long ago.”
“It is wonderful, Luath. A marvel. Perhaps this ritual should be done each year, both to celebrate the return of the sun and to simply enjoy such beauty.”
Luath smiled down at her. “We will consider it, Lady Rioghan.”
She glanced back at Donaill, and her eyes widened. “Oh! I nearly forgot why we came! Luath, please gather your people around—we have brought things for them all.”
The Sidhe all glanced at one another, but then came to stand near the pack pony. Donaill slid down from Cath and began unpacking the big cloth sacks, and in a moment both he and Rioghan were handing out skins of good blackberry wine, bags of dried wheat, thick folds of bright woolen cloth, and lighter stacks of the finest linen weave.
“We cannot thank you enough, Lady Rioghan and Lord Donaill,” said Luath. “These midwinter gifts will help us get through the remainder of the darkest, coldest season. You have been most generous to us all.”