She had no time to wonder who Nico would help, Sevei or the tiarna.
The forest lay a hundred strides ahead of her; to her back there was nothing but the road and the gardai. Meriel ran for the trees through tall grass, the weeds seeming to grab at her ankles. She heard the gardai cry out in alarm and start after her; she half heard, half felt a sound like a gigantic boulder striking the earth followed by a woman’s piercing wail; she heard Nico and the others shouting in new alarm and panic. Hooves pounded behind her, too close, and she realized that she wasn’t going to make it, that the gardai would have her long before she found the trees.
A black mass streamed from the forest above her. A wolf howled, answered by another. The dark mist rushed noisily past Meriel and she realized that it was a dense flock of crows like the one that had appeared the day before. A quartet of wolves the size of small horses emerged from the cover of the oaks at the same time. Even from this distance Meriel could see their eyes glowing red, and two of them . . . two of them had riders astride them, and one of those riders . . . One of the wolf-riders leaned forward, his eyes narrowed as if he were trying hopelessly to bring the scene into focus.
“Bráthair Geraghty?”
Hooves thudded behind her and Meriel dropped to the ground. She heard the
swish
of a blade through air as she dropped. With the dangerous sound came the realization that they were not here to capture her; they intended to kill her. The garda pulled his horse up and leaped off as Meriel rolled and pushed herself up on one knee, readying herself to run again. She got no farther. The man lifted his long sword. Meriel was frozen as if caught in prayer; she could see the metal and the brighter scratches where he’d whetted the edge and between his hands the skin-polished patina of the leather around the hilt. There was a hint of pity in his eyes, but also a resolve that was her death. His mouth opened as the blade began to move . . .
. . . a wolf hit him from behind, the beast’s dagger-filled mouth closing around the garda’s weapon arm. The massive head shook like a dog with a rabbit, tearing the arm entirely from the socket as the garda screamed. Blood flew through the air, spattering over Meriel as the wolf flung the arm—still clutching the sword—away with a final jerk of its head. The garda had collapsed to his knees: screaming, his eyes wide with panic, his remaining hand closed around the ragged stump at his shoulder as a red torrent flowed unchecked between his fingers. The wolf looked at Jenna with eyes the color of the blood and growled—not an animal sound, but a sound which seemed to have words—before bounding away past her.
The garda collapsed facedown in front of her, his head at her knee. The body twitched. Close behind her, she heard other growlings and a scream. A riderless horse went galloping past her, neighing in terror. She started to run toward the forest again, but there was the clamor of hooves and movement as a man jumped from his horse, and now O Blaca was standing before her. His hand dropped from his cloch to his sword, and he grinned as he raised the weapon.
The cloch gleamed at his breast; she wondered why he didn’t use it.
The crows saved her. Dozens of them flew at the man, enveloping him in a loud flurry of black wings and bodies. He flailed at them with the sword and birds flopped dead to the ground, but more came to replace them. Meriel couldn’t see O Blaca behind the screen of ebon feathers.
“Meriel!” Owaine, clinging to the back of another dire wolf, was there also, his hand reaching for hers as she stared at the crows’ assault. “Come on! We have to get out of here before those tiarna use their clochs on us.”
She took his hand and he pulled her onto the wolf, her feet nearly touching the ground. “Hold on!” he cried and the wolf raced away, turning back toward the forest at a run. Meriel wrapped her arms around Owaine’s waist; even so, she nearly fell off as the wolf, panting, rushed toward the shelter of the oaks. Meriel felt . . .
something,
a pressure or presence above her. She glanced up and the sky shimmered just above them, as if a nearly transparent giant’s fist were moving there. It came down, and the force of the blow was tremendous, all the air going out of her lungs as the mage-force slammed into her back. The wolf collapsed with a high-pitched yelp as she heard its legs snap, Owaine and Meriel sprawling onto the ground. On her back, Meriel could not breathe; she tried to suck in air, but her lungs complained with a loud wheeze. She tried to move her arms and every muscle along her spine went into spasm. She wanted to scream from the pain but couldn’t gather the breath. Her body trembled, helpless.
She saw air gathering above her again, the fist forming and starting to hurl down directly toward her. For the second time, she saw her death approaching. She closed her eyes.
For the second time, she was saved.
She heard a crackling and saw light through closed eyelids. She opened her eyes to see the ethereal fist outlined in brilliant, snapping fireworks, quivering not three feet above her. Meriel rolled, her body protesting; as she did, the light flared and vanished and the fist slammed into the earth, the soft earth cratering where she’d just lain. At the edge of the forest, she saw the other wolf-rider: a woman holding a wooden staff in her hand, the end of the stick broken and smoldering. The twig in Meriel’s pocket seemed to sing and tore away from Meriel entirely, rushing toward the woman as if blown by a storm wind and falling at her feet. As Meriel watched, the woman flung the staff aside and called out, her voice howling like a dire wolf. The wolves came thundering toward her, two of them stopping where Meriel and Owaine were trying to stand.
“Get on!” she heard Owaine say, and she clasped her arms around the nearest wolf’s massive neck, throwing her leg over its back.
It ran as Meriel desperately hung on. She heard calls behind her, then abruptly they were in the woods. The branches of the nearest oak cracked and snapped, the massive trunk splintering as the mage-fist pounded earth again, but they were already moving deeper into the cover of the forest. Branches whipped and cut at Meriel as the wolf tore through bramble and cover before emerging into a small glade. The wolf stopped and Meriel half climbed, half fell from the wolf’s back. “Thank you,” she said. The wolf stared at her, ears up, then ran off back the way it had come.
She was not alone for long. A few minutes later, another wolf deposited Owaine in the glade. He ran to her. “Bráithair Geraghty? Owaine? I can’t believe—” she began, but then the tears came, and she felt Owaine’s arms go around her as he tentatively held her. The touch brought Meriel’s head up and Owaine’s arms dropped immediately away. He stepped back as if he realized he’d overstepped his bounds. “I’m sorry, Bantiarna,” he said. “But you needn’t worry now. Keira will take care of everything.”
Meriel blinked. She tried to take a deep breath but pain stabbed her side; she groaned instead. “Who’s Keira?” she managed to say.
As if in answer, a woman stepped into the clearing. She was dressed in furs, her body short and bulky, and a huge black crow was perched on her shoulder. Her long, dark tresses were bound and wrapped with ivy and vines, and a collection of leather pouches were tied to a belt looped over one shoulder. She looked to be older than Meriel’s mam, though not much so. Her hair was pure white at the temples and abundant strands of gray ran through the rest of her hair; her eyes and the corners of her mouth were caught in webs of fine wrinkles. Her face was flat and broad, the brow prominently ridged: a Bunús Muintir’s face.
“I’m Keira,” she said. “Welcome to Doir Coill.”
29
Into the Woods
“Y
OU don’t have to worry,” Keira said. “I told Arror to lead any of the soldiers who come after us down the Fastwater Dell to where the Elder Trees are. Those who go there won’t return, not even if they hold a Cloch Mór. If the tiarnas are at all familiar with Doire Coill, they already realize that and won’t come in here at all. For now, you’re safe.”
They were still in the glade not far within the borders of the forest. Keira had first checked on Meriel before going to Owaine. The Bunús Muintir woman rapidly cleaned and bound the worst of the cuts on Owaine’s arms and legs. She spoke to him in a whispered conversation that Meriel hadn’t been able to overhear; he’d nodded and left the glade, moving deeper into the woods. Then she came to where Meriel was reclining in soft grass and wrapped Meriel’s ribs with a poultice that first burned like fire before turning colder than a winter’s morning. She moved quickly, her gaze frequently flicking outward in the direction from which they’d come, from where they could hear a canine whining in the distance. She knotted the cloth holding the poultice under Meriel’s léine and brought the tunic over it. She brushed Meriel’s cheeks with thick-padded fingertips. “I have to leave you here for a bit—the wolf you rode also needs attention. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“What about Bráthair Geraghty?”
“You mean Owaine?” Keira asked. “He may be back before me.”
With that, she rose and hurried off, the crow flapping away in front of her. In the space of two breaths, Keira vanished under the trees. Meriel lay back, shading her eyes against the sunlight that filtered down through the overhanging boughs. She tried to sit up and succeeded, groaning with the effort and the sharp pain in her sides. She remembered the scream she’d heard after Sevei had attacked Tiarna O’Murchadha and guilt flooded through her. Sevei might have lost her life keeping her word to Meriel. At best, she would be seriously injured, and what the tiarna might do to her now that Meriel had escaped . . .
Meriel remembered the cards and the reading Sevei had performed what seemed ages ago now:
the dark-haired woman and the skeleton.
She was afraid that she knew now what Sevei had not been willing to tell her then. She wanted—needed—to see Sevei again, to find out what had happened.
She pushed herself to her feet and took a few limping steps after Keira. Every muscle protested and knife blades seemed to stab into her right hip with each impact of her foot on the ground.
There’s nothing you can do, and you’ll only put yourself in danger after these people have risked themselves for you,
some rational part of her mind yammered, but she ignored it. She imagined Sevei lying in the road bloody and hurt, and O’Murchadha or O Blaca screaming angrily above her, ready to strike again with cloch or hand, to make Sevei pay in pain and blood. She couldn’t bear that image. Better to go back, to let them finish what they’d started if doing so meant that they’d leave Sevei alone.
The Riocha wanted Meriel dead, which meant that was what Doyle wanted, too, assuming they had told Nico the truth. She knew that. O’Murchadha hadn’t come to take Meriel away somewhere; he’d come to kill her. With the realization came another: there was only one reason she could think of for Doyle to order her death: her mam refused to pay the ransom Doyle Mac Ard demanded. That could be the only explanation. Her mam had decided that Meriel’s life was secondary to something else.
She leaned against a tree, closing her eyes against the pain and trying to take a breath that was more than a sip of air through her broken ribs.
“Meriel! There you are!” She heard Owaine behind her, and turned her head to see him entering the glade from the other side, leading a dappled gray horse. There was no bridle or harness on the animal, but leather straps were drawn around its chest and belly, to which two long branches were attached, their ends bound together several feet in back of the horse, dragging the ground. Between the poles a length of cloth had been tied, creating a hammock of sorts. “Keira said you shouldn’t be walking; you don’t want one of those ribs to puncture a lung.”
She tried to push away from the tree and had to hang on once more as the movement sent pain stabbing through her chest. “Sevei,” she managed to gasp out. “Have to . . . see . . .”
“You can’t do anything for them now,” he told her. He hovered around her. “I’m sorry. I know that’s not what you want to hear right now, but it’s true. Let Keira do what she can. Here, put your arm around me and I’ll help you walk.”
“I have to go to Sevei,” she insisted. She took a step, but the jolt of her foot on the ground sent the pain lancing through her again. She drew in a breath, and that only made the pain worsen. She felt herself starting to fall, then Owaine was alongside her, lifting her arm and ducking under it. He put an arm carefully around her waist. “I’m taking you to the carrier,” he said, and she finally nodded. She was crying, and she didn’t know if it was from her fear for what had happened to Sevei, or the pain, or relief at getting away from the Taisteal. “Hang on,” Owaine said. “One step at a time . . .”
They moved back to the glade. The horse came toward them, and Owaine brought her over to the improvised stretcher. “Here, lie on this. I’ll lift the other end when we’re ready to move so it doesn’t jolt you too much. We’ll go slow . . .”
She realized how tired and hurt she was when she let go of him. Her legs trembled and she could barely stand. She sagged to the ground. “Not yet,” she said. “Need to rest first. How . . . ?” The single word was all she could get out of the question, but he seemed to understand. He sat down in front of her.
“It started with Dhegli,” he answered.
“Dhegli?” The word brought his face back to her, along with a fleeting sense of his presence in her head.
Owaine’s face took on a strange expression as she spoke Dhegli’s name, but he nodded. He told her about the search for her on Inishfeirm, and how he’d gone to see the Saimhóir. He gave her a short version of the tale of his long pursuit, how Dhegli brought him over, how Cataigh and Léimard had aided him, and how they’d tracked the Taisteal. “I figured that the healer had to be you, using a cloch, and I was right. Léimard led me along your path, and when I was close enough, Keira sent the wolves to find me. She tells me Cataigh and Léimard have gone back to Foraois Coill. That’s a shame; I wish you could have met them, too.”