Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 04 (14 page)

           
“I’ll do? I’ll do what?"

           
She tossed heavy hair back, strode
down the corridor in muddy boots and shut her hand upon my wrist. "You'll
do because I have no better, Liam so lost in drink. “Tis Brenna, you see. Come
along."

           
She did not wait to let me close my
door. "Brenna?" I asked as I went with her, wrist still trapped in
her hand.

           
"Brenna," she said firmly.
"She's needing a man's help."

           
"A—man's?"

           
"Aye. I always get Liam to
help, but he's lost for the night. Brenna doesn't know you, but once I
introduce you she'll be fine. She doesn't like the others."

           
Deirdre led me past the guard and
released my wrist as she started down the twisting stair. Behind her, I saw
hair turned to molten gold in the torchlight; a slender hand sliding against
rough stone as she went down and down and down, never hesitating. Gone was the
prince's sister I had seen on the battlements of Kilore, green-clad against the
gray of the skies and the gray of the Aerie walls. Gone was the elegant
princess of Erinn in white wool, crimson and hammered gold, atop the chalk
cliffs on a storm-gray horse. It was a different woman I saw now: rumpled,
half-dressed, all intent upon a thing. And as she turned her head to look over
a shoulder at me as she reached the bottom of the stair, I found I
wanted—suddenly, irrationally—to kiss her.

           
"Do ye know horses?" Deirdre
asked.

           
With great care I removed myself
from her immediate presence, taking two steps back up the stairs.
"Horses?"

           
Horses were the last thing on my
mind.

           
"Aye. Why—were ye thinking
Brenna was a woman?" Her mind, clearly, was only half on me; she frowned,
then laughed. "No, no, a mare. And one about to foal, Come on, then, or
she'll be done before we get there."

           
"Would that be so bad?" I
thought surely a mare knew best how to bring her young into the world.

           
"D'ye know nothing of horses,
then?" she asked impatiently. "Agh, go back to bed. I'll do it
myself."

           
Obviously, Brenna was a favorite.
Well, I'd had them myself. And at the moment, I had no desire to leave.

           
"I’ll come."

           
Deirdre took me out of the castle
proper to the stable inside the curtain wall. There was almost no moon, so that
I stumbled over the uneven cobbles like a child just learning to walk. Deirdre,
knowing the bailey, cast me an impatient glance and hastened onward with only a
single torch in her hand. It smoked and flared in her wake.

           
A man met us at the stable. He
looked at me in mild surprise, then turned his full attention to Deirdre. He
seemed unconcerned by his lord's daughter arriving at the stable in the dead of
night in nightrail, boots, and man's trews. He simply took the torch from
Deirdre's hand and told us to go on.

           
"She'll be having naught of
me," he said quietly. "At least until the foal is born. Tis always
Brenna's way."

           
"Aye." Distracted, Deirdre
went by him into the stable and I followed.

           
"Oh, breagha, breagha,"
Deirdre said softly as she slipped into a stall. "Oh, my Brenna breagha, ‘tis
a fine foal you'll be showing us."

           
The stables were thickly shadowed,
illuminated only by a few lanterns. Looking into the stall Deirdre entered I
could only see blackness, and then the blackness moved.

           
I saw the glint of eyes. Heard the
flaring snort from velvet nostrils. Smelled the faint acrid tang of a horse in
extremity.

           
The mare lay on her side. She heaved
her head up, touched Deirdre's hands softly with muzzle, stiffened with
exertion. I saw the contractions roll through the mound of glossy belly.

           
Deirdre moved away at once, stepping
closer to me as she gave the mare room. Black Brenna grunted, strained, lay
back again.

           
"There," Deirdre breathed.
"See the hooves just under Brenna's tail? There's the sac. The foal will
follow soon enough."

           
She spoke softly, so softly to the
mare, soothing her with infinite care and affection. Brenna seemed calmer with
Deirdre talking her through the labor; she gave a great heave and the foal slid
out into the clean straw of the stable floor.

           
"Now," Deirdre breathed,
and knelt down to tear the wet sac from the newborn foal. Brenna aided her,
catching what she could with her teeth, then began to lick.

           
And stopped, almost as abruptly.

           
"Brenna breagha," Deirdre
soothed. "A bit of a stud-colt for us, is it?"

           
She was soaked in birthing fluids,
the ends of her bright hair stiffening into sticky' curls. I saw the damp shine
on her forearms as she shoved the sleeves of her nightrail above elbows,
reaching down to free the colt's nose of residue.

           
"Ah, no," she said
abruptly. "Ah, no." Hair whipped as she jerked her head around.
"Seamus? Seamus—are you there? Quickly, man. The colt's not
breathing!"

           
He was with us in an instant,
hanging the lantern onto a nail. Now I could see clearly how still the colt
was, how limp he was in Deirdre's arms and in the soiled straw.

           
He bent even as the mare lurched to
her feet. Brenna turned her back on the colt. Her exhaustion was plain to see;
so was her rejection of the stillborn colt.

           
"Hold her," Seamus told me
plainly. I did as was told, taking hold of Brenna's halter and keeping her in a
comer of the stall as they ministered to the colt.

           
The mare was too weary to resent my
presence. She shut her eyes as I stroked her face, marveling at the purity of
her coloring. Black, all black, with not a single spot of white anywhere.
Priceless.

           
"Breagha," Seamus said,
and I knew he did not speak to the mare, "breagha, 'tis nothing left to
do. He's gone from us."

           
"Ye skilfin, you've not tried
hard enough."

           
"I have," he said solemnly.
"Tis nothing left but to give him to the cileann.'"

           
"Nothing." Deirdre echoed-
"Eleven months spent a-waiting for this birth, and now there is
nothing—"

           
"You've got the mare,
breagha."

           
"Aye," she said finally,
and rose. She came to me, to Brenna, and clasped the mare's neck in her arms.
"Oh Brenna, Brenna, such a fine little colt he was, so fine . . . fitting,
I think, for the cileann. They'll give him honor and all the freedom of his
days."

           
"I'll be bringing him,
then," Seamus said.

           
"No." Deirdre swung
around, but not before I saw the sudden kindling in her eyes. "No, 'tis for
Niall to do, if he'll do it."

           
There was no need to ask me. And I
think she knew it as well as I, though we dared not look at one another.

           
Seamus's face closed up.
"Homanan," he said only. And then he added: "shapechanger."

           
"Surely the cileann won't
begrudge him his fair share of magic," Deirdre chided. "They are
honorable folk, and generous. They'll be giving him welcome, Seamus, as much as
Shea himself."

           
Subtle reprimand, I thought,
reminding the loyal servant that the woman he served was the daughter of a
king. Reminding him also that what respect I was given by that king was owed by
Seamus as well.

           
"Then I'll be tending the mare.
She'll have me by her, now."

           
Deirdre looked at me. "Can you
lift him?"

           
Silently, I did so, gathering the
wet, still body into my arms. He weighed substantially less than one of Liam's
wolfhounds.

           
She nodded. "Bring him, then.
We've a thing to do."

           
Deirdre took me out of Kilore and
into the hills of Erinn. With no moon to speak of it was difficult to see, and yet
Deirdre seemed to know the way. I followed the pale luminescence of her linen
nightrail and the faint gleam of burnished hair. She did not stop, did not
speak, did not even turn as if to see how I fared with the weight of the colt.
She simply walked on, intent upon her thoughts, and I left her to her silence.

           
At last, upon a crumbled hilltop,
she stopped. Over the colt I saw the stone cairn and low altar beside it, also
of stone, all carved with alien runes. I knew, without Deirdre's instruction,
what I was to do, and so I lay the colt down upon the altar. Then Deirdre
motioned me back, and I saw there was a thin circle carved into the turf. Chalk
white, it glowed faintly in the darkness.

           
"The tor," she said,
"belongs to the cileann, the oldfolk. They were in Erinn long before we
were. Many have forgotten them, but not all. And none of the House of
Eagles." Her eyes were black in the darkness, though I knew by day they
were green. "We will wait the night through until dawn, so we know he is
safely taken."

           
"Taken—?" I looked at the
cairn and altar. "I mean no disrespect, but what would the oldfolk do with
Brenna's stillborn colt?"

           
"What they do with anything
born without breath in its body—give it welcome, give it life, give it the
freedom of the cileann." She sighed a little. "I have seen women
leave stillborn babies here, and children murdered kittens, all with equal
grief. But also equal certainty that the death is only of the earth, and not
real in the land of the oldfolk."

           
She sounded so certain, so absolute
in her conviction.

           
"And have you waited
before?" I asked.

           
"Twice," she answered
calmly- "There was Callum, my brother. And Oma, the sister who died in
childbed."

           
"And did the oldfolk take them
away?"

           
"That is a question best
answered at dawn," she told me quietly; "And by the cileann
themselves."

           
It was cold upon the tor, and windy,
and heavy with ancient magic. Lirless I was, but neither blind nor deaf to
power when it is so strong. I tried to sleep and could not; Deirdre did not
even bother to close her eyes. We lay on our backs on the cool turf with the
cairn and altar behind us and stared up at the stars, talking of dreams and
aspirations, sharing portions of ourselves we had never thought to share,
holding them too precious, and waned for dawn to come.

           
And when it came, just as I put out
a hand to touch her, Deirdre scrambled up and spun to look at the altar.

           
I was forgotten. She was lost in the
rite of welcome given to a new day.

           
Sunlight gilded the cairn. The world
was born again.

           
And the altar was perfectly empty.

           
I moved, slowly, toward the cairn.
Now I could see her face, where the sun touched it even as I longed to touch
it; as the light set her hair afire. I saw a smile of blissful satisfaction.
She murmured something in a tongue I did not know, and then she looked at me.

           
She wore a soiled, dirty nightrail
and a pair of men's nubby wool trews. She had spent the night upon the sacred
tor with a man she hardly knew, and yet knew better now than he himself. We had
thrown open the corners of our hearts that men and women kept secret from one
another, too afraid to set light into those corners for fear the other would
laugh or, worse, find the secrets not worth the hiding.

           
And I had waited for her to grieve,
speaking of the colt. But she had not. Like a Cheysuli, she locked it away. But
I thought she waited for something,

           
I looked at her. At her smudged,
proud face with the look of an eaglet in it, waiting to leave the aerie.
Knowing the day will come when she will ride the air and lay claim to all the
world.

           
Deirdre looked at the empty altar.
She sighed a little, and turned her face back to me. "Now," she said.
"Now lean cry."