The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) (35 page)

Dafydd nudged his horse to her door. His gaze took in her throat marked with redness, at the wrinkling of her tunic, at the wildness of her hair.

Aileen tilted her chin away as knowledge came into his eyes.

He dismounted and came to stand by her. “Don’t take his anger to heart, Aileen. It’s hard for a man to believe in magic after so many years of not believing.” He squinted back up the path. “You were right, though, you know that now. It was the castle. Maybe the man will come to his senses and tear the thing down.”

She buried her hands in the folds of her skirts. “Dafydd, don’t you have to see to the cows or something?”

“It’s not Rhys I came here to talk to you about.” He squinted toward the far rim of the hills and leaned back against the stone wall. “There’s another matter I’ve been meaning to place before you. As a healer.”

“Too much mead to drink last night?”

He didn’t answer right away. He kept staring at the far horizon, occasionally glancing at the woman tending the garden just beyond. The silence went on so long that Aileen realized there was something he was afraid to say.

“Dafydd,” she said softly, “don’t you know by now there’s not an ailment I haven’t seen?”

“You know of this one.” He toyed with the sleeve of his handless arm, and then tugged the cloth above his wrist. “After all you’ve done for Rhys, I was wondering if there anything you could do about this?”

Her gaze fell to the ruddy end of his arm. Sympathy flooded through her. Not once in all the time she’d spent here in Wales had she ever heard him complain. Never had she seen this lack of a hand limit him in any way.

All his life perhaps, he’d hidden this hope in his heart.

She laid her hand upon the ruddy stump and held it tight. “There’s no knowing God’s will. But in some things, it cannot be changed.”

He managed a self–deprecating laugh, then pushed away from the wall. “I suppose I wouldn’t know what to do with all those fingers anyway.”

He flashed her a grin. She watched as he lumbered toward his horse. He eased himself into the saddle and tipped his fingers to her as he nudged his mount away. Whistling a light tune, he wove his way down the path while the sunlight gleamed off reddish streaks in his hair.

Aileen thought how strange a thing it was, to have such different brothers: One who believed in nothing, and the other who believed too much.

Chapter Twenty–One

A
ileen sat down to rest on a fallen log. She frowned as she gazed at the reed–strewn ground around her. Father Adda had been sure she’d find some meadowsweet on the shores of this lake, but she’d slipped halfway around the boggy edge and seen no sign of the wildflower, though it was well into the season of its blooming. He’d probably mixed up the name of one lake with another. Despite all his learning, Father Adda was a nervous, scattered sort.

Ah, well, there’d be no loss to the day if she made it to Mass before the offering, but she paused as she stood up and took a good look at her dirty tunic and muddy calfskin boots. If the people of Graig saw her like this, they’d wink and whisper and grant her knowing little smiles. These Welshwomen had known the moment Rhys had stormed out of her hut that there’d been more than simple conversation going on between them. For a full week Aileen had been ignoring their sly–eyed questions with as much dignity as she could muster, whilst her freckled skin flamed redder than her hair, making a mockery of all her denials.

Let them wonder, she thought as she picked her way to a patch of dry ground. Rhys himself would soon enough dispel their imaginings. He hadn’t set foot on her path since that day. Best just get on with it. Wiping hair off her cheek, she squinted up through the trees. She’d gotten to know the pathways of these hills well enough, but this way was unfamiliar to her, and overgrown. She gauged the direction in which she walked by the slant of the sunlight, then hiked her skirts above her feet and set off into the thick.

Though the rustling of tiny feet had ceased the moment she’d paused to listen for them, as soon as she moved they followed. In the wood–spice fragrance of these woods, the
Sídh
dared to emerge from their hiding places. She noticed the gentle swaying of a fern, though no wind seeped down from the height. She noticed the drift of a leaf too young to fall from the tree. She noticed, just beyond, an ancient standing stone covered with ivy. In all her time in Wales, she’d sensed them only twice before—on the edge of the battleground in a moment of terror, and in the woods around the half–built castle. Now, with some of the mortar and stone removed from the land, the
Sídh
grew bold enough to slip through the veils.

The patter of their feet faded as she strode beyond the ancient standing stone, but her smile lingered.
This
she had done. Her mother would call it a fine, fair thing. Perhaps it was worth all the trouble she must live through in the years to come, to feel the singing joy of the little people dancing upon these hillsides.

She stepped out of the woods and came to a sudden stop.

Ma and Da had told her that the
Sídh
could take the form of humans so well that you could pass them thinking they were as whole as yourself. Indeed, the horsemen lined up before her were dressed strangely enough to be of another world. Jerkins of skin hung from their shoulders. They wore threadbare woolen leggings. Blue woad smeared their faces above the mustaches and beards. Their long matted hair was braided through with bits of shell and stone. Only one man stood out, for having strapped grass about his own feet in a sort of prickly boot.

She froze with a shock of recognition. She’d met those eyes before above the stretch of an upraised javelin, right before the world had erupted in a chaos of high–pitched war–cries. Her basket of foxglove, harebells and butterwort slipped out of her hand, for these were Rhys’s half–brothers.

“Get her.”

She heard the words as she whirled and fled. Branches snapped across her arms, whipped into her face and jerked her head back as they snarled in her hair. She raced blindly down the slope, ignoring the tearing of her woolen tunic and the slice of an edged stone through the sole of her boot. Their mounts would never make it through these thickets, she told herself, as she sprung sideways through a cluster of trunks. They’d have to dismount and follow her on foot. She pretended not to hear the crashing of heavier feet behind her, pretended that a woman could outrun a clutch of strong, war–hardened, desperate men. She told herself she would find sanctuary by the standing stones, and if the
Sídh
didn’t come, then she could swim the length of the lake if she dared.

Someone snagged her hair and snapped her head back hard enough to launch her off her feet. She slipped down the slope until her captor hauled her up against him. He swung a meaty arm around her neck. She clawed at his arm and struggled for breath, but it was like clawing leather for all the harm her nails did on his skin. Too soon, he dragged her back into the clearing and tossed her like a sack of barley upon the stone, where she lay on her knees, choking air back into her lungs.

The toes of two grassy boots came into her vision.

“Where are your bees now, witch?”

She leaned back onto her knees, fighting panic. Screaming would do nothing but frighten the deer and the rabbits. The church, where everyone headed this time of the morning, was a valley beyond. At Mass, people might gossip about her absence, but she wouldn’t be missed. They all knew of her propensity to wander off herb–gathering on a fine day.

She tumbled back at the blow to her jaw.

“Speak! They tell me you can mumble your witchery in Welsh as well as in Irish now.” The leader crouched on his haunches before her. “Where are your demons to save you?”

Pain speared through her neck and over her skull. His face spun in her vision. Blue woad caked the skin above his matted blond beard, the same color blue as his eyes. He’d dressed his hair so it stood up like two horns. Crouched there before her, he looked half–beast, half–man, like a creature she’d seen once jutting out above a doorway to the monastery on the north island.

“No witchery for us now, eh? Has my brother Rhys fucked it out of you?” He seized the hem of her dress and flipped it up, to laugh at her threadbare stockings before she tugged the tunic back down. “Legs like a chicken. For all my brother’s gold, he couldn’t find a better–looking witch?”

Laughter rippled among the men, but it was a nervous laughter, and when she glared at them it died off.

There was power in this fear, the only power she held against such men.

“I think,” the leader continued, his smile dimming, “that you used up all your magic. Otherwise, you’d be summoning your demons to ward us off as you did before.”

Aye, to be a witch. She narrowed her eyes upon the leader with all the contempt she could muster. Oh, to be able to mutter a few unintelligible words and turn this creature into stone, to be able to summon a flock of crows down upon them. A frisson of hate shook her spine. She clutched it as a stronghold against the fear.

“You dare much,” she said, “coming so close to the
llys
.”

“I dare nothing.” He tugged a piece of straw from his makeshift boot and clamped it in his mouth. “Not from my brother and not from you. God has long abandoned my brother. And now your demons have abandoned you—to us.”

She knew those eyes of ice blue. Rhys’s father must have had the same eyes. Something twisted in her to see them glittering in this man’s face. For all of Rhys’s fury, he had never lost that touch of vulnerability that spoke of hidden torment. She thought, this is what it is to lose all sense of humanity. This is what it is, truly, to be a beast. At that moment if she had a knife or a lance in her hand, she would have skewered this man as she might skewer a cow or a rabbit for food, or a predator for threatening those she loved.

“You have an eye on you, I’ll grant you that.” The leader settled back on his haunches. “More power than that, if you’ve done what they say you’ve done. If you’ve cured our brother Rhys.”

She slurred through a throbbing jaw, “News travels swiftly in these hills.”

“More swiftly than the wind.”

“Then you should whisper. Voices carry. He’ll hear you and he’ll kill you.”

“If he can catch me. Three years he’s been trying to do that.”

“He needn’t bother anymore,” she retorted. “No more does a maimed leader rule the lands of Graig.” She brushed some caked mud from her tunic and tried to rise with dignity to her feet. “You have no standing on your claim to his lands.”

“You speak of what you do not understand. We’re all Welsh sons of a Welsh father—we are entitled to this land.” He yanked the straw from his mouth and raised his voice. “What are we to do with our good fortune, eh, brothers? We’ve captured our brother Rhys’s lucky charm—a skinny heifer, but a prized one.”

“You overestimate my importance.” The words rang with painful truth. “He’d pay more for stolen cattle.”

“Ransom?” He tossed the straw into the dirt. “We have no need of gold in these hills. We slaughter any cattle that we steal—our own cattle.” His lips curled as he stared her up and down. “Rhys won’t part with a kingdom for the likes of your bag of bones, even if you are the only woman who cares to tumble him.”

The men snickered, and this time when she glared they did not look away.

The leader said, “We do have one score to settle. The matter of our dead brother Edwen.”

Somewhere in the trees a crow screeched. She stiffened her spine as she saw the men nodded their agreement, as an ugly eagerness vibrated in the air.

“It’s hardly a match to have a brother’s life avenged with that of a mere woman. A peasant woman, at that.” The man’s smile disappeared, the dark humor in his eyes faded. “Slaughtering her would hardly pay proper tribute. So we’ve only one choice.” His nostrils flared. “We’ll have to make your death spectacular.”

She went very, very cold. She hoped she wouldn’t cry out. She hoped she would have the strength and courage to spit in his face with her last breath. She hoped Rhys would remember her kindly.