Catrione put one hand on the nearest chair to steady herself, and Bog caught her eye. Forgetting Deirdre, she knelt beside him, one hand on his head. He didn’t stir at her touch, didn’t open his eyes, didn’t thump his great white plume of a tail, and in a moment of awful realization, she knew he was dead. He’d seemed fine all that day, she thought as disbelief descended on her. She tried to remember the last time she’d looked into his deep brown eyes, fondled his silky ears, tried to think what she’d been doing the last time she’d seen him. Her mind was a complete blank, filled with a raven’s screech. One for sorrow, was all she could think.
Deirdre. Find her. The unequivocal command yanked Catrione into the present, galvanizing her. With one last look at Bog’s poor limp body, she shut her door, and paused, looking both ways down the empty corridor. Find her.Catrione picked up her skirts and ran down the shadowy corridor toward the rain-shrouded dusk.
Hardhaven Landing, Far Nearing
Wind-driven rain slashed against the panes of yellowed horn, and the shutters rattled against the latch as the storm howled around the tower room. In the hearth, a log cracked and split in a shower of sparks, stinging Cwynn’s bare legs like a hundred bees, chasing him out of yet another dream of the woman with the honey-blonde hair. Her now-familiar features dispersed into a swirl of color as he came to himself with a start, just in time to wonder briefly who she could possibly be. The girls who caught his eye were usually dark-haired, like Ariene the midwife’s daughter, the mother of his sons. He knocked his head against the stone hearth and opened his eyes to see his grandfather, Cermmus, watching beady-eyed from his pillow. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Hard day?”
“Thought it would never end.” Cwynn cleared his throat and shook himself awake. The storm had risen fast out of flat water and hazy sun, catching him off guard and farther away from the shore than a one-handed fisherman should be when the weather was bad. Until his feet had actually touched land, Cwynn’d believed it more likely than not he’d find himself feasting in the Summerlands. The sound of off-key singing, followed by loud laughter and catcalls filtered up from the hall, and he remembered there were three strangers in the keep tonight who wore odd-patterned plaids and supple leather doublets with high boots polished to a fine sheen. He’d had no chance to speak to them himself, for Cermmus had left word with every occupant of the house, apparently, that Cwynn was to come to him directly. A whoop from the floor below sounded like Shane, Cwynn’s uncle, who, at thirty-five, was only five years older than Cwynn. “I lost the whole day’s catch, and the nets—the mast—the boat’s going to need a lot of repairs.” He held up his hook. “I put a hole in the side.” He braced himself.
But to Cwynn’s disbelief, Cermmus only shifted under the sheet. “Forget the catch, never mind the boat. There’s—”
Cwynn stared. “Never mind?” Was his grandfather not aware there were two more mouths to feed this summer? Duir and Duirmuid, his twin boys, were weaned and hungry. And there were no men in the midwife’s house to provide for them. “We needed that catch, Gran-da—the fish aren’t running this year like they should. Why, Ruarch was saying—”
“Did you get a look at those strangers down there?”
“I saw them. I figured if there was something about them I needed to know, you’d tell me.”
“I was waiting for you to ask.”
“No sense wasting your breath, eh?”
The old man nodded, and what lately passed for a smile flickered across his face. Then his expression grew serious and he rose up on one elbow, fumbling beneath his pillow. “Come here, boy. I have something for you.” He began to cough, a hard, hacking cough that brought Cwynn to his side, his right hand extended to help him sit up, a clay cup of water awkwardly held in the curved iron hook that had served as his left ever since the accident.
“Drink this, Gran-da,” he said.
The old man waved him away. “Don’t fret about me, boy.” Cermmus cleared his throat, hawked and spit expertly into a metal pot on the other side of the bed. “Here.” He held out what looked like a piece of folded yellowed linen. “Take it. It’s yours. I should’ve given it to you before, but after Shane killed your father—”
It was much heavier than Cwynn expected. He unfolded the stiff, yellowed fabric, frowning as he unwrapped the round gold disk. It was about the size of his palm and nearly as thick. A border of intricate knotwork was etched around the edge. He turned it over. It was warm from his grandfather’s bed. The delicate spiral reminded him of a seashell, studded here and there with tiny crystals, spinning out from an enormous emerald in the center. “What is this thing?”
“The druids make them. We all had them—I sold mine off for food in the years the fish ran slow. Could have another made if I had the gold for it, which I don’t. But I didn’t think it wise to bring that one out.” Cermmus turned his head and spat into a clay ewer. “Pull that stool closer, boy. I don’t want to shout.”
“Are you saying this is mine?” Cwynn asked as he obeyed. The acrid scent of a sick man’s body blended with wet wool and damp dog and the heavy scent of fish that clung to everything beneath his grandfather’s thatched roof.
Cermmus coughed again, and this time he accepted the cup. “I couldn’t let your uncle know it was here—especially after…after, well, you know. I was afraid he’d steal it, sell it.” His mouth twisted down, and Cwynn knew he was remembering the terrible day ten years ago when his father, Ruadan, had accused Shane, his younger brother and Cwynn’s uncle, of lying with his Beltane-wife.
“And what if I did?” Shane had laughed. He was twenty-five then; dark-haired and tanned, strong and agile from a life spent outdoors on the water, much-liked by all the women, whereas Ruadan, more than twelve years Shane’s senior, was balding and beginning to wear his age.
Ruadan had lunged across the table, clearly intent on wrapping his hands around his younger brother’s throat. Quicker than Cwynn could blink, Shane was on his feet and his knife was buried to its hilt in Ruadan’s chest. Cwynn leaped at his uncle, and it had taken six men to pull him off. The druid court at Gar called it self-defense. Shane paid a blood-fine to Cwynn, which really amounted to no more than assigning him a portion of what he expected to inherit from Cermmus, which wasn’t much to begin with, and the matter was considered settled.
But Cwynn never trusted his uncle again, and Cermmus had never been quite the same since. The old man shook his hand, dragging Cwynn back to the present. “It’s yours. You keep it, now. You keep it safe. Don’t lose it.”
“So what’s this all mean?” He turned the disk over awkwardly, squinting at its markings in the candlelight. The druid script was impossible for anyone without their training to decipher, but he could see that the tiny gems scattered across it clearly had some meaning.
“It’s why those men are here,” Cermmus said. “It’s your birthright, it’s your heritage.”
“I don’t understand.” Cwynn squinted at the intricate workmanship.
“That’s your mother’s line, there. The ancestors from your mother.”
At that, Cwynn looked up. This disk clearly indicated the line of a clan rich and well-renowned. “So who’s my mother? Great Meeve herself?”
“Aye.”
Cwynn guffawed. “All right, Gran-da, why don’t you tell me the real story?”
The old man shrugged as a muffled burst of laughter rose from the hall. “That is the real story. The other you were told—well, I guess we told you that to save your father’s honor. It were something of a blow, you see—but you believe what you like. You find a druid to tell you what that says,