Juliet Marillier - Heart's Blood

“Give me the book, Caitrin. Don’t keep me waiting.” Her voice had acquired a new edge; she was no longer calm and controlled. She lifted a hand, and in it was Orna’s carving knife.

My heart juddered in panic. I ran through the words of Nechtan’s invocation in my mind: Legio caliginis appare! Appare mihi statim! Resurge! I was fairly sure I could remember it correctly. I knew the image of the pentagram within its snake-formed circle. I could remember the words Nechtan had used at the beginning, addressing the elemental spirits. Even without the book, I might be able to give Anluan what he needed to end this. If I could stay alive long enough. “I don’t understand why you tried to kill Anluan,” I said, “but I do know I could just as easily have been the one who drank the poison first. There’d have been nobody to find Irial’s notebook and read the antidote if I’d been lying there unable to speak. I can’t give you back your book without a promise of good faith.”

I backed away from the table that stood between us, but I could not go far, for a set of shelves stood behind, effectively boxing me in. Chances were she’d still stick the knife into me, even if I gave up her treasure.What to do, with Orna lying there, perhaps dead, perhaps needing my help, and Gearróg now ominously silent? From down the hill noises still came to my ears, a great roaring as of many voices raised together in a war cry or perhaps a song; the thunder of hooves. “The Tor!” someone shouted, and “ The Tor! ” screamed a hundred voices in response. Cry of comradeship or call to retreat, I did not know which it might be.

I held Aislinn’s eye and spoke as calmly as my hammering heart would allow. I must keep her attention off the host.“You were cruelly wronged, I saw that in the mirror just now. Nechtan failed to recognize your strength, your ability, your potential. I understand why you punished him so. But Irial . . . he was a good man. He never sought to use the host for ill, and I don’t believe he was unkind to you.Why would you kill him? Why would you kill Anluan, who wants only the best for Whistling Tor? I thought you loved him.”

“Love, hate,” Aislinn said, and as she moved around the table towards me, knife in hand, she held my eyes with hers, “little divides them. Nechtan’s heirs are weak. They cannot match his lofty aspirations, his genius, his . . . his beauty.”

Holy Saint Patrick, after everything, after the callous betrayal, after the long, long time of suffering, she still had tender feelings for him. Even as she worked to perpetrate the curse she had laid on him and his, she cared for him. It was a notion of love so warped that it sickened me, and I could find nothing to say.

“I had hopes for Irial,” Aislinn said, taking another step towards me. The point of the knife was an arm’s length from my heart, and shaking. That icy calm was deserting her. “I learned much from him, and taught him in my turn—don’t look so startled, Caitrin, I know far more of herb lore than one man could learn in his lifetime. But in the end, Irial disappointed me. He loved unwisely. He dared to be happy. Irial wanted a future for Whistling Tor that was . . . not allowable. As for Anluan . . .” Her eyes softened, then as quickly turned to flint. “You sealed his fate when you opened his mind to hope,” she said. “At Whistling Tor, there can be no hope. The curse forbids it. He will lose his battle. He will know despair again. As for you, meddling scribe, you thought to change what had been sealed with a dying breath.Why should you survive?”

The slightest of sounds from the garden doorway. I looked past Aislinn and saw the ghost child standing there, her hair thistledown pale in the sunlight from beyond. Her eyes were wide with fright as she glanced from me to Aislinn to the prone Gearróg. She clutched her small bundle with both hands. “Catty?”The little voice wobbled with uncertainty.

Aislinn turned towards the child. I saw her freeze. “ Where did you get that? ” There was such venom in her tone that I shrank back as if from a blow. It was the embroidered kerchief that had done it, one of her trophies, taken from the secret place. The next leap of logic was lightning quick. “You, you puny wretch, you abomination, you told her where it was! I’ll make you sorry—”

“Here, take your book,” I said, and threw it high over Aislinn’s head.

It crashed to the flagstones near Irial’s corner. The child was gone in an instant, out into the garden. As Aislinn moved to recover her treasure a figure loomed up behind her, all bunched muscle and furious eyes.The knife clattered to the floor.They fell together, her wildly thrashing form pinned by Gearróg’s strong arms. Specters they might be, but the fight was violent and real, her desperation against his force.

“You killed them!”Aislinn screamed, her voice now ragged and hoarse.

“Your little boy, your baby—”

“Hold your filthy lying tongue!” Gearróg had one hand on her throat, the other holding her arms above her head as he knelt across her struggling body. “It was an accident! An accident! Don’t spit your poison in my ears!”

“Make him stop,” Aislinn gasped, and her eyes rolled towards me.“Call your brute off or I’ll see to it that the Normans come up the hill as easily as that kinsman of yours did, the one you weren’t sensible enough to go off with! I’ve done it before and I can do it again. All it needs is a word, a snap of the fingers—get your filthy hands off me, pig! Don’t just stare at me, do it, Caitrin!”

Perhaps I was staring; her veil had come off completely as Gearróg grappled with her, and her hair spread out across the library floor, long, shimmering, the hue of ripe wheat in sunshine. I recalled, uncomfortably, how Nechtan had longed to touch it.

“It was an accident,” Gearróg said again, and such was the difference in his tone that my heart skipped a beat.“I didn’t do it. It was an accident.” What had been furious denial had turned to stunned recognition. He remembered now, and knew this was true. Something had changed here, changed profoundly.

New figures in the doorway: the wise woman of the host, and behind her the two others who had gone with her to the garden to wait. They crossed the library to kneel by Orna. As Aislinn quieted in Gearróg’s grip, more and more folk came in to stand around us, watchful, expectant. There was no doubt, now, that what we could hear from down the hill was a song. It sounded out through the brightening air of morning, jubilant, strong, not quite in unison: “Swing your swords proudly, Hold your heads high, Brothers together, We live and we die!” Someone shouted: “Lord Anluan!” and many voices answered: “Lord Anluan! The Tor!”

“It’s over.” Gearróg might have been witnessing a miracle, such was the wonder in his voice. “They’ve done it.”

And at the same moment, the wise woman said,“I’m sorry; we cannot help her.” She laid Orna’s still form down and stood to face me.“Her neck is broken. A quick passing and a valiant one.”

It was too much to take in.The battle won. Orna killed. Perhaps, when the men came back up the hill, we would learn of more losses, more brave souls who had given their lives so that Anluan could win back his own ground and theirs. Strangest of all, Aislinn quiescent on the library floor, no longer spitting insults, no longer struggling.

“Tonight is All Hallows,” the wise woman said.“A hundred years since the accursed chieftain of Whistling Tor first called us forth.” She turned her shrewd gaze on me. “Did you find what you sought?”

“It’s in her book,” I said, and as I spoke, suddenly Aislinn moved, writhing like an eel, slipping from Gearróg’s grasp, diving across the library to seize her journal. She rose wild-eyed, with the book clutched in her hands. Her golden hair was dishevelled, her clothing disordered. Gearróg lunged towards her. “No!” I said, obeying some impulse I hardly understood, and he halted in his tracks.