Juliet Marillier - Heart's Blood

“Release her.” Anluan’s voice was quieter now, but it cut through the general mayhem like a knife through butter, and this time Cillian obeyed, gesturing for one of the others to untie the rope around my ankles. The spectral horse was circling, its progress audible as a clatter of bones, and I saw that Eichri was carrying a long, pale sword.

“Oh God, oh God!” someone screamed, as behind the rider a swirling mass flowed out from under the trees around the courtyard, not mist, not smoke, but something full of gaping mouths and clutching hands, something with a hundred shrieking, moaning voices and a hundred creeping, pattering feet. Cillian’s men struck out wildly with their weapons, but the blanket of ill-defined forms continued to advance until it was close to swallowing all of us. The uncanny sound reverberated through my head, blotting out reason.With my heart pounding fit to leap out of my chest, I kept my eyes on Anluan’s. If he was not afraid, I told myself, then I would not be afraid. I belonged to his household now, and he had told me I would be safe.

A parting shove, and I found myself sprawling on the ground as Cillian and his men fled through the gap in the fortress wall and down the hill, pursued by Eichri at full gallop with the amorphous host following behind. Unleashed, Fianchu pelted off in their wake, baying. Olcan marched at the rear. As Anluan hurried to my side, his limp more pronounced than usual, Magnus appeared from the general direction of the farm, striding towards us.

Anluan had knelt to lift me to a sitting position, his touch gentle. “You’re safe, Caitrin,” he murmured. “The host will not harm you; they obey my commands.There is nothing to fear.”

With his good hand he managed to unfasten the gag while Magnus untied my wrists. Down the hill, a cacophony of shouting, barking and metallic clashing had broken out.The two men helped me to my feet. My breath was coming in gasps; the tears I had held back so that Cillian would not see me defeated were flowing in earnest now.

“Inside,” Magnus said.“We can rely on the others to see off our unwelcome guests. Did I hear that fellow say he was your kinsman, Caitrin?”

“Not now,” said Anluan. After helping me to my feet he had backed off, as if wary of touching me. “Take it slowly, Caitrin. You’ve had a bad shock. Magnus, go on ahead and brew a restorative for Caitrin, will you? We will follow.”

I was crying so hard I couldn’t even frame a thank-you. It had been so close. What if Anluan hadn’t come out? I might even now be on my way back to Market Cross. How in the name of God had Cillian found me? Had the villagers betrayed me, when only yesterday they had been all sympathy? And how had Cillian managed to get up the hill? Now that it seemed to be over, I had begun to shake. As we headed for the front entry, Anluan moved closer, half lifting his arm as if to put it around my shoulders. I edged away, fighting for self-control, and he did not complete the gesture. “I never even saw Cillian coming,” I sobbed. “I was stupid to go out there on my own, stupid!”

“This was no fault of yours,” Anluan said quietly as we went into the house. “I am sorry I was slow to reach you. I heard you cry out and I ran. But I could not run fast enough.”

“You got there in time, that’s all that matters.” I paused to wipe my face on my sleeve. “Anluan, those beings . . . and Eichri . . . I don’t understand any of it.” One thing was glaringly apparent: Eichri was no ordinary monk, nor even an ordinary man. “How did you do that? That . . . summoning? They were there so quickly. Olcan appeared from nowhere.”

“It is a thing I can do.” He seemed reluctant to say more.

“Was that the . . . the host? Nechtan’s host?” I had hardly thought to be afraid of them. Mind and body had been possessed by the old fear, the fear that had driven me from Market Cross to seek safe haven here.That terror still trembled through me: the knowledge that if I were taken back home, I would lose myself forever.

“It is the same force you have seen mentioned in the documents,” Anluan said.“Nechtan’s army, such as it is. Sometimes biddable, sometimes unruly. Stone is no barrier to them. I thought it better that you did not know . . .” As we walked into the kitchen he swayed, and after seating me on a bench he sank down beside me and put his head in his hands.

“Anluan, what’s wrong?” His sudden collapse frightened me.

“He’ll be better soon,” Magnus said, spooning powders into a jug.“It’s a natural reaction: the exercise of power can be draining.”

“I can answer for myself, Magnus.” Anluan’s voice was not much more than a whisper. “Caitrin, it is past time for an explanation, I know.”

“You’re not well,” I said.

“It’s nothing. I cannot give you answers to everything, for there are some questions here that have none.Those entities you saw just now—we don’t quite know what they are, only that they’re wayward and difficult to govern. There is a passage in Conan’s records that you may have read, in which my grandfather attempted to ride forth with them to fight a battle.”

“He lost control,” I murmured. “And they ran riot.”

“There are many such descriptions in the documents. These beings have been on the hill since Nechtan’s time.The common belief is that he summoned them by an act of dark magic. They are not monsters, despite the impression they gave just now.That was simply trickery, an illusion that can be used to strike fear into an adversary.” He did not clarify who created this illusion, himself or the host, and I did not ask.Touch too closely on his own astonishing role in this, and the flow of words would likely dry up.

“The host is bound to the chieftain of Whistling Tor, whoever he may be,” Anluan said. “I can exercise a certain control over their actions. It is done by . . . by thoughts, by concentration . . . Not sorcery, a knack.When I do this, it weakens me. As you see.”

“Don’t try to talk,” I murmured. “There’s no need to tell me all this now.”

“I will tell it.” His tone had sharpened. I felt the considerable effort he exerted to make himself sit upright, straight-backed on the bench. “Caitrin, you have seen that I can command these forces. I can call them to my aid. But this . . . relationship . . . does not end with the occasional deployment of Nechtan’s host to rescue a friend in trouble or to keep out unwelcome visitors.You know that in the past the host has run amok and caused unspeakable harm. There is an evil amongst them, something that has the capacity to rule them if allowed to go unchecked. Its exact nature, we have never known—my theory is that Nechtan’s original experiment went wrong somehow, and that instead of the mighty and biddable army he desired, he got a force that was more burden than asset.There is a constant need for me to maintain order on the hill. I can never afford to relax my control completely.You have observed, no doubt, that I am often tired. I have been ashamed of this.When I look at myself through your eyes, I see a weak man, a lazy man, one who spends much of his day inactive.There is a reason for it, beyond my physical affliction. Every moment of every day, a part of my mind must be fixed on Nechtan’s host. If I ever lost control of them, their minds would be influenced by the evil that dwells somewhere amongst them.They might leave the Tor and run riot in the fields and villages beyond. Should I let that happen, the region would be doomed.”

Throughout Anluan’s extraordinary speech, Magnus had calmly mixed his powders, added hot water from the kettle on the fire, poured the result into a pair of cups and set them on the table. Now he was getting out a jug of ale.

I tried not to show how horrified I was. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? And what about Eichri? He was . . . he is . . .”