Juliet Marillier - Heart's Blood

“Caitrin?” Olcan called from outside.

My skin in goose bumps, I went out to the gallery. He and the dog were coming up the steps.

“Thought I might leave Fianchu with you tonight,” Olcan said.“You’ll be nervous after what happened earlier with your unpleasant kinsman and his cronies. You needn’t have this fellow in the bedchamber with you, though that’d be his preference without a doubt.You can leave him out here when you bolt your door, and he’ll sleep across the threshold.”

“Thank you.” Fianchu’s presence would be more than welcome.“I had visitors just now. From the host.Will Fianchu keep them away as well?”

“You’ll be safe, Caitrin.You’re Anluan’s friend.They won’t harm you.”

I considered this as I lay in bed a little later with the door shut and bolted and Fianchu on my side of it, comfortable on one of the two blankets, for I had not had the heart to shut him out. If dogs had been able to smile, he’d have had a big grin on his brutish features. Everyone seemed sure that Anluan could protect me; that his mastery over the host meant the uncanny presences of Whistling Tor would not harm his household or the chieftain himself unless he crossed that invisible line he had shown me. I wondered about that. The young man in the bloody shirt had seemed almost inimical when he accused me of lying.There had been anger in his voice when he bade me tell Anluan to let the host go. Anluan was Nechtan’s descendant, and Nechtan was the one who had brought these folk forth and, I assumed, condemned them to their strange existence on the hill.Were we really safe from them? Or might it take only a wrong word or a trivial error of judgment to turn them into the chaotic, destructive horde of Conan’s account, a force that destroyed friend and foe alike? When they had confronted Cillian this morning, they had looked ravening, fearsome, malevolent.

My mind went to Anluan. I recalled his courage as he stepped out to face my attackers, all alone. Now he was alone once more, probably in his quarters brooding over his father’s sad end. Alone save for Muirne. Solici tous, protective, devoted Muirne. Even if she had been a living woman, as I had believed until this morning, she was wrong for him. “He needs someone as perfect for him as Emer was for Irial,” I told the enormous hound. “Someone who will be kind to him, but not too kind. Someone who won’t mind living in this strange place. Someone with the patience to help him learn.”

Fianchu made no comment, only lifted his head, sighed, and stretched out luxuriously on the blanket.

“Someone who respects him,” I added. “Someone who sees him as strong, not weak. Someone who needs him as much as he needs her.”

The dog was asleep. I blew out my candle and pulled the blanket up to my chin. “And no, I don’t mean myself,” I murmured. “I’m not so foolish as that.Though I’d surely do a better job of it than she does.”

Despite Fianchu’s protective presence I slept badly. I rose at dawn with the tangled remnants of my nightmares hanging close about me.When I opened my door to let the dog out there was a sudden movement along the gallery, a blur, as if a ghostly presence had kept its own watch outside the door.

Mist shrouded the garden, creeping into every corner.Within the shifting shapes of it I could see them: the wounded, the sorrowful, the furious, the desperate folk of the hill.Their eyes were fixed on me.There were no threats, no entreaties, indeed there was no sound from them at all as they passed, but I heard the unspoken words in my heart: Find it. Find a way.

“ I will,” I muttered, more to myself than to the host. “If I can, I will.” But as I threaded my way through the maze of chambers and passages towards the kitchen, I reminded myself, uncomfortably, that I was here at Whistling Tor because I had run away from my own problems. The host had been on the hill for a hundred years. It had blighted the lives of four chieftains, their families and the folk of the region. Anluan had hired me to translate Latin for him, not to achieve what nobody else had been able to do in all that time.

Magnus was in the kitchen making up the fire.

“I’m off down to the settlement soon,” he said. “You sure you’re all right, Caitrin? You’re not looking well, even now. It’s not every day you discover all of a sudden that you’re living alongside—well, I’ve never been quite sure what to call them. Must have been unsettling, at the least.”

“I slept badly.That’s nothing new. Yes, it was a strange day. It wasn’t the host that most disturbed me, it was the way Cillian managed to find me, just when I was starting to feel safe. When Tomas and Orna first sheltered me, I told them I was running away and expected to be followed. It’s hard to believe they would tell him where I was.” Even in this quiet chamber, with this kindly man as my only company, the words did not come easily. “It had been quite bad, at home, before I came here,” I made myself say.“It took me a long time to be brave enough to leave. I was so terrified he’d drag me back, I hardly thought to be afraid of the host.”

The fire was blazing now. Magnus set the kettle on its hook. “If that fellow’s typical of your kinsfolk, you’re best off without them, in my opinion,” he said. “What is he to you, Caitrin? A cousin? How was he able to get away with those acts of violence?”

“His mother is a distant cousin of my father’s. Before Father died, I hardly knew them. And afterwards ... well, they came to look after me, at least that was what they said, and ... I don’t want to talk about it, Magnus.”

Magnus was frowning.“The situation sounds irregular at the very least, Caitrin. Why don’t you have a word with Rioghan? He knows all about the law. Explain it to him and ask what he thinks. Sounds like something’s wrong to me.”

I would never go back to Market Cross. Never. So it didn’t matter what advice Rioghan had, since I would not be acting on it. “I’ll talk to him some time,” I said. “Not today. After yesterday’s disruptions, I need to spend all day in the library.”

So early in the morning, the light was barely adequate for writing. I busied myself preparing a broad-tipped goose-feather quill and scoring a fresh sheet of parchment.As the sun rose higher and the chamber grew brighter, I set these items aside—they were not for my use. I got out my own quill and ink, and took up the task of copying my most recent document listing from wax tablet to parchment. I had filled the tablet five times over now, transcribing each list in turn when the wax surface was covered, then erasing and beginning again. It was a thankless, tedious task.All I wanted to do was plunge frantically into the Latin documents in the quest for spells and charms. Common sense prevailed. I must maintain the catalogue as I progressed, or as soon as I left Whistling Tor the library would descend into its old chaos. I wrote quickly, using a common hand. There was no need for this work to be finely executed; it just had to be legible.

From time to time I was aware of a whisper of feet on the flag-stoned floor, a shadowy movement at the corner of my eye, but when I glanced up there was nobody to be seen. I knew they were there watching me. “I’m working as fast as I can,” I muttered, acutely aware that the real work still lay before me. If the truth about Nechtan’s sorcery lay in this library, it would be in those Latin documents. I glanced at the chest that held the obsidian mirror. From within the squat form of the box I could feel the malign power of the artifact. Use me. If you want the answers, use me.

I completed the pen and ink list, wondering if I would see Anluan at all today. Yesterday had felt like a turning point, and I wished I had not upset him at supper. I remembered his fingers against my arm, when I had thought to leave him and Muirne in the kitchen, and the way I had responded as a harp string does to the touch of a bard.