Juliet Marillier - Heart's Blood

“That the chieftain is a misshapen good-for-nothing and that the hill is swarming with monsters and giant dogs?” I said, fighting to stay calm. “Yes, I know that; I lived at Whistling Tor all summer. I must get there. Isn’t anyone using the roads?”

They looked at each other, and I thought there was something they were not saying, or had been forbidden to say.

“What? What is it?”

“Nothing,” said the farmer.“We know nothing, except that if you head for Whistling Tor, you take your life in your hands. Fair warning.You’re not really planning to walk all the way?”

“I have no choice. How long do you think it will take me?”

If they believed me out of my wits, it did not stop them from offering help, and I blessed them for that. I set out from the farm with a thick felt cloak on top of my damp clothing.They gave me a strip of leather to tie around my writing box so I could sling it over my shoulder along with my pack, leaving my hands free.They gave me a walking stick and a packet of food. Best gift of all was a crude map of the path I must take, with landmarks scrawled in charcoal on a piece of birch bark. I sheltered it under my cloak against the rain. The farmer advised me to stop at one of the farms along the way and go on in the morning, since I had no chance of reaching Whistling Tor by nightfall. The moon would be near full, but with heavy cloud covering the sky it would not light my path. I did not say that I had no intention of stopping before I reached my destination. Never mind if night fell; never mind if there was no moonlight. Somehow I would find the way. Anluan. His name was a talisman against the dark, against fear, against giving up. Anluan, I’m nearly home.Wait for me.

I walked through the afternoon and into the dusk. I walked on the road and, when I heard a body of horsemen approaching in the fading light, down beside it, under the cover of trees. I could not see the riders well, but as they passed I heard the jingle of metal and voices speaking a tongue unfamiliar to me. Reinforcements for the besieging army, perhaps. How could Anluan prevail against so many? I set my jaw and walked on. It grew dark. I followed the paler ribbon of the earth road; on either side, in the gloom, there might have been anything. Sudden steep rises; abrupt, perilous drops. Cattle, sheep, monsters. Old stories swirled in my mind, full of the menace of what lurked in the shadows beyond the light of hearth fires. I kept on walking. I would get there in time. I must get there in time.Why would the mirror show me what it had chosen to show, if only to draw me back to Whistling Tor after Anluan was dead?

When my feet ached and my back hurt, when the layers of damp clothing and the chill night air had begun to leach away my courage, when I could no longer pretend that I need not rest, I sank down in the shelter of a crumbling stone wall.The moment I stopped moving my knees began to shake. My head was dizzy. My fingers were so cramped I struggled to unfasten my bag. The clouds had thinned, and there was a suggestion of moonlight. I ate some bread and cheese from the package I’d been given and drank some water from my flask. It was too dark to tell if I was on the right track. It was too dark to read my birch-bark map.

I packed the remains of the food into the bag, my hands touching the edge of the mirror as I did so. “Now would be a good time to show me something useful,” I muttered.“A lamp, for instance, or a candle; something to light my way.” But I did not draw it out. That last vision was strong in my mind: Anluan’s gray face, his limp form; my bending, sorrowful figure holding him; and Muirne standing in the doorway with that odd, impassive look on her face. That look made my skin crawl. It was as if she had no understanding of right or wrong . . .

In a moment of insight it came to me. Aislinn. Aislinn in the obsidian mirror, watching as Nechtan performed his acts of torture. Aislinn who had learned so much from the man who had taken her under his wing: to help him in his work, to keep meticulous records, to gather and prepare the materials for ritual magic, to set aside the suffering of human and animal if that suffering could provide vital knowledge. Aislinn, whose face I had never seen, for those visions had shown her hands scrubbing, her form bending over the table, her fall of wheaten hair, but never the features that no doubt had gazed on her patron with nothing but admiration as he had taught her how to set aside her conscience.

My heart raced. Could it be? Could Aislinn have come back after death to join the host that she and Nechtan had unleashed with their flawed experiment? After that fateful All Hallows, the girl had vanished completely from Nechtan’s writings. I could not remember a single reference to her after the description of their preparations: the herbs, the wreath, the white gown, the incantation. Where had she gone? Had she perhaps thought better of the path down which Nechtan was leading her, and moved away from Whistling Tor? Or did she linger still? Muirne. Oh, God, Muirne who was as devoted to Anluan as Aislinn had been to Nechtan, Muirne who had been companion to each chieftain in turn . . . Images teased at me: Muirne adjusting cups on a shelf so they were perfectly aligned. Aislinn clearing away the debris of torture, fastidious, detached. Muirne’s veil, covering every strand of her hair—if she removed that covering, would a cascade of golden locks tumble over her shoulders and down her back? Aislinn and Muirne. It could be. And if it was, that meant Muirne had a talent nobody at Whistling Tor knew about. She could read.

The moon made a gradual appearance, revealing a landscape in many shades of gray, the path winding on, stony hillsides to either side, pale forms that might have been rocks or sheep. I must go on.The new blisters stinging my feet must wait for attention until I reached Whistling Tor. Anluan needed me. He might even now be lying sick, wounded, despairing. And if my suspicion about Muirne was right, I didn’t want her anywhere near him.

I came down a small hill and saw in the distance a bigger rise, dark on dark, with what might perhaps be a high wall at the top. Nearly there. And now, here was a side road. I took out my map and squinted at it in the moonlight.Yes, there was a grove of oaks nearby, and a single tall pine to the north. I must get off the main track here and go by this lesser way, still wide enough to accommodate a cart or a troop of mounted men-at-arms, but not well traveled. It was the way I had first come here, when I had been running so hard from my demons that I had ventured where no person in her right mind would go.When I reached the marker stone I would be following in my own footsteps.

Before I got close, the mist began to rise. In shreds and ribbons, in twisting tendrils that wrapped themselves around me as I passed, it crept up to obscure the way, turning a moonlit track into a deceptive tapestry of shifting patterns. Curse this place! Even the elements conspired to keep folk out.The memory of that day in the library returned: the blinding clouds of smoke, the panic, the struggle for breath. I willed it away. If I stayed on the edge of the track I could keep going, finding my way step by step.

Time passed; my progress was painfully slow. I held to the side where the marker stone for Whistling Tor had been and prayed that I had not gone past it unknowing. Sounds came to me through the curtains of mist, the call of an owl, something creaking, a shiver in the undergrowth as a small creature passed nearby. And then, not so very far off, I heard men’s voices, foreign voices, and a sliding, metallic noise, perhaps a weapon being stealthily drawn. Somewhere ahead of me I could see a glow, as of a cooking fire. I took two steps forward and blundered into the marker stone, cursing as I bruised my knees.A moment later, someone shouted what was unmistakably a challenge, and there came the sound of booted feet approaching.