The Sword of Light, page 10
Kylin hadn’t realized just how late the night had grown.
He thanked Daniel and bid good-night to Deidre. He lay on his pallet, eyes open at first, staring into the darkness, wondering what dreams or visions might come to him.
In time, he slept.
But he awoke at the least noise and he heard Deidre enter his room the minute she reached the doorway.
“What is it?” he asked, bolting up.
“Nothing, nothing!” she assured him quickly. “Except . . .”
“Tonight, a dream came to you.”
She nodded. “Kylin, I am no coward. I face men three times my size in battle! But this . . .”
He indicated his pallet.
“Rest.”
“I don’t mean to rob you of sleep,” she told him.
He shook his head. “Lie down. I will lean against the door—”
“No, please. Lie down beside me. Just . . . listen.”
Not a great idea, he thought. He was coming to like her too much. And he was young and in very healthy shape and he’d always recognized the fact that Deidre was a stunningly beautiful woman and now he was discovering that he liked and admired her and . . .
Lie down beside her? But she is obviously so distraught!
He inhaled on a long breath. Reminded himself who he was, not even in relation to their positions in life, but as a human being made up of what he hoped were ethical and moral fibers.
He was not, he assured himself, going to pressure Rí Eamon’s daughter in any way, shape or form.
“Come, then. We will rest together, and you can tell me of your dream.”
And so they lay down together. Her head was on the pillow as she stared straight ahead at nothing in the darkness. He propped himself up on an elbow at her side, watching her, waiting for her to be ready to speak.
“Deidre . . . what is it?” he asked softly at last.
She had never shown the least fear, no matter their circumstances.
The dream had shaken her as no sword or promise of blood had ever done in battle.
“The worst was that I couldn’t tell! It had come to pass, Kylin, just as we’ve seen it, in dreams, in visions. The battle takes place here, in the valley by the great mounds at Tara. We’re there, my father is there, other rís are there and we have a great horde of our own, and we’ve hidden in the passages, watching, waiting, and we’re able to stop those trying to slip through, but I’m coming along a passage and there is so much darkness and then there’s Angus in front of me and James of Munster behind me and . . . I can’t tell if one is a traitor and one is not! Or if they’re both traitors, or if both are there to help me. But I still don’t know who has been helping the enemy through, bringing them inland through the rivers. Because we’ve tried, of course, we’ve all tried, we’ve caught many . . . but the traitor in our midst has helped and the numbers the jarl has garnered are many, so many. And James and Angus are both rushing at me, swords, axes drawn, and I can battle one but not two and I just don’t know . . .”
“Deidre, Deidre, think of it this way,” he said gently. “The dream was like so many of the strange, magical things that have been happening. It’s telling us something, telling us something that’s incredibly important.”
She looked at him at last, eyes huge and beautiful, somehow brilliant even in the darkness. He longed to cup her chin, to stroke her cheek, ease the strain from her strong and elegant features.
“That I am to die?” she whispered.
“No. That we are to study the two men, set spies upon them, watch them carefully.”
“You think that the dream is telling us that the traitor is one of those two men?” she asked.
He nodded gravely.
“But what if I am wrong? What if it was just a dream because we are here, because we are more afraid of the traitor within our own ranks than we are of an enemy horde?” she asked softly.
“I don’t believe that.”
“But it could be.”
“Still, nothing lost,” he assured her. “We know we must be wary. We know that we must watch people. And, of course, it will be difficult. In life, we tend to like James of Munster, long known and respected, and as for Angus . . . well, he can be a great deal tougher to trust.”
“But being such a hard man to deal with does not make him evil. And yet, what if it is neither of them and they believe that I . . . Perhaps someone who is after me just thinks that I should just be eliminated for causing such strife in our world?”
“Both men bear watching,” he said. “That does not deter anything that we’ve planned. And, of course, when we return . . . we can talk to your father again. He has the greatest wisdom about the island, the past and all the people. And then we can talk again about the dreams and the visions, finding the cauldron, the spear and the stone. We will let his wisdom guide our tactics as we move forward.”
“My father may not believe that the Tuatha Dé Danann and the fairies of old could possibly guide us today. For him it may be that the sword is a sword, the spear a spear, the cauldron a cauldron and the stone . . . well, it is really just a pebble.”
He had to smile at that.
“A very powerful pebble. And your father is a wise man. He will not discard all that has happened. You know that better than I.”
She nodded. She managed to almost smile.
“Thank you!” she whispered.
“For?”
“For not hating me for waking you up, for dragging you into more blood and danger, for . . . for being you,” she said softly.
“Ah, Deidre, we fight the same fight! And I thank you for being you.”
Her eyes closed at last, a smile curling her lips.
He waited for her to speak again, and then he realized that her eyes were remaining closed, that her breathing had eased . . . she slept.
“Well, lass,” he murmured. “If only such a state would come so easily for me.”
But he lay beside her, and he felt her incredible warmth, felt all that had come between them. He wished that he dared hold her. Just hold her. But he knew he would want more. And more.
At long last, he eased himself down beside her.
He wasn’t sure at what point the dream came.
Maybe he had just fallen asleep. Maybe he had known rest for a while.
HE DIDN’T FEAR his dreams; the dreams were from a greater power than any warrior knew, be it that they came from the fairy world, that of the Tuatha Dé Danann, or the angels of the new order they embraced so fervently on their emerald isle. It didn’t matter to him; he knew that a higher power was helping them, and he would embrace all dreams.
That night he even tried to summon the battle dream. While falling asleep, he kept thinking about all he knew regarding the burial passages of those who had come in truly ancient times. He imagined the twists and turns beneath the great mounds, honored as sacred by those who had followed in the footsteps of the ancients. He thought about the battles to come and each of the players in such battles that he had met or knew thus far.
And yet, when sleep and darkness claimed him, he did not dream of the battle.
He dreamed of her smile, of the way she looked at him. He could hear the soft melody of her laughter, see the flash of her eyes when she teased him.
He felt the softness of her incredible fiery hair slipping through his fingers like skeins of silk from the far Eastern lands . . .
Felt the softness of her fingertips, the sweet warmth of humanity and femininity of her body.
And then he awoke, frozen.
Because the last had not been a dream.
She had turned and twisted in the night as she slept, and now she was curled against him. Her head rested upon his chest along with an arm. The length of her was a beautiful curve against him. So soft, warm . . .
Trusting.
He didn’t want to move. He was frozen on the one hand, and yet his body was heating at the touch.
He didn’t need to dwell on his action long. Her eyes opened; she apparently realized her position and quicky sat up, looking down at him in abject apology.
“I’m truly so sorry! First, I woke you up and now . . . I’m so sorry. I never meant to ruin your sleep. Oh! Did you have the same dream?” she asked anxiously.
“Nay, Deidre, not this time.”
“Because I didn’t let you sleep at all,” she said worriedly.
“I slept. Seriously, I slept.”
She looked at him with such concern that he had to reach up and touch her face gently with his fingertips.
“Deidre, it’s fine, I was fine. You added warmth against the dampness of the night,” he said lightly. He abruptly withdrew his fingers and stood up. “And, Deidre, you’re feeling all right now?”
“Much better. It was just so very . . . unnerving to me at first. And, I admit, I believe that what we see are events that are to come.”
“You will never be left to wonder in such a situation. Not alone,” he vowed.
“My sword . . . my sword of light will protect me. I think that my fear is in siding with the enemy—and killing a friend! Or thinking that the enemy is the friend, and finding that I’m prey to someone I trusted.”
“Whatever comes,” he promised quietly, “I will be there.”
“I know.” For a moment they shared something in a look that was more intimate than the hours that had gone by.
“Morning has come!” she said.
“Aye, that it has,” he agreed. “We need to move quickly. We don’t know when this is all going to happen, and we need to reach your father. Declan now has others going out across the country, so we needn’t take the precious time, but I wish your father’s council on all that we feel must be done and how we’re so convinced that the battle will be here.”
“Aye, we must move! But—”
He interrupted her with a soft laugh. “Cillian will have seen to it that we have bags with bread and cheese and dried meat packed for us for the journey. And I’m anxious to . . .” He hesitated.
“To what?”
“Well, there’s a stream that leads off the river in a richly wooded area on our way.”
“You wish to swim?”
He realized she was teasing.
“A bit of a bath that doesn’t come in a bucket?” she asked. “That sounds wonderful! Except that’s a while away . . . ah—” she exclaimed, looking around his room “—there’s the water. Wait. Your water. I’ll return to my own room for water.”
“You’d be welcome to my water,” he told her.
She smiled and headed to the door. “Oh, no! Please. Bathe the best that you can in that bucket. We do ride close to one another!”
She left the room, and he smiled as she left, watching her. Then his smile faded slowly as he wondered if he’d ever wake again to find that she was next to him, body to body, in the night.
Then his imagination took hold, and he couldn’t help but envision different ways in which he might find them together, the warmth of her body more directly against his.
He gave himself a serious mental shake. It was morning. They were on a mission.
And the mission was life and death.
8
THERE WAS ONE thing Kylin seemed to know very well and that was the terrain over which they traveled.
They’d been riding about two hours from Cillian’s land when he nodded toward a path Deidre could barely see at first. It appeared to wind into a grove of trees and disappear.
“We’re riding to a tree?” she teased him.
“Just wait. Follow me.”
“Hmm. I’ll have to trust in you.”
“A little late for you to be having doubts,” he told her, grinning as they made their way, single file, through a dense thicket.
But then they emerged upon a narrow stream bank. It had to be a little offshoot of the river, but it was stunningly beautiful, crystal-clear water bouncing off stones here and there, moving gently beneath the sky. The day itself seemed to enhance them; the sky was blue with no sign of clouds or the fog that could drift in so quickly. Here and there, branches grew out over the water, dripping soft green leaves. The embankment itself was grassy, lightly spotted with areas that were clear, constantly kissed by the rush of the water.
“Well?” Kylin inquired dryly as they dismounted at the end of the trail with the entirety of the scene before them.
“It’s beautiful!” she admitted. “I mean, so much of our landscape is beautiful, but this is . . . spectacular!”
“I thought you might like it, but . . .”
He looked perplexed. She wasn’t sure why at first, and then she knew. He wanted to strip down, to get really clean after their days of being in the saddle, carrying their message to the ard-rí.
“I can go there,” she said, pointing downstream. “And you can go here.”
He shook his head. “We are not . . . promised or together in . . . that way. I will not do anything . . .”
She smiled. She’d never seen him awkward in this manner.
“I trust you,” she told him.
“I don’t,” he said simply. “I didn’t mean . . . I have it. I’ll leave you with the horses here. No one can reach this area except from across a great ravine on the other side. I will be quick while you stand guard, and then I shall be with the horses, near enough to hear if you so much as whisper a cry, but at an . . . appropriate distance.”
“As you say,” Deidre said, smiling. “But I do trust you. We’ve put our lives in one another’s hands.”
“Please, for once, let’s just do it my way.”
She turned away, stroking her horse’s neck and allowing a pat for Kylin’s extraordinary mount as well.
“Go!” she ordered.
While he bathed, she kept an eye on the trail that had led them here while talking to the horses.
She was tempted to watch him, and at one point she did. She couldn’t help but glance his way. The lower portion of his body was in water. His hair was long and plastered against his skin. He was sluicing the water over himself, obviously in heaven at the pleasure, despite what she knew had to be a bit of a chill in the stream.
He was an extraordinary man: broad shouldered with striking features, a strong chin, sharp cheekbones . . . well-set eyes. He had always been so, and yet he had always been someone set at a distance in her mind.
Because she hadn’t trusted his father, not because the man had ever given any of them a reason not to be trusted. Just because of the man’s birth, because raiders who had come from his homeland had come time and time again.
It was a lesson in learning to judge a man for himself, and not for the place from where he had come.
And now she was liking his son—and everything about him—too much!
She forced herself to give her attention back to the horses. And in a matter of minutes, he emerged, hair still wet, skin carrying a bit of a sheen, but fully dressed and booted and ready to give her a turn in the water.
“Take as long as you wish,” he told her. “Unless, of course, someone comes, and I will have plenty of time to tell you. I know these woods. There’s the little trail. And other than that, you’d need to be a snake to get through the brush and the trees unseen and unheard.”
“Thank you!”
She hurried from him to the shore. And she understood his ecstatic expression as she stripped and stepped into the stream. To feel the fullness of the water, ever cold, embracing her skin, was wonderful. She dove into it, running her fingers through her hair, over her scalp. She found bits of gravelly earth with which to scrub. And it did feel like a little bit of heaven.
Emerging at last, she dressed and rejoined him.
“Thank you!”
“Ah, a pleasure for us both.”
“Pure sensation.”
He laughed suddenly. “We need to be careful with such words!”
Mounting her horse, Deidre shook her head as she looked down at him. “Sometimes, you are almost annoyingly moral,” she muttered.
“I beg your pardon. I do my very best—”
“You do very well,” she said softly. “Come, then, we need to reach home!”
He mounted and nudged a bit ahead of her to lead the way out, though it was rather obvious as there was no other way to go.
They left the narrow trail behind at last and rode abreast. She was thoughtful and worried, thinking about the dream that had so disoriented her during the night.
Running to his room.
Finding rest . . .
Finding such security and peace as she curled against him. Innocently, at least as far as her conscious mind went.
“What is it?” he asked her.
“I just keep thinking about the dream. Of being in the passageway. Not knowing who was the enemy and who was to be trusted, and then wondering if I know anything at all, if I’m suspicious without cause and—”
“Someone will betray us,” he said flatly.
“No, I’m curious. I don’t doubt your father. I doubt the man who gave him the information. What if he told us that someone would betray us just to sow seeds of mistrust among us?”
Kylin shook his head. “Talk to my father. The man with whom he spoke was truly grateful to be alive. Your father is truly a great man, merciful by nature—and by intelligence. I don’t believe the man lied. And it’s not just his word that we go by, Deidre. Only you and I know how strange this has been. I’d like to think it was me, but the sword saved your life when you discovered it. And then we found the cauldron. The spear—and the pebble, as you say. It all means something, Deidre. And I think we have it right.”
She let out a sigh. “Angus was . . . angry with my father. First, I suppose there isn’t a man out there who likes being told no. He thinks my father is an idiot and very wrong. To Angus, a woman’s role in this world is to go where she is told, create alliances and birth heirs. That is not so rare. Many, many—maybe most—leaders would feel that way. But I’m still uncomfortable with him, which, of course, makes me suspect him, when maybe I shouldn’t. I don’t know!”
