Son of the Shadows. Juliet Marillier
His eyes were as trusting as those of a faithful hound as I sponged his brow.
‘Bran. Snake will have left the pot of broth to cool by the little brazier. Could you fetch me some in a cup?’
‘Broth,’ said Evan in disgust. ‘Broth! Can’t you give a man a proper meal?’
But in the event, it was hard enough for him to swallow even the mouthful or two he took. And I did have to ask Bran to help me, his arm lifting the smith’s head as I spooned the mixture little by little between his lips. Evan gagged, despite his best efforts.
‘Breathe slowly, as I told you,’ I said quietly. ‘You must try to keep this down. One more spoonful.’
He was soon exhausted. And he had swallowed so little. Beads of sweat were already breaking out on his brow. I would need to burn some aromatic herbs, for there was no way I could get enough of a sleeping draught into him to give any relief. He never spoke of the pain, save in jest, but I knew it was extreme.
‘Could you move the little brazier further in?’
Bran said nothing, but carried out my orders. He watched me in silence as I got what I needed from my pack, and sprinkled the mixture onto the still-glowing coals. There was not much left. But then, three days was not long. I did not allow myself to think beyond that point. The pungent smell rose into the night air. Juniper, pine, hemp leaves. If only I could have got some tea into the man, for a mere half-cup of lavender and birch-leaf infusion can give good relief from pain and bring healing sleep. But I had not the ingredients to make such a brew, nor would Evan have had the energy to swallow it. Besides, it was past midsummer. Birch leaves are only good for this purpose used fresh, and plucked in spring. I wished my mother were there. She would have known what to do. The smith grew quiet, eyes closed to slits, but his breathing was laboured. I wrung out the cloth and began to tidy up.
‘What if Conlai had never learned his father’s name?’ said Bran suddenly from the entrance. ‘What if he had grown up, say, in the family of a farmer, or with holy brothers in a house of prayer? What then?’
I was so surprised I said nothing at all, my hands still working automatically as I emptied the bowl and wiped it out, and unrolled my blanket on the hard earth.
‘You said, it was his father’s blood flowed in his veins, his father’s will to be a warrior that ran deep in him. But his mother trained him in the warlike arts, set him on that path, before ever he knew what Cú Chulainn was. Do you say that, whatever his upbringing, this boy was destined to be another in his father’s mould? Almost, that the manner of his death was set out the moment he was born?’
‘Oh no!’ His words shocked me. ‘To say that is to say we have no choice at all in how our path unfolds. I do not say that. Only, that we are made by our mothers and our fathers, and we bear something of them in our deepest selves, no matter what. If Conlai had grown up as a holy brother, it may have been much longer before his father’s courage and his wild, warlike spirit awoke in him. But he would have found it in himself, one way or another. That was the man he was, and nothing could change it.’
Bran leaned against the rock wall, his figure in shadow.
‘What if …’ he said. ‘The – the essence, the spark, whatever it is, the little part of his father that he bore within him … that could be lost, destroyed, before he knew it was there. It could be … it could be taken from him.’
I felt a strange sort of chill, and the little hairs rose on my neck. It was like a darkness stretching out over me, over the two of us. And images, passing before my eyes so rapidly I could scarcely make them out before they were gone.
… dark, so dark. The door shuts. I cannot breathe. Keep quiet, choke back your tears, not a sound. Pain, cramp like fire. I have to move. I dare not move, they will hear me … where are you? Where are you … where did you go?
I wrenched myself back to the real world, shaking. My heart was hammering.
‘What is it?’ Bran stepped out of the shadows, eyes fixed intently on my face. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I whispered. ‘Nothing.’ And I turned away, for I did not want to look into his eyes. Whatever the dark vision was, it was from him it had come. Beneath his surface there were deep uncharted waters; realms strange and perilous.
‘You’ll be needing your sleep,’ he said, and when at length I turned around, he was gone. The brazier burned low. I made the lamp dim, but did not quench it, lest the smith should wake and need me. Then I lay down to rest.
Something woke me. I sat up abruptly, heart thumping. The fire in the brazier had gone out; the lantern burned low, casting a circle of faint light. Outside it was completely dark. Everything was still. I got up and went over to the pallet, lantern in hand. Evan was sleeping. I tucked the covers over him and turned to go back to bed. For a summer night, it was quite chill.
Then I heard it. A sound like a stifled gasp, the merest indrawn breath. Could such a little thing have woken me so instantly? I went out, hesitant in my bare feet and the borrowed undershirt I wore for sleeping, shivering slightly, and not just from cold. It was a deep, deep darkness, intense in its presence. Even the night birds were silent before it. With my small, dim lantern, I felt as if I were the only creature stirring in this black impenetrable world.
I took a step forwards, and another, and saw that Bran sat against the rocks at the entrance to the shelter, staring straight ahead of him into the darkness. Perhaps he, too, had heard something. I opened my mouth to ask him, and he shot out a hand and grabbed me violently by the arm, without looking at me, without saying a word. I bit back a scream of fright, and struggled to keep the lantern from falling. The clutching hand gripped so tight I thought my arm would break. Still he said nothing, but I heard it again in my mind, a voice like a terrified child’s; the voice of a boy who has wept so long he has no more tears in him. Don’t go. Don’t go away. And in the light from the lantern, which wobbled dangerously now in my free hand, I could tell that Bran did not really see me. He held me fast, but his eyes stared ahead, unfocused, blind in this night of no moon.
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