Elphame's Choice

Chapter Fourteen

"Cuchulainn! Here!" Brighid's voice carried over the whine of the wind. The centaur Huntress galloped to the spot where Elphame lay and slid to a halt, Cuchulainn close behind her. He leaped from his horse before it could stop and fell to his knees beside his sister. Then Elphame was ringed in blazing torchlight as the night exploded with horses, riders and centaurs.
"El! Oh, no! Please, no!" He took her hand in his. It was cool, like carved marble. Blood - she seemed to be covered with blood. Her face was ghostly white, and if she hadn't blinked and whispered his name, he would have believed that she was dead.
Elphame thought he sounded very young, and she wanted to reassure him, but she was so cold again. It felt like with Lochlan, all of her strength had fled, too, and talking took such a great effort.
"Cuchulainn, move aside." Brenna's voice was calm and firm and held none of the shy hesitancy with which she usually spoke to him.
He looked blankly up at her.
"Cuchulainn, now! I must see to your sister." Brenna's tone of command was so sharp that the warrior in Cuchulainn obeyed without thinking.
Brenna knelt beside Elphame. "Bring that torch over here," she ordered. "And bring something to cover her."
The light made Elphame squint painfully, but it was a relief to feel the concealing weight of several cloaks that were hastily thrown over her near nakedness. Strange that she hadn't thought about how little she was wearing when Lochlan had been there.
"Elphame, who am I?" the Healer asked, bending close and using the light from a torch to carefully study her eyes.
"Brenna," she whispered.
"And where are you?"
"Forest..." she managed to say. "The ravine, I fell." She tried to point, but the pain in her shoulder caused her to bite off a moan instead.
Brighid followed Elphame's half gesture. Holding her own torch high, the Huntress disappeared over the side of the ravine.
Brenna's sure, gentle hands traveled quickly over Elphame's injured shoulder, up to her head, and finally down to the moss-covered wound on her side.
"You did well to pack this. You've lost far too much blood as it is."
"I didn't..." Elphame started to say, but the Healer stopped her.
"Don't speak. You need to save your strength for the return trip. Drink this." Gently, the Healer helped Elphame lift her head while she pressed a wineskin to Elphame's lips.
Elphame sputtered, and then drank thirstily. The herbed wine was sweet and cold, and as its energy filled her she felt revived enough so that she was able to smile faintly at her brother.
"I'm fine, Cu," she said, wishing her voice didn't sound so weak.
"No," Brenna said sharply. "You are not fine, not yet. Cuchulainn, I need a strip of material to bind her shoulder and another to wrap around the wound on her side."
Relieved to have been given something constructive to do, Cu pulled off his shirt and began ripping the fine linen into long strips.
"He just wants to show off his chest." Elphame's voice shook, but she managed to make it carry. The men and centaurs surrounding her laughed, as did Brenna. Cuchulainn tried to frown at her, but he succeeded only in looking ridiculously happy, and El was afraid for a moment that he might actually cry.
"You have just relieved my mind greatly about the severity of your head wound," the Healer said.
Her brother's smile widened.
"There is a dead boar at the bottom of the ravine." Brighid had rejoined the ring around Elphame. "I believe this is yours." She handed the throwing dagger to Cuchulainn, but her eyes were studying Elphame with a curiously guarded expression.
"By the Goddess, El! A wild boar?" Cuchulainn's face, which had regained some of it color, paled again.
Brenna began carefully tying the linen strips around her waist, saving Elphame from having to respond to her brother. She closed her eyes and set her teeth against the pain - and tried to concentrate. Lochlan.
He hadn't been an apparition; she'd seen him kill the boar, the same boar Brighid had found. He'd carried her up the ravine, dressed her wound, and covered her with his warmth. Shouldn't she tell them that he had saved her?
He said his father had been a Fomorian.
"They would see only a Fomorian, and not a man."
Lochlan's words echoed through her troubled mind. It shouldn't have been possible. The Fomorians had been defeated and driven from Partholon more than a century ago. The different races of Partholon had joined together to insure that the demon horde had been extinguished - that it would never threaten the peoples of Partholon, in particular the Partholonian women, again. Her pain-fogged mind shied away from remembrances of the historic record of rape and destruction. The being who had just saved her life couldn't be a Fomorian. It didn't make sense.
Yet she had seen his wings. They had covered her with their warmth. Clearly, the impossible had happened.
"You meet your destiny at MacCallan Castle...that destiny is tied up in your lifemate... The words rustled through Elphame's throbbing head. She tried to wrap her mind around the thought, but it was simply too bizarre. Her concentration fragmented. She couldn't think clearly about it now, and she wouldn't talk about it until she'd had time to sort it through in her mind.
"There," Brenna said, knotting the makeshift sling that held Elphame's arm securely against her chest. As she finished, the first drops of rain sprinkled through the canopy of pines. "That is all I can do here. We must get her back to the castle."
"El."
She opened her eyes to see her brother crouched beside her. His hair was already damp. He'd wrapped a fold of his kilt over his bare chest. Elphame thought he looked very dashing, like the ancient warrior for whom he'd been named. She smiled at him, wanting to ease the worry in his eyes.
"El," he repeated, spreading his hands over her head in an attempt to shield her from some of the rain. "I know it's going to be hard for you, but you're going to have to ride back to the castle."
Brighid moved to Cuchulainn's side. "I will carry her."
"She can't ride by herself," Cu said. "She'll have to ride with me."
"Then I will carry you, too. You'll be too busy holding her to guide that empty-headed gelding of yours anyway," Brighid said. "And you can be sure that I won't misstep and cause her unnecessary pain."
Cuchulainn looked up at the Huntress. "You'd carry both of us?"
"Easily."
The sky boomed and the patter of rain came more insistently through the trees.
"I want her out of here. Now," Brenna told Cuchulainn. "And she should not sleep. Talk to her, Cuchulainn."
He nodded tightly in response to the Healer, then began shouting orders, "Angus, Brendan, lift her up to me." He stood and vaulted onto the Huntress's back. "Carefully!" He snapped when his sister moaned in pain as the two men began lifting her.
Elphame tried to help the men, but her vision had grayed again and each time she moved the wound in her side burned almost unbearably. She felt Cuchulainn's strong arms around her as she straddled the Huntress's smooth back.
"Ready?" Brighid looked over her shoulder at Cuchulainn.
"Yes." Cuchulainn tightened his grip on his sister and the Huntress moved easily into a smooth, ground-eating canter.
In some part of her mind, Elphame acknowledged that she would have liked to have been able to enjoy the novelty of a centaur ride. Instead she was plummeted into an unrelenting nightmare. Every stride the centaur took jolted through her body. Her head pulsed and her stomach heaved. She could feel warm wetness washing down her side and she knew her wound was bleeding through the moss. Soon she could not hold herself upright, and as they emerged from the forest to retrace her path along the rocky side of the cliff, she slumped against her brother, depending completely upon him to keep her from falling.
"It won't be much longer___I've got you___" Cuchulainn kept up a litany of encouragement in his sister's ear. "Talk to me, El. Tell me about how beautiful MacCallan Castle will be when it's finally restored."
His sister's responses to his constant questioning were jumbled - sometimes she described rooms that he recognized very well as rooms they had grown up in, and sometimes what she said made no sense at all, like when she rambled about a bed of pine needles canopied by wings - but he did keep her talking, even though he could feel her growing weaker as she leaned more heavily against him. Then the sky opened and rain came down on them in heavy ropes. The torches the riders held sputtered and went out.
Cuchulainn was almost thankful for the brilliant flashes of lightning that helped to illuminate their way.
Brighid's decision to carry them had been a wise one. If he had been riding his gelding he wouldn't have been able to steer the horse through the stormy darkness and support his sister, too.
The Huntress soon outdistanced the rest of the group - even the male centaurs who had volunteered to join them on the search. Her determination and stamina were impressive. He had misjudged Brighid, Cuchulainn admitted to himself. When he had announced that he was going to search for his sister, she and the little Healer had been the first to join him. Without her assistance he could never have tracked and found Elphame as quickly.
If only he had reacted as quickly when he had had his first premonition that something was wrong with El! Instead he had ignored the growing Feeling because it had come from the spirit realm - that area of his life that he tried his best to repress and ignore. Well, this time the spirit realm had refused to be ignored. The knowledge left the acidic taste in his mouth that he recognized as part self-loathing and part fear.
Cuchulainn clutched his sister more tightly within his arms. Now he knew what had been bothering him since they had begun their journey to MacCallan Castle. The nameless threat that he had felt hanging over his sister hadn't been a hurtful lover or an ancient curse. It had been something totally mundane - an accident, and he'd been too busy imagining faceless phantoms to foresee it.
Faceless phantoms? If he hadn't been so wet and miserable he would have laughed aloud in self-mockery. Apparently, some of them had faces all well as voices and attitudes.
Brighid slowed and Cuchulainn was relieved to see the dark walls of the castle materialize before them.
"Take her to the kitchen. It's where they've done the most work," Cu yelled over the storm.
Brighid nodded and trotted through the gap in the outer walls, then entered the inner courtyard. Rain poured through the empty roof, and, as they passed the fountain, lightning forked across the sky, suddenly outlining the stone girl like a ghost in the night. Cuchulainn eyed the statue uneasily - glancing suspiciously at the area around it.
Brighid's hooves clattered into the Great Hall, where she finally halted. She twisted at the waist and said quickly, "The kitchen will be dark as a tomb. You and Elphame wait here where there is some light. I'll get flint and torches from the wagons."
Brighid helped him as he lifted Elphame's unresisting body from the Huntress's back to the floor, where Cuchulainn sat leaning against the wall cradling his sister's head carefully in his lap.
"I won't be long," Brighid said, giving Elphame one last worried look before she hurried from the room.
"It feels good to be still," Elphame said faintly into the darkness.
"Brenna will be here soon," Cu assured her.
He wanted to fuss over Elphame, to do something that would make her feel better. He felt helpless and useless. He unwrapped the fold of his kilt that he'd thrown over his shoulder and used the end of it to gently wipe some of the rain from her face and arms. Talking...he had to keep her talking, but before he could ask another inane question about castle decorations she surprised him with a question of her own.
"How did you know to come after me, Cu?"
He looked down at his sister. In the dimness only the vague outline of her face was visible. Occasional flashes of light stole into the Great Hall from the open courtyard, and Cu could see the bright reflection of her eyes as she stared up at him.
"I was uneasy about you."
Elphame smiled weakly. "You've been uneasy about me since we arrived here. What made you come after me?"
"I wasn't going to; I told myself that I was imagining things. Then the storm began moving in. I was restless, so I thought I'd come back here and keep a lookout for you." He paused and brushed a wet strand of hair off of her face. "I thought I'd challenge you to race my gelding to Loth Tor, and since you'
d already been for a long run, he might have a chance at beating you."
He saw her teeth flash, and he grinned back at her.
"So, I was waiting by the main entrance when I heard a noise coming from inside the castle. Unlike my restless unease about you, the noise was impossible to ignore."
"Why?" Elphame asked.
"Because it was the sound of someone bellowing my name." Cu shook his head, remembering the massive voice booming his name from within the empty castle and the terrible feeling caused from hearing an all too real spirit demanding his attention. Cu's voice was tight with anxiety. "El, I have to tell you that the rumors about your castle were at least half-true. It might not be cursed, but I can promise you that it is haunted."
The next flash of lightning illuminated his sister's widened eyes.
"The MacCallan talked to you, too?" she asked in a rush, with decidedly more animation then she'd shown since they'd found her by the ravine.
Cuchulainn frowned.
"Are you telling me that he has appeared to you and you said nothing to me?" he said incredulously.
"Well, Cu..." She hesitated, suddenly almost glad she was injured. At least he couldn't get too mad at her. "I know how you dislike the spirit realm."
"Dislike!" he shouted. When his sister winced in reaction he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
"El," he said slowly, "it isn't simply a matter of my dislike for the spirit realm. Think about all that has happened since we have arrived. You have never felt even the slightest touch of magic from the Goddess, and suddenly it is as if you have become a living conduit to Epona. There are forces at work here that we do not understand, El."
Elphame made a weak gesture with her hand and tried to shake her head, but the motion ended in a grimace.
"Shhh." Her brother was instantly apologetic. "I didn't mean to upset you. I'm not angry at you."
"I know, Cu," she said, blinking hard to clear her vision and order her thoughts. "But you must remember that it is different for me. I do not fear the spirit realm. And you cannot believe that The MacCallan or Epona wish us any harm."
"Of course not," Cu said, wiping more bloody water from her face. "But I want you to remember that just as good exists, so does evil. And evil in the realm of spirits cannot be defeated with strength of arms."
"No," she said softly. "It must be defeated with honor and truth and strength of will."
Cu studied his sister in the dim light. He realized that she was changing. He didn't want to admit it, but that realization made him uneasy. Lightning flashed again and he could see that she was smiling up at him.
His heart wrenched. She had been his best friend for as long as he could remember. Didn't he love her enough to allow her to become the woman of her destiny, even if part of that destiny seemed foreign and incomprehensible to him?
"Just promise me that you will tell me about any more of your spiritual visitations. Especially if they are with any of our ancestors."
"I promise," she said, sounding relieved. "By the way, did you notice the resemblance between you and The MacCallan?"
Cuchulainn snorted. "Please! I am nothing like that caustic old ghost."
"What did he say to you?"
"Let me see if I remember it correctly...yes, it was something like, 'Cuchulainn, are ye no more than a muscle-hound clot-heid? Go after yer sister, the lass has need of ye!'" He growled in an excellent imitation of the gruff old spirit.
Elphame was still alternating between giggles and grimaces from the pain they caused when Brighid and the rest of their party clattered noisily into the Great Hall. Brenna climbed awkwardly from her horse and moved to Elphame's side, frowning severely at Cuchulainn.
"I told you to keep her talking, not to make her hysterical."
Lochlan shadowed the three of them, watching through the pelting rain to be certain that Elphame arrived safely at her castle. They disappeared within, and were soon joined by the rest of the group that the female centaur had so easily outdistanced. He continued watching all through that grim night, and only allowed himself to return to his shelter to sleep when Elphame emerged from the castle the next morning leaning heavily upon her brother to walk stiffly to the tent the workers had hastily erected as soon as the sun had begun to lighten the sky.
Lochlan smiled. He had known that Elphame would not be content to retreat to the village and be cosseted and cared for there like a delicate flower. He was a little surprised to see her leave the castle walls, but that was probably a compromise she had agreed to make with her brother. His sharp eyes focused on Cuchulainn's stern expression. Yes, the warrior would prefer that she recover in the village.
Did he not understand that she drew her strength from the very stones of her castle?
He should not judge the brother harshly, Lochlan chided himself. Cuchulainn loved her dearly, and only wished to save his sister from harm, just as he did. If only the two of them could be allies___
Far to the north Keir raised his pale head as if he was scenting the air, but in truth the gesture was unnecessary. It was not a physical trail he detected, but a spiritual string, a strand of which lay unwound at his feet.
"Yes." His voice was a hiss of triumph. "Lochlan took his departure through here."
Beside him, Fallon's wings stirred with excitement as she gazed at the small, partially hidden trail that led deep into the mountains. "Are you quite certain?" she asked, hardly daring to believe. "We have searched this area before and found nothing of him."
"He has been away too long and he grows careless. I have said many times that his obsession makes him weak, and this only proves it. He has relaxed his thoughts and I sense him again. If you would concentrate, you would know that it is so," he said, his voice a steely admonishment.
With an effort, Fallon did not cringe. It would only make him angrier, and Keir's anger hovered too close to the surface without enticement. Fallon could sense the madness too clearly in Keir. She could feel how it waited for her mate to give in - to be finished fighting for his humanity and to embrace the dark heritage of their father's demonic blood. She could see it lurking like an oily stain within his eyes. The longer Lochlan was gone, the wilder Keir had become. It seemed that Lochlan had taken with him a piece of her mate's humanity. Yet another reason that they must find Lochlan and the hoofed goddess of his dreams___
Fallon closed her eyes, ignoring the insistent pain that tapped at her mind as she beat back her instinctive flare of anger. Lochlan should have allowed them to accompany him. His quest was too important. One slip - one mistake - and they would all be doomed to the madness that lived within their blood. Keir might be right; Lochlan could have become too obsessed with his dreams to be trusted completely. With an enormous effort she cast aside her whirring thoughts and concentrated on gray eyes that sparkled with humor and patient understanding - and she felt it. A small tug that beckoned her forward. She opened her eyes and smiled at her mate.
"I do feel him!"
Keir's scowl relaxed, and the blackness within his gaze lightened. He nodded, satisfied with her response. "Let us tell the others."