Awakenings

Neve preceded me out the door of Phelan’s room a little while later.  She didn’t speak until we were about halfway to the campfire.

“How far is the lake from here?”

I blinked at her, then cocked my head toward the sound of snow and ice lashing the rooftop above us.  “I don’t know anymore,” I said.  “It rose before the snows began to fly, but I never quite figured out how close it got to us.  Not too far, I guess.  You’re not seriously thinking of heading in that direction in a raging blizzard, are you?”

“When the weather breaks, you and I and Thordin will ride out to the shore,” she said.  “Don’t tell Thom or Cameron or anyone else we’re going to do it.”

“Do I at least get to know why we’re doing it?”  I drew alongside her as we exited the narrow hallway and she purposefully made her way toward the secondary cookfire, where some of our fellows had taken up fletching, knitting, and sewing as useful pastimes.  I wasn’t sure that I’d linger there once she was settled, but she’d probably pull out her knife and start working on another bundle of arrows to go with the arrowheads my brother and Thordin had been churning out from molds at the forge.

“We’re going to get the answers that he won’t give us,” she said firmly.  “The answers that your gifts haven’t shown you yet and the ones that I’m afraid to look for.”

My stomach dropped.  “About what, Neve?”

“Our children,” she said.  “Their futures.  I could care less what happens to me.  I only care about them.”

It was a lie, one that made me shiver.  She looked so determined, though, all I could do was sigh.  “So why are we involving Thordin in this?  Why do we need him?”

“He has runes that would be useful in the scrying,” she said.  “He doesn’t talk about it, but he’s got a gift, too—made more powerful by the fact that he was kind of dead for a while, but he got better.”

“He—wait, what?”

Neve laughed weakly.  “Come help me with the arrows and I’ll tell you all about it.”

I shook my head slightly.  “Right, sure.”  This I have to hear.  “It sounds too absurd to be true.”

“More absurd than gods walking the Earth and sending snowstorms and other nastiness our way?”

“Point.”  I sighed.  “Lead the way.”

“Why didn’t you tell them?”

“How could I?” he whispered.  “She’d have freaked out and gone sideways.  I don’t know what he would have done.  It didn’t matter then.  I’m not sure it matters now.”

“How could it not matter now?”  I leaned forward and put my hand on his shoulder.  “Phelan, they know the truth.  Of course it matters.  It impacts their entire lives from this day forward and the life of that baby.”

“Babies,” Phelan said softly, his voice distant.  “There will be two.”

“Two?”  I blurted, blinking rapidly.  “Two?  How do you know there’s two?”

Evan as I asked the question, I knew he was right.  I could see Cameron and Neve cradling two bundles, one dark like Neve and the other with Cameron’s looks.  I could see them running in the fields, chasing after the dogs, after the sheep, my own son and Tala’s children—oh god, five at once, how are we going to cope with that?—laughing and happy in the autumn sunshine.

“There was a legend, wasn’t there?” I asked in a bare whisper.    “There’s a legend or a prophecy or something that you knew, that you read, something.  Something you never talked about, never told anyone.”

“There are some burdens that I’ve had to shoulder alone,” he said, his eyes closed.  “There are things that Seamus knew, that he told me, that I’ve never been able to share.  This…this was one of them, Marin.  He knew.  Somehow, he knew, even all those years ago, what would happen someday—with his sister and with his many times over grandson.”  He sighed and opened his eyes again, staring at me tiredly, seeming like the weight of the entire world had settled on his shoulders again.  “I never thought that I’d ever have to deal with it, though.  I thought I’d somehow get myself killed before I ever needed to.”

“Phelan, you should have told me,” Neve said, at my shoulder now, staring down at her cousin.  His fingers twined through mine and squeezed hard.

“You weren’t ready,” he whispered.

“And I never will be,” Neve countered.  “But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have told me.  I deserved to know.  Cameron deserved to know.”

“What would it have changed?”  Phelan asked, staring up at her.

“I don’t know,” Neve said.  “But we’ll never find out, now.”

“And that’s the way it should be,” Phelan said.  “That’s the way it should be.  Things  should happen the way they’re meant to happen, with or without our knowledge.”

There was a lie in his eyes that Neve didn’t see, but I did.  My lips thinned and my fingers tightened around his.

There are some things that are meant to be changed.  Nothing is certain.

                Everything changes.  Everything changes.

“Leinth was here.”

Phelan stared up at the ceiling, his breathing shallow and his face pale in the lamplight.  He swallowed hard, his gaze never wavering from the rough beams above his head, the bundles of herbs hung to dry there.  “Was she?” he whispered, lips barely moving.  “What did she want, leannán?  Do you know?”

I reached over and brushed some of Phelan’s hair away from his brow.  He winced and turned his face toward mine.  “Cameron,” I said.  “She wanted to talk to Cameron.  He didn’t really feel like it.  Neve freaked out.”

Phelan snorted softly, almost laughing, then winced.  “Ooh.  Bloody hole in me is going to be the death of me.”

“No it’s not,” I said, feeling my stomach twist painfully, bile rising high in my throat for a brief moment before I swallowed it back again.  “Don’t say shit like that when you’re flat on your back like this, Phelan.  One of us might forget that Jac and Jay said you’d be fine and believe you.”

“Right,” he said, his gaze drifting back toward the herbs he’d hung to dry weeks ago.  “So they both freaked out?”

“I’m surprised you’re not,” I said softly, drawing my bad knee up to my chest, wincing a little as the stitches pulled.  “Not after the way she reacted.  She said that Leinth betrayed…I guess everyone.”

Phelan’s eyes drifted shut.  “That’s how she remembers it, anyway.  She didn’t know everything.”

Another mystery, Phelan?  Just what we need, right?  More intrigues, more secrets.  It’s never ending.  “What did she miss?” I asked softly.  “You’re not angry.”

“Leinth loved Seamus,” Phelan said simply, his eyes still closed.  “I knew that she did when I saw her last.  I could practically taste her desperation, the pain when she brought word that Rasenyr fell during the wars.  She knew that Seamus had been there when it fell.  I saw the pain.  He meant the world to her.”  A shudder ran through him and he opened his eyes.  “Anything she did, she did it to protect everyone she loved.  I can’t fault her for anything she’s done.  But Neve never saw that—she never had the opportunity to.  All she ever knew were the stories, the legends.  Leinth had betrayed her people.  Winter befouled the grand boot.  I’m sure some would have blamed more on her if they could have found a way to do it.”

I wet my lips.  “She came to warn Cameron because of who he is.”  I had to swallow bile back down again.  “Did you know, Phelan?”

“Depends on what you’re asking.”

“She wants to know if you knew that Cameron was Seamus’s descendant,” Neve said from the doorway.  I hadn’t heard her come in over the sound of the wind that still screamed above the rooftops.  The storm was unrelenting.

Neve shuffled forward on her crutches, her expression bleak.  “Did you know, Phelan?”

He didn’t answer—he just looked away.  That was how I knew.

He’s known all along.  Somehow, he’s known all along.

Cameron darted forward as soon as Neve started to collapse.  Thom took a deep breath, pulling the door closed behind him and latching it, watching as Cameron sidestepped the sword laying on the floor and crouched in front of Neve.

She looked like she’d fainted dead away as Marin held her half upright.  Cameron made a sound halfway between a sigh and a sob as he gathered Neve into his arms and cradled her against his chest.

“I don’t understand any of this,” he whispered, voice broken and confused.  “What does Seamus have to do with any of this?”  He glanced sidelong at Thom as he slowly straightened and carried Neve toward their bed.  “What does he have to do with that woman?”

“More importantly, where have you seen her before?”  Marin asked, carefully picking up Caliburn and returning it to its sheathe.  “That seemed to upset Neve more than anything.”

“There were pictures,” Cameron said.  “Old, old pictures back from the very earliest parts of the twentieth century—the teens and twenties, I think.  She was in a white lace dress with my great-great grandfather.  Maybe it was my great-great-great grandfather.  I don’t remember.  I remembered thinking that they both looked really young and I didn’t quite believe my aunt when she was telling me about them—if the clothes hadn’t been right for the time frame she was talking about, I’d have thought that she was wrong about when the pictures were taken because they just didn’t look old enough.”  He stared down at Neve, brushing her hair back from her face.  “I don’t know why it matters,” he said softly.  “I don’t care where she comes from.  Why should it matter who I may have in my family tree?”

Thom and Marin exchanged looks.  His wife shivered a little, gnawing on her lower lip as she hung Caliburn up again.

“You know what she implied, right?”  Marin asked softly.

“Of course I know what she implied,” Cameron snapped.  “She’s making it sound like—like—”  He stopped and sucked in a breath, leaning against the edge of the bed.  “Like somehow, I’ve got Seamus the Black’s blood already running through my veins, god only knows how many generations back.”

“You’re the last legacy Seamus could leave to her,” Marin said, staring at Neve for a long moment.  She went to the side of the bed and tucked the blankets up over her.

“We’re fucking related,” Cameron said, his voice flat.  “Dammit, I love her and we’re somehow related.”

“Half a dozen generations back and more,” Thom pointed out.  “And trust me, it’s not as weird as you think.”

“Right,” Cameron muttered.  “Sure.”

“Does it change how you feel about her?”

“Of course not,” he snapped, glaring at Thom.  “How could it?  She has me already, body and soul.  My heart’s hers.  It always will be.”

“Then you don’t have anything to worry about.”  Thom shot him a weak, wry smile.  “She’ll be fine once the shock wears off.”

“You sure?”

Thom’s gaze flicked toward Marin.  She met his gaze head-on, one corner of her mouth quirking toward a weak smile of her own.

“Yeah,” Thom said.  “I’m sure.”

The pair were squared off, Cameron to the left and Neve to the right, each looking more desperate than the other.

Neve leaned against one corner of the room, Caliburn unsheathed and gleaming in the lamplight, leveled at Cameron.  “How?”  Her voice shook, either with shock or outrage.  “How do you know her, Cameron?  How the hell do you know her?”

“Neve, I will tell you everything you want to know once you get back into bed please.”  Cameron looked haggard, eyes sunken into dark hollows.  Thom’s stomach twisted, bile rising in his throat.

I can see the resemblance.  He looks like Leinth a little.  The cheekbones.  Bone structure.  His hand spasmed around Marin’s.  She squeezed his fingers, then let go and left his side, slipping past him and deeper into the room.

“Neve, put down the sword,” she said gently, moving toward her trembling friend.  “We need to talk about all of this like civilized adults.”

The look she shot Marin was one of pure agony.  “She betrayed us,” Neve whispered.  “She betrayed us to them, Marin—so many years ago that I cannot count them anymore. She’s the reason that hundreds—thousands—died.  And now he knows her face and she calls him family and she comes here looking for him.  Why?  Why would she do that?  How am I supposed to accept that?  How can we all trust him and her and all of it?”

“The sword chose him,” Marin reminded her.

“Swords can be wrong.”  Her voice was desperate, but uncertain, as if she wasn’t entirely convinced that was the case.

Somehow, I don’t think this sword is wrong and I think that there’s a lot more going on right here, right now than any of us are quite aware of.

“She loved Seamus,” Thom said without thinking.  “Shouldn’t that be reason enough to hear him out and give this a chance to start making sense?”

Neve went rigid, her face pale.  “What did you say?”

“She loved Seamus,” Thom repeated.  “And she’s been watching over all of you for a very, very long time.”

“It’s not possible,” Neve whispered, the sword’s tip drifting toward the floor.  “It’s not possible.”

The sword slipped from her nerveless fingertips and Marin caught her as she fell.

“Put me down, Cameron.”

“Get into bed, Neve.”

“Put me down!”

Thom winced.  That doesn’t sound promising.

Marin’s fingers tightened around his hand.  “What did we just witness?” she whispered to him.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Thom murmured back.  He shut his eyes for a moment and sucked in a breath, then exhaled it slowly.

“Good to know we’re both on the same page,” Marin said, then sighed.  “You think they’ll settle down?”

“Once he puts her down,” Thom said.  He shook his head slightly and tugged her closer, sliding his arm around her waist.  “More enemies,” he said after a moment of silence.

“Par for the course,” Marin said, her head resting against his shoulder for a moment and her voice soft.  Rory had looked at them funny, asked what had happened when they’d passed.  Thom just shook his head and told him they’d tell him in the morning.  It had taken he and Marin a few minutes to get the wall wrestled back into place once they’d come in from the cold.  Thom was confident that the storm wouldn’t be passing for a while, not with the warning Leinth had given them.

I need to ask Phelan who she is, how she’s important.  Thom shivered.  Getting those answers might end up being like pulling teeth.

“Are you cold?” Marin asked.

“Aren’t you?”

“Of course,” she said.  “It’s freezing out there and the wind didn’t help, did it?”  She caught her lower lip between her teeth, staring of blankly into the darkness for a few long moments.  “I don’t know if we can handle another enemy, Thom.  Not right now.”

He sighed.  “I don’t think we get a choice in the matter, Mar.”

“Probably not,” she agreed softly.  “But that doesn’t change anything.  I’m still not sure that we can handle it.”

Thom nodded as he put his hand on Neve and Cameron’s door.   “We’ll find a way,” he said.  “We always seem to.”

Then he pushed open the door and stepped into a war zone.

“What just happened?”  Marin murmured to Thom.

“If I didn’t know better,” he muttered back, “I’d say a family reunion.”  His eyes didn’t waver from Leinth, who stood before them in the driving, stinging snow, her gaze suddenly soft and sad as she peered back into the dim of the tent, the gloom into which Cameron had vanished.

“Such fire,” she said softly before her gaze flicked toward Marin and Thom, intensifying for a moment.  The storm grew momentarily stronger, then abated as her expression softened slightly from its harsh severity into something almost sad.  “He reminds me so much of those who are long lost to us.”

“Like Seamus,” Thom said.

“Yes,” she said, her voice almost lost in the wind.  “Like Seamus.”  Her gaze drifted toward the shadows beyond them again and she shook her head.  “This did not go as I anticipated.”

“These things seldom do,” Marin observed.

Whatever the hell this was.  Thom’s brow furrowed and he shivered in the wind and snow.

“Go inside,” he said to Marin.  “Make sure that they’re okay.  I’ll handle…whatever there is left to handle.”  His gaze drifted toward Leinth again.  “What, precisely, brought you here?”

Marin hesitated when he asked the question, making him regret asking it before she was out of earshot.  Leinth stared at him for a long, aching moment.

“I came to see the young dragon,” she said.  “I came to warn him.”

“Warn him?”  Marin drifted back to Thom’s side.  “About what?”

Leinth’s eyes slid shut, the lids fluttering for a moment.  “You will carry this warning to him, I trust?”

“Is it meant for him, or all of us?”  Marin asked softly.

Leinth’s lips quirked toward a smile.  “A fair question.  I am no fool, he would share this warning, so I mean it for all.

“This storm…it is not my doing, though it was once within my power.  I am not the only one who has ever possessed such power.  Others will come who mean you ill.”

“Same story,” Thom said.  “Different day.”

She laughed.  “I suspected.  Tell him that sometimes, not even family can be trusted.  I pray he’ll understand my meaning before it’s too late.”  Her smile faded and she drew the hood of her cloak up to shield her face.  “I have loved them all, in my way,” she said, her words carried on the harsh wind.  “Tell him that, too.  Would that I could protect them.  That task, I fear, will fall to him—to you.”  Her head dipped.  “Safeguard them, Seers.  Have a care.  I have loved and lost.  I would not have that be his fate.”

“Should we tell him that, too?”  Thom asked quietly, imagining that he was still meeting her gaze, though her eyes were hidden in the shadows of her cowl.

She nodded.  “Yes,” she said in a bare whisper.  “Tell him that, too.”

“Leinth,” Neve said, breathing the name as if it was a prayer and a curse all at once.  “What are you doing here?”

Thom tore his gaze away from the figure he’d seen once before, after the raiders had come, had attacked their home.  She had brought a warning, then, one that had shivered his bones.

If you cross them, not even the Wanderer or a princess of Avalon will be able to save you.

He glanced at Cameron, who seemed to be the figure’s focus—or at least had been until Neve had appeared.

Neve is a princess of Avalon.

Thom felt his stomach start to sink.

Cameron twisted toward the sound of Neve’s voice.  “You know her?”

Neve nodded, limping forward with Marin at her side.  “I do.  Though I never expected to see her again.”

The dark-cloaked figure with the gleaming eyes drifted forward.  Though the snow and ice swirled around her, she didn’t seem touched by the cold, by the sting of wind or the shards of frozen water.  “Some things are certain, princess,” she said softly.  “Even as some things fade, others remain constant for the full measure of time.  Like winter and the moon.”

“You were all supposed to be dead,” Neve said, stopping next to Cameron.  Thom felt Marin’s fingers lace through his, felt her shiver next to him.

She recognizes her, too.  She must.

“Most of my brethren are,” the figure said, sounding sad for a moment.  “But I survived to wait and watch.  I don’t know if I’m the only one.”  She took a step closer, gaze drifting toward Cameron.  “I’ve been watching his sons.”

What the hell is she talking about?

“I don’t have any children,” Cameron said haltingly.  “Not yet.”

Neve swore softly.  Marin’s fingers dug into his hand.

“My god,” Marin breathed, “she was talking about Cameron when she warned us.  She was talking about him.”

She was talking about more than one, though.  Thom’s lips thinned.  Who else is coming?  He felt vaguely queasy.  Did Neve know that her lover was one of Seamus’s descendants?

Judging by her reaction, I’d say probably not.

Cameron edged forward.  “Who the hell are you and what do you want?” he demanded, eyes narrowing as he stared at the woman.  “You show up here, uninvited and talking in riddles, and I don’t appreciate it.  None of us appreciate that kind of bullshit at this point.”  His jaw tightened.  “We shoot people who start spewing that kind of bullshit at this point.”

Thom winced, reaching over and grasping Cameron’s arm.  “Back off, Cameron.”

“No,” Cameron said.  “Not this time.  She’s going to tell us what the hell this is all about.”

“She’s been watching over you, dumbass,” Thom snapped.  “She’s been watching over you because you’re some kind of ridiculously distant descendant of hers.”

Cameron stiffened, slowly looking back toward Leinth again.  He looked her over one more time and then rocked back a step, almost stumbling back into Neve.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered, her face as pale as the snow.

“I know her,” he whispered.  “I know her.  I’ve seen her.  I didn’t—I didn’t know it until just now.”

Thom sucked in a slow, deep breath.  This isn’t going to end well.  I hope I’m wrong about that, but I don’t think it’s going to.

“I’ve been watching you for a long time,” Leinth said softly.  “Your many times over grandfather would be proud—as am I.”

Cameron stared at her for another moment, swallowed hard, then swept Neve into his arms and stormed back into the safety of the tent, leaving Marin and Thom beyond the walls to face the dark-cloaked figure alone.

Neve stiffened next to her.  “There’s someone here,” she whispered, her throat tight and mouth dry.  “There’s someone near enough that I can feel it.  Do you feel it, too?”

She didn’t wait to hear what Marin would say; she forced herself back to her feet and clutched the borrowed blanket around her shoulders as she got her crutches back underneath her again.  Her heart was beating fast, too fast.

There’s someone or something here and I’m not sure I like any bit of it.  She caught her lip between her teeth and had hobbled to the door by the time Marin was on her feet and coming after her.

“Neve, slow down!”

Her heart was hammering too fast for that.  Marin grasped her shoulder and Neve cursed under her breath as pain shot through her collarbone.  Marin’s fingers sprang open and the other woman cursed softy.

“I’m sorry,” Marin said.   “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know.”  Neve took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.  “But we’ve got to move.  There’s something here and I can feel it.”

“You keep saying that,” Marin said as she grabbed the lamp and shoved her feet into her boots, “but you’re not explaining it and I’m not following what you are saying.”

“I—”  Neve stopped, swallowing hard.  “I’m not sure what or who it is,” she said after a moment.  She grasped Marin’s arm, fingers digging in.  “But I know it’s powerful.”  That could be really good or really bad.  I just…it feels familiar.  “And I think I’ve felt it before.”

Marin shook her head as she yanked on her jacket.  “That could be really good or really bad. “  She checked the lamp, then nodded toward the door.  “Go, I’ll follow with the light.”

Neve nodded and started into the corridor, moving as fast as she dared, Marin following close on her heels.  Her throat was tight and her heart was trying to batter its way past her breastbone and out of the cage of her ribs.  Why is it so familiar?  Dammit!

They pressed on past the fire, startling Rory, who blinked at them, half rising.

“Mar, what’s the—”

“Just stay there,” Marin snapped as they kept moving.  “I don’t know, just stay there.”

None of us know, but she’s right.  He needs to stay right where he is until we know more.

                No sense in putting five of us in danger.

She wasn’t quite sure why she assumed Thom and Cameron were in the midst of some kind of encounter, but in the pit of her stomach, she knew—beyond the barest shadow of a doubt, she knew.

They were half a dozen steps away from the spot where the snow gusted into the tent, carried by the wind.  Their men stood silhouetted in the light of the lamp Thom carried.

“Oh no,” Neve breathed.  I know—

“Hello, sister,” the stranger in the dark cloak said.  “It’s been too long.”

Thom shook his head.  “Neither do I.  Let’s get on with having a look.  I’m sure those two are conspiring against us already.”

Cameron snorted humorlessly, though he couldn’t help but agree.  Neve and Marin probably were coming up with something, and he suspected either he or Thom—or both of them—wouldn’t like it.

“You left them alone together?”  Rory asked as Thom lit a lantern.  “Bad idea.”

“Yeah, well,” Cameron said as they started to walk away, “I didn’t get a vote.”

Rory’s laughter followed him until it was lost under the sound of the wind.  Cameron shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his coat, fingers questing for his gloves.

“Hopefully it’s not as bad as it sounds,” Cameron said, not sure if he was talking about the weather, whatever was causing Rory’s headache and Neve’s unrest—assuming they were connected—or whatever Neve and Marin were coming up within their absence.

“Hopefully,” Thom agreed, holding the lantern high enough aloft that they could see more than a few feet in front of them.  Shadows danced in the flickering flames and Cameron watched them idly for a moment, recalling long ago camping trips and bonfires.

“One bloody big adventure,” he muttered under his breath.  When I was a kid, I would have thought all of this was the most epic experience ever.  The adult in me knows better.

Thom snorted softly.  “That’s how you have to look at all of it sometimes,” he said.  “Even when it’s not.”

The walls of the tent undulated against the harsh wind, suddenly reflecting the lantern’s light and then disappearing into the shadows again.  Cameron shivered as tendrils of wind snaked their way between the layers of plasticized canvas between them and the weather beyond.  Thom made a beeline for the exit, where they left a corner of a wall open to let the smoke from the fires escape and keep clean air flowing in and out.  The wind whistled through that gap, gusting snow and ice into the tent in an arc.  Cameron rocked back a step as a gust sent tiny shards of ice billowing into his face.

“Sounds like some kind of frozen hell out there,” he said to Thom, taking the lantern so the other man could tug on his gloves and unfasten the catches holding the rest of the flap of wall in place.  An uncomfortable shiver arced up Cameron’s spine and back down again and he set his jaw.

Stop letting your goddamned imagination get the better of you.  It’s just a storm.  There’s nothing more to it than that.  Settle the hell down.

The wind kept right on screaming past the tent as Thom peeled the wall back, snow gusting toward he and Cameron in stinging clouds.  Cameron flinched away with a curse.

A curse dropped from Thom’s lips and he gripped Cameron’s arm.  “Cameron, look.”

“There’s nothing—”  The words died on Cameron’s lips as he stared out into the blowing snow.  There was a figure out there, slender and beautiful, seemingly unaffected by the snow an ice that swirled around her.  His throat tightened as her eyes met his, a wordless pain welling up from somewhere deep inside—a pain he couldn’t identify, one that could have been his or hers.

“My god,” he breathed.  “Who is she?”

In a voice like the musical, terrible sound of breaking icicles, the strangely pale woman with the coal-black hair and silver-gray eyes spoke.

“One who has watched you from afar and waited for this moment for far too long, young dragon.  Far, far too long.”