Gaelin knew that he should slip away before they noticed him, but he couldn’t stop himself from listening.
“What if you had no rival, Erin? You’re a commoner, unblooded.
Mhoried is a grand duchy, and Gaelin must someday find a queen. Would you still hold his love, knowing that someday he must find a wife and raise children to continue the Mhoried line? Have you thought that far ahead?”
“What about you, Seriene? Would you love him if he had already won his kingdom back? If you didn’t know that he may be gone in a few weeks, if things go badly?” Erin paced away, her arms crossed in front of her. “Are you just infatuated with him?”
Seriene was quiet for a long time. “I’ve never met anyone like him,” she said at last. “Erin, you’re ruining Gaelin’s chance to be happy, and mine as well. He can’t rule his own heart – no man can. You must show him you aren’t interested.”
“What if I can’t?” Erin retorted, fire in her voice. “I’m not strong enough to deny my feelings.”
“Then you must leave. Not right now, but sometime soon.
If you truly care for him, Erin, you’ll understand you can’t keep his heart. It will hurt less if you do it sooner instead of later.” Seriene settled into the logic of her argument. “You know it must be this way,” she added.
Erin paced anxiously, a dark shape against the dim sky. She did not speak, but she hugged her arms tightly around her body, as if containing a violent outburst. Gaelin strained to listen closer, but she remained silent. Finally, her shoulders slumped and she turned away. “I’ll go,” she said quietly.
“Thank you, Erin. You’re doing the right – ”
“Don’t thank me, Seriene. I’m not doing it for you.” Erin squared her shoulders and wheeled toward the open fields.
Gaelin fled just in time, retreating to the campfire. He took out his whetstone and set to work on his sword, ignoring the fact that it was perfectly honed already. When Erin and Seriene came back inside about a quarter-hour later, neither even glanced at him. Gaelin abandoned the field altogether and retreated to the small chamber he’d appropriated for his own, a little way from the crowded main hall.
He found it difficult to sleep, and tossed and turned restlessly for an hour or more before falling into a fitful doze. In the middle of the night, Gaelin found himself lying awake, listening to the soft rain falling against the ruined roof. He could hear water trickling through the old beams and stones of the building. The moon had risen late, and a dim silver halo illuminated the room, barely penetrating the endless clouds overhead. Gradually, his eyes became accustomed to the light, and he lay back tracing patterns of light and shadow with his eyes.
A furtive movement by the chamber’s entrance caught his attention. Strangely, he was not alarmed; there was a dreamlike quality in his awareness, as if he still slept and only imagined that he was awake. He turned his head to look at the doorway. Erin crept into the room, moving with the silence of a falling leaf. She stopped a little distance short of his blankets, surprised to find him awake. Then, quite deliberately, she disrobed as he watched, until she stood revealed to his eyes, her long, slender body gleaming silver in the moonlight.
She kneeled beside his pallet, gazing at his face. “We’ll reach Caer Duirga tomorrow,” she whispered. “We may never have this time again.”
Gaelin sat up, leaning on one elbow. He let his eyes drink in her beauty, the soft curves and the fiery passion in her face.
She glimmered in the moonlight, like one of the fabled queens of the Sidhelien. His heart thundered in his chest.
“Erin, I – ” He swallowed and tried again. “What did you and Seriene – ”
She leaned forward, placing her fingers on his lips.
“Shhhh. There’s nothing to say.” Slipping beneath the blanket, she drew his face close to hers and kissed him with fierce abandon.
Some time later, they lay quietly with their limbs tangled together, listening to the rain without speaking. There were all sorts of reasons why he shouldn’t have made love to her.
It was cruel of him to accept her love when he knew he could be dead in a matter of days; he had nothing to offer her except struggle and risk, and even if he recovered Mhoried, it was inconceivable he could marry a half-elf with no lands or titles of her own. Yet all these objections seemed insubstantial as he listened to her heart beating, close to his own. For the first time in a long time, Gaelin felt at peace.
Chapter Fifteen
Early in the afternoon of the following day, they sighted Caer Duirga, across miles of rolling, mist-shrouded fells. It took hours to cross the treacherous vale, since dense thickets of briars and rank bogs barred their way. Although the day had started with the promise of clear weather, as they came closer to the hill the weather grew unseasonably cold, and a leaden overcast obscured the sun. By the time they reached the foot of the mount, Gaelin was wondering what had happened to spring.
Gaelin discovered a sense of brooding menace as they neared the place. The green, vibrant vegetation of the surrounding highlands seemed pale and sickly here, as if the sun didn’t shine with the same strength near the tor, and the air was unpleasantly clammy. Gaelin hadn’t been bothered by the cold rains of the past few days, not even when he was soaked to the skin, but he shuddered at the heavy dew collecting on the wool and leather garments he wore beneath his armor.
Caer Duirga rose several hundred feet higher than most of its neighbors. It was, in fact, a small mountain, crowned with a distinctive jumble of dark stone visible for miles. In local legend, the hill had once been a goblin fortress, in the years before mankind had come to Cerilia. A mighty warlock had held Caer Duirga and the lands around, the story went, until the day of Deismaar, where the goblin hosts perished in uncounted numbers. The few highlanders who lived nearby avoided the area, claiming it was haunted.
They camped in the shadow of the hill, surrounded by a dire sense of foreboding that was nearly tangible. Even the horses were nervous, prancing skittishly and pulling at their makeshift hobbles. No one argued when Gaelin suggested a double watch that night. After they ate a cold and tasteless dinner of hardtack and dried beef, Gaelin took Seriene a little ways away from the others. “Well?” he asked. “Have you found anything?”
The princess frowned. “I haven’t started to look. But I can sense something here. There’s power in this place, but it’s dark and twisted. This place draws mebhaighl, but it’s corrupted somehow.” She shivered. “What’s wrong with this place, Gaelin?”
He told her what little he knew of Caer Duirga’s history. A day ago, he would have scoffed at these stories as tales to frighten children. Now he was inclined to take them more seriously.
“I’ve been up and down these highlands for fifteen years or more, since I was a boy of nine or ten,” he finished.
“But for some reason, I never passed by Caer Duirga. I might not have been so quick to bring everyone here if I had.”
Seriene walked in a slow circle, surveying the hillside, and finally stopped and gazed up the dark flanks of the mountain, now shadowed with the deepening dusk. Its barren crest was easily three or four hundred feet above them, and she craned her head back to look at the peak. “Mebhaighl – the magic of the land – runs and collects like water, seeking the point where it belongs. We’ll find what we’re looking for up there. I’m certain of it.”
“You’re the authority. I’ll trust your judgment.” He paused, and added, “We only have three days before Bannier plans to meet me here. For that matter, he could be here now.”
“The powers of darkness are strongest at night, and this is a place where the powers of darkness are strong enough already.
I won’t challenge them until the sun’s in the sky again.” Seriene pulled her gaze away from the hilltop -