Chapter 11
“GONE?” KEIRITH ECHOED. “Where?” G “I don’t know.” His father shot a quick look at Mam who sat in white-faced silence.
“Did you argue? After Callie and I left?”
“Just leave it, Keirith.”
“But why would he—?”
“Leave it!”
After a moment of shocked silence, Callie ventured, “Perhaps someone said something. About the portal. Or Seg. But he’ll come home. After he’s calmed down.”
“Which way did he go?” Keirith demanded.
His father hesitated.
“You didn’t track him? You just let him go?”
“This is not your concern.”
“He’s my brother!”
“And he’ll be safe.”
“Of course he will,” Callie said. “He knows the moors as well as he knows this village.”
“He could trip. Twist an ankle. Or—”
“He’ll be safe,” Fa repeated. “And he’ll come back.” He squeezed Mam’s hand, but she continued staring at the glowing peat. “Please, boys. Just . . . trust us.”
The misery in his face made Keirith soften his voice. “We do, Fa. What’s harder to understand is why you won’t trust us.”
A third time, Fa turned to her, as if awaiting some sign. When none was forthcoming, he said, “Later. Please.”
Unable to bear the tension, Keirith shoved back the deerskin and ducked outside. Yanking his mantle over his head, he stalked through the village.
It had taken all his willpower to watch the flames devour Conn’s body. Now, he feared he would shatter like clay heated too long in the fire.
He slumped against the wall of a hut, recalling the night that he had “pushed” Fa and fled the village. His father had scoured the hills with Conn. His mam had begged Gortin to use his vision to seek him. Although his parents were clearly upset by Rigat’s disappearance, they seemed content to let him go.
Two confrontations. Two sons fleeing. And two attacks by the Zherosi. Hard to believe that was merely coincidence; harder still, to accept it as fate.
A racking cough from inside the hut interrupted his thoughts. Only then did he realize where he was. He wondered if this had been his destination all along.
He reached for the doeskin, then hesitated. Ennit and Lisula had enough worries. And he had not spoken to Hircha since he had carried Conn into the village.
While he continued to hesitate, the doeskin was flung up. Hircha drew back with a startled exclamation. “Keirith? Good gods, you’re soaked. Come inside.”
Ennit was huddled beside the fire pit, flanked by Ela and Lisula. Lisula managed a tired smile. “It’s good of you to come, Keirith. Sit down. Ela, take his mantle.”
“What’s wrong?” Hircha demanded.
He shook his head.
“Something’s happened,” she persisted.
By now, even Ennit was looking at him with concern.
“It’s Rigat. He’s . . . run off.”
Ela’s cry of dismay was so like Callie’s that he almost smiled.
“Sit down,” Hircha ordered. “Tell us what happened.”
Ennit and Lisula were his parents’ best friends. Ela was as good as promised to Callie. Whatever his concerns, he could share them here.
“They’re not speaking to each other?” Lisula asked when he finished.
“It’s more like they know something they’re not telling us.”
Ennit’s curse brought on another coughing fit. When Lisula dipped a cup into the sweet-smelling brew simmering in the fire pit, he shook his head and hawked a gob of phlegm onto the peat bricks. For a few painful moments, there was only the sound of his wheezing and the sizzle of the peat. Then Ennit exchanged a brief glance with Lisula and nodded.
“Darak and Griane may not talk to us either, but we’ll go to them.”
“That’s not why I came,” Keirith protested.
“But that’s what friends do,” Lisula said.
She pulled her mantle off the bone hook by the doorway. Ela held out Ennit’s. Once, he would have protested that he was only walking a dozen paces; tonight, he simply drew the mantle around his shoulders.
“Is Callie all right?” Ela asked.
Before Keirith could respond, Ennit jabbed a blunt forefinger at her. “Tell him to check on the sheep. Or take you for a walk.”
“In the rain?”
“Just get him out of the hut! And take your mantle,” he added, shoving it into her arms as she darted past. With a weary sigh, he held back the doeskin for Lisula. “You’d think the gods could grant us one day of peace. Just one.”
“If the gods cared about us,” Keirith said, “they wouldn’t have let Conn die.”
Lisula flinched. As Keirith mumbled an apology, she shook her head. “I used to believe that the gods had a purpose for all that happened. Including death. But I was younger then. It’s hard to understand why Conn was taken. I’d like to believe he was simply too good for this world. That he was so perfect that the gods wanted to bless the Forever Isles with that loving spirit. But I suppose every mother believes that about her child.”
“He was good,” Keirith said. “And kind and loving. And a better friend to me than I ever was to him.”
“Don’t!” Lisula’s fingertips pressed against his lips. “It doesn’t help. And it won’t bring Conn back. He knew you loved him. And he’d rather have you honor his life and his memory than blame yourself for his death.”
Her lips brushed his cheek. Then she led Ennit from the hut.
“Does Faelia know?” Hircha asked.
Keirith shrugged helplessly. That was another mystery. Why had Fa been so adamant about excluding Faelia during Rigat’s revelations?
“Perhaps that’s what she was upset about,” Hircha said.
“Faelia was upset?”
“I saw her after the council meeting. She wouldn’t talk either.” Hircha took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “If she doesn’t know, there’s no sense worrying her tonight. And if she does . . . well, she has Temet.” The keen gaze locked with his. “You don’t have to stay with me.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“I didn’t say that. But you needn’t sit with the grieving widow if it makes you so uncomfortable.”
“It doesn’t—”
“Ennit’s the one who needs a hand to hold. Lisula needs to believe Conn died for a reason, that his death was more than just a senseless accident.”
“And what do you need?”
“Not your bottomless guilt. So spare me that, Keirith. Just for tonight.”
He winced. If he blamed himself for failing Conn, Hircha was surely blaming herself for failing to love him as he deserved—and desired—to be loved.
“If Conn were here,” he said quietly, “he’d knock us both senseless.”
Hircha pressed her lips together tightly. “Nay,” she finally whispered. “He’d hit the wall. Or the stones of the fire pit. He’d break his hand before he’d lift it to either of us. And then he’d apologize for making me bind it.” She took a deep breath. “I still have a flask of elderberry wine. I was saving it. For a special occasion.”
“Then let’s drink to Conn.”
Unwilling to dwell on his death or their recent estrangement, Keirith shared memories of their childhood. At first, his words were slow and faltering, the memories only feeding his grief. But after he won a smile from Hircha by confessing how they used to spy on the girls bathing in the lake, the words flowed more easily and the constriction in his chest eased. Then Ennit and Lisula returned, grim-faced, and the comfort evoked by his stories leached away.
He rose and left them. Although the rain had stopped, the wind chilled him. Somewhere on the moors, Rigat huddled under a clump of heather or in the lee of a boulder. At home, his parents maintained their silent vigil. And Keirith could think of no way to help any of them.
His steps slowed when he saw the figure leaning against the wall of their hut, staring up at the night sky.
His father’s head turned toward him, then tilted skyward again. “Do you think we look as small to the stars as they appear to us?”
Unprepared for such a question, Keirith just stared at him.
“Like ants, I’d think. Or beetles. Scurrying about. Gathering food. Living. Dying. With so many of us to watch, we must seem insignificant.”
“But that doesn’t mean we are.”
“True. We have our loves, our hates, our fears. Our choices.” His father took a long, shuddering breath. “Fellgair once told me each man’s life was a web of possibilities. A pattern woven by chance and luck, the choices of others and the choices he makes. Strands woven and broken and rewoven hundreds of times. Thousands. Shaping and reshaping a life.
“Who knows what might befall us on the morrow because we lingered here instead of crawling under our furs? I might be weary from lack of sleep and snap at a man leaving for the hunt. Perhaps he shrugs it off and returns with a deer. Or perhaps he broods and cannot concentrate. He comes home empty-handed. Every pot has less meat. Every child goes to bed hungry. All because I’m standing here, gazing at the sky. And if such a small act carries such weighty consequences, what of the more important choices we make?”
“Please, Fa. Won’t you let me help?”
His father just stared at the tiny, unblinking stars.
“No matter what’s happened—no matter how bad it seems—you can trust me.”
“I do,” his father assured him. “More than anyone in the world.” And then he winced.
It took Keirith a moment to understand. It wasn’t just Rigat. It was something to do with Mam, too. Suddenly, he was as terrified as that spring morning when he heard the wood pigeon’s scream echoing through his spirit.
