Aine Nic Tamhais left Calhoun’s study with a distinct uneasiness in her stomach. Truthfully, the sensation had not been far from her since coming to Lisdara four months before.
Her father, Alsandair Mac Tamhais, had always spoken of Seare as a wild place, barely one step removed from its pagan roots, enmeshed in magic both dark and mysterious. Aronans thought themselves highly civilized and pragmatic, an affectation that made them closed-minded about anything that hinted at the supernatural. Lord Balus’s coming had ended the need for magic, they said, and anyone who practiced it must serve a darker power.
Aine’s pace quickened as she returned to the chamber she shared with Niamh. Magic hung heavy over Seare. She had felt it as soon as she set foot on the dock: the pulse of a pure, brilliant power, and beneath it, a sinuous strand of something older and much darker. That same darkness lingered in the forest beyond Lisdara, and sometimes she felt it seeking, testing the protections woven into the keep’s walls. No one else seemed to notice the invisible battle that waged beyond, though, and admitting her sensitivity would only bring unwanted scrutiny. Even the ancient healer, Mistress Bearrach, did not know Aine’s secrets, but the longer she studied with her, the more difficult they were to conceal.
Oonagh, the lady’s maid she shared with Niamh, was folding clothes into a large oak chest when Aine entered her chamber. “My lady! I thought you were at your lessons!”
“I’m riding with Mistress Bearrach this morning. Will you send for Ruarc? I can find my riding clothes.”
Oonagh curtsied in acknowledgement and hurried from the room. Aine took her time selecting a brown wool dress and a lightweight cloak from the wardrobe. She had just pulled on the clothing when a familiar rap sounded at the door. She slid a sheathed knife onto her belt and buckled it quickly, then swept the cloak around her shoulders. When she opened the door, Ruarc lounged against the opposite wall.
Aine had known her Seareann bodyguard for so long it was hard to see him as others did, but objectively, his mere presence was enough to discourage untoward thoughts. Middle-aged, but as lean and strong as he had been in his early years, Ruarc projected restrained menace, like a viper poised to strike.
He was the gentlest soul she had ever met. He could also kill remorselessly with the proper provocation. The latter was likely why Lady Ailís, with her last breath, had passed his duty to Aine. Ruarc never questioned the matter. He had merely appeared at her side, and he had not left it since.
“You look troubled,” he said, falling into step beside her. “What is it?”
“The same as always.”
Ruarc fingered the dagger at his belt, a sure sign he was troubled. “Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to come here. You’ve been unsettled since we arrived in Faolán.”
“And what was there left in Aron? Mother’s dead.” Aine swallowed the lump in her throat. Six months was not long enough to dim her sense of loss. She steadied her voice and continued, “Aunt Macha has no use for me. She tolerated me for Father’s sake. If she found out . . .”
“I know, but—”
“I’ll be fine. It’s just harder to ignore certain aspects of my talents here than it was in Aron.”
They emerged into the bright morning sunlight and started across the courtyard to the beehive-shaped clochan, a stone remnant of a more primitive age that now served as Mistress Bearrach’s residence.
“It’s more than that, isn’t it?” Ruarc said, his brow furrowing as he studied her. “Something else is bothering you.”
“It’s nothing.”
But it wasn’t nothing. The Mac Nir boy disturbed her. She couldn’t look at him without feeling the subtle hum of energy, a stronger, brighter version of the threads underpinning Faolán. Worse yet, she had dreamed of him in Aron the night before Calhoun’s invitation arrived. She had been poised to decline until she was struck with the certainty that that boy waited for her in Lisdara. Instead, the words had spilled out, “Tell my brother I’ll come.”
Ruarc’s frown deepened. “My duty is to protect you, Aine. If you hold things back, it makes my job much harder.”
Aine forced a smile and put a light hand on his arm. “I have full confidence in you.” A pity his particular skills would be of no help in this situation.
Just as they arrived at the clochan, the door sprang open. An elderly, white-haired woman scowled at them from the threshold. “What took you so long?”
“Forgive us,” Aine said, aware that Ruarc was struggling against a smile. He found Mistress Bearrach’s ill temper more amusing than she did. Then again, he didn’t bear the brunt of it. Still, the old healer knew more medicine and herb lore than a dozen of the clan’s physicians, and Aine had already learned more from her in four months than in two years with her aunt’s knowledgeable, but skeptical, practitioners.
Mistress Bearrach thrust a bulging leather sack at Ruarc. “There, young man, carry this for me and go get our horses. Go on, I’m not getting any younger, you know. At this rate, I’ll be dead before you return.”
Ruarc hid a grin and jogged back across the courtyard to where a boy waited with three blanketed horses.
“Thank you for allowing me to accompany you today,” Aine said.
Mistress Bearrach harrumphed. “Just don’t kill anyone. That’s one mistake I can’t fix.”
Ruarc returned with their horses then, saving Aine from answering. He helped the healer mount first and then gave Aine a leg up onto her own mare. The horse danced nervously beneath her, obviously sensing she was a barely competent rider. Mistress Bearrach, by contrast, seemed as comfortable atop her mount as on her own feet, despite the fact horses were not common in Seare outside the palaces of kings.
The horses’ hooves thudded on packed earth as they made their way down the steep switchbacks with Mistress Bearrach in the lead. At the bottom, the old woman turned due south onto a trail that was little more than a few hoof prints in the grass. Aine would have missed it had she not been following the healer so closely. After a few minutes of open meadow, the trees began to grow more thickly, forming the young forest that bordered Seanrós. Aine shivered at the touch of magic on her skin.
Mistress Bearrach cast a glance over her shoulder. “You feel it, do you? Good. You’re not a total disappointment.”
Aine’s eyebrows lifted. Perhaps Mistress Bearrach saw more than she let on.
They traveled slowly through the border woods, breathing in the heavy scent of damp earth and vegetation. After nearly an hour, the small trail joined a larger road, and the trees again thinned into rolling countryside.
Aine drew a deep breath, and her earlier tension began to melt away in the quiet. Peat smoke drifted faintly on the breeze, wafting from the hearths of the whitewashed cottages in the distance. Ivory-fleeced sheep with black faces grazed freely, unhindered by enclosures. A cow lifted its head and lowed softly as they passed.
Up ahead, the road widened into a large area of hard-packed dirt. A square building with a shingled, peaked roof loomed before them, the lime-washed wickerwork and great three-spoked wheel identifying it as a church.
“This is Fionncill,” Mistress Bearrach said.
“Only this?” Compared to Aine’s birthplace, Forrais, this smattering of cottages and pastureland hardly qualified as a village.
A throng closed around them as they rode into the square. There were women in rough-spun skirts and wool shawls, tending dozens of children among them. Frail elders, propped up by daughters and grandsons. Men wrapped in bandages or wracked with coughing. Aine threw a panicked glance at Ruarc. So many patients, so many expectations. How could they possibly tend them all?
Ruarc dismounted first and helped her down from her horse. As soon as Aine’s feet touched the ground, several children began tugging at her clothes.
“Are you really the king’s sister?” A tow-headed girl, perhaps six years old, looked up at Aine with wide blue eyes.
“I am. My name is Aine. What’s yours?”
“Mara, m’lady.” The girl bobbed a curtsy and smiled shyly.
A little boy, who had been hiding behind Mara’s skirts, popped to Aine’s side. “Are you going to fix my mama?”
“I’m certainly going to try. Where is your mama?”
The boy grabbed her hand and dragged her across the yard to where a pale, red-haired woman cradled a tiny infant on the front steps of the church. “Mama! This is Aine! She’s going to make you better.”
Color bloomed in the woman’s ashen cheeks. “Hush now, Donall. I’m sorry, my lady. He hasn’t yet learned to hold his tongue.”
“No need to apologize.” Aine smiled and sat down on the steps beside her. “What’s your name?”
“Caitlinn Ó Laoghaire, my lady. My husband’s Donall the Elder. One of the Mac Cuillinn’s tenants.”
Aine nodded and turned her attention to the infant. “May I?”
Caitlinn gave the baby over to Aine without protest. Automatically, Aine extended her awareness into the boy, seeking signs of illness, but she found only a drowsy sense of well-being and the faint stirring of hunger. Whatever troubled the mother, she had not let it affect the care of her newborn.
“How old is this little one?” Aine asked.
“Born a fortnight ago, my lady.”
“A difficult birth, was it?”
“Aye. The midwife barely stopped the bleeding with an application of casewort and yarrow.”
“I see.” Aine handed the child back to his mother. “May I examine you?”
When the woman nodded, Aine made a show of her cursory examination, though she hardly needed to. She immediately sensed the sluggishness Caitlinn hadn’t been able to shake off since the child’s birth. The woman had been far closer to death than she knew.
“I’ll mix a tonic of yellow dock, stinging nettle, and dandelion to strengthen your blood,” Aine said. “It may still be a month or two before you regain your energy, though. Try not to exhaust yourself.”
Caitlinn bowed her head in relief. “Thank you, Lady Aine. You are very kind.”
“Not at all.” Aine smiled at Mara and Donall. “Take care of your mama, all right?”
The children beamed.
Ruarc handed her a wax tablet and stylus before she could ask. She jotted down the woman’s name, her diagnosis, and the remedy and then moved on to the next patient.
None of the patients taxed Aine’s skills, considering a single touch revealed what ailed their bodies. She made her examinations and assured them she could mix a remedy back at Lisdara. Soon, her wax tablet was full of names and notes, and the crowd dwindled to only a handful of petitioners.
When the last patients had been seen, Mistress Bearrach strode to Aine’s side and took the tablet without asking. She scanned the notations, clucking her tongue. “Too fast. You don’t spend enough time with the patients.”
Aine’s cheeks heated. “Do you think I got the diagnoses wrong?”
Mistress Bearrach’s scowl returned, but her black eyes twinkled. “I have no doubt they are correct. But it won’t do to make it look so easy. People begin to ask questions.”
Aine swallowed hard. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Don’t you? When you touch them, you know what’s wrong with them, just as you felt the wards.”
Aine tried to deny it, but her dry mouth wouldn’t form the words.
For the first time, the old healer looked at her kindly. “I know how difficult it is to keep such a thing secret. There shouldn’t be a need. But even here, different can be dangerous.”
Then, as if the conversation had never taken place, Mistress Bearrach said, “Don’t dawdle now, you two. You’d think I was asking you to carry the horse, not the other way around. We still have work to do.”
Aine mounted with her guard’s help and spurred her mare after the healer, concealing her smile. Apparently she was not the only one hiding her true nature.
A quick glance at Ruarc, however, showed no such amusement. In fact, he looked as troubled as she had ever seen him.