Orla might have waited if it had been anything else. But by the goddess, some man invaded Deirdre’s mind.
Orla had been sitting by the steam with the girl late in the afternoon, watching the dragonflies dance among the sprites along the riverbank. She had her bare feet dangling in the water alongside Deirdre’s and her ear cocked to the high road, listening for Liam’s return. She prayed for it, since just that afternoon she’d finally had to bring Binne’s situation to the court’s attention. The bruises had been real. Her husband the tanner had actually been hitting her when she’d balked at lovemaking. Hitting her, which was against every law of faerie. And what had the council done when presented with the evidence? Tsked and said they would investigate. Orla had barely kept herself from leaping across the table and showing them how pleasant it was to be beaten.
Ah, Danu, but didn’t she wish her mother were here right now? Didn’t she wish Liam was? The goddess knew he would take charge of matters. He would find a way to protect them.
It was amazing. Before coming here, she would have looked to none but herself for solving a puzzle. But now she wanted Liam’s help, his insight and calm judgment. And she wanted his arms around her while he was exercising them. She wanted his arms around her even if he wasn’t. She missed him.
She forever found herself looking down that long road and felt lost every time she didn’t see him there. She wanted to share her bed, but more, she was beginning to feel she wanted to share her heart. And what frightened her about that was that she wasn’t frightened.
“Orla?” Deirdre suddenly asked. “What happens at a girl’s Rite of Passage?”
Well, she hadn’t expected that one, sure. Eyes to where a school of minnows nibbled at her toes, she did her best to sound offhand. “Well, it’s when she is officially a woman in the land of faerie. She is assessed again for her colors and life stones, taught the things she’ll need for adulthood and celebrated for her wonderful childhood.”
The little girl tossed a pebble into the water. “Is that all?”
“Of course not. You know as well as any that it is the day you first welcome the joy of life-making. Sure, haven’t your mother’s people spoken of it? There’s no hurry about it, though, for, sure, aren’t you a few years off yet?”
“Are you certain?”
Something about the tone of her voice caught Orla’s attention. “Deirdre?”
The little girl wouldn’t look at her. Her head down, she was picking at the grass as if it were a school lesson. Orla’s heart hit her stomach. She couldn’t think of a child braver than Deirdre, and now she was hiding from something.
“What’s wrong, mo chroí?”
Deirdre shrugged. “One of the men…” She drew a huge breath. “He was in my head. Can he do that?”
Orla stopped breathing.
Calm. Stay calm. “He shouldn’t be able to. Do you want to tell me about it?”
Deirdre lifted confused eyes. “He said he wanted to show me what happened on my Rite of Passage day.”
Orla could hardly get her voice to work. “And did he?”
“No. I think I slammed a door on him.”
Rage hit Orla like a storm. She was shaking with it; she actually saw Deirdre through a red haze. That anyone would so blatantly violate the most sacred of the children’s laws in the world of faerie, and that he would dare try to do it to Deirdre…
Orla had never murdered. She would this day.
“Do you know who the man was?” she asked with careful calm.
“Somebody on the hurling team. He has whitish hair, and his ear is funny-shaped. And he had a griffin on his tunic.”
Orla wrapped her arms around the little girl and pulled her close. “You did exactly right,” she said, resting her cheek against Deirdre’s sun-warmed hair. “He had no right to come uninvited into your mind, especially to be expecting you to—” it was her turn to draw the breath “—have him show you what he knows is too old for you. I’m so proud of you. And I’m so very, very mad at him that I could carve him up like a peacock.”
For a long while she just held Deirdre and let the silence surround them. She needed it for the courage to go on. “Deirdre, I’m going to have to tell the king. What that man did is absolutely forbidden. Faith, when your father hears about it, the man might not live to see the next banquet.”
“My father would stop him?”
“Your father would gut him like a fish. And may yet, if the king doesn’t take care of him first.”
“What if he tries again?”
Orla’s smile was terrible. “Slam the door on his hand. Then let me know right away. I’ll just pay a little visit to his head and he’ll never bother anyone again.”
She left her little girl with the bean tighe that night and attended the banquet, prepared to speak so none could claim ignorance of this outrage. She had only brown to dress in, but she made sure she was groomed and presented like the princess she was. Then, when all were seated, she stalked right up to the king.
“Your grace,” she said, her body trembling with fury, her voice cold, her posture rigid as she stopped before the high table. “We women have petitioned you. We have petitioned the council and the court. We have had no response but assurances that we were safe.”
The king looked as if he were suffering from indigestion. “And so you are.”
“Then tell me, your grace,” she said, “how a man managed to invade my daughter’s mind this day and suggest he show her the initiation into life-making.”
The hall exploded into chaos. There truly could be no greater crime in the land. The women were shouting, the men shouting back. Smaller fairies scrambled for the door or hid in the rafters, screaming their own opinions, for who could possibly believe such a heinous accusation? The king stopped the clamor by banging his goblet on the table.
“These are serious charges, Orla,” he said, his expression harsh. “Are you very sure you wish to make them?”
“I would. I do. I beg the king for my daughter’s protection.”
“Sure, she’s looking for attention!” one of the men yelled.
“It’s the Tuatha bitch,” another answered. “Trying to rouse trouble.”
Orla turned on them. “Will you say this to Liam the Protector when he returns?” she asked. “Will you dare question his word?” Turning back to the king, she held out her hands. “Sadly, I haven’t the luxury of waiting for the Protector to return from his king’s business. My child is at risk right now.”
“Do you have a name?” the king asked.
“A hurler on the griffin team,” she said. “With white hair and a deformed ear.”
“It’s a lie!” came the shout, and goddess, wasn’t he stupid enough to gain his feet so that she now knew him?
“Well, I’d say Deirdre described him to a T, your grace,” she said, leveling a look on the man that should have left him in cinders. Just to make sure all knew, she pointed to him. “My daughter needs to be kept safe from this man. How can you protect us?”
“Well,” the king said, looking around, “it’s a grave charge you level, ’tis true, and it carries the most severe penalty. We’ll have to investigate it, of course.”
She wanted to scream. “That isn’t good enough.”
The hall went deadly quiet.
“You think to question the king?” he demanded, rising slowly to his feet. “You could suffer death for such a thing.”
Orla didn’t move. “And should I stay silent at the risk of my daughter’s innocence? Her peace of mind? Besides which, if she has been approached, have other children? Children, your grace. Our most sacred trust.”
“You overstep yourself, woman.”
And then she knew. He would not help. Not now. Not soon enough. Neither could she wait for Liam, and it cut at her. She’d begun to rely on him so much. But she had no other choice.
Turning again, she faced the hall. “Women of the Dubhlainn Sidhe!” she cried, her voice ringing out. “I call you to me now!”
Chairs scraped and women stood. Even Aifric rose at her place at the high table and, glaring at her father-in-law, walked away from her husband to stand behind Orla. There was shouting and protest from the men, but every woman in the room crowded in behind her and faced the king.
And Orla, because she was left with no other option, stood at their front. “We sought your help, your grace,” she said. “We sought the protection you guaranteed us. But the men have not only ignored us, they have stepped farther and farther over the line of what is good and right in the world of faerie. Only Liam and some of the men of the Coimirceoiri have stood by us, but, sure, they aren’t here now. So we must stand for ourselves. We have requests.”
She held out her hand, and Aifric offered her the vellum with the list they’d made up. Simple things. Immediate punishment for infractions of violence. A woman on the court to hear complaints. Trustworthy guards in places where women gathered so they weren’t harassed. Orla added to them the immediate apprehension of the white-haired fairy.
“Requests?” someone yelled. “You want to take our bollocks!”
The men cheered. Orla faced them. “Faith, you can keep your bollocks. But you’ve left them with nothing to do, for haven’t you forced us into taking the one measure we actually do have power over?”
“What measure could that be?” the king asked, with a bit of arrogance in his voice.
“Until we feel safe again,” Orla said, laying the requests before him, “not one woman in the land of the Dubhlainn Sidhe will lie with any man.”
The king laughed. “Don’t be absurd, woman. You can’t possible accomplish that.”
Orla looked behind her to see every woman standing strong at her back. “Every woman here so swears.”
She’d finally accomplished what no one had since she’d been here. She brought absolute silence down on the great hall. Sure, there would be no jolly melee here this night.
“How dare you threaten me, daughter of Danu!” the king grated. “I could have you killed where you stand.”
“You could,” she said. “I have to trust that you won’t. And that, with a bit of time to think in solitude, you’ll come to recognize the justice of our mission.”
She said not another word, but swung away from the high table and followed the women out the door. It was a good thing there would be no banquet this night. Her hands were shaking so badly, she doubted she could have raised a goblet. The terror of what she’d done lodged in her throat and made her steps wobbly. Ah, goddess, what would Liam do when he found out? Was this what would have him throwing her out? She couldn’t bear the thought.
She left chaos in her wake. The men yelled and pounded and began to throw full goblets of wine after the women. One hit her in the back as she walked out behind the other women, but she ignored it. Sure, she had the feeling it wouldn’t be the worst thing she suffered before this was over.
She’d followed the other women only halfway to the home of the bean tighe when she felt the first attempt at incursion into her mind. And mallacht, if it wasn’t the white-haired man. She stopped dead in the middle of the lane and turned back. And she let him come.
There in her mind, she saw him sidle toward her, his smile feral. Goddess, she’d never seen such a thing in all the land of faerie. It was turning her stomach, sure. But she let him approach. She even smiled back, the kind of smile she might have given him as leannan sidhe. She invited him closer, when she knew he had assumed she would cringe from him.
“I knew you wanted me,” he said, and stepped right into her trap.
Or rather, her knee.
She rammed it as hard as she could into his crotch. The scream from the hall was a terrible thing.
“Come near my child again,” she whispered into his frantic mind, “and I’ll let Liam the Protector have you for carving.”
She was still sitting up by the front window of their home in the early hours of the morning when Liam finally passed on his way to the stables. She hadn’t changed or bathed or eaten. She was sick with what she’d done this day. But sweet mother Danu, she hadn’t known what else to do.
He walked in an hour later with the knowledge on him of what she’d done the night before. His face was taut, his hands wrapped around his saddlebags, as he opened the front door. Orla didn’t bother to move. She knew he’d seen her.
“Well, wife,” he said very quietly. “It seems I can’t return home without hearing of another outrage perpetrated by you.”
Orla met his gaze with dry eyes, dry throat, sick heart. Faith, all she wanted was to go to him, to rest her head against his broad chest and drink in the return of him. She wanted to be able to cook him an edible breakfast and laugh over what nonsense Deirdre had been up to while he’d been away. But some things were simply impossible, now, weren’t they?
“If it’s to be a long talk we’re having, Liam,” she said, climbing like an old woman to her feet, “you might as well have a seat. I’ll fetch us both a bit of mead, shall I?”
“You think I’ll need it, do you?”
She closed her eyes for a second against the pain. “Oh, aye. I think you will.”
By the time she returned, he’d divested himself of his armor and was sitting in his chair facing the window, his posture rigid with anger. He was still dusty and rumpled, and she could see the weariness of the road on him. She handed him his cup and took her own seat alongside him. It seemed he wasn’t about to face her.
“What have you heard, then?” she asked.
He didn’t bother drinking. “That you’ve organized the women into heretofore unimagined heights of folly. There are demands involved, it seems.”
“Ah.” She nodded. “I see. And you’ve decided, then, that I fully deserve the clan’s denunciation?”
Sighing, he rubbed at the edges of his eyes. “You always have a reason, Orla. You might as well tell me what it is, else I’ll never get to bed.” He huffed and shook his head. “Alone, it would seem, for crimes I never committed.”
“No,” she said. “You didn’t. That was the most difficult part of this, that you should suffer the punishment meted out for the rest. But I swear on the name of Danu, Liam, we couldn’t find another way to open their ears.”
“And what was it this time, Orla? Hurlers in the garden? Butchers with a wandering eye? Maybe an especially noisy brawl at the great hall?”
She looked over, daring him to face her when she said it. He did. “It was a man invading the sanctity of your daughter’s mind and offering to initiate her into lovemaking.”
If she’d thought to shock him, she’d been grossly wrong. Shock was far too mild a word. His features went chalk white. He couldn’t seem to breathe. He literally leapt to his feet and stalked the room, back and forth, for what seemed an eon. Then, with a growl of agony, he hurled the cup as hard as he could. The splintering of it was like a bomb going off in the small room.
“You couldn’t have been mistaken?”
Orla set her cup on the table un-drunk. “Do you think your daughter could make up something like that?”
“Did he…was he…?”
“No.” She jumped to her feet and grasped his hands hard. “Your daughter slammed the door in his face.” She grinned a bit. “Then I slammed my knee into his stones.”
“And I’ll hack them off with a dull blade.”
His voice was ragged with agony. He’d shut his eyes and dropped his head, as if the weight of her words had crushed him.
She lifted her hand to his tired face and sighed. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know things are worse on the borderlands. You’re exhausted and anxious with it, and I bring you more burdens.”
“I should have been the one to protect her.” He choked, and Orla thought he was swallowing a sob. “Why couldn’t I protect her?”
“Because you were protecting us all.”
“You don’t understand! I thought you were both safe here!”
She reached up to cup a hand around his neck and draw his head to hers. “These are things I can deal with, husband. You have kept the enemies of the other realms from us. And I swear, if it had been anything else, I would have waited for you. But I had to act. No man would stand with us.”
He looked stunned. “Even the king?”
Orla shrugged. “He was going to take it under advisement. I imagine he wanted to interview Deirdre himself, just to make sure I wasn’t after inventing stories to be heard and all. I could wait no longer. Liam, I’d already brought Binne to him with bruises from her consort.”
Liam dropped his head again. “Ah, no,” he said, holding onto her hands as if afraid of losing her. “I’m that sorry I’ve dropped such a burden on you, lass. I’m so sorry.”
“You dropped nothing on me, Liam. In fact, you’re the only one who has sought to ease it.”
His smile was too sore for words. “Well,” he said, squeezing her hands, “it’s off to a lonely bed for me, it seems. Sure, I can’t have you standing before your friends when you don’t suffer what they do.”
Orla was surprised by tears again, welling in her throat. In her eyes. In her heart. “Ah, goddess, I’ve been given a good husband, so,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “Sure, a girl could fall in love with such an honorable man.”
Surprisingly, he bent over her, holding her so close she could barely breathe. “She could, could she?”
She just nodded into his chest, too terrified of the actual words.
“Ah, Orla, sure you deserve a better man than I am, for I can’t stay long enough to make a difference, I think. The borders have begun to disintegrate.”
She just nodded. “All I ask is your blessing.”
His smile was wry. “Well, it seems it’s all you’ll be getting from me until those demands are granted, now, doesn’t it?”
“Requests,” she said.
He nodded. “Requests.”
There was so much more she wanted to say. She just wanted to hold him there, nestled in their little house where they were all safe. But he was already pulling away from her.
“I hope the king is in the mood for early rising,” he said, grabbing his saddlebags. “For doesn’t he have a full slate today? Scythies in the far reaches, gremlins in the hills, and women with demands—requests—in his hall.”
Orla almost smiled. “Ah, so we’re on the list with gremlins, are we?”
He almost smiled back. “Sure, you’re prettier by far. Would you do me one favor, though, wife? Stay here till I get home. If you have to meet with the women, do it here.”
“Liam, I think the king needs to send back the stone.”
But Liam shook his head. “No. I’ve thought on it, and I think we need what power we can if we’re to fight. It’s going to be a fierce-run thing, Orla.”
“And you won’t accept the women’s help.”
“No. I won’t.”
She sighed, disappointed. “Ah, well, then, there’s nothing for it but for you to get a bath before you meet the king.”
He sighed again. “Alone, I’m guessing.”
“Alone. Will you be back to see Deirdre when she awakes?”
“As soon as I make sure she’ll no longer be bothered.”
And hefting his bundle over his shoulder, he stalked back out of the house.
His worst nightmare was coming true. While he was out trying to protect his wife and daughter from the evils of the other worlds, he was leaving them exposed to the evils of this one. Mallacht, he just couldn’t get it right.
And now she said she loved him. How could she, so, when he’d failed her so badly? When he’d left her to the disapprobation of his clan for having the courage to stand up for what was right? Well, she would stand alone no longer.
He should have had the courage to at least admit what he felt for her. He should have told her the truth about how poorly he protected the ones he loved. But he was a coward, and he was paying for it.
At least he could plead her case to the king. At least he could shake some sense into someone. First, though, he had to deliver his own report. For the Ghostlords of the Seventh Realm had allied with berzerkers and scythies, united by the vilest of treaties and ready to prey on the weaker realms. And for the first time, Liam wasn’t entirely sure that the armies of the Dubhlainn Sidhe would be enough to turn them back. And here in the land of the most honorable of fairies, the women were being preyed upon.
The white-haired fairy was banished into the coldest reaches of the Twelfth Realm, where the beings were pale, silent things and the sun barely shone. He left limping, with a pack of food, a good pair of shoes and a forest of bruises from the beating he’d received from Liam. He was accompanied to the border by a guard of Coimirceoiri, led by Faolán, who added a few bruises of his own.
Earlier, little Deirdre had awakened to find her father sitting on the edge of her bed and jumped into his arms. The two spent the morning alone, and came out with reddened eyes and held hands. But Deirdre was smiling and made sure she had a good seat to witness her attacker’s ignominious retreat from her world.
As for the women’s requests, it seemed that the king resented having women tell him what to do. Women should be submissive, he asserted. A clan should look to the king for guidance, not a transplant from a world of thieves. Liam argued long and hard, sad to see the most reasonable man he knew refusing to see reason. There was nothing else he could do for now, though. He was needed back on the frontier.
Within a day of his leaving again, the women were banned from the Great Hall. Within three they’d set up their own banquet in the field behind Liam’s house. Since they were the ones who grew and cooked and served the food, the men were left with half-baked bread and the apples they could gather from the ground. They didn’t mind. They still had the mead and whiskey.
That only helped for another four days. Fights broke out even in the middle of hurling games. Military practice kept the bean tighe working overtime. The children were kept completely away to save them hearing the most colorful curses ever uttered in the land of faerie, and surrounded by sacred arrays to keep their minds protected.
The women gathered quietly and followed their stone crafts in the glen where they fed themselves and their children. They welcomed the bard, who had decided that they were a much more appreciative audience, and on his return, Liam, who had argued their case repeatedly before the king and betrayed the effect of the Coilin Stone on him only with his frequent forays to the hurling field, which always ended in the other team being fairly battered.
The women fed those of the Coimirceoiri who helped guard their children and the priest who blessed them. And they held an even larger celebration when Eibhear appeared to present Orla with another stone.
“Moonstone for leadership,” he said, sliding it onto the third finger of her right hand. “For sure, haven’t you gathered an army the likes of which we’ve never seen and formed them into an effective force?”
The women cheered. Orla wept and ran to her husband, who held her in his arms. Eibhear told her that she had to give a speech.
“Ah, no, Stone Keeper,” she said with a watery smile, her beringed hand in her husband’s. “Haven’t I given enough speeches altogether? I’m just happy to be here with my new clan and my new family.”
“Sure I thought moonstone was for the sight?” she asked Eibhear later as he sat with her and her husband. “That wouldn’t be me, then. Haven’t I spilled the scrying water and shattered the crystals?”
The Stone Keeper fluttered a hand at her, his eyes sly and amused. “Ah, well, I’m thinking you’ll be surprised, for isn’t there always a bit of the sight in anyone who leads well?”
She shrugged. “I’d argue,” she said, “but by the good goddess, you’ll not be getting this ring back.”
“When do you choose her raiment?” Liam asked.
Eibhear made great show of considering Orla’s still-mud-brown dress. “Ah, sad I am to say, for isn’t that the sorriest color in nature, but the dress’ll take a bit longer.”
Orla sighed. “Just as well. I’d only be after staining it with whatever other stone craft I’m mangling.”
Liam settled her onto his lap and hugged her. “By the light of Lugh, who needs a woman who knits? Sure, isn’t it much more interesting to have one who foments rebellion?”
Orla laughed. “Just what is the stone for a rebellious soul?” she asked.
Liam laughed, as well. “I’d have to say moonstone and iolite, now, wouldn’t I?”
The Coimirceoiri protected the women when they were there, and when they were gone, the women stood together, but the rest of the men were growing impatient. Then anxious. Then desperate. And Liam could only be with them part of the time, since his skills were so needed on the frontier.
Orla asked again for the chance to help him, to arm the women, to do anything to lighten the load on him. Again he refused. So when he wasn’t there, she resumed her clandestine lessons in the arts of war. Sure, she had the idea that if they didn’t need it for the war to come, they would need it for their own home lives before long.
It was the thirtieth day before the men grew desperate enough to try to invade the women’s minds. Because the women stayed together, they were able to protect one another. The incursions worsened. The images grew more and more aggressive, then violent. More than once, a woman came within moments of suffering violation in what should have been the safety of her own mind before a comrade successfully thwarted the attack.
The days grew long and the women tired. The wives grew anxious. The husbands grew angrier and angrier. And then the crisis came. And it came from a direction none of them could ever have anticipated.