The Hidden World

Chapter 10

She was awakened by a scream.

The echo of it lingered in her ears as she sat up, cold and stiff and disoriented. It was not so much a sound as the sleep-distorted memory of a sound. She was not quite sure that she had not dreamt it. All around her people lay on the ground, wrapped in their cloaks or in coarse blankets like the one Branwen had given her, huddled together for warmth. She saw many familiar faces: Old Ned, with his big black dog lying beside him, and the baker and the blacksmith and the weaver-woman. Not all the monks and villagers were here, however; it seemed that one group had gone on ahead of this one. Nearby, Cordelia was snuggled between her parents, and Thomas lay not far off, his long brown hair covering half his face. Guilt filled her. Had the Ryans delayed their departure because of her? Would they have got safely away with the first group had they not waited for Maeve to return?

Aengus—no, not Aengus, she remembered—was also awake, standing apart from the slumbering villagers, an erect dark figure gazing pensively at the sky. Had he slept at all? She rose, wrapping the blanket about her like a cloak, and approached him shyly.

"Prince Arawn—I mean, Your Majesty..." she stumbled when she realized he must now be king.

He turned to her, and she saw the noble lines of his face, firm and well-defined, the steady gaze of the grey eyes. It was not hard, now, to imagine a circlet of gold on his dark hair. From now on, whenever she read Hamlet, she would always see this man's face and his brooding dark-clad figure. Melancholy hung about him like smoke over a banked fire, but she felt that anger might yet flash through it, quick as flame.

He had not always been thus, she knew. This man had been young Gwalchmai, the merry huntsman beloved of his people, the man he himself now bitterly derided. She had glimpsed that man briefly at the village ceilidh—so long ago now, it seemed. All that gentleness and mirth had been stripped from him. It was like erosion, she thought. Suffering cut away the soft parts and left only what was hard and durable. Arawn looked as though he had been carved down to a solid core of strength and endurance. Did he feel guilty for being alive when all his loved ones were dead? Guilty that he had not been there to defend them?

"There are no titles any more, young Maeve," he said in his quiet voice. "Can there be a king without a kingdom?"

How could he be so calm when he was so close to death? Even she knew the fate of heirs to a throne when the land is invaded.

"I'm sorry," she burst out miserably, and then fell silent, feeling the pitiful inadequacy of the words.

He spoke softy, as if to himself. "My grandsire and grandmother loved each other deeply, so much so that I was filled with dread at the thought of one dying before the other. The grief of the one left behind would have been hard to see. That they should perish together, then, and know no separation, is perhaps not such a dreadful thing as you might think. And they had led long, happy lives. But my father and mother are another matter. Many long years they had ahead of them still, and their blood demands justice." Again, as in the tower room, his hands clenched tightly at his sides.

He's so brave, she thought with a pang. So noble. It's not fair. "Isn't there anything we can do? Aren't there any allies who can help?" she asked desperately. "That big island, Tir Tairngiri..."

"Tir Tairngiri has but few people in it," he told her. "A people called the Skraelings once dwelt there, but they suffered greatly from the assaults of the Lochlannach in your grandmother's day and I doubt there are many of them left. The only other inhabitants of that land are the Daoine Sidhe, and they will care little what becomes of us common mortals."