Brighid’s Quest

CHAPTER TEN

“I’m no bard, but if you want the real story, I’ll tell it.”

She was glad her voice didn’t betray the tumult going on within her. Her gut was tight and her heart thumped like she had been running all day after an elusive prey. She could feel Cu’s eyes on her and she allowed herself one fast glance at the warrior. His brows had gone up and surprise curled one side of his lips. She looked hastily away. He probably thought she was going to brag about how hard it had been to track the two-day old trail of the dead mother wolf. Brighid drew a deep breath and hoped that she did have the instincts of a Shaman. Right now she was following those instincts, and it felt a little like following a cold trail through a darkened wood during a thunderstorm.

“Well, it seems you already know the story of how Cuchulainn discovered the body of the dead mother wolf while we were hunting, and how Cu challenged me to track the wolf’s trail back to her den to see if any of the cubs could be saved.” Brighid paused and her attentive audience nodded enthusiastically, making little sounds of agreement. “But what you don’t know is why Cu wanted to find the cub, or who really saved Fand.” Brighid ignored the warrior at her side, even though she could feel his slouching body suddenly tense. “It was all about Cu trying to get a young woman’s attention-a woman who acted like she wasn’t interested in him at all.” Brighid grinned and a few of the children giggled.

“Brenna was Clan MacCallan’s Healer. She was also my friend,” Brighid added in a voice she carefully kept free of sadness or regret. She would tell the story, but she would not tell it as a lamentation, mourning Brenna. She would tell it as a joyful tribute to the Healer.

The Huntress squared her shoulders and tossed back her hair. “Did I mention that Brenna was smart?”

Little heads bobbed up and down.

“Well, she was smart enough to say no to a certain arrogant warrior who thought he could snap his fingers and have whatever woman he desired.” Brighid jerked her head at Cuchulainn, careful not to look at him. “So when Cu pulled Fand from the den-and let me tell you, that wolf was in a sorry state-he thought the perfect way to get the Healer to spend time with him would be to bring her a sweet young animal that needed healing.” The Huntress snorted and shook her head in exaggerated disgust. “Not that Fand was very sweet. You should have seen her then. She was pathetic. Tiny, dried-out, and covered with wolf dung.”

Brighid did not react to the waves of tension radiating from Cuchulainn. Instead she caught the bright gaze of the children sitting closest to Fand. She rolled her eyes and wrinkled her nose, causing the children to laugh.

“So instead of making the very smart Brenna swoon with desire, the appearance of the dirty, half-dead wolf cub only annoyed her, and I think, it also made her question Cuchulainn’s common sense.” More laughter drifted with the fog-colored smoke from the campfire. “But Brenna was as kind as she was smart and beautiful, and she took pity on the little wolf. She showed Cu how to feed Fand, and she kept a careful watch on the two of them, coaxing the warrior into being the perfect wolf parent. I remember how she described what the two of them looked like that first morning after Cu had spent all night trying to keep the cub alive. Brenna had laughed and laughed, saying she’d almost had to hold her nose because of the smell.” Brighid paused again, letting the children’s soft, sleepy laughter fade. “But I supposed Cu’s plan worked, because it wasn’t long after that Brenna accepted his suit, and they were formally betrothed. And that is the real story of how Fand was saved. It was not me, but Cu’s love for Brenna, and the Healer’s kindness, that saved the cub.”

The children broke into spontaneous applause. Brighid drew a deep breath and turned to face Cuchulainn. The warrior had gone so pale that the dark smudges under his eyes looked like wounds. He was staring at her and it seemed his face had frozen into a harsh, painful grimace.

“That was cruel.” He ground out the words from between his teeth. In one fluid movement, he stood and stalked away into the darkness.

“To bed now!” Ciara’s voice hushed the applause and the children obediently started disappearing into the warmth of the tents, calling good-nights to each other and to the Huntress.

Brighid jumped in surprise when Liam’s little arms wrapped around her and he squeezed her with unexpected strength.

“That was a wonderful story, Brighid! Good night!” He rushed off in a flutter of wings, barely giving the Huntress time to call good-night to his back.

“You did the right thing.”

Brighid looked up at the Shaman who seemed to materialize from the fringes of the fire.

“I don’t think Cu would agree with you,” Brighid said.

Ciara went on as if Brighid hadn’t spoken. “Follow him. Don’t let him be alone right now.”

“But he’s-”

The Shaman’s eyes flashed with a flame-colored light. “He is not whole. If you care for the warrior’s soul, follow him.”

Flexing her powerful equine muscles, Brighid rose and left the campfire. Heading in the direction she thought Cu had taken she considered Ciara’s words. Of course she cared about Cuchulainn’s soul. He had been betrothed to her friend, and he was her Chieftain’s brother. She should care about him, just as she should want to help his shattered soul to heal. The centaur stopped short with a sudden realization-that had been it! What she had sensed that first night when she and Cu had discussed the New Fomorians-the tickle at the edge of her mind. She’d known then that something beyond Cu’s grief was affecting him. It had been his shattered soul, and something within her-that elusive, indefinable something she had inherited from her Shaman mother-had recognized the warrior’s loss.

By the Goddess, she didn’t want this! She had no experience with it. She had turned from The Way of the Shaman when she’d left the Dhianna herd. But the choices she’d been forced to make weren’t Cuchulainn’s fault, and if there was something, anything, she could do to help him, her problems shouldn’t compromise that help. But beyond all of that, Cuchulainn was in pain, and Brighid had never been able to stand by and watch anything suffer. She wished she hadn’t been made that way. It had caused her more than a little trouble. The centaur snorted in self-mockery. That was the ultimate in understatements. Her sympathy had caused her to leave her beloved Centaur Plains and her family and to break with tradition.

It had been the right choice. She was following the right path for her life. Now she would find Cuchulainn, let him know he wasn’t alone, and then do the only thing her Huntress training had prepared her to do. She’d tell him she’d take first watch so he could get some much needed sleep. Simple. Clear. Just as she preferred her life to be.

But where was Cu? By the Goddess, it was dark beyond the circle of tents and the campfire’s friendly light. Dark and cold. Brighid shivered as the insatiable wind licked against her skin. She would be damned glad to return to Partholon and the warmth of MacCallan Castle.

A muffled sound to her left brought her to an instant halt as she listened with the acute senses of a centaur Huntress. The sound came again, and she angled to her right, almost stumbling over Fand, who growled low in her throat.

“Don’t tempt me to kick you,” Brighid told the half-grown cub. Fand slunk off, casting a look at the Huntress that was partially contrite and partially a warning.

At least Brighid knew Cuchulainn was near. That cub was never far from him. Of course Fand’s semi-aggressive reaction also told her that Cu must be upset enough to have shaken the wolf into growling at a friend.

She almost didn’t see him. If the moon hadn’t cast its wan light through the veil of high clouds at the same moment Cu lifted his tear-streaked face, she would have walked right past him. But his tears had given him away. Damn it! She hadn’t expected him to be crying! She’d expected anger-let him rail at her and get it over with. She understood that. She could handle that. But as he turned toward her something totally unexpected happened. She felt a mirroring of his pain that was caused by more than their shared clan ties or even their friendship. She was reacting with a Shaman’s empathy and the knowledge almost undid her. Brighid wanted to walk away, to deny the inherited purpose that flowed through her veins, but she could not. That would be cowardly, and Brighid Dhianna, MacCallan’s Huntress, was not a coward.

“Cu,” she said softly, reaching to touch his shoulder.

He jerked away as if her touch scalded him. “Does it make you happy to cause me pain?”

“No.”

“Then why?” The warrior didn’t sound angry. He sounded defeated.

“You have to go on, Cu. You have to find a way to live without her. And you can’t do that by avoiding all mention of her.”

“How do you know?” Anger was beginning to stir the apathy from his voice. “How would you know anything about it?”

“You’re not the only man to have ever lost a loved one. Grief isn’t exclusive to you, Cuchulainn!” She quickly considered telling him her own story. But her gut told her not to make this about her. She was decidedly out of her element, so all she could do was follow her gut. “Look around you. How many of the hybrids have lost lovers or parents or children to suicide and madness? How is Brenna’s death more tragic than that? For the passing of two moons you have been surrounded by a people who have overcome losses that would have decimated any other race, yet they have done more than survive. They still find joy in life. You’ve seen it yourself. How has that not reached you? Maybe Brenna was right when she called you self-absorbed.”

With the lightning reflexes of a well-trained warrior, Cuchulainn’s dagger was unsheathed and pressed against the centaur’s neck. But she did not flinch from him. She held his wide, pain-filled gaze with her own.

“This is not you, Cuchulainn. The man I know would never take arms against a member of his clan.”

Cuchulainn blinked twice, and then stumbled back. “What am I doing?” With a growl he hurled his dagger to the ground and wiped both hands across his thighs as if he were trying to eradicate a stain. “I’ve lost who I am,” he said in an emotionless voice. “Sometimes I think I died with Brenna.”

A chill of warning shivered through the centaur’s body. “You aren’t dead, Cu. You’re shattered.”

Cu bent wearily and retrieved his dagger. “Aren’t the two really one and the same?”

“No, my friend. One involves the body, the other the spirit. And I’m afraid your trouble rests within the spirit realm.”

His bark of laughter was humorless. “That is something I’ve known for most of my life.”

“This is different.” Brighid sighed in frustration. “Damn, I’m doing a poor job of this!” She rubbed a hand across her brow, wishing her head wasn’t pounding in time with the beat of her heart. “I think you have a shattered soul, Cu. That’s why you don’t feel like yourself and why you’re not able to heal from Brenna’s death.”

Cuchulainn narrowed his eyes. “Is this more of that Shaman affinity nonsense you say you inherited from your mother?”

“No! Yes…I don’t know!” She rubbed her forehead again. “By the Goddess, you make my head hurt, Cu. The truth is I don’t know much more about Shamanistic dealings than you do! But I do trust my instincts. As a Huntress they have never failed me. Now they’re telling me that Brenna’s death damaged your spirit, so it is your spirit that must be healed if you are to recover.”

“What if I don’t want to recover?” he said slowly. “Maybe I should have died with her, Brighid.”

Everything within the centaur became still. How she answered Cuchulainn might change whether the warrior lived or died. Epona, help me to say the right thing, she beseeched silently. And, like a candle flaring to light in an unused room, she suddenly understood what to say.

“Maybe you should be dead-maybe you shouldn’t. I don’t know, but I do think I know how you can decide for sure.” Brighid was careful to sound calm and matter-of-fact, like she was discussing whether they should hunt deer or boar.

“How?” His voice was ragged.

“Well, it’s really simple. You’re not yourself. So, as you already admitted, you don’t trust your own judgment. But if you fix your shattered soul, you’ll be able to rely on your own instincts again. Then if you choose death, you’ll know your choice is valid.”

“You make it sound simple, but I have no idea how to go about fixing something I didn’t even realize was broken.”

“Neither do I. All I know is what I’ve observed from my mother, and that was too many years ago to count.” She didn’t need her Shaman-inherited instinct to know that it was best not to mention that she and Ciara had been discussing the state of his spirit that very day. “But I do remember that she helped those whose souls had been shattered to become whole again.”

“I don’t want any Shaman meddling with my spirit, shattered or not.”

“Then how about me?”

“You?”

Brighid shrugged. “As you said, I do have ‘that Shaman affinity nonsense,’ which I inherited from my mother. But I’m decidedly not a Shaman. So how much meddling could I actually do?”

A bark of real laughter escaped from him, and for an instant he sounded like the young, rakish warrior she had once known. “Shouldn’t the question be how much fixing could you actually do?”

“I think the question should be how much do you trust me?” Brighid retorted.

“You’ve proven yourself trustworthy many times, Huntress. If I have made you believe otherwise, it is due to my failing, not your own.”

“Then will you trust me to try to fix your soul?”

The warrior hesitated. His face was no longer devoid of expression, and Brighid could clearly see the emotions that warred within him. Finally he met her gaze. “Yes.”

Brighid didn’t think that hearing any one word had ever made her feel quite so much like she wanted to run in the opposite direction. Instead she jerked her head in a quick, acknowledging nod.

“Now what do I do?” Cu asked leerily.

“You give me your oath that you won’t do anything to harm yourself until your spirit is whole again.”

“What if you can’t fix it?”

Brighid drew a tight breath. “If I can’t fix it, then your oath would not be binding. You’d be free to do as you will.”

“Then you have my oath.”

Cuchulainn held out his arm and Brighid grasped his forearm in the warrior’s way of binding an oath. His grip was strong and he felt so alive. She hoped desperately that her instincts hadn’t just blundered her into a suicide pact with the brother of her best friend.

“Where do we go from here?” Cuchulainn asked.

“Back to camp. I’ll take the first watch over the fire. You get some sleep. I’ll wake you when the moon is at half point.”

“What does that have to do with fixing my shattered soul?”

“Not a damn thing,” she muttered. “But it’ll give me time to think about the mess I’ve gotten us into.”

As they walked side by side back to the camp, Brighid heard Cu chuckling. She might very well be helping his suicide, but at least she was amusing him.

Her family had been right about one thing. Humans certainly were odd creatures.