Celtic Nights

Awakening

Derryth was lying on her side clutching her pillow when she felt two pin sharp stabs deep in her belly. She knew what that sensation meant and it jolted her like a bucket of ice water. The druid stared at the dark linen bedclothes. When it was too cold to sleep outdoors, she stayed in a room in the valley fort. Livia was a very capable young woman who would never waste coin on dyed sheets.

She sat up confused and woolly headed, wondering if she had taken too many ales or a blow to the head. Her shift lay folded on the blanket box at the end of the bed. Derryth padded over to it and shook out the well travelled garment. Someone had laundered it for her as well as mend the tear in the hem. Where were the rest of her clothes? Who had taken her armour and weapons?

Her eyes fell to a grey robe crumpled on the floor. She knew that robe. Anger burned along her veins and scorched the fog from her mind. She remembered going to Avalon. Livia was an old woman now and the valley fort had grown into a stout walled keep. In a desperate attempt to free her brothers’ children, she had snuck back into the Marnad clan hold. Lann had surprised her and taken her prisoner.

Fang and Rinny had also come through the hidden portal but as they had not known where she had gone, their mission was a raid not a rescue. The fomori had overwhelmed them but not before her son used his damned enchanted arrow. Derryth pressed a hand over her heart. The pain was still there but the joy of new life within her was enough to blunt the grief for the time being.

The druid still felt dazed. She frowned at the bed and the unfamiliar room. Derryth realised she had retreated temporarily into the dream world for solace. The surprise of finding how much time had passed and how much she had lost in that time had shaken her badly. Escaping into her mind brought her no shame but her task now was to find what was real. Something was not right.

Her surroundings and the slight soreness in her womb was proof enough she had not just been dreaming. For some reason she expected to see Bovos, which was wrong as he had not returned with her to the clan hold. She had deliberately gone alone to rescue her kin because she did not want to risk anyone else on what could have been a fool’s errand. Derryth breathed in deeply and blinked stinging eyes.

She had seen her children die. That was not a nightmare. At least she had been there with them, not like Ailidh who had been trapped in the Mists while her family tree withered. It hurt, Derryth admitted to herself. It hurt more than when she lost her blood-brother, another of her kin not accepted by the clan. She and her friends had rescued the true clan chieftain and her cousin could declare the dead rightfully Marnad.

It would take a great deal of persuasion to sway Ranalt to allow Lann into the clan but her cousin owed her that at least for saving her. She had not managed to rescue the young ones borne during her kin’s captivity. That thought made her pause. Derryth padded to the door that stood ajar opposite the bed. Beyond indeed was a richly appointed bath, in which she had been washed like an infant.

A recollection of dark hands on her bare skin came to her. Gritting her teeth, she went to the windows to stare out on green hills. She knew the look of those hills for she had been many times to Scota. A long moment of concentration attuned her to the ley lines and the feel of the forest. Derryth cursed in the language of the Vikings, a good language in which to blaspheme.

She was in the north, past the wall the Romans had built. Since the Picts had retreated into the caves and the Scottish danaan had fled or died, the only power in Scota was the fomori. A prisoner again. Derryth had a shrewd idea borne of disjointed memories whose hospitality she enjoyed. Taking her shift, the druid walked back into the bath room to scrub herself red.