Celtic Fire(109)

He paced to the center of the circle and raised his uninjured hand. A single Word left his lips, a syllable of power bequeathed by the Old Ones. Bryan and the other warriors drew back as if scorched.

Owein turned his piercing blue gaze on Lucius. “Take the skull and go,” he said.





Chapter Twenty-Five


Lucius had but one task to complete before returning to Marcus’s hiding place. He stabbed at the forest loam with a sharpened stick, gritting his teeth against the pain in his arm and ribs. The pit deepened, and still he dug.

Aulus lounged against a nearby pine, inspecting his fingernails. His bruises were gone and his chin had been shaved clean. He wore a white tunic and toga, but his face had not regained its pallor. It glowed with life and health, and if not for the rotted skull lying in the mud, Lucius might have believed his brother had risen from the grave.

The sun hung on the horizon by the time Lucius judged his labor complete. He stood silent for a long moment as the magick of the wilderness breathed its quiet spells about him. For the first time, the northern forest whispered to his heart, and he listened.

He would not leave Britannia without leaving a piece of his soul with this mysterious land and the woman he left behind.

“Perhaps the memory of her will fade,” he told his brother.

Aulus looked up and raised his brows.

“We weren’t fated to be together. She won’t leave her brother, and I can hardly join her tribe.”

Aulus pushed himself away from the tree and paced closer. He laid his hand on Lucius’s shoulder, his fingers as warm and solid as a living man’s. Though he didn’t speak, his opinion was clear.

Lucius sighed. “You always understood more of love than I, but in this you are wrong. I cannot go after her.” He covered Aulus’s hand with his own. They stood unmoving while the shadows deepened and the sky darkened.

“Come,” Lucius said at last. “It is time.”

When he lifted his brother’s skull, his vision blurred. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to defend you on that dark day.”

A sad smile played about Aulus’s lips, but he shook his head as if to say Lucius was a fool to question fate. He glided to the edge of the pit and looked down.

Lucius nestled Aulus’s skull in the pit, weighting it with stones against the ravages of wild animals. Aulus lifted one hand in a gesture of farewell. When the first handful of dirt spattered the pit, he vanished.

Lucius stood for a long time, staring at nothing.

A tear tracked down his cheek. “Good-bye, brother,” he whispered.



Rhiannon slipped out of the dun before sunset and followed the well-worn path to the sheltered glen where Briga’s waters sprang from the earth. It was a place so unlike the pool in Lucius’s house, but Rhiannon had felt Briga’s spirit in the Roman fort as keenly as she knew it now in the forest. The Great Mother’s arms embraced the entire world. Rhiannon suspected her peace flowed as easily through the streets of Rome as through the wilderness.

She imagined Lucius, garbed in a white toga, taking his father’s seat in the Roman Senate. Would he think of her once he returned to his homeland? If he did, what would he remember—her love or her deceit?

The brush stirred behind her. “Rhiannon?”

Owein stood in the shadow of an elm a few paces away. Though the wound she’d inflicted had not been deep, she still shuddered when she thought of what might have happened if her blade had sliced his neck rather than his shoulder. She’d washed and rebandaged the gash upon returning to the dun this morn. In time, he would bear only a thin scar.

She waved him to her side. He came, hesitating only the briefest of instants before he bent and kissed her cheek. Rhiannon smiled up at him and lifted her hand to ruffle his red curls.

“The Roman and his son have set out on the southern trail,” he said.

Rhiannon’s heart cracked a little. “Ye’ve seen them?”

“Aye, though they did not know I watched.” A solemn expression lit his blue eyes. “Go with them, little mama.”

“What?”

“Go. Your spirit will travel with them in any case.”

“But the clan—the tribe—needs a queen. Someone to draw them together.”

Owein shook his head. “If the chieftains cannot come together in their own right, what good is a queen to draw them? Thanks to the Romans, the days when a Celt woman ruled alone are past. When the chieftains are through bickering, the strongest among them will claim ye as a prize to brace his position. Are ye willing to accept such a man?”

“Nay.”

“Just so. But I am thinking with Edmyg and Kynan dead, no other will be able to hold the clans’ allegiance. The Romans will come from the south. I See naught but blood and death. In the end, the conquerors will prevail and the Brigantes will be no more. There is nothing ye can do to stop it. Take what happiness ye can, Rhiannon. If ’tis with a Roman, so be it.”