Read Online Flame of Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier - Free Book Online

either pity or disgust. He had looked at me as if I were a normal woman.

CHAPTER 3

    I rose very early. Rhian was stifling yawns as she helped me dress. I suggested she go back to bed until it was a reasonable hour to fetch our breakfast. Then I made my way downstairs.
    I should have undertaken my mission by twilight, perhaps; recaptured more closely the way things were on that long-ago night of Samhain. Doors standing open, for spirits roamed abroad as the year made its turning to the dark. Empty chairs at the table, an invitation for lost loved ones to return and sit awhile amongst the living. A great bonfire blazing in the space between keep and stables. Uncle Conor speaking words of power into the chill air, then lighting a torch and passing it to my cousin Fainne, who walked about the house rekindling each hearth fire in turn. Later that night, with the household abed, I’d woken suddenly to hear screaming. Beyond the little round window of my chamber was a tapestry of flame and shadow. At ten, I was not allowed to have Bounder in my room at night, though I had pleaded his case with all the eloquence a child could summon. That Samhain night I’d known my dog was with our druid guests, who had softer hearts than my mother’s.The druids had not been accommodated in the keep, for to be thus enclosed unsettled them. They were sleeping in the annex across the stable yard. When I’d slipped downstairs and out the kitchen door, quiet as a little ghost, it had been to see the annex all afire…
    I had been brave then; I had acted without a moment’s hesitation. Now I was not so brave. I had waited until it was almost daylight to do what I must do. In the dark, the place would be too much the same. It would be all too easy to remember the smoky air catching in my chest and the hungry roar of the flames.
    I must retrace my footsteps as closely as I could. On the night of the fire I had not gone out the front door. Just as well, since there was no way I could open it now, with its big iron bolt. I slipped into the kitchen, which was full of the comforting smell of baking bread. Nuala was taking a batch of loaves out of the oven, her hair tied back in a scarf, her cheeks red. Two young assistants were preparing some kind of mushroom dish, their knives flashing with precision. Both stopped when I came in, staring at me round-eyed. Nuala straightened. I saw the flicker in her expression. Doran would have told her what to expect. They’d both been here a long time; she would remember the child I had been.
    “Welcome home, Maeve! I should say, my lady. It is good to see you again.”
    “And you, Nuala.” Perhaps I sounded a little too crisp, but I could not help it.
    “Girls, back to work!” Nuala snapped, and they obeyed, not without a few sideways glances in my direction. “You’re up early, my lady. Hungry after yesterday’s journey?”
    “Rhian—my maidservant—will come down later and fetch some food for the two of us,” I said. “The bread smells wonderful. I want to go outside. Could you open that door for me, please?” A pox on the kitchen girls; they would simply have to get used to me. I gestured toward the door that led directly out to the stable yard and saw Nuala’s eyes widen as I lifted my disfigured hand.
    “Oh, let me—” She was quick to help, moving across the kitchen, holding the door open for me. “It’s cold out there,” she said. “Won’t you need a cloak?”
    “I won’t be long.” I turned my back and strode off across the yard. I had come out without cloak or veil, my scars on full display. That had seemed a necessary part of my personal rite.
    No bonfire now; only the first hint of dawn, rose-gold on the stone walls of the keep, the wattle-and-thatch outbuildings, the woven fences of sheepfold, byre and chicken coop. Shadows clung to the corners and lay across the ground where the feet of man, woman and child had stepped that long-ago night around the ritual bonfire. And farther