We walked on. Above us, sunlight filtered down through the branches of willow and elder; a stream gurgled somewhere nearby. The warbling song of a thrush spilled through the air. “I don’t want to trouble you with too many questions,” I said. “But there’s one that seems important. When you spoke of this before, you implied that you cannot step outside the tight boundary of the fortress and its land or the host will escape your control. When your grandfather tried to lead them into battle the result was catastrophic. You spoke once of being trapped. Is that true? Is that the reason you can’t—” I fell silent.
Anluan kept walking. “The reason I cannot be a leader? The reason I must let my territory and my people fall prey to flood, fire and invaders? Come, we are almost at the foot of the hill: the margin between a safe place and a place of peril. I will show you.”
“But—” I could see the settlement across the open ground ahead, the view framed by a pair of sentinel oaks. Smoke was rising from hearth fires; men stood guard behind the fortifications.
“You believe your Cillian might still be there?” Anluan’s voice was calm.
“It’s the obvious place to run to. He must have been there this morning. They must have let him in and told him I was up here. Otherwise how could he have known where to find me?” I had halted on the path. My feet were refusing to carry me a step further. “I’m sorry,” I said as panic rose in me, threatening to blot out reason. My skin was clammy, my throat tight.“I don’t think I can go on. I’m—this is—Anluan, I can’t do it.”
“Come, Caitrin. One step at a time, as we agreed.” He reached out his hand. I took it and was drawn on down the path, towards the edge of the woods. If we stood in that gap we would be in full view of anyone who might pass between the forest and the settlement. I clung to his hand, my stomach churning.
“You may be right about your attackers,”Anluan went on.“Perhaps they went to speak to the innkeeper. Maybe he told them you’d been there and had headed up to the fortress. But it’s clear Tomas didn’t pass on the warning he’s so ready to give to other travelers: that these woods are dangerous; that few who attempt to reach my house alone arrive there unscathed. It seems to me the villagers do not want you hurt any more than I do.As they would see it, they were directing Cillian and his mob straight into the path of the host.” He halted abruptly between the marker oaks.“I cannot go beyond this point where we stand. Imagine a line encircling the hill at this level.The chieftain of Whistling Tor must not cross that line. Each of my forebears, from Nechtan forward, attempted to do so, and each time the result was disastrous. No wonder our own people revile us. When my father . . . when he . . .” There was a note in his voice that turned my heart cold. His hand had tightened on mine; he was hurting me.“It can’t be done,” he said flatly.
“This is the curse,” I breathed. “Not being able to leave; being forever tied to these beings. Giving up your whole life to them.That is . . .” I could not find a word for it. Terrible, cruel, tragic: none seemed sufficient.
“Unfortunate?”
“Unfortunate indeed,” I said, “if there really is no remedy for it.”
“Remedy?”The word burst out of him, scornful, furious. He dropped my hand as if it might burn him. “What remedy could exist for this?”
I said nothing. I had hoped that after what had just unfolded, he would spare me his sudden bursts of anger. It had been too much to expect.
“Hope is dangerous, Caitrin,” he said after a little, his voice calmer.“To allow hope into the heart is to open oneself to bitter disappointment.”
That shocked me into a response.“You don’t believe that,” I said.“You can’t.”
“The curse condemns the chieftains of Whistling Tor to lives of sorrow. If there were a way out of this, don’t you think my father, or his father, or Nechtan himself would have found it? If we could run this household as other chieftains do theirs, sending emissaries, receiving visitors, employing stewards and factors to help us fulfill our responsibilities, matters might be different. But you’ve seen how it is. Nobody stays. Since Nechtan’s time, fear and loathing have kept them away. I don’t need false hope from you, Caitrin, only neat script and accurate translation.You can’t understand this. Nobody from outside can.”
He was wrong, of course. I knew exactly how it felt to be hopeless and alone. I knew about sorrow and loss. But Anluan was in no state of mind to hear it, nor was I prepared to lay my heart bare before a man whose mood could turn so abruptly from sun to storm. “If you think your situation is beyond remedy,” I said quietly, “why bother with translating the Latin? Why trouble yourself, or me, with reading the documents at all?”
He made no answer, simply stood there gazing towards the settlement as if it were a far-off, unattainable land of legend.
