The buzz of early summer made her smile.
She could hear the river Bóand bubbling past her roundhouse. Her cauldron was on over the fire, emitting the smells of the herbs she had simmering. The herbs competed with the forest smells, smells she missed each winter.
Mopping at the sweat on her brow with her free sleeve, Fedelm sighed and banged the brush against the roundhouse wall to clear the dust. Cleaning after two years on Ynys Môn was proving tiresome. After all the herblore with Biróg, she supposed, any household chore would prove tedious. Even if some of the activities of a happy home would not be so unwelcome, she smiled at the thought.
Two years under the druidess meant sacrifice. She had not felt the arms of a strong man since The Hound loved her while trying to outrun his blackness. Exciting times. Had Dornoll discovered the dalliance, Fedelm would have been lucky to escape with her life. The druidess took the rules very seriously. Too seriously perhaps, Fedelm smiled. She knew taking things seriously was part of leading the council, whose business was always serious.
She thought about the time that had passed. By the Aos Sidhe, is it that long? she wondered, thinking about Setanta thrusting above her. So long since he had ridden into Caer Leb with thunder in his eyes and then ridden her with the same thunder. It was not all love and light, she recalled. She would not forget the sadness behind the thunder nor the hunger in his thrusts. She would not forget the news of what he had done at the festival of Samhain, which arrived two days after he did, too late for her to stop falling in love. Those were strange times when she felt revulsion, fascination, and love at the same time. Her head told her to stop, her heart told her to love, and her loins told her to open her legs. Her loins won.
Now, she was in her roundhouse on the banks of the river, an hour’s ride from Tara. The spymaster had been direct. She was to face the crisis. The importance of the coming strife and her part in it had been impressed upon her. Dornoll and, by extension, the Elder Council did not want war, but Mac Nessa constantly manipulating everything to his own benefit, blinded them to it. Mac Nessa had not blinded the spymaster. Conflict at this time might mean the end of The Five Kingdoms because iron-clad storm clouds were gathering in the east.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Fedelm was to help Ériu prepare. But first, she needed to stop the Witch Queen. She had no idea how she would do it. Stopping Medb would be nigh impossible. Never one to balk at a challenge, Fedelm packed a small bag and told the Head Sorceress she was leaving on the next ship. Biróg thought the flighty girl to be abandoning her studies. Her training demanded ten years of servitude, and Fedelm was eight years shy. But surely Biróg would learn the truth and realize she was not a woman who would yield despite the hardship.
“Why me?” she asked on the morning the spymaster gave instructions in the glade above Caer Leb.
“Cú Chulainn is going to play a part, and no one knows him quite as well as you,” the master said with a knowing smile. Does he know? she wondered again, remembering the hint in the look on that morning, three days since.
“I know nothing of him. Nothing more than the next man or woman.”
“Keep your secrets if you want, Fedelm; it does not matter. This crisis transcends everything else. If we fail, each of the tribes will succumb. We, too, will be under the yoke that is Rome.” Of course, he knows, she realized.
“He always knew,” Fedelm said to the raven cawing on its perch beside her hide-piled cot. “Else, he would not be much of a spymaster.”
She smiled again. Memories of a rigid torso pressing down on her made that smile. His eyes had been closed, but still, she saw his pain.
He will seek you out and you will help him, the master’s final words before she left, playing through her mind in time to the sweeps of the brush.