Heir to Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier Page B

Clodagh.” Eilis sounded unusually chastened. “We shouldn’t have ridden off; I know that.”
    “All right,” I said. “We’ll say no more about it now. But don’t do it again, please. The same goes for you, Coll.”
    As we rode on, something inside me was sounding a warning. The Inis Eala men were highly trained, not only in fighting, but also in such skills as tracking and path finding, not to speak of their peerless horsemanship. How could Cathal have lost his way on a perfectly simple track? What exactly was the man playing at?
     
    We reached the lake in good time. It was a lovely spot, nestled in a hollow high on the flanks of a wooded hill. There was a quiet over it that set the mind at peace, for there seemed nothing between the pale water and the arch of sky above but dreams and birdsong. When we came here, I liked to lie on my back on the sward and breathe deeply, letting my troubles go.
    That was not possible today. There was no sign of Cathal. While Sibeal and I set out the food and drink that Doran had carried in his saddlebags and the men went down to the water with the children to see if there was any good fishing to be had, I was still working my way through the possibilities and not liking any of them much. The paths through Sevenwaters forest were known to be deceptive. If the Fair Folk wanted a man to lose his way, he would lose it. In the past, certain travelers had ridden into the woods and never come out again. But this particular path was straightforward. That was one of the reasons I’d agreed with Eilis’s choice of destination. And if Cathal was with the Sevenwaters family, the Fair Folk should treat him as they would us. We never got lost, and nor did the trusted members of our household. I put no credence in the silly rumors that were circulating beyond the borders of our own territory, about the Tuatha De starting to turn against humankind. Certainly, such folk had great power and were prepared to use it. But not against us. Anyone familiar with the history of our family would know that could not be the explanation for Cathal’s disappearance.
    Had he ridden off on some mission of his own? That conversation in the stables had suggested Cathal was behind today’s outing. Perhaps he hadn’t organized it to help his friend, but for a more devious purpose. I thought of spies, abduction and assassination, and began to feel very uneasy. Deirdre’s marriage to Illann had offended the northern chieftains. Perhaps Naithi or Colman had decided that kidnapping one of us to gain leverage against my father would impress the influential Eoin of Lough Gall. Perhaps Cathal was out there right now, telling someone exactly where we were.
    We had started to eat when he appeared from under the trees on his black gelding. He dismounted, leaving his horse to graze beside ours, and walked over to sit down next to me. As the rest of us stared, mute, he helped himself calmly to a mutton bone. “You could have waited for me,” he said.
    “Where were you?” I held my annoyance in check, knowing it was only fair to allow him an explanation.
    “You know I was looking for Coll and Eilis, Clodagh. But I see they’re here and unharmed, unless the Fair Folk have transformed them into ghostly simulacra of themselves—let’s see—” He reached out and pinched Eilis lightly on the arm, making her squeal. “No, it’s the real thing all right. At least you saved me some food.”
    “Where did you go, Cathal?” Aidan sounded calm. Of course, he was more used to his friend’s oddity than I was. “That was a straight path, and the children turned and came back after quite a short ride. But we saw no sign of you.”
    Cathal’s dark eyes were guarded as he glanced at his friend. “Nor I of you,” he said. “I rode after them until I was certain I should have overtaken them. I turned back, thinking they might have ventured along a side path; investigated several of those, discovered nothing and returned to