Riona by Linda Windsor

and Father Columcille can’t help Kieran, no one can.”
    “God can.”
    Riona meant it with all her heart, although God’s presence seemed sorely lacking in the hearing. She fell in step beside Bran as the bard started toward the gate to the outer vallum, where the livestock and dairy were kept.
Please, Father, make Your will known to me that I might make some sense of this
.
    “It may well take God’s help,” Bran reflected aloud. “Much can happen to a man between here and my destination. Baetan’s not likely to make passage through his lands easy for an ally of the high king.”
    “What are you trying to say? That the Uliad king is involved in the abbot’s murder?”
    Bran shrugged and lowered his voice. “After what I just saw, I wouldn’t be surprised at anything. Baetan rules from Tara as though Rodanus never uttered a curse against it.”
    A decade ago, the hill of Tara was the home of the high king of Ireland, as it had been for centuries past. The same Diarmait, against whom Riona’s and Kieran’s fathers led the forces of Gleannmara at Culdreime a year before the king’s demise, brought a curse upon the legendary capital with his violations of sanctuary and his inhospitality to God’s own. Now a lesser king, Baetan of Ulster, occupied it with delusions of glory, while his cousin Aedh Ainmire ruled as high king from the Niall strongholds to the north.
    Well Riona knew that no high king who hoped to rule with the blessing of church and God would ever choose the once-revered hill of ancestral rule for his court. Clearly the Uliad’s Baetan flaunted his disregard for Tara’s curse, as if he somehow hoped its spirit of the pastmight pass along to him its power and glory.
    “But what is most important for you, my pretty cousin, is to keep Kieran from harm until I get back.”
    “Wouldn’t it be faster to summon troops from Gleannmara?” After all, how could she protect her foster brother when Senan and Gadra would not take her words seriously?
    Her cousin pulled an astonished face. “Why, Riona O’Cuillin, are you suggesting war?”
    Riona bit her lip. Heavens, she was! If Gleannmara’s troop clashed with Maille’s, blood would spill for certain. For the first time, she knew how easily taking up the sword had come for Columcille when, a decade before, he too had acted in outrage at his kin being threatened in the sanctuary of the church. This time, though, it was the church itself—or rather its bishop—who championed injustice.
    Father, keep us all from our human weaknesses. Do not allow Satan to use our love as a weapon against our souls. Let our love avoid bloodshed, not provoke it. Go with Bran—
    “Hey you, bard!” Two of the men-at-arms ran after them from the gate in the stone embankment of the inner rath.
    Bran and Riona stopped just outside the stables and waited for them to catch up. Fear congealed in her chest. Had something changed? Would the bishop or Gadra keep Bran from going for help?
    “We’d have a look in that sack before you leave,” the one in the lead huffed upon reaching them.
    With grimace of impatience, Bran handed over his belongings. “Have a care for my harp. Aingeal is a gentle creature and sensitive to the touch of brute hands, e’en though they belong to such stouthearted men as she sings about.”
    Her cousin had a way of making words sting with the forehand and stroke with the back.
    “Spare us your wily tongue. Given my vote, your likes and all their troublesome talk would be shipped off Erin’s shores in a leaky boat.”
    The senior officer—a red-haired, mustached man—shook out the sack. The contents—a blanket, a spare leine and accessories, a razor, and the velvet case containing Aingeal—spilled to the wet ground. Theharp strings shivered with dissonance at their careless treatment.
    “Perhaps if I knew what it was you searched for, I might help you find it.”
    “Nothing here.” The other soldier snapped the velvet that had encased the