“Question for you.” Blackthorn had come up beside her again, jolting her out of her thoughts. “You still want a cleansing ritual, yes? That should be the first thing I do when we get there. But you’ve spoken of these monks as if you’re on friendly terms with them. Since you’re happy to have my assistance with your problem, I assume you’re not of the Christian faith.”

“That is not a question, Blackthorn.”

“What is your own spiritual path?”

Geiléis felt her mouth twist into a bitter smile. “You think Father Tomas and the brethren might object to a ritual of the old faith conducted so close to their house of Christian prayer?”

“One might expect that.”

“We are all desperate for answers, Blackthorn. The creature’s screaming is enough to send the sanest of folk witless. Father Tomas may not be best pleased by your arrival, but I am chieftain of Bann, and what happens on my land is my business. As for my faith, ill fortune has all but snuffed it out.”

“But not entirely?”

“If it was quite gone,” Geiléis said, “I would not have waited so long for the druid. As it is, I am prepared to try anything. When we reach Bann, you will understand why.”

12

Blackthorn

The landscape passed me by unseen. The voices of my fellow travelers might have been the babble of a brook or the sighing of the wind. I held my tongue. The secret within me, the perilous secret Flannan had shared with me, was so huge that I feared it would burst out and ruin everything. One wrong word might betray me. One wrong word—Mathuin or south or plot—might alert Grim or Geiléis or even Conmael, if the man really could appear wherever he liked. And once they had an inkling of what had made me change my mind, they would start asking questions, and then stop me. And that would be wrong this time, because what Flannan had told me meant I wouldn’t be on my own confronting Mathuin; I would be part of a much wider strategy, a plan that had been years in the making, a plan involving many folk. With so many voices raised, the chieftains would surely listen this time. Mathuin would face justice for his wrongdoing. At last we would make it happen.

When Flannan had first told me, I’d refused to believe him. False hope was a cruel thing, and this had reeked of it. We’d tried, hadn’t we? We’d tried, and my husband and child and a whole lot of other folk had been killed. I’d tried again, years later, and where had I ended up? Incarcerated in Mathuin’s cesspit. Powerless. Hopeless. Silenced as effectively as if I too had died. The plot Flannan spoke of sounded just like that first one, only weaker, because Flannan himself had not gone back to Laois and spoken in person to his fellow conspirators there. He’d relied on messages carried by pigeons from one monastery to another, messages that could then be passed on to other trusted allies. Why would I break my word to Lady Flidais and my promise to Conmael and rush off south on the strength of that?