11
Nuada's Spear
"Her brideshirt. How could I have not known?" his anger fed on a lifetime of wanting her.
For a moment, as he ran up the stone steps to the tower, he was sorry—--if Danu was not dead, he was going to wear the scars of Nuada's anger until he did die.
He liked Danu.
The boy was good with a long staff--a satisfying training partner. Nuada was accustomed to the dark youth's impervious good nature. He was the only member of the court who always spoke to him, "How are you Nuada?" "Did you sleep well?" "And how is your lovely sister?"
Danu didn't seem to understand that Nuada was not to be spoken to or treated like just another one of the fighting men.
And Nuada began to train the boy.
At the various tournaments, no one dared to mention that only Nuada might fight for the Lady Nuala. Yet, at the last tourney, Danu commented, "Does anyone but you ever get to fight with the Lady's colors?"
No other member of the court would have asked. They all knew better. Eamon was missing three fingers from the day he asked the King if he might wear the Lady Nuala's colors in just one event.
The puckering scar over Thyres' left eye was only just beginning to fade from the time when he,apparently secure in the knowledge that even the prince must be unarmed in the king's presence, asked Nuala, "So when are going to let that lovely sister of yours choose her man?"
Nuada would certainly have killed Thyres had not half a dozen butcher guards fought to divide the two men.
"I don't understand," Danu blundered on, "why no one else fights for The Lady."
And, indeed, it was strange. For the Lady Nuala was not only their Princess, but the senior woman of the Royal House. She was The Lady of her people. In the past every man in the court would have fought for her, or at least worn her colors to show his allegiance.
But no Lady in any past court past was watched by the black-gold eyes of a silent warrior ready to attack any approached her.
A few days before he fought with Danu, Nuada, concerned at her silence, asked what troubled her,
"I was just wondering what is wrong with me,"
Somehow no one told Nuala was not aware that her brother was literally fighting off anyone who tried to get close to her. The ladies of the court certainly knew. Fianna, her closest servant had seen (as she saw everything) the look on Nuada's face when Thyres' asked about Nuala's bond.
But to tell her meant to anger Nuada. It was a risk no one dared take.
There was talk that Fianna was working with lady on some needlework late into the night to distract the lady's mind, but they were both silent about what it might be.
Nuada looked at her white face and worried over the blankness in her eyes. He reached out to touch her hair. Usually if he even tried to touch her it was enough to see her anger flare behind the gold in her eyes. Anger was better than this quiet sadness.
"Nothing is wrong with you," his eyes darkened. He stepped closer to stroke the white gold of her hair, touching her as he smoothed it where it covered her shoulder.
"You are perfect." He said this in a tone that, in normal times, would have made her step away from him and blush. Now she did not to notice.
He knelt beside where she sat in the windowseat looking intently into her face—she did not look at him.
"There must be something wrong with me," she said, her gaze on the low moon outside the window.
"What are you talking about?" his forehead crinkled as he looked at her.
"Am I The Lady?" she looked at him kneeling beside her without any of her usual nervousness. He took one of her hands in both of his. When she did not pull away, he sat beside her on the long cushion, his face clouded with concern. Something terrible must have happened to her for her not to push him away as she always did.
"Of course. You are the Lady." He didn't understand what she wanted.
"And in the past didn't all of the men fight for The Lady?"
"Yes" he saw the danger now.
"Well, today I heard the maids laughing because no man would dare to fight for me." Her voice sounded like a fall of ashes in a dying fire.
"I will put an end to that" he muttered, seeing there broken bodies at his feet, then quickly pushing the thought away so his violence would not upset her further.
"Did they say why?" he leaned nearer. Even if it meant losing this closeness with her, he must stop her from thinking this way. She would discover that he had wanted her only for himself. He breathed her in, at the same time preparing himself for her outrage.
"For the same reason no one has ever asked if I have prepared a bolt of cloth," choking on tears as she said it.
She thought no one wished to marry her. She would hate him when she knew.
"To prepare a bolt of cloth" was the first step a woman took in making a brideshirt when she met a man she would wish to marry or who asked her to bond with him.
He stood, ready for her to send him away. It was his fault. If she only knew, many men had wished her. "But none," he thought, desire turning in his belly, "as much as I want her."
He turned to leave and was startled to find her close behind him.
"Oh don't leave" she dropped back onto the windowseat, her head bent, her shoulders trembling.
"Nuala—" in his worry he had forgotten he had promised never to say her name aloud.
She looked at him, stunned out of her despairing by the effect of her name from his lips
All of his love, desire, honor, passion, care, shimmered through her as he spoke.
As the warmth passed through her, Nuala realized that Nuada hadn't spoken her name since she made him promise all those years ago.
She had been so careful not to be alone with him.
"You have known since we were children" he began, thinking that at last she would listen him.
"Stop, you must not tell me this," she looked like she would climb out the window rather than hear him.
His features set as he became the stoic Nuada who would do anything for Nuala.
"Tell me what you wish," he sounded too calm, "I will get it for you"
She stopped, looking into his face, "what do you mean?"
"You wish to marry?" his voice was cool.
"Of course." Her simple, confident expectation pierced him.
"Who?" his voice was ice crystals and Northern winds.
Before she could edit or change the image, she thought only of him, chasing her, laughing, as they sought each other among the trees.
At once she sent him a thought of herself sewing by a fire, a cradle beside her, a nameless husband in the background.
The joy that suffused his face as her first vision reached him was blackened over by the second image.
"I understand." And he left her.
That was the only time they had ever discussed any bond for either of them. Each time she thought of the joy on his face for that moment, and the darkness that followed, Nuala knew she must not be alone with him again.
For the next weeks Nuada thought of nothing but his sister's bridal. He even asked his father if he knew of Nuala's unhappiness.
"Of course. I am not blind," Balor answered his son in the combination of courtly manners and exasperation that characterized all the king's talks with heir.
Balor was aware of his son's possessiveness of his sister. It was partly due to Balor's own orders that the Lady Nuala not be told of Nuada's furious shielding of her. The King's orders had kept his daughter unaware that there were any men who wished her.
"She cannot stay so unhappy," Nuada looked thoughtful, quiet, quite unlike himself.
"What would you have me do?" the king looked at his son his eyes aglow with unusual emotion.
"I could not say, father," there was a faint gasp as Nuada's feelings—loyalty, love, anger—for his father drifted over his words.
Nuada looked bloodless as water, "Nuala—" there was a gasp throughout the council chamber as his love and guilt radiated for all to feel, "she" his voice faltered, "she must be allowed to choose."
He walked steadily out of the council chamber to the practice yards where he stayed for the next weeks.
Until that morning when Danu, who had heard the rumors of Nuala's possible bonding from the court, had cheerfully asked, "So, at last your beautiful sister is to wear her brideshirt?"
Nuada, who had been sparring since dawn and had already bested two partners with spear and sword, was not ready for the shimmering vision of Nuala,
Wearing a man's heavily embroidered white shirt, the generous size making her seem only more delicate and feminine. The gold white of her skin was visible through the filmy texture of the shirt. He saw her cheeks flush gold with pleasure as she welcomed a man whose face he could not see—
Nuada did not even look to see the effect of the spear blow to Danu, just grabbed a cloak and ran to her rooms,
Breathless and bloodied, Nuada slammed open the door,
Nuala leapt to her feet as though she had felt him in the doorway.
He crossed into her room feeling, even in his anger, like he was coming home at last.
She stared at him, reading his thoughts,
He felt anger like showers of gold sparks bursting from every part of him. Everything he felt was open for her to see.
"You are making a brideshirt?" his voice sounded like his lungs were full of water.
The image of the two of the—Nuala and him, then Nuala with another man--at the highest moment of mating sluiced through him, blinding him.
She led him to the fire and said words to him he could not hear.
Even in his anger he tried to be calm before her,
"This is all I want," he thought "to come to her each night and feel her hands on me."
"I made the last stitch," she was still talking.
She had made her choice. He stared at the fire, "How will I bear it?"
He did love her. Enough to want her to be happy even with another man.
No.
The vision of her white hair spread out like a halo around her face and of another man's back laboring over her made the blood pound in his ears so loudly that he wondered if he could shield her from the violence in his mind--
She watched him, then reached out and took his spear hand, "How many times have we two sat together as the candles burned down after a feast and watched as two by two, our hearth companions left us for better companion.
He remembered the last feast, sitting in the golden dimness of the empty hall, her beside him—as it should be, he thought.
"Everyone else has gone to bed" she moved as if to leave him.
Must everything she said to him sound like lover's talk?
"Would you like to go to bed now?"
And must everything he said sound like he was a raw boy thinking only of their bodies together?
He knew he would lie awake for hours in the grey darkness thinking of the two of them together, first as mates and then as bonded lovers sleeping in the peace of their own bed. He had pictured it so many nights for so many years it felt more real than another night awake without her.
He was wrenched back to the present as he felt her thinking of the time when just on the brink of manhood he had told her of his love for her.
He fell back into that moment above her, his weight resting on his elbows, her softness beneath him when she has shut her mind to him.
"I will never come to your bed or across the threshold of your room again," he had sworn, his hand still on her face. He knew from her eyes that she had felt him promise it. And she had been relieved. Relieved
He felt his whole body blacken like ash at the thought of it.
She leaned against him. He was brought back to the present by his concern for her, "This is too much for you." He was wondering if she would forgive him if he carried her to her bed when he was overwhelmed by her thoughts flooding into his mind.
Her sadness at hurting him, her weariness of fighting him, her longing to be close to him surged through his senses.
He had been unaware of the turmoil within her. How had she kept this from him?
It was a relief when he felt a blue-gold point of happiness glide toward him. She was sewing, making something black. But, brideshirts must be white, or rarely, pale green.
It was the vision of her sewing for her husband. It was too late to turn his mind away.
He saw the firelight, heard her hum a lullaby as she cut a thread, watched as she sat up and smoothed her embroidery. Her face glowed with such love and happiness that, for a moment, her thought he might not kill this man she loved.
Then, his whole body sang with laughter and happiness--but it couldn't be.
She had never let him touch her. Every time they had been alone, she had stopped him, closed his mind to her.
He remembered that afternoon that ended their child time together. How his knee had parted her legs, how the warmth had coursed between them. She had stopped him.
She was only good. Only he would have wanted something so wrong.
Then he tried to identify what she had been sewing by the fire.
"Where is it?" he felt the strange tingle of laughter sizzle through his thoughts, "I must see the shirt. Now."
She thought something at him, but his mind was too singing to care. He tore fabrics out of her the chests along the wall, ran his hands behind the tapestries.
The first time a man is to see a brideshirt was when his mate wears it to their bed.
It was in her bed, he knew it.
And it was. Heavy black silk. It had been under her pillow these many years. Touching it his mind was buried in her thoughts and plans and wordless dreams sewn into the shirt just as firmly as the pattern of birds and flowers.
"You felt it, too" he had a moment of joy shot through with fury.
She felt his fury, he knew, none of the joy. She pulled the shirt to her as though to shield it from him.
He stared at her and she released the black cloth into his hands.
He saw her wearing it to bed thinking of him night after night knowing his honor would keep him outside the door.
No wonder the thoughts of the two of them flowed through him, drowning him, buoying him up, all these years. She was thinking of him as he stared at the ceiling thinking only of her.
A blur of memories passed between them like a flock of young birds.
His hands around her waist as he helped her from her horse, his body half mad to have her. She smiled sweetly at him, but underneath, she had reveled in how strong he was, how much he loved her.
He saw, as he had missed at the time, the glow of pleasure as he gave her the tight bunch of meadowsweet ("your beauty shines into every part of me")he had ridden half the morning to find for her. He thought she had passed it to one of her ladies, but she had carried it inside her sleeve and slept with it under her pillow that night.
He saw himself through her eyes as he walked toward the Lady's box at a tournament.
She worried to see him so sweaty and tired, but warmth passed through her when he looked full in her face waiting for her to say formally," You have won this match wearing my favor, my lord. You have earned a forfeit. What would you ask of me?"
He knelt before her, pausing a long moment as he always did before saying, "Nothing, my lady, save to be your lord and fight for you again." Then he looked up into her face and for another long moment thought the hardest kiss he could at her.
In the past he only saw that she blushed and turned her face away. Now seeing from her mind he knew she touched her lips as if she would drink him in,
"How could I have not known?" the smile of wonder was both on his face and in his words.
"You didn't know" there was a smile in her voice too.
"She is proud to have hidden this from me," he thought, too happy to worry about what this might mean.
"I know now," she let him kiss her. And, more than that, she kissed him back.
"You love me?" his voice so soft he did not recognize it as his own.
She turned to the fire for a moment and turned back to him her eyes and mind so aglow with love he thought her whole body radiated warm light.
It was a long time later that she whispered, "Yes."