Adair would think her mad if she changed her mind. Yet she could find no peace.
The only times she felt a measure of it was while lying in Adair’s arms, or while playing her music. Caomhán very kindly continued to insist she had a great talent. She knew only that when the music possessed her, she could express all the tangled emotions inside her, the love and longing. She created song after song.
All about Alba.
While Adair worked at training, she often took walks on her own, with Wen. And she came to appreciate the beauties of Erin. The broad sweeps of green stretching to the horizon. The mist that rose from the ground of the mornings and the gentle hills. The rain fell softer here than in Alba. She could walk out through it as if it did not exist. The sun soon came out again, like a woman smiling after passing tears.
Bradana could see why Adair loved this place.
She put her energy into her music and into growing her child, and let no word of complaint cross her lips. Lammas came and went, and Erin’s fields began to turn golden.
One afternoon, Adair came home early and told her, “Baen is to become handfasted. ’Twas announced today. A woman from south o’ us. Father is hoping ’twill give us a chance to expand our holdings.”
“Ah. He has given up on expanding to Alba, then?”
“Nay. But no one has heard back from Daerg. We do not know if he is alive or dead.” For an instant, Adair’s eyes turned bleak.
“What will she be like, this wife for Baen?” The woman would one day help to lead the clan.
“Who knows? He will, so I imagine, want an heir right quick.”
Their eyes met. They had so far not told anyone that Bradana carried what might at present be the heir to the clan.
“That will make your father happy.”
“Aye, so. But no matter. I am home early with time to spend. Shall we go walking? Or will ye play for me?”
She came to him, stood close and then closer. She craved this man’s company the way she craved air. “I do no’ mind what we do.”
They kissed as naturally as breathing. She wound her arms around his neck. He smelled of sunshine and the hard work he’d done. He tasted of eternity.
What if she told him she wanted to go home? Home to the land she’d lost.
“Play for me,” he whispered when the kiss ended.
“Aye, so. I made a new song today.” A song of longing. Mayhap with her music, she could tell him what she dared not say.
*
Adair dreamed ofAlba. He stood upon the shore at Phee staring out to sea, away past the islands that lay there like crouching beasts. Toward Erin.
There, in the dream, he turned his back squarely upon the place of his birth.
He now faced Rohracht’s dun, and the place was under attack. On the rise above him, the hall burned. Men fought everywhere by the garish light of the flames, a life-or-death struggle for possession.
For his heart.
He heard Bradana’s music in his ears, one of her sad and wistful laments, a complicated weaving of sound that grew ever louder with the crashing of sword on sword, sword on shield, till the very din of it woke him where he lay shivering.
“Adair?” Bradana stirred in his arms, and Wen lifted his great head from the floor. “What is it? My love?” Bradana touched his face. “Are ye unwell?”
He spoke without thinking, still half held by the power of that dream—or vision.
“I must go home.”
“Home? My heart, yearehome. Here in your own bed, in Erin.”
“I must go back to Alba, where my destiny lies.”
