"I'm not certain. It's just... impressions. Bits and flashes. Feelings. But I have to go back to where it all began. The key has to be there, Fallon. Whether it's tangled with Silver Hand's smugglers, or wrapped in your dreams." His eyes darkened, the mysteries of the ages in their depths. "Take me there, Fallon. To the castle."
She nodded and turned her gaze toward the hills, to where limitless possibilities lay waiting. Wasn't this what she'd wanted? For him to believe in heroes that walked out of the mist, in fairy rings and magic. And yet, she'd never imagined what that belief might cost her. For if he was the Ciaran of legend, nothing could hold him. Not the chains of marriage vows, not even a woman's love.
Chapter 13
Mist snagged on one green hilltop, a shimmering island of mystery floating in the heartbreakingly blue sky. It was as if Eire had polished and preened and garbed herself in her finest raiment to welcome Ciaran of the Mist home.
Ciaran's horse picked its way to the top of the hill, where the tower castle still stood sentinel after so many years, and he wondered how many times over the centuries beleaguered Irish had turned their gaze toward the stone walls, drawing courage from a past almost more real to them than their present. Was he a part of that legacy? Or was he sinking ever deeper into Mary Fallon's fantasies?
He glanced at her, so regal atop her own mount that she might have been Maeve the Fairy Queen herself. Her hair glowed, the red highlights burnished by the sunlight, her chin tipped up, neck arched with an innate pride no mere mortal could humble. And her crystal blue eyes shone with the dreams of ages past and the hope of the future to come. A hope hard-won, Ciaran now realized. Wrested from the crushing grasp of those who had conquered this island so many generations ago.
His throat tightened, his fingers clenching on the reins. Where was she leading him, his fairy queen? One thing he was beginning to be certain of: destiny had cast him into her arms. Perhaps it didn't matter whether or not he was the legendary hero she believed him to be. There was something in these people that echoed through him with the exquisite resonance of a familiar tune plucked from the strings of a harp.
He brushed his fingers over the healing gash in his head. The low throb of headache was all but gone, leaving him with nothing but questions. What lay beyond the veil of his lost memory? Skills, tools, knowledge that might help him in this quest? And he had no delusions: Redmayne was a formidable foe. To match wits with the Englishman, to defeat him, would take every resource at Ciaran's disposal.
He struggled to open himself to the flickering impressions, sifting through the shadows for the tiniest spark that might light some memory, illuminating everything. Gradually it came, in tantalizing glimpses.
Small—he was very small. Sorrow was crushing the breath from his lungs, while tears flowed down porcelain-smooth cheeks. Beautiful—the most beautiful lady in the world, and someone was taking him away from her. He wanted to kick and scream and run back, to stay with her forever. But he knew the men would only take him anyway, with their hard hands and their fierce eyes. And her tender heart would be bruised forever by his cries.
"I'm not a baby anymore, to be clinging to a woman's skirts." He forced his best scare-the-dragon smile, but it couldn't scare away the fear in his own chest. "They have swords." He'd jabbed a grubby finger at what looked to be a giant forest of thick-muscled legs and bone-cracking fists. "They promised to teach me everything, how to lop off enemies' heads. I'll fight an' fight an'..."
Sobs cut him like the sharp stone he'd stepped on once in a stream, the sound made far worse because she fought so hard to silence it. Then the biggest man of all roared.
"You robbed me of my wits for a little while, woman. Bewitched me. But I came to my senses. Rid myself of you. I can only be grateful I discovered what else you stole from me, thief that you are! My son!"
Ciaran's mother cried. "The marriage between us held nothing but hate! I feared you would hate him, too. He's innocent. A child. I beg you—"
But no plea on earth could have stopped the big man. Ciaran knew it though he'd never set eyes on that towering figure before.
"The boy is mine," the big man snarled. "You'll never see him again."
One beefy hand closed on his arm, pinching so tight that the next day a bruised ring would be pressed into his skin. Then he was being dragged away. Rage and helplessness balled up inside him. He was a boy, but he wouldn't be dragged about. They were determined to make him a man. Then his first act would be to make certain his mother remembered him standing tall.
He kicked his father in the leg with all the force he could muster, pain exploding in his toes. But it was worth it. The big hand released him in surprise. He straightened his spine and stalked ahead, leaving of his own free will. Leaving everything warm and safe and loving.
"I will make you proud of me," he vowed as he walked out of the doorway. "I will come back someday, Mother, I promise."
The words were so clear, and the emotions as vivid as a new scar against white skin. He struggled to picture some detail, anything that might give him some visual idea of where he'd been taken from, what his mother had been wearing, or what the men who came to take him away looked like. The tiniest detail that might give him some idea as to when it had taken place. Thirty years ago? Or was he mad enough to consider the possibility that it had been nine hundred years since his mother and his father had turned to dust?
His struggles were futile. He could only feel the pain of the small boy he had been awakening again in the darkest, most hidden reaches of his heart. Is this what regaining his memory would be—an excruciating journey with all the pain he'd suffered made new?
"Ciaran?" Fallon's gentle voice reached out to him, and he turned to her, every emotion still in his eyes.
"They took me away from her. And I never saw her again."
"Never saw who?"
"My mother." He searched Fallon's face, almost desperate, as if she might hold the answers to the questions welling up inside him. "The legend, Fallon—does it say anything about that?"
"Ciaran's childhood is lost. It was as if he'd merely stepped from the mist a man, a warrior."
"Do all the hero tales begin that way?"
"Usually there is something special, some story that marks a man a hero from boyhood. Cuchulain killed a ferocious wolfhound that attacked him. But afterwards, he realized the household would be unprotected. He stood watch until another hound could be trained. His name means Cullen's Hound."
"But there's nothing about Ciaran?"
"Only that he had no ring fort of his own, nowhere he returned to when the fighting was over. The High King tried to reward him with the finest of conquered lands, but Ciaran refused. He said he had no need of a home."
