Free Pride of Lions by Morgan Llywelyn Page A

habits. I do what I like when I like, and never the same twice."
    "I mean going up on the palisade and shaking your fists at the sky. It's making my men uncomfortable."
    She shrugged one shoulder. "They are easily upset, then. But we knew that already. Look how they ran away from him on Good Friday."
    Sitric gritted his teeth. She was deliberately goading him, trying to make him lose his temper, but he was determined she would not manipulate him this time. "They did not run from Brian Boru. My men fought as Vikings should, unflinchingly and to the death."
    Gormlaith's reply was scornful. "They ran like hares, the cowards." She turned toward Emer, the first indication she had given of being aware of the other woman. "You saw them, too, didn't you?"
    "I did see them. When I remarked on it, your son hit me." In spite of herself, Emer felt a flush of gratitude to Gormlaith for including her in the conversation, for acknowledging and validating her presence as if bestowing a gift.
    Having the uncanny ability to center attention on herself, Gormlaith occasionally enlarged her sphere to include others. They invariably felt flattered. Even those who most disliked her could not help responding. This was one of her gifts, and she used it to telling advantage.
    Now she gave Emer the sympathetic look of one abused woman to another, creating a sisterhood in the presence of the tyrannical male. Then she smiled; a slow, conspiratorial smile. She turned back toward Sitric.
    "You hit your wife but you won't hit me, will you?" she asked her son in a low, deadly voice. Rising from the bench, she took a stride toward him with a fluid grace that belied her years.
    Against his every intention, Sitric backed away from her.
    Gormlaith laughed.
    But there was no mirth in the sound. No amusement left in her. She was hollow. She would spend the rest of her life with a howling void at her center.
    Until he set her aside, she had adored Brian Boru with all the excess of her flamboyant nature. She had flaunted her sex to excite his jealousy and played political games out of an ambition the equal of his own.
    When he divorced her, she had sought a fearsome revenge.
    When it came it cracked her heart down the middle.
    I am wreckage, she thought. I am
    alone in the world without him, who was my only equal.
    I am alone.
    Her huge eyes stared at Sitric out of cavernous sockets. "Hit me," she invited.
    If he hit her perhaps she would feel something again.
    Shaking his head, Sitric took another step backward.
    "Coward." With another shrug that dismissed the King of Dublin and all his works, Gormlaith turned to leave the hall.
    "Wait!" Sitric cried.
    "Why? Is there the remotest possibility you might say anything worth hearing?" she asked over her shoulder.
    "I need your advice," he admitted.
    She waited where she was. Her back was eloquent.
    Sitric said, "You of all people understand the politics of high kingship. You've been married to two of them and you know every possible claimant.
    Tell me who I shall have to deal with now."
    She turned halfway toward him. "Why should I?"
    "Mother!" Sitric heard the pleading in his voice and knew it was a mistake, it would only make her more contemptuous.
    But Gormlaith merely yawned. "Very well, I have nothing better to do anyway. And aren't those wretched servants of yours going to bring us some food sometime or other?" Radiating boredom, she sauntered back to the cushioned bench and sat down. "Let's look at the situation, Sitric. Malachi Mor is the most obvious claimant; he was Ard Ri before. Remember that until the rise of the Dalcassians, the High King was always a member of either the northern or the southern Ui Neill.
    "But he destroyed the tradition of alternate kingship. Malachi might well attempt to reestablish it now that he's gone."
    Sitric pointed out, "Brian Boru put an end to the alternate kingship not only so he could be Ard Ri, but also so he could establish a dynasty of his own, with one of his sons