Free Shadow of Stone (The Pendragon Chronicles) by Ruth Nestvold Page B

of freedom the hunt gave her.
    A hand on her upper arm, shaking her. "Yseult!"
    No, her hounds were closing in for the kill — not now!
    The shaking grew stronger. "Yseult, wake up!"
    The smell of loam and forest mist, the excited barking of her hounds, a perfect moment of chase and imminent death — who could touch her here?
    No one. She had to wake up, return to the present.
    Yseult pushed herself up on her elbows, blinking and shaking her head, trying to banish the dregs of her dream. Bran and Ossar were long dead, and she was not in Eriu, she was in Britain — the place she had lived for almost twenty years now, the place that had slowly become home, despite the fact that she had not come here of her own free will.
    Illtud knelt next to her pallet in a corner of the church. The scraps of moonlight coming through the high windows were not enough for her to see his expression, but as consciousness returned she could feel his fear.
    She sat up, rubbing her eyes with the tips of her fingers. "Illtud. What is it?"
    "We just had a visitor, one who found it necessary to seek us out under cover of night," the Christian priest said. "It appears the Pictish invaders have received word of whom we are harboring and are intending to attack holy ground to take you, Lady."
    Yseult chafed her arms, trying to wake up faster. "Then I must leave. I hope you will forgive me for putting your church in danger."
    The warrior-turned-priest shook his head. "The danger came with the raiders themselves. It is a wonder we have been spared so long."
    "The fear of holy places," Yseult murmured.
    "Yes. But now we must flee, all of us."
    Yseult thought quickly. "To reach the nearest woods, we would have to go past the town."
    "We will have to risk it."
    She stood. "Perhaps not. They will expect us to run away. But what if we were to move closer to the Rock?"
    In the faint light, she thought she saw him smile. "The caves?"
    "Precisely."
    "But how do you propose we get down to the beach with the enemy in control of the land bridge to Dyn Tagell?"
    Illtud had a point; the easiest path was from the Neck, not available to them now. There were other paths down the cliffs, but they were perilous enough in the daylight — what chance did they have negotiating them at night?
    Sighing, she pushed the strands of hair that had escaped from her braid back from her forehead. "We will have to take one of the other paths."
    "Wouldn't that be too dangerous?"
    Yseult looked at the priest who had once given her the cuttings for her first herb garden here in Britain. "What would be more dangerous — attempting the cliffs or remaining where we are?"
    Illtud's chuckle was a welcome sound in the dark, given the threat morning might bring. "By all means, let us attempt the cliffs."
    * * * *
    There was little moonlight, but perhaps that was for the best, in case a Pict watchman chanced to glance towards the open fields between the church and the cliffs. Here on this empty, windswept space, there was nothing for them to hide behind: no bush, no tree, no house. They wore their darkest clothes and crouched low to the ground as they scampered from the protective walls of the churchyard to the nearly hidden pathway down to the beach. Yseult did her best to cloak them all in an illusion of shifting shadow in starlight, but she didn't know how far her powers would reach for a jumble of three dozen refugees.
    Even when they dropped down below the rim of the cliff's edge, they did not dare light a torch — it would be immediately visible from the promontory.
    "There are a number of caves in the cove," Yseult whispered to Illtud. Drystan had hidden somewhere in these caves during his period of madness after his marriage to the Armorican princess — one of the many times in their relationship that they had done their best to make a future together impossible. She pushed the memory away, concentrating on what was necessary here, now. "There's a very large cave beneath Dyn Tagell that