Free The Well of Shades by Juliet Marillier Page B

outlast whoever Circinn elects. I know it in my heart.”
    “That is an argument of faith, not of logic.”
    “I intend to employ both.”
    “You’ve another tool you can use, if she agrees,” Fola said. “You know your wife’s facility with scrying. Ask Tuala to look into your future. Ask her to investigate the future of your kingdom. Find outif what she sees in ten, twenty, fifty years is a Christian Fortriu. That is the vision Broichan most dreads. By leaving Circinn to its own devices and at the same time giving these Gaelic clerics an invitation to settle on our western islands, you may be opening the door to our worst fears, Bridei. Are you prepared to take responsibility for that?”
    “I am the king. Whatever unfolds, the responsibilityis mine. My heart tells me we need peace above all things.”
    Fola nodded and got up. She was a tiny woman, her head level with Bridei’s chest. Her long hair gleamed silver in the candlelight. “Very well, Bridei. I will go to my prayers and you to yours. I see a dark time coming; a difficulttime. It’s regrettable Faolan cannot be back with news for us before spring.”
    “He may be far later thanthat. He has business of his own to attend to as well as my mission.”
    “Oh?”
    “Family business. He won’t talk about it.”
    “That man has a family? You amaze me, Bridei. I’d always thought he came to life in a dark corner somewhere, fully grown and fully armed.”
    Bridei smiled. “He works hard to give that impression. Underneath, he’s human. I’m becoming more and more aware of that. Good night, Fola.I thank you for your balanced judgment.”
    “Thank me tomorrow, when we’ve worked out where we stand. Good night, Bridei.”

    C OLD BREATHS OF air whispered around the Well of Shades. A torch burned higher up the path, at the head of the precipitous steps down to this underground place, beneath the hill of Caer Pridne. Garth kept his own vigil above, his job to ensure Brideiwas undisturbed. Halfway down the steps crouched the white dog, Ban, the king’s loyal companion since a long-ago winter at Pitnochie, when the small creature had emerged from a vision and become reality. Ban did not come right down to the Well. This was a dark place, inhabited by unquiet memories and wounded spirits. It was a shrine of the Nameless God, a deity particular to men, and had beenover the years the scene of a cruel test of their loyalty. The old ritual, in which once a year a young priestess had died, had not been observed in the six years since Bridei took the throne of Fortriu. He had forbidden its practice and, because they knew him to be deeply steadfast in his devotion to the ancient gods, his court and his people had supported the decision, though not without some expressionsof disquiet. In place of the sacrifice, the king andhis druid performed a long vigil of obedience on Gateway night.
    This season, Bridei had missed that ritual, and tonight’s observance was in its place. He knelt alone by the square of inky water, his arms outstretched in a pose of meditation. He was well practiced in druidic observance; he had been sent to Broichan for his education at the ageof four, and was as fully trained in lore and ritual as any man might be who was not a druid. He calmed his breathing, slowed his heartbeat, made his body ignore the piercing cold of the subterranean chamber. Clearing the memories from his mind was more difficult. He could not visit this place without the awareness of his first Gateway sacrifice. Bridei had been the only kinsman of the old kingto step up and help when illness had rendered Drust the Bull too weak to perform his part in the ritual. That night, Bridei had helped drown a girl.
    He had used every argument he could to try to justify it to himself, every scrap of lore and history. He knew the dark god had required it; he understood that, by acting thus, he had won the respect of every man there present and, as a result, theirsupport when he stood