Tower of Thorns by Juliet Marillier Page B

his drawn-up knees. “It’s safer if you know nothing. Safer if you just go. I want you to go, Lily. Please, just do as I ask.” His voice was rich with feeling. He looked at her as if she were the last good thing in his world. She knew that, in his heart, he did not want her to leave him. But she had not entirely lost sight of reality. When rest time was over, her handmaid would come looking for her. If she could not be found, Muiríol would tell her mother, and her secret expeditions would be over. If she wanted to see Ash again—and she did, oh, so much—she must leave him now.
    â€œFarewell, then,” she said, rising to her feet. “I hope you will soon be recovered.” It sounded stilted and formal, and in no way conveyed the feelings in her heart. “I wish you would let me help.”
    â€œYou cannot help,” said Ash. “But I will treasure the memory of our meeting; I will hold it close when you are gone. Good-bye, Lily.”
    She made her way down the stair with her thoughts in turmoil; she had hardly a word for the wee boatman as he ferried her over from the island. She ran all the way home, and was just in time to clamber up the tree and in her window before Muiríol came to wake her from her nap. All through supper time and afterward, she could think of nothing but Ash: his pale skin, his dark, dark hair, his sorrowful eyes. His sweet words and the way he had looked at her.
    Tomorrow, she resolved, when it was night and she was at long last alone again. Tomorrow I will take salves and soft cloths and some proper food and drink for him. Tomorrow I will find out who he is and why he is in the tower. Tomorrow . . .

7
    Blackthorn
    E ven when I was young and content and thought life would bring good things for me and mine, I didn’t believe in miracles. Magic, maybe, of the kind wrought by the fey. But that wasn’t the same. Magic could seem to deliver the remarkable, the impossible, the stuff of wild dreams, but such gifts all too often came with hidden tricks, nasty surprises, the drop of poison in the golden chalice, the venomous lining in the silken garment. A real miracle, such as the survival of a dear old friend whom one had believed long dead, was truly wondrous.
    Close on thirteen years. That was how long it had been since I’d last seen him, when he’d waved Cass and me farewell and headed off on one of his scholarly expeditions, the one that had ended up saving his life. When disaster had struck us and our fellow conspirators, Flannan had been far away in Mide, working in some monastic scriptorium and, in effect, out of Mathuin’s reach. Not that the chieftain of Laois wouldn’t be able to track someone across Mide and Ulaid and Dalriada if he chose to—I still lived in fear that one day he would find me. But he wouldn’t remove a man by force from within a house of prayer. Not if that house lay within King Lorcan’s borders. Lorcan of Mide was married to the High King’s daughter.
    Those thirteen years had marked both of us. Flannan’s dimpledsmile came less often than it once had, and his green eyes were not as limpid as they had been in the younger man. His hair bore traces of gray. But he was still himself. Flannan, my friend. Flannan, who had introduced me to the man who became my husband. Flannan, whom I had known since I was a child growing up in the south. His return was indeed a miracle.
    For a while, after he’d been made welcome by Oran and Flidais and had settled into the men’s quarters at Cahercorcan, we simply enjoyed the remarkable gift of finding each other again. Our talk was of the good times past: the way Flannan had introduced me to Cass, his friend and fellow scribe; the long arguments the two of them used to have over obscure points of law or calligraphy; the fierce debates we three had conducted in lowered voices as it became more and more apparent that the new chieftain of