The Soul Thief Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  BOOKS BY CECELIA HOLLAND

  Copyright Page

  For Bob and Jackie Batjer, most excellent friends

  CHAPTER ONE

  “You coward, Corban. Loose-strife! Changeling! No-Son! So I call you! You do no good, you only cause me trouble!”

  Corban stood, his jaw clenched, silent, enduring the pounding of his father’s wrath. He felt all their eyes on him—his mother, hunched at his towering father’s side, his brother like a mouse down by the table, his little sister and his grandmother at the hearth—but no one spoke out for him. They kept still, out of the way, while his father roared.

  “For the sake of your family, I order you to go! Find some shred of manhood in you and take up a sword with the High King!”

  “No,” Corban said.

  He stood fast, staring at the floor, unable even to look his father in the face. If he obeyed he was nothing. If he went to the High King he would stand under the King as here he stood under his father, he would never have what he wanted.

  He had no idea what he wanted.

  “Damn you! You are not my son!”

  “Father, please!”

  That clear voice rang through the hall. Corban lifted his head. Behind him his sister Mav had come in the door. She walked swiftly up, her head high, and went by him and stood before their father, and laid her hand on his arm.

  “Sir, don’t speak so. Don’t say what cannot be unsaid.”

  The old man turned his gaze on her, his shaggy grey hair wild around his head like the bursting of a sun, and smiled, as he always smiled for her. He said, “I wish you were the male, and he the female. I would have no doubt of you.”

  “Father,” she said. “I beg you. Make peace with him.”

  He swung his gaze toward Corban, who lowered his eyes, unwilling to look his father in the face. “Peace? He gets no peace from me! You will do as I bid you, Corban, and go offer your service to the High King. Or leave this place and this family forever!” At the last word his voice cracked like a whip.

  Corban clenched his fist. “You give me no choice,” he said, low, and turned, and went toward the door.

  Now suddenly his mother cried out, not words, not even his name, but a wail, rising above the sudden low rumble of voices. He caught a glimpse of his little sister, watching him openmouthed. He reached the door and went out into the bright sunshine, and stood there, surprised at his own calm, looking around him at the farm yard, the stone wall of the byre, the mound of cut turf, the bondsmen walking away down toward the green meadow, where the cows were already grazing. Past everything the glitter of the sea dazzled his eyes. He drew a deep breath. He turned, and his gaze found the long path that led past the byre, past the bake oven and the pigsty, up over the hill and away.

  He started off. This part was easy enough, he had been going this way all his life. When he came to the place where the path turned up the hill Mav caught up with him. They walked along together a while, climbing the grassy treeless hill. He glanced at her, striding along beside him, with the wind blowing her long black hair back, her cheeks ruddy.

  She murmured as she walked, and turned, looking back, her lips moving. He went along a step ahead of her, toward the top of the hill. He began to think of the way ahead but could not. He was just going away. He had his cloak, and his sling in his belt, nothing else. His heart sank.

  He said, suddenly, “I’m not a coward.”

  “What are you, then?” she said.

  Beside him she strode along, her long skirts whipping around her legs. Her words rang in his ears. He had no answer; he knew nothing of himself save what he would not be. She was watching him, her eyebrows raised, as if he might say something, but he could not.

  Her gaze jerked suddenly off around past him, back the way they had come, and a low moan burst from her.

  He looked; he saw nothing. They had come to the top of the hill, where a grey rock thrust up through the green sod, its surface rough with patches of lichen. He said, “What’s wrong, Mav?”

  She gave a shudder, as if something shook her from top to bottom, and lowered her eyes. She did not answer. From the belly of her cloak she drew forth a loaf of bread and a jug.

  “Take these.”

  “You are good,” he said, grateful, and took them, and set them on the rock. He took hold of her hand and looked into her face. “What is it?”

  “Ah, I don’t know,” she said. She was staring away toward the sea. With her free hand she drew the cloak tight around her again, the wind buffeting her, plucking at her hair. The linen hem of her gown fluttered. “I think only that something is coming. Someone.” Her long cold fingers tightened around his.

  He looked away back down the path, toward the farm. He doubted her somewhat. They saw few travellers, out here at the edge of the world. Still, what she said impressed him. She was long-sighted, his sister. She knew what happened before it did, she could find what was lost, she could see what was hidden. Whenever before he had seen her this way, generally then something did happen, not always evil, but often evil; he remembered especially how she had twitched and murmured like this for two days before a sudden storm off the sea wrecked their fishing boats and killed half their cattle.

  Some said she made the evil happen.

  He held tight to her hand. He knew that was not so. She was good, she was true as steel; his father was right about her.

  He wondered if she foresaw his banishment. He said, “Father will let me come back, maybe tomorrow. You know how he is.” But he was not sure. The fury that had stiffened him had melted away and he knew nowhere to go. Off to the west the land rose toward the low hills in the distance, all turning brown now as the winter crept toward them. Suddenly his homefire seemed the only warm place in the world, his family the only people who would ever love him.

  Mav drew her hand from his grip; she gripped the cloak in her fist, her face staring fixed at the sea. “I will try, Corban. I will talk to him.” She raked her hair away from her face. Then suddenly she flung her arms around his neck.

  “Corban. I’ll make him let you back, or we’ll go away together. Now, go into the woods and wait, and meet me here tomorrow, when the sun is well up.” She pushed abruptly away from him. “Will you be hungry? Did I bring you enough?” Her eyes turned steadily away from him, toward the sea.

  He thought she looked beautiful, her hair flying in the wind, and her cheeks red and her eyes bright. He knew she would not leave their home, even to go with him.

  He said, “Tomorrow then.”

  She came around to him again, leaning on him, and kissed his cheek. She looked deep into his eyes, their noses almost touching.

  “I think I shall bring you home again, Corban,” she said. “But better it would be if you came home yourself, alone, and faced him, and made him take you as you are.” She kissed him again and stood back, frowning, her gaze running suddenly over him, and she made as if to pull off her cloak and give it him.

  He laughed at that; he caught her hand. “No, no, I am warm enough.” And she shrugged. Without a word, she turned, and went off back down the path to t
he farm.

  He watched her go, his mirth fading.

  They had been born on the same day, one-two out of the womb; folk said they were as alike in their looks as two eggs, and yet he saw nothing of himself in her. Mav was straight and clean, she thought long on everything, she had no fear, and cared for all of them. Corban was neither wise nor brave, his father wanted him to be wise and brave, and so, clutching always to himself that part of himself his father could not touch, he was foolish and slack. Whatever else he would be, whenever he began to form a thought of that, he saw his father there ahead of him.

  He took the bread from his wallet, and ate it. He went away over the hill, and down through the oak wood, hunting squirrels with his sling. Against them he was a brawny man, he knew their ways as they coiled around the oaks, and waited patiently and struck when they grew too curious or bold.

  He worked his way so along the edge of the great wood, where the going was easier, following the line of meadows and bogs where the red deer grazed. He watched for the bright splashes of nut trees and for berries. He flushed a covey of little marsh hens that fluttered up and away across the meadow, their wings buzzing. The grass was turning yellow, dying back for the winter, yet the day was warm and he had no use for his cloak and wore his shirt down around his waist. Going down a long brushy hill he came on fresh bear droppings full of seeds. Twice he killed squirrels in his hunting and hung the stripped bodies from his belt.

  The sun rolled away into the west and he was far from home. Ahead of him the forest lay thick and shadowy, and to his right, to the north, the hills sloped down and he could see the sheen of water in the distance and knew it to be the long lake. He walked that way across a bog, following an old path marked with stones, and went down a steep long slope toward the water. Coming around the flank of a hill, he reached the shore.

  Afar he could see men in a boat on the lake fishing. The curling water of the lake rippled along the shore. The sun was sinking down and he was tired suddenly and cold, and he pulled his shirt up, and wrapped his cloak around him. Against the face of a pocky grey boulder he made a little fire and spitted his squirrels.

  At home they would be gathered to eat, his father and mother sitting together, and his younger brother taking them their meat and bread and filling the cup between them. His sisters next beside them, waiting until they were done, and then the bondsmen and their wives and children, all around in a ring. His spirits drooped. He wished suddenly he were among them, in their shared warmth, waiting for the common meat, telling some joke to make them laugh. He remembered his little sister, how she had looked when his father cast him out, her eyes round, her head twisted on her neck to watch him go; she had been sitting by the hearth, with his grandmother roasting apples, and her eyes followed him the whole way across the room to the door.

  He would never go back. He did not need them, he would go on by himself. He needed nobody. He thought of the great inland farm, Dun Maire, where a girl lived who had looked on him well, and more, the last time he was there. He could go there. He might never go back again to his home.

  He thought of Mav, and his mind faltered; he loved his sister best, alone, of all of them. Certainly, in a flash, he hated them all, all but Mav: his father, his mother who had said nothing, his brother Finn, who mumbled and bowed and prayed like a madman to convince his father he would make the priest the old man wanted.

  He loved Mav. He would go back, for his sister’s sake. A prickle of uneasiness passed through him. Surely he would go back.

  The sun set; while it sank down to its rest it swept a wash of color over the sky above and over the lake below, until all the world streamed with the strong ruddy light. The rosy hue faded at once. On the lake, the little boat rowed slowly away. Corban felt the dark settle over him, fitting down around the glow of his fire. He felt his aloneness like the cold air all around him, the singleness of his being, untouched.

  He shuddered off that feeling. In the morning he would go back to the rock above the farm, and Mav would have won their father over, and they would let him go home again. He ate the squirrels, sucking the bones empty. He would work harder than usual for a while, to make up for it all, and soon enough there would be another quarrel.

  He flung the bones into the trees. Wrapping himself up in his cloak, he said an old charm against fairies, even though his father wasn’t there to hear it, and lay down to sleep. His father was a stout Christian, and they had pounded the Cross and the Trinity into him all his life, but it was no use to him, any of it. Mav went her own way, and some of the bonders, while praying loudly to his father’s face, made offerings to the old folk; but he put no more faith in the sidhe than he did in Christ, since they had let Christ defeat them.

  There was no place for him, the world was not of a piece with him. He was outside everything, belonging not even to his own family, not to anywhere or anyone. Lying there, watching the fire die down to glowing ash, he felt empty as the hollow of a beggar’s hand.

  The fire darkened, showing a single dull red eye under the weight of ash. The lake glimmered under the moon, and he slept.

  “Mav,” her father said, “don’t talk to me anymore about Corban. I want nothing more to do with him. Damn him, I hope he never comes home.”

  “Ah,” she said, “what are you saying?” She flung her hands up. They were standing in the center of the hall, with all the family gathered for the evening meal; the chatter and laughter of the other people smothered their talk. She took her father by the arm. “Once more, Papa. Forgive him, just once more.”

  “Bah.” He shrugged her hand off. Under the great wooly ridges of his brows his eyes burned hot. He gripped her by the arm, hard, but his voice was gentle.

  “For you, my dear one, my darling, I would do almost anything, but this time—no.” He bent and put his lips against her forehead, and went off down the long room.

  She stayed where she stood. Around her the bondsmen and their wives and children stuffed themselves with bread and fish. By the fire somebody was telling a story. The room was smoky from the fire, and too hot. All her nerves rippled again. Everything in her was churning. Her mind strained toward her brother, off in the wilderness.

  Her father was wrong. Corban was unformed as a chick in the egg, but in him there was a rare goodness: not what their father wanted, but finer still. She had to bring him home again. But some cold dread dragged her down. For an instant, she thought of something else, something terrible, but it was gone before she could lay her mind on it.

  She went away from the fire, to the cool by the door. Her mother sat at the table still, picking at a piece of meat, her headdress all undone and hanging around her ears. Mav’s little sister came running up, holding out her hands, and their mother took her and lifted her onto her lap. The two heads bowed together, the child’s cheek smooth and the mother’s rough, the child’s hair black and the mother’s grey.

  Her younger brother Finn came up. “What did Papa say?”

  “You should hope he lets Corban come back,” Mav said, with an edge in her voice. She thought he sometimes steered their father against their brother. “Or next he will be wanting you to go off to King Brian’s court.”

  “Not me,” Finn said. He was eating nuts by the handful; he spoke through a mush of filberts. “I shall go to be a priest, and make sermons all over Ireland.”

  “I hope not spitting on people as you do it,” she said, brushing bits of nut off her sleeve.

  Finn snorted at her. “When I am a bishop you will like me better.”

  “When you are a bishop, I will fall over speechless with surprise.”

  Again in her mind, some great wave rose, like the breast of the sea, as if to break up and drown all her thinking. She shut her eyes, queasy in her stomach, struggling against that feeling of dread.

  When she looked up again Finn was gone. She folded her arms over her chest, looking out over the hall. Without Corban there it felt only half-real to her.

  He had to come home. S
he would make sure that he came home. Over there by the hearth, one of the women began to sing in a high, light voice, an old song of Saint Brendan, and all around the room, others joined in, a seamless cloak of voices. She leaned against the wall behind her, shivering in the draft. She had a song to sing, but they would not hear it; and she bit her lips to keep them silenced, and hugged her arms around herself and waited.

  Corban slept without dreams. When he came awake finally in the morning, he thought again of not going home at all, but of walking on, along the margin of the lake, and finding somewhere else to live. Dun Maire, or O’Banlon’s homestead farther north. O’Banlon with his great flocks and herds always needed men. But he thought of Mav and suddenly a fierce wild yearning arose in him to see her. He remembered how she had been the day before, uneasy and restless. He thought suddenly that he should have gone back with her to the farm, as she had said, and challenged his father.

  What would he have said? He knew he was no hero. What his father wanted of him he could not do. To strut and shout as he had seen such men do, to fight not to save himself and his own but merely to further the wishes of the high king—another man’s wishes—

  “You coward, Corban.”

  He felt the words still like a whip, even in his memory, like a lash across his face. He wondered if he were in fact such an empty man as his father said. He climbed up along the steep hillside, against the margin of the oaky wood, the going harder this way, mostly uphill, when the day before he had gone so easily down. Crossing the bog, he cut through the forest toward his home. The leaves of the trees were turning and falling and underfoot he trod on carpets of thick damp forest rot, hard to keep a firm footing on. He was hungry. He reached the top of the hill and looked out toward the sea, and saw there a column of smoke rising up, black and rolling.

  For an instant, he thought, What are they cooking, to make so great a smoke?

  Then he began to run, his heart pounding, straight down into the glen. Thick billows of smoke rolled off across the sky. He sobbed as he ran. The downward hill gave him long, long strides. It seemed so far still. His lungs were bursting. He flew by the rock where the day before he had met his sister and turned down onto the path.