Gossamer Axe Read Online Free Page A

many kings, but they have not recast Brehon Law yet.”
    “That is what I think, and that is what father thinks. But it seems the Christians do things differently. Mother wants me to be a Christian.”
    “But you are not a Christian!”
    Chairiste plucks a piece of tall grass and, in the timeless manner of children who stand gawkily at the door of adulthood, chews absently on the sweet stalk. “I want to be a harper. Mother disagrees: Christian women stay at home and tend their men.”
    “And so?”
    “And so I have decided to run away to the harpers’ school to the north. People say that I play well, and maybe I do. But I want to do more than just make music. Any
timpanach
can do that. I want to learn to heal, to work magic with the harp. I cannot learn that here.
    “I am thirteen, I have been proclaimed a woman. I am old enough to be taken as a student. Sruitmor is the master of the Corca Duibne school, and I saw him once at the Great Fair. I heard him play, too. He seems…” Chairiste smiles, impulsively presses her lips against Siudb’s cheek. “He seems a strange man. Like a Druid, and yet not. Stern and kind both.”
    Again, Siudb tightens her hand on Chairiste’s shoulder. “If you are running away, then so am I.”
    “But, your singing—”
    But Siudb’s hand fades, and Chairiste has only enough time to throw her arms about Siudb before the bedroom in Denver came back, flickered in and out of existence as Christa blinked at it with tear-filled eyes, then vanished again as the harper buried her head in the pillow and willed herself to sleep—and dream—again.
    Midsummer Night. Crickets. Bonfires showing starlike at the tops of surrounding hills. Song and laughter across the miles, across the fields and pastures.
    O dear Goddess, not this! Gracious Mother
—
    Older by four years again, Chairiste and Siudb, having leapt the flames of the fire together, scamper away from the light. Under their arms they carry the harps that they painstakingly built during their first year of study. They are rude instruments, made by inexpert hands, but their tone is sweet.
    Dear Goddess, no!
    But the dream continues, unfolding methodically. It is a reckless, foolhardy thing they do, but they are young; and Chairiste sincerely believes that she can do anything, even unto listening with impunity to the music of the Sidh.
    Go back, Judith. Go back. O Brigit, she doesn’t hear me! She can’t hear me. It’s already over.
    They approach the fairy mound and hear the crystalline tones of harp and voice. Chairiste looks at Siudb, puts her finger to her lips, then kisses her. Siudb giggles. The full moon burns down on the land, laving the mound in silver.
    Chairiste touches several strings of her harp lightly, trying to follow a strain of the Sidh music. There is magic there, more magic than Sruitmor can ever teach her. The sequence of notes turns outward, then in on itself. She feels her arms tingling. Yes… yes, this is it. There is something
here
…
    Siudb gasps. The tall, silver-haired figure of the Sidh bard is stepping across the grass toward them, a gaping archway of darkness open in the hill behind him. His eyes glitter as though a piece of the moon lies in each one, and the harp in his hands glows palely.
    He sounds a few strings. The mortals wilt before him.
    In her bedroom, Christa screamed. “Judith! Run!”
    But her friend was centuries away. Christa sat up, mouth dry, and switched on the bedside light. “Siudb,” she whispered. But the Gaeidelg name came uneasily to her tongue. She had been speaking English for too many years. It was much easier to call her lover
Judith
, to call herself
Christa
, to call her instrument not a
cruit
but a harp. The old names were gone, and the old ways along with them.
    She hunched over in bed, hands to her face. “Judith. Judith.” But Judith was still with the Sidh, still a captive of that realm of twilight and shadow, still a dweller in that cursed palace of ice and