Eowain found Eithne in the Commemoration Hall. The granite blocks were centuries old, yet gleamed from long silent years of torchlit vigils. Tapestries hung from the stones, depicting the ancient tale of Thaynú: How she arose from the sea after a great and terrible deluge that drowned all the lowlands. How she came with her sons and daughters, last survivors of an ancient golden empire in the southern seas, to the lands of Iathrann.

This was the place where that miracle happened. Upon this hill. Eowain felt a moment of awe as the brazier-lights played over the particoloured tapestries. Each displayed a different scene in the legends of the Great Mother Goddess Thaynú, and he was surprised to find himself there, under Her hill.

Eithne knelt before a bronze statue of a woman. He came in, girded for war, mailed shirt ringing. She turned about with a small cry and rose to her feet. Her eyes were dark, and the green of them seemed to shine. She looked to him like a hungry wolf in expensive robes with her back up against a stone corner. In one hand, she clutched a sheaf of old, wrinkled parchments, stained and nearly shredded. The epistles he'd sent to her, when she was away in Dolgallu.

Her other hand dropped out of sight. He knew she had a dagger ready there, hidden behind her skirts. The dagger decorated with the dark yellow schorl in the hilt.

He stopped, caught in her fearful gaze. Will I be stricken to stone?

"Lady—." His voice stuck in his throat. "Lady. By the Gods, I do attest, no woman upon the Abred has eyes as green and striking and lovely, my lady." He cleared his throat, put his fist sheepishly to his chest, and saluted her.

The fair skin of her cheeks flushed a rosy pink, and freckles like bronze flecks glowed like embers in the firelight. Her lips parted and she gasped, "What?" Her eyebrows rose and the reflected light of the braziers grew from a flicker to a flame as her eyes widened.

He looked down at the floor, pulled at the collar of his mailed shirt. "Your—uhm—your eyes, my lady. They are—" He shook his head. "I mean—" He looked up at her. "How do I start, Eithne? What do I say? Your eyes— They were like sunshine when all I knew was rain. In the darkest moment of my despair, I longed to look into your beautiful eyes, to feel the warmth of their light." His throat closed, then feelings rushed from his tongue in a torrent. "Eithne, the sound of your voice calls me by what I wish to be. It ripples through my blood and melts my heart. In all the chronicles and tales of beautiful ladies and brave warriors, I see now that all the praises of those poets were but prophecies of you." He reached out a hand to her, unsure if he should touch her. He turned over the hand, beseeched her understanding. "Eithne, I want to kiss your rosy lips, and touch your blushing cheeks."

Here eyes went round and she blinked at him, then looked away. Her hair, liquid copper burnished by the ruddy braziers' light, fell again over her face. "Then— This is real now?"

He bent to one knee. "If love is measured by how far one can fall, my lady, or judged by how low one is willing to crawl to save it and make it last, then none have ever loved another so well as I love you." He looked to her face and sought understanding. "Love endures, my lady. It bears a Prince's Truth."

There was a clatter upon the smooth, polished granite floor. The dagger with the yellow schorl in the hilt rattled as it came to rest.

She looked up from it, then away again, tugged at a strand of hair.

"I have endured much tonight as well," she said. Her chin rose as she faced him again. "You've been dead to me, then alive again. And I have—." Her voice went quiet. Her chin fell again. "I have seen things here." Her green eyes met his. "Terrible things." Something haunted lay there.

He did not know what she might have seen, what terrors might still lurk ahead for them. Who can know such things? But he reached out and gently touched the epistles still clutched in her hand. "And what of them? Did any one of them tell you I would make a bad husband?"

She scowled at him, the freckles across her nose wrinkled. She cocked her head and put a finger to her chin. A hint of a smile played on her lips. He wondered for a moment what else might bring such a look to her face.

"You know?" she said. "In fact, they didn't." She put her hand to his cheek, his ten-days' beard cleaned and trimmed, the braids re-done. The broad width of his polished ring-mail gleamed in the firelight. She drew him up to his feet.

He looked her in the eye, stepped closer to her. Then he spat in his hand and held it open to her. "Then what say you, my lady?"

Eithne grinned at him, spat in her own hand. "Clap hands, then, and a bargain." She put her hand firmly in his. Her green eyes glimmered, and heat leaped from their hand-fasting like flames from a hearth.

—33—

Look for the next installment in this Continuing Tale of The Matter of Manred: The Romance of Eowain.

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