Mairi dived beneath the covers, clutching her child. One of the men laughed and said something just audible, and Eilan shuddered. She felt like following Mairi, but was too paralyzed to move.
Caillean cried out again in a ringing voice and took a step backwards to the hearth. The men seemed mesmerized by her gaze. They stood, staring, as she knelt and plunged her hands into the embers. Then suddenly she was rising, casting the coals at the intruders with both hands. She shouted again and the strange warriors gasped and recoiled; then they were gone, surging back over the doorsill, cursing in an odd sort of British and another tongue she did not know, knocking each other off their feet as they struggled to get away.
The priestess followed them to the door, laughing, and cried out something in a high voice, like the cry of a falcon. Then she slammed out the surging wind and all was still once more.
When they had gone, Caillean sank down on the settle by the hearth and Eilan, who was shaking to her very toenails, went to her. "Who were they?”
"Raiders, a mixed band, I think, from the North and from my country,” Caillean said. "More shame to me, for I am a woman of Eriu, brought here by Lhiannon.” She stood up and began to mop up the rain water that had come in.
Eilan quavered, "And what did you say?”
"I told them I was a bean-drui, a she-Druid, and if they laid a hand on me or on either of my sisters I would curse them by fire and water; and I showed them that I had that power.” Caillean stretched out her hands. The slim fingers that Eilan had seen her thrust into the coals were white and unharmed. Was this all a dream?
Eilan, remembering what Caillean had cried out after them, said hesitatingly, "Sisters?”
"By the vows I have taken, all women are my sisters.” Her lips twisted. "And I said if they went away and left us in peace I would lay a blessing on them—”
"And did you bless them then?”
"I did not; they are wild wolves of the forest, or worse,” Caillean said defiantly. "Bless them? As soon bless a wolf and his teeth in my throat.”
Eilan’s gaze returned to Caillean’s fingers. "How did you do that? Was that a Druid’s illusion, or did you really take fire in your hands.” Already she was beginning to wonder if her eyes had deceived her.
"Oh, that was real enough.” Caillean gave a short laugh. "Anyone with my training could have done it.”
Eilan stared at her. "Could I?”
"If you were taught, certainly,” said Caillean with a trace of impatience. "If you had the trust, and the will. But I cannot show you now. Perhaps in the Forest House, if you come there.”
The reality of what they had escaped burst over Eilan then and she dropped down upon the seat next to the priestess, shuddering. "They would…they would have—” Eilan swallowed. "We all owe you our lives.”
"Oh, I think not,” said Caillean. "A woman in childbed is small temptation even to such as these. And I might well have been able to frighten them from me; but you, yes; rape is the least you could have expected from them. They do not kill fair young girls; but you might well have ended a captive wife, if you so call it, on the shores of wild Eriu. If that is a fate that would have pleased you, I am sorry to have interfered.”
Eilan shuddered, remembering the feral faces of the men. "I think not. Are the men all like that in your land?”
"I do not know. When I left it I was still very young.” After a moment’s silence Caillean went on. "I do not remember either my mother or my father, only that in the hut where we lived—all of us—there were seven children smaller than I. One day we went to the market and Lhiannon was there. I had never seen anyone so beautiful.
"And something—I know not what—reached out to her, for she cast her cloak over me, thus claiming me in the oldest of rites for the gods. Years later, I asked her why she had chosen me from all the others there. She said that she had seen that the others there were cleanly dressed and that their parents clung to them. There was no one to cling to me,” she added somewhat bitterly. "In the home of my parents I was only another mouth to feed. Nor was my name Caillean; my mother—I do not really remember her—she called me Lon-dubh, Blackbird.”