Sevenwaters 04 Heir to Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier

Author:Juliet Marillier [Marillier, Juliet]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781440608889
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2010-08-29T18:45:44.940000+00:00

By the time Cathal woke, I had almost persuaded myself not to tell him what had happened. The need to explain why I had refused an offer of help was especially awkward in view of the fact that he had made it clear he felt no friendship toward me, only a bizarre sense of obligation. I knew he wouldn’t explain what he had meant about the ills that had befallen my family somehow being his fault. He never explained anything. If I wanted to find out what that was all about, I would have to work much harder at earning his trust. And perhaps my nocturnal visitor had been right after all. Perhaps Cathal was the trickster I had first believed him to be, and I was marching into battle in company with an enemy. Perhaps I was letting my feelings get the better of me. Whatever they were. Not pity; the creature had certainly got that wrong. One couldn’t pity a person like Cathal. He intrigued me. I had never met anyone who was so much an outsider. It seemed to me he worked against himself, unable to fit in, therefore making a point of shifting himself still further beyond the rules of us ordinary folk. And yet there was a profound unhappiness in him. If being odd, eccentric and unpredictable was his choice, it wasn’t one he made gladly. I would swear that what he wanted above all was to fit in somewhere—to belong. Perhaps, at Inis Eala, he had found a place where that was possible. Johnny had done Cathal no favors by bringing him to Sevenwaters. No doubt the man wished he’d never clapped eyes on me.

In the end, I told him everything as we packed up our camp after a quick breakfast. A strange visitor, a cryptic warning, an offer of help if certain conditions were met.

“So I said no,” I told him. “I said I trusted you to find the way for me.”

Cathal had been silent for most of my lengthy recounting; he stayed silent now, concentrating on fastening the straps around his pack.

“Maybe that was foolish,” I said as I adjusted Becan’s position in the sling. It was day. The sun could not be seen, but a hazy light filled the forest around us and beyond the latticed branches of the tall trees the sky was golden. In my dry clothes, with my cloak over the top, I was comfortably warm at last. I could feel my courage coming back.

“You should have woken me,” Cathal said. “What if the creature had attacked you? That’s the point of my being here, to protect you.”

“You looked tired. I wanted you to get some sleep. And it didn’t attack me. As things turned out, if you’d been awake it probably wouldn’t have spoken to me. It tried to convince me you were a danger. Scum, I think that was the word used.”

“Ah, well,” Cathal said, “I’ve been called worse before. As for the way, we’ll find it together.

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