Dreamer's Pool by Juliet Marillier Read Free Book Online Page A

up a mournful chorus, I decided Conmael was nothing but a meddler. In the old tales, the fey were full of tricks. A curse on the man, I shouldn’t have trusted him an inch. He’d taken me out of one hellhole to drop me right in another.
    It was too cold to let myself sleep. The chill would carry me off before starvation got a grip. Grim would have solved the problem by performing his nightly exercises, pulling himself up on a branch of the oak or walking on his hands awhile. Even thinking about that made me tired. He’d used some of that strength to get me out; bade me run and not look back. But what about him? What about the rest of those poor sods?
    A soft noise in the dark. I sat up, peering over the edge of my hollow. Had that been only a creature padding by, or had I caught the tread of a human foot? Earlier in the day I’d stopped on a rise, and when I’d looked back I’d seen men with dogs, searching along the road; men in Mathuin’s colours. Morrigan’s curse, I was shivering so hard my nest of foliage was trembling all around me.
    No sound now, but light; somewhere not far away, someone was making a fire. The warm glow of it touched the mossy trunks of the oaks and turned the foliage to a rich tapestry: green silk, gold thread. The fire called me as a dryad calls a lovelorn shepherd or a mermaid a lonely fisherman. A wonderful smell came wafting my way: was that chicken soup? My mouth watered.
    Now someone was approaching, not furtively but in measured fashion. ‘You can come out.’ Conmael’s quiet, authoritative tone. ‘Unless, of course, you prefer to sit there and freeze to death.’
    No contest. I dragged my cramped limbs up to stand and hobbled out.
    ‘Come this way,’ the fey man said, offering a supportive arm.
    I did not ask whether the fire might draw pursuit after me. If Conmael could make the roof of Mathuin’s prison cave in, I imagined he’d have no trouble casting some kind of invisibility charm over us for as long as he needed to. Who knew what he could do?
    By the gods, the warmth of this little fire was good! And yes, there was a pot of soup warming on it, and a dry blanket which he passed me to wrap over my wet things, and another blanket, folded, to sit on. I sat, swathed, and thought how dangerous it was for a person to become so weak she might do almost anything for a fire and a full belly.
    Conmael filled a cup from the pot and passed it to me. ‘Careful,’ he warned. ‘Don’t drop it.’
    I willed my shaking hands to take control; lifted the cup to my lips; took a mouthful. Shut my eyes in utter bliss. I could almost understand those old stories in which folk exchanged their first-born child for a bowl of broth.
    ‘And drink slowly,’ he said, ‘or you’ll make yourself sick.’ Then, after a moment, ‘But I don’t need to tell you that; you’re a healer. And now you’ll need a healer’s name. I imagine you won’t be wanting to use either of your old ones.’
    ‘You imagine right.’ This was the best meal I had had in my life. Ever. If that was because it was fey food, and if that meant drinking it changed me into a toad or whisked me off to another world, too bad. I was going to finish every drop and probably lick the cup clean afterwards. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the question of names, and how he knew I had two, but right now it didn’t seem to matter.
    ‘There’s bread,’ said Conmael. ‘Take just a little at first – here.’
    When he passed me the chunk of oaten bread, I had to blink back tears. In the lockup, when the men had dreamed of roast pork, sausages and plum pie, I had longed for fresh, honest bread.
    ‘Thank you,’ I made myself say. The first bite transported me to that place Grim had described: barley fields in sunshine, yellow flowers, bare feet paddling in a stream. I had indeed become weak, to be thus overwhelmed by simple things. ‘Blackthorn,’ I said, trying to get control of myself. ‘That is the name I choose.’ It