"Call me also to thy mother's memory," Toran the boaster cried presently, when all was made ready, and Coloman bade draw the irons from the brazier—"if thou goest so far, Darling of the King."
"I will remember," Aonan said: and then fire and flesh met.
*****
At the next Beltane feast Cathal the Red slept beside Acaill in the burial-place of the kings at Brugh, and Guthbinn sat in the high seat, Toran the boaster at his right hand. But Coloman the Druid stood on the tower-top, reading the faces of the stars; and along the road that wound its dusty way to the country of the Golden Hostages there toiled two dark figures: a woman and a man. Now the woman was hooded and masked, but under the grey hood the moonlight found a gleam of ruddy hair; and the man she led by the hand and watched over as a mother watches her son. Yet the woman was Danish Astrild, and the blind man was Aonan-na-Righ.