5
Liadan
She smelled him before Séamas brought the news.
It was not the Fáidh — or not entirely; the gift did not traffic in scent, which was a wolf's domain. But she had known Ciarán for twenty-six years and the particular smell of him — woodsmoke and damp wool and the faint iron of the blade he wore at his hip that he had been carrying since their father died — was one of the earliest things her body had learned to recognise. It reached her through the lore-hall's narrow window on the late-afternoon air, and she had set down the lore-roll she was transcribing and pressed her eyes briefly closed before Séamas appeared in the doorway.
"There is a man at the gate," Séamas said. "He gives his name as Ciarán Mac Fáelán. He says he is your brother."
"He is," she said. She kept her voice e
