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  In Memory of My Mother Lois Lawhead

  Eamon

  Like many another fella, I remember where I was when word of Lord Brecan’s death came my way. I was about joining the younger lads at their weapons on the field below the ráth. I like to keep my arm strong and help with the training whenever I can. Seghan is a spruce hand with the spear, and a shrewdy with feints and backhand thrusts and such. Everybody likes the pretty flowers, so they say—but sometimes I think a warrior should tend to the roots of our craft as well. I know I do.

  Ach, well, I had collected my sword from the hall and was heading across the yard when visitors came clopping through the gates. I knew them on sight—a party of seven Coriondi warriors with their lord, King Cahir, at the head. Cahir is a good friend to us and our king’s closest ally. Still, he had not been seen at Dúnaird since the shameful incident at that disastrous Oenach when our Conor went and got himself mixed up with that mad druid, Cadoc, or Mádoc, or whatever was his name.

  By the sword in my strong right hand, I never believed Conor a thief. Neither thief nor liar is our Conor. If a fella ever wanted to see what honour on two legs looked like, all he had to do was catch a glimpse of Conor mac Ardan and he’d know it right enough.

  I still ent got to the end of it all, but the long and short was the trouble got Conor exiled from the tribe and made outlaw, so he did.

  We lost Conor, sad enough, but we also lost Fergal and Donal, and that is a bitter blow, I can tell you. Those two would not be separated from him and so they followed him into exile. Nor have they been heard from since—any of them.

  And now, here was Cahir, come nosing around. I stood aside as they rode into the yard and watched them dismount, but I did not go to see what had brought them here. Truth, I begrudged Cahir for his part in Conor’s exile. He could have stopped it and he stood aside and said not a word.

  I went on to join the lads at practice, but could not keep my mind on the task. Like a nervous sparrow, my attention kept flitting back to Lord Cahir and that lot and wondering why they had come and what news had brought them.

  Ach! What news it was.…

  King Brecan mac Lergath, Lord of the Brigantes, was dead. Murdered!

  That was the word from the wider world and it was on everyone’s lips the moment we strolled back into the yard. ‘Is it true?’ I shouted up at Braida, the young lad on guard duty that morning. ‘Brecan dead?’

  ‘That’s what they’re saying,’ he called back from his place on the walkway above the gate. ‘Slaughtered like a pig by the Scálda.’ Wiping the sweat from my face, I thought, Aye, and there’s a fox put among the geese for sure.

  Braida was talking to me. I glanced up, squinting in the sunlight. ‘Say again?’

  ‘If you go to the hall, will you send word back?’ He gestured to the gate. ‘I’m here the whole day long.’

  ‘I expect you’ve heard the best of it,’ I told him. ‘If there’s anything more to be said, you’ll find it out soon enough.’

  I hurried to the hall then and entered to find the lords already on their second or third welcome cup. A few of Ardan’s advisors, including Liam, our battlechief, occupied one end of the long board, with my lord Ardan, and Cahir and Dara, the Coriondi king’s battlechief, at the other end. Dara I knew from previous meetings at gatherings and such, and reckoned him a good man with a blade.

  Hanging my sword and spear on the wall, I started toward the table. My lord Ardan saw me and hailed me, saying, ‘Here, now! Eamon, to me. Friend Cahir has news for us.’

  ‘Sit with us,’ said Cahir. ‘Have a drink to wet your tongue.’ He shoved the cup across the board to me as I lowered myself to the bench across from him. Ardan, jar in hand, sat in his chair at the end of the table. He poured more mead into the silver welcome cup.

  ‘Brecan Brigantes is dead,’ Cahir announced. I noticed he could not keep the smile long from his face. He was enjoying the chance to tell us something we did not know.

  ‘Scálda killed him?’ I raised the cup to my lips and took a long draught of the cool, sweet liquor. ‘What was it—a raid on Aintrén?’ I took another drink, handed the cup back, and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand.

  ‘Nay, nay,’ replied Cahir. ‘I’m hearing it was Balor Evil Eye himself did the deed.’

  My eyes must have grown wide to hear this, for both Cahir and Ardan shared a chuckle at my expense, and my lord said, ‘It appears that Brecan was on his way to a secret meeting some little way beyond the southern border.’

  ‘A meeting with Balor Berugderc?’ This did not make sense to me. I shook my head, trying to think what that could mean. ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Ach, well, the dog-eaters sent his poor dead carcass back home on his horse.’ He gave me a knowing look. ‘And that brute of a battlechief of his—’

  ‘Cethern,’ I said. ‘His name was Cethern.’

  ‘Aye, that’s the fella,’ confirmed Cahir. ‘Him they killed, too, and him they sent back in little pieces scattered along the road.’

  ‘Bastards,’ huffed Ardan. ‘Puffed-up gloating bastards.’

  ‘The Brigantes are outraged, as you might expect. Demanding an honour price and all.’

  ‘How much?’ wondered Ardan, lifting the cup to his lips.

  ‘Twenty pounds of gold, forty pounds of silver, a hundred horses, and fifty hounds,’ Cahir said, shaking his head at the audacious amount.

  ‘You might as well ask for the moon and the stars and all the fish in the sea,’ concluded Ardan, swirling the mead in the cup, ‘for you will never see so much as a shrivelled bean from the black-hearted Scálda scum.’

  ‘Too right,’ agreed Cahir, taking the cup Ardan offered.

  ‘I suppose,’ I ventured, ‘fixing the honour price at such a ridiculous sum is just to show how grieved and angry they are.’

  ‘A hundred horses…,’ muttered my lord, shaking his head; he poured more of the sweet golden nectar into the cup before passing it back to me. ‘Or,’ he suggested, ‘they mean to impress everyone with how great a king was Brecan Big Brócs.’

  ‘Big Brócs!’ hooted Cahir. ‘I like that.’ He leaned his sturdy bulk forward and put his arms on the table. ‘More likely that fluffy little chit of a queen set that absurd high amount in order to disguise the simple fact that their top-lofty lord, for all his grand ways, was not well loved.’

  ‘Either by his wife or his people. They say even his dogs avoided him!’ added Ardan, and lofted the cup in mock salute.

  We drank in silence for a moment, passing the cup hand to hand, listening to the low murmur of voices from the other end of the board and so
unds from the yard outside: women talking, laughing, shouts of children running around. Occasionally, a horse would whinny, or a dog would bark.

  ‘Mark me,’ said Cahir, growing sly, ‘there is a stink to this that festers in the nostrils.’ He wrinkled up his face as if that stench got up his nose just then.

  ‘Have you ever known Scálda raiders to return our dead to their tribes?’ I said, feeling the liquor spreading its warm, soft fingers through me. ‘They have never done that before. You are right, lord’—I lifted the cup to Cahir—‘there is more to this than we know.’

  ‘Aye, I’m right. I know it,’ said Cahir, taking a long pull at his cup, then wiping his moustache on his sleeve. ‘I’m thinking there’s legs to this rumour that Brecan and Balor had a secret meeting of some sort and a fight broke out. That’s what I’m thinking.’

  ‘Now we’ll never know,’ concluded Ardan, gazing into his cup. Then, glancing up, he said, ‘Will you stay the night? I will have Aoife sing and play for us. We can talk some more.’

  ‘Ach, well, that is tempting,’ replied Cahir. ‘But I will move along down the road. I just came to tell you the news and see if you had any word from your Conor.’

  ‘Neither peep nor cheep,’ I said. ‘Though there are those among us who wish otherwise.’

  ‘Ach, don’t tell me,’ said Cahir ruefully. He gazed into the depths of his cup. ‘Accusing your Conor of the crime—that was all part of old Mádoc’s cockeyed plan, I am embarrassed to say.’ He looked to Ardan. ‘I’m sorry I had any part of it. Believe me, it was a mistake I regret. I only hope to make it right one day.’

  ‘What’s done is done,’ replied Ardan. ‘Are you sure you won’t stay—have something to eat at least?’

  ‘Ach, nay,’ said Cahir, rising. ‘I thank you for the drink, my friend. But I have one more stop to make. Lord Sechtan will want to hear the news.’ He paused, rubbing his chin as he reconsidered his plan, then said, ‘I don’t suppose you would care to send a messenger to him?’

  ‘Stop here tonight and we will go together in the morning,’ suggested Ardan. ‘I have not seen Sechtan since the Oenach, and the Robogdi were that close to joining Brecan. It would be good to sit down together and see where their loyalties lie now.’

  Cahir smiled and accepted the offer. ‘Maybe I am getting old,’ he said, ‘but a dry bed and a tight roof are too appealing to resist. Very well then, I will stay and we will ride out together tomorrow.’

  The Coriondi lord went out to inform his men, and I took up my sword and begged leave to return to my weapon’s practice. Lord Ardan walked with me from the hall and called a boy to go fetch his stable master to prepare a place for his visitors’ horses. As the lad raced away, my lord murmured, ‘How I wish Conor was here.’ He turned to me. ‘Where do you suppose he is now?’

  I shook my head. ‘By my shield, if I knew I would go and bring him back.’

  1

  Conor stood at the water’s edge with waves lapping at his feet. The late sun threw his shadow across the glistening slate shingle. A solitary seagull soared effortlessly in the clear blue sky, dipping and gliding high overhead, and a light landward breeze lifted stray wisps of his light brown hair—grown longer now in the months of his slow and painful recovery—long enough to wear it in a tight braid gathered at the side of his head like one of the ancient kings whose exploits the bards turned into song.

  Indeed, dressed in his splendid new clothes he appeared the very image of a prince of Eirlandia’s noble line. Thanks to his host’s generosity, he now possessed a siarc of gleaming scarlet edged in heavy gold thread; brown breecs the colour of oak leaves on the turn; fine brócs of soft deer leather that laced halfway to the knee; and a wide black belt studded with tiny gold rivets in the pattern of sea waves, and a cloak of tiny blue-and-black checks. This magnificent attire, like the healing care given him in the last many weeks, was a gift from a grateful benefactor: Gwydion, King of the Tylwyth Teg and Lord of the House of Llŷr, whose daughter Conor and his friends had rescued from the Scálda.

  Just now, Conor paused in his stroll along the water’s edge and gazed out across the green-grey water of the Narrow Sea, suddenly overcome by the realisation that time was passing in the wider world. How much time, he could not say. Here, in the Region of the Summer Stars, time behaved differently. He did not know why and understanding, much less any explanation, remained just beyond his grasp. Tír nan Óg, and the island realm the faéry folk called Ynys Afallon, was part of, and yet somehow separate from, the wider world beyond its shores.

  Conor stood on the strand, his dark eyes searching the shimmering horizon, in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Eirlandia lying out on the rim of the sea. All the while, he massaged his arm and shoulder with his free hand. The wounds that had laid him low for such a long time were almost healed; he could move his arm freely and strength was fast returning. His side no longer ached every time he moved, nor sent a pain stabbing through him when he stooped or ran. According to Eurig, chief of the faéry physicians, his feet were on the path to health restored and he would soon be able to travel freely once more.

  He felt more than ready. Although, curiously, as strength returned, the homeward pull diminished. Each day that passed, it seemed to Conor that he forgot a little more the cares and concerns of his homeland: the war with the Scálda, its ever-present urgency, its towering importance, receded a little more; even his memories seemed to grow more distant—as if they belonged to another Conor in another time and place. Lately, he had begun to fear that if he and his friends did not go soon, they would never leave.

  As he looked out across the gleaming silver sea, he reminded himself once again that, as pleasant as life among the faéry was for him and Fergal and Donal, they could not stay. He told himself that the Land of the Everliving was not their home and they were needed in Eirlandia. He was needed in Eirlandia. The thought conjured an image of Aoife, long hair streaming in the wind as she, like him, stood on the strand gazing out to sea. She was waiting for him; his beloved, his betrothed was waiting, willing his return. If not for Lord Brecan, that devious and deceitful schemer, the two of them would be married by now.

  But the fatal intrigues of the arrogant and ambitious Brigantes king had set Conor’s feet on a different path. Perhaps, Clíona, that fickle and flighty daughter of destiny, had decreed they would forever remain apart. Conor cringed from the thought, and felt a pang of longing pierce him to the marrow. Aoife, dearest heart of my heart, how cruelly you have been treated. I will come back for you.

  Hearing a crunch of footsteps approaching over the strand, he tensed. No doubt it was his physician come to fetch him and chide him for his errant ways. A moment later, a voice called out, ‘Here you are, brother—and me looking for you half the day.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Conor without turning around. ‘Here I am.’

  ‘Did Eurig say you could come out?’

  Conor gave vent to a resigned sigh as Donal came to stand beside him. ‘Ach, well, good Eurig did not say I couldn’t go out.’

  ‘They are wonder workers, these faéry healers,’ Donal observed.

  ‘They are that,’ agreed Conor. ‘If they could mend you, I suppose they could put anyone back together.’ He turned to his friend. ‘It is that good to see you up on your two hind legs—a sight I never thought I would see again.’

  ‘Was I that bad, then?’ wondered Donal in a matter-of-fact tone.

  ‘Worse—at least, worse than me.’ Conor put out a hand to grip Donal by the shoulder. Despite his friend’s recent ordeal, he seemed much his old self: his broad good-natured face glowed with good health; his long, thick moustache was neatly trimmed, his jaw clean shaven. Certainly, his solid, well-muscled frame—clothed now in the fine brown breecs and splendid siarc, and a cloak of faéry weave that combined blue and brown and violet in a check pattern—had never looked better. But his pensive black eyes hinted at new depths of knowledge or understanding that Conor had never noticed before. The observation prompted
Conor to say, ‘I am sorry you had to suffer so. If only—’

  Donal shook his head. ‘It was not your spear that caught me. You brought me here and that was the saving of me. You have nothing to feel sorry about.’

  Conor accepted this without comment. Bending down, he selected a small, flat bit of slate, hefted it, and gave it a quick flip that sent it flying out into the bay. The stone skipped four times before sinking.

  ‘Not bad,’ observed Donal. ‘But is that the throw of the fella who used to win all the contests when we were sprouts?’

  ‘I did not throw with my left hand then,’ Conor told him, lifting his injured right arm slightly. He rolled his shoulder and swung the arm to loosen it.

  ‘A good warrior would be able to throw with either hand,’ Donal reminded him. ‘A good warrior can skip a stone seven times at least.’

  ‘Seven times?’ Conor challenged. ‘Go on then, let’s see how a good warrior skips a stone.’

  Grinning, Donal picked up a round, flat sliver of slate from among the countless small stones at his feet. He stood, hefting it in his hands for a moment, squinted his eyes and said, ‘Six.’

  With that, he drew back his arm and, with a whipping motion, released the stone. It flew low over the water before dipping and skipping six times over the surface.

  ‘Six, is it?’ said Conor, searching for a stone. ‘Six is fair, but it is not seven.’ He bent and chose another stone, then prepared to let fly.

  ‘Three,’ said Donal, squinting his eyes and looking out into the bay.

  ‘Seven,’ Conor insisted. He threw again, awkwardly, and the stone sank after the third skip. ‘Ach, well, you distracted me.’

  ‘Then by all means, try again. Find a better stone this time.’

  Conor did and, as before, just as he was about to let fly, Donal said, ‘Five.’

  The stone made five equal skips before plunking into the water some little way out in the calm water of the bay. This process was repeated six more times: with each throw Conor announced a number, Donal countered it with another—sometimes higher, sometimes lower—and each time the stone skipped the number of times Donal predicted.