Son of the Shadows (35 page)

moment, that what I chose to do was wrong. You are your mother's daughter. I do not have it in me to believe your choices can be faulty. Surely good must come of this in the end. There, sweetheart, weep if you will. Later you must find Aisling and plan your visit. Perhaps you should travel by cart; it may not be wise for you to ride."

"Cart!" He had jolted me out of my tears. "I'm not an invalid. I will be safe enough on the little mare.

We'll go gently."

He was true to his word. Just how he achieved it I do not know, but by the eve of the men's departure for Tara, my news was known to Liam and to Sean and also to Conor, but perhaps he had known already. I was aware, constantly, of how different this was from Niamh's experience.

For my sister there had been the cold disapproval, the harsh censure, the shutting out, the hasty, forced marriage. For me there was simply acceptance, as if my fatherless child were already part
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of the family at Sevenwaters. My transgression broke more rules than Niamh's. I still could not understand why the family had considered

Ciaran an unsuitable match for her, why their reasons had been kept secret. There had been no child on the way. Yet Niamh had received none of the love and warmth that surrounded me.

There was a terrible injustice about it. I was aware of my sister as she moved stiffly about the house, closed off behind her invisible barrier, eyes expressionless, arms wrapped around herself or hands clutched tightly together as if she could not afford to let down her guard for one instant, as if she believed us all to be her enemies.

Despite the unfairness of it, I was deeply grateful to my father for easing my path so miraculously. News travels fast. I went downstairs before supper, and there was Janis herself, making sure there were enough goblets and platters and knives for the household and the guests.

Janis was ageless. She had been my mother's wet nurse; she must be quite old in years, but her dark eyes still gleamed with keen interest in whatever was new, and her hair, scraped back into a severely plaited bundle at the nape of the neck, was as black and shining as a crow's wing. Her family were traveling folk, but Janis had settled at

Sevenwaters long ago; it was with us she belonged.

"Well, lass," she said with a grin, "no need to keep the secret any longer, I hear."

"My father told you?"

"He put the news about in his own way. Not that I didn't know. A woman does know. I'm just glad you're well. You'll carry safely for all you're a little thing."

I managed a smile.

"I'll help you when it's your time," Janis went on quietly. "She might not have the strength for it by then.

She'll tell me what to do. I'll be the hands. There now, no tears, lass. This news has brought a smile to your mother's face. That makes him happy, the Big Man. You've no need for shame."

"It's not that," I said, blinking hard. "I feel no shame. It's my mother, and Niamh, and—and everything.

It's all changing; it's changing too fast. I don't know if I can keep up."

"Here, lassie." She put her arms around me and gave me a firm hug. "Change will follow you.

You're one of those who invite it. But you're a strong girl. You'll always know what's right for you and your babe—and your man."

"I hope so," I said soberly.

Looking around the hall that night, it occurred to me that this might be the last occasion for some time that we were all together. Liam sat in his carven chair, his stern image somewhat softened by the young wolfhounds that played a game of pursuit around his booted legs. My brother stood next to him, the

resemblance as always striking. Sean had the same long face and hard jaw, the features of a leader in the making. Conor's was the same face again, but subtly different, for it was ever filled with an inner light, an ancient serenity. Niamh was seated silent beside her husband. Her back was held straight, her head high, and she did not look at anyone. Her hair was veiled, her dress demure in the extreme. So quickly, it seemed, was her light quenched, which had shone so strongly as she danced and dazzled at the feast of

Imbolc. Fionn ignored her. On my sister's other side was Aisling, keeping up a one-sided conversation with no difficulty at all. And Eamonn was there, seated in the shadows, tankard of ale between his palms.

I tried to avoid catching his eye.

My mother was tired, I could see it, and distressed to see her elder daughter so changed. I saw her glancing in Niamh's direction and looking away, and I saw the little frown that never left her brow. But she smiled and chatted with Seamus Redbeard and did her best to make things seem
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as they should be.

Father watched over her, saying little. When we had finished our meal, my mother turned to Conor.

"We need a fine tale tonight, Conor," she said, smiling. "Something inspiring to send Liam and his allies on their way to Tara strengthened. There will be many departures, for Sean escorts the girls west in a day or two, and we shall be very quiet here for a time. Choose your tale well."

"I will do so." Conor rose to his feet. He was not a very tall man, but there was a presence about him that made him imposing, almost regal in his white robe. The golden tore around his neck gleamed in the torchlight, and above it his features were pale and calm. He stood quiet for a little, as if summoning the right story for this particular night.

"At this time of parting, of new ventures, it is apt to tell a tale of those things that have been, and are, and will be," Conor began. "Let each of you listen and make of this tale what your heart and spirit will, for each brings to the thread of words his own bright vision, his own dark memory.

Whatever your faith, whatever your belief, let my tale speak to you; forget this world for a while and allow your mind to go back through the years, back to another time when this land was untrodden by our kind, when the Tuatha

De Danann, the Fair Folk, first set foot on the shores of Erin and discovered unexpected opposition from those who were here before them."

"Fine tale, fine tale," rumbled Seamus Redbeard, setting his cup heavily down on the table.

"The Tuatha De were folk of great influence, gods and goddesses all," said Conor. "Among them were powerful healers; warriors with an awesome capacity for regeneration; practitioners of magic who could drain a lake dry, or change a man into a salmon or turn a soul off his chosen path with a flick of the fingers. They were both strong and willful. And yet they did not take Erin without a good fight.

"For they were not the first on these shores. There were others here before them. The Fomhoire were plain folk, folk with both feet on the ground. Some tales say they were ugly and deformed; some that they were demonic. Thus speak those whose understanding is limited to the surface of things. The Fomhoire were no gods. But they had their own crafts and their own kind of power.

Theirs was an ancient magic, the magic of the belly of the earth, of the bottomless caves, of the secret wells and the mysterious depths of lake and river. Theirs were the standing stones we have employed for our own rituals, the solemn markers of the paths of sun, moon, and stars. Theirs were the great barrows and passage tombs. They were older than time. They did not simply live in the land of Erin. They were the land.

"Then the Fair Folk came, and others after them, and many were the grueling battles and subtle acts of treachery and feigned overtures of friendship that occurred before at last there was a kind of peace, a delicate truce, a dividing of the land that was so inequitable that the Fomhoire would simply have laughed at it, had not they been so weakened that they dared not risk further losses.

So they agreed to the peace, and they retreated to the few places grudgingly allowed them. The Tuatha De possessed the land, or

thought they did, and they ruled here until the coming of our own kind drove them in their turn into secret places, Otherworld places, under the surface, in the deep forests, in the lonely caverns beneath the hills, or back to the depths of the ocean across which they had first journeyed to Erin. So both races of magical beings seemed lost to this world.

"Time brings change. One people follows another and holds sway for a span, and then a new conqueror comes to take their place. Even for our people, even within the span of our fathers'

fathers' lives, we have seen this. Our own faith was stretched very thin for a time. Even here, in the great forest of Sevenwaters, its sacred lore was all but forgotten. For once that lore exists only as a memory in the mind of one very old man, it is as frail and tenuous as the gossamer wing of a butterfly, as a single thread of a cobweb. We nearly let it slip through our fingers. We
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came so close."

Conor bowed his head. There was a hush in the room.

"You have brought it to life again, Conor," my mother said softly. "You and your kind are a shining example to us. In these times of trouble you have preserved the old ways and fanned the spark into a flame."

I glanced at Fionn; he was a Christian, after all. Perhaps this had not been the wisest tale to choose. But

Fionn did not seem to be perturbed. Indeed, I wondered if he had even been listening. He had his fingers lightly around Niamh's wrist, and his thumb was moving against her skin. He was looking at her sideways, with something like amusement in his expression and a little smile on his lips. Niamh sat rigidly upright, her blue eyes wide and blind like those of a trapped creature staring into the light of a flaring torch.

"We forget sometimes," Conor resumed the tale, "that both these races, the Fair Folk and the Fomhoire, dwelt here a very long time, long enough to set their mark on every corner of Erin.

Every stream, every well, every hidden cave has its own tale. Every hollow hill, every desolate rock in the sea has its magical dweller, its story and its secret. And there are the smaller, less powerful folk who have their own place in the web of life. The sylphs of the upper canopy, the strange, fishlike dwellers in the water, the selkies of the wide ocean, the small folk of toadstool and tree stump. They are a part of the land as great oak and field grass are, as gleaming salmon and bounding deer are. It is all one and the same, interlinked and interwoven; and if a part of it fails, if a part of it is neglected, all becomes vulnerable. It is like an arched doorway, in which each stone supports the others. Remove one and the whole structure collapses.

"I have told you how our faith weakened, and was driven into hiding. But this is not a story of the

Christian way and how it grows in strength and influence throughout our land. It is a tale of custodianship and of trust. It is a tale you ignore at your peril when you go forth as an ally of Sevenwaters."

There was a pause.

"Very cryptic," murmured Liam, reaching down to scratch one of the dogs behind the ear. "I sense the tale is not yet begun, Brother."

"You know me well," Conor responded with a half smile.

"I know druids," said his brother dryly.

Conor was standing just where Ciaran had stood to tell the tale of Aengus Og and the fair Caer Ibormeith, whom he created in my sister's image, with her long, copper hair and her milk white skin. I

glanced at my sister, wondering if she was thinking the same, and I saw her husband's fingers where they played against the palm of her hand, stroking, teasing, pinching so that she flinched in sudden pain.

"Come and sit by me awhile, Niamh." My voice rang out clearly in the silence while Conor pondered the

next part of his tale. "We have seen nothing of you. I'm sure Fionn can spare you for a little."

Fionn's lip curled in a show of surprise. "You are bold, young sister," he said, arching his dark brows. "I

ride to Tara in the morning; I will be without my lovely wife for the best part of a moon, maybe longer, since she has been prevailed upon to desert me. Would you deprive me still further? She is such a ...

comfort to me."

"Come, Niamh," I said, suppressing a shudder as I looked him straight in the eye and held out a hand toward my sister. Everyone was watching now, but nobody said a word.

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"I ... I would . . . ," said Niamh faintly, but her husband still held her wrist imprisoned. So I got up and walked across and I slipped my hand through her other arm.

"Please," I said sweetly, smiling at my sister's husband in what I hoped was a placatory manner, though I

suspect the message of my eyes was somewhat different.

"Oh, well, there's always later," he said, and his fingers uncurled from her wrist.

This is the Ui Neill, Liadan

. Sean was frowning at me. The voice of his mind was stern.

Don't meddle

.

She is my sister. And yours

. How could he forget that? But it seemed they had all forgotten when they sent her away.

Niamh sat down by me as Conor resumed the tale. I felt her draw a deep, shuddering breath and let it out all at once. I kept her hand in mine, but loosely, for it seemed to me I had to move slowly, as carefully as if I walked on eggshells, if I were to win back her trust.

"This is a tale of the first man to settle at Sevenwaters," said Conor gravely. "His name was Fergus, and it is from him that our folk are all descended. Fergus came from the south, from Laigin, and he was a third son with little chance of claiming his father's lands. He was one of the fianna, those wild youths who ride out to sell their swords to the best bidder. Well, one fine summer morning Fergus was separated from his friends right on the edge of a great wood; and try as he might, he could not find their trail. And after a while, lured by the beauty of the arching trees, the dappled pathways and slanting light, he rode on into the old forest, thinking, I will go where this path takes me and see what adventure comes my way.

"He rode and he rode, deeper and deeper into the heart of the forest, and the farther Fergus traveled the more that place took hold of his spirit and the more he marveled at its beauty and its strangeness. He felt no fear, even though by now he had completely lost his way. Instead, he was compelled to go ever forward, high on hills crowned with great oak, ash, and pine, down into hidden valleys thick with rowan and hazel, along streams fringed with willow and elder, until at last he reached the shore of a magnificent lake, glittering gold in the light of late afternoon. He did not know if this journey had taken a single day or two or three. He was not weary; instead, he felt refreshed, reborn, for something had awoken in his spirit that he had never known was there until now.