“All right.” My brother turned his solemn gaze on me. “You won’t like this, Maeve,” he said soberly.
“Hush,” muttered Luachan, but I did not think anyone would hear us; all were intent upon Mac Dara.
“Ready,” said the Lord of the Oak, and the little pipe sounded its pure note into the silence.
“You know I can conjure with water.” As he spoke, Mac Dara lifted a casual hand and rain came, a thundering downpour all around the clearing. The fire fizzed and went out; people scrambled to put cloaks over their heads or to retreat under the trees. The deluge lasted for perhaps a count of five, then abruptly ceased. Steam arose from the stone basin. The two men standing before Mac Dara had not moved.
“You know I can conjure with fire.”
I made myself watch, though everything in me shrank away. Mac Dara put up a clenched fist. He opened his fingers and a ball of flame flew into the air to burst in a cascade of colored sparks, showering down into the stone basin. Within that bowl there was an answering glow, then the crackling of flames, and the fire flared up, renewed. For this, no more than another count of five.
“You know I can conjure with any material I choose,” Mac Dara
said. “How unfortunate that my challenger has selected something so…unexciting.” He cast his gaze over the two men. “But I suppose humankind might be persuaded to provide some entertainment for you, lords and ladies. Conn, Fergus!”
The two men bowed their heads.
“You will always obey my orders, yes?”
“Yes, my lord,” they said in unison. Both of them had the same dazed look as my bath attendant; I wondered if they understood anything of their situation.
“You will never refuse a command?”
“No, my lord.”
“Let’s test that obedience a little, shall we? Conn, have you family at home, back in that realm you came from?”
Conn, a tall, red-haired man, looked confused.
“Speak up! We don’t have all day. Have you a wife back home? Children running about the house? A fine son maybe? A sweet little daughter? Don’t keep me waiting.”
“I—I don’t remember, my lord.”
“And you, Fergus? What dear ones did you leave behind when you wandered into a mushroom circle and out of your own realm into mine? An aged parent needing his son’s support? A comely young wife your neighbor already had his eye on? Don’t be shy.”
“Nobody, my lord.” Stocky, broad-shouldered Fergus stared straight ahead, face wooden.
“Is that so? Turn around, lads.”
They turned to face the fire, and there, on the very end of the tongue of stone, was a little girl of perhaps five. She was dressed in a homespun gown and neat linen cap, and in her arms she clutched a grubby cloth doll. Her feet were a handspan from the drop; hungry flames reached up toward them. She stood frozen, her eyes wide with terror.
Outrage filled me. Forget Caisin, forget the geis; I simply could not let this happen. I was three strides down toward the basin when a hand came over my mouth, arresting both speech and movement.
“No, Maeve!” Luachan spoke in a fierce whisper.
For a moment I fought him; then I made myself be still and he
took his hand away. “Sorry,” I muttered, knowing I had been foolish. I could not help that child or stop what evil plan Mac Dara had in mind. I had almost jeopardized our whole mission.
“Me, too,” Luachan said as we both stepped back. “I am more sorry than I can possibly tell you.”
“Fergus!” Mac Dara rapped out as the child teetered above the flames. Not a single person moved to help her. “Do you know this little girl?”
“No, my lord.” The response was delivered in the same flat tone as his earlier speech.
“And you, Conn?”
An infinitesimal pause; a shadow of doubt. Then, “No, my lord.”
“So, if I ordered you to push her into the fire you would do so without hesitation?”
“Yes, my lord.”
A shiver of shocked delight ran through the crowd; they were hungry for spectacle.
“What if I told you this was your daughter, Conn? Your only daughter? She’s grown since you left, hasn’t she? How long is it, two years you’ve been with us now?”
The hesitation again, as if awareness were not entirely lost from the fellow’s mind, even after so long. “I don’t recall, my lord.”
“Then let me remove the charm from your thoughts, my friend, so you will remember more clearly.” A pass of the hands, deft and graceful.
Conn took a staggering step; cast a panicky glance around the clearing, taking in the crowd of beautiful folk, the tall trees, the fire, the child…
“Saorla!” he shouted, and in the same moment she cried out, “Papa!” Conn took two strides toward the girl. Mac Dara waved a casual hand and the man froze in place, one foot off the ground, arms reaching out vainly to snatch his child from harm.
“Not so fast,” said Mac Dara. “Fergus, walk forward and push the child into the fire.”
Fergus walked forward.
“No!” screamed Conn, still held immobile. “Fergus! No!”
Mac Dara lifted his hand and halfway along the tongue of stone Fergus, too, froze in place. The child was weeping, shivering, her eyes fixed on her father. Her feet were on the very edge; she was too terrified to step away and save herself. From the hem of her gown, a thread of smoke arose.
“Well, now,” said Mac Dara. “Let us see what Conn is prepared to do in order to save his child. What if I told you, Conn, that you must kill your friend here before your daughter can be brought to safety?”
“You godforsaken apology for a man!” Conn spat. “How dare you play these evil games? How dare you put a child’s life in the balance?”
Mac Dara folded his arms. He tapped his foot. “You didn’t answer the question,” he said. “So let’s raise the stakes a little higher.” There was an implement in his hand now; it resembled a shard of bone. “You shrink from harming your friend, though he would have killed your child without hesitation. What’s to stop me from letting him go right ahead and do so? Only my kind heart, Conn, only that. Take this weapon. You’ll find you can move your fingers.” He came forward and put the bone knife into Conn’s hand. “When I remove the immobility charm, you’ll have a three-way choice. Kill Fergus and you can pull her to safety. Plunge the knife in your own heart and I’ll see to it that she is spared. Do neither and she falls. Ready, now?”
The crowd gave a great gasp. Luachan muttered an oath. My stomach protested; bile rose to my mouth. Inside me someone was babbling,
This isn’t real; it can’t be. I want to go home.
“He’s bluffing,” Finbar said, his voice not quite steady. “He wouldn’t break the rules. It must be an illusion.”
How close were we to two hundred? I could not see the green-cloaked personage with his pipe, but others seemed to be counting now, all around the circle.
“One hundred and seventy-three,” Mac Dara said. “One hundred and seventy-four. On one hundred and eighty I will release you both from the charm.”
“Papa!” screamed the child as the hem of her gown caught fire. “Help!”
I could not look. I screwed my eyes shut and prayed. A sequence of sounds followed, a roar of fury, someone shouting,
No!
, a great cheer from the crowd as if they were mightily entertained by what was unfolding. When I dared look again, Fergus lay flat on the tongue of stone. Blood pooled around his still form. Conn was at the very end, arms outstretched toward the fire. Of the girl, there was no sign at all.
A moment’s terrible silence. Conn turned. “Where is she?” His face was ashen. “Where’s my daughter?” He took a few staggering steps toward Mac Dara. “You promised me! You gave your word! You said she would be safe!”
“Aolu!” called the Lord of the Oak, ignoring him completely. One of the fey men came forward. It was the golden-haired fellow who had won the position of Master of Portals.
“This man is no longer required in my household,” Mac Dara said crisply. “Take him back where he came from.”
“My daughter—” gasped Conn.
“Go home, fool. Your daughter died last winter, of an ague. Your wife has a new man and a fine baby boy. The lives of human folk are short, their memories shorter. Take him away.”
Conn gave a roar of fury and hurled himself forward, though the bone weapon still lay on the stones, red with his friend’s lifeblood. Aolu stepped out and arrested his wild progress, restraining him as easily as he might a wayward terrier.
“Go on, then,” said Mac Dara, not sparing a glance, and Conn, fighting, weeping, raging, was led away. “Remove the debris, will you? We must leave things tidy for my challenger.”
The very large man, Mochta, came forward, scooped up the limp and bloodied form of Fergus and tossed him into the fire. The flames flared up to receive the body; it would soon be consumed. Mac Dara pointed a finger toward the tongue of stone and the pool of blood lifted in a red mist, then dissipated. The voice of the crowd rose to a shout: “One hundred and ninety-nine, two hundred!”
The pipe sounded, its delicate timbre incongruous in this place of cruelty. Mac Dara’s demonstration of magic was over.
I bent double, retching up a watery bile. My heart felt like a
trapped creature dashing itself against the walls of its cage. My skin crawled. “He broke the rules,” I whispered, wondering if Caisin’s plot was over before it had begun.
Down by the basin, someone else had the same idea.
“My lord,” said Breasal, “the rule on unreasonable injury—”
“The child was not harmed,” Mac Dara said. “There was no child. And these men were merely the material of the spell. The references to injury surely do not apply to humankind.” His tone suggested the very idea was ludicrous.
“The rules make no distinction between races.” Breasal was dogged; in view of what we had just witnessed, either he was extremely brave or exceptionally foolish. “The loss of a life, no matter whose, goes beyond reasonable injury. Nobody would dispute that, my lord.”
Fraochan cleared his throat. “Does Lady Caisin wish to lodge a complaint? Is this a formal request that Lord Mac Dara’s display be ruled invalid? Without a precedent, it could take some time to determine—”
“Let’s ask her, shall we?” Mac Dara turned a genial smile in Caisin’s direction. She was looking remarkably calm. I would have thought a person of her mettle would be disturbed by the foul display we had just witnessed, even allowing for the differences between her kind and mine.
“What would happen if it were declared invalid, Fraochan?” she asked.
“Lord Mac Dara would be required to perform another demonstration of his magical craft, my lady.”
Caisin rolled her eyes. “Have mercy! In that case, I will raise no objection to his shameless flouting of the rules. May I proceed to my own display now?”
“Oh, please do,” drawled Mac Dara, speaking over his councilor. “This must be the most drawn-out conclave in history.”
“It’s time.” Dioman was beside us, come from nowhere.
“What about Swift?” I asked.
“He’s over there,” said Luachan, pointing. “On the far side. See?”
It was so. Swift was there, looking reasonably calm, with his
leading rein held by the man who had taken him away, and a small crowd of Caisin’s folk close by. Now I could see what they had been setting up earlier under cover of the dispute over the rules. Two wooden poles stood on one side of the basin, one pole on the other side. Those mallets I had seen earlier must have been used to hammer them securely between the rocks. Now Caisin’s people were doing something with the ropes, and…Surely they didn’t think they could tie Swift on one side while I stood on the other, keeping him under control with the flaming bowl between us?
“That won’t work,” I said, appalled. “It’s too far. I won’t be able to do it! And he’ll be too close to the fire. He’ll panic. He’ll hurt himself!”
Luachan said nothing. His face was chalk white, his jaw set. He looked the way I felt: as if we were heading out to certain death.
“This is how it’s supposed to be.” Finbar spoke with chilling certainty.
“You must come now,” said Dioman.
I couldn’t make myself step forward. My body was full of my beating heart.
“I’ll look after you, Maeve,” said Finbar, and moved down toward the basin. His back was straight, his head held high. In his encircling arms rode the little dog.
Muttering a prayer to the gods I did not believe in, I followed.
Down among the crowd of tall folk, I couldn’t see far ahead. Dioman had left us, heading for the far side of the basin. I could hear Swift whinnying, and I could hear the whispers, too. On one side, “Look at her hands! How unsightly!” And on the other side, “Isn’t that child Lord Sean’s son? Look, Coblaith, he has your dog!” And someone else put in, “If you could call it a dog.”
Finbar led Luachan and me to the place where two poles stood side by side, three arms’ lengths back from the edge of the basin; he seemed sure that was where we should be. A pair of fey men clad in Caisin’s colors stood there. I glanced across to see Dioman fastening Swift’s leading rope around the single pole on the opposite side. Other folk in blue and silver were there, and before I
had time to put together the pieces of what I saw, one of them tossed the end of a long rope from that side to this, where it was deftly caught. Now the rope spanned the breadth of the basin, a distance of at least ten strides. What in the name of the gods were they doing? Swift was restless now, turning his head, lifting his feet, twitching his tail. Dioman gestured, making the other folk step back to give him room. A second long rope followed the first.
Finbar advanced to stand beside the two poles, and now here was Caisin, lips curved in a smile, eyes bright as stars.
“We’re ready,” my brother said.
“My lady,” I blurted out, “I can’t do this at such a distance—Swift is already upset—what are you—”
“You will do it, Maeve.” Her tone was calm. “You must. Finbar, give me the dog.”
He stared at her, his arms tightening around the little bundle in his cloak.
“Take the dog,” Caisin said, glancing at her men. “There is no time to waste.”
They wrenched the creature from Finbar’s arms; he stood silent with tears streaming down his cheeks.