The crow gave a cry and flew away.
Meriel gazed at the lough, its peat-stained waters glistening in the sun, the far shore blue-gray in the atmospheric haze. She saw—faintly—a smear of white smoke from a small village on the hillside across the water. Here, the lough was four or five miles wide, though its length stretched nearly thirty miles end to end. From the southernmost end, the River Duán flowed down to Lough Dubh, and from Lough Dubh on an ever-widening course to the sea.
The sea . . .
Meriel suddenly, desperately, wanted to get to the shore. The water called her, the gift that Dhegli had placed within her burning in her mind. If she could touch the water, she could call him, and he would hear her longing and respond, swimming up the river’s current from the Westering Sea.
He would come to her, she would go to meet him and they would swim away together. . . .
Heedless of the aches and protests of her body, she started down the hill. “Meriel!” she heard Owaine shout behind her. “Wait!” She paid no attention to him, almost falling down the hillside through the bramble, the staff somehow managing to keep her upright. She could hear Owaine thrashing through the woods after her.
At the bottom, she slogged through a marshy fen, the cold black water filling her low boots and soaking her clóca to the knees. Midges rose in a cloud around her, biting incessantly, but she ignored them. Then she was on the firmer ground of grassy hummocks, and the oaks were thin and far apart, and the High Road was just ahead of her on the other side of a low fieldstone fence, and not more than fifteen strides beyond it, the water.
“Meriel!”
The rolling embrace of the sea pounded in her head. She could almost feel Dhegli, as if he were standing invisible alongside her. If she could reach the water, she could touch him, she could send her words flowing out to him . . .
She heard the sound, so sudden and loud that she knew that she must have been hearing it for some time without realizing it: the thudding of hooves on soft earth. She looked to her left: from the north, two riders were coming fast: gardai, she saw, bearing the colors of Tuath Gabair, and each with a spear in his right hand. They’d seen her: one garda jumped the wall of the High Road as she watched, the hooves of his mount tearing at the loam of the field. Meriel hesitated—the shelter of the trees was too far away; the water now seemed terribly distant. She reached the wall and clambered over it onto the road, every muscle screaming protest, the binding around her broken ribs not enough to stop her from crying out in pain. Her staff clattered onto the rutted ground as she half fell onto the road.
“Meriel! Use the staff!” The voice wasn’t Owaine’s but Keira’s. Meriel bent to pick up the staff: as the first of the riders thundered down at her, as she saw the blade set on its long pole gleam in sunlight as he lowered his spear to run her through. She grasped for the staff and lifted it in a desperate, late attempt to strike the spear and knock it aside.
She expected the stunning shock of yew against oak or, worse, the terrible ripping of the spearhead through her body. She was unprepared for the scream of the rider: in the instant spear touched staff, Meriel seemed to see the staff leap outward, the wood flowing like water around and through the weapon, up the man’s arms, spreading and twisting even as Meriel was thrown back by the force of the contact and went tumbling on the dirt of the roadway. But her attacker had stopped in mid-charge, and when she pulled herself up, she stared at a living sculpture: rider and horse caught and frozen, the expression of murderous intent still on the man’s face, the horse captured in mid-stride, its head turned and mane flowing with the wind of its movement.
Made of oaken wood now, not flesh. Meriel’s staff itself was gone, consumed.
The other garda reined in his steed. For a moment, Meriel and he stared at each other and she could see the fright in his wide eyes. When Keira and Owaine came out from the shadows of the trees, the man visibly shuddered, taking a final glance at his wood-snared companion. Keira gestured at him, as if she were about to cast a spell.
The garda yanked at the reins of his horse, turning his mount so hard that they almost went down as hooves flailed at muddy ground. He fled.
Meriel crouched in the dust of the road, panting. A crow landed on the wooden-bladed spear of the transformed garda and cawed once at her. She heard Keira and Owaine climb over the stone wall.
“Rather pretty, isn’t it?” Keira said. “Very lifelike.” She patted the horse’s neck. The crow flapped from the spear to sit atop the rider’s head. It lifted its tail and a splotch of white dropped, leaving a streak from the top of the garda’s armored cap to his ear.
Meriel had no words. It was Owaine who spoke. “Slow magic?”
Keira nodded. “I said that the staff was one of Seancoim’s. He had enchantments in all of them. Seancoim had an ability that only a few who use slow magic can master—that of being able to place the spell into an object, where it stays until released.”
“You can do that, too,” Owaine said. “Can’t you?” Keira only smiled in answer. She nodded appreciatively at the rider. “I didn’t know what the staff would do, only that it would do something.” She tilted her head appraisingly at the garda and horse. “That’s a rather nice effect, I think.”
Owaine came over to help Meriel up but stopped when she shook her head at him. She rose slowly to her feet on her own, holding her side. Keira turned to her. “There are several encampments of gardai around Doire Coill,” Keira said to her, “and they’re sending patrols to ride the High Road on this side of the lough. They’re also around the north and west reaches, or so the crows tell me. That’s why I sent for you; to show you and warn you. I really didn’t expect you to go wandering out to give yourself to them.”
“I . . .” Meriel released a loud sigh. “I’m sorry. Are the Tuatha at war, then?”
Again it was Owaine who answered. “It’s
you
they want, Meriel.” He gestured at the wooden rider. “He wasn’t looking to capture you; he wanted you dead. Which means Doyle Mac Ard still wants you dead.”
Keira nodded her agreement. “I watched the patterns of the mage-lights; there are clochmions and a few Clochs Mór among those watching the forest. They know you’re in Doire Coill.”
“Are they going to attack?” she asked, but Keira was already shaking her head.
“They’re not that stupid. A few foolish gardai went in, but the trees sang to them and took them into the hidden places—they won’t return. The soldiers remember the wolves and crows, too. And now this will be a further reminder.” Keira shook her head. “No, they won’t attack; not yet, anyway. For now, they’re willing to have Doire Coill act as your prison.”
“But now I’m out of the prison.” Meriel gazed at the lough. “I need to go to the water before they come back.”
“Meriel,” Owaine started to protest, but Keira put her hand on his shoulder.
“Let her go, Owaine,” Meriel heard her say. “She will make her own decisions. All you can do is help her. Go on.”
In a few running footsteps, Owaine was beside her. “Here,” he said, and swept Meriel up before she could protest, lifting her over the wall on the far side of the road and climbing over after her. “You really don’t need to come with me,” she told him.
Owaine shrugged. “I get to make my own decisions, too,” he told her. He walked alongside her as she limped across the rocky verge to where wind-driven waves lapped at the rocks. Meriel walked into the achingly cold water until it reached her knees before glancing back. Owaine had stopped at the shore; Keira remained standing where she’d been, alongside the immobile horse and rider in the road. Meriel could feel this water’s connection with the distant sea and the sense of that link made her tremble with the remembered change, caused the gift Dhegli had placed within her to awaken fully. The scale of Bradán an Chumhacht burned in her mind and she could feel Dhegli—far distant to the north and west—answer the call.
I hear you,
he seemed to say.
I’m coming to you, Meriel . . .
Then the bond vanished, as quickly as it had come, making her wonder whether she’d truly felt it at all. She called to him again, her lips moving with his name, but there was no answer.
I’m coming to you, Meriel . . .
It would be effortless to let herself change, easy to go and meet him. It would be simple, and it would be what she wanted. Dhegli would have to come up the Duán; there was no other way for him. All she need do was fall forward and the feel of the water would turn her and she could swim down to meet him as a Saimhóir with the flow of the water.
Effortless. All she need do was desert Owaine, who had followed her all the way from Inish Thuaidh. All she need do was leave Keira behind, who had rescued her a few quick breaths from death. All she need do was forget about Nico and the Taisteal, who had at least treated her kindly enough. All she need do was forget about Sevei, who had sacrificed her own life for Meriel just to keep a promise she’d made.
All Meriel need do was to think of herself first and follow the easiest path.
She glanced back at Owaine and Keira. Following the path of least resistance was what she’d done most of her life. She’d done that with her mam, with her da, with her life as the Banrion’s daughter. It was what she’d done in her personal life as well: with Lucan, with Thady, and—aye—with Dhegli. If she left now, she was abandoning those who had helped her to the revenge of Doyle Mac Ard and the Tuatha when they realized that she was gone.
The water lapped at her thighs, beckoning to her and warm with promise. The change tingled inside her skin, making her forget the bruises, the torn muscles, the broken ribs. The desire to go into the water tugged at her, but this time she resisted its allure.
She turned. She walked out of the water onto the rocks and mud and chill air.
“I need to go back to the cave and dry these clothes,” she said to Owaine. “Do you mind if I lean on you while we walk?”
32
Casting Bones
“W
HYDIDyoubringushere?Whoarethose people?” Meriel asked Keira.
Meriel, Owaine, and Keira stood on a small rise deep within the forest, looking down at a small, hidden lough. Well out in the water were three crannogs: lake dwellings—artificial islands on which thatched wattle and daub huts stood. Small herds of sheep and cows grazed in fenced stockades on the crannogs; chickens pecked at the dirt among the huts. Smoke from peat fires drifted low over the water and through the branches of the trees huddling close around the lake, and they could hear the ring of a smithy working metal somewhere on the shore. A few people were visible on the crannogs: feeding the cattle, milling grain in stone querns, placing herbs over racks to dry.
“They’re my clan,” Keira answered. “This is where I was born. And I brought you here because I was asked.”
“There’re more people over there,” Owaine said, pointing to another group of a half dozen men and women along the shore of the lough, tossing a weighted net over the black water. He grinned at Meriel. “I can
see
them.”
The Bunús Muintir pulled at the net; with high-pitched shouts: water foamed suddenly, raging and white, and the ropes were nearly torn out of their hands. Something scaled, manlike, and large emerged from the water, tearing at the strands that snared and held it. The captured animal—if that’s what it was—charged toward one of the net holders, sending those behind sprawling and bearing the man in front down onto the reed-choked mud of the shore. They heard a thin scream as the creature tore savagely at the man’s arm with claws and teeth. The others pulled at the net, yanking the creature away as a few more Bunús rushed in to stab at the thing with spears. It grasped one of the spears and pulled the woman wielding the weapon toward it; she released the shaft and retreated as the water-beast slashed at her, but another spear impaled it from behind, the barbed stone head emerging from the scaled, blue skin of the abdomen. The creature shrieked, then the Bunús Muintir closed around it, forcing it down onto the muddy shore. The blood that pulsed from the beast glinted the pale yellow of a winter sun.
“What is
that?
” Meriel and Owaine asked together.
“A water ghost, a Uisce Taibhse,” Keira answered. “Not ghosts at all, but creatures that live in fresh water. Sometimes one will come into Doire Coill through the river and come over to our lake—they can cross short distances out of the water, though they can’t breathe air. You’ll find them in many of the lakes in the west and north—like other races, they were awakened in the Filleadh. They’re intelligent and strong, and they like human flesh too much. Where we find them, we kill them.”
Lough Méar . . . Sevei told me that water ghosts lived there and I didn’t believe her.
Meriel imagined one of these Uisce Taibhse grabbing her, bearing her down under the water: she shuddered as they hurried down to the shore. At close range, the body of the Uisce Taibhse was a horror. Its body was a mottled blue-black like the deep water held in an underwater canyon. Sharp-pointed spines lifted from the crown of its head down its back to the waist, the spines linked by leathery webbing; the long-fingered hands were also webbed. The face was smooth except for the slits of gills on either side of its neck and two tiny eyes. The eyes were dead black and shining—emotionless, cold shark eyes—and thin fanged teeth glistened in a gaping round fish mouth smeared with the blood of the man it had attacked.
The others were talking loudly to Keira: the guttural, odd cadence of their language sounding eerie and strange to Meriel. One of the women had gone to the injured man; another of the men strode away a few steps, calling across to the nearest crannog until someone called back.
Hidden, Treoraí’s Heart warmed between Meriel’s breasts. She went to the injured man; he was moaning and rolling from side to side as the woman crooned to him, the tone of her voice belying her worried eyes as she tried to staunch the bleeding with cloth torn from her skirt. The wound along the man’s forearm looked awful, the skin laid open in a trio of parallel tears, the white of bone showing through the gushing red flow of blood that soaked his shirt and dripped to the muddy ground. “Let me help,” Meriel said to the woman, who glared at her almost angrily before her gaze flicked over to where Keira was standing. Keira said nothing, but the woman moved aside with a grunt. Meriel reached for the chain of the cloch and brought it out, closing her hand around the stone and touching the man at the same time.