Authors: Jennifer Fallon
Fat chance
, Brydie thought, sceptical of this whole charade. Anwen might be good at composing vows, but Brydie doubted her sincerity.
‘Each mouthful of food, I will save some for you. Each drink I take, I spare some for you. I will stand beside you in battle and know that your shield will protect us both. In the presence of
Danú
, and
Leucetios
, the
Bellona
,
Bel
and
Sionnan
,
Llyr
, and
Goidniu
,
Easal
,
Cebhfhionn
,
Finncaev
, and
Cliodna
. May these gods and goddesses bear witness to my pledge and hold me true to it, until death take me from you, or you from me.’
Brydie was impressed, as much by Anwen’s ability to name all those gods and goddesses without stumbling over a single name, as she was by the vows. Torcán repeated them, much less fluently than his bride, and then Colmán declared them wed and everyone cheered and retired to Temair for the wedding breakfast — quite an affair despite the fact they were all due at
Sí an Bhrú
later that day for the ceremony investing the new Undivided.
Álmhath had spared no expense, but the result was more than just a bountiful celebration of her son’s nuptials. By mid-morning, almost everyone from Temair was well on their way to being drunk, which did not augur well, Brydie suspected, for the evening festivities after the investiture of the new Undivided at
Sí an Bhrú
.
Brydie had a bird’s eye view of the entire proceedings. Anwen didn’t take the necklace off, even when she retired to her own chamber to change into something warmer for the journey to
Sí an Bhrú
later that morning.
Álmhath came into her chamber as Anwen was putting the finishing touches on her hair. It had been braided with rare golden samphire flowers for the ceremony. Now she was shaking her long hair free of the petals and brushing it out, before she braided it again for the journey. The daisy like flowers she had
managed to retrieve intact sat on the table in front of the brass mirror. Brydie supposed Anwen was planning to press them as a keepsake of this auspicious occasion. At least, that’s what she would have done with them. Who knew the workings of Anwen’s mind?
‘So,’ Álmhath said as she stepped up behind Anwen, watching her new daughter-in-law. ‘It is done.’
‘It was necessary, Álmhath,’ Anwen said.
‘I do love my son, you know. I will be displeased if you hurt him.’
Anwen turned from the polished brass mirror to face her mother-in-law. ‘I mean him no harm, Álmhath. But the greater good of the
Matrarchaí
is my overriding concern. You have no daughter to carry on your role as head of the
Matrarchaí
in this realm. That situation had to be addressed, and we don’t have time for you to conceive a girl child of your own, or for your son and me to produce a granddaughter who can be trained in time.’
‘I knew it! I knew you were marrying Torcán for something other than love!’ Brydie shouted triumphantly.
‘I am sorry,’ Anwen continued, ‘but we all have to make sacrifices, and I would argue, my lady, that the greatest sacrifice here is mine, not yours. This business of separating the Undivided and Marcroy finding the replacement twins we were hiding has forced our hand. Sadly these new twins were never meant to inherit because they’re barely gifted enough to empathise with each other.’
The queen nodded, looking a little chastened. ‘I know. And I appreciate the reason you married Torcán, and your dedication to the
Matrarchaí
in doing so. I just wish I didn’t have such a strong feeling we’ve failed miserably already.’
Anwen must have smiled reassuringly, given her tone when she replied. Brydie could no longer see her reflection in
the brass mirror, so she couldn’t be sure. ‘We haven’t failed,
an Bhantiarna
. Not yet. We have the seed of the Undivided.’ Anwen’s hand briefly touched the jewel.
‘Trapped in a
djinni’s
spell,’ the queen reminded her.
‘Which is better than nothing. I’m sure Lady Delphine will find a way to retrieve our prize.’
‘In the meantime, we must smile and nod while Marcroy thwarts our plans,’ Álmhath said, frowning.
‘A temporary setback, sister,’ Anwen assured her. ‘Sooner or later, we would have removed RónánDarragh ourselves. You know that. In a few years it would have become very obvious they were not what they seemed.’
She was talking about the Undivided being
sídhe
, Brydie realised. Why would the
Matrarchaí
need to remove Rónán and Darragh?
‘Because if they’re mostly Faerie, they’d not age like ordinary men,’ Brydie said aloud, as the solution came to her.
Ye gods and goddesses
, she thought.
This isn’t the first set of Undivided twins to be removed prematurely, just the first time the Tuatha Dé Danann beat you to it.
‘How can we be sure they will be dead?’
‘Nobody survives the power transfer. You know that.’
Álmhath nodded. ‘And the
sídhe
know it too. And yet they allowed Marcroy to subvert Amergin and separate the twins. We don’t know where Rónán and Darragh are, Anwen. So once the power transfer happens, we can’t be sure they are dead.’
‘I see your point,’ Anwen said, jostling Brydie up and down with her nodding. She wished she knew what Álmhath was talking about. Brydie didn’t get the point of this discussion at all. ‘You’re afraid that if we don’t confirm the death of RónánDarragh,’ Anwen continued, ‘we risk them appearing some day, returning from another realm, after
our
Undivided have achieved Partition. They could destroy everything.’
Our Undivided?
Brydie thought, rather confused by this discussion of which she was mostly ignorant.
Is she talking about the new heirs, BrocCairbre? RónánDarragh? Some other, as yet undiscovered, or unborn twins?
Brydie glanced down and rubbed her belly.
Is she talking about me? About the twins I might be carrying?
‘We haven’t failed, an Bhantiarna,’
Anwen had told the queen a few moments ago. ‘
Not yet. We have the seed of the Undivided.’
‘Trapped in a
djinni
’s spell.’
‘Which is better than nothing at all.’
‘The obvious solution,’ Anwen said, ‘is to keep our little friend trapped in the
djinni’s
jewel, until we can confirm RónánDarragh are dead. Any twins gifted enough to achieve Partition can only be destroyed by their ancestors — and let’s face it, it is almost unheard of for the retiring Undivided
not
to perish during the transfer of power from one generation to the next — then we do not allow those twins to be born until we know the danger is gone.’
‘That could take a very long time,’ Álmhath warned. ‘RónánDarragh are probably ninety per cent
sídhe
. If they survive the transfer, they could live forever.’
Anwen shrugged, knocking Brydie off her feet. Again. ‘Your precious twins aren’t going to survive you jumping about like that, Anwen,’ she called, annoyed but not harmed by the constant jostling. Anwen couldn’t hear her, of course, but she felt better for yelling at her.
‘RónánDarragh are long-lived,
an Bhantiarna.
Not immortal. We will ensure they are dead, one way or another. If not from the ceremony this evening, then the
Matrarchaí
will find them and kill them. Once we have confirmed their demise, we will release our vessel from her
djinni
spell and allow the next generation of Undivided to be born. These twins will be able to
achieve Partition and rid us of the intolerable burden of
sídhe
interference in our use of magic. Once that is done,’ she added, turning back to the brass mirror to finish doing her hair, ‘we can start working toward what we have achieved in so many other realms — the annihilation of all Faerie races — because unlike the Christians are fond of saying, it is not the meek who shall inherit the Earth, Álmhath. It belongs to those prepared to eliminate any competition for it.’
The ceremony to transfer the power to the Undivided took place at sunset. Brydie was keen to watch, but more interested in seeing the queen of the
Tuatha Dé Danann
. Orlagh rarely left
Tír Na nÓg
and probably wouldn’t do it again in Brydie’s lifetime, so this was a rare chance to see a creature of legend, surrounded by scores of other celestial beings, all of whom had always been more myth than reality to a mere mortal like Brydie Ni’Seanan.
The exotic creature Brydie saw, however, was not Orlagh, queen of the Faerie.
It was Jamaspa, the
djinni
responsible for her imprisonment and, if Anwen and Álmhath were to be believed, the only one who could free her.
So how she was supposed to attract his attention?
Brydie assumed Jamaspa would not recognise the stone itself, or surely Anwen would have gone to much greater pains to hide it. She certainly wouldn’t be flaunting it for all to see, if she thought the
djinni
would know it instantly. He remembered a brooch — a gold filigree fancy worn to hold a cloak together. Now that the amethyst had been reset into a pretentious frippery amid scores of smaller, but similar stones, it was nothing like the item he remembered. And even if he looked at Anwen’s necklace
directly, could he tell there was someone trapped inside the centre stone? Would he even think to look?
The questions were far too many, the answers far too uncertain for Brydie to be hopeful this night would see her released from her jewelled prison. Anwen took her place beside Álmhath and Torcán, observers here rather than participants.
This was a ceremony belonging to the Druids and the
Tuatha Dé Danann
.
The ceremony took place just as the sun rested on the crest of the hill in the west, illuminating the stones for the twenty minutes or so that the sun would bathe the circle and the Undivided heirs in her light, while Orlagh performed the ritual to share the magic, branding them to the bone, searing the magical symbol into the boys so deeply that even losing that limb would not interrupt the flow of power.
Usually that would be the end of it. The boys would be branded — often as babies — and they would remain in reserve until the Undivided died and they could assume their dying predecessors’ powers.
Tonight was different. Tonight, the queen of the Faerie would brand the boys and then transfer the power conduit from the absent RónánDarragh to these shy, bemused seven-year-old boys, who stood naked in the centre of the circle, shivering as they were daubed in the blue woad with the triskalion symbol which would define them for the rest of their lives, once Orlagh had branded it into the palms of their hands.
Brydie felt sorry for the boys. They were pale, ginger-haired and thin, unprepared for what was to happen. As a rule, the Undivided heirs were identified much earlier and branded at an age where they would not remember life without the triskalion tattoo. Their lives from then on were full of privilege and preparation, waiting for the time they would take the reins of power.
These boys had received no such preparation. Brydie gathered, from what she’d heard between Anwen and Álmhath, that they had been identified years ago, but their presence had been kept secret. For some reason, the
Matrarchaí
had determined Rónán and Darragh were the preferred Undivided. They had not wanted to give anybody any excuse to threaten RónánDarragh’s position until it suited them.
That plan had been thwarted, of course, by Amergin and Marcroy Tarth, when they separated the boys as toddlers, robbing the
Matrarchaí
of whatever it was they wanted of them.
She wondered if Amergin had understood that what the
Matrarchaí
wanted, more than anything, was the children of Rónán and Darragh. Brydie put her hand to her belly again, something she was prone to do of late. She still had no idea if she had conceived a child or whether all this plotting and scheming on the part of Anwen and Álmhath was for naught.
They would be more than a little disappointed, she realised, if her menses appeared a week after they released her from this jewelled trap.
That
would ruin all their plans.
The tall stones cast their long shadows as the ceremony began. The boys were ready, a stag had been sacrificed to appease the gods, and the Druids had recited their part of the long, complicated ritual, and now the truly magical part of the ceremony could begin. Brydie watched Colmán and another, taller man wearing a stag mask. She guessed he was the Merlin from Albion, come to aid the Vate in this important task.
They spoke for a long time, so long that Brydie could feel Anwen starting to fidget.
And then they stepped up to the boys and turned to face each other.
‘I invoke thee, first daughters of Ernmas, Ériu, Banba, and Fódla,’ Colmán called. ‘And their husbands, Mac Cuill, Mac Cécht, and Mac Gréine.’
‘I invoke thee,’ the Merlin responded, ‘and beg thee
Tuatha Dé Danann
kings to bring this gift to bear.’
‘I invoke thee Ernmas’s younger three — the
Badb
, the
Macha
, and the
Morrígan
,’ Colmán said, raising his eyes to the setting sun.
‘I invoke thee,
Anann’s
sons, the brave
Glon
,
Gaim,
and
Coscar
,’ the Merlin added, opening his arms.
And so it went, back and forth between the Druids as the sun sank behind the hills of
Sí an Bhrú
. The boys, Broc and Cairbre, seemed confused rather than honoured. Brydie felt sorry for them, standing there, so small, so insignificant, and yet so important to everyone here. She glanced across the circle to the
sídhe
who had gathered to watch, looking for Jamaspa, but she couldn’t see his smoky blue form in the fading light. Marcroy Tarth was there, along with the achingly beautiful Orlagh and the contingent of lesser
sídhe
who hung about her like a cloud of insects in long summer grass.