Only the Stones Survive: A Novel (24 page)

On this particular night, Shinann, who rarely reacted to the weather, felt cold. In her cave, she had an extra cloak among her belongings; a deliciously warm cloak she could hug around her body. But the Dagda had become central to their lives. Although healing was not her gift, she wanted to see him first.

As she walked along the narrow spine of limestone that gave access to the front of the caves, she was not thinking about the old man. Lost in thoughts of someone else, she let her foot slip. Weathered limestone crumbled under her heel. Shinann flung out a hand to catch herself.

In the twilight, a much larger hand closed over hers long enough to steady her. Then it was gone.

Melitt saw Shinann lose her balance and start to fall.

Tucking Drithla under her arm like a loaf of bread, the Dagda’s wife rushed forward to help the young woman. The effort was wasted; Shinann made a recovery that was astonishing even for one of the agile Túatha Dé Danann. “Where is he?” she gasped.

“My husband? He’s inside with Joss. Come along now, and watch your step; you nearly tumbled into the river.”

Little Drithla chose that moment to scream in protest at her undignified handling. Melitt had to stop long enough to readjust the baby. While she waited, Shinann scanned the rapidly deepening twilight but saw no one else, neither on the path behind her nor on the riverbank below.

The Dagda and his bed were in the center of the cave. There had been considerable discussion between Melitt and Joss as to the best location for the stricken man. Melitt wanted him close to the cave mouth, where she could see him better. In order to keep the sufferer warm, Joss thought he should be at the rear of the cave, away from any draught.

His bed’s location was a compromise.

When Shinann entered, Joss was sitting crosslegged on the floor beside the Dagda. The bed was piled with blankets and cloaks. Near the old man’s head was a beeswax candle stuck to the top of a stone with melted wax. The pale light falling across his features revealed stark bony prominences and deep caverns. At first glance, Shinann thought he was dead. She made an inadvertent sound of distress.

Joss got to his feet, flexing his legs one at a time. “It’s all right, Shinann; he’s only sleeping. You can sit beside him if you want to. I need to move around a bit anyway. Melitt, why is Drithla squalling? She’ll wake him up.”

The old woman pressed the baby into her bosom to comfort her. “If only she could wake him up.”

“He’ll come back to us when he’s ready,” Joss assured her.

I am not ready yet,
said the voice in his head
.

I know that.

Just give me a little peace.

We will give you anything you want if you stay with us.

The Dagda tried to censor his next thought, but Joss heard him anyway:
I do not want to stay.

One of Éremón’s advance scouts, a young Mílesian called Ruari, had unusually keen eyes. This was his first time to carry battle weapons; he was taking part in an expeditionary foray into Éber Finn’s territory to identify hidden pockets of the Fír Bolga. While the others were setting up camp for the night, Ruari made an interesting discovery.

As the last light faded, he saw a faint trail crossing open ground. Silvery, delicate, it resembled the track a snail might leave on a stone, but snails meander aimlessly. Whatever left this had been moving in a straight line. Going forward with a purpose.

Ruari called the strange trail to the attention of Gosten, his commander. In the Gaelic style, the army of the north was composed of a number of small companies provided by the clans who followed the chieftain. Each company was led by a commander whose loyalty was beyond question. Gosten hoped to be rewarded for his with a house inside Éremón’s fort.

“What do you make of this?” Ruari asked him.

The older man scratched his head. “I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like it. This is a dangerous land, and we need to keep our wits about us.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Follow that trail, Ruari, and see where it leads.”

“Me?”

“You are the only one around here who’s called Ruari, aren’t you?”

“Can I take someone else with me?”

Gosten snorted. “Why? You are a warrior of the Gael. Show some courage!”

The scout gave a sullen nod. Fortunately for him, Gosten could not hear his unspoken thoughts.

With his eyes firmly fixed on the ground and his hand on the hilt of his sword, Ruari began to walk along the shining trail. After a few paces, he inadvertently touched it with his foot. The strange light faded. Within a few more steps, it was gone.

The baffled scout halted and looked around for new instructions. However, Gosten had issued his orders and marched away, back to the comforting light of a blazing campfire.

Ruari was alone and very young. In the gathering dark, in a dangerous land.

He could throw down his spear and run; the idea had strong appeal. But where would he go? Whatever was out there would surely get him.

If he returned to Gosten with nothing to report, the older man would berate him savagely.

Ruari sat down on the cold damp ground and wondered if he was too old to cry.

I was not trying the keep the Dagda’s condition hidden from him; I am sure he knew it better than I did, though I did not think he would care to hear it described to someone else. After Shinann sat with him for a while, she and I went outside the cave to talk. I repeated what Cleena had told me about her father’s illness.

Shinann’s eyes glittered suspiciously, but she did not cry. “We have to accept the fact that the Dagda is very old, Joss.”

“No one can say how old,” I agreed. “I’m not even sure Melitt knows.”

“And he’s not in any pain?”

“I don’t think he is.”

“He may recover, then.” She looked at me hopefully.

I did not give her the reassurance she was seeking. Better to accept the pain now, I thought, than to be ambushed by it later.

My father climbing the burial mound. Me expecting him to come back down.

After an uncomfortably long pause, Shinann said, “The Dagda would be a great loss; there are so few of us left now.”

“Did you think he and Melitt were going to add more children to the tribe?”

She smiled; she could not help it. “You must admit he is a remarkable man.”

“You will get no argument from me.”

“I suppose anything is possible,” Shinann remarked. “Melitt is not even his first wife; the Dagda was married before, you know. To a princess of the Iverni.”

My face must have shown the astonishment I felt.

“Does that surprise you, Joss?”

“He never mentioned it to me.”

“Why should he? The only reason I know is because one of my grandmothers told me. When she was a girl, she had hoped to marry the Dagda herself, but he married the Ivernian to encourage peace between our two tribes.”

I was not only astonished but fascinated. “What happened to her?”

“She grew old and died,” Shinann said casually. “Her people don’t live very long.”

“I thought we only married other members of the Túatha Dé Danann.”

“The Iverni are not that different from us, Joss; we can have children together. We might even have children with the Fír Bolga, but who would want to do that? Ugh.” She gave a delicate shudder.

A shocking thought occurred to me. “Do you suppose we could have children with the New People?”

By the light of the moon I saw a blush creep into her cheeks. “I would not know,” said Shinann.

But her eyes were dancing.

“There are times when you remind me of your mother,” Melitt said to me the following day. She had been spooning a broth made of mushrooms and thyme into the Dagda’s resistant mouth and looked up to see me watching. “You have her eyes, Joss. And the same span of forehead.”

“Was my mother Túatha Dé Danann?”

My abrupt question took her by surprise. “Of course she was.”

“What did her name mean in the old language?”

“Lerys?” Melitt’s wrinkled old mouth softened as it shaped the name. “It means “starbird.” We knew the girl ever since she was born, and from the time she could talk she babbled about the stars. She dreamed of them every night, she insisted; dreamed that we were birds who had flown here from the stars. Her parents began calling her Starbird. I don’t remember what she was called originally, but Starbird was a lovely name that fitted like her skin.”

The dreams of children are dismissed as fanciful. I have now lived long enough to understand that some of them are not dreams but memories, carried into thislife from Before the Before.

TWENTY-FIVE

T
HE MYSTERY OF THE SHINING TRAIL
preyed on Gosten’s mind. He went to tell Éremón, whose interests were elsewhere. “This is a strange land, and strange things happen here, Gosten,” he said dismissively. “There is something more important for you to do. My wife is about to bear my child, and I’m having all my fortifications doubled. Higher walls, deeper ditches, more guards on duty. Fortunately, one of the druid samodhii who oversee birth has survived, but I don’t want to take any chances. No more native incursions to upset her. See to it.”

Gosten interpreted these orders as permission for a band of warriors to investigate the shining trail. He had no doubt that some of the natives were involved.

Young Ruari was summoned as the only witness. That evening, he showed the other men exactly where he had been standing when he first saw the trail and indicated the direction he thought it had taken.

“Right!” said Gosten. “Let’s go. Come along, Ruari, don’t just stand there staring at me.”

The Dagda did not recover, but he did not appear to be failing further. I was spending a lot of time with him. I had learned a lesson when Mongan died; I wanted to ask all my questions of the Dagda while he was still with me.

He could speak a little, but he preferred not to; if he spoke aloud, others would talk to him, which was a strain for him. He was quite content for me to sit beside him and engage in a silent conversation.

Now the gift of memory that I had received from Mongan came into its own. When I shared my deepest concerns, the answers the Dagda gave would stay with me forever.

If the others will accept me, I am willing to take my father’s place, but I am unprepared.

We are always unprepared, Joss. Every day we awake is a journey into the unknown.

They may say I am too young to lead them.

You are as old as the way you think.

If you go, who will I have to help me?

We only have ourselves. From birth to death, we only have ourselves.

I cannot imagine you dying.

Death and birth are but the change of the seasons. If we want another spring, we must endure another winter.

You will go somewhere else? And teach someone else?

The achievements and discoveries of a great but dying society can bring light to a young and growing one.

Was that what happened to the Túatha Dé
Danann in the time Before the Before?

I waited eagerly for the answer to that question—but the Dagda had fallen asleep. If I woke him up, Melitt would make my life a misery.

Ruari was sorry he ever mentioned the shining trail. His quiet father, married for a lifetime to his loud and argumentative mother, often advised, “Whatever you say, say nothing.” Now Ruari could see the wisdom of those words. Against every instinct in his body, he was part of a warrior band hunting something unknown through the mysterious night. With no hope of finding it. Whatever it was. And no idea what it might do to them if they found it.

Stumbling over rocks and roots. Jumping out of his skin every time an owl hooted. And the older Mílesians laughing at him, teasing him about seeing things.

It was easy to “see things” in a land where every tree and bush had an unfamiliar shape and any large rock might be a crouching enemy.

At the outermost edge of Ruari’s vision, a pale shape glimmered briefly and was gone. “There!” he shouted. “Over there, look quick!”

His directions were far from specific. The little band scattered to search the immediate area, but nothing unusual was found. Gosten was not pleased. “If you are making this up for some reason, Ruari, you had better admit it now. We have a bard to tell us tales; we don’t need a beardless warrior to waste our time with fanciful notions of his own.”

“It’s not fanciful,” insisted the young man. “I really saw that trail and just now I’ve seen a…”

“A white cow,” one of the warriors interrupted. “There is a large one over the brow of the hill. Your sharp eyes saw her and made a monster of her.”

The other men roared with laughter.

The evening’s entertainment over, Gosten led his men back to camp for a meal and a good sleep. Ruari slunk along at the rear, feeling humiliated.

Gosten did not sleep well. He kept thinking about Ruari. The lad was young but no fool, and his words had the ring of truth. Gosten had faced the Túatha Dé Danann on the battlefield; he knew that much of what they did was inexplicable by normal standards. If enough of them had survived after all and were planning an attack on Éremón, this might be the way it would begin.

On the following day, Gosten assembled a much larger company to undertake an extended search. Should they be successful in finding the Dananns and putting an end to them once and for all, Éremón would be exceedingly grateful. And generous, no doubt. Gaelic chieftains traditionally showered rewards on followers who rendered exceptional service.

Being decisive had made Gosten a commander in Éremón’s army, but the full benefits of that position had yet to reach him. Éremón was still too occupied with consolidating his own position.

A short, stocky man with a proclivity to warts, Gosten was not the material of which champions were made. Women were not attracted to him; in Iberia, it had been said that he had a face like a lizard. He would have to do something exceptional in order to acquire the sort of wife he wanted. If he was given a house in Éremón’s fort, it would improve his status, but more was probably needed.