Only the Stones Survive: A Novel (9 page)

I should have listened more closely, but as usual my mind was wandering. Only one fragment of conversation caught my attention and stayed with me. “We are coming to another fork in the road,” Eriu said. “We must be strong. If we weaken now, we might as well be Unbodied.”

I had never heard the word before. Afterward I asked the Dagda, “When she said Unbodied, was the great queen talking about dying?”

“Not exactly,” he replied. Which told me nothing.

“Then what did she mean?”

“Being Unbodied is to stand outside oneself as an observer.”

I felt an icy finger trace along my spine. “How do you get back in?”

“It is very difficult; the condition is not to be recommended.”

“Then what is dying?”

“Dying is not the last thing but the least thing, Joss. Think of it as another way of traveling.”

And that was all the answer I got.

We had one more harvest before leaf-fall, although not the bounty of times past. The heads of grain were more brown than gold; they drooped upon their stalks like the heads of weary children. My mother said the energy that should have gone into stimulating the earth was being redirected elsewhere.

The men of our clan helped my father cut the grain we had planted. In spite of his age, even the Dagda helped. He looked almost as strong as a young man if you did not get too close. I swung a scythe myself until my entire body ached. As soon as our crop was gathered and stored, the men left to harvest someone else’s field. Mongan went with them, of course.

Sometimes I heard Lerys crying softly in her bed.

Then the sun hid his face and the dark came back.

Under the pressure of the invaders, battle had not been limited to sunseason but bled over into autumn and then into darkseason, so we had no festivals to celebrate the changes. That was the sort of enemy we fought. Foreigners who had no respect for anything.

Yet from snatches of adult conversation, I realized that not everyone wanted to fight them. I heard my mother say, “They are refugees just as our ancestors were, Mongan. We do not know what catastrophe drove them from their homeland, and they could not possibly have traveled as far as our own people. But they must feel just as lost and uncertain as we did Before the Before. We should show them mercy.”

“It is so like you to say that,” my father replied. “Do you suppose they would show us mercy if the situation were reversed?”

Lerys was not the only one who had misgivings about the war. The other Dananns continued to debate the rights and wrongs of aggression. Confusion clouded the atmosphere. During the short gray days and long cold nights of darkseason, a strange lassitude descended on the tribe, as if an invisible piper were playing the Sleepy Music.

More men came to confer with my father, and the tone of the conversations changed. There were words I had never heard used before: words like “pain” and “defeat” and “failure.” The ugly, naked language of warfare.

The shadows in the corners of our house moved toward the center.

Meanwhile, the Dagda began to place more emphasis on the history he wanted me to learn. “The legends of our race are the proud inheritance of every Danann child,” he said, “along with their chain of names. In the long-ago time when we challenged the Fomorians for the sovereignty of Ierne, we possessed weapons engraved with symbols of the arts we had brought with us from the land of our origin. Arts that must have seemed magical indeed to the primitive Fomorians.”

Was he referring to the Sword of Light and the Invincible Spear? Were they the Earthkillers? Or was that something even worse?

When I asked the Dagda, he would not meet my eyes. “You would not understand yet, Joss; you are too young, and your mind is too vulnerable. We are not going to talk about those things because I do not want to put horrible images into your head. You would never be able to get them out.”

Too young, although I had attended the Being Together. It was only a foretaste; I saw that now. Because of my size and the number of my seasons, I was still being excluded from knowledge. And I wanted to
know.
Curiosity is an itch that demands to be scratched.

The Dagda would not tell me about the terrible weapons, yet I could see that he was pleased by my eagerness to learn. So I kept asking questions, more and more questions. I skirted around the topic he was determined to avoid and nibbled at the outside edges of warfare, hoping I could trick him into giving something away.

That is how young I really was. I thought I could trick the Dagda.

He explained that over the generations highly stylized warfare had become a sport among our people, a way of releasing the excess energy we had in abundance. Both men and women relished the rigorous exercise. Those who did not care to compete gathered to watch, whistling and applauding and stamping their feet, throwing armloads of flowers and cheering wildly for their heroes. Poems of praise were composed for victor and vanquished alike, and the two sides feasted together afterward.

It sounded glorious. And perhaps it had been, once. When we were on the winning side.

But in addition to the lessons the Dagda taught me, I could not help hearing some of the things our visitors said when they came to talk with my father.

We did not appear to be on the winning side now.

The conflict was being fought in deadly earnest. There was no sport in it; no skill, no art. The New People were simply killing everyone who got in their way. Elders whose heads were silvered by the passage of time and youngsters with their unlived lives sparkling in their eyes were being cut down where they stood.

In response, even men and women with no taste for battle were taking up weapons and fighting back. We who hated nothing were learning to hate. Hate the strangers, the foreigners, the enemies who were alien from the shape of their heads to the style of their weapons. Some claimed they were not people at all, but they were.

People like us. People who wanted what was ours and hated us for a reason I could not understand.

NINE

A
CCORDING TO THEIR
OWN BARDS
in succeeding generations, the Mílesian conquest of Ierne was a succession of epic battles against vastly superior forces.

Truth depends on who tells the story.

It was true that the warriors of the Gael had never encountered a foe as mysterious and enigmatic as the Túatha Dé Danann. With the passage of time, the Danann names would be added to the Gaelic pantheon of gods. The Children of Light were not the only opposition the conquerors faced, however. Their initial encounter with the Túatha Dé Danann at the lake had been only a skirmish; the first real battle had taken place a few days later, with different people entirely.

The sons of the Míl had been feasting on the bounty of the sea and preparing to move farther inland when Donn suggested fortifying an area near the coast. “We should have a secure base to leave the mothers and children in. Someplace we can return to if … just in case.”

Ír grimaced in disgust. “You want to come back here and eat fish and fish and more fish?” He bent over his pottery bowl and pretended to be vomiting.

Scotta said, “Pay no attention to him,” in the voice of a patient mother whose child was still too young to behave himself.

The woman who had been Ír’s wife for so many years she was no longer embarrassed by his antics continued chatting with Taya, who was friendly with everyone.

Odba sat alone on the other side of the fire and picked her teeth with a fish bone. Since her presence was made known, most of the other women had spoken to her—in a rather embarrassed fashion—but no one had befriended her. Hierarchy was important among the Gael, and on Ierne it appeared that Éremón held the highest rank. If Taya was his first choice, Odba must be relegated to a lower station.

She understood this, but she blamed Éremón long and bitterly in the dark watches of the night. She was learning that hatred could convey strength.

Éremón expressed reservations about building a fort on the headland. He thought it would be an unnecessary delay to the conquest of the island. In his mind the army of the Gael already had swept Ierne from one end to the other. “We should be on the move now,” he declared, picking fragments of crab meat out of his beard. “Tomorrow at the latest.”

Scotta had sided with her oldest son. “We would be foolhardy to take the entire tribe into unknown territory,” she said—ignoring the fact that they had just done that very thing. “Your father would never forgive us if we allowed harm to come to his grandchildren”—although Mílesios had never shown much affection to his grandchildren and hardly knew their names. It was the bard who remembered names.

“Our first step,” Scotta continued, “should be to locate the most fertile soil and the best water … and any other natives. They will occupy the choice land and must be driven off.”

“Don’t worry about them,” said Éber Finn. “Such frail people can never resist us. They would not even make useful servants, though if the women were pretty…”

Colptha hissed, “Don’t you have enough women already?”

The others laughed.

Sitting in his personal space beyond the wide glow of the family’s fire, Sakkar heard the laughter. He found himself in an awkward position on Ierne. He was not a Mílesian, nor did he belong to one of the lesser Gaelic clans that had accompanied them. He was not even a freeman. As a shipwright he had possessed a status beyond his dreams as a child. When he was supervising the building of the fleet, he had the Míl for a mentor and warmed himself at the old chieftain’s hearth.

On the island at the rim of the world he was only … Sakkar the Phoenician. Which meant nothing here.

While Scotta and her sons filled their bellies, Sakkar had left his own tiny fire with a few crabs smouldering among the embers and retrieved the weapons he had been given. In the darkness beyond the campfires, no one would see him practice.

Following Donn’s instructions, the freemen began to dig a defensive bank and erect an earthwork wall while the sons of Mílesios led the expeditionary party farther inland. The participants consisted of seasoned warriors, both Mílesian and the best of the lesser clans, plus Colptha to represent the spirit world, Amergin to see and remember, and Scotta, who demanded to be included in her late husband’s name. Heavily laden with her finest jewelery, her richest clothing, and a sword in her belt as befitted a warrior, she rode in the chariots of each of her sons in turn.

Éremón’s chariot was so packed with his personal food supplies that there was barely room for him and his charioteer. He grumbled when things had to be rearranged to accommodate his mother.

Éber Finn had a little more room in his war cart, although his baggage included four tunics, a heavy cloak lined with fur, an extra pair of soft leather boots, and an inlaid box for his combs and razors and scented hair paste.

Colptha’s supplies included bags filled with vile-smelling herbs and a collection of oddly shaped roots and branches. Scotta spent as little time as possible in his chariot. She confided to one of the other women that his roots and branches poked her in her private parts.

Amergin, who accompanied them on foot, wore his customary blue woolen cloak and unbleached tunic. His baggage consisted of a second tunic in the pack on his back and the harp in her case. Bardic rank accorded him a chariot, which he rarely used. He preferred to feel the earth beneath his bare feet, the living earth. As a druid he was part of her and she of him.

As they traveled inland, they realized what a truly rich land they had discovered. Ierne was clothed with endless impenetrable forests of oak and elm and ash; enough timber to house and fuel countless thousands. There was pine and hazel, aspen, alder, holly, and elm.

An abundance of rivers and streams watered grasslands that were green both in summer and winter and could nourish more herds than the Mílesians had ever owned. Trees and bushes were laden with fruit and nuts; game of every description seemed eager to present itself to the spear.

They also caught glimpses of wickerwork huts among the hills, and once or twice they saw what looked like a ruined stone fort. “This is too easy,” Éremón remarked to his charioteer. “Land can only be won through deeds of valor. Ask my brother the bard; he knows all the stories. If we don’t have someone to fight, there will be no deeds of valor. Where are the people?” he called to his brother.

Éber Finn stood tall in his chariot with his mother beside him. “I see huts but no people. Perhaps they all starved to death.”

“In a land like this?” Scotta retorted. “I don’t think so. Be on your guard; we may have action yet.”

Which is exactly what her husband would have said.

They had continued their journey unchallenged until they came to a range of purple mountains, jagged and dangerous as shark’s teeth. When they reached the foothills, Donn suggested they encamp for the night, but Éremón and Éber Finn wanted to push on. “Before the sun sets there will be plenty of time to make ourselves comfortable.”

This time Donn had capitulated.

The twilight did not last as long as they expected. The air turned cold and thin and blue and soon the ground was too stony for the chariots. When one of his wheels began to wobble on its axle, Éber Finn called out, “Let’s stop now, brothers! Tomorrow we can either find a way through the mountains or choose a different direction entirely.”

Éremón muttered in his beard. He did not like for anyone else to make decisions.

Donn led the way to a large stand of pines where they could tie their teams and wait for Amergin to catch up with them. Éremón went on by himself for a short distance, then reluctantly turned back.

The mountains ahead were grim and forbidding in the gathering twilight.

Éremón’s charioteer had just wheeled the team to a halt beside Éber’s war cart when a horde of demons burst upon them from the trees. Half-naked demons with tattooed skin and garishly painted faces; creatures who howled like wolves and carried stone axes and bronze-bladed weapons, which they wielded with savage intent.