The Crow of Connemara (39 page)

“The sacrificial lamb,” Colin said.

“That's mixing mythologies,” Maeve told him, “but aye. A finding spell told me long ago where Rory and the cloch were, but I couldn't leave the soil here to go to him, and he never returned on his own. I think he knew I'd find him if he did, an' he was afraid of that. So I watched, and I knew yer father was born, but he didn't have the caul nor the ability Rory had, so I waited even longer, and yeh came. When it was time . . . well, yeh know that. Yeh saw me; yeh saw the green land, yeh heard my call, and yeh answered. Aye, I went to Regan's deliberately to see yeh, and aye, the flirting that night was deliberate, too.”

“And you used another spell to make me infatuated with you also.” Colin was scowling, looking down at the floor. “Like you did with my grandfather.”

“Aye, I did that for Rory,” Maeve told him. “'Twas necessary, but it di'nah last long enough, did it? But for yeh I cast no glamour at all. With yeh, 'twas genuine.”

“Because I'm a sap and a fool.”

“Yer neither. I couldn't love yeh if yeh were that. And I
do
love yeh, Colin. 'Tis the truth, and I wish I could make yeh believe that. I hope yeh feel it, even now.” She watched him as he took in that statement. He sniffed, his fingers still prowling over the cloch as if the answers were written there. She thought his expression was snagged between hope and skepticism. The voices inside her howled in derision.

“I can't tell when you're lying and when you're telling the truth,” he told her.

“I understand, and I'm sorry for it. Colin, if I'd wanted, I could have stopped yeh from ever leaving the first time yeh came to the island. 'Tis a fact, and Niall wanted me to do exactly that. A spell, a minor glamour; that's all it would have taken; yeh were infatuated with me, and just a nudge would have changed yer mind and kept yeh here—and if I had, Dunn and the NPWS wouldn't have had time to act as they have. But I waited, because . . .” Her thoughts swarmed with things she couldn't say, that she was afraid to say because she knew he wouldn't, couldn't, believe her.
Heroes have changed,
she could have told him
. In the past, it only mattered how well you fought, how many men yeh could slay and how strong yeh were. Now, courage is measured in other ways. It's in what yeh believe, and whether yer willing to stand firm in that belief and follow it, no matter what others tell yeh. I've seen yeh do that.
“
 .
 . . because as much as is possible for the Morrígan, who has lived too long and known and lost too many lovers and watched too many grand heroes die in my name, I also loved yeh, and I wasn't willing to do what I was supposed to do. Believe that, Colin. Please believe it.”

Colin had started to speak, and she lifted a hand to stop him. “Nah, let me finish, now that I've started. Part of me was pleased when Dunn took yeh, because I thought he might also take the decision from my hands and send yeh home where I couldn'nah bring yeh back. I wanted the decision taken from me entirely.”

“You didn't hesitate to send the aos sí after me when you found out I was still there, did you? I'm just something for you to use. A tool.”

“No,” she told him. She stretched her hands out to him, wanting him to take them, but he only stared at them, as if their touch might burn him, and his fingers wouldn't leave the stone. “Have yeh been listening to me? I care for yeh, Colin. 'Tis truth.”

“You told Niall and the others to start getting ready to leave. How are you going to do that if I'm not willing to be your sacrifice?”

“I
ca'nah
do it,” she told him. “I lied to them because . . .” She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. The cloak felt impossibly heavy on her body, as if she were but a specter of herself, a wisp as insubstantial as Keara's fog. She inhaled the scent of peat: an odor as old as herself.
There has to be an answer. There still has to be a way to do this.
“Come with me to see Fionnbharr. I need to talk to him, or it all falls apart whether yeh help or nah.”

30

C
OLIN WALKED WITH MAEVE through the dense, cold fog up the path from her house to where the land lifted under their feet. Suddenly, the fog vanished as if they'd walked through a wall, and overhead he could see the brightening sky of dawn and the mound of Fionnbharr rising at the lip of the island: Cnoc Deireadh. “Promise me this much,” Maeve said to Colin as they approached the mound. It was the first words she'd spoken since they left the house. “Just pretend that yeh agree with me, even if yeh don't. Would yeh do that much? I want Fionnbharr to think that we're a unified front, or we lose his cooperation when we need it more than ever.”

“The asshole dropped me in the goddamn ocean,” Colin said, glaring at the mound, standing now in quiet moonlight despite the fog that wrapped the rest of the island. “He nearly drowned me.”

“I know. But the Lord of the Sidhe isn't mortal, and he doesn't think like one.”

“And you do?” he asked, and Maeve stopped. She caught his gaze with her eyes; he found that he couldn't look away.

“No, I don't either, and 'tis good yeh understand that. But . . . When I gave meself to you, Colin, there was no lie at all in me. I wanted yeh as any mortal woman might want the man she desires. I
still
want that, no matter how yeh feel about me now. That hasn't changed.”

“But it wasn't that way with my grandfather?”

His words stung. He saw it in her face. She gave a faint shake of her head, swaying the long strands of her hair. “'Twas nah. He was nah the same as yeh, Colin. Yer stronger and yet gentler than he ever was, and yeh know yerself better. Yer a true bard; he was an amateur. I might have come to love Rory in some way, but he left me before that could happen. I frightened him too much. I know yeh feel the same a bit, but yeh stayed when yeh could have left. He di'nah. I just hope yeh can still trust me, with all I've told yeh.”

Colin blinked. He wanted to believe her, but the confusion in his mind was thicker than Keara's fog. “Maeve . . .” he started to say, but he felt the shift in the air in the same moment, and turned to see Fionnbharr, clad in armor and with a spear in his hand, standing alongside the tree at the summit of the mound.

“Morrígan,” he said, nodding first to Maeve. Then he glanced at Colin, his eyes glittering. “Well, would yeh look now, the leamh's all dried off after his little swim.”

“Fuck you, Fionnbharr,” Colin spat back, and crystalline laughter answered him from the mound, the sound of a thousand-voiced amusement.

“So, does yer little play-toy know what's expected of 'im?” Fionnbharr boomed over the laughter.

“He does,” Maeve answered. She didn't look at Colin now, and he remembered her words.
Just pretend that yeh agree with me . . .

“An' does he know all that means? Och, nah, Morrígan,” Fionnbharr said, raising his spear and thumping the shaft on a stone at the base of the hawthorn. The booming sound that followed was like the stroke of a mallet on timpani. “Let himself answer, so I can hear 'im.”

Maeve waited, still not looking at Colin and her chin lifted, as if she was entirely confident and certain of his answer. Colin could hear the cold Atlantic wind sighing in the branches of the hawthorn and the faint crash of waves against the rocks below the cliff; he could smell the brine. He started to speak, then halted, taking another breath. The hesitation seemed to go on for seconds. Finally, Colin spoke, his voice sounding thin against Fionnbharr's growling bass. “I know the spell to open the Green Land to you requires blood magic. I know I was brought here for that purpose.”

The words sounded ridiculous. Impossible.
Why am I going along with this? I can't trust her . . .

“And so yer willin' to be that for the Morrígan?” Fionnbharr continued, his tone mocking. “Then yer a greater fool than any.”

“
Not
for the Morrígan,” Maeve answered before Colin could reply. “What Colin does, he'll do for all of us, the aos sí as much as any.”

Again, many-voiced laughter echoed from the mound. “Yer the ones threatened by the leamh,” Fionnbharr answered. “We aos sí are safe for now under the mound. Let them come ashore with their empty laws and their guns. They won't find
us
in our caverns under the ground.”

Maeve sniffed and turned to Colin. “May I borrow the cloch? For a moment only, I promise.” She held out her hand to him, palm up.

He didn't want to obey her. He didn't want to feel the pain and the loss again; he knew now what it would cost him. He wondered whether, if he gave it to her, she would give it back or if he would lose it forever, as his grandfather had done to her. He looked at Maeve's hand, then her face, trying to read what was there.
I just hope yeh can trust me . . .
Now that it came to it, he wasn't sure he could. He fisted his hand around the stone, which lay on his chest: his grandfather's stone. The Morrígan's stone.
Your stone. It's yours and no one else's.

Reluctantly, he slipped the chain over his head and held his hands over hers. He had to fight his own fingers to loosen them. The stone fell, and Maeve's hand closed around it. Colin gave a cry, a wail that died when it hit the wall of fog around the mound. Pain racked him, as if he'd just dropped his own heart into her palm. He had to clutch his arms to himself to stop him from clawing at Maeve's hand to take back the cloch.

Fionnbharr laughed.

Maeve lifted her hand, and the wind failed in the hawthorn as Fionnbharr's amusement went silent. Movement snagged Colin's gaze, and he looked up to see yellow-green waves of lights shimmering among the stars, tendrils of that strange aurora he'd glimpsed once before stretching down toward Maeve's hands and wrapping around her arm. In her fingers, he thought she was holding his cloch, but it was no longer just a pretty crystal; it was glowing itself in response to the sky's light. Maeve spoke a single word—“Oscail!”—and the world shifted around them. She, Colin, and Fionnbharr were no longer standing on the mound, but in an immense cavern lit by thousands of torches and candles. Around the stones and through the earthen walls, the roots of the hawthorn were entwined, like the tangled base of some immense world-tree. Colin gasped, helplessly. Around them, the host of the aos sí were gathered, half-hidden in the shifting light and shadows.

Leaning over Colin, she took his hand and gave him back the stone. Colin gasped with relief, at the sense of being whole once more, but he saw pain wrinkle Maeve's face even as she released the cloch. He quickly put it around his neck once more.

She sighed, shaking her head. “That was far harder than I thought 'twould be,” she whispered to Colin.

Fionnbharr's face was suffused with red, visible even in the light of the torches. He shook his spear toward Maeve. “Yer not permitted here, Morrígan.” His gaze went to Colin. “Nor is any mortal, on pain of death. Yeh should nah have done this.” His eyes narrowed. “Yeh should nah have been
able
to do this.”

“Then send me away, Lord Fionnbharr. I've given you a glimpse of the power that my mere mortal holds. So show us yer great magic. Show me how powerful
yeh
are. Send us back.”

Fionnbharr scowled; he lifted his spear as if he were about to cast it at Maeve, and she seemed to wave a casual hand, the aurora light still flickering around her fingers even though the stone was now in Colin's hand.
“Pléasc!”
she uttered, and the shaft of the spear exploded into long splinters in Fionnbharr's hands, the bronze head falling to ring impotently on the stones at his feet. Colin heard a collective gasp from the host as Fionnbharr tossed down the remnants of his weapon and spat on them. “Yer not a mortal, Morrígan. Yeh think this mortal lover of yers could'a done that? Could
he
have brought yeh down here?”

“Yeh misjudge the power of the mortals in this world, Lord Fionnbharr. Yeh always have an' that's the foolishness of
yer
kind, as it's been the foolishness of my own. I told yeh this before yeh rode: if yeh do nothing, then those mortals out there will cut down the hawthorn, dig up the sidhe, and salt the very earth, as Eithne's husband did at Cnoc Meadha. Yeh might not believe me, but 'tis fact. If yeh do nothing here on Inishcorr, then yeh and all of yer kind will die here, too. This will truly be the last mound.”

Colin saw Fionnbharr scowl again. His face seemed older now, as if the centuries were marking Fionnbharr's face as they watched. “When I came here to Cnoc Deiridh, I brought the sacred earth from the heart of Cnoc Meadha, Morrígan. 'Tis that and our own spells will keep us safe.”

“Scoff all yeh like, Fionnbharr. Yeh can cower here in your caverns while they turn Inishcorr into a park for the leamh and sell fairy trinkets and plastic swords in a bloody souvenir stand on top of yer precious Cnoc Deiridh. Yeh can comfort yerself with knowing that they will leech all the true magic from the earth and leave the aos sí nothing more than whispers and mist. Yeh need to have the gate open to Talamh an Ghlas as much as the rest of us, and yeh know it. If yeh fail to help us now, yeh will know the real death, eventually.”

“An' why are yeh here, Morrígan? Why aren't yeh already crafting the spell to open the path? Why is the witch's fog still all about the island? Why are yeh slabberin' at me instead of acting?”

“While the fog holds, no enchantment of mine can reach outside it, and the blood spell needs to go beyond to find the gateway. Which yeh already know—'tis why I sent the wild ride to find Colin. When I tell Keara to stop her chanting, then the leamh
are
going to try to take the island and us, and the blood spell is long and difficult. I won't be able to help hold them back. We'll need the aos sí then, or it will all fail and Colin won't be the only mortal a'standin' in the sidhe caverns.”

“There are more than mortals here, Morrígan.” Fionnbharr chuckled, and the host laughed with him. He waved his hand toward the dark recesses of the underground, and torches flared into life there. “Can yeh wake those who sleep? Does the bard's cloch also give him that power?”

Colin took a step toward what the light had revealed, and the host parted reluctantly in front of him. Down a long passage, ornate, decorated niches had been carved into the living rock and painted brightly; there, on beds of silk-covered rushes, lay bodies. The nearest one to Colin was a stocky, muscular man, arrayed in mail and a cloak of blue. Where his arms were exposed, the jagged lines of old battle wounds were visible, as was a long scar from his chin to his temple on the left side of his face. Locks of golden hair touched with white fell around his shoulders, and a long spear, the leaf-shaped blade inscribed with the incised lines of ogham lettering, had been placed alongside him, his hand grasping the yew staff. A brown, lean grayhound slumbered at his other side, its long and narrow muzzle resting on the man's shoulder. Colin thought the man a corpse, but as he stared down at him, he saw the chest rise and fall in a slow breath.

“That's Lugh,” he heard Maeve say behind him. “Son of Cian and Ethniu, grandson of Balor of the Fomorians. He's been this way for two centuries and more, though once he was vibrant and alive. Now he sleeps like the others who have been brought here, all those we could find in the old places.”

“Places like Rathcroghan, where you met my grandfather?”

“Aye, there and a hundred other places as well. Now they sleep here, where we remember them.” Maeve began to intone their names, and Colin heard Fionnbharr's voice join her, and those of the host as well, until the cavern swelled with the sound, the names like a litany chanted in a church, each name an echoing thunder stroke: Nuada of the silver arm, Allai, Indai, Ériu, Banba, Fodla, Aengus, Manannán mac Lir, Brigid, and dozens more—names that Colin knew from old texts: the Book of Leinster, the Lebor na hUidre, the Táin Bó Cúailnge; all the other manuscripts that comprised the three cycles of Irish myth. The syllables the aos sí intoned shivered the walls and made the flames of the torches gutter in the wind they created. With every name, one of the niches farther along the passage would erupt in shafts of gold-green light like the afternoon sun through a canopy of leaves, then fade again.