The Crow of Connemara (40 page)

When it ended, the silence pressed down on Colin, smothering and oppressive. Maeve touched his shoulder as he stared down at Lugh's slumbering form. “It's your time,” she said to Colin. “Show them what you can do.”

He shook his head, confused. “I don't know how.”

“Hold the cloch,” she told him, “and sing.”

“Sing what?”

Her lips curled into smile. “The words will come to you, love. Don't worry. Trust me, as I said.”

She stepped aside and back, close to where Fionnbharr also stood. Colin glanced at the stone in his hand, standing at the foot of Lugh's bed and looking down on the sleeping god's figure. Feeling both foolish and self-conscious, he took the pendant from his neck and put it in his right hand, lifting it as he'd watched Maeve do, imagining the cloch glowing again as it had when she had held it. For a moment, nothing happened, but then his perception shifted, as if he were seeing double, and he saw the scene around him outlined in green, coruscating light as the shimmering curtains of aurora-like radiance filled the cavern above the upheld cloch, drifting downward to wrap around his arm and hand. Colin gasped at the touch of the light: frigid, burning his skin like ice. Curling lines like white, raised scars traveled down his arm to the wrist, burrowing past the cuff of his sweater. He could
feel
the cloch, he could hear voices inside it, and they gave him words and a song, and he opened his mouth, letting their words fall from his lips to become wrapped in the aurora light, his voice sounding deeper and more resonant: a stranger's voice more than his own.

Brosdaighthear, ar Tuath Dé Danann

doirseóir Teamhra,

d'ionnsoighidh na craoibhe cubhra,

aoighe Eamhna.

Mása thú an tIoldánach oirrdhearc

an airm ghlaisghéir

is mo chean duid, ar an doirseóir,

a bhuig bhaisréidh.

Damadh é Lugh, leannán Fódla

na bhfonn sriobhfhann,

do bheith ann, ar Tuath Dé Danann,

dob é a ionam.

As the last words echoed in the cavern, Colin felt he could no longer bear the bright cold that wrapped around his arm. As the scar-like lines deepened on his hand and arm, Colin saw Lugh's eyes open for a moment, startling clear and blue, and Colin's grip on the cloch loosened. He cried out as he nearly dropped the pendant. He felt more than saw Maeve move past him to bend over Lugh's body. She touched the god's face with her hand, the fading green light of the cloch still falling on Lugh's features. She spoke to him in quick, ancient Gaelic, far too fast for Colin to understand. Lugh answered in a single word in a voice that was graveled and slow:
“
Tuigim
.
”

But after he spoke, his eyes closed once more as the light from the cloch faded entirely. Colin brought down his arm, cradling it against his body as he went to his knees in the cavern. His arm was stiff and aching, and his fingers were clawed around the silver cage that held it.

The host of the aos sí and Fionnbharr maintained a reverent silence, while the echo of the thundering light and his own voice reverberated in Colin's memory. “What . . .” His voice sounded hoarse and broken after the song, and he licked his lips and tried again. “What did you say to him?” Colin asked.

“I told him that 'twas time for him to take up his spear once more. I told him that we needed him to come when we called, and he said that he understood.” She glanced over to Fionnbharr. “Great Lugh will come,” she said. “Colin the Bard has awakened him again, and he will answer the call.” Maeve paused, and Colin saw her look past Fionnbharr to the gathered shadowy host. “So, what of the rest of yeh? Are yeh willin' to ride out now that it's time to do battle, or nah?”

“Aye . . .” The word came first as a whisper from one, then it was joined by other voices until it sounded like a gale off the North Sea, and finally Fionnbharr himself joined in. “Aye, Morrígan,” he bellowed, and the host behind him went silent. “We will, and perhaps we can rouse others here besides Lugh. But I tell you this, Morrígan. 'Tis given to me as the Lord of the Aos Sí to glimpse the future, an' the future I see yer nah part of.”

Maeve nodded. “Then so be it,” she answered. She crouched down alongside Colin. “Take up the cloch and take us away from here,” she said in his ear. “Yeh must do it; I do'nah think I can bear to handle it again only to give it back. Not again. So unless yeh want me to take it from yeh forever . . .”

“No!
” He nearly shouted the word; the thought of losing the stone unbearable. He closed his fist around it, hiding it from her against his body. “It's mine.”

“Aye,” she told him. “'Tis. An' yeh must use it now.”

“How?”

“Hold it up as yeh did before and just think of us outside once more. It will hear you and do the rest.” She put her hands under his arms, and he started to pull away again. “Let me help yeh stand,” she whispered. “Yeh can't appear weak to Fionnbharr. 'Twill be easier this time, I promise.”

Grimacing, Colin stood again, Maeve helping him up. With a long, shuddering sigh, he lifted his right hand once more. Using the cloch
was
easier this time: the doubled vision came quickly, and as he thought of the path leading to the mound from Maeve's cottage, it was as if the place appeared solid and complete in front of him. A word in Gaelic drifted through his consciousness:
Filleadh.
He sang/spoke the word, and the green-gold light of the stone erupted between his fingers once more, as a gust of cold air struck him so hard that he closed his eyes in response.

When he opened his eyes again, he and Maeve were once more standing on the grass at the foot of the mound. Fionnbharr and the others had vanished. Colin heard Maeve laugh even as he sagged in weariness and pain, as exhausted as if he'd run miles. His right arm ached, a cold and dead weight at his side. Maeve must have noticed, for he felt her put her arm around his waist to hold him up. He placed the hand in his jean pocket, and as he did he saw the patterns on his arm, mounded like white, angry scars but already beginning to fade. He released the cloch, letting it fall into the nest of his pocket.

“That's done, then,” she said. “The host will come out when we call. Yeh did grand in there, Colin. Just grand.”

“I still don't
know
what I did,” he told her, “or how. It hurts, Maeve.”

“I know,” she told him. “But it will pass soon.”

“We told Fionnbharr a lie. I haven't agreed that I was willing to be part of this spell of yours.”

“Nah, yeh haven't,” she agreed.

“So what happens now?”

“I don't know,” she told him. “I truly don't know.” The weariness overwhelmed him again; he seemed to be holding himself up only by sheer force of will and Maeve's arm. “Help me,” he husked, and Maeve put both arms around him tightly as his knees buckled. She kept him upright, his arms draped over her shoulders, her body warm against his cold one, her face nestled against the curve of his neck. “Let's go home,” she whispered into his ear.

Leaning against Maeve, the two of them made their way back down the path into the fog and to her cottage.

31

B
Y THE TIME THEY REACHED the cottage, Colin seemed to have largely recovered. She let go of him as he trudged—slowly—alongside her. Through the gray tendrils, faintly, Maeve could glimpse Niall leaning against the door of the cottage with his arms crossed, waiting for them. “How's Keara?” Maeve called to him as they approached.

“Exhausted,” he answered, pushing himself off the doorframe and opening the door so they could step inside. He glanced at Colin once, his gaze unreadable, then back to Maeve. “Your favorite cailleach will be good for naught but rest for a long time after this. The effort is damn near killing her and might actually manage it—not that yeh'd stop her from making that sacrifice. Such things are necessary sometimes, aren't they?” With that, Niall's gaze flicked over to Colin again.

“We are all of us in Keara's debt,” Maeve said calmly. She watched Colin closely in case he was about to collapse again, but he slid onto one of the chairs from the kitchen table and sat. Maeve went to the hearth and crouched down in front it. “But it's almost done now,” she said as she rekindled the banked ashes and put another turve on the fire. “Yeh can tell her and Aiden that. A few hours more, that's all.”

“An' where have yeh been, Maeve?” Niall asked. His breath gusted out, gray against gray.

She stood, the iron poker still in her hand. She leaned on it as if it were a cane. “Colin and me were makin' certain that Fionbharr and the others will stand with us.”

“An' will they?”

“They will.”

Niall nodding, glancing sidewise toward Colin. “An' the spell to open the gate?”

“I'll be starting that as soon as I can, and that's going to require the rest of yeh keeping the Naval Service away from us while we do it. In fact, I need to talk to everyone about that: can you get those who're capable of it together at the tavern?—everyone but Keara and Aiden. We need to make plans, because as soon as the fog's gone, things are going to happen fast. Why don't yeh get the others together for me?”

Niall was still glancing toward Colin, as if he expected him to speak, but Colin only stared back at the man, his face carefully neutral. The peat fire crackled loudly behind Maeve. “Give me an hour,” Niall said finally.

Colin glanced at the clock above the hearth, and his eyes widened slightly. Maeve looked as well: impossibly, it was late afternoon; they must have been hours under the mound.
Yeh know time runs differently there . . .
“Make it an hour and a half,” she said. “At the pub. I'll be there by six o'clock.”

Niall shrugged. “As you wish, Morrígan. Six o'clock. And then?”

“Then?” Maeve repeated, with a short laugh. “For us, we live or we die. Right here.”

Niall gave a faint nod. He stood there, silent, for a moment, then slowly turned and went to the door. “Six o'clock,” he said again, his hand on the handle as if waiting for Maeve to say more. She only stared placidly at him. He pushed the door open and left.

As the door closed again behind Niall, Maeve let the poker drop; it clanged against the stones of the hearth. She swung the teakettle over the fire for the water to boil, then went to the cupboard and took out black tea, two mugs, and a tea ball. She opened the ball and stuffed tea inside it, closing it again. When she heard the water began to bubble, she put the tea into the pot and brought it over to the table. Colin was watching her the entire time, but neither of them spoke. “Have some tea,” Maeve said. “It'll revive you.”

“And what about me?” Colin asked as Maeve sat at the small dining table in the front room. Through the haze of Keara's fog spell that had invaded the cottage, she watched him push his glasses up his nose even though they didn't seem to need the adjustment—such a familiar, habitual gesture. A mortal gesture. “What happens for me?”

“I make yeh this promise, m'love,” Maeve told him, staring down at the teacup between her hands. She was weary from the pretense of displaying false confidence in front of Colin, Niall, and the others, from the confusion of not knowing what she was going to do next. “I won't ask yeh to do anything that yeh don't want to do.”

“Then how are you going to open the gateway?”

“There may be another way.” By far her best strategy would be to lie to Colin and use him despite the promises she'd made. The spell required a “willing victim” who would give the necessary blood and life. She had listened to the voices inside the cloch before Rory had stolen it from her, and they had told her what was needed to open the gateway. The voices insisted that the chosen sacrifice didn't have to completely understand what was required to be “willing.” Lying to Colin would guarantee that she could save her people and those who had trusted her . . . at least all of them except Colin himself. The old Morrígan would have done exactly that without flinching: give Colin a comforting lie (“Just a nick to give me what little blood I need and no more . . .”), then slit his throat from ear to ear and use his gushing, dying life to complete the spell, all without any regret or guilt.

Cúchulainn and Medb would have concurred with that assessment of the Morrígan's trustworthiness. Odras, whom the Morrígan turned into a pool of water, would agree. The Dagda, whom she once loved, knew well how the Morrígan could deceive, as did Lugh himself. But that old Morrígan felt very far away at the moment, centuries away.

Maeve closed her eyes and gave a huff of exasperation. Strands of Keara's fog billowed away from her with the exhalation.

“There
may
be another way?” she heard Colin say.

She was too exhausted to do more than shrug. “'Tis all I have now.”

“Is it going to be enough?”

She tried to laugh, tried to be offhand about it. It was nearly too much of an effort. “Going to have to be, is it nah?” She sighed, pushing back from the table. “I have too little time, and you're exhausted. Why don't you lay down for a bit? I'll wake you up.”

He shook his head. “I couldn't sleep, and I'm feeling better anyway. What do you want me to do? How can I help?”

His eagerness tugged at her, making her regret her thoughts. “I'd like to hear yeh sing something. Yer guitar's still in the bedroom. A song will clear my head best.”

“What would you like to hear?”

“Do you ever write yer own songs? All I've ever heard yeh play are the old tunes.”

He shrugged. “I've written a few. I don't think I'm much of a songwriter, though.”

“I don't care. Play me one.”

In the bedroom clouded with Keara's fog, she reclined on pillows piled against the headboard of her bed and watched him take the guitar from its case. Her eyes half-closed, she listened to him tune up, feeling the bed move as he sat near her feet. She remembered the voices inside the cloch, and she imagined them mocking her now, railing at her, giving her suggestions that she wasn't certain she could use. “Okay,” Colin said finally. “This is something I jotted down not long after I met you. I call it ‘Slip Away'—let me see if I can remember it . . .”

Colin strummed a few chords in a minor key, then started to sing. The voice . . . She could still hear the bard's energy underneath the melody, but it was mostly just Colin's own voice.

I felt you watching me from across the room

Felt through the crowd the pressure of your gaze

I didn't know what made the air spark between us

All I know is that we both sensed it, we both felt it

You gazed at me while you were talking to him

Your smile over his shoulder said more than words

Without hearing your voice I heard your mind, I heard your heart

I wanted to move, should have moved, but with one last look you turned away

I saw you at the door, alone, your keys dangling in your hand

I would have called your name had I known it

You would not look back, just walked away into empty night

By the time I reached the door, I found that you had slipped away

I saw your face for many hours after

All the promise in your eyes and all the promise in your smile

Heading home, I wondered if I'd gone to you and spoken

Was this our chance, our moment? Did I let it slip away?

Just slip away . . .

He strummed a final minor chord, then leaned the Gibson against the mattress. He smiled at her. “Now you see why I stick mostly to singing other people's stuff.”

“I liked it,” she said. “A sad melody, and a sad thought. Was that us, yeh and me? After the first time we met?”

“Partially, yeah, though it's mixed in with a few other times when I regretted not speaking to someone, all conflated. After what I was told about the Oileánach following that gig, well, I didn't figure we'd be talking again, and the song just kinda came to me while I was noodling on the guitar, thinking about things.” His hand rested on her calf, stroking her leg. “I'm glad all of it turned out to be wrong, that you didn't slip away from me.”

“Even now? With all this? Even though I dragged yeh arseways into this hash?”

He laughed, once, and his amusement sounded clear and certain. “Yeah. Ultimately, the song's about choices we wish later that we would have made, and how we need to seize those moments when they come or we live with the regret. Regret's a lousy companion.” She saw his hand brush over the cloch in his jean pocket, protectively, before he lay back, his head on her belly. The motion made her yearn to hold it once again, to keep it. “What's going to happen now, Maeve?”

She stroked his hair for a long time without answering, closing her eyes again. Inside, the old Morrígan howled, churning her stomach. “I have to find another way,” she said finally. “There is one. I know.”

They both lapsed into silence after that, as she continued to stroke his hair. His breath was calm and slow, and she wondered whether he'd fallen asleep when he stirred again. She opened her eyes to see him staring at her.

“So . . . this blood magic and sacrifice you talked about—does the person providing the blood have to die?”

“Aye,” she whispered, “but then maybe nah. When I had the cloch, before Rory—” she stopped, changing the word she would have used. “—took it, they told me what must be done to open the gateway, the spells and rituals I have'ta use. Yeh've heard the voices yerself now. They're confusing, so many of 'em talking all at once . . . Some of them, at least, said that if someone offered himself freely, I might be able to bring him back afterward, in Talamh an Ghlas. There's a chance. The cloch may have that power left in it.”

“You
might
be able to,” Colin repeated. “Do these voices of yours believe that's likely?”