The Greener Shore (18 page)

The festival blew away with the last ashes of the Lughnasa fire, and I accompanied Cohern back to his clanhold. We were both still dazed with excitement. And drink.

I did not think to ask Cormiac Ru to accompany us.

By the time we entered the pass through the mountains, twilight had fallen. Although we carried torches we hardly needed them. We both knew the way. We sauntered along talking about cattle and crops and women. The night wind was warm and sweet. Cohern belched repeatedly. “A tribute to the feast,” he said.

I bade my first friend in Hibernia a genuinely fond farewell at the door of his lodge, then I headed for home. Through the pass.

The distance was greater than I recalled. I walked and walked and walked and still the mountains rose beside me. My eyes searched in vain for a glimpse of the Plain of the Broad Spears. I began to walk faster.

Behind me a wind was rising with a strange sibilance, more like deliberate whistling than the simple movement of air. No sooner did I notice this than I realized I could feel no wind on my body. I stopped in my tracks.

The mist closed around me.

A strangely shining mist, damp but not cold as mist usually is, moving, swirling, thickening here, lifting there, but always obscuring. Shimmering like crystal; ringing like faraway bells.

My heart pounded in my chest.

The whistling turned into the sound of a rushing river. That was soon transformed into a cascade of laughter. Silvery laughter, coming from every direction and no direction. Mocking laughter with an undertone of cruelty.

“Who are you?” I cried. “Where are you? What do you want?”

The laugh multiplied until there must have been hundreds of them—whoever they were—hidden in the mist. They seemed to be circling around me like people dancing. There was not enough room in the narrow pass for hundreds of dancing people, or even a dozen, yet no one brushed against me.

I could feel them, though. A weightless weight like the weight of the wind pushed me forward again. Driving me as deerhounds drive deer toward the hunter. I tried to resist by catching hold of one of the rock outcroppings that lined the pass. My desperately reaching hands closed on mist.

The laughter grew louder.

My feet were moving faster, running.

“Please!” I cried, uselessly beseeching strange gods whose language I did not know. Nothing was solid but the earth beneath my feet. The firm, fertile flesh of Hibernia.

“Of Eriu,” whispered a voice in my ear.

chapter
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VERYONE ELSE WAS LONG SINCE ASLEEP, BUT BRIGA HAD NOT
gone to bed. When I stumbled into the lodge she caught me in her arms. Otherwise I would have fallen on my face.

She gave me a cup of water which I drank in one deep draft. Nothing had ever tasted so good. It soaked into me like rain falling on parched earth. Briga refilled the cup and I drained it again. Only then did I realize how loudly I was panting. How far had I run?

I tried to tell Briga what had happened, but words were inadequate. How does one describe invisibility, or convey the sound of disembodied voices? “I ran from the wind” sounded foolish, even to my own ears.

“There was something out there,” I told her. “That’s all I know. It was real, and it was there, and I can no more describe it than I can describe the bottom of the sea or the top of the sky.”

“Don’t try, Ainvar. Just come to bed and let me hold you.”

I did.

The following morning I tried to recount my experience to Cormiac Ru, but with no more success. “I’ll go back there with you,” he offered. “Whoever assaulted you can’t be allowed to get away with it.”

“I wasn’t assaulted,” I said, “not in the way you mean.”

“Were you threatened, then?”

“Yes. I mean no. I’m not sure.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Either you were or you weren’t, Ainvar.”

“I’m no old fool who can’t tell dreams from daylight,” I said indignantly.

“Then let’s go back and confront them.”

“There speaks the warrior whose only answer is the sword.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

I did not.

Nor was I willing to give in to my fears. This was supposed to be a new life for all of us. So I agreed to go back with Cormiac, provided we went at night. I had a strong suspicion that nothing would happen in the daylight.

When Labraid heard what we were about, he insisted on coming with us. Having the son of Vercingetorix at my side would be a comfort, I thought. With the passing of seasons the boy had grown into a man who physically resembled his father in ways that sometimes made me catch my breath. He was big and bold and beautiful. There were moments when I could almost imagine Rix had returned to us.

Almost, though not quite. Labraid was still inclined to act before he thought, a quality he would carry to his grave.

Cormiac Ru was the better man.

The three of us set off as the sun was dying. Before leaving my lodge I drank several cups of mead to fortify myself against the cold of night. I also brought a blazing torch made of pine pitch.

My companions carried swords and spears. Iron weaponry to challenge mist and laughter. I had never felt more foolish. Nor been more frightened. At least the repulsive Caesar was flesh and blood. What I had encountered in the pass was not.

I had no intention of revealing my fear to Cormiac and Labraid. Sometimes pride can be an ally.

During their time with Cohern the two young men—I habitually thought of them as “the two young men,” though Cormiac was much older than Labraid—had fought in several skirmishes together and thus shared the brotherhood of warriors. As the land tilted to meet the mountains they chatted amicably with each other. I paid only desultory attention to the conversation. My ears were listening for a certain whistle. Hoping it was there and hoping it was not.

Labraid claimed, “The Gael are the best warriors in the world.”

“How can you say that?” asked Cormiac. “You never saw the Romans in battle. They defeated your own father.”

“They did not. Vercingetorix was tricked into surrendering.”

“I was there, Labraid, I know what happened.”

“I was there, too.”

“You were still in your mother’s womb.”

“But I knew things,” Labraid insisted. “Can you prove I didn’t?”

“I suppose not.”

“Well then,” said the other triumphantly. “And I’ll tell you something else, too. If we had the Romans here right now we could beat them.”

“Albion is infested with Romans,” Cormiac replied, beginning to sound irritable. “Why don’t we send for them and test your theory?”

“That’s enough!” I snapped. I did not like the way the conversation was going. We walked on in silence for a while then, though my head was not silent.

Albion and Hibernia, I thought, two islands like sisters in the sea. If Albion was infested with Romans, what infested Hibernia?

The pass through the mountains yawned just ahead of us. The mountains were not very high compared to those I remembered from…No.

We are truly home, Ainvar.

The pass climbed gradually, narrowing as it went, until it was only a pathway on the lip of a deep defile. Water cascaded in sparkling streams from the rocks above and tumbled into the gorge below, where it became the little river I remembered so well. When the pass reached its narrowest we had to proceed single file. I led the way, holding my torch aloft. Brandishing it almost like a weapon. Behind me, Labraid and Cormiac began to talk again. Their voices echoing from the stone walls were the only sounds I heard.

Until the whistling began.

My torch sputtered and went out as if it had been doused in water. The mist—where had it come from?—closed around us.

I stopped so abruptly that Labraid bumped into me. “Look out!” I snapped.

“Look at what? What’s going on?”

“It’s started again. The mist. And the whistling.”

“What whistling?”

“Don’t you hear it?”

“No.”

“Neither do I,” said Cormiac.

“But you do see the mist?”

“I see low clouds sinking down onto the mountains. That often happens when I’m out hunting.”

If I was the only one who could hear the whistling, then something was trying to communicate with me alone. Remembering the name that had been whispered in my ear once before, I called, “Eriu?”

“What?” said Labraid. “Who are you talking to, Ainvar? There’s nobody here. Are you drunk?”

The exasperation Labraid engendered in me exploded. “By the rocks and the rivers! Cormiac, take him back the way we came.”

“I won’t leave you, Ainvar.”

“I’m not asking you to leave me, just remove this fine fellow for a dozen spear lengths, will you? And keep him there.”

In the all-enveloping mist I could not see the brief scuffle that ensued, but there was no doubt who won. I could hear Labraid being frog-marched back down the pass, protesting indignantly until a large hand was clamped over his mouth.

Then there was silence except for the whistling. It did not sound as if it came from human lips. A less sensitive person might have assumed he was hearing only a ringing in his own ears. But I knew better.

“Eriu?” I called again.

The whistling was replaced by a voice. A silvery, rippling voice, almost sexless; almost female. “Who seeks Eriu?”

“Ainvar,” I replied as steadily as I could.

“Who is Ainvar?”

Old habit dictated my answer. “Chief druid of the Carnutes.”

“Who are the Carnutes?”

I replied with a question of my own. “Where is Eriu?”

A nacreous light suffused the mist. It could not be moonlight, for the moon had not yet risen. When I held my hand close to my face, the moisture on my skin glistened like jewels. “I don’t understand.”

“There is nothing to understand, Ainvar of the Carnutes. I am here. I am in the Otherworld. I am Eriu.”

At her words a jolt passed through my body as if I had been struck by one of the white-hot javelins of Taranis. The mist thinned, allowing me one tantalizing glimpse of a brilliant chaos where one color was all colors, where all shapes were one shape, where the sheer intensity of
being
surpassed mortal experience. I staggered, unable to cope with the overwhelming sensations flooding my senses.

The veil of mist descended again, protecting me from sights not meant for mortal eyes. With an effort I regained my balance. Then I felt myself…change. I could not see the walls of rock on either side of the pass but I could feel them through the pores of my skin. I could hear trees murmuring in the night wind on the far side of the mountains. I could taste the sweet pure water in the most distant rivers. I was part of all of these, and they of me.

Rapt, transported, I stood exulting.

Here was validation for one of the principal tenets of druidry: belief in the unseen. In the presence of mystery and terror I was not afraid.

“Ainvar.”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand?”

“No. But I accept.”

“As we all must.”

“Your people…” I hesitated to name them.

“Yes?”

“Do they mean my people any harm?”

“The Carnutes?”

“We are the Gael now,” I told her.

The mist turned cold. Moisture began to freeze on my skin.

“Lads?” I called out uneasily. “Are you still there?”

There was no answer from Cormiac and Labraid.

“
I
am still here,” said Eriu. “Before the Gael invaded I was here. When they have gone I will be here. Nothing they have done can drive me out.” If the voice had come from a human throat, those words would have been spoken through clenched teeth.

Druids believe that existence is finely balanced between Chaos and Pattern. Both are necessary.

By her own admission Eriu spoke from the Otherworld.

Yet she was with me as well. When I drew in breath I inhaled Eriu. When I put down my foot I touched Eriu—who had every reason to hate the conquering Gael.

Fíachu had spoken of being “cursed with dark skies from morning to night. Infants are born dead and the limbs of children wither. Rain turns to sleet, snow turns to ice, grass freezes, and cattle starve.”

Had he been describing one method by which the Túatha Dé Danann took revenge? With their mysterious powers could they do even more dreadful things?

Horrifying thought.

By joining a powerful tribe in order to protect my people, I had made them subject to Eriu’s anger. A sacrificer might have been able to placate her, though I doubted it. Besides, I was no sacrificer. All I had was my head.

Think, head; think as you never thought before.

“The Carnutes were destroyed by a conqueror in a land far away,” I said to Eriu. “In order to survive, my clan needed a place to hide. That’s why we came here in the first place. Because we were hungry to belong to a tribe again, in all innocence we joined with the Gael. But we’re not your enemies, Eriu. Believe me, we are not your enemies. We merely ask to be accepted by this land.”