The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4)
Read The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) Online
Authors: Rebecca Lochlann
Tags: #Child of the Erinyes
THE SIXTH LABYRINTH
R
EBECCA
L
OCHLANN
Table of Contents
Glossary for The Sixth Labyrinth
Gaelic (and Greek) Translations
Published by Erinyes Press
Copyright © Rebecca Lochlann 2016
Internal design © 2016 Rebecca Lochlann
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or shared in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, and recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher or author.
ISBN-10: 09838277-8-8 Electronic Book
ISBN-13: 978-0-9838277-8-8
Cover image— Eve Ventrue
eve-ventrue.com
Back Cover, Paperback: Les Trois Grâces 2.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Les_Trois_Gr%C3%A2ces_2.jpg
Labrys Axe graphic © “Labrys-symbol” Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Labrys-symbol.svg#mediaviewer/File:Labrys-symbol.svg
Crescent moon, necklace, & Erinyes Press logo: Lance Ganey
freelanceganey.com/
Author website, maps, bibliographies, etc:
rebeccalochlann.com
Also available in paperback:
ISBN-13: 978-0-9838277-9-5
ISBN-10: 0-9838277-9-6
TO ALL THE SURVIVORS
B
OOK
F
OUR
THE CHILD OF THE ERINYES SERIES
MOTHER
NOTE TO READERS:
Almost all the Gaelic in this book is translated immediately or within a few paragraphs or pages. The dialect is usually clear via context. But I have included a glossary at the end for those who prefer it.
Most readers will be familiar with these dialect words, as they are widely used in fiction. In fact, most have already been defined in every dictionary and Wikipedia: you only need to tap on or highlight the word to bring up the definition. If there is no ready definition and you are curious, simply click or tap on the hyperlink, or the glossary link in the table of contents. Because the hyperlinks seem a little distracting to me, I haven’t hyperlinked the words that are translated in the text.
PRONUNCIATION OF NAMES YOU’LL SEE IN THIS BOOK:
SEAGHAN – SHAWN
DIORBHAIL – DER-VAHL
EAMHAIR – EE MER
RUAIRIDH – ROOREE
HE SINGS THE
morn upon the westward hills
Strange and remote and wild;
He sings it in the land
Where once I was a child.
He brings to me dear voices of the past,
The old land and the years;
My father calls for me,
My weeping spirit hears.
~~~~
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
PROLOGUE
GLENELG, SCOTLAND
NOVEMBER 1853
“IT LOOKS TO
be a hard labor,” Beatrice said.
Isabel squinted at the woman from the corner of her eye. Beatrice Stewart never wasted words. If she opened her mouth to say
It looks to be a hard labor
, well, it was no doubt going to be the worst labor ever seen in Inverness-shire.
The forest pressed in, heavy and watchful, the shadowed trees looming like baleful black giants.
Beatrice seized Isabel’s arm. “Fetch water.”
Grateful for something to do, for a distraction from brooding thoughts and growing panic, Isabel carried a wooden bucket to the nearby burn, using a fallen tree limb to break the ice. She wasn’t so far away that she couldn’t hear Hannah Lawton’s awful moaning as the poor lass struggled to give birth. The babe was a full two months early. Nothing could save it. They’d be lucky to save the mother, with no midwife.
She fought off tears as she knelt to fill the bucket. Hannah had endured much this day. So had the rest of Glenelg. The entire village, Isabel’s friends and kin, all those she’d ever known, had been evicted, forced to watch without recourse as every building, even the old kirk, was burnt to the ground. The men hired to carry out the landlord’s wishes had inflicted many cruelties. Terror, devastation, and now this unrelenting cold— brought by the worst storm she could remember blanketing the entire coast in snow— surely these things would curse the coming infant and its mother.
The bucket was cracked, but didn’t seem to leak. Isabel tripped through frozen loam, snow, and hidden tree roots, handing it to Beatrice then standing there, not knowing what else to do. She glanced through bare branches and sweeping evergreen limbs into an ominous patchwork of clouds.
Lord, help this woman
, she prayed.
Help us all.
If God ignored her, they would die, either of slow starvation or painful freezing. How many days could this pitiful band survive? Her instincts declared,
Not many
.
Hannah screamed, “Seaghan! Seaghan!” The circling trees magnified her cry.
Isabel looked at each of her companions, those who had gathered here after the destruction of their homes. Yesterday, over two hundred people lived in and around Glenelg. Now she counted seventeen. Six were children.
She turned away, not wanting these wounded, weary souls to see the defeat she couldn’t hide, or her conviction that they would all die here together.
* * * *
Wake up, daughter
.
Isabel rose on one elbow, rubbing at her eyes. Mist eddied, eerie and opaque. She half expected a unicorn or dwarf to appear.
A miracle comes. Why do you sleep?
Shivers ran over her, though she was oddly warm. “Miracle?” She peered in every direction, though she was almost certain the source of the voice was inside her own head.
The mist split like a tattered sail, framing a woman who observed her in a curious yet arrogant way. A lady with long, curling black hair and pale skin, rather like an Irish lass. But she wasn’t dressed like any Irishwoman Isabel had ever seen. A narrow silver band ran across her forehead; in the center was an ornament shaped like a boat with high-pointed prow and stern, or a crescent moon propped on its spine. Her white gown, sleeveless and bound with silver ribbons, rippled about her ankles. Isabel, who loved fabric and needlework, couldn’t help admiring such an uncommon article of clothing, or a twinge of envy at how it fit.
The holy child comes.
Envy vanished beneath apprehension. “Who are you?”
Handmaid of Areia Athene, she who brings life and death to men
. The crown flashed as the lady inclined her head.
She brings life now, sacred life. Wake. See the child who suffers for your sake
.
