“I remember nothing,” Ardal whispered. “Nothing at all.”
CHAPTER 6
~Felix~
It is night. Gull’s sleep is a warrior’s; he would wake in an instant. From Sibeal’s chamber, silence. I picture her deep in slumber, the clear eyes closed, the sweet mouth in repose. Her dark hair rippling down across the covers that blanket her slight form. A druid, committed to a lifelong journey of the spirit. I have encountered druids before, I think. But none like her.
It is night and I am awake. Somewhere beyond these walls there is a man who would kill me for my memories. It was no idle threat; his eyes were like hard frost. What is it he fears so?
I have nothing to tell, nothing of any account. My mind is a shell, empty save for a rattle of old images. Noz, my dog. A row of olive trees. A cart on a dusty road. And now, as I lie here in the dark with eyes wide open, a bog, a mist, a stirring of the uncanny.
Gull sleeps quiet in his corner, untroubled by what his tale has awoken. I see barren hills. It is desolate, empty country where folk scratch a sparse living and forlorn spirits wander. A haze wraps the slopes, rendering them uncertain, treacherous. Below, down below, lies Yeun Ellez, where strange lights come and go. The dark ooze is patched with eruptions of ominous bubbles. Rank pools defy the probing of the longest stick. There are places where an object, thrown in, vanishes as if seized by an invisible hand. Flickering; fading; changing. A gateway to another world . . .
Who told me this? Is it a tale recounted around the fire, a thing of magic and wonder from time past? I remember the voice, a seasoned voice, expert in the telling of stories. I see the eyes, a vivid blue, the skin like old parchment. A hand in mine, knotted fingers warm with love. Is this a true memory? Have I conjured this from my real life, the life I have forgotten? Lying here on this pallet in the darkness, I see the Ankou striding out of the swamp, rags dripping bog water, eyes ghastly with mad intent, hands tipped with scythe-like nails black as pitch. His flesh is pale; his stride is long. My heart sounds a drum beat. My feet are rooted to the ground. Slowly, I begin to sink. I am on a steady, inexorable descent to the place beneath. Terror snatches away my breath. I stretch my mouth in a silent scream.
If you will go there, Felix, at least go armed with knowledge. The wise old voice speaks in my mind and I am back in the chamber again, in the dark, and the Ankou is gone. My heart is knocking at the walls of my chest; chill sweat coats my skin. I have made some sound, surely. But Gull does not stir, and in the little chamber beyond the curtain all is silence.
Felix. I think that is my name. I will not tell them. In this place of secret threats, knowledge is dangerous. The brave name Sibeal has given me will serve. I shiver, remembering that man’s gesture, the knife across the throat. Is that how he would do it? Or would it be a sudden cord around the neck, or poison drops in the jug? Perhaps I harmed someone dear to him. Or stole his treasure. Maybe I betrayed his trust. No. Use your wits, Felix. He fears my knowledge. I have seen something. I have witnessed something he wants forgotten, something he does not wish these good people to know about. The hair prickles on my neck; my heart is chill. Remember, Felix. Why can’t you remember?
I do not think I will sleep tonight. Oh, Sibeal, I wish you would come through that doorway, come and sit here by me. I wish you were close with your sweet clear voice and your eyes full of far-away things. Help me to remember, Sibeal. Help me. All I know is that I have a task, a mission, and time is running all too swiftly. I must remember before it is too late. Vanquish demons . . . Confront the Ankou . . . Be a hero, as Gull and his Liadan were in their own tale . . . hah! What manner of hero is this, who for so long could not bring himself to speak aloud? Deiz, little dog, you show more courage than I, with your bold forays up and down my pallet and your warning growls. Yet here you are, no bigger than a squirrel.
The night seems long. There is a deep quiet, broken by the occasional cry of a sea bird passing overhead, and the sleepy bleating of sheep. Gull gets up and goes out. He comes back; stands by my bedside yawning.
“Awake, Ardal? I’ll get you some water.” The candle set carefully down on the stool by my bed; the cup lifted between his palms. Twin flames shining in the dark eyes. “Here,” he says. I prop myself on an elbow and take the cup in my own hands, surprising him. Tomorrow, I will show Sibeal that I can do this. “Good,” Gull murmurs. “Lie back now.” And, as he returns to his own bed, “The gods guard your sleep.”
My arm hurts. My shoulder hurts. My throat aches. What a hero! That small effort has worn me out.
That man said that if I spoke he would kill me. What of those who tend to me? When I remember, when I tell my tale, perhaps I will imperil not just my wretched self, but all those who hear me. Perhaps my very presence endangers them. Who knows what manner of man I am?
While I wait for the dawn, I imagine an augury for Sibeal. In my mind I hold the rune rods bunched in my hand, loosely, while I ask the question. What lies ahead for Sibeal? What paths will she be offered? I let my imaginary rods fall as they will, making a pattern on the linen of the ritual cloth. Three lie across the others: these are the runes of augury. Daeg; Beorc; Gyfu.
What would you say, Sibeal, if you could see this? There is love in it, and sacrifice, and completion. There is a bright light in time of darkness. There is, in the end, an understanding that comes from deep in the spirit. Those men Gull spoke of, those who hope, foolishly, selfishly, that you might not be entirely committed to your future path—for you are young in years, if not in wisdom—hope in vain. If ever there was a druid’s augury, this is it. From a man like me, this path must lead you far, far away.
~Sibeal~
“Sibeal, may I speak with you?”
I jumped, startled; I had not heard Cathal coming. “Of course. You’re abroad early.” I was seated on the rocks overlooking the little cove where I had encountered Svala, the day Knut asked me to keep her secrets to myself.
“You, too.”
“I usually go walking before breakfast.” It was a journey to greet earth and wind, sun and cloud and hovering gulls. It helped me step forth from the wild landscape of dreams.
Cathal seated himself beside me, gazing out to the rocky islets off the coast. He looked grim. Today the sea matched his mood; it was a sullen gray under scudding clouds. For a while, neither of us spoke. When the silence had almost become awkward, Cathal said, “Sibeal, we spoke before about scrying.”
“Mm-hm.”
“The dreams continue. They persist, night by night the same.”
“What is it you want to know, and cannot bring yourself to ask?”
“About the child: if it will be born safely, if it will thrive and be well. About Clodagh.” His jaw was set tight. Someone who did not know him might have thought the look in his eyes was anger. Perhaps, in part, it was; anger that he was driven to this. “I need to know, Sibeal. I thought perhaps you . . . ?”
I had seen nothing concerning Clodagh and her baby; I had not sought guidance on the matter and I had no intention of doing so. Now, with a suddenness that was becoming familiar since my arrival on Inis Eala, an image came to me: a tiny child, a boy, lying naked on a shawl of many colors. He was so small. Even my little brother, Finbar, born many days before his time, had from the first been more robust than that. Or did I misremember? Watching over the babe was a tall, black-cloaked man. They were out of doors, in the shade of old oaks. I could not quite see the man’s face, but it was surely Cathal. I hoped it was Cathal. The vision faded.
“Your fear is shared by every man who is about to become a father for the first time, Cathal.” With an effort, I kept my voice calm. I put from my mind the knowledge that Cathal and his father were so alike that even Clodagh had mistaken Mac Dara for his son the first time she saw him. “Clodagh is young and healthy. And there’s expert help here on the island; Muirrin will look after her. Unless you’ve suddenly decided you must go back to Sevenwaters, surely there’s nothing to worry about.” But there was; it was written
all over him. And this was not a man to let his fears overwhelm him; this was a warrior, strong and skillful, a man others looked up to.
“My dreams are full of storm, violence, death.” Cathal knotted his fingers together. “I’m losing sleep over them, and so is Clodagh. You said before that you believed the shipwreck had left more than two men and a woman on this shore. Sibeal, something is wrong here, deeply wrong. I have heard more than one person speak of ill omens, of shadows and portents. I am not the only man on Inis Eala troubled by his dreams. My father has a long reach. Even here, in this protected place, I carry talismans to keep his influence at bay.”
Cathal had given Clodagh his green glass ring, handed down over many generations of his mother’s family. That ring had helped keep Cathal safe as a child. Its protective magic had won him and Clodagh their release from the Otherworld, when Mac Dara would have trapped his son there. Maybe it was safe for them on Inis Eala, but I had noticed Clodagh still wore the ring, and Cathal carried a cargo of charms sewn into the lining of his long cloak.
“My dreams have been the same,” I told him. “Dark, violent, frightening. But—shadows and portents? What exactly have people been saying?”
“Thus far it’s no more than a general unease among the men. It may die a natural death. I have heard some talk.”
“What talk, Cathal? And what has this to do with Clodagh and your child?”
He was sitting with elbows on knees, his hands still interlaced. He did not look at me. “Perhaps nothing,” he said quietly. “But with every unusual event, with every surprise, I fear my father’s influence. The sudden squall that wrecked the ship out there . . . It was no ordinary storm. I saw an uncanny hand in it, and I suspect others did as well. And . . . ”
“Go on, Cathal,” I said after a while. “I may not be able to give you the answers you want, but I will listen without judging, and I’ll betray no confidences.”
“What you saw the other morning was only a small example of what I can do. I could have helped them. Those wretched souls. I could have been on one of the boats. I could have . . . ” He looked utterly wretched.
“That was a fierce storm, Cathal.” An unnaturally fierce storm. “Even you could not have held back those waves, or stopped that gale from blowing Freyja onto the rocks.” In my heart, I wondered. He was Mac Dara’s son, after all.
“I should have tried,” Cathal said. “Instead I put my own needs first: the need to escape my father’s notice, the need to keep my family safe. Meanwhile the wives and children of other men perished before my eyes. No wonder I am visited by nightmares.”
“If you go beyond the boundaries of Inis Eala, if you reveal yourself and if your father finds you,” I said carefully, feeling somewhat out of my depth, “Clodagh could be left on her own with the child.”
“And so I did not act. I am a coward, Sibeal. If I could know what lies in her future, if I could be assured they will be safe, the two of them . . . ”
“Have you sought answers in the scrying bowl? Have you used other tools of divination?”
The waves washed into the cove below us, a whispering song in the quiet of early morning. “You know I have not,” he said.
“Then don’t ask me to do it. She’s my sister.”
Cathal did not reply.
“Besides,” I said, “my visions are often fragmentary, cryptic, full of symbols. They are open to many interpretations. There are no neat windows into the future. It would alarm me if there were—that would surely mean that we have no power to influence what is to come.”
My companion gave a mirthless smile. “If one could see a possible future, one might then take steps to ensure it did not come about.”
“We’re not gods,” I said. “There’s good reason why a divination is never carried out on one’s own behalf. If you obtained answers, you could find yourself paralyzed by them.”
“I understand.” After a moment he added, “Sometimes I wonder how someone so young can be so wise.”
I grimaced. “I don’t always feel wise. But that is the druid path: it lasts a lifetime, and one never stops learning.”
With the arrival of the Connacht men came changes to the daily pattern on Inis Eala. Training began early in the morning and lasted until supper time. Both island men and visitors were either shut away in the practice area where we could not see them, or spread out across the island rehearsing various maneuvers. I saw them heading out with coils of rope, and heard that they were practicing cliff scaling. I wondered if the Connacht warriors were preparing for a particular assault back home, perhaps an attack by stealth on an island fortress deemed unassailable. Nobody was talking about that. Biddy and her assistants prepared enormous meals, which were devoured in near silence. Folk went early to bed.
The men snatched time for themselves when they could. I rarely saw anyone use it to rest, despite the exhaustion that shadowed even the faces of the Inis Eala men. Instead, they matched up in pairs and practiced for the challenges. It became common to stumble upon a fight when going to hang up washing or draw water from the well. Every spare corner seemed to house one of these intense contests, fought with swords, knives, staves, bare fists.
These bouts were conducted under the eye of anyone who happened to pass by. Out at the back of the infirmary, beyond the dry-stone wall that sheltered the herb garden, a similar but less public activity was taking place: Gull and Kalev were training Knut. Going out to stake up plants or spread straw, I would see Kalev and Knut locked in combat, using the new swords, while Gull circled, eyes narrowed, observing and instructing. And once or twice I saw Gull and Knut working in Kalev’s absence, the Norseman practicing with his weapon, the teacher correcting his student’s grip or the position of his upper body without the need for any common language but that of combat. I could see from the look on Gull’s face—his eyes bright and intent, his jaw firm—that the warrior he had been lay not far beneath the healer he had become. He was enjoying himself. As for Knut, the hard work of preparation seemed to suit him. When he spoke to me in passing his manner was quietly courteous. He had the look of a man who has begun to find content.
By the third day Rat had ceased agreeing to challenges; the program was full. None of the Connacht men had put his hand up to fight with the new swords. Still, the visitors were eager to show their mettle. Plenty had requested bouts against their own or the islanders, and a couple of the Inis Eala men had challenged the most promising of the visitors. It would be an entertaining day.
My conversation with Cathal had troubled me. I said nothing of it to Clodagh, but made sure I spent time with her each day, whether it was keeping her company in the mornings as she spun or wove or helped with the hundred and one tasks required to keep the community going, or sitting by her in the afternoons while she lay on her bed resting. Left to herself, Clodagh would have kept on working. I had heard her say that a daytime sleep was a ridiculous indulgence. Her increasing weariness frustrated her. Like our mother, Clodagh was wont to fill her time with activity so that there would not be too much opportunity to dwell on troubling possibilities. I told her stories as she fell asleep. I chose them carefully, and my sister saw right through me.
“You are determined to have me believe in happy endings, Sibeal.”
“Don’t you believe in them?”
A shadow passed across her face. “Perhaps I’ve had my share of good fortune already.”
“Nonsense,” I told her. “You’re one of the strongest people I know. You’re chock-full of courage and goodness. You’ll make your own happy endings.”
“I hope so. But I do feel tired, Sibeal. Tired and weak. I hate that. And I’m worried about Cathal. His dreams are terrible. Last night he woke up shouting, and he refused to tell me what the nightmare was.”
“A dream is not reality,” I said. “As for being tired, you don’t need me to point out that women who are soon to give birth do feel weary. You could ask Muirrin for a tonic.”
Clodagh grimaced. “The las
t one she gave me tasted like rotting seaweed.”
“No doubt a very efficacious cure can be brewed from rotting seaweed,” I said, smiling. “One might get better by sheer force of will, simply to avoid a second dose. Now shut your eyes and I’ll tell you the story about the clurichaun wars.”
“I know that one already.”
“Ah, but I’ve made up my own version, especially designed for an audience of warriors, and I want to try it out before I tell it in the dining hall.”
I was telling a lot of stories. There were the ones that sent Clodagh to sleep, and the ones that entertained the scattering of folk who stayed in the hall after supper, and there were Ardal’s stories, the tales I kept for later in the evening, to be shared in the quiet of the infirmary.
Ardal was showing a fierce determination to get well again. He reached a new milestone each day—feeding himself, getting up from the pallet unassisted, walking to the fire with his hand on Evan’s shoulder. They were of a similar height, and when I saw them standing side by side I was shocked. Ardal was so painfully thin, his arms skeletal, his borrowed robe hanging loose from his frame. Beside the well-built Evan he seemed a wraith.
Those who tended Ardal during the day found it hard to believe he had a good command of Irish, though Gull and I assured them it was so. To them the patient spoke only those few words that were essential to help them in their work. At night, when the others were gone, he stepped past other milestones, though I sensed a wariness in him even when only Gull and I were present. The two of us took turns to tell stories, choosing by instinct. Some tales were for comfort or reassurance. With others we hoped to give Ardal something to hold on to, a rope with which he might begin to haul in the complex net of the past. Sometimes we simply talked, and each night Ardal contributed a little more. If his memory was still lost in the fog somewhere, there was no doubting his will to recover it. As for his Irish, though it was strongly accented, it proved to be so fluent, I began to think he must have lived here for some years. Gull and I discussed this in private, for we both wondered why our charge had chosen to conceal his knowledge of our tongue for so long. Gull said that in another man he would have suspected an ulterior motive—an attempt to glean information under false pretenses. I thought the shock of being shipwrecked, coupled with the loss of memory, would be enough to make anyone act oddly. I could not imagine what I would do if such a calamity befell me. With everything gone, even the knowledge of one’s own identity, what could a person cling to? There would be nobody to trust.