Uncertainly, I brushed the stray hairs off my forehead. “Where is this place? Is it difficult to get there? My time—it’s so short.”
“Not difficult at all, my pet. And no whirlwind this time! I could send you there by Leaping.” A low cackle filled her throat. “Or, if you like, I could use a chariot. More time-consuming, but ever so much more exciting.” Seeing my expression, she frowned. “All right. Leaping, then.”
“I’m still not sure. If Urnalda does have the Galator, it could take all the time I have left to win it back.”
Domnu reached for the flask of wine, opened her mouth as wide as a crevasse, and poured all the liquid down her throat. “Ah, my pet, don’t you understand? If Urnalda does not have it, then you will have used up all your time for nothing. If, however, she does have it, the oracle will tell you that straightaway. This way, you can be certain who really is the thief.” She crushed the flask in her fist, spraying shards of glass on the stones. “And that is something—breaded bones, that is something—I would dearly like to know.”
Slowly, I gave a nod. “All right, then. Tell me about this oracle. What sort of person is there?”
“Not a person. Not exactly. The oracle lies far to the south, near the sea, in a place surrounded by cliffs—steep, smoking cliffs.”
At this, Hallia stiffened. She started to say something, but the hag cut her off.
“It’s so simple, my pet! All you need to do is ask it your question.” She glanced toward the flickering lights. “That is, after you have surmounted a minor obstacle.”
I cringed. “What sort of obstacle?”
Blue light exploded in the room, swallowing everything.
PART THREE
21: THE BIRTH OF THE MIST
Salt. On my lips. In the air.
Suddenly I realized that my legs and back felt wet. Thoroughly wet. I shifted when something rough scraped the side of my neck. Startled, I sat up—as a bright purple sea star fell from my shoulder, landing beside me with a splash.
Tide pool! I was sitting in a tide pool. A strand of kelp clung to my arm; a sea cucumber, slimy and bloated, draped over my hip. And there, smirking at me, sat Hallia. She leaned against a gnarled piece of driftwood, her back to the waves stroking the shore of black, crystalline sand. Trying to stifle a laugh, she quickly turned aside.
“In the name of Dagda!” I cursed, lifting myself out of the shallow pool. As I stood, water coursed off my tunic and splattered my boots. “Of all the places to land . . .”
Hallia’s eyes flitted toward me—then veered away. “You’ll dry out,” she said quietly, pausing for a long moment to watch the undulating wall of mist beyond the waves. “This place holds more heat than you know.”
Unsure what she meant, I rubbed the sore spot on my neck. Though the sting of the sea star was fading, its smell was not. And rubbing made it worse. Much like garlic but stronger, the smell wafted over me, pushing aside even the ocean’s briny breath. Hoping to wash it off, I bent down to the tide pool and splashed some water on my skin.
“Just wait a bit,” said Hallia, still looking at the mist. “A purple brittlepoint’s odor won’t last very long. You’re lucky it wasn’t a yellow one. Their smell can take days to die down. And this beach is full of them.”
Annoyed, I peered at her. “How do you know so much about sea stars? And this place?”
She turned her eyes, softer than the mist itself, toward me. “Because this is the place of my childhood. Before my clan, the Mellwyn-bri-Meath, left for the woods of the west.”
“Your . . . childhood?” I stepped, boots sloshing, closer to her. “Are you sure? This island has so many beaches.”
“Not with sand like this.” She ran her fingers through the dark crystals. Then her gaze lifted to something behind me. “Nor with cliffs like those.”
I spun around to see a line of sheer cliffs, as black as the sand at our feet. Ominous they stood, like a stand of dead trees. Despite the strong light from the sun, still well above the horizon, the cliffs wore only shadows upon shadows. From several points among their crags, thin trails of smoke climbed skyward.
I shivered, from more than the wet tunic on my back. “The smoking cliffs. The ones Domnu talked about.”
“Where lies the oracle—among other things.”
Using her big toe, Hallia poked a cockleshell, turning it over on the sand. A long, gray leg instantly emerged from the shell and started to push sideways. In a few seconds, the .cockle flipped itself back over—with a squirt of seawater for good measure. Watching this, she smiled wistfully. “It was a good place to live. Full of . . . companions. Even now.”
“Companions?” I glanced again at the forbidding cliffs, then at the dark stretch of shore. “Beyond the shells and sea stars, there’s no one here but us.”
“Oh, no?” She hesitated for a long moment. Finally she Shook her head, catching the sunlight in her unbraided hair. “My people are here.”
“But I thought you said they left.”
“They did—except for those whose tracks had already melted into the sand.”
I drew a deep breath of salty air, more confused than ever. “I don’t understand.”
She waved at the cliffs. “Use your deer eyes, Merlin. Not your man eyes.”
Turning, I allowed my second sight to spread over the cliffs. To probe their shadows. To feel their edges. The slapping of the waves behind me slowly faded, transforming into a different sound—somehow nearer, somehow farther away. Thrumming. Drumming. Like an ever-beating heart, an ever-pounding hoof.
In time, I began to discern a faint tracery of lines woven across the vertical slopes. The lines ran in all directions, bending with every surge and scoop of the cliffs. Could they be ancient trails? Worn by countless hooves over countless years?
And . . . hollows. Caves. Darker than the shadows. Full of mystery, as well as something more.
I nodded, understanding at last. “Your ancestors are still here.”
With the grace of a doe, Hallia rose to her feet. “That they are, buried in the caves, and a part of me with them.” She sighed. “In my heart, I still cling to this shore, just as much as those blue mussels cling to the rocks over there. In my dreams, I find myself floating through this mist—like the silver jellyfish, so delicate, that swims through the shallows, forever breathing the water that becomes its very body.”
Her words encircled me, enveloping me like the mist itself. “Why then did you leave?”
“Because of the cliffs. The old lava mountain they surround began to rumble, and then to smoke.” Her eyes darted like fretful gulls across the shoreline. “Though it never spewed fire, as it did in Distant Time, the mountain released . . . other things. Evil things.”
Under my eye, the tender skin started to throb. The mention of the fire mountain, most likely—reminding me of those flames of my own making, flames that had scarred my face forever. I reached up to stroke my skin, when my hand froze. This scar under my eye hadn’t come from those flames. No! It had come from an older wound, years before.
How could I have forgotten? On that long-ago day, on a deserted beach much like this one, a wild boar had attacked—and I was its prey. I could still hear its snarl, still see its slashing tusks, still feel its hot breath. And, with every throbbing pulse, I could still remember my shock at discovering that it was really not a boar at all, but the wicked warlord of the spirit world: Rhita Gawr.
Hallia nudged my shoulder with her own, just as I had seen her do once, as a doe, to Eremon. “You are troubled, I can tell.”
Despite the moist air, my throat felt parched. “Those evil things . . . from the mountain. What were they?”
She frowned, then stopped to pick up a moon snail on the sand. Pensively, she ran her finger over the round, spiraling shell, the color of cream. “Something tells me you already know. Spirits—angry ones. Seeking death, not life, for anyone who lived here.”
As I nodded, her frown deepened. “They came out of the cliffs, th
e caves, the sea itself, it seemed. No one knew why. We only knew that sickness and pain followed in their tracks.” She winced, remembering something. “And that they had come only once before.”
“When was that?”
Gently, she placed the shell on the rim of a barnacle-crusted rock. Before straightening, she paused to touch the flower of a pink sea anemone, limply waiting for the higher tide to return. At last, she stood again and faced me, her eyes now less frightened than sad. “Eremon could have told you. He knew all the ancient stories.”
I wrapped my arms around my ribs, hoping to warm myself. “I miss him.”
“So do I,” she whispered. “So do I.”
I watched as her tongue moistened her lips. “How is that tooth healing?”
“It hurts a little,” she said sadly. “but not so much as other places.”
“You don’t have to tell that story if you don’t want to. I just had the feeling . . .”
“I’ll try.”
Turning her long chin toward the waves, and the billowing mist beyond, she started speaking in a slow, solemn cadence. “In the time before time, all spoken words could be seen and touched and held. Every story, once told, became a single, glowing thread—a thread that wove itself into a limitless, living tapestry. It stretched from these very cliffs all the way down to the sea, across this shore, and under the waves, where it lay beyond reach, beyond knowing. The tapestry—alive with colors and shapes, shadowy places and bright—was called by many names, but to the deer people it was known as the Carpet Caerlochlann.”
She watched a crab, decorated with a ragged frond of kelp, strut across the driftwood by her foot. “The Carpet grew more luminous, more richly textured, with each passing season. Until . . . it grew so lovely that it caught the interest of one who wanted it for himself. Not to savor its stories—to feel its layers upon layers of woven yearnings, passions, grievings, and delights—but to own it. Possess it. Control it.”
“Rhita Gawr,” I said, touching my aching scar.
“Yes. Rhita Gawr. He sent his spirit warriors to haunt the cliffs, chasing away the deer people, poisoning any who dared to remain. Then he took the Carpet Caerlochlann as his own. It is said that on that day, when the sun began to rise, it was so stricken with sorrow that it could not bear to return. So from that moment on, all of Fincayra was cast into darkness.”
Waves rolled onto the shore, one after another, nearly slapping our feet. A pair of cormorants soared out of the mist, flapping noisily before splashing down in the shallows. One of them plunged the full length of its neck into the water and came up with a writhing green fish in its beak. Hit by the golden sun, the fish flashed like a living emerald.
“There is sunlight now,” I said softly.
“There is, yes. Because the great spirit Dagda confronted Rhita Gawr and won back the tapestry of tales. No one knows just how he succeeded, though it is said that he had to give up something terribly valuable—some of his own precious powers—to do it.”
A new kind of cold gripped me, reaching deeper than the skin beneath my sopping tunic. “And what, after paying so dearly, did Dagda do with the tapestry?”
Hallia’s round eyes turned to me. “He gave it away.”
“He what?”
“Gave it away.” She looked toward the slumbering sea, hidden by the vaporous curtain. “First, using the trail of a falling star as his needle, he pulled loose all the threads of the story. These he wove together with threads of his own, made partly of air and partly of water. When finally he finished, the new weaving held all the magic of spoken words, and more. It was not quite air, not quite water—but something of both. Something in between. Something called . . .”
“Mist,” I finished.
She nodded. “Then Dagda gave the magical mist to the peoples of this island. He wrapped it all the way around the coastline. So that every beach, every cove, every inlet would touch its mysterious vapors. And so that every breath taken upon these shores would mingle with its magic.”
Shyly, she shrugged her shoulders. “So that is how, in the tales of my people, Fincayra’s eternal mist was born.”
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. A gull screeched overhead, while clams squirted by the tide pools. Beyond that, we heard only the waves slapping the shore, sucking the black sand as they pulled back to the sea. Then the lowering sun dropped behind a cloud, and I shivered.
Hallia scrutinized me. “You’re cold.”
Another shiver. “And wet. What I really need is a fire. Just a small one. Say, if we gather up some of this driftwood—”
“No.” She shook her head, tousling her auburn hair. “It will attract them.”
My eyes widened. “Spirits?”
She glanced at the cliffs, which loomed even darker than before. “They might have departed. It’s been many years. All the same . . . it frightens me.”
“A small fire, that’s all.” I flapped my arms. “Just so I can dry out.”
“Well . . . if you must.”
Without another word, we began picking up shards of driftwood. Higher on the shore, above the clusters of mussels, I found an old tangle of seaweed that had dried into a mass of brittle stems. Pulling it apart with my fingers, shivering all the while, I made a rough-hewn nest. Then, striking two sharp rocks above the kindling, I tried to make a spark. My first several landed not on the nest, but on the wet sand. Finally one struck a stem. Gently, I breathed on it, coaxing it to burn. In time, a thin trail of smoke drifted skyward.
Before long, Hallia and I were warming ourselves before the crackling flames. “As much as I miss having hooves,” I observed, “hands can be useful.”
She gave a somber nod. “Eremon liked to say that hooves can make speed, while hands can make music.”
Remembering my own disastrous attempt to make music—so long ago, it seemed—I grimaced. “Some hands, anyway.”
“You have tried?”
I broke some driftwood over my knee and laid the pieces on the fire. “I’ve tried.”
Hallia watched me, as if she hoped I might say more. When I didn’t, she scooped some sand in her palm. “Music, real music, is a kind of magic. As elusive as the mist.”
Slowly, I drew out of my satchel the charred remains of my psaltery. Holding the remains of the oaken bridge, I twirled the string, blackened and stiff. I tried to imagine it as part of a whole instrument again, cupped in my hand, with all the gleaming strings intact. But the vision exploded into flames, crumbling into charcoal. Gone: whatever magic this string once possessed. Just like whatever magic my own fingers once possessed.
“Cairpré once asked me,” I mused aloud, “whether the music lies in the strings . . .”
“Or in the hands that pluck them?” Hallia grinned at me. “My own mother, who taught me how to play the willow harp, asked me the same question.”
“And did you answer it?”
“No.”
“Did she?”
“No.” She pulled a barnacle off a shard of driftwood, then tossed the wood into the flames. “But she did say, while we sat on a rock on this very beach, that an instrument, by itself, makes no music. Only sound.”
She furrowed her brow. “I can’t remember her words exactly, but she said something else, too. That musical instruments need to tap into something more—something higher. That’s it. She called it a power still higher.”
I jumped at the phrase.
She eyed me. “What’s wrong?”
“That’s what I’m going to need if I’m ever going to stop Valdearg. A power still higher. It could mean the Galator. Or it could mean something else.” Using the last of the shards, I shoved the burning coals together. “Whatever it is, I don’t think I have it.”
Hallia studied me, half her face aglow from the flames. “Maybe not, but you do have something.”
I looked at her skeptically.
“You have whatever it took to make Domnu give that stallion back his natural form. And, just as important,
to set him free.” She turned toward the pulsing waves. “That was a noble thing to do. Almost . . . a stag-like thing.”
I lifted the flap of my satchel and replaced the psaltery string. “Maybe I have done at least one thing right, then. I only hope that hag keeps her word and sets Ionn free.”
Hallia shook her long strands of hair. “I don’t trust her any more than you, believe me! She does need your help, though, if she’s going to get back that pendant. That’s why she told you about the Wheel.”
“Wheel?”
“The oracle. The one in the smoking cliffs.” Her face tightened. “It’s called . . . the Wheel of Wye.”
I squeezed her arm. “You know about it?”
“Not much. Just that it’s hidden somewhere up there.” She paused. “And that it’s a place of fear—and has been long before the spirits came to the mountain.”
“Do you know what Domnu meant by a minor obstacle?”
“No. And I don’t want to find out.” She drew a halting breath. “There is, though, a village near the cliffs where you might learn more. It’s a brutal place. Filled with m—” She caught herself. “With that kind of men. Who don’t even notice their own tracks, who would kill a deer just for sport. Not like . . . well, another man I know.”
For an instant, the fire glowed bright on her cheeks—and, it seemed, on mine. Suddenly she scowled. “That village . . . I’ve never been there. And never want to! But for you, it’s different. It was the place—in my childhood, at least—where most oracle seekers started their climbs into the cliffs. Someone there might know something useful.”
Sensing she was preparing to say good-bye, I felt saddened—even as I felt grateful for her suggestion. “Going there, I suppose, could save time.”
“Though it’s a rough place, and could end up costing you time.” She sighed. “The biggest risk to your time, though, is simply finding it, tucked away in its hidden valley. Unless you know the right trails, you might search for days among the folds of cliffs, and the maze of hillocks on their western edge.”