Son of the Shadows Read online

  Looking around the hall that night, it occurred to me that this might be the last occasion for some time that we were all together. Liam sat in his carven chair, his stern image somewhat softened by the young wolfhounds that played a game of pursuit around his booted legs. My brother stood next to him, the resemblance as always striking. Sean had the same long face and hard jaw, the features of a leader in the making. Conor’s was the same face again, but subtly different, for it was ever filled with an inner light, an ancient serenity. Niamh was seated silent beside her husband. Her back was held straight, her head high, and she did not look at anyone. Her hair was veiled, her dress demure in the extreme. So quickly, it seemed, was her light quenched, which had shone so strongly as she danced and dazzled at the feast of Imbolc. Fionn ignored her. On my sister’s other side was Aisling, keeping up a one-sided conversation with no difficulty at all. And Eamonn was there, seated in the shadows, tankard of ale between his palms. I tried to avoid catching his eye.

  My mother was tired, I could see it, and distressed to see her elder daughter so changed. I saw her glancing in Niamh’s direction and looking away, and I saw the little frown that never left her brow. But she smiled and chatted with Seamus Redbeard and did her best to make things seem as they should be. Father watched over her, saying little. When we had finished our meal, my mother turned to Conor.

  “We need a fine tale tonight, Conor,” she said, smiling. “Something inspiring to send Liam and his allies on their way to Tara strengthened. There will be many departures, for Sean escorts the girls west in a day or two, and we shall be very quiet here for a time. Choose your tale well.”

  “I will do so.” Conor rose to his feet. He was not a very tall man, but there was a presence about him that made him imposing, almost regal in his white robe. The golden tore around his neck gleamed in the torchlight, and above it his features were pale and calm. He stood quiet for a little, as if summoning the right story for this particular night.

  “At this time of parting, of new ventures, it is apt to tell a tale of those things that have been, and are, and will be,” Conor began. “Let each of you listen and make of this tale what your heart and spirit will, for each brings to the thread of words his own bright vision, his own dark memory. Whatever your faith, whatever your belief, let my tale speak to you; forget this world for a while and allow your mind to go back through the years, back to another time when this land was untrodden by our kind, when the Tuatha Dé Danann, the Fair Folk, first set foot on the shores of Erin and discovered unexpected opposition from those who were here before them.”

  “Fine tale, fine tale,” rumbled Seamus Redbeard, setting his cup heavily down on the table.

  “The Tuatha Dé were folk of great influence, gods and goddesses all,” said Conor. “Among them were powerful healers; warriors with an awesome capacity for regeneration; practitioners of magic who could drain a lake dry, or change a man into a salmon or turn a soul off his chosen path with a flick of the fingers. They were both strong and willful. And yet they did not take Erin without a good fight.

  “For they were not the first on these shores. There were others here before them. The Fomhóire were plain folk, folk with both feet on the ground. Some tales say they were ugly and deformed; some that they were demonic. Thus speak those whose understanding is limited to the surface of things. The Fomhóire were no gods. But they had their own crafts and their own kind of power. Theirs was an ancient magic, the magic of the belly of the earth, of the bottomless caves, of the secret wells and the mysterious depths of lake and river. Theirs were the standing stones we have employed for our own rituals, the solemn markers of the paths of sun, moon, and stars. Theirs were the great barrows and passage tombs. They were older than time. They did not simply live in the land of Erin. They were the land.

  “Then the Fair Folk came, and others after them, and many were the grueling battles and subtle acts of treachery and feigned overtures of friendship that occurred before at last there was a kind of peace, a delicate truce, a dividing of the land that was so inequitable that the Fomhóire would simply have laughed at it, had not they been so weakened that they dared not risk further losses. So they agreed to the peace, and they retreated to the few places grudgingly allowed them. The Tuatha Dé possessed the land, or thought they did, and they ruled here until the coming of our own kind drove them in their turn into secret places, Otherworld places, under the surface, in the deep forests, in the lonely caverns beneath the hills, or back to the depths of the ocean across which they had first journeyed to Erin. So both races of magical beings seemed lost to this world.

  “Time brings change. One people follows another and holds sway for a span, and then a new conqueror comes to take their place. Even for our people, even within the span of our fathers’ fathers’ lives, we have seen this. Our own faith was stretched very thin for a time. Even here, in the great forest of Sevenwaters, its sacred lore was all but forgotten. For once that lore exists only as a memory in the mind of one very old man, it is as frail and tenuous as the gossamer wing of a butterfly, as a single thread of a cobweb. We nearly let it slip through our fingers. We came so close.”

  Conor bowed his head. There was a hush in the room.

  “You have brought it to life again, Conor,” my mother said softly. “You and your kind are a shining example to us. In these times of trouble you have preserved the old ways and fanned the spark into a flame.”

  I glanced at Fionn; he was a Christian, after all. Perhaps this had not been the wisest tale to choose. But Fionn did not seem to be perturbed. Indeed, I wondered if he had even been listening. He had his fingers lightly around Niamh’s wrist, and his thumb was moving against her skin. He was looking at her sideways, with something like amusement in his expression and a little smile on his lips. Niamh sat rigidly upright, her blue eyes wide and blind like those of a trapped creature staring into the light of a flaring torch.

  “We forget sometimes,” Conor resumed the tale, “that both these races, the Fair Folk and the Fomhóire, dwelt here a very long time, long enough to set their mark on every corner of Erin. Every stream, every well, every hidden cave has its own tale. Every hollow hill, every desolate rock in the sea has its magical dweller, its story and its secret. And there are the smaller, less powerful folk who have their own place in the web of life. The sylphs of the upper canopy, the strange, fishlike dwellers in the water, the selkies of the wide ocean, the small folk of toadstool and tree stump. They are a part of the land as great oak and field grass are, as gleaming salmon and bounding deer are. It is all one and the same, interlinked and interwoven; and if a part of it fails, if a part of it is neglected, all becomes vulnerable. It is like an arched doorway, in which each stone supports the others. Remove one and the whole structure collapses.

  “I have told you how our faith weakened, and was driven into hiding. But this is not a story of the Christian way and how it grows in strength and influence throughout our land. It is a tale of custodianship and of trust. It is a tale you ignore at your peril when you go forth as an ally of Sevenwaters.”

  There was a pause.

  “Very cryptic,” murmured Liam, reaching down to scratch one of the dogs behind the ear. “I sense the tale is not yet begun, Brother.”

  “You know me well,” Conor responded with a half smile.

  “I know druids,” said his brother dryly.

  Conor was standing just where Ciarán had stood to tell the tale of Aengus Óg and the fair Caer Ibormeith, whom he created in my sister’s image, with her long, copper hair and her milk white skin. I glanced at my sister, wondering if she was thinking the same, and I saw her husband’s fingers where they played against the palm of her hand, stroking, teasing, pinching so that she flinched in sudden pain.

  “Come and sit by me awhile, Niamh.” My voice rang out clearly in the silence while Conor pondered the next part of his tale. “We have seen nothing of you. I’m sure Fionn can spare you for a little.”

  Fionn’s lip curled in
a show of surprise. “You are bold, young sister,” he said, arching his dark brows. “I ride to Tara in the morning; I will be without my lovely wife for the best part of a moon, maybe longer, since she has been prevailed upon to desert me. Would you deprive me still further? She is such a … comfort to me.”

  “Come, Niamh,” I said, suppressing a shudder as I looked him straight in the eye and held out a hand toward my sister. Everyone was watching now, but nobody said a word.

  “I … I would …,” said Niamh faintly, but her husband still held her wrist imprisoned. So I got up and walked across and I slipped my hand through her other arm.

  “Please,” I said sweetly, smiling at my sister’s husband in what I hoped was a placatory manner, though I suspect the message of my eyes was somewhat different.

  “Oh, well, there’s always later,” he said, and his fingers uncurled from her wrist.

  This is the Uí Néill, Liadan. Sean was frowning at me. The voice of his mind was stern. Don’t meddle.

  She is my sister. And yours. How could he forget that? But it seemed they had all forgotten when they sent her away.

  Niamh sat down by me as Conor resumed the tale. I felt her draw a deep, shuddering breath and let it out all at once. I kept her hand in mine, but loosely, for it seemed to me I had to move slowly, as carefully as if I walked on eggshells, if I were to win back her trust.

  “This is a tale of the first man to settle at Sevenwaters,” said Conor gravely. “His name was Fergus, and it is from him that our folk are all descended. Fergus came from the south, from Laigin, and he was a third son with little chance of claiming his father’s lands. He was one of the fianna, those wild youths who ride out to sell their swords to the best bidder. Well, one fine summer morning Fergus was separated from his friends right on the edge of a great wood; and try as he might, he could not find their trail. And after a while, lured by the beauty of the arching trees, the dappled pathways and slanting light, he rode on into the old forest, thinking, I will go where this path takes me and see what adventure comes my way.

  “He rode and he rode, deeper and deeper into the heart of the forest, and the farther Fergus traveled the more that place took hold of his spirit and the more he marveled at its beauty and its strangeness. He felt no fear, even though by now he had completely lost his way. Instead, he was compelled to go ever forward, high on hills crowned with great oak, ash, and pine, down into hidden valleys thick with rowan and hazel, along streams fringed with willow and elder, until at last he reached the shore of a magnificent lake, glittering gold in the light of late afternoon. He did not know if this journey had taken a single day or two or three. He was not weary; instead, he felt refreshed, reborn, for something had awoken in his spirit that he had never known was there until now.

  “Fergus stopped by the lake and dismounted from his horse. He bent to cup his hands in the clear water and take a welcome drink. The water was good. It sharpened his mind and emboldened his heart.

  “‘What is it you want most in the world, Fergus?’

  “Fergus whirled around in shock. There behind him stood a man and a woman, so close he could not understand how he had not seen them before. Both were very tall, taller far than mortal kind. The man had hair the color of flame that curled and flickered around his brow as if it were indeed living fire. The woman was very fair, with long dark tresses and deep blue eyes that matched her flowing cloak. Fergus recognized that they must be folk of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and that he must answer the question. Strange, though; his answer came out quite different from what it might have been a few days before.

  “‘I want to stay here and make my home,’ he said. ‘I want to be part of this place. I want my children to grow up under these trees and taste the fresh water of the lake. Then they will be clear-sighted and rich in spirit.’ So short a time had it taken for this place to set its imprint on his soul.

  “‘You know who we are?’ asked the lady.

  “‘I—I’ve an idea, yes,’ said Fergus, suddenly abashed, for he had never encountered fairy folk before. ‘I don’t intend to be presumptuous, my lady. I expect this is your land. I can hardly claim it as my own. But you did ask.’

  “The flame-haired man laughed. ‘It’s yours, son. That’s why you were brought here.’

  “‘Mine?’ Fergus’s jaw dropped in shock. ‘The forest, the lake—mine?’ It was a dream, surely.

  “‘Yours to keep as guardian, if you fancy the job. As custodian. Make your home here by the lake of Sevenwaters. The forest is old. It is one of the last safe dwelling places for our people and for—the others. The forest will guard you and yours, and you will enjoy great power and prosperity if you remain true. But you must play your part as well. The old ways dwindle, and the secret places are safe no more; they are laid open, despoiled. You and your heirs will be the people of Sevenwaters, and your influence in the mortal world must be used to keep the forest and its dwellers safe—all of its dwellers. There are few such places of refuge left in the land of Erin, and they grow fewer with each turn of the wheel. It is not our way to seek help from your kind, but the world changes, and we need you and yours, Fergus. Will you be this guardian? Have you the strength for it?’

  “What could he answer but yes? So Fergus built his keep of strong stone, and in time he gathered around him some of his old friends from the wild fianna, and some of the farm folk from these parts, and he cleared a few trees, just enough to make room for his grazing land and his small settlements. And he took a wife. Not the daughter of a farmer nor the sister of one of his friends, as you might expect. No, his wife was of another kind entirely. He found her one day when he was out scouting on the hills above the lake, seeking a good place for a watchtower. He came up a rise between rowans, and there she was, sitting high on the rocks in a ragged dress the color of willow leaves, combing her dark hair and gazing out over the trees toward the lake; and he took one look into her strange, clear eyes and was lost. She never said where she came from, or what she was. She was a wee, small thing, a slip of a girl; she was never one of the Tuatha Dé. Fergus remembered, sometimes, how the mysterious lady had spoken of the others, but he never asked.

  “Her name was Eithne, and she was a good wife to him, and bore him three bold sons and three brave daughters. His first son he taught the arts of war, and the second the arts of good husbandry, so that together they might preserve the forest and lake of Sevenwaters and keep it safe. The third son was claimed, on his seventh birthday, by a very old man with braids in his hair who came limping out of the forest, leaning on a staff of oak. This son became a druid, and that was how the old ways were rekindled among the people of Sevenwaters.”

  “What about the daughters?” I could not resist interrupting, although it was not good manners to stop the flow of a druid’s tale.

  “Ah, the daughters,” said Conor, smiling. “All three had their mother’s small stature, and her dark hair and her strange eyes, and many a suitor was there for them when they became women. Fergus was a good strategist. The first he wed to the holder of the túath to the west of the forest. The second he wed to the son of another neighbor, who dwelt in the heart of the marshlands bordering the pass to the north. The third daughter stayed home and became skilled in herb lore and healing, and folk called her the heart of Sevenwaters.”

  “What about the Islands?” Sean asked, eager for the tale to unfold further.

  “Ah, yes.” Conor grew solemn. “The Islands. That is the next part of this tale. But maybe my audience grows weary. It is a long story, perhaps best told over two nights.” He glanced around him, brows raised in question.

  “Tell the rest, Conor,” my mother said softly.

  “As I said, Fergus never asked his wife, Eithne, what she was or where she came from. He never knew if she was an ordinary mortal or something else. She grew older just as a mortal does. But they do say that if one of the Otherworld folk makes the choice to wed one of our kind, she loses her immortality. If this is true, Eithne must have love
d her man deeply indeed, and that perhaps is the root of the way the folk of Sevenwaters love to this day. Eithne gave her husband good cause to believe that she might indeed be one of the Old Ones. They say the Fomhóire are folk of the sea, that it was from the depths of the ocean that they emerged, long ago, to dwell in the land of Erin. Eithne’s secret was a sea secret. She told Fergus of three islands, three rocks in the great water that separates our land from Alba and Britain. Secret islands they were, very small, very hard to find, save by those who knew. Knew what? asked Fergus. Knew how to find them, said Eithne. The Islands were the heart. The heart of everything, the center of the wheel. Fergus must go there, and then he would understand. When all else failed, when all was lost, the Islands would be the Last Place. Even more than the lake, even more than the forest, the Islands must be kept safe.

  “What Eithne said turned Fergus cold, and he did not ask her to explain. But he had his men build a sturdy boat, a big curragh with a bit of a sail, and he followed the map Eithne had shown him how to make, and set out from the eastern shore toward the Isle of Man. That was before the worst of the raids; still, it was not the safest stretch of water for a boat manned by a bunch of woodsmen and farmers. Eithne did not come with her husband. She was carrying a child and besides, she said, sea travel made her sick. So Fergus and his men traveled east and a little south, and as they neared the coast of Man a mist came down, so thick you couldn’t see your finger in front of you. They took down the sail and stilled the oars, but the boat moved on, pulled by an invisible current, while the crew sat shivering in fright, their minds full of long-toothed sea monsters and knife-edged rocks. And after a long time, the keel of the boat scraped onto a shelly beach, and the mist lifted as suddenly as it had come down. They were on the shore of a small, rocky island, not more than a speck in the sea, a desolate place surely inhabited only by seals and wild birds. The men were dismayed. Fergus reassured them, although truth to tell he himself was less than happy with their situation. There was a strange hush about the place, a feeling that something large was watching their every move. He bade the men haul up the curragh and make camp under the shelter of overhanging rocks, while he climbed higher to see how the land lay.