Chapter 1 #3
Eamon O’Connor had lived a long and violent life, never attacking, but always defending the honor of his father before him and the family. His hair was long and silver, his face and body were scarred, but despite his many decades, he stood tall.
He walked into the room and took her into his arms, holding her dear and tightly.
“Thank the good Lord, child, that you are alive! And unhurt?” he asked anxiously.
“I’m fine, Da, quite fine!” she assured him.
He pulled back, studying her face, determined to assure himself that it was true.
She smiled for him. “A brutal day, a bitter day for our people, but Aidan prevailed, and all is—”
“I have heard about the attack and the fighting from many. I did my best to help those who escaped the first onslaught here, behind the walls,” he explained. “I was ready to come to the front—”
“No! Father, your life is too precious, too valuable. While Aidan leads the fighting, sir, it is you who keep us from the advancement of others upon the village, and you ask so little of our people, and we live so happily—”
“I know my age, I know my weakness,” he muttered.
“But without you and your brother, well, there is little point to my life. I made peace with my God years ago, child, and I live as long as I can serve.” He managed a weak smile.
“I know your mother waits for me. For us all. Yet I pray it will be years before we are all joined again. Now! As to that, I was told that you fought brilliantly along with the men. And I was also told that we’d have not made it were it not for the addition of Kylin and his warriors. ”
“Aye, Da, they fought and fought well,” she said.
“And yet you sound strange as you say that,” Eamon said.
Deidre shook her head. “I just . . . Da, in truth, I fear him and his people.”
“Why on earth, child, would you fear him? His father came to me to escape a world in which he was expected to sail and brutalize those at endless ports! His mother is an Irish lass and he had proven himself through the years . . .”
He broke off, nodding. “Ah, child, I see the fear, for in certain battles, the Irish have joined with the Northmen against other Irish and Northmen! But you do not need to fear the son of Sigurd. He has proven time and time again that his father’s teachings are his own.
He will be true to us. Together, we form a greater force than we might ever do alone.
Our land has many kings, one great king, but even he must rely on his alliances and be ever careful of those who would take his place. ”
“Will it ever stop?” Deidre wondered softly.
“There will forever be those who seek what others have that they do not. Some strike out because they starve in their homelands, others for riches. But there will also be beautiful times of peace, when we may love and show kindness as we have been taught.”
Deidre shook her head again, fighting the confusion of the day.
“Father?”
“Aye, child.”
“I almost fell today. Then a woman appeared. She did not touch the ground—she was part of the mist. She . . . pointed out a sword that was in the ground. It was shimmering and it is there, now, where I have set it in the corner of the room. She . . . she seemed to be magic, Father, and yet how can I believe in what our great Father Patrick taught and . . . Father, I believe I survived because of that sword!”
“Patrick loved this land. He returned to it when he had been a slave here. And maybe there is a magic in the world, in Patrick’s world. Perhaps it comes when needed.” Her father smiled. “And, hey, my beloved daughter, what about Kylin, eh?”
“I saved his life, he saved mine,” she said flatly. “But I had lost my weapon and this magical creature in the air showed me the sword and I can lift it so easily, move with it as if it weighs nothing at all. Wasn’t such a sword supposed to be—”
“Aye, lass, in our ancient legends of the Tuatha Dé Danann, such a sword was a gift, one that couldn’t be bested, along with a spear, a cauldron and a great stone—safe at Tara, so the old stories say.”
“But the Tuatha Dé Danann, or, if I remember the old ways right, the people of the gods or goddesses, are not—were never—real!” Deidre said. “People of the gods or goddesses, or, as some said, supernatural beings, I mean such things—”
“Ah, child, some higher light, some greater good, came to you today! Was it one of the fairy folk? Were you winded, seeing perhaps in a vision what you had seen right before you fell? Angel, fairy, does it matter what name we give something that has brought us good? Perhaps we never knew the fairies to be the angels of Father Patrick’s teaching, perhaps all that is good comes from one place and men give it different names.
Child, don’t stress over such gifts, be they of the mind, the earth, or the heavens above.
Accept all that we need, that we value, that can help us, for helping us, it helps others, and we are living in dangerous times, lass, deadly times.
If this has come to you . . . be grateful, as I shall be! ”
Deidre nodded slowly, still trying to reconcile the day.
“And that is the sword there?” her father asked.
She nodded.
Eamon walked over to the corner of the room and lifted the weapon. He shrugged. When he held it, the object looked like a regular sword—a good one, extremely well crafted and honed to perfection.
Does it only shimmer when I hold it? Can that be? Am I worthy to have been chosen to wield it? The thoughts worried her as she watched her father. She didn’t want to voice them.
“A fine sword,” he said. He winced as if in great pain.
“And I am sorry that I must be so grateful that we have taught you to wield such a weapon so well. For now, child, you have been a true warrior and lady of this realm. You have defended the young and old and the weak, you have been amazing at your brother’s side.
The danger is gone—for today. Take your rest now. For rest we must when we can!”
“Aye, Da, thank you. I am so very weary.”
“Sleep. We will talk again come the morning,” he assured her. He smiled, but then sighed. “We will all be busy, doing as our great healers ask so that many of our wounded may live.”
“And the enemy?” Deidre asked. “I mean, I imagine that you’re going to speak with the injured we are caring for?”
“Indeed. Ah, well, that is one thing I can still do well—demand to know how men have come to attack our shores, if they were alone, or a small part of a greater onslaught to come and who may be involved as well. The coming days will be long. Rest.”
“Aye, I love you, good night,” she said softly.
He left her.
She moved to blow out the candle in the room and for another moment, sat in darkness.
But even in the darkness, the sword reflected a light that wasn’t there.
She was so very weary. And yet still so conflicted that she feared she wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Deidre lay down, smiling, for tonight she would sleep on linen sheets that were clean and soft. She had a warm blanket of wool. And then, suddenly, she saw him again in her mind’s eye.
“No,” she muttered aloud. “No, you must not plague my dreams!”
But he was there. Tall, formidable, striking. Even among the fiercest warriors of the island or the sea, he appeared to be the most indomitable one.
“I see it!” he said.
“See it?” she murmured.
“We seek the same, I believe.”
She shook her head. “No, no, no. You are a neighbor—you helped us. My father trusts you, my brother trusts you. Fine. But I need to sleep!”
He started to laugh and walked away from her, over rich grasses and toward a thicket of trees.
She turned away from him, thinking that she must find it first.
Find it first? Find what?
It was all crazy. She was just trying to sleep. Trying to rest after the horror of the day. Prepare for the sadness to come when some of the wounded could not be saved, rest for new assaults that might be on the way if this attack was just the beginning of something far worse.
“You will see it, you will know it. Human beings are created of flesh and blood, and their bodies must be fed, even as their souls.”
Deidre blinked.
She was back. The beautiful woman. Like the sword, she seemed to shimmer, even when there was no light. Or, perhaps, she was the light. No matter where it came from, she was in the light, she was there, smiling gently down at Deidre.
“You will find it, and more, for often, one may not be enough, and only in great alliances may all be discovered.”
“Find it . . .”
“Souls must be fed, bodies must be fed,” the vision told her.
Then, just as she had so suddenly appeared, the woman vanished.
Deidre awoke with a start, stunned to realize that she had been sleeping . . . that Kylin had been a dream, just as her image of the magical creature who had given her the sword had been a dream.
She had been so exhausted.
Her body had given out, but her mind had not!
With a soft groan, she rolled to find a more comfortable position. She lay awake, mocking herself for the ridiculousness of her dream and struggling to make sense of it.
She wasn’t sure why, but she resented Kylin. She blamed him for his father, or, rather, his father’s people.
She found it hard to trust him. But he had been there for her on the battlefield. She hadn’t expected to see him or his men, but he had been there.
Naturally, her feelings regarding the man were mixed!
And without the sword she’d have been buried deep within the ground she loved so much! So, of course, she was revisiting the woman, the sword and Kylin in her dreams. She had almost died.
But could it have been my imagination? Because the sword . . .
No, it had been a regular sword when her father had hefted it.
And yet she could wield it as she could wield no other weapon. In her hands it was as light as the mist in which the fairy, angel or magical being had appeared!
She fell back asleep at last, but once again, the vision of herself on a hill, watching Kylin walk away, filled her dreams.
And then the magical being was there, at her side, whispering to her.
“The cauldron, my dear. The cauldron, for crimson days might arise. Aye, in legend we may be pranksters—malicious, even—yet usually we are the creatures of goodness, whatever one might call the greatest above us all. You will fight for peace, and so you must find it and you must not try to fight alone, you must not . . .”
As she spoke, Kylin turned from the entrance of the thicket to look back at her.
He lifted a hand to her. “Are you coming?” he asked.
“No!”
Everything within her seemed to shout the word.
She awoke again with a start.
A dream. It had been nothing more than a dream.
But the woman had mentioned a cauldron. Another gift the legendary Tuatha Dé Danann brought with them when they had appeared to the people of éire.
Of course, she could look for a cauldron . . .
No, ridiculous.
As she prepared to leave her room, she stopped short. There was a piece of torn parchment just inside the door to her room. Curious, she picked it up, and read the written words.
“Seek. Crimson days lie ahead. Seek the cauldron on the Hill of Tara.”
She stared at the note incredulously.
Cauldron . . . Tara.
She winced, letting the strange piece of torn parchment fall to the floor.
How? How did this come to be here? None of this can be real!
And yet I am alive! Alive because a shimmering vision showed me where to find a sword.
She would seek a cauldron on the Hill of Tara as commanded, she decided—foolishly? Because life had become something of a strange dream . . .
And if Kylin was involved, maybe more of a nightmare!