Chapter 16 #3
The walls and the tapestries, the stone floors and the thick bearskin rugs, the tables and the maps and the discarded pieces of parchments – turned to ice, glistening and unforgiving.
The hearth, frozen solid, reduced to hoar-covered ash and plunged into darkness, and even now, a strange, unearthly fog still lingered, knee-high and dense and icy to the touch as he bent down and ran his shaking fingers through it.
But his sister was nowhere to be seen.
He looked up at the members of his father’s advisors, Eilis standing at the front, still huddled on the terrace just outside the room, too terrified to re-enter the council chamber. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” said Eilis. “I ran out here, to – to see you, and when I turned around, the room was empty, save for…all this.”
Niall jolted to his feet, running his hands through his hair.
Donkey, a twisted, cruel parody of his sister’s voice whispered in his ear.
You stupid, shite-for-brains donkey, look at what you have done.
“She’s upset,” he said, as calmly as he could.
“I promised – I once swore to her, when we were young, that I would never tell, that I would never make her use it like this, and she’s angry with me, that’s all.
” He lurched forward towards the ice-coated table, wrenching a quill free from the ice, its feathers still and slick and cold in his hand.
“I’ll write to her,” he said, a bit frantically.
“I’ll give her a bit, some time to calm down, to think, and then I’ll send Molly, with a letter and apologize, and ask her to come back so we can talk.
I can make her understand, make her agree.
She has to be the one to lead us, not me, it was never meant to be me –”
“Niall.” Eilis took a deep breath and then stepped forward, back into the ice-cursed council chamber, wrapping her arms around herself as the rest of the council watched warily from outside on the terrace.
“You are the king,” she said, far more gently than he could ever remember his older sister speaking to him in the past. “You must accept this, Niall. Our father left it to you, his throne and his crown and his sword, and only you can wear them, wield them.” She reached out and slipped her chilled hand in his hand.
“You are the king,” she repeated, more sternly this time.
“Let go of this evil, and do your duty to your people.”
Niall shook his head, eyes burning. “She’s not evil,” he said, shaking loose of Eilis’ hand and stepping around her to push past his stone-faced advisors and pale-faced friends, shoulders stiff and voice unwavering. “You'll see. When she comes back, Rory will save us all.”
He wrote to her later that night, sending Molly winging out into the starlit sky, but she returned long before the dawn, sad-eyed and head hanging, the letter he had tied to her leg gone, but no answering missive attached.
Letter after letter he sent, launching his kestrel into the sky each day with increasing urgency, a feverish kind of panic, as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, and at last, the months into years, but no response ever came, save unbroken, unyielding silence, until at last he slumped in his chair by the hearth-fire, his head in his hands, and admitted what the rest of the castle already knew.
Rory was gone, and she was never coming back.
It passed in a blur, the endless meetings with the kings and the lords of the lowlands and the northern realms and the seashore clans.
They listened, begrudgingly at first, but then with an equal mixture of doubt and keen intent, as he explained, as confidently as he could, his intention to let the rock of the Lia Fáil roar for him, to unite the realms as one and drive back the invaders who threatened their mist-shrouded isle.
“Before the first light of the dawn, I will approach the rock of destiny, brought to these shores centuries ago by the might of the Tuatha Dé Danann themselves, the rock which shall roar for the one true ruler of éire – I will approach, and place on it my foot, as all the great High Kings of the past have done,” Niall announced, uncomfortably conscious of Aoife’s pleased smile and Eilis’ disapproving frown.
“It will loose its roar, an earth-shaking shriek, and bless me – bless us – with all the strength of the gone gods, and our enemies will be driven back into the sea from whence they came, never to be seen again.”
He had thought it was a good speech, well-written and delivered with just the right mix of gravity and confidence, but their doubtful faces remained unchanged.
Niall cleared his throat. “It will,” he said. “I guarantee it.”
“And if does not?”
He turned to face Mac Duinn, the king of Ulaid.
“It will,” he said again, a little wearily, because for the love of Medb’s bull, this had to be at least the hundredth time he’d said it, avowed it.
What more did they want from him? “Do you swear, all of you, to grant me your allegiance, your armies, when it does – to unite behind Connacht to defeat our common enemy?”
Mac Duinn stared at him for a long moment. “If the Lia Fáil roars again after five hundred years of silence,” he said at last, “there is not a soul in éire, not man, woman, nor child, living nor dead, that would not take up arms to answer its call.”
“What then?” Liam ó Briain, king of Munster, asked gruffly, his twin battle-axes lashed to his back.
“You say that you know for a fact that the Lia Fáil will reawaken in this our time of need, to anoint you as our god-blessed leader to bring us victory over the invaders. So be it – what then, ó Flannagáin? Do you intend to rule us all, to make us your suppliants at your knee?”
“No,” said Niall at the same time that Eilis spoke up from his right. “Let us first achieve this victory,” his sister said sharply. “There will be time to discuss the future once that future has been assured, and at present, it is not at all secure.”
ó Briain scowled. “But –”
“But it will be secured.” Niall linked his hands behind his back, doing his very best to appear kingly and confident and tall before this broad-chested warrior of a man.
“Tomorrow at the first breaking of the dawn, the roar of the Lia Fáil will drive our enemies back into the sea from whence they came, and tomorrow night, we shall feast together in celebration, in joy – in unity. Our realms, as one people, one heart, one hope.”
After a moment, the kings and the lords gathered together bowed their heads, a silent agreement, and Eilis closed her eyes, face pale, and Aoife smiled at him from the corner of the tent, her hood pulled low over her sea-swept eyes, her curving lips as slash of blood-red across her marble-white face.
They filed out of his tent, one by one, until at last he was alone, save for Molly perched on his shoulder, and he sank down onto his bed of furs and linens, head in his hands, awash in the dim glow of the candles still flickering within their metal lanterns.
Tomorrow was the feast of Imbolc, and tomorrow, one way or the other, he would ride to war.
He sat for a long time, knees hunched, shoulders bowed, until at last he straightened, his breath loosing in a long, slow sigh, and reached for a plumy feather quill and a sheaf of parchment.
In the soft light of the candles, with only his kestrel to bear witness to this last moment of weakness, of loneliness, Niall began to write, yet again, a letter to his lost sister.