Chapter 20
Chapter twenty
NIALL
The air was impossibly silent and still at the dawning of Imbolc as Niall walked on unsteady legs up the hill to the Lia Fáil, that slab of rain-weathered rock no taller than his waist – such a little thing, he thought, to hold such power, such strength, as to bend the knees of a thousand men and send an army hurtling down into the depths of the sea.
Rory would find a metaphor in that, he thought. See, she’d say with a nudge to his ribs. What does it matter, how skinny your shoulders, how slight your build? It’s better to be a fox than an ox, little brother.
He’d feel better about all this, if she were here to tease him, to call him donkey and flick his ear.
To protect him.
Gods, how he missed her, with such a bone-deep ache that he felt as though a limb that he had never known he’d possessed but had been such an integral part of him had been lopped off and cast away.
He slowed to a halt before the stone of destiny, still shrouded in gloom, the dense gray fog swirling around him, around it, enveloping them both in shadow.
The armies of éire awaited behind him, hidden in the early morning mists, swords in hand and spears at the ready, prepared to charge when the first shriek burst from the slumbering stone.
Aoife had told him that the Albion army still slept, save for a few dozen night-watchers, and that once the rock loosed its roar, the earth would shake and rise up against them, driving them back, back, back across the lowlands and down into the depths of the sea until nothing remained but the relentless churning of the waves.
Niall could almost see it, that glorious scene of victory – could almost hear the shouts of triumph.
All he had to do was awaken the rock before him, this last and greatest gift of the Tuatha Dé Danann bestowed upon his people so many centuries ago.
He drew a deep breath and placed the sole of his boot against the Lia Fáil, bracing himself for the deafening, world-ending roar.
Nothing happened.
Niall licked frantically at his lips, sweat trickling down his back, and tried again – the other foot this time.
“No,” he said, low and urgent, as even from a distance, he could feel the confusion, the panic rising among the watching armies of éire behind him. “No, no, no –”
Something moved in front of him, a flash of blue-green and burnished gold emerging from the mist that enveloped the hill, and he looked up sharply, stumbling backwards and fumbling for the sword at his waist before he recognized her.
“Aoife,” he said. “Thank the gods – you must help me, it’s not working –”
“Little prince.”
He froze, fingers tightening around the hilt of his sword. “Aoife,” he said again, and it shamed him, to hear the flickers of fear threading their way through his voice. “What are you doing?”
She smiled, terrible and cruel, and the smell of rotting meat, rancid and sour, flooded his nostrils.
He bent over, gagging slightly, as she raised her arms towards the early morning sky, and he watched in horror as the mists evaporated and the fog rolled back, to reveal an endless line of blue-and-gold clad soldiers standing far below him, thousands upon thousands of them, armed and ready to go thundering across the plain to destroy his army.
“Little prince,” she said. “You should have listened to your sister.”
“No,” he said again, numb with disbelief. “No – Aoife –”
“Both of them, actually.” Her sea-swept eyes burned with a terrible fire, ravenous and vicious, eager to consume all in its path. “What a donkey you are.”
From far below and behind him, his soldiers’ murmurs became a roar itself – not the triumphant, king-naming shriek he had expected – but a raucous, confused din of anger and resentment. “This can’t be,” he stuttered. “You swore – you promised me –”
He watched through dazed eyes as her smile became a sneer, wolfish and hungry. “Poor little prince,” she cooed. “Are you not as worthy as you had hoped?”
“Aoife,” he said once more as the sound of swords scraping against the sides of scabbards began to echo across the fields, steel clanging against steel, the roar of disbelief devolving into shrieks of agony and pain. “You promised. You swore –”
Her eyes glowed bright. “I am not bound by the laws of gods and men, princeling.”
“I’m a king –”
“You are the king of nothing but despair,” she said as from down at the base of the hill, trumpets sounded and the Albion cavalry reared back, horses screaming, and their spears lowered as they prepared to charge.
“And the child that you have given me will be the ruin of every mortal that has ever dared defy the earth of my people with their hands and their feet. Do you know what it once was, this land of rain and fog and green growing things? Once,” she said, her face as bright and terrible as a fallen star, “it was a land of magic and mystery, and now see what it has become.” Her white hand came to rest on her belly, a gentle swelling visible beneath the folds of her gown.
“My son will end that,” she said. “He will devour all mortal things, and this land will again belong to us.”
“No,” Niall managed to say through lips stiff and cold. “No – it was said that only Meiche, the destroyer, could do that, and he is dead, he is gone –”
“And soon he will be born again.” Her hand still pressed against her rounded womb.
“I found his hearts, beating still, at the bottom of the An Bhearú, the serpents three still slumbering deep within the remnants of the charred and burnt shells. All they lacked was a vessel to give them new life, and all I need to wake them is the three hearts of that vessel’s blood.
” She smiled. “I have already fed to him your own father’s heart, harvested from the cairn in which you laid him, and soon I shall have your heart and your sister’s too, and he will rise in a storm of smoke and flame to consume life itself. ”
“Eilis,” he choked, unsheathing his sword in a panicked, clumsy motion. “Do not touch my sister – stay away from Eilis –”
“Not that sister.” The witch waved a slender hand in bored dismissal.
“Your father never told you the truth of her, did he? She is not your father’s blood, that girl, but the fruit of your mother’s weakness for a strapping young guard.
Why do you suppose your father strayed so easily during his stay in Inagh, tempted by the quiet young beauty of the dark-haired princess of the vale?
” She smiled again, bestial and vile. “I meant your other sister – the one who wields the magic of the Mórrígan as her own – the one who has left you here to die.”
Rory, thought Niall desperately. Rory would come. She would know, she always knew, and she would come, at the last moment, like she always did, in a storm of shadow and ice, to save them all, to save him.
She always saved him.
“Run away, little prince,” she whispered, as the ground began to shake and the air began to thunder, not with the god-blessed roar of the stone of destiny, but from thousands of foreign throats, hundreds of relentless hooves pounding against the rich black earth, charging down upon the still-shouting and confused armies of éire – disorganized, he thought wildly, unprepared for battle, all because of him.
“Run, for your life depends upon how fast and how far.”
So Niall turned, and ran for his life.
“Retreat,” he screamed as he stumbled his way down the great hill of Tara, waving his hands, striving to be heard over the frightened and confused shouts of his own army, the distant thudding of the hooves and charging men behind him. “It’s a trap – retreat –”
He skidded to a stop, horrified, as from over the crest of the hill behind his still-discombobulated army rose an emerald green banner, led by a black-bearded man on a roan-colored stallion, and at his heels, a thousand fighting men, their swords drawn, screaming with rage, with the anticipation of a soon-to-be-satiated blood-lust. Leinster, he realized, blind panic overtaking him.
Daithí, the traitor-king, had circled in behind them and now –
Now they were trapped.
Doomed.
The word reverberated inside him, a heavy, iron-hard lump settling down deep into his chest.
They were, all of them, doomed – because of him.
“Behind you,” he screamed. “Your swords – draw your swords –”
It seemed to happen all at once, the crash of the Leinster army into the unsuspecting rear flank of his own, the descent of the Albion cavalry on his own back.
He threw himself down in the dirt as they swarmed him, lashing out wildly with his sword, before he realized they had charged right past him, without sparing him a glance, their attention and their spears focused on the disheveled army of éire even now trying to rally itself – the provincial kings riding back and forth along the front line, shouting and bellowing orders, the archers fumbling for their arrows, the flank – Munster’s army, he realized dazedly, Munster had been positioned at the flank, gods, they were being massacred like helpless lambs being led to slaughter for the Imbolc feasts.
Today – today was the feast of Imbolc.
Why had they passed him by, the calvary?
He stumbled to his feet, running towards his men, his sister – Eilis, she was somewhere among them, she had insisted on it, he had to get to Eilis – even as he heard the rising shouts of the Albion infantry closing in behind him.
Would they ignore him as well, he thought with a shiver of unease, of dread? What orders had they been given, what commands had they been issued, to pass up on the chance to kill a king in battle, like the heroes of old, relentless in their pursuit of glory?
It had been his dearest wish when he was a boy – to feel the strength of Ferdiad, to know the cunning of Fionn mac Cumhaill, to wield the might of Cúchulainn, to sing the all-devastating songs of Oisín and to share his might and his magic, to taste the sweetness of eternal glory, of honor without ending.