The Last Days of Magic (13 page)

6

Near Tara, Ireland

March 1391

I
n a spot not far from where Aisling took the poisoned arrow in her back three years earlier, a red stag grazed near the center of a large clearing. Its velvet-covered antlers had sprouted early, encouraged by the unusually warm spring, and by the time the autumn rutting season arrived he would carry a rack large enough to have his pick of the five does that grazed closer to the clearing’s edge.

The stag jerked his head up, one foreleg stomping the ground. With a bound, the five does disappeared into the surrounding woods.

“You moved too fast. He sensed you,” hissed Tadg into Conor’s ear.

“It wasn’t me he sensed,” Conor hissed back.

The two men squatted behind a cluster of elderberry bushes inside the tree line. They were human but lived outside normal Irish society, in the forests. Conor, tall and lean and the younger of the two at twenty-three, wore a buckskin tunic over black woolen trousers and calf-high leather boots. Short, dark brown hair, still showing some of the curl that had been prominent in his youth, contrasted with the blue of his eyes. Tadg, at fifty-one, was dressed in a more traditional, if tattered, woolen tunic, trousers, and cloak, in faded green, brown, and black. His long, hooked nose dominated a face weathered from living outdoors.

Conor rose and drew his bow, but it was too late. The stag was already leaping into the trees and in a blur was gone.

“Save your arrow,” said Tadg. “So much for venison tonight. You’re losing your touch. When you were young, you could creep up close enough to kill a stag like that with your dagger.”

“It wasn’t my fault. Listen. Someone’s coming.”

A horse entered the clearing, walking slowly. Its rider wore a chain-mail tunic and a full helmet with a keyhole-shaped opening for his eyes, nose, and mouth.

“Is he alone?” asked Tadg.

“I hear no one else,” responded Conor.

“A horse is worth three deer.”

“In meat, not flavor.”

“We could dry most of it, so we’d have it if we need it.”

“If you insist. I’m more interested in that knight. I haven’t had a good fight all winter.” Conor drew his bow again. The arrow caught the horse behind the shoulder, an inch from the knight’s leg. It stumbled, then fell, spilling its rider onto the grass.

“Well, that should do it,” said Tadg. “Have fun.”

Handing his bow to Tadg, Conor drew his sword and started toward the knight, who was getting up, also drawing a sword. “Sir Knight, if that’s what you are, do you wish to fight me for the right to this piece of meat you so kindly rode into my clearing? Or would you prefer to just walk away?”

The rider stared at Conor, then dropped her sword and pulled off her helmet, spilling out long red hair and revealing a seventeen-year-old Aisling. She knelt beside the horse. “He’s not a piece of meat. I don’t know his name, but I know he’s a faithful horse with a strong heart.” She began to chant an incantation of comfort while stroking the horse’s neck. Red foam bubbled from its nostrils.

Leaving his sword thrust into the earth, Conor went down on one knee and covered the horse’s eyes with his left hand. From his belt he drew a misericorde dagger. Shifting his hand, Conor thrust the long blade through the top of the eye socket and into the brain. The horse’s gasping ceased. Listening to Aisling’s chant, now a prayer of thanks for the horse’s life, he cleaned the misericorde on the thick grass, replaced it, and stepped back to retrieve his sword.

“Don’t be sad, Lady— What’s your name?” asked Conor.

Aisling did not reply.

“As you wish,” said Conor. “But know that this noble horse, as you’ve said, will make a fine feast for my friend’s family and me, bringing its strength to us. Certainly a worthy end for any animal.”

Aisling finished her prayer and turned to retrieve her own sword, one she had secretly slipped out from the armory. Her back to Conor, she took several practice strokes to measure its balance. “You haven’t won your feast yet, you arrogant, hedge-born knave,” she said calmly.

“If you insist on—” Conor did not finish. Without a sound, Aisling had turned and charged. She started her sword high, sweeping it down in a decreasing radius arc ending in an S-hook thrust. Conor recognized the move too late for a clean parry and had to spin out of the way to avoid taking the point in his shoulder.

Aisling’s momentum carried her past Conor, who added to the distance by taking three steps back. He needed to reassess his opponent.

“A little less speed on the charge and you could’ve caught his torso with a backstroke before he finished his spin,” Liam called to Aisling as he walked his horse into the clearing. “Good morning, Tadg, Conor.”

“A fine morning it is, Liam,” replied Conor. “If you’re here, then this must be the new High Priestess of Tara, our half Goddess.”

Aisling took a step toward Conor. “A bow is required.”

“I bow only to what’s left of the Morrígna,” said Conor, bending slightly while keeping his eyes on Aisling. “She was much needed. My heart cried at the news of your sister’s murder.”

Aisling returned a nod.

“I still claim this horse,” said Conor.

“Well, are you going to fight him for it?” asked Liam.

“No,” replied Aisling. “Let him have it. Otherwise he may have to eat that goat he’s been keeping to satisfy his manly desires.”

Liam and Tadg broke into laughter. Conor just smiled.

. . . . .

“You took your time finding me,” said Aisling to Liam as she sat behind him on his horse, riding out of the clearing.

“I was here, watching. It’ll take a lot more than a set of men’s clothing and a simple concealment enchantment for you to slip out without my noticing.”

“Basic enchantments are all I can muster anymore. But next time I’ll fool you,” said Aisling without conviction.

She lay against Liam’s broad back and turned her face toward the sun, soaking in the warmth of the spring day. “You know those two?” she asked.

“Tadg is the finest fletcher in Meath, perhaps all of Ireland. When you were younger, he made all of the arrows I brought you.”

When I was still training to be a warrior Goddess,
thought Aisling.
When I was whole, before Anya was torn from me and I was imprisoned in this half-life.

They rode on in silence. “They were exceptional arrows,” she finally offered. “They always seemed to know where I wanted them to go.”

“He harvests the shafts from live elm trees and dries them for two years. Sidhe smiths make arrowheads for him, of his own design. For his flights it’s said that he has a covenant with the peregrine falcons. They flock to him each morning, and he selects and gently removes only one feather from each, and in return no Tadg arrow will bring down a peregrine.”

“Where’s his home kingdom?”

“He has none. He and his wife live in the woods, constantly moving to find the next perfect tree to make his arrows.”

“And this horse-eating, goat-loving Conor?”

Liam laughed. “The story Tadg tells is that Conor’s mother was thought to be a fugitive slave who died in childbirth. No father or owner could be identified. When he was six, he ran away from the farm that fostered him. Soon after that, as Tadg was standing at the base of a tree studying the branches, Conor appeared and offered to climb up and harvest the ones he wanted. Conor has been with Tadg and his wife ever since. But he has no honor price.”

“Tadg didn’t at least petition the court on his behalf?” asked Aisling, surprised.

“Conor wouldn’t let him. Told Tadg that he’d disappear if Tadg tried. And once of age, Conor simply avoided anything to do with it.”

“That’s odd,” said Aisling.

In Irish Celtic society, almost all free persons had an honor price. It represented the size of a business agreement that they could bond by themselves, and it signified the relative value of their testimony in court. In a marriage contract, the person, man or woman, who carried the highest honor price was in charge of all financial matters. Those with a high honor price created income by lending a share of it to others for their business dealings. A child would be assigned a portion of the family’s collective honor price at fourteen, or earlier if the family chose.

The Celts loved trade even more than fighting, and all trade functioned using honor price. However, it was not a static amount. It rose and fell, depending on a person’s success. Slaves often earned their freedom and their own honor price through hard work or education, which was encouraged for all. A lord could lose his entire honor price and become a slave through a few bad transactions and have to earn it all back again.

If a person was killed without legal justification, then the perpetrator had to pay the victim’s honor price to the victim’s family. If the perpetrator could not pay, the family was honor-bound to kill him or, as usually happened, take him as a slave until he worked off the debt.

Customarily, only two types of free people were without an honor price. There were the wild, savage tribes, called Woodwose, living in remote forests and worshipping dark spirits. The others were bandits, often fugitive slaves—though with the possibility of earning true freedom there was little incentive for slaves to run away and few measures taken to prevent them from doing so.

Aisling did not think Conor was a bandit even though he had killed her horse, and he did not have the crazed look of a Woodwose. She had been dressed as a knight. Challenging a knight to a fight, with his horse as a prize, was legal if the challenger was of a lower honor price, though it also put the challenger at high risk of a legal slaying.

. . . . .

Liam and Aisling approached Tara from the southwest. The Celtic capital city sprawled across a hill slowly rising five hundred feet from the plains of Meath. The lower structures were simple one-room cottages of post-and-wattle construction, with thatched roofs and walls smoothed with plaster mortar made from mud, lime, and a bit of blood. The buildings became larger and more elaborate the higher up the hill they were positioned. At the summit sat the royal enclosure, wrapped in a meandering stone wall. Within the enclosure were stone buildings with timber roofs containing embassies from the five kingdoms and a great meeting hall built in the traditional Nordic fashion housing a Viking delegation. Surrounding these, filling the royal enclosure except for the courtyard, were inns, shops, and residential buildings for the royal retinue, official visitors, influential lords, ladies, and traders. Gallowglass maintained no delegation, preferring to avoid politics and keep their agreements strictly contractual.

Rising from among the royal buildings and dominating the entire hill were three interconnected towers. The meeting chambers for the elected high king, the treasury, the military, and other high officials were located in the northeast tower. As high priestess of Tara, Aisling occupied the top floor of the southeast tower. The four lower floors housed representatives of the higher-order guilds: harpists, bards, physicians, smiths, brewers, masons, scriveners, and genealogists. Five hundred years earlier, two guild chambers on the lowest floor had been granted to the Irish Christian Church in gratitude for the Latin writing they taught to all—separate chambers because the followers of Patrick and the followers of Colmcille did not get along.
Only Aisling and the high king were allowed residence chambers within the towers.

The chambers and even the number of floors inside the west tower varied depending on the needs and moods of its occupants, Sidhe ambassadors. They were mostly Brownies, whose love of debate and basic understanding of polities distinguished them from other Sidhe. Aisling remembered that the previous winter, when the Sidhe high king arranged for the Celtic high king to meet with the leader of a group of visiting Goblins to negotiate their return to Scotland, the west tower had seemed to contain only one large chamber.

Looking up at the towers, Aisling thought again of Haidrean, her druid tutor killed during the attack on Anya. When she was younger, Aisling looked forward to the time she was no longer required to listen to the old curmudgeon. Now she missed him.

H
AIDREAN
HAD
BROUGHT
Aisling and Anya to visit Tara when they were seven, following their Ceremony of Hearts.

“The Grogoch constructed it out of a single row of stones,” he told them as they walked around the base of Tara Tower. The stones, seven feet on edge, emerged from the ground and looped around in a cloverleaf shape, crisscrossing in the center, until they spiraled up over a hundred feet to form the three towers, each thirty feet in diameter. “When it was up, the Grogoch molded openings for doors and windows. So it looks like three towers, but it is really one solid structure.”

“Like the Morrígna. Like us,” said Anya.

“Exactly,” said Haidrean.

“So I’m this tower, and Anann’s the far one, and you’re that one,” said Anya to her sister.

“It was just an analogy,” replied Aisling.