Voada’s lips didn’t move, but Orla heard her mam’s voice.
“Then tell me how to avoid that, Mam. Tell me how—” Orla’s voice caught in her throat. Her mother was drifting back into the crowd, fading into the mist of bodies. All their voices had gone silent. Another presence was moving forward, one whose existence she’d only glimpsed distantly in the landscape of Magh da Chèo. The apparition’s long, unbound hair flowed behind her as if in a wind off the ocean, the color of chestnuts streaked with pale gold, and her eyes were the color of the sea under a cloudless sky. She radiated power—it seemed to crackle in the air around her—and when she spoke, the chorus of the anamacha spoke with her.
“No,” Orla began, but the woman only gazed at her, and Orla’s denial faded away, unheard in the thundering of Magh da Chèo.
“I was too young.”
Leagsaidh laughed at that, a bitter sound.
Leagsaidh reached for Orla, who backed away. “No,” she said, but the apparition moved too suddenly and rapidly, the misty presence wrapping around her, and she was suddenly somewhere and someone else. . . .
* * *
She was Leagsaidh, listening to the long-dead woman’s thoughts and feeling her emotions, the touch of sun and wind on her skin, the fabric of her tattered bog dress scratching along her knees, but she was also Orla, a silent observer inside. She stood at the rim of a valley, looking down at a place both familiar and unfamiliar to her. Below, the valley was ringed by a stand of large oak trees. Beyond the oaks was an inner ring of tall blackstone menhirs capped with granite slabs, and at the center of the ring on the valley’s floor stood a single, smaller blackstone column.
The part of her that was Orla knew this place. This was Bàn Cill on Onglse, the sacred place of the draoi, but a Bàn Cill without people, without the walled ring of protective forts around the valley’s lips, and without the temple that now enclosed the central blackstone. This was Bàn Cill untouched, as it had been before any draoi walked there.
Leagsaidh/Orla stared at the sights and marveled. This was unlike anything she’d experienced before. The moons-long diaspora of her people had taken her to many places outside the realm of her knowledge, but this . . .
Since the last winter solstice, the clans had fled north and away from the invaders who had emerged from the fleets of white-sailed ships, who had pillaged and murdered and raped their way through the fields and villages of Albann Deas. Leagsaidh’s own daughter, thirteen summers old, had been staying with an aunt who had just given birth; she’d been killed when the invaders had landed near Darende, where the aunt lived. Leagsaidh tried not to imagine what she must have endured before she died. Leagsaidh’s husband, the àrd of Clan Mac Cába, had fallen in battle near Ladik along with Leagsaidh’s two sons. After that defeat, the warriors of the clans had been unable to muster a concerted resistance, instead retreating across the River Meadham for safety. Leagsaidh had come to the island of Onglse with the weary remnants of her clan and a few others.
She’d come across this valley while following the small flock of sheep they’d acquired. The sheep were wandering among the stones now, her black-and-white dog barking as he tried to herd them back up the hill toward Leagsaidh, but Leagsaidh was paying attention to neither dog nor sheep. This place . . . it felt impossibly ancient, as if it had been here since the Nameless God pulled up Albann and the other lands from the endless waves. The Nameless God then tore itself asunder on the knives of the mountain peaks of Albann Bràghad, giving birth to Elia and her brood, the gods who took the Nameless God’s spilled blood and used it to bring all life to Albann and then to the entire world.
Leagsaidh could feel the power throbbing in the bones of this place, beating in time with her own heart.
She walked down through the ring of oaks to the blackstone ring. Her hand, brushing against the stones as she passed, caused sparks to erupt from deep within, the cold fire gleaming under the polished, night-black surface like stars as it traced the path of her fingers, a fire visible even in the sunlight. She passed through the ring of blackstones; the air felt heavy and oppressive as if a storm were about to break even though the sky above was blue and empty of clouds. Her ears were ringing, as if hearing some sound both too low and too high to decipher. She approached the central stone, sunlight flashing from its glossy facets, causing her to shield her eyes from the glare.
There was something moving inside the stone. Leagsaidh could almost see it, almost hear it. She reached out her hand and placed it on the stone. The glassy surface was cold, as if she’d plunged her hand into a snowbank, and she tried to snatch away, but it refused to move. The stone was holding her in place.
Then she felt it: a Presence rising from the depths of the stone and sliding into her as if she were a vessel to be filled. She screamed in fear, still trying to pull her hand away from the stone, her entire body shaking with the sense of being inhabited by another. She heard laughter, as if the Presence were mocking her terror.
And she heard its voice, deep and throbbing.
* * *

Orla’s perception went whirling away once more into Leagsaidh’s memory. Now she was in the midst of a battle, with a ruddy twilight sun illuminating a coastal dune field strewn with bodies. Out on the horizon she could see ships under sail, and she knew that they were the White Ships fleeing the carnage of Ìseal Head and returning home. She could feel the exhaustion of her body from having cast spell after spell, and a fury and bloodlust that blocked out every other response. The Presence—the Moonshadow, Leagsaidh called it—was with her, and the emotions she felt were that of the Moonshadow. Leagsaidh herself cowered inside her own head.
A scar-faced man in armor spattered with streaks of blood and gore was screaming at her, spittle flying from his bearded lips: a Cateni warrior. She knew him: Tuathal of Clan Leask, ceannàrd of her army. There were others behind him, all pleading with her: Cateni warriors, the draoi whom she’d helped to bring their own presences from the blackstones, those whom she’d taught to control the half gods that were now part of them. She’d shown them how to hold the power drawn from Magh da Chèo, how to shape it and use it. She knew some of them were already calling her mad. Too consumed with revenge. Too lost in the Moonshadow that gave her power.
She didn’t care what they said or what they thought: she’d led them from the north to the south coast of Albann, chasing those from the White Ships and driving them before her army in battle after battle, and now it was so nearly finished . . .
“Stop this!” Tuathal shouted. “Ceanndraoi Leagsaidh, stop! We’ve won. They’ve surrendered. They’re beaten. You must stop!”
“No!” Moonshadow/Leagsaidh/Orla shouted back to him, her voice tearing at her throat. “Look, Ceannàrd! They’re still here!” She pointed with a trembling finger toward the beach, where the last soldiers from the White Ships were huddled, calling out in desperation to the ships that had already left, some of them waist-deep in the waves or swimming out toward the few vessels still anchored in the bay. The pebbles of the beach were
littered with abandoned weapons, armor, and banners. “I want them all dead, all of them—for what they did to me, what they did to us, what they did to our land!”
The Moonshadow was already pulling more energy from the Otherworld, and she began to move her hands instinctively to create a spell cage to hold it. Tuathal continued to argue with her. “This isn’t necessary, Ceanndraoi. You’ve won. We’ve won. These are just the remnants of them, and they’re leaving.”
Leagsaidh didn’t answer. The rage was rising in her as the power of the Otherworld filled her spell cage. Tuathal reached for her hands, trying to stop her from casting the spell; with his touch, her fury and anger overtook her. The Moonshadow rose up inside, and she shouted the release word, not caring that Tuathal and the others stood directly in front of her. She saw Tuathal’s eyes widen in sudden terror as she loosed the power, a sun exploding outward and hurling broken bodies away from her. Cateni bodies. Uncaring, she strode through the gap she’d created toward the beach and the White Ships: as she heard the screams of dying Cateni to either side; as she smelled their charred and burning bodies; as she heard the cries of outrage from the warriors and draoi around her.
“She’s gone mad,” someone cried.
“Stop her, or the Moonshadow will kill us all!” another shouted.
She didn’t care. She was focused only on the beach and her enemies, their very presence a mockery.
She felt the first touch of another draoi’s spell; a burning flame blistered her skin, though the Moonshadow immediately sent a cold wind that blew away the flames. She heard the creaking of bows being pulled back, and she turned angrily, the same gale sending the arrows flying wildly. She snarled at them all. “Let me do what I must, or I’ll kill you instead,” she grunted, her teeth bared like a wild animal. They were closing in around her, and she no longer even attempted to contain and shape the strength that the Moonshadow ripped from Magh da Chèo and fed to her; she simply let it flow through her unchecked and undirected. Lightning flared around her, fire spewed from her fingertips, burning her as much as those surrounding her, wind howled, and hard rain hammered the ground.
Leagsaidh screamed as a spear ripped into her side, turning to face the warrior who’d thrown it only to feel another thrust into her spine. She went to her knees in pain and shock, the energy still flailing madly around her. A sword cut her; spells pummeled and burned her. She tried to rise, tried to shape another spell, but her legs refused to move, and she could no longer see the Otherworld or the Moonshadow within it.
“Why?” she screamed at them. “Why are you doing this to me? I saved you! I saved all of us!”
There was no answer as she spiraled away into darkness, hearing the Moonshadow’s deep voice as she fell.
* * *
Orla still felt the pain and heard the growl of the Moonshadow’s low voice, but she was back in Magh da Chèo, and Leagsaidh’s ghost was staring at her. “Why did you show me this?” Orla asked, managing to husk out the words through the remembered agony of Leagsaidh’s death. “Did you do this to my mam, too?”
Leagsaidh shook her head.
“No, I . . .” Orla began, then stopped. The continuing pain made concentration difficult. She felt as if her body had been pummeled, then burnt. She wanted to fall to her knees, wanted to drop to the ground and sleep. Her gaze went to the darkness behind Leagsaidh, then quickly away. She drew in her breath. “There’s no ‘Leagsaidh,’ is there? It’s not Leagsaidh Mac Cába who drives mad the draoi who hold this anamacha, only the creature she drew from the blackstone. You’ve become one. Leagsaidh Moonshadow. One being, not two.”
Leagsaidh laughed, a bright sound in the storm. Orla thought she heard an echoing and much lower laugh as well, and it tore at the agony of her body, nearly making her double over. She straightened slowly.
“Elia is my god,” Orla answered. “Our god.”
Leagsaidh snorted her bitter amusement.
“I don’t believe you.”
Orla shivered at that, knowing who Leagsaidh meant. Or perhaps she shivered from the fever that was wracking her; it was impossible to tell.
Leagsaidh continued, though Orla found it difficult to concentrate on the words. Her voice went bitter and cold.
Orla collapsed, unable to stand any longer. The gray stones of Magh da Chèo tore at her knees, grinding into her skin. She saw her arms in the flickering lightning, and she gasped; her skin was red and blistered, cracked and bloody. The wind was like a file tearing across the wounds.
“No!” Orla screamed in denial, still huddled on the ground. She couldn’t look up, but she felt Leagsaidh and the Moonshadow close by her, and she heard their combined laughter.
18
Mark of the Moonshadow
“ORLA?”
The voice seemed to come from a terrible distance.
“Orla, can you hear me?”
Something cool and wet yet too rough touched her forehead and her cheeks: a cloth? She tried to open her eyes but closed them again quickly against the light. She lifted an arm; it moved sluggishly, the muscles aching. “Oh, thank Elia, you’re awake. Orla, what’s happened to you?”
She realized it was Sorcha’s voice. She eased her eyelids open again a slit. She was in their tent. She could hear the activity around her and saw venison stew cooking over a nearby fire. A shimmer in the corner of her vision was her anamacha; she looked away quickly. The tent smelled of boiled herbs, incense, and the venison. “How did I get here?” Orla managed to ask. Her voice sounded graveled and tired, as if she’d been screaming.
Sorcha leaned over her again with the wet cloth—just soft linen, but it felt like broken and jagged stones were being dragged over her forehead. “Magaidh came to look for you after the ceannàrd and ceanndraoi met. When she couldn’t find you, she sent people out searching; they found you collapsed outside the camp and brought you back here. You’ve been lost in a fever for over a day.”
There was something in the way Sorcha gazed at her—the way she’d look at her face, then look away again—the set of her mouth, the forced smile . . . “Sorch
a, what’s wrong?”
Sorcha didn’t answer. Instead she moved away, and Orla lifted her head to see her rummaging in her pack. She brought back a polished disc of copper: her mirror. Silently, she held it up before Orla. The image trembled in Sorcha’s hands, then steadied. With a gasp, Orla let her head drop back down.
You are marked as ours . . .
Her face was reddened and scarred, most of her hair burned away. Fragments of memory came back to her: the battle at Ìseal Head, the draoi and warriors attacking Leagsaidh after they tried to stop her from continuing the assault . . . She had been Leagsaidh in that memory. She’d killed her own people in a blind rage. She’d felt the agony of the spells, the spears, the swords raised against her.
You are marked as ours . . .
The breath went out of her.
Sorcha took the mirror away, then sat on the blankets alongside her. Orla heard the cloth being dipped in a basin of water again, and she turned away as Sorcha tried to place it on her forehead. “The archiater said . . .” Sorcha’s voice broke then, and she stopped. “She said that what happened must have been spell-fire, since this isn’t like any burn she’s seen before. She’s left an ointment for you. She thinks the burns will heal, but . . .”
“I’ll be scarred. A horror.”
“She doesn’t know. She can’t know,” Sorcha answered.
“I know,” Orla told her. Then: “Go away. I want to be alone.”
“Orla, let me stay. Please.”
“Go away. Please.” Orla closed her eyes. A few breaths later, she felt the bedding shift as Sorcha stood.
“I’ll be back in a stripe. I’ll bring some stew,” Sorcha said.
A Rising Moon Page 21