Whatever the root causes, Orla felt anger rising up inside her as she looked at the self-righteous man standing before her. The vision obliterated any timidity left inside her.
“You would have lost back then,” she told him. “Just as you lost at Muras, just as—had Ceannàrd Iosa listened to your advice after your premature retreat—we’d have already lost Onglse because none of us would have been here today to stop Savas. You’re an incompetent fool, Ceanndraoi Greum. You might have the title; you may even once have deserved it. But you don’t deserve it now.”
“And you believe you do.” Scorn dripped from his voice.
Orla let out a sigh of frustration. “I don’t know whether I do or not. There may be others better suited. Maybe Magaidh should be ceanndraoi. I only know you shouldn’t.”
“You have no idea what I’ve done as ceanndraoi. You have no idea what you’ve ruined since you arrived, you and the Moonshadow.”
She saw him glance toward his anamacha, standing so close to him that she knew he must be able to hear the voices within. She pointed to the misty presence. “After today, do you still believe that your Dòrn is stronger than the Moonshadow?”
“Ah, so you do want this,” Greum said in answer, a forefinger sliding along the silver torc around his neck. “You’ve started to believe all those fools shouting your praise earlier and the lies Eideard and Magaidh have been whispering in your ears. You know they all did the same with your mother—at first. Then they started calling her the Mad Draoi, and after Siran and her death, they cursed her for failing them. Voada failed. And that will be your fate, too, Orla Moonshadow. I accept your challenge.”
Orla stepped back in surprise. “But I haven’t—”
Greum’s arms opened suddenly, and with alarm she saw his anamacha slide into him as his hands began to weave a spell cage. In the same moment, she felt the shock of the Moonshadow entering her of their own volition. Orla was plunged into Magh da Chèo, its torn, dark landscape overlaying the ceanndraoi’s room. They were both there: she could see Greum standing a few strides away. Someone—something—was standing next to him, its form shifting back and forth: a woman in a flowing red robe; a writhing, smoking fume. The answer to her unspoken question came in the voices of her own anamacha.
Orla turned toward the sound of the voice. A similar vision stood alongside her: the figure of Leagsaidh and the aching void that was the Moonshadow. She could feel both Dòrn and the Moonshadow clawing at the Otherworld, sucking in its power. Lightning crackled and hissed all around them.
Without warning, a whip-like snarl of blue light snapped from Iseabail Dòrn toward Orla and Leagsaidh Moonshadow. The impact was stunning and painful, sending Orla sprawling on the stones of the Otherworld even as she howled in pain. But Leagsaidh and the Moonshadow seemed to feel nothing. They took in the light, held it, and sent it back toward Iseabail and Dòrn redoubled, a strand of orange fire added to it. This time it was Greum Red-Hand who screamed, collapsing to his knees, though again neither Iseabail nor Dòrn seemed affected.
Orla struggled to her feet; she saw Greum trying to rise as well. A raging storm loomed above the two anamacha, and once more lightning flared between them . . . and once more both Orla and Greum were flung to the ground. Thunder boomed, so loud that the impact of it was like unseen fists pounding at Orla. Jagged stones tore into her skin, blood seeping from the gouges. The torc around her neck felt hot, and when she reached to touch it, she had to snatch back her fingertips with a gasp from the burning metal. She started to pull it from her, but Leagsaidh’s voice shouted in her head:
His bloodied body lay near the roaring gale around Iseabail and Dòrn, as battered as Orla’s. He too was clawing at his torc. Eerily, she could see the knobbed ends of his torc closing around his throat, compressed by invisible hands. Greum dug at the constricting band, his fingers desperately trying to get underneath it and pull it apart. His nails were tearing long, deep scratches into his skin, blood running down his neck. Tendons stood out like taut ropes. His chest heaved with his struggle to breathe, his mouth gaping like a fish and his eyes protruding, his face as red as his hand.
Greum was dying. Orla could feel it. She heard the laughter of Leagsaidh Moonshadow and an answering wail from Iseabail Dòrn. Thunder continued to pummel them all.
“Stop this!” Orla screamed: at Leagsaidh and the Moonshadow, at Iseabail and Dòrn, at Greum. “Stop!”
“No!” Orla shouted again. “End this now!”
“It is now,” Orla answered. “Leave me!” She could feel the Moonshadow resisting as she turned her mind away from Magh da Chèo, as she pushed the ghosts of the draoi away from her. She felt Iseabail watching, felt the hesitation in the other anamacha as well.
“I said leave me!” she ordered the Moonshadow again, and the Otherworld vanished, the thunder quieting and the storm clouds fading into nothingness. Her torc was no longer burning. She was on her knees back in the ceanndraoi’s rooms, her anamacha standing an arm’s length away, the faces of multiple people passing over it and looking at her with accusation, with understanding, with anger, with sympathy. She briefly caught her mam’s face among the many, then it was gone again.
And Greum. He was here as well, sprawled on the carpet over the worn wooden boards. At first Orla thought he was dead; his face was pale now, his eyes closed. But she saw his chest rise with a breath, and his anamacha was still present, standing near him. “Ceanndraoi Greum?” Orla called, but there was no response, no movement.
The door to the apartment opened. “What have you done, girl?” Ceiteag cried, and Orla turned her head to see the old draoi, her mouth open in soundless grief as she hurried to the prone Greum. She went to her knees alongside him. “He’s alive,” she said to Orla in a growling rasp of a voice. “You didn’t let the Moonshadow—”
“Kill him?” Orla finished for her. “No.”
“He would have killed you. You know that.”
Orla could only nod her head. She had no strength left for more. Ceiteag turned back to Greum, stroking his hair; the man still didn’t move. Orla allowed the silence to lengthen, recovering her breath as she slowly started to regain her own strength. She finally pushed herself up from the floor, standing shakily. She looked at her anamacha, watching the faces come and go.
“This was nothing I wanted,” she told all of the dead draoi inside, not caring if Ceiteag or Greum could hear her also. “I don’t care what you think I should have done. It was my decision to make, not yours.”
“You should have finished this,” Ceiteag told her. Her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “It would have been kinder.”
“Will he . . . do you think he’ll recover?”
“Maybe,” Ceiteag answered. “Or maybe not. He’s somewhere far away. I’ll send for the archiater, but his fate’s in Elia’s hands now, and his anamacha . . . it’s trapped now. The anamacha can’t find another draoi while he live
s.”
Orla had no answer for that. She gazed down at Greum and Ceiteag, then took a tentative step toward the door. Ceiteag’s voice stopped her.
“Wait,” she said, her voice breaking on the word. Her withered hands found the end knobs of Greum’s torc and pulled them desperately apart until the torc hung loosely around his neck. Ceiteag removed the silver torc from Greum’s neck, holding it one hand. As if he were aware of what was happening, Greum took in a long, loud breath like a drowning man, though he remained unconscious. Ceiteag waited, continuing to hold out the silver necklace of twisted, ornate metal toward Orla. Orla hesitated for a breath, then stepped toward the woman. She pulled open her own bronze torc enough to slip it from around her neck, but didn’t hand it to Ceiteag or take the one she offered.
“You’re certain this is what you want?” she asked. “Is it what Greum would want?”
“The Moonshadow was stronger than Dòrn, and you were stronger than Greum,” Ceiteag answered. She blinked, and tears ran down the time-worn channels of her face. “Eideard and the others were right; you should be ceanndraoi.” Still on her knees, she extended the torc toward Orla. Orla began to reach for it, but Ceiteag held onto it, her fingers closed around the cold silver. “This will bring you no pleasure, Orla,” she said. “This isn’t a gift; it’s a curse. You have no idea what his title has cost him, and you’ve no idea what you ruined for all of the Cateni. You’ve no idea. No idea at all.”
“I believe you,” Orla told her. “And I’m sorry.” She extended her own torc to Ceiteag and took the torc she was proffering. She placed the silver torc around her own neck as Ceiteag put the bronze one on Greum, pushing the ends together to tighten them.
Orla did the same. The silver torc of the ceanndraoi was significantly heavier than the bronze and more resistant to being pulled open or pushed closed. It hung heavily on the ledge of her shoulders. She could see Ceiteag staring at it.
“I’ll need your help with this burden,” Orla said, and Ceiteag’s gaze went from Orla to Greum and back.
“Tha, you will. More than you realize,” Ceiteag said, then repeated the words. “More than you realize, Ceanndraoi Orla,” she said, her voice quavering. The title sounded strange to Orla’s ears, as if the woman were addressing someone else.
Orla inclined her head to Ceiteag. She watched as Greum took another shuddering breath before she turned and left the room.
* * *
Orla went to her own room, wishing Sorcha were there for the comfort she would have brought. Exhausted, she lay down on her bed, falling asleep without intending to do so. She was awakened sometime later by a soft knock on the door. She opened her eyes to find the room dark except for the low blue flames of the peat fire in the hearth and an open window lending a bit of light from the crescent moon peering through broken clouds. The Moonshadow’s anamacha gleamed in the far corner of the room opposite the door, waiting and silent.
“Orla,” she heard Eideard’s voice call through the door, “it’s time for us to light the pyres.”
Orla rubbed at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “A moment, Ceannàrd,” she said. She put her feet on the floor and tried to stand. There was a strange and unaccustomed weight on her neck that upset her balance. She sat back down as her fingers found the braids of the torc, tracing its pattern around her neck. Sighing, she stood again. From the chest at the foot of her bed, she took out a well-worn brown cloak and swept it around her shoulders, bringing up the hood so it mostly hid the ceanndraoi’s torc—her torc now. She went to the door and opened it. “Come in,” she told Eideard. “I’m nearly ready.”
He slipped inside, taking in her appearance. He nodded to the flash of silver around her neck. “So the rumors are true. Draoi Ceiteag hasn’t been allowing anyone into Greum’s rooms, but she summoned an archiater . . .”
Orla nodded.
“Is there another body we need to place on the pyre tonight?”
“Greum’s alive,” she said. “At least I hope he still is.”
Eideard’s eyebrows raised at that, but if he thought that a mistake on her part, he said nothing. “Then, Ceanndraoi, we should go and send our warriors to their rest.”
She walked with him to the courtyard, where he stopped and pointed southward. There was a bright glow in the sky there, reflecting from the bottom of the clouds. “The Mundoa are doing the same,” he said, “but they have far more bodies to burn. I count at least three pyres there.”
“One pyre is more than enough,” Orla told him.
“There will be many more pyres before you and I are finished here.”
“And that’s also my fear.”
Their pyre had been constructed well inside the wall, between the tower and the grove of oak trees that marked the boundary of Bàn Cill. It was several levels high with bodies laid reverently on each level. Orla could smell the oil-soaked wood as she and Eideard approached. She also began to hear the whispers from the warriors, draoi, and others gathered to watch.
The torc. Look, she wears the torc. The rumors are true. Orla is now ceanndraoi.
Orla tried to pay no attention to the comments, her gaze firmly on the pyre before her. “Ceannàrd. Ceanndraoi.” Two of the clan àrds stepped forward holding torches. They handed one to Eideard, but Orla shook her head when the other was offered to her. The àrds exchanged glances, then stepped away.
Orla started to weave the spell cage as Voada fed energy to her. This was a simple spell, little more than the first lesson that Greum had taught her what now seemed long ago, when she was just learning to control her ability. Flames leaped into existence in the open air between her moving hands, but she didn’t let the fire linger there. “Teine!” Orla shouted, and cast the flames toward the pyre. They hit the timber supports, dripping down slowly as if they were liquid, then the flames ignited the oil. At the same time, Eideard tossed his torch into the wood piled under the pyre. The light caused them both to lift their arms to shade their eyes, and the heat drove them all back a step, then another and another as the entire pyre came alive with dancing, hungry flames. The menachs began to chant the Prayer of the Worthy Dead, and the shadows of the Cateni were thrown long and black over the rolling landscape.
It was nearly dawn before the pyre finally collapsed to send a swirling tornado of glowing sparks high into the sky. Orla imagined each rising ember as the soul of one of the fallen, ascending to Tirnanog and their final peace.
23
Reunions and a Dream
WHEN THEY RETURNED TO the tower, weary and exhausted from their vigil at the pyre, Eideard stopped before the door marked with the silver torc. He opened the door and gestured for Orla to enter.
“These are Greum Red-Hand’s quarters,” she protested.
“Not now. I sent word to Ceiteag that she was to move him while we were at the pyre. He has your torc; now he has your room. And this is yours, as it should be. Next to mine, so we can meet whenever we need to.”
Orla frowned. “Exactly what does that mean?”
“Nothing more than what you want it to mean,” Eideard answered. He bowed his head to her. “The ceannàrd and ceanndraoi have to consult on strategy, if nothing else. Surely you don’t believe that Savas is going to leave Onglse because we beat him once.
You don’t think that, do you?” he asked with a comically shocked face, his features so distorted that Orla responded with a helpless laugh. “There,” Eideard said. “I knew you could still smile. You should never forget how to do that.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” she told him, though the smile had vanished like hoarfrost in the sun. “And now . . . It’s been far too long a day. I need privacy, and I need sleep, so if you don’t mind, Ceannàrd . . .”
“Not at all,” he said. “Enjoy your new quarters. You should find everything of yours already here. I had one of the acolytes take care of it. Everything’s ready for you. I’ll see you later today. Much later for both of us, I suspect.”
Orla closed the door behind Eideard, and the movement of air brought the scent of oily smoke from her clothes. She sorely missed Sorcha; she would have been here to comfort her, to soothe her, to tell her that all her efforts and her exhaustion had been worth it, that she’d done the right thing.
But Sorcha wasn’t here; she was somewhere with Magaidh and Comhnall, though hopefully she’d be here soon. Orla wondered whether she should use the Moonshadow to go to her in a dream, but she was too exhausted to consider that.
Orla shuffled into the bedchamber and stripped off her clothing, setting it aside to give to one of the acolytes to wash in the morning. She opened the chest—her chest, she noticed, though the bed wasn’t hers; this one was larger and more sumptuous—and took out a nightdress.
Her anamacha was standing at the foot of the bed, watching her.
She wondered if anything had changed with Greum, wondered if she should go to her old rooms and ask Ceiteag, but the bed beckoned. She pulled down the quilt and crawled in. Every muscle in her body seemed to ache and protest. She lay on her side, her free hand touching the unfamiliar torc around her neck and the much more familiar and comforting shapes of the oak leaves on their chain.
A Rising Moon Page 26