“Hey, hey, hey! Enough, you two,” Pádraig said, frowning at Máiréad and shaking Liam by the shoulder. “No one’s going down any dark path, here. All three of us are going to achieve great things. You, Your Highness, will one day be Chieftain of Tulach Shire, King of the Western Shires and, most probably, High King of Cruachan. You, My Lady, are going to stand for entry into the Academy for the Spiritually Gifted at the Mid-Winter Roghnú and turn out to be the finest master wizard the Academy has ever produced and, I have no doubt, the first female Arch-Wizard of all Cruachan. While I, the humble servant of you both, will make sure that your horses have the best-cared-for hooves in all of the three kingdoms. Okay?”
Neither of the other two said a word.
“Lady Máiréad,” Pádraig entreated, “apologize for calling him a donkey.”
“He’s lucky I didn’t turn him into one,” she replied, glancing away and sulking.
“See, Your Highness?” Pádraig continued. “She didn’t turn you into a donkey, did she? That’s sort of positive, isn’t it? Now what do you have to say?”
“Then I guess I won’t have her tried for practicing dark-path magic.”
“If I had turned—” Máiréad started, but with a small hand-gesture from Pádraig, broke into a sneezing fit and couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Great!” Pádraig said, quickly, patting Liam on the back. “Now, since by royal request you got me out of helping my da with the garrison’s horses—” He stopped, frowned, and pointed westward. “Horses! Six of them and coming fast!”
Liam looked in that direction. “I don’t hear or see anything.” He glanced over at Máiréad.
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m not get—No, wait! I hear them now. And like Paddy said, there are six of them.”
“I still don’t hear anything,” Liam protested.
Pádraig cocked his head slightly. “Six horses but only four riders.”
“You’re making this up,” Liam said, then stopped as he, too, heard the sound of hooves approaching from the west.
Out of the trees came six horses, but only four with riders. And all four of the riders carried lances. Emblazoned on the dark-blue tabards of the two lancemen in the lead, as well as on their round shields, was the gold tríbhís—the conjoined triple spiral—with a lightning bolt in its center, the symbol of the Cruachanian Defense Forces. The tabards of the other two were purple and bore a tríbhís with no image in the center, and having its top and right legs in black and only its left leg in gold, the emblem of the Security Forces of the Western Shires.
“Your Highness! Your Ladyship!” one of the lead soldiers with the insignia of a captain on his shoulder formally addressed Liam and Máiréad in turn, dismounting and bowing slightly as he spoke. “The High King and the earl have sent us to bring you back to Cathair Tulach. Please, Your Highness and Your Ladyship, we must hurry.”
The two members of the security forces had also dismounted and brought the riderless horses forward. One, a pure white stallion, carried a standard saddle. The other, a dapple-gray mare, had been outfitted with a sidesaddle.
“What’s happened?!” Liam asked. “Is the High King all right?”
“Both he and the earl are fine, Your Highness. I have no details. I just have orders to fetch the two of you and bring you back to the cathair.”
“What about Paddy?”
The captain shrugged. “No one said anything about the farrier’s lad. Please, Your Highness, hurry!”
“Come up behind me,” Liam said to Pádraig as he mounted the stallion. “It’s not that far. Máedóc is a strong horse. He won’t be taxed.”
Pádraig waved him away. “Go! It’s obviously important. The two of you just go! I’ll be all right.”
Máiréad had crossed to the side of the mare. There she addressed the captain. “Go! Take the prince. I’ll follow shortly.”
“But, Your Ladyship,” he protested, “my orders are—”
Putting her hand on his arm, Máiréad repeated herself. “Take the prince. I will follow shortly.”
The soldier stood there, glassy-eyed for a second or two, then replied, “We’ll take Prince Liam with us, My Lady. You’ll follow shortly.” He then swung himself up into his saddle, as did the two soldiers from the security forces. Quickly, all five turned their horses around and took off at a gallop, two soldiers in front and two behind Prince Liam, toward Fortress Tulach, a promontory stone ringfort and ancestral home of the Kings of the Western Shires.
“How soon will you come?” Liam called out over his shoulder.
“Shortly,” Máiréad shouted back.
As Pádraig and Máiréad followed on foot in the same direction that the horses had gone, she leading the mare by its reins, he said, “Why, Meig? Why didn’t you go with them?”
“Why were you holding back in the race?” she asked, ignoring his question.
Pádraig kept silent.
“You could have beaten him,” she insisted.
Pádraig shrugged, then asked, “Why did you trip him?”
“Because you were letting him win.…Why?”
“He needed to.”
“And you didn’t?”
The boy shook his head and replied, simply, “No.”
The girl had stopped while Pádraig had kept on walking. When he had gotten a half-dozen steps ahead of her, she flicked the fingers of her left hand in his direction, sending a miniature lightning bolt at his backside.
She had no sooner loosed it when she felt the sensation of Pádraig’s magic detecting it.
Without turning around, he made a movement with his right hand, deflecting the energy spike off into the pond where it sizzled as the water extinguished it.
Máiréad raised an eyebrow in surprise that he had been able to not only sense but repel her magic without seeing it coming. She flicked her fingers again, sending another power-surge toward him, this one twice as potent.
Again, Pádraig sensed and deflected it, without ever turning around.
Yet a third time she tried, redoubling the power of the energy.
Once more, without physically seeing it coming, the boy detected and stopped it before it made contact with him. Only this time, instead of deflecting it into the pond, he sent it back toward her so that it exploded at her feet.
Although startled, Máiréad said, “So there is a limit to how much abuse you’re willing to take. Good for you. But you’ve been given a gift, Paddy. Why don’t you use it?”
He turned to her. “I don’t believe An Fearglas gave it to me to use as a toy or for personal gain, Meig.”
They both bowed their heads slightly, performing the ritual touching of their foreheads, chests, and mouths.
“A most noble sentiment for a commoner. But were you given this gift so that you could squander it on sick horses and healing scrapes on the donkey-prince?”
“Relieving suffering is hardly squandering.”
“Paddy, Paddy, Paddy,” she said, leading the mare up to him. “You are so naïve. Come, ride with me. Rionach will barely feel the difference.”
Bending down and cupping his hands to give the girl an assist, he lifted her up onto the mare’s saddle. “After Liam went to all the trouble of getting me out of work? I might just as well enjoy myself for the rest of the day.”
“Will I see you later this evening?”
“After supper tonight we’ll be packing up the wagon. Early tomorrow morning we move on to the garrison at Southwest Head.”
“So soon?” Máiréad whined. “Not only is it a Between-Season Holiday, it’s the beginning of the new year. No one works on New Year’s Day.”
“Tell that to the king’s horses. But how about if I meet you at the overlook at the beginning of the first watch tonight? We’ll celebrate New Year’s Eve together by eating a traditional meal while we reflect on our ancestors who have passed on to An Saol Eile. After that, we’ll run hand-in-hand through the smoke of the bone-fires to cleanse our own souls.”
Cringing slightly at the mention of The Otherworld, she said, “I’m not sure about reflecting on An Saol Eile, but the running hand-in-hand sounds like fun.” Forcing a smile, she kissed the fingers of her left hand, bent down, and briefly placed them on Pádraig’s lips, adding, “Until tonight, my farrier.”
“And, Meig, remember,” he said, holding on to her horse’s bridle, “while our friend may very well be a donkey-prince now, after his da passes over, Liam will become not only Chieftain of Tulach Shire but King of the Western Shires, as well. When that day comes, it will fall to his court wizard to help him develop into the king he needs to be.”
With that, he gave the horse a slap on the rump and sent it heading in the direction of Fortress Tulach.
From high above, the circling fish hawk let out a screech.
Oakday - Falcon 64th
Tulach Shire
As the hoof-beats of the dapple-gray mare faded into the distance, carrying the Lady Máiréad toward her home at Fortress Tulach, Pádraig picked up a small, flat stone and sent it skipping across Fox Pond. Although he wondered why soldiers from both the defense forces and the security forces had been sent to retrieve Liam and Máiréad, he decided he could wait until later in the afternoon to satisfy his curiosity. Had he gone back with them, his father would have put him to work; and a rare day off was not something Pádraig was willing to relinquish without an extremely good reason. He had worked each day of the previous six eight-day weeks, including every Hollyday and Oakday, the traditional days off at the end of each week commemorating the two trees most sacred to the Deity.
Following the brook that fed Fox Pond, Pádraig stopped momentarily to watch a little wren flit about, foraging for food. From somewhere among the bare branches of the alder trees, two crows argued with each other, while above the canopy, unseen by the boy, the fish hawk continued to circle.
With his heightened senses, a by-product of his ‘gift’ from the Deity, the young blacksmith detected the sound of splashing water coming from somewhere upstream.
A rapids, or maybe a waterfall? he wondered, and quickened his pace.
Wash-downs at the garrison with a bucket and rag hardly made a difference in his personal hygiene. The young farrier would have liked nothing better than to stand under a waterfall and rinse the smell of horse from his body.
His visual sense, though, detected something else as well. For just a fraction of a second, out of the corner of his eye, Pádraig caught a glimpse of an image through the tree line that bordered the stream. He couldn’t tell whether it was a person or an animal; but, he forced himself not to turn his head and look in that direction, hoping that whatever or whomever it was wouldn’t know that it or he had been noticed.
Continuing to walk along the stream bank, Pádraig caught two more flashes of the figure, just long enough for him to confirm that someone or something was, indeed, tracking him. However, he couldn’t discern what it was.
Daoine Dofheicthe? he wondered, then thought back to Máiréad tossing her energy bolts at his backside. And did I or Meig draw its attention? He shuddered at the notion.
His father had warned him repeatedly about using his gift indiscriminately:
“Magic draws magic,” he had cautioned the boy. “And there are some Daoine Dofheicthe that you would do well not to attract. Be very careful. What you’ve been given is not a toy. Actions always have consequences.”
On the other side of the brook, the trees opened up on a small clearing. In the very center of the glade, one of the most magnificent looking horses Pádraig had ever seen stood there snorting, whinnying, and limping as it tried to walk, favoring its left foreleg.
Using the rocks in the stream, Pádraig crossed into the glade, approaching the animal slowly, all the while talking to it softly.
“Such a pretty girl, you are. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a horse this black in all my life. And your coat? It absolutely shines. Someone must take really good care of you.”
The animal tried to back away, but its hoof hurt too much for it to go more than three or four paces.
“It’s okay,” Pádraig continued, slowing his approach slightly. “I’m not going to hurt you. No one would hurt a horse like you. Did you break through a hedge or fence, or just jump over it. You’ve got to be what? Fifteen hands, at least. I’ll bet you jumped over it, didn’t you?”
The horse snorted, moved its head to the side, but didn’t shy away.
“Yeah, I’ll bet someone’s missing you, all right.”
Now within less than an arm’s length of the animal, Pádraig reached his hand into the pocket of his breeches. “I know quite a lot about horses. And the one thing I know for sure, more than anything else, is that all horses like sugar.” Removing his hand from the pocket, Pádraig held a lump of raw sugar between his thumb and forefinger.
Again, the horse snorted and fixed its yellowish-brown eyes on the boy. However, this time it stretched out its neck toward him and the treat.
“Okay, this one’s for free,” Pádraig said, placing the sugar in the palm of his hand and extending the hand toward the animal. “But to get the next one, you’re going to have to let me look at that hoof. Do we have a deal?”
The soft lips plucked the lump of sugar from the boy’s hand and the horse’s teeth made short work of it.
Pádraig had positioned himself at the side of the injured foreleg. During those two or three chews, he had placed his right hand on the animal’s neck. He stood there, now, stroking the horse and continued to talk to it. “What’ve you been doing?” he asked, pulling a few strands of dark-green water-grass from the animal’s mane. “Did you go for a swim?” Removing a few more strands of the water-grass, he sniffed the horse and went on. “It sure looks and smells that way. Bet you had fun, didn’t you? Now, how about letting me take a look at that hoof, okay?”
Moving his hand down the neck onto the shoulder, he continued stroking halfway down the horse’s left foreleg. “This is the one isn’t it?” he asked, letting his hand move back up to the animal’s mane.
The horse stretched out its neck and nuzzled the boy’s pocket.
“Yeah, I know, I promised you another treat, didn’t I. But this time, in order to get it, you have to let me look at that hoof. Remember? That was our deal.”
Again the horse nuzzled the pocket.
Letting his hand slide all the way from the animal’s neck to the fetlock, Pádraig leaned up against the mare to make sure that it was standing solid on the other three legs, then gently lifted the left forefoot off the ground.
The horse didn’t protest. It simply nuzzled the pocket again.
Not wanting to scare the animal the first time it had allowed him to lift its foot, Pádraig gently set it back down again without touching the bottom of it.
“Good girl!” he cooed, once more patting the horse’s leg all the way up to the shoulder. “See? I’m not going to hurt you. This time, though, we’ll take a good look.”
Removing the wrought-iron hoof-pick from his belt, Pádraig showed it to the horse. “I made this myself,” he said. “In my da’s forge. It’s in the shape of a hawk. I won’t hurt you with it, I’m just going to scrape away some of the caked-in mud and grass so that I can see the bottom of your hoof. Okay?”
Taking a nuzzle at the pocket as a ‘yes,’ Pádraig again slid his hand down the horse’s leg to the fetlock, and again assured himself that the animal had its other three legs securely under it before lifting the foot.
“Got quite a collection jammed in there don’t you?” he asked, as he went to work with the hoof-pick, using the hawk’s beak to clean away the debris.
“Ah-ha!” he said. There, lodged in the wedge-shaped frog of the animal’s hoof, was a stone.
Looking over his shoulder and making contact with those yellowish-brown eyes, he told the animal, “You’ve managed to get a stone stuck in there. No wonder you’re limping. Just hold on for a few more seconds and I’ll pop it right out of there.”
Again showing the hoof-pick to the horse, he continued. “That’s why I made the hawk’s beak like I did. It’s perfect for this job.”
Returning to the hoof, Pádraig set the point of the beak at the bottom of the stone, rotated the pick, and the stone popped right out.
He gently set the hoof back down on the ground and said, “Okay, try it out. See what you think.”
Instead, the horse nuzzled his pocket.
“Oh, I see. First things first. Okay. Here’s your treat.” Taking another lump of sugar from his pocket, the young farrier put it in the palm of his hand and held it out.
Again, the animal took it softly, chewed it three times, then walked away from Pádraig.
“How’s that feel?” the boy asked.
In answer, the horse took another few steps, broke into a slow canter, then into a gallop as it raced around the glen. Returning to the boy, the animal snorted and again nuzzled the pocket.
“No. That’s enough. Too much sugar isn’t good for your teeth.”
Another nuzzle.
“Well, okay. Let me check the other hooves and we’ll see.” Patting the horse as he did so, Pádraig walked around the animal and checked its other hooves, using his pick to clear out the debris, but found no other problems.
“You’re good to go,” he said, giving the mare one more lump of sugar and pulling some more of the dark-green water-grass strands from its mane. “Now you’d better be getting home. Your master or mistress is probably really worried about you.”
The horse just stood there, bobbing its head.
“Go on! Shoo! Go home!”
Nothing.
Looking at the position of the sun in the sky, Pádraig saw that he had plenty of time before he had to head back to Fortress Tulach.
“You can’t just stand here. How about if I get up on your back, and you can show me where you live? Okay?”
More bobbing.
Leading the horse over to a rock, Pádraig used the rock as an assist, springing from it onto the animal’s back and holding on to its mane.
A Spark is Struck in Cruachan (The Chronicles of Pádraig Book 1) Page 2