The big man rode back on his horse, a captive before him and two behind him. “Take them below,” he called. He rode away.
“They will not readily accept him,” said Nuada. He winced as she pressed a pulsing instrument into the shoulder. “Not after Bres.”
She shrugged. “He is what he is. He does not need our acceptance. Nor theirs.”
Nuada smiled. “And he has yours.”
Airmid smiled. “You can return to battle, Uncle.”
“So that was Lugh,” Banba said softly.
Airmid was leaning back against the cushions, her eyes closed. She said nothing.
“Ancient,” said Eriu. “You are well?”
“I am well, child. It has brought him back to me again in all his beauty.”
“Did they accept him?”
“No. Not at first. Between Lugh and Nuada and Dagda, they rescued all the hostages. When the battle had ended, Lugh returned with us here to Tara. The people shunned him.”
“Despite what he had done?”
“Perhaps because of it. They feared his purpose; they feared that he would be as false as Bres. None of it bothered Lugh. He simply laughed and said, ‘They will come to know me.’ And eventually they did.”
“How did you come to know him?” Banba asked.
“When I was in the north. One day, there he was in the forest, hunting on foot, silent as wind.” She shrugged. “Obviously Danu. Obviously something else as well.”
“What did he say of that?”
“He did not know. Rumors swirled about him here at Tara. Some of the Danu said they had heard that Dagda had a son by a Fir Bolg woman. Others said that he was the son of Cian of the Danu, who had taken to wife Ethlim of the Fomor. For many years there had been a story, that Balor of the Fomor had a daughter, that he kept her locked in a tower that she might never be troubled by a man. Among the Danu, it was whispered that Cian had seen her and been smitten, that he had used Metaphor to transform himself into a woman. In that guise, he had visited her in her tower. Nine months later she gave birth to triplets.”
“Triplets?” said Eriu.
“It does lend weight to the story, does it not?”
“It does. Where were his brothers, then?”
“Among the Fomor there was a legend that Balor of the One Eye would be killed by his own grandson.”
“So there is the truth of why he walled his daughter up,” said Banba. “He was not protecting her virtue.”
“Well, when he saw the triplets, he knew that the tower had failed. The story was that he tried to drown them all. He succeeded with all but Lugh.”
“Who raised him?”
“He was raised in the deep northern forest by a woman named Birog. She was a wise woman. Druii, he called her. She told him that he was Danu and that he should learn well, so that the Danu would know him as a wisdom keeper when at last they met. When he was seven, he was fostered to a blacksmith. It was the first of many apprenticeships.”
“Did our people come to accept him?”
“At length,” she said. “He simply worked his way into their hearts. I say this literally, daughters. He was a carpenter and a smith, a warrior, a poet and a harper, a physician …”
“That last thanks to you, I suppose,” said Banba.
Airmid nodded. “He did whatever he was asked. Whenever. Without complaint and always in good spirits. He even taught the Danu to be horsemen. The Danu came to call him Lugh Ildanach, Lugh All-Craftsman. It was not possible not to love him.”
“You called him Lugh Lamfhada,” said Eriu.
Airmid nodded. “He earned that name in the battle.”
“How?” asked Eriu.
“Why did Nuada not speak for him among the Danu?” asked Banba.
“So it was Lugh who began the battle from behind the lines?” asked Fodla.
“Too many questions, daughters,” she said softly. “And the answers are troubling and sad. You must see them for yourselves.”
She pointed to the speckled stone.
Nuada returned to the field, dashing in and out of the Danu, appearing and disappearing in the battlefield fog. Bolts of lightning emerged from the spears of the Danu, and Lugh on his white horse pounded across the field.
Suddenly there was a huge roar.
Balor had sighted Nuada. He heaved back his spear arm. The spear flew true, piercing Nuada through the heart.
In the chamber Airmid let out a sob.
Nuada fell to the ground lifeless, the Silver Arm falling hard across his chest. The people of the Danu began to scream.
“Nuada Argetlamh.”
“Nuada! No! Nuada!”
Balor began to move inexorably toward the dead man, his huge frame leaning forward at a heavy run, his eye focused on the Silver Arm.
Suddenly Lugh rode toward the fallen Nuada. Without ever leaving his horse, he swept his arm down and snatched the Silver Arm, pulling it from Nuada’s own. Holding it out in front of him like a spear, Lugh called out, “For Nuada.”
He shifted the arm and it gave out a bolt of great light and noise. It pierced Balor, directly through the blind and rheumy eye. Balor fell.
A great cry arose from the Fomorians. The began to scatter, to flee between the lintels of the great stone circle and run for the forest below. It was not long before they fled for their sea boats, leaving the rest of the Danu captives behind.
The fog began to lift at the edge of the battlefield. In the trees at the far side of the circle, where once they would have been behind the Fomor lines, a shadow moved. The Morrigu stepped onto the Plain of Mag Tuiread. Macha wore a Silver Arm.
“Well begun, Sisters,” said Macha softly.
“And well ended,” said Banbh in her scratchy, masculine voice. “Let the Danu take our wounded and our dead. I will take the rest.” She touched the triangle at her neck. Ravens began to circle the field, to dip to the grisly work below; Banbh flew among them.
In the chamber, Airmid wept softly.
“And so we lost Nuada?” said Eriu.
“And Lugh became known as Lugh Lamfhada, for the way he used the Silver Arm, as if it were a spear,” said Fodla.
“And if the legend is true, Balor was indeed killed by his own grandson.”
Airmid nodded.
“And the Morrigu?” asked Banba.
“They are sowers of chaos,” said Airmid quietly. “They make war very well indeed; they are the necessary evil.”
“There is one thing I do not understand,” said Eriu. “The fog that covered the field. It was not raining. Was it created by the Light Spears?”
Airmid smiled. “That is the beauty of the Silver Arms, child. They are not weapons only. Each finger of each arm is articulated to a specific purpose. Wind, fog, noise, lightning, images of warriors, even sweet music.”
Eriu tried to stand from the floor, but her legs would not come up with her. She hissed in pain, pressed her palms to the floor to lift her own weight. When she was standing, she shifted gingerly from one leg to the other. Airmid watched from her chair.
“It will pass,” Airmid said. “These are temporary effects only. The long-term costs will be assessed later, five hundred, a thousand years from now. And you are finished now with Lia Fail. Eriu has learned the answer from the history, have you not?”
Eriu nodded excitedly. “I have. Sisters, the answer was before us always. The Silver Arms. You must teach us, Airmid. All three arms.”
“You will destroy the Invaders with them?” asked Banba.
“No. We will use them on their minds, not their bodies. We will make them wary of us and wise.”
“Until now, our memory had shown me only three ways: we could hide from the Invaders, seal the doors to Tara—”
“Which would abandon the Fir Bolg,” said Airmid.
“Precisely. No Danu wishes such a thing. Or we could destroy the Invaders.”
Airmid sighed and shook her head. “We have seen what price our history paid for that choice.”
“We ha
ve,” said Eriu. “If these Invaders were enough like Fir Bolg, we might frighten them into submission.”
“But they are far more sophisticated than Fir Bolg,” said Banba. “Superstition will not keep them from the doors.”
“We know not yet if they are more like Fir Bolg or Fomor,” said Fodla.
“Oh, they are more like Fomor,” said Banba.
“What makes you say so, child?” asked Airmid.
“Airioch Feabhruadh and the way he was eyeing the jewels we wore in Metaphor,” Banba replied.
“When he was not eyeing the jewels your Metaphor created elsewhere,” said Fodla.
“And Eber Donn, that great hairy beast who kept muttering about cattle pasturage.” Banba shook her head. “Stupid but dogged. Small-minded but determined.”
“So they are greedy,” said Airmid quietly. “As Bres was. You could feed their greed with treasure.”
“No,” said Eriu. “Greed feeds on itself and grows larger. Think of Bres. He became all greed, all wanting. It destroyed him and nearly destroyed us.”
“And so the arms?”
“Do you see?” she said. “If the arms are not destroyers alone, if they are many-purposed …”
“We could make a show of strength; we could seem to be more in numbers and to be more skilled and dangerous than we are,” said Fodla.
“Yes,” said Banba. “Now have we learned from our memory. We can appear to be as Lugh Lamfhada was—so skilled in all things …”
“That the Invaders will respect us,” said Fodla, “and so let us be, or work with us in truce.”
“Airmid,” said Eriu, “will you take us to the hiding place of the Silver Arms?”
Airmid stood and held out her hand. “Come,” she said. “This is a wise plan. It honors them all. Nuada, Lugh, Miach, all who protected the Danu.
“Braid hands,” Airmid commanded. “I will stand in your midst. Encircle me; braid me into your Triad. I will press upon my triangle. You will see it pulse and grow warm. Do not touch me or stop me. Promise this.”
“We promise, Ancient,” said Eriu softly. “Begin the chant of vision.”
Banba and Fodla issued the deep sounds, reed and chanter. Eriu began the chant. She watched as Airmid pressed her palm to her own triangle. She could smell the flesh of the Ancient’s palm burning, burning. But she remembered her promise and did not break hands or cease chant.
All around them, the room grew viscous; lights pulsed within her frame of vision, then darkness. Complete darkness.
“Sisters, you may unbraid.”
It was Airmid’s voice.
“Ancient,” Fodla whispered. “Are you well?”
“You need not whisper,” said Airmid. “No one knows of this place. No one can hear you. We hid the arms here, Lugh and I. Not even Council knows where they are. Nor can they be discovered by any but a triad. After the battle was done and the Fomor departed for the cold north. This is how we hid them, that they could not be reached by one person alone. The Danu have not needed them since.”
Eriu could hear her moving in the darkness. Suddenly the room began to illuminate with an eerie blue light. Airmid was standing to the side, her triangle pressed into a depression in the wall.
“How did you find it?” asked Banba.
“I can see it,” said Airmid. “Have you not wondered why we of the Braided Ancients wear the dark lenses over our eyes? Our eyes are more sensitive than yours by a thousandfold. I see in darkness.” She took small blue torches from a niche in the wall, each seeming to contain its own source of light. She handed one to each of the Sisters. Eriu stepped toward Airmid and looked at the Ancient’s palm. It was burned and blistered. Airmid shook her off.
“A little salve will heal me. It is nothing.”
“Where are we?” asked Eriu.
The light began to illuminate the walls, which seemed crystalline, almost opalescent. Clear crystal towers grew from the ceiling and the floor.
“Deep beneath the earth and sea,” said Airmid. “Where these three would remain safe and untouched forever.”
She turned her torch toward a depression in the wall. Before it shimmered a waterfall, softly descending, seeming to chime, small lights flickering within the viscous cascade. Airmid gestured to a triangular recess at each side of the waterfall. Eriu stepped up to one side of the cascade while Airmid pressed her triangle into the recess at the opposite side. The water ceased to fall. Behind the cascade, illuminated in soft light, were the clear tubular chambers that should have held the Silver Arms of the Danu.
The tubes gleamed in the ambient blue light.
They were empty.
23
“By the Danu!” The Sisters rushed to catch Airmid, who swayed in place, her eyes riveted to the wall in horror.”Just so we left them, Lugh and I. I do swear it.”
Banba nodded. “There is no mystery here, Ancient. You said they could be accessed only by a Triad. Who were the only ones who knew to use them in the battle other than Nuada and Dagda and Lugh?”
“The Morrigu.” Airmid wailed it out into the cold cave. “But how did she find them here? We hid them well.”
“Like darkness, she slips into the hollows of the world,” said Eriu softly. “Oh, I fear the work that she will do. Does she know all of their powers?”
“I know not. Nuada knew, and Dagda. When Nuada had passed, Dagda taught their uses to Lugh. He became chief after the death of Dagda.”
Eriu patted the shoulder of the Ancient. “It will be well. We will speak to the Morrigu.”
“What leverage do we have? How can we bargain with her from a position of strength? We do not have the arms and we know nothing,” said Banba.
“We will act as though we know. Airmid will teach us,” Eriu replied.
“Except that I do not know their uses,” said Airmid softly.
“How can that be?”
“Council Triad knew the weapons. My father, Nuada, Dagda. And after Dagda died, Lugh. No others.”
“And Lugh is dead.”
“There is no death,” Airmid said.
Eriu sighed. “So I have heard the Ancients say. If only that could help us now.”
“Then hear me,” said Airmid. Her tone was urgent. The Sisters sat before her in Triangle.
“Speak, Ancient,” said Eriu. “We are listening.”
“What do we say of death?”
Eriu replied. “We say that the departed has gone into the west, that he dwells on Mag Mell, the Isle of the Ever Young. We say that when his time is right, he will return. We celebrate his departure, for that country is beautiful and devoid of sorrow. And when a child returns to us, we toll the bells and thank him for his sacrifice, his return to this world.”
“And the Isle of the Ever Young? It is a place to which we can sail?” asked Banba.
“It is … an idea?” asked Eriu.
“A state of being in the Braid?” asked Fodla.
“Perhaps a leaf,” Airmid responded.
For a moment the Sisters were still. Then they all answered at once.
“We see,” said Fodla.
“Like the leaves of time,” said Eriu.
“If only we could speak to them there,” said Banba. “Then such knowledge would be useful.”
“But you cannot. That is not your gift. Yet, among the Danu are those who do see and hear what is not there. We call them second-sighted.” Airmid was silent.
“And you are one of those?”
She nodded simply. “It has always been a useful skill for a physician, a deeper way of knowing. I am very old and most of those I love have crossed to Mag Mell. There are places in this world which serve as doorways between this world and the next. At such a doorway I have spoken once to Miach. In the Chamber of Memory, when I said that you had returned Lugh to me?”
Eriu nodded.
“Now I will speak to Lugh again.”
Eriu tilted her head and regarded the Ancient. “Why have you not done so before now, Ancient? Why n
ot more often, for surely we can see how he resides in your heart.”
“Like accessing memory, it takes much to do it,” she said softly. “We ask much when we ask for this world and the next to intersect, for they are much different from each other. The … space … between this world and the next vibrates with voices, with presence, with all that comes and goes. It is more difficult than the Lia Fail because the Chamber of Memory shows us only selected … episodes. But to speak to those who have passed is to hear all of the voices who have crossed and then try to select from them. It is like standing in a forest in a great wind and listening for the sound of a single tree. And some of those voices come bearing a darkness.”
“Then you shall not do it,” said Eriu.
“But I shall,” Airmid said softly. “How shall I do less than you have done, in immersing yourself in Lia Fail? I have told you that I have nothing to fear.”
“It is we who fear,” said Fodla.
“You are one of the last of our Ancients, one of so few remaining to us who were born on the Homeworld,” said Banba. “If you die in trying to speak to Lugh, we will lose you.”
“You will not lose me; I will always be here in memory for you. The very walls around me will remember me for you. But let me show you something.” Carefully, she placed her memory triangle in the wall, pressed the stick language incised below it. Onto the walls came an image of a Danu of the Braid, a young woman, diminutive and pale, her huge dark eyes wide with wonder. She was laughing at the man beside her as they ran side by side along a windy beach.
“Come, Brother,” she cried. “Just because this world is rainier and cold does not mean that I should beat you every time.”
He put on a burst of speed and passed her at a run, a tiny pale man with a large childlike mouth.
“You let me win!” he cried.
She shrugged. “You are my brother Miach. We can run races together forever.”
A silence prevailed in the room for a long time.
Then Eriu spoke softly. “Tell us what we must do to help you prepare.”
In the deep forest at the top of a little rise, a huge flat rock rode unevenly across two great upright stones incised with whorls and spirals. Moonlight spilled across the surface of the rock, inched down its sides, making it looked like a giant ill-pitched table covered with a patchy tablecloth of white. Ivy had twined and curved around the uprights, hiding much of their carved surface in a moon-silvered profusion of leafy green triangles.
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