“It is a dolmen,” said Airmid softly. “It is not like the doorways to our cities. Rather, it is a place of concentration; forces gather here. You must not enter it with me; stand here and wait. You will know when you can come for me.”
The Sisters stopped at the foot of the hill, peering upward into the darkness. Airmid climbed carefully upward, leaning on her medical staff, her tiny body and her great age making her seem fragile and vulnerable in the darkness. She stepped beneath the great stone.
The space beneath the dolmen shimmered and wavered. In the sky beyond, the stars seemed to lengthen, the moon to stretch its shape from round to oval. A long time passed. An hour, perhaps two, by the reckoning of this world. And then he was there. Lugh Lamfhada, his huge frame silhouetted in the doorway.
“By the Danu,” Banba whispered. “Surely we are seeing him there.”
“Or so it would seem,” Eriu whispered. “This is a fearsome thing; I am joyful and afraid at once. Oh, Sisters, we have learned much in these last days.”
“And still we know but a single leaf on the vine of Airmid’s knowledge,” whispered Fodla.
In the dolmen, Airmid and Lugh stood apart, the air between them shimmering and thick. Once he turned his head toward the Sisters, who stood awestruck and still at the base of the hill. Collectively, they drew in their breath at his gaze.
A soft wind moved high in the trees above them; small animals skittered on the floor of the forest, as though a meeting between the living and the dead were ordinary, as though they should go about their business as they always did. Time seemed to slow, almost to still. Eriu felt heavy; her limbs, weighted and watery. And then Lugh was gone.
Airmid stepped from the dolmen and crumpled to the ground; the Sisters rushed to assist her. Eriu lifted her into her arms, gently poured drops of cool libation between her lips. For her part, Airmid smiled and smiled, though she was weak as a newborn Danaan.
“I did not see him leave,” said Banba, “though I was watching him well.”
“He did not leave,” said Airmid. “He simply closed the door. But he is here still. The Braid contains us all at all times. We are sustained inside the Braid.”
“Why do we weep their absence, Ancient? When all the while their presence is right here next to ours?”
“We weep their absence from their bodies in this time and in this place. We weep their incarnation. We see from a single leaf, Daughter. But do you see the vines that twine around these lintels?”
Eriu nodded.
“The Braid knows all of that; the beginnings and the endings, the intertwinings, the new and the old, the death and the reblossoming. She tries to show us; she weaves the worlds in Metaphor. Over and over again. But we are singled-minded and blind. We see a single leaf, we cannot see the pattern.”
“It is all too much for me,” said Banba, her reaction to the strange and the new being irritation, as always.
“You are young,” said Airmid. “You will come to see it clearly. Lugh has told me what we need to know. You have much to learn, Daughters. Return me to Tara, for I have little time.”
“This also Lugh has told you?” asked Eriu.
Airmid nodded. She kept smiling and smiling, touching her long fingers to her lips as though she held some wondrous secret.
“Hurry now. We have much to do.”
Far out at sea, Amergin stood on the deck of the ship and looked toward the land, silhouetted in the moonlight. Airioch Feabhruadh slipped up beside him in the darkness.
“What do you see, Brother?”
“I see only the outline of the island in the moonlight. But the wind seems full of voices.”
“And they all speak of treasure,” said Airioch Feabhruadh. He clapped Amergin on the shoulder. “On the morrow, you will see. The treasure is bottomless.” His face was flushed with excitement. Amergin regarded him in silence. Airioch returned across the deck and descended below.
Amergin remained on the deck.
“My treasure has vanished into the sea,” he whispered. “Skena, do you hear me? Is our child within you still? And Ir? Do you care for them both? Oh, forgive me, love, that I did not reach the railing first.”
Around him the wind twisted and grew, snapping at the sails, howling in the rigging. He leaned far forward over the railing.
“It would take so little, love, a shift forward, that is all. But then I would betray my father and Uncle Ith. My duty to the tribe. Always duty.”
Amergin dropped his head to the railing and wept.
24
“Sisters, I would speak to her alone!”
“You do not wish our presence?” Fodla’s voice sounded at once wounded and surprised.
“And with, of all people, Morrigu?” Banba was incredulous and angry.
Eriu shook her head. “It has naught to do with you. It has to do with her sisters. I would meet with Macha alone, separate from Nemhain and Banbh.”
“That I understand well enough,” said Banba. “Those two make my very skin crawl.”
Eriu nodded. “Precisely. We know now what we need to know of the functions of the arms. I stand a better chance of learning what the Morrigu knows and of negotiating a reasonable position if I meet with Macha alone. What she sows, she does with intelligence; the other two are all instinct, all base. But Macha will never meet with us in triad if she is alone. Her position would be too weak without her sisters.”
“Well reasoned,” said Banba.
“But still I like it not,” said Fodla.
“And yet you see its wisdom?”
The Sisters nodded.
“But promise us that you will stay near the doorway.”
“And that you will have your triangle at the ready should you need to return to Tara.”
“I promise.”
Yet now, sitting on the spring ground, her back against a sarsen stone, she felt no fear. A soft breeze blew up from the forest, and the stars, which had been spread across the sky like a veil, blurred and lightened as the soft gray of predawn paled their fire.
Eriu sighed. What she wished, just once, was to see what Airmid had seen in the dolmen, to see on the face of a beloved absolute recognition, a look of complete belonging.
The Brothers had been good men, funny and wise in the ways of the Danu. They had been good companions and gentle elder teachers for the mating. They had been friends. But they were interchangeable; the Sisters had been bonded to them because that was the way of the people—triad to triad, that the learning might be passed on, the duties of triad. And of course, there had been the hope that one of the matings would itself produce a triad.
But none had; the Brothers had passed from the world leaving no offspring at all. Briefly, Eriu wondered again if that too had to do with the Brothers’ long immersion in Lia Fail. She was filled suddenly with a terrible sorrow at the thought that neither she nor her sisters might bring children into the world.
Eriu wondered if her sisters sometimes felt lonely, if they too wished for a companion of the soul. Even when they were bonded to the Brothers, the Sisters had been bonded first to each other and to their duty to the Danu.
Eriu thought of Illyn, and a small smile crossed her face. In Illyn she had a daughter of the heart, but Banba and Fodla did not even have that. Her heart ached for all of them.
She began to feel panic rising in her. They would produce no triad, none of them. There would be no Council to serve the Danu. Chaos would reign; the Invaders would defeat them, would kill the Danu. Those who remained would be trapped below world, never to see the sun … . Eriu gasped. She stood.
“Nemhain, show yourself!”
Nemhain stepped into view from behind the stone, her face sulky, her black eyes beginning to lose their luster.
“You were causing my panic!”
“And I was feeding on it too.” Nemhain smiled, her look almost ecstatic, the white teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “You are not as good a subject as the Invaders, but you were doing well, racing down some
path of self-destruction in much the same fashion that they do. The only difference is that they do not know me as the cause and I can feed on the mounting panic for hours, days, sometimes years.” She actually ran her small, dark tongue over her lips.
“How do you know about the Invaders?”
“I have been on their ship. One of them I infected with such sorrow that he weeps on the railing and thinks of drowning himself in the sea. The other is so hard with his lust for treasure that he has to relieve himself whenever I am near.”
“You disgust me,” Eriu said bluntly. “I asked to meet with your sister.”
“We did not approve of your meeting with her alone. So we came. But now I fear I have given myself away. Macha will be furious.” She smiled again. “I can feed on fury, too.”
Eriu felt a shiver run up her arms, drew her cloak closer around herself. “What are you?”
“We are that part of you that you do not acknowledge. We are the Antithesis. We dwell everywhere in all times. We plant ourselves and feed and wait for growth.”
“Banbh is with you.”
“She has shifted. There are dead in the water. She awaits them.”
“What dead are in the water?”
“The Invaders have lost some of their own to drowning. Banbh will feed.”
“Banbh!” Eriu called it out. A huge raven came spinning up from the direction of the sea and landed at the top of the sarsen stone. A moment later Banbh stepped from behind the stone. She was brushing her cloak into shape, dark iridescent feathers drifting from it. She turned on Nemhain immediately.
“So. You could not keep your presence hidden for a little hour, Chaos. I am hungry.”
“I never keep my presence hidden, Feather. It is only that Eriu recognized my presence. Most do not recognize chaos or panic. They take it into themselves and let it grow.” She smiled. “And then I feed. Have you fed tonight?”
“The dead have not washed to shore. Soon enough they will. I would be sated soon had you stayed hidden.”
“Then I am somewhat sated and you are empty.”
Banbh stepped toward her sister, her masculine, nasal voice low and threatening. “I can feed from you, Sister. Never forget that.” In a flash, she raised a single finger with its long curved nail and swept it across her sister’s throat. A thin trail of blood appeared.
“I will share,” said Nemhain, softly, seductively. She tilted her head back in the moonlight.
Eriu backed against the stone; her hand went reflexively to the triangle at her neck. Her sisters had been right to tell her not to come alone.
Banbh looked at Eriu, her eyes glittering. She turned back to Nemhain.
“You will share because you know that our little ritual will repulse her and throw her sweet vision of the world into chaos and then you can feed again.”
Nemhain chuckled. Blood was trickling now down into the neck of her gown.
“But then,” said Banbh, “we both win, do we not, Sister? I feed and you feed.”
“We do,” said Nemhain. “Come, Sister.”
Banbh bent her head toward Nemhain’s neck, her long black tongue flicking. Eriu turned toward the stone, raised her triangle.
“Stop!” The word was so commanding, the sound thundering across the clearing, that Eriu turned back around at the same moment that Banbh raised her bloodied lips from Nemhain’s throat. Macha had appeared suddenly beside the stone, her face contorted with anger.
“Get you gone from here!” she commanded. “Return to the rook and go nowhere else. You have not obeyed me; you will answer for this transgression.”
In a flash the two sisters were gone. Eriu could hear a raven flapping and winging toward the sea at the same moment that a cold wind passed across her face.
She leaned back against the rock, her knees gone wobbly, trying hard not to let Macha see the weakness.
“They will be severely punished,” said Macha.
“They will enjoy that, I am sure.”
Macha tilted her head and a curious expression came into her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“When you punish Banbh, Nemhain will feed on her rage and indignity. When you punish Nemhain, Banbh will feed on her …” Eriu trailed away, her mind picturing the carrion sister at the neck of her own sister.
“Her blood,” finished Macha. “Aren’t you the wise one, Little Triad Sister? One would think you were as old as we. But you should know me better. I have found ways to punish that do not feed either of them, that leave them hungry and void. How do you punish your sisters?”
“Punish? I love my sisters; they love me. We care for each other and bear each other up.”
Macha seemed completely taken aback by the admission. “You have never had to punish them? Not even once?”
“Of course not,” Eriu said angrily. “They are not mine to punish. They are the Danu’s children, as am I, as are …”
“Ah,” said Macha. “Now you see. Whose children are we?”
The sea breeze wafted Macha’s gown, and her scent drifted toward Eriu—musk and spices, exotic and dark. Quite beautiful really. Eriu closed her eyes, inhaled. When she opened her eyes, Macha was inches from her face, the dark inquisitive eyes taking her in, the long black hair drifting against Eriu’s wrist and hand.
“But you have asked to meet with me. Privately. I too like you best of your threesome.”
Eriu laughed. “Do not play your games with me, Ravener. You know why I have asked you to come.”
Macha sighed. She folded down onto the ground in a sitting position and gestured to Eriu. Eriu slid down the rock, glad for its support for her quavering legs.
“I know why you have asked,” said Macha. “You have asked because my sisters are beasts. They function on instinct alone, and all their instinct drives toward sating their endless desires for chaos and carrion. And you see in me something else.”
“I see in you a tree that thrashes in the storm, throwing branches first this way, then that. I see lightning, jumping cloud to cloud, then striking at some poor soul skittering along the ground. I see a wind that can shift direction in a moment, here leave destruction, here spare another. You are the bringer of battle, Macha, but you fight a war within yourself, always. And yes, I see intelligence. And loneliness. Vast as these stars.”
Macha’s mouth had formed into a wide circle of surprise; her dark eyes had gone soft. “It is the loneliness, Eriu,” she whispered. “The loneliness drives it all.”
As if she had admitted too much, her whole face closed up.
“And the fact that I am tethered to those two fools for all of time. How would that do for you, Triad Leader? To be a woman of mind, linked forever to two giant, dark, hungry mouths? Never mind; time will come, I will find a way to destroy them … or to swallow them; I will find a way to move in the world alone.”
“And when you do that, will you be worse or better for the action?”
Macha shrugged. “I neither know nor care.”
“Do you not fear that they are listening, that they will hear you say these things to me?”
“It is a relief to say them to you. And no, I do not fear it. I have told them the selfsame thing many times. ‘Beware of me. Obey me. I am coming for you and I will destroy you.’ They fear me well.”
“Ah,” said Eriu, the dynamic becoming suddenly clear to her. “And this is how you feed. When you cannot feed your battle lust with Danu war or human war, you cause a war within your triad, and so you feed on Morrigu itself.”
“Aren’t you the clever girl,” said Macha admiringly, “to see through us so clearly? You have a good mind, Eriu. But you did not call me here to unwarp and unweft Morrigu.”
“You have the arms,” said Eriu bluntly.
Macha nodded. “This time we have all three. In the war against the Fomor, we had but one.”
“And it would do no good to ask you to return them to us?”
“None whatever.”
“And you know how to use them?”
“We know enough. We used them once before. In human wars, it is enough to cause chaos. They do the rest themselves. But … you do not know their uses, do you? Would you like us to teach you? Morrigu will be happy to provide such a service to the Sisters.”
Eriu felt her arms and neck prick up again at the very thought of spending time in the company of Macha’s sisters. “I thank you, no,” she said formally, as if she were declining an invitation to share a feast.
Macha chuckled. “Well, I cannot say I blame you. We are not a pleasant threesome. But you can trust us. What we want from those who come will not harm the Danu; that will not be necessary.”
“I ask you not to harm these humans until we know their character. I think that they will be again unlike either Fir Bolg or Fomor.”
“Why should I do this for you?”
Eriu took a deep breath. “I know uses for the arms that you cannot imagine.”
Macha regarded her silently. “This is not possible,” she said. “All those who knew the arms have passed.”
Eriu said nothing. She had promised herself that she would make no one but herself vulnerable. Not her sisters, not Airmid. She waited quietly. Already she knew that Macha would ask for knowledge; already she knew which function of the arms she would trade. It was almost funny to imagine the Morrigu unleashing music against the coming invaders.
Macha closed her eyes as if she were thinking. At last she opened them. “Well, I will promise you this. If you give me just one gift, we will kill none of them unless they come for us in battle.”
“What gift?” She prepared herself to explain the steps which would result in music.
“I ask you to take my hand again.”
Surprise welled up in Eriu. This was not what she had expected. “I took your hand once before; your darkness poured into me like rain,” she said.
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