by Sarah Rayne
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, it was the Battle of the Dawn Enchantment, for the spell we can weave into our music was the first spell of them all. It was born when Tara was raised from the rock, and we have guarded it jealously.” He looked back at Grainne. “But we yielded it to our long-ago ancestress, ma’am,” he said, “and we have held by the bargain that was struck with her. When you came into the world, along with your ill-starred brother, we poured our enchanted music into Ireland for you. You do not know it, but that music has protected you many times now.” He looked at her very directly, and Grainne held his look, and knew that he saw and understood far more than anyone had ever done. And then, without warning, he lifted one slender arm, and seemed to sprinkle something she could not quite see in the direction of the others. Grainne half turned her head, and glimpsed a thin shower of blue-green droplets, cascades of muted light, falling on the waiting Beastline and the Cruithin, and Fintan and Cermait and Tybion. She thought they blinked and Tybion put up a hand as if to ward something off, and Raynor seemed to move back as if a blow had been aimed at him.
Grainne said, “What —”
“The Draoicht Suan,” said Aillen. “The gentle Enchantment of Slumber. They will sleep while we talk.”
“Why have you done it?” Grainne was still looking to where the others were standing or sitting as they had fallen, the thin gleaming threads of the Enchantment all about them.
“They will take no harm.” He looked at her. “But there are things you do not yet wish them to know.” He stopped, and Grainne said nothing. “The boy is safe,” said the Elven King, and Grainne felt the colour rush to her cheeks, and such a powerful wave of emotion engulfed her that she could only gasp.
“We have protected him,” said Aillen mac Midha. “For he is Ireland’s Prince, for all that you gave him up, Your Majesty. He has had our protection since we sang him into the world at his birth.”
“I had no choice,” said Grainne, but through her words there was a sudden singing in her heart, and a sudden soaring joy, because he was not dead, the boy was not dead, Fergus’s son was alive and living, and perhaps one day she would find him … “I had no choice,” she said again, but for a moment her vision had blurred, and she was back in that terrible night when they had taken the child, and her heart and her womb had ached, and mingled in with it had been the yearning for Fergus, her brother, whom she could never have … And, oh yes, the sidh had been there, she had heard their music, pouring into the chill night, and she had known that the child was in truth Ireland’s heir, for the sidh only sang for the Wolfline.
The Lost Prince, the once and future King who would drive back the Dark Ireland for ever … Grainne stood very still and looked at the slender unearthly creature before her, and knew that he understood it all. He understood about the days when she had loved Fergus, and when she had learned the truth from Dierdriu, and lost Fergus for all time. He knew about the days and the nights and the weeks when she had ached and hurt and been more alone than she could have imagined possible; when she had had to see Fergus and the Court ladies, and when she had had to smile and seem not to mind, because she was Tara’s heiress, she was the Crown Princess, and even if Fergus had not been her brother, they would never have let her have him …
The Elven King said, “Better by far to have lost your love in that way than to have lost him to another. You never lost his love.” The huge eyes were steady. “But you knew that.”
“Yes,” said Grainne in a whisper. “Yes, I knew.”
They looked at one another, and then the Elven King smiled and it was a smile so blindingly beautiful that Grainne blinked. “The boy is safe,” he said, and already his form was blurring. “You will find him when the time is right for you to do so.” And then, in a fading voice, “And we shall be with you when you ride on Medoc,” he said. “I promise you that.”
There was a sudden swift movement, a smudge of blue-green, the beating of iridescent wings on the edge of the forest, and Grainne heard Fintan behind her say, “Dear me, did we drop off for a few minutes? I hope I haven’t missed anything.”
*
The sidh were with them on their march to Folaim, which was to be their first overnight camp.
“Folaim,” Aillen mac Midha had said, and there had been something unfathomable in his eyes. “A strange choice.”
Grainne thought it was not really a strange choice, because Folaim was directly on their route to the valley where Tara lay. They had plotted the journey while they were still at the Grail Castle, and the Cruithin had helped. In fact, Grainne thought, now she came to think back, the Cruithin had been quite firm about Folaim being their first camp.
“A good place,” they had said in their soft, courteous voices. “Your Majesty will do well to be there.” And they had looked at her with their heads on one side, and they had smiled and nodded, but they had not said quite why Folaim ought to be their camp stop.
The sidh stayed with them. As Tybion said, you could not but be aware of them. They were in the air and in the night scents and they were occasionally to be glimpsed when the light changed.
“I know they are there,” said Fintan crossly.
“We can’t see them, of course,” said Tybion.
“We don’t want to see them,” said Fintan, who would not have trusted a sidh from here to that tree and did not mind saying so. You had to be extremely wary of the sidh> said Fintan. Didn’t they all know the stories of how the sidh would snatch a man’s virility right from between his legs if the mood took them.
“But,” said Tybion, who was finding all of this so marvellous that he could scarcely restrain himself, “but isn’t it the most wonderful thing in the world that they’ve come to be with us?”
As to that, Fintan was as pleased as the next man. Of course he was. It was only that they must be wary, he said. To be sure, it was great altogether. And if the sidh were going to be with them in the battle, then they could be very hopeful indeed, said Fintan. But they would have to be careful, that was all, he said, and went off with Rinnal to discuss what they ought to do about supper that night, because you did not quite know what constituted good manners on these occasions, and nobody seemed to know if Aillen mac Midha should be asked to supper or not.
“But the sidh don’t eat ordinary food,” said Cermait, and Rinnal grinned and said, “I heard they ate the hearts and souls of humans,” and then looked horrified, because of the Conablaiche and the Lad of the Skins and Crom Croich.
“But he’s right,” said Fintan to Cermait. “They don’t eat ordinary food.”
“Then it’s as well you didn’t ask him to eat rabbit stew with us.”
“He would probably have eaten our souls,” said Fintan, and was put into such good humour at having imparted this macabre note to the proceedings that he went off quite happily to see could he coax a second helping of stew from Bee, whose turn it was to cook.
It was easy and pleasant and unexpectedly natural to sit with the others, about the fire that Rinnal had made, eating Bee’s rabbit stew which turned out to be excellent. Grainne felt such a sense of contentment and kinship that she thought she would like the supper and the quiet talk afterwards to go on for ever.
The stew went round very well and there were wild mushrooms in it and wood sorrel and sharp clean hazelnuts. “Everything I could find,” said Bee, delighted at the others’ enjoyment.
“It’s very good indeed,” said Fintan, eating his portion industriously.
“And there wouldn’t have been anything like enough for Aillen mac Midha and the sidh,” said Cermait. “Especially when people have three helpings.”
“I didn’t,” said Fintan.
“I counted,” said Cermait.
The stew in fact had gone round very well and there had been large helpings for everyone. “Even allowing for people who are greedy,” said Cermait.
“Well, we didn’t want any waste,” said Fintan. “It attracts predators if you leave wasted food in the forest. Anyone kn
ows that.”
When the supper had been cleared away and the Cruithin had asked permission to light their pipes (which they were scrupulous about doing no matter the occasion), the sidh returned to the edge of the camp. Fintan said they came too close, but Cermait said that Fintan would have to put up with it. Several people said that it was rather restful to see the sidh drifting across the clearing and getting mixed in with the smoke from the Cruithin’s clay pipes.
“And it is more than restful to hear the music,” said Raynor, delighted. “I never thought to hear such music.”
The music began slowly and gradually; one minute it was not there, and the next minute it was entirely there, so that you thought it had probably been there for quite a long while. It was not that it crept up on you, it was more that it was such a part of the forest and the twilight and the fire, that you did not immediately realise it was all about you.
It was almost as if it was music you could not quite hear. And then it was all about the camp, it was pouring into the centre, a great blue and green fountain, an icy waterfall of beauty and enchantment and old, old magic. Grainne thought afterwards that it was as if they had been fed a sleep drug, as if their eyelids had been streaked with the juice of poppies, with mandragora, the drowsy sleep drug, with the golden heavy honeydew of slumber …
The music poured into the clearing like a crystal river and, one by one, Grainne and the others slept, and in sleeping dreamed sweetly and well.
Aillen mac Midha stayed where he was on the edge of the clearing, because to have approached too closely would have been dangerous for the humans. He could see, as Grainne had seen earlier, the gossamer threads of the ancient Draoicht Suan, the Enchantment of Slumber which his people had woven, and he could see, as well, within the threads, the other Enchantment, the spell that had been woven at the very beginning for the protection of Tara’s Royal Wolfline. It was a slender, rather fragile spell, and it had not always kept the High Kings and Queens entirely safe. But the sidh had been charged to protect and weave it for every Prince of Tara ever born, and it had been woven at Grainne’s birth, and again for the child whose birth had been so closely guarded that very few people in Ireland knew of it. But Aillen mac Midha knew, because it was not possible for a Wolfprince to be born without him sensing it.
The spell woven at Grainne’s birth should have kept her safe from Medoc and the Dark Ireland, but Medoc was the most powerful necromancer ever known, and his sorcery had torn through the gentle, pure bewitchment.
The sidh would help Grainne and her people in the battle against Medoc; they would do all they could to protect her, but Aillen mac Midha did not know whether it would be sufficient to save her from what lay ahead.
*
Lugh of the Longhand, rounding the curve in the forest, came upon the sleeping High Queen and her small retinue, and thought it was just as he might have expected. You could not trust anyone to do anything these days. Here was Lugh, marching the army strongly and firmly through the forest on the way to Folaim, keeping a weather eye open for any enterprising enemies that might lurk, and what should they come upon but the Queen, Tara’s High Queen, lying peacefully asleep with every person who should have been keeping watch asleep as well. Anyone might have crept up and committed all manner of crimes, well, hadn’t Lugh himself been able to march right up to the clearing, and no one springing out to challenge him! It was an outrage and a disgrace if it was not a downright scandal, and Lugh did not know when he had been so shocked. He did not scruple to say so.
“I don’t know when I have been so shocked,” he said, tucking his chins in sadly. “I am saddened,” he added, and then, on an inspiration, “I should not have allowed the High Queen to be so vulnerable,” he said, and shook his head in deep sorrow, which Cathbad said was so false it did not bear thinking about.
“I’m afraid he’s very false indeed,” said Cathbad to Dorrainge, who was marshalling the men, even though this was not, properly speaking, Dorrainge’s job. “I thought it days ago, and now I see it’s right,” said Cathbad, and Dorrainge, who had thought the same but was not going to admit it, and certainly not to Cathbad who was a shocking gossip, asked had Cathbad not better things to be doing than passing judgments on Her Majesty’s soldiery.
“He’s as false as a silk pig,” said Cathbad, getting his pots and pans together and paying no attention to the people who said he was getting in the way, and wouldn’t he help to knock in a tent peg or two, and hadn’t they all enough to do without tripping over fat Druids who got in people’s way everywhere? Cathbad paid this no heed, because he had a soul above tent pegs, and said he had far too much to be doing as it was. “Goodness me,” he said, “I’ve the supper to be seeing to, and where should we be if the men were not fed? In a great deal of trouble, that’s where we’d be,” said Cathbad, and took himself off to ponder over the evening’s repast, and wondered should he attempt a few nice little curd puffs, or would that be a touch too dainty?
Lugh had made a great deal of noise in setting up camp, partly to discourage the shadow that had followed them, and partly to wake the Queen’s people. He did not like the shadow, and while he was not especially worried about the Lad of the Skins himself, it was as well to remember he was out there.
The sleepers were lying all anyhow in the bracken, and Lugh stamped about the clearing loudly, because you could not set up camp with people asleep all over the forest floor, and you certainly could not do so when one of them was the High Queen. It was one thing to throw in your lot with Medoc (not that Lugh had done that precisely), but it was another to show discourtesy to the High Queen. Lugh would not have dreamed of committing a discourteous act if you had paid him, or not unless you had paid him a very great deal.
The sleepers were not pleased to see Lugh and the men.
“Because,” said Fintan, “if there’s one thing you wouldn’t want to see when you wake, it’s Lugh Longhand. My word, he doesn’t improve with absence, does he?”
Tybion the Tusk could not understand why they had all fallen asleep in the first place, but Cermait said solemnly that it had been the Draoicht Suan. “That’s what it’ll have been,” he said owlishly. “The Draoicht Suan.”
“Rubbish,” said Fintan.
“No, it isn’t. If that wasn’t the Draoicht Suan” said Cermait, “you may call me a goatbeard and have done.”
“I shouldn’t dream of being so rude,” said Fintan, and went off to help Cathbad, who was quite flustered at having so many extra people to feed, and had abandoned the idea of curd puffs, and was contemplating a dish of mumbled rabbit, which nobody had ever heard of.
“Rich,” said Cathbad worriedly, and shook his head over the necessity for procuring pimpernel or toadflax which, as everyone knew, greatly improved the flavour of mumbled rabbit.
Grainne had welcomed Lugh, but she was not as pleased to see him as it seemed. She asked about the plan of spying on Tara, and Lugh said, “Well, there was nothing to spy on, Your Majesty.” He bowed. “There was nothing to see, and nothing to be found about the guards or the sentries.”
“I see,” said Grainne thoughtfully.
“In fact,” said Lugh, “Tara was undefended.” And he looked at her with an odd, sly glint, which Grainne found worrying, because Lugh was a great many irritating things, but sly had not, so far, been one of them.
But Lugh did not seem to be concealing anything, and Grainne could not think what there was for him to conceal.
“And,” she said later to Raynor, “if Tara is undefended, then why do we need the army and your people at all?”
“Tara is not undefended,” said Raynor.
“Can you know that?”
“Medoc is far cleverer than that,” said Raynor, and frowned and then said, “How far do you trust Lugh?”
“I don’t —” Grainne stopped and looked at him. “Do you think Lugh is a traitor?”
“I think,” said Raynor, “that all Men have a vulnerable point, and that Medoc is very clever. That
is all.” He regarded her, and Grainne thought, Yes, of course he is right. I am far too trusting. And remembered that Medoc was certainly clever, and that he was subtle and cunning, and had the forces of the Dark Ireland at his beck.
She had made Raynor and the Beastline known to Lugh and the army with deliberate ceremony, because it was important that the Beastline were welcomed properly and given homage.
The men had seemed to accept them. They were wary but they were polite. It was almost as if they were saying, Well, we always knew that the old Enchantment had not really died. They welcomed the extra strength to the army, and said to be sure the more people you had on your side, the more chance you had of winning. They wanted to know about the Grail Castle, and they listened to the stories with interest, and made room for Raynor’s people, and seemed altogether amiably disposed.
After supper, which was not mumbled rabbit in the end, but braised hare and pickled herrings, they eyed the animals a bit doubtfully, and said it would be grand to have them along, and it was to be hoped they could be kept under control.
“Raynor and the others control them,” said Tybion, and Fintan said this was very likely true, but it was disconcerting to march along with a crowd of Eagles and Swans and Badgers and the like, all padding and fluttering and scurrying and barking at your back.
“And I don’t trust the Eagles,” said Fintan with deep suspicion.
Cermait started to say that the Eagles were loyal, and Fintan said, “It isn’t their loyalty I’m worried about, it’s their temper.” Cermait laughed and told Fintan not to be ridiculous and to pass round the mulled wine. The soldiers, who had listened to this babble with enjoyment, said you never could trust an Eagle in peace-time, although they were great to have on your side in a battle, and wanted to know would the animals be sleeping separately from the humans, because you heard some odd tales these days.
“Quite separate,” said Dorrainge firmly, who had heard some of the tales himself, and was not going to have any of that kind of thing going on.