STEPHEN LEIGH’S
spellbinding original fantasy novels
available from DAW:
IMMORTAL MUSE
THE CROW OF CONNEMARA
and writing as S. L. FARRELL:
The Cloudmages:
HOLDER OF LIGHTNING
MAGE OF CLOUDS
HEIR OF STONE
The Nessantico Cycle:
A MAGIC OF TWILIGHT
A MAGIC OF NIGHTFALL
A MAGIC OF DAWN
Copyright © 2015 by Stephen Leigh.
All Rights Reserved.
Jacket art courtesy of Shutterstock.
Jacket design by G-Force Design.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1683.
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All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
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ISBN: 9780698164314
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Contents
Also by Stephen Leigh
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
A Note on Dialect
Epigraph
PART ONE: MACHA
Chapter 1: Death and the Sinner
Chapter 2: A Dream, Vanishing
Chapter 3: They Are Gone
Chapter 4: Visitations
Chapter 5: Searching for Young Lambs
Chapter 6: There’s a Chicken in the Pot
Chapter 7: ’Tis a Pity to See
Chapter 8: The Banshee’s Cry
Chapter 9: My Sorrow and My Loss
Chapter 10: At Midnight Hour
Chapter 11: The Light of Other Days
Chapter 12: Toss the Feathers
PART TWO: NEMAIN
Chapter 13: The Black-Haired Lass
Chapter 14: Two Conversations
Chapter 15: Petting the Seals
Chapter 16: Learning New Music
Chapter 17: At Regan’s
Chapter 18: The Fairies’ Lamentation
Chapter 19: Come to the Dance
Chapter 20: Blow the Candle Out
Chapter 21: The Fairy Ring
Chapter 22: Mothers and Brothers
Chapter 23: Revelations
Chapter 24: A Blindness Lifted
Chapter 25: A Summoning
PART THREE: BADB
Chapter 26: An American Exiled
Chapter 27: The Gray Daylight
Chapter 28: The Night Ride
Chapter 29: If the Sea Were Ink
Chapter 30: Let Sleeping Gods Lie
Chapter 31: The Twisting of the Rope
Chapter 32: The Dawning of the Day
Chapter 33: America Lies Far Away
Chapter 34: After the Storm
Acknowledgments & Notes
Appendices
This book is dedicated to the memory of Walter Leigh, my father,
who introduced me to the Irish side of the family,
an1d for whom Ireland was always a precious destination.
And, as always and ever, to Denise, whose support is what makes all of my books possible.
A Note on Dialect
Given that the majority of the people in this novel are Irish, they would speak English with a distinct accent. From my own time in Ireland, I remember that the “depth” of the accent and even the pronunciation of words varied quite a bit depending on the person and their location. There were times I had to “translate” what some of my relatives in Roscommon were saying even though we were all nominally speaking the same language, their accent was so pronounced.
We won’t even talk about idioms, which can be very different there.
An author always has choices to make when rendering dialect in fiction. The dialogue and even the exposition could be entirely in dialect (à la Huckleberry Finn, for example) but to my mind that slows down the reader unnecessarily, requires far too much work on the reader’s part, and can lead to confusion. Another author might choose to not use phonetic dialect spelling at all, but leave the sound of the dialect entirely to the reader’s imagination.
My personal preference is to take a middle road between the extremes: to try to give the occasional hint of the pronunciation where it doesn’t seem to hinder comprehension, with the hope that the reader will begin to “hear” the accent and continue to provide it in their inner hearing for all characters’ dialogue. Hopefully, that works for you. If your preference is more toward one or the other pole, please forgive me.
Irish Gaelic provides another issue for those readers who insist on knowing how to pronounce the words. I’m not someone who knows Irish Gaelic beyond a few words, though I love the sound of the language. I’ve rendered the occasional Gaelic word or phrase here in the generally accepted spelling—but be aware that you won’t capture the pronunciation of any version of Gaelic by using the rules of English any more than you’d get proper pronunciation of French by applying English rules. For instance, in Irish Gaelic “mh” is a single aspirated consonant, and is pronounced as an English “w” or “v” depending on the surrounding vowels—thus, the Celtic festival day Samhain (to a reader of English) looks like it should be pronounced “Sam-hane” when it’s actually pronounced more like “Sow-en.”
There’s the added complication that the same word in Irish Gaelic can be pronounced differently in various regions of the country, in much the same way that we have regional variations in pronunciation in the USA. For instance, how do you pronounce “pecan”? Is it pee-KAHN, puh-KAHN, pick-AHN, pee-CAN or PEE-can? They’re all “correct,” depending on what part of the country you’re in.
There are online guides to pronunciation of the Gaelic consonants, vowels, diphthongs, and so on; check them out if you’re so inclined. For this book, I’ve attempted to give a rough phonetic pronunciation of most of the Irish words in the appendix at the end of the novel, but I apologize in advance if my efforts don’t quite match reality.
Contents
Part One: Macha
1 Death and the Sinner3
2 A Dream, Vanishing7
3 They Are Gone18
4 Visitations21
5 Searching For Young Lambs30
6 There’s a Chicken in the Pot34
7 ’Tis a Pity to See44
8 The Banshee’s Cry48
9 My Sorrow and My Loss55
10 At Midnight Hour58
11 The Light of Other Days68
12 Toss the Feathers83
Part Two: Nemain
13 The Black-Haired Lass93
14 Two Conversations103
15 Petting the Seals110
16 Learning New Music121
17 At Regan’s127
18 The Fairies’ Lamentation135
>
19 Come to the Dance145
20 Blow the Candle Out162
21 The Fairy Ring169
22 Mothers and Brothers178
23 Revelations189
24 A Blindness Lifted202
25 A Summoning212
Part Three: Badb
26 An American Exiled225
27 The Gray Daylight233
28 The Night Ride238
29 If the Sea Were Ink246
30 Let Sleeping Gods Lie257
31 The Twisting of the Rope265
32 The Dawning of the Day273
33 America Lies Far Away277
34 After the Storm286
Acknowledgments and Notes295
Appendices299
“I don’t think there’s any point in being Irish if you don’t know that the world is going to break your heart eventually.”
— Daniel Patrick Moynihan
PART ONE
MACHA
1
Death and the Sinner
DARCY FITZGERALD LAY DYING in the next room.
His family and friends were gathered in the small front room of Darcy’s farmhouse on Ceomhar Head, well outside the town of Ballemór in County Galway. Two and sometimes three of the group took brief turns sitting at Darcy’s bedside with the priest and Darcy’s sister Margaret Egan, who were holding vigil. The priest—Father Quinlan—had been sent for by Margaret; the truth was that, in living memory, no one could recall Darcy ever trudging into town of a Sunday to attend Mass, but Margaret had insisted that her own pastor come out and sit with her.
“Darcy’s been baptized, an’ so I’ll be having the Last Rites done proper for the repose of his poor soul,” she proclaimed. “The good Father will do them, too, or he won’t be seeing another pence of mine or m’family’s in the offering tray.”
Margaret, Father Quinlan, and the occasional friend sat in the stuffy bedroom: listening to Darcy’s labored, stuttered breathing and the muffled din of conversation from the other room. They talked quietly to each other over Darcy’s form under the blanket once quilted by his twelve-years-dead wife, occasionally glancing at the grizzled, sunken face on the pillow that was, in turn, staring blindly at the candlelit shadows gathering on the ceiling.
In the front room, the evening already had more the aspect of a wake. The dozen folk there had gone through two bottles of Jameson 12-year-old Special Reserve from Darcy’s cupboard (“Well, he won’t be a’needin’ the whiskey now, will he?”), and flasks were regularly being produced from back pockets and passed around. The air was murky with fragrant smoke from cigarettes, pipes, and the smoldering peat fire in the hearth, which didn’t seem to be drawing properly. Their voices were loud and boisterous, laughing as they related stories from Darcy’s past: purely fiction, embellished, or nakedly raw, they didn’t care. Someone had brought along a guitar and another a fiddle, and the stories and conversation intermingled with playing and singing.
Outside, a gale off the North Atlantic howled and shook the shutters and roof beams of the farmhouse. The door to the farmhouse rattled in its frame, causing those closest to glance toward it to check that the latch was still holding.
The door to Darcy’s bedroom opened. Margaret stood there with her white hair hanging limply around her face and a rosary clutched in her hand, Father Quinlan a dark presence behind her. The song failed in mid-phrase and the laughter shuddered to a halt. Margaret sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “Poor Darcy’s gone,” she stated simply. Several of those in the room made the sign of the cross at the news.
At the same moment, the shutters boomed and rattled, and the door visibly quivered with a sound as if wild fists were beating on the planks. “Sweet bleedin’ Jaysus!” one of the company shouted in alarm, then glanced guiltily at the priest. “Beggin’ your pardon a’course, Father.”
The door and shutters continued to rattle as the wind rose with a nearly human, furious shriek. The blue flames of the peat fire shuddered in a sudden downdraft that sent smoke pouring into the room. “What in heaven—” Margaret began as the gathering coughed and waved hands against the invasion, but a new voice interrupted her.
“’Tis yer fault, all of yez,” the voice said, and as one they looked over to the hearth from where the voice had emanated. A woman stood in front of the fire, and hers was a face that none of them knew. She was bundled in a hooded red cloak, the cloth beaded with rain as if she’d just come in from the weather, though no one could remember her entering the room. Her eyes were a deep, saturated green, and the strands of hair that escaped the cowl were the color of a moonless sky at midnight. Her voice was edged steel wrapped in dark velvet, low and sensual. “There be no door or window open here for the soul to depart through, as is customary. The spirits sent to accompany Darcy are angry.”
“Darcy’s soul ca’nah be kept from the Lord by doors or windows,” Father Quinlan interjected. He scowled. “This blather is simple superstition, woman. Shame on yeh.” Both he and Margaret glared at the intruder.
“Darcy Fitzgerald didn’t believe in yer foolish God, priest, so shut your gob,” the woman said, and half the company drew in their breath at the blasphemy. Several warded themselves again with the sign of the cross. “Darcy believed in things much older than that, and they’ve come for him now. Yeh must let him go. Why has no one stopped the clocks here or turned the mirrors?”
Again there came the sound of fists beating at the door, and the shutters were nearly pulled from their hinges. The wind shrieked in the chimney, and the guitar player, sitting on the hearth nearest the woman, looked at the fire, startled. “’Tis the very banshee,” he said, then glanced guiltily at the woman.
“Aye,” the woman in red answered. She was smiling strangely. “Open the door,” she commanded, gesturing to the men nearest to it.
“Nah,” Margaret shouted back. “There be no need for that. Darcy’s soul is already in heaven, and his body will be placed in consecrated ground.”
The cloaked woman laughed as fists continued to hammer at the planks, and she gestured once more. “Open the door,” she repeated. Her voice was imperious, commanding, and one of the men sitting next to the door rose to his feet, glancing at his wife who sat alongside him who, in turn,was staring at the woman.
Finally, the wife nodded, faintly, as if she and the woman had exchanged some unheard communication. “What can it hurt?” she half-whispered, though she kept her gaze averted from Margaret and the priest, who remained standing in the doorway of Darcy’s bedroom as if defending the corpse. Her husband lifted the latch and turned the knob, pulling at the door.
The door flew from his hands, slamming hard against the limits of its hinges as the mourners shouted in alarm. A hurricane wind as cold as a winter gravestone blew hard into the front room, snatching papers and napkins from the small table and hurling them about, extinguishing all the candles, sending the pictures on the wall swaying and falling, and toppling the empty bottles of Jameson. The few electric lights in the room—Darcy having been slow to have the lines run out to his farmstead—flickered and went momentarily dark. Only the faint, ethereal light of the peat fire remained, strangely untouched. The wind plucked at the coats and pants and skirts of those gathered there as if with invisible fingers, and tugged especially hard at the priest’s cassock, enough that they heard him cry out in the darkness. Then the wind abruptly reversed itself, rushing out from the house and slamming the door shut behind itself. Later, some of those in the room would swear they heard a man laughing in the midst of the retreating gale, and that the laughter was that of old Darcy himself.
The electric lights pulsed once and returned. The peat fire crackled contentedly as the gathering blinked and looked around. “That woman . . .” they heard Margaret say. “I swear that she . . .” and they all looked to where the woman had been.
But she had gone as suddenly as
she’d come.
This time, it was the priest himself who made the sign of the cross.
2
A Dream, Vanishing
THE CHICAGO WEATHER promised to be a shock. Even in early May, the heat threatened to overwhelm the sweater Colin Doyle was wearing. He pushed his glasses back up his nose as he peered myopically at the crowd near the Arrivals gate.
His sister Jen waved at him as he emerged, rushing over to him after a moment’s hesitation. Her short hair was disheveled, as if she’d just hurriedly toweled it dry after a shower. She wore her smile in the same way she wore a business suit. When he hugged her, he heard the smile break and a sob escape. “How’s Dad?” Colin asked as he embraced Jen.
“No better,” she answered, sniffing as she stepped back. “Sorry. I promised myself I wasn’t going to cry when I saw you.”
“My face sometimes has that effect.”
That brought back the smile momentarily. “Silly as always. Good. I’ve missed that.” He saw her glance at the gig bag on his back, his Gibson J-45 safely ensconced within; she said nothing, but her lips tightened a bit, and he wondered if she were going to say something about it. “Let’s hit the baggage carousels and get home,” she said instead. “You’re sure you want to stay with me and not Mom? You know she’s expecting you at home, in your old room.”
“I’m certain she is. I’m just not sure that’s where I want to be.” Colin gave a shrug. He lifted his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “Or is that going to be a problem with you and Aaron? You are still seeing him, aren’t you?”
Jen’s quick blush gave him the answer, and suggested more.
The first time he’d heard about Aaron had been last semester . . .
Last semester . . .
Colin slid into a booth at the Starbucks on University Way NE with a grande latte. He pulled out his phone, which claimed it was 6:32 in the morning—8:32 back in Chicago. He touched the link for his sister Jennifer. He heard the click of the connection, a long hiss of static, and finally a ring. A second ring. A third.
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