They first noticed the fog when cold fingers wafted in through the open windows of the guard house, accompanied by the sudden, alarming sounds of galloping hooves and rattling chariots on the wooden planks of the bridge and the wild chanting of Cateni draoi, the clamor all strangely muffled. The guardhouse shook and trembled as the soldiers at the gaming table rushed outside—the older one first taking the time to sweep the coins on the table into his purse—and the remaining two guards struggled sleepily to their feet, following belatedly.
The fog and the early dawn dimness made it difficult to ascertain exactly what was happening, but they could see war chariots as well as Cateni warriors on horseback, hand after hand of them, rushing past them and over the bridge. One of the guards started to shout an alarm, but a spear came from the fog bank, and his shout was lost as he toppled, clutching desperately at the shaft that impaled him as blood poured through his fingers. As the others stared at their fallen comrade, at the invaders rushing past them, more spears came flying out of the fog as the ghost-like horde continued flowing by them.
One by one, the other four guards fell to join their companions, slowly painting red the gray wooden planks of the bridge.
Voada rode in Maol Iosa’s chariot, bound upright to the railing so that she could create the patterns of the fog spell and send it sweeping out before them. They’d passed over the first bridge and onto the island, rushing past the knot of stores and inns that lined the dirt road and onto the second bridge, as poorly guarded as the first. In her doubled vision, the lightnings and storms of her anamacha’s world were bright against a real world filled with dull gray.
Her heart was pounding with the thrill of the moment. She felt somehow more alive than ever before. Maol shouted, and his new chariot driver—Comhnall Mac Tsagairt’s eldest son Hùisdean—slapped the reins hard on the horses’ backs, urging them onward. The wind was tangling their hair, the fog rolled before them, and they clattered over the bridge and into Muras itself, the mounted Cateni swarming after them.
Voada had returned to Albann Deas, and the realization made her shout in exultation along with the ceannàrd even as she sagged against the ropes that held her upright from the exhaustion of using the spell, which had come from Iomhar’s spirit in the anamacha.
Maol and the other charioteers wheeled about the head of the bridge, making room for the mounted fighters who followed them. They’d left more fighters of the clans at the other bridgeheads, ready to hold those positions against any counterattack until the Cateni on foot could cross. They could hear shouts and calls of alarm from all around them now as the townspeople woke and realized they were under attack. Voada opened her hands, stopping the chant and releasing the fog to clear on its own. Already a breeze from the west was shredding it, and the eastern horizon smoldered with the first rays of sun, turning the waters of River Meadham a fiery orange.
“Hold the bridge!” Maol shouted to the others. “We must continue to hold the bridge!”
They were in the market square of Muras, deserted in the dawn, and across the square, they could see the gates of the Muras garrison. As Voada watched, they swung open and disgorged a clot of Mundoan soldiers. To her right, Voada saw Tormod’s hands moving, and his voice rose in a chant. He gestured, and a wave of water from the river behind them lifted into the air, flew above them, and crashed down on the soldiers, sending the first ranks of them sprawling and flailing. Tormod grinned at Voada. But more soldiers were now pouring out of the garrison, and Voada could hear the Mundoan sihirki chanting from the upper floor. Ceannàrd Iosa was shouting at Hùisdean, directing him to turn and attack the onrushing soldiers. Already the other Cateni charioteers were doing the same. Their chariot lurched and turned sharply as Voada began a new spell; from the side of her vision, she saw a ghostly spear—a sihirki spell—arc out from the second floor of the garrison.
The conjured weapon wobbled, poorly formed, but Voada saw Tormod’s chariot, turning to meet the soldiers, move into the path of the sihirki’s spell even as the young man began creating a new one of his own. Voada called out a warning to Tormod, abandoning her own spell, but he either didn’t hear her or chose to pay no attention. She saw the sihirki-created spear—already beginning to fade and fail—strike Tormod full in the chest, tearing into the young man’s body. Blood erupted from him, spraying out behind the moving chariot as it plunged into the line of soldiers and showering Maol’s chariot with red droplets. Voada shouted in wordless anger and grief and ripped open the anamacha’s world once more. She called Iomhar to her, stealing the energy that he quickly fed her to create a spell. In the real world, she could hear the sihirki continuing to chant even if she couldn’t see them. She wove the net to hold the spell, and even before it was full, she gathered it and gestured.
A ball of light arrowed away from her, so bright that it cast shadows across the square and the tumult of fighting bodies, chariots, and horses, and plunged into the open upper windows of the garrison. For a moment, it seemed that the sun itself had materialized inside the building, rays of brilliance stabbing outward into the morning sky and the remnants of the fog. Voada could see the black shadows of the sihirki nearest the windows. Then the sun pulsed and went from light to heat. The upper floor burst into sudden and complete flame, screams echoing across the market as Voada sagged against the ropes holding her upright. One of the sihirki flung himself from the window, his clothing afire, his skin blistered and charred. The sihirki’s body lay twitching on the cobbles of the square.
The entire garrison was aflame now, the noise of the blaze loud and the heat palpable even near the bridge. The flames were beginning to leap across to the nearest buildings, and townsfolk were running out, fleeing and carrying their children and possessions.
Voada’s chariot lurched as Hùisdean turned the horses once more, and Maol flung spear after spear into the soldiers confronting him. Hùisdean had the horses rear and strike out with their hooves, then let the scythe blades mounted to the chariot’s wheels tear at the Mundoan soldiers milling around them as the they galloped across the square.
More Cateni warriors were beginning to stream over the bridge on foot now, and their arrival ended the confrontation. Soon the Mundoan soldiers were all dead or fleeing for their lives. Maol shouted in triumph from his chariot as Hùisdean drove the horses in a mad, wild circle around the square. He howled as he looked back at Voada.
“We’ve taken Muras!” he screamed. “The entire south will soon be ours! We’ll take them all!”
22
A New Draoi
THE AREA SOUTH OF the market square of Muras was burning. The fire Voada had started at the garrison spread rapidly in the wind, devouring the wood-and-thatch structures. Voada could have stopped that destruction. Certainly she could have called down a rain that would have at least slowed it and saved some of the houses.
She did not. She had other concerns.
The market square was filled with bodies, most of them Mundoan. Near her, the war chariot in which Tormod had been riding was stopped, and the warrior and his driver were trying to untie the sagging, broken body of the draoi from the rail. Here and there, Mundoan soldiers and a few Cateni fighters were moaning, holding up their hands in supplication. Cateni archiaters were moving among them, crouching down and making their assessments, then calling over men to take the wounded where they could be treated. Cateni fighters simply killed any of the wounded Mundoan soldiers who were stubbornly alive.
The pillaging of Muras had begun. The army of the Cateni was flowing across the bridges of the River Meadham, unstoppable, and they were looting what they found as they spread out through the town. Looting, and worse. At the eastern end of the square, Voada saw a girl who looked to be little older than Orla—a local Cateni, from the blond hair and shape of her face—pulled from one of the houses by three Cateni fighters, who were tearing at her clothing and laughing. “Stop that!” Voada shouted, still bound to Maol’s war chariot, but her voice went unheard in the general chaos
around them. “Ceannàrd Iosa, look!” She pointed to the assault, but Maol only shrugged.
“It’s war, Ceanndraoi,” he said. “This is what the end of any battle looks like.”
“Not this one. Not my war …” Voada opened her arms again in invitation, ignoring the weariness as she let her anamacha enter her. Iomhar was there, waiting for her as if he’d expected her return, but she ignored him.
Greum’s warning about the Moonshadow was but a whisper in her mind, one easily ignored in the heat of the battle’s aftermath.
Voada gestured widely, leaving the power inside her, and the Moonshadow’s presence filled her voice so that it boomed and roared, echoing throughout the town and rebounding off the buildings around them and the ones across the bridge: a voice like that of a god. “Listen to me and hear me. I am Ceanndraoi Voada, and this is my victory. I will not have it tainted. Do what you will to the Mundoa, but do not harm or take anything from any Cateni. Do no harm to Cateni children or women. Those Cateni are our brothers and sisters, and I call on them to join with us. Those who harm the Cateni of Albann Deas I declare to be my enemies, and you have seen what I do to my enemies. Hear me, and understand what I say. Stop this!”
Maol and Hùisdean had clapped their hands over their ears against her voice; everyone in the square had stopped to look at her, including the men around the young Cateni girl. They saw her staring directly at them, her arm pointing in their direction. They stepped away from their victim and dropped to their knees, bowing their heads low. Voada saw the girl clutch the remnants of her clothing around herself and run. No one pursued her.
“Cateni of Muras,” she continued, the god-voice bellowing. “We’ve come not to hurt you but to free you. Join us, and together we will set free the whole of Albann Deas. Go to any of our warriors or any of our draoi; they will help you. I am Ceanndraoi Voada, and I promise you this: no more do you have to serve the Mundoa. No more!”
She shouted the last two words with all the power left in her. The words were incandescent, shimmering in the very air with their energy. The world spun in Voada’s vision. She sagged against the ropes holding her, and the worlds—both of them around her—vanished.
She was lost, but someone had her hand, and even though she couldn’t see in the darkness, she allowed it to pull her forward until light fluttered around her …
“Ceanndraoi! I was so worried about you.”
Magaidh’s face came into focus in front of her. Voada could feel a cool cloth against her forehead and a blanket over her. She was laying on a makeshift bed, and the surroundings seemed oddly familiar: a temple. Moving her head slightly, she could see the tiles marking the sun-paths and the traditional four large windows. On the central altar plinth of the round structure, a crude statue of Elia had been placed, while on the floor around the altar were the shattered remnants of a bust of Emperor Pashtuk.
The air of the temple was filled with the scent of wood fires, and Voada could hear voices outside, punctuated by the occasional shout.
“Who brought me here?”
Magaidh looked away as if embarrassed. “After your spell in the square, no one could rouse you, not even the other draoi or the archiaters. The ceannàrd sent a runner for me, and I came and told them to move you here. It seemed the best place. You were murmuring in your dreams, and I held your hands …”
“I felt your touch,” Voada told her. The Moonshadow was so strong a presence, like trying to hold the sun. She nearly consumed me. I can’t call her again. I can’t. “That allowed me to follow you back. Thank you, Magaidh. You brought me back to the living world.”
Magaidh blushed at that, but a grateful smile touched her lips. “I didn’t know what else to do. I was just as useless as the others, but I knew you weren’t gone—your anamacha was still standing alongside you.”
Voada smiled. “You did exactly right. How long has it been?”
“Three, maybe four stripes of a candle.” Magaidh’s gaze left Voada and traveled to a different area of the temple. There was another anamacha there with them, one whose shifting form Voada remembered: Tormod’s anamacha. It stood there as if waiting. Magaidh’s attention returned to Voada. “It follows me,” she said in a whisper, as if afraid to let the anamacha overhear her. “It appeared not long after dawn, before the ceannàrd called me to you. I … I think I can hear its voice.”
“Tormod died today,” Voada told her. “His anamacha went looking for another draoi. They want you.”
Magaidh drew back slightly. The straw in the mattress under Voada crackled with her motion. “I don’t know … I don’t know how to …”
“I can show you.” Voada grunted as she pushed herself up into a sitting position. Every muscle in her body groaned and protested at the movement. She fought the urge to lie back again and give herself up to the darkness once more. You can’t go back there. She’ll take you if you do. You need to be stronger to hold her.
“Ceanndraoi… .” She felt Magaidh’s hand on her again, pressing the cool, damp cloth against her forehead once more.
“No,” she told the young woman. “I need to be up. I need to see what’s happening here. And I need to help you most of all, and this is the proper place to do that.” Voada saw that Tormod’s anamacha had slid closer to them. In the shifting faces of the apparition, she thought she saw Tormod’s features appear briefly in the barrage of faces. She remembered how Ceiteag and Greum had taught her, in their very different ways, to use her own anamacha. She called her anamacha to her reluctantly as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. “Watch me,” she said to Magaidh. “Then copy what I do with Tormod’s anamacha. You must make them yours and bond with them. I’ll be with you in their world; I won’t let them harm you.”
“Them?”
“The anamacha holds every draoi who has ever been part of it. Now it holds Tormod as well, and one day it will hold you. Greum Red-Hand told me that the draoi are forbidden to ever enter Tirnanog; instead, we remain forever in Magh da Chèo, the otherworld of the anamacha.” She found Magaidh’s gaze and held it. “This is a decision you need to make now. Do you still want to be draoi, knowing this? If you take this anamacha, you’ll never be with your husband or your children in Tirnanog. That’s the draoi’s curse.”
Magaidh nodded, though her eyes were wide. Voada imagined that she must have looked the same to Greum—frightened, uncertain, yet strangely eager. “Do as I do,” she repeated, and she opened her arms. Her anamacha slid toward her quickly at the motion, entering her and plunging her into the dark world. “Iomhar!” she called, making certain that it was he who connected with her and not Leagsaidh Moonshadow—she didn’t even dare think that name. She felt Iomhar’s comfortable, familiar presence, and that calmed her. But she also sensed the Moonshadow moving closer to her.
A few breaths later, Voada saw Magaidh appear near her, surrounded by the flowing presences within her anamacha as she was surrounded by her own. “Magaidh,” she said, and the young woman spun about wildly, seeking her voice. “Don’t worry. I’m here with you.”
“The voices. I hear them. I see them. So many …”
“Can you find Tormod’s voice? Concentrate on that. Call him to you. He’s the most recent soul here; he’ll be the easiest link and the safest for you. Call him.”
“Tormod!” Voada heard Magaidh’s voice, faint against the storming of the anamacha’s world and the insistent voices of Voada’s own anamacha.
“Be quiet! Let Magaidh do her work.”
“I see him, Ceanndraoi. I … feel him,” Magaidh said. “He’s laughing at me, mocking me. All of them are. Why? Why do they hate me?”
“They don’t hate you,” Voada told her. “They’re testing you. They want to be certain you’re strong enough to handle them. Call him again. Make him come to you.”
Voada could feel her hesitation. Lightning flared in the anamacha world; thunder cracked. A wind that couldn’t be felt shrieked around them, and it tore the name from Magaidh’s mouth and hurled it into the void: “Tormod! Come!”
A figure detached itself from the crowd around Magaidh and approached her. Voada watched carefully. “Good,” she told Magaidh. “I don’t know the other draoi within your anamacha, but Tormod will. For now, use him alone—he can gather the power here and pass it to you, but that’s another lesson. Later, he can tell you which of the souls within your anamacha is most powerful, which ones he used, and which ones he trusted. For now, calling him to you is enough. Tell them all to leave you now, Magaidh. Cast their voices out of your mind, and let yourself come back to our world.”
A Fading Sun Page 22