The Last Days of Magic: A Novel

by Mark Tompkins

  The procession had taken the southern road out of Tara. Open fields now lay to both sides. Two curious young shepherds trotted along the side of the road, talking to one of the younger Gallowglass. The road was about to enter Laigen Forest when a Woodwose stepped out.

  The air filled with the sharp scrape of swords being drawn from scabbards.

  “Hold!” shouted Aisling.

  Liam’s sword flashed, knocking down an arrow that had already been loosed by one of the Gallowglass.

  “Hold!” Aisling repeated.

  The Woodwose, an unpainted male wearing a loincloth, carried a severed head. He took several steps forward and tossed the head toward them. It rolled to the forelegs of Aisling’s horse and stared up at her with vacant eyes. Aisling recognized the dead face, still contorted, of the Woodwose shaman. She dismounted.

  “What are you doing?” objected Conor.

  “They seek a new shaman,” she answered.

  Liam circled his horse back protectively.

  Conor studied the Woodwose as Aisling picked up the head and lashed it by its bushy hair to her saddle. He asked, “Why do this? They killed Tadg and almost killed us.”

  “That’s why I need to. They’ll follow their shaman to their death without question, so I must become their shaman.” Aisling looked up at Conor. “And you must become their lord.” She wiped a smear of blackened, sticky blood from her hands. “They’ll be a powerful ally for you, to the exclusion of all other nobles. What they lack in organization and weapons they make up for in fearlessness and ferocity.”

  “She has a point,” offered Liam.

  Aisling walked toward the Woodwose while Liam watched. Conor pulled his bow from its pouch behind his saddle and fitted an arrow but did not draw. When Aisling stood in front of the Woodwose, he dropped to his knees and bowed his head. A line of Woodwose, men and women, materialized from the trees, moved forward, and dropped to a supplication pose. Then another line, followed by more, until more than two hundred, Aisling estimated, knelt before her.

  . . . . .

  One hundred forty-six miles north, on the coast of Ireland, large waves crashed through the soaring, arched mouth of Dunkerry Cave, an entrance that rivaled any cathedral’s. Its crimson-hued galleries extended far under land, briefly dipping beneath the dark water before emerging to form a vast cavern.

  In the cavern, scattered torches did little to push back the darkness. Carvings of the sea-serpent-shaped God Seonaidh glistened faintly on the damp walls. There was just enough light to reveal blood dripping from open wounds on the Fomorian’s strong arms and chest, staining his white sable cloak as he sat, for the first time, on the stone throne of the Fomorian high king. At his feet lay the broken body of his predecessor. The new high king reached down, ripped out the single engorged eye of the former ruler, and held it aloft, his own single eye looking out at the four thousand Fomorian warriors kneeling before him.

  15

  The Palace of Westminster, London

  October 1392

  Propped up in bed on a copious pile of purple silk pillows, Queen Anne watched de Vere getting dressed. Opening the chamber door, he glanced back at her. She smiled, a smile he returned, and then he left. Anne looked down at Richard, his head in her lap, eyes closed, and stroked his hair. Richard curled up tighter against her bare body.

  “Our pretty king,” she cooed. “We hate that Our lovely friend had to run off to a war council meeting. Such a tedious errand.”

  Richard nuzzled her lap and whispered, “He must prepare for the invasion.”

  “You and he are spending altogether too much energy on these plans. We are not happy that there is less time for Our games. How hard will it be to defeat the faeries? There cannot be that many of them—We have never even seen one.”

  Richard opened his eyes. “Our sweet queen, do not be cross. You have not seen a faerie because the Romans drove them out of southern England a millennium ago. However, Longshanks had to fight them in Wales, and he recorded that they were quite fierce. We have been reliably informed that there are a lot of faeries in Ireland, as well as Celts. You would be happy We are making such efforts to protect de Vere’s force and make sure he comes back to Us, if you heard what happened during the last attempted invasion. We cannot afford to repeat that disaster.”

  TWO CENTURIES EARLIER, twenty miles off the Irish coast, gray clouds closed in on the sun, building a midday gloom. A quarter mile ahead of Strongbow’s flagship, enchanted waves suddenly sprang up thirty feet and tossed themselves about, forming turbulent fortifications spanning the horizon, blocking the armada’s route to Ireland.

  “Time to earn your kingdom back,” Strongbow said to Diarmait, the exiled king of Leinster.

  Diarmait removed his cloak, handed it to Strongbow’s marshal, Robert Fitz-Stephen, and strode to the prow. Spreading his arms wide, he began to chant. At first nothing happened, but then a wide channel of calm opened up in the wild sea ahead. Strongbow’s armada sailed easily into it.

  Pope Adrian IV had issued the Laudabiliter grant authorizing Henry II, the Norman king of England, to invade Ireland. As tempting as the Vatican’s offer was, Henry did not act upon it for a decade, not until the apparently blessed event of Diarmait’s eviction from Ireland and arrival in Henry’s court. By demonstrating a few simple enchantments, Diarmait convinced Henry that he would be able to perform the rite necessary to land an invasion force safely on the Irish shore. So with great confidence, King Henry, having also secured the Vatican’s payment for the nine-hundred-sixty-man mercenary army, launched an armada at Ireland under the command of Richard de Clare, second Earl of Pembroke, known as Strongbow. With him went his marshal, Robert Fitz-Stephen, illegitimate son of the constable of Cardigan.

  Robert watched as a wave rose up above the port rail only to fall harmlessly away from his ship and, for the first time since hearing of this plan, allowed himself to smile. Clapping Strongbow on the back, he said, “I’m looking forward to plenty of Celtic ale, and I hear their women—” He did not finish.

  A loud crash reverberated from off their starboard bow as one of the other ships hit a colossal rock that had not been there a moment earlier. Robert glimpsed two young women astride its peak, their long red hair streaming out behind them in the rising wind. One reached out in the direction from which his ship had come, and her hand made a gesture, leaving a glowing trail in the air. He looked back. A wall of water rushed down the channel behind him and washed over the trailing ships, causing them to flounder, spilling men over the side. The women—Robert saw that they were twins—began to direct a symphony of rising waves and rocks. His flagship tossed and spun. A green-tinged, manlike Fomorian climbed over the rail, seized the sailor at the ship’s wheel, and dragged him over the side. Strongbow grabbed the wheel and fought the waves for control.

  Robert drew his sword just in time to thrust it into the chest of a Fomorian charging at him. He kicked the dying beast off his blade. The flagship ran up against the side of another ship that was overrun with the creatures, and he heard the screams of its men. Robert severed the head of a Fomorian lunging for Strongbow and yelled, “We have to turn back!”

  “Which way is back?” shouted Strongbow.

  Both men were knocked to the deck as the ship struck one of the rocks that were now everywhere. With a groan the ship started to list. Strongbow’s personal guards gathered around him and were holding their own against the Fomorians. “Get to the longboats!” Robert shouted. They managed to launch two of the boats, carrying Strongbow, Robert, Diarmait, and sixteen other survivors, before the ship sank.

  . . . . .

  The following dawn Robert squatted in the tree line and looked out across the marshy foreshore toward the water. Waves had driven the wreckage landward, where it clogged Bannow Bay. Throughout the night survivors had crawled out of the bay through the marsh and into the woods, having made it to shore on a collection of planks, longboats, and, remarkably, one almost intact ship. Robert waited another h
our, but no one else emerged from the water, so he made his way to back to the clearing where Strongbow and Diarmait had assembled the survivors. In all, about a quarter of the men had made it.

  “Any more men?” asked Strongbow.

  Robert shook his head and asked Diarmait, “Do you know where we are?”

  “I’m sure we’re between Wexford and Waterford, Viking ports,” replied Diarmait. “There’s a dry riverbed just to the west of us that must be the Scar, but it’s never run dry before.”

  “Which port is closer?” asked Strongbow.

  “If that’s truly the Scar River, then Wexford’s less than a day’s walk to the northeast.”

  “So we go to Wexford,” said Strongbow, looking up at the clear sky to get a sun bearing. “The Vikings might be persuaded with the promise of enough gold to return us to England. With luck we can slip by the Sidhe and Celts without being noticed.”

  “There’ll be no such luck. They know where we are,” said Diarmait. “It was the Morrígna twins that sank the fleet. We won’t be able to hide from them.”

  “We have no choice,” said Strongbow. “How are the men set for weapons?”

  “They have what they were wearing when we were attacked—a sword or a dagger or both,” replied Robert. “We managed to salvage five sets of mail, sixty shields, thirty bows, and maybe six hundred arrows from the surviving ship. But we have no fresh water. Fomorians got to the casks, and they were spoiled.”

  “Organize the men. We make haste to Wexford. There should be plenty of water on the way.”

  The company did not find Wexford or water. They walked for ten hours, using the sun for bearing, without seeing a sign of a Celt, a Sidhe, or even a farmhouse. Worst of all were the three wells they found. Sunlight glinted on the water at the bottom—they could smell it, drop a stone and hear it splash—but even with all the rope they could piece together, the bucket always came up dry. At the third well, one man attempted to leap in and had to be pulled back by his friends.

  Finally Strongbow called a halt to the slog. They scraped together a meager meal consisting of the last of their salvaged provisions and sucked the moisture out of a few wild turnips and radishes they had found.

  A shrill wail penetrated their skulls. Men leaped to their feet, swords in hand, peering around through the gathering gloom.

  “What’s that?” shouted Strongbow to Diarmait.

  “Banshee, messenger of death.”

  A tall woman appeared, walking among the trees, gray hair floating in the air about her gray cloak over a green dress. She looked at Strongbow with eyes red from weeping. Her mouth opened, became impossibly large, and emitted another wail. Three men rushed at her. They found only mist. The Banshee started up again in another direction.

  Surrounded, submerged in wailing, the men tried to cover their ears but found no relief as the cry rose and fell for three hours. Then it stopped. The entire company collapsed, exhausted, in a fitful sleep without even posting a guard.

  The sun rose on a fresh crisis. Twenty men were missing. Trails of blood led deep into the trees. A nervous scouting party was sent out and quickly returned to report that the bay where they had washed up the day before was just a hundred yards away. They had been walking in circles.

  “Diarmait, this is your homeland. You have to find us water,” demanded Strongbow.

  “It must be the Sidhe. They’re not letting the company leave this wood.”

  “Then go get water and bring it back.”

  “I know an enchantment that should enable a few of us to get out,” Diarmait said. “No more than five. Me, Robert, and three others. We’ll take all the buckets and rope.”

  The group headed west to connect with the course of the river Scar. When they reached its bank, the riverbed appeared to have been dry for an eon, even though, maddeningly, they could hear water running as if the river flowed just around the next bend.

  “Pick a sprig of heather and place it in your hair,” ordered Diarmait. “Then remove your boots. We can carry them in one of the buckets.”

  The men looked uncertainly at one another.

  “Do it, if you ever want to leave this wood alive.”

  Robert found a patch of heather and plucked a sprig. Securing it in his hair, he sat on the dry ground and began to pull off his boots. The other men followed his example. Diarmait drew a six-inch circle in the dirt, had each man gather what moisture he had left in his mouth and spat into it. There was just enough for Diarmait to work a layer of mud, in which he drew a complex symbol. Scooping up the mud, he smeared a small amount on each man’s feet, then his own.

  “This may get us past the Sidhe and out of this trap,” he said without emotion.

  “Or get us killed trying,” added Robert.

  “That’s right,” said Diarmait. He decided to head north and keep the riverbed close on their left to ensure that they did not again travel in circles. After three hours of walking, never losing sight of the dry riverbed, or escaping the sound of flowing water, they broke free of the trees. Spread out ahead of them were large fields divided by a network of stone walls. A mile or more to the east, away from the river, they could see the top of a round tower that signaled the presence of a monastery. The small group turned toward the tower, sliding along the field walls to stay out of sight.

  The medium-size monastery consisted of the tall round tower, a stone sanctuary still under construction, and three thatch-roofed buildings with plaster walls. The largest of these was marked as the old sanctuary by a tall stone Irish Christian cross, a merging of the Roman Christian cross with the Celtic Sun God, some said the Moon Goddess, though it could be both. Perhaps even the cross itself was not from the original Roman Church, as cruciform elements were common in both Celtic and Sidhe ritual practice centuries before Christ was born. The sound of harp music and singing drifted from the old sanctuary. In the courtyard, clearly visible through a wide gap in the unfinished outer defensive wall, was a well.

  Crouching behind a hedge, Diarmait whispered, “It’s unlikely an enchantment protects their well.”

  “Let’s seize this monastery and shuttle water back to the company,” said Robert. “Is the heather still in my hair?”

  “That enchantment only hides you from Sidhe and won’t work here. Besides, we can’t capture this monastery, as Celtic monks are often armed, and we don’t know how many there are. We’ll just quietly slip in and take what water we can carry.”

  At that moment a young woman bearing a wooden tub walked out of the smallest building and over to the well. Singing softly along with the drifting music, she unlaced her dress, slipped the top off her shoulders, and rolled it down to her waist. She filled her tub from the shallow well, set it on the stone ring, bent forward, and began washing her long black hair.

  Music from the old sanctuary fell away, chanting rose in its place. “We must be quick,” whispered Diarmait. “They’ve started the Sext prayers, and they don’t last long. Careful, though, there may be a watch in the tower.”

  “I’ll cover the tower,” said Robert, fitting an arrow into his bow. “You three”—he indicated the soldiers carrying two buckets each—“to the well. If it won’t let you draw water, make the woman do it. Diarmait, you stay with me, and as soon as we have the water, lead us back to our camp. Go now.”

  The three men ran to the outer wall, paused, and then looped through the opening, quietly approaching the distracted woman from behind. Before they reached her, a monk leaned out from the tower’s highest window, shouting a warning. The woman looked up just as one of the men seized her, pressing his dagger to her throat.

  Robert stood and loosed an arrow at the monk. It clattered against the suddenly vacant windowsill. An alarm bell began to clang from the tower. The soldier’s grip on the woman slipped on her wet skin as she tried to spin away, but her footing failed in the mud and she fell, sliding her neck along the dagger, severing an artery.

  The soldiers stared down at the woman as her life flow
ed out onto the ground, as did a cluster of monks now congregated outside the doorway of the old sanctuary. One, wearing a blue robe with a cream sash around his neck, stepped forward and pulled an iron bell from a leather pouch on his belt.

  Diarmait grabbed Robert and yanked him down behind the hedge. “The Blood Bell,” he hissed. “That’s Patrick.”

  Patrick rang the Bell at the soldiers who turned to run, but blood was already flowing from their ears, eyes, and mouths. They fell before they passed the outer wall. Diarmait and Robert fled, crouching low out of sight, back toward the woods.

  Diarmait and Robert’s return without water and without their men further disheartened the company. They had no food left for a meal that night. In the dawn more men were missing. The only sign of them, other than trails of blood, was Diarmait’s head in the wooden tub that had belonged to the young woman whom they had killed the day before, an Irish cross branded into his forehead.

  Robert sat, his back against a tree, as the sun rose, vacant eyes staring into the woods, waiting. A battle horn sounded in the distance, then a second, a third. More followed. As the sound built, Strongbow called to him, “Get the men up. The end is here.”

  Robert slowly rose to his feet. He struck the shoulder of one of his remaining men with the flat of his sword. “Get up, all of you. Do you want to die sitting here or die with a sword in your hand? I don’t care how tired and thirsty you are. If you want relief, follow me and you’ll soon find relief in heaven.” None of the men moved. “Or stay here and find out what the Sidhe will do to you.” Men began to stand and gather their meager supplies.

  “Leave everything but your weapons,” said Strongbow. “You’ll have no need for the rest.”

  They had to walk for only a quarter hour before they entered a meadow. The Celtic force waiting on the far side began to laugh. Many mounted Celts made a show of falling off their horses and rolling around on the ground. Others, on foot, sheathed their swords and lounged on the grass. Some of the female warriors exposed their breasts while calling out to the Normans, asking if they needed milk. On horses in front of the Celtic army sat the same two young women that Robert had glimpsed on the rock before the flagship sank—the newly enthroned Morrígna twins of that time.