by Trisha Telep
He sighed, shifted his body, but when she wanted to move away, worried she made him uncomfortable, he stopped her. “Lass, I do not know how to give ye this news gently. Ye are Fae, Tara.”
She suppressed a laugh. “No, I’m not.”
“Aye, ye are. We can sense the presence of another of our kind. Ye felt me there.”
“No. It’s not possible.” Half of Tara wanted to roll off Ulick, go for a walk to process this strange claim of his. The other half wanted to snuggle closer to him, where she felt safe.
He moved his hand down to her back, stroked fingertips over her shoulder blades. “It is possible, sweet Tara. The feeling ye described, ye would have felt it when near yer own.”
“But . . .”
“Most likely, yer grandma would have told ye of yer nature, had she lived. But if we die in the world of man, we can only resurrect if a stranger wakes us again. Our kin must walk away. The only other way is for the body to be taken to Tir na nóg, where resurrection is an easier task. But to enter Tir na nóg, ye have to be gifted with time magic. Not all are.”
“So . . . you think I’m a faerie, like you?”
“Aye.” He pulled the duvet up over them. “And, Tara . . .”
“Yes?”
“Moments before I was killed, I had implored Mother Eireann to lead me to one of my kind who had the gift of time magic.”
Tara blinked. “So?”
Ulick didn’t answer.
And then he didn’t need to. She sat up beside him. “What? Me? Now I know you must be joking.”
“Nay, lass. I do not jest.”
Tara laughed. Ulick put an arm behind his head, watched her with a quiet smile. “Ye set my soul on fire when you laugh like that.”
Her giggle subsided. Ulick reached out and pulled her down on top of him. Tara felt blindly for the lamp switch. She found it. Velvet darkness poured into the room.
* * *
“So what do I do?”
They were on the couch in the sitting room, windblown from their walk. The smell of fresh heather and yesterday’s rain clung to their skins, their hair. Three days had passed since they became lovers, and their hunger for each other burned day and night.
“Let go of yer thoughts first.” Ulick got up and drew the blinds to shut out the bright realness of the sun. “Close yer eyes, if ye must, but empty yer head. Then think of Tir na nóg.” He sat back down beside her.
“But surely the Tir na nóg I’ll think of will be the wrong one? It will be the image I’ve formed of it in my mind from the stories I’ve heard and read, not the place as it actually is.”
“Tir na nóg is in the heart of all Fae, Tara. Ye know it here.” Ulick rested his hand on her chest. “Try.” He shifted away from her and gave her an encouraging smile. “I think it might be easier for ye than ye think, because ye’re a scholar. Yer mind is disciplined already.”
She’d try, for his sake. In truth, she was still sceptical about his claims. Her? A faerie? Come on.
Yet at the same time, she couldn’t just dismiss what he’d said. It made sense. Yes, she would try unlocking the time magic he was convinced she carried in her soul. She’d really try.
Tara closed her eyes and imagined herself sitting in an empty, white space. Her breathing slowed. Every time a thought tried to muscle its way in from the outside, she focused harder on the white space. Just white, nothing else.
When she felt empty and relaxed, Tara allowed a single name to join her in her space. Tir na nóg. Mythical land beyond time, home of the Irish gods.
Nothing happened. She shook her head regretfully, and opened her eyes. “I’m sorry, Ulick, I . . .”
The sentence died on her tongue. For a mere moment, she saw something like a hole in front of her, obliterating the furniture and wall behind it. Inside was a sense of absolute nothingness, as if everything stopped inside this darkness.
And then it was gone.
Tara turned to Ulick, her mouth opening and closing, but no sound coming from her throat. He grinned at her like a proud teacher. “I was right. Yer mind is disciplined already. Ye have strong time magic in ye, Tara. Ye opened a door to the space between time and time, the passage to Tir na nóg.”
“I . . . I . . .”
She felt it herself even as alertness sprang into his eyes and his lips pressed into a thin line. That familiar prickle, a spider wearing football spikes crawling up her spine. A shadow passed over the drawn blind.
Tap-tap-tap!
Tara rose automatically to open the door, but Ulick pulled her back. “We need to know who it is first. Remember, the knowledge I carry can yet harm those who work to undermine the King. They will be looking for me.”
“More than 250 years on?”
“Aye. Ye do not understand, Tara, time means something different when you have eternity.”
Her caller knocked again. “Helloooo! Tara? Are you home?”
“Oh.” Tara smiled. “It’s just Dr Dullaghan, the dig supervisor. My boss, actually.” She turned to Ulick and the blood froze in her veins. He had turned deathly pale. His body adopted a deep, dangerous stillness in every line. Like a leopard, cornered, which turns itself into a statue to make full use of its camouflage, but at the same time tenses to fight.
“Tara,” he said, his voice low, as Dullaghan knocked again. “The man ye think of as yer leader is not what he seems.”
“Tara? Hello? I know you’re home, pet.” The familiar Irish way of using endearments for all and sundry sounded wrong on Dullaghan’s tongue. “Open the door, Tara.”
“He is a powerful faerie, who works to gather enough power to kill Nuada Airgethlam and take his throne. Our King has learned over millennia to rule with wisdom and grace. War has been eradicated from Tir na nóg, the land beyond time. The hidden world has always been treacherous,
but for several hundred years now it has worn peace as its preferred outfit.”
“Tara, I know you’re in there. Open the door.” Every patch of false friendliness Dullaghan had first plaited into his voice was now gone. He hammered at the door, making the knocker rattle.
“Taking away the man who keeps the balance, who knows the diplomacy to preserve this peace, will trigger wars that will reverberate in this land, and cost the lives of countless faerie.” He glanced at her, a plea in his eyes. “I cannot let this happen. I must stand against him.”
Ulick sprang to his feet and Tara followed suit. “Open an entrance into time for us, Tara,” he said, his voice still low. He stepped in front of her, between her and the front door. “Do it. It’s our only chance.”
“Can’t we—”
The end of her sentence was swallowed in a massive crash. Her front door splintered into a thousand pieces. Tara flinched, braced herself for the shower of debris that would hit her, but nothing did.
Ulick had lifted his hands to chest level. The air in front of him seemed different, as if it was somehow separate from the rest of the air in the room. Debris bounced away in front of him as if from a shield.
As if he’d solidified the air.
Dullaghan strode into her ruined sitting room as if he owned the place. He rested contemptuous eyes on Ulick, sighed and clicked his tongue. “There you are. Do you have any idea how much trouble I’ve had to take to find you?”
“Aye. I guessed. Ye became a man of history, an excuse to dig where ye felt other Fae resting, looking for me.”
Dullaghan clapped his hands slowly. “Bravo. Te n points for logic. And I would have found you sooner if Tara hadn’t been there to muddle my senses. Now, I’ll not ask if you want to go easy. I know the answer to that already. Never one for making things simple if they could be complicated, Ulick.”
He wasn’t even paying attention to her, as if she was completely inconsequential.
“Tara,” said Ulick.
She snapped out of her shock, grasped his waist with shaking hands, rested her forehead against the hard muscles of his back. Comforting, yes, but how in hell coul
d anyone stand against someone who oozed menace and chill cruelty like Dullaghan did? How had he ever managed to hide the monster he truly was?
“Tara,” Ulick said again, his voice low and calm, helping her focus.
Dullaghan misunderstood. “Oh. Tara? We can negotiate there. I am willing to give you my word to let her go, if you will give yours in return to yield to me without making things difficult.”
“Nay. I will promise no such thing.”
Focus, focus, focus, but how could she call into mind the empty white space when her brain screamed with fear?
“Then she will die with you,” Dullaghan said. Tara didn’t look, just heard the creak and crash from above. She felt a whoomp around her, her ears blocked, and she heard Ulick grunt. She had to risk a glimpse.
There was little to see. There was empty space around them, but if she reached out, she could touch a mass of broken timber, pieces of ceiling, shards of glass and lumps of brick wall. Light filtered through the mass, but faded fast. Dullaghan was breaking the house up around them, piling all the debris on their heads.
Ulick groaned. “Any day now, lass,” he said, teeth clenched. He was holding a pocket of air rigid around them. Tara watched his arms start to shake, the light disappearing.
They were going to be crushed. She had to find a way to make that entrance. Silence. Emptiness. White space. Please, white space, come on!
Something flashed in her mind, a memory of the emptiness she’d seen briefly in the hole she’d called with her mind. Not quite emptiness, though. Empty, but very, very full. Tara grabbed Ulick around the waist. His air-shield crumbled, and tons of debris tumbled down into the space where, moments before, they had stood.
“Wonderful.” He kissed her. “Wonderful.” Another kiss. “Clever woman.” Three more kisses accentuated his words, then the playful elation at their narrow escape turned serious. His kisses deepened, her arms wound tighter around him.
Ulick lifted her from the ground and twirled her around, laughing. “Thanks be to mother Eireann, I found ye. She is nothing if not complicated, our wee island’s soul. Why just take me to a wielder of time magic, if she could find my soulmate at the same time?”
Had he said soulmate? But Tara was too overwhelmed to savour the term. Right now, she wanted to take in the sea of forest around her, the blue-green giant pine trees that undulated to a rim of mountains in the very far distance. Snow lay heavy on the boughs, twinkled in what looked like early morning sun. They stood on the round top of a hill that alone bore no trees, only grass on its gently sloping flanks. Tara thanked her lucky stars that she still wore hiking boots with thick socks.
Ulick turned and scanned the world around them. He gasped, then started laughing.
“What?” Tara asked.
“Do ye see those footprints, lass?”
She couldn’t exactly miss them. A lone line in the virgin snow, they snaked up the side of the hill and ended abruptly a few steps from where they stood. Another line of prints seemed less churned, the snow less disturbed.
“Those are my footprints,” Ulick said.
“What?”
“I ran here before I left Tir na nóg. I was very tired by then. And I know it was me, because in that tree yon, I left my lunch. See? The red sack. I was walking in the woods when I overheard the man ye call Dullaghan meeting with another. A servant in the King’s castle. The man I met in Warrington had discovered their plot, though he knew not who was involved. I turned and ran for the gate to Tir na nóg.”
Tara frowned. “Not for the King?”
He shook his head. “They were between me and the castle, and I felt power roll off this enemy in waves. I would not have stayed alive much longer, had I tried to reach the King. Instead I aimed to reach the one who knew of their doings. Each of us knew half of their plan: he the details but not the mastermind, myself the names but not the plan. I thought if both of us knew all, we stood a better chance of getting word to King Nuada.”
“You mean to tell me that here, it’s no more than hours since you left? Yet you lived through more than 250 years while you were gone?”
Ulick grabbed her hand. “Aye. And in the here and now I must make all speed to the castle.”
Tara glanced over her shoulder as she hurried after him, fear clutching her throat. “What about Dullaghan? Won’t he just step through that empty place to Tir na nóg right after us?”
“He will indeed. And there the Lord of Time will let him through into Tir na nóg when he feels it is best.”
“When is he likely to feel it is best?” Tara let go of Ulick’s hand to run better. He snatched the lunch bag from the tree as they passed, and settled into an easy trot. He grabbed Tara’s wrist to slow her down. “It’s a long way to go, lass. Pace yerself.” He remembered her question. “The god of time is a good friend of the King. I judge he will feel it is best for the enemy to step into this land with not enough time for him to catch us, but enough time to tempt him into trying.”
“And then?” A stitch grew in Tara’s side, but at this pace, she felt she could go on for hours.
“And then prepared men will meet the man ye call Dullaghan, with his fiendish accomplice trussed and ready for judgment. Not men caught unawares, with a cancer in their midst they do not know of.”
Tara jogged beside him in silence for a while. “And then?” she ventured.
Ulick glanced at her. “And then we explore this land together. Or Eireann. Whatever ye wish. As long as we can do it together.”
“Sounds like a plan.” She grinned at him, and ran a little faster.
The Skrying Glass
Penelope Neri
The Village of Glenkilly, southeast Ireland – 853
Prologue
“Siobhan! It’s your turn! Come!”
“I don’t want to. I’m frightened!”
“Frightened, mo muirnin? There’s nothing to be frightened of! What could go wrong on your lucky day? ’Tis but a mirror, after all,” her mother soothed, stroking Siobhan’s tangle of black curls.
“Aye, a mirror that shows the future where my face should be, Mother! I’m thinking ’tis better not to know what lies ahead,” she added with a wisdom that belied her years.
“Oh, very well then. Ask it a question instead. What would you see?” Deirdre thought for a few seconds. “I know! Bade it show us your wedding day!” She smiled. “And your future husband. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Knowing her mother would not give up until she took part in her fortune-telling games, Siobhan rolled her eyes and sighed. “Very well, Mother.”
Taking her seat, Siobhan gazed deeply into the skrying glass. Her lovely face was grave, her expression intent, her brow furrowed.
The large oval looking glass was framed in silver. The precious metal had been exquisitely cast with crescent and full moons, stars, and all the constellations of the heavens, including the sign of Scorpio; the lucky star under which Siobhan had been born twelve years ago that very day. However, the polished silver oval that should have reflected her face was instead as black as a raven’s wing.
At first, Siobhan saw nothing in its inky depths, although she stared, unblinking, for what seemed an eternity.
She was about to give up when her mother motioned her to try again.
“You must ask it your question aloud, daughter. Bid the glass reveal your future husband on your wedding day!”
Siobhan nodded. “Very well. Show me, mirror!” she commanded. “Show me my husband on our wedding day!”
She stared into the mirror’s ebony depths. Did the future even hold a husband for her? she wondered. Perhaps not. Perhaps she was destined to die a young and tragic death, like one of the martyred Christian saints the monks at the monastery had told her about?
But then, a grey mist began to boil and gather within the mirror’s dark depths, like billowing smoke.
Little by little, the silvery fog cleared, revealing a tableau of figures and an unfamiliar place.
Her m
other’s watching maids gasped.
Siobhan saw three tall men in the looking glass. They stood around a low couch on which sprawled a fourth man. He was bare-chested, deathly pale and very still. Siobhan could not make out his features, but his terrible battle wounds were plain to see.
The gorge rose up her throat. It was all she could do to keep from retching.
“A Druid healer has been summoned, min jarl,” murmured one of the men. “He will be here before sunset.”
“Too late for this brave warrior,” said a second man. ‘‘He is already dead. By Odin, three of our finest fell like trees before his sword! He will feast in Valhalla this night!”
The little tableau began to blur and dissolve. The three men slowly disappeared. The fourth image – that of the dead man – lingered for a heartbeat more, then he too, vanished.
Blackness returned to the looking glass.
Siobhan jumped to her feet. Horror and sorrow contorted her lovely face. “No!” she cried. “No! It cannot be!”
“Siobhan! What is it? Mo muirnin, sweetheart! What did you see?” Deirdre cried. “Was it your bridegroom? Tell me!”
Siobhan did not answer. Rather, she fled her mother’s bower.
The Lady Deirdre and her serving women stared after her, wondering what great tragedy the skrying glass had foretold for their chieftain’s daughter.
It was on that day, the day of her twelfth birthday, that Siobhan vowed she would never wed.
The looking glass had shown her that she was cursed. She’d surely become a widow before she was ever a bride.
One
Never, in all her eighteen summers, had Siobhan seen a man more handsome than this one. The look of him made her heart beat so wildly ’twas a wonder it did not soar from her breast like a frightened bird.
For the first time since her twelfth birthday, Siobhan wondered what it might be like to take a husband.
Her companion gasped. “Oh, mistress, will ye look at that one!”
“Shush, Aislinn! He’ll hear you!” her mistress hissed. “Besides, I’m not blind, girl! I see him well enough!”
From their perch in the ancient oak, where they had climbed when they heard the hunters coming, Siobhan and Aislinn held their breaths as the man and his party – hounds, horses and all – halted directly beneath them.