The smaller man leaped out at once. “Which way?” he asked Connla.
Staring up at the cliffs, Connla tried to remember where such basalt was found. “East, I think,” he said at last. “Quite a long way.”
“Then we had best get started,” said his companion at once. “Come on.” He trotted off briskly in an easterly direction.
Connla looked back at the sea again, trying to envision the Isles of the Blest floating in the sunshine, just beyond the wall of human limitations. Sea birds were crying, far out, and he raised his arm to hail them. “Tell Blathine I am thinking of her!” he cried.
Then he turned to follow his friend inland.
The journey was long, for time no longer stood still. The sun rose and set and rose again, and the two men followed a hundred byways and trading roads and cart tracks and chariot ruts. Sometimes they were lost in impenetrable forests; at other times they had to skirt wide lakes. Connla took care to avoid being seen by the inhabitants of the occasional settlements they saw; this was unfriendly country, not within the sway of Hundred Battles.
To his surprise, his companion remembered skills of hunting and fishing far better than his own. In the twinkling of an eye the little man could make a hook out of a fragment of bone and catch them a tender salmon with ease, or bring down a wild pig with a javelin fashioned from a piece of flint and a tree limb. He was unerring in finding edible mushrooms and berries, and could run up a tree as easily as a squirrel in order to shake down a feast of nuts.
They did not go hungry, but celebrated the pleasures of human stomachs and appetites in a land where there was food in abundance.
“I had no idea this was such a rich country,” Connla said with surprise. “Now that I think of it, even the Isles of the Blest could feed us no better than this.”
“What you say is true,” agreed the man who had been Whimsical, wiping a fine smear of grease from his chin as he finished a large meal of wild boar and badger meat. “Viands there just have the spice of the strange and unusual, but nothing tasted any better than this.” He belched and his nose wrinkled. “As good coming up as going down,” he commented.
Connla laughed.
“Was that funny to you?”
“It was.”
The little fellow nodded.
They resumed their journey, and soon the land began to look more familiar. “I recognize this plain,” Connla said, “and that distant huddle of purple mountains, I know its shape, too. If we follow the curve of this valley toward the south and then back along the river beyond, we will come to the land of Hundred Battles.”
Eagerness refreshed him. His strides grew longer and his short friend began to trot again to keep up.
When the Hill of Usna rose before them Connla felt his heart pounding. “I had forgotten how beautiful it is,” he said softly. Yet it was like any other hill. Perhaps more sweetly rounded; perhaps greener. Not unique or special.
Merely ... home.
A gentle twilight lent hues of violet to the shadows of the two men as they started up the well-worn path leading toward the fort of Conn of the Hundred Battles. Connla wanted to run, but he made himself adjust his pace to his friend’s. It might be rude to seem too eager. But he could not help pointing out the beauty of the bellflowers blooming beside a stone wall, or the heavy hum of bees settling toward their hives ahead of the evening’s chill.
Everything he saw seemed infused with a forgotten glamour, a magical luster composed of memories and nostalgia. Visions of the Isles of the Blest faded before the reality of his own homeland, his own familiar grasses and stones and pathways.
The carved gateway of the fort.
Beside the gate stood a guard in a saffron tunic, with a broad leather belt around his waist and a shortsword in his hand. A second guard, a few paces beyond, held a spear at the ready and met Connla’s eyes with a hostile glare.
“What do you want here? Give us your name and tribe!”
The young man had never been challenged at this particular gate before. He checked his stride in surprise. “Do you not know me?”
“Should we?” asked the guard with a harsh laugh. “If we put your head on a pole atop the palisade we will learn to know you well enough before the crows eat your eyes out. Now again, tell us your name and tribe!”
He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin so the last rays of the dying sun could set his well-known hair ablaze. “I am called Fiery Hair; Connla, son of Hundred Battles.”
The two guards looked at each other, then back at him. “That is impossible,” said the one with the sword.
“I assure you it is not, and I demand to see my father.”
“You say your sire is Conn of the Hundred Battles?”
“He is.”
The two guards seemed uncertain what to do next. Drawing away for a short distance, they conferred in low tones, glancing at the strangers from time to time as they talked. At last the one with the sword advanced.
“Can you prove your claim?”
“I do not have to prove anything,” answered Connla haughtily. “Send for my father; he will identify me.”
“The gates are closed and barred for the night. We have orders to admit no one. There have been some skirmishes recently and our women are frightened. If you come back in full daylight, perhaps you will be admitted.”
“I have come a great distance, all the way across the sea, to greet my father, and I am going to stay right here until I see him.” Connla planted his feet and folded his arms across his chest. Standing just a little behind him, the man who had been Whimsical imitated his stance right down to the clenched jaw and outthrust underlip.
The guards spoke together a second time. “I have no orders,” said the swordsman to Connla. “No matter what you say, I cannot let you in.”
“Then I stand here for the night.”
“Please yourself. I have no orders to prohibit you, either. But the night will be chilly and there are wolves in the forest. I suggest you gather some wood and build a fire for yourselves.”
Connla took the suggestion. How long had it been, he wondered, since he had worried about the length of a night, or keeping himself warm?
When they had a good fire going his friend sat down cross-legged beside it and pulled his cloak more snugly around his shoulders. “You can stand there all night, Connla, but I am going to lie down.” The little man yawned.
“Sleep, I will keep watch,” promised Fiery Hair. Just in case word should somehow reach his father, and the old chieftain came to see if it was true, he wanted to be found on his feet as a warrior should be. A brave warrior who had fought a dragon beneath the sea and slain a monster formed of granite and won a hundred hard-fought battles on the Isles of the Blest.
The stars also kept watch, looking down on the Hill of Usna.
Now that he was caught in the flow of time, Connla realized how slowly it could move. No matter how often he threw his head back and looked, the stars had scarcely altered their courses or the moon moved more than a finger’s width across the sky. The night threatened to become endless. He stamped his feet to keep them warm, he pinched his cheeks to keep himself awake. He tried calling out in his mind to his father, but even the dragon had been more receptive. He sensed no answering response; no response at all.
He might as well have shouted into empty sky.
Day, when it finally came, was gray and wet. Instead of dawn, there was a gradual paling into mist and an occasional harder spatter of raindrops. The air smelled of water. Connla’s clothes were soon soaked through and he found himself shivering.
Beside the fire, which had sunk to a bed of coals, the man who had been Whimsical sat up. “Oooh, my every joint is stiff!” he complained. “Now I remember how much I hated sleeping on the ground.” He got up creakily, rubbing his knees and shoulders in turn. “Give me a nice dry cave any time.”
“As soon as my father learns we are here I will take you into a nice dry fort,” Connla promised. “Our chieftain
is well known for his hospitality. Even on the Isles of the Blest no stranger was ever made more welcome than he will make you, my dearest and most loyal friend.”
The two guards of the night before had been changed, in the darkness, for two unfamiliar men. Once more, Connla explained who he was and demanded to see his father, and once more the guards jabbered away at each other while casting suspicious looks at him over their shoulders.
“Are you certain this is the right place?” his small friend asked dubiously.
“It is,” Connla assured him. “We will see my father any moment now. Just watch the gateway ... Ah! It opens!”
It did indeed open, and a chariot rolled out, drawn by a pair of bay horses with short, bristling black manes. The charioteer was a red-faced and bony man, and beside him, arrayed in the many-colored cloak of a major warlord, rode a man Connla had never seen before.
“Where is Hundred Battles!” he called out in surprise.
The charioteer drew rein in. The chieftain beside him beckoned to one of the guards. “Who is this stranger?”
“He claims to be a man called Connla of the Fiery Hair,” the guard replied.
The chieftain in the chariot laughed. “Preposterous! He has been gone for so many years hardly anyone even remembers him anymore.” The man pointed an imperious finger at Connla. “Who are you in truth, and what do you want here?”
“I belong here,” Connla said. “Just summon my father, I beg you. He will recognize me.”
The man in the chariot gave a disgusted snort. “Madness. This one is a victim of madness, though the moon is not even full. And what about you, little fellow?” he said, turning to Connla’s companion. “Who are you supposed to be?”
Drawing himself up to his full height, which was not very much, the little man who no longer had pointed ears replied, “I am called Gerrish the Cymbrian, and though I am short, I am supposed to be strong. Which I am,” he added through clenched teeth, knotting his fists. “If you care to try me.”
The chieftain narrowed his eyes. “I believe you, though you are a long way from your homeland. Why do you travel with this impostor?”
“Connla is no impostor but exactly who he says he is. I have known him ... a very long time,” Gerrish said, “and I do not understand why he is being insulted at his own stronghold.”
“This is not his stronghold but mine,” claimed the man in the chariot. “I am the son of Hundred Battles’ youngest daughter and I was fairly elected by my people to be their leader.”
“But what about Conn?” asked Connla, his face growing pale.
“Old Hundred Battles, tough as he was, could not live forever. He died long ago. His sons did not live up to his measure, and I took his place. The only one of his children who might have challenged me is the one they called Connla Fiery Hair, but he ran away long before I was born. You could not be he, stranger; he would be an old graybeard by now and you have hardly any frost in your hair.”
Connla raised a hand to his head. “There is no gray in my hair! I am young ... Whim?”
“Gerrish,” the other corrected, standing on tiptoe and peering up. “I do see gray, though there was none before. Tell me quickly, what about mine?”
“You are getting bald,” Connla informed him. “On top.”
Gerrish moaned. “Time is making its claims. We had better try to go back. Though I did want to find another plump and gentle woman and have some children on my knee again,” he added wistfully.
“I will not go back yet,” Connla said, his face set in hard lines. “I cannot believe what this man says. I know my father still lives and I want to see him. I want to see my friends and my brothers and the steward who was always so good to me. I want to see...”
“Coran the druid,” said a voice as whispery as dry leaves rustling together.
Connla’s head jerked around.
An incredibly old creature hobbled down the path from the fort. Gnarled and twisted like a blackthorn branch, swathed in layers of unbleached wool, dragging himself forward in an act of sheer will, the man approached the little group around the chariot.
The guards fell back out of respect, knuckling their forelocks and keeping their eyes averted.
The chieftain in the chariot seemed equally impressed. “It is long and long since you came past the door of your own chamber, Coran. What possibly brings you on a journey of such difficulty for a man of your age?’
The ancient figure threw back its hood and turned a toothless face toward Connla. Trapped in the seams and fissures of that face the young man recognized, with a start, the mild eyes of his father’s chief druid. They were all that remained of a once keen and foxlike countenance; all else was destroyed by time.
Coran was likewise peering hard at Connla. In his shred of a voice he said, “All those years we did the dance. All those years. At last even the most faithful lost faith, but we continued the dance out of habit. When Hundred Battles died I had thought we might stop, but by then it was so much a part of ritual that it went on after the reason was forgotten.
“And here you are, Connla.” He shook his head in wonderment. “Here you are.”
“This is Connla?” The chieftain hastily dismounted from his chariot and strode forward to take a close look for himself, though he had never laid eyes on the legendary Fiery Hair before.
“Indeed,” the druid affirmed. “Now, perhaps, I can sleep and not have to wake up again. I had power after all. I have brought him home.” The figure in the woolen cloak gave a sigh of weariness beyond all imagining and slowly sank to the earth.
They all bent over him, but Coran’s spirit fled before anyone could touch him. Only an empty husk remained lying on the ground, muffled in fabric. Assured of the existence of magic, the druid himself had gone elsewhere.
The chieftain bowed his head. “So dies the very last of those who remembered you, Connla of the Fiery Hair. But I do not doubt his word. You are who you claim. If you wish, you are entitled to contest the chieftaincy with me. I suspect you might even be chosen by acclamation, all things considered.”
The last of those who remembered you...
Connla pivoted slowly, looking up at the fort, out toward the land. A crowd was gathering now, a crowd of his father’s people. Though they were not his father’s people any longer.
Nor were they his, he thought. There was no familiar face among them. The only one he knew was Gerrish, who stood by his side smiling broadly at a plump young woman who approached carrying a leather water bucket.
“If you want to be chieftain here, I will stay with you, Connla,” Gerrish said suddenly.
The man who was chieftain scowled. “There has to be a contest,” he said. “I will not give way easily; it has never been said of Cormac mac Airt that he gave way easily. Do I not hold the kingship of all this land? Have I not been inaugurated at Tara itself?”
Connla was stunned. “Kingship of all the land?”
The other nodded. “Your sire, Conn of the Hundred Battles, engaged in a great war after you left him. He was seething with fury and fell upon Owen of the Southlands, and they fought for many seasons. At last they divided the entire country between them, and Hundred Battles was made ruler of the northern half, building himself a stronghold at Tara. I was on my way there now, in fact. It is not just for the Hill of Usna you must fight me, Fiery Hair—but for much of Erin.”
“You must fight me,” Cormac mac Airt had said. “Fight me for ... Erin.”
Fight and kill others and die yourself in a world where time is, where pain is.
Where life is.
Connla stood stricken, feeling his heart pound while they all stared at him, waiting to see what he would do.
Fourteen
THE LITTLE MAN who had now identified himself as Gerrish the Cymbrian shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. “I am no warrior, Connla,” he said in a low voice. “I remember that most distinctly. I was a leather worker by trade and a storyteller by disposition, and I liked a hot fire and
a good laugh. If you are going to go to battle, leave me out of it.”
“I do not want to go to battle,” Connla told him. “Not the way battles have to be fought here.”
“But you must,” Cormac mac Airt said in a hard voice. “The people will demand it and so do I. The issue of the kingship must be settled. And I warn you, Fiery Hair—no matter where you have been, or by what magic you have prolonged your life or increased your strength, I will fight you to the death.”
Cormac mac Airt was tall and strong and proud, with a great mane of lustrous hair, and blue eyes that flashed like the sun on a summer sea. In his full manhood and power he was beautiful, and Connla had no wish to destroy beauty, even if he could.
He knew he could. He had not forgotten the magic arts that went with mastery of the blue sword.
The kingship of Erin, he thought. That was nothing I ever wanted or even imagined. It is not right that I must kill this fine man for it. But if I stay here, I will have to kill him.
And if I leave, if I find my way back to the Isles of the Blest, I will never again be cold enough to enjoy being warm, or sad enough to enjoy being happy, or dead enough to enjoy life.
“Aaagh!” he cried aloud, twisting his body with anguish.
Cormac mac Airt mistook the sound for a scream of challenge. There was a rasp as he withdrew his sword from its scabbard and in one long stride had it pressed to Connla’s throat. “I accept,” he said grimly. “Prepare yourself and assemble what support you will. If you have a champion to fight for you, my champion will meet him. If you do not have a champion, I will fight you myself and the winner will ask the people to name him as king if they find him worthy.”
Gerrish, at the mention of a champion to fight for Connla, had taken several steps backward, until he found himself standing in the shadow of the plump woman with the water bucket. He smiled up at her; she smiled down at him.
The Isles of the Blest Page 16