There was no source of light in the hall. Her guess was wrong – it was neither dawn nor dusk, for bright sunlight shone through cracks and gaps in the wood. She made her way towards the hall’s double doors. She felt very unsteady, and more than once her legs went from underneath her, but she made it to the doors.
Vertiginous fear overwhelmed her. Things were not as they should be.
She collapsed to the floor, desperately trying to make sense of what she could see. Then she remembered where she was. Then she remembered coming to the Otherworld.
Britha collapsed onto the warm, slightly damp, lush green grass outside the hall. She clung to the ground expecting to fall into the sky. The land was enormous, too big to take in properly, and she could see so much of it – farmed fields, thick forest, mountains, rivers, lochs, even seas and, beyond the seas, other lands. Mists and cloud obscured some of the places in the distance but it went on as far as she could see, and she imagined it went much further than that.
There was no horizon. The ground curved up, so she found herself looking down at blue sky, and so much of it. Perhaps more than her mind could cope with. Above/below her, the sky was bright blue, but from where she clung to the ground she could see patches of dark sky obscured by thundery-looking clouds in the distance. Even further away she was sure a land across one of the seas looked white in colour. It was as if she stood on the inside of a sealed giant cauldron.
There were things in the sky, hanging there, floating. Rocks, strange round plants or trees, distant spheres that looked like they might also have land on them. Closer, but still too far off to make out what they were, she perceived smaller objects that moved more erratically than the sedate floating rocks and trees. The few birds she could see looked very different from the birds she knew in her realm.
Despite all the strangeness, it was the Otherworld’s sun that caught her attention. It was not that different from the sun she knew, except it looked much, much larger, and closer. She could feel its warmth. Few summers in Ardestie had been this warm. Sweat started to bead on her skin.
She had to force herself to let go of the grass, though instinct told her that if she did so she would fall into the sun. Looking around, she could see that this wasn’t the case. It was normal to be upside down, apparently. She stood up unsteadily, shading her eyes with her hand.
Awe and more than a little dread overcame her. She knew herself to be in the presence of the gods now. Her people had always sought to avoid their attentions as the gods only cared for themselves, and none but the gods could understand those cares. In front of the sun stood a giant figure. Difficult to make out against the brightness, it existed only in silhouette and was nearly as tall as the sun itself. She guessed it was a warrior because it carried a spear. Black lines sprouted from all over the figure, they reminded Britha of many hollow logs joined together. The lines connected the enormous figure to the sun itself, and then down to the land in a number of different places.
The figure had wings on its back. Six of them, Britha thought, though she wasn’t sure as some appeared to be extended, and others folded behind it. The extended wings cast the land below them into darkness. In the closest of the dark areas she could make out what looked like tiny pinpricks of light.
‘It’s called the Forge.’
Britha actually screamed and jumped. She rounded on Fachtna, who was sitting on the grass, his back against the long hall’s outer wall. He was barefoot and stripped to the waist, wearing only a pair of loose-fitting trews. There was no scar tissue on his chest and stomach, but she had learned that he healed faster than mortals. His body also looked strangely hairless, though a detailed tattoo of a serpent, or a dragon, in the knotwork style of the Goidels coiled around his left arm, over his shoulder and onto his chest. Its open maw surrounded the place where his heart would be. A silver torc curved around his neck and another around his upper-right arm. His beard was short and neatly trimmed, and his hair and moustache were both long and braided.
Britha took a step back from him. ‘Bress told me he killed you,’ she said. And then she remembered seeing his face in the crowd when she first arrived, when the lightning consumed her.
‘That’s disappointing,’ he said. His manner was … different, somehow.
‘Are we in the land of the dead?’
Fachtna picked up something from the ground next to him and held it out to her. She glanced at it suspiciously and then realised it was a folded grey woollen robe. She was more surprised when she looked back at Fachtna and found him meeting her eyes rather than staring at her naked body. Britha took the offered robe from him and started to dress. As she did so, she glanced around the local area. The long hall appeared to be on a foothill surrounded by larger wooded hills and truly grandiose snow-capped mountains in the distance. Looking downwards, the land narrowed into a long cliff-lined bay that led to what she assumed was a sea. A road meandered down through trees towards a small settlement surrounding the bay, though the huts were rectangular rather than round like those in Ardestie and most of Ynys Prydein.
The robe’s material was very soft and didn’t make her as hot as the scratchy, thick robe she had worn back in Ardestie. It had a hood and the belt was of leather, not rope.
‘The Cauldron brought me back to life, just as it did you,’ Fachtna said. She stared at him. ‘I’m sorry. With the crystals and the taint of Crom in your blood, we had no choice. We did it in the knowledge that the Cauldron could bring you back.’
‘I thought the crystals came from the Otherworld?’
Fachtna grimaced. ‘They are from another realm, but it is forbidden to talk about them.’
‘To anyone, or just mortals?’
Fachtna looked up at her thoughtfully but said nothing. She realised what it was about him that was bothering her. He seemed quiet, more thoughtful. He hadn’t said or done anything that annoyed her yet.
‘Teardrop?’ Britha asked. Fachtna nodded. ‘Is he here?’ Britha asked, eager to see the strange, wise man with the deformed skull, but Fachtna was already shaking his head.
‘He struggled with the path he had to walk. His people’s equivalent of the drui. He wants something simpler now—’
‘To be a warrior?’ Britha asked, unable to keep a smile from her face.
‘Perhaps, or perhaps he will just work the land, but he is with his family and content.’
‘Will I see him?’ Britha asked, and was disappointed by Fachtna shaking his head again.
‘You would not know him, and he would not know you.’
Suddenly something struck Britha. ‘Is this a lie?’ she asked.
Fachtna regarded her strangely for a moment. ‘No, but that is a good question—’
‘Don’t patronise me,’ Britha said evenly. ‘This may be the Otherworld but I am still the ban draoi of the Cirig.’
Fachtna bowed his head. ‘Apologies, it was not my intention to patronise. I have no memory after leaving here to journey to your world, and nor does Teardrop.’
She let this sink in. ‘But then why can I—’
‘Because you died here. Your body was here.’
Britha sat down on the grass. She was quiet as she tried to think through all she had been told. Fachtna watched her, concern in his expression. Britha found herself looking at some distant thing making its way through the Otherworld’s endless sky. It did not move like a bird.
‘What is that?’ she asked.
Fachtna followed her gaze. ‘A chariot.’
It was almost enough for her. The vertiginous fear returned, but she knew she had to master it. She could not show weakness here.
‘You have a rhi here?’ she asked.
‘For this particular land, I am he.’
Britha stared at him; it made sense, but somehow it made her angry, too.
‘And the dryw?’
‘They wish to speak with
you.’
‘Can I return to my people?’ she asked, ashamed that it had taken her until now to do so. She had been overwhelmed by this place, this land of plenty. It would be so easy to succumb to its apparently easy life.
‘In time.’
‘Am I prisoner?’
She knew the ways of the fair folk. A day in their world could be many years in her land. She thought of those in the wicker man – her people, the Cirig, taken on the beach and at the broch. She wondered what had become of Tangwen, of Kush and the navigator.
They might have stopped Crom Dhubh’s summoning of the Llwglyd Diddymder, the Hungry Nothingness, but she hadn’t set out to save Ynys Prydein, only to rescue her people. She cursed herself for weakness in front of a warrior as tears sprang to her eyes. Fachtna reached out for her but she slapped his arm away.
‘Why—’ she started, and then choked back sobs and wiped her eyes. ‘Why are you different? Has death robbed you of your manhood?’
Fachtna regarded her for a moment and then leaned back against the wood of the long hall. ‘You and I didn’t like each other, did we?’ he asked, smiling for the first time.
I considered you stupid and boorish, and in the end you believed I was a monster, Britha thought. Because that’s what I had become.
‘I went to war,’ he said. ‘The drui put certain geasa on me. They change us. As warriors we have to behave a certain way.’
‘Obnoxiously? Yes, I’ve met warriors before.’
‘No, I mean we cannot show weakness in front of others because then we would start to doubt ourselves. I took … certain potions and preparations.’
‘You mean you drank and boasted a lot?’
Fachtna was looking a little exasperated.
‘So what now?’ Britha demanded.
‘You are not a prisoner, but to send you back is a great magical undertaking. It will require a little time.’
‘My people … ?’
‘We can only know what you tell us.’
‘I don’t want to return a thousand winters after they are all dead.’
Fachtna shook his head. ‘We wouldn’t do that to you. The drui will want to speak with you but I don’t know when. I can arrange for food and drink, and I hope you will be my guest.’ Then he started to smile again. In the smile Britha saw some of his old cockiness. ‘Until then, perhaps you could entertain me with tales of the great deeds I did before I died.’
She started to tell Fachtna of great and terrible deeds. She used the bards’ tongue and spared him nothing. She told him of the betrayal on the Crown of Andraste. There were tears in his eyes when she described what had become of Teardrop. He tried to mask his disgust at the killings of the kneelers, and the boy the Corpse People had taken prisoner. Half the time she didn’t even realise that her cheeks were wet with her own tears.
How did this happen? Britha demanded of herself. Now more than ever, so far from home and among such strange people, now was not the time to show weakness.
She had eaten well, though she was embarrassed by memories of gluttony. The uisge beatha was good, but not as good as what she had grown up with, it was too smooth, too easy to drink. She was also secretly pleased that their ale was not as good as her heather ale.
She found herself sitting around a fire with the people from the village and the surrounding area, down by the cliff-lined bay. They spoke a language she recognised, and of which she knew some words. All of them were intimidatingly tall and beautiful, not unlike Fachtna. Whether Fachtna was a rhi or just a landed warrior, Britha wasn’t exactly sure. His people showed him respect, but he had a very informal relationship with them. In this he reminded her of Cruibne MaqqCirig, though that informality could only be taken so far. Britha had watched Cruibne break the teeth and split the skull of more than one young warrior who had pushed his luck too far.
Even the common folk here had access to some kind of magics. They had all learned her language with just a moment’s concentration, as she had when Cliodna’s blessings and the darker blessings of Crom had mixed in her blood. They made her welcome. Fachtna made her welcome. They even showed respect to her as a ban draoi, though in that she detected something false.
Fachtna had put on a blaidth, though even in the darkness that fell as one of the giant’s wings obscured the Forge, Britha did not feel much of a chill. Fachtna, at the insistence of his people, played some kind of complicated, long-necked, stringed instrument. She liked the sound of it, and was even more surprised when she liked the sound of his voice, though he was no bard. He sang songs in their language. Most of them sounded a little sad to Britha. They made her think of home.
She had no idea how she had come to be lying by the dying fire in Fachtna’s arms. Trying not to think about Cliodna. Trying harder not to think of Bress.
It’s because he is the only familiar thing so far from home, she thought, then: That is not a good enough reason.
‘You said the giant is called Forge?’ Britha asked, looking up at the obscured red glow of the huge sun and the figure of the spear-carrying giant fixed in front of it.
‘No, the sun is called the Forge. The giant is Lug, one of the Lloigor. He came from before everything was created and he changed the Forge.’
‘That does not make sense,’ Britha said, nestling deeper into Fachtna’s arms. ‘How can he come from before everything was created?’
Fachtna shrugged. ‘The drui tell us these things. The Lloigor came from somewhere before everything. The place they came from is not there any more.’
Britha considered this. ‘I have heard stories of lands that once were, that had been taken by the ocean,’ she said. Fachtna shrugged non-committally. ‘You call this place Ubh Blaosc?’ He nodded. ‘What does that mean?’
‘The Egg Shell.’
‘If this is a shell, what is beyond it?’ Britha asked. Fachtna glanced down at her. He looked impressed. Britha found herself feeling irritated again, as if she was being patronised.
‘The night,’ he replied.
‘We are in the sky.’
‘We are in a different sky.’
‘Then how did I get here?’
‘A bridge.’
She shook her head. It was too confusing, even assuming Fachtna was telling the truth, though if he wasn’t he had suddenly become a very good liar.
Britha looked around the fire. Many of the villagers had gone home and only a few other couples lingered around the dying embers. She was intrigued that one of the couples consisted of two men. She had never been able to differentiate between her attraction for women and men, but most tribes had frowned upon men who liked men, or women who liked women.
‘Our people are from your world, you know?’ Fachtna said. ‘The Lloigor brought us here a long time ago. First us, and then the Croatan, and their slaves from the Roanoke settlement.’
She looked up at him, his face orange in the glow of the dying fire. ‘They commanded great magic then, your gods?’
Fachtna nodded. ‘They were gone when we arrived here, but they had changed us.’
Britha gave this some more thought. ‘How old are you?’
Fachtna laughed. ‘Older than you, younger than many.’
She pushed herself up and looked at him, angry more with herself than him. ‘You only ever give me half an answer. You act like you don’t think I would understand.’ And you were happy lying in his arms, she admonished herself.
‘And how old are you?’ he asked lightly.
‘That’s not the point!’ she said in exasperation, and then his lips were on hers. It was just too easy to reciprocate. He had not asked her permission but it was not the rough wooing of the arrogant warrior she had first met as she’d made her way south. With his arms wrapped around her, suddenly she was aware of her hand on his leg, her other hand in his hair. She felt herself responding, wanting.
&nb
sp; Then she remembered Teardrop teasing Fachtna about bedding many mortal women. She remembered him rutting in a ditch with Tangwen. She remembered Cliodna. She remembered Bress.
Then she remembered running Cliodna through with a spear.
Britha’s disgust with herself fuelled her anger as she shoved him away. She assumed the hurt expression on his face was just an act. She stood up, unsure where she might go, where she could sleep. This angered her further and she almost kicked Fachtna, thinking that he had assumed she would share his cot with him.
It took her a moment to register the gasps of surprise from the other side of the fire. She spun around and then staggered back, almost tripping over the log they had been leaning against.
She must have just emerged from the treeline. She wore the brown robes of a dryw and carried a staff, a sickle hanging from her belt along with several pouches. The dryw’s entire head was hidden by a horse’s skull. Britha knew the meaning of the horse’s skull. This was the Lain Bhan, the White Mare. This was death, night and the desolation of winter. As she was about to flee, she felt a hand on her leg.
‘It’s not what you think,’ Fachtna told her gently. She looked around the fire. The other couples had reacted with surprise but not fear. That didn’t prevent a cold feeling from running through her when the Lain Bhan pointed at her, and then beckoned.
The grove was almost too idyllic for Britha. A small waterfall ran over rocks that bordered one edge of the small clearing. The waterfall fed a pool, which in turn fed a stream of clear, cold, fresh water. The oaks leaned in overhead, but the nature of the wing-shrouded night under the Forge meant that it never appeared to get completely dark. It was more of a perpetual twilight.
After leading Fachtna and a very uncomfortable Britha through the woods to the grove, the woman had taken off the horse skull. Like all the inhabitants of the Otherworld she was tall and well made, though she was older than most of the people Britha had seen so far. Still handsome, her face was heavily lined and her hair white but she looked energetic. Something in her eyes and the set of her features suggested shrewdness and a penetrating intelligence to Britha. She had introduced herself as Grainne.
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