“Selkie!” Caith shouted, holding, though the rope burned his hands and the strength of the creature dragged him off his feet.. “Selkie, you of Corrigh, the third time, hear me! Your children are in mortal danger, your children of Gleann Fiain! The witch’s men are on the hunt, d’ ye not hear them?”
For that distant sound of horses was back, or the thundering of the cauldron, the strangeness that had haunted them from the walls of the glen and chased them along the river shore. All about him he felt the imminence of sorcery and calamity.
It was the white whale, then, its horn aimed at the heavens, that blew steam and blood and sank to the shingle again in exhaustion. “Death, death, and death,” it mourned, with its head on the sand, into which its tears still ran. “So many the brethren, so sharp the iron, oh, man, man, man, the slaughter is bitter! Death hae ye brought us! Death was always the ending of the matter—”
”Sidhe, listen to me!” Caith cried, remembering the arrow, and the lady’s chamber, and the pain. A blind, dark rage, that memory brought on him, that was no small part of fear. That rage of his had damned him once, and he could not trust his own heart to reason when the temper rose in him, no more than he could trust the Sidhe when it shape-shifted continually. He fell on the creature, hopeless as it was and tried to still its threshing and its battering of itself.
“Ye will not destroy yourself, lord selkie, nor will I kill thee! ’T is thy own foolishness, to trust nathin’, wi’ the witch of Dun Glas trying to kill ye. Gi’ me your true name, ye stubborn creature, and gie me your help, and bring my foolish friend back, if ye can hear him! ’T is only good that I mean ye!”
Suddenly it was a man he held pinned, a young and handsome man with wild, fair hair, with sea-green eyes as mad as the unicorn’s. All out of breath this stranger was, and with an eel’s slipperiness, he still fought to reach the sea— but damned if he should escape now, Caith thought. The same as on the docks of his boyhood, he threw his arm across the selkie’s throat and flung him head-backward on the sand so hard the wight went all hazy-eyed and dazed.
“Now,” Caith said, panting for breath himself, and, leaning on the selkie’s throat with his arm. He carefully lightened his weight. “Now, ye fool. I hae got ye, and ye owe me the wish of my heart for it. Defeat this witch!”
The madness at least dimmed. It was the sad, wild eyes that regarded him, now, so gentle and so wise that no one with a heart could wish to harm the creature.
But that was only another of its shapes.
The cloud had rolled over them while they strugggled. Cold rain pelted them both and made pocks in the sand. Lightnings flashed overhead, making the sand white, and the puddles sheen with white fire around them.
“Man,” the selkie panted, “I shall do thy bidding. But by the salt and by the blood, and by the tides that flow in mortal veins, ye maun answer this for ’t. Who holds me? Is ’t the bright Sidhe ye serve?”
“Caith is my name,” he said, without even thinking: its power struck like a serpent, so subtle it was, and so absolute its magic, compelling the truth— but having given it that dangerous truth, he was not bound to let it go. Recklessly he gave it the rest of his name. “Caith mac Sliabhan is my name. And yours, lord Sidhe?”
“Corrigh is the name I gie ye. And is the lady dead, now, her of the fair glen, and is the green land gone waste?”
“Gone all to grass, but no flock lives to graze there. More graves it has than people. And only the two bairns are left, of all the house of Gleann Fiain.”
“The last fate is worse than the first. Pity the servants of Moragacht.”
He did not understand that saying at first, and then did understand what the selkie meant, remembering with the vividness of Padraic’s recollections the men who had kept the watch on the wall that night.
Send the young men away, the mac Ceannann had begged Padraic. But they had not taken the warning, they had never gone away— and were they now the very servants of the witch that he wanted with all his heart to kill?
The notion shook him to the heart, and the tears ran from the selkie’s eyes, as its breath labored beneath his arm.
“A small evil to bring a greater one,” the selkie said. “The getting of children to the death of me. The black loch’s waters hae flowed down to stain the sea, and, ah, the sea ... the sea maun swallow a’ the wickedness. ’T is the nature of me, man, for wickedness I hae drunk to the dregs, and I am filled with destruction. So ye maun do murder on my kind. ’T is the calling they hae set on ye fra’ the making of the world. Ye maun kill me.”
The thunder crashed, shaking him, but he did not let go, nor could he let go of what it said to him, nor shake it from his hearing.
“No. Not I, selkie. Not I.” He found breath hard, in the clenching of his limbs to hold the creature. Harming it was all too easy, now, and its suppositions were far too dire. He feared it might shape-shift again for fear of him, and he would kill it, and the both of them would be damned, then, all for nothing. “I will not harm thee, selkie. Not I. Never fear me.”
The lightnings sheened across its eyes, and on the puddles about its head, one and the same blind illusion. “Ye hae nae choice, man, ’t is the nature of you and me. The sun will nae shine nor the moon rise wi’ the world as it is.”
He shook his head, fearing truth, fearing traps. “No. No such thing, m’ lord Sidhe, not I, no. I will not....”
“They hae sent ye to do this, man! What other choice hae ye but this?”
“Sent me. The Daoine Sidhe hae sent me! The bloody hell they sent me for any such thing, Sea-lord— not me!”
“Aye. You.”
“The hell with them all! Plague take them!” He trembled, holding the creature with all his strength. It had Ceannann’s face, it had Firinne’s, it became the face of something wiser and more beautiful and more ancient, and it gazed at him the while with all its compassion and all its fey madness.
“Ye maun do it, man. For that right ye hae battled me, and ye hae won. Ye maun use what ye hae gained. Ye ask’t me t’ kill the witch. And by my death she maun die!”
He listened. He had no choice but listen, holding it as he was, but by the Badbh, he was not required by any geas to have its blood on him. He was not required to do whatever crime the Sidhe sent him to do. Damn lord Nuallan, damn the twins and the folk of Gleann Fiain and the Sidhe and all. He would not kill this ancient innocent.
He drew back his elbow from the selkie’s throat, and his hands from off its arms, and scrambled for his feet, quickly, if it was in the selkie’s mind to shape-change again and force him.
“Not I,” he said. “Not I, lord Sidhe. The hanging of a witch, now, that, I will do with rare gladness; and the killing of her hunting-hound i’ the loch, that gladly will I, m’ lord of Corrigh, without remorse. But not—” He backed away, with a hand held in the air, and the thunder rolling and the rain pouring down on them both as the Sidhe arose in his young man’s shape, young and strong and terrible. He dared not offer it a friendly hand for help, or for peace. He did not even know the words that would make it believe the things he said. He only knew he had let it go, and it was free, and that, by that freedom he had granted, the fate of them all could change.
Then he heard a sharp small hiss pass his shoulder, and saw in shock the creature’s whole body shaken, and the dark feathered shaft standing unreasonably in the selkie’s heart.
The shock of that sight was still going through him as he spun about. It was still painful as he flung himself toward the sandy lee of the cliff, searching through the grey, blowing rain for the bowman who had struck the selkie.
The witch’s men— he had no doubt at all.
But there was no sound but the wind and the crashing of the waves— while he held his sword in his hand, and kept his back against the sandy curve.
Thunder cracked. The whole sky lit up above him as he saw the selkie lying bleeding its life into the sand.
Angry, oh, yes, he was angry ... he was trembling with rag
e, and doubt. He asked himself did he have the courage to leave cover, to drag a wounded creature to safety, whether it willed or no.
The selkie lay there looking at him, still alive, for the while, still in its young-god shape, and its lips moved in words he could not hear.
He saw its eyes lift, then, wide in startlement, and fix on the bank above his head, and he swung the sword up at the dark body that hurtled down on him, a mass of cloth and solid limbs and kilts. Its fall tore the blade through it and all but out of his hand, brought it down on him as he staggered for balance and tore the sword free.
Macha, it was Ceannann sinking against him, Ceannann’s bleeding body he was holding upright in his arms, with the hot blood flooding over his hands.
His heart went cold as ice.
“No!” he protested to the Sidhe and to the gods. He could not have done it, he could not have killed without looking, or knowing who it was—
“Damn you,” Ceannann said, and caught after a breath, trying to staunch the life’s blood with his own hand ... he had that much presence of mind, fading as he was. Caith let him down to the sand and pressed a wadded fold of the boy’s cloak across the wound.
But blood kept coming, flooding through the cloth onto his fingers, and he knew then that he had no hope of stopping it.
It was the nearly-dead he had for allies on this shore, with one archer out there somewhere in the blowing mist, where Firinne must be, if she was alive. Ceannann had no bow. It was not he who had fired the shot.
“They’re chasing us,” Ceannann said, teeth chattering, and fear was in his eyes, as his hands clung desperately to Caith’s sleeve. “Firinne can help me. Find her. Firinne can make me well.”
But the blood was coming too fast, and Ceannann’s face grew white and pale, the eyes already set on death. Caith found himself powerless to break away from that stare, or to tear the comfort of his arm from that frightened, mortal grip on him. ’T was all his own handiwork, that pain and that fear.
And the lonely death of the selkie yonder, lying now like a heap of weed on the shore— could any of that grief be chance at all, and not the work of the Sidhe that sent him here?
Draiocht and geas. Ceannann must be Sighted ... and had Ceannann not Seen his own death in him, in the hour he had run for refuge to the house above the glen?
Had Ceannann not had every right to have hated him and feared him?
And was it not generously the boy had dealt with him, always, instead of stabbing him in the back?
The life ebbed from the boy. The eyes kept staring, fixed on nowhere at all, and the cold drops of rain hit them alike, falling onto bowed head and open eyes. Heart’s blood mingled with water and flowed into the puddles, as if it were nothing precious to anyone.
“What more do ye ask of me?” he cried at the storm and the wind. — What hae you brought me to, ye damned, righteous bastards, but everything you cursed me for when I did it for myself? “Dubhain, is it not enough? Is there ever enough blood for them? Find me enemies to kill, ye damned wight, but send me nae more children! Is this their white-handed justice?”
He wanted the witch’s men, he wanted them in sword’s reach, whatever the outcome of it.
But he heard instead, through the rolling of the sea and the rush of wind and rain, asound to chill the blood.
An animal’s cry, it was, a keening like an orphaned child.
The twins, he recalled in sudden dread.
The twins that could not be parted.
Andthat, still living, was Firinne.
Chapter Eleven
The awful keening died away down the wind, and the noise of the waves and the roar of a new spate of rain drowned the sounds of movement on the shore.
There was no telling even from how near or far down the shore that cry had come, or whether— counting the father— a woman’s throat had uttered it. Firinne was out in the storm grieving and lost, and, the Badbh knew, perhaps not even sane, or even in mortal shape any longer. The mac Ceannann’s son was slain. The selkie’s daughter was on this shore, seeking her brother.
And oh, he wanted to go no farther in dealing with the twins in this sad and bloody business. He wanted to kill the men who had made him kill Ceannann, one last murder to be done, and after that he wanted to fling the cursed sword into the sea and be quit of all obligation to faery.
He did not want to face Firinne in her grief. But, be it geas or the wakening of his own conscience ... he saw the chance of saving her as the chance to do something right— once, only once, to unravel disaster about a soul before the nets of his masters could close on it.
Go free, he would tell her when he found her. Run, go far away, the spell is done, the geas unwoven, the witch has nae more claim on you. You are free.
He hoped that that was true, at least, and he wanted to believe, at least, that it was Moragacht and a long-ago curse, not his own will, that had ordained the selkie’s death.
But, failing that, ’t was certain faery had ordained Ceannann’s at his hand— was that not so?— in the selkie’s place, or because Ceannann was what he was, in all things an innocent, and caught in the witch’s magic: he was the sacrifice. It was a dark design, a witch’s design, blood for the old stones.
Perhaps the weight of guilt was still Moragacht’s. The scales were all out of balance, and a mortal man did not know how to read them any longer. He only knew that the arrow that struck the selkie had passed his unguarded back. Granted the archer would target the more dangerous enemy first— but why had a skilled archer, seeing two of them and striking from ambush, not had a second arrow ready and killed him, too? A good archer could have fired again almost before he could have turned about—
If not for the boy coming blindly up behind him atop that cliff.
Looking for the selkie, Ceannann had been— perhaps knowing the witch’s men were close, but without the least notion that he was there below. Ceannann’s arrival might well have saved his life, and cost Ceannann’s own.
Ah, lad, fool to the bitter last, coming over the ridge like that, at a man an arrow had just missed.
But he was the one who had struck out at a descending shadow without even thinking it might be an ally.
Macha, he might find a thousand reasons for what his hand had done, too skilled and too quick from too many fights, but none, none that made it better than it was. No reason could call the blood back from the sand. No excuse could mend anything in this tottering, wind-scoured world.
The selkie had seen the Necessity of his own death, and maybe more than that. The selkie had sought that death of him, insisted on it being at his hand...
Knowing what?
That to be the sacrifice might spare his child? Sidhe of his acquaintance were not so selfless.
That it might tip some balance to faery? He did not even know what he had already cost, or done, or what power he had just helped by a murder.
Badbh, he said to himself, ask the cost of that, and what possesses me to think I know what to do wi’ the daughter?
“Dubhain, Dubhain, ye have your blood, is ’t not what ye asked? Heart’s blood, brimming over, the innocent, with none of the guilty— does that not free ye, Dubhain?...”
A dark lump lay in the rain-haze ahead of him, on the sandy stretch between two great black rocks, a body beneath a dark grey cloak, it might be— all but certainly not Dubhain, and most like Firinne.
He stopped, fearing the archer had found her, too, but he feared, too, to go straight to it, with the steep rocks on either hand, and with the cliff above. He went around the one rock on the seaward side, instead, until he had another view of the body.
“Firinne?” he asked it, and, it lying so still, he walked up to it, sword in hand, and with an eye to the cliff and all about, then nudged it warily with his foot.
It was lighter than he thought. It was a man, dead hand holding a broken bow.
With no face, and no entrails.
He drew his foot back in haste, and asked himself whethe
r the clattering beast might be loose on this shore, and taken the witch’s men by mistake.
He thought not. He asked himself what he was to do now, or what was sane to do, and he made up his mind to go down the skein of sand to the south again, out of this blind jumble of mist-scoured rock and blowing rain, in which a man could not tell what he was walking into. Dubhain had not come back to him. There was blood enough for any Power, and a Sidhe lying murdered, and Dubhain had not come back. The powers were still out of joint, and something boded happening that had not happened, or something had changed the rules, and held Dubhain from him, in which case—
Something blocked the wind from his back, and he spun full about to face a woman’s cloaked shape.
“Firinne,” he said. The woman had a fold of her cloak up for a hood and he could see a hand, and half a face, and one dazed and staring eye, that held everything a man might imagine there— horror, madness, welcome, anger. It was all that at once.
“Firinne,” he called her name more gently, respectfully as one had to speak to faery when it was all in the right. “Your father is dead, lass. Ceannann is dead, too. D’ ye know that, Firinne?”
“Ceannann’s gone to the sea,” she said, and added, distractedly, faintly: “And my father’s coat is mine.”
Mad, it sounded. It was shadow, it was woman, the hand that held the cloak beside that single eye let it go and the cloak fell. Shadow existed across her face, where shadow had no reason to be, making pieces of a woman, and threads extended into shifting darkness, widening, and growing, until the part that was Firinne was the small center of something vast and constantly changing.
He tried to back away, but terror or blind foolishness held him fast, watching the shadow-pieces blow and billow about her in the wind, like grey veils, like blowing nets, or seawrack, pieces thrust up like the ribs of things dead and stripped of flesh.
But that one hand, that small sliver of face, stayed constant, and that eye which was fixed on him was full of fear, asking things he did not know, or help he could not give. He could only stand there with his back unguarded and himself helpless to leave or move or save anything. He did not want to face the creature she had become. He feared what it might be next.
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