Fire Arrow (7 page)

Aelwyn nodded. "He smelled of goat; I never could abide that odor. And his voice had a 'baa' sound like a goat. I couldn't understand his language, though the morgs seemed to."

"They ambushed you?"

Aelwyn nodded. "After I left Cuillean's dun, the same day you did, I believe, I began making my way north. I have a friend, from my village in Dungal, who now lives in a town at the foot of the Blue Stacks. There are a handful of Dungalans scattered throughout the few villages and farmholds that lie in the foothills of the mountains. I think it is because they cannot stand to be too far from Dungal." She paused. "My friend is expecting a bairn, and I had pledged to come when the child was due, to help with the birthing, as well as afterward, for she already has a young son and daughter. I was traveling east through the foothills when I spotted them, the morgs and the goat-man. They came after me, killed my pony, and knocked me unconscious. I am not certain," Aelwyn said matter-of-factly, "but I believe they were headed toward Lake Or. To throw me in."

"For what reason?"

"They said nothing, at least nothing I understood, but I sensed it was because they knew I was Dungalan and did not want me traveling to Dungal."

"Why not?"

Aelwyn shook her head. "I do not know. In fact, I had been thinking of returning, after helping my friend, before the winter snows come to the mountains. Now I certainly will," she said with an obstinate smile. "And you, Brie?"

"I am on the trail of a man."

"One of your father's killers?"

"No. But one who may lead me to them, I hope."

"Who is this man?" asked Aelwyn.

Brie described Bricriu. The wyll nodded in recognition. "I met such a man, before the morgs and goat-man ambushed me," she said. "He asked the way to Beirthoud's Pass in the Blue Stack Mountains."

Brie's interest quickened. "Then he was journeying to Dungal?"

"Most likely. No one chooses to travel over Beirthoud's Pass unless they go to Dungal." Aelwyn frowned at the eager look in Brie's eyes. "Remember what I saw, Flame-girl," the girl said with a warning glint in her eye. "Bog Maglu is a dangerous place."

"Bog Maglu?"

"Maglu is a large, treacherous wetland that lies in the center of our country." Aelwyn paused, shaking her head. "I do not know, but the stones I saw, the standing stones, looked as I have heard the stones of memory look. The stones of memory lie in the heart of Bog Maglu. Yet it is confusing because I saw seabirds as well and the Bog is far from the sea..." She trailed off. "But there was shifting earth and water, and the arrow. You do not forget the arrow I saw?"

"No, I do not forget. Pointed at my heart. So I will journey with great care. Are you up to traveling, Aelwyn?"

Aelwyn shrugged. "I am well enough."

"Then we ought to move on. The goat-man may return," Brie said, rising and looking for Ciaran. The Ellyl horse had moved away from them as they talked.

The night had deepened while Brie and Aelwyn spoke. At first Brie could not see Ciaran, but then found her lying down behind the gorse bushes. Ciaran's skin was even hotter than before and her manner listless. She did not respond when Brie spoke to her.

"What is wrong with her?" asked Aelwyn, who had followed Brie.

"I do not know. I'm worried..."

Aelwyn crouched beside the horse., Gently she laid a small hand on the horse's neck. Ciaran tensed for a moment, moving her legs as if to rise, but then she settled, her body relaxing into the tall grass. Gradually the large eyes closed.

Brie watched, anxious.

Then Aelwyn rose and moved toward Brie. Ciaran was sleeping. "How long has it been since Ciaran was in Tir a Ceol?" asked the wyll.

"A long time."

"Three moon cycles? Four?"

Brie thought. "Eight or nine perhaps."

"I am getting a strong feeling of hiraeth, the heartsickness I told you of. Perhaps there is something similar for those from Tir a Ceol. I also felt a very strong longing for something green, soft, with sweet-smelling white flowers..."

"Seamir," murmured Brie. "It is what the Ellyl horses eat in the cavern of the horses in Tir a Ceol," she explained.

"It must be very good. I believe that if Ciaran doesn't have some quite soon she may die."

Then she must return to Tir a Ceol at once," Brie said without hesitation. "Is she strong enough to journey there?"

"I believe so. I know of a porth—or a portal as you call it—into Tir a Ceol that is not far from here, by Lake Or. But she does not want to go."

Brie looked puzzled. "But you said..."

"She needs to go, but she will not leave you."

"She must."

After swiftly dressing Aelwyn's cut face and cutting loose the disagreeable goat-horse from its tether (for which kindness Brie received a glancing blow to her shin), they set out on foot for Lake Or. Ciaran walked slowly, head down.

They walked until the moon was directly overhead. By then Ciaran was barely able to raise her head, and Aelwyn said her own head was pounding as if from a thousand blacksmith hammers. Brie spotted a small stream and suggested they rest there.

She lit a campfire and went to fill the skin bags. When she returned Aelwyn had already brewed a pan of brownish liquid she called cyffroi. She offered Brie a cup.

Brie tasted it and grimaced.

Aelwyn chuckled. "If you go to Dungal you will get used to it. It is what we drink instead of chicory. I am slightly mad in the morning until I've had my cup of cyffroi. Of course, there are those who say I am mad most of the time, being a wyll."

"What's it like?" asked Brie.

"Being a wyll?" Aelwyn smiled her cat-smile at Brie. "It is not so very different from not being a wyll. Eirrenians think that we are always being bombarded with visions and portents. But seeings come only when I ask for them, when I deepen my thoughts, turn inward. In Dungal they say of us that we have a fire in the head, and I suppose it is so, although it is a fire we kindle ourselves—it is gentle, and, for the most part, without fear. I find it rather pleasant, a hearth fire, if you will." She took a sip of cyffroi, looking thoughtfully at Brie. "I should not be surprised if there was a little of wyll fire in you."

Brie laughed. "That's absurd."

"Why?"

"Because I am Eirrenian and have shown no particular gift for fortune-telling in all my years. No, I have fire in my bow, my arrow, even in my name. That's quite enough fire for me."

"Perhaps, but perhaps not. I have not had a trance that took such hold of me since I was in Dungal, with a fellow wyll who sought the heart of an unbending fisherman."

"Would I not have felt it, if I did have magic or draoicht of some kind?"

"It is usually so. But there have been cases when it lay dormant for many years..."

"Well, I have no wyll fire, nor any draoicht, and that is that." Brie took another sip of the cyffroi. As she got used to the Dungalan beverage, she was noticing that under the bitterness was a subtle taste of nuts and vanilla. "Are there many wylls in Dungal?"

"Not so many as there once were. There used to be at least one in every village. But now many villages have none. The coastal villages had their own kind of wyll; they are men, called Sea Dyak sorcerers. There are also only a very few of these left in Dungal.

"In fact, there is a Sea Dyak sorcerer in Bog Maglu. Perhaps he is the man of power I saw, which could account for the seabirds..." Aelwyn paused as though to examine this train of thought. Then she continued. "He was once the most powerful sorcerer in Dungal; Yldir is his name. I cannot tell you how old he is for no one knows, but there are stories of him alongside heroes who lived hundreds of years ago. Before my parents were born he became a hermit, went off by himself to live in Bog Maglu. There are a few who have made pilgrimages to see him there, and they say he is quite mad, but still powerful. He lives near the stones of memory."

"Why are they called stones of memory?" Brie asked.

"Because they are thought to hold the entire history of Dungal inscribed on their surfaces. Only one of great power, such as Yldir, can read the ciphers and pictures etched in the stones." Aelwyn paused. "I see a Dungalan arrow in your quiver. Is this the arrow of fire you spoke of?"

"Yes. How did you know it to be Dungalan?"

"The fletching feathers are goldenhawk."

"It was my mother's. The man Bricriu tried to steal it. It has bands of color I cannot make out. Perhaps you..." Brie reached for the arrow.

"No," said Aelwyn definitely, raising her hand to arrest Brie's movement. "I prefer not to hold the arrow. Fire magic can be unpredictable."

Brie nodded, thinking of her blistered fingers. "Yet it is cool most of the time." She paused. "Sometimes I feel it is drawing me to Dungal."

"It could be," answered the wyll, smiling. "Take care it does not kindle in you more than you bargained for."

Brie uneasily asked what the wyll meant, but Aelwyn ignored her, saying her head was still pounding and she needed to rest. She finished her cup of cyffroi and settled herself on the ground, pulling her cloak over her face.

***

When dawn came, Brie woke a cranky Aelwyn. Ciaran was already awake, grazing nearby.

While Aelwyn brewed more cyffroi, Brie consulted her map.

"That looks to be a wizard's map," observed Aelwyn.

"It belonged to Crann, the wizard of the trees."

"I have heard of him."

"Where is the village where your friend lives?"

Aelwyn leaned over the map. "Here," she said, pointing to a spot a short distance east of Lake Or. "And this is the way to Beirthoud's Pass." The route through the mountains lay directly north of the lake.

Aelwyn suddenly laughed, her good spirits restored by the cyffroi. "A fire arrow and a wizard's map. And you say there is nothing of wyll fire in you."

***

As they came to the top of a ridge, they saw Lake Or stretched out below them. It was a large lake that glowed golden in the late afternoon light. The lake was bordered on its right side by a gentle rolling terrain of grass and heather, but its left side was dominated by a large fell with sheer screes of loose rock plunging Straight into the water. Beyond Lake Or a fertile green valley with a scattering of farmholds could be seen, and beyond the valley loomed the Blue Stack Mountains. So high did they rise that some were peaked with white, though it was late summer.

Aelwyn led them down the ridge and onto a path leading toward the scree side of the lake. They followed the path until it ended, directly at the foot of a silab of stone. Aelwyn laid her two palms against the rock face and a handful of pebbles cascaded down, splashing into the water. Then she turned to Brie. "Now we wait."

"What did you do?"

"The draoicht equivalent of knocking. I let him know there was an Ellyl here. They don't usually open porths for anyone but Ellylon. They don't mind us Dungalans in general, especially wylls, but they still do not choose to invite us into Tir a Ceol."

They waited in silence. Aelwyn made herself comfortable on a boulder, while Brie stood beside Ciaran, her hand resting lightly on the horse's warm flank.

Suddenly there was a person standing at the foot of the path.

He was tall for an Ellyl, and his body was long, sitting atop two gangly, storklike legs. He had long, skinny arms from which dangled two large hands. His hair was more orange-red than gold, and instead of curling down his neck like the hair of most Ellylon, his was cut short and stood up straight, giving him a slightly demented look. But the eyes were unmistakably Ellyl, a startling silver color that gleamed at Brie and Aelwyn in the twilight.

"I beg your pardon, fair maidens, but I understood there to be an Ellyl at the porth," he said in his thin, somewhat reedy voice.

Ciaran raised her head at the sound of the Ellyl's voice.

"Oh, yes, I see. Come," the Ellyl said. He beckoned and they moved toward him, though Brie did not see where there was a doorway of any kind. Then the Ellyl was gone, and as Brie watched, Aelwyn moved right up to the scree wall, where the path ended, and she was gone, too.

Ciaran suddenly broke into a trot and disappeared as neatly as the others. When Brie came to the end of the path she saw a sliver of a crack in the rock face, and while she was thinking that she would never fit through it, a bony hand closed over hers and she was through, standing in a large, dimly lit cavern.

The Ellyl dropped her hand and strode to Ciaran. He laid his head beside Ciaran's and seemed to be listening attentively.

Aelwyn was moving about the cavern, closely inspecting their surroundings. The Ellyl stood up, running his hand through his spiky orange hair. "My dear young lady," he said, "you will find no gems or trinkets here. Indeed there is little of value here at all. I am afraid this is a remote porth. A lonely posting, especially for one as fond of society as I, yet I endeavor to do my duty with a stout heart. But first things first. Which of you is called Brie? The wyll perhaps?"

"No. I am Brie."

"The horse Ciaran must proceed to Tir a Ceol at once. Will you journey with her?"

Brie hesitated. She felt Ciaran nudge faintly into her thoughts.
Come.
Brie was suddenly filled with a sharp yearning to revisit the land of Ellylon: to see Ebba, the artist with brindled hair; to visit Slanaigh, who had brought Brie back to life with the healing waters after Brie had been bitten by the demon creature Nemian; and to see Silien, the Ellyl prince and a companion to Brie and Collun when they had traveled to find Collun's sister.

"I cannot," she heard herself say. She crossed to Ciaran, resting her cheek against the horse's warm skin. "Our paths must divide here, Ciaran," she said softly.

There was a buzzing sound in Brie's ears that sounded almost like tears, then the words,
Your face needs washing.
Brie smiled broadly, saying, "I know."

Fly high and true, Breo-Saight.
Ciaran abruptly reared up on her hind legs, broke into a gallop, and was quickly lost to sight.

"Well, very good then, that's done. Allow me to introduce myself. Monodnock is my name, and I am at your service, exceedingly kind damsels." He bowed low from his long waist.