The Crow of Connemara

STEPHEN LEIGH'S

spellbinding original fantasy novels

available from DAW:

IMMORTAL MUSE

THE CROW OF CONNEMARA

and writing as S. L. FARRELL:

The Cloudmages:

HOLDER OF LIGHTNING

MAGE OF CLOUDS

HEIR OF STONE

The Nessantico Cycle:

A MAGIC OF TWILIGHT

A MAGIC OF NIGHTFALL

A MAGIC OF DAWN

Copyright © 2015 by Stephen Leigh.

All Rights Reserved.

Jacket art courtesy of Shutterstock.

Jacket design by G-Force Design.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1683.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA).

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

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ISBN: 9780698164314

This book is dedicated to the memory of Walter Leigh, my father,

who introduced me to the Irish side of the family,

an1d for whom Ireland was always a precious destination.

And, as always and ever, to Denise, whose support is what makes all of my books possible.

Given that the majority of the people in this novel are Irish, they would speak English with a distinct accent. From my own time in Ireland, I remember that the “depth” of the accent and even the pronunciation of words varied quite a bit depending on the person and their location. There were times I had to “translate” what some of my relatives in Roscommon were saying even though we were all nominally speaking the same language, their accent was so pronounced.

We won't even talk about idioms, which can be very different there.

An author always has choices to make when rendering dialect in fiction. The dialogue and even the exposition could be
entirely
in dialect (à la
Huckleberry Finn,
for example) but to my mind that slows down the reader unnecessarily, requires far too much work on the reader's part, and can lead to confusion. Another author might choose to not use phonetic dialect spelling at all, but leave the sound of the dialect entirely to the reader's imagination.

My personal preference is to take a middle road between the extremes: to try to give the occasional hint of the pronunciation where it doesn't seem to hinder comprehension, with the hope that the reader will begin to “hear” the accent and continue to provide it in their inner hearing for all characters' dialogue. Hopefully, that works for you. If your preference is more toward one or the other pole, please forgive me.

Irish Gaelic provides another issue for those readers who insist on knowing how to pronounce the words. I'm
not
someone who knows Irish Gaelic beyond a few words, though I love the sound of the language. I've rendered the occasional Gaelic word or phrase here in the generally accepted spelling—but be aware that you won't capture the
pronunciation
of any version of Gaelic by using the rules of English any more than you'd get proper pronunciation of French by applying English rules. For instance, in Irish Gaelic “mh” is a single aspirated consonant, and is pronounced as an English “w” or “v” depending on the surrounding vowels—thus, the Celtic festival day Samhain (to a reader of English) looks like it should be pronounced “Sam-hane” when it's actually pronounced more like “Sow-en.”

There's the added complication that the same word in Irish Gaelic can be pronounced differently in various regions of the country, in much the same way that we have regional variations in pronunciation in the USA. For instance, how do you pronounce “pecan”? Is it pee-KAHN, puh-KAHN, pick-AHN, pee-CAN or PEE-can? They're all “correct,” depending on what part of the country you're in.

There are online guides to pronunciation of the Gaelic consonants, vowels, diphthongs, and so on; check them out if you're so inclined. For this book, I've attempted to give a rough phonetic pronunciation of most of the Irish words in the appendix at the end of the novel, but I apologize in advance if my efforts don't quite match reality.

Part One: Macha

1
Death and the Sinner 3

2
A Dream, Vanishing 7

3
They Are Gone 18

4
Visitations 21

5
Searching For Young Lambs 30

6
There's a Chicken in the Pot 34

7
'Tis a Pity to See 44

8
The Banshee's Cry 48

9
My Sorrow and My Loss 55

10
At Midnight Hour 58

11
The Light of Other Days 68

12
Toss the Feathers 83

Part Two: Nemain

13
The Black-Haired Lass 93

14
Two Conversations 103

15
Petting the Seals 110

16
Learning New Music 121

17
At Regan's 127

18
The Fairies' Lamentation 135

19
Come to the Dance 145

20
Blow the Candle Out 162

21
The Fairy Ring 169

22
Mothers and Brothers 178

23
Revelations 189

24
A Blindness Lifted 202

25
A Summoning 212

Part Three: Badb

26
An American Exiled 225

27
The Gray Daylight 233

28
The Night Ride 238

29
If the Sea Were Ink 246

30
Let Sleeping Gods Lie 257

31
The Twisting of the Rope 265

32
The Dawning of the Day 273

33
America Lies Far Away 277

34
After the Storm 286

Acknowledgments and Notes 295

Appendices 299

“I don't think there's any point in being Irish if you don't know that the world is going to break your heart eventually.”

— Daniel Patrick Moynihan

1

D
ARCY FITZGERALD LAY DYING in the next room.

His family and friends were gathered in the small front room of Darcy's farmhouse on Ceomhar Head, well outside the town of Ballemór in County Galway. Two and sometimes three of the group took brief turns sitting at Darcy's bedside with the priest and Darcy's sister Margaret Egan, who were holding vigil. The priest—Father Quinlan—had been sent for by Margaret; the truth was that, in living memory, no one could recall Darcy ever trudging into town of a Sunday to attend Mass, but Margaret had insisted that her own pastor come out and sit with her.

“Darcy's been baptized, an' so I'll be having the Last Rites done proper for the repose of his poor soul,” she proclaimed. “The good Father will do them, too, or he won't be seeing another pence of mine or m'family's in the offering tray.”

Margaret, Father Quinlan, and the occasional friend sat in the stuffy bedroom: listening to Darcy's labored, stuttered breathing and the muffled din of conversation from the other room. They talked quietly to each other over Darcy's form under the blanket once quilted by his twelve-years-dead wife, occasionally glancing at the grizzled, sunken face on the pillow that was, in turn, staring blindly at the candlelit shadows gathering on the ceiling.

In the front room, the evening already had more the aspect of a wake. The dozen folk there had gone through two bottles of Jameson 12-year-old Special Reserve from Darcy's cupboard (“Well, he won't be a'needin' the whiskey now, will he?”), and flasks were regularly being produced from back pockets and passed around. The air was murky with fragrant smoke from cigarettes, pipes, and the smoldering peat fire in the hearth, which didn't seem to be drawing properly. Their voices were loud and boisterous, laughing as they related stories from Darcy's past: purely fiction, embellished, or nakedly raw, they didn't care. Someone had brought along a guitar and another a fiddle, and the stories and conversation intermingled with playing and singing.

Outside, a gale off the North Atlantic howled and shook the shutters and roof beams of the farmhouse. The door to the farmhouse rattled in its frame, causing those closest to glance toward it to check that the latch was still holding.

The door to Darcy's bedroom opened. Margaret stood there with her white hair hanging limply around her face and a rosary clutched in her hand, Father Quinlan a dark presence behind her. The song failed in mid-phrase and the laughter shuddered to a halt. Margaret sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “Poor Darcy's gone,” she stated simply. Several of those in the room made the sign of the cross at the news.

At the same moment, the shutters boomed and rattled, and the door visibly quivered with a sound as if wild fists were beating on the planks. “Sweet bleedin' Jaysus!” one of the company shouted in alarm, then glanced guiltily at the priest. “Beggin' your pardon a'course, Father.”

The door and shutters continued to rattle as the wind rose with a nearly human, furious shriek. The blue flames of the peat fire shuddered in a sudden downdraft that sent smoke pouring into the room. “What in heaven—” Margaret began as the gathering coughed and waved hands against the invasion, but a new voice interrupted her.

“'Tis
yer
fault, all of yez,” the voice said, and as one they looked over to the hearth from where the voice had emanated. A woman stood in front of the fire, and hers was a face that none of them knew. She was bundled in a hooded red cloak, the cloth beaded with rain as if she'd just come in from the weather, though no one could remember her entering the room. Her eyes were a deep, saturated green, and the strands of hair that escaped the cowl were the color of a moonless sky at midnight. Her voice was edged steel wrapped in dark velvet, low and sensual. “There be no door or window open here for the soul to depart through, as is customary. The spirits sent to accompany Darcy are angry.”

“Darcy's soul ca'nah be kept from the Lord by doors or windows,” Father Quinlan interjected. He scowled. “This blather is simple superstition, woman. Shame on yeh.” Both he and Margaret glared at the intruder.

“Darcy Fitzgerald didn't believe in yer foolish God, priest, so shut your gob,” the woman said, and half the company drew in their breath at the blasphemy. Several warded themselves again with the sign of the cross. “Darcy believed in things much older than that, and they've come for him now. Yeh must let him go. Why has no one stopped the clocks here or turned the mirrors?”

Again there came the sound of fists beating at the door, and the shutters were nearly pulled from their hinges. The wind shrieked in the chimney, and the guitar player, sitting on the hearth nearest the woman, looked at the fire, startled. “'Tis the very banshee,” he said, then glanced guiltily at the woman.

“Aye,” the woman in red answered. She was smiling strangely. “Open the door,” she commanded, gesturing to the men nearest to it.

“Nah,” Margaret shouted back. “There be no need for that. Darcy's soul is already in heaven, and his body will be placed in consecrated ground.”

The cloaked woman laughed as fists continued to hammer at the planks, and she gestured once more. “Open the door,” she repeated. Her voice was imperious, commanding, and one of the men sitting next to the door rose to his feet, glancing at his wife who sat alongside him who, in turn,was staring at the woman.

Finally, the wife nodded, faintly, as if she and the woman had exchanged some unheard communication. “What can it hurt?” she half-whispered, though she kept her gaze averted from Margaret and the priest, who remained standing in the doorway of Darcy's bedroom as if defending the corpse. Her husband lifted the latch and turned the knob, pulling at the door.

The door flew from his hands, slamming hard against the limits of its hinges as the mourners shouted in alarm. A hurricane wind as cold as a winter gravestone blew hard into the front room, snatching papers and napkins from the small table and hurling them about, extinguishing all the candles, sending the pictures on the wall swaying and falling, and toppling the empty bottles of Jameson. The few electric lights in the room—Darcy having been slow to have the lines run out to his farmstead—flickered and went momentarily dark. Only the faint, ethereal light of the peat fire remained, strangely untouched. The wind plucked at the coats and pants and skirts of those gathered there as if with invisible fingers, and tugged especially hard at the priest's cassock, enough that they heard him cry out in the darkness. Then the wind abruptly reversed itself, rushing out from the house and slamming the door shut behind itself. Later, some of those in the room would swear they heard a man laughing in the midst of the retreating gale, and that the laughter was that of old Darcy himself.

The electric lights pulsed once and returned. The peat fire crackled contentedly as the gathering blinked and looked around. “That woman . . .” they heard Margaret say. “I swear that she . . .” and they all looked to where the woman had been.

But she had gone as suddenly as she'd come.

This time, it was the priest himself who made the sign of the cross.