The Fair in Emain Macha by Charles de Lint

Author:Charles de Lint
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2022-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

Near midnight, as Fergus’s Gailana were carrying Colum into the Stronghold of the Hostages in Emain Macha, Myrddin arrived at the dun of the Muireagain sidhe some leagues distant from the High King’s Seat. He came in the robes of an Erse druid, with a holly staff in hand, but to the hidden gazes that watched him, it was the ancient strength and wisdom of an oak, hung with mistletoe, that gleamed in his eyes.

In front of the green knowe that housed the tulman of the sidhe, Myrddin tapped the staff on the packed earth at his feet. He called out a summoning word, then waited. The moon was full and rearing high in the sky, shedding its brightness of its borrowed light across the hills.

And the sidhe were near.

He could feel the weight of their many gazes on him, watching him from all sides. He could smell the apple scent that followed them where they walked. He heard the sly rustlings and soft paddings of their light-stepping feet. They moved liquid as water. When they finally stepped out into the moonlight, it was as though shadows flowed from the deeper darkness where they had been hidden.

Myrddin stood, as silent as the moonlight, and regarded the gathered host. A good twenty of them surrounded him; there were more still hidden in the shadows.

They were the younger cousins of the Tuatha de Dannan and the Aelden of Artor’s Isle. They reminded Myrddin of the Picta in northern Alban, for like the Picta, the sidhe were hill dwellers, too—slender and brownskinned, with cloaks of fur and flint knives stuck in their belts, armbands and torcs of gold glittering bright. Bone arrows, feathered and flint-tipped, were notched in the gut strings of their yew bows.

“So,” said one after silence had stretched between them long enough for the moon to have moved from the tip of one branch to the tip of another. “You’ve come.”

“You know me?” Myrddin asked.

The sidhe stepped closer. His eyes were a dark unreadable glimmer that burned and flickered like wind-caught leaves, wheeling and spinning. They were eyes a mortal could lose himself in. Myrddin matched him gaze for gaze, letting the little man drink deeply from the druid blue of his own gaze.

“Myrddin,” the sidhe said. “The Fox-without-a-home. We know you.”

“And do you know why I’ve come?”

The small head bobbed. “For the bairn. You’ve come for our fosterling, haven’t you, Old One?”

“His father sends me,” Myrddin replied.

Bowstrings slackened in the moonlight. The sidhe spokesman nodded wisely.

“So. Has the time come so soon? Has the long wait ended? Will Morrigan’s ravens feed at last upon the not-King’s body?”

Myrddin nodded. “Men will die. Many. But more not born of Aerin, than her own sons.”

“And the not-King? Will he die?”

“He especially.”

“And you?” the sidhe asked. “You of the Grey Isles, the Pendragon’s druid. What is it that brings the Fox a-running to our door? The bairn alone?”

“Peace,” Myrddin replied in a soft voice. “I seek peace.”

The sidhe eyed him strangely. He seemed about to speak, then paused.

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