The Shadows (37 page)

“I saw Lucy sobbing. I suppose you’ve sent Derry away?”

Patrick stopped abruptly. He dragged his hand through his hair. “Yes. And his name’s not Derry. Well, it is, but that’s just a nickname. His real name is Diarmid Ua Duibhne.”

Diarmid. Diarmid and Grainne. “Don’ run off with him, Grace. . . . Promise me.”

Finn’s Warriors had all taken Fianna names. Of course Derry had taken Diarmid.
Of course.
“Like the legend?” I asked Patrick.

“Exactly like the legend.”

“He said his name was O’Shea. Derry O’Shea.”

“He lied.” Patrick was watching me so intently I squirmed.

He was looking for something, but I didn’t know what. I wanted to tell him the name meant nothing, that it was all pretend, that they all had these names. But I couldn’t think of how to do so without telling him how I knew it. “Well, it’s a legend, Patrick. I hope you don’t think I mean to run off with Derry because we have the same names as in the story.”

“It’s not just the same name. He’s the same person.”

Everyone around me seemed to be going mad. It was this blasted thunder. “The same person. I see. Oh, Patrick, how old is that story? Two thousand years?”

“At least that.” He knelt beside my chair. His hand covered mine in my lap. “This is what I was trying to tell you the other day. I know it sounds unbelievable—or . . . mad, I suppose. I told you about the old magic, remember? That some of these relics still hold it.”

“I remember.”

“We’ve found incantations. Old spells written in ogham. Some of them, it turns out, still work.”

I laughed in disbelief—and despair. “Magic? Are you joking?”

“Not at all.” He rose again. “I have something to show you.”

He went to his desk, unlocking a drawer with a key he wore on his watch chain. He took out a wooden box. It was plain, with no design carved upon it, nothing to mark it at all. Again he knelt beside my chair. He flipped the metal latch on the box and opened it.

Inside, lying on a pad of deep-blue velvet, was my horn.

“My horn! Wherever did you get it?”

“So this
is
yours? You’re certain?”

I nodded. “Well, it
was
mine. My grandmother gave it to me for my fourteenth birthday. And then Aidan lost it in a bet. How do you have it?”

“A man came to me with it a few months ago. He thought I would be interested in buying it, and I was. I didn’t realize it had belonged to you.”

I reached out, tracing my finger along the silver, feeling the same little shiver I always felt when I touched it, as if something in it recognized me. “Oh. Look—it’s still bloody from when I cut myself on the silver.” I held out my finger for him to see. “That was weeks ago. It’s long healed.”

“No,” he whispered.

“It’s all right, Patrick. If anyone but me has to have it, I’m glad it’s you.”

“Grace, do you know what this is?”

“A hunting horn. My grandmother said it had been in our family for generations.”

“Two thousand years at least.”

“Is it that old?”

“It’s the
dord fiann
.”

The
dord fiann.
Finn MacCool’s hunting horn, spelled to recall him and the Fianna from endless sleep to serve Ireland in her time of need. The story was very like that of King Arthur, sleeping forever in Avalon until Britain called him awake again—but my grandmother had told me that Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table were only the tales of Finn and his Irish Fianna, stolen and recrafted by the British.
“And that’s not all they stole,”
she’d said.

“Really? I suppose you used it to call up the Fianna?” It was a joke, but then I saw how serious Patrick looked. “What? Are you telling me you’ve
tried
? Patrick, it’s only a legend.”

“No. It’s true. It’s all true.”

He
was
mad.
Not Patrick. Dear God, not him.
I rose. “Patrick, there must be a doctor you can see. Someone . . . should I tell your mother? What should I do?”

He caught my arm. “Sit down, Grace.”

“You’re talking nonsense.”

“I want you to listen to me.”

His voice was so calm, and when I looked into his face I saw—just Patrick. No madness, not the way I saw it in my grandmother’s eyes. Or even in Aidan’s yesterday. But I couldn’t believe this. I
didn’t
believe it.

Patrick rushed on. “The Brotherhood called the Fianna to help us with the rebellion in Ireland. We had the incantation and the horn. But no one came. I thought it didn’t work. I
thought the magic was dead. But it did work, Grace. It worked! The horn brought the Fianna here, and you told me all about them.”

“I told you? How could I have told you?” But I knew what he meant.

“Finn’s Warriors
are
the Fianna. Led by Finn MacCool. Ossian is here. Diarmid Ua Duibhne and Oscar, Ossian’s son. Goll and Conan and Keenan. Does any of this sound familiar to you? And not because of any legend, but because you’ve seen them yourself?”

Finn, imprisoning me on the barrel. Asking me about a rowan wand and a horn. Oscar walking with Rose on the Battery. Keenan and Goll laughing with me in a tenement room. Conan with his bald head and dirty fleece. Diarmid Ua Duibhne. Derry. Glowing.
All glowing
.

“You see,” Patrick said.

“No. No. It’s impossible. They’re just a gang—” A gang who fought with efficiency and precision, as if they’d trained for it their entire lives. They’d dispatched twice as many Black Hands in almost no time at all. They’d moved in concert. The ruthlessly deliberate plunge of a knife . . .

“It’s possible. It’s real. We called them. They’re here!”

I was caught in a dream. A nightmare. Where Derry carried a spear and the Morrigan howled, and . . . and I had known all this already. I had known all of it, in some place deep inside me. Finn’s Warriors. The Fianna.

Diarmid Ua Duibhne. The way he’d touched me and I’d felt as if I knew him. A kiss that burned like lightning.
Dreams where I ran my fingers down his bare chest. Diarmid and Grainne.

“No.” I grabbed Patrick’s arm, knocking the box and the horn to the floor. “No, not him.”

“There’s something else,” Patrick said. “I need to tell you all of it.”

“I don’t want to hear any more.”

“You have to,” he said. “It concerns you, Grace. You have to hear it.”

“How could it possibly concern me? I didn’t know what the horn was.”

“Do you remember the story of Finn’s death? How he’s to be called back? The prophecy?”

“I . . . yes, I suppose.” My grandmother’s voice came to me as she told the story like a song: lilting, rhythmic.

“Tell me what you know of it.”

I forced myself to think. “The Fianna had grown arrogant. They were demanding tributes and taking whatever they wanted. Fighting for whoever paid them most. The High King grew angry and warred against them. When Finn died, the Druids put a
geis
on them. If they were called back, a priestess had to decide if their fight was worthy. If it was not, they would fail and die. But if it was, she could give them the power to win and live again.” I looked up at Patrick expectantly. “Is that right?”

“Yes. That’s right. They can’t win without the
veleda.
”

“The
veleda.
” I laughed a little. “You realize how silly this sounds, don’t you?”

“Our fight is a worthy one, don’t you agree? Saving Ireland?”

Weariness swept me. How could I believe any of this? “Yes. So
. . .
Derry—Diarmid—asked me about a rowan wand. I suppose you need it to find this
veleda
.”

“No, Grace. We’ve already found her. She’s you. You’re the
veleda.
”

“What?”

He gestured to the horn. “The horn was yours. It was only because you’d blooded it that we could call them. The
veleda
sees; she weighs; she chooses. You’ve already seen all this, Grace. You know you have. Your nightmares—”

“Only nightmares,” I said uncertainly.

“More than that. The ogham stick burned you.”

“It was in the sun.”

“No.” Now Patrick sounded strangely sad. “Their Druid did a divination. You’re the
veleda
. There’s no doubt.”

Their Druid. Cannel. Derry taking me to the tenement. Lies and evasions. His questions, and Finn’s.
“Touch her.”
The terrible glowing and the pain and . . . I sank back. “That can’t be.”

But it was, and I knew it. It explained everything.
Everything.

“You’re the one who must decide.”

“What is there to decide? What am I to say? Your fight is worthy, carry on?”

His sadness and misery were so palpable I couldn’t look away. “There’s more to it than that. The
veleda
must give up her power to the side she chooses. There’s a ritual. I don’t know
what it is yet, and I hope to find another way. I know there must be. We’ll find it, I promise.”

“Another way? Why should there be? Whatever power I have—” And here I laughed, because obviously the
veleda
’s power had faded over the years. “My only power is the ability to have terrible nightmares. I hereby give it up. It’s yours. Take it!”

“Grace, the
veleda
has to die.”

The words were so stark I couldn’t understand them.

“There must be a sacrifice,” he said.

I leaped from the chair. “Patrick, this is all insane. Don’t you see it? I’m no
veleda.
I can’t even . . . I don’t have any power over my own life, and now you’re saying I have to die?”

He caught me, holding me close; I struggled against him. I was no one, just an ordinary girl who liked to read poetry and tried to take care of her family. I was no
veleda
, and this was all just another terrible dream. I pinched myself, willing myself to wake up—
Wake up, wake up—
but I was still there, still being held in Patrick’s arms while he whispered, “Don’t worry; I won’t let you die. Do you think I want this? I love you, Grace. I love you. I won’t let you die.”

“Then you could end this now, couldn’t you? Take it all back. Send them off. You’ll find another way to save Ireland. You and the Brotherhood—”

“I would if I could. I didn’t know, Grace. I didn’t know. And now . . . now it’s all been made worse.”

“How could it be worse?”

His arms dropped. He stepped away. “We didn’t know the Fianna had come. We thought the call had failed. And we
were desperate. We had something else. One more thing to try. We had the ogham stick.”

Darkness and thunder, blood and fire. The eye of one who slays. As one is bid, so come the rest. The rowan wand and virtue gone. A blood price paid. Now come the Children of Domnu.

The Children of Domnu.

Balor of the one venomous eye, who destroyed all he looked upon. Bres, the half Fomori king who’d enslaved the Irish and ravaged the land. Miogach, the son of Lochlann, who’d killed Finn’s son. Lot with the bloated lips in her breasts and four eyes in her back.

And now I knew it was all real. Everything he said. It was
real
.

“You called the Fomori?” I whispered.

“We’ve made a bargain with them. Their help for a share of the power. They’ve agreed. They’re coming to help us.”

“They’re coming.”
Grandma’s words.

“Patrick, no!”

“I never would have done it if I’d known the Fianna were here! How was I to know they’d been brought to some tenement? The heroes of Ireland? Why should they have awakened there? What was the reason?”

“But—”

“The Fomori were our only hope, Grace.” His eyes were beseeching. “They’ll be here today. And they’ll find a way, another spell. Something so you don’t have to die.”

“And the Fianna? Have they agreed to help you too?”

Patrick glanced away. “They won’t ally with the Fomori.
Now the fight is between us and the Fianna. We have to defeat them before we can help Ireland. And if we don’t—if we can’t, how will we save Ireland then?”

“So I have to choose between you? Patrick, do you know what you’ve done?”

“What if I told you the Fomori aren’t as the legends say? The Fianna had reason to paint the Fomori as evil. It made them look stronger. But I’ve met Daire Donn. He’s a good man who loves Ireland. And the Fianna have forgotten none of their arrogance. They’ve
forced
this. They could fight with us, but they won’t. You’ve
met
him.
Diarmid
.” He spoke the name like a curse. “Do you think him so noble?”

How easily he’d killed that Black Hand. And how frightened the gang boys in the street had been of him.

“He used the lovespot on Lucy. Deliberately. So he could get close to me.”

The lovespot. I’d forgotten that.
The lovespot.

And suddenly I knew why I’d dreamed of touching him, why I’d been so hungry for his kiss. He’d used the lovespot on
me.
It explained why I couldn’t get him out of my head when I wanted Patrick there instead. Derry had bespelled me.

I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or furious.

“He’s the one who discovered you are the
veleda
, Grace. And he’s the one who means to kill you.”

“Kill me . . .?”

“He has to. Another
geis
was laid—he’s the one who must take your life at the sacrifice on Samhain. He means to seduce you into choosing them, and then once you do, he’ll kill you.”

“N-no. No, that can’t be true.” But it made sense. All of it.

“It is true. I promise it. He was here. He told me everything. Everything he’s said to you, everything he’s done—it’s all been in service to the prophecy.”

It was all a trick. A lie.

“I want to save you. But he doesn’t. He’ll kill you because he has to, Grace, but before that, he’ll do what he must to convince you to choose the Fianna.”

It was all a plan to kill me.

“I’ve told him to stay away from you,” Patrick said. “But there’s too much at stake. I don’t trust him. So I want you to stay here, where I can protect you.”

“I can’t stay here. What will people say? And my mother . . . my grandmother . . .”

“Marry me,” Patrick said.