The Fair in Emain Macha, page 24
RED RAGE, RED MIST
The battle-mist overcame Colum now. His knee lifted to drive into Donnan’s crotch. As the man bent over in pain, Colum stmck him a savage blow across the back of the neck with a closed fist. Donnan dropped like a felled ox and lay still.
But Colum wasn’t done with him yet. Still cursing, he grabbed a fistful of red hair and raised Donnan’s head, meaning to pound it into the ground.
Suddenly, it was Fergus he saw lying under him. This was no contest of champions. It was a blood-feud between the Aid-righ and himself—which could only end with the spilling of blood.
“Stop.”
The word lashed Colum, piercing the red-mists that bound his mind. He lifted his head and saw a tall manshape from whose brow twelve-tined antlers sprung. The eyes that fixed their gaze on Colum were ageless, deep and knowing. Silently they spoke to him.
Would you break Fair-truce, Colum, Donal’s son, and so be outlawed in truth?
The mist cleared from Colum’s gaze—quickly and sudden, like the long grass of Kerry’s plains parting before a storm wind.
This book is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in it are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
THE FAIR IN EMAIN MACHA
Copyright © 1990 by Charles de Lint
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
An earlier version of The Fair in Emain Macha originally appeared in Space & Time #68, edited by Gorden Linzner; copyright © 1985 by Charles de Lint.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Robin Williamson for permission to use a portion of “Five Denials on Merlin’s Grave” from the book of the same title published by Pig’s Whisker Music Press; copyright © 1979 by Robin Williamson. For further information on Robin Williamson’s work, write to: Pig’s Whisker Music Press, at P.O. Box 27522, Los Angeles, CA 90027; or at BCM 4797, London WC IN 3XX, England.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
49 West 24th Street
New York, N.Y. 10010
Cover art by Mel Grant
ISBN: 0-812-50821-1 Can. ISBN: 0-812-50820-3
First Tor edition: March 1990
Printed in the United States of America
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents:-
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I came to the held of fantasy and science fiction through the back door, as it were—from an interest in folktales, myths and traditional music. Like many of us enthused with fantasy at the time, I read the classic writers: Tolkien, naturally enough, but also Morris, Dunsany, Cabell, Eddison, Peake and the like. And then somewhere along the line I ran headlong into the works of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber.
I decided I wanted to write when I was about fifteen and used to fill notebooks with poetry. My first attempts at writing fiction were painful pastiches of Morris and Dunsany that I never submitted to publishers. Happily, I put the fiction aside and devoted my time to playing music and gaining some life experience (both of which I still try to do), thereby saving numerous editors the onerous task of trying to wade through all that naive scribbling.
Fiction writing again reared its head in the late seventies as I expanded upon and gave fuel to the pen and ink work of an artist friend of mine, John Charette. This time around, the stories were pastiches of Howard, Moorcock, Leiber. They were equally as painful as the earlier ones, but at least they had a sense of story and characterization about them and eventually I went on to try and find my own voice.
The story of Colum was the first in which I began to utilize the material that had drawn me into this field in the first place. It’s set in an Ireland that never was, but much of its background and, certainly, its mythic resonances are woven from that same cloth of folklore, myth and song that brought me here so long ago.
For that reason—principally, although there are others—this story retains a warm spot in my heart.
No creative person works in a vacuum; those who say they do are only kidding themselves. The source material can’t often be easily traced back—by the creator of the work as much as by those who partake of it—but we all know, or should know, that we have debts to pay. There are many writers whom I’ve admired, for many different reasons. When I have the chance, I like to thank them for the pleasures and inspiration they’ve given me. That’s easy to do when they are contemporaries; far more difficult when it comes to someone like de la Motte Fouque, for example, or Dickens.
Fritz Leiber is an author whose career has spanned decades. I’ve had the opportunity to speak to him once, only briefly, but I’ve had years to enjoy and appreciate his work. Sharing this double with him is a wonderful opportunity for me to thank him again—this time in public.
If you’d like to know why I consider him to be such an important writer, go pick yourself up a copy of Conjure Wife, The Wanderer, the more recent The Ghost Light, or any other of his many wonderful books, and see what I mean.
Or just turn this Tor Double over and lose yourself in Lankhmar where you’ll find the prime lesson that Leiber taught us with his Fafhrd and Mouser series, which is, that heroic fantasy can be adventurous and entertaining, yet still explore the universal truths that the best practitioners of any creative endeavor are trying to illuminate with their work.
In the meantime, I offer to Fritz Leiber The Fair in Emain Macha as but a tiny portion of the thanks that I feel I owe him for those many wonderful hours of reading he’s given me.
—Charles de Lint
Ottawa; Summer 1989
This is the noble truth of the arising of sorrow. It arises from craving, which leads to rebirth…
—from The Pali Canon; sacred scriptures of the Theraveda
Buddhists (c. 500-c. 250 b.c.)
Above and below all weir the Green Man makes his play.…
—Robin Williamson, from “Five Denials on Merlin’s Grave”
ONE
Twilight fingered the sky with grey threads of cloud as the horseman stepped his mount from the wood. He skirted a jumble of rock, avoiding the trail that led down into the marshes, and made his way to the chalk cliff that lay ahead. From that vantage point he could look out over the Erse Sea, that body of water separating Aerin from the main body of the Grey Isles. His own kin called it Nial’s Arm.
A frown twitched on his brow.
Kin. Best not to remember; impossible to forget.
He had no kin now.
Seven years ago, his father had led him into a King-breaking—a justified rebellion that ended in failure, death its only reward. The horseman had been the sole survivor of that final battle. He was the last of his clan; an outlawed wolf of Aerin, alone on a foreign shore. And soon to be outlawed here as well.
The horseman sighed. He dismounted wearily, swinging his right leg across his mount’s forequarters and dropping lightly to the ground. The grass, blades bowed low by the sea winds, was springy underfoot. He stood in the quiet for a moment, listening, grey eyes watching his back trail with a wary gaze until he was satisfied that he hadn’t been followed. Only then did he drop the reins and continue on foot to the lip of the cliff. Left to its own devices, his mount nibbled contentedly at the salted grass.
Aerin, the man thought, looking westward. Do you remember me still?
Seven years was a long time.
He stood tall and straight-backed, one hand plucking at his mustache, the other loosely resting on his swordhilt. The links of his mail tunic caught the last rays of the sunset and made a glitter of its captured light; his hair was as red as the sun itself as it now sank seaward. His gaze fixed on the misted distance, hoarding thoughts behind his eyes.
He yearned for justice as a blind man yearns for sight. Yearned for justice, and for a welcoming smile from his own Meave whom he had been forced to leave behind.
His frown deepened at the thought of her, for he could not think of Meave without recalling her sire as well: Fergus mac Coemgen, Ard-righ of Aerin; the unbroken King who’d had the horseman’s father slain and set his King’s Curse on the horseman himself. In the years since his exile, word had come from Aerin: How his father’s rath was less than a memory, how the clan’s fields were salted and barren now, how their cattle fattened the Ard-righ’s herds, their great black bull—his father’s pride—servicing the Ard-righ’s weaker stock.
Men, women, and children had all been slain. In the duns of his people, in the raths of the Kings, not even the harpers kept alive the memory of his clan. Only he remained, Colum mac Donal, truly his father’s son, for the father’s hatred for the unbroken King still lay unchecked and simmering in the son’s heart. But retribution remained beyond his grasp. He was an exile, a chieftain of Artor Foes-slayer, with three companies of horse under his banner, his own keep, more land and gold at hand than his own father had ever known, but he was no closer to vengeance now than when he’d first left Aerin, a lad of seventeen summers and green as the woods in spring.
Staring westward, watching the sun set behind the green isle that had once been his home, he knew he had to dare Artor’s anger and return. He had no choice. For all the honor he had earn
ed under Artor’s Bear banner, he was still an outlaw, still wore a King’s Curse in the land his heart named home.
Who was the Bear to forbid his going?
During his seven years of exile he had faithfully served the Bear as Artor’s banner was carried across the Grey Isles. Cymrn lay under its protection now, and Midst-land. Kernow, Endland and Thumbria to the very borders of Alban. They named Ar-tor the Pendragon in the duns and raths of his liegemen. Chief of chiefs, King of Kings. What Norseman did not fear the sound of his horse companies come a-riding? What brigand stole through the Great Wood and did not keep a wary watch for the Pendragon’s men? The chiefs of every tribe except those in the Highlands bowed their knee to him.
They had won peace, Artor and his horse companies. What need was there for an Aerin wolf when the battles were all done? To which did he owe his fealty now—liege or homeland?
Colum knew which call was stronger.
He remembered an evening two nights past when he and Artor had been out to take the night air, standing together on the high battlements of Caeme Tor. The conversation had turned to Aerin and Colum had spoken of returning, but the Bear shook his head in response.
“No,” he said.
His voice was quiet, but it cracked with an edge that would brook no argument. The Bear was used to commanding, and expected his commands to be obeyed. It could e no other way. But that night Aerin stirred strongly in Donal’s son and a queer streak of feyness made him argue.
“The Norse have stopped their vikings for a full season,” he said. “The tribes are quiet—even the Picta. The whole summer long I’ve been at nothing but drilling and training recruits.”
Artor nodded in agreement, but said nothing. He looked away, across the green slopes below Caeme Tor that lay cloaked in darkness.
“Why do you deny me?” Colum asked. “I ask for leave—a season at the most. Not to be forsworn.”
Artor turned to him again.
“We’re not all fools here, Colum,” he said finally. “Use the good common sense that Ullr gave you and think of what you are saying. You’d go to an isle where every man’s hand is against you…to accomplish what? Revenge? All you’ll gain in Aerin is your death.
“But—”
“Give me one more year to see that the peace we worked so hard to win here holds and then I’ll sail with you myself.”
Colum shook his head. The darkness hid the bitterness in his eyes, if not that in his voice.
“You said that last year, and the year before, and still we train troops in Caeme Tor and I’m no closer to home than I ever was. If you’d go, go now. Let me scout ahead of you. There are still those loyal to Coinneach mac Conan. Think of it, man. You’d be a liberator.”
“And I say it’s still too soon,” Artor replied. “If I left now the tribes would be yammering at one another’s throats within a fortnight. We’d return liberators of Aerin with the task to begin all over again at home.”
“But—”
“Ullr take you! Are you deaf? I’ve said no.
They faced each other, veins throbbing in their temples, fists clenched .at their sides, each willing the other to back down. Colum found himself considering the sword sheathed at his belt and was half minded to draw it and damn the consequences, when he realized what it was that he was contemplating. He dropped his gaze from the Bear’s, reason prevailing, the anger untempered.
“Follow your own head,” Artor said softly, “and you’ll be outlawed here as well as in your homeland, mac Donal. I’ll hound you from shore to shore and never give you a moment’s pause.”
Colum looked up as the Bear stalked away from him. He bit back further argument. Under his anger, sorrow ran like a wide river, for he knew what he must do; knew as well that neither Artor nor the threat of a second King’s Curse would stop him now.
He had to forget that they had been friends, the Pendragon and he.
After this day, they could only be enemies.
On that western cliff top, Colum shook his head, remembering. Caeme Tor was behind him now and the King’s Curse was on his head—or would be, as soon as he set foot to ship’s deck. Before the word went out, he must be gone from these shores. He would miss the Bear and his other comrades, but they would have to make do with one another for their company from now on. Tam O’Linn and Garn of the Fens. An-celin with whom Artor had at last settled the difference as to whose wife Gwenore was to be. The druid Myrddin.
He would miss them, but Aerin’s call had the stronger pull now. It was as though his homeland had lain a geas upon him, a geas to return he could no longer set aside.
He returned to his horse, mounted and rode down the narrow twisting trail that led, on one side, into the fens, on the other, to Clynnog-fawr sprawled along the coast below. There would be traders docked there, a passage across Nial’s Arm that he could buy. He unrolled his cloak from behind his saddle as the night’s chill deepened. It was a plain cloak, woven from wools dyed a muted green and blue. His scarlet cloak—that which marked him as one of the Pendragon’s captains—lay rolled around his commander’s tore in his keep near Caeme Tor.
He no longer had a need for either.
TWO
He sailed on the morning tide, the gulls haggling like fishwives overhead, the salt spray in his hair. Cymrn fell away behind him, but he looked only westward, waiting for his first glimpse of Aerin and her green shores.
He wondered vaguely at what course the Bear’s anger would take. Would he sail to Aerin to reclaim his errant captain? The notion pulled a grim smile from Colum’s lips. What dark humor that would be, if his desertion was what it took to influence Artor to cross Nial’s Arm.
But mostly he let the past seven years slip away, just as the shores of the Grey Isles slipped away behind the wake of the ship, and turned his mind to what lay ahead.
Was vengeance so important?
He remembered his father’s face, features twisted in a death mask as he lay on the battlefield, and knew that, if nothing else, retribution was necessary for his father’s sacrifice not to have been in vain. The harpers should be singing the great deeds of the Fiolan clan. When their songs told that Donal’s son had set Coinneach mac Conan on his rightful throne, that a Fiolan had returned the High King’s Seat to Te-muir where it belonged, then the bitter taste of his clan’s defeat would finally be washed away. They would be remembered with honor once more and their ghosts would finally know peace.
But what of Meave? Would she still be waiting?
Colum shook his head. There it was not such an easy thing to guess how it might end. He had sent no word—how could he? But seven years was a long time for silence. That he had taken no other woman to his bed during that time…how was she to know? But if she would still have him… there were the far western lands, across Atlanta, where his sister Aine had gone before the trouble began; to them, to Aerin Nua, he’d take Meave if she was willing. But first…
He sighed.
First there was the small matter of who should sit in the High King’s throne.
“Your thoughts seem heavy, for one who’s returning home.”
Colum turned at the voice. There was a man at the rail beside him, his features hidden in the hood of his brown cloak. Colum wondered at the man’s silent approach, then gave a mental shrug. He’d been so lost in thought that a longship of Valkings could have come alongside the ship and he wouldn’t have noticed them.
“Home,” he said softly, looking west again.
He must have the look about him of a man returning. The way his gaze strained ahead into the distance. The sense of anticipation that hung over him like a bright cloak that could not possibly be missed.
“It’s a long time since I’ve seen Aerin’s shores,” he added.
