A Spark is Struck in Cruachan

by Bill Stackhouse

  Hazelday - Wolf 45th

  Cairbrigh Shire

  As the water became more shallow near the ford, Pádraig raised his head above the surface just enough so that he could gulp down some much needed air and reconnoiter his surroundings. The herd of horses milled around the ford and on both sides of the stream.

  It was as he had hoped.

  Rather than fleeing on foot and thrashing around blindly in the unfamiliar woods while being chased by mounted troops, Pádraig’s plan had been to divert attention away from the ford by snagging Liam’s cloak on a tree downstream, making his captors assume that he had escaped at that spot. While everyone’s attention was focused there, he had intended to swim to the ford and mingle with the horses as they were driven across the stream, cutting one out from the herd once they were through the tree line and making his escape on horseback into the darkness of the night.

  Although he still had no idea where the compound was, the young farrier figured he’d get away first, then determine his whereabouts later.

  Using his hands on the bottom of the stream bed to propel himself along as he reached the ford, he checked out the horses as best he could in the moonlight in order to select one with no obvious defects.

  In amongst the herd, now, he stood up in a crouch, dripping wet and shivering in the cold night air.

  Why aren’t they moving? he wondered, making his way through the animals toward the edge of the stream on the forest-side of the compound in order to better see what was happening. What’s the hold-up?

  Peering around the side of one of the horses, he saw the animals near the tree line shy out of the way as two of the riders fought to control them. Only then, in the light of the two moons, did the hold-up reveal itself.

  Pádraig fought the urge to retch at what he saw.

  In addition to re-establishing the concealment spell which prevented those outside the compound from seeing or hearing anything inside but allowing those inside to observe what was happening outside, the power-wielder with the kidnappers, when alerted to the young farrier’s possible escape, had imposed a containment spell as well. This containment spell blocked physical passage—from both directions. It was as if a giant invisible dome had been placed over the entire compound. And it had formed just as the herd of horses was being driven across the ford and through the tree line.

  There, just before the tree line, two front halves of two of the corral horses lay outside the barrier. Their rear halves lay on the inside, sliced cleanly through by the invisible wall. In like manner lay one of the riders and his mount, both cut in two, their blood mixing with that of the two corral horses and running down the bank and into the stream.

  Pádraig had to amend his previous assessment of the skill level needed to cast the concealment spell, thinking, I don’t know if an apprentice wizard would be able to cast a containment spell. The person behind this has to be a journeyman wizard, at least.

  It was that ‘at least’ part of his thought that worried Pádraig the most. While there were many graduates of the Academy for the Spiritually Gifted who functioned as journeyman wizards, the fourth level of wizardry—in fact, each of the shire chieftains had at least one—there were only a handful of wizards with a higher rank—the members of the Sodality of Master Wizards.

  “Move ’em back! Move ’em back!” the boss-man shouted, riding up to the front of the herd. “Move ’em all back to the corral! Now!”

  He was accompanied by the Northman, also on horseback.

  Porky and Slim ran up, shouting and waving their tan cloaks in front of the horses in an attempt to turn them around.

  “You this way, and you that way!” the boss-man continued, pointing at the two riders and gesturing them in opposite directions. “Start patrolling the perimeter. The prince has escaped. Find him!”

  The two men guided their horses as they had been ordered, looking intently from the barrier back into the compound.

  As the animals around him started to turn and move toward the corral, Pádraig slid back down into the water, avoiding the sharp hooves, and silently propelled himself upstream, completely submerging as soon as he was able and swimming underwater against the current until he came to the small pond beyond the corral.

  By now the frigid water was beginning to take its toll. The young farrier’s extremities started to lose feeling. Quietly gliding through the water, he made his way across the pond to a patch of tall grasses growing up from the bottom near the opposite shore. There he secreted himself, watching and waiting for an opportunity to make his getaway. And all the while his body became colder and colder.

  Pádraig moved his arms and legs, slowly so as not to splash, but fast enough, he hoped, to keep his blood circulating. His movements were jerky, lacking coordination, and he shivered all over due to the intense iciness.

  He knew that he had to find warmth somewhere soon, but he couldn’t leave his hiding place. His captors and the dogs searched diligently for him.

  What, at first, had been a disorganized hunt now became more structured. The men had formed a line, each person about a dozen feet away from the next, with the wolfhounds crisscrossing the area in front of them. Within ten minutes they would reach the pond, and Pádraig had no doubt that they would encircle it and start beating the grasses that grew near the shore.

  Breaking off one of the reeds, he paddled farther away from the shoreline with it, staying completely submerged by hanging on to a large rock he found on the bottom, and extending the reed’s hollow stalk above the water’s surface, using it to breathe.

  Think warm thoughts, he told himself. Concentrate on warm thoughts.

  The warm thoughts the young farrier managed to conjure up were of Máiréad in his arms on New Year’s Eve up on the ramparts of Fortress Tulach, her lips and body pressed up against his.

  Having recalled earlier in the day how her use of magic, tossing energy bolts at his backside, had drawn the attention of Siobhán the phooka, the image of Máiréad gradually morphed into a vision of the dark maiden as she, too, embraced him and kissed him, even more sensually than had Máiréad.

  Although both mental pictures warmed his mind, they did precious little to alleviate the chill that seeped even deeper into his body.

  After about a half hour, the shivering tapered off; however, exhaustion had now set in and his heart rate began to drop. Pádraig became progressively more drowsy. He didn’t know where his captors were or if they still searched for him. And somehow he had ceased to care. All he could think about was sleep.

  His eyes slowly closed and his grip on the rock slipped off. Floating to the surface, he let go of the reed and simply let his body drift, face up, his breathing shallow.

  As he lost consciousness Pádraig’s only thoughts were alternating hallucinations of Máiréad and Siobhán.

  Hazelday - Wolf 45th

  Tulach Shire

  The little brown stoat had taken time out from its nightly foraging for unsuspecting shrews or voles on this winter night, venturing down to the edge of a pond to slake its thirst. Not wanting to take its chances near the waterfall, it stretched out its long neck at the shoreline to lap at the cool liquid.

  Four laps into its drink, the water in the center of the pond started to churn. Fearful at what might be the cause, the little stoat sought refuge behind a large boulder up a ways from the bank, peeking around from behind to satisfy its curiosity.

  From the center of the bubbling fount, a tall, sleek maiden with ebony skin, wearing a black, mid-thigh, skin-tight gown rose up and strode purposefully toward the bank, her yellowish-brown eyes filled with rage. Above her pointed ears, long, jet-black tresses, crowned with a circlet of woven, dark-green water-grass, spewed a cascade of water behind her that sparkled like a shower of diamonds in the light of the two moons.

  The little brown stoat pulled its head back behind the boulder and tried to be as inconspicuous as it could possibly be.

  Three feet from the edge of her phooka-pool, Siobhán wriggl
ed and shape-shifted into a magnificent black mare.

  Rearing up on her hind legs, she whinnied, pawing the air with her front hooves, then took off like a ferocious bolt of black lightning in the direction of Cairbrigh Shire.

  Hold on, my young farrier, she sent out a mental plea. It may take me awhile, but be assured that I will be there. Just hold on. She continued her thought with a mental warning. And if anyone has done him harm, there is not a corner of this island where they will be able to escape my wrath.

  Peering around the side of the boulder and finding the horse gone and the pond back to a glassy stillness, the little stoat warily crawled back down to finish its drink.

  Hazelday - Wolf 45th

  Árainn Shire

  Ráth Árainn

  In her room at Fort Árainn, the Lady Máiréad awoke, chilled to the depths of her being. Shivering, she pulled her covers more tightly around her, but they were of little aid in her battle against the cold. The blaze in her fireplace had long ago burned itself down to flickering embers. Through her window, the light from the two moons told her that it was sometime late into the first watch.

  Debating on whether or not to call for her lady’s maid, she decided that the quicker solution would be to take matters into her own hands. Hastily, she threw back her covers, hopped out of bed onto the cold stone floor, bolted for the fireplace, grabbed three split logs from the stack of firewood, and pitched them onto the bed of coals. As she sprinted back to her bed, trembling uncontrollably, Máiréad grabbed both her blue and green ruanas from the pegs where they had been hung. Once again beneath the covers with the ruanas on top, she watched with teeth-chattering patience as the logs ignited.

  However, even as the room warmed around her, Máiréad’s inner coldness remained unabated.

  Unable to get warm enough to go back to sleep, she lie there thinking of Pádraig and of the past few days searching for him.

  I know you’re out there somewhere, my anam cara, she thought, tears filling her eyes. But I just haven’t been able to sense you. I’ve tried, Paddy. Honestly I have.

  The tears now spilled unchecked down her alabaster cheeks.

  Tomorrow, they would leave for the Citadel of Cruachan. Máiréad had argued with her parents that night, begging them to let her stay at Fort Árainn so that she could continue searching with Shire Reeve Cian.

  An absolute ‘No!’ had been the answer from her mother, Kyna, and reinforced by Eógan.

  “We’re returning to Dúnfort Cruachan,” her father had told her. “My place is at the side of my cousin in his hour of grief. There are search parties scouring every shire. If the lads are alive, they’ll be found.”

  Máiréad’s crying increased as she remembered those words:

  “If the lads are alive…”

  I know they’re alive, she thought. At least I know Paddy is. There’s a connection between us. If something really, really bad had happened to him, I would feel it. I just know I would.

  Shivering, despite the covers and the fire, Máiréad lie there in her bed, sobbing, and wondering, Why can’t I sense him? Why is it that all I can feel is this ghastly cold?

  Hazelday - Wolf 45th

  Cairbrigh Shire

  Something jarred him.

  With great difficulty, Pádraig opened his eyes for a fraction of a second, then the heavy lids slid closed almost immediately.

  Let me sleep, his mind argued. For the love of An Fearglas, just go away and let me sleep. Before even considering the ritual act of submission, he slipped back into unconsciousness.

  Again he was jerked, as two small hands gripped him under the armpits and pulled his body from the icy water. And again, the young farrier opened his eyes for a brief moment, only to have them involuntarily shut once more.

  An exhausted brain tried to process the swirling images that the eyes had registered in that fleeting amount of time.

  Snow falling, he thought. Heavy snow. Large, puffy flakes. So cold. So very cold. And a tree?…Am I caught in a tree?

  He felt himself being dragged—dragged across the ground—before losing consciousness yet again.

  * * *

  “Must get you warm,” she murmured softly, in a high, lilting, almost musical voice. “Must warm your pink body or you will surely die.”

  Looking down at Pádraig, where the wood-nymph had laid him in a soft bed of leaves covered by a pilfered horse blanket, Yseult stretched out her mottled brown-and-green arms and gently removed his soaking-wet clothing.

  “Must hurry. Get these off of you first, then warm you.”

  In her cavern beneath the forest floor, lit by a phosphorescence emanating from the walls, Yseult peeled off the young farrier’s clothes, ringing out each item, then smoothing it and hanging it on the roots of an old hawthorn that poked down from above.

  With hair that resembled thin twigs covering her pointed brown ears, wearing only a vine wrapped around her that barely concealed her private parts, Yseult lay on top of Pádraig and stretched her scarcely four-foot-tall, bark-colored body over the lad.

  Humming to him, as she often did to the roots of her beloved trees, the wood-nymph began to transfer her own body-warmth to Pádraig, shivering slightly as her heat was replaced by his cold.

  After a few moments, she opened her eyes wide in surprise as she sensed something in her patient.

  “There is a power in you, my pinkie,” she whispered. “A great power that I feel even now when you are so close to death. But I also sense that it is a power for good. So sleep, pinkie. Sleep and be warm and regain your strength, for good is needed in this world.”

  * * *

  Yseult had been high up in the hawthorn, singing softly to her trees in the moonlight, comforting them in the cold night air. Observing the men and the horses in the corral beyond the pond, she had felt the concealment spell dissipate and had not only seen the riders enter the compound and cross the ford, but she had also observed Pádraig escape from his prison.

  From her perch, she had been able to watch his entire plan unfold, smiling at his resourcefulness in attaching his cloak to the branch in the tree line, then doubling back and diving into the stream. As the horses were herded from the corral across the ford, she nodded with admiration as she had recognized what he intended to do. She had also gasped when, in addition to the concealment spell being reinstituted, a containment spell had been initiated along with it.

  No! she had empathized with the young farrier. Not fair! He has earned his freedom.

  But then her Hidden-Folk logic argued, The problems of the pinkies are not the concern of the Daoine Dofheicthe.

  However, her compassion answered back, adamantly. But his problem is not being caused by a mere man. He is being subjected to magic. It’s not fair.

  Compassion winning out, the little wood-nymph had kept Pádraig—as well as his captors and the wolfhounds—under constant surveillance, biding her time, waiting until the search had been called off for the night and the clouds had moved in, blocking out the moonlight. As the snow had begun to fall, she had crept down to the ground and had pulled him from the pond.

  * * *

  “By morning the snow will have completely covered our tracks,” Yseult told Pádraig, quietly, rubbing his arms and legs to help restore the circulation. “Here you are safe from them. They won’t be able to find you. Not even with the nasty dogs. Here we are safe from them.”

  Ashday - Wolf 46th

  Central Federal Region

  Dúnfort Cruachan

  As the first rays of sunlight appeared over the Sea of the Dawn, an outer-gate sentry at the gatehouse of the Citadel of Cruachan shook himself alert and nudged his fellow member of the Cruachanian Defense Forces with the butt end of his halberd, nodding westward.

  Both guards stepped forward ready to intercept a rapidly approaching horseman, clad in a tan hooded-cloak.

  Liam reined in the buckskin-colored gelding about a rod in front of the sentries, patting the horse’s black mane, and whisper
ing to him, “We’re here, Bucky. There’s a warm stall and a bucket of oats waiting for you just beyond this gatehouse.”

  Having neglected to ask Neave the horse’s name before leaving Tadhg’s forge, ‘Bucky’ seemed appropriate to the prince. And, after traveling a few weeks with Pádraig, he did not relish being chastised by his friend for neglecting to call the animal by name.

  “Halt and identify yourself and your business!” the first sentry demanded.

  “My business is with the High King and Field Marshal Gearóid,” Liam replied, tiredly, nudging Bucky forward a few more yards.

  “So much for the second question I asked you, stranger,” the sentry said, not giving any ground and transferring his weapon to a thrust position. “Perhaps you’ll be kind enough to also answer the first.”

  Brushing the hood back off his head, Liam responded, “It’s good to know that the High King is so well protected, halberdsman.”

  Despite his grubby appearance, both soldiers instantly recognized him and snapped to attention.

  “Your Highness!” they both spoke in unison.

  The second sentry took his hand off the pommel of his sword and said, “We heard that you had been kidnapped. Thanks be to An Fearglas that you’re safe.”

  Both guards, as well as Liam, touched their foreheads, chests, and mouths with the first two fingers of their right hands, mentally reciting: May His tenets be always in my mind, in my heart, and on my lips.

  When they had completed the ritual act of submission, the second guard continued, “I’m sorry, My Prince, we didn’t recognize you at first.”

  “No need to be sorry. You did your jobs well. What are your names?”

  “Our…our n…names, Your Highness?” the first sentry asked, slightly bewildered.