The Absinthe Earl

by Sharon Lynn Fisher

  “You’re saying the Gap gates were created intentionally, inside fairy doors, to make it easier to circumvent the seal?” The Morrigan’s role in all this was complicated indeed.

  Diarmuid frowned. “They were.”

  “Do you use them to travel to Ireland?”

  “Immortals inhabiting living descendants require neither fairy doors nor Gap gates.”

  Edward was his fairy door, and I was Cliona’s. “You mean we might have traveled to Faery without passing through a Gap gate?”

  He nodded. “But not to pass from Achill Island to Brú na Bóinne,” he admitted. “We may pass easily between worlds, but only the navigator devices can fold the distance between locations within those worlds. Without one, we must employ more traditional means for cross-country travel.”

  “Ah. Captain O’Malley uses such a device.”

  “And Billy Millstone.” Diarmuid shot a disdainful glance at the prostrate redcap. “But if you’re thinking to catch up with the other servants of Balor, we shall be too late.”

  My heart sank. “We know now what they plot. Is that not an advantage? What is your counsel?”

  “My counsel is as it has ever been: prepare to fight.”

  Of course. He was a warrior. “But what of those who will die in the famine, my lord? Farmers and their children. Their aged ones. They will be most affected.”

  Diarmuid lowered his sword but kept his heel planted on the chest of his foe. With some impatience in his tone, he replied, “They shall be avenged.”

  “If it could be prevented, you would do nothing?”

  His eyes glittered. “You must know, there is only one mortal I care for. It was for her—for the child that she pined for, and for her descendants—that I worked the magic to exile my own people. I will fight for her. You are of her line, and I will fight for you. All else is distraction.”

  I cast all Faery out of Ireland for the love of her, he had told me at Kildamhnait. At the time, it had seemed yet another riddle, but I had learned much since then.

  Now I understood that his creation of the seal had not been out of regard for the people of Ireland, or over hatred of his old enemies, the Fomorians. This rendered his motives, at least to some degree, disconnected from our own, which meant that we could not entirely trust him.

  I took a step toward him, holding his gaze though I trembled. “You need the earl. Without him, you can never reach her. Without me, you can never reach her. And the earl and I are for Ireland.”

  He cocked a dark brow, eyes lit with fierce amusement. “You would threaten a warrior of the Danaan?”

  I willed myself not to flinch. “If I must.”

  He dropped the sword, and it clattered to the deck. I gave a startled cry as he grabbed for me, pulling me against him and locking me in his arms. His lips came down on mine.

  My body erupted in fire.

  The fire of making. It consumes us. Yet for us, it burns without issue. We forge nothing but passion between us. But across the centuries we have found each other, my love. And our mortal bodies can do things our immortal ones could never dream of …

  Edward

  Then let us burn.

  Four passions raged in two bodies, and I feared it would tear us to pieces. Yet I knew it would be the most exquisite pain I had ever known.

  No.

  With a growl of desperation, I gripped her shoulders to pry us apart. What I had intended to be gentle separation resulted in more of a shove, and she stumbled. Cursing my clumsy control of my own body, I reached out to steady her, but my attention was diverted by Billy’s lunge toward his fallen spear. Recalling the preternatural strength with which he wielded that weapon, I snatched Great Fury from the deck and struck him across the back with the flat of the blade. With the redcap once again immobilized, I looked at her.

  “Forgive me,” I panted, hoping it would suffice for both the ardor and the violence.

  She shook her head, dismissing the apology as she struggled to recover her own breath. “What now?”

  I studied the cringing Billy Millstone, considering. Each of my ancestor’s visits left behind a kind of memory residue. I knew things about his life that I hadn’t before, though the picture was far from complete.

  “Brú na Bóinne,” I replied. “I trust your instinct that there are answers there. I believe we may even be able to consult my foster father—Diarmuid’s foster father—Angus.”

  She stared at me, and I knew she was curious about the merging of my ancestor’s and my intellects, yet also wary of it.

  “Perhaps we shall not find this Faery version of Brú na Bóinne deserted, like the ruin we visited at Newgrange,” she said.

  “It is by no means deserted.” I thought for a moment about how to explain something that I barely understood myself. “Ireland is the domain of mortals, but Faery is inhabited by what is left of the Danaan, and the gentlefolk—the fairies. In Faery, Brú na Bóinne is the domain of Angus and Caer.”

  Ada’s expression was composed, but very keen and active. “You’ve learned much from your ancestor. This will help us.”

  “Perhaps so,” I replied. “I hope that is true.”

  “Do you know how to reach Faery?”

  I frowned, reluctant to answer this, of all questions. But I needed her counsel. “If I give myself over to Diarmuid completely—and you to Cliona—we shall be boundaryless. In fact, Diarmuid has been able to use my slumbering form to cross between Faery and Ireland already.”

  “Your nightwalking.”

  I nodded. “Understand, Ada, my ancestor wants this surrender more than anything.”

  She considered, and I waited, counting heartbeats, as if she held my fate in her hands. And indeed, she did—the fate of us both. I strongly suspected that if we relinquished control of our physical forms, we might not ever recover it. There would be rich rewards for such a choice—I could feel the promise of those rewards every time Diarmuid’s gaze branded her—but it might be the last choice we would freely make.

  “No,” she replied, and I let out my breath. “Their motives for wanting this may well be very different from our own. We have a navigator who can take us there.”

  Following the turn of her gaze to the redcap, I saw his eyes move between us as if we were two wolves fighting over a lamb.

  Grateful for her steadiness of mind, and even more for her vote in favor of our autonomy, I ordered, “Take us to Brú na Bóinne, little man.”

  “Wait, Edward,” said Ada. She used the ill-fated Roup’s spear to push the diseased tubers back into the sack, as if afraid even to touch them. Then she moved behind Billy, pointing the iron spike at the back of his knobby neck. Glancing up, she nodded at me.

  I lowered my sword and bent to lift the moldy sack. Then I heaved it over the rail. Like Roup, it floated rather than plummeting, and we watched it sail away from us into the void.

  With these small but formidable weapons disposed of, we marched Billy into the wheelhouse. Inside, we found one of the fog-filled globes that the ship’s navigator on the Queen of Connacht had used. What appeared to be a tin cutout of the tugboat floated in the mists of the Gap.

  Billy moved to the globe and began operating the gears with his long, knobby fingers.

  “We want to go to Faery,” said Ada. “To Brú na Bóinne, the domain of Angus. Is that clear?”

  “Ach, aye,” replied the redcap in a voice thick with sarcasm. I whacked the back of his head with Great Fury. He flinched and yelped, grizzled hairs smoking, but continued with his manipulation of the device.

  Once the navigation had been set, the helm began to spin seemingly of its own accord, and the tugboat drew away from the tunnel.

  I didn’t like trusting this rough fellow who had applied himself so enthusiastically to murdering us—along with the whole population of Ireland, albeit less directly. But our c
hoices were dismally limited. He, at least, could be controlled by fear, and for the moment, he appeared to fear Diarmuid more than he feared his master.

  I eyed our surroundings by the light of the wheelhouse’s greasy lanterns, imagining what Captain O’Malley might have to say about the state of this vessel. As an officer of the Irish navy, it fairly made my skin crawl. Bones of birds and other small animals littered the deck and had accumulated in piles in dark corners. Empty ale and wine jugs lined the walls, a few of them tipped over and rolling gently back and forth with the motion of the tug. Gazing out the wheelhouse window, I discovered that what I had taken to be a battered and frayed standard was actually a portion of blackened human skeleton that had been hung from the flagpole. The bones rattled gently together with the movement of the tug.

  The engine room resided in an open well behind the wheelhouse. Rather than the rattle of steam pistons, there was a grimy gearworks that produced rhythmic mechanical clicks. The decks and hull were in a sorry state of repair, verdigris-coated and containing gaping holes that would sink a seagoing vessel. For all that I could understand by studying its workings, the operation of the tugboat might as well have been magical in nature.

  I glanced at Ada, wondering what her inquisitive mind made of all this, and found her watching me.

  “What is on your mind, my love?” I hadn’t meant the presumptuous endearment to pass from my thoughts to my lips—I had slipped into a habit of shielding her from the Danaan warrior’s ardor, but sometimes I was not quick enough. This time, it had rolled so naturally off my tongue, I realized that marking any kind of solid boundary between Diarmuid’s and my intellects would become more and more challenging.

  It is the boundary you so unnaturally draw between yourself and the lady which is doomed to fail was the helpful suggestion of my ancestor, who would have my body for his own if he could.

  She broke from my gaze and appeared to study our captain’s back. “I was thinking of what you said. You implied a risk of losing ourselves. Do you believe that might happen?”

  Frowning, I replied, “If we give in to their wishes, I think it very well might. But what is your opinion?”

  “I think you have grounds for that fear,” she agreed. “They are clearly devoted to each other, holding on to their bond for centuries. And we know they are powerful.”

  “I cannot help wondering whether they are why we found each other,” I said, unsure that I really wanted to know.

  “It would be hard to dispute that we have been touched by fate,” she admitted.

  My thoughts had run in a similar vein even from the earliest moments of our acquaintance. “And what of our own will?” Her eyes returned to me, and I continued, “Our own choices, I mean. Do they exist anymore?”

  She smiled. “For now.”

  She was right. She had encountered no difficulty in rejecting my request to bind us under the law. Yet I was uneasy. “I worry about the price we will pay for their aid.”

  Ada

  The earl spoke of a personal price, I knew.

  “As do I,” I admitted, “and yet I am grateful for their aid. Perhaps we should feel encouraged by Queen Isolde, who seems to have embraced her otherworldly connections and yet remains her own sovereign.”

  Edward frowned. “An advantage, perhaps, of being half mad. What worries me most …” He drifted off, leaving me hanging on a partially voiced sentiment that my instincts told me was important.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  His eyes met mine. “I had begun to know you. You had begun to know me. I fear now that we will be consumed by their passion. And, Ada, don’t mistake me—I yearn for that. Its siren song is almost irresistible.” His gaze took in all of me, and under the sudden heat of his regard, my thoughts drifted back to our night together. “But if that happens,” the earl continued, “will we lose the opportunity to write the story of us, whatever that may be? Will we not be a mere footnote to their epic?”

  I was astonished by his eloquence. Misgivings very like these had been taking shape in my own mind, but I would have failed utterly to voice them. And I could not overlook the tender sentiment underlying his words. The story of us.

  Longing to feel his arms around me, I said, “These are questions we share, and I fear it will be some time before we know the answers. For now, I think all we can do is allow ourselves to be led by our better natures and hope that fate will be kind to us.”

  Edward smiled, replying softly, “Hear, hear.”

  HOUSE OF IMMORTALS

  Ada

  The tugboat had just nosed into a bank of warm fog when the stillness was suddenly broken by cracking noises along the deck, as if the little vessel were under strain.

  “What’s happening?” the earl demanded of Billy Millstone.

  The redcap grumbled in annoyance as he fiddled with the navigation device. The fog inside the globe shifted from gray to green. “We’re nigh on the River Boyne, or is that not what ye were after?”

  The tugboat drew up beneath another stairway inside a tunnel. Glancing to the top of the hewn stone steps, I saw the same watery sunlight filtering down. It might be the same gate, for all I could tell.

  “Can you not take us there more directly?” I asked, recalling that our brief journey on the Queen of Connacht had not involved Gap gates. “We recently traveled by Gap galleon without any need for climbing or descending wet staircases.”

  Billy gave a frustrated squawk. “And did the madwoman carry ye to Faery?”

  By “madwoman,” I assumed he was referring to Captain O’Malley. “No, only cross-country.”

  “Well, then,” he replied, raising his eyebrows and shaking his head in impatience. “Ye can get out here or not. It’s all the same to Billy.”

  I glanced at the earl, who nodded.

  “What are we to do we do with him?” I asked.

  Edward let out a sigh. “I suppose he’d better come with us. We don’t want him carrying his story to his master.”

  “Damn thee for a—”

  “Desist, redcap,” Edward hissed, raising the tip of Great Fury, “if you want to keep your head.”

  He sent Billy up the ladder first, and I followed. The wretched, foul-smelling creature kept up a steady stream of muttered recriminations, which Edward and I ignored.

  I had kept Roup’s spear, feeling more secure with some method of defending myself—especially as I now believed that it had been Cliona’s voice that recommended it to me. I was intensely curious about my ancestress, and more trusting of her counsel than the earl was of his ancestor’s. Perhaps because she herself had been mortal once. She also had yet to overpower my intellect—as Diarmuid certainly had done many times with Edward—and for that I was grateful.

  What has happened to the banshees? I inquired experimentally, keeping an eye on Billy Millstone as he stepped from the top rung of the ladder onto the first stair. Edward’s boots continued tapping against the rungs below me.

  I had not dared hope for a reply, but it came as a whisper in my mind: They are spectral and easily pass between worlds. There was a sense of effort behind the words, as if it had cost the speaker something to make them heard. They will find you again in their own time.

  I understood her to mean that like Diarmuid and Cliona, the banshees did not require Gap gates in order to move between worlds.

  As I joined Billy at the top of the stairs, I saw the calculation in his eyes—on this uneven footing, a sudden charge would easily have overpowered me, even with the spear in my hands. But Edward and Great Fury were only a few steps behind, and I could see the redcap soon abandon his scheming.

  I stared into the liquid sky. As the water drifted overhead, Edward and even Billy watched me with expectation. Tentatively I reached up, dipping a finger into the current. Cold water pulled gently at my skin, and I slowly submerged my whole hand. Beside me, Edward held his b
reath.

  The river’s flow ebbed and stilled to become like the waters of a lake. Then, with the roar of a breaking wave, the water parted and peeled back from the opening. Ignoring the twist of panic in my stomach, I hurried up the last few stairs and stepped onto a riverbed slimy with drooping water weeds. As I glanced back to make sure the others were following, my instincts screamed at me to escape, and I shook, thinking of the potential energy curling directly over my head.

  We hurried across rocks and mud and the occasional flopping trout, to the bank. I lost first one, then both slippers. Not knowing how long it would be before the river returned to its course, I didn’t pause to retrieve them. They were ruined in any case and did very little to protect my feet from the hazards of the riverbed.

  We climbed onto the grassy bank, and I watched with wide eyes as the parted waves rolled and crashed into one another. Witnessing this explosive event from aboveground was even more shocking. I thought about Cliona and how terrifying it must have been—snatched from the coracle and carried to her death by the violence of the ocean, all the while worrying over the fate of her child.

  Suddenly, a sense of the horror of that moment washed over me, and I stumbled to my knees with a fearful cry.

  The water was icy, the shadows deepening as she sank. Willfulness is a sin. The weight of her garments carried her beyond hope, and she had never learned to swim. God punishes the selfish. But the child was innocent! Where was she? Washed overboard like her mother? Drifting alone out to sea? Manannán save her!

  “Ada!”

  Edward knelt beside me, alarmed.

  “I am well,” I assured him, yet I struggled to catch my breath, and tears stung my cheeks. The sadness was heavy, like the young mother’s soaked gown. The soul-rending shame was unbearable, and I choked back a sob.

  “Ada, what is happening?” demanded the earl.

  Gripping his hand for support, I rose slowly to my feet. “I am well,” I repeated, my voice stronger this time. “A difficult memory, that is all.”