The Absinthe Earl

by Sharon Lynn Fisher

  Gasping, I grabbed for it, and the wailing of the banshees filled my ears. The warning keen—I knew it by now. The moment I snatched up the weapon, Balor’s talons closed around my other arm, and time itself seemed to stutter and slow.

  Agony seared a path from shoulder to fingertips, and I screamed. Balor had yanked me from the ground by my arm, and something in my shoulder had given way. The pain was nauseating, nearly blinding.

  He thrust me up so I dangled between him and Diarmuid, and a cruel laugh bubbled up out of his throat as, with his other hand, he reached to lift the membranous covering from his eye.

  I felt faint from the wrenching pain in my shoulder, but my right hand still gripped the spear, and I focused on the feel of this sturdy weapon in my hand.

  Weapon of thorn and iron. It will serve you well. It wasn’t the spear I had lost, but it was the same in every other respect. I squeezed the shaft with my palm and fingers. I raised it, feeling its heft.

  As the first beams of red-hot light stabbed outward from beneath the eye’s covering, I took aim and thrust the spear with all my strength.

  It had only a few feet to travel, and the iron tip cut through the eye like a hot knife through butter. As putrid steam hissed from the wound, time spun free once again, and Balor gave a roar of agony. Silver fluid fountained from beneath the eyelid. The talons at last released me, and I fell again to the ship’s deck, tears of relief and pain hot on my cheeks.

  The great hand swept out blindly, and I rolled aside. But the knuckles caught Billy, hurling him across the deck to crash against the rail. He crumpled and fell to the boards, and there he remained.

  I heard feet pounding the deck beneath me and looked up to find Fomorians swarming over it, forming a protective circle around their king—all but the four who were running toward me, fangs bared and gazes rabid.

  The next thing I knew, I’d been gripped at the waist, but these hands were warm and familiar. Friendly. He lifted me, placing me before him on the back of the crow and reaching his arms around to grip her glossy black neck feathers. I let myself sink against his chest as the pain knifed through me, hot and searing like a blacksmith’s forge.

  FOR IRELAND

  Ada

  I awoke to the loud blast of a horn and looked around me. I was lying on a hard surface.

  “You are safe.” The voice was Edward’s. He bent over me, intently focused, the black clouds dramatically framing his dark features—and those vivid blue eyes. It stopped my breath.

  “Your arm was pulled from its socket,” he said. A fresh wave of nausea washed over me, and I closed my eyes. “I believe I have successfully reset the joint. You should feel some relief.”

  He touched my face, gently pushing back a strand of hair, and I opened my eyes. “I must go,” he said, “but may God strike me down should I ever underestimate you again.”

  He stood then and moved away.

  “Edward!” I cried, sitting up.

  The sudden movement triggered a dull, hard ache in my shoulder, and I sank back with a groan. But the sharper pain, thank goodness, was gone. I used the uninjured arm to support myself as I rose to my feet and discovered I was alone on what appeared to be the roof of a tower, facing the battlefield and the southern slope of Ben Bulben.

  Hugging my injured arm to my chest, I glanced about me and tried to get my bearings. The field below me was a seething mass of bodies. I made out Fomorians, the green-uniformed fighting men and women of Ireland, and many species of fairies. The Danaan were distinguishable by their ancient dress and leather helms and shields—as well as by the wild abandon in their faces—and the Fomorians by their gruesome forms. Many were like the gaunt, fiery-eyed creatures aboard the enemy galleon. But there were also gray demons with wrinkled elephantine flesh that reminded me of gargoyles, fearsome giants with the torsos of men and the heads of boars or wolves, and cloaked spearmen whose faces I could never quite glimpse. There were also beings very like the woodland fairies—larger and with painted faces—who fought viciously against the Irish allies.

  The clash of weaponry—spears, swords, bayonets, daggers, axes, and clubs—blended discordantly with shouts of pain, grunts of colliding bodies, and fierce battle cries. Volleys of arrows fell like rain, some thunking against shields, some piercing flesh, others whizzing off crazily, apparently repulsed by spells.

  As my mind struggled to order the chaos, something drew my attention skyward. Not birds, but half a dozen huge stones, were soaring in an arc above the battle. Though I was out of range, I ducked instinctively as they slammed down on the east end of the field, ground mostly held by Isolde’s men. A loud cheer went up on the opposite end of the field, and I saw Death Rattler suspended above the western tip of Ben Bulben, her Fomorian crew swarming over a catapult.

  I understood why Edward had wanted to protect me from these horrors, though I could not countenance the choice he had made.

  Where is Diarmuid? asked my ancestress.

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  The din around me was not as loud as it should have been. I did not hear rifle fire, which was troubling. I assumed that these weapons had been defeated entirely. But I also detected no sign of the deadly eye of Balor. Had I killed him? I lifted my gaze again to Death Rattler and located the Fomorian king’s dark form, standing on the foredeck. He seemed to be directing his army using horn blasts that differed in pitch, tone, and length.

  I scanned the battlefield again for Edward, and as my eyes began to make sense of this constantly shifting tapestry, I saw banshees moving through the violence and carnage. They were the only shapes without solid lines and forms. Indeed, sometimes they passed directly through the bodies of the soldiers in their midst. The men, otherwise engaged, seemed to take no notice of this, but it was an eerie sight.

  They can help us! said Cliona.

  The women appeared to be on a course for the castle—seeking me out, as they always did. Yet they did not travel in a group as they had before. Instead, they moved individually and slowly, stopping at times to keen over the fallen. Their keening was diluted by the sounds of battle, but I noticed that whenever they uttered these heartbreaking cries, the warriors in the immediate vicinity—no matter which army—sank to their knees with expressions of despair until the keen had ended. I continued to watch them and so made another discovery. The women in gray, who uttered a different sort of cry, had a very different effect on the fighters. The fallen they cried over were not dead, and when the keen had ended, these men rose and rejoined the battle. Unlike the death mourners, these gray ladies seemed to have no effect on the Fomorian soldiers, nor did they minister to them.

  They were healers, I realized. This was good news indeed.

  A few of the women had now reached the hilltop, and I called to them to make haste.

  “I need healing,” I said to the first gray lady to reach me on the tower—a crone perhaps fifty years my senior.

  She reached out and touched my shoulder, then tipped back her head and keened. I closed my eyes, listening to the clear, pure voice, and a warm pulsing sensation moved up and down the length of my arm. The heat in my shoulder grew quite intense, and I began to tremble. But before it became intolerable, both the keen and the heat began to fade.

  Flexing my fingers, I raised my arm gingerly toward the sky, but the pain was gone, replaced by a pleasant tingling. And my heart, too, had been lifted, filled with a sense of hope.

  “Thank you,” I said to the old woman. Studying her more closely, I recognized her from the night I was carried across Achill Island.

  The night I was carried. How had I forgotten?

  “Call the others,” I said to her.

  I saw now that with a little guidance in deploying their efforts, the banshees could perhaps play a very real part in this battle.

  Edward

  As soon as the Morrigan set us down atop the tower
of Drumcliff Castle, I whistled for the water horse, Aughisky, and she came galloping across from Sligo Bay. By the time I took leave of Ada, the mare was waiting for me on the lawn below, and I mounted and galloped into battle.

  Isolde had embodied her warrior ancestress, Maeve, in all her glory, and a golden chariot had come through the fairy gate for her at the commencement of the battle. While I was occupied with Ada, the queen and Finvara had used the chariot to relocate to the lower slopes of Ben Bulben. Now I, too, must cross to that higher vantage point—a grassy bulb near the eastern end of the mountain.

  I could have crossed the battlefield on the friendly side of the line, as they had, but I found myself riding a wave of Diarmuid’s eagerness to join this fight with his ancient enemies. Moreover, the threat to Ada had fired my blood—the white-hot rage that flooded my chest when Balor broke her body had yet to recede.

  Once Aughisky charged through the battle lines, I was amid the enemy, and as I swung Great Fury in wide arcs to my right and left, the sword showed me how it had come by its name. For it could smite three goblins or cleave the head from a giant in a single stroke. My ancestor and I had found our stride. I felt his power coursing through me, and I made use of it. My body possessed the strength, but the memory of the movements required for this form of combat came from his centuries-old consciousness. Dark and ancient magic was at work in our collaboration. Yet it felt natural, and it felt fated. Only one other time had I felt so alive.

  I hazarded a glance back toward the castle, hoping to reassure myself that she was safe. But from this distance, I could not see her. I had glimpsed her women moving across the field of battle, and I knew they would find her. Diarmuid seemed to believe that they would protect her even more fiercely than would the men I had stationed on the grounds below the castle. It would have to be enough.

  Have we not come to the end of your doubting her, after all?

  Ignoring this just chastisement, I raised Great Fury again and took out my anger at myself on the leather helm of a boar-faced giant that had stumbled on the slick and casualty-littered ground. The blade easily sliced through and down into the pig skull, and the sound he made was indeed like that of a wild beast.

  I cut my bloody way across the field, and Aughisky attacked the steeply climbing slope on the other side. Soon I had rejoined the others.

  “Is she whole?” Finvara demanded.

  “No thanks to you,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure whether Diarmuid or I hated him more. “Perhaps your powers are weakening.”

  “Desist, idiots!” barked the queen. “Or I shall order you both executed for dereliction.”

  She directed our attention to the battlefield. “I should have anticipated the inefficacy of our firearms,” she fumed. “We have not had to contend further with the eye, at least.”

  “With thanks to Ada Quicksilver,” I said, still awed by what she’d had the presence of mind to do despite being terrified and badly injured.

  “Indeed,” replied the queen. “But they outnumber us, and my men are not seasoned in this kind of combat. My ships …” She gazed across the few miles to Sligo Bay, biting her lip in frustration. “I assume their cannons are disabled, and without cannons they are useless.”

  The moment the seal was broken, dozens of enemy ships had landed on the strand, unmolested by the queen’s fleet of French-made midcentury ironclads stationed in the waters just beyond. These enemy ships were not Gap galleons, but Norse-style vessels with oarsmen. Fomorian warriors streamed in a continuous line from strand to battlefield, where they joined a host of dark fairies who had slipped through the gate behind the Danaan while Balor was raining down terror and destruction on the main body of Isolde’s troops.

  “They don’t need cannon to sink those smaller ships,” replied Finvara, sounding more like Duncan than he had since Brú na Bóinne. “Nor steam, either, unless they’ve forgotten how to use their sails.”

  “They do need wind,” I observed, glancing at a small hawthorn tree growing on the slope above us. Its foliage was gone with the season, but every twig on every branch was as still as the grave.

  A tense silence ensued, but finally Finvara said, “I might be able do something about that.”

  The queen turned to look at him. “What are you waiting for?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not Dana or the Morrigan. I can’t hope to do it from here.”

  Isolde muttered an oath. “Then we must get you there.” She glanced at me. “What about the Morrigan? Perhaps she would carry him as she carried you.”

  “We dare not trust her,” I told her. “Our interests run counter.”

  She frowned. “Is not war her purview?”

  “Precisely, and she will prolong it if she can.”

  While she and Finvara continued discussing our options, a light snow began to fall. Turning my attention once again to the castle, I saw something strange approaching in the sky from the southeast.

  Ada

  As the banshee host gathered around me, lifting me from the castle’s tower, I began to search for Edward. Cliona had advised me to look for the black horse, which he always rode into battle. I found them scrambling up a steep hillside near the eastern end of the long, narrow mountain that enclosed the battle along the northern edge of the plain.

  “There!” I cried. Edward made it to the top and drew up his mount next to two other figures atop the hill.

  The banshees bore me forward on their shoulders, far above the flying arrows and near the battlefield’s eastern boundary, out of range of the catapult.

  I could feel the moment Edward saw us approaching. Though I could not yet make out his expression, I didn’t need to see him to know that he would be less than pleased to find me outside the relative safety of the castle.

  The three figures on the hill followed our progress as we approached, and to my surprise, the banshees placed me directly into the arms of Edward, who waited below us on his great black horse. This was not precisely what I had asked them to do, but they knew the earl, the Danaan warrior, and the horse, and perhaps they could not be blamed for taking this initiative.

  Or perhaps they did what you wanted instead of what you asked.

  I let this observation from my ancestress pass.

  “Acushla,” Edward murmured, settling me before him on Aughisky’s back.

  The Irish term of endearment translated to “pulse of my heart.” I could feel the electric presence of Diarmuid, and the low timbre of the earl’s voice raised a shiver in my body.

  “My dear,” said the queen, “that was quite a useful parlor trick. Perhaps your women might likewise spirit Finvara across to my fleet so that he may endeavor to run down these enemy ships.”

  This they would not do; I knew it without asking. The request would only confuse them. Their interaction with the living was limited to death warnings and healing. As Cliona’s descendant, I was an exception. They considered me one of them.

  I explained this to the queen, but I also told her, “I will send for Enbarr. She will carry Finvara if I accompany him.”

  The earl stiffened behind me, but he had sense enough not to protest. I certainly felt no eagerness at the prospect of joining forces a second time with the faithless fairy king, but ending this battle with as little bloodshed as possible trumped all lesser considerations.

  “Make haste, then,” replied the queen.

  I twisted on my perch in preparation to slip down. I had forgotten the considerable distance to the ground, but Edward caught me around the middle as I pushed off, helping to ease me down.

  “Your shoulder?” he asked.

  As my eyes met his, the tenderness and regret in his expression squeezed my heart. But I gave a brisk nod. “I am well, my lord. The gray ladies are healers. They have been restoring our wounded in the field. It could give us an advantage.”

  “More good news,” pron
ounced the queen.

  Two of the banshees had remained close while the others dispersed to the edges of the rounded hilltop. I called to them and relayed my orders. One left us immediately, in search of a gull to carry a message to Manannán, the sea god, while the other led the gray ladies down to the battlefield. I had ordered that the death mourners remain behind. They were a distraction, and there would be plenty of time after the battle for keening over the dead.

  “Now what shall we do to make ourselves useful, cousin?” the queen asked Edward.

  “I shall ride down among my men,” he replied, and it was my turn to feel a stab of dread. “Great Fury should not remain on the sidelines.”

  “Nor the most accomplished warrior of the Danaan,” said the queen. “Leave your bird so I may send for you if I have need.”

  Looking up at the sky, Edward whistled, and soon I saw the slight figure of the kestrel moving across the heavy backdrop of cloud. She floated down to us and landed lightly on the queen’s shoulder.

  Then the earl’s eyes came to rest on me.

  “Take care, my lord,” I said through the tightness in my throat.

  He held my gaze a moment longer, and the tender, regretful expression returned. “And you, my love.”

  Finally, he urged Aughisky forward, and they plunged down the hillside, my unspoken pledge trailing after them.

  My heart goes with you.

  STILL A MAN

  Ada

  The gray ladies returned to their work healing the fallen, and my eyes followed the dark figure of Diarmuid as he joined the battle, swinging Great Fury about him with preternatural speed, leaving a wide swath of destruction in his wake. Spear after spear they hurled at him—as well as lances, pikes, and arrows—but the sword’s motion created a protective bubble around him that no weapon could penetrate.

  Yet he was still a man. Would he not tire?

  God and Dana protect him, whispered my ancestress.