The Last Days of Magic (23 page)

“And what of the English? Do you believe that they were also involved in Kellach’s escape?”

“I don’t know. But I fear no outside force. I fear only what Ireland may do to itself,” said Liam.

“I fear that Ireland may tear herself apart without the Morrígna to bind her,” said Tadg.

“Aisling will do all she can,” snapped Liam automatically, weary of this argument. He disdained the implication that Ireland was now vulnerable with only one aspect of the Morrígna on earth, which prevented the full manifestation of the Goddess’s power. A growing number of nobles openly suggested that Aisling should return—voluntarily or not—to the spirit realm and allow the Morrígna to be reborn whole.

“Don’t get me wrong, you know I love Aisling like a daughter
and will protect her with my life. I was just pointing out that we must prepare for war without the Goddess’s power,” said Tadg.

“Aisling has power she hasn’t yet discovered,” said Liam. “She’ll be enough to ensure that Ireland is protected.”

At that moment they rounded a curve in the road and the hostel came into view. Outside stood Brigid in a circle of her priestesses, offering prayers to the setting sun. Liam and Tadg sat up straighter on their horses and urged them into a trot.

“There’s one thing I’m looking forward to, and that’s fighting alongside you, my friend,” said Tadg.

“If you’re going to try to keep up with me, you’d better bring extra arrows,” Liam said with a laugh. “Lots of them.”

Brigid joined them when they reached the hostel. “I wasn’t expecting you until the dark of tomorrow morning,” she said.

Liam dismounted and gave her a firm embrace. “Tonight’s not a good time to have my best horse in the royal stables. Besides, I’d be a fool to pass up an evening of your hospitality.”

Brigid smiled and placed a hand on Liam’s chest. “I’ve several novice priestesses who will extend their hospitality to you and Tadg.”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Liam, “but it’s most welcome.”

A novice priestess in the Order of Mancha cannot become a full priestess, and thus chaste with men and women, until Brigid determines that she has sufficient knowledge of both. As he looked over at the circle of priestesses, Liam was reminded that no lover had ever rivaled his experiences with Brigid when she was a novice and gaining much of her knowledge of men from him.

A rook fluttered toward them. At first Liam thought it must be injured, but as it flew closer, he saw the last traces of twilight through it. The rook gave a faint cry, then vaporized.

“Aisling!” shouted Liam. He swung onto his horse and galloped off, with Tadg following close behind.

Brigid rushed through the enchantment to transform into her
swan form. It did not work; something powerful was countering it. She ran for the stables.

A
T
T
ARA
the main gate of the royal enclosure was being pushed closed for the night when it paused to let Lord Maolan ride out. He could not recall when he had felt quite this happy.
A God must be smiling on me from the Otherworld,
he reasoned as he rode through the town toward the woods. He was not sure which God, only that it must be one who was jealous of the Morrígna.
I will make an offering when I return,
he silently vowed,
in gratitude for everything coming together better than I could have imagined, with the old high king voted out and Art not yet crowned.

Maolan thought of the smug way Art had looked at him when he won the election and smiled to himself.
Well, Art, enjoy your night, because there will be no coronation tomorrow, only my knife at your throat. And once I make myself high king, I will do away with the election altogether.

12

Christians and their Jewish forefathers are much addicted to the sorcery taught them by Moses.

—
The True Word,
by Celsus (circa CE 177)

Conwy Castle, Wales

The Same Day

O
n the north coast of Wales, the ship that Jordan used to rescue Kellach lay at anchor in the mouth of the river Conwy. Stone walls of a fortified port town, punctuated with guard towers, stretched toward the foothills of the nearby Snowdonia Mountains. Perched on a rocky outcrop, compact and formidable, Conwy Castle brooded over the river and the town it protected. Stone stairs wound up from a small dock at the end of the outcrop and through a sea gate into the castle garden, brimming with hundred-year-old oaks, where Kellach waited to meet with English and Fomorian delegations.

Upper chambers of the castle towers that faced the garden had full-size windows rather than the arrow slits used elsewhere. In one of those chambers, on the third level, Jordan sat cross-legged on the wooden floor, across from him sat Najia, and between them the stubs of seven wax candles burned. He had slipped on a pair of trousers for the ceremony but remained barefoot and bare-chested. Najia wore a modest frock of white linen, which highlighted her dark skin.

Najia’s siblings had been shipped off to Jordan’s ancestral home in Sicily. He had drawn up papers changing their status from slaves to
bound servants, a designation that meant they could not be beaten with impunity by anyone along the way.

Jordan and Najia focused on the light radiating from the candles between them. As they concentrated, the light gathered into a floating sphere that hung suspended, an orb of glowing gold. Areas of blue began to materialize on the surface; then an island of green and brown started to push through the azure. Cracks stretched across the sphere and a tremor set in. Flakes of blue fell off, evaporating before reaching the floor. Jordan frowned, furrows appearing on his forehead and around his eyes. Najia’s expression remained calm, impassive. The orb stabilized, and the island started to take definitive shape. Suddenly the sphere disappeared in a puff of candle smoke.

Najia leaned back, supported her body with her hands on the floor, and stretched. Jordan gave a heavy sigh. “What else we can try?” he asked.

Najia shook her head, her dark hair caressing her face. “Apparently it’s impossible to manifest an accurate map of Ireland.”

“Who blinds our sight?” he asked. “The Sidhe? The Celtic druids?”

“Both have set up barriers,” said Najia. “But there’s a greater problem with attempting an enchantment this strong from here: too much Ardor has already been stripped from Britain.”

“Ardor?”

“The energy that originally animated all life and what makes natural magic possible. There’s less and less for those with the knowledge, people like you and me, to draw upon. All magic requires some form of energy. With less Ardor our ability to cast enchantments weakens. You should know that—you’re involved with driving it from the world.”

“If we can’t even create a map of the Irish coastline”—Jordan paused in frustration—“we’ll be entirely at Kellach’s mercy when we send an armada.”

He rose and moved to the window, where he observed the strange
gathering forming in the walled garden below. He had sailed here directly from Great Skellig, a journey of a few days, while it had taken the legate nine months to return to Rome from London and squeeze enough money from the Jews of the Papal States to fund the English invasion, then another month to convene this conclave. Yet in that brief time, tended by Kellach, the trees had grown twice as tall and had become fuller and more animated; each morning they twisted themselves into slightly different shapes.

The English lords Mortimer and de Vere had arrived and sat next to Kellach at the round table, quizzing him on the invasion plans. Propped up in a chair beside them was their Tylwyth Teg, Oren, who the English believed could tell if another faerie tried to deceive them. To Kellach’s right, the legate was approaching, which meant that Jordan was late. Across from Kellach, between the Vatican and the English seats, a gap remained for the Fomorian delegation. With the sun dipping into the sea, they were expected to pad up the stone steps from the water at any moment.

“The legate believes that when the Nephilim are gone, natural magic will disappear,” said Jordan.

“God may have infused the world with Ardor when he created it, or it may have come in the blood of the angels, blood the Nephilim still carry—no one knows,” said Najia. “But what I know for sure is that when Nephilim leave a land, Ardor leaves with them. That’s what caused the Ardor in Europe to fade almost as much as it has here.”

“What of Europe’s human witches, like the High Coven? They seem to be getting more powerful,” countered Jordan.

“They’ve less magic than they claim, and they’ve had to turn to taking lives to power its more potent forms.”

“Your father taught you all this? Or did you learn firsthand?”

“Don’t worry, I haven’t been hiding a dark side from you,” replied Najia. “As sorcerer to the emir, my father had to battle dark witches moving into our lands. These witches stripped the fat from stolen infants, who have the most malleable life force. Older people need to
be boiled or burned alive to extract any usable energy. Do you want to try one of those methods to create your Irish map?”

Knowing that it was not a serious suggestion, Jordan ignored it, but he could not stop the images reappearing in his mind of the butchered children he had seen in the witch Marija’s lair. Trying to think of something else, he asked, “What of the exorcists?”

“They enable their magic through relics, angelic grimoires, and ancient words of power from their God. Forces that were not meant to be used by humans, at least not in the way the exorcists use them, so they do not serve them well, they corrupt.”

There were many things that corrupt men, Jordan thought, and surely Nephilim as well. From above he watched Oren nod at something Kellach said, then spoon sugar into his mouth. Jordan did not know what the Welsh faerie’s agenda was, but he was sure it was not what de Vere expected.

Jordan knew that Oren had betrayed his own kind at least once already, a century earlier, when he had revealed the hiding place of the Croes Naid. The English king Edward I, known as Longshanks for his imposing height, had celebrated his conquest of Wales by having Dafydd, the last Welsh prince, drawn, hanged, disemboweled, quartered, and his head shipped to the Tower of London to be displayed on a spike. However, relentless attacks by surviving Tylwyth Teg and groups of allied Trolls threatened to destabilize Longshanks’s newly won holdings before he could build castles to protect them. Then Longshanks’s cousin, Count Philip of Savoy, sent him Oren as a present. With little persuasion Oren disclosed that the Croes Naid, containing a shard of the True Cross of Jesus, had been used by generations of Welsh princes as an effective talisman against Nephilim attacks. Once the VRS League began using the powerful relic, Longshanks had the calm he needed to build this fortress at Conwy. Construction went so smoothly that he finished it in only four years. As soon as Jordan had arrived, he had demanded that the Croes Naid and its exorcist keepers move from the castle chapel to
the church in the town. While his excuse was the comfort of Kellach, in truth it was so that he could practice his new art undetected.

Jordan heard the rustle of cloth as Najia pulled her frock off over her head and threw it on top of a chest next to the bed, but he did not turn around. He had too many other things on his mind. She slid up behind him, pressing her breasts against his bare back. Rising up on her tiptoes, she looked over his shoulder at the scene below.

“Once Kellach gets you to Ireland, the plan is to turn on him?”

Jordan had learned during their short time together not to bother lying to her. “Yes. The Vatican and the English will double-cross him and turn on all his kind.”

“The Skeaghshee and the Fomorians are betraying Ireland in their lust for power,” said Najia. “In turn they’ll be betrayed by mortals who lust for land. And the last beacon of Ardor in our world will be snuffed out. Then the breath of the world will fade, and she will begin to die.”

Silence hung between them.