I glowered at the druid but bit my tongue. Cathair did not share his queen’s disdain for ostentation. His fingers dripped gems, and his mantle was edged in gold thread. His hair and beard were braided with little bronze trinkets that clinked when he talked. Some considered his features handsome for a man of his age. But he had said and done too many ugly things for me to see any beauty in him.
I dragged my thumb over my jagged bracelet.
Cathair’s canny eyes did not miss the action.
Pain is useful. But only if you’re the one choosing to inflict it.That was what he told me a few months after Rogan had left. He’d seen the way my eyes welled with tears every time Rogan’s name was mentioned. So he’d shown me how to turn that despair into strength.
Oh, yes. Cathair had made me very strong.
“Tell them what you’ve seen, Cathair,” Mother was saying. “And how it pertains to what we discovered from the darrig.”
“For many years, the Book of Whispers only showed me what I had already seen,” Cathair said with a flourish of his hands. “The Gates between the human world and Tír na nÓg, twelve in all. Opened in a time of war, then closed in surrender.”
Like Mother, Cathair possessed many arcane objects. The Book of Whispers was the most powerful. Found buried beneath a fairyhill, papered with birch bark and bound with human hair, the tome was written in the language of dreams and spoke to the druid only as he slept.
After the Fair Folk murdered the high king, Cathair had tried to solve his grieving queen’s first and greatest problem: how to wage war upon the Folk when they lived in Tír na nÓg, a place beyond mortal knowing. How could she march upon castles in the clouds? How could she ambush starlight? How could she slay armies of wildflowers?
It took five years for Cathair to discover how to open the Gates to Tír na nÓg. Beneath the light of a full moon, an incantation must be spoken in the tongue of the ancients. A knife of pure iron bound to ash wood must be forged. And blood must be spilled upon the thirsty earth from the still-beating heart of one of the Folk.
One by one, the twelve Gates to Tír na nÓg had been opened this way. Many died in the ensuing war, and many met fates worse than death. It was only after Eala was stolen that the queen refused to carry on with the war—she thought if she ended it, the Folk might take pity and give her daughter back. She dispersed her fianna and ordered the twelve Gates closed and buried beneath great mounds of earth. She swallowed her defeat like the cup of poison she knew it was. She waited for her daughter to be returned to her.
But none of the stolen girls returned. Only I remained.
“A fortnight ago,” Cathair continued, “I had a new vision as I slept. There is a Thirteenth Gate to Tír na nÓg, one that has never been opened. Beyond its threshold, I saw a lough of darkness. And upon that lough were twelve white swans. And in the fort above the lough lived a shadowy tánaiste—an heir among the Folk. One of the Gentry.”
Disgust burned through me, and I clenched itching fingers tighter around my wrist. In the past few years of acting as Mother’s spy, I’d encountered a fair number of the Folk. But never the Gentry, the dreaded aristocracy of the Folk.
Where the Folk were fickle, the Gentry were treacherous. Wherethe Folk were dangerous, the Gentry were murderous. They were hollow-hearted predators, worse than their smaller brethren by far.
Cathair paused significantly, not because the story was finished, but because it wasn’t. But Rogan didn’t know Cathair as well as I did.
“So there’s a Gate we didn’t know about,” he said. “But swans? I don’t understand.”
Though Cathair looked annoyed at the interruption, he answered the question. “The swans are not truly swans—a powerful geas has been laid upon them.”
This only bemused Rogan further. “A geas?”
I knew the word. It meant something likebindingorobligation. In the Folk’s uncanny stories of broken promises, stolen lovers, and backstabbing treachery, it was a common theme.
“You’ve heard of geasa,” I said to him. “Our great warrior Cuchulainn was said to have been placed under two. One geas forbade him from ever eating dog flesh. The other forbade him from refusing hospitality. When a host offered him the meat from a hound, he was forced to break one of the two geasa upon him. His strength was shattered, his love was lost, and soon after he died in battle.”
Rogan nodded, although he still looked confused.
“The little witch speaks true,” said Cathair. “This geas fades at night, when the moon sails high above the lough. Then, and only then, do the swans return to their true forms, as twelve human girls. And around the throat of the twelfth and loveliest girl is a golden torc—the weight of royalty carried in precious metal. She is banfhlaith—a princess.”
“Eala.” Rogan looked stunned.
“Yes.” Mother’s sudden smile brimmed with gladness, and the rare unguarded expression knocked me off-balance.
Mother had long suspected her true daughter was alive. For years she’d believed the Folk mocked her with insolent signs. Cornflowers—Eala’s favorite—growing like weeds in the kitchen gardens. Skylarks singing in the pink of morning, as they had theday the princess was born. A child’s giggle echoing through the castle in the dead of the night. But it occurred to me now that part of her had not believed she would ever see her daughter again.
Rogan shook off his dazed expression.
“If this is true, then she’s been suffering at the hands of our enemy for twelve years. We must do everything in our power to rescue her.” His quiet conviction sent a sharp splinter to pierce my heart.
“That’s very noble, boy, but she is trapped,” said Cathair impatiently. “Imprisoned in both body and soul, within deceptive Folk magic. The task will not be easy, and the price of her freedom may be high.”
“There is no cost too high, nor risk too great.” Determination hardened on Rogan’s face.
