The Crow of Connemara Read online

  STEPHEN LEIGH’S

  spellbinding original fantasy novels

  available from DAW:

  IMMORTAL MUSE

  THE CROW OF CONNEMARA

  and writing as S. L. FARRELL:

  The Cloudmages:

  HOLDER OF LIGHTNING

  MAGE OF CLOUDS

  HEIR OF STONE

  The Nessantico Cycle:

  A MAGIC OF TWILIGHT

  A MAGIC OF NIGHTFALL

  A MAGIC OF DAWN

  Copyright © 2015 by Stephen Leigh.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Jacket art courtesy of Shutterstock.

  Jacket design by G-Force Design.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1683.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA).

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

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  ISBN: 9780698164314

  Version_1

  Contents

  Also by Stephen Leigh

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  A Note on Dialect

  Epigraph

  PART ONE: MACHA

  Chapter 1: Death and the Sinner

  Chapter 2: A Dream, Vanishing

  Chapter 3: They Are Gone

  Chapter 4: Visitations

  Chapter 5: Searching for Young Lambs

  Chapter 6: There’s a Chicken in the Pot

  Chapter 7: ’Tis a Pity to See

  Chapter 8: The Banshee’s Cry

  Chapter 9: My Sorrow and My Loss

  Chapter 10: At Midnight Hour

  Chapter 11: The Light of Other Days

  Chapter 12: Toss the Feathers

  PART TWO: NEMAIN

  Chapter 13: The Black-Haired Lass

  Chapter 14: Two Conversations

  Chapter 15: Petting the Seals

  Chapter 16: Learning New Music

  Chapter 17: At Regan’s

  Chapter 18: The Fairies’ Lamentation

  Chapter 19: Come to the Dance

  Chapter 20: Blow the Candle Out

  Chapter 21: The Fairy Ring

  Chapter 22: Mothers and Brothers

  Chapter 23: Revelations

  Chapter 24: A Blindness Lifted

  Chapter 25: A Summoning

  PART THREE: BADB

  Chapter 26: An American Exiled

  Chapter 27: The Gray Daylight

  Chapter 28: The Night Ride

  Chapter 29: If the Sea Were Ink

  Chapter 30: Let Sleeping Gods Lie

  Chapter 31: The Twisting of the Rope

  Chapter 32: The Dawning of the Day

  Chapter 33: America Lies Far Away

  Chapter 34: After the Storm

  Acknowledgments & Notes

  Appendices

  This book is dedicated to the memory of Walter Leigh, my father,

  who introduced me to the Irish side of the family,

  an1d for whom Ireland was always a precious destination.

  And, as always and ever, to Denise, whose support is what makes all of my books possible.

  A Note on Dialect

  Given that the majority of the people in this novel are Irish, they would speak English with a distinct accent. From my own time in Ireland, I remember that the “depth” of the accent and even the pronunciation of words varied quite a bit depending on the person and their location. There were times I had to “translate” what some of my relatives in Roscommon were saying even though we were all nominally speaking the same language, their accent was so pronounced.

  We won’t even talk about idioms, which can be very different there.

  An author always has choices to make when rendering dialect in fiction. The dialogue and even the exposition could be entirely in dialect (à la Huckleberry Finn, for example) but to my mind that slows down the reader unnecessarily, requires far too much work on the reader’s part, and can lead to confusion. Another author might choose to not use phonetic dialect spelling at all, but leave the sound of the dialect entirely to the reader’s imagination.

  My personal preference is to take a middle road between the extremes: to try to give the occasional hint of the pronunciation where it doesn’t seem to hinder comprehension, with the hope that the reader will begin to “hear” the accent and continue to provide it in their inner hearing for all characters’ dialogue. Hopefully, that works for you. If your preference is more toward one or the other pole, please forgive me.

  Irish Gaelic provides another issue for those readers who insist on knowing how to pronounce the words. I’m not someone who knows Irish Gaelic beyond a few words, though I love the sound of the language. I’ve rendered the occasional Gaelic word or phrase here in the generally accepted spelling—but be aware that you won’t capture the pronunciation of any version of Gaelic by using the rules of English any more than you’d get proper pronunciation of French by applying English rules. For instance, in Irish Gaelic “mh” is a single aspirated consonant, and is pronounced as an English “w” or “v” depending on the surrounding vowels—thus, the Celtic festival day Samhain (to a reader of English) looks like it should be pronounced “Sam-hane” when it’s actually pronounced more like “Sow-en.”

  There’s the added complication that the same word in Irish Gaelic can be pronounced differently in various regions of the country, in much the same way that we have regional variations in pronunciation in the USA. For instance, how do you pronounce “pecan”? Is it pee-KAHN, puh-KAHN, pick-AHN, pee-CAN or PEE-can? They’re all “correct,” depending on what part of the country you’re in.

  There are online guides to pronunciation of the Gaelic consonants, vowels, diphthongs, and so on; check them out if you’re so inclined. For this book, I’ve attempted to give a rough phonetic pronunciation of most of the Irish words in the appendix at the end of the novel, but I apologize in advance if my efforts don’t quite match reality.

  Contents

  Part One: Macha

  1 Death and the Sinner3

  2 A Dream, Vanishing7

  3 They Are Gone18

  4 Visitations21

  5 Searching For Young Lambs30

  6 There’s a Chicken in the Pot34

  7 ’Tis a Pity to See44

  8 The Banshee’s Cry48

  9 My Sorrow and My Loss55

  10 At Midnight Hour58

  11 The Light of Other Days68

  12 Toss the Feathers83

  Part Two: Nemain

  13 The Black-Haired Lass93

  14 Two Conversations103

  15 Petting the Seals110

  16 Learning New Music121

  17 At Regan’s127

  18 The Fairies’ Lamentation135
>
  19 Come to the Dance145

  20 Blow the Candle Out162

  21 The Fairy Ring169

  22 Mothers and Brothers178

  23 Revelations189

  24 A Blindness Lifted202

  25 A Summoning212

  Part Three: Badb

  26 An American Exiled225

  27 The Gray Daylight233

  28 The Night Ride238

  29 If the Sea Were Ink246

  30 Let Sleeping Gods Lie257

  31 The Twisting of the Rope265

  32 The Dawning of the Day273

  33 America Lies Far Away277

  34 After the Storm286

  Acknowledgments and Notes295

  Appendices299

  “I don’t think there’s any point in being Irish if you don’t know that the world is going to break your heart eventually.”

  — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  PART ONE

  MACHA

  1

  Death and the Sinner

  DARCY FITZGERALD LAY DYING in the next room.

  His family and friends were gathered in the small front room of Darcy’s farmhouse on Ceomhar Head, well outside the town of Ballemór in County Galway. Two and sometimes three of the group took brief turns sitting at Darcy’s bedside with the priest and Darcy’s sister Margaret Egan, who were holding vigil. The priest—Father Quinlan—had been sent for by Margaret; the truth was that, in living memory, no one could recall Darcy ever trudging into town of a Sunday to attend Mass, but Margaret had insisted that her own pastor come out and sit with her.

  “Darcy’s been baptized, an’ so I’ll be having the Last Rites done proper for the repose of his poor soul,” she proclaimed. “The good Father will do them, too, or he won’t be seeing another pence of mine or m’family’s in the offering tray.”

  Margaret, Father Quinlan, and the occasional friend sat in the stuffy bedroom: listening to Darcy’s labored, stuttered breathing and the muffled din of conversation from the other room. They talked quietly to each other over Darcy’s form under the blanket once quilted by his twelve-years-dead wife, occasionally glancing at the grizzled, sunken face on the pillow that was, in turn, staring blindly at the candlelit shadows gathering on the ceiling.

  In the front room, the evening already had more the aspect of a wake. The dozen folk there had gone through two bottles of Jameson 12-year-old Special Reserve from Darcy’s cupboard (“Well, he won’t be a’needin’ the whiskey now, will he?”), and flasks were regularly being produced from back pockets and passed around. The air was murky with fragrant smoke from cigarettes, pipes, and the smoldering peat fire in the hearth, which didn’t seem to be drawing properly. Their voices were loud and boisterous, laughing as they related stories from Darcy’s past: purely fiction, embellished, or nakedly raw, they didn’t care. Someone had brought along a guitar and another a fiddle, and the stories and conversation intermingled with playing and singing.

  Outside, a gale off the North Atlantic howled and shook the shutters and roof beams of the farmhouse. The door to the farmhouse rattled in its frame, causing those closest to glance toward it to check that the latch was still holding.

  The door to Darcy’s bedroom opened. Margaret stood there with her white hair hanging limply around her face and a rosary clutched in her hand, Father Quinlan a dark presence behind her. The song failed in mid-phrase and the laughter shuddered to a halt. Margaret sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “Poor Darcy’s gone,” she stated simply. Several of those in the room made the sign of the cross at the news.

  At the same moment, the shutters boomed and rattled, and the door visibly quivered with a sound as if wild fists were beating on the planks. “Sweet bleedin’ Jaysus!” one of the company shouted in alarm, then glanced guiltily at the priest. “Beggin’ your pardon a’course, Father.”

  The door and shutters continued to rattle as the wind rose with a nearly human, furious shriek. The blue flames of the peat fire shuddered in a sudden downdraft that sent smoke pouring into the room. “What in heaven—” Margaret began as the gathering coughed and waved hands against the invasion, but a new voice interrupted her.

  “’Tis yer fault, all of yez,” the voice said, and as one they looked over to the hearth from where the voice had emanated. A woman stood in front of the fire, and hers was a face that none of them knew. She was bundled in a hooded red cloak, the cloth beaded with rain as if she’d just come in from the weather, though no one could remember her entering the room. Her eyes were a deep, saturated green, and the strands of hair that escaped the cowl were the color of a moonless sky at midnight. Her voice was edged steel wrapped in dark velvet, low and sensual. “There be no door or window open here for the soul to depart through, as is customary. The spirits sent to accompany Darcy are angry.”

  “Darcy’s soul ca’nah be kept from the Lord by doors or windows,” Father Quinlan interjected. He scowled. “This blather is simple superstition, woman. Shame on yeh.” Both he and Margaret glared at the intruder.

  “Darcy Fitzgerald didn’t believe in yer foolish God, priest, so shut your gob,” the woman said, and half the company drew in their breath at the blasphemy. Several warded themselves again with the sign of the cross. “Darcy believed in things much older than that, and they’ve come for him now. Yeh must let him go. Why has no one stopped the clocks here or turned the mirrors?”

  Again there came the sound of fists beating at the door, and the shutters were nearly pulled from their hinges. The wind shrieked in the chimney, and the guitar player, sitting on the hearth nearest the woman, looked at the fire, startled. “’Tis the very banshee,” he said, then glanced guiltily at the woman.

  “Aye,” the woman in red answered. She was smiling strangely. “Open the door,” she commanded, gesturing to the men nearest to it.

  “Nah,” Margaret shouted back. “There be no need for that. Darcy’s soul is already in heaven, and his body will be placed in consecrated ground.”

  The cloaked woman laughed as fists continued to hammer at the planks, and she gestured once more. “Open the door,” she repeated. Her voice was imperious, commanding, and one of the men sitting next to the door rose to his feet, glancing at his wife who sat alongside him who, in turn,was staring at the woman.

  Finally, the wife nodded, faintly, as if she and the woman had exchanged some unheard communication. “What can it hurt?” she half-whispered, though she kept her gaze averted from Margaret and the priest, who remained standing in the doorway of Darcy’s bedroom as if defending the corpse. Her husband lifted the latch and turned the knob, pulling at the door.

  The door flew from his hands, slamming hard against the limits of its hinges as the mourners shouted in alarm. A hurricane wind as cold as a winter gravestone blew hard into the front room, snatching papers and napkins from the small table and hurling them about, extinguishing all the candles, sending the pictures on the wall swaying and falling, and toppling the empty bottles of Jameson. The few electric lights in the room—Darcy having been slow to have the lines run out to his farmstead—flickered and went momentarily dark. Only the faint, ethereal light of the peat fire remained, strangely untouched. The wind plucked at the coats and pants and skirts of those gathered there as if with invisible fingers, and tugged especially hard at the priest’s cassock, enough that they heard him cry out in the darkness. Then the wind abruptly reversed itself, rushing out from the house and slamming the door shut behind itself. Later, some of those in the room would swear they heard a man laughing in the midst of the retreating gale, and that the laughter was that of old Darcy himself.

  The electric lights pulsed once and returned. The peat fire crackled contentedly as the gathering blinked and looked around. “That woman . . .” they heard Margaret say. “I swear that she . . .” and they all looked to where the woman had been.

  But she had gone as suddenly as
she’d come.

  This time, it was the priest himself who made the sign of the cross.

  2

  A Dream, Vanishing

  THE CHICAGO WEATHER promised to be a shock. Even in early May, the heat threatened to overwhelm the sweater Colin Doyle was wearing. He pushed his glasses back up his nose as he peered myopically at the crowd near the Arrivals gate.

  His sister Jen waved at him as he emerged, rushing over to him after a moment’s hesitation. Her short hair was disheveled, as if she’d just hurriedly toweled it dry after a shower. She wore her smile in the same way she wore a business suit. When he hugged her, he heard the smile break and a sob escape. “How’s Dad?” Colin asked as he embraced Jen.

  “No better,” she answered, sniffing as she stepped back. “Sorry. I promised myself I wasn’t going to cry when I saw you.”

  “My face sometimes has that effect.”

  That brought back the smile momentarily. “Silly as always. Good. I’ve missed that.” He saw her glance at the gig bag on his back, his Gibson J-45 safely ensconced within; she said nothing, but her lips tightened a bit, and he wondered if she were going to say something about it. “Let’s hit the baggage carousels and get home,” she said instead. “You’re sure you want to stay with me and not Mom? You know she’s expecting you at home, in your old room.”

  “I’m certain she is. I’m just not sure that’s where I want to be.” Colin gave a shrug. He lifted his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “Or is that going to be a problem with you and Aaron? You are still seeing him, aren’t you?”

  Jen’s quick blush gave him the answer, and suggested more.

  The first time he’d heard about Aaron had been last semester . . .

  Last semester . . .

  Colin slid into a booth at the Starbucks on University Way NE with a grande latte. He pulled out his phone, which claimed it was 6:32 in the morning—8:32 back in Chicago. He touched the link for his sister Jennifer. He heard the click of the connection, a long hiss of static, and finally a ring. A second ring. A third.