A Rising Moon Read online

  The dormitory was empty except for those few who had been on night shifts, now sleeping in their beds. Orla dressed quickly and used the midden down the hall, an experience made uncomfortable by the fact that the anamacha remained with her as she relieved herself. Orla realized that this was something to which she would have to resign herself; in many ways she would never again be alone in this life, though she didn’t know if those within the anamacha knew or cared what she was doing. She hurried down the corridors of Bàn Cill to the temple itself, coming to a halt at the side door when she saw Ceanndraoi Greum, Draoi Ceiteag, and Menach Moire speaking together near the altar. Sorcha was standing well away from them and pointedly not looking at Orla.

  Orla cleared her throat. Greum Red-Hand looked over at her as Menach Moire scowled, bowed to the ceanndraoi, gestured for Sorcha to follow her, and hurried off into one of the rear rooms. Ceiteag remained behind.

  Greum was staring more at Orla’s side and the Moonshadow than at her face. He tapped his staff on the tiles. “So I see the anamacha remains with you. You’ve not gone inside them again?”

  “No, Ceanndraoi,” she told him. He nodded.

  “Then come walk with me,” he told her. “Ceiteag, we’ll talk more later.” With that, he turned and limped toward the main door of the temple, leaning on his staff. Orla nodded to Draoi Ceiteag as she followed Greum outside and into the gardens that covered the steep, verdant walls of the valley in which Bàn Cill stood. It was a slow walk with Greum’s bad leg. At the summit of the hills around them an undulating stone wall followed the ridgeline, studded at intervals with large towers: the last defense against armies that might invade Onglse, a third and final wall never breached in the long history of the island. Barely two years before, Commander Altan Savas had managed to break through the two outer rings of the island’s fortifications, but he had abandoned his siege of the island before reaching Bàn Cill.

  Orla knew why Savas had retreated. Every Cateni knew why. She wondered, seeing Greum’s gaze flickering over the wall, whether the ceanndraoi ever thought that Savas might have taken Bàn Cill itself, the center of the draoi universe, had he not been compelled to return south to confront Voada on her rampage through the cities of Albann Deas. Is that something I could ask her inside the anamacha? She stood here once, and she fought Savas here for a time. . . .

  It was a question that would have to wait. Greum moved slowly through the gardens, his staff prodding the soft ground, until he came to a low wall where the gardens ended and the forested lower slopes of the hills began. There he finally stopped, his breath labored as he planted his staff in front of him. “This place will do,” he said. “Here, if you lose control of the anamacha, at least I can stop you from doing terrible damage.” The words made Orla shiver, both at the thought that using the anamacha might be so dangerous and as she tried to imagine how Greum would “stop” her.

  “When I taught your mother how to use this anamacha,” he continued—Orla saw his lips press together tightly beneath his graying beard as he paused after the words— “she at least had some previous, if inadequate, knowledge from Draoi Ceiteag of how a draoi works with her anamacha. You’ve had no such training, I understand.”

  Orla shook her head. “No, Ceanndraoi. I never had the opportunity, and Menach Moire told me it was nothing I needed to know.”

  “Menach Moire was entirely right, at least until the Moonshadow’s anamacha came here.”

  “You didn’t want the anamacha to come to me.”

  “No.” His answer was short and curt. He shook his head. “But when you came here, I suspected the anamacha might follow. However, better to have it find you here than somewhere else, where there’d be no one to guide you at all. Elia only knows what might have happened then.”

  “You think I would have gone mad like . . .” Orla couldn’t complete the sentence. She glanced guiltily at the anamacha next to her, invisible in the sunlight but the coldness of their presence palpable at her side.

  “I know that trying to contain the Moonshadow’s power can send even a strong will into madness; I’ve seen it happen.” That last was spoken with a significant glance at Orla. “But if your mother’s anamacha had come to you without training, no, you wouldn’t have gone mad. The experience of trying to become one with the anamacha would likely have killed you outright, and your spirit would already be in there screaming with the rest of them who weren’t prepared for their task. Your mother was fierce, strong-willed, and well trained, both by Ceiteag and by myself here in Bàn Cill. I saw her wield the power of your anamacha, perhaps better than any other draoi could have—perhaps even better than myself, had the Moonshadow come to me instead.” His lips tightened again as he made that admission, and Orla wondered if there was jealousy and envy within the words. “Yet when she tried to use the Moonshadow’s spirit over the other draoi inside, even she succumbed.”

  Orla shivered as the cold of her unseen anamacha pressed against her side. “It’s already too late for your anamacha to be given to some other draoi,” Greum continued. “The Moonshadow has claimed you, and you will either learn to use those inside or they will take you into their world entirely and go seek another draoi. Are you ready to start?” Greum asked her, as if sensing her fear. Orla could only nod silently. Her fingers involuntarily sought the silver oak leaf at her breast, her mother’s gift. Greum’s gaze followed the motion.

  “Good,” he said. “Then pay attention. I’ll be with you as you enter Magh da Chèo, the Otherworld of the anamacha, and I can—and I will—pull you back if I see the need.” Greum Red-Hand didn’t appear happy with the prospect. “Listen to me carefully. You will not call either your mother or Leagsaidh Moonshadow from your anamacha. The Moonshadow would destroy you in a moment, and your mother . . . well, she might be capable of doing the same. You have to remember that while it is Voada’s spirit that dwells there, being in Magh da Chèo changes the dead draoi; they become fey and dangerous, and your mam will be no exception. You’ll be able to hear me. If you wish to live, you will listen to me and do exactly as I tell you. Do you understand?”

  Orla nodded again, swallowing heavily. Greum took in a long breath as he lifted his staff from the ground and cradled it in the crook of his elbow. “Take my hands,” he said. “Then call the anamacha to you, and I will do the same with mine and follow you into Magh da Chèo. Bring the anamacha to yourself. . . .”

  His hands were dry and warm, and he clasped her almost too tightly. At the same time, as if she’d spoken a summons she hadn’t heard, she felt the cold embrace of the anamacha sliding into her body. At their touch, the world around her dimmed and became transparent, and the stormy chaos she remembered from her first bonding with the anamacha returned. Snarling branches of lightning flickered in a black, roiling sky as thunder grumbled. The ground underneath her feet was cracked and broken rock, and there were figures moving restlessly around her. Their massed voices whispered and shouted and called to her. She couldn’t see Greum, couldn’t feel his hands on hers, but she heard his gruff voice: “A draoi has to be a perfect vessel, without cracks or flaws. If you aren’t able to contain your anamacha, they will consume you. Be that perfect vessel. Let them become you.”

  She could hear their multiple voices, hands upon hands of throats speaking the same words: male, female, young, old . . .

  “Mother?” Orla called. “Are you here?”

  “No!” she heard Greum snap angrily. “Don’t call her. Don’t bring her out!”

  The anamacha only repeated what they had told her the night before. With the statement, the figures spun dizzily around her; she saw her mother’s face replaced by another and another until finally she felt something impossibly strong approaching her, the power radia
ting from it as if it contained the very essence of the ferocious storm around her.

  “Mother?” Orla felt a growing fright as the presence came closer. She pleaded for her mam as if somehow if she were there, Orla would be protected despite what Greum had told her.

  “Orla!” Greum’s voice shouted, and the sense of that wild, uncontrollable presence receded, the figures now still and silent around her again. “This isn’t the time. I warned you—don’t call for Voada. Don’t call for the Moonshadow. Call instead for Iomhar of the Marsh. He was your mother’s first channel to the power; if she could handle him, so might you. Call for him.”

  “How?” Orla asked. “How do I call him?”

  “Think his name. Tell him he must come to you. You need to be the one in control of your anamacha, Orla, or they will destroy you. Don’t ask him to come. Order him to be there for you.”

  Orla shut her eyes, if only to block out the sight of the ghosts around her and the storm-wracked landscape.

  A chorus of voices hammered at the inside of her head. She opened her eyes to see a single ghost standing before her, its features blurred and mutable, but the same man’s face came and went over and over.

  “Ceanndraoi?” Orla said aloud. “I think he’s here. What do I do now?”

  Even as she spoke, the anamacha was talking to her. Orla shivered at the anamacha’s words.

  “I will give you the form you must make and the release words you must say,” Greum’s voice answered her. She thought she could feel his fingers press her hands, holding her tightly so that even if she wanted to release his hands, she couldn’t. “Tell Iomhar you want fire to cast. That will do.”

  she thought. She imagined it in her mind, holding that energy inside her and letting it burst from her hands. With the thought, she saw the shade in front of her begin to glow as if the figure had been formed from a brilliant sun. Orla’s hands were moving—or rather, Greum was moving her hands for her, forming a complicated knot in the air. She could see the shape in her mind, a sphere formed of intricate curves and knots: a vessel. At the same time, she heard Greum’s voice whispering words to her. She repeated them, syllables that sounded like Cateni but were older, the forms archaic and foreign-sounding on her tongue. The shape of the spell, the vessel, seemed to harden between her now-motionless hands. “Now speak the word,” Greum said. “Teine!”

  “Teine!” Orla shouted after him: Fire! Iomhar—or the ghost that she thought of as him—gestured too, and flames burst into existence inside the cage she and Greum had formed, leaping and snarling. The heat and energy battered at Orla, painful to view and to hold.

  “Now,” she heard Greum say, “look past the Otherworld. Can you see this world? Our world?”

  Orla blinked, trying to see beyond the caged inferno. Like a mist laid before her, she glimpsed the garden and the forest beyond it. “Yes,” Orla breathed. “I see it.”

  “Then find one of the trees in front of you. Keep it in your sight. Imagine the fire striking it and say this: I release you. Say it!”

  “I release you!” Orla shouted. In that moment, the spell cage she and Greum had made shattered, and the world of the anamacha fell away from her. Orla staggered and nearly fell as she saw the gout of fire streak away from her to strike the oak that she’d chosen. The flames encased the tree, crackling and fuming: as gray smoke rolled upward toward the sky; as the green oak leaves shriveled, went black, and dropped as burning ash. The smell of woodsmoke came to them. Greum gestured, and a quartet of acolytes from the temple rushed forward with buckets of water to douse the flames. Orla realized that Greum must have forewarned them.

  Orla was panting heavily, as if she’d been running for a full stripe of the candle. The exhaustion made it difficult for her to keep her head up. She wanted to sink to the ground; she wanted to sleep.

  “Not bad for a first effort,” Greum said. His dark gaze held her, and she forced herself to stare back. “But you’ll need to do far better,” he finished. He waved a hand toward the temple. “Go back to the temple and give thanks to Elia for having spared you. I’ve arranged with Menach Moire for Sorcha to serve you; she’ll show you to your new room. Go on. You’ll be useless for the rest of the day.”

  * * *

  Her chamber was more plush and comfortable than any she could remember since her days as a child in Pencraig, and certainly far more luxurious than the army encampments she’d endured after her forced marriage to Bakir. She’d been given a suite of two rooms in the hallway outside the rear of the temple with a view of the gardens and a small sleeping alcove just off her bedchamber that was Sorcha’s room. Greum Red-Hand’s even more lavish chambers were close by, a few doors down the same hall.

  Sorcha was there, as Greum had promised, with mulled wine, bread, cheese, and fruit arrayed on the small dining table in the outer room. “The ceanndraoi said you would be tired and probably want to sleep but that you should eat first,” Sorcha told her. “So I went to the kitchens and found what I could.”

  “Thank you,” Orla said. The exhaustion from using the anamacha threatened to close her eyes, but the sight of the food made her stomach rumble, and she realized that she was also famished. She sat at the table, Sorcha sitting opposite her but not eating. She had finished half the bread and most of the cheese when someone knocked on the door to the rooms. Without asking, Sorcha rose from her chair and went to the door. “Draoi Ceiteag,” she said, glancing back at Orla, who nodded to her. “Please come in.”

  The elderly draoi shuffled into the room. Her gaze found Orla as Sorcha gestured for the draoi to take her chair at the table; Ceiteag ignored her. “The ceanndraoi told me you survived,” she said to Orla.

  “Was that in question?” Orla asked, and Ceiteag shrugged, the folds of her cloak shifting with the motion of her thin shoulders.

  “Not everyone survives their first time,” she answered. “Menach Moire barely did, and she still avoids entering Magh da Chèo. But for you . . . No, your survival was never in question. I knew because I knew Voada, and you’re her child.”

  She paused, and for a long breath neither of them spoke. “So you taught my mother,” Orla said finally, when the silence threatened to linger.

  “I was the first draoi to find her after the Moonshadow came to her,” the woman said. “Even though I didn’t realize at first which anamacha had claimed her, I did what any draoi would have done in those circumstances: I taught her the basics so that the anamacha wouldn’t simply consume her. Your mam . . . she was stronger than any of us knew. With that anamacha, she had to be.” Ceiteag licked dry and cracked lips. “Have you met her yet? Inside?”

  Orla shook her head. “I’ve glimpsed her and felt her presence,” she admitted, “but the ceanndraoi told me not to call her yet.”

  “Good,” Ceiteag said. “Listen to Ceanndraoi Greum. His advice may keep you alive and sane.”

  Orla thought the woman was about to turn and leave. She hurried to speak. “Draoi Ceiteag, you knew my mother. How . . . how was she?”

  Ceiteag looked past Orla, toward her anamacha. “When I first met her, she was lost and frightened and wounded from everything that had happened to her in the south. She was like a boat adrift after barely surviving a storm. She wept, she raged, and I comforted her as best I could. She mourned for you, for all her lost family, and she was angry at what the Mundoa had done. She was so angry . . .” Ceiteag’s gaze came back to Orla. “If you want me to tell you what a wonderful person your mother was, I can’t. I saw anger and bitterness consume her. I saw the Moonshadow’s grasp on her tighten the more power she drew from her anamacha. I saw her become brittle iron, unbending and strong but driven by rage. She was unwilling to listen to anyone who tried
to advise her or who contradicted her. I tried to help her. Ceanndraoi Greum tried, but she wouldn’t listen. No—to Voada, her way was the only way, and in the end, she abandoned us. She claimed the title of ceanndraoi that wasn’t hers, and she led far too many Cateni to their deaths.” Ceiteag’s face seemed to furrow even more. “For what? What did she accomplish? The Mundoa have only tightened the chains they place on us. Their soldiers destroy more Cateni villages; they imprison and execute and enslave more of us. Voada failed us. And I . . . I share some of the blame for that, for not being able to help her see the awful path she had chosen.”

  Ceiteag’s lips pursed as if she were tasting sour fruit, and Orla thought she might spit. But the woman lifted her chin, the loose skin underneath swaying. “I know that isn’t what you wanted to hear,” Ceiteag finished. “But it’s the truth, and I tell it to you as a warning so you don’t try to follow that same path. Don’t listen to her voice, not if you want to live.”

  * * *

  In the days after Ceiteag’s visit, Orla kept mostly to herself.

  Other draoi lived at the temple in chambers much like Orla’s, though she seemed to be the only one actively in training. Some of the draoi were visitors, come to Onglse to see Bàn Cill, to consult with the ceanndraoi, or to bring news to the island. Others were stationed here on a permanent basis, several of them draoi who had fought with Ceanndraoi Greum against Commander Savas’ army during his siege of the island. Those draoi, she realized, had known her mother and would have seen Voada with the anamacha that now shadowed Orla.