Seer of Sevenwaters Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  Also by Juliet Marillier

  THE SEVENWATERS NOVELS

  Daughter of the Forest

  Son of the Shadows

  Child of the Prophecy

  Heir to Sevenwaters

  Wolfskin

  Foxmask

  THE BRIDEI CHRONICLES

  The Dark Mirror

  Blade of Fortriu

  The Well of Shades

  Heart’s Blood

  For young adults

  Wildwood Dancing

  Cybele’s Secret

  ROC

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  Published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Macmillan Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd. edition.

  First Roc Printing, December

  Copyright © Juliet Marillier, 2010

  Sevenwaters Family Tree by Gaye

  Godfrey-Nichols of Inklings Calligraphy

  Studio (www.inklings.com.au)

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Marillier, Juliet.

  Seer of Sevenwaters/Juliet Marillier.

  p. cm.

  “A Roc book.”

  eISBN : 978-1-101-47513-3

  1. Prophets—Fiction. 2. Mythology, Celtic—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR9619.3.M26755S44 2010

  823’.92—dc22 2010029391

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To my granddaughter Isobel

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to Gaye Godfrey-Nicholls for lending me her reference books on runes and divination; to Glyn Marillier for answering my sailing queries; and to Elly Marillier for advice on medical matters, including how early medieval healers might have dealt with a serious kidney problem. The members of my writers’ group provided their usual excellent advice and encouragement. My agent, Russ Galen, is a source of ongoing support.

  I consulted a number of reference books before writing the runic divination scenes in this novel. Two were especially useful: The Secret Lore of Runes and Other Ancient Alphabets by Nigel Pennick (Rider, 1991) and Rune Magic by Donald Tyson (Llewellyn, 1992).

  I wrote much of Seer of Sevenwaters while undergoing cancer treatment in 2009. During that period I received wonderful personal support from my family and friends, and also from my readers all around the world. Readers, your encouragement helped me to meet my own challenge as bravely as my characters do theirs, and I salute you.

  Observant readers will notice two characters in the Sevenwaters Family Tree who do not appear in this novel. Conri and Aisha are introduced in my novella ‘Twixt Firelight and Water, which appears in Legends of Australian Fantasy, a collection of stories by well-known fantasy writers. The anthology was published by Voyager Australia in June 2010. It was edited by Jack Dann and Jonathan Strahan.

  CHARACTER LIST

  the héirs of

  seven waters

  PROLOGUE

  Pull! In the name of all the gods, pull!

  I haul on my oar, every muscle straining. Cold sweat shivers on my skin. Salt spray blinds me. Or do I weep? We’re going to die. We’re going to perish in the chill of the sea, far from home. Pull! Pull! We haul with our guts, with our hearts, with our last strength. We seventeen, we survivors, exhausted, sick at heart—how can we prevail against such seas? Freyja shudders a moment, balanced between muscle and swell, then plunges broadside toward the rocks. The waves snatch up the ship, and with a surge and a decisive smack, hurl her down on the reef.

  A jagged spear of rock splits the prow. Splinters fly. The fine oak disintegrates like kindling under the axe. Fragments fall on the deck, a momentary pattern of augury, gone almost before I can read the signs: Eolh: protection; Eoh: comfort; Nyd: courage in the face of death. The sea surges in, erasing the runic shapes in a heartbeat. The air fills with screaming; abandoned oars fly everywhere. Struck on the temple, a man falls. Another lies limp over his bench, a red stain spreading across his tunic. Others stagger along the boat, pushing, shouting. My heart thunders. I struggle to my feet. The purchase is perilous. The shuddering deck has a tilt like a church roof. The reef is opening Freyja as a hunter’s knife opens the carcass of a deer.

  “Felix! The rope, quick!”

  Paul, gods, Paul with his feet still tied . . . I stagger over to where he lies half on, half off the bench, clutching a broken oar. The rope around his ankles is caught on a jagged length of split wood. A wave washes over me, drenching me to the chest and submerging him. The water recedes. Paul chokes and wheezes, sucking in air. Freyja’s timbers groan, grind, shatter. The ship is in her death throes. Crewmen fall, shrieking, into the maelstrom. Nowhere to climb to. Nowhere to shelter. No surface broad enough, flat enough, high enough for even one man to balance on and wait for rescue. There’s land not far off; smoke rising. This storm will drown us before anyone can come.

  “Here.”


  I crouch down, fumbling for the rope. It’s underwater, the knots impossibly tight, the strands snagged fast in the broken wood. Too slow. A knife, I need a knife . . . There’s a crewman dead, his corpse washing about in the narrow gap between benches. I snatch the weapon from his belt—gods, let me do this in time, let the two of us live.

  I hear Paul speak behind me. “Save yourself, Felix.”

  As I turn back toward him a monstrous wave engulfs me. It’s in my nose, my ears, my mouth. Its surging song drowns everything. Iron bands close around my chest. The sea bears me away.

  CHAPTER 1

  ~Sibeal~

  I had been just one day on Inis Eala when a ship was wrecked on the reef north of the island. I was on the cliffs, heading out with a basket over my arm to gather seaweed, when I heard the men shouting down near the settlement. As I looked out over the sea the vessel struck the rocks.

  “Manannán be merciful,” I murmured, horror clenching my belly tight. The waves were monstrous around that reef. It was as if a malevolent hand stirred the water, reaching up to destroy any man so foolish as to come near. The day was windy—I had kept a cautious distance from the cliff’s edge, for it was a long way down—but here on the island there was no storm. A freakish turn of weather stirred the seas in one particular place out there. Did that ship bear someone who had angered the gods?

  I stood frozen as the vessel smashed and twisted and broke up. Men were tossed into the water like dolls. Then, as the shouting from the settlement turned into an orderly series of commands, followed by a disciplined pattern of activity—men running to the anchorage, a flotilla of small boats being launched and heading out to the rescue, women suddenly busy between infirmary and kitchen—I was able to move again, and headed back down the hill. Inis Eala was full of capable folk, but at a time like this another pair of hands could always be put to good use.

  I reached the infirmary to find it full of quiet activity: women putting sheets on pallets, sweeping the stone floor, clearing space. My eldest sister, Muirrin, stood at the workbench preparing poultices while a young helper checked the supply of bandages. A pot steamed on the fire; a fragrant smell of healing herbs filled the air.

  “What can I do?” I asked.

  “Nothing here until they start bringing in the survivors,” said Muirrin. Her black hair was scraped back under a neat head-cloth; a capacious homespun apron protected her gown. She was a picture of orderly calm.

  “Where’s Evan?” I asked, not seeing the tall, dark-skinned figure of her husband among the helpers.

  “He went out in one of the boats. It helps to have a skilled healer there as soon as they pick the survivors up.”

  It had looked a substantial ship, with many oars. Norse, I guessed. Such a vessel would require a big crew. Each of the island boats had capacity for only a few passengers. The work of bringing back the survivors might take some time.

  I headed for the kitchen, where my sister Clodagh was helping Biddy, cook and matriarch of the island establishment, to prepare food. A great cauldron bubbled on an iron trivet. Biddy was kneading a large lump of dough, her hands pummeling and punching with a violence that suggested her attention, like mine, was on those poor souls out there in the water. Clodagh had been chopping vegetables, but she had laid down her knife and was staring out between open shutters. The breeze caught strands of her fiery hair, tossing them around her face. One hand rested on the swell of her belly. Her child, and Cathal’s, would be born within two turnings of the moon.

  “Can I help?” I asked Biddy.

  “You could talk to your sister,” Biddy said, glancing in Clodagh’s direction.

  I walked over to the window. “Clodagh? Are you all right?” I followed her gaze. There was a view from here down the track to the anchorage. Across the water, the small boats were making steady progress toward the reef. The stricken ship looked almost submerged. I thought I could make out dots in the water, men swimming or floating, but the wash of the waves around those rocks made it hard to be sure.

  My dreams had not shown me this. I had been weary from my long journey. Last night I had slept soundly. Now I wished I had resisted sleep and made use of my scrying bowl. But then, if I had been granted a vision of the storm, the wreck, what could I have done to prevent it? A seer was not a god, only a hapless mortal with her eyes wider open than most. Too wide, sometimes. Even as I stood here beside my sister, there was a cacophony of voices in my mind, folk shouting, screaming, praying to the gods for salvation, crying out as lost children might. It happened sometimes, my seer’s gift spilling over into chaos as the thoughts and feelings of other folk rushed into my mind. It was one of the reasons my mentor, Ciarán, had sent me here to Inis Eala.

  “Cathal’s down there on the jetty,” Clodagh said. “I know exactly what he’s thinking. A freak storm, a boat wrecked so close to our shore . . . He believes it’s his father stirring things up, trying to make him leave the island.”

  I could see the black-clad figure of Cathal, his cloak whipped by the wind, his eyes trained on the flotilla moving out across the bay. He could not go with them; everyone understood that. There was a powerful ward over Inis Eala, something ancient and good that held the whole island in its protective embrace. Here Cathal was safe from the clutches of his father, a devious prince of the Otherworld.

  “What could he have done that Johnny and the others can’t?” I asked, ignoring the clamor of voices in my mind.

  “He could have calmed the waters, Sibeal. Maybe. But he can’t even try. If he performed a feat like that beyond the confines of the island, his father would soon know about it. That man has spies everywhere. It’s hard for Cathal, standing there watching men drown, knowing he could save people if it weren’t for the need to protect me and the child.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” I said, putting an arm around my sister’s shoulders. “You and Cathal came here so you would be safe, and you are safe. Ask Cathal, and I’m sure he’ll say that matters more to him than anything else. Besides, the storm seems to be over—the water’s much calmer already. And look, they’re picking someone up.”

  The sharp rocks jutted from the water like the toothed jaws of some ancient sea creature. Around them the waves had subsided and the ferocious gale had dwindled to a stiff breeze. Two men were leaning over the side of Johnny’s boat to haul someone in. The other vessels had spread out to cover the area all around the reef.

  “Thank the gods,” Clodagh said quietly. She squared her shoulders and turned to walk briskly over to the cook fire. “Biddy, I’ll start another batch of bread.”

  I wanted to help, but the voices were crowding my mind, and if I stayed here I was in danger of fainting on the floor and giving these already busy women still more work to do. I excused myself and headed out into the vegetable garden, which spread between kitchen and infirmary, protected from the prevailing winds by a dry-stone wall. I sat down with my back to the stones and bowed my head onto my knees. My body was tight with terror, the wrenching fear of men at the last extreme. I struggled to catch my breath. My vision blurred. My head was bursting. I whispered a prayer, fighting for control. “Danu hold us in your hand. Manannán be merciful.”

  I breathed slowly, repeating the words over and over to steady myself. The air was full of the sweet scents of thyme and calamint. The stones at my back held the sun’s warmth, anchoring me in the here and now. High overhead, gulls called. Closer to hand, the island dog, Fang, appeared from a corner where she had been digging and approached me, rolling onto her back to demand attention. I reached out my hand to stroke her, glad that she was in one of her good moods, for the diminutive creature had not earned her fearsome name for nothing. I waited, my fingers keeping up a slow pattern against the dog’s warm belly, and the voices screamed on. Perhaps they would not hush until all were dead.

  It was some time before the cries died down sufficiently to let me move. I stretched and rose to my feet. The little dog scampered off to investigate something under a comfr
ey bush. Beyond the garden wall the settlement seemed near deserted, but I could hear voices from the communal dining hall that adjoined the kitchen. Nobody near the infirmary, though the door stood open. No movement near the practice yard where the main work of Inis Eala—the training of fighting men—was carried out. Everyone must be busy indoors or out on the rescue boats. But surely the small craft should be back by now. In my mind one last voice called—Mother, help me!—and fell silent.

  Inis Eala’s sheltered bay housed the long wooden jetty and an old cottage where a fisherman had once lived. I walked to the top of the steep path and looked down to see a good number of folk standing on the shore in silent clusters. Among them were Clodagh and Cathal, his arm around her shoulders, hers around his waist. I did not go down, but settled to wait on a flat rock beside the path.

  Johnny’s boat had turned for home. The others passed and passed again around the rocks. A few timbers floated on the swell, but the ship was gone. “Danu hold you in her hand and bring you safe to shore,” I murmured. “And if it is your time to go, Morrigan guide you through the gateway. May light shine on your path; may you walk on without fear.”

  After a while Fang crept up beside me and settled, nose on paws, keeping her own vigil. Dogs were not allowed on Inis Eala. For this unlikely creature an exception had been made. The story went that she had been brought back from a mission by the intimidating Snake, a man whom one would expect to see accompanied by a fearsome wolfhound or barrel-chested fighting dog, not a tiny, temperamental ball of white fluff. I hoped I would hear the full tale of how it had happened before my visit here was over.