Seer of Sevenwaters Read online

She waits.

  I glance over my shoulder toward Gull.

  “Fast asleep,” Sibeal says in a murmur.

  “The past is coming back, but in small pieces. My true name. Some of the circumstances that led me and my brother to leave our home. But . . . I think it may be better if I do not give you the account of it. What I remember . . . it is of no consequence.”

  “Why not? Your name, your origins, the voyage—if you don’t tell us those things, how can Johnny help you get home?”

  It is a bitter understanding. If Paul is dead, if that memory is true, then someone must bear the news to our mother and father. Someone must take the tale to Breizh. A long way back. Further than this wayward son’s feet will ever bear him.

  “I cannot go home, Sibeal. I bring danger. I bring shadows. I bring ill luck. Better if the Ankou had taken me, that day in Yeun Ellez. Better, perhaps, that I had never been born. Then my brother would be alive.”

  “That is not true.” Sibeal’s eyes are wide in a face turned inexplicably pale. A white owl. She fixes me with a particular gaze. I think she sees right inside me. “You cannot know what would have happened if you had not been there. You cannot invent a past that never was. There is only this life, and the way forward.”

  I make no reply, and after some time she adds, “Ardal, we will cast the runes again. Not to seek wisdom on any of the dilemmas I spoke of earlier, but to make sense of this for you. I believe a mission lies before you. Of its nature I know nothing at all. But perhaps you need to execute that mission for your brother’s sake. In doing so, you might make some sense of his death.”

  “Or prove to him that, now he is gone, I can be brave without him.”

  “You’ll have me weeping, Ardal.”

  “You? I do not think so.”

  “Do you believe me incapable of tears?” she asks, turning her gaze away.

  “I think you hold them inside,” I say, “fearful to let them go, because you believe that is a sign of weakness.” If I am right, and I think I am, she must consider me a poor example of a man. When they told me Paul was drowned, I wept a lake of tears.

  “Ardal?”

  “Yes, Sibeal?”

  “You won’t be going on without Paul. He is dead, yes. Most likely laid in his grave to the sound of my prayers. But he will walk with you step by step for the rest of your life. You will feel his presence in the air you breathe. In the cry of a gull you will hear his laughter; in the wash of the sea you’ll hear him whispering to you, late at night, telling you a story after the candles are quenched. You will remember his goodness and courage every time you see a man help a comrade. You’ll see his strong features, his humor, his kindness, when one day you have a son of your own.”

  If Sibeal cannot shed tears, I surely can. She fishes in the pouch at her waist for a square of linen, reaches up, puts it in my hand.

  “He was a stranger to you. But it’s as if you know him.”

  “I know you, Ardal. I hear the love in your voice when you speak of him. Your words tell me the kind of man he was.”

  We cast the runes together, on a ritual cloth before the fire. I want to sit on the mat opposite Sibeal, but she is afraid she will not be able to get me to my feet and back to bed afterward, so I remain in my chair, shame making my cheeks hot. Tomorrow I will work harder. I will walk further. I will make myself strong again.

  Sibeal closes her eyes—such long lashes—and breathes deeply, her back straight, her hands relaxed in her lap. I cannot manage this manner of breathing, not now. My chest hurts when I try; my breath rasps, disturbing Sibeal’s concentration as she sinks deeper into the receptive state of mind required for a divination. I close my eyes instead, summoning up an image of birches in the wind, of standing stones in a circle, of a shimmering lake under a pale dawn sky. I stroke the dog. I attempt to banish from my mind all distracting thoughts. I wait.

  When Sibeal is ready she picks up the bag. The rods shift inside, as if knocking gently on the door of understanding, and I open my eyes. She looses the string. Instead of casting the rods onto the cloth, she lifts the bag within my reach. Our hands touch for a moment as, together, we let the rods fall out onto the linen square. Together we examine the pattern before us.

  I have wondered if we will be shown the same runes Sibeal plucked from the bundle that first night: Os, Ger and Nyd. But although three rods lie on top of the others, all are different. Before us now lie Ken, Gyfu, Sigel. A voice sounds in my mind, the voice of Magnus who taught me: The runes will not speak to you if you rush them. Let the meanings settle in your thoughts, let them blend and combine for you, or you’ll make no sense of them at all. Wisdom doesn’t come like a spring tide. It’s more like the slow unfolding of an oak, from acorn to sapling. Before that oak becomes a tall tree, you will be old. Magnus, a friend, a teacher . . . I see him, big, broad, yellow-bearded. A Norseman. A kinsman. My mother’s brother. I see him beside me at a table, and before us a set of rune rods much like Sibeal’s, but fashioned from a darker wood, perhaps oak.

  “You speak first, Ardal.”

  I start with some violence. The memory leaves me; here is the fire, the dog, the darkened infirmary. Here is Sibeal, who has spoken with quiet calm, and does not deserve such a response.

  “I’m sorry, I—” I cannot go on.

  “Ardal,” Sibeal says, “I know you understand the lore of runes. You can interpret what you see here without reference to the past. There’s no need to touch on those matters you’re so reluctant to talk about. When I cast the runes I asked a question about your pathway forward.” After a moment she adds, “I would prefer you to give your interpretation before I give mine. I want to be sure I am not influencing you.”

  “Very well,” I say, wondering what a druid will think of my reading. Is she testing me? I am not unskilled, but by Sibeal’s standards I must seem a raw novice. “Ken is light in the darkness; vision; the illumination of things hidden. Gyfu, a gift. The gift of talent in the service of the gods, or through service to others. Sigel, sunlight, vision, achievement.”

  Sibeal sits quietly, not rushing me. She looks down at the scattered rods, her dark lashes screening her eyes. The firelight touches her skin to glowing rose.

  I find the courage to go on. I must risk offending her. “You are the gift and the light, Sibeal. In the darkness of unknowing that has come upon me, you are the flaming torch that leads me forward. My eyes are blinded by the mist of forgetting; you are the clear vision that keeps my feet on the path. You choose to help me because you are a servant of the gods, and you see this as a mission laid on you, a duty required by your spiritual vocation.”

  Abruptly, her eyes are on me, clear and searching. “Duty? You think I’m helping you out of duty?” She remembers Gull and lowers her voice. “You have a strange idea of what a druid is, Ardal. First you accuse me of being unable to feel as others do, and now this.”

  “I tell the truth, as I see it. Maybe my truth offends you. Would you prefer a lie?”

  “Of course not.” It is the first time I have heard her sound sharp. “I should not have asked you for your interpretation. No wonder your answer was somewhat . . . ”

  Instead of holding my tongue as I should, I blunder in deeper. “Why are you helping me, Sibeal?”

  She folds her hands in her lap, frowning. “You have disturbed the divination,” she says in a small, cool voice.

  “There,” I say, “you change the subject, you detach yourself again, as if to look in your heart is too dangerous. Is this reserve something they teach you, your Ciarán and his fellows? Always to hold back, always to keep control, never to show the world your true self, a living, breathing woman? Is this what your gods require of you?”

  She stares at me. After a moment she says, “The preparation to become a druid is very long, Ardal. I have spent a good deal of the last four years in the nemetons at Sevenwaters, much of it alone in prayer, or memorizing the lore, or finding out how much I still have to learn. If I allow my own feelings to
crowd my mind, there will be no room left for the voices of the gods. If I expend my strength on my own everyday concerns, I cannot walk my spiritual path as I should.” She pauses then, reflecting on what she has said. “I didn’t express that well,” she adds. “Ardal, I must be detached. That’s one of the reasons I’m here, at Inis Eala. Because I have such difficulty, sometimes, in separating myself from what other people feel. It is something I must learn to do before I make my final promise.”

  “I am not talking about what other people feel, Sibeal. I am talking about what you feel.”

  “What I feel doesn’t matter.” It is a simple statement, and it saddens me beyond measure.

  “Then you waste what you have to give,” I say quietly. “To be less than honest with yourself makes your pledge to the gods only half a gift.” I picture Brother Bernez, with his merry eyes and his droll wisdom; his family was vast, and he loved to talk of them. He spoke, too, of the anguish with which he made the choice, long ago, to dedicate himself to God. “Four years, you say. So you have been undergoing this training since you were . . . ?”

  “Twelve. It is quite usual.” Her whole face is closed up; her tone is as chilly as I have ever heard it.

  “And since you were twelve, you have been self-contained, serene, thoughtful, dedicated to the will of the gods. A dutiful servant.”

  She says nothing. I remember the tale she told, that first night. I suspect she has not wept, laughed or stamped her foot in anger since she was a child of five or six. I gaze on her face, though by now I need not look at her features to see her; I carry her image deep within me. There is hurt in her eyes, though she will not release it in tears. Why have I challenged her thus? What am I expecting, a declaration of love? Wretched Felix. You never could learn to keep your mouth shut.

  “I will give you my interpretation of the runes,” Sibeal says, turning her gaze down toward the ritual cloth. Her manner is that of a teacher correcting a wayward student. “The way forward is no longer obscure as it was before. The light of the gods shines down on our pathway. The mission can be completed. But it’s not straightforward. The possibility of victory is balanced by the presence of death in these runes. That may relate to your brother and to the others who perished in the sea. But Sigel also tells us we can summon the strength to hold back the forces that conspire against us. We can resist the chaotic influences that attended my first divination, the night you used Is to tell me you had lost your memory. Ken is not simply light as in a torch or lamp; it also signifies the light of knowledge. Ken and Is are opposites, Ardal. Against the frozen immobility of Is, Ken is transformation.”

  When I do not reply, she continues, “A runic divination works on many levels, from the most esoteric to the simplest and most direct. My interpretation is a druid’s; it differs from yours, but does not invalidate it.” A deep, gulping breath. “Ardal—”

  “I’m sorry if I hurt you, Sibeal.”

  “I don’t do what I do out of duty, but out of love.”

  I am not fool enough to interpret this in the way I would like to. I wait for her to go on.

  “We are all joined in spirit, Ardal. Every man, woman and child; every creature, every blade of grass, every apple on the tree. Every wave that breaks on the shore. How can I not help?” Her tone changes, softens. “It was a stranger I found on the shore. But now you’re my friend. As for your interpretation of the runes, I did guess you might be a poet, and what you said makes me think I was correct.”

  A smile creeps onto my face. “I am sorry I disturbed the divination. I seem to have a talent for that.”

  “If we discuss it calmly, I may avoid a headache. The interpretation seems clear.”

  “But are there not many interpretations, including conflicting ones? Could not one say, for instance, that the most significant element in this divination is the link or joining? Gyfu can be interpreted as the union of two disparate elements. Ken, the torch, does not only bring light. The torch sees wood destroyed, but heat and light created. Perhaps this divination deals with change. With transmutation, not simply on the physical level but on the spiritual one as well.”

  “That’s all very well, Ardal.” Sibeal is starting to relax now. She is far more comfortable with a philosophical debate than with a discussion of her own feelings. “But to perform this divination fully, you should relate your general interpretation to the question I asked when we cast the rods. Or, more aptly, to one of your own, one you do not share with me. It was incorrect for us to attempt ritual practice together. We should not do so again.”

  “Why is it incorrect?”

  She flushes slightly. “You are untrained. And . . . No, I can’t explain. It feels wrong. My instincts tell me it is unwise.”

  “I am not untrained,” I say quietly. “I may not have your level of skill, but I have received good guidance in this, as in other learning. There was a . . . there was a Norseman in my own family, a scholar who taught me runic lore.”

  “So you’ve remembered more,” Sibeal says. “Tell me.”

  “Of the wreck, the voyage, of recent times I remember nothing. What is in my mind is a clatter of old bones, a shred or two of a distant past.” I hesitate. This is not quite true; and I have just challenged Sibeal to be more truthful. “I left home because my presence endangered others,” I tell her. “Paul came to watch over me, and he died. I bring misfortune, Sibeal. I bring ill luck. I will not draw you into that circle of shadow.”

  Sibeal reaches out her hands and gathers the rods in. The clattering sound wakes Deiz, who jumps down from my knee. Sibeal begins to pack the rods away. “I never want to hear you say that again, about bringing ill luck.” Her voice is stern. “I will not believe that to be true of any man.”

  “That is what Paul said.” I see him beside me on the deck of a ship, a trading boat, the crew not Norsemen but Gauls. That’s rubbish, Felix. It’s just circumstances, that’s all. You do have a tendency to speak out when another man might find it prudent to hold his tongue, that’s true enough. But that doesn’t mean you carry some kind of cloak of doom with you.

  “Then Paul was a wise man as well as a kind one.”

  “And I killed him.”

  I hear her draw a breath. “The sea killed him,” she says.

  “I was too slow, too clumsy. I could not untie it . . . ” I shut my mouth on the words. His voice, his face, the rope around his ankles, the knots . . . the wave . . .

  Calmly, Sibeal continues to replace the rods in their bag. “It happened so quickly,” she says in a murmur. “I was watching from the cliffs out there. My first full day on Inis Eala. It must have been chaos on the ship. I suppose people were trapped as everything broke up. And the waves were . . . of an unusual size.”

  Save yourself, Felix. It washes over me again. I close my eyes, lost in the darkness.

  Later, when Sibeal is abed, I lie awake and watch the shifting shadows thrown by the banked-up fire. The last lamp is quenched, the last candle extinguished. I breathe. How long will it take for my body to be whole again, how many days, how many turnings of the tide before I am strong enough for this task, this unknown task the runes lay on me?

  Deiz presses close against my side, sighing in her sleep. She trusts me. It is a small blessing; a dog forgives much. I wish I could pray. I wish I could believe in a benign deity, a good father who holds us safe and heals our wounds. I wish I could believe my brother has gone to a better place. But I lost my faith in that god long ago. I lost my trust when I saw men claim power for themselves in his name. There are other gods; other paths. In time, perhaps my feet will carry me onto a true way. Perhaps I will wander until I die. Perhaps I will die tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, on the end of Knut’s sword, all for a truth that I cannot remember.

  CHAPTER 7

  ~Sibeal~

  On the day of the challenges I rose early as usual and went out walking, accompanied by Fang. Muirrin, who had patched up hundreds of injured combatants during her years on the island, would
stay in the infirmary with Ardal while the bouts were on, ready to tend to anyone who needed her. Her presence there had a twofold purpose; Evan judged Ardal still too unwell to be left on his own.

  A great deal of interest had been sparked by Knut’s challenge to Cathal, and even more interest once it became known that Gull was training the challenger. This meant both Gull and Evan, along with almost the entire male population of Inis Eala, would be watching the two battle it out this morning. It meant a good audience for the earlier bouts, in which the Connacht men would demonstrate their skill. I wondered whether I might skip those and be present only for Cathal’s fight. Probably not; Clodagh would be keyed up already, needing me for support.

  Fang had been behaving oddly all morning. She would scamper along for a while, then stop dead in her tracks, her whole body tense, her ears pricked. Once or twice this sudden alert was accompanied by a sound, not the customary low growl but a faint whimper. When I bent down to check if she had a thorn in her paw she snapped at me. I walked on, and in a while she was running along beside me as if there were nothing at all out of the ordinary.

  “What is your story, little dog?” I asked her. “Another of those that can’t be told?”

  She ignored me, but three more times before we came back to the settlement she did it again: the sudden halt, the still, alert pose, as if she had caught a scent she could not ignore. Once the low buildings of the settlement were in sight, Fang seemed to forget whatever it was, racing ahead of me toward the kitchen where Biddy could be relied upon to provide a bowl of tasty leftovers.

  Despite the early hour, the dining hall was near full. Men made wagers, discussed strategies and techniques, debated the likely results of each bout. Women offered opinions and exchanged jests as to the relative prowess of their husbands, brothers or sweethearts. Knut was with Kalev at the far table, deep in conversation. If he had had second thoughts about his rash challenge, he showed no sign of unease. I did not see Svala.