“Make him stop,” Aislinn gasped, and her eyes rolled towards me.“Call your brute off or I’ll see to it that the Normans come up the hill as easily as that kinsman of yours did, the one you weren’t sensible enough to go off with! I’ve done it before and I can do it again. All it needs is a word, a snap of the fingers—get your filthy hands off me, pig! Don’t just stare at me, do it, Caitrin!”
Perhaps I was staring; her veil had come off completely as Gearróg grappled with her, and her hair spread out across the library floor, long, shimmering, the hue of ripe wheat in sunshine. I recalled, uncomfortably, how Nechtan had longed to touch it.
“It was an accident,” Gearróg said again, and such was the difference in his tone that my heart skipped a beat.“I didn’t do it. It was an accident.” What had been furious denial had turned to stunned recognition. He remembered now, and knew this was true. Something had changed here, changed profoundly.
New figures in the doorway: the wise woman of the host, and behind her the two others who had gone with her to the garden to wait. They crossed the library to kneel by Orna. As Aislinn quieted in Gearróg’s grip, more and more folk came in to stand around us, watchful, expectant. There was no doubt, now, that what we could hear from down the hill was a song. It sounded out through the brightening air of morning, jubilant, strong, not quite in unison:
“It’s over.” Gearróg might have been witnessing a miracle, such was the wonder in his voice. “They’ve done it.”
And at the same moment, the wise woman said,“I’m sorry; we cannot help her.” She laid Orna’s still form down and stood to face me.“Her neck is broken. A quick passing and a valiant one.”
It was too much to take in.The battle won. Orna killed. Perhaps, when the men came back up the hill, we would learn of more losses, more brave souls who had given their lives so that Anluan could win back his own ground and theirs. Strangest of all, Aislinn quiescent on the library floor, no longer spitting insults, no longer struggling.
“Tonight is All Hallows,” the wise woman said.“A hundred years since the accursed chieftain of Whistling Tor first called us forth.” She turned her shrewd gaze on me. “Did you find what you sought?”
“It’s in her book,” I said, and as I spoke, suddenly Aislinn moved, writhing like an eel, slipping from Gearróg’s grasp, diving across the library to seize her journal. She rose wild-eyed, with the book clutched in her hands. Her golden hair was dishevelled, her clothing disordered. Gearróg lunged towards her. “No!” I said, obeying some impulse I hardly understood, and he halted in his tracks.
“But—” Gearróg protested as Aislinn opened the little book and started, with feverish strength, to rip each parchment page from its stitching, tear it up and drop it onto the flagstones.
“Leave her be, Gearróg.” I could almost hear her thoughts. Though her face was a frozen mask, they were in her eyes as she wrenched apart what she had held close for a hundred years, the cherished repository of her secret knowledge.
Tiny scraps of parchment, here two words, here only one . . .They lay all around her, scattered like the fallen leaves of autumn’s first gale. Aislinn took the empty covers of her book and tore them in two. “He can’t do it now,” she said with perfect clarity, her eyes on me. “There’s no banishing the host without the spell. You won’t end this so easily.” She turned and walked out into Irial’s garden, and the folk of the host moved back to let her pass.
I stood numb, watching her go. Gearróg was opening and closing his hands, as if he needed to do some damage with them. “Are you all right?” I asked him.
“Yes. No.You going to let her go, just like that?”
“For now.” It seemed Anluan had won his battle. Once he was back on the hill and learned the truth, he could hold her in check. And it was All Hallows’ Eve. “She’s wrong,” I said. I looked over at the wise woman, and she gazed calmly back at me. “It doesn’t matter that she tore up the book. I think Anluan can do this without it.”
Gearróg’s eyes widened. “You mean . . .”
