“I know, Ma,” said a man with salt-and-pepper hair, “but we’re obliged to be hospitable to strangers.”
“Only if they mean us no harm!” Grandma scowled at the wanderers. Her hair was completely white, her face a network of wrinkles. Her wasted frame might have been robust and voluptuous in its day but was more bone than meat now. Nonetheless, her eye still gleamed with intelligence and her jaw was still firm with self-assurance. “If you come to curse us, strangers, you can keep right on going!”
“No harm intended,” Gar answered, “unless you mean hurt to us or defiance to the gods.”
Alea gazed off into space, raising her hands as she took on the appearance of a trance—and was surprised to feel some trace of rapport within her, some feeling of connection to a force greater than herself.
“What is this mummery?” one of the young men sneered. “Be still, Rhys!” Grandma hissed. “She’s making magic. Let’s see if there’s any worth to it.”
Rhys glanced at the old woman as if wondering about her sanity, then back at Alea with the first hint of awe.
“I speak for Dana in her aspect as Mother of All People!” Alea said, not noticing that her voice had dropped several notes and gained resonance. “She who gives life to all is displeased with those who take it. She from whom the red blood springs is angered with those who squander the precious life force and spill the priceless current of their veins!” Then she staggered as though missing a step, eyes wide in surprise.
Gar glanced at her in concern.
Moira spoke up quickly. “I speak the words of Cathubovda!” The clansfolk gasped, for Cathubovda was goddess of death and battle. You didn’t have to believe in her to be upset at the mention of her name.
“We have served Cathubovda as well as though she were real.” Grandma frowned. “We have been valiant in war, slain every enemy we could find, and cast out cowards and peacemongers from our ranks! What cause could Cathubovda have to be displeased with us?”
Moira stood, eyes upraised and unfocused, arms angled outward and downward, trembling. “Even Cathubovda wearies of excess! Slay strangers who come to you with fire and lead, not your own kind!”
“We do not!” Grandma Leary cried. “We slay only Clancies!”
“Celt must not kill Celt,” Moira moaned. “Gaul must not slay Gael. The People of Dana must not murder one another, or there will be none left to fight when the Sassenach comes upon you.” She threw back her head and gave vent to a weird warbling scream, eyes closing. “Cathubovda does as Dana bids! Cease this slaying of Danu’s children, or Cathubovda shall strengthen your enemies against you! They shall lay waste your crops, they shall burn down your houses, they shall scatter the ashes and let the forest come back so that none shall know this clan ever stood!” Breath hissed in, all about the chamber; wide eyes reflected lamplight. Even Grandma looked unnerved, but Rhys’s lip curled. “So speak the women. What say you, boy?”
Grandma rounded on him, face purpling, but before she could speak Kerlew stepped forward, singing a high open cadente, mockery dancing in his eyes, a smile of sarcasm showing teeth that gleamed in the firelight. Gar glanced at the boy and felt his blood run cold, for he could see that, like Moira, Kerlew believed his own role too well; the weird was upon him.
“So says the youth,” he chanted, “so says the minstrel who honors Aengus.”
People muttered to one another and someone even moaned, for Aengus was the Harper of the Dana, the Lord of the Land of Youth, who had gained his throne by trickery.
“Aengus, for the love of a maiden, sought the Land of Youth, where all was peace and harmony,” sang Kerlew. “In his honor, I shall punish all who hinder peace, I shall discipline all who hinder love, I shall lay a satire upon all who harken not to the wishes of Danu!”
“A satire?” Rhys made a burlesque of cowering. “Oh, not Not jokes! Not verses! Oh, how shall I defend myself against them?”
“How shall you defend yourself against your grandmother!” Grandma turned on the boy. “Fools should be still when wise folk speak!”
But before Rhys could respond, Kerlew began to chant:
A moment of preternatural stillness held the room. Then, almost imperceptibly, those nearest Rhys shifted their weight in such a way as to pull away from him a few inches. Someone said loudly, “Ridiculous!”
“To think a verse could change the way we think!” a woman agreed.
“Though you know, Rhys has always been kind of nasty,” a third said.
“He has that,” another woman concurred. “Now that I mind me of it, he did say some nasty spiteful things about you last winter, sister.”
Kerlew stared, stupefied.
“Oh, really! Well, you should hear what he said about you when you were out of the room!”
“Can’t really trust a man what’ll talk behind your back,” an older man growled.
“What are you talking about?” Rhys cried, turning from side to side to look at them all.
“If you can’t trust him behind your back with words, you sure can’t trust him with a rifle,” someone else opined. “You’re talking trash!” Rhys protested. “You know I’m loyal to the clan!”
“To the clan, aye,” Grandma snapped, “but to anybody in it? That’s another story, isn’t it, boy?”
Rhys spun to level a trembling forefinger at Kerlew. “This is your doing, stranger!”
Kerlew snapped out of his stupor and gave the young man a wicked grin. “Yes it is, and I could sing worse. How about if I tell them a man with a tongue as barbed as yours could only have been sired by a snake? Or that your boots are really hiding cloven hooves?”
Rhys paled. “They’d never believe it!”
“Are you sure?” Kerlew asked, then called out,
Everyone froze in a strange, still moment again. Then they relaxed, and a man called out, “You tell ‘em, Rhys!”
“Aye!” cried a woman who’d protested about him moments before. “There’s our lad!”
“Glad to have him beside me in battle, every time!” averred the man who hadn’t been willing to trust Rhys behind his back. “A fine upstanding Leary, and a credit to his clan,” Grandma said, nodding.
Rhys stared, jaw dropping. Kerlew wasn’t much better.
Then the young clansman turned on the bard. “You did that! All of it!”
Kerlew managed the wicked grin again. “Now imagine what would happen if I told them to cast you out—or told them all they were breaking out with boils?”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Grandma gasped, but her face paled. “I’ll do what the gods tell me,” Kerlew said bravely, then turned and called out to the assembly,