Brie watched, anxious.
Then Aelwyn rose and moved toward Brie. Ciaran was sleeping. "How long has it been since Ciaran was in Tir a Ceol?" asked the wyll.
"A long time."
"Three moon cycles? Four?"
Brie thought. "Eight or nine perhaps."
"I am getting a strong feeling of hiraeth, the heartsickness I told you of. Perhaps there is something similar for those from Tir a Ceol. I also felt a very strong longing for something green, soft, with sweet-smelling white flowers..."
"Seamir," murmured Brie. "It is what the Ellyl horses eat in the cavern of the horses in Tir a Ceol," she explained.
"It must be very good. I believe that if Ciaran doesn't have some quite soon she may die."
FIVE
Monodnock
Then she must return to Tir a Ceol at once," Brie said without hesitation. "Is she strong enough to journey there?"
"I believe so. I know of a porth—or a portal as you call it—into Tir a Ceol that is not far from here, by Lake Or. But she does not want to go."
Brie looked puzzled. "But you said..."
"She needs to go, but she will not leave you."
"She must."
After swiftly dressing Aelwyn's cut face and cutting loose the disagreeable goat-horse from its tether (for which kindness Brie received a glancing blow to her shin), they set out on foot for Lake Or. Ciaran walked slowly, head down.
They walked until the moon was directly overhead. By then Ciaran was barely able to raise her head, and Aelwyn said her own head was pounding as if from a thousand blacksmith hammers. Brie spotted a small stream and suggested they rest there.
She lit a campfire and went to fill the skin bags. When she returned Aelwyn had already brewed a pan of brownish liquid she called cyffroi. She offered Brie a cup.
Brie tasted it and grimaced.
Aelwyn chuckled. "If you go to Dungal you will get used to it. It is what we drink instead of chicory. I am slightly mad in the morning until I've had my cup of cyffroi. Of course, there are those who say I am mad most of the time, being a wyll."
"What's it like?" asked Brie.
"Being a wyll?" Aelwyn smiled her cat-smile at Brie. "It is not so very different from not being a wyll. Eirrenians think that we are always being bombarded with visions and portents. But seeings come only when I ask for them, when I deepen my thoughts, turn inward. In Dungal they say of us that we have a fire in the head, and I suppose it is so, although it is a fire we kindle ourselves—it is gentle, and, for the most part, without fear. I find it rather pleasant, a hearth fire, if you will." She took a sip of cyffroi, looking thoughtfully at Brie. "I should not be surprised if there was a little of wyll fire in you."
Brie laughed. "That's absurd."
"Why?"
"Because I am Eirrenian and have shown no particular gift for fortune-telling in all my years. No, I have fire in my bow, my arrow, even in my name. That's quite enough fire for me."
"Perhaps, but perhaps not. I have not had a trance that took such hold of me since I was in Dungal, with a fellow wyll who sought the heart of an unbending fisherman."
"Would I not have felt it, if I did have magic or draoicht of some kind?"
"It is usually so. But there have been cases when it lay dormant for many years..."
"Well, I have no wyll fire, nor any draoicht, and that is that." Brie took another sip of the cyffroi. As she got used to the Dungalan beverage, she was noticing that under the bitterness was a subtle taste of nuts and vanilla. "Are there many wylls in Dungal?"
"Not so many as there once were. There used to be at least one in every village. But now many villages have none. The coastal villages had their own kind of wyll; they are men, called Sea Dyak sorcerers. There are also only a very few of these left in Dungal.
"In fact, there is a Sea Dyak sorcerer in Bog Maglu. Perhaps he is the man of power I saw, which could account for the seabirds..." Aelwyn paused as though to examine this train of thought. Then she continued. "He was once the most powerful sorcerer in Dungal; Yldir is his name. I cannot tell you how old he is for no one knows, but there are stories of him alongside heroes who lived hundreds of years ago. Before my parents were born he became a hermit, went off by himself to live in Bog Maglu. There are a few who have made pilgrimages to see him there, and they say he is quite mad, but still powerful. He lives near the stones of memory."
"Why are they called stones of memory?" Brie asked.
"Because they are thought to hold the entire history of Dungal inscribed on their surfaces. Only one of great power, such as Yldir, can read the ciphers and pictures etched in the stones." Aelwyn paused. "I see a Dungalan arrow in your quiver. Is this the arrow of fire you spoke of?"
"Yes. How did you know it to be Dungalan?"
"The fletching feathers are goldenhawk."
"It was my mother's. The man Bricriu tried to steal it. It has bands of color I cannot make out. Perhaps you..." Brie reached for the arrow.
"No," said Aelwyn definitely, raising her hand to arrest Brie's movement. "I prefer not to hold the arrow. Fire magic can be unpredictable."
Brie nodded, thinking of her blistered fingers. "Yet it is cool most of the time." She paused. "Sometimes I feel it is drawing me to Dungal."
"It could be," answered the wyll, smiling. "Take care it does not kindle in you more than you bargained for."
Brie uneasily asked what the wyll meant, but Aelwyn ignored her, saying her head was still pounding and she needed to rest. She finished her cup of cyffroi and settled herself on the ground, pulling her cloak over her face.
***
When dawn came, Brie woke a cranky Aelwyn. Ciaran was already awake, grazing nearby.
While Aelwyn brewed more cyffroi, Brie consulted her map.
"That looks to be a wizard's map," observed Aelwyn.
"It belonged to Crann, the wizard of the trees."
"I have heard of him."
"Where is the village where your friend lives?"
Aelwyn leaned over the map. "Here," she said, pointing to a spot a short distance east of Lake Or. "And this is the way to Beirthoud's Pass." The route through the mountains lay directly north of the lake.
Aelwyn suddenly laughed, her good spirits restored by the cyffroi. "A fire arrow and a wizard's map. And you say there is nothing of wyll fire in you."
***
As they came to the top of a ridge, they saw Lake Or stretched out below them. It was a large lake that glowed golden in the late afternoon light. The lake was bordered on its right side by a gentle rolling terrain of grass and heather, but its left side was dominated by a large fell with sheer screes of loose rock plunging Straight into the water. Beyond Lake Or a fertile green valley with a scattering of farmholds could be seen, and beyond the valley loomed the Blue Stack Mountains. So high did they rise that some were peaked with white, though it was late summer.
Aelwyn led them down the ridge and onto a path leading toward the scree side of the lake. They followed the path until it ended, directly at the foot of a silab of stone. Aelwyn laid her two palms against the rock face and a handful of pebbles cascaded down, splashing into the water. Then she turned to Brie. "Now we wait."
"What did you do?"
"The draoicht equivalent of knocking. I let him know there was an Ellyl here. They don't usually open porths for anyone but Ellylon. They don't mind us Dungalans in general, especially wylls, but they still do not choose to invite us into Tir a Ceol."
They waited in silence. Aelwyn made herself comfortable on a boulder, while Brie stood beside Ciaran, her hand resting lightly on the horse's warm flank.
Suddenly there was a person standing at the foot of the path.
He was tall for an Ellyl, and his body was long, sitting atop two gangly, storklike legs. He had long, skinny arms from which dangled two large hands. His hair was more orange-red than gold, and instead of curling down his neck like the hair of most Ellylon, his was cut short and stood up straight, giving him a slightly demented look. But the eyes were unmistakably Ellyl, a startling silver color that gleamed at Brie and Aelwyn in the twilight.