TWENTY-TWO
The Fire Arrow
Brie abruptly stood, then realized she could not see. Stuffing the arrow in her quiver and feeling for her bow, Brie called out softly, "Fara?"
She felt the furry body of the faol brush against her legs. "Guide me, Fara. I cannot see. I wish to find Ciaran, to watch Collun. And then I need to go to the stone beach."
Fara began to move forward and Brie kept near the faol by resting her hand on the animal's back. Fara had long since rid herself of the bandage on her neck and Brie could feel the puckered edges of the faol's wound.
"Brie?" It was Aelwyn's voice.
Brie stopped short, turning her face toward the voice.
"I could not sleep. How is Collun?"
"The same," Brie answered, keeping her voice casual. "Aelwyn, would you do me a favor and sit with him? I, uh, need to look for mallow, in the forest. It's for burn salve..." She trailed off weakly, hoping Aelwyn would not ask questions.
"Yes, of course. But..." There was curiosity in the wvll's voice.
"It should not take long. Thank you." Brie walked forward, her hand still on Fara's back, trying to move with the assurance of one who can see. "To the beach, Fara," Brie whispered.
Brie felt the branches of the trees around her as they entered the forest, but Fara guided her surely, and she did not stumble or fall.
She could tell the moment they emerged from the forest: the moonlight brightening the dimness of her sight, the air on her face, and the strong smell of the sea. They moved quickly across the battlefield, and as they were making their way through the ruins near the shore, Brie's sight began to return. By the time they stepped onto the white stone beach her vision had returned to normal. She could clearly see the moths that swarmed up with each step. There were more than she remembered, and she had to keep waving her hand in front of her face to keep them from lining her lips and closing her nostrils. Fara playfully swatted at a few, but because there were so many she soon tired of the game.
Suddenly unsure, Brie gazed around, still waving away the moths. The moon was so bright that except for the dun color of the sky it might have been day. Brie saw no sign of Balor.
She moved closer to the water and the number of moths began to diminish. Restlessly her eyes scanned the bluff, the glittering fortress, the battlefield, and then the beach and across the sea.
Squinting, she took several steps closer to the water, until it was lapping the tips of her boots. There was a long jagged line of darkness resting on the horizon, a deeper dark than the murky night sky, and Brie stared at it until her eyes hurt. The darkness stretched left and right almost as far as she could see. At first she was puzzled; then vague, uneasy fears began stirring in her.
She stood very still, her body rigid. Fara had seen the darkness, too, and let out a low sound. Together they watched as the darkness grew larger and moved closer.
Boats. Hundreds and hundreds of boats. The swollen moon shone on them as brightly as a sky full of torches. Brie could make out the arching long necks of the prows of long boats with bloodred sails billowing above. They looked like a fleet of winged sea serpents splitting the waves, bearing down on the coast of Dungal.
She had a sudden tingling sensation on the skin of her neck and arms. Someone was nearby. Almost involuntarily Brie looked up, and there, standing at the tip of the bluff above, was Balor. He gazed straight out to sea, at the approaching boats, and he wore golden armor, burnished, dazzling in the full moon. His head was covered by a resplendent war helmet with the guise of a bird of prey rising in radiant gold from his forehead. Because of the way he stood, Brie could see that across the torso of the golden mail was a black tunic. In the center of the tunic, woven of impossibly bright threads, was a goldenhawk.
He did not turn his face toward Brie, but he knew she was there.
Brie looked back at the boats. They had dropped their sails and were now being rowed. Each boat was crowded with morgs—there were more standing than sitting at the oars—a ghastly silent horde, some hooded, some baring their skeletal heads. She suddenly remembered that the morgs who attacked Collun at Cuillean's dun had come by boat.
Balor must have emptied the island kingdoms of Usna and Uneach, Brie thought as she stared, unbelieving, at the oncoming multitude. Hundreds of boats, perhaps even thousands, each one carrying a hundred morgs. Even if all of Dungal and Eirren combined stood against them, there would still be morgs to spare.
Brie sank to her knees. Fara huddled against her. No wonder the gabha battle had been irrelevant to Balor. This was his true army.
Only when she felt a searing on her already burnt hand did Brie realize she was holding the fire arrow. She must have reached for it, unknowing. Hot tears of desolation and loss stung her eyelids. She. found herself thinking of the hero Amergin and how he beat the sea back with his fists. And of Fionna, who had emptied herself to keep the sea from overwhelming her people.
But these were morgs in boats, not the sea, and Brie had no drapicht. The fire arrow did, but she could hardly slash and burn her way through such a horde.
She gazed up again at Balor. The moon gleamed on his golden armor like a beacon. He stood unmoving, triumphant. He must have removed his eye-patch, for Brie could see his white eye under the golden beak of his war helmet.
Numbly she rose from her knees, feeling for her bow. She held the arrow a last time. And then, fingers trembling, she nocked it to the bowstring.
She pointed the arrow at Balor, at the goldenhawk on his chest. For my father, she thought.
She pulled the string back. But then, with a sob that tore out of her gut, she swung the bow away and, thinking irrelevantly of the god Nuadha and his magic teka, she fixed her sights on the nearest longboat of morgs, though it lay well beyond the range of an arrow shot. She focused all that was in her, all of her strength, her will, her passion, and her stubbornness, into that banded, mysterious arrow, until she did not know where she began and the arrow ended ... and she was the arrow. Before letting the arrow fly, Brie suddenly remembered the nightmare she had had in Ardara, of flames instead of eyes. She felt the heat of the arrow along her jawbone, and it seared against her first and second fingers as she held the nock in place on the string. She had never felt the arrow so hot, hot enough to burn through the bowstring; her muscles contracted and terror threatened to dissolve her will to shoot.
But with a courage she did not know she possessed, her already kindling eyes fixed on the nearest longboat, she re-leased the arrow. As she watched it soar, an unwavering line of brightness against the dun-colored sky, Brie thought to herself what a farcical, ridiculous gesture it had been, to shoot a single arrow at a war host as vast as the sea itself. Her bow collapsed in fragments in her hands, the string burnt through. But the arrow flew higher and higher, soaring over the sea waves, arcing, then gracefully descending, and soundlessly cleaved the surface of the water, leagues short of the longboats. Brie crumpled to the ground, her eyes on fire.
As she pressed her fingers in agony against her eyelids, Brie felt a great stillness around her, almost as if all sound had been sucked down under the surface of the sea with the arrow. She could not see with her burning eyes, but pictures, vivid and clear, were forming behind the heat. She saw the arrow cleaving the water, then piercing rock and sand and sticking there in the seabed, upright. A fish was swimming by, a yellow parrot fish (one of Sago's favorites, Brie thought foolishly), and, as the arrow came to rest, the fish suddenly startled, darting away in a great hurry. And Brie saw why; the water surrounding the arrow began to move in an unnatural way. It was as if an invisible giant finger had dipped into the water and was spinning it in circles around the fire arrow. The water began to foam, and the churning grew so intense Brie could no longer see the arrow.