And then the pictures behind her eyelids were taking her up above the water and she saw how quickly the underwater upheaval had spread, for the moonlit sea stretching before her was being whipped into a frenzy, like a violent northeastern storm, yet there was not a breath of wind.
The burning in Brie's eye sockets was close to unbearable, and the pictures began to flicker, filming over from the heat and pain.
But she could hear the churning and the groaning of the sea. Sprays of water hit her body. The waves were growing larger, and blindly she backed away from the shoreline.
Then through the flickering she could dimly make out one giant wave beginning to form. It gathered itself together and rose, monstrous and impossible, into the night sky, blotting out the moon. And defying all reason, the giant spume of water exploded west, away from the beach. It slammed into the Western Sea with a thunderous roaring blast, as if the earth itself had cracked open.
Then the picture flicked off suddenly, leaving only blackness behind Brie's pain-seared eyes. And she heard another sound, cacophonous and enormous: a blend of hissing and screaming from thousands of morg throats. It lasted only a moment; then came silence, save for the sound of the ocean, restless and ever moving, as it settled back into its familiar rhythms.
Brie realized she was drenched with water, as she lay huddled on the beach of stones. The burning in her eyes had lessened somewhat, though she still kept her hands pressed against them, but her body felt broken and lifeless. And, when she removed her hands and opened her eyelids, she could not see. It was a darkness that frightened her; not just a blurred gray, as had happened before, but a complete and utter black.
She was so weak she did not think she had the strength to sit up, but then she felt Fara's wet fur beside her. When she had pulled herself up, Fara climbed into her lap, filling it. Brie laid her face on the animal's haunch, glad for the warmth.
Then she heard a cracking sound, so loud, as of something very large beginning to splinter. A familiar sound, Brie thought. Oh yes, the bell tower. And she knew, without being able to see it, that the sound came from Sedd Wydyr, and that the crystal castle was shattering.
As splinters of glass and rubble began to tumble down onto the bluff and beach, Brie crawled on her hands and knees to get farther away, Fara close beside her. Moths, some with damp wings, fluttered into her face, but she did not stop to brush them away. Somewhere in the dull recesses of her mind, she thought that Balor wasn't going to be pleased. This was the second of his buildings she had somehow managed to wreck.
Then her battered body began to shake. It was not only Balor's buildings she had destroyed.
He was somewhere nearby. She could feel it and had a sudden insane urge to throw herself into the sea, thinking it would be better to get it all over with quickly. But she did not; she just held Fara tightly as she lay curled up on her side, trembling.
And soon the footsteps came, as she had known they would, and she felt Fara being lifted from her arms and flung aside. She heard the faol hit the stones and then she heard no movement at all, except for the whooshing of moths.
Brie sat up, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees.
"It cannot have happened, and yet it has," came Balor's golden voice, thick with rage and incredulity. "I had not thought the old woman's draoicht adequate, and yet her prophecy was true."
"Old woman?" Brie croaked. Somehow she pulled herself to her feet, weak and blind as a newborn kitten still wet from afterbirth.
"A wyll, a hideous crone, misshapen, offensive to the eye. Before I left Dungal and came to Dun Slieve, this wyll told me that a cousin with an arrow of power would destroy me one day. I disbelieved her, but when I came to your father's dun and saw the unkindled skill in you with bow and arrow, I decided it was as well to be cautious. So I made the serving woman of Dun Slieve talk in her sleep and learned of the arrow.
"I tried to take it from you once"—he laughed his rich golden laugh—"but you had it not. Not yet."
And Brie remembered. One rain-soaked night in late spring, she was in her room at Dun Slieve, woken suddenly from sleep with a horrible pain and fear. Her breath had stopped, and a yellow bird was plunging down at her. Balor's tunic. Even then the goldenhawk had been his emblem. So evil, terrifying had it been that she had hidden the memory until it began to come on its own, unbidden, on a rainy night in Cuillean's dun. Or perhaps Balor himself had hidden the memory from her. "'Cross my heart and then to die/Stick an arrow in my eye.'"
"I almost disposed of you then, and, of course, I should have. But there was an interruption and I did not wish to be discovered, not until I found the arrow." Masha had opened the door, worrying about rain leaking from the ceiling. "It was a mistake, for as it turned out, the arrow concealed itself from me well. It did so again, did it not, in the bell tower?"
Brie nodded, as if in a trance.
"I could have done much with that arrow," Balor said, regret mingling with his rage. She could hear him take several strides away. He must have been looking up at the ruins of Sedd Wydyr, for he said, "That was to be our fortress, you know: rulers of a golden kingdom, Balor and consort." The rage broke over his words like a cresting wave, but his voice did not waver.
"'Cross my heart and then to die...' " The words echoed in Brie's ears, and she saw the plummeting goldenhawk, suffocating, hurting her.
The strip of cloth Collun had used to bind her burnt hand had come loose again and, unthinking, Brie began unwinding it, her blind eyes fixed on the place where Balor's voice had been. She stood sightless before this sorcerer and his staggering rage, with nothing to protect herself. Her pockets were empty, except for the moon shell Sago had given her.
Why does he not move? Brie wondered.
"And now..." Balor's voice was suddenly impatient. The rage could be contained no more.
"What of Bricriu?" The words tumbled out in a feeble effort to distract.
"Bricriu? I saw him scuttling off toward the mountains, toward Medb. The last time he came groveling at Rathcroghan she broke him. I do not care much for his chances with her now." Brie could hear the shrug of indifference in his voice.
Unlike yourself, Brie thought, for she knew, as he knew, he would have little trouble finding favor in Medb's eyes again, with his golden vanity and his seductive power. She slipped her fingers into the pocket that held the moon shell and pulled it out slowly, almost unmindfully. She heard an odd clanking sound, as though Balor were taking off some part of his golden armor.
"Will not Bricriu tell Medb you intended to betray her?" Brie wondered if Balor still had his eye-patch off.
"Who do you think Queen Medb will believe?" he replied contemptuously.
You, thought Brie.
"Now..." He moved toward her.
Brie quickly slid the moon shell into the piece of cloth from her hand and, abruptly lifting it above her head as she would a slingshot, she snapped the shell toward where she guessed Balor's head to be.
He screamed: a high-pitched foul noise infused with outrage and disbelief; a rending, piercing scream. And then something heavy knocked against her. She lost her footing and fell to the stones.
Something was lying across Brie's legs. She reached a tentative hand out and found a face, Balor's face. There was a sticky wetness on his cheek and her hand recoiled, but not before feeling the moon shell, which was lodged in his right eye, the white eye.
Quickly, fighting down a violent hysteria, she pulled her legs free of Balor's lifeless body. Half fainting, she tried to crawl away, but her burnt hand stung fiercely and would not bear her weight. She tried crawling on her elbows, but lost all sense of direction. She did not even know she was heading toward the sea until a large wave came up and slammed into her face. Coughing, she started crawling backward, but her arm brushed against something. She reached for it. It was an arrow.