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 Gearrog’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. Gearrog lunged towards her. “No!” I said, obeying some impulse I hardly understood, and he halted in his tracks.
“But—” Gearrog 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, Gearrog.” 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. Gearrog 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.”
Gearrog’s eyes widened. “You mean . . .”
“If what she wrote in her little book really is the counterspell, he can use it. I believe he can release you all.”
He sank to a crouch, his hands over his face.
I knelt down beside him. “You’ll be with them again, Gearrog,” I said quietly, laying my hand on his shoulder.“The ones you loved; the ones you lost. I truly believe it. Now come. I have another task for you.”
We did not go back by the inner door, but made a solemn procession through Irial’s garden. The women of the host went in front, and then came Gearrog with Orna in his arms. I walked last. Not alone; the ghost child crept in from a corner of the garden, embroidered bundle in hand, to walk close beside me, brushing against the skirt of my borrowed gown. Suddenly I felt the full weight of this. If the counterspell worked, we would be saying goodbye to all of them. Cathair. Gearrog. The little girl. Eichri. Rioghan. A catalogue of tears.
As we went through the archway something made me turn to gaze back over the empty garden. The cool autumn sunlight lay on a drift of fallen leaves, the empty birdbath, a blanket of moss softening the stone seat. A lone bird sang in the bare branches of the birch. And down by the stillroom there was a shifting and a folding. I saw nothing moving, but I had the sense that someone had stepped back, set down a burden.This garden had always felt like a safe place. It came to me that someone had kept watch over it, someone who had loved all that grew here. He had lingered beyond his time, knowing there was a duty to be done, a guard to keep; after all, he had seen his son become a man.The unseen tenth in the circle: the invisible presence revered by all. Here, not by the compulsion of a fell charm, but by his own selfless choice. He had been a good man, deserving of eternal rest, but love had held him here until he knew his son would be safe. I fixed my eyes on the place where a rake rested against the stillroom wall, with a hat hooked over the top of it that surely had not been there when I first entered the garden, and I whispered,“Farewell, Irial. Go home to your Emer. I will watch over him now.”
It was a day of triumph and of loss, of jubilation and of mourning, a day that would furnish fuel for a hundred years of fireside tales. Anluan led his ragtag army back up the hill and into the courtyard with his head held high.The men of the settlement marched behind him, shields carried with pride, weapons gripped in hands more accustomed to wield hay fork, scythe or fishing net than bow and spear. The men of the host came after, with a new light in their shadowy eyes.They had held fast; they had stood by their comrades.They had obeyed their orders and kept to the plan. Rioghan looked stunned. Perhaps he had not quite dared to believe that this time his audacious strategy would bring victory and deliver his lord home safe and sound.
The makeshift infirmary filled up.The stunning success had not been achieved without casualties, and the spectral monks went to and fro with their basins and bandages, splints and potions, tending to the wounded from the settlement and from the force Magnus had brought for the surprise attack.
I had barely time to greet Anluan before he was surrounded by a press of excited folk. As I moved across the courtyard, the tale came to me in fragments. All across the Tor folk were talking, talking, trying to put it together. The chieftains of Whiteshore and Silverlake, with their remaining troops, were even now dealing with the ragged remnant of the Norman army. Cleaning up, I heard someone call it. The horses having bolted, the enemy was fleeing on foot, disordered and terrified. No doubt Stephen de Courcy had heard the tales of Whistling Tor before he decided to lay siege to the place. That was not the same as waking from sleep to find oneself doing battle with an army like Anluan’s. Magnus was of the opinion that Lord Stephen would already have decided against claiming the hill for his own. Just in case he had not, Brion of Whiteshore and Fergal of Silverlake were out there reminding him of the wisdom of such a choice.
Anluan’s first party, led by Cathair and made up entirely of spectral warriors, had entered the Norman encampment while the enemy was sleeping, then manifested abruptly, spooking the horses and causing general pandemonium. Though the Normans had greatly outnumbered their attackers, they had not had time to assume their fighting formations or establish sufficient order to strike back effectively. While the host was still wreaking havoc among them, the substantial forces led by Brion and Fergal had mounted their surprise attack, driving the enemy up onto the hill. There Anluan’s second force, under his personal command, had fallen upon the Normans with much screaming and wailing, vanishing and reappearance, trickery and surprise, not to speak of the traditional use of arms—by all accounts, the warriors of the host had put their combat skills to fine use.The men of the
