It is given to you,” the archdruid said, handing her Finn’s hunting horn. “It is put into your care and that of your descendants.”
The veleda curled her fingers around the horn and felt the power, an ancient energy. She caressed the crack at the base where it had been trampled in the battle that had mortally wounded its owner, Finn MacCumhail, the great leader of the Fianna warriors. The bronze decoration had been stripped away, replaced and mended with hammered silver etched with ogham, the symbols that infused it with magic.
The power was hers. The privilege of sacrifice. She looked up into the blue eyes of her teacher and mentor.
He asked soberly, “Do you accept the task, my child?”
She glanced at the men lying on the biers surrounding her, the soldiers of the Fianna, with Finn at the center. They were as still as death, clad in the raiment of battle. They were the most elite warriors and bodyguards of the High King of Ireland. These men had served gods and kings; they were the subjects of countless stories, poems, and ballads. Everyone knew of the Fianna. There was not a boy who did not dream of becoming one of them, nor a girl who did not yearn for their kisses.
But now a new world had come.
“I accept the task,” she said.
“They will return when the horn has known the veleda’s blood, when the incantation is sung and the horn is blown three times,” the archdruid continued. “When Ireland is in need, they will return as young men in their prime to fight for her. That is the spell that is laid. That is the word that is spoken.”
“But they have grown arrogant and greedy these last years,” she joined in, singing the spell she’d labored to master, not just the words but how to say them. “They have misused their power, and they have not always served the honorable. And so we place upon them this geis, this prohibition: the veleda must decide if their new fight is a worthy one. If it is not deemed so, they will fail, and die.”
The magic of the words threaded through the branches of the overhanging rowan tree. She clutched the horn tight between her fingers. The power reverberated through her like thunder heard beneath the water.
“The veleda will see the path,” the archdruid sang. “She will weigh the task and choose the worthiest side. And on Samhain, when the doors between worlds open, her death will release her power to the chosen, and they will win. If this condition is not met, the Fianna will disappear, never to return to any world. This will be done. This is complete.”
The spell would pass through her blood and down through the generations, from one Druid priestess to another. One day her descendant would blood the horn. One day the daughter of her daughter’s daughter would know the joy and power of self-sacrifice.
She smiled and echoed, “This is complete.”
The moon turned the color of blood. The rowan tree trembled, and the earth shook beneath her feet and opened, swallowing the Fianna. The men were there and then gone, and the great maw closed again, leaving no seam, nothing to show what had been, nor what lay beneath.