NEW YORK CITY
Diarmid
First was the darkness—or no, not the darkness itself but rather his awareness that it was dark, and that it had been so for a very long time. Next came memory, only bits and pieces: golden hair and eyes the color of a spring morn. Her voice cautioning him not to go without his great sword. Then the boar, charging, tusks red with blood. Pain, there had been pain. And thirst. And . . . death. And then, from far away, his foster father’s voice, conversations held in a gray twilight.
Now Diarmid heard murmurings, young men’s voices. He opened his eyes, blinking at the daylight peeking through an unshuttered window. He saw the ceiling first, spotted with mildew, in one place black with soot, and then the rest of the room: seeping walls, a potbellied iron contraption in one corner. Pallets of straw, his friends dressed as he was: in linen shirts, capes, and boots. The Fianna. He knew a moment of swelling pride.
And then he realized that the undying sleep was broken. They had been called back as foretold. Ireland had need of them again.
He saw the white-blond head of his best friend, Oscar. Then Ossian, Oscar’s father, looking strangely young, no more than twenty-four, as if there were only a few years between him and his son instead of more than twenty. Some of them had died old men, some of them in war, some—like Diarmid—by other means; but they were all young now. Most of them, like him, eighteen or nineteen; some a bit older. Goll, no longer haggard. Keenan, still thin but not yet gaunt and gray. Conan—bald as always, but then he’d been bald in his youth, and still wearing that stinking sheepskin about his shoulders.
And then there was . . . Finn. His golden-red hair glistened in the pale light, his gaze was as sharp and blue as ever. Finn, whom Diarmid had betrayed. Finn, who’d had the means to save him but had let him die.
Diarmid rose to one elbow, trying to gain his bearings. Yet nothing was familiar but these friends he’d known the whole of his life.
“A restorative sleep, it seems,” Finn said with a smile, rising, flexing arms and shoulders. “It looks to be all of us together again, lads. The horn’s sounded at last.”
“Where is she?” Ossian asked. “Shouldn’t she be here? The priestess?”
Diarmid looked around. No woman anywhere, no veleda. He remembered hearing the spell through his dreams, the archdruid’s booming voice and the veleda’s soft one, though still powerful. Even then he’d felt a foreboding, and now he looked for her with dread.
There was another part of the prophecy that had a special role for him. He didn’t think the others knew of it—he wished he was ignorant himself.
“She’s not here,” he said, hoping no one heard his relief.
“Who blew the horn?” Finn asked. “Where is she who blooded it? She should be—”
There was the sound of rapid footsteps, a clatter, and the door sprang open. A boy burst inside. Threadbare coverings on his legs, short boots revealing bare ankles, a shirt with buttons, a small cap. The boy skidded to a stop, his breath coming fast. “You’d best get up! Get up! Get up! You got to get outta here! The Whyos are coming, and they’re gonna take your hide for bein’ in their panny!” The boy spun on his heel, racing out again.
They were silent, staring at one another.
Finn frowned. “By the gods, what was that?”
Diarmid ignored Finn’s question. He went to the single window and looked out. This was no world he knew. He stared in shock at tall buildings blocking the sky, with metal ladders twining around them and narrow streets below; chariots with four wheels; horses—the only thing familiar—and the stink of mud and piss and piles of garbage. People dressed in outlandish costumes. More people than he had seen in one place since the battle against Daire Donn and the son of Lochlann. But these people were not fighting.
And these were not the green hills and glens of Ireland.
“We’re not home,” he said, his voice gravelly from long sleep. He cleared his throat, said again, more loudly, “’Tisn’t Ireland.” He turned back to his friends. “Where are we? When are we?”
Then they heard the shouting.