Elea gulped but dropped her bleeding hand.
Unsurprisingly, Nora pulled a flying star out of her cloak and cut her own palm with it. Another weapon hidden on her person. “We will all three now leave the circle and open the door to our ancestor’s cairn. Each one of us will meet our predecessor and release their souls by fulfilling their oath with our own blood.”
Gerard did not need to ask which cairn belonged to Aine. He had visited it so many times in visions. Stepping out of the sacred trigon, he felt the wind on his face. As if he had left a building instead of an inscription on the ground. He walked to a mound of rocks and turned the golden knob with his bloody hand.
* * *
The roominside of the rocks had a rounded roof and a couple of narrow, rectangular windows that let in light. In the middle of the room there was a carved stone sarcophagus of pure white marble. On the side of the coffin, he saw engravings of Màthair. The story of Queen Eleanora and her husband, Brendan. He saw the three sisters depicted. On the stone slab at the top of the coffin was an intricate trigon, exactly like the one that Nora had made in the mud. Unthinking, he placed his bloody palm on it.
A rumbling sound filled the space. Gerard stepped back from the sarcophagus as the top stone slid away to reveal wrapped bones and a wraith of a woman. She was colorless, or rather shades of opalescence. He saw her long hair and somehow knew it had once been purple. Her clothes were ornate and belonged to another time. Even translucent, she had the most beautiful face that he’d ever seen.
“Long have I waited for your arrival, my child,” the wraith said, her voice rippling like a river.
He fell to his knees and bowed to her, feeling unworthy.
“There is no need for that, son,” she said. “We are all children of Màthair and you are a child of my blood. The strongest born in my line in five hundred years.”
Gerard stumbled to his feet, but his doubts still remained. How could an illegitimate son of the King of Kaul be an heir of Urka? The descendant of this transcendent being? Of a goddess?
He hung his head low. “I am not the strongest. I am unwanted, Mother Aine.”
A coldness fell over his shoulders and he looked up to see that the wraith had wrapped her arms around him in a hug. Her soul felt cold, but a warmth radiated from his heart. He had no memory of his own mother embracing him.
“To understand your future, you must first face your past.”
The woman he saw had every eye in the room on her. Her skin was golden brown, her hair black, and she wore the costume of a traveler.
“Come, let me tell you your fortune,” she called out in a lyrical voice.
The man who came forward was none other than his father, King Pierre. The woman took his hand and told him that through his bloodline would be the greatest kings Kaul has ever known . . .
The image splintered, and for a second, Gerard glimpsed the traveler woman and his father kissing . . .
The next picture was the woman holding a newly born boy. She was smiling at him. Singing to him. His eyes focused on the letter on the table beside her. The woman was blackmailing King Pierre. Beside the letter was a pouch of golden coins. His eyes focused back on the woman; she handed the child to the nurse beside her.
“Take him,” she said. “I have seen it. He will be my death.”
“To the orphanage?”
“No, to the palace. He is a son of the king.”
The nurse nodded and turned to leave with the wailing child.
“Wait,” the woman said, taking off her trigon medallion and handing it to the nurse. “I am not completely heartless. Give him this to remember me. It was my grandmother’s.”
The older woman took the trinket.
Gerard then saw the nurse leave the baby on the steps of the palace, the necklace around his throat . . .
Then he saw himself as a man. As a captain, leading his crew to board Elea’s ship. With his sword, he slew three of the merchant sailors before he reached the captain. Her face was partially obscured by her hat, but she fought like a tiger. He lunged. She feinted. Their swords clashed over and over again. Until he saw an opening and stabbed her in the heart. The captain fell to her knees, her hat fell off, and then she lay flat on the deck. Gerard pulled his sword from her chest, and for a moment, glimpsed her face; it was the same traveler woman who had seduced the king.
Instinctively, he stepped back in horror. Only to find himself back in the cairn with Aine, an expression of pity on her ghostly features.
“I killed my own mother.”
“Yes,” she said. “But Aoibheann Ó Murta, your birth mother, put you on that path the moment that she abandoned you.”
He rubbed his eyes. “She knew that I would kill her.”