Corchen nodded to Eithne, then turned to Kilim and bowed slightly.

Kilim bowed in return, then again to the little man sitting on the stool.

“You know this little man?”

Corchen gesture to the small man on the bench before her. “Of course. One can hardly study the lore of the Abred without coming to know the Avacs who dwell beneath it.” She frowned.

The little man’s eyes rounded, then he cast a suspicious look to Corchen.

“Aye, that’s her,” she said, then to Eithne. “It’s about time, lass.”

With a rattle and a clatter, the little man in the steel plates took a knee and bowed his head to Eithne. “My lady.” Then he clunked to his feet and screwed his eyebrows into a knot. “Thordorest bolim Kilim-nalaim?”

For a moment, Kilim’s face twisted with helpless grief, then he shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Dwo dígilest bolgimbímalk belaim.”

Corchen’s face twisted with regret. “That’s a shame. He was very brave.” She noted the lacerations on his leg. “I’ll have a priestess look after you.” She rang a bell.

“And who do we have here?” Corchen regarded Eithne’s companions gravely.

“I’m a Cockam, I am!” Talwyn put her fists on her hips, and her liripipe shook with great dignity.

Corchen on the seat inclined her head. “Always an honor to have a Cockam in our presence.”

Tommalt gave Eithne a sideward glance. Gray ripples of doubt and discomfort moved just beneath the surface of his eyes. He put his fist to his breast and identified himself.

Two priestesses in light blue robes entered. Corchen gave them instructions to see after Kilim’s wounds, and to make Talwyn and Tommalt comfortable.

Talwyn helped Kilim as he shuffled away, but Tommalt objected. “The Lady Eithne, she’s my responsibility, Your Worthiness.”

The white eyebrows of the man in the white drymyn robes rose on his forehead. “You don’t trust us, soldier?”

Tommalt’s eyes shifted to Eithne and around the room, and he rubbed at the back of his neck. “It ain’t that, Your Honor. It’s just—”

“Where’s Eowain? We came to find him, not to turn ourselves back into your custody.”

“Soldier.” His resonant voice seemed to make the very stones of the hill take notice. “Go with the priestesses.”

The muscles of Tommalt’s jaw twitched and worked. The eyes that glanced to her seemed like passengers on a runaway wagon.

“Tommalt?” Fear choked at her like an ox-yoke.

But he saluted and left with the priestesses.

Eithne backed against the wall and drew her dagger. “I’ll gut you both if you try magicking me. I swear to Gods.”

The old man harrumphed and scratched at his beard as he regarded Eithne. “How old is she?”

“Just seventeen circles, Your Eminence,” replied Corchen.

“And you're sure of her heritage?”

“The great-granddaughter of Sárán Red Hand, who is of the line of Demna and Grainne from of old. Her lineage is beyond doubt.”

“And you’re sure she’ll breed?” said the old man.

“The omens are good.” Corchen opened her hands and shrugged. “But the Gods, they are forgetful.”

“She’d better breed, and she’d better breed true. I’ve read the coelbreni.” The older man looked at Corchen severely. “The time is coming.”

Eithne threatened them with the point of her sword again. “You know I can hear you, right?”

“I don’t understand.” Eithne waved her sword from the little man to the older man. “Who are they?”

The High-Priestess motioned with her open hand. “This is Nalim, Chief of the Boffik Clan.” The little man nodded. “And this is His Eminence, Gruath, Great Oak of Iathrann.”

Gruath in the white robes held out his hand, on the finger of which rested a heavy, ornate ring that featured a circle set with antlers.

Tommalt went to his knees with a gasp, “Your Eminence,” and kissed the proffered ring.

But Eithne refused to be impressed. “So what? What have they to do with me?”

Gruath raised his eyebrows and lowered his waiting hand. Corchen sighed and smiled to him.

The little man reached into a pouch on his belt, and drew out a package wrapped with linen.

“Nalim’s kindred found this fifteen-hundred-and-twenty-two years ago,” said Corchen. “Before Men ever came to these lands. It comes from deep under the Abred, from the caverns of the vættiri, horrid beasts with whom the Avacs have warred for many years.”

Eithne narrowed her eyes. “Horrid beasts? Giant, ogrish monsters?”

Corchen blinked at her, surprised. “I wouldn’t know, dear. I’ve never met one. But I imagine they’re something like that.”

With thumb and forefinger, Nalim unwrapped the linen as if its contents would bite.

Corchen went on. “Their priests told them it was destined for—if my Old Avac isn’t too rusty—the ‘Copper-Haired Bride of the Meadow of Groves under Star-Seer’s Mountain.’”

Nalim revealed a shining lozenge-shaped metal plate about the size of her palm amid the folds of the linen.

Corchen waved toward the east. “Your family’s mountain is named for the giant Ydrys, an astrologer in his own age. And your home, Dolgallu, the name means ‘Meadow of Groves,’ doesn’t it?” Corchen shrugged. “Your hair speaks for itself, I should think.”

Nalim held it up to her.

Eithne leaned forward. The metal had a silvery lustre, with a hint of golden warmth. On its face was inscribed a single long line, twisted and curved to resemble the upper side of a snail and its shell. The line wrapped around four squiggled arrows and another line that terminated in a round oval. At the left end, the snail-line ended in a small circle, like a head. The other end terminated in a wavy line that resembled a fish tail.

Eithne scowled. “What does it mean?”

Corchen pursed her lips and shook her head. “I’m not sure. The metal is findruinne—”

“Findroo-what-now?”

“Findruinne. White bronze. An alloy of silver and gold.”

Eithne thought she knew that much about metallurgy. “That’s impossible.”

“Aye, without powerful magick, it is. The ancients alone knew the secrets of its manufacture.” The High Priestess frowned. “But the sigil itself is unfamiliar to me.”

Nalim held it higher. He clearly intended her to take it.

“Is it dangerous?”

Corchen regarded it, head cocked to one side. Her gaze became abstracted, as if she peered across a vast distance. “There’s something of magick to it. An abjuration of some sort, I think. It wants to repudiate something.” She blinked several times and shook her head as if to clear her sight. “But it’s been dormant a long while.” She stepped down from her stone chair. “I wouldn’t say it’s dangerous. Not to you at any rate.”

“What does he want me to do with it?”

“Well, he wants you to take it, of course. It’s a wedding gift.”

Eithne shook her head with suspicion and distrust. “Why would their priests, from more than a thousand years ago, even know of me?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, lass. They’re gods are not our gods.”

Though she kept her sword at the ready, Eithne reached out and took the plaque in her hand. Though light, it carried a strange gravity in her hand, and was warm to the touch. She tucked it into her belt without lowering her blade. “Where’s Eowain?”

“Safe, and recovering nicely, I assure you.” Corchen raised her hands to take in all the shrine and the hill above it. “Do you know who’s interred here? The first ten Stewards of the Vale. Their sacred bones have lain here for nearly fifteen hundred years. Their wisdom brought our people to these lands. Their wisdom held the Unlimited at bay, and gave your Ancestors their power.”

A shiver went through Eithne. She’d feared the Ancestors all her life. Had even heard them at night, in the howls of the wolves on the mad mountain slopes of Ydrys.

Her people had burned torches along the outskirts of the village every night, and posted watches on well-lit timber-scaffolded towers, lest the Ancestors should come to the village and take them unaware.

Yet still, sometimes—not often—people went missing. Eithne had known two such girls. Kigfa and Neava, they were called. She shuddered at the memory of those fearsome nights, two years apart. No one dared show their face amid the snarls and growls and scuffles and screams that ran riot through their dark village.

“Gone to the Ancestors,” that was all the elders would say. Eithne wasn’t sure how, but that was someway different from simply dying.

Eithne spread three fingers upright, like the branches of a holly tree, a protection against evil. She didn’t like to remember such things.

Corchen shook her head. “Well you might make Tinne against the Ancestors, but they aren’t evil. Merely necessary.”

“I don’t understand.”

White-haired Gruath spread his arms. “All the Manred, all that is known and unknown, the Abred beneath our feet, the blue sky of Gwynfyd over our heads, the infinite Ceugant all about, all these are Bound by the Limit. But the ultimate substance of things is Boundless, the Unlimited Void. It’s the Limit that gives the Boundless form.”

“What in Annwn are you talking about?”

“Pay attention, you fool girl,” snapped Corchen. “It’s exactly Annwn that His Eminence is talking about. The Unlimited, Boundless Void. The lowest state of being—the state of not being.”

Eithne had always thought of Annwn as a chthonic realm, a place of stillness and darkness cut off from life and the Gods. But it was still—to her own mind—a place. As firm beneath the feet as the stone hall in which they stood.

But a state of not being? Eithne frowned and tried to imagine such a—How does one even call it? An un-place?

Corchen looked on her gravely. “Make no mistake, girl: the Void exists. It enters the world from the Unlimited breath—The world breathes in the Void, so to speak. The Void distinguishes the natures of things, one from the others. It’s the thing that separates the successive terms in a series. But without the Limit?” Corchen threw her fingers wide. “Poof! All is Void.”

Gruath went on. “Your Ancestors were given the power to maintain the boundary of the Limit against the Unlimited. It’s only by their power that Annwn—the Abyssal Void of the Unlimited—is kept from blowing in like a dark, terrible wind to extinguish all the light of the world.”

“The blood of the Ancestors.” Corchen poked at Eithne. “It moves through you.”

Eithne licked her lips with the tip of her tongue, shook her head rhythmically, side-to-side. “Are you saying I keep the Void at bay?”

Corchen put her hands up and waved them apart. “Not you. The Ancestors. And those descendants deemed worthy of their power.” Alva arched an eyebrow at her. “Descendants such as yours, my lady.”

“But I don’t have any—” Realization swept over Eithne then, like a cold wind from a dark grave. “You mean—?”

Corchen nodded. “Yes. Your descendants, my lady. Your children. Yours and Eowain’s.”