“I was on duty when she finally came to. Her brother was there, so happy to see his little sister alive and awake again. She looked confused at first, which was to be expected. Head injuries often affect the memory, and patients usually wake asking what happened, or where they are.

“Catríona Ní Marra didn’t ask anything like this. Instead she gazed out the window, out into the dark, frozen courtyard, and asked, ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’

“Her brother smiled and told her that she had just bumped her head and would be better very soon. We had told him to expect some memory loss, so he knew that the last thing she remembered was probably seeing the courtyard outside alive with the colours of spring.

“Then she asked, ‘So I missed my birthday?’

“He laughed, and said that she did, but she’d remember again in time. He told her about the feast they had to celebrate and described the jesters, bards, and fools that performed for all the guests. She was laughing at this point, until she asked, ‘And how is Father? Is he still unwell?’

“Desperately, he looked to me for help, but I was just a student then, and I didn’t know what to do. The poor lad was left with no choice but to tell the girl about her father’s death, and little Catríona mourned for him all over again. She cried for several minutes as her brother sat there in silence. Soon afterwards, she stopped. Her eyes, barely dry, were drawn again to the window.

“Then she asked, ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’

“He told her about the accident again, the memory loss, but still she asked, ‘So I missed my birthday?’

“I sat and listened to the same details—the jesters, the bards, the feast—as the little girl laughed and smiled in delight. I knew what was coming next, but I prayed to the Gods that she wouldn’t ask again.

“‘And how is Father? Is he still unwell?’

“For a whole hour, they had the same conversation. Over and over again. For a whole hour, Catríona mourned for the death of her father. Each time she cried in exactly the same way: soft sobs followed by a slow building wail, then silence. The way she paused and looked out the window was the same every time, as was the way she wiped her tears away with the back of her sleeve.

“Again, and again. Every. Single. Time.

“Eventually the gaps between her periods of memory-loss decreased, but still she always asked the same first question: ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’

“Those words have been burned into my soul since that day. Whenever her crying stopped, I wanted nothing more than for her to remain silent, but always she asked, ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’

“From that day on, I knew that our will has never been free.”

Farris remained silent when she finished her story. It was a strange tale. Eventually, he asked, “But… but what does that have to do with fate?”

“Everything, Chester. Consider this: If our memory of this conversation were to be erased, your response, ‘But what does that have to do with fate?’ would be the same if we were to have it again. If we were all to relive this day from the start, we’d still end up here, stranded in the middle of the Glenn. If you were to be born again, with no knowledge of the life you have already lived, everything would turn out exactly the same.

“Like an alchemical reaction, the output will never change if the ingredients are consistent. I don’t know what you are going to say next, but the Gods do. The Gods do because your next answer has been determined before I started speaking. It was determined before your father met your mother. It was decided before the Fall of Sin, before Móráin’s Conquest. From the moment the Lord created the world, He knew how each of our lives would unfold, along with the lives of our children, and our children’s children. It is often said that the Lady has weaved our fate, but there are those who argue that She can only observe its threads. Because She sees life like alchemy. Formulaic. Predictable. Predetermined. Catrina Ní Marra’s injury gave us an insight into what it would be like to lose your memory and relive a few moments over and over, and her story leaves very little room for free will.”

Farris pressed his hand onto his forehead as he considered the healer’s words. He was put on board the ship because he had earned the king’s trust. He had earned the king’s trust because of his work with the Guild of Thieves. He was sent to Cruachan because of the Silverback’s wish to rid the land of Humans, and the Humans never would have landed on the shores of Alabach if it wasn’t for King Móráin the First, and the Grey Plague. Everything was suddenly traceable back to a single point.

The moment of Creation.

This was an unsettling thought.

Sláine stood up, unaware of the turmoil inside Farris’s head. “Now, get some sleep while you can. Only the Gods know what tomorrow holds, but you better make sure you are strong enough to handle whatever’s in store.”

Dear Yarlaith,

I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you this in person, but I’m tied up with work on the new inn, and I needed to get this message to you as soon as possible.

Cormac is alive. He’s here in Point Grey. I have him staying in the inn for the time being, but he’s in a bad way. Seems like he’s been homeless for the best part of a year.

I know you two have never really seen eye to eye, but Gods above and below, he’s your only brother. I have a healer looking after him now, and he’ll hopefully be ready to come back to Roseán by the time the moon turns.

I know how bad he was as much as you do, and I’m all too aware of what the others have been saying about him fleeing when Aoife died, but he needs help more now than ever. He can barely string a coherent sentence together, and I’ve no idea what he’s been doing on the streets of Point Grey to survive all this time.

I can understand if you don’t want anything to do with him, but he can’t stay here forever. Please come as soon as you can. If not for me, for Morrígan. She’s had a tough year and needs to know her father is still alive.

Yours in the Light of the Lady,

Peadair O’Briain.

Chapter 13:

Morrígan the Black

The sun set crimson over the Eternal Sea, bathing all the houses on the High Road in fiery light.

Morrígan gazed out from the clinic. The days are growing shorter. Summer had somehow slipped by between all her glass beakers and broken bodies. It was almost a full year since her mother died.

She sighed and turned her attention back to her patient. Darragh went on chatting casually as if he hadn’t almost sliced his own finger off with a meat cleaver an hour earlier.

“… and his da’s new inn is gonna open soon, too, over in Point Grey. We should all go visit them soon. What do you think? I’ve never been outside Roseán before.”

“Is that so?” said Morrígan, concentrating again on Darragh’s wound. It was clean and deep, with bone exposed right across his knuckle. She had applied some pappavar oil to alleviate the pain, but she thought her job would be much easier if the fool would just pass out in agony.

“Yeah,” he continued, his eyes hazy from the medicine. “Never even put a toe outside the village, so I haven’t. Sure, there’s no need to! What do the other cities have that we don’t?”

He waved his free hand across the room. Yarlaith’s clinic was empty, cleared entirely of its contents, the healer himself down in the caves. Morrígan desperately wanted to finish fixing Darragh’s stupid wound so she could assist in Yarlaith’s final experiment.

“Hold still,” she said, her fingers pressed firmly on either side of the gash. Reaching out and grasping living flesh was quite similar to Necromancy, she found.

To think, every white mage in Dromán has been dabbling in arts so close to sin. There isn’t much difference between healing and heresy.

The Human body was capable of a sort of white magic, too, Morrígan supposed, as she watched the blood clot and coagulate under her control, slowly forming a dark scab across the boy’s knuckle. With a little more time, it would have healed itself just as easily.

As she dabbed the wound with cleaning solvents and solutions, Darragh filled Morrígan in on the funeral of Mrs. Mhurichú. He didn’t ask where Morrígan had been, and for that she was especially grateful; she hadn’t come up with a reasonable excuse to miss such a big day.

Maybe I’ll tell them where I’ve been after we bring Mother back. Maybe they’ll understand, once they see what we can do.

The battlemages had formed an honour guard, but some villagers saw it as more an insult, considering Mrs. Mhurichú’s strong position on the Crown’s ‘occupation’ of Roseán, as Darragh put it.

Sounds more like his father’s words. Morrígan turned to tidy away the vials and solutions she had used for the procedure.

“It hasn’t been the same, you know?” said Darragh, standing from the bed and flexing his healed finger. “Ever since Mrs. Mhurichú died, that is. Sorcha hasn’t left her house in weeks, and I’ve only seen Taigdh once or twice. He told me that he wants to be there for Sorcha, but it seems like she just wants to be alone.”

“I know the feeling,” she said, hoping he’d take the hint.

Darragh bowed his head in response. “I’m… I’m sorry, Morrígan. I know it must be awful to lose someone like you have. Even though the whole town is upset over Sorcha’s ma’ right now, it doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten about you.”