He stood there, squinting into the midday sun, one hundred feet over the waves. Deep, jagged lines chiseled by saltwater and time ascended from ocean to turf, intersected only by the borders between rock layers. Smoke and sea spray filled his nose. The few remaining corn crakes too stubborn to relinquish their mating ground voiced their protest from the smaller sea stacks further from shore.

  éamon Breaslin held the left half of his lower lip between his teeth and glowered at the Tyrconnell shoreline as the wind traveling from it buffeted his face. The man’s pale blue eyes never strayed from the sandy stretch that marked Ballyness Bay, book-ended from above by Muckish Mountain on the left and Errigal on the right.

  They’re right there. Right in front of me, he thought. Living their small lives. Making their small plans.

  He stared with enough intent to block the outside world from his thoughts, including the man approaching him from behind.

  “éamon,” the man called out to him. “It’s time. Don’t keep him waiting.”

  Breaslin nodded. “Did I ever tell you what this place is, Ultan?” he asked.

  The middle-aged man shook his head and knitted his brow. “Sorry?”

  “This place,” Breaslin said. “Exactly where we’re standing.”

  “The place where you stand and glare at children from five miles away?” his accomplice asked. “Is it important?”

  Breaslin shrugged, his eyes still fixed upon the shore. “Likely not. They called it Balor’s Prison.”

  Ultan pulled on his earlobe and shifted his weight left to right back to left again. “This is where Balor kept his prisoners?”

  Breaslin shook his head. “This is where he threw his prisoners into the ocean,” he said. “Look at that view. I imagine there are far worse things one could see right before their death.”

  “I imagine so,” Ultan said. “Look, éamon—”

  “—Do you think this will be the last thing I see?” Breaslin asked. “If I can’t fix this, that is. Will he get someone to throw me from atop here?”

  “I’d rather not find out,” Ultan said, “because that would mean I’d be tossed in immediately after you.”

  Breaslin’s smile wasn’t wide enough to show his teeth. “So you would. Let’s go see if we can keep you above water.” He made a grand gesture with his open hand away from the rocky jut of Balor’s Prison, toward the rest of the island. Ultan led Breaslin up the gentle slope.

  Breaslin navigated the uneven terrain with blanched knuckles wrapped around his cane. The majority of Tory Island stretched into the west ahead of him, blanketed in a haze of smoke.

  “Our cover is thinning,” Ultan said. “We’re running out of wood. I’ll contact my man and bring in more wood from the mainland.”

  Breaslin stopped to peruse each pyre built between the island’s eastern settlement and the shores to its north and south.

  “Fine,” Breaslin said. “But keep the shipment small. Use the pyres along the southern coast. We need only enough smoke to keep the common folk concerned from this point forward. The sílrad know we’re here—even if they can’t see what we’re doing.”

  “Hai,” Ultan said. “Agreed.”

  The corner of Breaslin’s mouth twitched. Ultan mistook him for seeking a consensus. éamon allowed his late lieutenant, Dother, too much agency in the plan to corrupt the Cauldron, and a group of young farmers and outcasts thwarted him. He contemplated his mistakes back in Kilmacrennan as he convalesced in the days that followed. He provided Dother with enough rope to hang them both and he knew his benefactors would not tolerate a second failure on such a level.

  “éamon?” Ultan asked.

  “Right,” Breaslin said. He propelled himself forward with his cane. They turned north before reaching the beaches at Doon, the narrow stretch of land separating the island from the misshapen complex of cliffs from which his ancient kin ruled the seas.

  Breaslin stumbled over a series of trenches as the grade steepened. On the mainland, one would find these trenches encircling an old ráth. Out here, the trenches were less than 60 yards from end to end. From there it was down to the cliffs to repel any invaders.

  Breaslin waved off his assistant and jabbed his cane into the ground as he stood. He never recovered his old walking stick from the abbey in Gartan—nor had he needed it to keep himself upright. He silently cursed the MacLaughlin boy whose spear collapsed a stone wall onto him. The pain in his leg had faded during the recent months but the damage left Breaslin with a slight disfigurement of his lower leg and a noticeable limp. He was thirty-two years old and faced the prospect of spending half of his life hobbling like his grandfather.

  You dropped an abbey on me, boy, Breaslin grumbled in his mind. I’m going to drop the whole world on you.

  The ground leveled into a large area worn of grass. When they first arrived here six years ago it took his men weeks to find the undercroft of Balor’s old fort, even longer to excavate it. After the fierce prevailing winds blew their fourth tent out to sea, his people resolved to forego any further attempts at shelter until they had carved it out of the island by hand. They found the entrance at the far end of this area, a hole lined with cut stone. A wooden ladder leaned against the northern side of the hole. Down it the two men descended.

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  Breaslin blew out two quick breaths of musty air to acclimate himself to the smell. His pupils adjusted to the subterranean light provided by five wall-mounted torches.

  A lady six years his junior knelt on the dirt floor, tracing shapes with her fingers. “Howya éamon?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “Ready for my scolding, Orla,” Breaslin said.

  The woman turned to face him. “Don’t you joke about such things,” she said. “I’m almost done.” She finished the last few strokes of her finger. She had drawn a pair of concentric lines a few inches apart. The innermost circle was eight feet wide. She spaced six small piles of mistletoe twigs and leaves within the two circles. Between the mistletoe, Orla had traced several phrases of invocation. Her last task was connecting lines between opposing piles of mistletoe.

  She stood near the center, raised her hands above her body and then pushed her palms toward the ground. “Métú nert ocus raon,” she said. A blue glow emitted from the tracings and then faded. With a look of satisfaction, she used mincing steps to exit the circle.

  “Ready,” she said.

  Ultan wagged his finger at the ground. “What is this business?”

  “It helps to amplify and sustain our magic,” Orla said. “Once we find the balance we can cease our circle casting and let Breaslin speak in peace.”

  Ultan scoffed. “Giving him all the credit, as well?”

  Breaslin’s grin traveled no higher than his mouth. “And all the blame. Her improvements allow you the choice to leave.”

  “That’s just grand,” Ultan mumbled.

  “It is,” Breaslin said. “Take your places, please.”

  Each person stepped between two piles of mistletoe, ensuring that the spaces beside them were empty. Breaslin nodded to Ultan and the man rotated his hands around each other in a tight circle.

  “Asoilgi tairse? ?uic pálás na ?fiad,” Ultan said.

  A small reflective sphere appeared three feet above the center of the circle. After a few rotations Ultan expanded his hands to form a wider circle. As he expanded his reach so, too, did the sphere grow until it was six feet in diameter. He spun his hands a few more times until the scrawl upon the floor glowed blue once more. He lowered hands and watched the rest of the ritual.

  The amber torchlight within the room swirled around the edge of the sphere. A colder blue light swirled in the opposite direction across the surface of the sphere.

  Orla and Breaslin exchanged a smile. She rotated her own hands and took a deep breath. “?eas?a? an draío?t laisti?.”

  The swirling on the sphere slowed. A wavy image of a room built from well-masoned stones stabilized. A man with greying hair and scars on the right side of his face was seated in a large chair. Blue light flashed from the sphere.

  Orla stopped her hands and then reached as far forward as she could. She pulled them back to her face and pushed them forward. “Glasáil ina aitt.” The blue glow held this time, its light mixing with the room light that swirled around the sphere. “It’s done,” she said.

  Conversations, footsteps and even airflow sounded from the sphere. Breaslin squinted and turned an ear to hear.

  “I can’t hear him,” Breaslin said. “Can he hear me?”

  Ultan chuckled.

  “Something funny?” Breaslin asked with a glare.

  Orla cleared her throat. “You forgot your bit, éamon,” she said.

  Breaslin blew out a heavy sigh. He turned to the side and flicked his hand at the sphere. “Comrá a ?éana?,” he said.

  The sounds from the sphere sharpened.

  “Apologies, sir,” Breaslin said. “We dabbled with some new techniques this time.”

  “To what end?” the man said, his low rasp striking a curious overtone.

  “Stability. Power, too,” Breaslin said. “We’re still working on strengthening its walls.”

  “And how are your efforts faring?” the man asked.

  Breaslin pulled a silver coin from his pouch and held it out for the other party to see. “May I?”

  The man dipped his chin and flourished his hand. Breaslin pinched the coin between his index and middle fingers and flicked it at the sphere. A popping sound emerged from the sphere a few seconds after the coin crossed its surface. The image of the man inside the sphere grew until he bent over and disappeared. He returned into view holding two elongated halves of Breaslin’s coin. “Not well,” he said, throwing the fragments out of view.

  “Sir, we’re close,” Breaslin said. “Portals from here in íriu straight to Tír na Marbh usually require the abilities of actual Fomori or Tuatha Dé. What you have there is something that was delayed for less than a second—”

  “—What I have,” the man said, his voice growling in a higher register, “is something that was split into two by your magic.”

  “I understand your reservations, sir,” Breaslin said. “Please trust that—

  “—Trust?” the man yelled. “I trusted your plans nearly four years ago and it cost us a useful descendant of the Morrigan. I trusted your plan to blight íriu last year and blame it on the sílrad. You were beaten by the weakest faction of sílrad north of Lough Ree, and it cost us our allegiance with Crom Dubh! Tell me, éamon, what happened to those fuath I sent to you by way of Mag da Cheonn?”

  Breaslin dropped his head.

  “I see,” the man said. “Give me one good reason not to end our arrangement and send one of my minions forth to deal with you.”

  Breaslin’s heart was pounding. Ultan and Orla intentionally avoided eye contact with him. “Because setbacks happen, sir. But we can learn from them. For instance, the sílrad’s instinct to act forthright in their dealings leads to backlash from the common folk. The people of Killybóthan blamed them for the fuath and ran them out of town. This proves my previous plan would have worked if not for those sílrad in Kilmacrennan. Which reminds me—”

  “No,” the man said flatly.

  Let me finish just one point, Breaslin thought to himself. “Help me understand, sir,” he said. “These people attacked us and stole back the Cauldron. They’re living out there in the open. I can practically see them from here. They are an obstacle—a small one at that. All I ask is that you allow me to remove them.”

  “The sílrad in Ulster still do not take MacMenamin’s people seriously,” the man said. “Half of them probably assume the reports out of Tyrconnell were exaggerations to improve western faction’s standing. If they get in your way again then do what you must. But if you strike them down without provocation now—and, given your recent history, that is a large ‘if’—you risk drawing higher scrutiny from the Ulster and Connaught sílrad. You don’t have the numbers and, as you just demonstrated, getting resources to you cannot happen quickly.”

  Breaslin raised a hand to interject. “Lord Indech—”

  “—Remember, Breaslin, you approached me. You told me we could help each other. If you can’t fulfill your side of the deal in íriu, how could you possibly help me take Tir na nóg?”

  “My apologies, sir. We will succeed here.”

  Indech scoffed. “Spoken like someone who thinks he has a choice.” He pulled both fists to his chest and shoved them forward. The sphere condensed until it was too small to see. The blue light faded from the circle below.

  “He’s not here,” Breaslin said. “Indech would understand if he were here.”

  Orla's shoulders sank as she approached him. “éamon, you can’t be serious! He just told you to leave them be.”

  Breaslin smiled and patted her shoulders. “It won’t matter,” he said. “Those boggers committed themselves to stopping us last year when the brothers could barely swing a sword or spear. They’ll come for us again. The difference this time is that we won’t underestimate them.”