Only the Stones Survive: A Novel Read Online Free

a straight path, but when alternatives were suggested that path seems to have lost support. We now come to a fork in the road. We are in danger of losing our direction. Therefore, this is my pronouncement.”
    The listening Dananns held their collective breath.
    “I decree that the Earthkillers remain in the ground as Eriu wishes,” Greine soberly intoned. “I shall not order their use. Our ancestors brought the gifts from the stars when they came here, but the time for using them has long passed. We have become a wiser people. The Túatha Dé Danann will enforce peace on this island with simple swords and axes. The other tribes are primitive but not stupid; the sight of so much weaponry in our hands should discourage them from further violence.”
    I expected someone to argue with him, which would have been exciting, but nobody spoke up. The air was filled with his words and his words alone.
    When the last echo died, Greine announced, “Now we must invoke the Stone of Destiny to seal the agreement.” He reached out to take the hand of Eriu, and they began climbing the ridge. The entire crowd followed them, a moving blaze of color. It was steeper than I thought. From where we were sitting, the ridge had appeared to be a low hill, but when we reached the top I saw to my amazement that the land was spread out below us from mountaintop to mountaintop.
    A king’s view.
    At the crown of the ridge was a grass-covered mound like a burial cairn, together with a single pillar of gray stone sunk into the earth. The exposed part of the monolith was taller than a man and rounded on top. I thought I saw tiny flashes of color peeping from its rough surface.
    The stone was watching me.
    A shiver danced across my shoulders.
    Greine went to one side of the pillar, Eriu to the other, while the Dananns formed a circle around them, spilling back along the ridge and blocking my view. The sun was warm, but a cool breeze was blowing across the hill. The sweet, damp air smelled of life, of green and growing things. A corncrake uttered its grating cry from its nest among the grasses. Far overhead, an eagle circled.
    The Stone of Destiny stood at the center of the Túatha Dé Danann.
    Throwing back his head, Greine lifted both his arms and brandished the ash wood staff. “Lord of wind and flame!” he exhorted. “Lord of the boundless curve! You alone know my people’s destiny. If we have chosen wisely, support us. If we have chosen wrongly, protect us. This I ask for the Tribe of Danu, the Children of Light.”
    Then he waited.
    When nothing happened, I tugged at my father’s arm. “Is the stone supposed to do something?”
    Mongan looked down at me. “Not now. We do the doing. The Stone does the knowing.”
    This made no sense to me. Was this not an ordinary piece of rock? “Where did it come from?”
    “We brought it with us, Joss. Before the Before.”
    Greine backed six paces from the Stone, then turned and walked away down the ridge. Every person he passed saluted him by saying, “Elgolai.”
    “Is that the old language?” I asked my father.
    “It is,” he confirmed. “Elgolai means, ‘He goes out,’ which is a term of the highest respect. Life is extended by the going, not by the staying. Greine is a direct descendant of those who had enough courage to go out Before the Before.”
    I had thought myself capable of thinking adult thoughts. Apparently I still had a long way to go.
     
     
    Later in the sunseason, an unfamiliar fleet appeared off our southern coast. The clans that lived along the shore assumed they were traders. The Sea People were known to sail great distances in order to buy and sell copper and tin and olive oil, silk and amber and rare perfumes. As restless as fleas, they were always going somewhere else. One of their trade routes passed between our island and the rising sun.
    We too had come from somewhere else. Before the Before.
    The lures of the Sea People did not attract the Túatha Dé Danann. We had