Chapter 36

Kell and his twins arrived an hour, or so after we had gotten back. He knocked on our door when they got upstairs. They looked tired.

"Anything?" I asked, after they were seated on the bed.

"A morning's ride, some nice scenery, and time spent at two ancient sites, but no trace of recent Magic use at either of them," he told me.

"There were still some traces of ancient Magic at the well. Kell told me that the goddess Airmid was one of the ones that created the healing well, and that the Fomorians filled it with stones to deny the De Danann access to it during the battle," Airmid told me with pride.

"There wasn't much ancient Magic, or any recent use of Magic at the tomb either, but the large rock on top was very impressive. Is it really the tomb of Nuada of the Silver Arm, who was the King of the Tuatha De Danann?" Alma asked.

"There is a legend that says it was, but no one knows for certain," I told her.

"What about you?" Kell asked, after that.

"About the same as you. The Eglone Stone has no Magic of its own. There was ancient Magic still covering the entire area, and we covered much of it, but again with no indication of the recent use of Magic," I told them.

"We should all eat again before we go anywhere else," Rose suggested when I had finished.

"Let's see if we can get anything to eat downstairs," I suggested. To our surprise, the hotel had a meal of fresh cooked fish and vegetables with buttered bread available. We all chose the fresh cider to drink with it. Following the meal, we went out to look at the mountains across the lake. From the entrance road, we could see the Bricklieve Mountains, and a part of the Carrowkeel Cemetery and its cairns across Lough Arrow.

"How do you want to proceed with this?" Kell asked, after we had studied the mountains for a time.

"We can do a direct line-of-sight transfer to the cemetery site, but we need to do it with the smallest Magic signature possible," I told him and our women. "We don't know if any of those Wizards are in the area. We have already created more than enough of a signature when we arrived here, and then again when we moved around the area. That is all in the past, but we need to be more careful from here on, especially since we have found no trace of recent Magic use at any of the sites that we checked. Carrowkeel is the last one, and we will hopefully find some kind of a clue there. If we don't find something there, I'm not sure what we do," I told the others.

"Okay, so only one of us uses Magic to power the transfer spell. That way they will think that only one person went to check that area if they are monitoring the Magic signature of the area," Kell agreed.

"Who should it be?" I asked.

"All of our signatures were on the other transfer spells, so it shouldn't make any difference," Kell replied.

"I'll do the transfer," Airmid told us, to my surprise.

"Can she do that?" I asked Kell.

"Definitely! Both of them can and have done it," he told me.

"That's fine. Let's get lined up, and then Airmid can cast the transfer spell."

"Which one do we want to go to?" Airmid asked pointing to the four cairns visible.

"Since this is a line-of-sight transfer and could be off a bit, try to put us between the cairn on the right and the second one. That way there is less chance of appearing too close to either one of them," I told her. Airmid started the spell then, and I could feel how powerful she was.

"Not too much power. We don't want anyone to know how many of us there are, or how powerful we are," Kell reminded her. After Airmid had gathered her Magic and cast the spell, we all linked together by holding hands, and she added the Magic in her left hand to the glyph held by the fingers of her right hand. There was a surge of Magic, and we all disappeared from the entrance road of the Rock View Hotel.

The Bricklieves are a series of parallel carboniferous limestone plateaus running in a north-west / south-east direction. Their amazing topography was sculpted by retreating glaciers during the last ice age, as they withdrew towards the north-west and Knocknarea. When seen from an airplane, or on a topographic map, the ridges appear as a giant hand that is palm down with the four plateaus for fingers, and their cliff-edge valleys in between. Tully Mountain in the west forms the thumb, and Treanscabbagh, Carn Mor, Carrowkeel, and Doonaveergh form the fingers.

We reappeared on the Carrowkeel plateau midway between Cairns G and H, as we knew them from studies in our Reality. Airmid had done a fine job of getting us here, but as I turned to congratulate her, I became aware of just how singularly eerie being on Carrorkeel in this Reality was. I could sense that there was ancient Magic all around us, and it was still fairly strong for being so old.

We had been to these cairns in our Reality, but there wasn't the Magic there that there was here. We also knew that on a clear day, you could see Knocknarea, some twelve and a-half miles away to the north-west. That wasn't possible today.

While the day had been dry and sunny below, up here on Carrowkeel, it was very windy, and that wind was quickly blowing in dark gray clouds. These were uncompromising dirty clouds that blocked out the yellow sunlight from the rough hills. The hills turned dark and lonely in the dim light. It was the kind of ancient, stormy atmosphere that would be just right for the casting of arcane spells, and the calling forth of demons and ancient gods. The landscape was made even more dramatic by the now purple-gray sky and the strange lighting. I thought that the Wizards had mistimed their arrival on seeing this.

Despite this dark, chilling atmosphere, we still had work to do. The four cairns near us, G, H, K, and L were great piles of rough stones, looking for all the world like leftovers from a mining operation. To the Magic senses, however, it was clear that powerful spells had been worked on these large piles of rock, and that enclosed within them were the remains of once powerful Wizards.

"Is this place spooky, or what?" Kell asked, trying to relieve the tension that we all felt, before we turned toward Cairn G. We instantly sensed that Magic had recently been used here -- strong Magic. That was also when I noticed that Kell and the Mac Sweeney Sisters already had their wards around themselves.

"Nervous?" I asked, trying not to appear flippant.

"No, but after being surprised by those Wizards while we were in Ballyshannon, I decided to be ready whenever there was a prospect of Wizards being involved," he told me.

"I believe that is a prudent precaution," I told him, before casting wards around myself and my twins.

Cairn G is some seventy feet in diameter at the base and around 21 feet high. If there had originally been a kerb around it, it is now completely covered by the soil and turf that have been deposited and grown there since it was constructed. In fact so much had accumulated that the floor of the tomb chamber is now two feet below the present base of the mound. The passage tomb in Cairn G is the best preserved of the tombs at this site. Whether this is because it is younger than the others, better built, or more powerful Magic had been used to preserve it, is unknown.

We moved around to the north-west side of the mound, where the entrance to the passage tomb is located. All of the tombs here face to the north-west, toward Knocknarea and Carrowmore. It was quickly apparent that this was where Magic had been used recently. There is a flat entrance stone a short distance in front of the entrance tunnel leading to the central chamber of the tomb. A thin man or a youngster would be able to squeeze past it, and enter the tomb.

Someone had used Magic to try to move the entrance stone. It was evident from the disturbed ground around it that the stone had moved slightly, but only very slightly. Certainly not sufficiently to make any real difference in the width of the opening. Something else was equally apparent.

"They attempted to move the entrance stone to gain access to the tomb," I told the others, pointing to where we could see that the stone had moved a small fraction of an inch. "This would seem to indicate that they cannot transfer, or they wouldn't need to move the stone."

"That makes sense, but they expended a lot of Magic Power trying to move it," Kell pointed out.

"Yes. One wonders what they wanted, or expected to find inside," I answered.

"Should one of us transfer inside and look?" Kell asked.

"I don't believe I would want to transfer inside. The ancient Wizards that constructed and warded this tomb obviously didn't want anyone entering it after it was closed," I pointed out.

"We could look through the light box over the entrance, and maybe find out," Kell suggested. Cairn G is the only tomb with a light box on Carrowkeel.

"You are welcome to try, but I don't think that it is a very good idea. With the light that we have here, you won't be able to see anything unless you brought a flashlight with you," I replied.

"No, no flashlight," Kell said dejectedly, looking at the clouds in the sky.

"Does this mean that the Wizards will be returning here to conduct their ceremony?" Almha asked.

"I would think that it is a very good indication of that," I told her.

"We should check the other tombs here to see if Magic has been used at any of them," Kell told us.

"All right, but we'll have to transfer to each ridge to do that. It will increase the Magic Signature, and show that multiple Talents were here," I reminded him.

"So you don't want to check the others?" Kell asked.

"I was merely pointing out the obvious. Of course, we need to check the others, and the one on Kesh-Corran also,"I told him. We checked each tomb on this ridge before transferring to the other ridges, and checking the tombs on each of them. We found no significant recent use of Magic at any of the other sites. Finally we turned toward Kesh-Corran.

The top of Kesh-Corran is some two and a-half miles, as the crow flies, north-west of Carrowkeel, and it is some 130 feet higher. It is also higher that the hill of Knocknarea by around a hundred feet. Its broad topped plateaus contains an unopened Cairn some eighty-eight feet in diameter. The ring of kerb stones of this cairn is partly buried in the turf. It is also enclosed in an oval ring of stone some 935 feet by 650 feet in diameter, suggesting that it was an important gathering place in prehistoric times due to its height, and the visibility of the surrounding landscape.

The final feature of Kesh-Corran is the caves located below the brow of the hill. There was little evidence that they have been visited, probably because of the presence of the sidhe, who are believed to live there in the Otherworld.

"We need to be very careful checking the top of Kesh-Corran," I told the women.

"Perhaps only the two of us should go," Kell suggested. "There is only the one cairn, and we could check it quickly and return here. More people, and a heavier Magic Signature, might alert the sidhe."

"That sounds good. You ladies wait here for us. We shouldn't be more than fifteen minutes, or so," I told them. Kell and I could immediately see that this was not a popular decision, but it was just too dangerous to take the women with us.

"You don't want us to go?" they all asked, in upset voices.

"It's for your own protection,"Kell told them.

"SO, it's all right for you to be in danger, but not us!" Airmid demanded angrily.

"We won't be in much danger. We'll go with our wards in place, but we don't want to alert those in the Otherworld to our presence. More people run the risk of doing that," I told her and the other women.

"If you run into trouble, we will come to your rescue," Almha told us, very defiantly. "And blast those there like we did those Wizards at the beach," she finished. Sunshine and Rose hadn't said anything, but didn't appear happy either. They had been very quiet the entire time here.

"We'll only be a short time," Kell assured his twins with a kiss, while I gathered mine to me, and kissed them.

"We won't be long," I told them, when we came up for air. Kell and I then transferred to the top of Kesh-Corran. As it turned out, we needn't have bothered. No one had been there using Magic in a long, long time. There were still some traces of O'Connell Magic there, but they were very old. We quickly returned to our women.

It was now late afternoon, and the dark, dingy clouds of earlier that afternoon had been blown away by the winds up here and had been replaced with lighter gray clouds. We transferred back to the Rock View Hotel on the far side of Lough Arrow. It felt good to get back inside, and out of the cold winds on Carrowkeel. We returned to our rooms where Kell and I both used the air change spell several times to warm up our rooms, ourselves, and our women. After a short rest, we dressed for the evening meal.

In the hotel's dining area, a number of other guests, whom we hadn't seen previously, were having their meals when we entered. They were all men, and they apparently had been out fishing for most of the day. Their conversations stopped when we entered the room, and they saw the women with us in their fancy dresses. Several seemed shocked to see women here at all.

We were part way through our meal, when one of the men approached our table.

"Have you enjoyed the fishing today?" he asked, in a friendly manner.

"We aren't here to fish this time," I told him.

"We are here to visit the various ancient monuments in the area," Kell informed him.

"And is that why the women are here with you?" he asked, not seeming to understand.

"Yes, they are our Apprentices,"I told him. Kell and I had on our fanciest Master's robs.

"Maybe I should have been a Wizard too. I didn't know that there were Apprentices as good looking as these ladies," he said good-naturedly, before returning to his friends at their table. The others in the room had heard our conversation also. Following our meal, we returned to Kell's room for a strategy meeting.

"So what is the plan for tomorrow," Kell wanted to know after we were all settled.

"There is no plan yet. We need to see what happens first. One thing though, there should be no use of Magic tomorrow, until we see what develops. Even this afternoon, we used too much Magic. We will need to make frequent checks throughout the day tomorrow for any Magic being used in the area," I told them.

"That may mean that we don't go out much. It is hard to concentrate on sensing Magic, while moving around," Kell mentioned.

"We'll just have to see what the morning brings," I told him and our women.

"If we aren't going to use any Magic tomorrow, we want hot water tonight to wash up with," Almha told us, and the other women all agreed with her. We soon left for our room, leaving Kell and his twins to themselves.

I heated water in the basin several times, so we could all wash up. Before we went to bed, I heated a pitcher full of water, and then used a spell that would keep it hot for some time. I also cast the privacy and noise suppression spell, as the Sisters were very aroused tonight, and my helping them clean up had done nothing to suppress their desires.

By the time we had finished making love, it was quite late. It may in fact have been after midnight. I canceled the privacy and noise suppression spells, and we used the still hot water to clean up with, before retiring to bed for a good night's sleep.

A portion of our problems was solved when we awoke in the morning, as it was raining quite heavily.

"Well, I guess that we don't have to worry about staying in today," Kell said, when they entered our room before we all left for breakfast.

"No, the rain will be a good excuse to stay inside today," Sunshine answered.

Things got a little sticky when we went to breakfast. It appeared that the other guests were also stuck inside and were bored. They had obviously been up well before we had gotten up, and had been drinking to pass the time. Having nothing else to do, they were looking to be entertained, since it wasn't fit to go fishing.