Night of the Fifth Moon Read online

  ANNA CIDDOR lives in Melbourne, Australia, but she is always wondering how it would feel to be another person, living in a different time or place. Being an author gives her many opportunities to find out. She spends hours searching through history books, surfing the internet, or questioning strangers about their lives.

  While she was writing Night of the Fifth Moon, Anna journeyed to Ireland in quest of the lost, pagan world of the druids. She found real ogham stones and iron-age ringforts, and one night she ventured down a dark passage into the earth to climb inside an ancient burial mound.

  Anna Ciddor’s best-selling books have been translated into other languages, recorded as audio books and shortlisted for various awards. In 2003, Runestone was chosen as a Notable Book by the Children’s Book Council of Australia and in 2005 Anna was awarded a grant by the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the research and writing of Night of the Fifth Moon.

  Find out more about Anna Ciddor and her books at www.annaciddor.com

  Other books by the same author

  The Viking Magic series

  Runestone

  Wolfspell

  Stormriders

  The author wishes to thank the Literature Board of the

  Australia Council for their generous support, and the Irish

  tourist authority, Fáilte Ireland, for their kind hospitality.

  This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  First published in 2007

  Copyright © text and illustrations Anna Ciddor 2007

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

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  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Ciddor, Anna.

  Night of the fifth moon.

  ISBN 9781741148145 (pbk).

  1. Druids and druidism – Juvenile fiction. I. Title.

  A823.3

  Cover and text design by Tabitha King

  Typefaces include First Order from Iconian Fonts at

  http://www.iconian.com/

  Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Teachers’ notes available from www.allenandunwin.com

  CONTENTS

  1 The omen

  2 The battle

  3 First test

  4 The telling

  5 Voices from the past

  6 Ogham

  7 The Greater Harmony

  8 Samhain Eve

  9 Samhain

  10 The tomb

  11 Divination

  12 Spell words

  13 The first new moon

  14 Cauldron of Truth

  15 Fians

  16 Lessons

  17 The next new moon

  18 Nessa’s clan

  19 The longest night

  20 King’s visit

  21 First snowdrop

  22 Distraint

  23 Festival of Imbolc

  24 Battle preparation

  25 The Sacred Spring

  26 The eve of battle

  27 Full moon

  28 Battle lines

  29 Alone

  30 The ogham message

  31 The fifth moon

  32 Initiation

  ONLY A TRUE DRUID CAN READ THIS MESSAGE

  THE OMEN

  The sun was dying in the sky as Faelán the Druid, swathed in a long cloak of blue-green feathers, glided towards the fire. His eyes, like clear pools, glinted with tiny reflected images of the flames, and his hair, the colour of moonbeams, hung in long, twisting locks below his shoulders.

  ‘Maybe he’ll let us join in today,’ whispered Ket.

  ‘And maybe the trees’ll lay eggs,’ muttered Bran.

  ‘He’s got to let us join in some time!’

  Every day Ket raced around doing all the tasks that Faelán bid him. He picked nettles till his arms stung with pain from the pricking of the thorns. He clambered up the highest trees and crawled on swaying, brittle branches to fetch feathers from the birds’ nests for the druid’s cloaks. He stood for hours in freezing mountain streams trapping fish with his bare hands, while his legs turned to ice and leeches sucked his blood.

  And every day he watched for a sign from the druid. For he knew that one day the druid would make him an assistant – an anruth. One day he would learn the druid’s secrets and take part in the mystic ceremonies. One day . . .

  Faelán lifted his branch of golden bells, and Ket bent eagerly forward. But, as usual, the druid turned his back on the group of fosterlings.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ pouted Riona.

  Ket gulped back a sigh and watched with envy as the four anruth began to circle the fire, their long grey robes almost touching the flames.

  ‘Spirit of the Moon

  Arise from darkness

  Spirit of the Moon

  Return and guide us,’

  they chanted.

  Slowly, the daylight seeped away, and there, hovering near the horizon, was the tiny, fragile crescent of a new moon.

  The anruth beamed with pride, then Goll, the tallest, turned and beckoned to the fosterlings. As the six of them scurried across the clearing, Goll pressed a finger to his lips. Faelán still stood with his head tilted back, searching for signs.

  With muffled whispers, the fosterlings slipped into their places, and waited. A gust of wind brought an icy spatter of rain and Ket gritted his teeth. It would be another freezing, miserable night, and there was nothing to sleep on but wet leaves and hard ground.

  Rain sizzled into the fire, and the brew of wild grass and badger bones bubbled and steamed.

  ‘I’m starving,’ hissed Nath-í.

  Ket nodded agreement.

  ‘I could go for days without food if I had to,’ asserted Lorccán in a loud whisper.

  Bran let out a snort.

  ‘Ssh!’ Nessa shook her head, and the little gold balls at the ends of all her braids clicked and jingled. Riona stifled a giggle.

  The druid lowered his gaze, and the firelight illumined his thin, furrowed face.

  ‘Master Faelán,’ called Goll, ‘what shall this day be good for?’

  As he spoke, there was a squawk from a nearby tree. Everyone turned in surprise. At such an hour the birds should be asleep. Into the astonished silence flapped the shadowy shape of a raven. It flew so close, Ket could feel the wind of its passing. He stared at the black, glossy wings and knew this was an omen.

  Faelán’s cloak shimmered in the firelight as he followed its flight. There was no sound but the beating of wings till the raven passed from view, then, slowly and solemnly, the druid faced the inquiring eyes. His words cut into the silence.

  ‘This,’ he announced, ‘is the day for a new beginning.’ His gaze swept the circle, and came to rest on the group of fosterlings.

  ‘It’s us
!’ Nessa gripped Ket’s arm. ‘It’s a portent for us!’

  Faelán nodded. ‘Five times have the harvests been sown and reaped while you fosterlings coveted the bells and robes of the anruth. Five times have the trees budded and shed while I watched for the auspicious hour. Now, at last, the sign has come. However . . .’ He raised a warning finger. ‘It is not as you expect. Only one of you will become an anruth.’

  The fosterlings gasped and stared at each other in dismay.

  ‘But . . . that means only one of us can learn to be a druid!’ said Nessa.

  ‘Which one?’ asked Riona.

  Lorccán thrust back his shoulders and looked at the druid with bright, expectant eyes.

  Faelán tugged the end of his long beard. ‘I have not yet decided.’

  Nath-í’s long, gangly body seemed to collapse. ‘It won’t be me,’ he mumbled.

  Ket couldn’t speak. His stomach was squeezed into a tight, nervous ball.

  ‘From now until the next new moon,’ Faelán went on, ‘I will teach you some of the Knowledge. I will set tasks and watch you. When the dark nights return, you will know your time of judgement is nigh. And when we gather here again to welcome the rising of the next new moon, one of you will be sent away. So we will continue from new moon to new moon, till only two of you remain. Then, on the night of the fifth moon . . .’

  The druid drew a smooth rod of birchwood from his girdle. He heated the point of a dagger in the fire and began to burn something in the wood. Ket stared at the blackened strokes appearing on the smooth surface. He knew they were a message written in ogham, the secret code of the druids, but he had no idea what they said.

  The druid faced away from the fire and held the rod towards the Sacred Yew. ‘Spirit of the Tree, I entrust this rod into your keeping,’ Faelán intoned.

  Stooping under the dense, dark canopy of branches, he jammed the birchwood upright between its roots. Kneeling half in shadow, half in firelight, he turned to speak.

  ‘Writing is a skill that is sacred and secret to the druids, to help us remember our great store of knowledge.’ He rested his hand on the rod. ‘When only two of you remain, the one true anruth will succeed in reading this. It shall remain here till the chosen one is found.’

  Ket stared in anguish at the black, meaningless strokes. How was he supposed to work it out?

  The druid smiled as he rose to his feet. ‘Keep your eyes and your ears open. You will find clues to guide you,’ he said.

  THE BATTLE

  That night, when the excited whispers of the other fosterlings had given way to slow, steady breathing, Ket lay tense and wakeful, his mind alive with images. He was living again the day he had first seen the druid, the day of the battle more than five years before . . .

  The door was crashing open and the flames of the firepit roared high as Bríd burst into the room, the wind rushing in behind her.

  ‘Quick! Hide!’

  The women looked up, startled, from their cooking and spinning; the children stopped their squabbling to stare.

  ‘The Niall clan’s . . . attacking us!’ Bríd gasped out, eyes wide with fear, one hand clutching her long skirt.

  Then everyone leapt to their feet. Stools clattered, spindles tumbled and children squealed. They charged across the room for the trapdoor, long skirts and braids tangling together as they all tried to squeeze down the hole at once.

  ‘Ow, that’s my hair!’

  ‘Don’t push!’

  ‘Help, the ladder’s wobbling!’

  They disappeared down the trapdoor, and Ket heard his mother’s shrill wail from deep inside the earth, ‘Ket, where’s Ket?’

  But Ket crouched where he was.

  ‘I don’t belong with the babies,’ he growled. ‘I’m nearly seven. I should be out with the men. Fighting!’

  The cries and hurrying footsteps grew muffled, and Ket was left alone, staring around him. Though his father was the chieftain of the tuath, Ket shared a home, as everyone did, with uncles and aunts, cousins and foster cousins. Twenty people ate, slept and lived in that one round room, and it was always brimming with people and noise. But now it was eerily empty.

  Ket’s feet rustled on the rush-strewn floor as he padded to the door and peeked out.

  The yard of the ringfort was deserted, the only movement a fluttering leaf caught between the cobbles, but in the fields beyond the walls there were shouts and the blare of trumpets.

  Ket scuttled across the empty yard in his bare feet, scrambled up the steps to the top of the rampart, and stretched up to peer through the spiky barrier of blackthorn. He saw Niall warriors, ferocious in war paint, marching up the hill, beating drums and blowing trumpets. From all the surrounding ring-forts, men of the Cormac clan raced to meet them, hurdling over their low stone fences, yelling in fury. With a thrill of pride, Ket watched his father Ossian leap on his pony and gallop through a field of barley, cleaving the sea of yellow, his red chieftain’s cloak billowing out behind him.

  ‘Victory for the Cormacs!’ Ossian the Chieftain yelled.

  The invaders drew to a halt, their bare chests gleaming with sweat, arms and necks glittering with gold. They had whitened hair drawn high up on their heads and eyes ringed in black paint, lurid and glaring.

  ‘You weakly milk-fed slop pots,’ they taunted. ‘We’ll beat you. We’ll trample you into the mud!’

  One of them lifted a trumpet shaped like a boar’s head. When he blew it, the hinged wooden tongue made a rude, ululating bray.

  ‘We don’t fear you, you ugly, rat-faced runts!’ Skidding to a halt, Uncle Ailbe flung a stone at the attackers.

  There was the flash of a spear, and Ket watched in horror as Uncle Ailbe keeled over, clutching a shoulder.

  Then all the Cormacs roared, and barged forward with makeshift weapons of spades, reaping hooks and stones.

  Ket let out a scream as his foster brother Eo fell to the ground, to vanish beneath the trampling feet. Ket thrust a fist in his mouth, and watched the bodies hurl together, blades flashing, voices screaming. Uncle Ailbe was on his feet again, hurtling like a bull at one of the Niall clan, locking chest to chest with him, muscles straining. Ket saw the gleam of a blade in the attacker’s fist. As they struggled to and fro, Ket bit so hard on his knuckles he could taste the salt-taste of blood.

  A horse-drawn chariot came rattling across the plain, sunlight flashing off the metal plates of armour on the chests of the horses. Ket saw his father wheel around on his pony, and Eo stagger to his feet. When the chariot plunged into the crowd, the rider waving and shouting, the painted warriors tried to surge forward, but the Cormacs roared their defiance.

  Ossian’s pony reared and lunged. Uncle Ailbe wrenched the dagger from his opponent’s grasp, and sent the man stumbling backwards in terror.

  ‘Get him, Uncle!’ Ket yelled.

  But just when the tide of battle was turning, just when the men of the Cormac clan were beating the invaders back, a group of boys and girls dressed in long grey robes appeared at the edge of the forest. The little Ket watched, astonished, as the noises of battle stopped in mid cry, and the warriors froze with their sword arms in the air.

  A tall figure materialised from the trees and glided majestically forward. His full-length robe was the colour of shadows, and his iridescent cloak of blue-green feathers flowed from his shoulders like a waterfall. He came to a halt, standing straight as a young champion, though he already had the grizzled hair and beard of an old man. The only sound was the creak of wicker from the chariot. That was Ket’s first sight of Faelán, the druid of the forest.

  The tall stranger raised an arm and pointed at Ossian.

  ‘Surrender!’ he commanded.

  The anruth rang their silver bells, filling the air with the sound of tinkling.

  ‘The druid speaks!’ they cried.

  Then Faelán hunched his shoulders so that the feathers of his cloak rose in a crest behind his neck. With arm outstretched, he lifted one leg from the ground and poised t
here, like a giant crane.

  He screwed up his face so that all his power seemed to radiate from his pointed finger and one glaring eye as words poured from his tongue.

  ‘Surrender, Ossian o Cormac.

  No chief are you who brings a blight upon his people

  No chief are you whose trees bear no fruit

  No chief are you whose corn droops on the stalk

  No chief are you whose cows give no milk.’

  The crowd booed at Ossian. Even the people from his own clan were hissing and booing at their chieftain. The druid had bent them to his will, wiping away their memories of the bulging sacks of grain, the casks of butter laid in the cool of the bog, the storage pits filled with apples and plums . . .

  ‘It’s not true! Don’t listen!’ shrilled Ket, but his voice was drowned out by the jeering.

  He watched in helpless amazement. The effect of the druid’s words was inexorable as the flood of a tide.

  Faelán’s gaze seared the crowd, quelling their cries.

  ‘Surrender, Ossian o Cormac

  Your prosperity is at an end

  You are no longer chieftain

  Ossian, grandson of Cormac.

  Surrender!’

  With the druid’s words rising to a crescendo, powerful Ossian, head of the Cormac clan and chief of the tuath, slid from his pony and crumpled to the ground.

  The druid swirled around to face the rider waiting in the chariot, gold torques gleaming on his neck and wrists.

  ‘Morgor of the clan of Niall,’ Faelán rasped, ‘claim your right!’

  The rider leapt from the chariot, and Ket cried out as he pounced on Ossian and plunged a dagger towards his chest.

  ‘Worm of Cormac, do you surrender?’ He crouched over his victim, a handful of scarlet cloak twisted in his fist, the blade hovering.

  Ket felt a swelling in his own chest that seemed to push against his throat, squeezing it tight. There was no sound. Not even the breathing of the wind. Then the fallen man gave a feeble nod of his head.

  Morgor slashed. The cloak fell from Ossian’s shoulders, and splayed out beneath him like a pool of blood.