Princes of Ireland - Edward Rutherfurd [12]
They had reason to fear. It was not just that single, all-seeing eye. It was the brain that lay behind it.
Goibniu was important. As one of the island’s greatest master craftsmen, he had the status of a noble in all but name. Though he was known as a smith—and no one on the island could forge better weapons of iron—his calling included working in precious metals. Indeed, it was the high prices that the great men of the island paid for his gold ornaments that had made Goibniu a rich man. The High King himself would invite him to attend his feasts. But his true importance lay in that terrible, devious brain. The greatest chiefs, even the wise and powerful druids, would seek out his advice. “Goibniu is deep,” they would acknowledge, before quietly adding: “Don’t ever have him for your enemy.”
Just behind him was the largest of the huge, circular mounds that lay along the ridge. A sid, the islanders called such a mound—they pronounced it “shee”—and though mysterious, there were many of them.
It was clear that the sid had deteriorated since former times. The walls of the cylinder had subsided or vanished under turf banks in numerous places. Instead of a cylinder with a curved roof, it now seemed more like a hillock with several entrances. On its southern side, the quartz facing that had once flashed in the sun had now mostly fallen down, so that there was a little landslide of pale metallic stones in front of the former doorway. He turned back to face the sid.
The Tuatha De Danaan lived in there. The Dagda, the kindly lord of the sun, lived in this sid; but all the mounds that dotted the islands were the entrances to their otherworld. Everyone knew the stories. First one, then another tribe had come to the island. Gods, giants, slaves—their identities lingered in the landscape like clouds of mist. But the most glorious of all had been the divine race of the goddess Anu, or Danu, goddess of wealth and of rivers: the Tuatha De Danaan. Warriors and huntsmen, poets and craftsmen—they had arrived on the island, some said, riding upon the clouds. Theirs had been a golden age. It had been the Tuatha De Danaan whom the present tribes, the Sons of Mil, had found on the island when they had arrived. And it had been one of them, the goddess Eriu, who had promised the Sons of Mil that, if they gave the land her name, they should live upon the island forever. That was long ago now. Nobody was sure exactly how long. There had been great battles, that was certain. And then the Tuatha De Danaan had withdrawn from the land of the living and gone underground. They were living there still, under the hills, under lakes, or far away across the sea in the fabled Western Isles, feasting in their glittering halls. That was the story.
But Goibniu doubted. He could see that the mounds were man-made; indeed, their construction might not be very different from the earth and stoneworks which men built now. But if it was said that the Tuatha De Danaan had retreated under them, then they probably dated from that former age. So had the Tuatha De Danaan built them? Likely enough, he supposed. Divine race or not, he judged, they had still been men. Yet if this were correct, here was the curious thing: whenever he inspected the carved stones at these old sites, he always observed that the patterns of the carvings were similar to those on the metalwork of his own day. He’d seen pieces of fine worked gold, too, which had been found in bogs and other places, and which he guessed were very old. On these, also, the designs were familiar. Goibniu was an expert in these matters. Did the incoming tribes really copy the designs left by the departed race of the goddess Danu? Wasn’t it more likely that some of the former people had remained and transmitted their skills? Anyway, did an entire people, divine or not, really vanish under the hills?
Goibniu cast his cold eye on the sid. There was one stone there that always