The Ban Sidhe Part II

Chapter II of the tale of Ciarin the Son of the Red King and the Death Faerie:

The thanes of Dun Daigh split the enemy host. Amid the routed Bruatta horde, fair-haired Ciarin, the son of the Red King, cut his path. Hacking and chopping, he carved a swath through the wall of iron and muscle and blood, warrior after warrior brought down by the stroke of his spear.

A feast of carnage spread out in such savage glory that the Ban Sidhe fell still at first sight. Perched among the sharp cliffs, girded with dawn-fog, the death Faerie held her voice at bay. She watched the killing field. She felt the stench thicken, rising about her in a shroud of screams.
It softened her stare.

Deep amidst the swirl of iron and entrails, Ciarin drew her gaze. She knew him. He had seized the chieftain’s mantle while still a teen, and in the twenty years since he had written his reputation in blood across the fields of Ireland.

It was a body of work the death maiden admired.

Brutality. Cruelty. The relish he took from ending life etched a mark of respect through the faerie’s empty soul. This was not the first time she had paused to marvel at his butchery.

The habit had not gone unnoticed.

Beyond the veil of mist, behind the reflections of the world of men, Lugh Samildanach saw her pause. The silence echoed in the great god’s ears. There was no scream. No killer howl. The lord of Tuatha De Dannan was not pleased by the interest his ghost-lady had taken in the affairs of men.

On that morning, as the strife stained black the green of spring, Lugh brought his interminable gaze from the realms of faerie. Across the valley Othma he looked long and hard, seeing through the smoke of crumpled chariots and the eddies of dying groans. He drank in the clamor of Ciarin’s rage and the stirring scent of dead men rotting in the mud.

A frown twisted his red beard.

"There sits my Ban Sidhe. She wilts after the doings of Ciarin while the Gates of Death stand closed. A dove upon the clouds."

Brigit, most ancient of the faerie listened to him ponder. She was not as dismayed. She drifted toward him through the magical shadows, sparkling with phantom shards of light.

"What trouble is that?" she asked. "Why shouldn’t the spirit of death be moved by such ferocity?"

"She has no heart," Lugh answered. “No feelings.”

Brigit sighed. A sea of clouds danced around her like fair maidens. She did not reply.

Another voice sounded through the dolmens. It was the Leanan Sidhe, soul of muses.

"Mortals love those who speak to their desires and their minds, as do we. Cannot a Faerie then, even one so baneful as the Ban Sidhe, come to such affection?"

Lugh did not consider the Leanan's words.

"The Ban Sidhe has but one purpose. That is all she has ever done, and all that I intend for her," he said.


Leanan was bade travel to the fields of Ulster, as messenger of the Gods of Faerie. She came upon the death maiden at the approach of noon, seated still where Lugh had seen her, enthroned among the low clouds.

So smitten was she that the Ban Sidhe failed to note the Leanan’s approach, though she came carried upon a torrent of leaves and straw grass. Before the spirit spoke, she gazed for a space upon the ghost-queen, her name a bane to both Faerie and Gael. The glare of her red eyes seemed to follow the blood-trailing figure of Ciarin.

Lugh had not been mistaken.

The Ban Sidhe was taken with him.

"Ban Sidhe! I come at the behest Lugh Samildanach. He demands that you issue your call. Many men have fallen this day, yet your scream has sounded but once."

The Ban Sidhe did not turn. She shifted her gaze from the struggle. The Leanan shuddered. Her stare was ghastly. Echoes of horror danced in her eyes.

"I serve Lugh. Never have I failed him," the killer-faerie said.

Her voice slithered in vile fragments of sound. It echoed within itself a thousand dreadful times, as though spoken in a cavern.

"After age upon age, ere these times since the days of the lost Fomori, what complaint could he have?"

The Leanan looked away. She faded in and out of sight with each gust of the sea-wind. "I speak only the words I have been given. Lugh commands you to carry out your calling."

She now wished nothing more than to flee the hideous gaze.

"I shall do my work," the Ban Sidhe said, shifting her translucent form. "In my own time. Tell Lugh Samildanach. And be gone from here.”

The Leanan Sidhe grimaced. The ghost-faerie pointed her away.

“Now leave me," she hissed.


Upon the wind the Leanan returned to the misty mounds of wandering spirits. She feared the words she carried, knowing the anger they would rouse in the Lord of Faerie.

"In her own time!" he thundered. "She dictates her duty to me?"

Brigit slipped through the shadows, summoned by the rage of the Ever-Seeing.

"Take some pause, Lugh. Never before has the Ban Sidhe refused you. Perhaps she deserves deference. Would you not allow any of us as much? For the sake of love?" she said.

"Love?” he replied. “We speak of the Ban Sidhe. She exists only to herald the descent of the dead. That is her only use, and she is perfect in that creation!"

Brigit passed through the mist trails in Lugh’s wake. Her aspect splintered into a dozen reflections. She came together as she answered.

"Perfect yes, perhaps too perfect. So enamored of death that she has come to love the man who so often brings it to his foes," she said.

"Fine,” Lugh replied. “If the Ban Sidhe so loves death, then let her herald his own."


Lugh’s decree sounded up from the darkness. It made the megaliths tremble. The Burren wept. As the Ban Sidhe watched Ciarin, raising his blade upon a foe, he was struck down. A bronze club smashed his skull.

He collapsed, his crown shattered. Gray matter mixed with mud and pointed flecks of bone.

Finally, the scream came.

The phantasm streaked down from the clouds. While her voice commanded death upon mortals, she held no power to restore life. Now her calling was stronger, for her next announcement would mark the death of the man she most admired.

She did not have tears. The death faerie nurtured no such human traits. Yet as she raised up the ruined corpse of Ciarin, shepherding his spirit out of the broken flesh, a fire seethed inside her. The eyes of the warlord stared even in death. He met the Ban Sidhe’s vacant gaze as few men ever had.

"Ciarin the slayer, long have I admired your spear. Your blood lust has brought me pleasure. No one has caused so much death as you. I will not be rid of you.

"Lugh! I refuse your task. I shall not herald the march of the fallen, lest you restore Ciarin to his beautiful form!"

Her cry shrieked across the green isles. It chilled the blood of thanes and sliced a path to the gods. But it shepherded no spirit up from the plain.

The clouds shivered, shrinking from the death scream. The seas raged. Waves battered the cliffs. Lugh heard the tortured lament of his domain, squeals of deer and shrieks of birds.
Eire trembled.

"Let her scream!” he said. “She serves my wishes. She will suffer my wrath.”

The words of Faerie were not spoken lightly. The tone of Lugh’s angry boast rolled down from the mist and the hidden reaches. It brought his spite to the fields of men in hammer-strokes.

Misery descended. Crops failed overnight, fields withered to dust in the hours of darkness. Grain stores rotted in their sheds just as quickly. The double shadow spread across the land, plague and famine invaded every village and hut.

They ignited a flame of anguish, fanned by the wails of the starving and the cries of suffering children. The thanes of Daigh Tuatha, men of the clans of Ciarin, already saddened by the falling of their leader succumbed with ease.

In the shrouded mounds of the hidden hills, Lugh Samildanach watched the grieving, the wilting of the fields and the dying of the forests. The isles faltered under his wrath, days long and dark as none could recall. Yet among all the long times of grief, as spring wore to summer and then summer into fall, there grew up a sign more ominous than all the gloomy tidings.

The Druid priests were at first loathe to dwell upon it, though as the affliction grew worse it soon demanded redress. For all the despair, and in all the cold months of dread, there had not been a single death across the lands of Eire.

Not in Ulster, or in Munster or Connacht.

Not on Innish More, or at Dun Guarie or Tara.

Where sickness once felled men, they breathed still. Riddled with pain that would have no respite, they watched their bodies rot and putrefy.

But they did not die.

Hobbled husks of men, little more than walking skeletons wandered the countryside. Warriors hacked their blades into the flesh of their enemies from light of dawn until deep into the moonless night.

But they did not die.

Druids assembled. They argued under sacred dolmens. They drank blood and divined the innards of birds and beasts. They sought answers in the black shadows of their Clochans.

They could find no other answer.

Eire had been forsaken.