The Geis of Sable – Part III
The Cailleach has spoken, but her prophecy is only the beginning. Will Cael rise—or be broken?
The tide was black that night, swollen with storms.
The merrow council’s chamber still echoed in Cael’s ears: thin voices urging patience, urging trust in the tide, urging silence while more bodies washed ashore. His fists had curled so tight on the stone table that his knuckles bled.
Patience. Silence. Hollow words while kelpies dragged children beneath the surf. While Muirín’s song was lost to the deep. While the Fianna’s oath rotted on his tongue.
Sable’s whisper followed him into the dark:
What is an oath, Cael, if it binds you to silence while your people drown?
He rose from the cliffside, the medallion cold as bone against his chest, and drew his spear. For once, he did not wait for the tide’s choosing. He chose.
The tide remembers, and so does the Chronicle. Leave your voice below or share this tale, and together we’ll carry the fire into the next telling.
The kelpie nest lay hidden in a salt-choked inlet, their slick hides glimmering under a broken moon. Cael remembered the first time he had faced them—his shield raised, his brothers singing. Tonight, there was no shield. No song.
He waded into the surf with fire dripping from his spearpoint. At his gesture, torches flared along the ridge. His men, those who still followed, whether from fear or loyalty, he no longer knew, cast their brands into the sea.
Oil spread. Flame leapt. The tide itself burned.
The kelpies screamed as their hides blistered. Some lunged toward shore, only to meet Cael’s spear in a fury too swift for chant. Others thrashed, their manes igniting as they sank beneath the boiling foam.
Cael’s breath tore his chest raw, but he did not stop. He drove his spear again and again until water and blood and fire became one. The night roared with it.
This is strength, Sable whispered. Not waiting. Not bending. This is what it means to command the tide.
But when the flames thinned, silence returned. Not the silence of peace, but of something broken. The sea stank of char and death. Even the gulls had fled.
And in that silence, she came.
Mist uncoiled from the breakers. An owl’s cry split the night. Then the Cailleach-Oidhche stood before him—her cloak woven of frost, her hair tangled with seaweed and night. Her eyes were two moons, pale and unblinking.
“Do you know what you are becoming?”
Her voice was no accusation but lament. It slid into Cael’s marrow sharper than Sable’s fire.
“I am keeping my oath,” he spat. “The sea took Muirín. The kelpies feast on our nets and our kin. This is justice.”
The Cailleach tilted her head, the way an owl studies prey. “The tide does not choose. It takes. But you, Cael—you have begun to choose what the tide will take.”
Her words scraped something buried. He saw the faces of Dún Carraig—the chieftain bent in surrender, the child clutching a crust of bread, the searching eyes that found no mercy in him. His stomach twisted.
But he remembered the council’s silence. The nets dragged empty. The song drowned. And his jaw hardened.
“The tide remembers nothing but strength. I will teach it to remember me.”
Snow swirled around her feet, though the season was summer. “Fire forgets the hand that lit it, Cael. So too will the tide forget you—except in ruin.”
Her hand brushed the medallion at his chest. It pulsed, once, like a heartbeat. Then her eyes fixed on him, bright with prophecy.
“A spear waits for you. Forged not of steel, but of memory. It will pierce the marrow Sable has claimed. You will be bound where sea and stone meet, and the tide will sing your name only as warning.”
The torches cracked behind him. His men shifted, uneasy. Some drew shields against the night. Others would not meet her gaze.
Cael forced himself to laugh, though it rang hollow. “Your riddles are wind, old mother. The sea does not sing. It drowns. The tide keeps only what it breaks.”
When she vanished into mist, he realized his hands were shaking. Not from cold, nor fear—but from the echo of her words rooting deep.
At dawn, the smoke of kelpie flesh still rising from the sea, Cael stood before his men. His voice was iron against the surf.
“Hear me. The tide has no memory. It takes and takes until we are nothing. But I will not be nothing. By this medallion, I swear: where the tide devours, I will answer in fire. Where silence reigns, I will speak in blood. This is my geis—my oath reborn.”
The words struck like hammer on anvil. Some of his followers shouted assent; others bowed their heads in unease. None dared defy him.
The oath coiled around him, darker than the tide-moon’s blessing, heavier than the Fianna’s creed. He felt it bite into his marrow, binding him not to protection, but to vengeance. Not to honor, but to domination.
Above him, the Cailleach’s eyes lingered like pale stars, then vanished into mist.
Cael tightened his grip on the spear. The tide might remember, but now, it would remember his fire.
The tide may yet remember Cael in fire or in ruin, but the Chronicle endures only if voices keep it alive. Leave a word, share this tale, or cast a coin for a pint—and together we will carry the story forward, into the next rising of the tide.