Cathbadh shook his head. «You do be telling me — and it is the word of a druid, so I must believe you — but ‘tis hard to credit that a druid could travel among the Scythians of Greece or the Scots of Egypt, with all the strange gods they do be having, and still be protected by his spells as well as at home.»
Shea got a picture of violently confused geography. But then, he reflected, the correspondence between this world and his own would only be rough, anyway. There might be Scots inEgypt here.
Just then Cuchulainn came out of his private room and sat down without ceremony at the head of the table. The others gathered round. Laeg took the place at one side of the hero and Cathbadh at the other. Shea and Belphebe were nodded to the next places, opposite each other. A good-looking serf woman with hair bound back from her forehead filled a large golden goblet at Cuchulainn’s place with wine from a golden ewer, then smaller silver cups at the places of Laeg and Cathbadh, and copper mugs for Shea and Belphebe. Down the table the rest of the company had leather jacks and barley beer.
Cuchulainn said to Cathbadh, «Will you make the sacrifice, dear?»
The druid stood up, spilled a few drops on the floor and chanted to the gods Bile, Danu, and Ler. Shea decided that it was only imagination that he was hearing the sound of beating wings, and only the approach of the meal that gave him a powerful sense of internal comfort, but there was no doubt that Cathbadh knew his stuff.
He knew it, too. «Was that not fine, now?» he said, as he sat down next to Shea. «Can you show me anything in your outland magic ever so good?»
Shea thought. It wouldn’t do any harm to give the old codger a small piece of sympathetic magic, and might help his own reputation. He said, «Move your wine-cup over next to mine, and watch it carefully.»
There would have to be a spell to link the two if he were going to make Cathbadh’s wine disappear as he drank his own, and the only one he could think of at the moment was the «Double, double» from «Macbeth.» He murmured that under his breath, making the hand passes he had learned in Faerie.
Then he said, «Now, watch,» picked up his mug and set it to his lips.
Whoosh!