“What you saw the other morning was only a small example of what I can do. I could have helped them. Those wretched souls. I could have been on one of the boats. I could have . . . ” He looked utterly wretched.

“That was a fierce storm, Cathal.” An unnaturally fierce storm. “Even you could not have held back those waves, or stopped that gale from blowing Freyja onto the rocks.” In my heart, I wondered. He was Mac Dara’s son, after all.

“I should have tried,” Cathal said. “Instead I put my own needs first: the need to escape my father’s notice, the need to keep my family safe. Meanwhile the wives and children of other men perished before my eyes. No wonder I am visited by nightmares.”

“If you go beyond the boundaries of Inis Eala, if you reveal yourself and if your father finds you,” I said carefully, feeling somewhat out of my depth, “Clodagh could be left on her own with the child.”

“And so I did not act. I am a coward, Sibeal. If I could know what lies in her future, if I could be assured they will be safe, the two of them . . . ”

“Have you sought answers in the scrying bowl? Have you used other tools of divination?”

The waves washed into the cove below us, a whispering song in the quiet of early morning. “You know I have not,” he said.

“Then don’t ask me to do it. She’s my sister.”

Cathal did not reply.

“Besides,” I said, “my visions are often fragmentary, cryptic, full of symbols. They are open to many interpretations. There are no neat windows into the future. It would alarm me if there were—that would surely mean that we have no power to influence what is to come.”

My companion gave a mirthless smile. “If one could see a possible future, one might then take steps to ensure it did not come about.”

“We’re not gods,” I said. “There’s good reason why a divination is never carried out on one’s own behalf. If you obtained answers, you could find yourself paralyzed by them.”

“I understand.” After a moment he added, “Sometimes I wonder how someone so young can be so wise.”

I grimaced. “I don’t always feel wise. But that is the druid path: it lasts a lifetime, and one never stops learning.”