settled over the skeletons like skin

as they rose to their feet:

seven dead kings with earth for flesh,

their jaws grinning open.

Eirdre’s corpse rose too,

the dagger still in her chest.

Connol frozen in horror,

his scalp crawling

as Eirdre took a smoky torch

from the cavern wall.

“Fian did this,” said Eirdre.

“I will not be her servant,

her abomination.”

She set the torch to her bloody robes.

As flames leapt, as her hair caught fire,

she screamed.

Beside Connol, Xau shifted,

undoing his jacket—

to put the flames out?—

but Xau’s left arm in a sling,

his movements awkward.

Blue light flashed, dazzling,

outlining the seven dead kings.

When the light faded,

the seven figures stood side by side.

In each dead king’s grasp, a blue sword.

On each eyeless head, a blue crown.

One still moment,

then the dead kings attacked.

∗

“Back to back!” shouted Donal

as the seven kings encircled them.

Donal swept Raid

clear through one king’s torso.

The two halves fell apart,

then, having fallen,

slithered back together,

bone rejoining bone.

The dead king stood up,

raised its blue sword.

Donal already beset by two others.

He parried one,

would have been skewered by the second

save that Xau lunged,

chopped off its sword hand.

Hand and sword

clattered jointly onto rock.

Xau yelled, “Take the sword.”

Xau’s guard scooped up the blue sword

in his off hand,

sliced one king’s head from its shoulders.

The blue crown rolled past Donal,

but the headless king fought on.

Around the living men,

the dead kings fell and rose again.

And again.

And again.

Donal cut the sword from one,

grabbed it. He laughed then,

laughed though he might die here,

because he finally knew the distance

between his father’s brutality

and his own violence—

a violence Donal had tempered,

battled, constrained.

That had not swallowed him whole.

∗

Connol heard his brother’s laugh,

but could not look round,

his boots slipping on the damp ground,

the king he faced outmatching him.

Xau sidestepped,

hacked off the dead king’s arm,

shouted, “Get the sword!”

Connol bent down,

yanked the blue sword loose

as the severed arm slithered

toward its body.

Three swords taken.

Four left between seven dead kings.

Turning to slash at the nearest king,

Connol saw his brother on one knee,

blood running from his thigh,

saw a dead king pivot

to lunge at Donal.

No time.

Connol stepped into the path

of the blue sword,

saw his own innards spill forth

in the instant before the dead king

lopped off his head;

saw then,

in the breathless end of his life,

his wife Mei,

pouring a bowl of tea,

her black hair shining.

∗

Seeing Connol decapitated,

Donal rose, roaring, to his feet.

He cleaved his brother’s killer

neck to groin,

cleaved another

as Xau kicked both swords

away from the grasping weaponless kings.

Xau’s guard sent a blue sword flying

from a dead king’s grip.

Together, Donal and Xau