The Elder's Last Story
An Eachann and Connor Adventure
By some strange means, Connor has been transported to another time where the land is ravaged by blight and drought. Here, he finds his best friend Eachann withered and dying as the land itself. What brought him to such a sorry state? And is there any hope to right everything that has gone wrong?
The Dead Druid's Cave
Continuing their roving through Alba (Scotland), Eachann and Connor find lodging from a storm in a cave inhabited only by the bones and moldering robes of a long-dead druid. In the middle of the night, Connor wakes to find Eachann gone without a trace! What could have removed him from the cave, or indeed, his world as a who…
“It took you long enough, Thunder-brains.” Wrinkles folded the pallid skin around Eachann’s eyes and the upper half of his beard rose as he smiled.
Connor sighed. “What is this? Why has this happened?”
Eachann’s hidden smile faded. “Come to my side, my friend.”
The woman rose and walked into the shadows, casting occasional glances back at the old man. Connor took her place and sat down, placing the great cloth and dirk on the ground beside himself.
Eachann’s gaze shifted to the items. “My cloth…Scían Tethrach…I didn’t think I would see these again.” He reached a shaking hand out from under his blanket and placed it lightly on the bundle.
“Whenever you are ready, say on,” bade Connor.
“My tale is long, but my time isn’t,” Eachann drew his hand back in close, “but I will say what I can, so perhaps…”
The woman returned with broken pieces of wood and placed them in the fire; it crackled, and its red glowing fangs bit into the kindling. She remained beside it, looking between Eachann and Connor.
“Perhaps?” Connor asked.
Eachann cleared his throat. “Perhaps this might never happen.” Connor said nothing more, but leaned closer and locked eyes with his best friend as he continued to speak:
“The night we stayed in the cave, I woke suddenly and wished to give thanks to the druid’s bones as they looked upon us. The moon shone brightly after the storm passed, and one lone beam shot into our shelter; I stepped into it as I knelt and at once I found myself in the same cave but in a different age—one when the druid’s bones were wrapped in flesh and his robes were clean white as the clouds. His hands were placed in the position of prayer as he sat in that same place. No longer did the blue spear of the moon shine in the cave, but the dim fire of candles with stinking smoke. I sought you, Connor, but many others were in your place; the people of this dun gathered before the druid, all knelt like me. Laying before them all was a scrawny, naked slave with a cracked head and throttled neck—a sacrifice. Their chieftain, a man of Pictish and Gaelic descent, rose and rejoiced, as did his subjects. They spoke Gaelic, but borrowed some words from the Picts, thus it took me longer to understand their speech. I stood and turned in confusion as the crowd honored me.
“To the druid, I knelt once more and asked, ‘What conjuration has been brought before me?’
“And the druid answered, ‘The only conjuration in this cave is you, for we have asked for a champion to come to us.’
“The chieftain approached me and bade me rise—the name upon him, he told me, was Maine, and asked for the one on me, so I gave it to him. He bestowed upon me a great cloth, so I could stave off the wind, and guided me out of the cave. It was a cloud-shadowed night outside; torches lit our way through the field. At the dun, in this hall, when everything was whole, a feast was brought to me, the chieftain, and his best tenants. They granted the champion’s portion to me.
“Once I partook, accepting the meal with pride, I said to my host, ‘A champion’s welcome I am given, but for what are you needing such a fighter as me for?’
“Maine called for his bard to tell me of his people’s plight, and his blue-robed lore-keeper said this: ‘Yon river is fed by the waves of the sea, our nets take the herds of salmon as they come, but also in its currents swims Neglachd the giant. Out from the crushing deeps he climbs and he hides among the catch as it is pulled upon the banks; he leaps from the binds ere they are loosed; his claws tear and his teeth snap at his own catch of man. Bands were sent to the banks to drive Neglachd away, but his strength is that of many trained in arms and his fury even greater. Since the time of Red Maine, father of Uma, father of Lí, father of our living chieftain Maine, Neglachd has swam thro’ the currents of yon river.’
“ ‘Now,’ continued the bard, ‘at last you have come to us—a champion to end Neglachd’s taking.’
“I stood and gave my sympathies, but I said to them, ‘Though I would be joyful to bring down this giant, I am unsure alone.’
“Maine offered to have a band of his best men join me, but I said on, ‘There is only one other who would be right to fight beside me—he is Connor Ua Sreng of the Fer Bolg. In yon cave we slept this night, but now he seems to be lost.’ None knew of him.
“I still did not fully accept their request, so Maine offered more for my skills—treasures, land, cattle, the hand of his daughter…”
Eachann paused for a moment and sighed. He and the woman exchanged a glance; tears along her bottom eyelids glimmered orange and yellow.
“She was fair,” Eachann said, looking up at the ceiling, “and kind. Now, she is passed on…far from this terror. Days after the feast, it was the plea her father put into her mouth that led me to swear to slay the giant. I accepted the mail, arms, and ward of the fighters, so I could approach Neglachd’s river. The fishers gave me a net and bade me to look for the salmon with the purple eyes. I went alone in a chariot, with gear that felt odd in my grasp—shield, sword, and spears. At the river’s banks, I cast the net into the roaring surge and waited for it to grow heavy with the catch. I sheathed my sword and spears into the ground; my shield I leaned against a stone.
“I sat there for two nights, seeking the purple-eyed salmon, and my fury rose each time I failed to retrieve it. At the dawn of the third day, with anger keeping sleep away from me, I cast the net and a great shadow fell into it; I almost fell into the current, but I pulled back and onto the banks. On the sand, I lay the catch and in the middle stared a salmon with purple eyes. Neglachd sprung from his hidden form as I reached for my weapons and ward. At once, I recognized his race—his stony skin like a cairn, his corpse-breath, black nails, and purple eyes—he was a Fomorian, Connor. His claws dripped with salted water of the sea; he lashed at me as I leapt away, but my mail turned the giant’s nails. We fought there ‘til the sun’s beams shot through the grass and onto the banks. I wavered and worried throughout the battle, for what I really treasured was not with me—my great cloth, my true sword, Scían Tethrach, and you, Connor. I taunted him with my exploits against his kind, and shamed their scarcity in this time of the Gael; his fury increased as we fought. Though I wounded Neglachd well, my fretting cost me this…”
Eachann pulled his blanket down past his shoulders. Where his left arm once sprouted from now hung an empty sleeve. He did not replace the blanket over himself as he continued:
“Neglachd fled into the current, and I back upon my chariot, my shield arm shattered and bloody. At Maine’s dun, his physicians healed and branded the wound. Though I brought back no head of the giant, the folk were pleased their banks were liberated. And though I was mangled during the fight, Maine’s daughter sill laid with me. I could not leave, for honor bound me to stay there until I knew Neglachd would not breathe again. So I waited for days, and nothing came of the giant—during those days I learned of this place I came to. None were familiar with the idea of taking a clan name by allegiance rather than just one father; the druid told me such a thing had yet to come in this time. He sat alone in his cave often, but I would visit him as I waited for news of Neglachd. I asked him if you could be brought to fight alongside me; the magic of traversing time and space is uncertain, he told me, and such things might also require the thing being brought out of nothing to be in the right place at the right time.
“‘When light and shadow are just right,’ he said, ‘and when the right share of it is crossed.’”
“Could you not go back to the time you left?” asked Connor.
“The druid knows of such a way, but to go to the desired place demands much from the traveler.” Eachann coughed before resuming. “Neglachd did not return in mere days after our fight. Weeks passed, then months. Within that time, I found comfort with my wife, and our only daughter, Saorla.”
Eachann gestured with his remaining hand to the woman by the fire. She put on a weak smile, but her eyes flowed freely with tears.
“And I have brought comfort to you ever since my birth,” she said.
Eachann smiled, then quickly lost it as he returned to his tale: “One day, some fishers went to the river. And they did return; their gory remains were skewered on the weapons, claws, and fangs of a band of Fomorians coming to Maine’s dun. Neglachd led them and called for me to meet him. After I drove him from the banks of the river, he went to the stormy isle of his race—Toraig. There, he beseeched his kin to follow and make a strike against the people I swore myself to. Though crippled and backed by small bands of fighters, we tried our steel against their blades of stone…”
He held his hand towards the sky. “Thus, we failed and their spells of drought took root in this land; I watched it wither before me—they slew my wife, her father, and most of their people. I was too weak and shamed to enter a hunt against Neglachd and his kin, so I remained here ‘til I withered.”
Eachann shut his eyes and said his next words in a clear, quiet tone, “But now my greatest friend is come, and I may finally pass.”
Connor shot to his feet. “Not yet! There must be a way—”
“I am an old man,” Eachann’s eyes opened and looked at the Fer Bolg, “there is nothing to be done for me in this time.”
Connor looked to the floor. He clenched his teeth so hard he believed he would shatter them; he fought against a mounting heat in the back of his eyes and the tightening in his throat. I wish it wouldn’t end like this, he thought.
“There is one thing…” Eachann said, almost in a whisper. “My cloth; it’s been so long since I’ve slept in it, I should like to have my last slumber be in it.”
Connor relaxed and knelt. He removed the Scían Tethrach from the bundle and unraveled the wool—the whole thing stretched around three yards long. He helped Eachann shuck off his ragged blanket and replaced it with the great cloth.
Eachann let out a long breath as the cloth settled over his feeble body. And before he closed his eyes for the last time, he looked into the oak-brown ones of his best friend Connor Ua Sreng. When the breath ended, no more came from the mouth of Eachann MacLeod.
Connor buried his face in his hands. Behind him, Saorla sobbed into her own. Gone, he thought, and in a fight with something I could not slay! I am trapped, and there is nothing to bring you back!
Then, a memory of the druid’s mummified face crossed through Connor’s mind. Unless…
***
“You return,” the druid hissed as Connor stepped into the belly of the cave. He entered with his mouth in a thin, hard line and his finger wrapped loose around the handle of his club; it tapped rhythmically against the floor as his arms hung low. His gaze locked onto the dim eyes of the druid the moment they came into his sight, unbroken and unblinking as he approached.
Connor paused an arm’s length away from the druid. “Take me to the moment before my friend set out to slay Neglachd.” He spoke just above a whisper, in an unwavering tone.
The druid’s lips twisted into a crooked smile, and the skin around them crinkled as he said, “Heed the instructions of my spell-making and I will bring you to that share of time.”
“Whatever is needed,” Connor agreed.
“Bring forth bundles of peat to ignite, enough so their glow will cover the floor of this cave…”
Connor nodded slowly as the druid spoke.
“And bring forth fragrant herbs to put in the little fires, so more smoke will pass through the light. And bring forth an offering of living flesh to strike down—”
“Flesh?” Connor interrupted. “Of beast or—”
“Of Man; of a living one, to whom you will deliver a deadly blow and step into their shadow as they fall.”
“But the only living ones here are me and…” Connor’s mind wandered back to the dun. When he left it to return to the cave, Saorla keened for her father; her mourning songs drifted out of the ruined walls into the dusty air. “Saorla.”
“Yes,” the druid’s confirmation forced a shiver through Connor’s bones.
“I would never betray Eachann, not after he—”
“The Eachann you seek has no daughter,” the druid’s volume did not rise, but his interjection halted Connor’s speech; “he will not miss one he never sired.”
“She would never agree; her father’s grave occupies her time, so she will not come before you.”
“She does not have to know.”
Connor and the druid stared at one another in silence; the Fer Bolg was wary of locking eyes for too long with the wizard-mummy. How many secrets and deceptions lurk behind that gaze? he wondered. In the hush, memories of Saorla’s song echoed in Connor’s mind. She truly had nothing left to live for—at present, she buried her father; perhaps she would place him beside her mother. No chiefs or heroes crossed through this wasted land, so marriage seemed a distant dream.
“It would perhaps be a mercy to the poor girl,” the druid’s breaking of the silence shook Connor’s bones once more, even harder this time. His fingers rubbed the haft of his club slowly.
Connor turned away from the druid, setting his gaze on the sliver of deepening orange light at the end of the tunnel. “Perhaps it would.”
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“The Elder’s Last Story” © Ethan Sabatella 2025 – Current Year, All Rights Reserved. Reprinting or replication of this work in its entirety in any form (written, audiovisual, etc.) without express permission of the author is prohibited. Excerpts may be used for review or promotional purposes with credit and acknowledgement of the author. This piece cannot be used for training of Artificial Intelligence programs.
You are st your best when you write of the adventures of Eichann and Conor. Excellent !