Nyx in the House of Night

still embodying the two druids. Some say until these two druids stop fighting we will never have peace.
    So what do you think? Did the sibh touch you, too? Can you see the link between the House of Night’s bulls of Light and Darkness, and the Brown Bull of Cuailinn and the White Bull of Ai Plain?
    SEOL NE GIGH [1] —THE SEAT OF THE SPIRIT STONE
    The idea to create a huge sacrificial stone with intricate knot work carved all over the sides, down which Stark’s blood runs, came from another story Alan told me that day. (Yes, three hours is a long time to get tattooed! Lots of talking and ale-drinking goes on!) This is what Alan told me that inspired the creation of the giant rock that rises from the middle of my fictional House of Night castle on the Isle of Skye:
Local legend held that the king who brought the art of gold smelting to Ireland began to worship the blood-hungry god Crom Cruach. Most of this worship centered around sacrifices that took place on what was called either the Plain of Adoration, or the Plain of Decimation, found today in County Cavan, outside the town of Ballyconnell. Crom Cruach’s stone wasn’t just ornately carved, but was covered in silver. It was said that “the Druids let the blood draw onto the stone, and read the auguries from the flow of blood in the carved channels.” Because of the violence of Crom’s worshippers, other tribes shunned the area, and didn’t marry into them
    There are several versions of what happened to the stone that was at the center of these rituals. One version, Alan told me, is that the stone now dwells in the bowels of the Vatican. Others say it used to be buried, but when in the 1840s locals began leaving flowers and offerings of milk and eggs on the ground above the stone, the Christian church had what they believed to be the stone dug up and smashed. According to this second version, remnants of the stone still “are to be seen in County Cavan to this day.”
    Then Alan told me a more personal chapter in the story, and it was because of this telling that I was sure that it should be this particular stone, resurrected through my fictionalization, that must serve as the conduit for Stark’s painful, near-death quest to the Otherworld.
Some close friends and I went to find the ancient circle of Crom on a miserable November day, a few years ago. We found the town. It was Sunday, and we didn’t see a single soul. We eventually found the old and abandoned stone circle, but a few hundred yards away from it I began to feel giddy and separated myself from the rest of the group. On reaching the circle, I began to feel light-headed and sat down on one of the stones. The inside of my head began to feel squashed, and I became overcome with the need for flight. When I tried to stand up my legs went wobbly, so I sat again. Then I began to feel screaming inside my head rather than hear it, so I tried to centre my thoughts by striking a conversation with the others. But the screaming was now mixed with images that I could not make sense of, so I stood up to walk away, and suddenly began to dry retch. That was enough for me; I will never return. This is the truth as I know it, and as I was told it, and as I pass it to you.
    So it was Alan’s soul-felt description that caused me to create a stone that became the Seat of the Spirit of Skye, the perfect conduit through which our Warrior, Stark, held at the brink of death, did what no other living vampyre Warrior had ever before accomplished, and entered the Otherworld!
    Do you believe in the sibh now?
    Scotland
    Seoras and I only spent a couple of days in Ireland during that trip, because my mind kept circling back to the Highlands and the stories that were calling to me there. I have to admit that my research in Scotland, on the Isle of Skye in particular, was the most satisfying, enjoyable, and productive research trip I’ve ever taken. Not only did I have a strong, intelligent, knowledgeable Clan Chieftain as my personal guide and research assistant, but through Seoras I met another wonderful historian and Clan member, Alan Torrance, [2] as well as his wife, Denise, who “saved” me from all that Clan Wallace testosterone. She also told her own wonderful stories of the fey, some of which inspired the scenes in Awakened where Zoey glimpses the old magick on Skye as it becomes tangible in the forms of elemental fairies. (Honestly, I sometimes think Denise is a little fey herself—she’s blonde and beautiful