7.
The West
Meanwhile, far away in Connacht, King Ailill Mac Mata was also about to receive an unexpected guest of a supernatural nature in his stronghold.
He still found it faintly strange at times that he should consider the impenetrable fortress of Cruachán Ai as his own bastion now. He stood on the battlements of what had been, for most of his life as a younger man, the symbol of the enemy. His mother, Mata Muirsic, who had been the matriarch of the group of settlements in which Ailill had grown to manhood, had fought for many years against the growing power emanating from this place, the fell castle that had been constructed by Queen Medb.
Medb, who wasn’t yet called queen at that point, appeared to come out of nowhere, a mysterious, powerful woman who easily brought many proud a
