The crouching figure of Eis Enchenn huddled in the darkness before her.
‘Welcome, Scáthach of Uibh Rathach. Welcome to Dun Scaith,’ the crone cackled.
‘I need no welcome,’ snapped the girl. ‘Where are you holding Flann Mac Fraech? And where is the gae-Bolga and An Seancholl Snidheach which Aife of Lethra stole from me?’
‘Come, come, my girl, this is no way to answer the hospitality of Darcon,’ wheezed the old woman. ‘Surely you will respect the custom of hospitality?’
‘As much as it was respected when Flann was kidnapped from our encampment and my weapons stolen.’
Scáthach moved further down the dark granite corridor into which the doors had opened, wrinkling her nose against the putrid smells that pervaded the place. At the far end of the corridor she saw other doors open leading into a courtyard, equally as grey and dank as the rest of the fortress.
There was a squeal of wood over stone behind her. She wheeled round, sword in hand. The great doors of Dun Scaith were closing.
She swung on the harridan. For the first time she could see the old one clearly. Eis Enchenn was of indeterminable age; that she was elderly there was no doubt, but she seemed more like an emaciated corpse than a living person, an animated skeleton. Her crouching bony body was wrapped in smelly, dirty animal skins. Her filthy, unwashed hair was matted and her burning single eye glared malignantly at the girl. Around her scrawny neck she wore a necklace of animal teeth and she held a huge thigh bone in one hand.
‘What are you?’ demanded Scáthach in disgust as she viewed the old woman. ‘Are you human?’
Eis Enchenn shook the thigh bone towards her, screeching angrily.
‘You have no call to heap insults on me after I have opened the doors of Dun Scaith to you, girl!’
‘Perhaps not,’ agreed Scáthach, ‘but I have not seen such an ill-kept person as you before.’
The old woman spat towards her and piped in her thin piercing voice: 'You have the haughty arrogance of youth, girl. Wait until you have lived as many summers as I have before you sneer … ’
She paused and cocked her head to one side and started to cackle again.
‘But I speak foolishly. It is written that Scáthach of Uibh Rathach will not live another summer.’
The girl, hearing the inflection in the other’s voice, tensed her muscles, her hand gripped tightly on the sword.
‘Speak plainly, hag,’ she hissed. ‘What do you mean?’
Suddenly the harridan began to move in a swaying motion left to right, right to left, like a snake, in a curious, mesmeric, twisting motion. Scáthach stared at her in distaste, watching the skeletal figure moving, increasing the motion until she started to quiver and until she began to work herself into a frenzy of excitement. The foam flew in flecks from her gnashing jaws. The fierce red eye seemed to start from her head, and she moved forward holding the great thigh bone towards the girl. It was not until then that Scáthach realised that the bone was actually a human thigh bone. She shivered slightly and drew back in disgust.
‘Stop, old woman, before I strike you dead where you stand,’ she cried and raised her sword.
The thigh bone gestured towards her, the crone shrieked loudly and then there was a blinding flash. Scáthach blinked rapidly and took a pace or so backwards. She had no idea whence had come the fierce streak of light nor what had caused it. Everything before her eyes had dimmed. She raised a hand to massage them, blinked again and tried to focus.
Eis Enchenn was chuckling and still performing her weird swaying dance. It was a sickening sight-seeing the old creature bent with extreme age, swaying and chanting, like some animated skeleton covered in a leather taut skin, her horrid eye gleaming with its red unholy lustre.
‘Foolish girl!’ she squealed. ‘Did you think I would let you into my lord’s domain without hindrance? You have managed to come thus far but you will go no farther. I have promised my lord that you will be brought before him … but as a prisoner.’
Scáthach rubbed her eyes and gasped.
‘You dare break your word?’
‘What word?’ sneered the obscene crone. ‘I only promised to open the gates of the fortress. I have done so. Now they are closed and you are my prisoner, girl.’
‘Not yet!’ cried Scáthach, raising her sword again and attempting to rush on the harridan.
Once more she saw the awesome thigh bone pointing towards her and sensed, rather than saw, the flash of blinding light. She shut her eyes but a fraction too late for when she tried to open them everything was dim and out of focus again.
She suddenly felt something wet and slippery enmesh her like a net, but it was a fine net, a cobweb of immense strength. It fell over her and immediately wrapped itself around her body so tightly that she could not move. She could not even move her wrist to use her sword to cut her way out. The sticky mesh enclosed her like a tightly wound shroud.
She could hear Eis Enchenn shrieking with laughter and she cursed herself for her stupidity. How dim-witted she had been to think that she had no need of the wisdom of Ruacán. She wished he was with her now.
She felt the mesh tightening, driving the breath from her body. She could do nothing but attempt to fight for breath. So right it became that she fell to the ground, gasping.
Then Eis Enchenn slithered over to her.
‘Proud child, stupid child. Did you think it would be easy to gain victory over the Island of Shadows?’
Then she raised her thigh bone and brought it crashing down onto the head of the bound girl. For a split second Scáthach was aware of the impact before losing herself into a black, bottomless pit.
Chapter Seventeen
Scáthach came to consciousness still cursing herself for her stupidity. She opened her eyes to darkness and had to wait a moment for her eyes to grow accustomed to the dank gloom. That she was in some dungeon, probably below Dun Scaith, was obvious. She did not move, in case she was being watched. She wanted as much time as she could to examine her surroundings before making her captors aware of her return to consciousness.
Some light must have been penetrating from somewhere, perhaps the flickering glow of a torch or candle, for she was able to discern the main features of her surroundings. She was in a cell-like room which seemed to have been tunnelled out of granite. It was no more than ten feet long by ten feet in width and probably the same in height. She saw that instead of a door, iron bars spread across one end of the cell. On looking more carefully, she observed that the iron bars themselves constituted a door.
She lay on a wooden cot on which rotting straw had been placed. There appeared to be nothing else in the cell.
Having made her inspection, her mind turned to her own welfare. Her head ached but the suffocating mesh which had caused her downfall was gone. Someone had removed her helmet and war harness and of her weapons there was no sign. All she had left was the gold medallion which was still in place on its chain around her neck. She tried to lick her lips and found her tongue rasping and her mouth dry.
That the harridan, Eis Enchenn, had tricked her comfortably was obvious. She was a prisoner at Dun Scaith. That much was certain. She wondered if Flann was a prisoner in a similar cell nearby.
Having spent as much time as she could assessing what information she could discern with her eyes, she decided she should move. She sat up, with a slight groan, for her head ached fiercely, and swung her legs over the edge of the cot. She noticed a jug by her cot and reached down a hand to dip her finger in the liquid, licking at it suspiciously. It was water. It seemed fresh and uncontaminated. She decided to chance her fate and picked up the jug, sipping a little and wetting her face with it.
There was a movement in a corridor outside.
She stood up expectantly. Apparently, someone had been monitoring her movements.
A figure emerged in the gloom outside.
Scáthach caught her breath sharply. A wizened-faced, hunchbacked dwarf emerged into the gloomy light and stood grinn
ing at her from behind the bars.
‘So?’ His voice was a high-pitched, sing-song tone. ‘You are awake, my pretty?’
The girl shrugged.
‘As you can see, little one.’
She tried to keep her tone light.
The hunchback’s thin lips drew7 back over yellowing fangs.
‘Don’t seek to provoke me, Scáthach of Uibh Rathach. Better people than you have tried and failed. That is why I am chief jailer to my lord, Darcon.’
‘Why should I provoke you, chief jailer?’ the girl forced a smile. ‘Are you worthy of the effort?’
The hunchback scowled.
‘You will not be so impertinent when I have questioned you, my pretty. I am Cuar and these dungeons are my domain.’
‘Well, Cuar, I wish you joy of them. You are welcome to have dominion over such a place.’
Cuar chuckled.
‘You sound brave, my pretty. Have you forgotten that you are in my domain? That I have power over you?’
‘If there were not bars between you and me, little man, I would show you just how much power you have,’ replied Scáthach evenly.
The hunchback hissed angrily and drew something from his belt.
Scáthach’s eyes narrowed as she saw that it was a whip.
The little man cracked it against the stone flagging.
‘Not even your whip can give you power, little man,’ sneered the girl, deliberately turning her back on him and moving back to the cot, where she sat down.
Cuar stared at her uncertainly but there was anger deep in his dark, smouldering eyes. He hesitated a moment and then turned and scuttled away.
The girl waited a while, listening to the quiet of the subterranean world in which she was now plunged. It was a fetid-smelling world. She shivered slightly for it reminded her of her childhood nightmare of the putrid smell of death and corruption. She was glad that Ruacán had made her face that fear and overcome it. She wondered whether the old druid had realised by now that she had been taken captive and, if so, whether he would be able to do anything? She thought not, for there was no way the old man could span the ravine which separated Dun Scaith from the mainland. She bit her lip in perplexity as she wondered what she should do.
She stood up and went to the bars that constituted the door. She had no real expectations as she tried them and found them solidly rooted in the granite and with the door section firmly locked. There would be no way through except for someone who had the key.
She pressed her head against the bars and tried to see up and down the corridor. The angle of the bars were such that all she could see was the opposite wall of granite.
‘Hello!’ she called, deciding to risk shouting into the darkness in an effort to make contact. ‘Flann Mac Fraech! Hello!’
There was no answer to her echoing voice.
She raised it again.
‘Hello?’
Somewhere down the corridor something moved.
‘Who calls?’ came a male voice, echoing sepulchrally.
‘I am Scáthach of Uibh Rathach,’ called the girl. ‘Who is that?’
‘I am … I am … ’ the voice hesitated and a long sigh resonated in the gloom. ‘Alas, I have been here so long … so long … ’
Scáthach frowned. It was hard to estimate the age of the speaker. The voice was weak and the man could be elderly.
‘You must know who you are,’ she pressed.
‘I was … was a chieftain once … I can’t recall. I have been a prisoner of Darcon … Darcon … I can’t recall. They call me Twenty-Seven, for that is the number on my cell.’
The girl shuddered slightly.
Could anyone have been incarcerated in this tomb so long that they had forgotten who they were?
‘Why are you here?’
‘I can’t recall,’ the voice echoed back. ‘Something … I would not obey Darcon … I … I was a chieftain once.’
The girl leant forward against the bars.
‘Twenty-Seven,’ her voice was low and urgent, ‘do you know anything about the other prisoners here?’
‘Other prisoners?’ The voice seemed puzzled.
‘Yes, yes,’ the girl said, trying to suppress the tone of exasperation. ‘I am looking for a young warrior of Éireann, Flann Mac Fraech. Is he imprisoned down here?’
There was a pause.
‘Twenty-Seven? Are you there?' called the girl.
‘Yes. I was thinking. What did you say?’
‘I am looking for Flann Mac Fraech who was brought as a prisoner to this place. Have you seen him?’
‘I have seen no one but Cuar the hunchback for many years now,’ the voice came softly. ‘And as for this place … I have heard that there are many prisoners on other levels. They work for Darcon.’
Scáthach bit her lip.
‘Have you never tried escaping?’
‘Escaping? How and to where? There is no escape from Dun Scaith.’
The man’s voice was resigned; it was a flat statement of fact.
‘There is no place from which a person’s ingenuity cannot work out a means of escape,’ replied the girl. Yet even as she spoke she knew she doubted what she said. She spoke only to bolster her morale.
‘Brave words!’
It was the sibilant hiss of Cuar that echoed down the corridor. She heard a sudden crack of his whip and a cry of pain and alarm from the unseen ‘Twenty-Seven’. Hot anger flushed Scáthach’s cheeks.
‘Come here, little man, with your whip and I will teach you to strike defenceless old men!’ she yelled.
The voice of the hunchback rose in a vicious chuckle.
‘Still brave, my pretty? You won’t be for long. I hear that Darcon’s sister, Aife of Lethra, is coming to look at you. Then your gods will not help you.’
Scáthach drew a sharp breath.
So. Finally she would see this mysterious Aife of Lethra.
Would she know the secret of the triskele mystery and of her birth?
‘Send her to me quickly, little man!’ she yelled back defiantly.
There was no answer.
Time hung heavily. She had no means of knowing the passing of the hours for everything remained in permanent gloom. She sat in silence for a while, trying to compose her mind and body until some opportunity presented itself on which she could act. It was useless trying to fight against her imprisonment for there was no way she could achieve anything. Buimech had taught her that when the body is made prisoner the personality is still free through the mind. So far as a person was still able to think then they were free. And even if a person was in isolation, thought provided them with companions. No jailer could make thought a captive. And so Scáthach fell to meditation for nowhere could a person find a more quiet or untroubled retreat than in their own mind.
How long she passed in contemplating, she did not know. That she must have fallen into a restful sleep was obvious for she came awake, sweating slightly, with her mouth dry again. She blinked her eyes and stared around.
A figure stood behind the bars watching her.
She started up.
The figure was that of a woman; no, a girl of her own age, build and height. She wore a silver helmet which covered her face entirely and a long black cloak fell from her shoulders to the ground, showing her black leather war-harness, her workmanlike sword and dagger. There was a golden hero’s tore at her neck. Even though her face was not revealed, Scáthach could see that the girl was attractive, her limbs supple and body lithe. She carried herself as one trained to combat.
For a while both girls stood staring at each other through the bars, each weighing the other up.
‘Ah so … the long breath of a sigh escaped the helmeted woman. ‘So you are Scáthach of Uibh Rathach?’ Scáthach’s chin came up defiantly.
‘I am.’
‘I am Aife of Lethra.’
Scáthach raised an eyebrow disdainfully.
‘I have heard some call you the High One.’
Beneat
h the silver visor of the helmet, the other’s red lips turned upward in a smile.
‘Some have called me that,’ she admitted.
‘Why do you fear me, Aife?’ demanded Scáthach. ‘Fear? Fear you?’
‘Yes. Why did you flee from Lethra when you knew of my coming? I have travelled long to find you.’
Aife did not deny the girl’s charge.
‘Your coming was prophesied some time ago.’
‘Yes?’ prompted Scáthach.
‘I was warned of your coming and the harm you could inflict on me.’
Scáthach grimaced.
‘Prophecies sound better when they become histories,’ she said dismissively. ‘I have no wish to harm you and yet you have already harmed me and those close to me. Where is Flann Mac Fraech?’
The other shrugged indifferently.
‘He is a prisoner here and soon will be handed to Aintiarna of the Cruithne by my brother Darcon.’
‘Why did you take him captive? How has he harmed you?’ demanded Scáthach.
‘He served you,’ retorted Aife. ‘That is more than harm to me.’
‘Why do you hate me so? Simply because of some prophecy? I do not understand it.’
‘Hate? Hate you?’ Aife’s voice was reflective.
‘There must be something more than a prophecy which caused you to hate me,’ observed the girl.
The other stared at her.
‘You are truly beautiful, Scáthach of Uibh Rathach. All that has been said about you may well be true.’
‘Why did your warriors steal my spear and shield?’ the girl demanded, switching subjects.
‘I had need of them.’
‘You will not reveal to me the mystery that lies here?’
‘Mystery?’
Scáthach summoned her energies to control the impatience she was feeling.
‘Aife of Lethra, tell me what mystery lies between us. Why should you seek to harm me?’
‘Knowledge is a weapon as deadly and finely honed as any sword, Scáthach of Uibh Rathach. I will not arm you lest you seek to destroy me. I will not present to you any weapon.’
Scáthach bit her lip in annoyance.
‘Then if you will not tell me what it is I have done, or what reasons cause your hatred of me, then answer me one question — what do you intend doing with me? Is there no way that I can purchase the freedom of Flann Mac Fraech and myself?’
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