The Undying Wizard cma-6

by Andrew J Offutt

  At the prow, Cormac son of Art of Connacht leaned on the bulwark, gazing ahead.

  Beside him was the short, slight warrior. The strange high boots still sheathed her legs above midthigh. Overlarge for those slim firm thighs, the rare boots she loved were held up by thongs she’d fastened to the belt of her tunic, under her coat of good mail. The yellow tunic covered her legs to the knees. Of linked steel in the Irish fashion, her mailcoat fell almost as far, and covered her upper body to the throat.

  Discarded this day was her bronze-studded cap of leather. Her hair, which was of a light golden red that might be called orange, blew this way and that, caught by the wind of their passage and by the wind that pushed them so gently.

  They’d launched the light Irish longboat with its single sail from the baile or town called Atha Cliath, which some called Darkpool, or Dubh-linn. The vessel skimmed along east by south. Well behind them now was the Pictish attack, and the bodies of good sons of Eirrin that nurtured the ever-hungry sea. They were mourned, though none aboard Quester was of the New Faith, whose adherents believed in an eerie bodily afterlife not of this earth, but cluttered all together in a sky-place called coelis or heaven. There they lived eternally, with their god Iosa Chriost. They did naught, so far as Cormac mac Art had been able to ascertain; he held no discourse with the dark-robed priests that had followed Padraigh to Eirrin.

  A venerated Druid rode this ship of men of the old beliefs. None had failed to note that he lifted no weapon against the Picts, nor was he menaced by them… which would hardly have been the case, had he been a priest of the new god from the East-and Rome. The Druid’s robe remained green. All aboard were of his belief, for Cormac mac Art had no Christians about him. These men knew that their slain comrades would return to tread this earth, though with different visages and names.

  “Cormac,” the orange-haired warrior said, “is’t true what that man of Baile Atha Cliath said, that once he sailed with you?”

  “Aye. Tiobraide lost his arm with me, Samaire, in a battle with the men of Norge up north of Britain.”

  “He called you Wolf.”

  “So did they all. It was Cormac an-cliuin I was then; Captain Wolf.”

  “How came you by that name?”

  “Men are fanciful, Samaire.”

  “And ye be evasive, dairlin’ boy. Come-how came you by that fierce name?”

  Cormac continued to look ahead, on the sea. “I earned it.”

  Samaire daughter of Ulad Ceannselaigh heard, and heard more than his spare words. She queried no further into that matter.

  “He said too that it was your wont ever to counsel that one should kill only when necessary.”

  Staring ahead, the one-time wolf of the sea said nothing.

  “Cormac?”

  “Aye.”

  “Be it true?”

  “Aye. Often I said it,” he said, with a catch in his voice that was not quite a sigh.

  “And… but… was it meaning that, ye were?”

  He nodded, without turning his face toward hers. He was aware of her bright green eyes-and of nine other men.

  “Aye. I meant it. Ye’ll be asking further, and I’ll make answer first. It’s true, Samaire: I believe that one should kill only when necessary. Unfortunately it is more often necessary than not.”

  The daughter of Leinster’s murdered king was silent for a space, whilst Cormac stared ahead and the sea furrowed past Quester’s prow to ripple all along her length.

  “I know not whether to laugh or sigh,” she said at last.

  “Nor do I, Samaire. It’s a world of killing we habit, and it’s good at it I am.” His tone and mien were matter-of-fact, and without pride.

  “I want to hug you.”

  A crease deepened at the edge of his mouth, in the slightest of smiles. “I hear you, dairlin girl. And it’s the hug I’d like to be feeling… but I salute you for the saying of it, rather than the doing.”

  “Had I known there’d be so much discomfort for all, I might not have come.”

  “’Twas you insisted, Samaire,” he said, noting that she’d said “might” not. A princess asea, among weapon men!

  “I remember, dairlin boy.”

  “None dare call me boy, save you, woman.”

  “Think you I’d suffer being called ‘dairlin girl’ by any other than yourself, man?”

  Cormac chuckled. “Likely not. And discomfort is the word. It’s why I insisted that ye dress as ye have, and keep on that mailcoat ungirt. No man asea should have a woman’s form flaunted to his eyes.”

  Samaire heaved a sigh and tucked back her nether lip. “It’s not that I meant by discomfort, though I understand it, too.”

  “Oh. Well… methinks it hardly inconveniences these men to look away now and again, whiles you do that which is necessary. It’s knowing they all are, too, that on yester day you were a warrior among warriors.”

  “It inconveniences them to worry about whether I be looking away!” Samaire assured him, and they chuckled together. “I try, Cormac. And… I miss your touch, your arm around me, and mine about you.”

  “Not aboard this ship.”

  “I know,” she said, with a hint of exasperation; she need not, Samaire of Leinster was saying, be told that again.

  “I have a question of my own,” he told her, turning his face at last toward hers.

  The lift of her brows was invitation enough to the asking of it.

  “Our… benefactor,” Cormac said. “He who provided money for this boat and crew, your cousin Aine’s husb-”

  Samaire was laughing, though not in amusement. “Benefactor! Dealing with Cumal Uais was worse than bargaining in the marketplace of Tara! The tenth portion of what we bring back we must give him, for financing our quest-and that after bargaining him down from the third he demanded! And him the husband of my own cousin… and his coffers full already with the price of five hundreds of cattle won by his wagers on you in the championship games! Benefactor!”

  Cormac was smiling. “Well, he did a bit of losing that day, too… sith he also placed wagers on Bress.”

  Samaire looked at him in shock, her green eyes huge and indignant. “No!”

  “Aye. He did risk more on my prowess, though-fortunately for him. Besides, it were a better return: the odds were against me.”

  She shook her head. “Oh gods defend us, why is it thus? Cumal was born wealthy, Cormac! And all his life he’s spent adding to that wealth.”’

  “And counting it,” Cormac said. “And eating,” he added, for Cumal’s girth was nigh as fulsome as his tally sheets. “At any rate… it’s his name I wanted to question, Samaire. How could parents nobly born and with wealth, and them residents of royal Tara as well, name a son Cumal Uais… ‘Slavegirl the Noble’?”

  For a moment Samaire stared at him. Then she was laughing.

  His cool stare stopped her. “Oh, Cormac! It’s not his name… he’s but called that. His name is Tuathal, though he likes not being called after a High-king of four centuries agone, a king whom Cumal considers to have been no good man. He welcomes being called Cumal, ye see, though in truth it began as but a bit of waggery, poking fun at him for his love of gains!”

  Cormac understood now. And to think he’d not asked before out of… manners. Until a few months agone it was long and long he was out of Eirrin, an exile for the old “crime” of which he was now absolved by Council, High-king, and druids alike, after his testing. He’d forgot. “Cumal” meant slavegirl, aye. It also meant a unit of exchange, as the Romans used their coins stamped with the faces of rulers with bird-of-prey beaks. A cumal was a unit of exchange worth the value of three cattle; it was by cows, boru, that those of Eirrin had long measured value and wealth.

  Not often was Cormac mac Art embarrassed.

  Samaire was still a-chuckle. “Hush,” she was bade, and she gave him a look that invited him to force her, even as she ceased.

  Cormac was rescued; sensing movement, he turned to see that Bas the Druid h
ad come to join them.

  “It’s a god’s blessing ye have on ye, Druid,” the Gael said, “for of all aboard I see no drop of blood on ye.” Then, lest the man think he was being denigrated for having had no part in the battle with the Picts, Cormac added more. “It’s glad I am to have ye aboard, beloved of the gods.”

  Bas nodded acknowledgment. “There be two of us, Champion of Eirrin, for as ye proved when ye underwent the Trials of the Fian and had sorcery done upon ye as well, all saw that Behl and Crom do love their staunch defender, Cormac mac Art.”

  “I hope it’s right we both are, Druid, and that we live to count many grey hairs. Being a staunch defender, as ye put it, be easier now, and all a true man can do, with the priests of the Dead God upon our land like a plague.”

  Art’s son of Connacht was ever wont to call the god of Rome and the bishops “the Dead God,” since all knew he’d been executed on a Roman cross by some forgotten procurator enforcing the sedition laws.

  Bas sighed. “Say not ‘No true man,’ mac Art, with so many in high places converted from the ways of Eirrin to the new faith.”

  “Perverted,” Samaire corrected.

  “There’ll come a time for the dealing with that problem, Lord Bas, and none will find my blade averse to being wetted through black robes!”

  “They are holy men, Cormac mac Art-or think themselves so. But I came to ask ye of our destination. How much farther?”

  Cormac looked upon the priest of Behl and the ancient god of the Gaels of older Eirrin, Crom Cruach. He did not smile as he said, “I cannot tell you, Druid.”

  Bas lifted his brows. “Cannot? Still, this far on our way-and you will not tell me?”

  Cormac gave his head a jerk. “No no, Lord Bas of Tara. Cannot, I said, and it’s cannot I meant; Druid or no, be assured that had I meant ‘will not’ I’d have spoke it so. It’s enough years I’ve spent asea that I have an animal’s sense of direction. Though there were changes in the seascape… land rose even as we sailed, and-”

  “Land rose?”

  Samaire shuddered in memory. “Aye. In fire and thunder! Rock and ash mingled with flame vomited up to slash the clouds and rain down upon us. The winds from that eruption of angry gods drove us far to the south and west, and we missed by mere fingerlengths smashing into a new isle even as it rose from the sea bottom!”

  “So that,” Cormac said, “we returned by a somewhat different route, from far off our course. What I know is how we came to the isle that Wulfhere named Samaire-heim. Even so we cannot approach it as we did afore…”

  The Gael trailed off. The face of the druid showed thorough confusion; Samaire was smiling.

  “Wulfhere Skullsplitter,” she told the druid, “is a Dane. A huge great towering oak of a man with hair and a beard-oh, a great full beard, Bas-like uncarded wool dyed red. He and Cormac are… were…”

  “Companions asea,” Cormac swiftly interjected. Most knew he’d been a reaver, a pirate, and he saw no reason to remind Bas, whose sister was the wife of Eirrin’s High-king. “When first we see land ahead, we must swing well to the west. For full ahead lies a combination of horror and death, a whirlpool called the Ire of Manannan, and then the Wind Among the Isles. We discovered them not ere they discovered us, to our dismay. Many jagged little rock-isles cluster there, and the wind that howls among them is insane. First we were whirled and spun and dunked and hurled helpless as a child’s boat when he tires and tosses stones at it. Three-and-twenty of us there were aboard Wolfsail; when we awoke on the beach of a tiny, rocky isle on no maps, we were but nine. The sea ate the rest, and our ship.

  “We found a castle on that island, Druid, a prodigious towering pile of superbly-stacked stones more thousands of years old than I’d care to say-or than ye’d believe.”

  Bas was staring, with more than interest now in his expression, in his entire attitude. His fingers toyed idly with the sprig of dried mistletoe he wore about his neck.

  “Think ye so, descendant of Gaels?”

  The two descendants of Gaels stared at each other, warrior and priest.

  “What… found you there, Cormac mac Art?”

  “Booty! A treasure-trove. The castle had been found afore us, and was the lair of a band of Norse reavers. We awaited them. When they came, they had as captive the Princess Samaire and her brother Prince Ceann. Their murdering, throne-thieving brother had arranged for these his younger siblings to fall into the hands of those men of Norge.”

  “Ah-it was thus you and Samaire met and linked destinies.”

  “We knew each other long before, twelve years and more agone, when she was but a girl and I a boy, a weapon-man in the employ of her father.”

  Bas nodded. He had heard the tale. First, because of the plotting of a fearful High-king, Cormac’s father had been slain. The boy, well trained and big for his age, had fled his native Connacht, to serve in Leinster under an assumed name. Later discovered there, he’d been forced to flee that kingdom too… and then Eirrin. For twelve long years he’d been an exile. There was a story that he had crossed the King of DalRiada, too, up in Alba. A man to rouse the fickleness of men and gods, was Cormac of Connacht.

  He was speaking on: “None of the Vikings survived. Of us, only Wulfhere and I did-and Samaire and Ceann. And the Norsemen’s ship. It was no easy mater, but the four of us reached Eirrin aboard that ship.”

  “When last we saw it,” Samaire said, with a reminiscent sadness in voice and face, “Wulfhere plied it alone, on a northerly bearing, ‘twixt Eirrin and Britain.”

  Bas was shaking his head. “What lifetimes of adventure and horror ye’ve crowded into your short term in this body, son of Crom Cruach! Oh… and sith I note how ye call my lord and lady the prince and princess of Leinster by their given names, Cormac, call me Bas.”

  “It’s Lord Bas ye be, or should. Ye gave up much to don druidic robes, man!”

  “I gained much, Cormac.”

  Again they gazed upon each other in silence for a time, and not without admiration and respect. Then Bas spoke.

  “And so this voyage is to take ye back to this isle your Danish friend named Samaire-heim, and carry off the rest of the Norsemen’s sword-gains.”

  “It is, Lor-Bas. That be the reason we few sail on a ship large enough to bear twice our number. Were the Lord Cumal Uais not so… cautious, we’d have two ships and more armed escort. The pr-Samaire and Ceann, ye see, need the wealth.”

  “It’s no comment I’d be making on what seems implicit in that, Cormac, my lady-”

  “Samaire,” she corrected, the orange-haired warrior. “No comment is necessary, Bas. My brother Ceann and I are what we are. When our father died, Leinster’s throne passed to his eldest. Within the year he was dead-slain, we know, by our brother Feredach’s scheming. Next it was us Feredach the Dark did treachery upon. Mayhap it’s grateful we should be that he did not have us slain. He is our older brother, and so Ceann and I have no claim on the throne.”

  “While Feredach lives,” Cormac added.

  Bas nodded, taking no note of Cormac’s sinister addition to Samaire’s words. “All this I know, sweet lady; I was present during the drama of accusation at the Council of Kings on Tara Hill but a month agone. Nor still will I comment, nor on Cormac’s dark remark. But… Cormac. Why am I along on this quest?”

  “Why-ye asked to come!” Samaire blurted.

  Cormac almost smiled. “Nay, so I told you, and it’s apology I make, dairl-Samaire. It was I asked my lord Bas the Druid to accompany us. There is sorcery on that isle, or was, and any who believe druids know naught but such as oak and mistletoe and the rites of Behltain and Samain be a fool before the gods.”

  Bas neither smiled, nor affirmed nor denied; that was affirmation enow.

  “The castle, Cormac,” he said, after a time of silence. “It is older than old?”

  “Men of Atlantis builded it, Bas.”

  “Ye know this.”

  “I know it.”

  Bas looked at neither
of them, but straight ahead, and he spoke as if to himself.

  “A castle of Atlantis… There is a story, a story passed down through thousands and thousands of generations of druids. It speaks of Kull, King of Valusia and an Atlantean born, and another man, a mage. Through some means Kull was able to best this wizard, who is variously said to have been a servant of the serpent god far more ancient than Atlantis… and to be immortal… and to be already dead but not dead, alive yet not alive, a man stronger than the grave, whose true face was that of death itself: a fleshless skull. There is a story… It is to these climes Kull is said to have sailed, where again he met that dread sorcerer. With the latter now was a legion of allies: serpents. Perhaps the serpent-god himself, who ruled the earth before we men came up from the seas… or, as some say it, down from the trees! Thus man met serpent again in a last great battle, and King Kull prevailed…”

  “Gods of my ancestors,” Samaire murmured, “against such a foe-how?”

  The closing of Cormac’s fingers on her arm deeply indented the flesh, and made her flinch. Hush, that sudden squeeze and grip bade her, without a spoken word.

  “Kull had his own mage by then,” the druid spoke on, “and besides Kull was of the mightiest of men ever to walk the ridge of the world. By sword and sorcery he and his prevailed, and raised a great castle over the ensorceled mage of evil. Some say those men ranged on, even to Eirrin where there were then no men, and that terrible war upon the Great Serpent’s last servant is the reason our green fens and blue hills are marred even today by no slithering serpent.”

  Bas came to a halt in his murmurous narrative-which was more like unto a remembrance, or a day-dreaming recall of the tiniest part of the lore that belonged to the druids. As though lost still within himself, he looked not at Cormac or Samaire. The grey eyes of the High-king’s brother-in-law stared ahead as though seeing only things that lay behind his eyes, not before.

  Dully Cormac said, “It is more than story, O Druid. It is Kull’s isle, and his castle. I… know. And beneath it… I like to have ended my days in this form. To a serpent, Lord Druid… a serpent several times the length of my body. And once I’d slain him… he bled scarlet, like a man.”