Wolfking The Omnibus: Books 1-4

by Sarah Rayne

  He turned away, rolling on to his front so that he could throw stones down the hill and see them splash into the Sidh Pool far below, and Joanna at once felt a sense of loss — a withdrawal. He had been looking at her and smiling, and there had been something so tender and so full of promise … I am on the brink of something wonderful, she had thought.

  But she had been reared in a stern school, and so she put the thought of Flynn’s mouth and his hands on her body from her mind, and said, “Tell me about the better time.”

  Flynn sat up, his eyes sparkling, reached for the wild strawberries again and began to talk about an ancient Ireland, an Ireland of long ago.

  Neither of them had ever heard those magical words “once upon a time”, for the art of story-telling, like so many of the other arts, had been lost. For the last three hundred years, men and women had been too taken up with rebuilding a shattered, burnt-out world to think of such mundane things as telling stories. But some things never quite die, and both Joanna and Flynn were imaginative; both were Irish, with the true Irish gift for telling and hearing a story. If Flynn did not say “once upon a time”, he did not need to, for the magic was in his voice and in his eyes, and Joanna was immediately and wholly enthralled.

  *

  “So long ago, that it was nearly the beginning of time, Ireland was ruled by a great and wonderful Court,” said Flynn softly. “The Court of Tara, where the High Kings sat on the throne of Dierdriu of the Nightcloak, and of Niall of the Nine Hostages.

  “It was a time when the land was ruled by sorcery and heroism and intrigue; when men were better than human and when women lay with the beasts of the forest, and gave birth to strong and cruelly beautiful children who had the blood of the wolves and the eagles and the lions in their veins. Did you ever see a Bible, Joanna? An immense book, very greatly honoured by the Letheans at one time in their history. In one place, it says ‘There were giants on the earth in those days.’ Giants, Joanna. Creatures better than human. Neargods. The people of the old, old Ireland were that, acushla. Beautiful mystical beings. Creatures to revere and serve, and perhaps fear. Yes, I think one would be a little frightened of them, but one would never be able to resist them. Half human and half animal, so that they had power over the animals, so that they could call them, summon them to their side in battle. Did you ever hear of the Battle of Cormac of the Wolves? The Wolfram, they called him. He was exiled from the Court, but he swore to return, and he stood on Tara’s Hill and sent out a call to his brothers, the wolves. And they came, they obeyed him, they came streaming out of the forest, down the valley, and converged on the hill at his side.

  “Remarkable,” said Flynn, his eyes faraway.

  “It’s there I’d go if you could work your magic, Joanna. To the Old Ireland: the land of half-humans, magic and wars, princes and enchanted beings, and great battles, mist shrouded forests. Do you know we’ve never seen mist, Joanna? The Apocalypse burned us up so that all the moisture went from the world. But they had mists then — like great smoky clouds they were. They called Ireland the blue and green, misty island. Beautiful. Men sailed the seas just to catch glimpses of it, for tales of it had spread half across the world. It was beautiful, acushla. Not the dry, arid place it is now. We have the Hard Rain, but once there was a soft gentle rain in Ireland, so soft that it shrouded the land in blue and purple mist.” He sat up. “Would you come with me, Joanna? Follow me into a land so old that its memories are lost in the beginnings of time? So old that the Letheans had forgotten it, just as we have forgotten the Letheans. Would you do it, acushla?”

  It was impossible to resist Flynn when he talked like this; absurd extravagant nonsense that you did not quite believe, but that you could not quite disbelieve either. For a moment, just for the briefest second, Joanna had seen it all quite clearly; the beautiful cruel faces of the children, and the slant-eyed intelligence of people who would not obey human laws, and who might not obey the laws of the animals either.

  “Oh,” said Joanna, her hands clasped tightly together, her eyes shining, “oh, if only we could go back, Flynn. If only we could.”

  “Would you come with me?”

  All my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay and follow thee my lord throughout the world …?

  The beautiful tragic words were lost for all time, but even so, an echo lingered. Joanna looked at Flynn and said slowly, “I believe I would.

  “Yes, I believe I would.”

  *

  Joanna’s father knew himself for a reasonable man. Everyone said he was. “John Grady’s as reasonable a man as you’d find in a week’s search,” they said.

  He was part of the ruling body of Tugaim, one of its Elders. He had a say in the entering up of the Kin Book, and he was almost always asked to make one of any inquiries that were set up when laws were broken. He hoped he was not guilty of the Letheans’ sin of complacency, but he thought he could be just the smallest bit proud of himself. A reasonable man. One of the Elders of Tugaim, and a Grady, a member of that grand old Irish line. Not everyone could boast of possessing that coveted second, family name these days; names, memories and lineages, like so much else, had been lost during Devastation. The surviving families had not always known who they were when they crawled back up into the light after the Apocalypse had at last exhausted its strength. But the Gradys had kept their name, and everyone knew that the Gradys of Tugaim had been a highly thought of family before Devastation.

  “Utter rubbish,” said Seamus Flaherty, stinging from John Grady’s stern sentence after the unfortunate episode of Fingal O’Dulihan’s pigs. “He’s no more a Grady than O’Dulihan’s pigs. He might be a graibeir.” And then several people had to be reminded that a graibeir was a landgrabber. “That’s where the famous ‘Grady’ comes from,” reiterated Seamus, pleased with himself, carrying Fingal off to Peg Flanagan’s wine shop where they could both drink poteen and cry destruction on the Elders and lasting death to the Apocalypse, and confusion to the Landgrabbers. It was a sorry thing when a man could not do that, and you might thank whichever god you paid homage to that one of the things the Apocalypse had not destroyed was the secret of making poteen.

  John Grady was not a landgrabber, of course, the very idea was absurd. Everyone knew that Seamus Flaherty was the biggest romancer in Tugaim, and everyone knew that you could not trust a word he said. Of course there had been graibeirs after Devastation; of course people had taken what land they could, started up little farms, and then bigger ones. Land had been there for the asking anyway, and no one had needed to do any grabbing. He would deal with Flaherty more sternly the next time the ruffian came up before the Elders, and the man would certainly not be left free to go off drinking poteen with his arch-enemy and lifelong friend O’Dulihan. John Grady disapproved of Peg Flanagan’s wine shop and the poteen that Peg made; he did not hold with becoming intoxicated any more than he held with frivolity. Too much poteen gave people ideas, and you had only to go back three hundred years — probably more like two hundred and fifty — to see where intoxication and getting ideas got people.

  It was to be hoped that Seamus did not spread his nonsense about graibeirs too far. John Grady remembered a word that the Letheans had used: snob. It had signified someone who thought he or she was better than anyone else. The Letheans had set a lot of store by that kind of thing; possessions and standing in the world. John Grady knew the worthlessness of such things, of course. Even so, you had to have standards, you had to remember that there were always those who led and those who followed. John was glad to think himself a leader, and he was very glad indeed to know himself above snobbishness. You did not often hear the term nowadays, but it was descriptive, nevertheless. It did not, naturally, describe John Grady, although he had his standards. It would not do for people in Tugaim to be saying his ancestors had been one of those unprincipled marauding gangs who had roamed the desolate wastes that were all the Apocalypse had left to mankind, taking land and plundering people’s homesteads. Everyone knew about them;
everyone knew, as well, about the courage and the determination of the survivors. A terrible time it must have been, and the pity was that the graibeirs — the real ones — had succeeded, so that even in Tugaim there were descendants of them. He dared say that Seamus Flaherty was one.

  You could not be too careful whom you allowed your family to conjoin with these days. He was going to be very careful indeed about Joanna. The child had been given some ridiculous Lethe notion about love and romance and suchlike; she was off with the wild O’Connor boy whenever the opportunity presented itself, and that was one of the things that was going to be stopped. Briony, foolish old woman, had encouraged her in her nonsense, but then Briony had always been more or less witless. Small wonder that Diarmid O’Connor had disappeared rather than be conjoined. Not that conjoining needed any particular degree of intimacy, of course. John himself had never been especially intimate with Joanna’s mother, it was a silly Lethe idea to think you had to live like that. The business of bed and board, and of day to day life could be done quietly and without fuss. There was a certain amount of messiness about conjoining, of course, he’d known that before he did it, but he’d gone through with it staunchly, because in these times it was every man’s duty to beget good sturdy children for the world.

  Joanna was certainly not going to be conjoined with Flynn O’Connor. Doubtless the boy had his worth, but John Grady did not think that Flynn had anything in his head other than daydreams and Lethean nonsense. As for the O’Connor land, well, there was certainly a lot of it, but John did not think it was so very marvellous. He had looked at the maps carefully. Mostly fruit, of course. Some wheat and maize and a few sheep as well. And that treacherous belt of Glowing Land on its southeast boundary.

  “A grand spot,” Michael O’Connor, Flynn’s father, had told him. “Can’t you see the Mountains of the Morning from there. The finest sight in all Ireland.”

  Grady had been surprised. He had said, “You have actually walked across Glowing Land? Actually stood on it?” and a strange look had come into Michael’s eyes.

  He’d replied, “Well now, wouldn’t any man be tempted?” and Grady had hardly been able to believe his ears, for didn’t everyone know, quite certainly, that the Glowing Lands were absolutely and finally forbidden?

  O’Connor had said gently, “But do you know why they’re forbidden, John Grady?” and John had had to admit that he did not. But then no one did.

  “Do they not?” said Michael softly. “Oh, do they not, indeed.” And John had taken himself off grumpily.

  Joanna was certainly not going to be given into such an impractical family. John would not be at all surprised to find a hidden Mutant or two in the O’Connor background. You were not supposed to conceal Mutants, although people did; you were supposed to take the poor creature to the House of Mutants where it could be looked after and kept with its own kind. You had, as well, to enter the Mutant in the Kin Book, and if a Mutant was born into your family, you could not breed again. The line had to die out. Mutants had pretty well ceased to be born now, but occasionally you came across one … terrible creatures. Ah, when you were an Elder, you had to see some shocking things. You had to make some hard decisions. John was very thankful that the Gealtacht stood a little apart from Tugaim, remote on its high hill — a dreadful thing indeed if normal, whole people had to mingle with those deformities!

  Joanna should be conjoined with Brian Muldooney. The Muldooneys were what was called New Stock; John did not think they had owned any land before the Apocalypse — you could nearly always tell when people were not accustomed to owning and possessing and having; but of course, this was not something which had to be taken too much into account. It certainly did not have to be taken into account when the land in question marched so neatly alongside Grady land, although John would not, of course, allow this to influence his decision.

  Joanna should be conjoined with Brian Muldooney and that was all there was to it. The Muldooneys were scrupulous about keeping the laws, which was a thing to be considered; they paid their dues and they did what they should, and if they had ever harboured a Mutant, it would be a very great surprise. Which was more than you could say about Flynn O’Connor and his father.

  The Muldooney farmlands would round off John’s own acres very nicely. It had been ridiculous of anyone to seriously consider Flynn, what with his impractical ways and his daydreaming family and his blend of arrogance and disinterest. John, who knew his own worth, and who knew, as well, that he himself was a natural leader of men, did not always care for Flynn O’Connor’s air of calling no man master. All men were equal, and that was what everyone today believed. It had not been what men believed before the Apocalypse, of course, they all of them knew that. There was even an ancient, carefully preserved book which the Letheans had thought well of, which said that all men were equal but that some were more equal than others. John had seen a copy of it in the People’s Museum, and had been very much shocked to see such a sentiment actually written down for all to read. He thought it told you a good deal about the Letheans.

  Anyway, Joanna was going to Muldooney.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Michael O’Connor was feeling altogether great. Life was grand if you made it so; life was a fine old thing for a man these days. To be sure, his ancestors had bargained with the devil, and they had lost, so that the devil had walked in to the world and gobbled most of it up — the memories were not so many, but they were there, and people knew a little of that time. But weren’t there grand compensations at times? Wasn’t O’Connor land as safe as ever it had been, and didn’t they do well enough with their fruit orchards and their sheep rearing, which was as yet modest, but would not always be. And wasn’t the square stone farmhouse as snug a home as you’d find anywhere in Ireland?

  Best of all, wasn’t it the finest thing in the world to be keeper of a secret so immense and so breath-taking that a man might be pardoned for feeling a touch arrogant now and then; he might be pardoned for feeling just the smallest bit superior to the likes of Grady the Landgrabber when he came poking his long nose, asking questions, actually sizing up an O’Connor for conjoining with his lovely daughter. Michael liked Joanna very much; he would have been very glad for Flynn to have Joanna; he thought Flynn would be glad as well. But wasn’t it as plain as a cowpat that the Landgrabber had no notion of Flynn for the child? A very great pity, and if there was anything Michael could do, he would do it, but Grady was a hard man, an inflexible man. He was suspicious, as well; would you only look at how he’d quizzed Michael about the Glowing Lands, and drawn in his prim mouth and looked disdainful. They could well do without the likes of John Grady in Tugaim.

  The secret of the Glowing Lands was safe, of course. Michael would never betray it, not even when he had drunk Peg Flanagan’s poteen; certainly not when he had taken Peg or her sister, or both, off to bed for the night.

  To be appointed one of the Keepers of the Secret had been the most tremendous honour. Michael’s father, initiating Michael when he was twenty-one, had said it was only because of the accident of geography; the Glowing Lands were on their territory and the thing had been preordained. A modest man he’d been. But Michael’s grandfather, who’d been a grand old ruffian and whose memory was still green in Tugaim today, had winked and grinned at his grandson, and said hadn’t the Keepers been chosen with great care throughout the world?

  “Throughout the world?”

  “There’ll be one or two in every land, even in England, although that’s always been known for a terrible dull place. Coldblooded the English. Weren’t we for ever at war with them?”

  “Were we?”

  “Even the English will have Keepers,” said Michael’s father. “For there’ll be Glowing Lands in every corner of the world — the Apocalypse made sure of that, may he rot in hell for ever.”

  But the Apocalypse, wherever he was now, had done the world a curious favour. “Although,” said Michael’s father seriously, “if he’d known it, he’d have f
ound a way of avoiding it. He intended destruction, you see; he brought down War, Plague, Famine and Death. He left the Glowing Lands as a permanent reminder. They say he touched them with his scorching breath as he passed through the world, and that they will glow for ever. Some people call them Gateways to Hell.

  “But of course,” said Michael’s father, “they are no such thing.”

  *

  Michael O’Connor thought wasn’t it remarkable the way life moved in a circle. Twenty years ago he had stood on this very spot, his father at his side, and looked down the hillside to the ovoid below them that was one of Ireland’s Glowing Lands. Now he stood here with Flynn at his side, and felt excitement and fear mingle in exactly the way his father must have done. Would Flynn understand? Could he be trusted with the Secret? Had his own father wondered these things? And in twenty years’ time, would Flynn stand here with his own son? Michael hoped so. In any case, it had to be an unbroken line. Father to son. The first Keepers had been firm about that. Continuity. Father to daughter might be permitted, or perhaps father to grandson or nephew, but a special Council would have to sit, and the Keepers were always cautious about meeting together more than was absolutely necessary.

  “We dare not,” the first Keepers had said, “draw attention to ourselves.”

  Nor had they. They met when required; when one of them was admitting a son into the Secret. Or when no son existed, they met to consider who in that Keeper’s family might be handed the trust. They met stealthily, carefully, nearly always at night. Michael had attended perhaps three assemblies of Keepers since his own admission twenty years earlier. They were solemn gatherings, and they were not to be lingered over. There was a prescribed ritual to be followed.