by Sarah Rayne
The Druids would be very pleased to be given a human sacrifice this year; they would probably swear a strong Allegiance to Eochaid Bres, which meant to Bricriu. They would be extremely discreet about it all as well, for whatever else they might be, they were people of the highest integrity.
Bricriu smiled as he made his way down to the Sorcery Chambers. Yes, it would work.
One to the sidh to be dealt with in the dreadful fashion the sidh dealt with all their victims. The other to the Druids for burning on the Beltane Fire.
It was a very good plan.
*
Sean the Storyteller thought the evening had gone very well. And hadn’t it proved that you had always to be on the alert, always prepared for all kinds of occurrences? It did not do to be caught napping, and Sean had not been caught napping when the travellers had arrived. A nice little entertainment all ready and waiting, and very appropriate too. It had been a surprise to them all when the King had given permission for the travellers to be brought up, for he was as inhospitable as a hedgehog as a rule. But of course, he was King only in name, they all knew that. It was Bricriu the Fox who ruled.
But there the travellers had been, and there the King had been, and there the entertainment had been. The King had certainly not suspected that Sean had not made it up on the spot. It was not so very difficult to fool the lions a little.
It was very nearly impossible to fool Bricriu, of course. The Fox had looked at Sean rather sardonically when the announcement had been made, and Mab of course would have known straight off that the ballad and its staging bore the marks of a carefully rehearsed piece. Didn’t Mab know all about playacting anyway, for didn’t she spend half her time doing just that, only that no one except Sean had ever realised it. Sean grinned and made himself more comfortable in the large old bed. He could tell a tale or two about Mab if he cared to! More than a tale or two!
Still, who couldn’t?
*
In her silk hung bedchamber, Mab was not thinking about the evening or about Sean’s entertainment, or about Bricriu or Eochaid Bres. She was drowsy and warm, and she was thinking about how soon she would have Flynn in her bed.
Tonight would have been much too soon, although the boy would almost certainly have come if she had beckoned. But it would put an edge on both their appetites to linger a little, to eye one another, to brush hands and thighs, to exchange smiles. Just as she had done with the young Cormac all those years ago.
Remarkable how she still thought about him, even after he had hurt and humiliated her.
Flynn would not humiliate her as Cormac had. He would not be allowed to. Yes, it would be amusing to plan Flynn’s seduction. He was slender and he was very nearly slight in build, but there was a steely strength to him for all that. Like Cormac. Cormac had been slim and narrow-hipped, but no one had ever thought for a moment that Cormac could not best any man in any fight. For a moment, when Flynn had walked into the Sun Chamber tonight, Mab had thought it was Cormac who stood there. The Wolfking returned …
She frowned and pulled the bedcovers about her. Cormac was at Scáthach, Cormac deserved to be at Scáthach. He had been vanquished and banished, and there was an end to it.
Beltane would be the right time to seduce Flynn. Beltane was the night when passions ran high and blood ran hot, and people were aroused by the fires and the giant Wicker Man. The heat and the firelight and the screaming of the burning animals let loose frantic passions in people; Mab had seen it so many times. It was a remarkable sight to watch the wooden giant ablaze against the night sky, to hear the screams of the dying animals. It aroused some curious passions in the watchers. Mab had stood back sometimes and watched them all roused to frenzy, so that they fell on those who stood nearest to them, tearing off clothing, unable to wait for privacy, doing it there on the grass in full view of everyone.
Fornication and sodomy were commonplace at Beltane. Bestiality as well, for if the men could not get a woman, a sheep or a pig would do. When you were desperate, they said, you never noticed the difference. If it came to that, where was the difference anyway?
In the dark, Mab’s lips curved in a smile.
Beltane.
CHAPTER TWELVE
John Grady and Brian Muldooney, estimable and respectable gentlemen of stout hearts if scant imagination, were cold and tired and hungry. They were also befuddled by their surroundings, although Grady said that wasn’t it simply that they’d taken a wrong turning in the dark, and Muldooney thought for sure they’d fallen down a well into an underground maze and come out the other side.
“But,” said Grady pointing, “we are not so very far from Tugaim. See, there, surely is the Gealtacht. The House of Mutants.”
Muldooney shivered and wished they had thought to bring warm coats with them, and was inclined to be disinterested in the Gealtacht.
“But it is a landmark,” said Grady rather irritably. “We may see from it where we are, for there is certainly not another such building in Tugaim.”
Muldooney said he’d never known the Gealtacht had a bridge crossing over to it.
“Nor did I. Or that it was so big.” The two men, accustomed all their lives to the smallish, sparsish dwellings which had been built since Devastation, stared in awe at the crouching lowering shape ahead of them. At length, John Grady, who knew that all parties should have a leader, and who did not forget that he was an Elder of Tugaim, said, “Well it cannot be anywhere other than the Gealtacht. And I believe the landscape to be familiar now I look.” Now that he did look, he could see the wasteful frivolous orchard that Michael O’Connor was so proud of, a shocking sight it was as well, and it stretching half across the countryside, taking up land that would have been better given over to hay and wheat and good sturdy root vegetables. John Grady had not realised quite how far the O’Connor orchards did stretch in fact, and he was very surprised to see that they seemed to stretch a very long way indeed. Of course, everything looked different at night.
“Of course everything looks different at night,” he said, and Muldooney, who seldom, if ever, went out after dark, but liked to tell what you could do of an afternoon, grunted. Exactly like one of his pigs! thought Grady disgustedly, and stalked off ahead, so that Muldooney thought wasn’t Grady the Landgrabber an intolerant one, and him with a walk like one of his own chickens.
“Will we make for the Gealtacht?” he asked, puffing a bit as he struggled to keep pace with Grady. “Will we be going right up to the house?” he said, and quelled a shudder, for he knew as well as anyone the grisly tales told about the Gealtacht, and he thought that the poor creatures inside it were better off alone. No sight for a pig farmer to witness. No sight for anyone to witness, really.
“I think we should,” said Grady, who liked as little as Muldooney the thought of the inhabitants of the House of Mutants, but who was not going to leave any corner unsearched in his quest for his erring daughter.
“We’ll go on up,” he said, pleased to have a definite plan, and Muldooney, relieved to be told what to do, wanted to know had Grady ever been this way before. To himself he thought the man had a very familiar way about the handling of all this. If Muldooney had not known better than to even think it, he might even have said that Grady knew the path to the Gealtacht very well indeed.
John said, “I have been here, but not for a very long time.” And pulled down his brows because when you were an Elder, you had sometimes to perform disagreeable tasks, and one of those was the incarcerating of children inside the Gealtacht. People were inclined to be ridiculously sentimental when it came to children, and John had sometimes had to be quite firm. You could not possibly have Mutants running wild all over Tugaim (or anywhere else of course), mingling with normal folk and breeding. He was glad to think he had never been guilty of neglect in his duties.
And so although he thought he knew the road to the Gealtacht quite well, he found, rather to his surprise, that it was not quite as he remembered it. Of course, it had been a good many years
since he had been called in to arbitrate over the question of putting away a Mutant child. Truth to tell, he was feeling the smallest bit uneasy out here in the dark with orchards that had doubled, if not trebled in size overnight, and paths and roads that were familiar and yet not familiar at all. He had begun to have the feeling that something very peculiar indeed had happened — something to do with those lights earlier on, was it? — and he was very glad to think he was not possessed of a ridiculous imagination, or he might start thinking all kinds of things. They would go up to the Gealtacht, he was an Elder of Tugaim and it was not the first time he had been here. The chances were that they would find Joanna, because it was just the sort of place that Flynn O’Connor would bring her to. John had even heard them once discussing the Mutants as if the creatures were no different to everyone else. Absolutely ridiculous! Still, walking cautiously through the darkness now, John was aware of uneasiness, because the place seemed so very different by night, and he was glad all over again that he did not possess anything so frivolous as imagination.
Muldooney did not possess any imagination either; he was not thinking anything other than how grand it would be just to sit down and eat a hearty meal. A plateful of roast chicken would be very nice. He was very partial to roast chicken, the skin nicely crisped and served up with well mashed potatoes and a few early peas. It seemed a long time since they’d eaten.
Neither of the men paid any attention to the small, curiously shaped shadow that detached itself from the trees and fell in behind them.
Portan, keeping far enough behind the two men to remain hidden, spared a thought for Flynn and Amairgen when they returned in the morning. Would she be able to get back to the dry snug little cave she had made for herself? She thought she would. It was unthinkable that she should not be there waiting for them. But it was important to keep track of these two, it was important to see where they went and what they did, and overhear what they said if that was possible. They were enemies, both of them, Portan knew that. She had smelled them for enemies back in Tugaim, and she smelled them for enemies now. They would harm Amairgen and her beloved Flynn, and if there was any way of preventing that, Portan would prevent it. She thought she would follow them for a while and see where they went, and then she would go back to the dry snug cave and wait for morning.
She pulled Flynn’s cloak about her, and padded silently on down the dark tree-lined road.
Muldooney said, “There’s something following us.”
Something? John Grady frowned.
“I tell you I hear it!” And so would you, thought Muldooney, if you were not so puffed up with your own pomposity.
“I think you are imagining it, my friend.”
Muldooney was rather affronted by such an accusation, for didn’t a man leave all that kind of nonsense behind him when he farmed pigs. Pigs left no time for imagination, not that he’d had any to begin with he was glad to say. They told how the Letheans had had imagination, and look where the Letheans had ended. No thank you. Muldooney would stick to his pigs, and be thankful that he had not such a handicap as an imagination. Even so …
“There is something,” he said, and slowed his pace a little nodding to the other man to do the same.
And then Grady heard it as well. Soft padding footsteps. Furtive footsteps. Someone — something? — coming up quietly behind them in the dark. He hesitated, seeing the looming bulk of the darkened fortress ahead, and he shivered a little, for even if you had no imagination, you could not but be aware of the tales that hung about that place. Supposing …
Common-sense reasserted itself. He said, very softly, “Keep on walking. And then when we get round that curve in the road, hide in the trees. We can pounce on it then. But be prepared. For it may bite and it may be very strong. They are, I believe.” Some long-buried streak of cruelty made him add, “If it is a Mutant it may have claws.” And he felt a rather surprising spurt of satisfaction as Muldooney’s face paled. “You know what they say about that place,” said John Grady, nodding in the direction of the dark castle. “Ready?”
Muldooney was not really ready, and he was not really interested in capturing whatever it was that had been following them, Mutant or otherwise. He thought they could have just gone quietly on and he thought they could very well have ignored whatever had been following them. No sense in courting trouble! But Grady the Landgrabber was out for a fight and Muldooney was not the man to be found wanting. It never did to run away from a fight, people talked about you if you did. He could see it already, the way they’d talk. Brian Muldooney? they’d say with a smirk. Oh, he’s no use in a fight. Runs away. Yellow as a dead fish. Couldn’t even keep the Grady girl after he’d been conjoined to her. And the next thing would be that people would be buying their pigs from Fingal O’Dulihan. So Muldooney set his jaw pugnaciously and stumbled after Grady into the shelter of the forest fringe, and hoped that the creature, whatever it was, did not bite very hard.
Portan did not bite; she did not even struggle very much. She was totally unprepared for the attack, and in any case, she had no defences against this kind of violence. Sexual abuse she knew about and could endure; neglect and loneliness she also understood. But the sudden swoop on a darkened road, the coat over her head, the blow that sent her reeling and dizzy, were so alien to her that she was easily overcome.
John Grady straightened up from tying his coat about Portan and found that the encounter had excited him. Remarkable. A Lethean emotion he dared say, and not something to be admitted to. He looked at Portan, helpless at their feet, and felt a warm arousal.
“A Mutant,” he said, his voice carefully colourless. “An escaped Mutant. My friend, this is a very great piece of luck for us.”
“What do we do with it?” Muldooney had not caught the rippling excitement that had coursed through John Grady’s body, but he had caught something, and he was rather disgusted. There flickered in his mind the suspicion that Grady the Landgrabber had actually enjoyed the encounter, and he was genuinely appalled. Muldooney could not kill one of his own pigs, and had to send for Fingal O’Dulihan to do it for him, and even then had to retire to the scullery while it was being done. He sent Grady a sideways glance and saw that the man was flushed and that there was a hard glitter in his eyes. “What do we do now?” he said, and hoped the answer would be one he could comfortably cope with.
“Why,” said John Grady slowly and with a lick of pleasure, “why, we take it back to where it came from.”
“Up there?”
“Of course,” said Grady smiling. “They’ll be so pleased with us to have it back, that they’ll soon tell us if Joanna and the O’Connor boy are hiding up there.”
*
Flynn and Amairgen stepped out through the door of the bedchamber they had been allotted and moved cautiously and stealthily down the starlit halls.
Flynn said wonderingly, “Even like this, in the deepest hours of the night, it is not entirely dark.” And then, with a sudden note of firmness, “Where shall we search first?”
“I think it will be a fruitless search,” said Amairgen slowly. “I do not think Joanna is here.”
Flynn did not think it either. He thought that if she had been he would surely have known. He would have sensed it.
You could not be near to me, my love, and I not know it. But he thought that he would tear the walls down and take Tara apart section by section if there was any chance of it providing the tiniest clue to Joanna’s whereabouts. He had not calculated how long she had been in the Deep Past now, and he thought that if he did he might very well begin to lose his hold on sanity. Joanna was somewhere in this beautiful, cruel, faintly sinister Ireland, and they must find her.
“We must search,” he said and Amairgen nodded at once and, not for the first time, Flynn blessed all the gods he had ever heard of that Amairgen had accompanied him through the Time Curtain. Without Amairgen, this would have been intolerable.
Amairgen was uneasy. He had sensed that travellers were not we
lcome at Tara any longer, and he had found it disturbing that they had been admitted at all. The High King had not worried him, for he had seen at once that Eochaid Bres was a straw man, a puppet figurehead, and he thought the strings were probably pulled by Bricriu. He had enjoyed his discussion with Bolg and the Councillors, but he had felt very strongly the dislike and distrust of Bricriu as they sat at supper. That one is suspicious of us, thought Amairgen, and I believe he would not hesitate to harm us. As they walked slowly through the deserted corridors and peered into dimly lit chambers, he began to be aware of something dark and ancient and powerful uncoiling itself far below them.
Flynn said softly, “It is natural you should feel that,” and Amairgen jumped, because he had forgotten the Samhailt’s power, and he had forgotten Flynn’s remarkable possession of it. A faint far-off warmth touched him; he thought that however often he had yearned to make this journey by himself, he had been fortunate indeed to finally make it with Flynn.
Aloud, he said, “You feel it also? The — the darkness?”
“Yes. I think it is that we are directly over the Sorcery Chambers now.”
“You cannot know that.”
“I do know it. The Sorcery Chambers go deep into the earth. They are a labyrinth, stretching for miles, each one deeper than the last. The deeper you go the stronger the magic.” He looked at Amairgen very steadily, and something gleamed in his eyes, so that Amairgen knew that it could no longer be Flynn O’Connor who stood with him, but must be the mighty warrior, Finn of the Fiana, from the far-off days of the High Queen Dierdriu.