by Sarah Rayne
Not alone. He had the blessing of human companionship. He had the knowledge of her strength and he could hear her thoughts flowing gently to him and back again. He knew it was the Samhailt working within him, but he found himself wondering a little at the intensity and the purity of it.
What does it profit a man to gain his soul but suffer the loss of his sight?
A great profit if he also gains the ancient and Mystical Samhailt of the One True Bloodline of Ireland.
He had always known himself to possess a thin vein of the Samhailt, but he had known it to be a frail, tenuous thing, diluted by countless centuries of out-breeding, frayed by use and by misuse, for his ancestors had doubted its powers and distrusted its meaning. The Letheans had not understood something that could not be seen or measured or analysed, and the Samhailt, possessed by Amairgen’s distant ancestors, had been worn to the thinnest of thin slivers by the time it came down to him.
Now it had doubled and re-doubled and grown until it was alive and joyful, flooding his entire body with its strength and its purity, so clear and vivid that for a time he forgot he could no longer see.
For I can hear and I can feel and I can taste. I can hear the forest sounds and I can taste the light — yes, just past dawn, pink and lavender and so utterly beautiful a man could cry for it. I can hear the thoughts of all the living creatures soaking in through my skin. Remarkable. He lay for a long time, Portan’s cheek against his, their hands still firmly clasped, and he began to savour and explore this new strength. He felt that he was at the centre of a great rainbow, where the colours and the senses and the feelings of the entire world were his for the asking and there for the taking.
And I can drink the colours and I can taste the senses and I can hear the feelings. There is another world that I never once guessed existed, and I am about to enter into it. The door is opening, and it is a door I never knew was there.
Beyond it is a world so full of light and beauty that it can hardly be borne. I do not see it, but I am made free of it. I am entering into a secret and most wonderful place.
So this was the price he had to pay for saving his soul and his sanity. This was the wonderful price he had paid for dwelling in the Caves of the sidh, for looking on their awesome beauty and for knowing their slender silky bodies, and for feeling his seed drain into them, over and over, until he was fainting and unconscious. He had felt them pull at his soul, he had felt his soul’s response, and he had sprung away from them, clawing at his eyes, feeling blood pour out over his fingers, seeing the world begin to whirl and spin in dizzying iridescent colours before the curtain fell and the wall rose up.
But I have pushed aside the curtain, and I have climbed the wall, thought Amairgen, and I believe I shall eventually find some kind of place in the world again. I shall certainly find peace again.
Deep within him, although he only partly knew it, was the spark that had lit Flynn, and deep within him was his own race-memory, that of the shadowy figure of the first Amairgen the Traveller. If the spirit of the great warrior Finn of the Fiana had woken in Flynn, so now did that of the courageous Explorer wake in his namesake. As Amairgen lay quietly in the forest, wrapped in Portan’s arms, he felt the soul of his dauntless ancestor stir strongly, and he thought: am I to allow this to quench me?
He would not allow it, and he knew that he would one day overcome it. He would tear down the curtain and he would climb the wall, and he would enter fully into this rich new world where sight did not count, but where colours were something to drink and light was something to soak through your skin, and where sounds and feelings could be scooped up and allowed to run through your hands like thin sand.
Amairgen the Traveller would not have allowed blindness to daunt him, and neither would his descendant.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Excitement was running through the Palace like a forest fire. Tara thrummed with anticipation and hummed with preparation for the evening’s ritual, and was so vividly alive that it seemed almost to possess its own heartbeats. It seemed to the younger members of the Court that if you stood still and were very quiet, you might hear it, beat-beating away quietly at the very centre. Several of the more fanciful members of the Court thought that if you could somehow fly over the Palace, from east to west and then from north to south, you would see Tara as a glowing living breathing thing; a golden heart, the gently pulsating soul of all Ireland. Several more, rather taken with this imaginative vision, wanted to ask Conaire to call up the Eagles and ask them to fly a few chosen observers over the turrets, but when it came to it, nobody quite had the courage. It sounded rather too much like making vulgar use of Conaire’s relatives. Also, as Sean the Storyteller pointed out, you could never altogether trust an eagle. They were apt to be bad-tempered, said Sean. They’d gobble you up in two bites if the mood took them — snap! with their beaks, and there you’d be, dead as last week’s dinner. And while flying over Tara on an eagle’s back might sound very poetic and very exciting (and would make a grand base for a new poem as well), it would not be very comfortable, leave aside safe. Well, it would not be at all safe, really. There’d be nothing to cling on to for one thing, only feathers, because you could hardly expect an eagle to submit itself to the indignity of a saddle and harness, as if it was of no more account than a plain horse. Anyone who believed that hadn’t the wits he’d been born with! Had they all of them forgotten the terrible time they’d had when Conaire’s family had had the Bloodline conferred on them, and chosen the eagles (eagles! of all creatures) as their emblem? Had they indeed? Well, to be sure, Sean had not, and it hadn’t been so very long ago, either, there was no call for the younger ones to grin and poke each other and furtively count up the years. Conaire’s Great Uncle Ailill it had been, and nobody had been quite sure why the honour had been conferred, although several people had pointed out at the time that Ailill had been extremely friendly with Mab. But, of course, who hadn’t been extremely friendly with Mab at one time or another? Sean himself could tell a tale or two if anyone cared to ask.
Anyway, there’d been the greatest old tussle anyone had ever seen, said Sean, well away by now, with the sorcerers at it all night trying to strengthen the original Enchantment and bring the eagles to a properly docile state, because nobody had ever envisaged a ritual conjoining with eagles, and a good many people thought that Ailill had done it just to be mischievous. But the sorcerers had done their best, although they’d had to go down into the very deepest of the Sorcery Chambers — and they all knew what that meant! — and Sean and Phineas the Gatekeeper had suffered two bitten fingers and a bruised kneecap apiece from the Ritual, not that either of them had especially wanted to play such an intimate part in the ceremony, only that somebody had to hold the eagle down. It had all been very harrowing, said Sean, and if anyone cared to call up an eagle and politely ask could they take a ride on its back, Sean for one was going to be conveniently not there!
So the project was reluctantly abandoned, although it was felt to have been a good idea. But it would be too discourteous to the Eagles, said the Court sententiously, although Conaire, who never missed much of what went on, grinned and said it was more likely they were all of them afraid of falling off. “No guts,” said Conaire, who would have called up the entire winged population of Ireland if it would have created some frivolity at Eochaid Bres’s ponderous Court.
And so the eagles were left to their solitary splendour, although three of the livelier spirits of the Court — Conaire among them — climbed to the top of the trees on Tara’s western boundaries, to see how the Palace was looking. They returned flushed and excited, reporting that it had been nearly as good as flying over on an eagle’s back, and they told anyone who would listen that Tara was as bright from above as it was from below, and it was going to be a great shame later on when all the lights were doused and the final Ritual of the Scared Fire on the Plain of Fál commenced. Tara was brighter than a thousand Sacred Fires, they said rather daringly, and it was never seen to bet
ter advantage than when seen from the very topmost branches of the trees.
“But they received a reprimand from the King later on,” said Sean. “Silly young cubs, didn’t they realise that until the trees are woken, they’re forbidden to all of us? I’d have thought Conaire at least would have known,” said Sean. “I heard the King was extremely displeased with them, and on the whole the eagles would have been safer.”
None of these comparatively minor setbacks deterred anyone from enjoying the day, for wasn’t Beltane the greatest night of the year, and didn’t they all, every one of them, look forward to it for weeks? A grand feast it was, and plenty of fun for everyone.
Bolg pointed out, in Eochaid Bres’s favour, that you had to say he did keep up the good old traditions. He was keeping to them for Beltane, and Bolg was pleased, because once you lost touch with a tradition all kinds of slipshod slapdash behaviour crept in. But the Sacred Fire was to be lit with proper attention to ritual, and the Druids would burn the Wicker Giant — Bolg did not care overmuch for that part of the proceedings because of the poor trapped animals — and a little later today they would all of them go in procession through the Palace to ensure that every light was quenched. You could not have any form of light burning that might quarrel with the Sacred Fire on the Plain. Everyone knew that.
They’d all gather about the Beltane Fire, and the virgins would leap through it, always supposing an adequate number of virgins could be found, because say what you liked, you needed at least a dozen to make a proper ceremony. It was to be hoped a dozen could be found. It was getting more and more difficult. Still, it had been very nearly impossible in Cormac’s day, at least you could not say that for Eochaid Bres. Sean the Storyteller had probably rounded up a dozen. And the Druids would make their procession across the Plain, just as they did every year, chanting their strange song which was not quite a song but not quite a chant either, and which was in the forgotten tongue of the Ancient Ireland, and so old that not even the Cruithin who still spoke pure Gael sometimes, could understand it. Bolg thought it was a tongue that men had used before they came to be civilised, but the Druids kept their secrets, and no one had ever been able to decipher the Beltane Chant, although many had tried. Cormac’s father, who had been rather scholarly (when he was not chasing women) had said it was in a tongue so ancient that it had never been written down, and that it had been old when men were still walking on all fours and living in caves, but Bricriu, who had friends among the sorcerers, had once said it was one of the sorcerers’ tongues.
And then, partway through the day, a rumour began — no one knew quite where or how — that the Wicker Giant would hold a human sacrifice this year. There was consternation in the Palace, and people began to whisper together in little groups. It was years since a human sacrifice had been offered at Beltane, or at any other feast, and no one cared for the idea. Certainly the Wolfkings had outlawed the practice; Cormac’s great grandfather had banned it. Several people thought it had been even earlier than that. Nobody quite knew whether to believe the rumour, and everyone began to exchange views.
Bolg and the Councillors were inclined to disbelieve the rumour. “For,” said Bolg, “we don’t have that sort of thing any longer.”
“Sheer superstition,” put in another.
“And messy,” added a third.
“I wonder at His Majesty even considering it, I do really,” said Bolg, worried.
“You don’t need to watch if you’re squeamish,” said the Councillor who had called human sacrifice superstitious.
“You don’t even need to come out to the Plain,” said the one who had called it messy.
But Bolg thought he had better be present; the King might need his guidance, he said. After all, he was His Majesty’s senior Councillor he said, rather grandly, and the other Councillors at once said of course, and to be sure he was, no one had intended to suggest otherwise. To themselves they thought that the old boy was beginning to show signs of age; hadn’t he appeared in Council only the other day with his breeches unfastened, and didn’t he take hours to nibble over a problem, when the rest of them had reached a solution long since? They remembered that he came of the Beaverline, and beavers, of course, were staunch and loyal and tenacious, but they were a bit slow. Bolg was getting a bit slow, said the Councillors, and took themselves off to hold an unofficial conference as to who might be groomed to be successor.
Bolg went off to unpack his winter underwear which he had lain away with a few sprigs of lavender. It might be cold up on the Plain tonight; you could never tell what the weather might decide to do.
He was very upset at the suggestion of human sacrifice on the Beltane Fire, and after he had dressed he went about the Court trying to find out as much as he could, which was not very much because nobody else seemed to know very much either.
But he persevered, because he thought it was his duty to do so, and he listened in to other people’s conversations so that he was told, quite politely, to go away, and he joined groups of gossipers, and was told, not quite so politely, to stop eavesdropping. Conaire became very cross when Bolg skulked outside his room, and asked hadn’t he anything better to do than disrupt them all, just as they were preparing for a bit of a feast; spreading gloomy rumours and upsetting people. Bolg, upset himself, replied rather more sharply than perhaps he meant. One thing led to another rather speedily, because although Conaire was not in the least bad-tempered as the eagles were reputed to be, he was certainly quicktempered and he fired up at once. Tempers became frayed and old feuds were disinterred. Bolg remembered that he had never cared much for Conaire’s Great Uncle Ailill who had beaten him to the bedpost with Mab twenty years earlier, and he recalled that he had always considered the Eagleline jumped-up second-generation aristocracy anyway. They all of them knew, said Bolg rather tartly, where the family had got its honours.
“And where would that be?” said Conaire angrily, snapping his brows together.
“In the Queen Mother’s bed!” said Bolg and turned away crossly.
Conaire then had to be restrained by Sean the Storyteller from issuing a challenge to Bolg there and then, and was with difficulty persuaded to apologise to Bolg, who at once shook hands and said that to be sure words had been spoken hastily, and he hadn’t meant any disrespect, not a bit of it, it was only that he was worried and upset by this talk of human sacrifice, and he did not want it to get to the King’s ears. And Conaire, who was hot-tempered, but basically kindly, said at once that the entire thing had been his fault, and he hadn’t meant to say that Bolg’s Bloodline was diluted out of all use and that the Beavers were of no help to anyone in a battle.
“Roaring snobs the pair of them,” said Sean crossly, and stumped away to his own room, to remind himself that a man was better by far to have plain honest human blood in his veins without any of that Ritual Conjoining nonsense.
Sean would by far rather deal with plain untampered-with humans and would not have thanked you for being offered a Bloodline. The fact that it had never been offered did not weigh; he would not have accepted it, or not without careful consideration anyway.
He set himself to pen a few suitable lines about the feuding of the humans and the Bloodline clans, which he thought might go down rather well in the village, although he would not be able to recite it at Court where a good half of the people were of the Bloodline.
Once or twice it occurred to him to wonder where the young traveller he had found so companionable had disappeared to …
*
The procession to quench all the lights in Tara began exactly one hour before the Purple Time. It was tradition to do it that way, said the Court; there was a grand sense of comfort about tradition. No one wanted it any different.
The procession was to be led by Phineas the Gatekeeper, whose duty it was, properly speaking, to safeguard the Palace, and who had therefore long been appointed to lead the procession. Every light in Tara must be quenched, no single flame or candle must be left burning in case
it interfered with the Sacred Fire on the Plain of Fál. Everyone remembered the shocking year when the King’s own bedchamber had been missed and the Sacred Fire would not properly ignite, and the Druids insisted on combing the entire Palace until they found the renegade light. Phineas did not very much like being put in charge of the proceedings as a result, but Bolg had told him they had all occasionally to do things they did not care for, and anyway if Phineas refused, there were plenty to take his place. Phineas, who rather enjoyed his position as Gatekeeper, and who had built up a very cosy little nest for himself over the years, acquiesced glumly.
The procession would end with the High King, and Eochaid Bres was no more enthusiastic about this than was Phineas about leading it. He thought that to bring up the rear of such an important cavalcade was not very dignified, and anyway he had not lived in Tara for nearly long enough to know all its rooms. Supposing they missed one or two again?
“Oh that won’t matter, Sire,” said Bricriu smoothly. “We always do, and nobody really minds except the Druids, and what the Druids don’t know can’t hurt them. The whole thing is purely symbolic in any case.”
Eochaid thought that if it had not been for everything to do with Beltane being so inflexibly rooted in tradition, he would have cancelled the entire ceremony. He did not say this, because it might have given people odd ideas about him, but he thought that it was not going to be particularly entertaining to traipse through Tara singing the Beltane Chant, which nobody ever knew properly anyway and which people always spoiled by singing the wrong notes in the solemn parts and succumbing to unseemly mirth. It was going to be even less entertaining to have to stand around on the draughty Plain while the Druids conferred about the proper arrangement of the agaric and woodbine and rowan, and the imprisoned sacrifices set up an ear-splitting wailing. Still, it would look bad to say any of this, and so Eochaid donned his warmest robes and assumed an air of benevolent tolerance (he practised this in his looking glass until he got it just right) and then he went down to the central marble hall where the Court awaited him.