Wolfking The Omnibus: Books 1-4

by Sarah Rayne

  He dare not risk it. Was there any likelihood that it might happen? Although it was not pleasant to examine distressing things closely, Bricriu now examined the very unpleasant possibility of a new rebellion, and was forced to admit that it was more than a possibility; it was a probability. And given that particular group of people, it was very nearly a certainty.

  Flynn was the lodestar, of course; he was the leader, and they would all follow. Bricriu admitted, albeit unwillingly, that the boy had that singular blend of recklessness and charm and intelligence that made for leaders. Odd how you never mistook it. Cormac had possessed it as well, of course, which was one of the reasons why Cormac had been removed; the Court never paid any attention to anyone else when Cormac was at Tara.

  Conaire of the Eagles possessed it as well; not in quite such strength, but still he possessed it and it had to be reckoned with. He would be a good person to have in a rebellion, and his eagles would be remarkably good creatures to have as allies. Bricriu shuddered as he thought of those cruel merciless talons and beaks, and those massive wings swooping down on an enemy. Yes, it was quite easy to see Flynn and Conaire together; Bricriu could well visualise them throwing in their lot with someone like Cait Fian of Gallan, attempting to set Cormac on the High Throne again, even, perhaps, succeeding. They were insolent reckless young men who would fight for any cause they considered worthy, and it was really a very great pity they were on Cormac’s side. They were arrogant swaggering cubs who made far too much of their youth and their virility, thought Bricriu, steaming himself into a high rage. It would be very pleasant indeed to see those three young men — four if you counted Cormac himself — with their thick glossy hair thinning and dry, and their clear bright eyes watery and dim, and their strong firm bodies withered and feeble. Well, there were such spells. He touched the knowledge in his mind with satisfaction. More ways than one of defeating an enemy.

  The others who had gone to Flynn would be useful to him as well. CuChulainn was a great brutish creature, of course, all muscle and flashing eyes, but he had at his back the great and fearsome Chariot Horses, and anyone who had ever seen the Chariot Horses galloping across the plains and the fields of Ireland would know they were creatures to be reckoned with. CuChulainn’s family had always liked to style themselves the champions of the High Kings, which Bricriu thought presumptuous. He remembered about the spell again — loss of hair and teeth was it? And softening of the wits. CuChulainn should be taught a lesson.

  Midir and Etain should be taught lessons as well. Bricriu had never cared for the twins overmuch, not since he had made a certain behind-the-hand suggestion to Etain, which she had rejected with such coarseness that Bricriu had been deeply offended. He had not minded the rejection itself — goodness, of course he had not! — but he had thought Etain’s exact wording of it quite unnecessarily vulgar. Also, if Etain did not want to receive such propositions, she should not flaunt herself so blatantly. Of course the family had no real breeding; they were only fourth generation aristocracy, if they were not third. A very new Bloodline indeed. In fact, Bricriu could remember the twins’ mother, twenty-five years earlier, giving herself airs and trying to rival Mab. Now that he thought about it, Etain’s mother had rejected a very similar proposition from Bricriu in very nearly the same words as Etain. What was in the meat came out in the gravy, and the twins were no particular loss.

  Oscar of the Wild Deer might, at first look, seem not to be a particular loss either, but Oscar was clever. He was so clever that he had by now probably mapped out an entire plan of campaign for the rebellion, and he was so shrewd that he would have persuaded them all to adopt it. Yes, the rebellion needed planners as well as leaders and fighters.

  It was really a very alarming combination. Individually, those five — six if you counted Flynn which Bricriu would certainly do — were not especially dangerous. But together with the might of their respective Bloodlines behind them, they posed a very grave threat. It could not be risked, and Bricriu would not risk it. The army that those six could summon would be formidable, but Bricriu could summon another army that would be more formidable still.

  You did not meet force with force; you met it with sorcery.

  Descending to the Sorcery Chambers of Tara was like passing through many layers of its life. It was like cutting down and down, through each level of the Palace’s history, so that you could see all of the different ages, and you could sense all of the different levels of the High Kings and Queens, all the way from Dierdriu of the Nightcloak to the present day.

  Down and down you went. Through the low roofed passages with the flaring wall sconces placed at intersections; down the narrow twisting stairways with huge walls all about you; with low arched doors leading off them. Bricriu had once heard it said that the doors were gateways to Tara’s past, and if you could find the key you could open the doors and step back into those lost Golden Ages — of Dierdriu, and Niall of the Nine Hostages, and Nuadu Airgetlam of the Silver Arm: magical times. And now they had Eochaid Bres who could not spend above an hour in the Sun Chamber without getting a headache from its glare.

  The awesome thing about descending to the Sorcery Chambers was the way in which the past crowded in. You hardly needed keys to unlock the doors; all you had to do was to stand very still and shut your eyes, and let the entire history of the Bright Palace soak in through your skin. Bricriu was not especially fanciful, but he never failed to be aware of the sheer weight of age that permeated these walls; these underground chambers were Tara’s soul and its memory and its heartbeat. It was not fanciful to think you could feel the emotions and the fears and the hopes that had been captured and held by the sorcerers.

  You caught fleeting images as well if you watched for them; nothing very clear, and sometimes things that were meaningless to you. But Bricriu had twice seen the dazzling weave of the protective spell that had been sent out with what were known as the Crusade Wars, fought by the followers of the god-idol Crom Croich whose mortal body was of pure living gold, and who ate the warm, still-beating hearts of his victims. He had seen the great armies of the Fomoire and their leader, the son of Goll the One-Eyed. Once he had glimpsed the spell that had driven out the marauding Mag Tuired — a heavy dark enchantment that had been, laced with crimson and gold, not ugly, in fact rather beautiful, but menacing and smothering so that you felt as if the light had all been blotted out, and a great weight descended on to you making it difficult to breathe.

  Once he had glimpsed something that was made of pure light; rose and gold and the colour of a summer dawn; glistening with cobwebs and warm with a strong heady perfume.

  He had put up his hand to shield his eyes at once, for he had known it to be the Final Great Enchantment, the spell that carries men to the Place beneath the Roof of the Ocean; the Lure of the Old Gods, more beautiful and more complete than anything the sidh could spin. He had backed from it at once, but the vision had sobered him, for he had not realised that Death walked these corridors.

  Death is Life, and Life is Death, Inquirer, and all must meet the Old Gods and their Lure eventually.

  You did not see the sorcerers until they were ready for you to see them. They did not much like being seen — Bricriu thought it was probably because they thought it preserved their sense of mystery, while in fact the only thing that remained a mystery about the sorcerers was who they truly served.

  “They serve the High King of course,” Eochaid Bres had said firmly when Bricriu had once voiced this doubt.

  Bricriu knew perfectly well that the sorcerers these days would serve anyone who would pay them well enough. Eochaid, very much shocked, had said no, this was entirely wrong, and Bricriu must not think like that. “They have all taken the Oath,” he had said, as if that settled the matter, but Bricriu knew perfectly well that a few words spoken on the Plain of the Fál did not automatically ensure allegiance to the High King, and any words spoken by the sorcerers did not automatically ensure anything at all.

  It had been d
ifferent in Dierdriu’s day, of course. People had known where they were then. The sorcerers had served Dierdriu faithfully and well. Bricriu quite accepted that. They had sworn allegiance to her in the days when oaths meant loyalty and not something quite different. They had done everything she had ever asked. They still took the Oath, of course — and made quite a performance of it as well! — but if they were any more loyal than Bricriu was, it would be a matter for comment. Bricriu was not loyal, of course, because sensible people were not any longer; you knew which side your bread was buttered and that was all there was to it. Bricriu would swear oaths to any manner of people if it would help him rule Ireland on his own account. By the same token, the sorcerers would swear allegiance to anyone as well, if it would pay them sufficiently. They were as greedy as goblins, sorcerers. They were wily as well, but Bricriu could be wilier still. He would be very wily now.

  He made his way through the passages, holding his single candle aloft, knowing that eventually he would come to the high ceilinged Supplicants’ Chamber — the place that lay at the centre of these subterranean passages, where the sorcerers came out to meet those who asked their help.

  Bricriu hated to ask anyone for help, but still, the sorcerers were there, they lived and worked and had their great Looms where they weaved their spells beneath the Bright Palace, and you might as well make use of the means to hand. In any case, the sorcerers lived well enough off the High King.

  The Supplicants’ Chamber was hewn from the rock — Dierdriu’s Rock, some called it, and told how the Queen had sat on the Rock and thrown back her head to the sky, and let the wind lift her rippling black hair, and how it was here she had bargained with the sorcerers to raise the Bright Palace for her, and build the great Sun Chamber.

  Superstition, of course. Bricriu did not believe a word of it. And yet, and yet …

  And yet, there was the remarkable portrait of the woman they said had been Dierdriu, etched in gold into the rockface; the one they said would one day return. “If the Darkness of the Necromancers should ever dim the Bright Palace … I shall return.”

  For some reason, it always made Bricriu feel uncomfortable to remember that legend. The High Queen returning …

  Still, even for an unfanciful man, there was something uncomfortable about the Sorcerers’ Chamber. It was steeped in magic and soaked in history, and whether you believed the legend of Dierdriu or whether you did not, it was easy to imagine that Dierdriu’s shade might walk these halls now and then.

  The Central Chamber was lined with marble and porphyry; there were great soaring pillars of alabaster which reared up into the dim vaults far above. The floor was patterned with the symbols of all the gods, with Dagda the father-god at the centre.

  Bricriu approached the great oval table, thus shaped so that no one sorcerer would ever sit at its head, and no one at its foot, and snuffed his candle. The sorcerers were believed not to like direct light very much, and in any case, all light that was necessary came from the Rock; a faint bluish glow that lit Dierdriu’s gold-etched image to eerie life. Bricriu felt uncomfortable all over again. He did not believe in the legend of the High Queen returning, because no sensible person did believe it, but it still made him feel a bit odd to be down here and see it like this.

  The sorcerers would make him wait, they always did. But in the end they would come. Not all of them, but enough, and the bargaining would commence. They were greedy, but they would do what Bricriu wanted, because Bricriu would pay. They would not necessarily do it for Eochaid Bres, or even for Mab, but they would do it for Bricriu for the money.

  And so Bricriu settled himself to wait, and presently the sorcerers appeared, almost seeming to materialise in the shadows, not there one moment and then suddenly there the next, so that you could not see how they arrived. It was a trick, of course, and if Bricriu had known how it was done he would not have been so impressed. He did not know how it was done.

  The sorcerers wore plain dark cloaks with deep hoods that shadowed their faces. Bricriu knew that these were their Outer World garments; the clothes they wore when they had to meet with people of the Court, or when they went out into what they called the Outer World on some quest or other. Once there, they liked to mingle with ordinary people — but of course you could always tell a sorcerer by looking at his eyes. Deep. Dark. Brooding. It was said that every sorcerer possessed a wardrobe of dazzling robes, some of them woven of spells, others of light, yet others of living breathing colours, but they never appeared in these robes other than to one another.

  Their manners were exquisite. They were exquisite now, to Bricriu, as they seated themselves at the table, and indicated to Bricriu that he should take the Supplicants’ Chair which faced the table.

  That was the part he disliked. To stand before these clever unfathomable men, and ask for their help. To know himself inferior to those who had spent numberless years immersed in study and the pursuit of the forces hidden from the rest of the world. To feel himself a lesser creature than these dark hooded beings who lived in scholarly seclusion, but who knew the secret longings in men’s souls, and who understood the ancient laws of the necromancers and the wizards and the Druids. But he took the chair and waited, hands folded, and presently, one of the sorcerers spoke.

  “You disturb our work once more, Creature of the Fox and Vixen. What do you want?”

  “Your help,” said Bricriu. “Tara is threatened by enemies.” He waited, and saw the tiniest flicker of consternation go round the table.

  “That is distressing.” A pause. “Tell us how you believe we may help you.”

  Bricriu said, “Tara should be rendered safe from attack. The Girdle of Gold —”

  “Unobtainable,” said the sorcerer, his eyes at once frosty. “As you know.”

  “The Erl-King has it?”

  “I did not say that,” said the sorcerer, and Bricriu thought: so the Erl-King does have it! And they know it, of course. I wonder did they get it for him?

  “We are sworn to serve the High King,” said the sorcerer blandly, and Bricriu knew that his thought had been heard. He remembered that although the Samhailt had been outlawed at Court, down here the sorcerers had their own laws. He remembered, too, that the Oath of Allegiance was not what it had once been, and that sorcerers were not what they had once been either. He thought that the sorcerers of Tara were perfectly capable of dealing with the Erl-King if it suited their pockets, but he clamped this thought down at once, because it would not have done for it to have been picked up.

  The sorcerer said, rather coldly, “You may request another enchantment, and if it is in our power, we will agree to weave it.”

  At a price, of course. There was always a price.

  “I wish you to weave a spell that will render Tara invincible,” Bricriu said and hoped that they would not know that it was Cormac he wanted to render Tara invincible from.

  The sorcerer regarded him thoughtfully, and it struck Bricriu that the sorcerer’s eyes were exactly the colour of cold, still lake-water.

  “You know the rules,” said the sorcerer. “You must name the enchantment you require.”

  Bricriu, hedging, said, “I am not well versed in sorcery.”

  “The Book of the Academy of Necromancers is available to all. The enchantments of the world are written on its pages. Our Looms are able to spin everything in the Book.”

  Bricriu knew, and the sorcerers knew, that to read in the Book of the Academy required immense understanding and also great purity of purpose. He knew, as well, that those who turn the pages of that ancient vellum book with the live illustrations and the coloured incantations and do so without a pure heart and a clean conscience risk being cast into the Prison of Hostages, from which no man ever emerges. He did not say this, of course, but he knew that the sorcerers knew he had never dared to go near the Book of the Academy. Even so, he did not waver; he looked directly at the sorcerer and said, “A great army is being mustered against Tara.”

  “Yes?” The
faintest question.

  “A strong army,” said Bricriu firmly. “We shall not be able to defeat it with our own Guard.”

  “Well?”

  “If we had on our side those who do not rely on strength alone, those who have at their fingertips the old magics of the Dark Ireland —”

  “War by sorcery is a nasty business,” said the sorcerer, and an uneasy ripple went round the oval table. Bricriu thought: they are a little afraid, but I think they are more afraid of losing the Sorcery Chambers of Tara. And remembered that the Silver Looms, on which the enchantments were spun were said to be at their most powerful when they were housed beneath the Bright Palace. No, for sure, the sorcerers would not want to find themselves cast out of Tara. Emboldened by this thought, he leaned forward and said, “We dare not permit this invasion.”

  “It would be — inopportune,” said the sorcerer, and Bricriu caught the faintest of nods from several of the other shadowy figures.

  “If we had the Dark Powers on our side — on the side of Tara — perhaps even inside the Palace walls …”

  A sudden and rather terrible silence descended on the sorcerers, and a great stillness fell about them. Bricriu thought: of course they know what I am going to say. But he said it all the same.

  He moved closer to the oval table so that the light fell across him, and although he did not realise it, in that moment, the fox’s mask of his forebears, cruel and sly and calculating, fell across his face.

  “We must summon the Morrigna.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The journey to Gallan, through the Morne Mountains, was not nearly as arduous as Joanna had feared.

  “You’re getting your second wind, my lady,” said Gormgall approvingly.

  “Or you’re beyond caring,” muttered Dubhgall, but Joanna laughed and thought that this new strength and this feeling of being more alive than ever before, came as much from the cold clean mountain air and from the majestic tranquillity of the mountains themselves, as from anything else.