Wolfking The Omnibus: Books 1-4

by Sarah Rayne

  But at least, thought Flynn, I shall die fighting.

  *

  Joanna had barely been aware of the moment when Flynn leapt forward to challenge Macha, Scald-Crow and the hunchback. Her whole attention was concentrated on the Nightcloak, and on whether it could help them. Could it? Supposing she called on it and found it impotent? This was a terrifying notion, and Joanna banished it at once.

  And the Nightcloak never has been impotent, my dear …

  But the cloak had been used against Morrigan, and the Erl-King already; what if that counted, and what if it meant it had no power against Morrigan’s sisters and against the Erl-King’s hunchback? What if, thought Joanna, it is not strong enough?

  It was the most awful thought. And the trouble is, thought Joanna, the trouble is, that once you have thought a thing, it is there with you. She knew — of course she did — that the Nightcloak would be strong and that it would call down the nightmares of her enemies. But still, “what if,” thought Joanna.

  To call on the cloak and find it useless against the enemy would be the most crushing blow of all. Joanna thought she could not bear it, and she thought that if there was another escape, another way to aid Flynn, then she would use it.

  And then she turned her head slightly and found that she was looking straight at the forest. Deep within her mind, something stirred …

  *

  Moving within the Sleeping Trees was a curious and rather unsettling experience. Joanna was no longer sure why she was here, or why she had come running from the battlefield but as she came into the dimness of the forest, she suddenly felt no sense of doubt. This was right, this was what had to be done.

  She thought that Dierdriu was with her more strongly and more completely than ever before, and she had the sensation of hands pulling her deeper and deeper into the forest.

  Where to? Where am I going? There was a ruffle of sweetness and amusement and courage that was Dierdriu, and Joanna stood very still and said aloud: “Of course! We are going to wake the Sleeping Trees!”

  A ripple of amusement stirred the air. What else? said Dierdriu.

  How?

  You will see, my dear …

  That is all very well, thought Joanna, that is all very well indeed, but what must I do! I don’t know what I must do! And despite the danger for Flynn — oh please let Flynn be safe! — despite all the urgency, there was amusement at what she was doing. Hadn’t there been old songs — Lethe or earlier? — about people talking to trees? Was one supposed to stand in the clearing and say politely, “Please wake up”? Well, this is quite certainly ridiculous! thought Joanna, standing beneath the trees and surveying them. Because I don’t know what to say, and I definitely don’t know what to do, and I am not at all sure that to wake an entire forest of trees is going to be very helpful or even particularly safe …

  And then from the far side of the clearing, on the outer rim of her vision, she caught a blur of movement, and she turned sharply, narrowing her eyes.

  A flash of scarlet, a glimpse of horns … three-cornered features … It was possible, of course, for one’s eyes to deceive one — but I believe I am seeing him truly, thought Joanna. Pan, the shepherd god, the god of music and love and wine, moving quietly in between the trees.

  A great joy filled Joanna, and she cried aloud with delight and went running forward.

  He was sitting cross-legged beneath a tree, the silver pipes held to his lips, and his hair clustering in tight little curls about his beautiful narrow skull. There was the faint translucency to his skin that Joanna remembered, and there was the wisdom and the knowledge and the mischief in his eyes that she had seen before.

  Pan smiled, and Joanna saw that it was the “what fools these mortals be” smile, but saw as well that he was watching her with affection.

  Joanna said, rather breathlessly, “The trees —”

  “Waken them,” said Pan.

  “How?”

  Pan smiled again. “Human Child, you are very stupid.”

  “But I don’t know how!” said Joanna loudly and rather crossly. “Tell me.”

  “They will waken for you if you want them to strongly enough,” said Pan. “Have you not yet learned that you may have anything you want, if only you want it sufficiently.” He tilted his head to one side, regarding her, “The Trees will almost certainly turn the tide of the battle,” he said.

  And then Cormac will be restored and Ireland will be safe …

  “I do want it,” said Joanna. And then, as Pan continued to look at her, with his eyes full of gentleness and humour and wisdom, “Help me,” said Joanna.

  Pan looked at her thoughtfully, and after a moment, he said, “Did I not tell you that I should be here when you least expected it?” And then, without pausing, he said, “And since you have sufficient faith, Human Child, I think I may help you.”

  He lifted the silver pipes to his lips and began to play.

  The awakening was so slow and so gradual that it was very nearly imperceptible. But the Trees were waking; there was no question about it, their branches were moving and their leaves were sighing in the wind, and Joanna thought that to stand here like this and see them and hear them and feel them waken was the most beautiful thing in the world.

  And there was the music, Pan’s music. Joanna thought that even the Mindsong, the great Beckoning that Cormac had sent out at Scáthach could not equal this. It was light and elusive and faint, icicle-on-glass, frost against a window-pane.

  When Pan stopped, Joanna felt as if something had died, but then he took her hand and smiled at her, and said very gently, “The Trees are with us, Joanna.”

  “So they are,” she whispered.

  *

  The massive wave of life broke through the Forest of Darkness, and the Trees began to surge forward towards the battle that was raging.

  As they moved, the Dark Armies faltered, and then fell back, and Cormac turned and stared, and felt something so intense and so tender clutch his heart that tears sprang to his eyes.

  The Forest was alive; it was a huge dark seething mass, rushing over the hillside. Cormac could see Joanna amongst the Trees, her hair flying in the wind, the Nightcloak streaming out behind her. For a moment he thought there was someone with her — slender and slight and faintly alien — and then he was not sure. But he could see the half-faces of the Trees now, he could see the nearly recognisable features, and he thought that the Trees had the faces of an ancient and implacable vengeance. They are going to crush the enemy, thought Cormac. They are merciless and rather terrible, and I think I am a little afraid of them.

  But he knew that Joanna had awakened them, and then he thought: No! Not Joanna! Dierdriu! And then he wondered was there really any difference?

  Flynn had moved back from the rope bridge: “In retreat,” he said later, but, “No!” said Cormac. “You had held them back for long enough for the Trees to come to life again. You had won your battle, Flynn!”

  Flynn stood watching the onset of life among the Trees, hearing the rushing sound as they crossed the Plain; a great susurration of leaves and branches and boughs. He caught, as Cormac had, a glimpse of the Trees’ inner spirits, and he knew that the old legends had not, after all, lied. Here were the dryads and the naiads and the tree-nymphs, beautiful and solemn and wise.

  Cormac moved at last; he made a sweeping movement with one hand, and shouted, “Back! Back all of you! Out of their path! Let them go on, let them destroy the Dark Armies!” and the Cruithin and the Bloodline and the people of

  Cormacston at once tumbled over each other to be out of the way of the Trees. Muldooney, who had been standing with his mouth open, fell over his feet and tumbled into a ditch again, and had to be pulled out by Dubhgall.

  Flynn, who was standing with Cormac now, said softly:

  “‘I will not be afraid of death and bane

  Till Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane.’”

  And frowned, for the words were unfamiliar — and yet I know them for
a fragment of the future and of the past, he thought.

  The Trees had reached the chasm, and the roots and great solid trunks bridged it with ease. As the Dark Armies fell back, the Trees were upon them, crushing and rending, the slender birchlike tree-spirits fully emerged now, pouring out on to the enemy, fastening on to the hags and the harpies and the wraiths, subduing them with ease and flinging them into the chasm.

  A strong straight beech had stretched across the ravine and, for a moment, they saw its spirit hovering, red-gold and supple and strong.

  “Come across, Sire!” cried the tree-spirit, in what Joanna afterwards thought of as a warm woodsy voice that made you think of pine-scented forests and burning apple logs and the clean smell of sawdust in a workshop. “Come across, Son of the Wolves, and rout the filth!”

  Cormac’s armies rallied, and as Flynn moved forward, Dubhgall sounded the attack. Flynn looked at Cormac and smiled, and Cormac said, “Proceed, if you will,” and Flynn began to walk across the chasm, hideous now with the bodies of victims. Tongues of flame shot upwards from time to time.

  “They have touched the earth’s core,” said the birch naiad, “and for all who are flung into the Pit, there will be no rescue.”

  Flynn stood on the other side of the yawning abyss, and waited, and Cormac led the armies across. At once the Wolves and the Beasts fell upon the Dark Bloodline, biting and savaging; the Trees seized on what remained of Macha’s creatures, breaking the spines of the harpies and crushing the grey malevolent hags. The fire from the abyss roared upwards, and the Plain was lit to red and orange life, a seething mass of fighting humans and animals.

  At length, the Trees turned their attention to the Erl-King’s Army of Corpses, and a sudden gentleness descended on them. A great oak, who seemed to lead the others, moved, and they saw the oak-naiad, ancient and wise and with the domed forehead of a thinker and a scholar.

  The naiad spoke. “Into the Abyss with you also. But you will find release.” He moved, and several slender, rather beautiful silver birches moved with him, and the Corpses turned about and walked submissively over the edge, their hands held palms upwards in the age-old gesture of supplication and submission, their sightless eyes lifted to the skies.

  A profound silence fell upon the Plain …

  The Trees stood in a half-circle about Cormac, their boughs bent in obeisance, for a long time. Nobody broke the silence, for, as Sean said afterwards, what was there to say? And all knew that the High King must be the first to address the awakened Trees.

  Cormac made no ceremony. “He never did,” said Sean, who would have enjoyed a bit of pomp now and again.

  “He doesn’t need to,” rejoined Dubhgall.

  Cormac simply looked at the Trees, and after a long while, nodded his head. “You are timely come,” he said. “Without you, the battle would have been lost,” and the formal, rather archaic words suited the occasion very well.

  The oak said, “We owe you obeisance, Cormac, and we are your most loyal servants,” and Cormac smiled.

  “I welcome your awakening,” he said, and again the words had the ring of ritual about them.

  “Well, it is a sort of ritual,” said Sean to Gormgall. “For the Trees have their own language.”

  The oak bowed again, his trunk nearly, but not quite recognisable as a face, but the ancient wise form of the naiad still just discernible. “It is the Lady Dierdriu who called to us,” said the naiad. “Only she could awaken us, for it was she who sent us into the Enchanted Slumber in order that we should not fall into the power of the Evil One of the Walled City.”

  And he turned to where Joanna stood quietly watching, and made again the deep bow.

  *

  Cait Fian had taken the Sun Chamber and its occupants with such speed and with such ease that, as Sean later said, it was very nearly insulting to Bricriu’s army.

  It was particularly insulting to Eochaid Bres, who had been told about the invasion, but had not paid very much attention to it.

  “A small matter, Sire,” Bricriu had said. “Your House Guard will deal with it quite easily.”

  The House Guard had not dealt with it easily, in fact they had not dealt with it at all. Cormac’s supporters rampaged through the Palace in the wake of Cait Fian and the Panthers, and from all that Eochaid Bres could hear through the closed door of the Sun Chamber, the Panthers were having a high old time. He had chosen the Sun Chamber as a refuge — “Not,” he had said to Bricriu, “to hide from the attack, you understand,” — and Bricriu had said, “Of course not,” and had gone off to issue orders to somebody somewhere. Eochaid had let him get on with it, because an invasion of Tara was not something he had been prepared for.

  “We’re none of us ever prepared for anything here,” said Phineas the Gatekeeper, drawing up the West Gate as he was told. But he cast a hopeful eye to the Plain and Cormac’s armies, because wouldn’t it be altogether grand to see the Wolfking come rampaging back!

  Eochaid sat in the Sun Chamber by himself, and thought rather pettishly that it was too bad of them all to leave him like this, with no word of what was going on. Anything might be happening out there. Cait Fian and his terrible Panthers might have murdered every living soul in the Palace, and be now lying in wait for Eochaid himself. He supposed he ought to just go out to take a look, but he was not so curious that he was going to risk meeting up with the Panthers. One had to be realistic. And he was the King — or so far as he knew he was, because all manner of revolutions might have taken place by this time. Still, Kings had duties, and one of those duties was to preserve themselves. Eochaid decided to preserve himself by remaining safely in the Sun Chamber until it was safe to go out.

  He was just thinking that it all seemed very quiet, and wondering could be find himself a bite of supper, when Cait Fian, with half a dozen Panthers at his heels, opened the door and stood smiling in at him.

  Eochaid Bres, who knew that you had to be practical when the opposing forces were stronger than you were, said simply:

  “I surrender.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Tara and the restoration of the legendary Wolfline to the Bright Palace is told in loving and lyrical detail by Amairgen the Blind in his famous epic poem, “The Road to the High Throne.”

  From it, scholars and historians of a later age have recreated with ease the immense pageantry and the spectacles which surrounded the exiled King’s return, and from it they have been able to understand, in part at least, the overwhelming joy that the people expressed on that day.

  It was a day for singing and dancing and laughter; it was a day for exulting and for thanking the gods for Cormac’s return. It was a day to obtain, by whatever means were to hand, a place near to Tara’s West Gate, for it was there that the High King would make the ceremonious re-entry.

  The excitement began at dawn, although older people said with tolerant good humour, that in some quarters it began even sooner. Certainly a great many people did not go to bed on the night before the King’s re-entry, and equally certainly a great many more did not go to bed on the night after it either, or at least not to their own beds, which amounted to nearly the same thing.

  The streets were lined with people, and the music and the feasting began long before the King’s procession could be expected. None of it mattered in the least, for weren’t they all so delighted that they could keep up the celebrating all day? While there was music to be played and wine to be drunk, it would not matter if the King did not appear until the Purple Hour.

  And then the first notes of the King’s musicians were heard, away to the west, and everyone craned his neck and jostled for a better position, and several people straightened the tubs of flowers, and everyone began cheering, for weren’t they going to give the Wolfking the finest old welcome that ever a High King of Ireland was given! Long reign to His Majesty and death to all usurpers!

  And then, quite suddenly, he was there, riding quietly at the head of his armies and the leaders of the great Blood
lines of Ireland, and so calm and so unassuming was he, and yet so entirely and so absolutely a King, that for a moment a great hush fell on the crowds as he came into the City. And then every person present, quite without warning, surely without realising, placed his hand on his heart in the ancient symbolic Oath of Allegiance; the Oath that Eochaid Bres had tried to make compulsory but had never managed to.

  The people rose in a single solid movement then, and cheering, wild and uninhibited, broke out. Cormac looked at them all and lifted his hand in a gesture that was completely lacking in ceremony, but that was a ceremony in itself, and thought: this is surely the equal of that moment I knew on the Plain of the Fál? Isn’t it? I ought to be feeling proud and strong and great, he thought, and wondered a little that he felt only rather humble and strangely empty. He thought that perhaps it was because the moment of purest happiness had already occurred, and that you could not have two moments like that, not in one lifetime, and certainly not within a few days of each other.

  But he knew that the emptiness and the unaccustomed humility sprang from something much deeper and much more complex.

  I have come so close to losing Ireland to the Dark Forces, that it is possible that I shall never feel safe again.

  He looked at the wildly cheering people and at the bright eyes and the laughing lips and the waving hands, and thought: oh, my poor people, will you ever know how close the Ancient Evil came to us? And will you ever forgive me for so nearly losing Tara forever?

  They would forgive him, of course, because they loved him — he had never understood quite why, but he knew that they did. Because he came of the old unbroken Royal line? Did they love him in spite of his faults, or because of them? A smile touched his lips at that, because for sure the people knew those faults.

  They would love him and cheer him, and they would tell tales of him, long into the night; they would recount the great Wolfking’s triumphant return to the Bright Palace. Cormac smiled, because the tales would lose nothing in the telling. They would form a few more strands in the folklore of Ireland.