by Sarah Rayne
“But I believe his soul is in pawn,” said Fribble softly, and then, looking at them very straightly. “The Lad of the Skins was here before us.
“And he has stolen Calatin’s soul and thrown it into the Prison of Hostages,” said Fribble.
*
He was immoveable and cold and terrible and pitiable.
The soulless one. The sleeping giant. Calatin, the sorcerer who had served the High Kings. His body slept and his soul was in pawn; he was unseeing and unhearing, and he slept the terrible sleep of all who lose their souls to the Lad of the Skins. As they moved cautiously closer, they could see that his skin had a cold, stony look to it, and that spiders had begun to spin webs between his fingers.
“And over his eye,” said Fergus, shuddering.
Taliesin said, “The plates and bowls and cups are covered with dust, but it is a very thin sprinkling.” He looked at them. “I do not think he can have lain like this for long.”
Fribble said, “Dear me, this is very upsetting. It’s something I never thought I’d see. A soulless giant. An undead sorcerer. He’s very nearly a legend, you know. They’re a very highly respected branch of the Amaranthines, Calatin and his Sons. He’s been going for a good long time, even for a sorcerer. Since well before the present Queen. As far back as Dierdriu, so I believe. I suppose it would be discourteous if we sat down at the table, would it? Yes, I thought it might be. That’s not to say we’d have any appetite if we did. Is there a drain of wine left? Do you know, it’s made me feel quite ill to see the old boy like this, never mind making it difficult for you two, because offhand I can’t think of another sorcerer who could summon Fael-Inis, can you, Fergus?”
Taliesin produced his flask and said cautiously, “Is he sleeping or —”
“Or dead? No, he isn’t dead precisely,” said Fribble, drinking the wine gratefully. “I don’t know what you call it, only that it’s a perpetual sleep, and he can’t be woken.”
“Only by the forfeiting of another soul in exchange,” said Fergus in a rather odd voice, and Taliesin looked at him sharply. But Fergus only said, “I wonder what happened?”
“Well, the Lad of the Skins got into the house,” said Fribble. “I do think we can be sure about that. And of course, once you’ve let him into your house, it’s very nearly a foregone conclusion. You lose your soul and your body goes into what they call a petrified state. Like trees. And I believe,” said Fribble, thoughtfully, “I believe you have to be very careful over the body, as well, because the soul can still feel pain. You can’t spill hot soup on it or tread on one of its toes, or drop anything heavy on it, because the soul would feel it. Dear me, and Calatin was one of Dierdriu’s favourite sorcerers. Very able. They say he taught everything he knew to his Sons, but they aren’t thought much of, so I understand.”
Fergus said, “I wonder where the Sons are? Because the fires were all burning, and there was a kettle on the hob.” He indicated the twenty-seven chairs pulled up to the table.
“You’d think they couldn’t be far, wouldn’t you?” agreed Fribble. “But they aren’t in the house, because we’ve searched everywhere. And you couldn’t exactly lose twenty-seven giants, not even if they were smallish ones.”
“We ought to try to find them,” said Taliesin. “Because even if they aren’t thought much of —”
“Yes, you’ve got to call up Fael-Inis’s Chariot somehow,” said Fribble. “And the Sons might be able to help, of course.”
Fergus said, “There is one place we have not looked.”
“Yes?”
“The Chamber of the Looms,” said Fergus.
*
The Chamber of the Looms. The sorcerers’ workroom. The great dark room that lay at the heart of this ancient mansion, where Silver Looms hummed and spun, and where the enchantments and the spells and the curses and the bewitchments of the world were harnessed. They would have to go into that chamber where the heat would be so fierce it could burn out their eyes and shrivel their skin, and where the power would be so tremendous that it would scald their minds. Fergus and Taliesin, who had glimpsed the power and the relentless force of the Silver Looms with the Tyrian sorcerers, stared at one another.
“But we have to find the Sons,” said Fergus doggedly. “Somehow, we have to summon Fael-Inis and the Time Chariot.”
Somehow we have to travel to the Far Future and turn back the Four Heralds … No one said the words, but a sudden silence fell on them.
They retraced their steps, to the great galleried landing at the centre of the house, and stood looking at the massive carved silver door.
Fergus said, “Fribble — you said there were ways —”
“Yes, there are ways to protect yourself,” said Fribble thoughtfully. “But I’ve never seen any of them actually working, you understand.” He went on studying the silver door, and then, with the air of one who has made up his mind, said in a matter-of-fact way, “It’s probably all a myth, but I suppose we could try the Ice Cauldron.
“Didn’t you know about all that?” he said. “Dear me, didn’t you? I don’t know what they teach people nowadays. Of course, it isn’t very widely known. That would account for it. I don’t know if it would work, either.”
Fergus said, “But what is the Ice Cauldron?” and Fribble, who had been examining the silver door and tracing the carvings with one hand, turned round and said, “Well, it’s rather difficult to explain. And we haven’t much time.”
“Try us,” said Taliesin.
“But don’t take too long about it,” said Fergus.
Fribble sat down on the floor. He looked oddly comfortable and entirely composed, and both Taliesin and Fergus remembered, with guilty surprise, that Fribble, after all, was Chief Druid of all Ireland.
“There’s a group of people somewhere in the east with some very curious beliefs. It’s no good asking me where they’re from, because I’ve forgotten, if I ever knew, which I probably didn’t. But they’re quite learned. They have begun to follow a belief and a teaching that they call Dualism. Two worlds, you see. Light and darkness. Good and evil. Quite sensible if you think about it,” said Fribble. “If you pursue the belief a little further, you have to admit that for every good act there is a corresponding evil one; for every sliver of light in the world, there is a sliver of darkness. We know that night follows day, or perhaps it’s the other way around, I forget.
“If you accept that every single thing has its opposite, you begin to accept the belief that a thing cannot have an existence without that opposite. Good cannot exist unless there is evil, and evil cannot be defeated unless there is good. You can’t ever rout evil, of course,” said Fribble seriously, “because so far as we know, good and evil are both pretty much equal. That’s another story. You don’t want me to start telling you about the two Great Masters, one on the side of darkness, the other on the side of light, fighting their eternal battle. No, I thought you didn’t. But it is there. Disbelief in something does not kill its existence.
“Hunger and thirst have their counterparts and their vanquishers. By eating, we can defeat hunger for a time, and by drinking we can defeat thirst. But the one must be dependent on the other. You see? It’s all quite simple and sensible and easy to understand.
“By applying cold water or ice to a fire, we defeat the fire. If we could walk into the heat and the power of that room behind the silver door, somehow protected by cold water or ice, I don’t suppose the heat would hurt us at all.”
Taliesin said slowly, “But the heat is not a tangible heat, Fribble. It is invisible.”
“Yes, that’s the point,” said Fribble, getting up and dusting his robes down. He looked at them. “You defeat an invisible force with another invisible force,” said Fribble. “You fight the heat with something of your own. You imagine the ice,” said Fribble, and he beamed at them …
*
Imagine the ice. The three of them sat together — “Cross-legged,” said Fribble, “because it distributes the body’s weight evenly. That’
s important, because it frees your mind.”
They linked hands. “For strength,” said Fribble.
And they closed their eyes. “Uncomfortable,” said Fergus, who was wary of sitting in a great dark mansion with evil all around and his eyes closed against it.
“You must do it,” said Fribble severely. “And now you must conjure up the Ice Cauldron in your minds. Think of it so hard that it appears to you. A great, ice-cold cauldron. Steamy with cold and white with frostiness. Great ice lumps floating on the surface. Fathom upon fathom of cold, cold water, blue and silver and glacial. Everything you can think of that is icy cold. Frozen mountainsides and iced-over lakes. Snow and frost. White on white.”
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, a chill crept over the three travellers. Fergus thought, and then was sure, that Taliesin’s hand on his left and Fribble’s on his right had grown noticeably cooler.
The Ice Cauldron. Think of it. See it. Feel it. Feel the coldness burn your skin, and remember that there is nothing to be compared with the pain of an ice burn. He drew in a great breath and felt it tear his lungs.
Yes. Cold on cold. Ice mountains and glaciers and the dark frozen wastes of the Northern Seas.
At his side, Fribble stood up slowly and carefully, and Fergus felt Taliesin follow suit. There was a moment of panic — I am not ready! — and then he was following them to the silver door, and the door was swinging open at Fribble’s touch, and the Chamber of the Sorcerers stood before them.
*
The head was like a solid wall. They flinched, and then — the Ice Cauldron! said Taliesin silently, and they picked up his thought and took strength. Ice on ice. Every cold thing you have ever known, every freezing dawn you have ever woken to.
The chamber was dark and immense. It was the most gigantic room any of them had ever seen. The ceiling stretched far above them and the floor seemed to fall away. The air was thick and heavy with heat and the smell of warmth, and there was a sizzling feel to the air, and a dryness. Ice on ice, thought Fergus, striving for calmness. Glaciers and frozen wastes.
For a moment, he could almost see the Ice Cauldron — huge and black, but rimmed with the heavy hoar frost that you would see on the skeletons of trees in the depths of winter. Solid lakes that you could walk across. Confidence surged up in him, and he thought, We can do it! Of course we can!
The silver door had opened halfway up the wall of the chamber, and they were standing on some kind of platform with steps that led down.
“And down and down,” thought Taliesin, staring, and remembered, and wished not to remember, the echoes.
Down, down to Hell and say I sent thee thither … for there awaits the fiery gulf …
Down into the bowels of hell …
The fiery gulf. The gaping chasm of fire and the huge furnaces of flames belching out heat, so that your eyes will burn and your skin will shrivel, and the blood will boil and burst your veins …
But remember the Ice Cauldron …
Fergus, his mind tumbling, his skin already flinching from the heat of the Looms, thought it was like every nightmare he had ever experienced.
Heat and darkness, and a great heavy stifling weight all about them. There was the dull thrumming of vast machinery all about, and there was the red glow of heat everywhere.
But remember the Ice Cauldron, and remember the frozen dawn of every winter morning …
Stretching away before them were the great silver Looms, the spinners of spells, the weavers of enchantments. The power and the force and the might of the sorcerers.
Great rearing edifices towered above them, and had their feet in the depths of the earth. Immense and powerful and awe-inspiring. Ceaselessly weaving and eternally spinning. Forever alive with the power they harnessed for the sorcerers.
There were roads between the Looms, little pathways, and at intervals, there were shelves full of ancient vellum books.
“The sorcerers’ library,” whispered Fribble, and Taliesin and Fergus nodded.
As they moved nearer to the Looms, they could see great tumbles and piles of raw spells heaped about the Looms’ feet.
“Raw bewitchments,” whispered Fribble. “We are seeing something that very few humans ever see.”
The nascent magic of the sorcerers. Unborn spells and formless bewitchments. Living colours and breathing scents and great rainbow swathes of shifting light.
The raw spells were lying in silken heaps, as if they had been taken from cartons like bales of material, and flung down by the nearest Loom until they should be wanted. There were huge spindle-like shapes as well, wound with skeins of glinting iridescence that caught the light and sent rainbow colours cascading everywhere. Fergus put up his hand again, but the other two knew that this time it was to shield his eyes from the pure brilliance of the unborn spells. Taliesin, who had seen the bazaars of the Tyrian silksmiths and the robemakers in the Eastern quarter where the money lenders lived, thought that the substances resembled rich, unfashioned garments, and then that they were more like unhewn gems.
“But there are visions within them,” said Fergus very softly at his side, and Taliesin looked sharply at Fergus, and saw that Fergus was staring into the depths of the formless matter that were embryonic spells, and that his eyes had an unfocussed far-away look, rather as a cat will look when staring into the leaping flames of a fire. “There are worlds within them,” said Fergus, and Taliesin, who had also glimpsed the worlds, and who had seen great rivers of flame and pouring cascades of molten colour, and felt his eyes becoming dry and harsh, took Fergus’s hand and felt it growing hot.
“Fergus, remember the Ice Cauldron,” he said, and summoned up every shred of the ancient powerful Samhailt, and closed his eyes, and concentrated on throwing about Fergus the carapace of coldness and hard-packed ice. On Fergus’s other side, he was aware of Fribble taking Fergus’s arm, and saying calmly, “Ice on ice … frozen dawns … snow and sleet and solid lakes and rivers …” And then Fergus’s skin grew cooler and Taliesin withdrew the images and saw Fergus grin, rather waveringly.
They moved warily on, searching the shadows, and Taliesin thought that every one of them could feel the Ice Cauldron all about them now, like solid armour. Fergus said, in quite an ordinary voice, “I suppose we do want to find the Sons, do we?”
“Beard the sorcerers in their lair?” said Taliesin with a lightness he was not feeling. “I admit, Fergus, that it takes extraordinary courage to do that. And when the sorcerers are also giants, and when there are twenty-seven of them …”
He stopped, and felt Fergus’s hand come down on his arm, and saw Fribble pause.
Sounds. Dreadful sounds. The sounds of a creature feeding. Sucking, guzzling, chewing … a beast, a monster taking in sustenance …
As they rounded a corner, they all heard the terrible low chuckling that Taliesin had heard earlier, and there was a sudden movement in the shadows ahead of them, and then the sound of huge leathery wings beating on the air. For a moment, the chamber darkened, and they thought that something reared up and flew over their heads.
There was a harsh, cawing sound, and there was a stench of rotting meat and bad fish and old blood.
Fribble said loudly, “All join hands. And whatever you do, remember the Ice Cauldron.”
But in each of their minds now, was the thought, Have we been lured here to be killed? Are we about to meet the Conablaiche and the Lad of the Skins?
And then the path widened, and they caught again the stench of blood and rotting flesh, and saw what lay ahead.
Neatly laid out, every one of them. Sightless eyes turned upwards, skin cold and waxen.
Every single one had been ripped open, so that their entrails spilled out, glistening wetly in the light. There were glimpses of lungs and liver; here and there the purple-veined sacs of stomach and bladder; the red stringiness of muscle … giants’ blood, giants’ marrow, and viscera … kidneys and bowels and skin.
The twenty-seven Sons of Calatin, butchered by the Con
ablaiche and their beating hearts torn from their bodies.
Giants’ hearts for Crom Croich …
The stench of blood was in their nostrils, and there could not be the smallest doubt that it had been the Conablaiche who had torn open the Sons of Calatin and left their ruptured bodies lying on the floor, like badly cured meat …
There was nothing they could do for the Sons. “But we can cover them,” said Fribble, who took death calmly, and they found some pieces of sacking and threw them over the bodies. Fergus and Taliesin hoped they would be able to forget the slimy trails of blood that ran from beneath the sacking, and they would certainly be able to forget the sight of the not-quite-colourless liquid that stained the sacking.
Taliesin stood up and wondered whether he would ever be able to get the taste and the smell out of his mouth, and as he did so, Fergus took his arm in a sudden grip, and said, “Look.”
“Where?” Taliesin, his mind still raw from the sight of the Sons’ bodies, took a deep breath and prepared to meet whatever else might be in store for them. “What is it?” Fergus was standing very still, pointing at something that lay very close to the Sons’ bodies.
Something that was nearly, but not quite, formed into the outline of soaring wings, and that was fashioned from some substance that was nearly, but not quite, gold.
Something that was molten gold and incandescent flame, that held within its depths slanting wildfire eyes and the whirling brilliance of a creature who could travel at immense speed …
“What is it?” said Taliesin again, and Fribble, who was staring intently at the half-formed shape, said, “Bless my soul, I believe it’s the spell to summon Fael-Inis.”
“Can we touch it?” said Taliesin, and Fribble started to say, “I don’t think —” when Fergus bent down and scooped up the beautiful strange thing that was the incomplete spell.
Iridescence whirled, and there was the blinding flash of skeins of colour fusing into a dazzling kaleidoscopic mesh.
The rushing sound of chariot wheels mingled with music poured through the house.
Fael-Inis.