by Sarah Rayne
He did not go to anyone. He fought his own despairs and his own bitterness, and he had believed that he had built up an inner tranquillity and a strength, so that he was armoured against the lure of any woman.
But when Grainne came to the castle, he knew himself lost, and he knew that the carapace so diligently acquired over the years was melting. The Wolfqueen was waking in him longings and emotions that he had striven to bury. When Grainne slipped silently into his room, desire blazed up so uncontrollably that the banked-down emotions of a lifetime were swept aside, and he knew he would take her fiercely and violently. He would try not to hurt her, but the minute she touched him, the minute he felt her skin against his body …
She slid the thin silk robe from her shoulders and stood naked before the fire, looking at him, and he saw the humility and the fear in her eyes, and felt something fierce and triumphant uncoil.
For I am on equal terms with someone for the first time in my life. I have been sought by this remarkable beautiful creature who is offering herself to me …
He moved cautiously now, unused to the preludes, unsure of what she would expect. He stood for a moment longer, looking at her, unable to speak, seeing that she was so beautiful it was hurtful to him, thinking that in other circumstances he would be unmanned by such beauty, except that he was not unmanned, that was the very last thing …
And then, Perhaps after all I am not such a deformed thing, he thought, and a sweet heady joy began to pulse through him.
When he lowered Grainne on to the pile of thick fur rugs before the fire, he was trembling, but when he stood up and began to unfasten his own clothes, he did so with a calm sureness and a gentle authority.
*
Grainne had known that when it finally came to it, she would be afraid — For I have never known anyone other than Fergus, and with Fergus it was so natural and so sweet — but she had not expected this sudden rush of tenderness. She had gone to his room ready to play the wanton, certainly believing she would have to seduce him into her arms, and there had been an undercurrent of panic at this.
But the desire and the longing in his eyes had given her strength, and he had moved to her at once, so that she had known, once and for all, that there could never be anything strained or awkward between them.
He had watched her cast aside her thin robe, and he had smiled with such infinite love and such intimacy that pain had twisted through her from breast to womb. He had thrown aside his own robe then, and had stood for a moment looking down at her, the firelight playing over his body, and Grainne had felt her senses tumble, for surely, oh, surely there had never been anything so beautiful and so strong … He is half-eagle, and I have never seen such an exquisite thing … His skin had the golden sheen of an eagle’s plumage … skin but not quite skin — Oh, yes! thought Grainne, drowning in delight now. When he turned to look at her, the firelight cast shadows across his body, so that she saw his arms not as arms, but as wings … and they will enfold me so strongly and so sweetly that I shall never want to be free … His legs were supple and strongly muscled, and Grainne half closed her eyes, and let her mind race forward, and anticipated the feel of his thighs against her … There was a tangle of dark golden hair; it was not rough and harsh but silken, as if the true eagleblood might be centred between his legs …
When he touches me, I shall certainly be helpless … But I believe I shall be his, completely and for ever then …
*
When she touches me, I shall be hers for all time, and when she touches me, I shall be so hungry for her, that I may hurt her.
The thought was hardly to be borne. Raynor paused, looking down into the half-closed eyes, and saw Grainne smile, and saw, as well, that despite her apparent tranquillity, she had been nervous, and that it had not been easy for her to come to his room. He thought she would certainly have had other lovers, for he knew a little of the way of the Court, and he pushed the thought away. For she is certainly mine now, and surely in a way she has never been any other man’s … Even so, he thought that never before had she been the hunter, and as the thought was framed, Grainne said softly, “You are right. It was not easy,” and Raynor smiled at her and said very gently, “The Samhailt?”
“I barely possess it,” said Grainne, unable to take her eyes from him. “Although it is my heritage, I barely possess it. It is only that —”
“It is that we are closely linked, you and I, my love.”
My love … Natural and right and entirely familiar. I should be feeling disloyal to Fergus, I should certainly be wondering if what I am doing is right, and if I am going to be hurt. She did not wonder if it was right, and she knew there was no hurt ahead for her. Not this time. And oh, Fergus, my dear, lost love, am I doing you so much harm? Was not the harm already between us, before we had loved and before we lost, and perhaps before we were born?
She knelt before the fire, facing Raynor now, leaning her head back as he began to explore her body, feeling his hands, tentatively at first and then growing more assured, sliding over her shoulders and her breasts … His hands were not quite skin and not quite plumage … Silken and smooth and so deeply loving that the pain was there again …
Only that this one will never hurt you …
This one. This strange, remote, eagle creature, whose body was bathed in incandescence from the fire, except that it was not quite the fire; whose eyes were dark with passion, and whose arms, strong and safe, were enveloping her, and laying her down on the thick fur rugs before the fire …
There was the pure and unalloyed joy of reaching down to cup his passion between her hands, and of feeling a tremor go through him … Fires banked down so strongly for so long … He is on fire with hunger, thought Grainne, her senses spinning. He is on fire, and I believe we shall both drown in the heat, and I believe neither of us would care if we did …
And then Raynor entered her with a strong swift movement, and the fires engulfed them both.
*
Grainne lay in Raynor’s arms before the fire, warm and drowsy, and more deeply happy than she could ever remember being.
She thought she could so easily stay here, learning the ways of Raynor’s people, working with them. Perhaps teaching them a little of her own world. Oh, yes, I could do that, thought Grainne, sleepless and still half drowning in the warmth and the sweetness.
I could be happy here, in this great, shadowy, secret-laden place, where there are unexpected patches of happiness, and where memories sometimes echo back, and where you can feel the history of the years swirl about you. You would never quite know what you might find here; you would certainly find unexpected flights of stairs which might lead anywhere at all, and you would surely sometimes come upon doorways you had not known existed. You would continually find gateways, thought Grainne, falling a little more deeply into sleep. Yes, there were gateways here in the castle, where midnight footsteps trod purposefully down the halls …
Footsteps.
The sleep vanished, and she was fully awake at once.
Footsteps. Going silently and steadily through the castle, somewhere quite nearby. Grainne raised herself cautiously on one elbow, trying not to wake Raynor, and looked towards the door. Yes, the footsteps were the ones she heard every night in her own part of the castle. She hesitated, and looked down at Raynor, and saw that he was watching her, and saw, as well, that he understood.
Grainne said, “The footsteps — I have heard them before …” and Raynor said, “Yes. Yes, it is time you knew.” And reaching for his clothes, he pulled her to her feet, and said, “Come with me.”
*
If it had been possible for the old castle to grow darker, Grainne thought it would have done so in the hour that followed.
She lost all sense of direction, and, “I never knew quite where Raynor took me,” she said afterwards.
As they moved through the halls and the corridors, she felt as never before the layers upon layers of history. She thought she could almost see the memories
and she could certainly hear the echoes. Happiness and despair and hope and fear. Plots and counter-plots and escapes and incarcerations. Torments and delights and pain-filled nights and promise-filled dawns.
Cormac of the Wolves, sitting out the long years of his exile; Niall and the Nine Lords chained and starving in the dungeons. Nuadu of the Silver Arm, submitting to the sorcerers so that he might be made whole again. And what of myself? thought Grainne. Am I also leaving a mark here? In time to come, will someone else walk these halls and remember the Wolfqueen who lived here for a time, but who brought the Cruithin out of hiding, and drove Medoc from the Bright Palace? Yes. And she smiled at Raynor and saw him smile back, and felt renewed, and understood how it was that Bee and the others came to Raynor for help.
Raynor said softly, “There is pain ahead for you,” and Grainne said, “Yes. I understand.”
“Would you wish not to go on?”
“No. I must see whatever there is to see.” She thought she knew about pain anyway, because there had been pain in losing Fergus, there had been nights and days and weeks of aching torment.
Raynor said gently, “There are different levels of pain, Grainne,” and Grainne looked startled, because he had heard her thoughts.
“I think you are acquiring the Samhailt, Raynor,” she said, and saw sudden delight flare in his eyes.
But, “It is just that we are in sympathy,” he said. To himself he thought, Supposing she is right! Supposing that after all the sorcerers did not fail? Supposing that I could stand on the hills surrounding this castle and send out the Samhailt, the ancient and precious gift bestowed on the Noble Houses of Ireland? Supposing I could call up the eagles? And then, What has she awoken? he thought, and in spite of his deep love for her and his longing to protect her, he knew a tremor of fear. This, after all, was the Wolfqueen, the last of a lineage so old that its beginnings were wreathed in legend and lore and magic. He knew that Grainne was gentle and strong and sensitive; he knew this as if it was something he had been born knowing; even so, he found himself remembering that the Wolfline were said to have old enchantments in their blood, and that the old enchantments were tinged with the dark sinister magic of the first sorcerers, and that the descendants of those long-ago Wolfkings could still spin their own bewitchments and weave their own spells. And, Is this what you have done, Lady? he thought. Have you summoned the ancient golden strength, to bind me to you once and for all time? He thought he would not care if she had in truth done so, although he knew it to have been unnecessary. But as he walked at her side through the dark halls of the Grail Castle, he remembered, and wished not to remember, that she might well have within her the strange power that could awaken all manner of sleeping bewitchments and lost enchantments. And the things that lie hidden in this castle? Oh, yes, certainly those, thought Raynor, putting out a hand to guide Grainne down a flight of stairs.
Grainne, going cautiously through the castle, thought that this was certainly not a journey she could have made alone.
Alone through the silent halls, where midnight’s arch stretches far above us … I am hearing the echoes again, thought Grainne, staring about her, her eyes huge and dilated.
And the footsteps? Were the footsteps also all about them?
This is like the centre of a dead world’s soul, thought Grainne. I think I am beginning to be very much afraid of what Raynor is taking me to.
The old stone walls closed about her, so that at times it seemed to be suffocatingly hot, and she found herself putting up a hand to her throat. There was despair here now — and it is the real and truly terrible emotion, thought Grainne. It was like falling into a black well, where you knew there would never be light, or it was like being cast adrift on a night ocean when you knew no ships would ever pass.
Alone forever, and with no hope, no joy, no warmth …
I do not think I can bear this, thought Grainne, but even as the thought was framed, she knew that for someone it had had to be borne, there had been no escaping it, this bottomless dark pit, this vast endless night sea …
Raynor said very softly, “Down here,” and Grainne hesitated, and then thought, Yes, but why is he whispering? What does he fear to disturb?
The steps led downwards, there were crumbling stone walls, so that they had to clutch at narrow ropes sunk into the wall at intervals. The steps were worn away at the centre, and Grainne wondered if it was from the footsteps which passed this way every night, or whether it was simply from age.
“A little of both,” said Raynor, and frowned briefly, for he was hearing her thoughts more clearly now. The Samhailt wakening? The Wolfqueen acting as some kind of lodestar? Is she affecting the castle? he thought. And then — and this was more sinister by far — or is the castle affecting her?
And then Grainne said, “It feels as if we are going down into some terrible prison,” and Raynor said, “Yes, it is a prison. It has been used as a prison many times. I do not know how many. But it has a dark and ancient history.”
He led her along a cold flagged corridor now, where the walls gleamed faintly with phosphorescence, and where, although wall sconces flared bravely, the light was greenish and lack-lustre, so that it was rather like walking under water.
Raynor came to a stop outside a thick, low door set into the wall, and stood for a moment looking at it, as if summoning up some inner resolve. Grainne saw that there was a small oblong grille set high up. To see in? Or to see out?
At length Raynor said, very softly, “Before we go farther, you must give me your promise that whatever happens inside here, whatever is said, you will not leave my side. You must not, under any circumstances at all, progress more than several paces into the room.” The sudden intimate smile lifted his lips. “Should I ask your pardon, Wolfqueen, for appearing to issue orders to you?”
“No,” said Grainne in a whisper. “Oh, no, never that.”
“Then, I will not,” said Raynor. “You will do as I ask?”
“Yes.”
The brief smile glinted again. “Unquestioning obedience,” he said. “I am fortunate.”
And reached for a heavy key and turned the lock. The door swung open.
The room beyond the heavy iron-studded door was larger than Grainne had expected. There was light of a kind, but it was the thin unreal light of the moon, and Grainne, standing still, adjusting her eyes to the room, saw that there were windows high up, and that moonlight, tinged with green from the forest, poured in from outside. There was the sound of the forest trees rustling. Or was it just the trees? Trees did not make that dry, brittle sound, as if old, dead bones were being rubbed together. Trees did not whisper and murmur and chuckle with an evil malevolence …
There is something in here that is barely human.
The room looked as if it might be quite comfortable. There were chairs, a table, a deep settle. Through an alcove was a narrow bed. But there were strong iron bars at the windows, and there was the dry, sticklike sound of bones; there was the mindless chuckling again …
The room should have been entirely normal. There were normal things in it; there were chairs and a table, on the table was a water jug, a bowl of food of some kind, fruit. The jug and the bowl were chained to the table.
Advancing stealthily into the room, Grainne felt the hairs prickle on the back of her neck. As she moved, the something, the creature that chuckled and rubbed its dry-bony hands together, moved with her, as if copying. Was it? Was it only her imagination? Two steps farther in, and the creature moved two steps as well. Grainne stopped, and the creature stopped with her. Three steps now. A slithering of chains, a horrid steel-on-stone sound, and three steps to match.
Grainne stood very still, although she did not close her eyes, for to do so in here, with a creature, a something that was watching from the shadowy corners and grinning and copying her every move, was not to be thought of. But she half closed her eyes, and she put her head back very slightly, and felt the shadows stir and felt the something wait, and felt the w
rongness and the lack of humanity that pervaded the room sweep over her. Like water flooding over your head. Like steam coming at you from a cooking pot over a camp fire. Like a sudden scent, borne on the wind.
A scent. And then she knew, with the extra sense that her ancestors, the wolves, had possessed, she knew suddenly what the wrongness and the dry evil intelligence meant.
Madness. There is sheer blazing madness in here. And we are locked in with it …
Grainne gasped and put out a hand to Raynor. They were not locked in with it, of course they were not. But just for a moment she had felt the weight of emptiness, she had felt how it must be to be shut away down here, bereft of even human companionship, away from the light, losing count of the days. Chained and caged.
Aye, cabbin’d, cribb’d, confin’d …
The echoes swirled and eddied all about them, but whether from the future or the past, Grainne was never able to tell. Anger rose up in her for whatever poor pitiful creature was shut away down here, and her eyes blazed yellow-gold in the duskiness, so that Raynor, watching her, thought, Yes, that is the wolflight. That is the power and the light and the strength of Tara’s wolves! And felt again the primitive thrill. Grainne was only faintly aware of Raynor at her side now. Her eyes were searching the corners, scanning the farthest recesses of the dungeon that someone had tried to make into the semblance of a comfortable apartment. The unseen creature was still, and Grainne had the sensation of being watched, inspected, assessed. The chains slithered again, and there was a scuttling movement in the shadows, and Grainne turned to see what crouched in the corner.