Wolfking The Omnibus: Books 1-4

by Sarah Rayne

  But I should surely know if Fergus was dead. And then — But should I know if Fergus’s son was also dead? she thought.

  The Lost Prince. Ireland’s heir. I was the one who lost him, thought Grainne, staring ahead of her. I denied him his birthright. I denied him Tara. For that alone I should be made to live in unhappiness for all my days. For I shut Ireland’s true Prince out from his kingdom, and I do not believe he will ever be able to return.

  *

  The Purple Hour was approaching when the soldiers set up a circle of burning torches, stout ash sticks thrust into the ground, which they had ignited so that the scene was lit to weird life.

  Grainne, seated at the head of the table with Raynor at her side, smiled to see the men so pleased, and remembered all of the Samains she had seen celebrated at Tara, and all the ritual processions to the Plain of the Fál, and the kindling of the Druidical Fires. Shall I ever see Samain celebrated at Tara again? Please, yes.

  Cathbad had decorated the table with trailing ivy garlands and was presiding over platters of wild duck, “Nicely stuffed,” he said, and dressed pheasant, and an array of sweetmeats. There were steaming cauldrons of soup (“I shan’t have any of that,” said Fintan) and mead, and mulled wine which Tybion and Rinnal had brewed over the Cruithin’s fires. The Cruithin, interested and bright-eyed, had contributed some kind of drink made from apples and honey and, as Cermait said, it would have skinned the soles of your feet if you fell into a vat of it.

  The villagers of Folaim stood a little apart, shy, but pleased to be included in the modest celebrations, certainly delighted to be presented to the High Queen.

  “Loyal,” said Tybion the Tusk, who had gone faithfully and doggedly through the village, and had rounded up every single person. “They’d follow you into hell and beyond, ma’am.”

  “It was thoughtful of you to bring them up,” said Grainne, and smiled, and Tybion frowned and started to say that he thought it had been Grainne’s request, but then was distracted by Cathbad, who had tipped up the soup and was running about in a panic, trying to mop it all up.

  The villagers thought it was a fine old sight to see on a Samain, and compared it all favourably with their own celebrations. To be sure, they always celebrated Samain properly and respectfully, they assured Dorrainge and Lugh. Didn’t they have their own fire every single year, and didn’t they all sit down to the finest banquet ever seen in Ireland? Let one of the dark forces try to get through tonight! cried the people of Folaim, and wouldn’t it find itself frizzled up on the instant!

  They bowed awkwardly to Grainne, because they were farmers and landowners and woodcutters in the main, and bowing to the High Queen of Ireland was not a thing you allowed for when you were tilling land or chopping trees or gathering fruit. But they knew what was what, said the villagers happily, and swept clumsy bows, and said they were delighted to be here, and shuffled the village reprobate into line, because hadn’t Seamus the Ancient a terrible old habit of saying the wrong thing, and it the High Queen! The children stood rather silently, round-eyed and awe-stricken, staring at the mounds of food, and Cathbad, who was rather fond of children, at once rounded them up and shepherded them to his array of spun sugar confections and crystallised fruits.

  And then the soldiers stepped forward to fire the bonfire in several places, and the flames leapt into the sky, red and orange and scented with the agaric and the dry oak.

  Grainne, watching, sipping the wine that Tybion, faithful as ever, had poured for her, frowned, and Raynor at once said, “There is something wrong?”

  Grainne said slowly, and very quietly, “I think we are being watched.”

  Raynor did not speak for a moment, and then he said softly, “Yes.”

  “There is something watching from the shadows. I feel it watching us,” said Grainne.

  “It is not,” said Raynor, “necessarily evil,” and Grainne turned to look at him.

  “On the night of Samain,” she said, “every evil force in the world is abroad. That is why these rituals take place. They are barriers,” said Grainne, her face serious. “Barriers to replace the natural ones that are lowered on Samain.”

  “Between this world and the Dark Ireland,” said Raynor. “Yes. We too know of this. On Samain the Gateways between the worlds are wide open, and it is possible to pass from one world to another with ease.”

  Grainne said, “That is why the rituals must be so exact. The procession to the Plain of the Fál. And the Sacred Chant … I do not pretend to understand that. I think no one has understood it for hundreds of years, for it was old when the world was young. But it is a strong magic, the Sacred Chant, and if it is to form part of the ceremony, it has to be exactly right. If the Chant were to be repeated wrongly, if it were to be inverted or in some way changed …”

  “But if it was done in ignorance —?”

  “I do not think it would matter,” said Grainne. “The gateways will already be opening. The creatures of the Dark Ireland will be waiting and watching their chance.”

  And out there in the forest, something is watching us, I can feel it watching us …

  She smiled at him. “But we should not spoil your first proper Samain with that. On Samain there are always strange forces abroad. I have felt them before.”

  “At Tara?”

  “Yes. And in other places.” She paused, and Raynor saw her eyes darken.

  “Tell me,” said Raynor, and Grainne, looking at him again, saw the yearning in his eyes, and knew that he was saying, Make me see it all. For I can still not believe that I shall see it.

  “You will see it,” said Grainne, and smiled at him. “You will see Gaillimh which is on the far western coast, and where, when the sun sets, it turns the sky to a sheet of flame. That is one of the most beautiful places in the world. And you will see Cnoc Aine where there are the burial mounds of the sidh — that is strange and disturbing and filled with faint music, and not entirely in the world of Men at all. And there are the Northern Isles, which are beautiful and friendly but tragic —”

  “Tragic?” said Raynor, hearing her voice change.

  “I found them so,” said Grainne, and Raynor saw and felt the shutters come down over her eyes and over her mind, and knew that there were still things about her he did not know or understand. But one day she will tell me, he thought. I must believe that one day she will trust me sufficiently to tell me everything.

  He would not yet say it. He thought she was his more completely and more gladly than he had ever believed any creature could be. But she is not quite yet entirely mine, he thought. There is still a small part, a corner, that she is keeping from me. And then: But why should she not? he thought. Why should any one creature expect to know and own and understand the whole of another? And he lifted her hand to his lips, for this touching, this gentle communication of one person with another, was something still new and remarkable for him, and to sit like this, with a banquet laid out before him, and with the unthinking instinctive homage of the people to Grainne, was something he had still to come to terms with.

  The feast was getting well under way. Lugh sat at the foot of the table rather solemnly; Fintan said he had deliberately manoeuvred himself into this position to appear important, but Cermait said this was unkind, because Lugh could not be important if he stood on his head.

  The soldiers were quaffing the apple brew in alarmingly large draughts, and several of them had begun an impromptu rendering of “A Nice Little Bit of Comfort for the Maid of Bunclody,” which should not be allowed with children present.

  “Although they won’t understand the half of it,” said Cermait, who had been joining in a bit furtively, but who had forgotten the last verse.

  The soldiers accepted the ban amiably enough, and commenced instead a spirited rendering of “When Rafferty Raffled his Pig,” which, as Fintan said, was a sight worse in the end.

  “I’ve never heard it,” said Tybion hopefully.

  “No, and you don’t want to,” said Fint
an, who liked Tybion, but who did not approve of bawdy songs on Samain.

  Dorrainge had begun the Sacred Chant at last. “Good,” said Fintan, settling down and looking to see where his tankard of apple brew had gone. “A good bit of solid tradition’s what’s needed now. This’ll quiet them down,” he said to Cermait, who was sharing the half of a wild duck with Rinnal. “My word, it’s grand to hear the Old Ritual again,” he said, who would not have known a syllable of the Ritual if it had leaped from the ground and struck him, but who liked to preserve the legend that he knew a bit about everything.

  “Dorrainge’s being very self-important about it,” said Cermait, through a mouthful of duck leg. “I wonder should we help him.”

  “You don’t know the Sacred Chant,” said Fintan dismissively.

  “Neither does Dorrainge, from the sound of it,” said Cermait.

  “Well,” said Fintan, worried, “it’s to be hoped he does know it, because if he’s going to get it wrong, he might as well not say it at all. In fact,” said Fintan, “he’d be as well not to say it, because it might call up all kinds of things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Well,” said Fintan, “I don’t think we ought to put names to them.” And he glanced furtively over his shoulder to the shadows, because you never quite knew what might be abroad on Samain.

  “Still, it’s a grand tradition,” said Cermait.

  “It’s a forgotten tradition,” said Fintan. “I hope there isn’t trouble ahead.”

  “Rubbish,” said Cermait, and took himself off to Cathbad’s corner of the feastings to see was the roast pig cooked yet, and went off to fetch a sharp pointed stick to test it, because roast pig had to be thoroughly cooked if they were not all to be taken with unmentionable ills half the night.

  Dorrainge was standing before the fire, his hands outstretched, his head flung back.

  “He’s making the most of it,” muttered Fintan, but was not paid any attention.

  Lugh Longhand was only half listening to Dorrainge, although he did notice that Dorrainge appeared to be stumbling once or twice, and it did just cross his mind that it was to be hoped that Dorrainge, the fat fool, did not mix the Ritual up or make a fool of himself. Lugh was feeling personally responsible for the entire course of the evening, and it would not do for Her Majesty and half the Court to see that things went wrong. Perhaps Dorrainge would recover himself. Perhaps — although this was not very likely — he had taken a drop more than was good for him of the Cruithin’s apple drink. A number of people had certainly done that, thought Lugh disapprovingly.

  The shadows were closing in on them. It would only be night falling, of course, but Lugh found the shadows disturbing. He knew that the Lad of the Skins was somewhere out there; he thought that the Conablaiche might be watching as well. He looked to where Dorrainge was still holding everyone’s attention, and he thought, As well now as at any other time, and slipped from his seat. No one would see him go and he would not be so very long.

  The children were grouped together, seated cross-legged on the grass, their small faces intent, their expressions serious. They had been given small portions of supper, which they had eaten with industrious pleasure, and they had been given a tiny sip of mead each, diluted with spring water. They were rather well behaved, the children of Folaim; they had not interrupted their elders, or run about screaming and fighting; they had not had fights with pieces of bread or flipped damson stones at one another, or made fun of Cathbad, or fallen into the cider cauldron.

  Lugh moved cautiously round the outside of the circle of people, every one of whom was watching the bonfire, some of whom were trying to hear Dorrainge’s Ritual Chant. The soldiers had, as Fintan had feared, begun a rival chant to the tune of “When Rafferty Raffled his Pig,” but no one was paying very much attention to this, and it would probably trail off into silence before the really rude verses were reached.

  The children were quite near to the fire. The red glow was casting shadows on their faces and turning their hair to crimson. It was strange, now that Lugh came to think about it, how many people in Ireland had really dark hair with red lights in it. Chestnut, or the colour of beech trees in autumn. Sometimes travellers came to Tara; great fair-haired, fairskinned, deep-chested people who had sailed the northern seas to find the glittering Palace, and who had flashing blue eyes and hair the colour of a sunrise. Lugh dared say that was all very well, but he preferred the Irish. Dark, slight, pale-skinned, fine-boned people. There was breeding in the Irish. You could always tell.

  The children of Folaim were small and slender, and they were nearly all dark-haired. Lugh stood where he was, more or less completely hidden by the shadows of the trees behind him, studying the small faces intently. Surely, surely, these were nothing other than the sons and daughters of good honest farmers and woodcutters and cottagers. Weren’t they?

  And surely, it was among precisely these sort of ordinary people that the Queen’s friends would have hidden the pretender?

  Folaim, meaning, in old Gael, a place of concealment …

  Surely Medoc had not been wrong?

  At the very back of his mind, Lugh knew that Medoc had not been wrong. He knew that the creature, the Lost Prince, the Wolfchild, was here. He remembered tales of hunters, and of how, nearing their quarry, they began to smell it and sense it and know it to be within their reach. He thought that there was no logical reason to know that the Prince was here, but for all that, he did know it was here.

  He was still scanning the circle of faces, examining, discarding, sure he would recognise the child when he saw it.

  Smooth-skinned faces, the unmarked faces of extreme youth. Smiling faces, untidy ones … a gap-toothed boy giggling with his sister, two tough-looking imps who would certainly be applying for entrance to the Fiana when they were older …

  The Ritual Chant was soaring into the night sky, and Dorrainge was flushed with the effort of sustaining it. Lugh was fairly sure that Dorrainge had missed large chunks out. He supposed it would not matter in the end, and it had to be remembered that Dorrainge was not used to chanting the entire Ritual by himself. It seemed to have grown considerably darker since he had begun, and it was certainly a good deal colder, but that would just be the winter night. It was nearly always cold on Samain.

  On the far side of the bonfire, the Cruithin were listening to the Chant. Lugh noticed with disapproval that several of them had lit their pipes, which was surely extremely discourteous to the Ancient Chant. He was rather surprised, because hadn’t the Cruithin always been spoken of as courteous and reverential to all of Ireland’s rituals? But he could see, quite clearly, wisps and curls of red heat rising; there was an odd heavy feel to the air as well now, which probably meant that the Cruithin were smoking something particularly unpleasant in their clay pipes. Lugh would have to have a word.

  Dorrainge was definitely stumbling over the Chant now, and Lugh could see one or two people frowning. It just showed that you could not really trust anybody, not even Druids, these days. Probably Dorrainge was distracted by the thick crimson smoke from the pipes, and by the strange scent. If you happened to be fanciful, you could almost imagine that you were smelling fiery furnaces and burning coals, and that there were slanting red eyes peering at you from the depths of the dying bonfire …

  This was nonsense, of course. Lugh would not give such whimsical absurdities any attention. He would concentrate on searching the children, because that was what he was here for.

  The children were rather attractive creatures. Was that just Folaim or something more? Had the strange, beautiful Wolfchild, the Prince of Tara, been hidden where it would be least noticeable? Lugh carried on looking.

  Small, dark-haired little things they were: a blue-eyed artless charmer of six or seven summers who would certainly wreak havoc in male breasts in ten years’ time; a chubby little roly-poly, eating plums with delight and listening to the soldiers; a snub-nosed freckled little soul who looked as if she might break in
to giggles at the smallest opportunity; a slant-eyed child with tip-tilted cheekbones and hair that grew close to his skull like an animal’s pelt …

  Lugh stopped and fixed his eyes intently on the boy, and something incredulous and fearful sprang to attention in his mind.

  Golden eyes. Wolfeyes, narrow and watchful: the eyes of the High Queen. Dark glossy hair and slanting cheekbones; ears set just that fraction too high to be wholly human, and that were just that little bit pointed …

  Lugh stood very still and thought, I have found him!

  The Lost Prince …

  Had he? Had he in truth so easily and so quickly found the Wolfchild, the misbegotten Prince, born in secret to the High Queen? The creature about whom myth and legend had somehow grown up, just as myth and legend had always grown up about the Wolfline.

  Was this the one who would topple Medoc and bring down darkness and destruction? The child whom Lugh had promised to kill?

  He stood there and drank in the child’s every feature and every movement, and knew that this was indeed the one.

  There was the unconscious grace that was wolfish, and there was the slenderness and the elfin-look; the three-cornered features of the ancient Wolfline of Ireland. Lugh stood and looked and could scarcely believe his eyes.

  But yes, this was the one. This was the one with the ancient mystical wolfblood. This was the one who was a direct descendant of Cormac, of the wild Dierdriu. This was the real thing; the strength and the power and the might.

  Could he be killed? Could Lugh do it? Could he stalk the creature through the dark night and scoop it up and sink a knife into its heart? Could I? murmured Lugh, and as he framed the question, there was a slight movement beside him, and he turned his head.

  Standing beside him, thin, white-cheeked, ragged and hungry-eyed, was a shape that made Lugh shudder.