by Sarah Rayne
But he knew that if he, Lugh, could not bring himself to kill the Wolfchild, the Lad of the Skins certainly would.
*
The Court and the soldiers and the Beastline were not quite sure when the Sacred Chant became blurred and clotted and somehow mingled with the heavy, crimson-tinted sky, and with the burning scents, as if the doors to an immense furnace had suddenly begun to open.
Grainne, listening intently to Dorrainge, had known with a deep inner knowledge which had nothing to do with conscious learning but that was pure race-memory, that the Chant was wrong. It was inverted, displaced; Dorrainge was altering its structure, so that the ancient ritual was no longer perfectly balanced.
He has upset the pattern and he has disturbed the delicate interleaving of the enchantments that create the barriers and keep at bay the Dark Ireland …
She could feel Raynor’s sudden alertness, and there was a moment to be grateful for it — he understands! — and she was trying to think what should be done.
For if the barriers are in truth destroyed, and if the gateways are beginning to open, then we are in the most terrible danger …
Grainne thought that she had half risen, although she did not remember pushing aside the chairs, and she certainly felt Raynor with her. The skies were filling up with the malevolent red light, they were becoming lakes of crimson, seas of living boiling colour …
The Doors to the Dark Ireland unfolding …
Dorrainge had fallen back, his face white, sweat streaming from his brow, a look of horror in his eyes. People were huddling together, pulling shawls and cloaks closely about them for comfort; everyone was staring upwards at the glowing, panting sky.
Grainne felt Raynor’s hand close about hers, and then saw him move unhesitatingly into the centre of the people, and lift up a hand to gain their attention. She sensed that he had drawn breath to speak, and she felt, even at several paces, the sudden authority that enveloped him. People turned to him, gratefully, trustfully, because here was someone who would know what was happening. The crimson glow fell directly across him, so that for a moment his hair was no longer a cap of gilt, and his eyes were no longer shining topazes; he was a creature of the skies, strong and warlike. The Noble House of the Eagles reborn … And if Fergus is lost to us, then he could lead the Fiana and vanquish Medoc …
The thought came unbidden, but with it came an immense strength.
And then, without warning, crystal clear on the curdled night air, came the sound of the music.
It was like nothing anyone had ever heard. It was cold and terrible, slicing through the malevolent darkness as piercingly as a knife slicing through whey. People shivered and felt for one another’s hands, and moved closer together.
Was it the sidh? Grainne, still standing where she was, turned to scan the forest, because the music seemed to be coming from the trees. And surely the sidh had been with them earlier; mischievously chasing in and out of the feasting, blue and green smudges, never quite materialising, elusive and fey and icily beautiful.
It was not sidh music. This was something chill and unearthly and terrible. It was calling and it was luring, but it was an evil call, and it was a malignant lure.
And then it changed again, and somewhere deep inside it was the sound of crying.
A child crying in the night.
The women of the company leapt up at once, searching the shadows, several of them running across the clearing to where the children sat together, their faces anxious as they looked for their own sons and daughters.
All there. None of the children had slipped away to work some small mischief. Each was accounted for.
Grainne had scarcely noticed the exodus of the women. She had stayed where she was, staring into the forest, listening to the crying, knowing it was something that could not possibly be ignored, because it was desolate and lonely, and it was filled with the cold, dark nights, and it was the most pitiful sound she had ever heard.
Raynor was at her side in a single movement. “Grainne, you must not —”
She thought that Raynor was holding her back, but she could not stay, even for him. It was out there, the child, the poor, lost, pitiful thing, it was somewhere out there in the dark. She tilted her head, trying to hear it again.
Help me … I am lost and alone and I am afraid of the dark …
The crying was stealing over the listeners now, and Grainne felt her heart flinch with the desolation of it.
I am lost and alone … I am shivering and ragged …
Oh, Fergus, thought Grainne, pain closing about her, Fergus my dear, lost love, what did I do when I let them take your son? I cannot bear this …
A bite of food … a warm fire … I have been wandering alone in the dark, and I am frightened and I am friendless. Help me …
Grainne said very clearly, “This is unbearable. We must find the poor child.”
I am shivering and in rags … I am so hungry …
She began to move towards the sound of the crying, dimly aware that Raynor was restraining her, pushing him away. Raynor, his eyes on her face, only partly understanding, felt a coldness enter his heart. For a moment longer he was able to remain detached, to think, This is something dreadful and evil, and this is an old and a terrible enchantment and we must fight it, and Grainne must be kept safe.
Let me in to your fire and your love … I have so little … I have never known what it is to be loved …
Grainne began to move towards the dark trees now, the memories alive and hurting, memories that were six years old, nearly seven. Memories which ought to have been long since safely buried, a wound which ought to have Healed and skinned over but which was as open and as raw as it had been when she had let them take Fergus’s child away. Fergus’s son. Ireland’s Lost Prince …
She broke away from Raynor’s arms and ran straight into the dark forest towards the crying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Annabel and Taliesin, with Fergus and the boys following, began the cautious descent down the hillside. Annabel was bemused and caught in thrall; she had partly understood what had happened, but she had not wholly understood.
“None of us wholly understands,” said Taliesin. “But later I shall take you to the Druids, and they will spend hours pondering over it all, and perhaps they will come up with a solution and perhaps they will not." And Annabel stared at him, and felt the joy all over again, and wondered if she dared believe that they had truly left her cold barren world behind and somehow entered this beautiful, ancient, magical land.
“Of course," said Taliesin. “Now you are in my world." And smiled.
Fergus had been standing a little apart, looking about him, trying to gauge exactly where they were. “Somewhere overlooking Tara," he said at length. “But I am not sure exactly where." He looked at them. “But there is something different," he said. “Something has happened."
“Yes?"
Fergus said softly, “The Old Ireland has woken at last," and there was such delight and such reverence in his voice that Taliesin and Annabel stared at him. “All of the old lost enchantments," said Fergus. “Can you not feel that they are all about us?"
Taliesin said lightly, “Fergus, my dear, I am only a Tyrian and a money lender at that, and if I deal in dreams and enchantments, then I do not admit to any of it.” But although his voice contained all the old mockery and all the old irony, there was something in it that was neither mocking nor ironic. Fergus knew and Annabel knew that Taliesin felt the strange whisperings and the barely seen, only-just-heard stirrings about them.
For the Old Ireland, the Enchanted Island, is awake again …
Conn and Niall and Michael and the boys were sitting close together, their faces intent, their expressions deeply happy. They had not said very much, but Annabel had known how they were feeling, because she was feeling the same. A deep, deep happiness; a delight so strong that you dared not speak in case you shattered it, almost a refusal to believe. Can this possibly be meant for
us? Dare I believe? But when Michael said to her, “Are we home again?” Annabel at once said, “Yes, Michael, home,” and Michael smiled and went back to Conn’s side, and curled into a tight little ball and sat absolutely still as if he did not even dare to move in case the precious fragile happiness should break.
Taliesin said, “Will you survey the terrain, Captain? For no one else has the least idea of where we are, and as the Fiana’s head — or are we lost beyond hope? Tell us, if you please, for if we are to wander in the wilderness like lost souls for a hundred years or more, it will be better to know. I suppose that is Tara, is it?”
“Yes,” said Fergus softly, looking across the valley again. “That is Tara. The Shining Palace. The bright city. In darkness still, for Medoc still reigns there.”
Taliesin said, half to himself, “And the light is no more, and which is most hateful, darkness or light, and which is most blessed, despair or hope? Do we go direct to it, Fergus?”
“Ride on Medoc?” said Fergus.
“I admit it appears to me a foolhardy thing to do, but whither ye go I shall follow, and whither ye lead I shall … Would it be better to take this road that appears to go nowhere at all?”
“It’s a dark road,” said Niall, uncertainly, and several of the boys looked up.
“Oh, radiant dark,” said Taliesin, “oh, darkly fostered rays. Darkness of slumber and death, forever sinking and forever mantling the world.
“Fergus, I wish you would stop staring across the valley.”
But Fergus did not move. “We cannot yet march on Tara,” he said, “but when I do, I shall do so with all the might and all the power and all the glory of Ireland behind me.” He turned back to them, his eyes shining. “The Future did not help us,” he said, “but I believe that here in this world, we will be able to raise an army so strong that we shall rout the Darkness from Ireland at last.” He looked at the boys. “Already we have these,” he said, and smiled. “And there will be more who will join us. And when I defeat Medoc,” said Fergus, looking at them very straightly, “I shall do so thoroughly and soundly, and with a triumph so great that it will echo down the ages. There must be no question of failure. To ride on Medoc now, just these few of us —”
“‘We few, we happy few, we band of’ … Yes,” said Taliesin thoughtfully. “That would be disastrous. We should be taken and captured at once. Medoc would throw us to the creatures who serve him.”
And if that happens, everything we have attempted and everything we have suffered will have been for nothing …
“So,” said Fergus, “for the moment, Tara must be closed to us.” And he turned his back on it with finality.
Taliesin said, “Then shall we take this road that appears to lead nowhere and see if we find ourselves anywhere?” And, half to himself, “Although it is a long, dark, lonely road, and — what have I said?”
“The long, dark, lonely road,” said Fergus, staring at Taliesin. “Of course.”
“Well?”
“The Grail Castle,” said Fergus. “This is the long, dark, lonely road that leads to the Grail Castle.” And he looked at them, his eyes shining, “This is the road the Queen took. This is where we must go.”
*
As they walked cautiously along the wide, curving road, they were aware of the overwhelming darkness again.
“Yes, it is very close to us,” said Fergus, and glanced back at Conn and the others. “But it is still sufficiently far for it not to be a danger,” he said.
Annabel, who thought it was as if dark heavy mists gathered in waiting on the edges of the road, said, “What is it?”
“The Dark Ireland,” said Fergus, and the others noticed that he spoke very quietly as if he feared to be overheard, and that he never ceased to scan the shadows that clustered on the sides of the road. “I believe that the Gateway that exists between our world and the Dark Realm is unfolding. And if that is so —” He stopped, and then went on. “If that is so,” said Fergus, “then every evil that ever lived, every force that ever tried to bring down the Wolfkings, will be waiting and watching.” He looked at them. “This is Samain,” he said. “And it may be that before the night is over, the denizens of that terrible world will have broken through, and will be loose in the true Ireland. If the Gateway is in truth opening, then Medoc will already have called up the Twelve Dark Lords.”
Taliesin said, “What of the Conablaiche?”
“It may be here already,” said Fergus. “I do not know. But it is possible that it was thrust back into this world with us.”
Annabel said carefully, “What did happen in the mountain?” and Conn added eagerly, “Yes, what did happen, Fergus?”
“Tell us,” said several of the others, and Fergus said, “But I don’t know what happened. I don’t think we shall ever know.”
“Did the Clock stop or did we stop it?” said Annabel, and saw again the figure of Fael-Inis, lit to brilliant life, hurling a bolt of pure radiance at the Clockface. “Were we in time to turn the hands back?” she said.
“I don’t know that either,” said Fergus. “There was a dreadful crash — some kind of explosion. If it was the Apocalypse in truth, perhaps it was that which jolted us back here.”
Taliesin said thoughtfully, “The Clock had reached the very last second before midnight.”
“Yes,” Fergus frowned, “but surely if the terrible devastation prophesied had taken place, then Annabel’s people would have had some warning. Wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t know,” said Annabel. “But I do wonder if the Apocalypse did come. Or whether I shall ever know if it did.”
Fergus sat down on the side of the road and leaned back against a tree trunk, and the others sat with him. Behind them was Tara, still shrouded in dark mists and the evil miasma of Medoc and the Twelve Lords. Ahead of them would be the legendary Grail Castle, and Fergus, who knew all of the stories, thought they would be fortunate indeed to reach it in safety. But for the moment, he looked at them all and said, “Do you truly want to know what happened? Annabel, do you really want to know if your world ended, if it burned and if the Four Horsemen rode across the earth and let in the Beast? If cities were razed and if mankind was annihilated?” He smiled at her very gently. “You see, we have heard the stories of what happened,” said Fergus. “We have had Time Travellers here. People who lived in the days after the Apocalypse is said to have walked. People to whom the Apocalypse is a terrible folk legend. A myth. They know it happened, but they do not know how or when or why. Only that some terrible and overwhelming catastrophe came to the world, and that mankind was nearly destroyed.”
Taliesin said, “The legends that the Time Travellers bring are fearsome … How the world burned, and how the seas were great boiling masses; how the skies rained fire and molten lead. How there were poisonous substances in the air, so terrible that to breathe was to burn up inside.”
Fergus said softly, “And even when the fires cooled and the world was a charred, smoking ruin, even then, the horrors did not end. People lived for years in the ruins and the rubble of the destroyed cities and towns, eking out some kind of existence, trying to preserve the flame of humanity … Stealing food and looting it, searching for water.”
Eating the rats before the rats ate them … Fergus did not say it, but it was the picture that had always haunted him from the stories about Annabel’s world.
“That is so dreadful,” she said. “Did we stop it after all? Was it possible that we did? For if people who lived after it happened brought back the legends —” She stopped and frowned. “I do not understand,” said Annabel. “If there are records that it happened, that dreadful final holocaust, how could we even begin to hope that we stopped it.”
“Can you unmake history?” said Fergus softly. “That is the question we had to ask before we travelled to your world, Annabel. And the answer is that none of us knows. The Druids would tell you that Time is continuous, that it is relative, and that if you know how to do it, you can slip b
ack and forth through Time. But none of us has the understanding to grapple with its concept. Perhaps when Taliesin takes you to meet the Druids, they may have a part of the answer. They will certainly want to know you and to hear about your world.”
“My world was sparse,” said Annabel. “Barren and sad. Dying. I daresay it is very disloyal of me, but I am thankful to have left it.” She looked at them. “It will be easy for me to forget it,” she said.
“Nevertheless, you will find that it holds great interest for everyone here,” said Fergus. “You will be asked about it.” He smiled. “We shall not let you forget it so easily,” he said. And then, standing up, “Are we all sufficiently rested? Shall we go on?”
As they moved on down the road, Taliesin thought that Fergus was once more in truth the leader of the High Queen’s Fiana. He had donned, without thinking about it, the authority and the imperiousness of one who has been used to command. Taliesin, watching Fergus, thought that there was something in him that would always take charge of any situation. Was it simply the quality of leadership? Or was it something more? Curious and rather fascinated, he fell into step with Fergus and, at last, noticing that Annabel and the boys were a few steps behind, said, “Fergus, what did they do to you in that place?”
Fergus was startled; he thought, Is it apparent? Will people know? And felt again the sick agony and the swift black torment that had descended as Conn brought the knife down between his legs …
Castrated … rendered impotent, made emasculate. Even now, even with every ounce of fortitude summoned, the mental anguish was very nearly more than he could bear. How shall I support it! he thought, and knew that it had to be supported. For it was the only way. Only by submitting to the Stone Judges could I have broken the bonds of the Prison and brought the boys back to the world, and only that way could I have returned to drive Medoc from Tara and restore the light to the Bright Palace.
Yes, and only by doing so could I quench at last the sweet forbidden ache for my sister …