by Sarah Rayne
Next to Debauchery was Lust: a nasty one this, made up of a fast swirling crimson pillar of smoke that twisted itself into a great thick column of flesh and took on the appearance of a huge erect phallus with a monstrously swollen tip. There were glinting eyes three quarters of the way up the phallus-shape and long bony fingers — dozens of them — that squirmed and that would pry and prod and insinuate themselves into every bodily cavity they could find … Grainne and Annabel both gasped and grew back, and Lust gave a low, treacly-sounding chuckle, and the eyes widened and several pairs of hands reached out. Pale thick fluid, giant’s semen, oozed from the pulsing tip of the terrible column of flesh.
Next to Lust was Selfishness: an amorphous jelly-like creature, very nearly ovoid with thick, pitted skin, small, mean features and a tight, prim mouth, all crammed into the centre of the ovoid.
Decadence was exactly as Grainne had visualised earlier: a thin-faced, pale gentleman, wearing a dark red velvet jacket, and with cold old eyes that inspected and discarded, and with pale polished skin. His hands were slender and smooth, and much too well kept, and they would curl lovingly about the stem of a wine glass and they would stroke young tender flesh under cover of darkness … Grainne disliked Decadence very much.
Hatred was a huge mask of glaring red eyes and teeth and claws; Jealousy — another nasty one, this — was another shifting changing shape, rather snake-like this time, sinuous and insinuating. He was green and the surface of his skin was faintly iridescent with what might have been fishscales. He would be cold-blooded and slimy. He had glaring yellow eyes and you could easily imagine that he would come writhing and squirming out of some dreadful steamy swamp. He would worm his way into your mind and coil his serpentine body about your thoughts, and his forked tongue would flicker and dart and he would whisper poison into your mind.
Greed, who was next, was made up of huge quivering sections of fat and blubber that ran and squelched because there was no skin to contain them. Here and there were patches of grease on the surface, and here and there, deep in the raw fat, were gaping wet mouths that made constant guzzling, sucking, lapping noises … All the better to gobble you up with, my dear …
Annabel, who had been just about able to cope with Decadence and Lust, found herself sickened all over again by Greed.
Deceit was thin and small and rat-like. He had a long slithering rat tail and a sly shifty eye. He was not quite a rodent, but he was not quite a human. He would scuttle into corners if the light fell on him and vanish into the dusty shadows if you tried to catch him. He would have a beautiful voice, and if you trusted him, he would hurt you quite dreadfully.
Conceit: beautiful and weak-mouthed; Perversion: a sinister figure in a long dark cloak with a deep, wide-brimmed slouch hat hiding his eyes. He would lurk in fog-shrouded streets or in dark forests where he could swirl his black cloak about you and take you to his lair and do things to you that you would probably prefer not to know could be done …
Vice and Avarice were twins, joined down the centre of their bodies. Annabel, who remembered about something called Siamese twins, thought they were particularly repulsive. They each had a wide, flat, curving, cruel mouth like a shark, and there were at least eight sets of arms and curved talons. Vice had a long downward-pointing beak like a vulture’s, and Avarice had a hard bony skull and a black shiny mandible like a giant beetle …
The Twelve Dark Lords were free of their concealing armour, out in the world to batten on their victims and fight for Medoc and Crom Croich …
Fergus and Raynor had both been backed against the wall by Decadence and Debauchery, and the twins Vice and Avarice; Greed was waddling towards the Wolves, licking and mumbling and guzzling, a monstrous, nearly liquid mass of wet, slopping blubber. The Wolves whined and cringed, but Grainne and Annabel saw that they did not actually back away. A shiver went through Erin, and Grainne knew that he was pouring every ounce of strength and confidence into them.
Taliesin, whose right arm was useless and hanging at his side, had managed to crawl round the edges of the room; Annabel saw him from the corners of her vision, and at once tried not to look, in case anyone should follow her gaze and see what he was trying to do. He was the farthest away from the Dark Lords, and it was just possible — oh, dear God, yes, it was just possible that he could take at least one of them by surprise. Some kind of diversion, thought Annabel wildly; if only he can create a diversion, then perhaps the Wolves can surge forward again and Fergus and Raynor can lead the men back in, and perhaps we shall be victorious after all.
As Taliesin inched carefully across the floor, Jealousy undulated and seemed to dissolve slightly; livid green scales shimmered, and a rope-like coil slid out and knocked him to the ground. An evil throaty chuckle rang round the room.
You see what happens to humans who try to fight us …
The Twelve Lords were moving forward now; they were shifting and coalescing, forming and reforming, almost becoming one terrible entity and then separating again. You could not fight them because they were terrible and invincible, and they were not human. You could not fight creatures like this with human weapons …
Decadence and Perversion moved forward, and reached for Grainne and Annabel, pulling them to the centre of the room; as they did so, Lust swirled forward, the huge penis-shape quivering and throbbing. Annabel gasped and thrust a fist into her mouth, but Grainne stood looking at the rearing form.
“Well, my dears,” said Decadence, in his smooth, weary voice. “Shall we feed you both to our brother? Shall we stretch you over the tip of his phallus? Shall we see him enter you and split you apart?”
The rearing shape of Lust chuckled, and clutching hands reached out from the column of hard, throbbing flesh.
“Take them to the Dark Realm and give them to us for pleasuring,” said Vice, and Avarice said, “We should know how to bend them to our Master’s will,” and chuckled, and Vice’s curving beak snapped with anticipation.
And then, as Annabel and Grainne both felt themselves being pushed closer to the chuckling trunk of flesh, Fael-Inis, who had been standing framed in the huge crystal window, said in what they both afterwards thought of as a voice of fire and light, “Medoc! Look to the skies! Listen to the echoes!
And everyone in the Sun Chamber heard the same thing, and Taliesin and Annabel both felt fear mixed with a sudden hope, because this had happened before, inside the mountain …
On the other side of the Sun Chamber, Fergus turned his head, and recognised the sound also, and dared not believe that this might be their deliverance.
Hoofbeats approaching them through the dark skies …
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse …
Medoc moved at once. He strode forward and stood at the great window, staring into the skies, his head tilted, his eyes dark and intent. Everyone moved back from his passing.
Fael-Inis moved to his side, and Taliesin who was nearest, and who was to wonder afterwards if the pain of his broken arm had made him see things not really there, thought he had never witnessed anything so clear-cut and so remarkable as these two disparate beings: light and darkness; the rebel angel of fire and light and speed, and the dark, cruel, beautiful necromancer. Both of them framed in the immense, intricate crystal window.
And then Fael-Inis said softly, “You called them into being, Medoc. You sent them into the Far Future with your creature, the Conablaiche.”
Medoc did not reply, and for a moment the silence in the Sun Chamber was absolute.
“But you failed to control them,” said Fael-Inis. “And you must know, Medoc, that the ancient immutable law decrees that any creature who summons an entity from outside the world, and then fails to control it, must perforce be at that entity’s mercy. They have been baulked of their prey,” said Fael-Inis gently and rather pityingly, “and so they are coming to the one who summoned them to take their revenge.”
He turned to Fergus, who was listening very intently. “Captain, you went into the Far Future t
o chain the Apocalypse and bring it back to destroy Medoc,” said Fael-Inis, and those closest to him saw that his eyes were shining. “You thought you had failed.
“You did not fail, Fergus. By breaking out of the Prison of Hostages, by leading out the slaughtered children who were Crom Croich’s victims in the last century, you forced open a chink between this world and that of the Future. You created a bridge, a nexus, a tear in the fabric of Time, Fergus. It is through that chink that the Four Horsemen are now coming.
“And they are very close now … they are nearly upon us …”
Fergus could not speak. He stood listening, his eyes never leaving Fael-Inis’s beautiful grave face.
Fael-Inis turned to hold out his hands to Annabel and Taliesin, and Annabel, who had been hoping that she could pass unnoticed in this rather awesome company, found herself walking forward, and found her hand taken by Fael-Inis, and thought it was rather like taking the hand of something molten and white-hot, but something that would never burn you.
Fael-Inis said, “In the Mountain Halls of the Drakon — the Far Future’s ruler — you escaped the Four Horsemen. You thought you had left them behind. You certainly thought they had been destroyed there.
“They were not destroyed, because they are indestructible. They are timeless and ageless and they will eternally stalk the world, seeking those evil ones who will try to use them. The Four Horsemen — who you also know as the Four Heralds — followed you back. They are riding through the night now, and they are riding through the skies, and if you listen closely, you will hear that they are almost upon us.”
Hoofbeats; pounding, galloping hoofbeats, drawing nearer and nearer, growing louder and louder …
Fael-Inis had released Annabel’s hand, and moved back into the frame of the crystal window again. As he did so, it seemed to the watchers that light began to stream from him; it poured from his fingertips and his head was becoming suffused with an aureole of light. The Sun Chamber began to glow and pulsate with beauty and brilliance and strength, and both Grainne and Fergus gasped, and Grainne felt tears sting her eyes, because they were seeing the Sun Chamber being reborn to all its former beauty. Raynor, who had dreamed of but never thought to see this, stood very still and felt the pure delight of the moment soak into his skin.
Thy former light restore …
And then the Sun Chamber was plunged into whirling confusion, and Annabel felt Taliesin pull her aside and there was a great howling wind somewhere, and although her eyes were tight shut, there were great exploding lights everywhere, and there was the almost deafening pounding of the hoofbeats, and the Horsemen were in the Sun Chamber with them.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse … the ancient messengers, the Heralds that precede the coming of the Beast.
Annabel opened her eyes and saw, for a never-to-be-forgotten instant, the great rearing figures of the Horsemen, etched in fire and bathed in blood-red light, awesome and fearsome and as old as Time. She saw them sweep Medoc up, and then she saw the monstrous shape of Crom Croich thrown into the air by one of the glinting hoofs, and fall across the leading Rider’s saddle. There was a howl of protest and fear from the Dark Lords, and a screech of fury from Damnaithe as she disappeared.
And then the Horsemen were streaming out of the Chamber, into the skies trailing chaos in their wake, into the strange other-world they had been summoned from, and the Dark Lords were dissolving, and Medoc and Crom Croich were gone, and there was a crackle of light across the eastern sky.
Silence, deep and enveloping, fell upon the Bright Palace.
*
Fergus opened his eyes and saw the pale, clear shafts of light spilling in through the crystal window of the Sun Chamber.
“Dawn,” said Grainne softly. “The first light.” She looked directly at Fergus and smiled, and for the first time since his return, Fergus looked at her properly, and felt delight and tranquillity.
The eye of the storm and the heart of the tempest. I think it is going to be all right, thought Fergus. My dear lost love, I think it is going to be all right. I shall meet you and love you and there will be no pain, except perhaps …
Except perhaps for the son I never gave you. Ireland’s heir.
Fergus turned his head, and saw Erin.
CHAPTER THIRTY
No one who had any pretensions to being anyone — which is to say just about everyone — would have dreamed of missing the Ceremony that followed almost immediately on the vanquishing of Medoc and the Dark Lords.
“The Ritual of the Fál,” said Dorrainge. “The embracing of the Stone of Fál by the destined Ruler. I suppose Her Majesty knows best,” he said disapprovingly. “But if she had asked my advice, I should have said, Leave well alone, ma’am. I never did like the Ritual of the Fál,” said Dorrainge, and would not listen to the people who asked why not.
“It’s because you never know if the Stone is going to answer,” said Cathbad, “and of course if that happens, you might be left with no King or Queen at all. It’s quite difficult,” said Cathbad, worried, and Dorrainge, listening furtively to this, began to wonder whether Cathbad was, after all, quite Druidical material, because Druids ought not to gossip.
Most people were rather intrigued and certainly interested in the Ritual, which had not been performed — “Dear me, since Cormac’s day,” said Fintan. “We shall find it very interesting.”
“The Druids won’t,” said Cermait Honeymouth.
“The Druids don’t approve of anything they haven’t thought up for themselves,” said Fintan.
In fact, the Druids were being very cagey about giving their support to the reviving of the Ritual. “Waiting to see which way the cat jumps,” said Fintan vulgarly, and was told to be quiet and pay attention to the ceremony.
“The Druids are more concerned with seeing that Fribble doesn’t have too much to drink and disgrace everybody,” said Cermait.
Fribble had come back for the Ceremony of the Fál. He had travelled from Calatin’s house in Calatin’s cart, which he had borrowed, and he had donned his best robes, and had accompanied them all to the Plain of the Fál, paying no attention at all to Dorrainge, who said it was all quite absurd and Fribble ought to have known better.
“At his age,” said Dorrainge, rather unwisely, so that several people frowned and told each other that they had never liked Dorrainge, and that in any case, Dorrainge himself was no spring chicken.
Fribble was very interested in the Ceremony of the Fál.
“I’m very interested indeed,” he said. “I’ve come back especially to see it. I’ve had a very nice time with Calatin; I’ve learnt a lot of things I didn’t know. But if I hadn’t come back, the fat fool would have had himself elected as Chief Druid, which would never do. I hear Fergus returned from the Future; well, I thought he would. He’ll have a good tale to tell, I shouldn’t wonder. And that Tyrian. Is he here? I wouldn’t mind seeing him again. He always brings his own wine, you know. You don’t mind entertaining somebody who does that, do you?”
“Sir,” said Taliesin, at Fribble’s side, “allow me to offer you a measure,” and Fribble turned round and beamed and said, “Well, just a drain to keep out the cold.”
“It is fire and warmth and the very breath of life,” agreed Taliesin blandly.
“Here’s to it,” said Fribble, causing Dorrainge to suck his teeth and remark that he had always said that no good came of consorting with sorcerers, and Fribble had acquired some very indelicate expressions.
“No, I didn’t,” said Fribble, who could usually be trusted to hear what people did not intend him to hear. “I’m what you call one of Nature’s gentlemen. I know how to behave and I’ve got very good table manners. Speaking of which, I expect we’ll all be having a banquet later, will we? You need a banquet after this sort of thing.
“Whose idea was it to hold the Ritual at the Purple Hour, I wonder? Of course, you need all the magic you can get, and the Purple Hour was always believed to be the strongest time for th
at. I don’t know that I believe it. But we’ll need a banquet afterwards, although it’ll be midnight, if it won’t be breakfast-time, by the time we get back to Tara. They tell me Cathbad’s roasting a few boar. I thought he would. I daresay it’s highly suitable when you think about it.
“Bless my soul, there’s Rudraige the Tusk. I’d better go across and have a word. A very bad business that about young Tybion. Don’t go away. I shall want to hear about the Future, you know.” He beamed at Annabel. “Very interesting,” he said. “I didn’t know they had people in the Future. Tell the Tyrian to bring you to see me. Don’t forget.”
“I should like that,” said Annabel, who would.
“Bring some wine when you come,” said Fribble, and set off across the Plain to where Rudraige was assembling a small party of Tusks who had come to see the Ceremony and pay homage to the Queen. He wanted to be sure not to offend Rudraige, who was Head Tusk and reputed to be rather wealthy.
Fintan was explaining to anyone who would listen (and several people who did not want to listen but could not get away) the exact nature of the Ritual.
“And they do say,” he said solemnly, “that when the Stone is embraced by the destined King of Ireland, it shrieks aloud.” He nodded as if agreeing with himself, and then glanced furtively over his shoulder, and drew a little nearer, with an air of the utmost secrecy, so that his listeners, hoping he was about to impart some interesting — and with any luck, shocking — nugget of information, did the same, and Cathbad, who had not been one of the company, but who had scented gossip, tip-toed on the outside of the circle, and tripped into a rabbit hole and went headlong in the dust.