by Sarah Rayne
As the Trees moved back, silently watching their victim, Balor’s bitten lips emitted a bubbling moan and saliva and blood dribbled out again. There was a choking rattle and his eyes turned upwards, so that only the whites showed, red-veined and protruding slightly.
‘Dead,’ said Floy softly, and then looked at the Trees.
The Oak, who had seemed earlier on to be the leader, said, ‘Yes, Human creature, he is dead. It is no more than he has done to our people.’
‘Yes. I see.’
‘We shall bury him,’ said the Oak, and Floy saw that already the Tree Spirits were scrabbling at the earth, their roots scraping and shovelling, so that, quite soon, a deep trench was opened.
‘Into the earth with the remains,’ said the Oak, turning to watch. ‘Let his rotting carcase mingle with the forest.’
It was rather dreadful to see Balor’s remains flung unceremoniously into the trench, first the mutilated torso and then the arms and legs.
‘Meat for our roots,’ said the Oak, and a rather grim smile touched its features.
‘Yes.’ But Floy was still sickened; he remembered how on Renascia they had tried to follow what they had known of the Earth-people’s death rituals and how they had had the large, austere Firehouse with the ornate bronze lamps which were always kept burning in memory of those who had died. The dead were consumed by cleansing fire at a ceremony which every Renascian was bound to attend and there would usually be a carefully arranged display of the dead person’s life and a small booklet telling about his life and his work, nearly always written by Snizort and Snodgrass in gentle and tactful collaboration with the bereaved family.
‘We shall eat the giant as its people ate our people,’ said the Oak and regarded Floy and Snodgrass steadily. ‘And as its people eat your people,’ it said. ‘That must not be forgotten. It is a fitting punishment, although it may seem harsh to you Humans.’
‘It is not what we have been used to,’ said Floy. ‘But I understand.’
‘The only basis for punishment,’ said the Oak, rather severely, ‘is to fit the punishment exactly to the transgression. It is a practice which has been followed in Ireland, since the High King Erin introduced it. He was strong and wise and believed in exact and precise forms of justice.’
‘I see,’ said Floy, who did not completely see, but who understood the premise.
‘And now,’ said the Oak, ‘you will wish to continue your journey, Human creatures.’ Its wise eyes were kindly and interested. ‘We shall wish you Good Speed and Safe Arrival.’
It sounded like some kind of ritual in the way the Oak said it and the other Trees bowed their heads in acknowledgement.
Floy said, ‘We thank you all,’ and hoped that this had the correct formality.
‘And we shall hope to meet you again,’ said Snodgrass and the Trees suddenly looked pleased and unexpectedly Human. The Silver Birches giggled in a skittish fashion and the Copper Beeches shook out their rippling manes of glowing leaf-hair and regarded the two Renascians through the red-gold curtains.
‘Perhaps you would do well to rest for the night and journey on by daybreak,’ said the Oak. ‘If you will accept the hospitality of the Wolfwood, we shall assure you of safety and warmth.’
‘Well — thank you very much,’ said Floy. ‘But I believe we must go on. It is a question of-of meeting up with our people, you see.’
‘Then,’ said the Oak, bowing its wise solemn head, ‘we shall not detain you.’
There was a murmur of assent and the wise, strange heads were dipped in the gesture of acknowledgement they had used earlier and the Tree Spirits moved away, not quite fading into the gloom of the forest, but somehow becoming one with it.
The moon was high above them as they walked cautiously through the dark forest and the pale, eerie light lay across the woodland path, cold and unfriendly. Over their heads, the trees interlaced their branches so that only tiny patches of the velvet night sky were visible.
‘And the Tree Spirits have retreated,’ said Floy, softly.
‘Yes. Interesting creatures, those Trees,’ said Snodgrass, trotting along beside Floy.
‘We should perhaps have asked the Trees the best path to take,’ said Floy, presently.
‘It’s only that this is such a vast place,’ said Snodgrass, firmly. ‘That’s all it is. Renascia was so small that you hadn’t to plan journeys at all. You could go from one end of Renascia in two days and from side to side in three. We aren’t used to such — such hugeness. The Wolfwood’s immense.’
Floy said, ‘If we could find the path to the Forest Court we could be sure of help.’
‘And food,’ said Snodgrass, rather sepulchrally. ‘We left the food with the horses, in those packs.’
‘Well, we can’t be far from either the road or the Forest Court,’ said Floy. ‘I won’t believe that we’re lost. And look, if we — ’
‘What?’
‘I was going to say if we carve notches on the Trees, at least we shan’t go round in circles,’ said Floy, grinning. ‘I don’t think we’d better do that, however.’
‘Bless my soul, no,’ said Snodgrass, shocked.
‘We could make a — a circle of stones, though,’ said Floy. ‘At the foot of the Trees. That’s more or less what we were going to do for Fenella and Caspar. Yes, look, we’ll do that, and then at least we shan’t go round in circles.’
They walked on, scanning the shadows, leaving markers at the foot of the Trees, trying to gauge their direction by the stars.
‘But the trouble is that we don’t know the pattern of the stars here,’ said Snodgrass, who had sent himself quite dizzy by standing perfectly still and craning his neck as far back as he could in order to see the night sky. ‘We could have done it on Renascia, because we knew where the stars where and what their names were. But here there’s so much of everything. Stars and forests and paths.’
Floy was becoming uneasily aware of the looming bulk of the Trees and of the scurryings and the rustlings and the patterings of unseen creatures all about them. Night was all about them and the Wolfwood was a strange, none-too-safe place. It was very easy to imagine eyes peering from the gloom, or strange beings creeping along the path behind them.
And there is magic abroad here … I wish Nuadu had not said that, he thought.
Snodgrass said, ‘Do you know, I believe the Trees are thinning. Over there.’
‘Where? Oh, there. Yes, I can see,’ said Floy, with a rush of thankfulness. ‘Yes, you’re right.’ And quickened his steps because, of course, they had not been lost at all and, of course, it had been ridiculous to think they had been. They had simply come a little deeper into the forest than they had realised. At any minute they would see the two horses and they would mount them and ride on down the road and all would be well. It might even be rather pleasant to ride through this strange, beautiful world with the silver moonlight. Floy had begun to get the hang of riding after a while. It was a question of balance and of bumping when the horse bumped. And on horseback they would feel so much safer. They would be able to gallop hard away from anything that might spring out at them. It was remarkable how unsafe it had felt walking through the forest like this.
They made their way through the thinning trees, the moonlight touching the grass with silver, seeing the shadows changing as they neared the forest’s edge, becoming thinner, less mysterious, more like ordinary shadows that lay across ordinary roads at night.
Ordinary roads …
The road ahead of them was narrow and winding, silvery and black in the moonlight. The forest sprawled behind them and ahead of them and, beyond the Trees, they could see the remote, beautiful outlines of mountains.
‘Mountains,’ said Snodgrass, frowning. ‘But there weren’t any mountains when we came along the road earlier.’
‘There wasn’t forest on both sides of the road either,’ said Floy.
‘Then — it’s a different road.’
‘It must be,’ said Floy, staring abo
ut him. ‘I’ve no idea where we are.’
They unrolled the map which had been tucked in Snodgrass’s cloak and spread it out carefully on the ground. It was important to find out exactly where they were, so that they could get back to where they wanted to be. It was even more important to do this quickly, because they had no food and they had lost the horses. Wherever they went, they would have to go on foot, which might take a long time.
‘I think we’re here,’ said Floy, after a moment, indicating a spot on the map. ‘D’you see the mountains and the Wolfwood? And this must be the road.’ He pointed, and Snodgrass nodded. ‘We’ve simply walked across the Wolfwood and come out where another road runs through it,’ said Floy.
‘Well, at least we aren’t lost,’ said Snodgrass, bracingly.
‘No, of course not.’ Floy frowned at the map. ‘We can go back through the Wolfwood and hope that we reach our original road again,’ he said. ‘Although that might take some time, of course.’ He glanced at the sky. Was it already streaked with the first faint grey fingers of dawn? Perhaps not.
‘If we continued down this road here, we’d still reach the Fire Court,’ said Snodgrass, who was quite good at maps and found them interesting. ‘We’d approach it from the south instead of the east, that would be all. But it looks much quicker than re-tracing our steps.’ He glanced uneasily in the direction of the Wolfwood and then said, ‘What about Fenella?’
But Floy had already faced this one. ‘We have almost certainly missed Fenella by now,’ he said. ‘If they set out from Tara at the hour they intended, they will have gone down the forest road hours earlier.’
‘While we were trying to find our way in the Wolfwood,’ said Snodgrass. ‘Perhaps while the Trees were setting about Balor. Dear me, yes.’
‘Fenella will go on to the Fire Court, of course,’ said Floy, who had very nearly managed to convince himself of this. ‘Caspar will be with her and he knows the roads.’ He did not listen too closely to the small, cold voice that had persistently asked how far they could trust Caspar. He thought they could be almost sure about Caspar. I’ll have to believe we can trust him, he thought. And Caspar helped us to escape. It’s important to remember that Caspar helped us to escape. I won’t believe that he was in a plot against us.
He looked back at the map. ‘I think you’re right, Snodgrass,’ he said. ‘This road we’re on looks to be the shorter way now. Let’s continue on it, shall we?’
Snodgrass thought this would be best. ‘We might lose our way in the forest again if we go back into it,’ he said. ‘We might wander about for hours and waste a great deal of time. That’s a mountain road ahead,’ he said, pointing to the map. ‘That means going a little way into the mountains and I don’t see how you could get lost on a mountain road. You’d have mountains on each side of you and there’d only be one way to go.’
Floy was tracing the road on the map. ‘We shall have to be careful there,’ he said, pointing. ‘The other side of that mountain road.’
‘Why? What’s there?’ said Snodgrass, adjusting his spectacles the better to see.
‘Just over the peak of the mountain,’ said Floy. ‘It’s the City of Gruagach. The City of the Giants.’
They looked at it in silence. The giantish city, the immense northern township where the Gruagach Giants had lived and lured Humans to their doom.
‘They’re no longer there, though,’ began Snodgrass. ‘They’re all at Tara,’ and then stopped.
‘No,’ said Floy. ‘The Gruagach are no longer there. But something else is. Something that we must avoid at all costs.’
He looked at Snodgrass. ‘Don’t you remember?’ he said. ‘When the Gruagach came storming down from their city to take Tara, Gruagach was taken by the Geimreadh.’
The Geimreadh … The terrible Human-hungry creature that Fael-Inis had warned them against …
Snodgrass said, ‘But can’t we avoid Gruagach?’
‘No,’ said Floy, and traced the route again on the map. ‘If we are to reach the Fire Court, we must pass close to the City of Gruagach.
‘We shall be inside the territory of the Frost Giantess.’
Chapter Twenty-six
Fenella stood very still and stared at the dark, hunched buildings at the side of the road.
The Workshops of the Robemaker … Dark and imbued with the evil of the necromancer and forbidding beyond anything she had ever seen.
And Nuadu is in there …
She had not expected anything quite so twisted and stunted-looking. A miasma of despair rose from the cluster of black Workshops and Fenella felt it billow out and engulf them in its sick, cold desolation.
‘And there is a sour sad scent on the air,’ said Caspar unexpectedly, his eyes on the Workshops. ‘The scent of despair.’
They were standing on the side of the road, with the forest behind them and the Robemaker’s Workshops directly ahead. It was not quite night, but it was very nearly night. The Purple Hour … Fenella shivered, because surely if there were any creeping darknesses abroad here, they would be abroad now, with the twilight stealing through the Wolfwood behind them …
But it was important not to think about things like shadows and creeping, unseen things. It would be better to concentrate on finding a way into the Workshops and getting to Nuadu and bringing him out. And I suppose, thought Fenella, with a sidelong glance at her companion, that I shall have to find a suitable way, an acceptable way, of explaining about Nuadu to Caspar.
In the uncertain light, they could see the dull glow that emanated from the Workshops and they could hear the steady thrumming of the Looms.
‘They never cease,’ said Caspar at her side. ‘They must never cease, otherwise the Power they draw down will be broken.’ He frowned. ‘All sorcerers know that,’ he said, ‘but only the Black Sorcerers use Humans to turn the treadmills.’
‘How else can they be turned?’ asked Fenella, partly from interest, but partly because it would be a good idea to know as much as possible about the Workshops.
‘They use water quite often,’ said Caspar. ‘Like mills.’ And looked at her questioningly. But Fenella knew about mills and mill wheels.
‘Or they use minor sorceries,’ said Caspar. ‘The best sorcerers do that. They create another source of power, a secondary source, to turn the Looms.’ And Fenella remembered the thin, frayed legend of how the Earth-people, at one time in their history, had created a race of machines and how they had then created machines to run the machines and how it had all got out of hand. So, after all, there was nothing so very new in the world …
‘Will the Robemaker be in there, do you suppose?’ Fenella was trying to decide how to explain to Caspar about the captured Nuadu. ‘Or might he be out looking for other slaves to turn the Looms?’ Nuadu had said that the Robemaker and CuRoi took sacrifices from the ordinary people of Ireland; strong young sons to work at the Looms, although presumably they would not actually do this work themselves. Had they servants to do it? Or was it done by necromancy?
‘They say that, for some of the time, the Robemaker dwells in the heart of the Dark Realm,’ said Caspar and glanced over his shoulder uneasily. ‘But he might as easily be here. We can’t be sure. That’s why we’d better move on without any delay.’
But Fenella, who had twice now seen the terrible hooded and cloaked shape creep up on her, thought that the Robemaker was not here. There had been a heaviness in the air on the Robemaker’s approach those other times; a cold, greasy feel, as if thick, oily fog had swirled out into the clean air.
‘I’m going to look inside,’ she said at length, and Caspar turned to stare at her.
‘You can stay here or go on without me,’ said Fenella, returning the stare very straightly. ‘I don’t much mind, although I’d prefer you stay. But whatever you do, I’m going to look inside.’
Caspar, genuinely appalled, said, ‘But don’t you know that it’s almost the most dangerous place in the whole of Ireland?’ And looked at her and said, ‘You
don’t know, do you? But it truly is, Fenella. If the Robemaker is there, or even if one of his horrid spells — what they call Sentry Spells — is lurking, we’d be taken up and captured before you could say Gruagach. I’d be put to work on the Looms and you’d be — Well,’ said Caspar, who, despite his work for the Court and later the Gruagach, had retained a vestige of delicacy, ‘well, I’d rather not say what might happen to you. Let’s go on to the Fire Court. We can’t be so very far from it now.’
Fenella was trying to be very patient, because it was not in the least unreasonable of Caspar to want to go on and leave the Dark Workshops as far behind them as possible. She weighed the advantages of telling him about Nuadu and the terrible crimson mask against the matter of his allegiance. Was there a middle course she could take? Something to account for her needing to get into the Workshops, but something that did not give away the Beastline people’s plans to attack Tara? Yes, of course there was.
‘Caspar,’ said Fenella, looking at him very intently. ‘We didn’t tell you the entire truth, Floy and I.’
‘Didn’t you?’ said Caspar, suspiciously.
‘When we arrived here,’ said Fenella, and spared a thought for the absurdity of these words, because the manner of their arriving had been something so remarkable as to defy explanation or description. ‘When we arrived here,’ she said, firmly, ‘we lost one of our — our party.’
‘Well?’ said Caspar.
‘He-the Robemaker took him,’ said Fenella. ‘And we vowed to try to rescue him.’ She looked back at the huddle of low-roofed buildings. ‘He’s in there,’ she said, and something so sad and so wistful entered her voice that Caspar, who was by no means insensitive, looked at her more intently.
‘We must get him out,’ said Fenella, abandoning all pretence. ‘Please, won’t you help me?’
Caspar hesitated. As well as not being insensitive, he was by no means impervious to the sudden plea for help from a young and attractive lady. He had never met anyone quite like Fenella and he found her rather intriguing. He supposed he was more or less honour bound to help her. But his eyes went back to the Workshops and he frowned and sought for the right thing to say.