by Sarah Rayne
He moved until he was standing in the deep shadow cast by the legendary Silver Scales. He looked up at them and saw that although they had appeared to be man-sized, in fact they were much larger. Floy was fairly tall, but his head was barely level with the silver dishes. Standing beneath the immense and awesome Scales, he felt the waves of power and the insidious evil which had soaked into them during the years they had been in the Cruachan Caves. He felt the evil reach out and down to snake itself about his mind.
Come up to us, Human morsel, for we shall weigh you against your sins and we shall pronounce judgement accordingly …
There was a ripple of evil mirth then. And our punishments are such that you will wish you had never transgressed your puny laws. Human, and they are such that you will know yourself accursed and damned for this life and for all your lives to come …
I can’t hear you, said Floy silently. I can’t hear you and I’m not afraid of you.
Come up to us, Human, climb the silver spine of the Scales, and feel the cold embrace of Justice …
I’m not listening, said Floy. You are simply cold, dead metal, and I’m not listening.
The left-hand dish was still weighed down with the gross and terrible Enchantment of Eternal Disease, its underside almost brushing the ground. Could he do it? Could he reach out and take the loathsome, wriggling sack of disease and filth and squirming matter in his hands? But I have to do it, he thought. I truly believe that it is the only way to defeat the Robemaker and I have to do it.
The writhing sliminess was still churning and seething in the pan; the Draoicht Tinneas Siorai thought Floy, staring, trying to harden his mind. But it is still all encased in the sacklike covering, it is unable properly to get out, he thought.
Are you so sure of that, Human creature … ?
Yes! said Floy, silently. I do not believe that I am in any danger, and even if I am — he glanced to the menacing shape of the Robemaker — even if I am in danger, he thought, I believe there is more danger from that creature and his servants.
He reached up to the deep silver dish and, as he did so, tiny webbed clutching hands reached for him and bulging lidless eyes swivelled to stare at him. There was a wet sucking sound, as if fleshless, lipless mouths were already savouring him. Here is sweet clean flesh for us to devour … here is untainted skin and firm muscle and strong white bone for us to burrow into and scourge and defile and poison …
Dreadful. Don’t think about it. Think that it is this that the Robemaker fears, that it is this which will surely overpower him.
Floy reached up to the left-hand dish, with the foaming amorphous things, and grasped the membraneous sack with his left hand and the grinning phosphorescent skull with the other.
There was a moment, terrible, sick-making, when the sack slithered and shifted beneath his grip, and when the misshapen hands seemed as if they would tear open the transparent outer covering, and Floy thought it would burst apart and spew its contents over his hands. And then the moment passed and the sack was quiescent and, although there was a horrid, cold, greasy feel to it, its contents did not move again. Moving carefully, Floy started to half carry, half drag the sack which held the grisly Enchantment of Eternal Disease across to where the Robemaker had already turned his back on them.
Nuadu and Fenella and Flame were standing motionless, watching. Behind them, the light of the sidh had dimmed, as if the sidh also were waiting. But Floy dared spare no energy for anything else. Every shred of concentration he possessed was focused on taking the bulging, disease-filled membrane to where the Robemaker was waiting to go through the Doorway into the Dark Domain beyond.
And then he was there, standing before the Doorway, and so strong was the evil emanating from beyond it, that he felt it engulf him in a thick, smothering mass, which for a moment made him fight for breath. The crimson glow fell across him, so that when he held out his hands, they were bathed in the hideous colour and the Draoicht Tinneas Siorai was instantly turned to blood-red.
Now! thought Floy. Now is the moment. When he is waiting for the Doorway to stand fully open, and when he is no longer aware of what is happening here.
‘Robemaker!’ cried Floy with all his strength. ‘Robemaker! Turn about and face the one thing you fear!’
For the space of a heartbeat he thought the Robemaker was not going to heed him. Am I too late? he thought. Has he already passed through the Doorway and is he beyond our reach? But he stayed where he was, still gripping the terrible Enchantment in both hands, his eyes never leaving the grim, black-cloaked shape of the Robemaker and at last, through what seemed like an ocean of time, the Robemaker turned slowly and looked straight at Floy and at the slithering, now-frantic, membrane.
Even on the outer edges of the watchers, the bolt of fear that went through the Robemaker was felt. Floy, who was directly in front of the necromancer, saw him flinch and put up a hand to shield himself. Confidence welled up within Floy, because he had been right, this was the only way to defeat this creature.
Deliberately, carefully, judging his distance, Floy flung the sack into the Robemaker’s face.
A terrible cry rent the air and the Robemaker fell back, the dark hood slipping back so that his eaten-away face was revealed. The gaping eye sockets stared balefully and the white, crumbling bone was mercilessly exposed.
The bulging, dripping sack burst open, and the dread Draoicht Tinneas Siorai crawled forward. Everyone saw, in the angry light pouring from the Dark Realm, the living, breathing, corporeal diseases and illnesses and infections and poisons and plagues pour forward and smother the cowering figure of the Robemaker.
Flame was trying hard to remember the Robemaker had been evil beyond words; he had chained slaves and forced them to the treadmills; he had bargained to have Flame in his bed for a night. But she found herself flinching and putting up her hands to her face and had to tell herself, very sternly indeed, that she was not going to faint, and she was not going to be sick.
Fenella, standing at her side, was very white; she thought that perhaps, after all, the Silver Scales had meted out justice, for what could be more just, more precisely in accordance with any law, than to see the Robemaker at last defeated by the enchantment that he had rendered others soul-less to cheat? But, like Flame, she felt her own skin crawling with the horror and the pity of it.
The Robemaker was screaming now, dreadful gasping screams, nearly but not quite still-born out of lungs which were barely able to inflate any longer. As they watched, a swarm of bloated white maggot-creatures poured from the sack and descended on his face and Fenella, who was nearer than Flame, saw them burrow in through his eye sockets and knew they must be boring straight into his brain. With them came the snails’ trail of leaking, oozing pus and matter. Decay and filth, thought Fenella, and, as the thought framed, she smelt the sweetish bad-fish stench of decaying flesh.
Floy had not moved. He had stood resolutely before the dying Robemaker, watching as the crawling, squirming, disease-ridden creatures of the Draoicht Tinneas Siorai overcame the necromancer. When, at last, the creature was still and silent and the creatures of the enchantment lay supine and bloated and satiated, he turned to Nuadu, his face pale, but his eyes steady.
Nuadu said, ‘Well, Floy? The battle is not yet done. Shall we ride into the Dark Ireland and slay the Master?’
Chapter Forty-seven
As Nuadu’s words died away, Fael-Inis, the salamanders at his side, moved forward out of the shadows and Flame looked up in delight. He touched the salamanders’ glossy flanks, and at once the four who had taken Floy and Fenella and the brothers across the River of Souls came to stand before Nuadu, their heads bowed.
‘We are yours to ride into the Dark Domain, Sire,’ said the first one.
‘If you will take us,’ said another, and Nuadu reached his hands out and placed them on the salamanders’ gleaming necks. He did not speak, but the others could see the delight and the acceptance in his eyes.
But he only said, ‘We
should be honoured,’ and the salamanders tossed their manes and kneeled, bowing their wise, sleek heads, so that it was easy to slide on to their backs. Lovely! thought Fenella in delight, and remembered how they had ridden through the tunnels of Fael-Inis’s Palace of Wildfire.
Nuadu looked across at her and sent the warm, sudden smile. ‘Ready, Lady?’ he said, and Fenella said, ‘Ready,’ and this time did not even stop to question anything. Of course they must go back into the Dark Realm, and of course they must seek out CuRoi and destroy him.
Snodgrass watched them, seeing them mount the gleaming sleek creatures, which were not like Snodgrass’s idea of salamanders, and probably not like anyone else’s either.
‘But I’ll stay with Fael-Inis,’ he said. ‘That’s if that’s acceptable, is it?’
‘Assuredly,’ said Fael-Inis, from his silent position on the edge of the light.
‘It’s a young man’s battle, this,’ said Snodgrass. ‘Well, and a young lady’s, too, of course. As if Fenella isn’t quite capable of giving a good account of herself, and Flame as well, I shouldn’t be surprised.
‘But I’d slow them down, you see,’ he said, eyeing Fael-Inis. ‘And if they’re to deal with these matters properly, then the last thing they want is to be slowed down.’
Fael-Inis said, ‘My hospitality is at your disposal, sir. Perhaps we may discuss a little of your world?’ and Snodgrass, who found Fael-Inis alarming but intensely interesting, at once said he would be very pleased indeed to accept such a cordial invitation.
‘We’ll be watching for your return,’ he said to Floy.
‘And our thoughts will be with you and about you,’ said Fael-Inis and, as Fenella said afterwards, it had sounded like some kind of ritual.
‘Rather comforting.’
‘Oh, yes.’
The four of them went through the immense Gateway in a single sweeping movement. There was time to realise that they were passing through what felt like thin, glinting light and time for Nuadu and Fenella to think: we are back in the Dark Realm again! And then they were streaming into the darkness and the salamanders were cutting a swathe of golden light through the Dark Ireland. The great Doorway opened up in the sky by the Robemaker was behind them and ahead of them was the glittering, sinisterly beautiful Castle of Illusions. And we have to enter it again, thought Fenella, remembering the dark radiance and the malevolent iridescence. We have to enter and we have to kill CuRoi.
The Dark Ireland was not nearly as dark as Fenella and Nuadu remembered. The skies were still black and low, so that you felt that you could reach up and touch them, but the strange distortion, the off-balance, out-of-kilter feeling was no longer so strong. To begin with, Fenella thought it was just that there were four of them and that it felt safer, or perhaps that it was the light from the salamanders. The sidh had melted away into their own strange world beneath the sea as soon as the Robemaker and the Frost Giantess had been slain and Reflection had vanished, but, once or twice, Fenella thought she glimpsed a smudge of blue-green against the skies.
But when Nuadu, riding the leading salamander hard across the ground, looked across and said, ‘Do you see how the Darkness is already dying, Lady?’ Fenella thought: of course it is dying! How could I have believed otherwise! And knew that it was nothing to do with there being four of them and nothing to do with the salamanders’ gentle radiance or the hovering sidh light. In some incomprehensible manner, the evil and the darkness and the terrible clotted malignancy of the necromancers’ Realm was weakening. Because the Robemaker was dead? Because something of Fael-Inis’s radiance clung to the salamanders? Perhaps.
They rode hard past the black swamplands and the black boiling lakes and on to the fearsome Fields of Blood, where Aed had endured the agonies of his bondage to CuRoi, the salamanders pouring through the necromancers’ realm in golden swathes of light, their manes streaming out against the darkness.
The sky was streaked with livid crimson and fingers of blood-red and, although there was a faint sound of beating wings and although they had the feeling several times that something dark and sinuous and boneless slithered across their path, there were no signs of the ravaged-faced Harpies or the prancing dungeon-creatures. Nothing came swooping down on them and nothing came scuttling across their path to bar their way.
The mountains reared ahead of them, stark black shapes, bathed in the evil of centuries, soaked in the terrible darkness of the fearsome Lords who dwelled within their depths. Fenella drew in a deep breath and glanced at the others, seeing that Floy was alert and intent and that Flame was at his side, riding hard, her hair streaming out as wildly as the salamanders’.
Fael-Inis’s daughter, riding the fiery salamanders through the Dark Ireland, sprinkling her father’s light …
And then there was no time to think about anything other than what they must do, because CuRoi’s immense Castle was in front of them, and spears of light were shooting outwards from it, as if CuRoi was already weaving the enchantment which would seal the Castle. The landscape was bathed in eerie light and Floy, looking up, caught sight of swooping, birdlike shapes above them.
‘The sun is setting,’ said Nuadu, suddenly. ‘Quickly, now, or the Castle will start to rotate and it will be sealed against us!’ He urged the salamanders on, but the salamanders needed no urging; they were pouring across the dark countryside, sparks flying from their hoofs, their eyes on the Castle of Illusions.
‘Can we force an entry?’ cried Floy and Nuadu half turned to look at him.
‘We forced an exit,’ said Nuadu, his eyes on the Castle. ‘And we have the fire and the light of Fael-Inis’s creatures. We have you, Flame,’ he said, suddenly fixing her with his brilliant stare, and Flame started, because it was disconcerting to be looked at like this and it was disconcerting to be suddenly marked out.
The chanting of CuRoi’s creatures was on the air all about them now; it ebbed and flowed on the darkness in a steady rhythmic pattern and, as it did so, Fenella felt the horrid distortion begin to creep back.
Flame, who knew a little more of the Dark Ireland than the others, and who had absorbed a smattering of sorcery in the Fire Court, recognised at once that this was the Chaunt of the Summoning, and that it meant that CuRoi was calling up every dark servant who dwelled here. Every creature of this terrible land would be flocking to the aid of the one they called the Master.
‘He is calling up his armies!’ she cried. ‘Floy! Nuadu! At any minute they will appear.’
Nuadu spurred the salamanders on and, as he did so, the great Castle began to rotate slowly and the chanting swelled to a massive crescendo all about them, sending their senses dizzy and reeling, so that they were in a vast chamber of rushing, chanting sound.
The voices grew to a tremendous tumult of sound and, as they did so, the four travellers saw the portcullis grow misty and faint. Dark heavy cloud swirled in, wreathing the great gates, and from deep within the Castle they heard the gloating chuckling of CuRoi.
Nuadu, who was a little ahead, shouted, ‘The sealing! Quickly, or we shall be shut out! Onwards!’
‘We can reach it!’ shouted Floy, his eyes brilliant. ‘Nuadu, if we use every ounce of speed, we can reach it before it seals!’
‘Yes! But there is no time to lose!’
And then a dark wall of seething, grinning creatures reared up in their path: the Harpies with their wicked talons and their ravaged-women faces, beating the air with their powerful wings; the red-eyed dungeon-creatures, long-fingered and bony, prancing and leaping, whirling in a mad evil dance.
CuRoi’s terrible servants, obeying their Master’s summons, banding together to drive out the Wolf-prince …
There were other creatures in the boiling sea of evil beings, as well; fearsome, nightmare things.
Hydra-headed snake-creatures and grinning gargoyle-beings; thin grey Human-like shapes with sunken eyes and reaching claws …
Hags and ghouls and viragos and Furies …
Humans to catch and Huma
ns to eat;
Bones to grind and flesh to strip.
‘On!’ cried Nuadu. ‘Straight through them!’ But the denizens of CuRoi were increasing with every minute; there were dozens of them, there were hundreds, thousands; the air was black with their filthy exudence and foul with their stench. Beyond them, the four friends could just make out the silhouette of the Castle of Illusions, rotating slowly still, its drawbridge still lowered, the portcullis still high. There was still time to get inside. If they could somehow rout these creatures, there was still time …
The chanting surged all about their ears and there was a note of triumph in it now.
See how powerful is the Master! See how easily he is able to defeat you!
There was a moment of the blackest, most vicious bitterness Nuadu had ever known. To come this far; to defeat the Frost Giantess and Reflection; to vanquish the Soul Eaters and see the Robemaker destroyed, and then to meet defeat like this. Nuadu stared at the Castle and thought: we were within minutes, we were within seconds of reaching the gateway. We could still reach it even now, before it seals, if we could but fling aside these dark servants of CuRoi.
He saw Floy brace his muscles as if for battle, but Floy would know, as they all knew, that they could not possibly overpower so many. Within minutes, the Harpies and the grinning prancing red-eyed devils and the hags and ghouls would be upon them to tear them apart and fling their remains into the Fields of Blood.
And then I shall truly have failed, thought Nuadu. I shall have failed and Ireland will be the poorer for it. CuRoi is stronger than I had bargained for and I have failed.
The others had reined in the salamanders and the salamanders were tossing their manes, pawing the ground and waiting, eyeing the Castle with unease.
I have failed, and CuRoi will spin his enchantments and he will reach out from here and take Ireland, and there is nothing any of us can do …