by Sarah Rayne
From the ground it was impossible to see the Tower’s zenith, and Andrew wondered, a trifle cynically, if this had added to its dark legend. It seemed to lean away from you, so that the closer you got it, the harder it was to see where it ended and where it began. He thought its very construction would have made it a place that would easily become the core of legends and myths and creeping folklores.
Dry stale air gusted outwards from the entrance, as if an ancient, long-sealed tomb had been forced open, and dribbling blackness spilled across the cobblestones at their feet.
Theo stood very still and looked at it because, although she had known what to expect, it was still disconcerting to see the dark and sinister Tur Baibeil, once the lair of the Fomoire, unsealed after centuries of disuse.
*
It was like stepping into a black, fetid tunnel. As their eyes adjusted, they saw that just inside the portcullis was a small, round room, with two tiny, slit-like windows high up. Thin moonlight seeped in, silvering the walls, showing the yawning well of the Sable Stairway, the remarkable structure of ebony and jet that Nechtan had believed reached down into the bowels of the earth until it came out in the heart of the Dark Realm itself.
‘That is surely where your people are,’ said Andrew, indicating the Stair. ‘That is where they would go.’
‘Yes. Down to the Well of Segais.’ Theo was staring at the stairwell. ‘It will be a very long way down,’ she said, softly.
It was smaller inside than they had expected, and it was dark and musty. Andrew held the branched candlestick up and fantastical cavorting shadows leapt, making Theodora shiver. Above their heads was a black infinity, stretching up and up.
They moved towards the Stair, hand in hand, the candles burning with a thin, dry, blue flame. The footprints of the Amaranths lay in the dust at their feet, ordinary prints of boots and shoes, and Rumour’s extravagant high-heeled slippers.
Theo had explained about not interrupting the Succession Ritual if it had begun. They would have to stand on the edges and be mouse-quiet until it was over. Andrew had nodded seriously and had said he understood about rituals and about how you had to treat them with respect. It was a question of politeness towards whoever you addressed the ritual to. His own people called it ‘praying’, he said, and not one of them would have dreamed of breaking in on somebody who was praying. It would be like interrupting a private conversation.
The steps of the ancient black Stairway curved steeply and sharply, and the flickering candles threw shadows on to the walls, weird and leaping and grotesque. Andrew felt a cold prickle of fear against his spine, because just for an instant it had seemed as if the shadows were not the shadows of himself and Theodora, but of something else … Something that had long, fibrousy arms and huge-knuckled hands and that was creeping stealthily after them; something that was dark and ugly and that wore a fearsome carapace that hid its true self … The light flickered again, and Andrew caught the fleeting shape of a creature crouching on the stair above them, huddled into the shadows. There was the brief impression of a snouted face with pale staring eyes that glittered cunningly and malevolently … Theodora’s Gristlen? Had she seen it? Did I see it? But Theodora was going on down the Stair, treading carefully, one hand touching the wall for balance, and her small face was intent on the perilous descent. Perhaps it was only a shadow, thought Andrew, following her.
*
The Cavern of the Segais Well was smaller and darker than the Amaranths had expected.
They had descended warily, chanting the Cantor of Starlight as they went, Rumour leading them, her voice husky and rather like a young boy’s. The younger sorcerers, led by Echbel, had started the secondary chant, the Descant of Sunrise, and the patterns had mingled and blended, driving back the dark shadows.
Rumour, accustomed to her own small, beautiful Castle, found the Cavern almost unbearably dank and oppressive. The roof was low and crusted with mould, and in the comers were pale, blind growths, fungal things that had sprung up in the dank, cold atmosphere. There was the suffocating feeling of the great dark Tower above their heads, and from somewhere beneath them was the sound of water dripping against stone. Rumour remembered that the entrance to the underwater City of the sidh was believed to be beyond the Segais Well.
As they stood at the foot of the Sable Stair, Rumour looked at the others, waiting for someone to make the first move, and then with a shrug, stepped forward, lifting her hands above her head, the palms upwards. At once she was engulfed in light, cascading rainbow colours, pouring harlequin brilliance that sent shards of iridescence into the shadows, and then solidified into a swirling, silken cloak that fell about her ankles with a sensual whisper.
‘Eye-catching,’ said Great-aunt Fuamnach, tartly. ‘How like Rumour to produce something so exaggerated.’
But Bodb Decht said it was actually rather a useful thing for Rumour to have done, and Great-aunt Fuamnach snorted because it was as she had always said: Rumour had no sense of occasion and the Rainbow Cloak was simply a piece of exhibitionism.
Laigne said, rather haltingly, ‘It’s very dark down here …’ And then in a different, sharper tone, ‘Echbel, your heavier cloak would have been —’
‘It’s musty as well as dark,’ said Cerball hastily. ‘But we’ll wedge the torches into the wall-brackets for extra light.’
Great-aunt Fuamnach dug her hazel walking stick into the ground and was looking around disapprovingly. ‘It’s damp and neglected,’ she said, frowning. ‘My word, Cerball, this is not at all what I expected.’
‘It’s perfectly ruinous on silk slippers,’ said Rumour. ‘My dears, if I had suspected it would be as damp as this, I would have worn fur. Next to my skin,’ she added with a suggestive purr, and was glared at.
She barely noticed the glares; she had spoken more or less automatically, simply because they would be expecting her to be vain and flippant. She looked back at the Stair. Was that a shadow, crouching just around the curve? She murmured an incantation of light and the Rainbow Cloak glowed a little more strongly.
The Well was at the centre of the Cavern, embedded deeply into the floor, a gaping black abyss. There was a narrow brick parapet, crumbling with age in places, and from the depths came a faint mustiness. It was much smaller than they had expected, barely eight feet across, and the brick parapet was stained and blackened. Rumour saw that there was an iron ladder clamped to the inside of the Well, rusting and ancient, but looking sound enough. So it would be possible to climb down inside it, would it? Could I do that? thought Rumour. If I had to, could I set foot to that rusting ladder, and go down and down into the darkness? Did the Well truly lead to the hinterlands of fabled Tiarna, the magical under-sea realm of the sidh, or was that only another of the jumbled myths about this place? She leaned forward, and just for a moment there was not the tomblike stench and the impenetrable darkness, but something that ruffled the air with sweetness … On the rim of vision, she caught a flash of vivid turquoise at the darkness’s heart: the glint of iridescent wings, the sinuous bodies of eerie sea creatures with not the smallest drop of Human blood in them … She shook her head impatiently to clear the images, and as she did so, Cerball wedged the last of the torches into the ancient brackets. Light flared up, casting the Well into sharp relief, and Rumour turned back sharply.
‘Everyone. Look.’ She held out a pointing finger.
‘What is it?’ said several voices anxiously.
In the ancient dust surrounding the Well were tiny footprints, dozens upon dozens of them, light and swift and darting, as if the owners had traced circles inside circles inside circles … As if they had not walked but leapt and cavorted. Exactly as if creatures had come swarming up out of the Well’s black depths into the Tower. Exactly as if they had been dancing as they came.
In the same moment, they caught the whisper of sound from the Well and the breath of a chuckle. And then, fainter than the faintest of winds, as insubstantial as the frozen fingers of trees tapping against a wi
ndow, the sound of voices singing.
‘O, give us skins for dancing in,
Pelts of Human silken skin.
Give us hides with Humanish veils
Fleeces with rinds of pale thin shale.’
The Hunting Song of the Fomoire.
‘It’s an echo,’ said the Mugain, a bit uncertainly. ‘That’s all it is, an echo.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Echbel ought to go back to the Palace —’
‘Oh, there’s nothing to worry about,’ said Cerball, hastily.
‘No, echoes can’t hurt anyone …’
‘And we know that echoes linger for — well, for quite a long time.’
Rumour said impatiently, ‘But all echoes were once attached to something, and it is the something we have to be wary of.’ She moved around the Well cautiously. ‘Cerball, you had better lose no time in pronouncing the Ritual.’
Laigne opened her mouth to say that Rumour had no right to be ordering people about like this, and Cerball had just begun to unroll the parchment, when the light shifted suddenly and became suffused with crimson.
Pouring upwards from the Well of Segais, there erupted baleful magenta light with, deep in it, dancing, whirling figures.
The Fomoire.
*
They danced as they came, whirling and leaping, the malevolent glow streaming about their bodies like a crimson mantle.
To begin with they were insubstantial; black silhouettes, paper cut-outs limned sharply against the red glow; dancing and prancing, casting weird, fearsome shadows against the crimson-lit Stair. But as they came pouring out of the Well, they seemed to solidify, and the Amaranths felt the terrible evil of the Dark Ireland surging and gushing about them.
Cerball and the Mugain began to form a circle, frantically gesturing to the others to link hands, and the Mugain’s voice was raised in a Banishment Chant, joined, after only seconds, by several others. Rumour held up her hands to summon power, and felt, with the purest horror she had ever known, the power slither out of her grasp.
‘It’s the darkness!’ shouted Bodb Decht, seeing her. ‘The Fomoire are blanketing everything with darkness!’
A noxious, pulsating menace was filling the Cave, and the voices of Cerball and the Mugain with Bodb Decht rose strongly in the Banishment Ritual. Several of the sorcerers were forming spears of light and hurling them at the Stair, and the Cave was becoming filled with sizzling, white-hot shards that pierced the malevolent crimson glow, and then splintered.
The Fomoire were leaping and whirling into the Cavern, and Rumour thought there were not so very many of them: perhaps there were fifty. But they moved so quickly, and they danced so wildly and so frenziedly, that it was impossible to count.
They whirled and spun, and caught one another’s hands and circled and pranced, and their shadows fell across the Tower walls eerily and fantastically. Several of them were astride snarling black creatures that reared and bucked, and tossed gleaming black heads with inward-slanting red eyes.
‘They are riding the NightMare Stallions,’ said the Mugain, in a voice of sudden awe.
The terrible legendary Fomoire, the hungry Dark Spirits who carried Humans off to their dungeons and flayed them alive … the Servants of the necromancers, breaking the bounds of their Realm, riding the NightMare Stallions into the heart of Ireland again …
The Gateway is open again!’ cried the Mugain. ‘Dagda preserve us all, the Gateway is unsealing!’
Then do something!’ shrieked Laigne. ‘Somebody do something!’
But the Fomoire were in the Cave with them, they were spilling into the Cavern, and they were marching round and round the walls, and the Amaranths could see that more were following them, pouring up from the Well, dancing and whirling as they came.
They sang as they danced; eerie, rhythmic chanting that set Rumour’s teeth on edge, and that ran slyly in and out of the Cavern’s crevices.
‘Give me a skin for dancing in;
And a pelt with a trim of silken sin.
Give me a hide with a Humanish veil
And a fleece with a rind of pale thin shale.
Give me a hide to climb inside
A murderer’s cloak or a child-eater’s fleece.
Give me a skin of Humanish thin,
A husk to hide my true self in.’
The crimson glow fell across the cave, and the distorted shadows leapt and danced wildly.
‘Do something!’ screamed Laigne again. ‘Cerball! Mugain! There must be something we can do!’
Rumour strode to the centre of the Cavern, her skirts swishing angrily, and lifted her arms high above her head, the silken sleeves of the Rainbow Cloak sliding back. She pronounced the first lines of the awesome Draiocht Tine, the great Fire Enchantment, and at once the sorcerers fell back, because the Draiocht Tine was a fearsomely powerful Enchantment; it required immense power and supreme confidence, and was believed to reach the Temple of the Dagda himself. Several people glanced with unwilling respect at Rumour.
As the last lines of the Enchantment died away, the air began to sizzle and forked lightning tore across the Cavern and buried itself in the sides of the Tower. Cascades of sparks shot high in the air and several of the NightMare Stallions reared up, flinging their riders to the ground.
Rumour, the Rainbow Cloak swishing about her slender figure, grinned in purest triumph because, despite the danger, and despite the terrible creatures pouring down upon them, it was the most marvellously satisfying thing in the world to pronounce a genuinely powerful spell and see it take substance in front of you.
And for a moment, it seemed as if Rumour’s spell had worked. A shriek of pain and fury went up from the Fomoire; the NightMare Stallions reared and bucked, and their inward-slanting eyes glinted.
‘The Draiocht Tine has never yet failed!’ cried Rumour, turning to regard them with malicious triumph. ‘All you need is confidence, my dears, that is all you need! We are opening the Temple of the Gods! Prepare to meet the Dagda!’
‘But the Fomoire are still coming!’ cried the Mugain, pointing. ‘They are still coming! Rumour, the Ritual, the Ritual! Pronounce it again!’ And even as he spoke, the Fomoire were remounting the NightMare Steeds, and were re-forming. The chill, grisly song filled the Cavern once more.
‘Give me a skin of Humanish thin
A husk to hide my evil in …’
‘Stop them!’ cried Herself of Mugain. ‘At any minute they will be upon us, and we shall all be carried down into the Dark Realm!’
Rumour was staring at the grinning, evil creatures in frustration and fury. ‘I cannot pronounce the Ritual again!’ she cried. ‘Foolish creatures, no one can call upon the gods more than once in a single night! You try something!’ said Rumour.
‘Give me a hide to climb inside,
A murderer’s cloak or a child-eater’s fleece.
Give me a skin for murdering in
A husk to hide my darkness in.’
‘Then back!’ cried Cerball. ‘Everyone! Back up the Stair and out to the Palace! Re-Seal the Tower!’
‘Run away? Never! See here, Cerball —’
‘Listen, it’s the only way —’
But, even as the words formed, even as the Amaranths tried to reassemble, a shadow fell across the Stair’s foot. They turned sharply and Andrew, with Theodora clasped tightly in his arms, half fell into the Cavern.
Behind Andrew came a fearsome creature, a hunched-over shape with a grotesque, snouted face, darting, lidless eyes and a thick, scaly hide.
The Gristlen stood at the entrance to the Stair, hugging itself with its huge, disproportionate hands, and peering hungrily at the Amaranths from its pale glittering eyes.
‘Prettinesses everywhere for me to take,’ it said, and threw back its dreadful head and laughed.
Chapter Four
Andrew was holding Theodora very tightly, surprised by the sudden feeling of fierce protectiveness. She had been trembling with fear ever since the Gri
stlen had come prowling out of the shadows and had run down the Sable Stair after them, and he tightened his hold, aware of the light, frail bones and the silky spill of dark hair, wanting to carry her to safety, knowing it to be impossible.
The sight in the Cavern assaulted his senses like a blow. He stood blinking in the pulsating crimson light from the Fomoire, feeling the thick clotted evil that surged and eddied everywhere. There was a moment when he thought, ‘Hell has opened and is spewing out into the world,’ and when he thought that, after all, his Leader had been wrong; Hell was not something that waited for sinners after death — it was here, now, its gates were yawning, and it was spilling its evil into the world. He stared at the leaping, grinning Fomoire and saw that this, then, was the old Ireland, the Ireland Brother Stephen had warned him against. This was the Ireland that was steeped in paganism and in magic and wreathed in enchantment and necromancy. This is the Ireland that beckoned to the Black Monk, thought Andrew. And this is something that cannot be fought with prayer or fasting …
The Fomoire had driven the Amaranths to the far end of the Cavern, and at least two dozen of the repulsive, grinning things were guarding them. A nauseating stench came from the creatures, a stench composed of badly cured meat and earth, and of old blood and raw agony.
Before us are the Fomoire, and behind us is the Gristlen. Andrew shot it a covert glance and saw that it was half crouching, half sitting on the Sable Stair, hugging its elongated legs in evil glee as it watched the Fomoire.
How sentient was it? How powerful? It looked stupid. I believe I would rather challenge that than the Fomoire, thought Andrew.
The torches that Cerball had thrust into the brackets were burning more strongly now and, as they flared up, Andrew turned back. For the first time he saw the Fomoire properly.
At exactly the same moment, Theo said in a small, frightened voice, ‘Andrew. They are wearing skins. They are hiding inside Human skins.’