by Sarah Rayne
The creature said, ‘I am come to beg your help, Your Majesty,’ and its voice was as cold and as ugly as its appearance. ‘But in return, I could offer you something which will be of great value.’
‘Why do you seek help here?’ said Aillen mac Midha. ‘Tiarna is heavily guarded and few find their way to us.’ He leaned forward, his eyes glittering. ‘Few choose to find their way to us,’ he said. ‘For to risk capture by the sidh is something most creatures would wish to avoid.’
The Gristlen put its head on one side as if considering its reply. ‘So you still hunt the senses of Men, Aillen mac Midha.’ it said softly, and for the first time there was a calculating intelligence in its eyes. ‘You still drag the Humanish down into the water-caves and tear out their sight or their hearing or their speech or sense of touch.’
‘For our music,’ said Aillen mac Midha with perfect courtesy. ‘If our music is to survive, it must be fed with the living senses of the Humanish.’ He leaned forward, the cool silvery light falling across his half-Human half-sidh features. ‘Our music must never die,’ he said. ‘It is the most precious thing in all Ireland, the music of the sidh.’ He did not say, ‘Without it we are powerless’, but the listening sidh felt the thought frame in his mind.
But the Gristlen, its head on one side, said, still in the same soft voice, ‘I see, Elven King. It is your music that gives you your strength and your impregnable City,’ and Maelduin felt his father become more alert. A tiny breath of disquiet brushed through the Silver Cavern, and several of the sidh glanced uneasily at one another.
Aillen mac Midha regarded the prisoner thoughtfully, and Maelduin caught a flicker of puzzlement from his father, as if the Elven King might have heard something in the prisoner’s reply that he had not expected. But he remained motionless and graceful on the Silver Throne, his head leaning lightly on one cupped hand, and presently he said, with exquisite courtesy, ‘Will you tell us how you are called?’
There was an infinitesimal hesitation. Maelduin thought the other sidh would not have heard it — he was not sure he had heard it himself; but then his father repeated the question, and Maelduin knew his instinct had not misled him. There had been a bats-wing brush of uncertainty in the creature.
And then it said, ‘In the world which I now inhabit, I am called the Gristlen,’ and Maelduin thought: is that why it hesitated? Because it was ashamed? But it must know we would recognise it for what it is, he thought. And then: or does it want us to think it has forgotten its true name?
A ripple of awareness had stirred the listening sidh, and Maelduin knew that they, also, were remembering the legend of the Pit. This creature had dwelled there; for some reason it had been flung into the dry, smoking depths, and it had acquired the terrible carapace of the necromancers’ punishment. Whatever it had been before its exile — Man or Beast or Fish or Bird or Crustacean — it might never regain its true shape …
The Gristlen had moved forward, shuffling its huge webbed feet, dragging the gyves as it did so. The sidh recoiled, for it was painful to hear the heavy, cold iron scraping the silver floor.
‘I could be of service to you, Your Majesty,’ it said, and although it adopted a cringing humility, there was a sneering note in its voice when it addressed the Elven King. Maelduin, motionless except for his eyes which glittered like turquoise fire, thought at once: this creature was never humble! It is not humble now! I think we have to be very wary indeed! And looked at his father, and saw that the Elven King was regarding the Gristlen through narrowed eyes.
The Gristlen was watching them, a calculating expression on its black snouted face. ‘If you will dissolve the enchantment that binds me,’ it said, ‘I could be of service to you.’
‘Say on, Gristlen,’ said the Elven King, his expression remote.
The Gristlen had sidled up to the throne; its pale eyes were glittering and it held out its manacled hands.
‘Once I was beautiful,’ said the Gristlen. ‘Once I was shining and fair and walked abroad and was admired. In my own world, I ruled.’
‘And now,’ said Aillen mac Midha, still in his courteous silver voice, ‘now you are warped and ugly and bound by malignant spells. Now you are an outcast.’
‘Yes.’
‘You offended one of the Dark Lords? That is the customary reason for banishment to the Pit.’
The Gristlen’s lipless mouth twisted, but it did not answer, and after a moment Aillen mac Midha said, ‘Well? What was your transgression?’ and the Gristlen dropped back into its cringing, shambling stance, so that Maelduin felt the flicker of distrust again.
The Gristlen said, in a soft, suddenly wistful voice, ‘Once I dined at the Twelve Tables of the Dark Lords, and once I dwelled in the dark mansions of the Black Ireland. I was feted and respected and my necromancy was sought.’
It stopped, and Aillen mac Midha waited.
‘I was vouchsafed my own realm,’ said the Gristlen, and a remembering greed glittered in its pale eyes. ‘My own realm,’ it said again, and looked round the Silver Cavern. ‘I ruled there for many centuries, and my people rendered me obeisance.’
Again the pause. After a moment, Aillen mac Midha said very softly, ‘You were driven out of your realm.’ It was not quite a question, but the Gristlen said at once, its voice hissing with hatred, ‘You are perceptive, Your Majesty.’
‘It is clear that you were once a creature of power,’ said the Elven King.
‘I lost my realm,’ said the Gristlen, and bowed its head in acknowledgement. ‘I lost it in a brief and bloody war, and after that war was over, I was judged weak and unfit to rule.’ It beat its breast again, and the iron gyves grated. ‘My own kind judged me unfit!’ it cried. ‘That is why they cast me into the Pit.’ It clenched its fists in bitter fury.
‘That is one of the age-old laws of your kind,’ said the Elven King, gravely. ‘To be unable to defend a vouchsafed realm against an intruder, to be unable to keep a land in the grip of black necromancy is regarded as a severe crime by the Dark Lords.’ It studied the Gristlen again. ‘And so you were cast into the Pit,’ he said. ‘For your failure to keep and hold what had been entrusted to you, you were cast into the Pit.’
‘But I escaped,’ said the Gristlen, rubbing its cold webbed hands together and peering round with crafty pleasure at its cleverness. ‘It took many centuries, but at last I climbed out of the Pit and I returned to the world.’ It struck its scaly hide with a webbed hand. ‘And I will regain what was mine!’ it said angrily.
The Elven King said, ‘Are you come here to seek our help? Perhaps to bargain with us?’ And although he did not say, ‘Are you daring to bargain with us?’ every creature in the Silver Cavern heard the words quite clearly.
‘I can pay a fine price,’ said the Gristlen.
Aillen mac Midha said, very slowly, ‘What do you require of us?’ and the dreadful smile stretched the Gristlen’s face again. ‘A Humanish,’ it said. ‘A girl, but a willing girl to lie with. Only that way can I dissolve this accursed carapace, and only then can I regain the realm where once I ruled.’ It stood looking at them, its features evil and cunning. ‘Only then can I take my place at the tables of the Dark Lords once more,’ it whispered.
‘Capture me a Humanish girl,’ it said. ‘For you it is easy. Send your sidh into the world above to bring me back a plump, fair-skinned Humanish female.’ It grinned. ‘And then lure her into my bed with your music.’
Aillen mac Midha did not move. He said, ‘That would dissolve the carapace you have acquired?’
‘Yes. I should take her,’ said the Gristlen, its voice slurred and thick with lust. ‘I should have her in my embrace and I should enter her and I should slake my body on her.’ It reached between its scaly thighs and caressed itself obscenely, and Maelduin saw its withered-looking genitals swell and ripen. ‘A sweet juicy Humanish,’ it said. ‘It is the only way.’ And, looking back at the Elven King, it said with sudden arrogant impatience, ‘Well? You will do it?’
A
illen mac Midha studied the Gristlen for a moment before replying, and then he said with cool, austere politeness, ‘You are unable to do this for yourself?’
‘They flee from me!’ cried the Gristlen, and now there was a note of real anguish in its voice. It made a brief bitter gesture, indicating its monstrous body, and the gyves dragged harshly on the silver floor again. ‘The prettinesses run from me,’ it whispered, and Maelduin felt an unwilling pang of pity.
‘But you could do it with ease,’ said the Gristlen. ‘You have the music that will lure the Humanish into your arms.’ It paused, and Maelduin thought: that is the second time it has referred to the music’s powers.
Aillen mac Midha said, ‘And if we agreed, what would you give us in return?’
‘In return,’ said the Gristlen, ‘I will show you the way through the catacombs beneath the Cadence Tower.
‘I will show you how to get inside the Porphyry Palace and take the entire House of Amaranth Sorcerers.’
It leered round at them, and Maelduin said, ‘But why should we want the Amaranths?’
‘For your music,’ said the Gristlen at once. ‘That is why you take the Humanish. To add life and power to your music.’ It crept nearer to where Maelduin was curled half into the crystal rock, and stood looking up at him from beneath its lowering brow. ‘And think, Crown Prince, only think how rich, how colourful your music would be if it had the Sacred Flame of the Amaranths coursing through it.’
*
The sidh rarely used the sunken dungeons with their cold stone walls and the constant lapping of the ocean at their walls. When they captured a Humanish, they drained him of his senses almost at once and took his soul for their music, flinging the carcass into the ocean where it would surface in the shimmering seas of Ireland’s wild beautiful western coast. They took what had to be taken quickly and cleanly.
But the dungeons were still there: they were fathoms below the Palace; tiny stone cells deep in the ocean’s heart, lit to dim dankness by the rippling green light of the seas. Maelduin and the sidh knew the eerie tales that haunted these dungeons; they knew that the dungeons had been always filled to overflowing by the fearsome Fisher King for his nightly entertainment. They knew how the Fisher King had once presided over a terrible Court in Tiarna, and how he had held grisly firelit feasts when the wretched prisoners would be dragged into the great circular Arena of Light by the nimfeach, to fight the Fomoire. The Fomoire hungered perpetually for Humanish victims and they had ever been allies of the Fisher King.
But if the shades of the Fisher King and his nimfeach walked these dungeons, they walked unseen and they walked unheard. Inse and Maelduin took the Gristlen between them, and thrust it into the deepest and the smallest of the dungeons. It crouched in a corner, its long legs drawn up almost to its chin, hugging itself with its gristly arms. The rippling green light fell across its features, giving it a twisted, sneering look.
‘You will be here until we decide,’ said Maelduin, using the same half-Humanish speech that his father had used, finding it clumsy and imprecise as he always did. ‘Until we decide what to do with you.’
The Gristlen was unresisting. It watched them from beneath its low, brutal brow.
Inse said, ‘There is Humanish food here, and water. It will not be for very long.’
‘You are merciful to your prisoners,’ said the Gristlen jeeringly. ‘I think these dungeons have not always harboured such well cared-for victims.’ It lifted its head to look around. ‘The water dungeons of Tiarna,’ it said, half to itself. ‘A strange place to find myself.’ Something that might have been amusement showed in its eyes as Inse and Maelduin left it.
*
Maelduin did not immediately return to the Silver Cavern. His father would have summoned the Seomhra, the sidh’s governing creatures, and the Crown Prince’s presence would be expected.
But Maelduin paused in Tiarna’s immense, cool, dim library, and stretched out on the banks surrounding the crystal pools, trying to glimpse the submerged annals of the nimfeach that lay beneath the pale water. In the deepest of those clear silken pools, was there something that would help them?
Maelduin did not trust the Gristlen. He thought that, even if they agreed to its request, it would betray them in some way. It would allow them to dissolve its terrible enchantment, but once it stood before them in its natural state — and that could be anything, thought Maelduin — it might turn on them. There had been a moment, no more than the beat of a wing, when it had looked not repulsive and cringing and beaten, but sly and triumphant. Maelduin thought it had been when the creature had said, ‘So it is your music that gives you your strength.’ And its eyes had gleamed, and there had been the fleeting impression of a sharp cruel mind thinking: so that is Tiarna’s secret. That is the source of the sidh’s strength. How very helpful of them to tell me.
The Seomhra had convened in the Arena of Light, and when Maelduin slipped in, Inse was addressing them, questioning the Gristlen’s motives and asking whether they really wanted the House of Amaranth and whether they needed it. The Elven King’s chief advisor, Chimeara, reminded the others that to bring a Humanish to the Gristlen and to render her submissive by using their music would take up a good deal of magical energy. He did not doubt it could be done, said Chimeara, but he questioned whether they truly wanted to expend their beautiful music on such a thing.
‘We use the music for just such means ourselves,’ said Maelduin softly. ‘We capture the Humanish with it.’ He curled smokily at his father’s side. ‘It was for that Lure that we took the long-ago sirens,’ said Maelduin.
‘So that we should have the power to beckon to the Humanish,’ said Aillen mac Midha, and the partly-Humanish eyes of the Elven King met the slanting turquoise eyes of the Crown Prince.
‘Exactly,’ said Maelduin softly.
‘The House of Amaranth,’ said Inse, thoughtfully. ‘It is very tempting.’ He looked at Maelduin, who said, in a cool, silken voice that gave nothing away, ‘Oh yes. Immensely tempting.’
One of the older sidh asked whether they dared risk actually releasing the Gristlen. ‘For we do not know what its true state might be,’ he said, and there was a ripple of agreement.
Aillen mac Midha said, very softly, ‘There is a familiarity to it, I think.’
‘It knew you,’ said Maelduin, suddenly. ‘It said, “So you still tear out the senses of the Humanish.”’
‘Perhaps it is something from the long-ago. There have been many creatures we have vanquished,’ said Aillen mac Midha, his eyes dark and inward-looking. ‘But perhaps it is only that all cursed creatures carry with them the same evil miasma.’ He gave himself a shake, and turned back to the Seomhra to listen, and in his customary courteous fashion asked the younger ones for their opinions. They all knew that other peoples looked for advice and guidance to the Elders of their communities, but the sidh believed that young new ideas and outlooks could frequently be helpful.
The younger sidh distrusted the Gristlen. They were for pouncing on it there and then, and sucking out its horrid soul and its senses, and never mind getting into the Porphyry Palace.
‘But,’ said Maelduin, ‘do we want the soul and the senses of such a creature? Mightn’t it taint our world?’ He moved to a jutting spur of rock so that he was a little higher than the others.
‘It took us hundreds of years to purge Tiarna and the Nimfeach Palace of the soulless greed of the Fisher King,’ said Maelduin, and the sidh listened, entranced, because this was no longer the cool, faintly mischievous Crown Prince; this was the dazzling, passionate being that headed the raids on the Humanish; that hurtled arrow-straight through the dim fastness of the Wolfwood, or skimmed the surface of the sparkling western seas, swooping on victims with soaring delight.
And when Maelduin spoke of the work and the dedication of the years; the decades that had been spent purging the Palace of the Fisher King’s taint, and then imbuing it with their own strong, gentle bewitchments, the sidh nodded, and the yo
unger ones who had been for draining the Gristlen of its soul, proffered their apologies.
‘But,’ said Inse cautiously, ‘what about its offer? What about the souls and the senses of the Amaranths?’
He looked at Maelduin uncertainly, and Maelduin smiled the slanting smile that was uncannily the twin of his father’s, but that had something far more reckless and far more audacious in it. He said, in a cool expressionless tone, ‘But we are sworn to aid the House of Amaranth. As one of Ireland’s Royal Lines, we are bound to the Amaranths. That was the bond made at the very beginning. In times of extreme danger, we are chained by the strictest sorcery to answer their summons if they should send it out.’
‘Humanish sorcery,’ put in Inse.
‘Amaranth sorcery,’ said someone else.
‘It’s nearly the same thing. The Amaranths aren’t precisely Humanish but they’re nearly so.’
‘But,’ said Chimeara, thoughtfully, ‘the Gristlen said it could lead us through the catacombs and into the heart of the Palace.’ He looked around. ‘The Sacred Flame of the Amaranths,’ said Chimeara.
‘But can we in honour take it? Maelduin, can we?’
Maelduin’s eyes were unreadable but there was a glint of colour deep within them.
‘It is not an offer to be lightly turned down,’ he said.
Chapter Seven
It was the most horrific situation the Amaranths could ever recall.
Theodora and Echbel were in the hands of the Lord of Chaos and the Fomoire, they were somewhere beyond the fearsome Gateway in the terrible necromancers Realm.
The Gateway had sealed. They had all heard it happen: they had heard the great thunderous sound of the stone rolling back, and they had stared at one another in helpless dismay.
Laigne had collapsed sobbing, and Great-aunt Fuamnach and one of the younger sorceresses had helped her from the Cavern, back to the Palace.