by Sarah Rayne
‘Understandable,’ said the Amaranths, but Andrew saw that they were barely aware of Laigne, and that they were circling the Well, most of them deep in thought, and that it had not occurred to any one of them to leave the Well Cavern or the Cadence Tower, until they had found a way to break into the Dark Ireland. He found himself suddenly liking them very much for this.
Herself of Mugain was watching Rumour, who had been standing lost in thought at the Cavern’s centre. ‘I believe that Rumour has a plan,’ she said presently, and Rumour looked up.
‘Yes, I have.’
‘What’s that?’ Cerball, who had been deep in discussion with the Mugain and Bodb Decht, turned around. ‘Has somebody got a plan? Well I’m very glad to hear that.’
Rumour smiled the catsmile and came to stand at the centre. She does it naturally and effortlessly, thought Andrew. She is so used to being at the centre of everything that she moves there without even noticing.
‘Really, my dears,’ said Rumour, sounding amused, ‘really, it ought to be quite shriekingly obvious to you all what we must do.’
‘What?’
‘It isn’t shriekingly obvious to me …’
Rumour eyed them all, and it was impossible not to know that, although she was as worried as the others, she was beginning to enjoy herself.
‘There is only one thing left for us to do,’ she said. ‘We must summon the sidh.’
*
There was an abrupt silence. And then Cerball said, a bit uncertainly, ‘Are you serious about that, Rumour?’
‘I was never more serious in my life.’
The Mugain, who had been frowning and beetling his brows, cleared his throat portentously and said he was inclined to be in favour. ‘It’s a weighty undertaking, of course,’ he said. ‘My word, it’s a complex thing to do. But it is the obvious thing,’ he added apologetically.
‘Oh yes.’
‘I don’t know why no one else thought of it then —’
‘And the sidh are sworn to come to the aid of any Royal House,’ said Cerball, still sounding as if he might be arguing it out with himself. ‘We all know that.’
‘They’re bound to come to our aid,’ said somebody else. ‘And to that of every Royal House in Ireland. It’s a very ancient spell indeed, that of the Summoning.’
‘I suppose Rumour knows the incantation, does she?’
‘Of course I know it.’
‘No, but really know it? Because it won’t do,’ said Cerball, looking unwontedly severe, ‘it won’t do at all to get it the smallest bit wrong.’
‘I shan’t get it wrong,’ said Rumour with a touch of impatience.
‘Then I suppose, yes, I really suppose we ought to try it.’
The ancient Summoning of the sidh, the powerful bewitchment that Rumour intoned, her hands lifted with the palms uppermost to call down power, was one of the most beautiful things Andrew had ever heard. He thought it would be something he would remember long after he had gone from these strange people, and he thought it would be something he would want to roll up and keep as a precious and immensely valuable experience.
The incantation was filled with gentle, rhythmic music, and with shifting, blurring patterns of fight and colour, and with a soaring, pouring chiaroscuro of bewitchments and enchantry and beguilements. Rumour’s soft husky voice rose and fell, reaching for the cadences with apparent effortlessness, shaping the queer, multi-syllabic words with what seemed to the dazzled Andrew to be supreme ease.
Cool light began to fill up the shadowy Cavern, and Andrew saw that the Amaranths had stepped back and were watching Rumour with mingled respect and admiration. They do not entirely like her because they do not fully understand her, he thought. But they acknowledge her strength. They respect her power and her learning. He realised with surprise that Rumour was probably very learned indeed. Would she not have been a possible successor for the dying Nechtan? he thought, and knew, in the same moment, that it would never have done. She was a gambler, a reckless adventuress. She had made that absurd extravagant gesture to the Lord of Chaos — ‘Take me instead’ — and although it had been courageous and generous, it had also been impetuous.
Rumour was standing alone, the cool fight twisting about her, turning her hair to a streaming cascade of turquoise and silver. Her slender cloaked figure was wreathed in a pouring waterfall of blue and green iridescence. She is beautiful and exotic and utterly pagan, thought Andrew, unable to take his eyes from her. And I believe that if anyone can force open that terrible Gateway, then she can.
Rumour’s voice rose and fell in the incantation, and Andrew felt, very faintly, the stirring of something from a very long way off. Something that thrummed with ancient power, and something that was so soft and cool and so achingly beautiful that it would sear your soul and brand your mind for ever … So that you would follow it into hell and beyond if only it would go on …
A huge anticipation was creeping over the Cavern now, as if every person present could hear and sense and glimpse that something tremendous was approaching …
The sidh, the ancient faery race of Ireland’s ocean city answering the Summoning … Rushing down to the aid of the Royal House of Amaranth …
Andrew drew in a deep breath and waited, torn between fear and delight, his eyes scanning the Cavern, his every nerve stretched, because it would be unbearable to miss a single second. And then, without warning, in the space between one heartbeat and the next, it began to fade. At one minute it was forming, it was taking shape and substance and life, and it was going to be beautiful and powerful and marvellous.
And then it was dying. It was fading and slipping, and there was darkness and a whirling, gaping void. Andrew saw Rumour’s eyes widen with surprise and fear, and he saw the Amaranths look up, startled.
It is going. Somehow she has failed. They all sense it.
Rumour whirled about, and her face was white. ‘They are not answering!’ she said, her voice taut with fear. ‘There is an emptiness …’
‘Try again!’ cried Cerball, and several of the others called, ‘Yes, again, Rumour!’
‘I cannot! It is useless!’ Rumour had moved from the centre of the Chamber. ‘There is nothing there! Can you not hear it? Can you not feel it?’ she cried angrily.
The Mugain said slowly, ‘Are they refusing to answer?’
‘They cannot! They dare not!’
‘They have to answer!’
‘They are bound to aid us, unless —’
‘Unless they themselves are dying,’ said Rumour, and stared at the others with horror.
*
The sidh, the cool faery creatures who had dwelled in Ireland from the very beginning, and who were constrained to aid her Royal Houses, were beyond their reach.
The Amaranths were shocked and horrified. Dawn was streaking the skies as they sat round the long banqueting table in the Porphyry Palace, stunned and appalled, eating the freshly baked bread and the honey and dishes of buttered eggs, but there was plainly no thought of resting. Andrew found himself warming to their doggedness and their unquenchable optimism, and he listened as they began to put forward suggestions, hesitantly at first, and then with more confidence. They drew strength one from another, he thought.
The Mugain, in whom Cerball’s wine had wrought a remarkable upturn in spirits, said they would be sure to find spells in Nechtan’s library which would force open the Gateway and get several of them into the Dark Realm. They had none of them thought of that. Somebody else remembered that there was a Spell of Keys which would unlock all doors, and somebody else suggested the White Stallion of CuChulainn which was said to be able to emerge victorious from all battles. There were Cloaks of Silence and Invisibility as well — Rumour was known to own several of those which might be helpful, and which she might be prevailed upon to loan. Great-aunt Fuamnach, who had helped to put Laigne to bed, but who had re-joined the party in time to partake of a huge breakfast, tartly said that these would be very useful indeed, always su
pposing that the loaning of them would not cause Rumour any deprivation.
‘My entire wardrobe is at your disposal, dearest Aunt,’ purred Rumour with impeccable courtesy.
Andrew had found himself seated next to Rumour. It flickered on his mind that she had deliberately arranged it, and a sudden delight surged up within him that this exotic and remarkable creature might have wished for his company. This was the closest he had yet been to Rumour, and he studied her covertly, seeing how the scarlet silk clung to her slender, supple body, and seeing that her skin had the faint ivory sheen of the other Amaranths, so that it was as if a flame had been placed behind thin, translucent alabaster. Her eyes were pure glowing violet, set aslant in her face, fringed by long dark lashes, and her long, striated, rippling hair changed from jet black to rich copper bronze, and was threaded with thin silver lace.
He had not, so far, dared to ask what would happen to Theodora and her brother, but even as the question was framing in his mind, Rumour turned her brilliant Amaranth eyes on him and said, ‘Echbel will be caged and fattened, and eventually the Fomoire will flay him and wear his skin.’
‘I see,’ said Andrew, who had already realised this, but who was so horrified to hear it put into fact that he hardly noticed that Rumour had heard his thoughts.
‘As for Theo …’ Rumour paused, and Andrew knew at once that, although the Amaranths were concerned for Echbel, and although they would do all they could to save him, it was Theodora for whom they were really fighting.
‘Theo will be held in the Castle of Infinity by Chaos,’ said Rumour. ‘It is many hours now since he took her, and probably they are still travelling across the Dark Realm. But they will soon be there. Every hour she is in there intensifies the danger.’
‘It would have been better to rescue her before Chaos’s Castle is reached?’ said Andrew.
‘Oh yes. There will be so many menaces,’ said Rumour, frowning. ‘Some we know of, but some we do not. But once she is inside the Castle of Infinity, she will be truly at Chaos’s mercy.’ She cupped her hands about a huge blue bowl of warm, thin mead, her eyes serious and absorbed. ‘Also, it is true what Chaos said; there will be many who will try to take her from him. The Crimson Lady of Almhuin will almost certainly be one.’
‘Yes?’
Rumour sent him a sideways look. ‘It is whispered that the Crimson Lady bathes in the blood of young and beautiful virgins, and of course,’ said Rumour, eyeing Andrew unblinkingly over the rim of the mead bowl, ‘of course, virgins are always a very alluring challenge.’
‘Why does she do that?’
‘It is how she preserves her eternal youth and her rather grim beauty,’ said Rumour. ‘There are other ways to do that, you understand, but the Crimson Lady has dark and depraved hungers, and the spilling of blood serves them. She was once Chaos’s paramour, although it is whispered that there has been a rift between them. But she would certainly want Theo for her slaughterhouse,’ said Rumour, thoughtfully. ‘And there would be others as well as the Crimson Lady.’ She turned her long glowing eyes on him. ‘It may be that war in the Dark Realm is about to break out.’
Andrew said carefully, ‘Because of Theodora?’
‘Yes, for she would be a very great prize. She has a remarkable power essence, Theo,’ said Rumour. ‘Chaos knew that at once, of course. Perhaps he knew it before we did so ourselves. Also, she understands something of the Lost Language of Magis, which the rest of us do not.’
Andrew said, ‘I had not realised — forgive me — that there would be female necromancers,’ and Rumour sent him one of her slant-eyed smiles.
‘Your Order does not account females very highly, I think?’ she said, and Andrew stared at her.
‘There are what we call abbesses,’ he said, rather coldly. ‘Women of immense piety who have forsworn a husband and children.’
‘How admirable,’ said Rumour lightly, and Andrew had the strong impression that she did not regard it as especially admirable, but that she did not regard the gaining of a husband and children particularly admirable either. But she said, ‘There are not so many female necromancers, but there are a few. They are sometimes extremely strong, and nearly always very beautiful, although I believe that some of them allow their hungers to quench their powers.’
Andrew said, with careful courtesy, ‘I have had little dealing with females, madame. My creed does not permit it,’ and Rumour leaned her arms on the table and allowed the silken gown to slide back, and looked into his eyes.
‘Does it not?’ she said, softly. ‘I should like to make you change your mind, Andrew.’ And smiled to herself, because although everything was truly dreadful, it was extraordinarily pleasant to discomfit this serious young man. He would be a celibate, of course, as the Druids were celibates, because it was part of this new, stark religion. I could have fun with this one, thought Rumour, with sudden mischief. There is something remarkably alluring about celibacy. There is something even more alluring about an untried lover, and I would stake my own Castle that this one is untried.
Andrew, who had eaten and drunk sparsely, sat back and studied the rest of the company.
Am I truly here, in the great Amaranth Palace, in company with creatures who profess to be able to harness magic? And am I really discussing the Realm of the necromancers with this strange exotic creature at my side? Am I eating breakfast with them and talking about enchantments and half-Human creatures, and dark evil spells, and believing in them? Am I believing in any of this?
And then, at a level of his mind that he hardly dared acknowledge existed: and am I feeling the stirrings of desire for this remarkable creature who may not be entirely Human?
He had embraced celibacy willingly, seeing it as something pure and strong; something that would lead to the greater purification of the soul. But his creed also demanded self-honesty, and now, faced with the mischievous, dazzling Rumour, he thought: but did I accept that particular vow only because I did not know what I was forswearing? Is it only that I have never encountered anyone quite like her? Is it simply the strange, not-quite-Human beauty, and the flame beneath the ivory … ? And the rippling hair, tawny and copper, that would pour over her shoulders and cover almost her entire body like a silken cloak … ?
He shifted uneasily in his chair. He would quench the desire as he had quenched other desires, and he would bank down this need as he had banked down other needs. It is no different, no more difficult than resisting rich food, potent wine. I can resist this one, as I have resisted others.
At the head of the table, Cerball had risen to his feet and was regarding his family solemnly. An instant silence fell on the Amaranths, and they turned towards him, waiting.
Cerball said, ‘As the direct descendant of our Ruler, I stand in his place until the Succession Ritual has been chanted.’ He spoke unassumingly and rather humbly, and Andrew understood that there had probably never been any question of Cerball succeeding Nechtan, and that probably Cerball himself did not want to. But someone had to take the lead, and someone had to stand in Nechtan’s place, and for the moment that someone had to be Cerball, Nechtan’s grandson.
Cerball said, ‘Since the sidh are beyond our reach, it seems that we must needs embark on a quest of immense importance and extreme danger —’
‘The forcing open of a Gateway into the Dark Realm,’ put in the Mugain, who would not have dreamed of usurping anybody’s temporary authority, but who liked to make everything clear.
‘Yes, since we are to attempt that, it would be appropriate to first invoke the Ritual of the Benison,’ said Cerball. ‘It would strengthen our powers.’ He looked down the table, his face solemn. ‘And so we will drink the wine and break the bread and call down the Benison of the Dagda,’ said Cerball, and as if they had been given a command, the Amaranths rose to their feet.
Andrew rose with them from instinctive courtesy, and stood quietly in his place. But his mind had been thrown into turmoil. When Cerball said, ‘We must invoke the Ritual of the B
enison. We must drink the wine and break the bread’, Andrew had felt a sharp jolt of shock beneath his ribcage.
The Ritual of the Benison? And — drink the wine and break the bread? What am I about to see?
Cerball lifted his hands upwards and the Amaranths brought their palms together and bowed their heads. Andrew, staring, thought: but that is the Christian attitude of prayer. That is exactly the Christian attitude of prayer.
In the same unassuming tones, Cerball said, ‘Dagda, All-Father, we call on you to guard us from the Destroying Darkness that passes over our thresholds.’ He waited, and the Amaranths murmured a soft response.
‘Guard us from the passing over of the Destroying Darkness.’
Andrew was no longer aware of his surroundings, or of the presence of Rumour at his side. With Cerball’s words, the tumult had begun again, and he felt it swoop and darken about his head.
The passing over of the Destroying Darkness … The passing over … The Passover, thought Andrew, torn between shock and creeping horror. The ancient, honourable feast, named for the exodus, the passing over of the destroying angel of the thresholds of the Israelites … It cannot be that. But the words are almost exact. Just as the prayer attitude is almost exact.
Cerball was saying, ‘We render thanks, Dagda, for deliverance from the Darkness,’ and again, there was the soft murmur from the Amaranths.
‘Dagda, hear our plea,’ said Cerball, his voice low and serious.
‘Hear our plea and let our powers be strengthened.’
‘Grant, we implore you, the might of your Staff of Life and Death.’
‘Let our strengths be unwavering.’
‘Let shine the light of your Temple about us, and let pour forth the power of your Staff.’
‘Let our purpose be strong.’
Cerball paused, and then went on, ‘And, if among us here present there be any creature with evil in its heart or its soul, or if we have done anything to offend the pure Flame of the Dawn Sorcerers which is our inheritance and our vouchsafed power, let that be known now.’
Again, the response: ‘Let not the evil or the wicked or the maliced-minded come to this Table.’