by Sarah Rayne
But for all that there was something extremely dark very near to them.
Rumour looked round the Sorcery Chamber, opening her mind to its fullest extent. Something dark and foul and leathery. Something that crept and lurked and peered slyly as it came. Cold horror touched Rumour’s skin. Whatever it was, it was not quite with them, but it was very near. Perhaps it was stealing through the deserted halls of the Porphyry Palace. Perhaps it was standing just outside the door, listening and rubbing its hands together and grinning.
There was a scrabbling sound from the other side of the Silver Door, and Rumour turned towards it at once, cold horror prickling her skin.
The Silver Door was opening slowly, inch by stealthy inch. Something was standing behind it, pushing it furtively ajar, as if whoever or whatever stood there was hoping to creep in and conceal itself somewhere. As Rumour stared, black reaching fingers appeared curled around the edge, webbed and tough and leathery.
Impatient anger surged up in Rumour, for how dared something creeping and sly come prowling down into the Sorcery Chambers like this, and how dare it peer in at them and try to steal into their midst? She hurled a spear of light at the door, and saw it splinter into dozens of tiny, sizzling cascades.
There was a howl of anger and frustration, and the door swung back of its own accord.
Framed there, its evil face dark with malignant glee, was Theodora’s pitiful, repulsive monster.
The Gristlen.
*
Cerball had felt the creeping coldness at approximately the same time as Rumour and, like Rumour, had looked round to see where it might be coming from. He had been overseeing matters generally, rather than weaving anything on his own account, and he had been worriedly watching the Black HeartStealers, who seemed to be working on something rather nasty. They did not want any necromancy creeping in. They did not really want the Black HeartStealers there either, and Cerball had been trying to discover how that branch of the family had got in. Somebody had said that they had been brought along by the Arca Dubhs who were apt to make undesirable alliances, and Cerball had been wondering, should he have a word with the Mugain about it?
At one minute it had seemed that there was nothing evil and nothing malignant in the Chamber, and everyone was working absorbedly and seriously. And then the next minute it was there, slam! a cold dark wash of necromantic power that hit you like a smack in the face and took away your breath with its suddenness.
As Rumour hurled the furious bolt of fiery light, the sorcerers turned as one, and an abrupt silence fell on the Looms’ Chamber.
The Gristlen moved forward, and a myriad of colours from the half-created enchantments fell across its snouted face. Dark, thought Rumour, shivering and drawing the Sorcery Mande more closely about her. This is an ancient dark thing. It is soaked in old, old evil.
Cupped in the Gristlen’s huge, horny hands was something small and light and delicate: something that shone with gentle, prismatic incandescence.
Cerball started to speak but Rumour cut sharply across him. ‘What is that you have there, filth?’
The Gristlen leered and held out its hands. Blue-green brilliance, cool and darting, trickled over its fingers and ran down its wizened skin, and Andrew, watching quietly, thought there was something obscene about such fragile loveliness spilling its turquoise and sapphire radiance over the ugly, warped body of this creature.
Rumour said again, ‘What is it?’ and her voice was sharpened with anger and impatience.
‘The sidh’s enchanted music,’ said the Gristlen. ‘I took it from Tiarna. I stole their essence and their life-force and now they are all dying.’ Throwing back its head, it bellowed its terrible triumph.
*
The music was a shifting, blurring kaleidoscope of rainbow colours and pouring crystal light and beckoning promise.
And it has an allure, thought Andrew. The music beckons and it sings and it is the most beautiful thing I have ever encountered. A man would be hard-pressed to resist a temptation of that strength.
It spun its soft, beckoning lures about the Chamber, so that the sorcerers stood momentarily transfixed, caught in its seductive strands …
Listen to me, creatures of the Amaranthine House, and you will never wish to listen to anything in the world ever again … Follow me, sorcerers, and never once look back, and you will not care if you are led into Hell and beyond …
There was the faint rippling of sound again, still distant, still barely recognisable, but light and silvery and mocking. Andrew thought: oh yes, I would follow that, I would not care whither it led me, so long as it would go on … Did he encounter this, the Black Monk? And did it lead him into dark and terrible byways and evil paths? I think I would not blame him so very much if that is what happened, thought Andrew, his senses spinning, his mind awash with the delight and the soft, sensuous pull of the music.
Rumour strode to the centre of the chamber and stood before the Gristlen. The music’s radiance touched her face and her hair, so that for a moment she was bathed in the light.
The Gristlen’s face twisted in a satisfied snarl, and it flung out its hands, the sidh’s music still clutched in its long-jointed fingers, thrusting it at Rumour.
‘Prettiness,’ it said, its voice so cracked and ugly with its desire that Andrew shuddered. ‘The prettiness must answer the music,’ said the Gristlen, edging closer to Rumour. ‘I stole the music for you,’ it said, and now there was such a terrible travesty of a lover’s persuasion in its tone that Andrew felt his stomach twist with pity for the dreadful, warped thing. ‘I took it for you so that you would look on me with favour,’ said the Gristlen, its eyes beseeching.
Rumour had thrown her hands up to shield her eyes from the music’s glow, and the Gristlen edged closer. ‘Such a prettiness,’ it crooned in its terrible voice. ‘So easy to do what it tells.’ It half crouched in front of her, straddling its thighs, and to Andrew’s horror, the shrunken, leathery genitals between its legs began to ripen and swell. ‘Love me!’ it said, and reached out for her.
Rumour raised her left hand and flung sizzling, white-hot light spears into the Gristlen’s face. ‘Evil filth!’ she cried. ‘How dare you touch me! How dare you approach me!’
The Gristlen was yelping with fear and pain. It had fallen back the instant the furious light touched it, screaming and tearing at its scorched face. The music slipped from its hands and Rumour tore the Sorcery Mantle from her shoulders and flung it over the beautiful, eerie enchantment. The elusive light vanished instantly, and the music faded with a tiny, gasping breath as if something precious and vulnerable had been smothered. An aching desolation crept into the Chamber.
Rumour was facing the Gristlen, with bitter anger blazing in her eyes. It cowered against the wall, pawing at the scorch-marks where Rumour’s furious fire had seared it; the stench of its burned hide filled the Sorcery Chamber. But its pale, bulging eyes glittered, and its snout-like face was twisted in a mixture of fear and angry spite. When it spoke, the power in its tone made Andrew flinch.
‘One day you will pay for that, BitchHuman,’ said the Gristlen, and it was quite suddenly no longer a cringing, pitiful thing, but evil and powerful and thrumming with menace. It reared up to its full height, no longer a crouching, hunchbacked distortion, but giantish and menacing. It towered over them, its elongated shadow falling across the Sorcery Chamber, and several of the younger Amaranths flinched. ‘One day you will answer the music’s lure, Amaranth sorceress,’ screamed the Gristlen. ‘And in a way that will surprise you very much.’ It looked round the firelit Sorcery Chamber with cold hatred. ‘One day you will all pay,’ it said.
‘Empty threats,’ said the Mugain briskly. ‘What are you doing here, creature? Why have you returned?’
‘You do not make me welcome?’ sneered the Gristlen. ‘No, I see you do not. I am an outcast and an exile. I am welcome nowhere. Even with that —’ it flung a pointing finger to the sidh’s music — ‘even when I bring you that, you shr
ink from me and twitch aside the hems of your cloaks.’ It lurched to the centre of the Chamber with its ungainly, lumpish gait and stood there, glaring malevolently at them, its breath harsh and rasping. But after a moment it seemed to shrink and to hunch itself into its former huddled stance, and when it spoke, it was again the cringing, whining voice, as if its earlier flare of anger had slipped out in error. It is trying to regain its earlier humble stance, thought Rumour, staring. It is trying to make us believe that it poses no threat and it is saying, Look at me, I am ugly and pitiful and I could not harm you.
But it could! thought Rumour. It is a foul, loathsome creature, soaked in terrible evil and immense ancient power. And it is far cleverer than it appears.
‘I am a cursed thing,’ said the Gristlen, holding out its hands in entreaty, and Rumour knew she had been right. ‘I am repulsive,’ it said. ‘Unless I can slough off the marks of the Dark Lords’ curse, I must drag this loathsome body across the world for ever.’ It looked round at them. ‘That is why I took the music,’ it said.
‘You are as mad as you are evil,’ said Rumour coldly. ‘I should never accept your repulsive embrace. Cerball, why have we not flung this filth into the dungeons by now? Or are we to stand discussing its future until it escapes us again?’
‘Yes, it must be imprisoned, of course.’ Cerball did not know what he had been thinking of. He gestured to several of the apprentices, who would probably like to try out their newly acquired knowledge, and was pleased to see that they stepped forward at once; weaving a thin, snaking chain that caught and held the Gristlen, and hauling it off to the Palace dungeons. The Mugain murmured in an aside that wasn’t it altogether grand to see the youngsters so efficient and obedient?
Cerball watched them go, and turned back to find out what they were going to be doing with the sidh’s music. ‘Because a stolen enchantment is of no use to us,’ he said. And then stopped.
The Mugain said, ‘Are we so sure of that?’
‘Could the sidh’s music get us into the Dark Ireland?’ asked Bodb Decht.
‘Under the right circumstances,’ said the Mugain, and from the fire wall, Rumour turned back to listen.
Great-aunt Fuamnach said, ‘It might get somebody into the Dark Ireland,’ and a sudden silence fell. Andrew, listening, felt the stir go through them and knew they were remembering something.
And then Rumour said, very softly, ‘The sidh’s music and the Samildanach …’ and several people frowned, but no one spoke.
‘It’s a very old belief,’ said Cerball, at length. ‘I don’t think we could rely on it.’ He looked across at Andrew and said, ‘Good sir, you are learned and a traveller. What do you think?’ Andrew said carefully, ‘I have not heard the legend. I only know of the … the being you refer to from your earlier Ritual.’ And thought: but now I am about to hear more, and I am not at all sure that I want to.
‘It’s probably not that well known a legend, of course,’ said Cerball, rather apologetically, as if it might be the Amaranths’ fault that Andrew had not heard of it. ‘It’s so old that I don’t know if anyone believes it anymore.’
Rumour said softly, ‘I believe in it.’
‘So do I,’ said several other voices.
‘The Samildanach,’ said Rumour, moving forward, her eyes on Andrew, her voice caressing the strange Gael syllables. ‘The Man of Each and Every Art, who will come into Ireland quietly and humbly, but before whom all doors will open.’
Andrew said carefully, ‘My own religion teaches a very similar belief. The One who will come into the world of Men and save them from eternal damnation —’
‘But,’ said Cerball, ‘the Samildanach is a Human. In all the stories, he’s a Human.’
‘Yes,’ said Rumour. ‘He is a Human. Precisely.’
There was a sudden intense silence, and every head turned to look at Andrew.
Chapter Ten
The Man of Each and Every Art, who will come quietly and humbly to the world of Men, and defeat the Dark Lords …
I could wish I had not been told that, thought Andrew. Or, if I had been told it, I could wish I had not seen beneath it and beyond it.
The Saviour who will be born to the House of David, and who will live humbly and obscurely, but whose death will free Mankind …
Is the story of our Saviour simply a newer version of the Samildanach … ? An echo, a rewritten legend … Did that gentle Nazarene carpenter never really exist, and was the world turned upside down, and were men sent to their death in agony only for a palimpsest — new writing on an old manuscript … ?
He did not quite believe it. He thought he dared not believe it. And yet so far was he from trying to argue against it, that he was listening to their beliefs and believing in their sorcery. Little by little, he was stepping deeper into the strange, twilit world of Ireland’s paganism. And discovering, along the way, that that paganism was not so far removed from the very beliefs the monks had travelled to Ireland to preach.
The Amaranths would ask him to go through the Gateway into the Dark Realm, of course. The sidh’s music in the hands of a Human. Powerful and unstoppable. And overshadowing it all, that eerily familiar legend. The Samildanach … Could I do it? Would it be arrogant of me to think I could don, even briefly, the mantle of the Samildanach? Would it help anyone? But the stolen music should certainly be returned, he thought.
But it was only when Cerball said, ‘We have no means of knowing what the Gateway is like and we have no means of knowing the creatures that guard it,’ that the real decision was made for Andrew.
He said, ‘Guardians?’ and Cerball said that there were several.
‘Although they do say,’ put in the Mugain, ‘that the most dangerous is the Black Monk of Torach.’
A stinging awareness lashed Andrew’s mind, and with it a surging exultation. Found! he thought. I have found him! And: so I was right! He did succumb to the lure of the Dark Realm, and he did travel down those evil byways!
‘The Black Monk is probably in some kind of servitude to the Dark Lords,’ said the Mugain, who had just remembered that the Monk might well be one of Andrew’s own strange kind, and who would not for worlds have dealt an insult to this quiet, rather austere young man. ‘But the story is that he prowls the boundaries of the Dark Realm, between their world and ours. What some people call the hinterlands.’
‘I understand.’
‘If he’s still there he’ll need to be sidestepped,’ said Cerball, frowning.
‘He would, perhaps, try to prevent anyone from entering?’ said Andrew, carefully.
‘Yes. And if he is held in bondage to the Dark Lords, he is probably constrained to take victims for them. But,’ went on Cerball, ‘we don’t really know.’
‘The music should protect you from him,’ said Bodb Decht, a bit doubtfully.
‘Oh yes. Although of course,’ said Cerball, ‘we don’t know what the Gateway will be like.’
‘That’s assuming he can find it in the first place.’
‘Well, I meant that.’
‘A rolling-back of an immense boulder, I always thought,’ said Rumour, half to herself, and Andrew glanced at her.
‘There may not even be a Gateway at all,’ said the Mugain. ‘Andrew may simply pass from one world to the next.’
‘But,’ said Andrew, with gentle irony, ‘the road into the Dark Realm, whatever it looks like, will be broad and straight and easy to travel.’
‘Why?’ The Amaranths looked at him in puzzlement, and Andrew smiled.
‘It is a belief of my people,’ he said, ‘that the road to the dark underworld — any dark underworld — is an easy one. It is only the road to the righteous and the sinless life that is narrow and hard to find.’
That is very profound,’ said Bodb Decht after a moment. ‘And rather an interesting idea.’
‘We believe it to be true.’ Andrew smiled at them again, and said, ‘And you think the music would enable a traveller to pass between the two worlds easily? Ev
en with the Monk of Torach lying in wait?’ Saying the Monk’s name suddenly gave immense credence to his existence in the Dark Realm.
‘That’s always been the legend,’ said the Mugain. ‘The sidh’s music and the Samildanach. They rather go together. So even though our spells failed, you should have the right tools for the job.’
‘How do you know the spells failed?’ demanded Great-aunt Fuamnach belligerently.
‘We didn’t force open a Gateway.’
‘No, but we’ve found a way through.’ She glared round. ‘It seems to me that we’re succeeding very nicely.’
‘Yes, but not quite as we expected.’
‘That is often the way,’ said Andrew quietly.
*
He thought it remarkable that the two quests should suddenly have come together in this way. To find the Monk he must enter the Dark Realm, and by entering the Dark Realm, he would reach Theodora. Prayer was often answered in odd ways. He thanked God again that he could go after Theodora without dismissing his own task.
He stood with the Amaranths in a hand-linked circle, and listened to Cerball and the Mugain and Bodb Decht — as the Elders — pronounce a brief Benison of Light over Andrew’s journey, and then a half-sung, half-chanted incantation which sounded very beautiful, but which was in a tongue that Andrew could not understand.
‘Gael,’ said Rumour, at his side. ‘But extremely early Gael. Perhaps as early as Cruithin, or even what is called Q-Celtic or Qretani.’
‘It is very beautiful,’ said Andrew, gravely.
‘Oh yes.’
When they finished, he thanked them courteously and said, ‘Would you allow me to pronounce one of the prayers of my own religion now?’ and saw the instant assent in their eyes.