Wolfking The Omnibus: Books 1-4
Page 200
‘Please do,’ said Cerball, and the Amaranths nodded eagerly, because it would be immensely interesting to hear something of this new Teaching.
Andrew bowed his head, and joined his hands, and spoke the lyrical, stirring words of the Exurgat Dens, the psalm that Augustinus was said to have pronounced over the mission monks at the beginning of their journey into the wild, barbarous northern isles.
‘“Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered … Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt thou drive them away, and like as wax melteth at the fire, so let the ungodly perish … ”’
A great listening stillness fell over the Amaranths, and Andrew felt the beauty and the strength and the exultation of his beliefs consuming him. How could I have doubted?
When he said, ‘“The Chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels, and the Lord is among them,”’ he felt the Amaranths stir in purest delight, and when he said, ‘“That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies and that the tongue of thy dogs may be red through the same,”’ he looked up to see their eyes kindling, and he saw them bring their hands together, the palms flat, as they had done for their own Ritual.
Andrew lifted his head and looked at them, and pronounced the final words ringingly.
‘“Thy God hath sent forth strength … Give thanks O Israel from the ground of thy heart.”’
And to himself, murmured, ‘Let me not fail, O Lord.’
*
Andrew stood very quietly inside the Well Cave, and felt the strangeness of the Tower close about him. He could think: this is the magical Cadence Tower, this is the place that was built by an overreaching sorcerer and that destroyed an ancient magical language. I suppose I am believing it, thought Andrew, but several layers down he knew he was believing it, for he was remembering all of the old stories about greedy peoples who had tried to reach other worlds and built towers, and challenged gods, and been overthrown.
He advanced to the Well, and stood looking down into the impenetrable darkness, straining his eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of light. He thought there was no light at all, and he felt a cold fear at the thought of descending by the iron ladder into such blackness.
He was slightly afraid, but not unduly so. He thought he was strung up to a pitch of immense excitement. I am fulfilling the mission vouchsafed to me, he thought. I am nearing the Black Monk of Torach. I know it. He remembered how in England, men would say that, in the act of hunting, nearing the end of the chase, the hunter sometimes entered into the mind of the hunted. I shall find him, thought Andrew, delightedly and, murmuring a soft prayer to avoid the sin of Pride, he put the sidh’s music in its small golden casket safely into a pocket of his robe.
He had grasped the first rung of the iron ladder, preparatory to descending into the Well, when an amused voice from the door halted him.
‘If I am to accompany you,’ said Rumour, ‘you could at least help me over the parapet.’
*
She was wearing a silk cloak of a swirling flame colour, and her hair was unbound and threaded with thin silver strands, studded with tiny scarlet beads. In her left hand was a narrow hazel wand wreathed with curling symbols. Her eyes glowed with the tiny dark flames he had seen earlier on, and she was regarding him with her head on one side.
Andrew said, ‘I am to go alone, Madame. The one you call the Samildanach had surely not a companion with him during his life here?’ And heard a tiny voice within him warning against Pride again.
Rumour laughed. ‘I would not be so sure of that, Andrew,’ she said, and regarded him with amused eyes. ‘To begin with, at least, the Samildanach was an ordinary Human. Was not your own Leader?’
Andrew said, without thinking, ‘He had the one referred to as “the disciple whom He loved”.’
‘There you are.’
‘It is generally assumed to have been a man,’ said Andrew slowly. ‘Although there is no actual proof of it.’
Rumour laughed. ‘Then we have good authority for me to accompany you,’ she said. ‘Because the Samildanach, from any tale I have ever heard, was certainly able to enjoy the company of females.’ She perched on the parapet and peered into the Well’s black depths. ‘Dark and nasty,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it just as well that I brought an Enchantment of Light for us to see our way.’
*
The Enchantment of Light burned steadily as they descended into the Well.
Andrew went first, sitting on the low, narrow parapet, and then swinging his legs over into the black abyss.
He began the descent cautiously, closing his mind to what he was doing, trying to shut out the increasing feeling of suffocation, the impression that the dank, stale air of the Well was closing over his head so that he would soon be unable to breathe.
The ladder was fixed firmly to the inside of the Well. Iron rivets had been driven into the black brickwork of the Well shaft, and there were brackets holding the ladder in position. The rivets were rusting, but Andrew thought they would hold.
Above him, Rumour stepped down lightly and easily, little silk-slippered feet barely seeming to touch the ladder, casting the warm, soft light as she moved. There was a whisper of perfume on the air, warring with the dank mustiness of the Well. Andrew found himself sending up a prayer of thanks for this unlooked-for companion. I did not wish it, he thought; I should have undertaken this alone. And then, with the self-honesty which was inbred in him: but without her, this journey would have been perilous and lonely.
The lower they went, the colder it became, and the more noxious the air. There was a sour, tainted taste to the air, as if it was the foul breath of a monster. We are crawling into the maw of a leviathan, thought Andrew, into the gaping jaws of a giant …
Several times, he stopped and found himself struggling for breath. Once Rumour missed her footing on the narrow rungs, and half fell, clinging to the iron staves, her feet searching frantically for the rungs. Andrew scrambled back up to her instantly, and caught her about the waist with one hand, guiding her back; and Rumour, regaining balance, managed one of her mischievous smiles at him.
‘A chivalrous knight,’ she said, slightly out of breath. ‘And you have restored me to the path. Or were you intending that we should fall from the path together, Andrew?’
‘I do not intend that either of us should fall, Madame,’ said Andrew, and although his voice was perfectly composed, his heart was racing and his senses had reeled at the sudden, unavoidable press of her body, and the feel and the scent of her skin.
Rumour said, ‘It is sometimes extremely pleasant to fall,’ and sent him her sudden, mischievous grin.
‘So I have heard. If you would direct the light a little lower, I think it would make the descent easier.’
‘As you will,’ said Rumour, meekly.
As they neared what must surely be the Well’s bottom, they were able to see tiny blind creatures crawling from the crevices in the ancient black brick of the Well shaft, tiny wriggling worm creatures, pale and fumbling. But, thought Andrew, surely that means there must be a sliver of light from somewhere? No creature can exist in complete darkness.
With the framing of the thought, he became aware of light: thin at first, and then stronger. He touched Rumour’s arm and she nodded, as if she, also, had been noticing it.
‘I think it must be seeping in from below,’ said Andrew.
‘Yes, for there is nowhere else it could come from.’
‘Douse your own light,’ said Andrew, but Rumour had already done so.
They stood very still, scanning the Well shaft with their eyes, trying to gauge the extent of the light, trying to see where it came from. Andrew thought, and then was sure, that the Well shaft was widening, and that the brick walls were no longer black and pitted.
But the light was not the pale, cool, elvish light of the sidh’s City, which they had both been hoping for; it was not the beautiful, faintly eerie turquoise-silver of Tiarna. It was thin, trickling crimson, like blood seeping from a wou
nd.
‘But whatever it is, we must go on,’ said Andrew. ‘We must reach the Well’s floor.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Rumour’s response was instant, as if there could be no other course for them to take. But Andrew thought he heard, for the first time, a note of hesitation in her voice, and this was the most alarming thing yet, because he had believed Rumour to be intrepid and adventurous and impervious to danger.
‘Of course I am not impervious to danger, Andrew,’ said Rumour’s voice softly. ‘To be so would be to be insensitive in the extreme.’
‘Of course. And to believe you so is to credit you with no imagination.’ In the uncertain light, Andrew looked at her. ‘I think you have a great deal of imagination, Rumour.’
‘I am honoured,’ said Rumour and, despite the danger, the note of amusement was in her voice. ‘Shall we go on?’
There was only a short length left of the iron ladder, ‘And I can see the Well floor,’ said Andrew, peering downwards. ‘But the iron rungs finish about six feet short of it. I think we have to jump from the last rung.’
‘If I fall,’ said Rumour, ‘I shall expect you to catch me, Andrew.’ And sent him, over her shoulder, the wicked grin again.
Andrew grasped the last few rungs firmly, and sought for footholds in the wall directly below. It was possible to hold the last rung, and half fall, half slide the rest of the way.
Rumour followed, descending to the Well’s floor in a slither of perfumed silk, half falling into his arms, so that there was again the warmth of her body, and the sudden, strong intimacy as they stood together in the near-dark.
For a moment she was pressed against him, and Andrew felt his body harden in swift, shameful response. He beat the sweet arousal down at once, and stepped back, and turned to look about them.
Directly ahead of them were black-mouthed caves, with baleful, flickering firelight deep within. Faintly, on the air, came the sound of rhythmic singing.
‘O give us skins of Humanish thin
To sew and weave and clothe ourselves in.
Give us hides and leathern skins
Shales to warm our caverns with.’
The dungeons of the Fomoire.
*
The dull light oozed into the rock passage, and they could see shapes moving within the caves; darting, dancing shapes that were wearing the semblance of Human appearances, but that were not Human in the least.
Behind them and above them was the Well shaft, with the iron ladder still within their reach. Beneath their feet was the hard packed earth of the floor. At their backs was a solid mass of black, pitted rock, and although there were crevices and indentations in the rock, when they tried to explore them they could see that they were simply shallow caves, niches in the wall.
There was nowhere else to go but in the direction of the singing.
Andrew was the first to move. He looked at his companion, and from somewhere dredged up a smile, and said, ‘Well, madame? Are you prepared for the first of the dangers you wanted to experience?’
Rumour said, ‘Perfectly prepared.’ But her eyes went to the red glow from the caves, and Andrew saw uncertainty there.
‘Is it possible to go past the caves without being seen, do you think?’ he said, and Rumour frowned, considering.
‘If we make no sound at all, and if we cast no shadow to alert them, we might do it,’ she said.
‘Mingle with the shadows,’ said Andrew, and thought: well, at least I do not sound afraid. ‘We must keep close together, and we must walk as if we walk on spun glass, and we must make no sudden movement that might catch their attention.’
‘All right.’ Rumour wrapped her silk cloak closely about her. She grinned again. ‘A Cloak of Invisibility would have been so useful, Andrew, but perhaps we shall manage without it. Onwards, then?’
‘Onwards,’ said Andrew and, hand in hand, they began to walk softly towards the Fomoire’s lair.
Chapter Eleven
Maelduin thought he was the only one left. Tiarna was already dying, as he moved through the great empty rooms, the gentle iridescence was dissolving and thin, brilliant threads of colour, like trickling spring water, were running down the rock walls. He reached out to touch the nearest rock face, and felt the cold dankness and the pale, thin sensation which meant an almost total absence of colour and light and music. He was unused to pain, but now he felt something very near to it, and panic gripped him. Many of the sidh were already gaunt and drab, swathes of pale colour, their narrow turquoise eyes filmed. Unable to move. Dying.
To begin with, he thought he might find help in the ancient magical libraries of the nimfeach, the silken crystal pools at the heart of the Palace. He darted along the silver tunnels, his mind in turmoil, but when he dived into the deepest pool, his body slender and shimmering, barely creating a ripple on the surface, he saw at once that there would be no help here. The cool sea-magic of the long-ago nimfeach — the evil, soulless water creatures who had lived in Tiarna before the sidh wrested it from them — was still there; but it was beyond his reach.
Maelduin’s people had spent years enveloping the cold, evil sea-magic in their own gentle, pure bewitchments; they had dissolved the nimfeach’s necromantic magic and imbued it with their own soft, cool sorcery, and the spells that lay beneath the crystal pools were now the strongest and purest magic in all Ireland.
But to reach it now, to dissolve the ancient protective carapaces, the music itself was needed. It was the key, the talisman. It must slide into the soft water, liquid and pure, until it had coloured the rock face and tinted the pools with sparkling colours, brilliant as peacocks’ tails, effervescent and elusive as herons’ wings. Only then could the dawn-of-time spells woven by the Fisher King and his minions be reached.
Maelduin swirled angrily in the clear silken water, a glinting arrow of blue and green fury and frustration, churning the pool’s surface to foam, emerging briefly to pour into the next pool.
In each one, it was the same. There were rows upon rows of spells and enchantments; each one exquisitely crafted and polished, each one written in the ancient mystical Cadence. Maelduin knew the Cadence as well as he knew the shining City of Tiarna. He could have pronounced any one of the enchantments effortlessly and it was certain that somewhere within those enchantments would be a spell that would revive the dying Elven King and restore Tiarna’s magic and show them where the music had been taken.
But without the music, the spells could not be reached, and without the music, Tiarna and the sidh would die.
Maelduin emerged from the last pool, and shook himself angrily, droplets of pale, shining water falling from him.
What now?
*
Light still poured into the Silver Cavern, where once Aillen mac Midha had held Court, and where once the sidh had sung their cool music, and sent out the lures of the nimfeach to shipwrecked sailors whose rafts washed up at the mouths of the sea tunnels.
But it was a cold, uncertain light now, colder than ever Maelduin had seen it, fainter than he had ever imagined it could be. The Silver Cavern was no longer the shining heart of the Palace.
Maelduin stood before the immense Silver Throne, where his father sat unseeing and unhearing. Dead already? Please, no! he cried silently and, as if his thoughts had taken shape, he felt his father’s response.
Not dead, my son, but fading and failing … And then, with a plea that went straight to Maelduin’s core.
Help me.
There was a flash of time, the span of a Humanish heartbeat, when Maelduin felt panic close about him again, and when he thought: but I cannot! I do not know what to do! And then, summoning his fortitude: Very well! What must I do to save Tiarna?
For whatever is necessary, I will do it.
He waited, and presently, as fragile as icicles tapping against the cave walls, came the response.
You must submit to the ancient ritual, my son …
Yes?
That is the only way to save us.
You must don Humanish garb and leave Tiarna.
And you must walk abroad in the world of Men.
*
Become a Humanish.
I cannot do it! thought Maelduin, appalled. There must be some other way! But hard on the heels of the thought came another: you must. There is no other way. And you are the Crown Prince, it is your right and your duty and your inheritance.
It was the only way. If he was to search the world of Men for the Gristlen, he must do so unchallenged, undetected. He must do so as a Man.
He found the idea repulsive; he could not imagine how it would be to carry about the cumbersome bones; he could make only the most fleeting guess at how it would feel to be inside their skins, to move in the clumsy, slow way they had to move, and to have, as the only method of understanding, the imprecise thing they called ‘speech’. Once the Humanish had possessed the ancient magical Samhailt: the art of hearing and understanding one another’s thoughts, but Maelduin thought this was something bestowed only on a very few, and he thought that it had frayed and ravelled until it barely existed.
Become a Humanish …
But I have no choice. He moved back to the great Silver Throne where the Elven King was dying.
*
Nearly all the sidh were gathered in the Silver Cavern for the ritual, but Maelduin could see that it had cost them dearly. The younger ones had dragged themselves there, crawling painfully through the tunnels, but the older ones had had to be carried.
Their eyes were dulled, their once-brilliant bodies were harsh and lustreless, and they looked at Maelduin with such desperate hope that the pity of it closed about him suffocatingly.
No one knew if Aillen mac Midha still possessed sufficient strength to summon up the ritual that would clothe Maelduin in Humanish garb; most of the sidh knew it, but they would all have flinched at invoking it. It was one of the oldest and one of the most powerful of all the ancient rituals. And it could rebound; in the hands of one who lacked the understanding or the power, it could play evil and malicious tricks.