by Sarah Rayne
But she did wish it. She wanted to find the creature who had had the music and who was calling to her. There was a darkness about it, but it was an alluring darkness.
When the voice again said, You must come willingly, Laigne said aloud, ‘I do come willingly. I come because I wish to.’ And reached up for the keys.
As she unlocked the cells, Laigne had the sudden impression that something cold and unclean and dank uncoiled itself, and surged towards her. Something ancient and implacable, and something that had known other worlds and ruled other creatures …
For a moment she could not breathe; the cold mustiness seemed to close about her throat, and there was a moment of undiluted panic. She stood very still, concentrating on Repose and Tranquillity and on the pure blue of Calm, and the smothering darkness cleared, and she could see and think properly again. She could see everything inside the stone cell at the far end.
Of your own wish …
‘Of my own wish,’ whispered Laigne.
There was very little light in the cell. There was a tiny window, high up, with thick black bars across it, and there was a spillage of light from the wall-sconces outside the dungeon. Some wisps of straw had been thrown down, and there was a metal dish containing food, with a pannikin of water close by.
The Gristlen was sitting in the far corner, its jointed legs drawn up before it, its pale eyes watching her. A shiver of cold repulsion disturbed the tranquil surface of Laigne’s mind, because this was not the pure and lovely spell she had been following; this was not the silver and turquoise tracery of cobweb allure. This was something dark and ugly and soaked in blackest evil. But what lay beneath the darkness?
The Gristlen was grotesque and hideous and there was a slyness in its eyes. But Laigne was here for Echbel. She had followed the music’s promise, and she would not flinch now.
But when the Gristlen spoke, it was courteous, and even humble. It said, ‘You have come in search of something, Amaranth Lady?’ and appeared to wait, quite submissively, for her response.
It was disconcerting to realise that this creature knew the purpose of her visit, and that it might even have been behind the music’s sensuous pull. Laigne set down the candle on the floor, and stood looking down at the dark, scaly-hide being. Yes, it was steeped in evil; in old and corrupt evil. Laigne, for all that she was believed to be a little light in the theory of sorcery, knew the difference between what was called Simple Evil and what was called Corrupt Evil. Simple Evil was a young and generally straightforward evil, frequently born from something as basic as greed or lust. Corrupt Evil was different. It was ancient and convoluted; if you imagined it as a solid wedge that you were slicing through, like bread or dough, you would find many different layers: hatred and bitterness and greed and malice and perversion and depravity. Many others. If you went on slicing, right down to the core, you would find that the core was black and warped and twisted.
But nobody had ever said to Laigne that Corrupt Evil could be so compelling, and nobody had ever suggested that, once faced with it, you would want to find out more.
The Gristlen reeked of Corrupt Evil. It possessed ancient and forbidden knowledge, and it had certainly walked in dark worlds. This gave it an unexpected allure. It gave it an authority. Laigne, partly horrified, but partly fascinated, caught herself wondering what its true self was. How had it looked before the Dark Lords had flung it into the Pit? How had it looked in the days when it had spun its terrible evil and wielded its forbidden powers? Had it still been ugly and repulsive? Or had it been one of those darkly beautiful Lords whom you knew to be corrupt and wicked, but whose very corruptness gave them a mantle of seduction?
The Gristlen was watching her, and there was an amused look in its eyes, a knowing look. Laigne had the sudden feeling that it possessed something — some inner strength, some secret ability — that it knew would fascinate her and that might even excite her.
This was not to be permitted. Laigne had come here in good faith; she had followed something that had beckoned and promised; that had spun a light cobweb of rainbow music and that had held out the promise of rescuing Echbel. She reminded herself that she was a sorceress of the House of Amaranth; she had studied and become proficient in the Academy of Sorcerers’ teachings, and they might say what they liked about that dash of Human blood on her great-grandmother’s side …
The Gristlen’s pale, bulging eyes were raking her body, and Laigne was suddenly conscious of the thin robe. Could it possibly see through to her body? Did such a repulsive, warped thing still possess ordinary physical lusts?
‘Certainly I do,’ said the Gristlen softly, insinuatingly. ‘Oh, certainly I do, Madame Sorceress.’ It moved then, suddenly and swiftly, rearing up from its half-sitting, half-crouching position, and loping across the cell to where she was standing by the iron gate. ‘And I could give you such pleasure as you have never dreamed of,’ it said. It was easily a foot taller than she was, but it was stooping over, so that Laigne found herself staring helplessly into the pale eyes.
‘When I look at you, my dear,’ said the Gristlen, its voice no longer harsh and ugly but caressing, ‘when I look at you, I see your slender white body, and the gleaming thighs, and I see what lies between those thighs, and I should like to feel what lies between those thighs.’ It stretched out a hand unexpectedly, and Laigne felt the thick leathery skin brush her neck.
‘White skin,’ it said softly. ‘With a drop of Humanish blood.’ It half closed its eyes, and Laigne thought: I am arousing it. This is a creature who has walked in the dark realms of forbidden practices and known all manner of depravities and I am arousing it. The knowledge gave her a sudden feeling of power.
The Gristlen was backing her against the wall of the cell, and its strong jointed fingers came up to her throat, caressing, stroking. Power rippled beneath its dark skin, and Laigne shivered in helpless fascination.
‘Afraid, my white bird?’ whispered the Gristlen. ‘You need not be. And you came here quite willingly,’ it said. ‘You came here to me willingly.’
Laigne, transfixed, staring into the cold, glittering eyes, whispered, ‘Yes. I came here willingly.’
‘You came because you wanted to.’
‘I came because I wanted to,’ repeated Laigne obediently, and at once the Gristlen’s face stretched into a smile. Its hand slid inside the bodice of her gown, the fingers with the thick horn nails touching her breasts, rubbing the nipples, the webbing between its fingers brushing intimately against her skin. She felt arousal swelling between its thighs. It was repulsive, of course it was repulsive, but … But it was once powerful and once it walked in the forbidden paths, thought Laigne.
When the Gristlen leaned closer and whispered, ‘Love me,’ Laigne felt the darkness within it uncoiling and reaching out serpent-fingers to her mind … A wave of desire, dizzying in its intensity, sliced through her, and she thought that if the dungeon wall had not been behind her, she would certainly have fallen.
The Gristlen tore aside the thin robe she was wearing, and reached beneath, the scaly skin scraping her flesh. It was beginning to pant as if it had been running, and it was thrusting itself against her. There was the feeling of a hard, huge phallus, huger than anything Laigne had ever imagined, pushing against her. The shameful desire spiralled inside her again, and she threw her head back and pulled the creature’s body to her.
At once the Gristlen bellowed in triumph and forced itself between her thighs, pushing her legs apart. There was the painful rasp of needle-like points tearing her skin, and Laigne gasped and looked down.
The Gristlen’s monstrous rearing phallus was studded with tiny cruel spikes, so that once embedded in flesh it would tear and lacerate … It was barbed, it was fletched like an arrow, and in another minute it would thrust inside her …
Laigne screamed and struggled for the first time, and the Gristlen made a convulsive movement, forcing into her. Pain tore through her womb, and there was a sudden shameful flood of wetness between her
legs as her bladder succumbed to panic and agony.
The Gristlen chuckled and thrust deeper. ‘Fear, my pigeon, or ecstasy?’ it hissed, and Laigne screamed again, and felt it grunting and heaving, moving inside her in terrible savage thrusts, pushing in and then withdrawing a little, so that the barbs, the wicked spiny growths, tore her skin. Her flesh was being ripped and there was a white agony, there was grinding, screaming pain … She could feel thick blood oozing from her, and she sobbed and struggled because it was tearing her apart; she could feel it happening. It was mutilating her beyond endurance, and she would die in the foul embrace of this evil, corrupt creature …
‘What are you!’ screamed Laigne, almost beyond reason now. ‘In the gods’ names, what are you?’
‘You — will — see …’ gasped the Gristlen, thrusting against her. ‘You will see because you will feel the curse dissolving,’ it cried, and clutched at her skin so that she cried out with the pain of her torn flesh. ‘Feel it!’ shrieked the Gristlen. ‘Feel the curse sloughing! Rejoice with me!’
It gave a final, guttural shout, and moved convulsively. There was a wave of agony so intense that Laigne thought she would die, and there was an icy wetness as its seed spurted into her, tainted and loathsome.
She cried out, but it was a broken, mewing cry now, and no one outside the dungeons could have heard.
The Gristlen withdrew completely, and a cry of agony broke from Laigne as the barbs of its phallus tore into her again. There was the terrible feel of its seed, cold and poisonous, flooding her womb. She sagged and half fell to the floor, doubling over, hugging the pain.
The Gristlen stood over her, looking down with a malevolent smile, and she saw through a sick mist that its dark carapace was indeed sloughing. It was digging its horned nails into its skin, raking furiously at the dark, repulsive hide, peeling it back in great gobbets, like a child tearing off a scabbed wound.
Laigne, almost beyond reason now, thought: in another minute it will stand before me in its true state! And I do not want to see it! screamed her mind. I do not want to know!
Beneath the fibrous lumps of torn skin, pale thick fluid was oozing to the surface, and in places there was the glimmer of greyish scales, faintly luminous in the dark cell.
And then the creature was emerging, it was climbing out of the discarded shell, and it was standing over her, a monstrous rearing shape, palely and evilly beautiful. A shining, membranous tail protruded like a giant fin from the base of the creature’s spine, and through the new skin, Laigne could see the tiny brittle bones of a creature accustomed to dwelling beneath the seas. There was a central hollow spine with a myriad of tiny, bony rays fanning out from it, extending into the arms and lower limbs.
A sea-creature. Something piscine. Something that had walked the world many centuries ago … A terrible fear began to form.
The Gristlen’s shrivelled black skin lay on the floor, and in its place was a sleek being with a round, hairless skull and Human features. There were bulbous eyes and a flat, wide mouth, and a thick neck with rudimentary gills.
Gills and hollow bones, thought Laigne. A lashing, jagged-edged fin. And there are scales, faintly phosphorescent, between his thighs …
Tumbled memories of mermen who left their sea-worlds to walk on land and spin their evil seductions over Humans churned through her mind, and with them came a searing knowledge.
Not a merman. Not something from the cool under-ocean realm of the sidh even.
This was the Fisher King. The ancient, legendary Fisher King, whose reign had been a reign of bloody terror, and whose name was even now whispered with fear.
The legend said that he had been driven from the world, that he had been vanquished by the sidh and that he could never again return to the world of Men. Ireland had been a safer place because of it.
And now he had returned. The Fisher King, Coelacanth himself, had come back.
*
The Amaranths were shocked and horrified. To think that Laigne had gone alone to the Gristlen’s cell, and there been so brutally savaged, was scarcely to be borne.
The Mugain said it was all very well to say tut and pshaw and that Laigne had acted in a foolhardy manner; there the thing was, and whatever her reasons had been, now they must make the poor soul as comfortable as they could.
One of the younger Amaranths, who had made something of a study of cures and elixirs and healing spells, had spun a cool, soothing balm, made up of gentle grey cobweb substances and thin silky twines. ‘It will calm her mind,’ said the sorcerer, whose name was Cecht, and who had until now been rather over-awed at finding herself in such august company.
‘Did she say anything about — about the Gristlen?’
‘Only that it attacked her,’ said Cecht, and everyone looked solemn, because you did not have to have achieved the level of scholar-sorcerer to guess what form the attack would have taken.
‘Where is the creature now?’ demanded Great-aunt Fuamnach, who had been sitting by the fire, unravelling the puckered enchantments for re-use. ‘What happened to it?’
‘It escaped,’ said Cerball crossly. ‘Of course.’
‘And is probably roaming freely about the Palace, ready to pounce out on to another of us,’ said Great-aunt Fuamnach, beckoning to Bodb Decht to sit in front of her and help with rewinding the skeins of enchantment. ‘Well, Cerball, I never criticise; but how we are to sleep safely in our beds with such a creature prowling the corridors, I hope you will tell us!’ She fixed Cerball with a stern look, and Cerball, who had already spent a nasty morning worrying over this one, and had assigned the Mugain to organise a proper Banishing Ritual, said crossly that it was all in hand.
The Banishing Ritual was duly performed, with the Mugain leading them all. Somebody produced an especially strong Enchantment of Light to shine in every dark corner, and most people said firmly that the evil had gone.
‘Self-delusion,’ said Great-aunt Fuamnach. ‘It’s still here. Mark my words, it’s still here.’
Whether it was still here or not, nobody really knew any longer. It might have scuttled into some dark hiding place somewhere, or it might have whisked itself out of the Palace altogether. And, as Bodb Decht said, there were so many itinerant enchantments wandering about the Palace at the moment, it was difficult to tell what was good and benign and what was just a little bit grey, and what was downright evil and black.
‘And now there’s poor Nechtan’s funeral rites to think of,’ said Herself of Mugain, and added that wasn’t it exactly like Nechtan — may the gods preserve his soul — to up and die just as they were in the midst of a turmoil. Nechtan, said Herself irritably, had always been a shocking old attention-seeker, and clearly he had not altered in death.
The funeral rites would take nine days and nine nights. Nobody had the heart for it, but it was not something that could be scamped and it was certainly not something that could be ignored. Although nobody quite said it was inconvenient, most people thought it. But there it was; Nechtan must be made properly ready for the great journey to the Land Under the Ocean, so that his spirit could scale the walls of the Gates of Paradise, and unlock the Three Gates of Wisdom, of Poetry and of Knowledge.
The female sorcerers had already prepared Nechtan’s body for its last journey, and the upper floors of the Porphyry Palace were redolent with the scents of natron and the burning of hazelwood. He had been dressed in the ceremonial white robe with the amethyst colours of the Amaranth House, and then his body would be placed on a silver bier draped with purple and white.
For nine days and nine nights, the Amaranths would read from the great annals of Ireland, nine of them at a time for a stretch of nine hours, after which a further nine would take over. It was exhausting and it drained their power, but it was important to surround Nechtan with poetry and wisdom and knowledge, so that the Three Gates would open for him with ease.
The first three days would be given to the chanting of poetry, the most beautiful and the most evocative poetry
of Ireland. There would be the verses from the famous Voyage of Bran:
Unknown is wailing and treachery
In the familiar cultivated land,
There is nothing rough or harsh,
But sweet music striking on the ear.
Without grief, without sorrow, without death,
Without sickness, without debility …
They would also use some of the beautiful poignant works of Amairgen the Blind, who had lived in Ireland centuries earlier and bequeathed a wealth of poetry and wisdom to generations after him:
And it is at the Purple Hour
When the day is handed into the keeping of the night
When spells are cast and enchantments walk abroad,
When the unseen creatures of the Old Ireland prowl,
When the silver bars of the body are dissolved
And the cag’d soul at last takes flight,
And joy abounds for ever …
The next three days would encompass wisdom and knowledge, so that there would be readings from the Chronicles of Calatin the First and the Annals of Sorcery. Probably there would also be sections from the lives of some of Tara’s wisest rulers; those of Grainne the Gentle and Erin the Just would also surely be chosen.
The last three days would be entirely given to music. The ancient magical runic songs of the Druids, which symbolised wisdom as well as music, would be sung, and the beautiful sad ballads of the long-ago High Kings and Queens, all of them beautiful and filled with adventure and bravery and magic.
It was unbearably difficult for them to give it their fullest concentration. Nobody could forget that the Dark Realm’s most powerful necromancer had entered Ireland with ease and snatched up Theodora. Nobody could forget Echbel in the grisly clutches of the Fomoire.
‘But,’ said the Mugain very fiercely, ‘we must pay this last homage to Nechtan, and we must do so fully and properly, for it is unthinkable that we should do other than ensure his entry through the Three Gates.’
It was unthinkable to all of them, and they would do it.