by Sarah Rayne
Rumour said, very softly, ‘Small wonder they have guarded it so jealously and so fiercely.’
To Andrew there was a silky, seductive beckoning about Tiarna. He had expected it to be beautiful; but he had not been prepared for this living radiance, this marvellous cascading light that caressed his senses. He understood why the sidh had ceaselessly and jealously guarded their City, and spun their ice-fire enchantments to deter travellers and invaders. Had I been born to this, thought Andrew, I should never bear leaving it. I should never bear to see it in the hands of clumsy, stupid fools, perhaps desecrated by Humans. This is something that belongs to the cool faery creatures of the seas. A world that Humans should never penetrate and despoil, but visit only in dreams and visions and longings.
The Gates stretched high above them, twenty feet at least, and they made out, very distantly, a rippling sea-green light, a ruffle of cloudiness, shot here and there with threads of vivid brilliance.
Andrew said, very softly, ‘So there is to be a Gate after all.’
‘Yes.’ Rumour indicated the dappled light far above them. ‘I believe that we are seeing the oceans of the world from beneath,’ she said. ‘One of our beliefs tells how, after death, the soul is taken to the place beyond and beneath the Roof of the Ocean.’ She sent him one of her sidelong glances. ‘There, the soul encounters the Wall of Paradise, over which it must climb,’ said Rumour very softly, and just as Andrew, earlier, had looked to see if she understood about prayer and faith, now Rumour looked to see if Andrew could understand her world’s beliefs.
He said, half to himself, ‘The place where all the worlds converge,’ and Rumour smiled with delight, because if he could understand that, if he could accept the difficult ancient beliefs and set them alongside his own rather beautiful, austere teachings, he was a very rare creature indeed.
Andrew said, ‘It is a concept I am not familiar with.’ But he looked at her as he spoke, as if wanting to know more, and Rumour said:
‘There are many worlds, and the wise men teach that, in places, the fabric between them is very thin. I have always visualised the worlds as prisms, polished diamonds, many-sided and multi-faceted.’
She looked at him and waited again, and Andrew said, slowly, ‘If that should be so, then in places the surfaces of the worlds could touch. Facets of worlds could impinge on one another.’
‘So that it would be possible to pass from one world to another,’ said Rumour softly, and looked at him and thought: so you are indeed able to open your mind to teachings other than those of your strange Order. And if I am not very careful, I may find myself attracted as much by your mind as by your body. And that would be the most dangerous attraction of them all … That would be completely and irreclaimably foolish, said Rumour to herself very firmly.
‘I am not sure, you know,’ said Andrew carefully, ‘that I can believe in other worlds.’
‘But there are other worlds, Andrew,’ said Rumour, still staring up at the glinting silver and blue City Gates, and at the misty world beyond. ‘There are other worlds, and there are other beings and there are certainly creatures who have not a drop of Human blood in their veins.’ She glanced at him. ‘You have already met the Fomoire,’ said Rumour, a questioning note in her voice, as if she might be saying: deny that if you can.
‘Yes.’ Andrew frowned.
‘Also,’ said Rumour, ‘you have met the Amaranths.’ And, as he turned to look at her, ‘Did you truly believe us to be entirely Human?’ said Rumour softly. ‘We are a small part Human, but we are not entirely so. The first sorcerers of all were imbued with the ancient magic from the dawn of the world; it is in the veins of all true Amaranths, and although inter-marriages with Humans have occasionally taken place, the thin trickle of the Amaranthine flame is in us. That is why we can harness the power and channel the ancient forces that prowl the world unseen. That is why a few of us were vouchsafed the Sacred Flame at the very beginning. So that we could work and rule and harness the good and pure Dawn Sorcery.’
There was a brief silence. I dare not believe, said Andrew silently, staring at Rumour. It is a dangerous, seductive idea, and I will not believe any of it. He closed his mind to the insidious bewitchment of creatures of an ancient magical lineage imbued with some kind of flame-like force, even while his mind was touching on the stories of the Twelve Apostles, filled with the Spirit of the Lord and bidden to go out and spread the Word … ‘Upon thee I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it …’ Simon Peter taken from the shores of Galilee to fish for men instead; Andrew his brother, James and John; Philip the lawyer who was the scholar Apostle … And what of Mary of Magdala, Mary, whom some Churchmen believed to have been the Apostle that Christ loved best … ?
4 And for those who wish to enter, the Gate is always open …’
The words repeated themselves in Andrew’s head, and as if at a command, he reached out and pushed them.
They swung open with a silken whisper, and the soft, blue-green radiance of Tiarna poured outwards and fell about them.
*
As they passed beneath the Gates, Andrew and Rumour were both instantly aware that they were not alone in the dying City.
There were scuttlings and slitherings; cold creeping sounds, as if unseen creatures were crawling and slinking across the ground just out of their sight.
‘The sidh?’ said Andrew in a whisper, but knew at once that it could not be the sidh. The sounds were made by creatures who were evil and cold and who possessed a dark, cruel intelligence.
‘Not the sidh,’ said Rumour softly, looking about her, the blue-green radiance of Tiarna falling about her like a cloak, turning her hair to rippling silver. ‘But perhaps some strange, chill race that has crept into Tiarna since the sidh’s music went.’
‘Come inside, Human Monk and Amaranth Sorceress …’ The cold, dank whispering hissed in their ears, and they whipped round towards its direction. There was a cold, dragging sound, and a sly chuckling, and there was the impression of pale, lidless eyes peering from behind the silver and blue pillars. But whatever was watching, and whatever had whispered its cold beckoning, had whisked into hiding, and there was nothing to be seen.
As they moved forward, they heard the sounds behind them again.
‘Not footsteps exactly,’ said Andrew, frowning.
‘Something crawling?’
Something crawling …
Several times, as they walked on, there was muffled laughter, as if the creatures watching them were savouring their presence, and once Rumour caught a glimpse of something pale and scaled that did not quite walk but did not quite crawl either.
Something that crept and slithered along the ground …
The Palace was in front of them; a glistening, blue-green castle of ice and fire, lit not from within, but from without. Its topmost spires reached upwards to the rippling, silver-veined ocean, and its turrets were shining and spiralling with the pouring water-light from above.
‘It looks Human,’ said Andrew, and instantly wondered if this sounded absurd. ‘It looks as if it was built by Humans,’ he said.
Rumour, staring at the Palace, said, ‘It is Human, Andrew. It was built by the nimfeach at the beginning of Ireland’s history, and legend tells how, when the world was young and Tara, the Bright Palace, was new, the Fisher King crept through the tunnels we have just traversed, and walked in the world of the Humanish. He stole the designs and the plans for Tara itself, which had been created by what we call architect-sorcerers for the first High Queen of Ireland, and he and his people, the nimfeach, used the designs to build their own Palace. What you are seeing is almost an exact mirror-image of Tara.’ Her eyes were still on the gentle, beautiful spires and turrets and crenellations. ‘Tara is said to be the most beautifully perfect thing in all Ireland,’ said Rumour. ‘But this is a Tara soaked in centuries and aeons of the sidh’s soft allurements and seductions and their cold, elvish magic. And whatever waits for us in there, it is not the s
idh, Andrew.’
Andrew was staring at the Palace. He said, ‘Whatever waits for us, we must go forward.’ He looked down at her. ‘All right?’
‘All right,’ said Rumour.
*
There were no pathways or tracks or roads as they knew them; there was no way of knowing how the sidh would travel to their shining, cool Palace. Rumour, who understood a little about the sidh, knew that for the most part they simply poured through the air, and that they had no need of roads or tracks.
Silver grass, waving and soft, grew all round the Palace, and here and there clung to the pale substance of the walls, rather as an ivy will creep over brickwork. In the depths of the silver fronds, Andrew caught flashes of soft, turquoise light, smudges on the ground or against the Palace walls.
‘Sidh-creatures,’ said Rumour. ‘Yes, they are dying. Then-light is fading. Whatever has crept into Tiarna found little resistance from them.’
As they passed under the great arch of the portcullis, Andrew paused, unsure of the way they should now go, but Rumour, whose boast that she had been intimate with the High King was not an empty one, had once known Tara’s layout very well indeed. She saw that the inside of the Palace corresponded almost exactly to the inside of Tara. Ahead of them were the galleried landings that led to the Staterooms: the Star of the Poets, the Skyward Tower, the beautiful, eerie Spirit Tower. Exactly the same, thought Rumour, torn between fascination and anger against the long-ago Fisher King who had stolen the architect-sorcerers’ vision of Tara.
As they passed warily through empty, echoing galleries, and down silver staircases, they saw, here and there, drifting, formless, turquoise smoke, blurs of colour so faint and so indistinct that Andrew thought it was a trick of the light.
‘It is no trick,’ said Rumour in a low, angry voice. ‘It is the sidh, Andrew, and they are dying a little more with every minute.’ She moved forward, her silken-clad feet skimming the floor, Andrew at her side.
They heard the sounds before they reached the Palace’s centre. At first, Andrew thought it was simply an echo, a lingering voice, some fragment of the dying sidh’s magic. And then, as they neared the centre, the sounds grew louder, and he realised that they had nothing to do with the sidh and their eerily beautiful world.
This was something evil and powerful; something that was
destroying the cool beauty and the lingering fragrance of the sidh’s music …
Immense double doors with etched symbols were ahead of them, partly open. Rumour and Andrew could see leaping candlelight, at first glance very nearly ordinary, and then not ordinary at all: smeary crimson, shot with frosted icy-blue, and filled with the clotted malevolence of ancient corruption and old evil.
There was shouting and jeering; bursts of goblin-laughter, screeching voices raised in revelry. A scent of food, warm and spiced and rather greasy, wafted through the doors towards them.
The whispering voice echoed about them again: ‘Come inside, Human Monk … Come inside, Amaranth Sorceress … Partake of my hospitality …’
The doors swung inwards. Beyond them was an immense banqueting chamber, a huge marble and crystal hall, created to reflect Tara’s glittering Sun Chamber.
But it was lit to garish life, and it was pulsating with a smeary red glow from dozens of thick, evil-smelling candles, and it was alive with shrieking, grabbing, rioting creatures.
And some of them were skincloaked, wizened, dancing creatures, and some were slender, writhing fish-beings.
The long marble tables were piled high with food, great overflowing platters of roasted meats and baked game and jointed carcasses. There were dishes of glistening fruits, crystalline and shiny with syrups and sugars, and the scent of hot, greasy food, and of spilt wine.
Andrew and Rumour stood in the doorway, their senses assaulted by the sights and the sounds that filled the banqueting hall of the Elven King. Through the thick, rank heat, they began to make out the shapes of the creatures who rioted and tumbled and held such grotesque revels. Andrew’s eyes were stinging from the fetid smoke, but he saw with cold horror that ranged about the tables were at least two dozen of the Fomoire, grinning goblin faces peering through slitted Human skins, tiny black paw hands reaching and snatching the food and wine. The skincloaks were shiny with spilled grease, and rivulets of fat ran from their lips. They gnawed at haunches of meat, spraying the table with fragments of half-eaten food, and then turned to the wine flagons, tilting them to their lips, spilling the liquid so that it splashed on to the tables and ran on to the silver floor. Several of them had scuttled on to the tables and were sitting cross-legged, the terrible cloaks flung back so that their wizened goblin-bodies were exposed. They reached for the hunks of warm meat joints, gnawing into them, and Andrew remembered, with an abrupt twist of nausea, the Fomoire’s black mouthed caves and the bubbling cauldrons of Human flesh.
Seated with them were nightmarish creatures, neither quite Human nor fish, but a cold, malevolent blending of the two. These were beings that could not walk upright like Men, but must go on their bellies like snakes or worms.
Slithering across the ground, thought Andrew, sickened. So it was those creatures who crept after us. He saw that they had small flat tails, jagged-edged and membranous, that hung from their spines.
Their faces were those of the beings depicted in the tunnels: sea-nymphs, sirens, with pointed, snouted features and thick, lipless mouths. There was such greed and such cruelty in them that Andrew and Rumour both shuddered. Their bodies were pale, but not in the eerily beautiful way that Rumour knew the sidh to be pale; these were whitish-grey, sluglike beings: neckless and bloodless and coldly evil. Their skins were spattered with pale, faintly greasy-looking scales, and they bent over the long food-strewn table, their bodies curved, so that it was possible to see a line of thin, glistening bones that bristled outwards from their spines.
As the flickering candles burned up, distorted shadows leapt, and Andrew and Rumour both had the sudden impression that the ancient cave drawings had been woken; that the carvings had opened their scaly eyes, and stepped down from the cave walls in the darkness.
Andrew thought: the nimfeach! The lost people of Tiarna! And looked at the grey-scaled, iridescent creatures, and at the lashing, pronged tails and the sly, cruel faces, and felt the terrible cold evil emanating from them.
And then he looked at the creature who sat at the table’s head, his pale eyes watching them, a cold, cruel smile curving his flat mouth.
The Fisher King.
The ancient, legendary Coelacanth, freed of the bondage at last, holding terrible revelry in the realm where once he had ruled.
Chapter Sixteen
Remnants of his Gristlen persona still clung to him. Shreds and fragments of the dark carapace that had shaled on to him in the terrible Pit were still adhering to parts of his sleek, pale body.
But where the Gristlen had been ugly and even pitiable, the Fisher King was not pitiable in the least. He was coldly and sinisterly beautiful, and he was imbued with such undiluted evil that icy fear formed at the pit of Rumour’s stomach. For this was Coelacanth himself; this was the enigmatic ruler of the nimfeach.
The Fomoire were chanting a tuneless, pounding song, beating the table with their clawlike hands, their evil goblin-heads peering through the skincloaks. The nimfeach did not sing, but Andrew and Rumour were both aware of a high-pitched humming, a keening wailing that spun and swooped all about the chamber.
The Fisher King stood alone, a grotesque figure silhouetted against the marble walls of the banqueting hall. He was as tall as the cave drawings had shown him: he was taller as well than the crouching, hunchbacked Gristlen had been. His body was sleek and streamlined, but there was a Humanish outline, as if fish and Human had long ago lain together and this was the result. To Andrew, this Human resemblance was the most sinister thing about him. And although his skin is not quite translucent, the bones are just visible, thought Andrew, appalled. I can see the bones and the pale thick
flesh adhering to them. They were not Human bones; they were thin, brittle fish bones that would break very easily; they would snap and splinter between a man’s violent, angry hands …
There was a finlike tail protruding from his spine, as pale as the rest; jagged-edged and covered with glistening scales, and lashing like the beating of a single wing.
The Fisher King was looking straight at Andrew and Rumour as they entered, and as he lifted his hand in a travesty of a salutation they saw, quite clearly, the light shining through the webs between his fingers.
And then he chuckled, and it was a sound so filled with cold malice, and with such evil triumph, that Andrew felt ice churn his stomach.
‘Come in, my dears,’ said the Fisher King, and his glittering eyes were on Rumour. ‘Come in to my celebration.’
Rumour said, ‘Celebration?’ and moved into the banqueting hall, Andrew at her side.
The Fisher King indicated the creatures seated at the long, laden, silver table. ‘My friends,’ he said. ‘My people. The nimfeach returning to Tiarna. Our good allies the Fomoire. They rejoice at my escape from the bondage of the Pit.’
‘So I see,’ said Rumour. ‘And the shedding of the Gristlen’s skin? Do they rejoice at that also?’
‘Of course.’
‘How did you do that?’ said Rumour in a rather off-hand voice. ‘The embrace of a willing female, was it?’
A leer split the Fisher King’s flat features. ‘So you know that, do you?’ he said softly.
‘Of course I know it. It is not an unusual way of dissolving a curse. In fact, I have always thought it rather common,’ said Rumour disdainfully. ‘I suppose it was why you wanted Theodora?’ she said, and the Fisher King’s eyes darkened.
‘I almost had her,’ he said. ‘She was almost mine.’
‘But Chaos took her instead,’ said Rumour. ‘Yes, I see. And then you had to find another.’
He smiled again. ‘Laigne,’ he said, softly. ‘She came to me of her own accord.’ He smiled again. ‘She answered the music’s call, as countless thousands have done,’ he said, and the smile became filled with remembering lust. He reached between his thighs, fingering the repulsive phallus that hung there obscenely. ‘I entered her. I invaded her flesh with mine. And she was warm,’ said the Fisher King with thick relish. ‘She was warm Humanish flesh.’ His eyes glittered. ‘She will never admit to it, but she enjoyed me,’ he said. ‘Deep within her, she experienced a throbbing enjoyment.’ The narrow, flat eyes slid to Andrew. ‘Does that arouse you, Monkish One?’ said the Fisher King. ‘Does it harden your loins and make the juice run?’ Again the horrid, cold laugh. ‘I filled her with the seed of my blood,’ he said, ‘Milt. Fish-sperm. I sluiced her shrivelled womb with it.’ He looked back at Rumour. ‘The dissolving of the enchantment happened there, in the Porphyry Palace,’ he said. ‘The crust that had formed in the Tanning Pit sloughed from me.’