by Sarah Rayne
‘They could do that?’
‘Yes, certainly. Although the danger to them would be almost overwhelming,’ said Rumour. ‘They would find it difficult to survive in the world of Men, because of the extreme differences in the ways of living. But if one of them was sufficiently courageous and sufficiently resourceful, he might do it. He might almost pass as Human. But he would not dare live like that for very long.’
‘He would acquire Humanish appetites and thoughts?’ said Andrew, tentatively.
‘Yes. How extremely perceptive of you. But as well as that,’ said Rumour, ‘he would begin to acquire an accretion of Humanish essence. To begin with, the donning of Humanish garb would be only like the wearing of an unfamiliar gown or a cloak. But if he lived like that for too long, the gown, the garb, the Humanish covering would begin to blend with the sidh beneath it.’
‘He would be changing from sidh to Human?’
‘Yes,’ said Rumour. ‘Exactly that.’
‘Then that is why they keep Human garments,’ said Andrew, remembering how he had found the silken robes.
Rumour grinned. ‘These robes do very well,’ she said, ‘but I believe that, if I can find them, I shall array myself in the regalia of the Elven King. Shall we explore?’
It was an eerie experience to walk through the empty, echoing Palace, knowing that the nimfeach and the Fomoire slept the deep, enchanted slumber of the Draiocht Suan close by. Rumour entered the chamber of the crystal pools unhesitatingly, Andrew at her side, and pronounced the spell again: ‘To strengthen it,’ she said. They stood silently, and watched the fragile filaments form on the air, and descend in a cobweb cloud over the slumbering creatures.
Andrew said, ‘Coelacanth?’ and Rumour sent a quick look to the pool, where the Fisher King still lay on the water’s surface.
‘When the sidh return, they will know how to deal with that one,’ she aid, and her face was shuttered, so that Andrew knew that, although she was already recovering from the Fisher King’s terrible assault, deep within her mind must still be areas of raw agony.
But she surprised him again. As they stood together outside the sidh’s ancient, beautiful library, with the slumbering enemies still held by the Draiocht Suan, the barely perceptible dawnlight of Tiarna silvering the Palace, she said, ‘Andrew, I cannot think of any other man who would have drawn my attention to Coelacanth, as you did just now. Almost every other man would have tried to pretend that he was no longer there, and would think that I must not be reminded of what had happened. That I must be shielded.’
‘Should I try to shield you? Should I pretend it did not happen? I can’t do it,’ said Andrew. ‘And you would see through it. I cannot … unmake the horror of what happened to you. Perhaps I can help you to heal; I can offer you comfort and friendship and love, but I cannot unmake Coelacanth’s brutality.’ He watched her, seeing the play of the silver light on her face, seeing it find tiny silver lights in the dark pools of her eyes. ‘I think you would not wish for any pretence,’ said Andrew softly. ‘I think you would not want well-meaning deceptions. If I had stood in front of Coelacanth’s body, so that you could not see it, you would still have known it was there.’
Rumour said, ‘I cannot bear pretence or falseness.’
‘No.’ He took her hands. ‘You are stronger than anyone I have ever known.’
‘You are stronger still.’ Her hands lay in his, unresisting. ‘I think I could have killed Coelacanth,’ she said. ‘If sorcery failed me, then I think I could have killed him as you did. I should have hated it very much, but I think I could have done it. But I do not know if I could have sufficiently overcome such deep-rooted beliefs as you did.’
‘The Man of Peace?’
‘Yes.’ She withdrew her hands with the same gentle, natural gesture. ‘It is not in your nature to offer violence to another living creature. It is not in your creed.’ The grin slid out. ‘I do not altogether understand your creed,’ said Rumour, child of a people who enjoyed warmth and comfort and love and wine and music. ‘But I understand that violence, killing, is abhorrent to you. And still you killed Coelacanth without hesitating.’
‘I was lent the strength to do it,’ said Andrew, so softly that Rumour barely caught the words.
But she said, ‘The Samildanach …’ and Andrew looked at her.
‘So you heard the nimfeach.’ He had wondered about this.
‘I heard them, but I do not understand it any more than you do. But it is an old, old belief, and an old, old legend, that of the Samildanach. Perhaps the nimfeach had their own version of it.’
Andrew said, ‘To us it is a very new and a very wonderful belief. The One who walked the world and redeemed Men of their sins. And who will one day return —’
He stopped, frowning, and Rumour said, ‘I think you are beginning to question that prophecy, Andrew.’
‘No.’ His eye met hers. ‘But perhaps to question its origins,’ he said.
‘Would your priests have …’ Rumour paused, searching for an expression that would not sound too brutal, ‘would they perhaps have manipulated the legends and the beliefs they found already in existence?’ she said.
The new wine in the old casks … ? No, thought Andrew. Please, no. If I lose the trust in that belief, the Nazarene carpenter who saved Mankind and who will one day return; if I lose that, I shall have lost everything. He said, carefully, ‘For what reason would they do such a thing?’ And waited to see her reactions.
‘To make their own new teachings more acceptable. To make them a little familiar. Oh, Andrew, you know it as well as I do. And I could understand it if it were so,’ said Rumour. ‘I could understand it very easily.’ She glanced at him. ‘It is not difficult to adjust truth and it is not hard to make people believe what they would like to believe,’ said Rumour, and her eyes met his coolly, with no trace of expression in them. ‘When a quest or a task, or when something of immense importance is at stake, it is surely a thing frequently done,’ she said. ‘Are you sure that they were not looking for a way to impose their own authority on the gullible?’
‘If they were,’ said Andrew, slowly, ‘they did so purely to show the people the Truth. There would be no selfishness behind it.’
‘People are rarely selfless,’ said Rumour, and touched his face lightly. ‘Most people are driven by some kind of self-interest. Remember that, Andrew.’
And then, as if suddenly impatient with herself, she shook her head, and with an abrupt change of mood, turned, indicating the galleried landings ahead of them. ‘I think that along here is the Elven King’s legendary Silver Cavern,’ she said. ‘If the Palace is a replica of Tara, then we are close to what is called the Throne Room at Tara.’
As they entered the Silver Cavern, light lay across the floor in great pearly swathes, and there was a thick, soft silence, as if swansdown lay everywhere, or as if a great fold of stifling velvet was enclosing the chamber. The walls were fashioned from some kind of pale, shimmering rock, exquisitely beautiful, veined with glinting crystal and delicate ivory, studded and crusted with great opalescent stones. Here and there were soaring, ice-blue formations, crystalline stalagmites, and within them were the outlines of slender shapes with slanting, mischievous eyes and sinuous, beautiful bodies. Andrew stood looking, thinking he had never seen anything so strange and so eerily beautiful, unable to tell whether the shapes were natural formations, or whether they had been hewn.
‘The sidh,’ said Rumour softly, looking up at them. ‘That is how they appear to anyone who is foolish enough to look directly upon them. Or at least,’ she said, ‘that is how they are believed to look, because no one ever looks on them and lives to tell of it.’
Andrew had been aware, ever since they entered the Cavern, of blue-green smudges, darting threads of turquoise light, moving on the outer rim of his vision.
‘They are not dead,’ said Rumour softly, when Andrew indicated this. ‘But do not try to look too fully upon them, Andrew.’
They moved
forward, across the shining silver floor, and there, in front of them, was the Silver Throne of the Elven King …
Rumour stood very still, and her hand came out to Andrew. In a whisper, she said, ‘So he is here. Exactly as Coelacanth said.’
Directly ahead of them, seated in the great carven Throne of the sidh, still wearing the eerie, half-Humanish form he had donned for Coelacanth’s repulsive Gristlen, the Elven King was unseeing, unhearing. His skin was ivory pale, translucent, dull, and the long turquoise eyes were filmed over. His hands, thin and slender, lay supine on the arms of the Silver Throne, the fingers delicate and curving inwards, indicating the predatory vein in his chill faery blood.
Aillen mac Midha, the strange, icily beautiful High King of the sidh, the most magical, most inHuman creature in all Ireland, bonded by ancient sorcery to the Royal Houses of Ireland, constrained to give his people’s aid to them in times of extreme danger, but now silent and helpless, poised in a halfworld …
‘Is he dead?’ said Andrew, at length, staring at the Throne.
‘No, he will not be dead, for the sidh do not die as we know it,’ said Rumour, also staring. ‘I think he could be revived.’
‘The music?’ Andrew started to reach for the golden casket with the shifting, beautiful enchantment, because surely this was the time to return to the sidh the stolen magic of their race; surely this was the time to restore their life and their world to them?
He started to open the delicately crafted lid, and at once Rumour put out a hand to stop him. ‘No!’ And as Andrew looked up, startled, she said:
‘It is only that I believe we should keep the enchantment ourselves for a little longer.’
‘But that is why we brought it.’
‘No. We brought it to force open a Gateway into the Dark Realm. Into the necromancers’ kingdoms.’ Her eyes glittered and Andrew, staring, thought: the idea of that excites her. Because she wants to enter the Dark Realm? Because, despite all she has said, there is something there that calls to her? Chaos?
But Rumour said, ‘If we are to truly help the sidh, we shall do so by destroying Chaos and his evil.’
‘And in order to reach Chaos and the Dark Ireland, we need the sidh’s music. Yes, of course.’ But Andrew looked back at the slender, unearthly creature on the throne, and he remembered that he knew very little indeed about the exotic Amaranth sorceress. A prickle of unease brushed his skin, and he thought: I must remember that there are many forms of temptation. I must remember that, even while she is tempting me, something may be tempting her.
Rumour had moved to the Silver Throne, and then behind it, where the soaring rock was a shifting, blurring cascade of cool blue ice-fire, threaded with glistening pearl and ivory. There was a moment when Andrew caught a whisper of entreaty — ‘Help us!’ — and there was a glimpse of slender, shining forms, wingless dragonfly bodies swooping and darting and then falling to the ground. And then the visions faded, and the heartbreaking whisperings died away, and there was only the sad silence, and the still figure on the ancient Elven Throne; blind, deaf, locked into helpless silence.
Rumour stood for a moment at the Cavern’s centre, her hands lifted, her head thrown back. The silver and blue light poured about her shoulders, and Andrew received a fleeting impression, not of the exotic, wilful, Amaranth sorceress, but of something that was imbued with the cold eerie light; something in whose veins might run the chill, faery blood of the under-sea creatures …
And she is withholding the music that would surely pour the life back into them …
And then Rumour moved, and the light changed, and the vivid image vanished. She slipped behind a jutting rock that was crusted with pale, translucent gems, and Andrew, watching, saw that she moved with assurance. Because she has been here before? Because she has consorted with these creatures?
He stayed where he was, looking about him, seeing that in places rock ledges gave way to alcoves, niches, seeing the blur of colour deep within the niches. And then Rumour reappeared, and Andrew caught his breath, for here, once more, was the beautiful exotic Amaranthine, the daughter of Ireland’s Royal Sorcerers, the creature composed of fire and magic, of twisting spells and cascading enchantments. He stared at her, momentarily unable to speak, and saw, as he had seen in the Porphyry Palace, the candle shining strongly through the pure alabaster of her skin, the rippling vein of mystical Amaranth blood that gave her the strength and the power to spin bewitchments.
Rumour was clad in a shining turquoise garment that slid over her body in a silken cascade, and clung to the slender outline. Here and there were scatterings of blue-green gems that moved and glistened and caught the light, making it seem alive. Woven into the gown’s substance were threads of living silver; rearing, licking tongues of pale light, exotic and dazzling.
On her head, she wore a close-fitting jewelled helmet, made up of the same turquoise and silver stones, glittering with icy fire, banded with pure silver. Beneath it, her eyes gleamed, slanting, tiptilted, filled with power and light.
Andrew knew he could not fight his desire for her for very much longer.
*
Andrew and Rumour supped together that night, in the room with the dais and the pouring crystal fountain, eating the sweet, crisp fruits, drinking the fragrant, brilliant wine.
Rumour had curled on to the cushions, graceful as a cat, the silken gown rippling sensuously over her limbs. As the light dimmed and softened into the strange night of Tiarna, shadows touched her face, making great, mysterious pools of her eyes, silvering her skin to purest alabaster, to cool, seamless marble …
Andrew ate little, as was his custom, although he found the fruit palatable and sustaining. He drank the wine, thinking it would calm him, knowing all the while that, so far from calming him, it was firing his ardour, it was feeding the sweet, strong throbbing of his body, sending his desire soaring as high and as hard as the cascading rock walls of the Elven King’s Throne Room.
He felt his heart begin to beat more slowly, and a great dark heaviness seemed to hover over him as he reached yet again for the chalice of wine at his place. When he moved, she moved with him, as if she had been sharing his thoughts, as if she had walked alongside his thoughts for every step of the way. She had travelled the path with him, her desires matching his, and when he set down the wine chalice and put out his hand to her, her hand was there, waiting.
The touch of her skin, soft, cool against his, fired his body to unbearable longing; he looked at her, and his mind tumbled with delight and fear; and passion, hot and hurting, raged through him.
He thought: I am sliding towards surrender; I am reaching the point where I shall not be able to stop …
Let me have this one night with her … Let me know, just once, the sweetness and the delight … Let me have that, thought Andrew, and I will forever suffer penance for it, I will go fasting all my days, I will embrace celibacy for ever more. But let me know it, just once, let me possess her, just once …
He traced the line of her face, moving over her neck, feeling the scent of her warmth reach out to engulf him. Of their own volition, his hands slid beneath the silk gown, cupping her breasts: exquisite, beautiful, sufficient to make a man cry with longing … Just this once, said his mind, and I will go barefoot, dressed in sackcloth; I will take the scourge upon my back willingly …
From somewhere came the strength to pull away from her, to move back and stand looking down at her. A tiny frown twisted Rumour’s face, and Andrew saw anger behind her eyes. He went abruptly from the room, feeling her eyes upon him, knowing that, if he looked back, if he saw her amidst the silken jewel-colours, he would be lost.
He went blindly through the great Palace, scarcely noticing where he went, his mind seething with a dozen different emotions, his body on fire with raging, hurting desire.
At last he found himself in the desolate Silver Cavern, the great rock-lined chamber with the eerie, silent figure of the Elven King and the strange, drifting, blue-green colours. He w
as trembling violently, but at length he sank to his knees, and bowed his head, reaching blindly, frenziedly for the calm, still centre that he had always been able to touch: the huge tranquil pool that he thought of as God’s love and that had always been his strength and his inspiration.
Am I so weak, so easily lured? he thought, horrified and wracked with self-disgust. He remembered how he had always felt slightly superior, slightly contemptuous of the poor frail men who had allowed themselves to be tempted by women. He had seen those women — the Jezebels and the Delilahs — as no better than the harlots in the Temples, as flaunting, unclean creatures; painted-faced, vulgar-minded, raucous-voiced. He had seen the men who consorted with them as dissolute, debauched libertines, bestial and crude. Wasn’t there something in one of the Epistles — to the Ephesians, was it? — that warned against such consorting? Such behaviour was not the stuff that made saints; ‘ … therefore fornication and all covetousness should be avoided … Walk as children of light … For unless ye be as children ye can not enter heaven …’
And it is not the stuff that saints are made of.
But now, struggling with the violent desires that Rumour had aroused in him, Andrew found himself remembering again those women he had always found contemptible and beneath notice. He remembered that they had been of high birth and considerable scholarship: Delilah had been sought out by the Philistine lords to entice Samson and learn the secret of his strength. Jezebel had been a King’s daughter, a lady of power who had forced the Phoenician religion in Israel and persecuted the Israelite prophets. And Salome was a Queen’s daughter. They might have been evil and calculating, but they must also have been clever and beautiful and courageous in their own way. As Rumour was beautiful and courageous and clever.
Rumour was worlds and years away from the harlots and the painted whores. And has, as those creatures had, her own motives?
For what do I truly know of her? They were thoughts to instantly quench, just as his response to her allure was to be instantly quenched. For to succumb to that, to fall into the temptation of the flesh is not the stuff that saints are made of! cried Andrew in silent anguish, and at once there was the answer: