Wolfking The Omnibus: Books 1-4

by Sarah Rayne

  The NightFields glowed redly and evilly, the crimson light glowing upwards into the darkling skies. Andrew and Rumour, shading their eyes from its glare, saw that it came from great stagnant lakes of blood, from huge, glistening pools of gore that lay across the NightFields and oozed slowly across the plateaux. The small, untidy mounds that Rumour had thought might be barrows, were tumbled piles of rags and skulls and pieces of bone. As they stood looking, a dry, sour wind ruffled the tattered mounds and puffed the sickly-sweet stench of decay into their faces.

  ‘Corpses,’ whispered Rumour. ‘And the carrion crows are eating them.’ As she spoke, three of the birds swooped, screeching, and tore at the tumbled heaps, and then ascended into the air again, tearing and clawing at gobbets of bleeding flesh, two of them with protruding stained bones, the other with a single eye hanging from a reddened shred of skin. Their dark harsh features were matted with blood; their talons dripped with gore.

  Rats and weasels scuttled within the heaped bodies, their little eyes red and baleful, their thin, boneless tails twitching and slithering. The mounds heaved and undulated with their scurrying, lending them a semblance of grisly life.

  Rumour nodded to the hovering birds. ‘Carrion vultures,’ she said. ‘And Harpies. The bodies of birds, but the faces of voracious women. They also will eat the flesh of the dead bodies.’

  ‘I have read of Harpies,’ said Andrew. ‘But I had hoped never to see them.’

  They stood still, watching, and as they did so the Harpies shrieked in eldritch glee and swooped again on to the gore-soaked fields, scrabbling and tearing at the piles of rotting corpses, several of them scooping up the scurrying rats and flinging them bodily across the NightFields, and then rising into the air again with the gobbets of decomposing flesh. Andrew saw two of them fly at the same piece of bone and tear the flesh that adhered to it, flapping their blood-soaked black wings as they did so.

  Rumour was standing very still, watching the Harpies. ‘I believe,’ she said, after a moment, ‘that Chaos’s prediction has come true. Do you remember, Andrew? Do you remember what he said in the Well Cavern? That the Lady of Almhuin would fight him for Theodora? That there might even be war and schism within the Black Ireland? I think it has already happened. I think it is still happening. The Crimson Lady is leading her people against Chaos. She is waging war on him in an endeavour to get Theo from him.’

  ‘The necromancers fighting one another for the Amaranth Princess,’ said Andrew, slowly, and Rumour at once said:

  ‘Yes! We are seeing the carnage of a War of Necromancy, for only one thing would have been powerful enough to destroy the Castles of Necromancy —’

  ‘More necromancy,’ finished Andrew.

  ‘Yes. They are fighting one another. They are at war.’ She turned to face him, her eyes huge with apprehension.

  ‘If they are still fighting for Theodora, she must be safe.’

  ‘Yes. But this is Civil War, Andrew! We will be walking into a land where necromancers are fighting one another! Where they will be using the darkest, most evil sorcery they can summon!’ Rumour’s eyes went back to the ravaged skyline.

  This will be the most dangerous part of the whole journey,’ she said.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Black Mountains of Almhuin were dark and forbidding; Andrew thought they gave the impression of leaning over, so that you felt that at any minute they might topple forward and crush you. But as they began to ascend the scree, neither of the two travellers sensed anything stirring in their depths.

  And then there was a moment when the Mountains ceased to be quiescent, and became something very different indeed, something menacing and watchful, as if some concealed beast had woken and looked up, and seen them approaching, and had rubbed its hands together and licked its lips …

  The sentries of the necromancers, alerted by two Human intruders? Or the Crimson Lady, Almhuin’s BeastWoman, who immersed her body in the blood of young virgins and whose servants were ever on the watch for fresh victims … ?

  There was the feeling of something dark and immensely powerful passing overhead, and so strong was the sense that they flinched, and Andrew saw Rumour throw up her hands to shield her eyes. He flung his arms about her, both of them diving for cover beneath a jutting overhang of rock.

  There was the sound of dark wings beating on the air, and the skies flared to angry life. Rumour shivered, and a scorching flare of scarlet tore over their heads, splitting the darkness wide open. The skies were lit to brilliant, hurting colour: great sheets of molten fire, livid and pulsating, shivered above the jagged Mountains, and huge, vicious starbursts exploded everywhere.

  At once an answering volley of flames erupted from the west, and great, arrow-shaped tongues of fire poured over their heads, straight to the centre of the fiery heat, a white-hot wake sizzling its path across the burning sky.

  There was the sound of rocks falling, and boulders and stones and rocks came tumbling and spilling down on to the mountain path. Andrew and Rumour pressed deeper into the shelter of the jutting rock, trying to avoid being hit. Andrew heard Rumour cry out, and knew she must have been hit. He moved instinctively to shield her, but the avalanche had already slithered to a halt, and the sounds were dying away.

  At length Andrew stood up, and peered cautiously about them. The fiery lightning was dying, and the thick, stifling darkness of the skies was creeping back. And although rocks and stones lay everywhere, the narrow mountain path was not blocked as he had feared. He turned back to Rumour and saw that she was bent over, her face white, her eyes dark with pain. Fear flooded him. He said, ‘You are hurt …’

  ‘Only a rock; but it crushed my foot.’ She was half lying, half sitting against the mountain wall, and Andrew saw that her left foot was bruised and torn where the rock must have fallen on to it. Blood soaked her shoe, and her foot was already swollen. Andrew winced inside, knowing that to suffer a blow on the soft fragile instep is excruciatingly painful.

  ‘I think it is only bruising,’ said Rumour. ‘I think the bones are not broken. I can go on a little way. And there is a healing spell I could call up, unless this place is smothering my powers.’ She looked up at the skies uneasily.

  ‘Were those things directed at us?’ said Andrew.

  ‘I think they were part of some kind of battle,’ said Rumour and, as she spoke, they heard, very faintly, the sound of hoofs thudding across a hidden terrain. ‘Cloven,’ said Rumour, very softly. ‘Cloven-hoofed stallions.’

  ‘A battle?’

  ‘Yes, almost certainly.’ Rumour looked about her angrily. ‘We are so vulnerable here,’ she said. ‘I am slowing you down, Andrew.’

  ‘Then I’ll carry you,’ said Andrew at once.

  ‘No.’ Rumour gestured to the narrow path with one hand. ‘It is far too narrow and dangerous. We shall have to walk very cautiously as it is. If you were carrying me, you would very easily miss your footing and we should both be at the foot of a ravine, or dashed to death against the crags.’ She straightened up, and tried putting her foot to the ground. Andrew saw a fresh jag of pain go through her, and looked about him. Could they rest here? But it is the open mountainside, he thought. We would be at the mercy of any creatures that prowl here. As he framed the thought, he saw the screeching Harpies rise into the air.

  Rumour said, ‘We have to keep moving, Andrew. The Harpies were alerted by the fire and the lights of the battle. They have seen us, and they will have sensed that I am wounded. They will be watching to see if we are weak enough for them to attack us.’

  ‘Yes.’ Andrew understood this. ‘If we could go a little further up,’ he said, scanning the mountain; ‘if we could reach the shelter of a cave or a crevice, perhaps it would be sufficient.’

  As they moved back on to the path and began the ascent again, Andrew had the feeling that the mountain was becoming more evil, as if its shadows had been disturbed, and as if lurking evils had woken and looked up and seen them. The fiery skies had dimmed, but
they could still hear, to the west, the pounding of the cloven hoofs.

  ‘And there is a scent of blood,’ said Rumour, softly. ‘Can you smell it, Andrew? A taint on the air.’

  ‘Yes. Then a battle is being fought somewhere.’ He took her arm. ‘We should go on,’ he said, and thought: we should go on, because something ancient and evil is uncoiling here. The clinging mists are hiding peering eyes and reaching bony fingers …

  As they struggled up the narrow, winding path, Rumour supported by Andrew’s arm, the path twisted around to the left, and Andrew saw something that the sheer mountain face had hidden from them until now. He paused, letting Rumour take the weight from her injured foot, and pointed.

  ‘What is —’

  ‘Lights,’ said Andrew. ‘A little cluster of lights, about a third of the way up the mountainside.’

  ‘Houses? A mountain village of some kind?’ And then, in a different, sharper voice, ‘Almhuin?’ said Rumour.

  ‘I suppose it must be.’ But Andrew thought that the lights had a rather warm, friendly look to them. He found himself remembering his own world, where travellers, pilgrims, wayfarers of all kinds were welcomed and given food and shelter. Perhaps the lights indicated a mountain village of some kind, where there might be ordinary people, Humans, who would allow them to rest, so that Rumour could pronounce the healing spell over her damaged foot.

  The mountain was becoming darker. Several of the Harpies had flown in the direction of the blood-tainted battle, but a number were still hovering, a little distance away, their cold, greedy eyes glinting in the red light from the skies.

  ‘If we stop for longer than a few minutes, they will be upon us,’ said Rumour. ‘They know I am wounded and unable to fight.’

  ‘Yes.’ It tore at Andrew’s heart to force her on, but there was no choice. They must reach somewhere where they could rest.

  The mountain was alive with strange, prowling movements; stealthy, furtive, creeping rustlings that seemed to come from out of the swirling mists above them. Andrew thought it was exactly as if a lair had been disturbed, and as if the beast that had its nest there had woken and was prowling and sniffing and scenting Humans … Was the Crimson Lady, the Beast of Almhuin, already watching their approach, and was she already eyeing them with her greedy lips smiling, and curving her voracious predator’s talons as she savoured their capture … ?

  Andrew tightened his hold on the limping Rumour, wrapping the black, fur-lined cloak she had donned for the journey more tightly about her, glad to think that at least she was protected from the cold, sour wind that blew into their faces. He still wore the plain robe of his Order, and although it was not as warm as Rumour’s cloak, still it was good, strong wool. He touched the crucifix that hung at his waist, almost without realising it.

  The lights were not as far up the mountainside as it had seemed; they were quite close. It would not take long to reach them.

  Rumour was plainly in a good deal of pain, but she had not complained. Andrew glanced about him, seeing that it was much darker, feeling the cold wind increase. If Rumour had not been injured, they would have been through the mountain by now and Almhuin would be behind them.

  As they rounded a curve in the narrow mountain path, several pairs of red eyes peered at them from deep within a crevice in the mountainside. Andrew drew a deep breath, and lifted Rumour in his arms, ignoring her protests. He carried her past the crevice, and there was a brief spiral of delight that he had done so without showing any fear. But Rumour was clearly unable to go much further, and so we have to risk stopping in this place! thought Andrew. He pushed from his mind the knowledge that this was Almhuin, and that they were now deep inside the war-torn Dark Realm, and they were in the terrible mountain realm of the Crimson Lady.

  Rumour was angry at the misfortune that had injured her foot, and she was trying to think of a way of avoiding Almhuin. She had tried several times already to call up the power, the flickering Amaranth flame that would summon the healing enchantment, but every time she attempted it, the pain smothered her strength. But there had been a brief shoot of delight at finding the power still with her. She thought: so Coelacanth did not kill it!

  The beckoning lights of Almhuin were warm, but they were sinister. Rumour thought there would be some kind of mountain village, a little self-sufficient community that would have grown up around the Castle, because although some of the Lady’s people would live inside her Citadel, there would be others that would not: cooks and scullions and smiths and masons and their families. She found herself remembering, all over again, the tales of how the Lady sent her creatures out into the hill farms and the mountain passes in search of prey, for the Crimson Lady’s bathhouses must always be kept stocked. This was a daunting thought, but, like Andrew, she could see no other path for them to take. At least I am still able to touch the power, she thought, with a spiral of confidence.

  The skies were still black and heavy overhead, but as they climbed higher, Andrew still carrying Rumour but beginning to lag, jagged lightning began to vein the skies again.

  ‘As if the skies are tearing,’ said Rumour fascinated. ‘As if they are bleeding. But this time there is no sound.’

  ‘Should we be wary of it?’

  ‘I think we should not look directly at it,’ said Rumour, and Andrew remembered how she had shielded her eyes earlier. ‘Any sort of light here is sure to be spurious.’ She glanced at him. ‘This is the Dark Realm, remember. The Black Ireland. Any form of light must be evil. Normal, harmless light could not live.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘They do not have night as we know it,’ said Rumour. ‘But there will always be a time when it is darker.’

  As the track wound upwards, the mountain face on each side of them, the jagged scarlet tears widened, and sluggish red light oozed out. The path became lit to eerie life, and a malevolent crimson glow bathed the black crags and the granite mountain faces.

  Through the strange livid tears, they glimpsed crimson-eyed stallions, gleaming black steeds, pouring across the skies, their riders thin, ravaged-looking beings with wild, streaming hair and clutching hands. They crouched low over their mounts, and Rumour and Andrew caught, very faintly, the screeching of their eldritch laughter.

  ‘The Lord of Chaos summoning his armies,’ said Rumour, softly. ‘I believe they are the WarMongers, riding the NightMares.’ She looked at Andrew, her eyes fearful. ‘Chaos is indeed a Master,’ she said. ‘For if he can call up the WarMongers, then he is unrivalled in this world.’

  They went on, keeping their eyes downwards, determinedly not looking up at the red-soaked skies with their eerie dark armies, climbing the path doggedly.

  Behind them they could see the spreading carpet of the Dark Realm; when Andrew stopped to rest, keeping careful watch on the Harpies, Rumour drew his attention to a large fortress on what they thought was the northern boundary, set apart. There were several towers and a massive central portion made of gleaming black stone.

  ‘Chaos’s Castle of Infinity?’ said Andrew, leaning back against the rock face, and looking to where she indicated.

  ‘I think it could be. It is the largest and it is set apart from the others. That is what I would expect of him.’

  ‘It is where the NightMares were riding,’ said Andrew.

  ‘Yes.’

  The NightMares had vanished now, swallowed up in the dense, swirling skies, and Andrew looked carefully at the great black fortress, trying to fix its position in his mind, thinking that Theodora could be somewhere within those grim, sheer walls, deep in the ancient black vaults. They must reach it as soon as they could.

  ‘I believe I could walk a little,’ said Rumour, trying her weight on her injured foot. ‘Yes. And it is not so very far. If I lean on your arm … Yes, that is not so uncomfortable.’

  ‘I would rather carry you.’

  ‘I would rather try to walk.’

  They eyed one another, and Andrew made an abrupt gesture of submission, and
thought: after all, we are almost in the village.

  ‘Also,’ said Rumour softly, ‘it may serve to deceive those creatures behind us.’

  The mountain path wound upwards, and thick red light still lay across their path. And then it curved sharply to the right, and Rumour stopped, and clutched Andrew’s arm, and pointed.

  Directly ahead of them, set half into the mountain, was a cluster of tiny houses with deep, low roofs and tiny, square windows. Lights shone from the windows, and there was a small cobbled square with two or three tiny streets leading off it.

  And, rearing up against the mountain, seeming to be built half into it, was a great dark fortress with twin turrets and a central portcullis and narrow, slitlike windows.

  The Castle of the Crimson Lady. The Mountain Fortress of the Beithioch.

  Almhuin.

  *

  It reared over them, seeming to overhang the little mountain village with its cobbled square and friendly huddle of buildings.

  Almhuin, the sinister Mountain Fortress. The grim rearing stronghold that guarded their way into the Dark Realm itself. The lair of the Crimson Lady, the Beast of Almhuin who scoured the Mountains of the Dark Ireland for prey to drain of their blood, so that she might bathe her white limbs and slake her terrible thirst … The necromancess who had once been Chaos’s paramour, but who now seemed to be his enemy.

  I could wish I knew none of her legend, thought Rumour, leaning against Andrew, and feeling the pain tear through her crushed instep again. How did they live, these poor people out here in the shadow of Almhuin? How did they live, knowing that the Lady nightly held her gruesome revelries? Did they live in constant and abject terror? Or was it the other way entirely?

  Perhaps they entered into the Lady’s grisly appetites, and perhaps they served her, not because they were forced to, but because they enjoyed it.