Wolfking The Omnibus: Books 1-4

by Sarah Rayne

  Maelduin said, ‘And it was that that caused the schism between them?’

  ‘Yes.’ Quintus looked back at Maelduin. ‘I gambled and I lost,’ he said. ‘The Crimson Lady flung me out. She turned me into the terrible Dark Realm, to live or die as the fates decreed. And Chaos also flung me out.’

  ‘Into the Pit,’ said Maelduin.

  ‘Yes. He would not, any more than the Lady of Almhuin, permit a traitor, a double-dealer, to go free. He summoned his dark brethren, and I was brought before the Dark Council of the Twelve.’

  ‘And sentenced to banishment to the Pit.’ Maelduin sought for the right words, the Humanish words. ‘For treachery against Chaos,’ he said. ‘For disloyalty to him.’

  Quintus, his eyes dark and pain-filled, said, ‘Yes.’ He turned his intense stare on Maelduin. ‘According to his lights, Chaos was fair,’ he said. ‘He is …’ A small smile touched his lips. ‘He is a gentleman,’ said Quintus. ‘He abides by the rules of his kind. I was a traitor, and it was a traitor’s punishment he would have pronounced.

  ‘Perhaps he would have banished me here anyway, but perhaps he would only have flung me into some miserable dungeon.’ Light glowed in the Monk’s eyes. ‘But at the end, I humiliated them,’ he said. ‘I stood before the Dark Council at the heart of the Castle of Infinity, and I remembered the teachings of my own Leader. I remembered the gentle goodness and the final sufferings of the One whose creed I had once followed.’ A flicker of anguish passed over his face. ‘I was reclaimed by the One True Religion,’ he said. ‘And, facing them all, I renounced the Dark Ireland and all its beliefs; there before the most powerful necromancers ever known.’ A brief smile touched his thin face. ‘I did so loudly and ringingly,’ he said, ‘as I should have done when Chaos first tempted me on the Moher Cliffs. I repudiated the Dark Ireland once and for all, and proclaimed my undying allegiance to the Nazarene. I tore Chaos’s wickedness to shreds before his people, and flung his darkness, and that of his henchmen and his evil brethren, in his face.’ He looked at Maelduin, and wry amusement touched his lips. ‘You understand, perhaps, why I was cast into the Pit.’ ‘You humiliated him,’ said Maelduin, studying the Monk. ‘That took extreme courage, I think.’

  The man said, ‘You have not heard of my Master?’

  ‘The … Nazarene? No.’ Maelduin would have liked to hear of this new austere religion which was being brought into Ireland, and which had apparently given Quintus such extraordinary courage. He knew, in a vague way, that it preached ascetism and fasting and long hours of silence, but little more. It occurred to him, rather bitterly, that at least there would be time to spare for him to talk with Quintus and learn about his beliefs.

  And while I sit here and learn of the world’s religions and the new teachings, Tiarna will surely die … Anguish pierced him again, but he beat it down, and turned back with courtesy to listen to the ending of Quintus’s strange story.

  Quintus said, ‘He had extreme courage and immense fortitude, my Master. He believed what he believed, and did not allow anything to sway him. Perhaps we shall talk more of him. But I have told you my story.’ He looked at Maelduin more fully and, as he did so, Maelduin felt the man shed a little more of the dark crusted shell that he carried. When Quintus said, ‘Will you tell me, in turn, how you come to be cast into this place?’ Maelduin, still unsure how far to trust Quintus, said, lightly, ‘Oh, I simply fell into it.’ And, despite his fear, and despite his deep inner horror at being trapped in the fearsome Pit, he grinned at the Monk. ‘A mistake,’ he said. ‘I encountered a band of Trolls who would have minced me for their supper. I outwitted them, but in the fight I rolled over the Pit’s edge.’ He stood up and looked about him and, as he did so, he heard a slithering movement above him.

  A shower of stones came hurtling down from the Pit’s edges, and the Gristlens stopped in their work and turned to look.

  Against the red-lit sky, sharply limned by the evil fight of the Human torches, a monstrous outline was staring down into the Pit. The torches flickered wildly, and the sickly warm-meat odours gusted downwards.

  In the glowing firelight, Maelduin saw the deformed outline of a squat, evil being with a flat, noseless face and slyly intelligent eyes set askew in its head. At his side, Quintus made as if to speak, and then was silent, and Maelduin felt the sudden fear course through the man’s body. Behind them, a low growling sound of angry fear came from the watching Gristlens, and Maelduin sensed the sudden concerted movement of the six who sat apart.

  The dark, misshapen silhouette at the Pit’s rim moved then, flinging a webbed-footed leg over the edges and beginning to clamber down the steep sides.

  The Fisher Prince, the monster-spawn of Coelacanth, had escaped from the silver cage and was descending into the Tanning Pit.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  The creature was descending easily, seeming to find footholes and crevices to cling to the steep rock face. The red torchlight cast its thick, clotted light over the creature as it moved, showing it for the dreadful warped monster that Maelduin had seen in the Amaranths’ Palace. As it moved, he had the eerie impression of something boneless wriggling its way down the Pit’s walls, and he remembered the legends of Coelacanth’s ancestry, and that Coelacanth was believed to be part-fish, part-snake, part-worm. This was unmistakably Coelacanth’s spawn: loathsome, unutterably evil. And yet, try as he might, he could not think of it as other than the son of the Fisher King, and therefore a Prince of a Royal House …

  As the light burned up, Maelduin and Quintus saw that the creature was using a thin silver rope, which it had clearly fastened to something — perhaps a jutting rock — beyond the Pit’s edges.

  Maelduin stared at it and felt a tremor of fear again. He thought: it is using a rope. It is only a few days old, but it has had the intelligence and the cunning to do that. A silver rope. Then it must have somehow made use of the silver bars and the silver lights I caged it with. I bound it with one of the Cadence’s enchantments of captivity, thought Maelduin, but it has broken out, and it has snapped the bars and fashioned a rope from them.

  It has escaped with ease and it is coming to fetch me.

  The Prince was nearing the floor of the Pit, and Maelduin saw that evil amusement was glinting in its flat, ugly eyes. He thought: it scents my fear! It smells it! It finds it amusing that I am prey to Humanish emotions. Deep within his mind he sought for the silver threads that would summon the Cadence, and the fear deepened as he felt the thin, elusive strands slide from his mind’s grasp.

  So that, also, is beyond my reach. Panic tore at him, great, scarlet, clawlike rents, and for a moment, his cool sidh mind spun out of control. And then Quintus’s mind brushed him lightly, unlooked-for and unexpected, but filled with such resolute courage that his own mind steadied.

  The Gristlens were watching the Prince’s descent with silent concentration. Maelduin could smell the dry, sour stench gusting forward as they moved from their work, and stood at the Pit’s centre.

  The Prince — I cannot think of it otherwise! thought Maelduin — was still climbing steadily downwards, its webbed hands curling about the rope with apparent ease, its gristly feet searching out footholds in the rock face. The membranous fin that protruded from its spine was darkly limned in the glowing torchlight.

  At Maelduin’s side, Quintus said softly, ‘Dear God, what is it? Maelduin, what is it?’

  ‘A son of the Gristlen,’ said Maelduin. ‘Of a creature that once dwelled in the Pit, but found its way into the True Ireland.’

  Coelacanth’s Prince, evil and malignant beyond belief …

  ‘A mutant,’ said Maelduin, ‘born of a rape inflicted on a …’ He stopped and amended his next words. ‘Inflicted on a lady of one of Ireland’s noble Houses,’ he said.

  Quintus said, ‘Its kin recognise it.’

  ‘Yes.’ Maelduin looked back once more to where the Gristlens were standing in a silent mass, their pale, bulbous eyes watching the Prince unblinkingly. ‘They will
certainly try to use the rope,’ he said. ‘They will try to escape.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Quintus looked back at the watching Gristlens, and Maelduin received the impression of a sudden strength uncoiling in the Monk, as if he might be tensing his muscles to fight. But he only said, ‘Is the creature coming to join its kindred?’

  ‘No,’ said Maelduin, in an expressionless voice. ‘No. It is coming for me.’ He looked at Quintus. ‘It needs me,’ he said. ‘It cannot fend for itself in the world yet, and it needs a protector. I caged it, but has broken out, and it is coming to find me.’

  As the words were said, the Fisher Prince reached the floor of the Pit and turned to look at Maelduin again. Maelduin knew he had been right.

  I can still get it to the Grail Castle, he thought with a surge of hope. It is going to bargain with me: if I will agree to take it to the Grail Castle, it will get me out of the Pit. It knows that inside the Grail Castle it will be safe from the world until it is sufficiently strong to venture out. And once it is there, I shall be free of it. I shall have paid my debt, and shall be free to pursue the music or explore the Cadence for a way to save Tiarna.

  He moved to the foot of the steep Pit walls, and grasped the waiting rope that would take him out the Pit. As he did so, there was movement behind him. He half turned, and saw that the Gristlens were moving forward, their eyes fixed on the rope, the manacles dragging and scraping across the hard rock floor.

  Quintus had moved to shield Maelduin, but his voice was low and urgent. ‘They are going to attack you! If they get past that creature, they have a means to escape! The rope is a way out! You have to go quickly!’

  Maelduin had already swung himself upwards using the rope, feeling it cool and easy to grasp. He began the ascent, and as he did so, he caught a movement from behind. He turned back and saw that the Gristlens were creeping towards him, their leering faces sly, their great, swollen-jointed hands lifted as if to strike, the thick iron manacles held out threateningly. Several of them glanced uneasily at the Prince, who was standing silent and still by the rope end, but they came on relentlessly.

  Quintus was facing them, standing below Maelduin, his back pressed against the rock walls. Maelduin thought: I cannot leave him behind! I cannot leave him to be torn apart by these creatures!

  He leaned down, and cried, ‘Quintus! After me! Take the rope and begin climbing! Quickly!’ and at once, Quintus reached for the rope, and swung upwards at Maelduin’s heels. Maelduin had the brief, vivid awareness that Quintus had had no thought for his own escape, that his mind had been wholly on facing the Gristlens, fighting them off if necessary to allow Maelduin to climb out.

  They were several feet above the Pit’s floor now, and Maelduin could feel his wrists — Humanish bones and muscles and skin! — aching almost intolerably with the strain, when the Gristlens moved again. Maelduin and Quintus both stopped, and the Gristlens surged forward towards the motionless figure of the Fisher Prince, their faces leering, their horrid, bulbous eyes avid and their long-toothed snarls more pronounced. The six Elders stood back, not joining in, not moving, but Maelduin and Quintus, from their precarious position, shared a thought: it was they who incited the others! They are the strongest!

  The Gristlens moved to the Prince, their great hands reaching for him, their lips curling back, their misshapen teeth gleaming wetly. A low growling of greed and bloodlust broke from them, and then they moved as one towards the Prince, holding out the gyves and the manacles threateningly. There was a moment, the span of a heartbeat, a breathspace, when the black heaving mass of dark leathery bodies and reaching hands and clawing fingers engulfed the Prince as the creatures of the Dark Lords’ Tanning Pit fought to reach the silver rope. Maelduin, still clinging to the rope several feet above the ground, thought: it will be slain by its own kind! They will tear it to pieces and then they will swarm up the rope and out into the world! He stayed where he was, his feet finding a crevice for support, his eyes never leaving the fighting, clawing throng below him.

  And then the small, slithering shape of the Fisher Prince detached itself, stepping back from the angry Gristlens with apparent ease; its cold eyes regarded its attackers, and the pale, membranous fin lashed angrily at its legs. The Gristlens turned, and seemed to draw in breath, as if gathering themselves for a final concerted rush at this evil creature who was barring their way to freedom.

  The Prince stood waiting, watching its attackers move towards it, silent and menacing; and a twisted smile lifted its lips.

  But the Gristlens crept forward, their eyes wary, but inching closer, fanning out as they came, to surround the one who was trying to prevent them from reaching the rope that would lead to freedom.

  Maelduin could see that the nearest of them wore one of the cruel mesh muzzles, and that it had a thin sly face above the muzzle, and the huge flat ears and high pointed skull of one possessing the black and evil blood of Goblins. Its fingers were not webbed like most of the others, but long and fleshless, with huge burrlike knuckles and joints and long, pointed nails. Goblin blood for certain.

  As the Goblin-Gristlen reached the Prince and swung the manacles it wore above its head, the Prince stepped easily and neatly aside and, reaching out, tore the muzzle from the Gristlen’s face contemptuously. A howl of dreadful agony rent the night, and bright red blood, speckled with fragments of white bone, covered the Gristlen’s jowls. Maelduin, unable to look away, saw that the muzzle must have been somehow fused into the creature’s jaw, so that it had been a part of its flesh and its bone. In ripping it away, the lower part of the Gristlen’s face had been ripped away also.

  The Gristlen fell back, its bony Goblin-fingers covering its mutilated face, screeching with agony, blood and teeth covering its hands. Its moans had a dreadful guttural tone, but as it stumbled away, the Prince turned to the one who stood behind it and smiled. Maelduin saw that the second Gristlen wore a spiked iron helmet, and that the nubs of hard black horns protruded through the iron. It had a cruel, evil intelligence and a furtive look to it. As it moved forward, Maelduin saw that it had pointed features and that its lips were curling back in a snarl, revealing the tiny, needle-sharp teeth of a Rodent. A thin boneless tail slithered behind it, but the tip had become jagged and shrunken and mummified with the Pit’s relentless heat.

  The Gristlen was advancing on the Prince warily, its eyes bulging. It lifted both hands above its head, so that the chains that bound them clanked and grated, and Maelduin saw that instead of hands, it had huge, leather-palmed paws, covered on the backs with black matted hide. Its neck and shoulder muscles rippled as it tensed to strike the Prince, but even as it did so, the Prince reached out again, chuckling contemptuously, and with one webbed hand, and a single horizontal stroke, sliced the helmet from the creature’s head.

  The Gristlen fell back instantly, clutching at its forehead and its eyes, braying in agony; in the thick, smeary light, Maelduin saw that the top of its skull had been sliced completely away, exactly as if it had been an egg, so that its brainpan was exposed. The Gristlen fell sprawlingly on to the ground, howling. Its long jointed legs scrabbled helplessly at the ground, and its tail twitched and curled. Thick grey brain matter, streaked with oozing, glutinous fluid, spilled and bubbled out of its skull and ran down into its eyes. It howled again and rolled on to its back, drawing up its knees, writhing in purest agony, bringing up its paws as it tried to wipe its eyes free.

  Maelduin, sickened and horrified, felt his stomach lifting with nausea, and a tiny part of his mind recognised that his feelings were almost wholly Humanish; he ought not to be feeling sickened, and he certainly ought not to be feeling pity.

  The Fisher Prince moved forward, and stood regarding the Gristlens, as if inviting more of them to pit themselves against him. The six Elders glanced furtively at one another and remained motionless, but a smaller Gristlen crept towards the waiting Prince. It wore a thick, dull breastplate of black iron about its upper body, and had short, sticklike arms and legs, so that it had the
appearance of a monstrous beetle.

  The armoured Gristlen stood its ground, and malevolence glinted in its pale eyes. The Prince turned from its scrutiny of Maelduin, and eyed the Gristlen thoughtfully. It did not move, but the other Gristlens backed away from it.

  The armoured Gristlen was moving forward with a scuttling, creeping gait which increased its likeness to a huge, upright insect. The Prince stayed where he was, and the Gristlen began to grin, showing tiny, stumplike teeth in double rows.

  All the better to rip you apart …

  The Prince moved then, bounding forward, cleaving the air with his monstrous body, landing on the Gristlen’s chest, clamping tightly about the upper part of the repulsive torso. The Gristlen fell back, pushing vainly at the thing that had fastened on to it, trying to dislodge it. It fell back, and the Prince fell with it, limpetlike, levering at the breastplate with sharp questing fingers.

  There was a wet, sucking noise, and the sound of rib-bones snapping. The iron breastplate came away with the Gristlen’s ribcage; the ribs gleaming wetly, spattered with blood, with slopping kidneys and liver and bile-filled sacs still adhering to it. Blood spurted upwards in a thick, dark fountain, and the other Gristlens fell back, cowering and moaning, flinging their clawed and webbed and leathery hands up to protect themselves.

  The Fisher Prince stood directly in the fountain’s fall, the dark, evil blood showering over it, the fragments of skin and bone and glistening wet entrails adhering to its face and arms and skin.

  And then he stepped back from the dying, partly eviscerated creature at his feet, and turned his eyes upwards, sending the cold, evil, compelling light directly on to Maelduin.