by Sarah Rayne
‘Cerball and the Mugain are calling up the Four Winds.’
‘If they can remember the Incantation.’
The creeping, slithering thing was fumbling at the door-latch now, and there was a nauseating stench of old blood and rotting meat and vegetation that has turned slimy and brackish.
Neit was standing at the centre of the room, his eyes on the door, a tiny frown creasing his brow. Cerball, who had left the Mugain to finish the Incantation to the Four Winds, thought: I suppose he does know about battles and wars, does he? and at once, Manannan mac Lir, who was standing next to him, said very softly:
‘Do not be too sure of it, my friend.’ And then, as Cerball looked up sharply, ‘He does rely rather heavily on his reputation, you know,’ said Manannan blandly.
Cerball said, ‘But he was sent to us — you were both sent to us when we used the Key …’
‘Oh, that.’ Manannan’s eyes went to Neit. ‘The truth is that our father is usually so glad to get rid of any of us for a time that he sends us down here willy-nilly whenever anyone calls for help. And then goes off on his own ploys,’ he added. ‘And you wouldn’t believe some of the things he —’
‘But the Key …’ said Cerball, so aghast that he broke in on Manannan’s words, which he would not normally have done, on account of Manannan being a God and one of the Dagda’s sons to boot. ‘We had the legendary Key to the Dagda’s Temple —’
‘And very nice too,’ said Manannan approvingly, as if they were discussing a possible supper dish. He glanced at Cerball mischievously. ‘There are a number of such things, of course,’ he said. ‘Keys to unlock doors, and Mirrors and Forest Pools to be stared into. All of them are supposed to summon my family, although I don’t know that any one of them works above another when you come down to it. And then of course there’re Golden Horns to be blown — my sisters were always very rude about those, because for all Neit’s golden strength and muscular build, and for all he would have you believe otherwise, he is very poorly endowed.’
‘Ah. Indeed?’
‘Oh yes. I’m the one our father sends if there’s any wooing to be done,’ said Manannan, puffing out his chest a bit, and Cerball, who felt the situation sliding from his grasp all over again, looked worriedly to where the Mugain was determinedly chanting the Tempest Runes.
It was Calatin who said, in an urgent cry, ‘It’s opening the door! The thing outside, it’s opening the door!’ He looked round. ‘To arms, everyone!’
‘Death to the Black HeartStealers!’ cried the cousins, and Calatin brandished his sword again, his face set and his eyes shining with excitement.
‘Destruction to Ireland’s enemies!’
‘Confusion to the Dark Realm!’ shouted the twins.
‘The Four Winds’ Spell!’ cried Cerball. ‘Mugain, what —’
But there was no time to remember the Spell to the Four Winds, and there was no use in relying on it, even if the Mugain had been anywhere near finishing it.
The door to the disused gallery was pushed open very slowly. It inched its way open, with the tortuous creaking of seldom-used hinges. A wavering, blurry light slid into the gallery, and a huge amorphous shadow fell across the floor. Cecht and the twins, standing together, grasped one another’s hands, and Great-aunt Fuamnach took a firmer grasp on her stick.
Slowly, with a crawling, groping movement, a great jagged-nailed hand slid around the edges of the door, the fingers curling about the edge of the wood, the movement horridly copied by the black shadow. In the deep darkness beyond the door, there was the rasp of clawed feet, and then, above that, the sound of hoarse breathing.
Something in the hall … Something fearsome and monstrous standing in the dark shadows watching them and awaiting its chance to burst through the door and get them …
The shadow of the thing lay blackly across the gallery floor, crepitating slightly, stumplike protuberances sprouting from its upper half, as if it were trying to grow rudimentary arms.
Cerball, standing with the Mugain and Bodb Decht, Calatin and the younger ones with them, stared at the black void with horrified expressions and pounding hearts. What had the Fer Caille sent to them? What was standing there in the shadows, listening and watching, … ?
No one moved. Everyone stared helplessly at the blackened, horny nails of the monstrous hand that had crept round it, and at the bloated-looking skin of the thick, fleshy fingers.
At last Cerball, who could not bear it any longer, said, ‘If there is anything there, come out and fight!’ And was pleased to hear that his voice sounded really rather fierce.
‘Come out and fight the Royal Amaranth Sorcerers,’ he added, and was just thinking that this sounded even better, when Bodb Decht said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything there at all.’
‘But it’s —’
‘Don’t you understand? It’s beginning,’ said Bodb Decht. ‘It’s part of the NightMares.’
Cerball started to say, ‘Oh, but …’ and stopped.
Great-aunt Fuamnach said, ‘Well something’s climbed those stairs, whether it’s a NightMare or a plain ordinary demon.’
‘Yes, but whatever’s there isn’t anything temporal,’ said Bodb Decht. And then, in a worried voice, ‘Or is it?’
A dreadful throaty chuckle came from beyond the door and Cerball, firmly grasping what little courage he had left, took a step closer to the door and said, ‘Who are you?’
There was a brief silence, and then they heard the hoarse chuckling and the harsh, difficult breathing again. And then, ‘I am Tromlui, a Servant of the NightCloak,’ said a throaty, whispering voice that made Cecht and the twins jump back.
‘When a sorcerer with sufficient power invokes the Cloak’s forces, then I am woken …’ The gloating chuckle broke from it again.
Bodb Decht said, half to himself, ‘Tromlui, meaning “a nightmare creature” …’ and they heard Tromlui’s quickened, excited breathing again.
‘Yes, Amaranth, that is what I am,
‘I am every NightMare you have ever encountered … Every dark slithering beast and every horned creature you have ever feared … Every slimed, loathsome reptile, and every squirming giant worm …
‘I carry the seeds of each and every race within me. I am Giant and Hobgoblin and serpent and snake … I am the faceless Ogre who chased you across the blood-red landscape, and I am the huge clanking machinery with the Humanish face that will waddle across the bedchamber to gobble you up …
‘Fear I am, and terror also, and every distortion and every warped being that has ever haunted your dreams, so that you woke drenched in sweat, reaching thankfully for the night candle so that its light would chase away the shadows and its warmth would dry the cold fear on your bodies …’
There was a pause, and again came the wheezing, wet-lung breathing, and the clotted laughter.
‘But supposing you awoke and I was still there?’ whispered Tromlui, and the blurred shadow palpitated again with evil amusement.
‘Supposing you fought your way out of your terror-ridden slumbers, and found that I was still with you? Crouching in the shadows, slithering beneath the bed-covers … The dark cloak you have hung in your cupboard that will suddenly rear up to smother you … The gown you have laid on the chair-back that will gather up its folds and glide noiselessly to strangle you …’
‘A lot of rot,’ said Great-aunt Fuamnach loudly, and thumped the floor with her stick.
‘Of course it is. See now —’
‘Are you sure I am not with you now?’ said Tromlui, its snuffling, bubbling breathing seeming to creep nearer. ‘Are you sure that I do not already lurk unseen in the corners of the room, peering at you, ready to pounce? Perhaps I have an axe already dripping with blood, or perhaps I have a razor to slash your pretty Humanish flesh to tatters … I like Humanish flesh,’ said the wheezing, phlegmy voice, and Cecht and the twins shuddered.
‘Pay it no attention,’ directed Cerball. ‘Nasty whispery thing.’
‘W
hy doesn’t it come out into the open and fight honestly?’ demanded the Mugain.
‘I shall come,’ whispered the creature. ‘I shall certainly come, my dears …’ it went on. ‘And when I do, I shall fold the pretty little Amaranth ladies in my embrace.’ The greed clotted its voice. ‘Ripe for my embraces,’ it said. ‘Perhaps I shall creep into their beds when it is dark and the Humanish world sleeps, and perhaps I shall press my noseless face to theirs, and push my skinless body close to their warm, soft flesh …’
Cecht and the twins gasped, and clutched one another’s hands, and Calatin took a firmer grip on his sword.
The Mugain said, very loudly, to the room in general, ‘I don’t think we believe in any of this, do we? The NightCloak was always on the side of the True Ireland. I don’t give much credence to it serving the necromancers.’
‘That’s quite right,’ said Cerball, gamely backing the Mugain, but still casting worried glances to the half-open door. ‘I’ve never even heard of Tromlui,’ he said firmly.
‘One of the northern lot, I shouldn’t wonder,’ put in Great-aunt Fuamnach, as if this dealt with Tromlui and there was nothing more to worry about. ‘I daresay we could banish it in a gnat’s eyeblink. Bodb Decht?’
Bodb Decht said, ‘The NightCloak was created by the first Amaranths for Ireland’s first Queen, and as such has always been used by those practising only pure sorcery.’
Great-aunt Fuamnach had started to say that this disposed of Tromlui, when the creature laughed derisively. The Amaranths heard at once that the throaty, snuffling note had vanished, and that now it was the hungry and over-powering laugh of the nearly-extinct Giantish race.
‘I did tell you, Amaranths, that I possessed the blood of all the races,’ it said, and now its words were impossibly loud, magnified a dozen times. ‘Perhaps I shall summon my Giantish blood, and my Ogre-ish appetites,’ it blared. ‘Perhaps I shall scent the blood of Humans and crush them in my great fists and pound their bones for my bread …’
Cecht, who was standing with her arms about the twins, thought it was the kind of laugh that said: o-ho and ha-ha, here is Manflesh and here are Humans for the supper table. It was the kind of sinister laugh that made you think of things like seven-league boots, that could stride across the land and catch you no matter how fast you ran, or of coarse, Ogreish faces that leered and smacked their lips in anticipation of eating you, and of huge Giantish fists that came down and crushed your bones in their hands …
And then the dreadful hoarse whispering died away, and the thick grotesque shadow became very still. Cecht thought: it has not gone, it is still there, watching and listening, but its attention has been diverted. And could not decide whether to be glad about this, or afraid of what might have caught Tromlui’s attention sufficiently strongly.
The Mugain, who happened to be nearest to the windows, caught a flicker of movement from down in the courtyard, and turned at once.
‘What is it?’ said Cerball, half turning to see. ‘What have you seen?’
The Mugain said, in a whisper, ‘There’s something down there in the courtyard.’
‘What sort of something?’
‘I don’t know.’
Calatin walked determinedly across to the window, deliberately turning his back on the partly open door, and clambered on to the window-seat to look down, because although he was actually extremely frightened of the unseen creature’s whispering (huge, clanking gobbling machinery, it had said, and Calatin had felt rather sick), he was not going to let anyone know he was frightened.
In fact, several people had followed him to the windows, which was remarkably comforting, and were beside him staring down into the shadowy courtyard directly below.
‘I can hear hoofbeats,’ said Great-aunt Fuamnach, who liked to let everyone know that her hearing was as sharp as ever it had been.
‘Muffled hoofbeats,’ said the Mugain.
‘As if the hoofs are covered with a thick cloth.’
‘Or as if they are cloven,’ said Bodb Decht, his face suddenly white.
Cloven hoofs … Dark shadowy beasts pouring through the night towards the Porphyry Palace, pounding the ground with cloven hoofs.
Cerball said, ‘What’s that?’
‘Where?’
‘Over there.’ He pointed to the far corners of the courtyard, where a low stone arch led out to the surrounding countryside. ‘There’s something moving out there,’ he said. ‘It’s —’
‘It’s horses,’ said Bodb Decht in a whisper. ‘Dozens of them. Black rearing stallions with red eyes and cloven hoofs.’
They’re each pulling a chariot,’ said Calatin, staring in horrified fascination.
Bodb Decht said, ‘And in each of the chariots is something dark and shapeless …’ He turned sharply as the thick chuckle of Tromlui sounded from behind the door again.
‘So unlearned you are, Amaranths … You are seeing the Beasts of the NightCloak bringing with them my brethren …’
Bodb Decht said in a voice from which the breath had been driven, ‘The NightMare Stallions. And they are bringing the creatures of the NightMares with them.’
*
They were pouring into the courtyard, their slanting red eyes glinting in the shadows, their skins gleaming like polished ebony. They were sinisterly beautiful and darkly menacing, and they dragged with them the foul miasma of the terrible Black Ireland.
The NightMare Stallions, answering the summoning of the legendary NightCloak of the High Queens of Ireland …
Each one drew a black chariot with huge, viciously spiked wheels, and the Dark Star of Necromancy glinted on their prows. The wheels of each chariot were clogged and fouled with gobbets of blood and with trailing, slimed skeins of flesh and mangled bones.
The Mugain said softly, ‘The NightMares are said to gallop across the fields of battle carrying death and mutilation with them. Whoever can enlist them as allies is believed fortunate.’ He stared down at the massing stallions. ‘They can call up not only the Lord of Chaos’s henchmen, but the lesser creatures of war,’ he said, and at his side, Bodb Decht said, ‘Chaos’s henchmen: Murder, Anarchy and Misrule.’
‘Yes. But also there are Mutilation and Agony and Spite and … I forget them all,’ said the Mugain.
‘Torment, Thirst, Starvation,’ said Cerball, frowning in an effort of memory.
‘And Loss and Despair, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. And there’re several more as well. The NightMares draw them to the battlefields. They’ll be down there now,’ said Cerball, his eyes still on the courtyard.
Neit pushed back a lock of hair with one hand and said, ‘Oh, I have met those ones many times.’
‘And defeated them, brother dear?’ inquired Manannan mac Lir sweetly.
‘They’re nasty creatures.’ Great-aunt Fuamnach could not be doing with such things. ‘WarMongers we used to call them in my younger days. Now then, Cerball, those things are rampaging through the courtyard.’ She eyed Cerball and the Mugain sternly. ‘They’ll be inside the Palace at any minute. What are we doing about them?’
The Stallions were beneath the windows of the west wing now, smoke pouring from their flared nostrils, the fetid stench rising like poisonous fumes from a swamp. They tossed their heads, so that the silver and black harnesses rang out coldly on the night air, and their cloven hoofs stamped the ground impatiently.
The Amaranths could not see the occupants of the chariots fully, but as they stood looking down, they caught glimpses of terrible and fearsome beings.
Giants and Ogres with brutish, greedy faces and coarse red lips … Squat stubby lumps of metal and iron that would waddle after their victims, their steel-trap mouths snapping hungrily, their grinding, threshing machinery whirring and gobbling. All the better to mince you with …
In the far chariots, they could see horrendous mutilations, creatures with their skulls split and with eyes dangling on the ends of bright red strings. Creatures with their skins bubbling and festering wit
h plague and disease and filth. Others with their skulls sliced off at the top, so that their exposed brains pulsated and heaved …
‘The NightMares,’ said Bodb Decht, leaning over as far as he could. ‘They have not quite solidified, but they are there in their embryo forms.’ He glanced back and saw the twins shudder. ‘Nasty,’ he said gently. ‘But we shall find a way to beat them.’
The chariots were forming themselves into a circle, and they could see that several of them held creeping snakes with serpents’ heads, and cauldrons of turbulent oil that would boil and ferment over the sides, scalding any who went near. Close by were huge spiders with the heads of Men, and scaly-skinned, batlike reptiles with great gristly jointed legs and arms.
At the far side of the circle of dark chariots, they could see thin grey beings, skin-covered skeletons with hungry, reaching fingers and empty eyes.
‘The WarMongers,’ said Great-aunt Fuamnach grimly.
‘Mutilation and Torment and Hunger and Thirst,’ said Cerball.
‘Yes. Present on every battlefield.’ Bodb Decht was looking very solemn. ‘Not only has the Fer Caille summoned the NightMares, he has also summoned the creatures of war.’ He stepped back from the window and regarded the Amaranths sternly. ‘I don’t think we can fight against this,’ he said. ‘The Fer Caille and his followers are sending the strongest forces of the Dark Realm against us. He is determined to take the Amaranth Palace at all costs.’
There was a moment of terrible silence. Then Cerball said, ‘You are not — surely you are not suggesting surrender?’
‘I hope he is not!’ said Great-aunt Fuamnach at once. ‘Surrender! Well, you’ll do so over my dead body, Cerball!’ She stumped across the room and sat down at thee table, glaring.
Cerball said, ‘Of course we do not surrender. Only …’ He sent a desperate look to Neit and Manannan mac Lir, who had taken no part in the rush to the window, but had stayed within the room.
‘Yes, but you know, I don’t think we can fight those things,’ said the Mugain, and paid no heed to his lady who tutted crossly, and wished that Himself would not show such defeatism. ‘We should be overpowered in minutes,’ said the Mugain. ‘I am only being practical,’ he added, and Herself sniffed and remembered that her dear mother had frequently said that the Mugains possessed a lily-livered streak.