by Sarah Rayne
Sometimes the prisoners would be brought up to the great hall, where the Prince would hold sinister revelries and dark, gruesome banquets with the Fomoire in attendance, and where the light would be provided by the burning of the prisoners themselves, impaled on spikes and set afire. At one time it had been one of the Prince’s pleasures to hold races between his prisoners, to decide which should be burned and which should be given to the Fomoire.
But the banquets were less frequent now, the Fomoire’s Hunting Songs were not so often heard echoing eerily down the dark cliff paths. The Prince had taken to creeping down to the dungeons by himself, rutting and killing and mutilating the poor chained wretches with his own hands, bellowing like a bull in lust as he did so, using the victims’ bodies in a dozen terrible ways, until finally his evil lusts were satiated.
His dark appetites had grown and his powers had increased with the years. The people of Moher were unsure as to how many years the Prince had been in their midst, because you did not count the years or the months of an oppression, you simply lived through them. But they could remember the day when Quintus had caught the child who had come through the Moher Gateway, because it had been the night when the strange, icily beautiful music had shivered briefly on the air, and the Prince had howled with such rage that the villagers had trembled in their cottages, and had not dared venture out for several days. He had rampaged about the countryside, the cringing Quintus at his heels, roaring with unbridled fury and lust and then falling on such unwary travellers as Quintus had been able to snare for him.
That had been the last time any living thing had come through the Gateway, although there were occasionally whispers of chinks of dark, smeary light showing, and there had even been murmurs lately of strange, slinking creatures being glimpsed: ugly things that walked upright like Humans, but that had an odd, scuttling gait, and eyes that protruded from their heads on stalks. But these were the kind of rumours that always echoed about Ireland’s dark Gateways.
No one knew what the Prince had finally done to the child, although the young man who had been with her was still at the Castle, toiling rather taciturnly in the gardens alongside the strange, silent Maelduin, who had been with the Prince ever since anyone could remember. The people of Moher guessed that the Prince took a cruel delight in being served by these two, for both were mutilated: the thin dark-haired Andrew was crippled and walked everywhere leaning heavily on a stout ash crutch, and Maelduin was known to be a mute.
But no one knew what the Prince had done with the child.
*
Deep within the Castle of Infinity, the Lord of Chaos eyed Murder and Anarchy, and pushed towards them the plans drawn up for the final great battle: the storming of the Grail Castle and the taking of the Beyond Ireland.
Murder studied the plans, his eyes in shadow, no trace of emotion showing on his face. He did not speak, but there was immense concentration in his expression.
Anarchy read them noisily, flipping pages over with a rustling sound, turning back to verify a point, showily making notes, frowning and then grinning, poring over a plan of Tara’s interior, counting up the number of fighting forces listed. At length he looked up at Chaos, who sat quietly in his chair at the head of the table, and grinned.
‘At last, sir,’ he said, in his light, undeveloped voice. ‘At last we are ready to take the Beyond Ireland.’ He drained his tankard of wine, belched, and reached again for the flagon that stood at the table’s centre.
Chaos said, with immaculate courtesy, ‘I am glad that my plans find favour with you. You will be expected to play a leading part.’ And so you had better be properly prepared, said his tone.
‘I’ll be there,’ said Anarchy, grinning. ‘Villages to burn and towns to raze! Humans for the slaying and females for the taking! I’ll dance on their dying carcasses and cause the streets to run with their blood!’
Chaos regarded Anarchy coldly. ‘You do not improve with the years,’ he said. ‘You are as selfish and egocentric as ever you were. You do not change.’
‘I do not wish to change,’ said Anarchy, sprawling back in his chair. ‘Nor do you wish me to. By being selfish and egocentric, I serve your needs very well.’
Murder said, in his cold, passionless voice, ‘You are confident that the plans will succeed, sir? And that you can slay Coelacanth’s spawn?’
‘I cannot slay him,’ said Chaos, and a tiny frown appeared in his eyes. ‘Only the Samildanach can slay those who issue from the line of the nimfeach.’ He reached for his own wine, which had been poured by one of the silent servants into a ruby-encrusted chalice. ‘You know it as I know it. That is why I have hesitated so long. That is why this plan has been so many years in the birthing.’
‘I thought it was all a legend,’ said Anarchy, a bit sulkily. ‘The Samildanach. Who believes that old legend now?’
‘It is very far from being disbelieved,’ said Chaos, sternly. ‘The Samildanach once walked abroad, preaching his accursed doctrines. It is certain that he lived.’
‘And may live again,’ put in Murder, softly.
‘The Draoicht Spiaireachts, the sons of the Spiaire that we sent through the Moher Gateway, believe that he does live again. Within the Grail Castle, under a Veil of Unknowing, is a young man who may very well wear the Samildanach’s mantle.’ The dark eyes rested on Murder. ‘He does not know it, but the marks were upon him. And we all know that the mark of the Samildanach cannot be mistaken.’
‘The Man of Each and Every Art,’ said Murder, half to himself.
‘Yes. And if it is true — if we find that the Samildanach does indeed walk the world again — it will be your task to kill him.’ Murder inclined his head, and Chaos said, rather sharply, ‘Do not waste time on bloody battles, if you please. There is to be no feeding of individual appetites and no sating of individual lusts. The time for that will come later.’
‘You are generous, sire,’ said Murder in a remote voice.
‘We have waited long enough for this,’ said Anarchy, petulantly.
‘You may have — you may both have all the blood and all the slaughter you want. But first this creature — if in truth he is the Samildanach reborn — must be killed. There must be no opportunity for him to fight us. There must be no mistake.’
‘But,’ said Anarchy, pleased to have found a flaw, ‘if we dispose of the Samildanach, we shall not be able to deal with Coelacanth’s son. We cannot kill Coelacanth’s line. Only the Samildanach himself can do that. You said so.’ He sent Chaos an impudent grin, rather in the manner of a rude child who has scored a point.
‘The Samildanach will not be killed until he, in turn, has slain the Fisher Prince,’ said Murder coldly and contemptuously. ‘We shall permit him to live until he has done that, and then we shall kill him.’ Really, you are very stupid, said his tone. He turned away from Anarchy and said to Chaos, ‘What of the Princess, sir? It is almost ten years. If she lives, she will be a beauty by this time.’
Chaos looked back at Murder. ‘Whoever weds the Princess of the Amaranths will hold very strong power in Ireland,’ he said. ‘If the Prince still has her, then I should expect him to take her into his bed. It is what Coelacanth would have done.’ His lips curved in a sudden smile. ‘It will be interesting to see if the son resembles the father,’ he said. ‘I fought Coelacanth and won. I banished him to the Pit. But I shall enjoy fighting his spawn.’ Murder said, ‘If the Princess is inside the Grail Castle, what will you do?’
‘She will be brought back here,’ said Chaos. ‘After we have forced the Samildanach to kill the Fisher Prince and after Murder has slain the Samildanach.’
‘If the Amaranth Princess still lives, she will lie in my bed on the night we take Ireland.’ The thin, cold smile touched his lips. ‘As I always intended her to,’ said the Lord of Chaos.
*
The concubines hung as far as they dared over the ledge of the Saraigli to watch the procession set out. They did not normally like Wars and battles — horrid dull t
hings! — but Meirdreach had said they must know what was going on, because if Chaos was to invade the Beyond Ireland it might affect them all.
They had understood this, and they thought that after all they might like to watch a procession, which would be something out of the ordinary. And then AnCine had told them that they could all please themselves, she was going to sit on the window-ledge and cheer the Army on its way. She was a vulgar, loud creature, and growing coarser with the years, but if she was going to drape herself on the window-ledge and cheer the Army, the other concubines were going to do so as well.
They spent the entire morning getting ready, running anxiously to the window at intervals to be sure that the procession was not already assembling, and then scurrying back to the looking-glass or the bathhouse, selecting gowns that would compete with AnCine’s scarlet, trying out the effect of threads of silver gilt. It was a time when you wanted to look your best. There had been a fashion some years earlier for very short hair, tipped with silver and gold; several of the older concubines still wore their hair in this way, in imitation of some long-ago sorceress who had visited the Castle and made the Saraigli the now-famous present of the Enchantment of Seduction. The concubines still giggled over this, and told one another that Chaos would not know what had happened when they were summoned to his bedchamber with the Seduction Enchantment draped about them! It had been used a number of times, and Chaos had never suspected. The younger, newly arrived concubines listened to tales about the Seduction Enchantment enviously, because it was interesting to hear about things that had happened so long ago. But they tossed their long flowing locks with self-admiration, and looked disparagingly on the ugly, short hair of their elders, and wondered how anyone could wear her hair in such an unbecoming style, never mind if fifty famous sorceresses had set a fashion.
The procession was assembling at last, and the concubines squealed in excitement, pushing one another aside to get a prominent place at the two large windows, glaring at AnCine — who had been there for quite half the morning, and very vulgar it had looked too — but telling each other that you had to be charitable, because it must be years since she had been summoned to Chaos’s bed!
‘Better to have been summoned in the past than never to be summoned at all,’ said AnCine, who thought the younger concubines pert and showy.
At the head of the procession rode Anarchy, very splendid in a new suit of glinting gold armour, astride a pure white stallion. The concubines nudged one another and said wouldn’t the armour be splashed and muddied before the day was out, and would you look at the huge gold phallus Anarchy had strung about his middle and arranged to hang over his genitals, the big show-off!
But Anarchy was to lead the procession through the Moher Gateway, riding at the head of the Rodent Captains.
They were there, of course, their black armour glinting, their visors lowered so that all you could see of them was their narrow red eyes. Nasty things, Rodent people! said the concubines, and giggled all over again, because they’d smuggled a Rodent Captain into the Saraigli one night, and hadn’t the vain, boastful creature vowed to take a turn with every one of them, but hadn’t his strength run out at the seventh, weakling that he’d been! It was to be hoped the Rodents fought better than they attended a lady! said the concubines daringly, and screeched with mirth at their own wit.
The Rodent Armies were massing behind the Captains, and a remarkable and very splendid display they all made. The poor, pale creatures of the Beyond Ireland would be sent running and tumbling into hiding at the very sight of them! The Almhuinians, brought out of the Crimson Lady’s domain all those years ago, marched with the Army. You could not precisely admire them; they were sly, furtive-looking creatures, but they were believed to be expert in all kinds of Warfare. They had not mixed much with Chaos’s people; the women had been thrust into the Saraigli when they first came, and several of the older concubines could remember how they had all sulked for days over it. The Almhuinian women had been sly and miserly with their possessions, and had thought themselves above the concubines on account of the mating with the Draoicht Spiaire, which had gone on for several months, and which the concubines had shuddered daintily over. But the Saraigli had been an unhappy place for a time, and Meirdreach had had her work cut out to keep them all from falling into scratching, biting, hair-pulling fights.
The WarMongers were on the edges of the procession, their fearsome chariots behind them. You could never quite make out which was which, but the concubines shivered and remembered that the WarMongers had names like Agony and Torment and Mutilation and Despair, and that they were cruel, pitiless fighters.
There had been a time when the Fomoire would have been there, of course, dancing and leaping in glee, screeching their Hunting Songs; but the Fomoire had long since gone from Chaos’s service, and there had been a rumour — five years ago had it been? — that they had been seen within the Grail Castle itself.
At the centre of the procession were the nine Draoicht Spiaireacht, the strange creatures spawned on the long-ago night when Chaos had invoked the now nearly legendary spell that had been woven into the Dark Realm’s myths and lore. The blending of a spell; actually a living creation of pure necromancy and strong black sorcery with the Humanish, it had been. Tales were still being told around firesides of Chaos’s supreme temerity and his remarkable powers at actually breeding between the Draoicht Spiaire and nine of the Almhuinian females. Those concubines who were sufficiently old enough to have been in the Saraigli on the night it had happened, and then later, when the screams of the Almhuinians in their birth agonies had rent the Palace asunder, pointed them out. The Spiaireacht were sinister, ugly creatures; they were so nearly Humanish, so nearly Almhuinian, that they might almost pass unnoticed in an ill-lit room, or on a shadowy road. They had arms, legs, a torso, a head with rather fibrous hair sprouting. They each had a normal face, with eyes and a nose.
But the eyes protruded on stalks, and swivelled and peered, and the lips were fleshless and mumbling and evil, and there was not only one mouth, but several, some of them gaping and grinning from the creatures’ rather thick necks, all arranged one atop the other, some of them opening from the creatures’ chests. And although the pale, fibrous hair looked reasonably normal, beneath it there was no hard, bony skull, no rounded bone to protect the brain.
The brain …
Beneath the thatches of strong, coarse hair, were dozens of tiny writhing brain sacs, normally a greyish, nearly colourless hue, but reddening and swelling when the creatures had sucked out a secret or an intrigue or a plot. The concubines, suddenly silent, stared at the Spiaireachts, and remembered the tales of how they had come slinking back to report to Chaos after scouring the Beyond Ireland, and how those very brain sacs had been so swollen with knowledge and so throbbing with gleaned secrets and plans and intrigues, that they had bulged out of the Spiaireachts’ heads, and spilled over on to their foreheads like slopping bags of warm fluid. Horrid! said the concubines, daintily repelled by such nastiness, and turned with thankfulness to where Chaos himself, with the most powerful necromancers of the Realm at his heels, was walking out of the Castle to take his place at the centre of his armies.
There was a burst of necromantic music — grand, stirring stuff — from the musicians who would march with the Armies, and Chaos sprang astride the gleaming black stallion that had been held for him. There was a moment when the Captains and Murder and Anarchy waited for the signal, and there was a moment when the scarlet and black pennants of the Rodent Armies fluttered in the breeze. A good moment, a moment to anticipate the victory that lay ahead. The concubines would look forward to Chaos’s return after his victory, because everyone knew that winning a good, strong victory gave the victor an arousal that might last for days. They giggled and told one another to look out for a lively time when Chaos returned!
The music poured out, stirring and strong, and the Lord of Chaos, from his position on the black stallion high above the rest, surveyed his A
rmies. And then he raised his hand to Anarchy and the Captains, and the Army marched forth.
To kill the Samildanach and possess Ireland.
Chapter Forty-six
The first thing to penetrate Theodora’s mind was the music. It was not really very loud, but it was an irritant; something you would want to brush away, blot out. It impinged on your mind when you were preparing for the banquet to be held in the great firelit hall, and it was dark and disturbing. Theo, trying not to hear it, was nevertheless aware that within its core dwelt pain and evil darkness and obscene lusts. It was not in the least like the other music that was occasionally heard inside the Castle — perhaps when the Prince held one of his grisly revels, when the doors of the immense banqueting hall would be firmly shut by the silent young man who shared the scullery tasks with Theodora.
At those times Theodora tried to shut her ears, because the music would mingle with the screams of pain and the pleas for mercy from the Prince’s victims. The sounds would drift into the sculleries where Theodora worked for most of the time, and even out to the small, ill-lit room where she slept, and which she had tried to make comfortable by dragging in a pallet bed and filling it with fresh straw, and by arranging jars of field flowers, and the sharply scented herbs that grew in the Castle herb gardens. During the warm weather, the little room would be scented with lemon verbena and rosemary and sometimes with night stocks if any could be found. Theodora would lie, trying to sleep, enjoying the scents but trying to shut out the sly, rollicking music of the feasting, because the prisoners brought up from the dungeons by Quintus would all die slowly and dreadfully; they would die there in the great stone hall as she listened; and it was unbearable and terrible and there was nothing any of them could do about it, because the Prince was too powerful. Theodora had once seen a couple of prisoners — travellers they had been — try to overpower him, but they had been felled instantly; the Prince had only to look at them and they had simply shrivelled where they stood; their skins had dried and wizened until they were tiny, mummified old men.