The Return of the Arinn

by Frank P. Ryan

  ‘You been to the States, Nan?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Well, that’s a shame.’

  Mark said: ‘Where do you come from in America?’

  ‘Kentucky.’

  ‘Is this official? I mean, with respect to General Chatwyn?’

  ‘Are you asking me whether he knows I’m chatting to you at this very moment? Well, the answer is, maybe.’

  ‘What are you really doing here?’

  ‘I guess you could look on me as liaison with mutual friends across the water.’

  ‘CIA?’

  ‘Ask me no awkward questions and I won’t tell you no awkward lies.’

  Mark thought about his answer for a moment. ‘We’re all fed up with the interminable waiting.’

  ‘Goes for me too. Tetchiness can be catching. But allow me to show you something that might cheer you up.’

  He took them out of the caverns and on through a short wooded walk, leading them into a huge rocky overhang that acted as a garage for the mechanics. They stopped before the newly re-camouflaged bulk of the Mamma Pig.

  Travis slapped a hand against the high bonnet. ‘Let me tell you – these techs have been making changes.’

  Mark frowned. ‘We know that it needed some repairs.’

  ‘I’m sure it did, but these guys have added a few novelties.’

  Mark looked the Pig over. He could see that there was a new proliferation of electronics gear on the roof, including new radio and radar receivers.

  ‘There’s a deal more inside, too,’ the American said.

  Mark exchanged glances with Nan.

  Travis opened the nearside porthole in the body of the Pig. He leaned half way into the interior before withdrawing a tarpaulin. ‘I guess you’re going to recognise this baby.’ Travis folded back the coverings, and then Mark’s breath caught in his throat as he recognised what it contained.

  ‘It’s—’

  Travis laughed, finishing Mark’s tongue-tied sentence for him: ‘The old guy’s missing battleaxe.’

  Mark shook his head in disbelief. ‘We searched hard for it at the burned-down sawmill. It’s the battleaxe Padraig took from Feimhim’s grave. He used it to demonstrate the reality of the magic to us.’

  Travis stood erect and clapped a hand on Mark’s shoulder.

  ‘How did you find it? Nan and I, we really searched for it. We combed the ruins, even with our oracula.’

  ‘You didn’t look in the basement?’

  ‘Basement? You mean, a cellar? I had no idea the old house had a cellar.’

  ‘Dang thing was buried deep. All of the rubble from the house filled it in. That must have hidden it from you, but not from deep radar. Stood out like Finn McCool’s thumb.’

  Mark hesitated.

  ‘Go ahead. Grab a hold of it.’

  Mark picked up the battleaxe, holding it in two hands, then hefting it in his left hand alone, raising it to the level of his shoulder.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It’s huge. At least a third longer than the one Qwenqwo gave me. And much heavier. Maybe because it’s bronze rather than steel? And the runes are different.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’ the American asked.

  Nan answered for Mark, ‘They’re Fir Bolg runes: a blade is always runed and named for the warrior who wields it. The named blade and warrior are one. This blade was not named or runed for Mark.’

  ‘Who then?’

  Nan looked at Mark. ‘I recall Padraig saying something about it: this battleaxe killed Prince Feimhin long ago. Padraig threw it just the once. That single throw exhausted him.’

  ‘So, likely it ain’t runed for Padraig neither?’

  ‘I think it was runed for a specific Fir Bolg. Maybe the high shaman?’

  ‘So we won’t know the answer to the question until Rip Van Winkle decides to wake up and tell us.’

  ‘You shouldn’t talk about Padraig that way.’

  ‘Sorry, fellas! No disrespect intended.’

  Mark went down onto one knee to replace the heavy battleaxe on the tarpaulin. ‘What’s really going on, here, Mr Travis?’

  ‘No need for formalities with me, Mark. Brett will do. And the Pig has been rejigged because we got us an idea.’

  Nan said: ‘You’re going to ask the crew to go back to London?’

  ‘Go back?’

  ‘Nan’s right, Mark. Me and General Chatwyn, we’ve got plans for you.’

  ‘But we’ve only just managed to get out of there.’

  ‘That’s what makes you ideal for this mission. You found your way out. You guys are survivors. You’re the only ones we can trust to find your way back in.’

  ‘Shit, no!’

  ‘Got to be.’

  ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘The situation is getting real bad. The phrase has become a bit corny, but it’s true all the same. Your country needs you. We’re running out of time. You guys have got to take me there so I can see for myself what’s going on.’

  ‘But we have plans of our own. We have to save Padraig. If anyone understands what’s going on, it’s likely to be him. It’s really important.’

  ‘No sweat! We’ll take him along. Matter of fact, I’d like to talk to you some more about Padraig. We can talk along the way.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind.’

  ‘Can we level with one another here? General Chatwyn, he’s a patriot, but his army is outnumbered ten to one by Seebox. And that same grand military asshole has all the big ordinance, including air support. He also controls communications. All those helpful satellites up there in the sky have been blasted. And now, from what you guys have been telling the General, Seebox is just the gopher for Grimstone. And he’s got black magic on his side.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d call it that.’

  ‘You can call it what you like. And it gets a deal worse. You know where Grimstone is right now?’

  Mark shook his head.

  ‘He’s in New York.’ Travis withdrew a big fat silver case out of the breast pocket of his fatigue jacket. He gazed longingly at what looked like a row of Havana cigars. ‘You need me to spell it out?’

  Nan spoke for them both: ‘Mr Travis, are you telling us that you’re afraid for New York? You’re afraid for America?’

  ‘Brett – please.’ The big man took a cigar out of the case. He looked like he was considering lighting it, but then he replaced it in the case and he put the case back into his jacket pocket. ‘Nan – Your Royal Highness, if that’s what I should call you – I’m telling you diddly squat. All I’m saying is that I need to get to London and see for myself what’s really going on there. I’ve stowed some nifty gear in the Pig that will help my mission and I can send up my own satellites. The bad guys will spot them, sure as hell they will, but it’ll take ’em so long to do so it’ll give us a window of time. I can gather a whole heap of information – something that is sorely needed. Wars get themselves won and lost on the basis of information.’

  ‘What sort of information could it get?’ Mark said.

  ‘Information that might be crucial to my guys stateside, which would help you guys here. But for that to happen, I got to go down there and see what’s what.’

  ‘General Chatwyn is with you in this?’

  ‘It was his idea. He asked for our help. He’s prepared to give you whatever additional support you need: bikes, a platoon of crack troops.’

  ‘Sending a small army of support would only make us more obvious to Seebox, with his drones everywhere.’

  ‘Now you’re talking my language – logistics.’

  ‘I’m not talking anything. I’m trying to explain to you why we can’t abandon Padraig. We believe he’s the key to it all.’

  ‘Then we take him with us.’

&n
bsp; ‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’

  ‘I’ve been following the conversation in the medical unit. Rip Van – sorry, Padraig – he don’t need much in the way of medication, not anymore.’

  ‘Brett, you’re bonkers.’

  ‘Maybe I am. So why don’t you wise guys just sit here on your hands watching Rip Van, while your country’s going to hell in a bucket.’

  Nan cut in: ‘What information are you looking for, Mr Travis?’

  ‘Brett – please! I need to understand the situation here with – what do you call them – the guys who like setting fire to things, the Razors?’

  ‘Razzers – Razzamatazzers.’

  ‘Okay, well those Razzers are popping up everywhere, in the most unlikely places.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as Russia and China.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Mark muttered.

  ‘Tell me about it. It don’t make any kind of sense. You know, like how can craziness be catching? But it’s catching like bubonic plague. And we just have to make sense of it. Way I see it, the best place to look for that sense is where it began, right there in London.’

  Mark and Nan were looking at one another. At that same moment, Cal’s sceptical voice came from behind them. An astonished crew was standing there, looking with the same surprise as Mark and Nan at the restructured Mamma Pig, and from there to the larger than life American, who was passing from one crew member to another, squeezing fingers and introducing himself.

  ‘Hey, fellas – good timing! Mark and Nan here were just about to tell us how to get this rig to London without Seebox having a ratass clue.’

  Cal was extricating his mangled hand from the handshake. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  A fraught thirty minutes later they all found themselves back in the conference room facing Brett across the table, accompanied by General Chatwyn, but at least on this occasion there was no sceptical psychologist.

  *

  Chatwyn raised his eyebrows, as if in apology. ‘I had planned to introduce you to Mr Travis, but it would appear that he has taken the bull by the horns and introduced himself. We are obliged to him, and the Pentagon, for his coming here with the intention of helping us. The situation is deteriorating more rapidly than we had envisaged. It’s increasingly global, as you now know. We, the remaining free forces here, face an unprecedented threat. We need all the help we can get. I know it’s asking a lot of you, given your recent experiences, but you may be uniquely qualified to help get Mr Travis inside the London cordon.’

  The General looked at Brett, who opened his mouth and performed a kind of sucking action with his tongue against the back of his teeth, as if to give him a moment or two to think. ‘Okay, so you’re wondering just what connection exists between the Pentagon and the situation here? Well, you’re looking at the connection. You could look at me as a military strategist sent by direct order of the President, through FEMA. I’m here to examine the situation and see what we can do to help you guys.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Cal.

  ‘Seems to me,’ Brett explained, ‘the situation here is pretty grim. The survival of this nation, and possibly mine too, may depend on what we can do to put it right. I need to know everything you fellas can tell me about what’s going on. I’m talking in particular about this monstrosity you’re calling the Black Rose. We need to know what it’s doing, sitting right there at the heart of London. We need to know what it is capable of. And most importantly, we need to figure out its weaknesses.’

  Mark sensed the crew’s tension.

  Cal looked at the General. ‘May I ask, why, Sir?’

  Brett answered for Chatwyn. ‘I’d have thought that plain obvious. We’re going to take the damn thing out.’

  Cogwheel spoke: ‘If you don’t mind my saying, taking it out might not be as easy as you think.’

  ‘Who said it’ll be easy? But the way I see it, we got us an ace or two up our sleeves – Mark and Nan here – and maybe Padraig too.

  ‘Mark and Nan, please tell us some more about your unusual powers.’

  Mark sighed. He looked at Nan, whose eyes were looking directly into Brett’s. He said: ‘The crew already know about us, and our powers. The oracula – the black triangles you see in our brows – allow us to do things you might see as magical. The power to do so comes from a goddess on Tír. Mórígán is the name of the goddess.’

  ‘We’re talking here about the goddess of Death, and the battlefield, you say?’

  Mark shrugged. ‘On Tír, the science we see as normal on Earth would appear just as bizarre. The worlds have evolved differently.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘We’ve evolved a scientific perspective. They’ve evolved what – well, I suppose the closest thing to call it would be a spiritual perspective.’

  ‘Which you’ve brought back with you from this other world?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Brett nodded. ‘This other world, Mark, which, as General Chatwyn has been explaining to me earlier, is some kind of a sister world to Earth?’

  ‘Yeah, as far as I can figure it.’

  ‘And so this Black Rose is also likely to invoke similar magical powers?’

  ‘Powers that would appear to be magical from your perspective. If what Nan and I are assuming is right, it is drawing its power from a source far more dominant than Nan and I possess.’

  ‘What source is that?’

  ‘The Fáil.’ Mark shrugged. ‘Maybe Nan could explain it better than I can.’

  ‘Nan?’

  ‘In the language of Monisle, my home continent, the word means something close to what you would call fate. But . . .’

  ‘But?’ Brett’s eyes appeared to twinkle a darker blue, within the deep folds and wrinkles of his face.

  ‘The Fáil is more real, and far more dangerous, than you might imagine from your concept of fate.’

  ‘Can you tell us more?’

  ‘Not much.’

  Chatwyn coughed. ‘Perhaps, Mr Travis, you could tell us more of what’s happening in America?’

  ‘The situation is nothing like as bad as you have it here. We don’t have the equivalent of Seebox running the armed forces, or at least not as yet. But we do have powerful elements within the services sympathetic to him.’

  ‘Members of Grimstone’s church?’

  ‘You got it. And they’re everywhere. Intelligence says they’re getting more powerful by the day. All of this suggests we’re heading down the same trail, only a ways behind you guys.’

  Cal returned their attention to the problem in hand. ‘Sir, the Black Rose – do you really plan to mount an attack on it?’

  Chatwyn shook his head. ‘For the moment all we want is to find out more about it, but I don’t need to emphasise just how important such a mission might be.’

  Brett sighed, a loud enough sigh to silence the table. ‘I know you fellas don’t want to go back down there. You’ve been busting a gut to escape that asshole, Seebox, and his minions – right?’

  ‘Seems like we have no choice, Sir.’

  ‘That’s mighty brave of you, fellas.’

  ‘Mighty suicidal,’ Tajh whispered, though the whisper carried more widely than she might have intended in the echoing cavern.

  The Meaning of the Rose

  These days, if they were truly days at all, Penny knew that she inhabited a decidedly alien world. But it was also a world of extraordinary richness and sensuousness. It was so intoxicating that it was difficult to think logically about her situation; where she was, what was she doing there, and what was happening to her. There was a sense that Jeremiah was never far away, even when she could not see, or hear, or sense him. It occurred to her that perhaps she existed in the world-mind of Jeremiah – an idea that provoked overwhelming panic. What an extraordinary
and terrible mind it was. It was not human – a human mind would be preoccupied by more basic things: comfort, feelings, emotions, the sex thing. Not once, in all the time she had been here, had she observed, or even sensed, any of these. That she was being manipulated had been obvious from the start. That the purpose of her manipulation was control over her mind, her spirit . . . her creativity.

  She screamed: ‘I don’t like being manipulated.’

 

  A voice, but not a person.

  As if to placate her, Penny heard music that felt like a feathery touch upon her mind. Then it became a discordant sea. She was looking out onto a landscape of blue that contained moving shapes resembling ghosts. She had no notion of where she was, or how she had got here, or even if it was day or night. Jeremiah was once again controlling every aspect of her consciousness. She felt angry that she had no control over her life anymore – that she should be reduced to this bewildered state.

  The music stopped.

  ‘I don’t know how to deal with you.’

 

  ‘You’re being facetious.’

 

  ‘I am hardly free. I can no longer distinguish night from day. I have no routines. I have no contacts, no friends, none of the activity one would associate with a normal life. I have to presume that this is the price of my bargain with you.’

 

  ‘I did it to protect what I love in London – to protect Gully.’

 

  ‘I don’t believe you would do that, not for a moment.’

 

  ‘But I am still here. Not that I know where here is – it doesn’t even feel like what would be described as “here”. It feels like nowhere.’