Unbidden, some lines of poetry from the legend of Kathleen and St. Kevin came to mind:
Fearless she had tracked his feet To this rocky wild retreat And with a rude repulsive shock He hurled her from the beetling rock.
Only Kathleen had likely worn clothes when she went to her death; Hexy had nothing to protect her save a pair of sodden shoes and a bit of damp silk that did nothing to preserve her modesty.
At last, the horrible constriction of the tunnel ended, and she was able to stand erect again inside a broad chamber. The air was less breathable than ever, and the foulness of the now familiar stench was beginning to make her dizzy.
The room she entered was circular, with a flat pool embosomed in the rock floor where there arose a column of still white vapor. Its dimensions were unguessable, but it felt large.
There was a second half-round antechamber off to the right, with an apsidal ledge spiraling up its glowing chimney. In its walls were cut a series of niches, chipped rudely out of the stone, and in each of these, save two, there rested overturned pots.
Avoiding the flat pool and its mist, which was somehow terrifying in its unnatural stillness, Hexy hurried for the antechamber, her lantern held high.
Terrified but resolved, she paused at the first urn. She set down her sack of stones and took a slow breath before she turned the pot upright. Her nervous exhalation condensed into vapor and refused to dissipate until it attached itself to the pot surrounding it in a light fog. Her lungs told her that they were drowning, even though she was above the high-water mark of the chamber. Except for her ghostly breath she was alone.
Hexy tried to convince herself that this meant that she was safe.
She tipped the first pot upright. The moment the seal broke, something rushed out, an entity formless but vaguely visible and warm. It blew by her in a short hot stream with a sigh that was like a mournful bird’s call. Chyrme, Rory Patrick had called the bird’s death songs, the ones they sang when their nests were raided of their young.
A soul! she thought, tears starting in her eyes as she watched the faint, silver trail that marked its passing. But not Ruairidh’s. Ian, the fisherman, son of John of Crot Callow.
Crying silently at the horrible proof that this nightmare was real, Hexy hurried to the next pot, turning it over quickly. And then another and another, searching frantically for her lover and praying that he was still recognizable and sane.
But each soul she freed was weaker and paler than the last, and none were Ruairidh. Seaumus, John, Coelph, Cennfailad, Sihtric—some human, some not quite—she knew their names and histories for an instant as they fled past her, searching for the freedom of the open air. The contact weakened her, part of their fear and sorrow clinging to her when they touched her mind and stole a little more warmth from her body.
It was a horrible and draining assault, but she did not blame the lost and sometimes insane souls for their unthinking panic, and forced herself on.
Midway up the ledge, she laid her hands upon an urn and received a ghastly shock. It was not a stranger she touched; it was a soul she knew well.
“Rory Patrick?” she whispered, horror taking her voice and all but paralyzing her. It wasn’t her lover beneath her hands, but her brother. Her brother! The thought made her feel sick and dizzy. She had never suspected that he might be here.
The pot under her hand quaked and grew warm, as if the soul inside knew she was there and wanted desperately to be freed.
“Rory?” she whispered again. Gently, fearfully, she lifted it, waiting for the familiar spirit to brush by her unheeding, as the others had.
Hexy, beware. Sevin comes. Flee! The soft zephyr that had been her brother touched her gently on her face. Instead of draining her of heat, the touch was warm.
Behind her, she heard water lap against rock and a wave of sulfurous gas climbed up the cave walls, partly obscuring the green light in it noxious veil.
Hexy looked longingly at the remaining dozen or so inverted jars and then at the pool below, where the mist had begun to writhe and the water shiver. She was exhausted, but escape for herself and freedom for the caged souls were both equally necessary tasks.
“I can’t leave them with this monster. I just can’t! Rory, can you help me?”
No. I have no form, no strength. Run, Hexy! He’ll take you, too. You cannot save them. His shade shimmered violently as he warned her.
“But the others—I can’t leave them—”
Before Hexy could decide what to do, the pool exploded in what looked like an aquatic inferno of limbs and sea wrack.
She looked with eyes that strained madly to see and comprehend but could not at first understand what the creature was. In fact, she thought that perhaps it was more than one type of animal wrapped about each other like some host and parasite. But the mass had only one set of eyes, which were yellow and set in a familiar blue face. They glowed like baleful candles, their tiny, internal fires flickering with fury as they looked upon her.
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? a voice screamed in her head, concussing her brain with its vicious din.
Hexy gasped in pain as the thing in the water boiled toward her, heaving itself out of the pool and moving swiftly toward the stony ledge.
Sevin. It was the creature of her dreams but, like everything in his domain, grown infinitely more hideous and warped in the last century. The thing that came toward her was no longer human-appearing at all, but rather a conglomeration of the sea’s dead horrors.
Its head was large and bloated, and covered in gray-green patches of mold or scaled flesh, which had replaced most of its hair. It had an animal’s mouth, though Hexy could not think of any animal that had such needlelike teeth in its maw. Indeed, it looked as if the individual teeth were covered in coarse bristles. Or perhaps the juts were made of more bone.
Its legs, such as they were, were short and powerful, but it was its arms that made it into a nightmare. They were not arms at all, but rather boneless appendages of an impossible length, covered in large suckers that belonged to a squid.
Its ferocity and spiritual miasma was beyond anything she had dreamed.
Hexy, run! Rory Patrick urged her again, refusing to leave her, though she could feel his fear and helplessness as the creature approached. Don’t look at him. He’s an eye biter. He’ll hypnotize you.
A tentacle reached for her, elongating until it squirmed over the edge of the path and touched her shoe. The tip scorched the leather as he tried to drive in his hooks and drag her down to him.
Another tentacle touched her leg, searing away the thin silk and burning her thigh as it tore at her flesh with wicked hooks. Unable to help herself, Hexy screamed and scrambled farther up the ledge, shoving pots over on the creature as she went.
Souls rioted, bouncing off one another in their confusion. She recognized Reverend Fraser when he was freed, and for a moment, it seemed he would stay with her, huddled around her heart. But then he seemed to gather himself and flew at the scaly horror clambering up the ledge toward her.
Flee, my child! He said to her. Save your soul!
Horrified but unable to move, Hexy watched and listened as the old clergyman attacked the monster. For an instant, she thought that perhaps he would be able to force Sevin off the ledge and open her escape route. But Sevin never moved. Reverend Fraser’s soul blundered into him at full speed and began screaming as it encountered the beast’s mouth. Sevin breathed it in, his massive chest expanding as his jaws gaped wide. He gulped it down in one swallow.
“Rory Patrick! Leave me,” she breathed, horror blanking out her mind. “I have nowhere to run, but you can escape.”
I will not.
She had known fear before—dread, like her fear for Ruairidh, which grew slowly over hours and days. She knew plain startlement, which made the heart race and lent her needed speed when action was called for. And she had learned to fear the helplessness of dreams.
But this was different. It was terror of something beyond her world
. Terror of the unexplainable paralyzed her. Despairing souls gibbered at her, as frightened as she.
How could she fight such a monster? How could she save them all?
Then she remembered the mermaid’s gift, still clutched in her left hand. Hexy pulled open the vial with shaking hands and hurled the tiny contents at the monster.
The water hit him in the face and spattered over his shoulders. Sevin screeched, dislodging rotten seaweed and loose shale from the ledge and knocking Hexy to her knees with the noisy percussion. Thick smoke rose from his body where the water had seared him. So piercing was Sevin’s voice upon her brain that Hexy put her hands over her ears and screamed, calling for Ruairidh.
“I will feed your soul to the kraken,” Sevin screeched, catching hold of the ledge for a second time and heaving himself upward. His smoldering body oozed toward her.
For a second time, terror froze her mind and flesh. All she could do was wait, helpless as he came for her.
Then a second form burst from the water behind the beast, half-shedding fur even as it broke the air.
“Hexy, run!” Ruairidh’s voice filled the cavern.
“You! Come, selkie! I’ll take your soul, too.” Without any hesitation, the finman spun about and hurled himself down upon Ruairidh. The two bodies met in violence and fell to the floor, where they began tearing at one another with teeth and claws. Blood, both black and red, flowed.
“Ruairidh!” Hexy cried, trying to regain her feet.
Behind Hexy came the sound of stone grating on stone and then two phlegm-choked roars.
She remembered the other monsters in her dreams.
Reacting without conscious thought, her only impulse to keep any more horrors from touching her, she turned and hurled her lantern at the two finmen who pushed their boneless forms onto the ledge from the impossible tightness of a narrow crevice between the last two wall niches.
Flaming oil and shards of glass spattered over the two eely forms, making them writhe in agony. Trapped in their stony prison either by their size or by Sevin’s call, they were compelled to try to kill her even as they burned.
Hexy heard more creatures heaving themselves out of the pool and entering the fray, but she could not turn to see what was happening. One of the finmen—Turpin—had entoiled her.
Hexy. You’re eye bitten! Wake up! Rory Patrick cried at her.
But she couldn’t. Though the creature was crisping, burning to nothing as she watched, he still held her in thrall, his power unbreakable. Almost he made her believe that the battle between her lover and the sorcerer was something unimportant, a longueur through which to sleep. She should just lie down and have a rest until Ruairidh could come to her and take her worry away.
Against her will, Hexy began to slump.
Then Rory Patrick was in her eyes, abrading them and obscuring her sight for the one moment she needed to take back her own mind.
Iron, Hexy. We need iron. An ax, a knife, a needle—anything.
Iron! That was what Ruairidh had said was in those burning red rocks. Turning, Hexy scrambled back down the ledge toward her bag of stones. She prayed that Ruairidh hadn’t been teasing her about the stones’ efficacy.
Her hands trembled as she unsealed the bag and reached in for a rock. Again it burned her hand as an ember would, and she had to hold back a scream of pain.
Behind her, she heard and smelled Turpin’s slow approach.
Praying for a true aim, she turned and fired a stone in his direction. Evil, get thee behind me! she thought, hurling her thoughts at him too.
Panic lent her strength and accuracy. The red rock flew from her hand and hit the creature between the eyes. As David’s slung missile had done for Goliath, the stone felled the finman where he stood.
Behind Turpin, the second finman, Brodir, tried to retreat into his niche, leaving behind strips of burnt flesh and a trail of black blood. His gaze was malevolent but unable to bespell her now that she had iron in her hand.
Hexy hesitated and then let him go. Instead of chasing him, she turned to look down at the confusion of bodies below her. There were a number of cast-off skins on the floor and a halfdozen pale, blood-smeared bodies grappling with Sevin. Ruairidh was there, too, still half cloaked in fur and more ichor-stained than the others. Long welts cut his skin, plain even in the green light, which made blood look more black than red.
The selkies had Sevin pinned on his back, but even with their vast strength and superior numbers, they seemed unable to deliver a killing blow to the amorphous blob.
The rocks. They are poison—put them in his mouth, Rory Patrick instructed her.
Hexy stumbled down the ledge. Touching the creature with her bare flesh would be horrible beyond words, but she didn’t hesitate to push her way between startled selkies and throw herself on Sevin’s scaled chest.
“Hexy!” Ruairidh gasped. “What are ye doing?”
“Killing him!” she answered.
“Then hurry.”
The monster’s mouth and eyes were open, pulled wide by Ruairidh’s grip on his bony brow ridge, which forced his neck into an arch. Her lover’s long hands had pierced the scaly skin, swallowing Ruairidh’s finger past the first joint as he grabbed bone in a punishing grip.
Sevin’s flesh was cold and abrading between her legs, scraping skin as he thrashed, but with a strength she did not know she possessed, she was able to stay atop him, in spite of the pain and revulsion.
Having learned her lesson, she did not look into Sevin’s eyes. Hexy quickly opened the bag and emptied it into the monster’s gaping mouth, cramming the bladder in after it for good measure. Teeth cut her hands even through the thickness of the sack, but she trusted Ruairidh to keep him from snapping his jaws shut upon her arm as she rammed the stones home.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the finman gasped, and something pale and green boiled out of Sevin’s mouth. Right behind the bile came the Reverend Fraser, bursting out of the maw and racing for the top of the cave with an audible howl of one driven mad.
Hexy fell back, trying to escape the green ooze that she knew would burn worse than the iron had.
Spurred by rage and pain, the creature gave a titanic convulsion of his chest and limbs, throwing off Hexy and the selkies as he heaved himself toward the pool and freedom.
Ruairidh was the only one who did not let go when the burning acid hit him. He was pulled toward the water as well, riding the monster’s shoulders as it tried to flee into the deep.
Hexy saw that much before she landed against the wall of the cave, striking her head on the smooth rock. She didn’t lose consciousness from the blow, but the world dimmed and spun on it axis, and she found that she could do no more than lie on the floor until the dizziness stopped.
You did it, Hexy girl, Rory Patrick said, his voice faraway and much weaker than it had been in the beginning. You’ve set us all free, love. Hang on now. Your man will be with you soon.
“Is Ruairidh all right?”
Her brother hesitated a moment before answering.
He is alive. Don’t worry about that now.
“I’d have come sooner, Rory Patrick, but I didn’t know you were here,” Hexy murmured.
That’s all right. You came in the end.
“I love you, Rory Patrick,” she whispered, her voice barely audible above the snarls and barks that filled the air. The selkies were chasing Sevin into the pool. This time, she was certain that they would be able to kill the monster. The iron had weakened him into vulnerability.
And I love you, Hexy. Rest now, or you will harm the babes.
“I will.” Having no choice with exhaustion upon her, Hexy let her eyes close on the horror and pain of Wrathdrum.
Chapter Fifteen
Hexy was relieved to waken and find herself clothed in the sensible woolen dress she had abandoned on the fishermen’s isle. It made her return to reality in a foreign situation nearly bearable.
The world she woke to was foreign. It was a
place she had never seen or imagined, except perhaps in long-forgotten dreams.
Her memories of how she came to this place were hazy. Two bloodied Ruairidhs had come to her after the battle in the finman’s cave. Kneeling down, one of them had taken her in his arms. The other had gathered up a cast-off skin, examining it with a worried frown.
At the edge of the frightening pool where the finman had gone, the nearer Ruairidh had leaned over and whispered, “I shall breathe for ye, aroon, until ye can manage on yer own. Hae no fear of the sea.”
Then he had fastened his mouth on hers and plunged them both into the blue water. After the first shock of the cold water, and seeing a phalanx of seals close in around them with elongated flippers extended, she recalled nothing.
There was a movement beside her and Hexy turned her head, expecting to see Ruairidh sitting beside the bed as he had been so many times when she awakened. But it was not her lover who sat beside her, keeping a vigil. It was an older man who had Ruairidh’s hair and eyes, and another who might have been Ruairidh’s twin.
Her brain was sufficiently awake now to understand that she probably hadn’t been seeing double back in the finman’s cave. Ruairidh actually did have a twin, or at least a brother.
The older man intoned formally, “I am Cathair—son of Ardagh and brother of Colm; first son of Lachlann; father of Keir and Ruairidh. This is Avocamor, home of the People. The ground whereon ye rest is sacred, consecrated by the passage of our ancestors and great progenitor whom are now but foam upon the ocean. Enter our home wi’ veneration, and welcome, daughter.”
The two men stood looking at her, waiting for some response.
Ardagh. She knew that name.
“Um—thank you for the welcome.”
Dazed, and unable to think of a better reply, though she felt that there was something formal that she was supposed to say, Hexy sat up slowly and looked around at Ruairidh’s father, brother and home.
They were in a grand chamber that had a cathedrallike atmosphere, though it more closely resembled an exotic pleasure garden than any church. Bizarre treelike plants grew from the glassy ceiling downward, their succulent, strangely hued leaves hanging protectively around the reddish fruits that clustered there like grapes. The plants glittered where the pale light caught in their dewy leaves. Their roots ran along the walls in tangled bundles and trailed down into the numerous pools of blue, phosphorescent water, which sent up silver veiling into the air.
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