“Och, it’s—” said Nemain, eyes wide. Then: “And he’s—”
“He is,” said Molly.
Hob looked at Jack, who shrugged massive shoulders, and drank more of the uisce beatha, licking a corner of his mouth, rather enjoying himself despite the dire circumstances. Jack had been on many campaigns, and was used to waiting for orders from superior officers, and was more patient than Milo the ox, and especially with strong drink in front of him. He would wait for Molly to tell him what to do, and then he would do it.
“ ’Twill be difficult, but I will explain,” said Molly, speaking mostly to Hob, but also to Jack. “You’re smelling something dead in the rushes, and Nemain, and myself—’twas that which I was trying to remember last night, and you asking me could I kill that buidseach, and myself about to say anyone may be killed save that he’s dead already. For didn’t I notice that breath of carrion myself, that night at Chantemerle, and then didn’t I forget it with all the ruction round saving that poor pup. ’Twas almost in my grasp last night, but my grasp was weak, weary as I was.
“The rat of my dream is Sir Tarquin himself. We have seen his rat familiars sitting in a row; you have seen one of his rats, and it more knowing than a rat should be, acting the spy. He has bound these vermin to himself in some way, and so Herself is using such an animal, in that way of dreams, to signify Sir Tarquin.
“It is he, as you saw, who’s killing these people, and worse, he’s drawing the life from them for his own purpose, and that is to give him a kind of life, for he has none of his own. ’Twas his own scent that you noticed, and you thinking it must be something in the rushes. His body is dead, and he alive. It has been dead a long time, I’m thinking, and he maintaining it by taking the beatha, the life force, from others. I’m thinking he’s made a bargain with some Power, and there’s no telling how long agone that bargain.”
“A bargain, Mistress? With Satan?” asked Hob, now in a daze of horror.
“With Someone,” said Molly. “There are many Powers, and some are vile indeed. ’Tis not a simple thing to say Whom he has persuaded, or—mighty mage that he is—forced, to help him.”
“Ochone!” said Nemain, an exclamation of woe. And then, echoing Molly, “Worse, and yet worse!”
“ ’Tis,” said Molly.
The terrier, sensing the tone of extreme dismay in the women’s voices, crowded next to Jack, leaning into the great body for warmth and reassurance.
“But how— He is alive and his body is dead?” asked Hob. “How does it aid him to kill these people?”
“What is the difference between a living person and a dead person?” asked Molly.
“The difference,” said Hob, “is, well, is that the soul has fled the dead person.”
Molly sighed. “A dog, then, one that’s died in its sleep, very old, with no violence—does a dog have a soul, then, to your priests?”
Hob thought that Father Athelstan had been fairly clear that animals had no souls, though Hob himself had his doubts, thinking, for example, of Milo, who seemed to him like a very young, albeit very large, child, who looked for Hob to be a friend, or even a parent.
“Nay, Mistress, it has no soul.”
“Then what’s gone from it, and gone for aye?” asked Molly. “ ’Tis the beatha, the force of life itself, and it’s that force that Sir Tarquin must have from others, his body having none of its own.”
Hob, always trying to think his way through things, was quiet for a long moment. Then: “Mistress, you said at Blanchefontaine that the, the dried-up . . . wrinkled bodies, they were a new thing to you; how come you to know these things?”
Molly said, “ ’Twas yourself put me on the track, reminding me of that scent at the castle. That young dog’s after startling Sir Tarquin, and his concentration, that maintains his body and its appearance, wasn’t it slipping with the great surprise, and for a moment his body declared itself. And I’m thinking of that which I saw in the water-mirror, and my dream, and what I know—and ’tis not a small amount—of these matters, and all at once I had it, had it in my palm, had it as though himself had told me.”
Another pause and then, suddenly, Hob asked, “But who is the old rat, the one that was alive, and that—what? Went away?”
“I believe that is Lady Rohese, the mate, and she very old—not as old as he, perhaps, for he may be ancient, to have heaped up so much power, and who knows when he made his bargain, and who knows when his body died—but she is very old natheless.”
“But she is not—”
“She does not seem old, but they are like two spiders in one web, and if he kills to maintain his life in his dead body, and to preserve that dead body, she may do the same to stay alive—for she is alive—and to stay young, or seem young. He may lend her his power, for aught I know. I do not fear her, but I fear him; she may be killed, he may not.”
“Then, then, you cannot kill him, Mistress?” Hob said, groping his way through this thicket of nightmare. “Then what is to happen?”
“Wait, lad. Nemain, come with me.”
The two women went to the wagons. Molly cleared a space in the dirt with her foot, and the two queens squatted down while Molly drew symbols in the dust with her forefinger, looking up from time to time to see if Nemain understood, while her granddaughter nodded, and nodded again. At one point Nemain stood up and walked a few paces away, her hands to her hips, her face distressed; then she came back, and squatted again, and nodded again.
Molly, who had watched her keenly, now resumed. After a time, Hob and Jack looking on from ten or twelve paces away, unable to see what was drawn there on the earth, the two women finished; Molly thoroughly erased whatever was there, and they went into the large wagon.
They emerged a few moments later, Nemain carrying what looked like two golden sickles. Molly went to the side of the wagon, worked a cunning latch, and from a compartment beneath the overhang of the wagon roof that Hob had never suspected was there drew two spear shafts.
The women came back, and fitted the sockets of the sicklelike blades to the shafts, working a hidden lock—Hob heard a distinct click as each blade was made fast. Molly let him look on them, but told him to avoid touching the weapons. Grooves had been cut lengthwise in the ashwood shafts, and the grooves filled with the same golden metal as the curved spearheads. From the top of the crescent shape, which strongly suggested the sickle moon, proceeded a leaf-shaped spearhead, so that the weapons might be used for thrusting, or as scythe-like cutters, or—as Molly now explained—in concert, one locking with the other about an enemy’s neck. Molly could wield both herself at the same time, but not against so mighty a foe.
“And what locks them about the foeman’s neck, Mistress?”
“My will, and Nemain’s will.”
She held one so that Hob could examine the curved head. It was decorated with engraved knotwork along both sides of the outer, blunt edge of the blade, while on one side, at the widest part, was a simple picture of what looked like a woman washing clothes by a stream, this last represented by several wavy lines.
“Is this gold? And what is this picture, Mistress?”
“ ’Tis steel that has been prayed over, and coated with gold, and infused with power, and that by Art. That picture shows us the Washer at the Ford,” said Molly, “one of the masks of the Great Queen.”
“If you meet her before a battle,” said Nemain, “it’s your bloody clothes she’s washing, and won’t you be dying in the battle, and no escaping it!” She seemed rather enthusiastic about this dismal prospect.
“Attend me,” said Molly, speaking to Hob and Jack. “I’m explaining this to you, and you only: I’m not to be speaking of this with those outside this family, and I’m just after showing Nemain what is to be done, drawing in the dirt over there. From my dream, from what I know of these things, I am to understand that this loathsome gesadóir is not to be slain with the weapons that I have, but they’re burning him, oh, they’re burning him, and Nemain and I hold
ing him still all the hours of darkness, if we can, until I’m able to be accomplishing his destruction. He’s not to be escaping the collar of blades we’re putting on him, and he’s not to be able to hold to the shaft of our weapons, because of the strips of holy metal.”
She paused a bit, perhaps wondering how much detail she should burden Hob and Jack with. She reached for her mug.
“Is túisce deoch ná scéal,” she said, half to herself. Then, seeing Hob frowning, she translated: “First the drink, then the story.” She took a swallow, then another.
“I’m having a visit from that raven, or Herself in the form of a raven, ’tis many years agone; and she’s telling me what I must do, and I’m waking and it still night, and at the foot of my bed a lump of metal, gold it was, and the size of it!” She shook her head, remembering. “I’m bringing it to one the raven told me of, a woman who made weapons. These were weapons of power, weapons that this spell-woman, this smith, blessed the metal of, blessed it by the name of the Phantom Queen. And she’s making them, shaft and head alike, and spellcraft woven into them, and prayers said over them, and holy symbols—the Washer as you see—graven onto them. And they are potent.”
Hob was turning all this knowledge this way and that. “But, Mistress, why can you not thrust this metal, this metal that will burn Sir Tarquin, through his heart, and so slay him?”
Molly had another drink of the uisce beatha. She sighed. “ ’Tis that you’re not listening: his body is dead. His heart is not beating, and ’tis by witchcraft he’s sustaining himself, and by the life force of others, and by the power of his will, and that will being immense. There is no vital spot in his body—’tis all dead, or all alive: dead but suffused throughout with the force of his sorcery, and so a thrust is paining him, but ’tis doing no lasting harm. He’ll be pulling himself from the blade, and attacking and killing us before we’re making the next thrust. Nay, we can but hold him till his destruction arrives.”
“And what is this destruction, Mistress?”
“Nay, I’m not to be speaking of that, even to you and Jack, for fear that the small breeze will be bearing my words to his ears. Nemain is knowing, for I’m after telling her by signs in the dust; and she being experienced, young as she is. But to say more of my plan, it’s risking a defense against it by this terrible magus. I’m not to know what he knows, and nor what he’s able to find out. Rat spies, indeed! What if it’s one that’s lurking in yon bush?”
Hob, startled, looked around quickly.
“Nay, I’m sensing nothing. But it’s only this that I’ll be telling you: We will have one chance, and I staking everything on one roll of this game of knucklebones that we’re playing with him. If it’s going with me, it’s Sir Tarquin who’ll be destroyed utterly, and if it’s going against me, we’re all to die, and his power beginning to stretch out over the land. ’Tis not that I’m doing this for Sir Odinell anymore; Herself is after giving me this command to expunge this evil, evil that’s now so mighty, it must not be allowed to flourish more, that it not overwhelm the world.”
CHAPTER 20
MOLLY AND NEMAIN MADE preparations for war. They had Hob and Jack stay by the wagons, under strict instruction to be silent, and they went several yards off, just into the woods. There was a little clearing there. The trees screened it, but only somewhat; the women could be seen but not heard. Jack lounged in the grass, up on one elbow, stolid as usual, waiting while the women did their incomprehensible rituals. There was no need to restrain Sweetlove—she could not be persuaded to go any real distance from Jack, as though there were an invisible tether between them; indeed she became agitated and snappish on the one occasion when Hob had tried to pick her up to pet her, and had made the mistake of taking her just the few steps to the opposite side of the fire from the dark man.
Hob was always interested in learning what skills his unusual family practiced, and now he sat up on the seat of the main wagon, sitting sideways with chin in hand, watching Molly and Nemain in fascination.
The women built a little fire; they had the iron basin filled with water again, and various stones and feathers, and the crescent-headed spears, and a ball of green ribbon. There was chanting in Irish, which just reached Hob’s ears, and casting of powders into the fire, which made the colors of the flames change, and then more chanting. The spearheads were passed repeatedly over the fire, and plunged into the basin, although they had not really been heated: it was a symbolic, rather than actual, tempering of the blades.
More powder was tossed into the fire, and now billows of smoke issued from the heart of the flames. Nemain passed green ribbon through the smoke, to the accompaniment of repeated forceful commands by Molly, while Nemain was silent. Nemain brought forth a silver box, and Molly carefully deposited the ball of green ribbon there, and fastened the box, and put it aside. The wind shifted, and the smoke reached Hob, a surprisingly pleasant aroma; Father Athelstan had taken Hob to hear Mass at Easter in the nearby market town, and there had been incense like this: a scent as of mingled spices.
The time was now near dusk: the women had been at it all afternoon. It was the hour when the birds of the day began to call to each other, preparing to retire; in a little while the bats would appear, wheeling this way and that to follow the clouds of insects, to whom they are as dragons; and then the birds of the night would awaken and shake out their feathers. Molly crouched down and spread a cloth on the ground on this side of the fire. She scattered bright bits of metal across the cloth, a double handful. Hob could not see just what they were from where he perched on the wagon seat, but some seemed bright as silver, and some were a leaden gray. Molly called up into the trees, almost casually, and down came three crows and two ravens, and landed on the cloth, and inspected the metal bits, their heads cocked to one side, moving up and down to provide focus. The birds walked about on the blanket, looking at each trinket, for all the world like purchasers at a fair, which would have been comical had it not been so uncanny.
Molly spoke to them the while; the occasional word that came to Hob was in Irish. The birds were silent; they seemed to be listening, glancing back at her while walking amid the metal. At last the crows gave a caw or two, the ravens croaked, and they sprang up into the trees. After a bit, one by one, they flew off.
Bats now ruled the air. Nemain built up the fire, and Molly threw something in it, producing more colored flames, more perfumed smoke. Full dark crept in, and again Molly called out, and now four brown owls floated down from the trees, utterly silent, to land upon the cloth. They walked stiff-legged among the bits of metal, and Molly addressed them, and after this had gone on for a while, they leaped up and flew into the branches, where Hob lost sight of them.
The women doused the fire, packed things up, and came back to the wagons. “That’s done, then,” said Molly. She hefted the cloth, now tied as a sack, and a muted clink came from within. “We’ll be going on the morrow, late in the day, when ’tis neither bright day that we may be seen nor full night when that evil buidseach may be at the height of his powers, and it’s these metal amulets we’ll be leaving, and don’t they have symbols of power grooved into each, and we placing them as guides for our watchers—crows and ravens by day, owls by night.”
The next day, late in the afternoon, Sweetlove locked in the middle wagon and the draft animals grazing on tethers, they set off, riding the four horses that Sir Odinell had provided. They took the coast road south, perhaps ten miles; they arrived near Duncarlin at sunset, as Molly had planned. When the castle appeared in the hazed distance, Molly turned her horse’s head and led them into the trees. They proceeded along parallel to the coast road, the strand just visible now and then through the gaps in the pillars of the forest. They went slowly, the horses’ hooves mostly silent on the cover of moist dead leaves. Now and then they had to duck under a branch or detour around a thicket, but the trees were old, the shadow beneath them was too dense to nourish other vegetation, and so the underbrush was not thick.
; At last they could see, from their half-hidden vantage point, the sheen of the setting sun on the darkening waters, gold on black, and the dragon silhouette of the long castle, crouching on its headland. Molly signaled for silence, and dismounted. As she had instructed them in camp, the others walked their horses to form a rough perimeter to ward against surprises: Jack to the south with Molly’s mount, Hob to the north, Nemain in the middle.
Molly now paced through the forest from just north of the castle to just south of the castle, placing the metal tokens here and there at the tree roots, to guide corvids by day and owls by night to the castle. From these trees they would fly to castle eaves, roofs, buttresses, windowsills, anywhere they could see and hear what transpired within. Others watched the road, and the gatehouse, to see who came, and who went.
When all the tokens had been distributed, she took her horse’s reins from Jack, swung up into the saddle, and led them back north, threading a way between the tree trunks, till they were able to come down onto the road, and make their way by moonlight back to the camp. They would spend one more night in the wagons, camped in the clearing, and then back to the inn to await word of the Blanchefontaine force’s arrival.
THAT NIGHT, sitting about the campfire, well fed, mugs in hand—uisce beatha for Molly and Jack, brookwater for the younger couple—Molly tried to explain her watchers to Hob.
“How will they see the markers, Mistress, it being so dark beneath the trees?”
“ ’Tis not that they see them, but that they sense them, and the messages I have put into them.”
“But, Mistress, they are just birds!” Hob objected.
“There are birds, and they have little wisdom, and there are those the Mórrígan has made captains of birds, and these may be spoken to, and instructed, and there are others . . .” Molly’s voice trailed away, and she drank from the clay mug in her hand.
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