The Sign of the Moonbow

by Andrew J Offutt

  “Aye, Cormac Trenfher, but-”

  “It’s there, in marvelous privacy, I’ll be sleeping, Red Rory. And violence may be done on that person who wakens me out of time!”

  Within the hour a physician arrived; both Tathill and his young woman had been smuggled out to secret and private lodgings-and Red Rory had dared lie to his queen about the whereabouts of her trenfher; her champion. In truth that one had stretched his bruised length-and what a length it was!-on the floor of the brewing room back of the inn’s kitchen. He was snoring.

  The physician, as he was departing, was led there by Rory.

  While he was seeing to the supine man’s wounds, the snoring was interrupted, lids rose, and eyes like sword-steel stared into Danan glims.

  “Durlugh the physician,” Rory said quickly, and a bit fearfully.

  Cormac said nothing; his eyes closed; he was snoring again ere Durlugh had finished his work. In several places was the champion’s body smeared and poulticed, and Durlugh and Rory departed. Nor was there brewing the next day, for in the world above that was his own, the sun came and went and was just coming again when Cormac mac Art awoke.

  It was then he discovered that he’d been found by the Queen of Moytura, and she had a wakening surprise for him. It was herself.

  Chapter Fourteen:

  Tarmur Roag

  “What kind of ceremony?”

  “All are there,” Dithorba said. “Cairluh, Tarmur Roag, the simulacrum of Riora, the priests of Danu, and the people have been bade to come into the great Square of the Moon before the temple. Too, the filays and seanachies are present.”

  Cormac straightened. He was clothed only in his breechclout which he wore tight. He had been exercising, he told Dithorba, testing legs and arms, flexibility and reflexes, after yesterday’s exertions and the hurts put upon him. His left forearm had been wrapped again and again with the lightweight Moyturan cloth, that his buckler would not chafe the two wounds left there by the fanged tip of Elatha’s whip. Elsewhere his skin was colourful with bruises.

  He repeated the other man’s last two words, his eyes narrowing until they were invisible. “Poets and chroniclers?”

  “Aye. You know their function here?”

  “The same as among my people; they keep alive the time-that-was for the Now and the time-to-come. They are our… our history. And Moytura’s too?”

  “Aye,” Dithorba said with a nod. “The same, Cormac. Tarmur and Cairluh plan something of moment, then. An announcement, methinks. The false Riora is going to make a speech to the people, assembled before the temple, that her words may have Danu’s blessing.”

  Cormac considered, started to scratch his left forearm, realized what he was about, and left off. “They know of my presence here, and that you and Riora are free. They have Wulfhere and Thulsa Doom-oh, saw ye them, Dithorba?”

  “No, Cormac.”

  “So, Tarmur Roag and Cairluh have decided to take some swift action. Prompted by my presence and yours and the queen’s freedom? Aye… mayhap the false Riora is about to announce marriage with Cairluh, or abdicate, in favour of her dear cousin?”

  “It is as Torna and I believe.”

  “Balan?”

  Dithorba shook his nigh-hairless head. “Commander Balan was for the barracks of the Queen’s Guard. There I dare not go-nor have we seen or heard from him.”

  Cormac nodded, thinking. He rubbed the bruise on his right upper arm, staring reflectively at nothing. “Dithorba… ye know where your queen is.”

  Dithorba put on an innocent face as he looked around. “Why nay, Cormac. I see her not.”

  Smiling, the Gael said, “It were better thus. Now-do you bring Torna here whilst I get clothes on me, be ye so kind.”

  With a nod, Dithorba departed the brewing room; he used his feet.

  A brewing room, Cormac thought. The planning place for the restoration of a queen-by a foreigner! Danu, Danu, it’s a whimsical lady ye be, moon-goddess! A brewing room, behind an inn… and what a queen!

  He turned to the heavy framework that supported ale vats and mugs; it was of a size to speak well for Red Rory’s business. Cormac walked around it, to where his clothing lay entangled with a blue gown. He looked down at Riora. She blinked lazily up at him.

  “Ye heard?”

  “Nay. I… think I was unconscious for a time,” she said. “Oh, Cormac! You are absolutely-”

  “Later, little girl. There’s business afoot. Best ye rise and come see to the business of your kingdom.”

  “You call the Queen of Moytura ‘little girl’?”

  Cormac smiled; she’d but jested, and he’d missed her point and now called her by name-the queen! She levered herself into a sitting position, reached for him; he backed away.

  “Dithorba was just here,” he told her. “Give listen.”

  And as he dressed and then grunted into forty pounds of linked-steel coat that had so long been a daily part of his attire, he told her what Dithorba had just reported, and their surmise. Swiftly he sketched a plan; a concept-a hope. She considered that with an expression both stricken and yet hopeful. Rising, she drew her soiled blue robe over her head and smoothed it as best she could.

  They had just emerged from behind the vats when Dithorba returned with the senior adviser, Torna. Cormac began speaking at once.

  “It’s the queen’s advisers ye two be, and it’s her champion I seem to be, now. Now methinks the swiftest action is called for.”

  Torna nodded. “If we be right, Cormac mac Art, in but minutes Cairluh will have been proclaimed king by the false queen.”

  Cormac looked at Riora. “We have a bargain, lady Queen?”

  “We have, Cormac. Once you have accomplished my reinstatement, I shall perform the strange task you have requested.”

  “Your pardon, lady Queen… but will ye just be speaking it aloud for the ears of these your ministers?”

  She blinked in surprise, arched an eyebrow-and repeated their bargain, and her strange and grisly promise to mac Art.

  “Dithorba,” Cormac said, “take me to the temple, to the very side of the creature calling herself Riora.”

  “It’s on the Crescent Balcony she is, Cormac. There too are guards.”

  Cormac signified that he understood and was ready, and they joined hands, and were gone. The moment they were there, on the outer balcony of the Temple of Danu, Cormac was speaking.

  “Dithorba, time races and we catch it now or miss it forever. Fetch the queen here man, and instantly! Then it’s to the barracks ye must go, and-”

  But Dithorba had winked out amid a little sound like the clap of hands.

  A far louder one succeeded it; a resounding cry form many, many Danan throats. The Gael looked out on the strange city that was subterranean Moytura, and down on thronging thousands of the People of Danu. Their light-eyed faces were turned up at him, and many uplifted hands were pointing.

  His knees in the partial crouch of a weapon-man’s readiness, he turned his head to his left. There, others stared at him; two. A handsome young man in a robe white as foam of the wave, with a large collar of silver on him, a carcanet from throat to mid-chest. It flashed with jewels. His robe was girt with a doubled cord of woven cloth-of-silver, and his fair hair was lustrous, clean and long-combed. At his side, bejeweled, in an ornately ornamented, and purfled robe of the same marmoreal white, on her pale locks a chaplet of silver and coral chased with gold, stood… Riora.

  Nay. Not Riora. Some Thing called from an unnatural elsewhere by Tarmur Roag! A lamia, mayhap. And mayhap Dithorba was more than right, in giving me this new dagger!

  Ready to act, he becautioned himself to look behind him; along the white-colonnaded balcony.

  No wizard was there; doubtless Tarmur Roag thought it wise to remain out of sight of the people whilst his plans were put forward by Cairluh and… the simulacrum. Cormac instead saw three Danan weapon-men in fine armour polished to high sheen, and with bronze on their wrists rather than bracers of leathe
r. As their eyes met Cormac’s, all three reached for their swordhilts.

  So too did Cormac mac Art-and turned, and plunged toward her who was Riora’s exact likeness and him the Gael assumed was the queen’s plotting cousin, Cairluh.

  “It is done, Cairluh!” mac Art said, biting out the words, and he drove his sword into the white-robed woman with such force that the point brast through her back and tented her garment before tearing through it.

  Cairluh stared in horror; so too did the people below. It was the total and all of Cormac’s plan; that he come here with all swiftness and, pausing for naught, seek to slay the thing in Riora’s likeness.

  A chorus of screams and roars of rage swelled up from the people gathered below, as their eyes reported the stabbing to death of their queen by a towering man with dark skin never got of Danan parentage.

  They were still shrieking when she they thought their queen was transformed before their thrice-shocked gazes.

  The skin of that lovely Riora-face became a liquid, melting and oozing, running. A frightful howling sound issued from her lips even as they changed. Then Cormac, Cairluh, three frozen weapon-men and thousands of duped Moyturans saw the queen become a ravening snarling demonic thing that was shaggy with red hair. The snowy robe fell from the metamorphosing body. Red too were the tufts of hair on the fox-like ears, though black was the hideous snarling animal’s face and the taloned claw-hands of the creature.

  The crown of Moytura clattered to the floor of the balcony.

  Dithorba was right, Cormac thought, and he transferred his swordhilt to his shield-hand. Iron and steel will not slay a demon, a lamia.

  Far from dead the thing was, and as it pounced, Cormac drew the dagger Dithorba had foresightedly given him and in the same motion plunged it into the heart of the monster. A single curving claw sought to tear open his arm; it left instead a deep groove in his bracer of good cow’s hide.

  With another snarl that lofted into a shriek, the thing gouted blood around the silver dagger. Staggering sidewise, it struck the parapet that ran around the Crescent Balcony, and fell over.

  Below, the people cried out anew, and not this time in rage. Citizens nigh trampled one the other in their efforts to hie themselves well back from the tumbling monster. It struck the green-and-white stones of the Square of the Moon with a loud and sickening thump and a great plosion of blood.

  Then all who could see stared, as the slain demon-thing that had worn the likeness of their queen melted again-into a shiny putrescence that gave off the stench of a thousand dead fish.

  Aye, Cormac thought, silver slays the demonic!

  No cries rose now from the populace. There were only murmurs. Again many eyes rose to the balcony. A new silence fell, followed by more excited muttering and isolated shouts; at the side of the demon-slaying stranger had appeared two well recognized figures: Dithorba Loingsech and the Queen of Moytura.

  Below, the last trace of the demon vanished.

  Stooping, Dithorba picked up the Coral Crown of Moytura, and placed it on the head of his queen.

  Yet no cheering bedlam arose; the people were too shocked and confused to react so. Had not they seen their queen afore; had not they seen that she had been a foul slavering thing? Now-was this their Riora? And the giant at her side with un-Danan skin… what or who was he, and from whence? Was not that the Sign of the Moonbow on his chest? The queen was lifting her arms to them…

  The silence deepened. Into it Riora called, “I am Riora, Queen of the Moyturans, Chosen of Danu. And this my champion, Moytura’s champion, Danu’s champion-Cormac mac Art!” And in a natural tone she said, “Your voice is stronger, Cormac-tell them.

  He did. The Gael bellowed out a few sentences, speaking slowly, pronouncing carefully and knowing that to them he spoke with a frightful strange accent. It was the content of his words that held import: he identified her at his side as the real queen, and accused Cairluh and Tarmur Roag of having done treachery on her.

  No proof was necessary. Cairluh provided it. He turned and fled, holding high the skirt of his regal robe to facilitate the churning of his surprisingly muscular legs.

  Again Riora lifted high her hands to her people; a queen crowned and in a soiled blue gown. And this time the cheers rose. After a moment of smiling on them, she turned to the three weapon-men who’d been coming at Cormac and who now stood frozen, as horrified again and again as those in the square below.

  “In your hands I see swords,” she said, “and on you I see the clothing of the Queen’s Guards. I am that queen. Sheathe your weapons!”

  The trio did. One fell to his knees; his companions swiftly emulated him.

  “Basest treachery was done on me,” the queen said. “And you were tricked-you thought that… creature was I?”

  All three kneeling men assured her that they had; from the anguished eyes of one tears rolled.

  “Then into the temple, Queen’s Guardsmen, and take Tarmur Roag, traitor to all Moytura-traitor to Danu! “

  The three guardsmen rose, bowed, and drew their iron swords. Cormac’s hand hovered at his hilt while he watched those men in crescent-shaped helmets for any hint of movement toward Riora. There was none; their pained expressions remained. One man spoke.

  “Lady Queen… below are the Lord Cairluh, and Tarmur Roag, the filays and seanachies and other guardsmen. There were a score of us for the… the ceremony; seventeen are in the temple.”

  “All dupes, as you were?” Cormac asked.

  The men’s expressions showed that they did not know. Some of the men below with the usurpers might well have been tricked into believing the lamia was the queen. Yet some were almost certainly knowing tools of the plotters, loyal to Cairluh and Tarmur Roag because of threats or promises or both.

  Cormac strode past Riora to the head of the stairway leading down into the temple.

  The Temple of Danu of Moytura was laid out in the shape of a crescent; a moonbow. Nor was it huge, as the Gael had already surmised from the balcony’s length. The arms of the crescent flowed out away from him on either side. The roof was supported by four colonnades that marched along the arms of the crescent; columns of pale stone blocks banded around by bronze. Within the innermost lines of columns, between them and the outer walls, hung deeply purple drapes or curtains, trimmed in silver. He assumed a sort of gallery or passageway lay behind, betwixt hangings and walls.

  The altar rose at the far end, in the center of the string of the moonbow. From Cormac’s vantage, the statue of the goddess appeared to be of excellently detailed workmanship, and all of silver. Plated to iron surely, he supposed, or to stone. The temple floor was of smooth and refulgently green marble or a similar stone of that unusual hue. On it stood men, and they stared up at him.

  Five were priests. Just under a score wore the helms and armour of the Queen’s Guards. The central figure was a plump man whose grey beard was plaited, like Dithorba’s. On the chest of his shimmering silver robe hung a Moonbow sigil; a Chain of Danu that was like the one Cormac wore. Beside him stood Cairluh. The traitorous cousin even so swiftly had doffed his snowy robe to reveal himself in a coat of fine scalemail, and sword-armed. Around the two plotters, for Cormac assumed him in the robe of silver to be Tarmur Roag, were ranked others he took to be filays and seanachies; poets and chroniclers or historians. Thus in Eirrin was history of centuries passed down, without written words.

  A movement at his side drew Cormac’s attention.

  Both Riora and Dithorba had come up beside him. There too were the three weapon-men, with nervousness and some anguish visible in their faces. Along half the length of the temple and up the steps, the queen’s usurping cousin and he who had effected his schemes-or laid them-stared at their queen and the dark, tall man beside her.

  With a fine sense of royalty and drama, Queen Riora lifted an arm and extended an accusing finger at the silver-robed sorcerer.

  “You have failed, foul wizard! And you, Cairluh, murderous cousin! This man has slain Elatha,
and brought me forth from the prison where I was tortured, with my girls and Torna and Balan and others. Lughan has been murdered, by Elatha the Whip! Now this same man, Cormac mac Art, slew the monster who wore my face and body-and the people saw that transformation; they know of your treachery and of the foul thing that bore my face! They saw it melt and ooze away to naught, that thing you put upon my throne-the throne of Moytura!”

  Cormac was watching carefully. He saw horror on the faces of four priests; saw the fifth smile thinly. The poets and historians stared too in shock, and backed from Tarmur Roag and Cairluh-all but one, him in the blue tunic and beige leggings. As for the weapon-men… it was hard to be certain, but Cormac thought that two looked shocked, horrified. Two of seventeen!

  If he was right about those two, then they were the only, fighting men loyal to their queen, with himself and these three beside her. Six of us… against sixteen with Cairluh… and Tarmur Roag with his dark powers!

  It was not possible. Had one of those with him been Wulfhere… had these men beside their queen been of his own people, or Danes… but they were not.

  It was not possible. Two could put defeat on six, when the two were Wulfhere Skull-splitter and Cormac the Wolf; six could not defeat sixteen, when as allies mac Art had only the small men of Moytura. And besides, there was Tarmur Roag, and Dithorba had more than merely admitted that the man in the silver robe possessed powers transcending his own.

  And then, horribly, there were four, not six. Suddenly men below drew shining blades of dark iron, and sheathed them anew in the two Cormac had rightly taken to be without knowledge of the treachery and deception. They fell, almost in silence.

  Tarmur Roag smiled.

  “That foreigner from among those who drove our ancestors from Eiru will aid ye no more, Riora! Let him and those three beside you come down among us, that we may see who rules Moytura!”