The Defiler

by Steven Savile

  "Indeed," said Myrrdin. "Like the Cauldron itself, they are fractured. But, in that similarity lies the genesis of our plan. To stand against Feg we - you - must reunite the tribes of Danu, and to do that you must reforge the Cauldron itself," the druid looked at Sláine across the fire. "It is a gift fit for a king." And Sláine knew then, with a cold certainty, that the Lord of the Trees had seen his shaming and understood the nature of his exile, and more tellingly, his desire to return home despite the risks such a homecoming promised. "And one that might well bring forgiveness with it."

  And suddenly he understood. Realisation crystallised with his mind. It was not about Feg, or Danu, the Sessair, not even Tir-Nan-Og. No, it came down to something as simple as a mother's love.

  He had known from the start that he was being manipulated, finally he understood by whom; at the root of everything that had happened since he had first set eyes upon her back in the forest glade so close to home, the Morrigan. His mother's death, his exile, his journey south into the Sourlands, the Crone was behind it all, even, no doubt, the Weatherwitch's visitation. The Sidhe had foretold his return, directing him to find the Skinless Man, and even as he awoke from the dream the Morrigan had been there to steer his feet to the very tree where she herself had bound the Lord of the Trees centuries before, the same Skinless Man Sláine sought.

  Coincidence?

  Hardly, the Crone was playing the long game.

  Her pieces had been in motion for centuries working towards this moment, on the fringe of the dead forest where once Myrrdin ruled, and why?

  The answer was as obvious as it was simple: so that the druid returned could set another subtle chain of events into motion. And that chain of events? The reforging of the four fragments of the lost Cauldron - the same Cauldron that served as prison for the Morrigan's only child. The manipulations of the Crone were far-reaching but their purpose was the most natural of all, a mother's love.

  Despite the fire, a cold chill touched his heart, put there by a sudden thought.

  With the Crone's machinations laid bare another possibility arose, one that Sláine could not afford to discount: had the Morrigan somehow fed the madness of Slough Feg? Had she created the monster that she would ultimately need to provide the threat to the Land of the Young knowing that would in turn prove to be the impetus for the liberation of her son?

  It made a perverse kind of sense, one that adhered to all he had ever heard of the Crone from Cathbad.

  It was like seeing the strands of a huge and elaborate spider's web picked out by the morning frost; suddenly it was all too clear.

  "You know where these pieces lie hidden." It wasn't a question. The druid gave no sign that he had caught the subtle difference in Sláine's intonation. He nodded.

  "One is in the possession of the Sidhe king, Finvarra, on the Isle of Glass. Another was claimed by Weyland the Smith. The third is in the saddle bags of the fabled Huntress."

  "And the final piece?"

  "That is held by the Morrigan herself," the druid said.

  "So what am I supposed to do, Myrrdin? Appeal to the better nature of these fabled folk and hope they take pity on my fool's quest? Or steal the pieces and invoke their supernatural wrath and earn their immortal enmity?"

  "It will be no easy thing," the druid admitted. "Indeed, the reforging of the Cauldron is a hero feat worthy of a true king. With such a treasure a man could return home without fear of his fate - not just as the voice of doom but as a beacon of hope. That, champion, is what Feg fears the most. That is why she brought us together. We both know it. It is our destiny. You are the champion I was promised, Sláine Mac Roth. This one act was what you were born for. All aspects of the Goddess have marked you; Mother, Maiden and Crone, you are their chosen one, their warrior. You are the light."

  And there it was, the bait spoken.

  It hung in the air between them.

  Sláine took another bite from the hare's charred carcass and swallowed the greasy meat without taking his eyes off the druid for a moment.

  Sláine grunted, tossing the stripped bones into the fire. The fat caused the flames to crackle and spit, leaping high enough to obscure the druid's wooden eyes for a moment. The elemental dance of the orange flame was hypnotic, seductive. A part of him yearned to enter the fire and be forged like iron by the flame. He watched the bone shrivel and crack open, the marrow scorched by the intense heat until it was all but consumed. He was the bone within the Morrigan's fire. Her quest would consume him. He knew that. But he had no choice. If he refused her all the Crone had to do was ask it of him and he would be forced to play the part she had scripted for him. One promise eroded his freewill. In this, and in so much else, he knew, he was the Morrigan's plaything. When the flames diminished, he said "What would you have me do?" across the top of them.

  The druid told him: "We must travel north, into the heart of Emania and reach the Moon-Torn before the Night of the Questing Moon. The Night Bringer is a legend, like the great smith. To find any of these immortals one must understand their nature. The Huntress and her wild hunt are tied to the stories people tell about them. She is the sum of the stories, trapped in a cycle of repetition, cursed to live again and again the sagas mortals spin about her myth."

  Sláine nodded his understanding. "And one such story promises that the Great Hunt will ride through the hill fortress of Navan on the night of the Questing Moon."

  "Exactly," Myrrdin said.

  "What do you know of this Huntress? You called her the Night Bringer?"

  "Before you boys get all wrapped up in hatching your schemes and forget about me, let me just remind you that a little misdirection and sleight of hand goes a long way. Or put more plainly, if there's any stealing to be done, I'm your dwarf," Ukko smirked, licking the last of the hare's juices off his fingers. "Now, what were you saying about this Night Bringer? Doesn't sound like a particularly pleasant individual if you ask me. How come we never go hunting for the Smiling Goat or the Gentle Giant? It's always the Night Bringer, the Dark Mistress, and the Raging Banshee that you heroes are obsessed with." Ukko shook his head in mock despair.

  SIX

  Acting as their guide and teacher, Myrrdin told them what he knew of the Huntress and her wild hunt as they journeyed on. The stories did little to soothe the doubts nagging away at the back of the young warrior's mind.

  She had two names: the Huntress and the Night Bringer. The duality reflected both aspects of her legend. As the Huntress she led the spectral hunt of the dead and damned, refused the peace of eternity. To join her hunt was to earn immortality of a sort.

  "The Huntress is not a woman," Myrrdin said, the dwindling sun at his back. "She is an essential being."

  "What?"

  "An energy, a spectre drawn from the land herself. She is not as powerful as a true aspect of the Goddess, but more like a shade fuelled by Danu's essence, if you would. She is a part of the Goddess - Danu is the land, but in the sky above her there is an uneasy truce between the sun and moon. The Goddess is at the mercy of these things and thus she channels part of herself into the Night Bringer, a warrior aspect mighty enough to rail against the very heavens above and bring on the night in answer to her summons."

  "Are you really sure we want to find her?" Ukko said, his short legs struggling to match their longer strides.

  "If there was another way," Myrrdin said, "believe me, I would choose it."

  "Well, that's even more comforting, I must say."

  The further north the companions travelled the closer winter drew around them, until, almost in the shadow of the Great Cairn itself, the first flakes of snow began to fall. The landscape was harsh - outsiders often called it the savage frontier. There was a wild beauty to it. Fields rolled out, blanketed by lavender and lilac heathers. Gorse and bramble filled in the patches between the purples. Jagged spars of rock rose like broken teeth, the chalk-white hills and the iron-rich ores adding grey, white and red hues to the countryside. The vista was hauntingly familiar
- so similar to the land he had grown up in - but that was unsurprising. They had travelled deep into the territories of Emania. They were less than a day's walk from Ard Macha, two from the Great Cairn and the fortress of Navan. The fortress demarked the northernmost edge of the lands of Emania - or as Sláine thought of the geography - the southernmost fringes of Sessair territory. If they were to walk north by north-east they would arrive in Murias before the week was out. The proximity of his childhood unnerved him.

  "How do we find the Moon-Torn? I have lived most of my life in the shadow of these white-capped mountains and I have never heard talk of them. What are they, more ghosts?"

  "They are not ghosts," the druid said, without meeting his eye. "Not truly."

  "I don't like the sound of that," said Ukko. "Funny how this almost ghost thing never came up over the last few weeks of walking to find them, isn't it?"

  "They are people, just like you or I. It is their curse that makes them... different."

  "Oh, a curse, this just keeps getting better every time he opens his mouth."

  "Hush, dwarf," Sláine said, brushing aside Ukko's snide remark. He stirred the fire with a stick, causing a shower of sparks to punctuate his rising anger. "Explain, druid. I am in no mood for surprises," Myrrdin looked decidedly uncomfortable under Sláine's scrutiny. "If you won't talk, it ends here, Myrrdin. Don't make the mistake of thinking you know my mind just because you shared a few memories. Murias is close enough that the duty to warn my people burns inside my chest. It is called loyalty. Now it is time to lay your cards on the table. You know something of these Moon-Torn and whatever it is, it concerns you enough that you are uncomfortable talking about it. That in itself tells me enough to know I should be wary."

  "There is not much to tell."

  "Let me be the judge of that."

  "Very well. Their curse is an old one. In many ways they are just like your people... or rather, they were your people once, long before the sundering of the Cauldron and the diaspora of the Goddess's tribes."

  "Speak plainly, man. I am no fan of your fancy words. They were Sessair, yes or no?"

  "Not Sessair, no, but children of Emania, brothers and sisters of your tribe. They turned their back on the Goddess, offering benediction to the heavens. They believed that the skies surpassed the wonder of the earth, and moreover, that the stars themselves sheltered ancient deities worthy of their worship. They paid lip service to Danu, but even as they did, they betrayed themselves with ceremonies of star worship. The Morrigan blessed them with what they believed was their heart's desire: she drew the strands of her dark self from deep within her being, conjuring or creating the Night Bringer, the Huntress who rode the land for eternity, claiming all those who looked upon her in her aspect to join her savage hunt."

  "Looked?" Sláine said sceptically, not for a moment believing that the sight of something, no matter how hideous, could be enough to still a human heart.

  "To see her was to embrace death, warrior. Make no mistake, the essence of the Goddess is mighty, her dark side far worse than anything Carnun could inspire. Carnun is a parasite on her flesh, the Night Bringer is her flesh - an apparition of it. What in the world could hold more power? Or more threat? The onlookers perished, their souls drawn to join the hunt for eternity."

  "Until people stop recounting stories of the wild hunt?"

  "Exactly. Until that day, they are bound to the endless winter night, running at her side in search of other souls to join the chase. The Morrigan's blessing was two-fold; on the one hand, she gave them the Night Bringer, on the other she gave them to the Night Bringer."

  "I am not sure I follow."

  "They worshipped the essence of the night. The Night Bringer became their precious deity, the moon her symbol. In return, the Morrigan gave them to the night and the moon. That was the duality of her gift, the curse that nestled in beside it. When the moon rides full in the sky the Moon-Torn children of the Night Bringer fade to nothing. They become invisible, save by the light of the moon itself when they are transformed, like the ghosts of the hunt they worship, appearing ethereal, insubstantial."

  "That's... that's..."

  "Barbaric? Evil? Hateful? Vile? Inhumane? Yes, it is all of these, and more, for the curse is handed down from generation to generation, the children suffering for the failings of the fathers with no way to break the cycle save for their story to stop being told. And in telling you this I merely prolong their suffering. As long as there are lips to blather they will suffer the torment of the moon."

  Sláine put his head in his hands, scratching at his scalp as he tried to think. "How could a spirit being whose visage brings death come into possession of a piece of the Cauldron of Rebirth?" But he knew the answer even before he had finished the question: the Morrigan. Her fingers were all over this latest facet of the quest. He was being bullied into a course of action he had no control over; they all knew it but none of them mentioned the way seemingly random events were actually intertwined if you scratched beneath the thin patina of chance.

  Was it any coincidence that the Crone was responsible for the curse that created one of the guardians of the fragments of her monstrous offspring's gaol?

  Almost certainly not.

  He was beginning to believe that there was no such thing as happenstance. There was a purpose to everything, no matter how innocuous it appeared to be; a guiding hand that shaped events to its need, want and desire. The Morrigan herself had confessed that she had walked paths of various futures - how could anyone with such knowledge not manipulate the here and now to their best interests, having seen how they would play out? The temptation to meddle would be too great, surely? Which all served to confirm his suspicion; they were being manipulated by the Crone. It was all part of that complex web of hers.

  He didn't give the druid a chance to answer: "The Moon-Torn... their curse makes them invisible every full moon?"

  "That is the nature of the curse, yes."

  Sláine nodded, thinking it through. "And the Night Bringer comes when? Every month? Samain? Beltane? Once a year? A decade?"

  "According to the saga of the Moon-Torn, the Huntress rides through Navan on the Night of the Questing Moon."

  "Only once a year?"

  Myrrdin nodded.

  "Does it not disturb you that chance has delivered us to this very spot in time for us to witness the wild hunt as it rides through? It feels too convenient."

  "Morrigu lead us to this place, this time. She pledged to aid me, to deliver to me the champion Danu needed for her salvation. You are that champion. These events transpiring now will temper you, not break you. I have faith."

  "You just spent three hundred years inside a tree," Ukko mumbled, "so you won't mind if I don't share your optimism, will you?"

  The Night of the Questing Moon was the holiest of holy nights for the Moon-Torn.

  The heather leant the night its rich fragrance. The three travellers walked side by side, following the moon-shadows towards the wooden wall of the hillside fortification. The air was brisk, with the chill of winter to it. The serrated edge of the spiked wall sheared across the top of the mountain; with the moon at its back, it looked as though the rocky pinnacle had been sliced clean through, exposing Navan as its stony heart. Behind the wall, the stone buildings of the fortress proper looked tiny set against nature's might. Sláine needed no such reminder of the fleeting quality of life against the permanence of the mountain. He had sworn an oath to be the mountain, to be the river. That was what it meant to be Sessair. One life was brief, a mote in the eye of the time. The sum of lives, of generations added upon generations, of wisdom learned and shared; that was to be the mountain, that was what it meant to endure, to make a mark upon the world. To live. There was a durability to that succession that the man-made fort could never hope to emulate.

  Even so, beneath the fortress they were little more than ants marching across the fields of heather and gorse.

  The moon was a silver-white orb that owned the
sky. Wraiths of breath coiled in front of his face. They curled lazily into the air above his head, climbing high before they finally dissipated, becoming one with the night.

  A storm was brewing in the western skies.

  Sláine studied the cloud formations: a warrior of the Red Branch learned to understand the skies, to read the mood of the weather. It was a poor battle king who led his men into combat with the elements against him. Mortal foes were enough. This was no ordinary storm front. The heavens roiled with angry life, thunderheads rolling in, and yet where he stood there was not so much as the faintest breeze to stir the air.

  Myrrdin had noted the peculiar weather patterns as well. The druid looked pensive.

  "The Night Bringer's doing?" Sláine asked, instinctively reaching for the familiar weight of Brain-Biter. The axe was slung on a leather thong across his back. He began loosening the leather ties.

  "Possibly, or it is just a storm. Not everything that happens is down to some sinister purpose, champion. The world moves no matter what we do, what we plan; the sun rises, the rains fall."

  "You don't believe that for a moment, do you? This is all a part of the Morrigan's scheming, Myrrdin. The more I see the more I know for sure and certain that nothing happens by accident in this realm."

  "Well, there was the time I knocked up that barmaid back in Lundin," Ukko grinned, winking lasciviously at Sláine. "That was an accident, believe me."

  "No, that was a miracle," said Sláine. "A miracle in that she let your scabby little backside anywhere near her in the first place."

  "Hey! I'll have you know that plenty of women come looking for some Ukko-loving. They don't all swoon at the sight of your rippling muscles and your rugged jawline. Some of them like a little-"

  "Runt?"

  "That's not what I was going to say," Ukko grumbled, folding his arms and turning his back on Sláine.

  "Oh I know, how about throbbing dwarfhood?" Sláine offered helpfully.