Feeling something crunch under his sandals, Ciarán looked down to find small bones—fingers and toes—littering the stony floor. Along the walls, more shelved recesses held entire skeletons and a miscellany of loose bones: thighs and shins, rib cages, arms with hands and clawlike fingers still attached. Dirt or grime, or perhaps the mummified remnants of human flesh, still clung to the grisly relics.
“We are in an ossuary,” Dónall said, “beneath their cemetery.” He pressed forward, the crystal’s light spilling from his palm. The passage went on as far as Ciarán could see, into the shadows beyond the crystal’s white glow. A horrifying thought came to him: what if the passage dead-ended? The basilisk would not be satiated, and they would be trapped with the hellish creature.
The scrape of metal echoed from the chamber behind them, followed by a somber chanting.
“Faster!” Dónall cried. Ciarán glanced behind them but saw only darkness and the faint outline of bones.
The chanting from the chamber behind them grew louder. It was the voice of more than one man, singing in the manner of a monastic choir. Although Ciarán did not recognize the words—for they were not in Latin or any other tongue familiar to his ears—he recognized the haunting sound of a requiem.
Something sharp bit into Ciarán’s ankle, and he cried out in pain and alarm. To his horror, a skeletal hand with dirt-stained nails protruding from fingers of bone reached out from the shelves, groping for Dónall’s neck.
“Holy Patrick!” Dónall cried as the skeletal hand tore his cowl. From the opposite side of the passageway, another hand clawed at Ciarán. A second bony hand wrapped around his ankle, and this time, he could not contain his fear.
“Necromancy!” Dónall growled.
From the piles of bones, skeletons emerged like moths bursting from cocoons. They clawed at the air. One tore the sleeve of Dónall’s habit as another tried to climb onto his back. The chanting grew louder, and the air around them seemed to pop and sizzle.
Ciarán swung the sword at one of the skeletons, cleaving off its arm and knocking it aside, but another body of bones took its place. The very walls had come alive. Ciarán and Dónall stood back-to-back as the skeletons pressed in on them like great, clattering marionettes, their mouths hung open in silent screams, vacant orbits staring balefully.
Ciarán bled from a dozen stinging scrapes and cuts. He clung tightly to the book satchel’s leather strap as a column of whispering dead five or six deep mobbed toward him. “Dónall!” he cried.
“In the name of God and Saint Patrick!” Dónall bellowed, pulling skeletons off him and kicking them asunder.
And still the dead surged forward in what looked like a final charge. Then, from the back of the column, the bones started to fly apart. Rib cages exploded, and skulls caromed off the walls and floor as arms and ribs scattered. A terrible hiss filled the passageway, and through the thinning throng stared the eyes of the basilisk.
Ciarán reached back and grabbed Dónall. “Look!” The basilisk thrashed and snapped at the skeletal forms, clearing a swath through those still blocking its path.
“Merciful God,” Dónall muttered.
Ciarán pushed Dónall forward, and using their combined strength, they punched through the pile of skeletons. More of the dead filled in behind them, clutching and clawing at their habits, but against this rearguard of bones the basilisk plowed forward with vengeful fury. Its whiplike tail twitched off skeletal arms and skulls and flung them against the walls. It knocked still others aside with its head, and a few it crushed to powder in its jaws. Its screech drowned out the chanting. “The necromancy is fading,” Dónall panted.
Ciarán pushed through the next wave of skeletons with ease, knocking them to the ground as if they were scarecrows. It was true, he realized: whatever sorcery had given the dead life had begun to wane. But behind him, too, the dead began to collapse en masse.
“They won’t slow it down!” he yelped.
“There!” Dónall pointed to one of the shelves ahead of them. Above the shelf was an opening of some sort, adorned with a row of grinning skulls. From the crystal’s glow, it appeared to lead to another passage. “Climb for your life!”
Standing by the shelf, Ciarán cupped his hands under Dónall’s foot, helping him up. Dónall swept aside the skulls and called back, “The alcove is narrow, but there’s a way out!”
Ciarán glanced over his shoulder to see the basilisk tearing through the remnant of the skeletal army that had filled the passageway. It tossed skulls and bones aside like leaves in the wind.
“Now!” Dónall reached for Ciarán’s hand as he jumped up.
The basilisk gave a fierce hiss, and a blob of its spittle soaked Ciarán’s shoulder. Droplets spattered against his face, and his cheek went numb. An icy cold invaded his veins, and the muscles in his left shoulder and arm began to cramp.
Dónall pulled Ciarán onto the stone shelf, which was barely wide enough to hold a man. A small passageway less than half a man’s height led away at right angles. Dónall ducked under first as, below them, the basilisk waded through the last of the bone barricade and scuttled toward them with terrible speed.
Ciarán’s left arm had gone limp, but his legs and right arm still had strength. Willing his body to move, he tumbled through the opening and found himself crawling on the floor of a narrow tunnel. Behind him, a snarling reptilian head burst through the hole. The basilisk hissed, thrashing and snapping its jaws as it struggled to squeeze through. Bits of stone crumbled from the opening.
“Ciarán, run!” Dónall said, tugging at his sleeve. “It’ll get through!”
“No.”
Ciarán shook his head and let the book satchel fall to the floor. Sweat beaded on his brow. He could feel a fever coming, but he fought to ignore it and forced himself to sidle along the wall, staying clear of the snapping jaws. Raising the sword, he brought it down on one of the shining black eyes. The blade sank in, and the eyeball exploded into something the consistency of blackcurrant jam.
The basilisk howled and yanked its head back from the hole. Ciarán heard the huge, writhing body slide off the shelf as its howls reverberated through the passageway of the dead.
The beast was gone.
“Well done!” Dónall exclaimed. “Are you all right?”
Ciarán just grimaced. Half his face was numb. His left eye had frozen open, and his left arm, screaming from the icy venom, was useless.
“It isn’t the basilisk’s gaze,” he said. “It spits some sort of poison.” Ciarán sensed the venom spreading to his chest and lungs, and found himself straining to breathe.
Dónall looked at him grimly. “Perhaps I can drain it out.” And pressing the crystal into Ciarán’s shoulder, he uttered a string of alien words. The white light flared anew, and Ciarán could feel its calming warmth, dissipating the icy cold. Liquid began to bead on the shoulder of his woolen habit. Then the droplets started to sizzle and steam away, like water on a hot skillet.
Ciarán clenched the fingers on his left hand and felt the muscles slowly returning to life. “Like a miracle,” he said, amazed.
“Not precisely,” Dónall said. “The power simply forced a chemical reaction, breaking down the venom.”
Ciarán thought about that, feeling grateful for this mysterious power of the Fae, until another question entered his mind. “How will we get out of here?”
Dónall looked around. “This cavern’s natural,” he observed, “and the walls are cool. I suspect there is water not far from here.”
Ciarán picked up the book satchel from the rocky floor, where the basilisk’s eye was but a smudge of dark ooze. Then a new and terrible thought struck him. “What about Alais?”
Dónall’s expression grew dark, and he placed a hand on Ciarán’s good shoulder. At his next words, Ciarán’s heart sank.
“I fear there is nothing we can do for her now.”
*
They trudged through the tunnels for what seemed like hours. At tim
es they stopped to rest, and Dónall closed his eyes and extinguished the light summoned to his crystal. The soul light, as he called it. Ciarán sensed that it took a fair amount of energy to keep the crystal lit, and Dónall could not go too long before needing to rest. During those dark intermissions, Ciarán could not help but feel as he had when they left Derry, when he had to leave behind his dead and dying friends. This time, it was Alais whom they left behind, and Remi who had given his life—trying to save them, for that could be the only explanation his charging the basilisk. Maybe the poison he had drunk would have killed him anyway. Still, if not for Remi, they would all be dead.
When Dónall had rested again, he spoke the simple Fae word and blew on the crystal again, conjuring its cool light, which always faded to a soft, white glow. Continuing through the tunnels, they found water dribbling down the walls, disappearing into small fissures in the rock. The air grew damp.
“A stream of some sort can’t be too far away,” Dónall said.
They walked farther. At times, the tunnel walls grew dry again, and Ciarán feared they may have taken a wrong turn. Other tunnels intersected the one they traveled down, and though he had little choice but to trust Dónall’s sense of direction, he worried that they would lose their way.
Eventually, Dónall’s crystal went dark, and the tunnel went as black as a tomb. “What happened?” Ciarán asked.
Dónall let out a long sigh. “I’ve never had to sustain it so long. I must have hit a limit of sorts. We’ll have to continue by feeling along the rock—or else we sleep here.”
The thought of actually sleeping in the featureless blackness was unnerving, especially not knowing for certain that the basilisk was deterred. That horror was the last thing they needed creeping up on them as they slept. No, Ciarán decided. He would rather chance stepping off a precipice or making a wrong turn.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They searched for the source of the water. And when the walls grew wet, Ciarán began to sense a dampness in the air—and a freshness. There was a difference, he realized, between the air wafting in from tunnels near the source of the water, and the dry smell that rose from the side tunnels that must continue deeper into the hill. In time, he began to hear the faint sound of rushing water. A waterfall, perhaps?
As the tunnel rounded a bend, a blinding sliver glinted through the darkness. Ciarán blinked, and it took him a moment to realize that he was gazing at daylight.
Exuberance surged through him as he stepped out into the morning sun. At first, he had to shield his eyes, but gradually, the outside world came into focus. Through the mist of falling water bouncing off stone, his eyes made out the green of trees on a hillside. A rock ledge flanked a cataract that spilled into a pool below them. He could see moving motes of brown, chestnut, and gray. Large shapes, some moving ever so slightly—a score of them at least. The scent of horses mixed with the freshness of the falls.
Ciarán squinted, struggling to sort out the brownish shapes and, above them, the glint of metal and the brown of cloaks. Horses, he realized, bearing riders.
Amid the roaring falls, he heard the thrum of a bowstring. Then the first arrow zipped past his ear and splintered against the rock wall behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ABDUCTION
The guesthouse door crashed open, jolting Alais awake. Wide-eyed, she strained to see in the thin moonlight. As shadowy figures charged into the room, a surge of panic seized her, and she sprang to her feet, only to collide with sinewy arms. A rough jute sack, reeking of stale oats, went over her head and was cinched tight at her neck. She feared she would suffocate, but through panicked breaths she tasted air through the fabric.
She let out a muffled cry: “What is happening?”
“Silence!” growled a hard voice inches from her ear. She struggled to break free, but her captors bound her wrists with rope that bit into her flesh until she could feel the slickness of blood on her palms. Yanking her to her feet, they pushed her out of the guesthouse and into the bitter air. Her bare feet ached on the icy ground.
“What have you done with the Irish monks and the Parisian?” she demanded.
“They defied the rebel lord and have been punished.”
His voice was husky and cruel, and despite the hood, Alais felt certain it was the voice of the surly gatekeeper who had greeted them at Saint-Bastian’s. “What rebel lord?” she asked.
Her captor just grunted and pushed her down a path, keeping a firm grip on her left arm.
They were near a stable, for she could smell the horses and hear their faint snorts and whinnies. Keeping her panic at bay was like damming the waters of a raging river. Yet after everything that had happened during the day, she knew she must try to stay calm. The men had not hurt her yet, but they surely would. Until then, there was still time for clear thinking. She feared for the Irish monks and even the lanky, half-crazed Benedictine, but she knew that if she dwelled on their fate, she would lose the battle with her fear. Under her breath, she whispered to Saint Radegonde a prayer for deliverance.
The men helped her onto a saddled horse. They spoke in whispers. Others had joined them, though how many there were, she could not tell. Someone started leading her horse by the reins. The other horses followed, their hooves clomping against the hard ground both ahead of her and behind. They were leaving the priory.
To fight the dread clawing at her insides, she concentrated on the things she could notice: the chirring of crickets, the scent of beech trees. Her horse was picking its way down a rocky path. Pebbles crunched under hooves. The path was winding, for she felt her horse turn at each bend.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, choking back a sob.
“Shut it!” one of her captors hissed.
As the horses plodded along, the men began chanting. It sounded monastic, haunting yet strangely beautiful. One voice began; then a chorus of six or seven more joined in. Alais tried to follow the words, but if they were Latin, it was of an age or dialect she did not understand. The chanting rose and fell as their horses maneuvered down the tortuous path. In the pauses of the chant, as the faint gray of dawn began to filter through the weave of the hood, she caught the sound of rushing water. They were nearing a waterfall.
After a time, the chanting stopped and so did the horses. Two men lifted her from her saddle and stood her upright on the cold, damp ground. One of the men removed her hood. The morning sun was blinding, even in the shade of the tall pine trees that surrounded them. As her eyes adjusted to the glare, she counted seven black-robed monks, two of whom had dismounted. In a clearing ahead were more than a dozen horsemen, clad in familiar dark cloaks. Her heart began to race. One of the monks beside her was the prior of Saint-Bastian’s. He acknowledged one of the riders in the clearing. A cloak covered all but the hem of the rider’s black robe, but it could not disguise the sharp cheekbones and silver-flecked beard, or those feral eyes that even now were undressing her.
“I heard the bishop of Blois was looking for a witch,” the prior said.
“No,” she stammered. “Please!”
The twang of a bowstring split the air, and Bishop Adémar’s eyes shot up toward the falls, to what looked like the mouth of a cave. Two men in gray habits now stood in the opening, shielding their eyes from the glare.
*
When a second arrow clattered against the cave’s rocky walls, Dónall grabbed Ciarán and hauled him backward. Above the roar of the falls, he could hear men yelling. Another arrow zipped past his shoulder and splintered against the rocks. “Down on your belly, lad!” Dónall growled.
Ciarán dropped to the cave’s rocky floor. “What in the hell . . . ?”
Two more arrows struck the rock, one of them glancing and clattering to a stop just before Ciarán’s nose. He glanced warily at the sharp iron arrowhead. “Didn’t you see those men?” Dónall said. “They’re led by the count of Anjou and the bishop of Blois.”
Ciarán’s eyes grew wide. “They w
ere waiting for us, but how?” He crawled to the edge of the cave and peered downward, then sprang back as another arrow splintered against the cave’s roof.
From the clearing, Adémar of Blois bellowed, “Kill the one with the sword! He is the sorcerer who slew your brothers in arms at Selles!”
Ciarán glanced at the leaf-bladed sword, which he had kept since their encounter with the basilisk, and offered it to Dónall. “Can you use it again?”
Dónall shook his head. “I’ve not enough strength—keeping the light going in the tunnels took too much.”
Another arrow clattered against the cave’s wall, but no more followed. Ciarán looked questioningly at Dónall. “They don’t want to shoot their own men,” Dónall said. “They’re climbing up.”
“Then we go back,” Ciarán said hastily. “There are other tunnels. We can hide.”
Dónall shook his head wearily. “We’ll never find our way in the darkness. If only I’d saved some strength . . .”
Ciarán looked at the sword, then at the mouth of the cave. It was so narrow that not more than a man or perhaps two could enter at a time. He could try to hold the breach. But these were seasoned warriors—men trained to fight, who, moreover, would like nothing better than to get their hands on the monks who had rescued the witch and killed their comrades. For an instant, he wondered whether Niall had entertained such thoughts when he stood against the Franks at Derry. And had Saint Columcille considered his own mortality when defying King Diarmait’s army? “We fight because we’re brave,” Niall had said, “and because we’re Irish!”
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