“Well I know the efficacy of the silver chain and Moonbow!”
While Cormac had spoken, Wulfhere laid buckler and ax and helmet on the long table of stone. Leaning against it, he combed hair and beard with his fingers and kept the corner of his eye occupied with the watching of Erris.
“My blade sliced that tunic not enough,” he muttered, when she handed him another cup of ale. Most valuable that cup; the Danans must have found a vein of precious metal and mined it well, for the cup, like the chains and the trim of draperies and of Dithorba’s robe, was of silver.
She gave the big man a look that was part archness and part defiance, and turned away-though, he noted, with a swift movement that made her sideslashed skirts fly. Abruptly that little face was smiling back at him over her shoulder.
“Ye be so clever, my lord-without knowing that handmaidens of the queen accustomedly wear only these bracelets and a girdle suspending two long strips of cloth!”
“It’s danger you’ve brought to Moytura then,” Dithorba said, “Cormac mac Art of the Gaels.”
“As ye’ve said, your goddess protects us and Moytura through her silver chains and Sign, wizard of under-earth. Now tell me of your queen.”
Dithorba did. Riora Feachtnachis she was called, the very young ruler of the Danans within Eirrin; Riora the Fair, righteous One. The story of the treachery done on her and her intimates and advisers, and of their imprisonment, was as Erris had told it. Simulacrum or Riora-mimicking lamia wore the coral crown and sat the throne of Moytura. Through her or rather it Cairluh ruled; he in turn was dominated by Tarmur Roag. The queen was endungeoned, watched over and tormented by one named Elatha the Whip. About her were her handmaidens and others, as well as her ministers and the commander of her guard. Others had been slain.
Cormac thought on it. It occurred to him that he need not worry about gaining entrance to the dungeon; surely this man could convey him there by his own unique means!
“And Tarmur Roag is powerful. What powers else have ye, Dithorba Loingsech?”
“With a few little abilities learned in time,” the Moyturan said quietly, “ye’ve seen most of my powers, Cormac mac Art. Much can be accomplished by a clever, thinking man who can disappear and reappear where he will-unless he is fed a drug, and taken in his sleep as I was. Oh, I am not without other abilities, but Tarmur Roag is my superior. If only I possessed the martial skills of your extraordinary self, Cormac of the Gaels, Elatha the Whip were no deterrent to the freedom of my lady Queen!”
Cormac showed the Danan his ghost of a smile. It little resembled pleasantry or mirth, but few others living had seen more. “Ye need not seek to persuade me; ye know my purpose and the necessity of its doing. Ye have my size and skills, Dithorba, so long as ye can take me anywhere at all, and that faster than the curvet of a trout! Anywhere at all-such as into the queen’s dungeon.”
“Cormac!” Wulfhere was distracted even from Erris.
Cormac turned on his friend a mild look, then returned his slit-eyed gaze to Dithorba. “Be there a bit of food hereabouts, Lord Dithorba?”
The old man looked most sorrowful indeed. “Not a morsel.” He sighed. “The queen’s own advisor-reduced to thievery!” And he vanished.
“Ouch!” Wulfhere grunted. “Erris! I did but fondle what normally ye wear bare-where’s he gone now, Wolf?”
“To someone’s kitchen or storehouse, there to snatch provender for us, poor man,” the Gael said. “Do ye have animals in Moytura, Erris?”
She frowned. “Animals… oh! I’ve heard of such-no. They live on that which we cannot grow here, Cormac mac Art. Wulfhere-please! Many kinds of mollusc we have, for we have cultured them and coaxed them over the years to… modify, so I’m taught. And fish aplenty too, of many varieties. And lichens, and oh! marvelous mushrooms of more than one variety. Ye-ye’ve seen… animals? Legend has it such were here, once, but could not survive. Beasts that walk like… like us?”
“On four legs. But whence comes the cloth for your clothing, for these drapes?”
“The mif and the great spiders,” she said, and when questioned she explained that the mif was a great worm that throve here within the earth, and of its dried slime excellent cloth was made, along of course with the filaments spun by spiders Cormac did not care to see.
“Ugh,” Wulfhere said succinctly and with fervour.
“An ye like not our cloth,” Erris said, low-voiced, “keep your enormous hands away from this I wear, then.”
“Mayhap we can find time and place to remove it together,” Wulfhere said, “later.”
Cormac sighed, turning away-and Dithorba was there, bearing food stolen from someone’s very cookfire, for the pot was hot and issuing a most savoury aroma.
Thrice he left them, and thrice he returned laden, and none asked questions. They ate and drank then, four of them; Thulsa Doom required no nourishment.
The visitors learned that nay, not all rooms in Moytura were carved from living rock as was this one; stone was cut and used in building, and there was a mortaring paste they had made, too, to hold together blocks of stone in this land of no baking sun, no softening rain, no freezing snow or ice. In a great pool and in the two rivers that ran near there were creatures of sea and fresh water, and some were of a sort never seen above. Their hides were much used; as mining was constant and iron and silver plentiful, frames were easily made for the stretching of hides of walrus and water-creatures even bigger. Every scrap of cloth otherwise came from spiders and mifhe; the large snow-hued worms fed on the gigantic mushrooms that throve here within the earth. The queen’s adviser, the handmaiden, and the two weapon-men from above dined well on dishes of various fish and molluscs and mushrooms, and when Wulfhere made brag on one dish, he was advised that it was comprised of mushrooms, a mussel they called ab, snails and two kinds of lichen. Whereupon the Dane deemed himself sufficiently well fed to confine his grinding teeth to fish and a mushroom dish.
And what of the pearly light that bathed sunless Moytura?
Dithorba, who was indeed possessor of few necromantic and thaumaturgic powers or knowledge, could not tell them. It had been devised, or brought by the first settlers from the land above, long and long agone. It was Danu’s light. She shed her silvery moonish glow on her own that they might not have to dwell in darkness but were ever in this soft twilight, and no more Dithorba Loingsech knew.
Nor did he know what was meant by steel. None such was there in all Moytura, a land sprawling, large as Meath above, among natural caverns and chambers and those created by men, beneath and within a seabound land anchored to the ocean’s floor. Too, the working of iron was no ancient skill with them, and it became plain, now, how long ago the Gaels had bested the People of Danu, for all their magickal powers.
For it was the Gaels had brought iron to Eirrin, whose people-the Tuatha de Danann-were workers and users only of bronze; the tin they needed for their plentiful copper came from Britain. Since then the Gaels had learned to modify their iron unto the making of steel, while those of Moytura had progressed only so far, as iron. All was wrought, and impregnated with tiny bits of slag. Apparently bars of wrought iron were not here packed with charcoal in containers of clay, so that with sufficient heat it became steel. Nor did Cormac or Wulfhere advise Dithorba of the process.
“Steel,” Gael said to Dane, “cuts iron.”
“And these men are small,” Wulfhere said, with a hand beneath the table of stone; despite her protestations, Erris had taken seat beside him. “Umm. Fair odds for me here would be about a half-score to my one, then.”
Cormac gave him a look. Seeing that the man was serious, mac Art rose and roamed the room, high-bending his legs, swinging and cranking his arms, now and again bending suddenly or dropping into a squat. He had just eaten well, and would not ask for possible danger and the necessity of all skill and agility until he was certain his body was ready.
It was. His skull had been unbroken by the blow; ale and food had done away with his headac
he, and a pair of bruises were little to him who had fought with far worse wounds and debilities.
“The direct way would seem best, Dithorba. Will you be taking me to the dungeon?”
“Loki’s wiles,” Wulfhere swore, “what a request!” Then he added, to Dithorba, “And return instanter for me.”
“He will not,” Cormac said, while Dithorba fetched a robe to take to his queen, “unless there’s sorest need. Despite the Chains of Danu, Wulfhere-remain ye here… with Erris.” Seeing the Dane’s grin, Cormac added, “-and Thulsa Doom.”
Dithorba came, carrying a robe. Helmeted, cracked shield on arm, sword girt at his left hip, Cormac extended a hand. Dithorba took it; the others saw the two men become not-there, and there was a slapping sound in the ears of Wulfhere and Erris and Thulsa Doom. Again Cormac was experiencing the unpleasant dissociative sensation, the dizzying spinning of his brain. Again he staggered and again temporary bewilderment was on him, as of his just having wakened.
He blinked, came alert, swiftly cleared his head while his hand left the Danan’s and went to the pommel of his sword. There was reality and security and comfort there, in the familiar heat-hardened wood with the cool spots that were insets of bronze and silver, tooled and chiseled and all designed and well shaped for enwrapping fingers.
Hand on hilt, Cormac mac Art looked about.
Here was eldritch gloom. No penetration was effected by the strange light of the moon that was Danu’s property and manifestation. Illumination there was, aye, and of a sort familiar to mac Art. This light was the pallid, ever-restless yellow of torches set in iron cressets or peg holes drilled into walls of forbidding and gloomy stone. Here no drapes hung to soften or add colour to these rocky walls. There was only the stone, living stone, a mottled grey that was darker higher up, from the greasy smoke of torches and oil lamps and braziers. Iron poles braced the walls and there were shelves formed of the outsized tap-roots of great trees, for these provided wood for the Danans and Cormac now understood why mighty trees died unaccountably on the surface of Eirrin. His eyes swept cell-like divisions, stone and hide and wood, with great doors on iron hinges.
To his nostrils came the odours of smoke and sweat, and too there lingered the acrid stenches of excrement and of urine. He knew they were of human origin. And he knew that much of the sweat had poured forth in fear and pain.
Chains gleamed dark and sinister, dark-splotched tables squatted malignantly about the floor. His gaze paused at a large brazier of black iron, set on iron legs above a firepit. From the pot thrust several dark stems of iron, each equipped with wooden grips. To facilitate wielding when the irons are hot, he mused grimly. The coals beneath the brazier were still golden and the air seemed to quiver above them. Cormac’s lips tightened. He’d seen torture-irons before.
Too, in that grim sprawling chamber beneath the earth, there were moans.
Cormac looked about him, at the human alluvia thrown up by the changing tide of fortune that had swept Riora Feachtnachis from her throne.
Some of the sounds and misery emanated from within closed cells into whose darkness he could not see-though fleetingly he bethought him how better if Dithorba had transported them into one of them. Instead, they were in the wood-columned, stone-columned, sprawling main chamber of the dungeon. That barn-large chamber was peopled.
There stood a well-built man rising threescore years, with a dark spot just below his ribs that was either a burn or a bruise; a huge splotch of yellow and purple flowered ugly on his right upper arm, the mark of a violent blow of another day; from his nipple stood a sliver of wood blackened at the end by burning and atremble with his uneasy breathing; his so-pale beard was shortened and darkened on one side, singed; his arms were drawn back around a column and secured to the same chain of iron that ringed. his naked midsection and the column, which was a mortared pile of square-cut stones whose edges cut into the prisoner’s arms. A few feet to his right a young woman lay huddled-insofar as was possible for her, with her bare left leg lifted high and chained to a great nail standing darkly from a column to the ceiling; her weight was balanced on naked buttock, which was both befilthed and marked by a whip.
Elatha the Whip, Dithorba said, Cormac thought with his teeth pressed tight; the lord of this demesne of dim ugliness was sinisterly called “the Whip,” torturemaster. Closeby another woman, and her in her middle years, stood slumped against the stone wall against which she was held, partway erect, by chains fastened to large-headed iron pegs driven into the wall-or morelike thrust ere they had cooled into drilled holes, so that the pegs sealed themselves there; the tatters of clothing that hung on her made this prisoner a more piteous sight than had she been naked. To her had been done that which was unspeakable, and Cormac’s jaw quivered with the grinding of his teeth. Staring in helpless fascination upon the loathesome demonstrations of the work of Elatha the Whip Cormac turned…
Standing against another wall, shackled there so that she was agonizingly spreadeagled, stood a moaning maiden who was young and shapely; though she wore a sort of breechclout of filthy once-white, Cormac saw that it was neither tied nor bound by brooch but that wooden slivers pinned the mocking scrap of cloth to her hips; one lovely apple-firm breast was fire-blackened and a terrible bruise marked her swollen cheek. Near her a young man was chained, with slivers of wood thrusting from beneath his toenails and whip-stripes dark and ugly across his muscular stomach. But a few feet from them was a sort of machine, a device for constant torment. It was of simple construction, for nothing complicated was necessary to the creation of human misery.
Up into the bottom of a long table constructed of strips of wood had been driven scores of slim iron nails, so that a tiny portion of the tip-end of each protruded upward; on that toothily ugly table of torture lay a naked man, and him not young. Stiff and straight he was bound there, and he had been beaten severely across bare and flaccid buttocks. Beside that sombre table of anguish stood another Danan, and him unbound.
This was the largest man Cormac had seen among the Danans, powerfully built with muscle-knotted arms and legs and chest; even his height was a thumb’s length greater than that of most of these people of Danu. On one burly thigh a dagger was sheathed. At his left hip hung a short slim sword. He wore only a leathern covering for his loins; something like walrus hide it was, while great thick leather bracers encased each thick wrist. His ankles and feet were encased in buskins of leather that was dark with sweat and smoke-and bearing darker splotches that mac Art knew were from the flying spatters of the blood of others. Scarless and of a sternly hostile mien, this man held a whip longer than Cormac’s body.
The big man was staring at Cormac and Dithorba. “Elatha!” Dithorba said, in an emotional whispering burst.
Elatha the Whip but stared at the two who had appeared in his demesne within the rock of under-earth. His whip trailed from his hand like a menacing black serpent ready to leap with cold determination to bring pain and scars.
“Bastard,” Cormac snarled, “sired by a pusdemon and whelped of a fly-swarming sow!” And his sword came sliding up from its sheath.
Elatha said nothing. His lips twitched; perhaps that was a tiny passionless smile. His arm shifted; his long whip trembled along the stone floor behind it. He snapped it back then and, striding two paces forward as he brought it whistling forward, the torturemaster sent his leathern serpent of torment rushing at Cormac mac Art.
The Gael seemed only to twitch, fading rapidly aside while instinctively, jerking up his shield to save his face from an incredibly aimed lash. With a great drumming sound the whip struck his buckler, and its tip came snapping over to send a slash of fire into his forearm.
Pain was a shock; so too was realization of the Danan’s skill and the vicious deadliness of his whip. Blood dripped where its tip had bit, for that long whip ended in a knot about a V-shaped plug of iron.
“Get ye back, Dithorba! He’ll slash out your eyes! “
Dithorba back-paced; Elatha the Whip said no
thing but only smiled. A seemingly gentle twitch of his wrist sent his whip scurrying snakelike across the floor to him. Cormac started forward. The whip snapped back, again came racing forward. With the same leftward sidestep and the same swift jerking up of his buckler Cormac again saved his face-and again his forearm was opened to let his blood fall to increase the number of dark spots that covered the floor of the hell-chamber. He bit his lip against groaning out his pain.
Blood of the gods! He durst not rush this demon of a whipmaster; the devil had absolute control over his serpentine weapon and knew precisely how to protect himself against sword-charge by the taller man; either Cormac remained at bay or charged into maiming lashes, or backed-to be followed and cut open-or used brain as he seldom had to in what he saw as simple one-to-one encounters.
Already Elatha’s lash was snaking back to him in response to a flick of his thick wrist. Cormac pondered, poised and trembling like a hound with the nervousness of the hunt on him. From their slitted sockets his sword-grey eyes glittered as he stared at the Danan whipmaster.
The two were some ten feet apart. Cormac knew he dared make no rushing Wulfhereish charge, despite his inclination to do; he’d be cut open or worse ere he reached Elatha. The torturer would but have to retreat a bit then, to place the same distance between them… having gained greater advantage by the infliction of a wound. Silently he stood, daring, mocking; come to me, his grim little smile taunted, try it!
Cormac held his ground, his eyes flicking this way and that. His brain pondered, worked, propounded ridiculous hopes and suggestions. He was helpless to attack; he must hold on the defensive, though he was hardly accustomed to it.
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