Wolfking The Omnibus: Books 1-4

by Sarah Rayne

  The passageway widened abruptly, and the uncertain light brightened just the smallest bit. Joanna stepped on to cold stone flags that ran downwards and curved, and reached out a hand to steady herself, because the stone was uneven and it was damp and looked as if it might be slippery. The walls were rough and felt old and pitted. Joanna withdrew her hand and shuddered, because the walls felt dry and crumbly, and you could easily imagine that they might fall down all around you at any minute.

  Ahead of her were steps, winding down and down, as far as she could see, away into some dreadful subterranean darkness.

  Joanna gasped, and the sound echoed rather horridly in the enclosed atmosphere. The steps were more huge than any she had ever seen, they were giant steps, cut for giant feet — she had come out into the Miller’s stairs (seven league boots? oh dear God, yes!). But I won’t notice it, she said to herself, I’ll just climb down them as well as I can, and I won’t notice that each step is at least two feet deep. I’ll go down on my bottom and I won’t even notice.

  She steadied herself against the cold wall again, and the light from the candle flared up in the raw air, making her shadow a massive, fantastic thing that danced and flickered as she descended.

  It was a very long way down. “Down, down to hell and say I sent thee thither” … Yes, and “Come, my dear, let us away and down and away below” … “I am going into the soft underbelly of the Axis and I am going into the underground of the world” … Yes, but beneath it all are the Everlasting Arms …

  And Cormac will be there, thought Joanna, and moved on even farther down.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Cormac came up out of a leaden cold sleep, and for the briefest second did not remember where he was. And then sleep receded, and memory came flooding back, and he knew a terrible loneliness.

  I am in the Miller’s cages, and I am entirely alone, and Joanna is in the hands of Morrigan.

  He grasped at the shreds of sleep, willing himself back into the unaware darkness a little longer. Perhaps none of it really happened. Perhaps when I open my eyes, I shall still be in the cave on the outskirts of Muileann with Joanna at my side and the Cruithin and the Wolves within call.

  Or shall I be still inside Scáthach, grim comfortless Scáthach, which I hated and which represented my defeat, but which I would now gladly trade my kingdom for?

  Or shall I open my eyes and find I am back at Tara, beautiful incomparable Tara, with Eochaid Bres and Mab nothing more than irritants on the western boundaries? Mab an irritant? said his mind, and he smiled in the darkness. You did not regard Mab as something so minor as an irritant. You loved her or you hated her — and Cormac had done both — but you did not regard her as merely an irritant.

  He allowed himself to pretend for a few moments longer, but the memory of Tara, his beautiful Bright Palace, his family’s legacy, was like a deep and unhealed wound, and he dragged his mind from it. Useless to remember and pointless to ache. He would never be whole until he had regained Tara and he would never cease to long for it, but he no longer believed he would ever see it again. I shall die here, in the dark, and I shall die alone, and if I am remembered at all, it will be as the last Wolfking. The defeated and exiled King. A failure. The thought was wormwood and gall to one who had ridden out triumphantly at the head of vast armies, who had beaten back the marauding Fomoire, the tainted line of the north. It was bitter to one who had held Court in the Sun Chamber and gathered about him the brilliant minds and the gifted artists and the musicians and ballad-makers of half the world.

  He opened his eyes to the cold dark cage, and his vision of Tara vanished instantly. He was lying on the stone floor, and he was cramped and curled into a tight huddle, every bone of his body ached with cold and every muscle hurt with the enforced inactivity of his prison. At his head was a wooden pannikin of water, and at his feet a handful of straw. He remembered how the goblin men had jeered when they thrust his head in the water: “The Erl-King does not like his meat dried out, Wolfking. Drink your fill.” He supposed the straw was for the relieving of bladder and bowels, and the fastidious, unwolfish part of him was disgusted. He thought: a High King to lie in his own ordure! Whatever it cost him, he would try to avoid that, at any rate. And then he remembered that he would probably die quite soon and it ceased to matter.

  The cage was unlit, for the Miller did not need light to go about his gruesome work, and a man — even a High King-may as easily die by rushlight as by a hundred bright candles. But — I could wish there was some light, thought Cormac, and the memory of the Sun Chamber rose up to torment him again.

  He rolled on to his side, wrapping his arms around his body in an effort to keep warm, feeling his limbs knotting with cramp, for it was one of the cage’s subtler forms of torture that no man could quite stand upright inside it, nor quite sit, nor lie. Cormac, who had been used to riding and marching for hours on end, and who had hunted and jousted and been tireless, was beginning to find it unbearable. And then he remembered that it must be borne, for there was no other choice.

  He wished he could have seen Joanna again. Just for a moment. Just to see her little pointed face with the too-wide mouth, and just to hold the fragile little body, and just to smell the sweet clean Joanna-scent. He thought it was something that purebred humans missed; that indefinable scent of another. He could smell enemies at twenty paces, just as he could smell friendship or lust.

  He would not see Joanna again. Morrigan would have done her worst and Joanna would soon be dead, if she was not dead already. Cormac would not shed tears, but a grief and a loneliness so immense gripped him that he nearly cried out with pain.

  She would have fought to the last, indomitable child, but she could never have overcome Morrigan and the hag-sisters, and she could never have overcome the goblin men. But she would have fought, and that was a good thought. It was a thought to hold on to.

  Gormgall and Dubhgall would have fought as well; they would have considered anything else unthinkable.

  “Give in, Your Majesty?” Gormgall would have said, shocked. “Not by a long way, Sire!”

  Dubhgall would have said at least they would go down fighting — it wouldn’t do any good, Your Majesty — but they would fight to the end.

  Cormac would fight to the end as well, because anything else was as unthinkable to him as it would be to Gormgall and Dubhgall. He would fight for Tara and he would fight for his people and for Joanna. Yes, he would fight for Joanna. If only he could have seen her again. Just once. If only he could stand up and shake off this creeping cold there might be a chance of overcoming the Miller. If only they had not come to Muileann.

  So many “if onlys.” In his mind he saw them all, neatly stacked, each one holding up its neighbours, so that if you could have pulled out just one of them, the entire pile would fall down.

  If only I had not left Scáthach. If only Eochaid Bres had stayed in the west. And …

  If only I had never loved Mab.

  He turned on to his side, staring into the impenetrable dark. Yes, and if only I had never loved Mab, if only I had never afterwards lost control and let the wolfish part take me over … If I had not loved Mab, she would not have sworn to be avenged on me for betraying her. She would not have intrigued to put Eochaid Bres on the throne, and I should not be here now.

  *

  He had been eighteen; “helplessly romantic,” he had said afterwards, but “incurably lascivious” said his courtiers, half shocked, half proud. Wasn’t it a great thing to have this wild, headstrong, heartstrong boy as their King, instead of the ailing old man that Cormac’s father had become? There was not a one of them who had not loved Cormac’s father, and there was not a one who would not have laid down his life for Cormac’s father, but say what you would, life at Court towards the end had been dull. When the period of grief was officially over, and all the proper sacrifices had been rendered up to Dagda, and the dead King’s soul duly sent to the place beneath the Roof of the Ocean, the Court had turned delightedly t
o Cormac. They loved him for what he was, as much as for what he was not; they flattered him and wooed him and would not hear a word said against him.

  And therein lay my downfall, thought Cormac, moving restlessly on the cold straw. I was given everything I asked for, and quite often I was given things before I even knew I wanted them. I was spoilt and overindulged, my every wish was anticipated, and I was arrogant and frequently selfish.

  And there at the centre of it all had been Mab. The Intoxicating One. The Wanton. Nearly twice his age, certainly fifteen years his senior, forbidden to him by the rules of society that frowned on a very young man lusting after a much older woman, but still the most fascinating woman he had ever seen.

  Even then, her reputation had been legendary. Even then, the men sat up and eyed one another when she entered a room, preening a little, more alert, vying for her attention. The gossips said she broke the rules and blatantly, but the wise said that she bedded where she chose and was outside of the rules.

  Cormac had known at once that both had been wrong. He had not known how he knew, but he did know. Mab was not any man’s for the asking, not by a long way, nor was she altogether outside the rules. Was it that she had her own set of rules? Perhaps.

  She had come to Court for his coronation, bringing with her a train of maidservants and menservants and cupbearers, and ollam and filid, bringing as well the young Eochaid Bres, pugnacious and shy, determined not to be overawed by the grandeur of Tara, but overawed by it anyway. Cormac, welcoming them with the ceremony that their high rank within the Bloodline demanded, had thought that he would have liked Eochaid the better if the boy had admitted to his shyness, if he had allowed himself to be dazzled and bewitched. He would have respected Eochaid’s dazzlement and he would have helped him. He would have remembered that the Lionline was an ancient and honourable Bloodline, that it was nearly as old as the Wolfline, and he would have taught Eochaid Bres all the things he had himself been taught at Eochaid’s age. He would certainly have preferred shyness to the self-opinionated obstinacy the boy displayed.

  Mab had swept into the Sun Chamber that first night, clothed in vivid green from head to foot, a huge billowing black velvet cloak about her shoulders, her long slanting eyes drinking everything in. And Cormac had sat very still and thought: oh yes, that is what I want. And then, with more assurance: that is what I intend to have.

  Mab the Wanton, her eyes brilliant with desire, her skin luminescent with allure. Irresistible.

  It had been as inevitable as the phases of the moon, as unstoppable as the tide, that Cormac and Mab should come together. Hadn’t it? The wayward, uncontrollable Wolfprince and the reckless aristocratic harlot, who had once boasted that she would lie with all the High Kings, and that no King of Ireland should ever wear his crown until he had worn it in her bed.

  And yet — could I have resisted? thought Cormac. Just a little? Could I have turned back, held off desire, not allowed my eyes to catch and hold those narrow brilliant green eyes? And if I had done so, would Mab have shrugged her lovely shoulders and turned away also, and let her roving eye fall on the next man? And would desire have then subsided and life gone quietly on as before? And would I still be in Tara, the Bright Palace, and would the Miller’s cages have remained empty?

  And would I then not have met Joanna?

  He thought it would not have happened; Mab had vowed to have him, she would not have considered her reputation complete unless she had lain with the arrogant unruly Wolfking, and she would have had him by human trickery or by sorcery. Cormac grinned. Yes, she knew about the sorcerers’ arts, Mab. But so did I, my dear, so did I.

  He could remember vividly the day they had finally set aside pretence. It had been the culmination of weeks (or had it only been days?) of the forest-fire blaze that had ignited between them. There had been looks, smiles, backs of hands brushing. There had been the knowledge of wanting between them. He had hung about in the corridors near her room, hoping for a glimpse of her; he had contrived to place her next to him at banquets.

  “Sire, you do me too much honour.” “Your Majesty, you put me in a position of such proximity to you.” And all the while, her eyes said: Go ahead, Cormac, do me too much honour. Do me as much honour as you like until we are both exhausted. Put me in a position of proximity to you. Put me in any position you care to. And Cormac had sat out innumerable banquets, struggling with a lust that was as hard and as high as the beech trees that stood sentinel on the drive to Tara’s West Gate.

  There had been a ceremony at Court, a huge and vast and colourful ceremony, such as only Tara could mount, and such as only the Irish could enjoy. Cormac had been invested with the Orders and the Vows that had finally pledged him as a Prince of Tara, a High King; there had been speeches and presentations and jousts and pageants; he had been full with and spilling over with energy and he had been as wild and as riggish as the wolves his ancestresses had lain with. Yes, the Wolfblood had been in the ascendant on that day.

  A group of them had gone riding into the forest to hunt the white stag, and then had swaggered back to Tara in time for supper in the Sun Chamber, hungry and thirsty and furiously randy from the hunt. Skirts would be lifted tonight, breeches unfastened; hands would stray and breasts and beds would bounce. The gilt corridors of the Bright Palace would be filled with night-garbed figures going from their own bedchambers to the bedchambers of their lady loves, and Tara would echo with the creaking of furtively unlatched doors and with muffled giggles. There had once been a hoary old joke that on the night following a hunt, you might stand in the upper corridors of the Bright Palace and meet everyone you knew between midnight and dawn. Sean the Storyteller, who had been Cormac’s official ollam, but was now Eochaid Bres’s, had written a wildly funny, blatantly bawdy ballad about the corridors of Tara on the night after a hunt. He had sung it to a roomful of men after the ladies had retired to bed, and Cormac could still remember the shouts of laughter that had greeted it. How had it gone? It had started with the riding home of the huntsmen — something about the Uprighting of the Pricks as they passed the High Hayricks. And then it had gone on to relate the events of the afternoon and the evening, each verse saucier than the last. There had been the Lifting of the Supper Table by the Pricks that were Strong and Able, and then there had been Gambling on the Chance that your Partner might prefer the Bugger-Dance.

  “And the dangling of the balls

  All in Tara’s marble halls;

  The furtive to and fro and the mighty cries of woe

  When the stubbing of a toe

  Means the rapier’s shrivelled small.

  The Councillors’ cautious tread

  As they go to someone’s bed

  With their nightcaps all awry

  And their weapons t’wards the sky;

  Shoulder-glancing, goatlike prancing,

  Masked and muffled, tiptoe shuffled,

  Joints a-creaking, softly sneaking,

  Pussyfooting, hypocriting.

  The squeaking of the doors and the laying of the whores;

  The groaning of the groins and the languishing of loins.

  When the day’s at last a-breaking

  Not a prick’s around but’s aching.”

  He smiled in the darkness. Remarkable Sean. And remarkable years. Golden, exciting, bawdy years. I was flown with the ceremonies that day and I was bursting with sheer rampant lust, and rather than being bowed down with the weight of my new powers, I was buoyed up with them. I had met with the sorcerers earlier, and I was charged with all the magic and all the force of every enchantment ever spun. I was overflowing with being a Prince of Tara, and I was any woman’s for the asking.

  He had been Mab’s that night, and there had been no asking and no answering. There had been the long banqueting table, laden with food and flagons of wine; there had been the warm rich scent that was the heart and the centre of

  Tara — the place Cormac’s ancestors had called Medchuarta — and there had been that immense feel
ing of power. He had looked down the table to where the sorcerers sat, for once present in the Sun Chamber, for they had formed an integral part of the ceremony of Cormac’s Investiture. They were shadowy, rather remote creatures in the main, but tonight they were eating and feasting with the Court. Cormac thought: if I asked them, asked them properly and approached them seriously, would they weave an enchantment that would bind Mab to me? And then he looked to where Mab sat, and thought, with a blend of mischief and white-hot desire: but is any sorcerer’s enchantment really needed? Doesn’t she want me as much as I want her? And then — I am the High King, he thought, I can do anything I want.

  Mab was sitting quite close to him; as a Princess of the Bloodline, she was permitted a high place at table. Cormac’s eyes narrowed as he considered her, and dwelled on her ancestry. Lionblood. It would be several generations now since Mab’s ancestor’s had lain with the lionesses of Tara, and Cormac thought it was probably nearly time for them to strengthen the Lionline. The Judges would be convened and it was almost certain that the Enchantment would be invoked. He thought: so Mab is nearly human, but she is not quite human. And watching, saw the way she arched her back and smiled, and saw, as well, the sudden slitting of the narrow eyes and the curve of her hands. Lionblood … She would purr like a cat under my hands … And then she looked up at him without warning, and their eyes met, and in that moment, all of the power and all of the energy rushed to Cormac’s loins, so that, like many another eighteen-year-old, he was instantly charged and stiff. (“The Lifting of the Supper Table …” Oh yes, Sean, how right you were!)

  They had all sensed it, of course. The Mindsong had shivered and thrummed on the air all round the feasting Court, for Cormac, in his wildly aroused, frantically sexual state, had been as unable to control the Samhailt as he was unable to control his lust. Word had gone round the Sun Chamber: the King will lie with Mab tonight.