by Sarah Rayne
Fergus had stayed at the centre of the Stone Palace with the Court. If they were going into the Far Future, they must do so quickly, and they must discuss how they would go about it.
Fergus’s plan had by far the most supporters, although the Druids were only there because Grainne was there. Cathbad was not there, because Cathbad had gone off to listen to Fintan and Cermait Honeymouth, but Cathbad was always doing things he should not. The Druids did not really approve of Fergus’s idea, and they certainly did not intend to accompany Fergus into the Future, always supposing he could get there.
“I wouldn’t mind going,” said a mild voice from one of the front rows, and Dorrainge tutted, because this would be Fribble, the Chief Druid, who was getting a bit hard of hearing. It was quite likely that Fribble had not properly heard Fergus’s plan anyway.
“Yes, I did,” said Fribble. “You’re going off into the Far Future, where all the licentiousness and lewdness and greed and self-indulgence reached its height. I’d like to see all that.”
“We shan’t be —”
“Fergus would have to be sure to bring me back safely.”
“Fergus isn’t going to be taking —”
“Because we don’t want him forgetting and leaving me there,” said Fribble. “That would never do. I’m Chief Druid, you know, and it won’t do for me to be away from Tara for too long — well, it won’t do for me to be away at all, but if the Druids are going to support this scheme, somebody ought to go.”
“But —”
“Well, there it is,” said Fribble, resettling his robes and beaming. “I feel quite young at the idea. Just a very little trip, mind. I shan’t want to stay for more than a week or two. You’d better make sure Fergus knows.”
“It’s impossible,” Dorrainge said crossly.
“I don’t see why —” began Fergus, when Grainne said softly, “But how are you going to get into the Future?”
A rather anxious silence fell, and then Fergus, squaring his shoulders, said, “There is only one way.”
“Yes?”
“By summoning the Time Chariot of Fael-Inis.”
Grainne said, “But that means —” and stopped.
“Yes,” Fergus said softly. “There is only one group of people in Ireland who can summon Fael-Inis.
“We must go to the sorcerers.”
CHAPTER TWO
Custennid the Tusk considered that he was being extremely clever. When everyone had gone rushing and scurrying out into the forest to chase down Medoc’s spy, Custennid had held back, because if there were any servants of Medoc lurking out there, Custennid was not going to be meeting up with them. But it was necessary to put up some kind of show, and so he waited until everyone else had disappeared, and then walked quite firmly and calmly outside. It would be perfectly possible to just skirt the edges of the forest. He did not need to go into it very deeply at all.
But even on the forest’s edges, it was queer how a man’s footsteps echoed, even when it was soft bracken he was walking on, and it was queer how the night noises were different to the ones you heard by day. There were rustlings, the scurrying of feet; there was the feeling that the bushes were about to part and show something that crouched there waiting … Custennid began to wish that after all he had stayed with the others.
And then he heard it. And as soon as he heard it, he realised that he had been hearing it for quite a long time. The padding of footsteps …
Custennid stopped and looked about him, trying to penetrate the darkness. Of course it would only be a fox or a weasel or a stoat. It would be more frightened of him than he was of it.
The footsteps were nearer now, and there was something very menacing about them. There was a purposeful air about them, almost as if the creature that was padding through the forest had sensed him, scented him, and was saying, Aha!
Here is something of interest. Here is a very tasty morsel indeed!
Custennid wished he had not lit on that word morsel. He certainly wished he had not lit on the word tasty. It conjured up very nasty visions indeed. And although the Tusks were not people of learning, you could not live in these times without hearing a thing or two. Custennid had heard a thing or two, and he had not liked what he had heard.
Medoc’s creatures. Medoc’s servants. The Dark Ireland waking. The twilight things, the darkling beings. The Twelve Dark Lords who served Medoc, and who were said to hold sinister revelry every night in Tara. The terrible necromancers of the Dark Citadels … The merciless Lad of the Skins who scavenged for human souls, and walked abroad with a dripping sack …
There was the rasp of claws on stone now, and there was a terrible low chuckle, and a triumphant harsh cawing sound, and Custennid thought, They are right! All the stories were right! And then he remembered the most terrible story of them all.
As he turned to run, the bushes in front of him parted, and a low bubbling chuckle rang out in the quiet forest.
There was no time to think and there was no time to cry out. All the tales flooded his mind: Medoc’s Servants — the Dark Ireland waking —
And then the creature was upon him, and there was a whirling blackness, and the sound and feel of teeth and claws and a great harsh curving beak … There was time to remember that this was the creature who ripped out the living hearts of its victims and offered them, dripping and warm, to its Master.
There was a crunching, snapping, sickening sound, and Custennid knew it for the breaking of his own bones. The forest swam in a sick dizziness, and the darkness became shot with crimson, because crimson was the colour of pain, and it hurt, it hurt, and somebody must do something, because it hurt … His bones were being crushed and his flesh was being torn away … something deep inside him seemed to collapse, and he felt a warm wetness between his legs and knew that bowels and bladder had given way. The creature held him up as if to inspect him before finally tearing out his heart — and there was a stale stench, like bad fish and ancient blood and rotting meat, and it was drawing him into its embrace and there were gristly jointed arms and sinews and clutching talons, and its breath was ancient and dry and evil beyond belief … stale eggs and long-dead marrow … Custennid felt his stomach lift, and he retched and vomited and screamed for help.
The creature was tearing great gobbets of flesh from bone, and it hurt … There could not be so much pain in the world …
Lumps of his flesh were flying all around now, as the creature tore deeper. Talons slit open his chest, and his ribs burst apart, and if it would only stop, just for a minute, if somebody would help him …
And then he felt the great pointed talons reach down into his open chest, and he felt the sudden violent pulsing of his heart as it was exposed, and he felt it ripped from his body and held, dripping and steaming, triumphantly aloft.
*
Custennid’s screams had almost died away by the time Fintan and Cermait Honeymouth reached the clearing.
“We ran as fast as ever we could,” said Fintan afterwards.
They had both run as fast as they could towards the sounds, but the screams were dying away when they reached the clearing, and they both stood for a moment, their minds tumbling, unable to make sense of what they were seeing.
A massacre. A bloodbath. Some poor mutilated creature fallen victim to a predator. Fintan had known a second of relief: At least it was not human, and then Cermait said softly, “Yes, it was human,” and pointed with a shaking hand.
Hair; eyes; a hand, five-fingered and covered with pale, unmistakably human flesh. The remnants of a cloak.
They moved nearer, feeling the miasma of evil that lingered in the clearing. Fintan, a little ahead, looked down at the thing that lay on the ground and felt his stomach heave.
Ripped open. Clawed and lacerated and torn. Liver and lungs and kidneys, all spilling out, wet and faintly glistening in the silver moonlight. Here and there, the whiteness of bone gleamed where once there had been arms and thighs. A man.
Custennid the Tusk was not quite dead. Incre
dibly, there was still a flicker of life, his brain was still receiving images, his lips could still move. From where he stood, Fintan could see the bloodless lips trying to speak.
“Help me …”
“Yes. Lie still now. There’s help on the way,” said Fintan, and he cast a hunted look at Cermait, for what help could there be? No one else had come in answer to Custennid’s screams; there was no one but their two selves to get Custennid back to the Stone Palace.
Cermait bent down and took Custennid’s hand. “Can you tell us what happened, Tusk? What — hurt you?”
There was a short, not quite silent pause, and both Fintan and Cermait recognised the bubble of the death rattle. Blood and saliva trickled from Custennid’s lips.
Custennid said in a wet, clogged voice, “Footsteps — in the dark —”
“Something followed you? Tusk, try to tell us.”
Custennid the Tusk, blind now, deaf, and almost beyond the agony of his mutilated body, said, “The Conablaiche. The Conablaiche walking in Ireland again.”
There was a final choking rattle, and Fintan and Cermait stood up and looked at one another.
*
The Conablaiche walking again …
“We ought to have known,” said Fergus, rather sickened. “We ought to have realised that Medoc would call up the great evil creatures out of the Dark Ireland.”
“Yes, but that one —”
Cathbad the Druid, who liked to know everything that was happening, asked to be told about the Conablaiche.
“Well,” said Fribble, who was so much concerned at what had happened that he was quite wide awake, “well, that’s rather difficult. Dear me, this is all very worrying. Fergus, I’ll take a smidgeon of that mulled wine, if you please.”
Fergus, who was seated at the table, draining a large chalice of warm spiced wine which some of the younger ones had brewed, and who was looking rather white, dipped a fresh goblet into the silver bowl and passed it to Fribble.
“Isn’t it a very old Gael word, Fribble? Conablaiche?”
“It means ‘mutilate,’” said Cermait, who was whitefaced.
“‘Lacerate,’” said Fintan, who was green.
Fribble said, “The Conablaiche is a — rather a terrible creature. Perhaps the most terrible of all the beings that dwell in the Dark Ireland. He is merciless and hungry for blood. He is a creation of the dark necromancers, and he was called into being by their powers many centuries ago — so long ago, that it was before people began to record Time.”
“But what is he?” someone asked.
“He is a servant,” said Fribble. “He is believed to possess a little of the necromantic powers, and he can appear in several guises. For generations he sleeps in the darkness of the Mountain Halls, but once a sorcerer sufficiently powerful summons him, then he wakes, and then he walks. He has been glimpsed in Ireland several times over the centuries, and in some places,” said Fribble, “he is called the Conail, which, as you all know, means ‘Plague.’”
A shudder round the Stone Palace. Everyone knew of the terrible scourges that had stalked Ireland.
“The Conablaiche will serve many masters,” said Fribble, “but it is whispered that his greatest allegiance is to the monstrous god-idol Crom Croich.”
There was a rather horrified silence. Most of the Court, and certainly all of the Druids, knew about the terrible hungry god-idol Crom Croich, the being of pure gold who must suffer human birth into the world of Men before it might reign, and who had appeared in Ireland’s history at various times.
Dorrainge said slowly, “But the worship of Crom Croich is utterly and absolutely forbidden.” He looked across at Grainne. “Wasn’t it Your Majesty’s great-grandfather, Cormac of the Wolves, who stamped it out?”
“Yes. Yes, it was towards the end of his reign when Crom Croich was called into being, and the cult was revived.” Grainne looked at Fergus. “They say that the Conablaiche and the Lad of the Skins walked the land then, also.”
“The Conablaiche and the Lad are nearly always seen if Crom Croich is awakening,” Fergus said. And then, because he knew Ireland’s history as well as anyone in the Stone Palace, he said, “They say that when the Conablaiche is awakened, it prowls the countryside by night, seeking the first-born boys of every family, so that it can tear out their living hearts and offer them to the god. A barbaric and pitiless cult,” Fergus said.
“And Medoc is reviving it,” said Grainne. “Medoc has called the Conablaiche out of its sleep.” She looked at Fergus. “There can only be one reason for Medoc to call up the Conablaiche.”
“Yes,” said Fergus, his eyes never leaving her. “He has heard the legend of the Lost Prince.”
A terrible silence fell on the assembled Court.
*
The Lost Prince … Ireland’s once and future King, who would appear in Ireland and drive out her enemies and defeat the terrible Dark Ireland once and for all. The legendary Wolfprince who would lead his people to prosperity and peace and to a new Golden Age. Every person present knew the legend; every person, to greater or lesser degree, believed it.
And then Fergus said, “If Medoc has in truth heard the legend, he will want to destroy the Prince. He would have to destroy him. Medoc will never feel completely safe until he can be sure that the Prince does not pose a threat to him.”
“But,” said Fintan, “don’t they tell of how the Prince was shut away for ever inside the Prison of Hostages? Wasn’t that one of the reasons for the Crusade Wars of Cormac’s day? To find the Prince and bring him out?”
“I never heard that,” said Cermait Honeymouth.
“Well, I wouldn’t be sure about it.”
“But,” said Dorrainge, “if Medoc is to loose the Conablaiche on Ireland again, then it means that —” He stopped, appalled.
“Yes,” said Fergus. “It means that the Conablaiche will again prowl the countryside by night, and that every male child will be slaughtered and its heart torn out and its soul flung into the eternal light of the Prison of Hostages.”
“And,” said Grainne softly, “once inside the Prison of Hostages, there can be no escape.”
“To kill the children would be the only way that Medoc could be sure he had destroyed the Prince,” said Fergus. “And we dare not let it happen.” He looked at Grainne, and said very softly and very gently, “We will not let it happen, ma’am.” He turned back to the Court. “There is no time to lose,” he said. “Unless we can destroy Medoc and send the Conablaiche and the Lad of the Skins back into the darkness, before many moons have passed, Ireland will be in the grip of a new reign of terror. No male child in the land will be safe.”
*
They buried Custennid the Tusk at noon the next day. Custennid’s family were all there; his grandfather, who was called Rudraige the Tusk, and who was an enormous old gentleman with red hair and a fiery eye, told Fergus it was a terrible thing. “And although I’m sorry to see him go,” said Rudraige, “I’m even sorrier at the manner of his going. The Conablaiche walking again … Dear me, something will have to be done.”
The youngest member of the Tusks, who was called Tybion, was round-eyed at the ceremonies and awed into silence by the proximity of such legendary figures as the great Fergus of the Fiana and the High Queen. Hadn’t he only glimpsed these glittering beings from afar until now, demanded Tybion of his grandfather, to which Rudraige tartly replied that when Tybion had a few more years under his belt, and when he had a battle or two to his credit, then he might think himself fit to address such people. Until then, said Rudraige, Tybion had better keep quiet and mind his manners. A remark which was quite unnecessary, because Tybion was extremely well mannered and not a little chivalrous.
*
Fergus had attended the burial of Custennid the Tusk, along with the rest of the Court, but his thoughts had been chaotic. If Medoc was in truth preparing for the killing of all the male children of Ireland by the Conablaiche, then they must stop him. And although Fergus did
not care very much for the use of spies, it occurred to him that this might be an occasion where a spy, sent into the enemy’s camp, might be able to find out a great deal about Medoc’s plans.
Medoc’s creatures were all over Innisfree. The entire Court knew it. They were for ever prowling outside the walls of the Stone Palace and slinking into the wine shop, trying to overhear people’s conversations. There was a furtive slithery look to them. Something about the eyes and the curving of the hands. Surely all that was needed was for a carefully chosen person to go into the wine shop and fall into casual discussion. Spying always worked two ways in any case …
Fergus knew that he could not do it by himself. As head of the Queen’s Fiana he was known. He would be recognised, and the entire ploy would fail. But he would not be recognised if he went heavily cloaked, perhaps with a companion.
A companion. Yes, that was a good idea. It was an idea that might work very well. Who should the companion be? Fergus let his mind run through the people of the Court, thinking that what was wanted here was a bit of a rebel. Somebody whose loyalty would be strong and safe, but somebody who was just a little at odds with the conventions. Somebody who would not mind employing slightly unconventional tactics. Fintan and Cermait Honeymouth would have done it, but Fintan and Cermait were both, in their own ways, fairly well known.
And then Fergus thought, Of course! Tybion. Tybion the Tusk, the youngest member of the clan, of the fiercely loyal, unfailingly dependable Tusks. And Tybion already, at sixteen or seventeen, wanting to be off with the Fiana, quarrelling with his family who thought him too young.
Fergus would have a discreet talk with Tybion.
*
Tybion the Tusk walked with Fergus into the little wine shop at the centre of Innisfree and stood for a moment looking about him. It was very crowded and rather smoky, and there was a thick warm scent of wine and newly baked bread on the air. Here and there, groups of people sat at tables, and the serving girls, who wore the scantiest gowns Tybion had ever seen, moved cheerfully in and out of the tables, fetching wine, evading the hands that reached out to them. It was not quite what Tybion was used to, but he summoned up his confidence, and squared his shoulders, and was glad he had put on his best green jerkin and the cambric shirt, and that he had brushed his hair until it shone, although he had not been able to straighten out the cowlick, because he never could. But it was as well to look your best if you were going on an important mission, and Fergus — actually the great Head of the Fiana himself — had impressed on Tybion that this was a very important mission indeed. Spying was a rather nasty tool, Fergus had said; it was not something they normally did. But circumstances altered cases.
