by Sarah Rayne
Annabel, running with the others, was listening hard for the Clock, trying to assess how close they were, for it was the Clock they were trying to reach, and it was the steady, inexorable ticking they must somehow halt. Midnight, and it must be so close now, because the Horsemen were already here, they were in the mountain and perhaps the Apocalypse was waiting to walk into the world …
And then, without warning, they half fell, half skidded, gasping and helpless, into a kind of intersection of all the tunnels; a great echoing cavern where several tunnels ended. Directly ahead of them was a massive door, hewn into the mountain, and from behind the door came the sound that Annabel had been straining to hear ever since they plunged into the tunnels: the steady ticking of the Clock.
Barring the door was the Third Guardian, and standing next to the Third Guardian was the hooded form of the Ferryman.
*
There was no escape. There was no point in turning back and running away, because the tall shape of the Ferryman would have caught them in an instant. Annabel, struggling to get her breath back, her lungs raw with the frantic exodus along the tunnels, thought that even the boys, still luminous from Fael-Inis’s fire, were exhausted. They were trapped, and in front of them were the two ancient evil creatures called the Sensleibhe and the Ferryman, and behind them in the dark tunnels were the Four Horsemen. She glanced at the boys, and saw that the odd, other-world quality was still clinging to them, that there seemed to be an inner strength, and the light and the fire of some unknown power. I am still not sure if any of this is happening, thought Annabel, but at least I am on the right side in the battle. At least I am fighting on the side of the just. And then she remembered all of the wars, just and unjust, righteous and dishonourable, that had been fought, and how often the unjust and the dishonourable had triumphed. But this was not a thought to be dwelled on, and so she turned back to the cave and to what was going to happen next.
None of them could see the Third Guardian very well — “Too much shadow,” muttered Fergus — and as they waited for their eyes to adjust to the gloom, they heard her speak. An old voice, a comfortable voice. Annabel, astonished, thought it was the sort of voice you could associate with security and safety. The sort of voice that would have belonged to nannies and children’s nurses in the old books. It was a voice that would bustle you in out of the rain, and make you get into a hot bath immediately. Annabel, who had been so fascinated by the world’s history that she had read as much about it as she could lay her hands on, thought it was precisely the sort of voice you would like to run to if you had hurt your knee or been bested in a fight, or broken your heart. And then she thought, But surely it is not a voice you would expect to hear down here, guarding the torchlit cavern?
“Dearie me,” said the voice, “Oh, dearie me, here’s a fuss and a bother. Here’s a to-do. My goodness gracious me, look at you all, drenched to the skin and liable to catch a death I shouldn’t wonder. And the little ones! A mug of my special cocoa, that’s what you need, my dears, and a nice warm by my fire. Come along in now, do.” Button bright eyes regarded them from the darkness, and a door seemed to open, and there was the comforting crackle of starch and the warm, dry scent of clean linen, and of washing airing before a fire with a brass guard that would catch the firelight and glow, and where you might be allowed to roast chestnuts and toast muffins.
“There’s freshly baked gingerbread,” said the voice, curiously — sinisterly? — in line with Annabel’s thoughts. “And I dare say that if we are very good, there might be scones and strawberry jam as well. So come along in, my lambkins, and be safe. A nasty night to be out in the rain and the dark and the cold. Come along in to the fire, and the warmth, and come along in to where it is safe.”
Fael-Inis turned as if to speak, but Annabel saw that Conn and Niall and Michael and all the boys were moving forward in the direction of the voice, their eyes bright.
“That’s the way,” said the voice with plump satisfaction, “all of you safely inside. What a lot of precious lambkins. Scones and jam for all and warm gingerbread, and you shall tell me about your adventures.”
The boys moved as one, and there was a chuckle and a movement from the shadows, and Annabel thought that something dark and formless moved. But then there was the gleam of an apron, and a whirr of sound that might have been anything at all. Spinning? Was it something being spun?
“All inside,” said the voice, and Annabel received the impression of somebody — something? — standing with arms folded, nodding placidly, and counting the children as they went. There was the scent of baking and of log fires and warm rooms, and there was the sound of a kettle singing on the hob. And then, before they knew it, the door had closed, and the children had gone, and the shadowy figure turned to Fael-Inis.
“All inside,” said the voice, and now it was treacly and purring, it was a gloating, chuckling voice. “And now,” it said, “and now, my dears, for the rest of you.”
The Sensleibhe. The Old Woman of the Mountains. Plump and cosy-cheeked and white-aproned. Fat and comfortable and safe and wide-lapped. You might run to her with your problems. You would surely trust her. If it had not been for her eyes …
Fergus, who was nearest, saw that the Sensleibhe’s eyes were dark and unblinking. They were animal eyes; dark, staring eyes that would reflect not the smallest sliver of light. He saw, as well, that her hands were predatory, with long thick nails, curved like claws.
Taliesin, standing nearby, thought, Well, I suppose she can be defeated. Can she? I suppose Fael-Inis will find a way. And we have to try. We have to get to the Clock.
Annabel was very frightened but she was also very angry. She thought that to have come this far, to have avoided the Drakon’s patrol and to have outwitted the first Two Guardians, and run willy-nilly from the Ferryman, and then to be barred from their goal by this ridiculous old woman, was beyond bearing. She would have flung herself forward had not Taliesin’s hand restrained her.
Fael-Inis had been watching not the dark squat figure of the Sensleibhe, but the thin hooded form just behind her. The Ferryman. The creature had not moved and it had not spoken, but Fael-Inis knew, as the Mortals could not, that it was this adversary they must be most wary of. It was this one who would take what the Sensleibhe left — the gleanings and the pickings. But he remained silent and he watched to see what these two would do.
The Old Woman said comfortably, “Dearie me, I can see you’ve been told some nasty tales about me! Bless and save us all, who’d have thought anyone could believe an old woman should be a danger to such grand strong gentlemen and such a pretty little lady! Why, if it wasn’t for Mr. Ferryman, I’d have long since been pushed out into the world, and a nasty cold place that can be! Why, Mr. Ferryman’s been a good friend to me.” She came nearer to them, and Fergus saw that he had not been wrong; the creature’s eyes were cunning and sly and darting.
The Sensleibhe was inspecting them now, walking round them, eyeing Taliesin and Fergus, patting Annabel’s cheek. Annabel drew back and scowled, and the Old Woman of the Mountains laughed.
“Dearie me, temper, temper. I should know what to do with you, madam, if you were in my charge. My word, there’d be early bed and no supper for a week for you!” She stood looking at Annabel, and Annabel stared back, because she would not let this creature intimidate her. The Old Woman grinned rather horribly, and moved back to the shadows. As she did so, there was a rather horrid sound of claws ringing out on the rock floor of the cavern. Taliesin and Fergus exchanged a thought: Is this the movement to spring? But the silent cloaked figure of the Ferryman moved, and they both stopped, because they knew they would not be permitted to get within two feet of the Old Woman. Fergus thought, He will be upon us and he will tear out our hearts and offer our souls to Crom Croich. And wondered how he knew this so surely. Taliesin, at his side, picked it up at once, and knew Fergus was right.
The Old Woman was seated in the shadows again, and Annabel saw with disbelief that in front o
f her was a spinning wheel, low and dark and ancient. As they watched, the Old Woman drew the wheel a little nearer and ran her hands lovingly over the machinery.
“It doesn’t do to be idle,” she said. “And with the morning, there’ll be plenty to spin. Well, this is a good catch for me, don’t you agree, Mr. Ferryman?” And then, as the dark figure did not move, she said, “He doesn’t say very much, that one, my dears. But he’s a good friend. A good friend and a bad enemy … He’s been good to me.”
Fael-Inis said courteously, “What do you intend to do with the children?” and the Sensleibhe turned to regard him.
“Dearie me, so it’s you. Eh, I never thought to meet you again this side of eternity.” The bright, dark eyes studied him and Annabel thought there was perhaps a gleam of uncertainty now, and hoped that this was not wishful thinking.
“And yet, as you see, I am here,” said Fael-Inis, and Taliesin knew at once that Fael-Inis was quenching his fire and his radiance. His voice was colourless, his words devoid of expression. “Tell us what you intend,” said Fael-Inis, and the Sensleibhe chuckled and Annabel shivered, because it was a gravelly, liquid sort of chuckle that made you think of horrid, bubbling, greasy liquids, and of things with repulsive names such as mucus and catarrh.
Fael-Inis moved nearer, and the others thought that a faint flicker of light came from him now. “Tell me,” he said softly, and the Sensleibhe laughed again, so that Annabel shuddered.
“All the better to help my spinning, my dear,” she said, and now there was a dark, leery sort of sound. “For, oh, what rosy cheeks, and oh, what plump limbs and pretty silken hair they have. All the better to help my spinning, Mr. Rebel Angel.” She hummed and rocked and the wheel whirred, and Annabel had the feeling that there was something rather grisly about the spinning. And remembered, and wished not to remember, the old, old fairy stories which people had once thought suitable for children, where old women rocked and grinned by firelight, and invited you in to warm cosy parlours where kettles sang on the hearth and gingerbread was baking; where suddenly the firelight burned up a little more brightly and showed you not a comfortable old woman in a frilled cap and button boots, but something very nasty indeed; something that had a grinning maw and wide predatory teeth, and something that was not covered with skin like a human, but with bristly hair, and that had claws and talons. Annabel gulped and took a deep breath.
When the Old Woman of the Mountains said again, “All the better to help my spinning, my dears,” Annabel found herself moving forward, and the Old Woman grinned and nodded. There was something unexpectedly soothing about the whirr of the spinning wheel, and there was something compulsive about it as well, so that you had to see what she was spinning, if only for a brief moment.
“See now,” said the Old Woman, reaching out a hand. “See what I do, down here, while I wait for the little children to come to me. Dearie me, they all come to me in the end. Mr. Ferryman goes on the hunt, and they all come here. They curl up by the firelight and they fall asleep, the precious little ones, their cheeks rosy, their eyes heavy with drowsiness. Oh, there’s no need of the Draoicht Suan down here. All fall asleep when I start my spinning. You see how pretty it is? Come now and take a better look. The gentlemen as well. Eh, gentlemen don’t like such things, I know that. But you come now and take a look. No cause for fear. It’s only the children I take, you see.”
Annabel, drawn forward against her will, unable to resist, felt herself coming slowly into the faint spill of light from beyond the mountain door. The Sensleibhe sat in the patch of light now, her spinning wheel humming. It was rather soothing. Soporific, that was the word. It was soporific. The Old Woman of the Mountains spun and hummed and spun and beckoned, and Annabel could see now that from the end of the wheel, a thin glistening thread was forming. A thin glistening thread, studded here and there with chippings of something sharp, with fragments of something you ought to be able to identify, and surely would if only the light was a little stronger. Skeins and strands and tufts, wet glistening threads, all woven into rope-like fibre that would presently be made into garments …
Annabel gasped and backed away from the spinning wheel, for the sharp hard pieces were slivers of human nails, and the wet glistening strands were human skin and human flesh, stained with blood, and the dark coarse strands were human hair.
Human victims, butchered and spun into thread to be woven into cloth for the Old Woman of the Mountains to wear.
The children were to be crushed and ground up and minced and spun into thread. This was what the Sensleibhe wanted them for. This was why she had trapped them.
And then, as they stood transfixed, there was a dreadful harsh clacking noise that made you think of nails clicking against cold stone, and of the beaks of vultures and predators opening and shutting hungrily.
The Ferryman moved into the light and, as he did so, he reached up to push the deep hood back from his head. The cloak fell aside.
It was the Conablaiche itself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
And so, thought Annabel, and so at last we have to face failure. We are trapped down here, with hundreds of tons of mountain rock above us, and with rock doors sealed against us. We are at the mercy of the Old Woman of the Mountains and of the creature that my people call the Claw and, somewhere quite close by, the Doomsday Clock is ticking the world’s life away and it seems there is nothing any of us can do.
The Claw, the Conablaiche, the Ferryman, who prowled the dark waters of the tunnels and hungered for the hearts and the souls of humans. The terrible ancient creature who owed allegiance to Crom Croich.
Fael-Inis moved first; Annabel thought that he sent a shower of radiance cascading across the floor, and she drew a breath of relief, for surely if anyone could defeat these two, then Fael-Inis could. There was a blur of light and fire, and she saw him launch himself at the Conablaiche, a straight arrow of brilliance that exploded in the dim cavern and dazzled them, illuminating the Conablaiche to dreadful clarity, so that they saw again the snapping vulture head, the protruding, fish-like eyes that swivelled and searched. They shrank from the torso that had sketchy human organs but was not human in the least, the rudimentary liver and lungs and ribcage, all blotched and smeared and made hideous by the shreds of human flesh from its victims, and the hard, bony spine discoloured by human blood. The Conablaiche was walking the world, seeking out victims for its Master, leaving their souls for the Lad of the Skins, leaving their butchered carcasses for the Old Woman of the Mountains to spin into thread …
The creature gave its clacking laugh, and watched them: Here are some fine juicy morsels for my Master …
And then it swept Fael-Inis aside with one great movement of its arm. Annabel thought that he fell and lay without moving, and then was not sure, because it was unthinkable that Fael-Inis should be defeated so easily.
Taliesin and Fergus moved as one. They were across the cavern and upon the Conablaiche, and for a second Annabel thought they would succeed, for the creature was brought to the ground, and they all went down in a horrid whirling jumble of human arms and beast bones and fists that punched and tried to restrain, and grisly talons that scraped and clawed.
The Conablaiche flung both men back against the mountain, and gave its cruel laugh again. Annabel, backed against the far side, looked frantically for some kind of weapon, because perhaps if she could lunge for the creature’s eyes it would give them all a chance. It would be the horridest thing she had ever had to do, to put out a living creature’s eyes, but it would disable the Conablaiche, and it would give them all a fighting chance.
Fergus and Taliesin were lying where they had been thrown; they were gasping and helpless, but they were alive. If they could be given just a very few minutes to recover, they would certainly try to overpower the Conablaiche again.
The creature was advancing on Annabel now, Taliesin and Fergus momentarily forgotten, watching her unblinkingly, a look of pure, gloating evil in its lidless eyes. It gave a neig
hing chuckle, and reached down between its legs to where a rudimentary penis hung, and began to rub itself suggestively. The raw stalk of flesh swelled and reared, jutting out from beneath the discoloured bones. Annabel, her eyes distended, stared down at it, and frantic thoughts of scrabbling on the ground for sharp stones which would cut it off tumbled through her mind. Would it be better to cut it off, or would it be better to attack its eyes? I shall have to do one or the other, thought Annabel, half kneeling on the floor, her hands searching furiously for sharp stones. Anything — a piece of stick … Was that something? Yes! Her hand closed about it.
The Conablaiche stood over her for a moment, its taloned, skeletal hand still between its legs, thrusting out at her in a travesty of the gesture made by the Drakon patrolman. Annabel managed to dredge up the slenderest thread of amusement: Well, and I have been offered two of these things since I have been here! She had to bite down the bubble of mirth, because clearly this was what had once been called hysteria, and she could not waste energy in being hysterical.
The Conablaiche reached down for her, and Annabel reached up, the sharp stick firmly in her hand. There was a really terrible moment when she thought she was not going to be able to do it; the creature’s stench was in her nostrils, and it was a stench of old blood and rotting meat; its bones were stained with the fluid of its victims, and there had never been anything so repulsive in the world ever before …
Annabel drew back her arm, and jabbed frantically, frenziedly, and with a violence she had not suspected she possessed, at the huge, lidless eye. There was a sudden, soft, squelching sound, and, what was much worse than the sound, there was a soft, squelching feel. Annabel felt the stick sink into the jelly-like matter of the Conablaiche’s eye, and touch something hard and bony behind it. There was a dreadful sensation of having pushed into decaying fruit, and there was a sudden stench of pus and rotting fluids.
