by Sarah Rayne
‘But you are no true sorcerer, CuRoi, you are flawed goods, damaged stock. You are the imposter … And you know the fate reserved for imposters,’ said Nuadu, very softly, and the planes of his face seemed to blur, so that for a brief moment the wolf looked out more strongly and more cruelly than the others had ever seen it.
And he is moving around CuRoi now, thought Fenella; he is circling him, driving him towards the Throne.
CuRoi was flinching now and the light that had poured from the great darkly beautiful Ebony Throne was sending its radiance towards him. Again he threw up his hands to shield his eyes from the light and in that moment Nuadu sprang on him, closing his hands about the necromancer’s throat, the strong hard silver hand circling it like a vice.
And with a gesture that was very nearly off-hand, he threw CuRoi straight at the Ebony Throne.
At once the chamber was lit to white painful light. Sparks and splinters of pure radiance tore across the small oblong dungeon and sliced into the ancient stones, so that they shivered and fell apart. There was a terrible scream from the depths of the great Throne, the cry of a soul who sees Hell yawning and, for a brief, terrible moment, Fenella glimpsed a great fiery furnace, red-eyed demons reaching out. There was the acrid smell of burning and the thing that had been CuRoi sagged, lifeless, eyeless, burnt out from within, smoking and charred.
Nuadu did not falter. He grabbed Fenella’s hand and bounded to the door.
‘Quickly, now, for the Castle is about to sunder and we dare not be trapped!’ He pulled Fenella with him, Floy and Flame at their heels, up the narrow stone stairway and into the great hall.
Deep blue light poured into the dark Castle of the necromancers; soft, purple-tinged dusklight, sweet and clean and untainted by the Dark Realm’s foul malevolence. Fenella could hear wailing and screeching from beyond the Castle’s walls; the scared running of creatures fleeing a great threat, the frantic beating of wings on the air of frightened beings who had served the dark powers, but who now saw those powers crumble before the might and the strength of the Wolfking.
The power and the light and the strength, Lady …
The Wolves were waiting. As the salamanders took them down the mountain path, they fell into line behind Nuadu, sleek and lean, their pelts dark and glossy, their eyes on Nuadu.
Fenella said, rather uncertainly, ‘Will they follow us back into the real Ireland?’
‘Yes,’ said Nuadu. He looked across at her and smiled and at last it was the smile of the lover of the twilit Wolfwood, the warm, intimate smile that held the shared memory of what had been between them, and what would be between them in the future …
And then the Gateway was before them and the lights and the brightness of the true Ireland, the fabled land of blue and green mist which was fabled no longer for Fenella and Floy, but real and warm and loving, were rushing towards them.
The salamanders poured effortlessly through the Gateway, the Wolves in their wake, and the Gateway closed behind them, leaving no trace.
Chapter Forty-eight
To Tealtaoich and the other Beastline creatures, who had all been accustomed to living at Tara and to being a part of its immense glittering Court, it was strange and quite dreadfully sad to have to approach it as aggressors.
‘But we have to drive out the Gruagach,’ said Tealtaoich.
‘That’s if they’re awake from Pumlumon’s Draoicht Suan.’
‘Well, I meant that. That’s what I meant,’ said Tealtaoich.
Pumlumon and the other Gnomes had been very flattered to be included in the march on Tara. Culdub Oakapple had said, lugubriously, that wasn’t it only that Tealtaoich and the rest needed Pumlumon’s help with dissolving the Draoicht Suan, but the Gnomes had not paid this very much attention, because hadn’t the Oakapple a terrible old way of squashing people’s optimism and wasn’t a bit of an optimism what was wanted now? Bith said it was very gratifying that Pumlumon was to go into Tara with Caspar, although wasn’t it only what you’d expect, what with Pumlumon being the one who had pronounced the spell in the first place. A spell could only be lifted by the person (or Gnome) who had first chanted it, said Bith firmly. Anyone knew that.
Feradach muttered to Clumhach that it was to be hoped Pumlumon could be trusted to remember the awakening ritual, but Clumhach, who was so pleased to be returning to Tara that he would not believe ill of anyone, said that of course Pumlumon would remember it.
‘He remembered the Draoicht Suan,’ said Clumhach.
‘I think that was a stroke of luck,’ said Feradach.
Pumlumon had, in fact, consulted anxiously with Miach about the exact wording of the ritual and a couple of the Oaks had helped. Pumlumon had repeated the ritual several times, just to be sure, and then Snizort had written it down for him, which was a grand useful thing to have done, and something Pumlumon would never have thought of doing. He would feel very important, he said, going on down to Tara alone with Caspar, and had asked couldn’t he take along one or two friends. Flaherty was the one to be taking with you when you were on an important mission, he said, and wasn’t Bith of the Bog-hat their leader, and ought, by rights, to be included as well. And the Oakapple never liked to be missing any bit of excitement that was going on.
But it had been explained to him that this first approach had to be very quiet and very stealthy, on account of not letting the giants know they were there until they had dissolved the Draoicht Suan. What they had to do, said Tealtaoich and Eogan, explaining it all to Pumlumon, was to wake the giants and then, just as the giants were blinking and feeling a bit sleepy from the spell, the armies would come roaring in and fell them before they had time to know what was happening. That was the way of it, said Tealtaoich, frowning at Pumlumon to be sure he understood.
And, of course, if it was stealth that was wanted, then Pumlumon was the one for the job, said Pumlumon, having seen the entire point of this plan. Hadn’t his own grandfather been known as the stealthiest Gnome that ever wore a hat, and wasn’t there a saying in Gallan to this very day, ‘as stealthy as Pumlumon’s grandfather’?
‘I’ll be there,’ he said, beaming, and Tealtaoich said to Eogan that it was to be hoped that Pumlumon could remember the spell.
‘Snizort’s written it out for him.’
‘He’ll have lost it by the time they reach Tara,’ said Tealtaoich.
‘Snizort made a copy and gave it to Caspar.’
‘Oh, I see.’
Snizort, who was walking with Caspar just behind the Gnomes, thought that the procession out of the Wolfwood and on towards Tara was awesome and solemn and one of the most remarkable sights he ever thought to see. He had rather enjoyed the walk, which had been in the nature of an informal march, and which had gone along to the accompaniment of singing. This seemed to be a traditional thing, and Snizort had enjoyed it greatly. The Tree Spirits had unbent sufficiently to teach the Beastline creatures several songs from the time of Cormac which everybody had liked, and then the freed slaves had sung several rousing choruses of songs which had been sung in their villages before the days of the Robemaker, and Snizort himself had even managed to remember two ditties from Renascia, which had been received very well. It had made the march seem much shorter than it really was and, as Clumhach had said, it had brought about a grand spirit of comradeship.
‘And of course,’ he had said to Snizort, ‘you won’t be expected to be on foot for the actual charge.’
‘Ah,’ said Snizort, who had wondered about this, but had not quite liked to ask.
‘Oisin will have a word with the deer, I expect, said Clumhach. ‘They’re very fleet and extremely nice. Unless you’d prefer a panther?’ He posed this is a perfectly ordinary possibility and Snizort, who had taken several wary looks at the prowling sinuous panthers padding after Tealtaoich, said, hastily, that he was sure the deer would be entirely acceptable.
The Beastline Lords had walked at the head of the march with the creatures they had summoned in their wake and the Gnomes behind the creature
s.
‘If we had been strict about the precedence,’ said Caspar, ‘the Gnomes should have come last of all, after the Trees. But they’ve no sense of direction, Gnomes, and they might easily have taken a wrong turning. So Tealtaoich and Eogan thought they’d be safer in the middle.’
‘If everyone had their rights,’ said Dian Cecht, hearing this and turning round haughtily, ‘Miach would be spear-heading the attack and going into Tara with the Gnome Pumlumon.’
‘Why is that?’ asked Caspar rather belligerently.
‘If there is any sorcery to be done, Miach is Court Sorcerer,’ said Dian Cecht.
‘Well,’ said Caspar, ‘if you really want to know, Miach can have my place for the asking. The only reason I’m going is because if the giants aren’t still asleep, they won’t think it odd to see me. They’d think it very odd to see Miach walking back into their midst after they’d driven him out. It’s simply a question of being practical,’ said Caspar firmly, to which Dian Cecht said there was no longer any justice in the world but, in any case, she would not have given her support to Miach going into such a sinister situation, and it was extremely likely that the Gruagach were awake and lying in wait for anyone foolish enough to try to sneak past the sentries.
The freed slaves were walking with the Tree Spirits who brought up the rear. Snizort had managed to talk with some of the dryads and had found them extremely scholarly and rather formal.
‘But I’m learning a very great deal,’ he said to Caspar. ‘My word, I wouldn’t have believed the half of the things I’ve learnt here. Tell me, shall we take Tara fairly easily, do you suppose?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Caspar, who felt he had acquitted himself firmly but courteously with Dian Cecht, and who was beginning to feel quite optimistic about this remarkable quest. ‘I truly don’t see why we shouldn’t. If the giants are still under the Draoicht Suan, and if Pumlumon can wake them, they’ll be too sleepy to put up much of a fight. As a matter of fact,’ said Caspar, lowering his voice and glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening, ‘as a matter of fact, it isn’t strictly honourable, attacking them like this. You’re supposed to send all kinds of challenges and warnings before you attack people.’
‘Ah yes. Chivalry,’ murmured Snizort, entranced. ‘The ancient code.’
‘But,’ said Caspar, ‘I think they decided — that is, Tealtaoich and Oisin and the rest decided-that since the giants didn’t observe the code when they took Tara, and since they’re usurpers anyway, the usual practices could be shelved. Also,’ he added, ‘it probably means we’ll be able to beat them.’
The armies approached Tara from the Western side and paused on the hillside behind the brilliant shining outline.
Oisin had told Snizort that this was the scene of many famous battles of the past.
‘If you stand on that hillside and close your eyes,’ he had said, quite seriously, ‘you can almost feel the past flooding in on you. That was where the great Cormac of the Wolves led the final charge against the usurpers Eochaid Bres and Mab the Wanton and where he defeated the terrible sisterhood of the Morrigan. And then later, Cormac’s great granddaughter, the High Queen Grainne, fought the necromancer Medoc there. It’s steeped in history and soaked in blood,’ said Oisin very solemnly, ‘and it’s a very good place indeed for us to assemble and begin the charge on the Gruagach.’
Below them, in the saucer-shaped valley, was Tara, the Bright Palace of legend, the Shining Citadel of Ireland’s history, woven into the weft and the weave, threaded into the tapestry of every tale ever told or sung or written or dreamed.
As Caspar and Pumlumon approached the Western Gate, they looked about them cautiously, staring up at the blind, unlit windows, seeing the traces of neglect everywhere. Pumlumon, a cleanly soul, tutted and said didn’t it make you feel a terrible old anger to see such shocking housekeeping.
‘They aren’t the tidiest of people, the Gruagach,’ admitted Caspar, standing in the courtyard. ‘But I think the neglect only strengthens our hope that they’re still under the Draoicht Suan.’
Pumlumon said at once that wouldn’t that be the way of it and Caspar the quick-witted one for spotting it. Would they be taking a look inside now?
‘Yes,’ said Caspar, who was feeling better with every minute, and who was, by this time, almost certain that the Gruagach were still under the Draoicht Suan. The notion that it might all be a trap occurred to him, but he put it from his mind, because the concept of a trap was far too subtle for Inchbad’s people.
And so he led Pumlumon through the echoing galleries and the vast chambers of Tara. Along the historic Wolf Gallery where, so said legend, Cormac had held the famous race with his court to see how many ladies they could each bed between sunset and sunrise. On down the great gilt stair with the curving, diamond-crusted balustrades, which was known as Mab’s Stair, and which the ladies of the court always used to make grand entrances into the banqueting hall below when there was a particularly festive gathering.
Caspar, who knew the way without really thinking about it, hurried along, Pumlumon scurrying at his heels, holding his hat on, tutting all over again at the dust and the grime everywhere.
They walked rapidly through the rather sombre official rooms, among them the exquisitely beautiful Star of the Poets, where the King of the day met with his Councillors and his advisers to discuss matters of state; past the slightly eerie, spell-ridden Hall of Light and the Skyward Tower where once had lived the nine sorcerers of Dierdriu, and on until there ahead of them —
‘The Sun Chamber,’ said Caspar. ‘Medchuarta. Ready?’ They moved forward, and Caspar pushed wide the great doors.
The first thing to assail their senses was the stale smell of unwashed giant and of onion-tainted, sleep-befouled breath. Caspar shuddered and Pumlumon shook his head, because wouldn’t a few sprigs of lavender have been of some help here.
In the great Sun Chamber of the Wolfkings, the immense glittering heart of the ancient Shining Citadel of all Ireland, the giants of Gruagach lay where they had fallen when Pumlumon spun the Draoicht Suan about them.
They were awkward and ugly; their jerkins were grease-spotted and their wide, stupid mouths had fallen open, showing blackened stumps of teeth. Most of them were snoring, and the Sun Chamber reverberated to the sounds.
The fire around which Caspar remembered them gathering that night had long since burned out and drifts of ash lay everywhere, sprinkling the silver floor so that it was tarnished and smeary. Inchbad’s crown had slipped from his head and with it the elaborately curled and powdered wig he had been wearing. There were cobwebs that were beginning to thicken, and there were even mouse-droppings in a neat line across the floor.
Pumlumon said, in a whisper to Caspar, that wasn’t this the most disgraceful thing you’d ever think to see.
‘We should never have let them stay for so long,’ said Caspar, staring at them, and looking fiercer than anyone had ever seen him. ‘I am very glad indeed that they are to be soundly beaten.’
He looked at Pumlumon: ‘If I go up to the Skyward Tower and give the signal to Tealtaoich, will you begin the spell to wake the giants?’
Pumlumon said he would, to be sure he would, and wasn’t that why they were here and there’d best be no delay.
‘Perhaps I’d better just run through it first to be sure I’ve remembered it, however,’ he said, worried, and Caspar, who had foreseen this and asked Snizort to copy out the spell, said, ‘Oh, really,’ and rummaged in a pocket for the ritual and put it into Pumlumon’s hands so there should be no further delay.
‘And remember not to start the ritual until I’ve reached the Tower,’ he said.
‘How long — ’
‘Count to one hundred,’ said Caspar and, as Pumlumon looked even more worried, said hastily, ‘Well, read the spell through silently, and then pronounce it,’ and sped away, thinking that really, when it came down to it, he was doing a great deal towards winning this war.
To the waiting Beastline and the Trees, Caspar’s signal came like a beacon of light, raying through the darkness.
‘The Skyward Tower,’ said Tealtaoich, softly. ‘Then they are inside and the giants are still under the enchantment.’ He turned to look at the others, and a mischievous, reckless grin lifted his lips suddenly, so that he was more catlike than Snizort ever remembered seeing him.
‘Ready?’ said Tealtaoich. ‘Then onwards!’
They had agreed that there should be no call to arms, no blasts of trumpets, or shrieks of war.
‘A swift, silent charge, it’ll be,’ said Oisin to Snizort, when he introduced the deer that Snizort would be riding. ‘Not the way it ought to be done, of course.’
‘Of course not,’ Snizort had said, entranced.
‘But practical.’
Pounding down the hillside towards the great, radiant Palace, the silence was unnerving. There was only the sound of the beasts’ hoofs on the ground and the rushing of the wind in their ears, or the rustling susurration of the Tree Spirits as they streamed across the terrain. Overhead, the White Swans and the Eagles dived forward in a maelstrom of gold and white, beautiful and powerful.
And then they were nearing the great Western Gate, going along the straight wide avenue and Tara was ahead of them, beautiful, shining Tara that was in the greedy, greasy hands of the giants.
Inchbad did not know when he had been so flummoxed. He said so, very firmly indeed.
‘I don’t know when I’ve been so flummoxed,’ he said.
The Gruagach were all flummoxed. It was difficult to know what to do. Goll the Gorm said, darkly, that they had all been the subject of a bit of a spell, mark his words, and everyone had agreed, because didn’t they all know how sneaky and sly spells could be.
There they’d all been, sitting round the fire after supper, as friendly as could be, looking forward to a bit of a game with the Fidchell board. Goll the Gorm had actually looked out the board from last time, and seen that it needed a bit of a clean what with it still having all manner of unmentionable stains on it from the last lot of Humans, and it a lady they were to be roasting this time. Goll had not known what things were coming to.
