by Sarah Rayne
My dear and only love, shall I ever forget? And then, beneath the agony: shall I ever want to forget?
*
With the coming of Theodora, Andrew tried to fill the days even more. There were times when he knew he must try to return her to her people; when he knew it was selfish to keep her with him.
But to have sent her to find her own way back to the Porphyry Palace was clearly out of the question, and Andrew knew himself not yet sufficiently recovered from the mutilation inflicted on him by Bailitheoir to go with her. To travel back the way he and Rumour had come — through the Black Mountains and the caves that surrounded the sidh’s dying City — he would have to be sure of repelling the creatures that would certainly be lying in wait.
And there is the prisoner of this Castle, said a tiny, treacherous voice in his mind. You took the task on your shoulders and you cannot leave her to die, alone and in the dark.
And so Andrew and Theodora entered into a strange halfworld, where time seemed to blur, and where the pattern of their days took on a surprisingly gentle, healing rhythm. Several times Andrew tried to ask about Rumour’s death: had she given Theodora anything at the last? Had there been any message? But each time he began to frame the questions the white frightened look closed down over the child’s face, and Andrew understood that Rumour’s death at the hands of the Draiocht Spiaire had been so truly appalling that Theodora was still unable to face it. And so, because it would have been cruel to have pressed her, Andrew let it go. To himself he thought that the sulk’s music had probably perished with Rumour.
Andrew tried to keep a count of the days, drawing a chart which they marked each night when they retired to the fire-washed stone room. He thought this would be difficult, for there was no recognisable night in the Dark Realm, and no day. But after a time, they became aware of a pattern in the hours; a time when the darkness became shot with purple, and when the brooding silence that surrounded Almhuin seemed to thicken and ferment with clotted malevolence. At that hour, with Theo safely tucked up in the small bed, Andrew would go out into the hall to where the squared pattern made by the portcullis fell sharply across the floor, and reach up to light the wall-sconces, so that light always burned here. For, if I can at least give some light to this dark fortress, I shall feel that I am fighting back the shades of the necromancers’ night …
He did not quite frame the thought that it would have been unbearable to lie in the stone room with the smothering darkness all about them, and the terrible prisoner in the Castle’s bowels.
He discovered the library early on, and experienced a delighted familiarity in the shelves of manuscripts and vellum chronicles, and in the leather-topped tables, at which a man might work and study. There was a square copper log-box, and Andrew stocked it with logs so that he could work here for as long as the mood took him, without needing to go out to the low-roofed wood-store that abutted the kitchens, in order to replenish the fire.
There was an unlooked-for joy in teaching Theodora. The child had a quick intelligence and an instinctive understanding that made the little lessons he devised a delight to them both. Andrew, with memories of his own schooling, devised small lessons for her; figuring and counting and simple exercises in logic. He set her to write accounts of incidents in her childhood inside the Porphyry Palace. He smiled a little at the vivid word-pictures she painted of the Amaranths, many of whom he recognised from his stay, and the matter-of-fact way in which she described the spinning of spells on the huge Sorcery Looms.
In turn, he recounted to her the gentler stories of the Gospel, concentrating on the promise-filled New Testament, with its messages of light and hope; omitting the dark, sometimes jealous god of Genesis and Ecclesiastes.
Theo, curled up by the fire in the little stone room, exactly as once she had curled up in Nechtan’s sorcery-filled workroom, was interested in everything and fascinated by it all. When Andrew told of the rather mild revelries held in his monastery to mark the Christmas feasts, Theo was able to tell, in turn, about the Saturnalia and the Twelve Days of Revelry. And what Andrew referred to as a rebirth, which he called Easter, was very like a worshipping of one of the goddesses of Spring, whose name was Eostre, and whose festival Great-grandfather had always liked to mark. Spring was a time of rebirth everywhere, said Theo. Things you had thought dead — plants and flowers — began to grow and flower again. Birds were born in spring, and animals. She explained it seriously, careful to pronounce the unfamiliar word ‘Easter’ exactly as Andrew pronounced it, grasping the idea of somebody dying so that the somebody could be born again at such a time.
When Andrew touched, very carefully, on the legend of the Samildanach, Theo sat up, her eyes bright, and said, ‘Then that is your Leader also? Yes of course! I see it now! The two stories are almost exactly the same!’
By now their days, far from being empty and formless, were becoming very full. For Andrew there was beginning to be comfort and healing in the steady pattern. The hours that he had identified as mornings were spent in preparation of food for that day: perhaps the baking of a loaf or the selecting of vegetables. There was an unexpected interest in trying to vary the ingredients of the soup; in using cabbage and carrots and beans one day, sliced bacon and peas and onions the next.
They ate the soup with wedges of bread baked in the vast iron range. They had several failures, but eventually they achieved crisp warm loaves which were wholly delicious. Theodora experimented with sweet loaves, because it was nice to finish your supper with something sweet. She chopped preserved fruit, standing on a chair to reach the huge, scrubbed table in the scullery, and tipped the fruit into the dough, stirring in spoonfuls of melted honey, or ginger from the large stone jars on the settle. There was ripe fruit from the small orchard behind the courtyard as well: pears and apples that scented the stone room, and the glossy blackberries that grew wild.
The chart counted off the days, and Andrew identified, as nearly as he could, Sabbath days, feast days, and days of fasting. On the days that Andrew had selected for fast days, he made sure that Theo ate properly, but for himself he took only plain vegetables, and a cup of waters
But on every seventh day, they made a small festivity of their noonday meal, and Theo was let to have a few sips of the apple wine diluted with water. They finished their meal with a bowl each of preserved fruit from the huge, shady larder, sweetened with honey. Andrew, watching Theo’s small solemn face, made his libation to his God quietly and devoutly, letting the child join in or not, as she chose.
He found jobs of work to do around the Castle; mending and repairing, which he rather enjoyed. As with the modest attempts at cooking, he found it satisfying to restore life to something which had been broken, just as he found pleasure in carving wood, or tilling a patch of ground in preparation for the sewing of seeds. As he worked, he murmured prayers, remembering how the brothers had believed that continual prayer sanctified, knowing that Almhuin was so steeped in evil that there would probably be no effect, but liking the idea anyway.
There were the gentle silken Uisce to be groomed and fed. Andrew and Theo had housed them in the stables, and they went out each morning. They dared not exercise them on the mountain path, because of being seen by the Almhuinians in the village below, but Theo took them around the courtyard and talked to them. This was not absolutely satisfactory for anybody, but it was the best they could do.
After the midday meal, they worked in the huge library, Theo applying herself diligently to her simple lessons, Andrew sorting and reading and trying to catalogue the tumble of books and manuscripts. He liked the scent of leather that lingered here, and he felt little evil in this room, as if the Crimson Lady might not have used it much. The great library became their study place, as the stone room was their rest place.
Rumour’s memory was constantly with him, and sometimes his longing for her was so fierce that it became a physical ache, and he thought he must surely look up and see her watching him. I have nothing left of her, he thought.
Given that the music, the sidh’s enchantment that we fought to preserve, has gone.
But there was only himself and Theodora; the creature in the dungeons was quiescent and silent; nothing moved in Almhuin Castle, save the shadows, and there was no one inside the great Fortress save a monk and a child and the silent, evil creature bricked up in the Castle’s bowels.
*
Andrew was taking what he thought of as his usual night-time vigil; each evening before supper he lit the flambeaux in the great hall, making sure that the portcullis was lowered. Now I am shut in and the Dark Powers are shut out! My house is secure and nothing can creep in while I sleep!
He never descended to the dungeons once darkness had thickened; he went to the Lady’s cell twice daily, keeping to the hours he had delineated as being daylight, always making sure that Theodora was occupied either in the stone room or the library at these times. He knew it was senseless to believe that these two places were not as strongly permeated with the Lady’s evil, but he did feel it. He thought of Theodora as being safe in those rooms.
It did not seem as dark tonight. Andrew stood framed in the portcullis, looking out over the mountain path, seeing the lights of Almhuin and then looking across to the east, where he could make out the ravaged skyline of the Dark Lords’ Citadels, and there, arrogant and untouched above them all, the Castle of Infinity. It was as he was narrowing his eyes to sharpen the Castle’s silhouette, that he became aware of a long thread of lights, strung out across the dark landscape of the Black Ireland. Moving lights. The lights of travellers.
He stood for a moment watching, seeing that they were coming towards the Castle. Fear warred with disbelief, and ice formed at the pit of his stomach. The lights were not sparse pinpoints signifying three or four travellers; Andrew had seen that on a few occasions, and although it had always been an uneasy reminder of how vulnerable he was, he had not thought that many people would venture up to the Crimson Lady’s Castle.
But this was a long procession, a huge caravan, a great mass of people, moving with precision and purpose, lit by the flames of hundreds of flaring torches.
An Army.
Very faintly, so distantly that at first Andrew thought his hearing had misled him, came the sounds of cold, discordant music. He stayed where he was, straining his hearing, and presently the music formed into its own discordant, rather sinister patterns.
The music of necromancy. Andrew felt a sick fear, for the music conjured up visions and images of people marching to War, of Armies being mobilised and, behind it and beneath it all, a grim, dark purpose.
For a moment, he thought that the Army, whatever it was, whoever led it, could have nothing to do with Almhuin, for Almhuin’s Lady was vanquished and caged, and Almhuin’s fangs had been drawn.
And then, with sudden terrible clarity, he thought: but Chaos does not know that. Chaos believes she still rules here. And by the Lady’s own admission to the strange, shadow-being called the Collector, Chaos and the Crimson Lady are most viciously at War.
This was Chaos’s concerted attack. His newest, perhaps his greatest assault on the Lady who had plotted against him, and who had stolen away the Black Monk from his service.
Chaos was marching on Almhuin. The might and the power and the necromantic strengths of the Dark Lords were directed on to the Castle.
*
‘We have to leave,’ said Andrew, taking Theo’s small hands in his and looking down at her as they stood in the stone room. ‘We have to leave at once, and we have to go swiftly and silently.’
They stared at one another, both of them loath to forsake the tenuous security of the small world they had created; neither wanting to venture into the dark night of the Black Realm.
It had not occurred to Theo that Chaos and his people would march on Almhuin. She thought she should have thought about it, but they had been so comfortable here together, and it had been so interesting to hear about Andrew’s religion, and to work at the lessons and bake bread and tend the little walled garden. She asked, in a rather small voice, if Chaos was chasing her, but Andrew at once said, No, Chaos would almost certainly be wanting to take the Crimson Lady’s Castle for his own — perhaps to use as some kind of base for mounting an attack on the True Ireland. He was not coming specifically for Theodora, said Andrew, he thought they could be sure about that.
This was unexpectedly comforting, because Theo would not want Chaos to count her so important that he would send out hundreds of people to capture her. It was nice if people counted you as important, but not if they were necromancers.
‘But we have to escape, Theodora, and we have to somehow find our way back.’
‘To the Palace.’ This would be absolutely the best thing that could happen, and Theo looked hopefully at Andrew when she said it.
‘Yes, to the Palace.’ He could not bend down to look at her directly because of being crippled, but he still looked deeply into her eyes, as if he might be trying to speak to her with his mind. As if he might be saying of course we shall escape and of course we can get home. This was what Rumour would have done and thought and said, and Theo began to feel better. They would leave Almhuin at once, and they would outrun Chaos’s Armies. Armies were clumsy things; they could not move very quickly because they were so many of them. They were cumbersome.
But if they took the Uisce, if they rode them as Theo had ridden them when she ran from the Castle of Infinity, they might get away. Theo, tumbling a few things hastily into a satchel, snatched up Rumour’s tapestry box-bag, which had been thrust into the back of the cupboard and which Theo had almost forgotten about, but was exactly the right thing to take with you on a hasty journey. She dared to hope they would escape.
Andrew’s mind was in a tumult. He had spared only the most fleeting of considerations for his prisoner, below in the dungeons. This was Chaos’s Army that was marching on them, this was the might and the power of the Dark Lords, and they could not possibly fight it. There was no choice to make between guarding the Crimson Lady and saving Theodora from Chaos.
But to his surprise, part of him rebelled at the idea of running away. Stay and fight the evil creatures! said a voice inside him he had not known he possessed. Stay and vanquish the Dark Lards!
He thought that, if he had not been so crippled, and if Rumour had been with him, he might have listened to the voice, for the idea of beating back the necromancers was a seductive one.
For a moment, Rumour was with him; smiling the slant-eyed smile, making wild, extravagant plans that might work and might not.
For an unreal but marvellous moment, Andrew wondered whether he could do it. And then he remembered that Theodora’s safety was paramount, and he remembered that Almhuin was permeated with centimes of evil, and that Chaos and his people had at their beck every dark enchantment and every evil spell ever known. And I am lame, he thought angrily. I cannot be so arrogant as to think I could oppose Chaos.
He paused only long enough to fling randomly snatched food into one of the satchels that Theo had brought from the sculleries, and to scoop up the papers he had been working on in the firelit library that day. He knew a twist of wry humour at that: am I then so much a scholar that I should count these things precious at such a moment! But he knew that the manuscripts and the diaries were infinitely precious, and that if they could be saved, they would be of immense value to the Amaranths.
The necromantic music was closer; both Andrew and Theo could hear it plainly now, a horrid raking at the senses, a dragging, jeering rhythm. As it drew nearer, there was a steady thrumming, a pulsating whirring, as if something dark and evil and immensely powerful was being spun.
When Andrew looked at Theo and said, ‘Ready?’ Theo at once said, ‘Yes, ready,’ because even like this, even thin and ravaged-faced, hobbling a bit awkwardly on a stick, Andrew was a person you would want to obey promptly.
As they went quickly through the great stone hall towards the stables, Theo looked up at Andrew, and saw that although he moved
awkwardly, leaning on the ash stick, and frowning as if he might be in some pain, he was no longer the ragged, unkempt creature who had lived here, inside Almhuin, and fought Almhuin’s terrible darkness. Neither was he the gentle, patient young man who had come to the Porphyry Palace, and tried to help when the Fomoire had come tumbling out of the Cadence Tower.
This was a fiery-eyed young man, strong and fearless, angry at having to run from a battle, angry because he was impatient of hypocrisy and intolerant of selfishness and because he would have liked to turn about and face Chaos and his horrid Armies. This was someone who might very well sweep aside the crowding darkness of the Black Ireland from sheer anger, purely because it was a nuisance and a petty irritation, and rather as if it was simply not worth bothering with.
It ought to have been faintly sinister, this sudden discovery that another person was looking out of Andrew’s eyes, but there was nothing in the least sinister about the sudden glowing look he gave her, or the way in which he seemed taller and broader and very powerful indeed. It was a little as if there was a side to him that he thought he ought not to show to the world. It is the hidden Andrew I am seeing, she thought, and felt pleased all over again, because people only showed their hidden selves to you if they trusted you very much.
The thin pale light from the Uisce touched his face as they rode cautiously across the courtyard, and Theo knew that she was safe, because she was riding with someone who might very well sweep away the darkness and brush aside the creeping evil …
Someone who would cut a swathe of light through the Dark Realm, and force open the Gateways into the Real Ireland …
As the Armies of the Dark Lord of Chaos swarmed up the mountain path towards them, the Uisce shortened their stride and plunged forward into the deep darkness of the necromantic night.
*
The radiance of the Uisce surrounded them as they soared through the night, Chaos’s terrible Armies and the Fortress of the BeastWoman still below them on the mountain path. Andrew, clinging to the silk-floss mane of his mount, Theodora at his side, and the other two Uisce at their heels, thought: we are breaking out of the Dark Realm. We are riding hard towards a Gateway and soon, very soon, we will be across the boundaries and on to the hinterlands, and safe.
