by Sarah Rayne
But Black Aed’s wife said, ‘She was never our Lady, sir. And we prefer to be on the winning side,’ and the Almhuinians glanced at one another, because Chaos would be pleased at such a grand bit of flattery.
And it seemed that he was, because he was smiling, although one or two of them could not help thinking it was actually a rather cold, malice-filled smile. But he said, softly, ‘I am honoured by the allegiance and the fealty of your people,’ and the Almhuinians were pleased that he’d picked that one up, because didn’t it show Chaos that he wouldn’t be dealing with unschooled peasants but creatures of some learning and refinement.
‘Your willingness to follow whichever Master will give you the most does you credit,’ said Chaos, and at his feet Anarchy let out a hoot of rude mirth. The Dark Lords smiled in a slightly sinister fashion, as if they found the Almhuinians amusing, but for all the wrong reasons.
‘I believe,’ said Chaos slowly, ‘that I could make use of you.’ He studied them in turn, and the thin, cold smile touched his lips again. Anarchy gave vent to another raucous laugh, as if he were trying to indicate that he knew something that nobody else did.
Diarmuit made bold to ask whether there was a battle ahead, and Chaos said, ‘Since I hold Almhuin Castle, there is nothing left within this Realm for me to conquer. The entire Dark Ireland is mine.’
‘And with the timely removal of Almhuin’s Lady,’ said Anarchy, jeeringly, ‘the way is apparently clear. If, that is, we were so foolish as to trust to it.’ He made a rude gesture at the Almhuinians with the glinting curved knife he wore at his belt, which was shaped like a huge phallus, but which had a very sharp tip.
‘The disappearance of the Lady,’ said Chaos in his soft voice, which Diarmuit had suddenly realised was sounding very menacing indeed, ‘is the most interesting thing of all. You knew that she was no longer here?’ said Chaos. ‘Yes, I see that you did know.’
‘And we should all like to know how the snivelling rats knew,’ said Anarchy.
There was an awkward pause, and then Diarmuit said, ‘We did know she had gone, sir,’ because wasn’t it as well to let Chaos think they had their own sources for information. ‘But we don’t know how,’ he added firmly.
‘Of course they know,’ said Anarchy, impatiently. ‘Sire, I told you. There is only one way she could have escaped, and that is if she was smuggled out.’ He glared at the Almhuinians. ‘I would not trust those turncoats an inch,’ he said. ‘They’ve got the Crimson Lady away into hiding somewhere, and just as they think you’ve been fooled into relaxing your guard, she’ll be at your throat! And they’ll be at her side! Rats!’ said Anarchy in a voice of loathing, and bounded out of his chair towards Diarmuit and Aed’s wife. But Murder was there in a silent slither of darkness, one dark, gloved hand hooking about Anarchy’s neck, pushing him into his chair again. Anarchy subsided with a bad grace, and when Murder released him, refilled his wine chalice and sat glowering at them over its rim.
Chaos had ignored Anarchy and Murder’s quelling of him, rather in the way of ignoring a rude child who has been subdued. He leaned forward, and said in his soft voice, ‘Let us return to how I intend to use you,’ and the Almhuinians looked uneasily at one another, because they had not liked the way that Chaos had said ‘use’.
‘You will perhaps know of my work?’ said Chaos, his eyes dark and unfathomable, and the Almhuinians glanced uneasily at one another, because didn’t the whole of the Dark Realm know of Chaos’s manipulations and tamperings, and the blending of warring peoples and of alien strains. They hoped they were sufficiently open-minded about these things, but didn’t it give you a shuddering grue to think of Goblins breeding from Giants, or Humans breeding from snakes. Say what you liked, it was unnatural.
But it was politic to appear interested, and so Diarmuit said, ‘Indeed we do know …’ and, uncertain as to how Chaos ought to be addressed, added, ‘sir’, which, as Aed’s wife had said, was pretty much a general term of courtesy and should be acceptable. ‘And have always found them of interest,’ added Diarmuit for good measure.
Chaos appeared amused. He said, ‘That is very gratifying. And since you have come to offer your fealty to me, and in such a courteous and prompt fashion, I have no doubt that you will not object to returning with me to my Castle, to assist in the — ah — furtherance of my work.’ He paused and, at his feet, Anarchy laughed again, with an immature, unbroken, boy’s laugh.
‘I believe I shall need only the females,’ said Chaos, apparently considering the matter carefully. He looked up and something harsh and cruel shone from his eyes. ‘Although we shall take you all.’
‘Take us?’ said Diarmuit. ‘As prisoners?’
‘Oh, my prisoners can be made very comfortable,’ said Chaos, in an amused voice, but there was a red gleam in his eyes that made Diarmuit and Aed’s wife glance uneasily at one another. ‘And your females will enjoy helping in my work.’
He stood up. ‘But prisoners you will be,’ he said, and his lips were suddenly thinned into a cruel, cold line. ‘You will work in my service until I have satisfied myself as to your true allegiance.’ He nodded to the darkly accoutred Captains, and instantly a dozen of them sprang forward, surrounding the Almhuinians, their swords drawn and poised to strike.
Diarmuit was by now very worried indeed, but he said with as much courage as he could muster, ‘And could we know, sir, what might be required of us? Within your service?’
Chaos studied Diarmuit, and now it was the icy appraisal of a superior species studying an infinitely lower one. At length he said, ‘Within the Beyond Ireland, somewhere inside the Realm of the High Kings and the Amaranth sorcerers, has been born a creature who poses a great threat to me. He is the only creature who can hinder my march to absolute power, and he is the only one who can truly challenge my complete possession of both Irelands.’ He paused, and his eyes blurred, as if he were looking beyond the candlelit hall and the long banqueting table. He said, in a soft voice filled with hatred, ‘The Fisher Prince. Coelacanth’s spawn.’
There was a sudden silence and, despite the menacing guards, the Almhuinians looked at one another, because this was the first any of them had heard of Coelacanth having a son.
Chaos said, half to himself, ‘He should never have been born. If I had known in time, I would have murdered the creature before it drew breath.’ He paused, frowning, and then said, ‘But somehow he has clawed his way into the world. Somehow he was begotten on to an Amaranth Lady, and somehow he was gestated and given his warped and grotesque birth. It was Coelacanth’s final and greatest revenge. His son to enter the world …’ A red gleam shone from his eyes, and his fists curled into predator’s claws. At his side, Murder made an abrupt movement, and Chaos seemed to recall himself.
He said, ‘As yet I know little about the creature, other than that he was taken from the birth chamber to a place of concealment. That much my people have been able to discover.’ Anger flared in his eyes, but it was normal impatience now. ‘They have not been able to find out where he is hidden,’ said Chaos, and his eyes fell coldly upon Anarchy.
‘I have searched and I have sent out spells, sire,’ said Anarchy in a whining, it-isn’t-my-fault voice. ‘But there are so many ancient fortresses and so many isolated strongholds: Ireland is thick with them,’ he said sulkily.
‘You failed,’ said Chaos, coldly. ‘There will be one more chance for you, and if you fail that time, you will be fed to the WarMongers.’ Anarchy slumped sullenly in his chair, hunching his shoulders pettishly, although he sent a nervous glance to Chaos and hot, embarrassed colour stained his cheeks. Chaos turned back to the Almhuinians. ‘And since my people have been unsuccessful in finding the Prince,’ he said, ‘I must look for better methods and better servants.’
‘You must find spies,’ said Diarmuit, staring.
‘I must find spies.’ He studied Diarmuit with interest. ‘That is astute of you,’ he said, and stood up, seeming to tower over the great hall. At once the Rodent Capt
ains snapped to attention, thrusting the huddled Almhuinians forward. Murder was on his feet also, and Anarchy sprang up, his sulk forgotten.
The spies I send into the Beyond Ireland to find the Prince must not be recognisable as creatures from this Realm,’ said Chaos. ‘I could use you …’ Again there was the appraising look, as if the Almhuinians were insects to be dissected. ‘Oh yes, I can use you,’ he said. ‘But I cannot use you as you are now. Once beyond the Gateway you would be instantly recognised for Almhuinians, and you would be taken and imprisoned. Perhaps you would be executed. Any value you had as spies would be ended.’ A frown touched his eyes. ‘I do not make the mistake of underestimating the Beyond Ireland,’ he said. ‘The High King is very strong, and he has for advisers and sorcerers the Amaranths. And the Amaranths are the strongest and the finest sorcerers in all Ireland.’ A thin, secret amusement touched his lips suddenly. ‘But I am stronger,’ he said, and he was no longer courteously explaining a battle plan to underlings; he was suddenly the unchallenged Overlord of his Domain; the greatest necromancer throughout the entire Black Ireland.
‘And so I must perforce create a new species for the work.’ He looked very straightly at them. ‘As Almhuinians, you have in your veins the blood of spies. Yes?’
Diarmuit spoke up again, saying how they’d always been known for their skill in spying, in creeping into castles and strongholds and houses, listening at keyholes, peering through chinks in windows. ‘We have centuries of spying in our blood,’ he said, proudly. ‘It is our trade.’
‘Ah,’ said Chaos, as if this pleased him. ‘That is precisely what I understood. Generations of spies. Then I have a good foundation to work from.’
‘A — foundation?’ said Diarmuit, and everyone looked worried.
Chaos smiled at Diarmuit, but his eyes flickered over the female Almhuinians. ‘Necromantic race breeding,’ he said softly, and a shudder went through the Almhuinians. If Chaos saw it or felt it, he gave no indication. He said, ‘Any enchantment must be created on a firm foundation. A strong base that will stand up to assault. It is precisely the same principle as building a castle or even a cottage. If the foundation is not firm and suitable, then the castle or the cottage will become unsafe.’ He paused, appearing to arrange his thoughts.
‘In my Castle,’ he said, after a moment, ‘deep within the Castle of Infinity, dwells one of the most fearsome and one of the cleverest enchantments I have ever spun.’ He paused, and no one moved or spoke. ‘It took many years and much study, and many of my enemies have tried to steal it away from me.’
There was a pause, and the Almhuinians, guessing what was coming, shifted their feet uneasily.
‘But it remains in my possession,’ said Chaos, softy. ‘It roams my Castle whilst my people are sleeping, and it hears their secrets and it listens to their intrigues, and it spies out their plots. And then it brings them to me.’ He looked round the hall, and a ripple of disquiet went through the Almhuinians, because everyone knew that Chaos was referring to the Draoicht Spiaire, the hungering thing that swallowed and then regurgitated its victims’ thoughts and secrets and memories.
‘The Draoicht Spiaire is one of my most valuable enchantments,’ said Chaos. ‘But because of its extreme ferocity, it cannot be unchained during the normal hours of working and feasting and living.’ The frown twisted his face again. ‘It is the creature’s only weakness,’ he said. ‘Its bloodlust. Its hunger not only for the minds and the secrets and the intrigues of its victims, but for their bodies.
‘And so because of that, I cannot send the Draoicht Spiaire into the Beyond Ireland to spy for me as I would wish. It would assuredly find the Prince, but it would serve its own greeds as well. It would slaughter and mutilate as the need took it, and since it has hot the slyness to resist capture, it would become useless to me.
‘It needs — we will say — tempering,’ he said. ‘It needs a little Humanish or perhaps Rodent blood in with its essence. It needs to be blended with creatures who have the slyness to remain unseen and unheard, and the cunning to creep into castles and strongholds and listen unheard and pry unseen.’ The smile became very faintly malicious. ‘I believe I have quoted you more or less accurately, sir,’ he said to Diarmuit.
‘I — yes.’
The results of a blending of the Spiaire with — let us say, an Almhuinian — would be very interesting,’ said Chaos. The issue of such a mingling would be unparalleled for spying and cunning and stealth.’ He appeared to consider. ‘So far, I have blended the blood of Goblins with Giants, and the blood of Rodent creatures with Humans,’ said Chaos. ‘And there have been several other mutant strains that I have created. All immensely interesting. But for the purpose of discovering the Prince’s whereabouts, I shall create a new race,’ he said. ‘A race born of a necromantically controlled mating between Almhuinian females and the Draoicht Spiaire who lies muzzled and chained in my dungeons.’ He smiled at them. That is how I shall use you,’ he said. ‘I am going to feed you to the Spiaire. You are going to breed from it.
‘It may take some time,’ he said. ‘For there will be the conception and the birthing. There will be the growing up of the spawn. Also, there may need to be several attempts before the blending of the two bloods is balanced correctly.
‘But however long it takes,’ said Chaos, ‘Coelacanth’s son will still be waiting for me. If it takes ten years to produce the race I require, I shall wait ten years.
‘Several lifetimes would not be too long for me to wait to find the Prince and kill him. For only then can I realise my dream. Only then can I ride unchallenged into Ireland and take it for my own.’
*
And so they set out for the Castle of Infinity, the Almhuinians unsure of what they had talked themselves into, but telling one another that you could not lightly ignore the wishes of the Overlord of the whole Dark Realm. You could not ignore, either, the fact that the Rodent Armies, under the direction of two of the Captains, had surrounded the Almhuinians and brandished their swords, and had really made it rather awkward for the Almhuinians to refuse to go in procession to Chaos’s Castle of Infinity, there to await his bidding.
Prisoners, said several of them crossly. They were no more than Chaos’s prisoners.
But in the end, everyone had fallen into line with as good a grace as possible, and had told one another that anyway wasn’t this what they had intended?
They made their preparations for the journey swiftly, scurrying about the Castle to gather up things that might be needed: swords from the Castle armoury, spurs and chainmail cloaks and helmets.
Several times they felt the Lady’s presence with them, and so strong was it that they looked around, half expecting to see her standing in the shadows. They even began to hear her voice, raised in one of the frantic rages that they knew so well, and the sounds seemed so real, that they found themselves stopping their tasks and listening.
But there was only the scrabbling of something from the dungeons — a rat or a weasel probably. Although just for a few minutes it had sounded eerily like the scratching of Human nails against bricks.
The Almhuinians paid it no attention. The Castle had ever had its share of ghosts, and it had always been overrun with rats. A few more made little difference. In any case, they were leaving it all behind them.
They were leaving the Castle to the ghosts and the rats and weasels and to the dark memories …
And to the single living creature bricked up in the dungeons and left to die in the dark …
Chapter Forty-five
The people of Moher always knew when the Prince was hungering for new victims, and when he was planning one of his grisly revels. There was a feeling, a scent, an essence. A dark brooding that seeped through the thick stones of the Grail Castle, and was borne on the wind into the farmhouses and the spinners’ workshops and the butteries and the crofters’ cottages.
There was no longer any pleasure in farming the rather sparse land around the Castle, and there was no lon
ger the innocent delight in making your living out of the little cottage crafts: wool-spinning and weaving and wood-carving. There was no longer any tranquillity or any pride in living in the shadow of Ireland’s ancient, myth-drenched Fortress.
When twilight stole over the cliffs, and the great oceans that lashed the shores turned black and cold, the people of Moher double-locked their doors and huddled round their firesides. You did not, if you valued your life, venture out after dark any longer; you stayed by your own hearth, and you listened for the shuffling of the creature Quintus coming along the narrow street, oozing the poison of the sores inflicted by the Prince all those years ago. You heard him and you smelt him and you prayed to whatever god you held dearest that he would not sniff at your keyhole and peer through the chink in the curtain and demand your daughter or your wife or your sister for the Fisher Prince.
But that did not happen so very often and, in the main, Moher itself had remained safe. The Prince had not often fouled his own doorstep, it was said, with one of the uneasy laughs that were all the Moher farmers could allow themselves these days.
The tales spread with the years, of course, and there were many gallant young men who came to Moher; reckless, eager eyed adventurers who had pledged themselves to discover the Grail Castle of legend. There were many boastful boys who wanted the glory of having slain the Moher Monster. It hurt to hear the terrible expression; it hurt the people who had been proud of their small community, and who had enjoyed their work and taken love and care over it, whether it had been tilling the sparse land or farming the sheep, or simply spinning the rugs and the cloaks out of the fine, soft wool that the Moher sheep grew against the creeping sea mists. They had enjoyed their happy, uneventful lives, they had helped one another when times were hard, and they had enjoyed welcoming travellers and hearing the tales of their journeyings.
They welcomed travellers and pilgrims no longer, for travellers were grist to the Prince’s sinister appetites; they were caught by the prowling Quintus, they were smothered by the terrible Enchantment of Torach, and thrown into the Castle dungeons, there to await the Prince’s pleasure, or even, of latter years, the Fomoire’s. It had been a terrible day when the Prince had enslaved the Fomoire.
