The Return of the Arinn

by Frank P. Ryan

‘You know he is – just like you’re keeping an eye on Nan.’

  Mark grinned, stepping down and huddling up. He thought back to President Harvey’s tired face on the monitor: a shot of him sitting at the centre of an oval table, surrounded by the Chiefs of Staff . . .

  *

  ‘You still in there with us, Brett?’ the President had said.

  ‘Yes, Sir, I’m here,’ Brett replied.

  ‘Our scientists tell us that in the short time the Black Rose has been with us the mean atmospheric temperature over the Earth has risen two degrees.’

  ‘Sir – how does this fit with whatever else has been going on?’

  ‘I’m going to pass you on to FEMA’s scientific coordinator, Professor Jess Harding, who will explain.’

  An angular white-haired woman occupied the screen. ‘We don’t pretend to understand the object in question.’ The object in question, or the OIQ, was what they were now calling the Black Rose. ‘It resembles nothing we have ever seen previously, in terms of weaponry or anything else. However, there is plenty to suggest that it is threatening.’

  Brett said: ‘How so, Professor?’

  ‘It is absorbing energy.’

  ‘Can you be more specific?’

  ‘We believe that it is drawing its energy from the sun.’

  The crew around their makeshift table stared up into the comm screen with open astonishment.

  Brett said: ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘You must have considered its shape: plants soak up the energy of the sun to photosynthesise. Think of radio receivers – we use the same dish-like shapes. We believe that that’s why the OIQ looks like it does: it’s a vast receiver directed at the sun.’

  ‘But why? What’s it need all that energy for?’

  ‘This we don’t know. But we’ve been studying the sun and examining the arc of its surface as we turn to face it at midday, GMT. A large solar flare now occupies that vicinity; a huge flare that wasn’t there before the OIQ appeared.’

  ‘So, that’s what’s raising the atmospheric temperature?’

  ‘We think so.’

  ‘Mr President, if this is true—’

  ‘We’re gathering more evidence from various other scientific groups, both in the States and globally. The world’s climate is undergoing some serious upheavals.’

  ‘Shee-it,’ Brett breathed.

  ‘We are effectively at war with an unknown threat from an unknown and alien world. We have no choice here but to attack.’

  ‘This is London we are talking about, Sir.’

  The President sighed, his eyes scanning the ranks of the senior officers around the table. ‘Which means we have to contain the strike, as best we can. And that also means we must ask you to monitor the success or otherwise of the strike and report back to us.’

  Sitting in his freezing foxhole, Mark acknowledged that order with a clenched jaw. They were the sacrificial grunts.

  A Bargain with Death

  Alan’s onkkh was refusing to advance. Its nostrils were streaming puss from the acrid mist that eddied and flowed down the slopes from the welling source at the south gate. On contact with eyes and skin, it burned like acid. Alan looked downslope to his left, to where the ocean was on fire. He could hear faint screams from the sailors aboard the Leviathans as the giant battleships were annihilated by the Septemvile Firebane. He hoped that the remainder of the fleet, including the warships of the Shee, had been able to withdraw. The menace was every bit as bad on the landward approach, but here the screams of the dying were fully audible, though it was impossible to see the way ahead because of a dense ground-hugging mist. He switched to his oraculum, knowing that something worse than mechanical weaponry, the Septemvile Lightbane, confronted him.

  Attack by a Septemvile was deadly, but Alan didn’t care about his own risk. He asked himself what it implied.

  The Septemviles were said to be immortal. Was this really true or was it merely a reflection of the awe and terror they put into the hearts of their enemies?

  Alan was inclined to question it. He wondered if all it meant was that none had ever been beaten in battle. But those who had fought them in ages past had not been armed with the magical powers of oracula. Recently Earthbane had been defeated by Kate and Mo. So they were, potentially, defeatable. Alan had previously confronted the skull-faced Captain. He had fought this terrible being in the Battle of Ossierel. The Legun had appeared indomitable then, proving impervious to Alan’s Spear of Lug, even though it was infused with all of the power of his oraculum. It had also shrugged off the former Kyra, when in a final desperation she had amplified her own power with Alan’s First Power, to make her dying self into a weapon. But the Captain had been forced to flee the battlefield by the army of the dead Fir Bolg. Two Leguns: and both had been defeated, even though their defeat had required magic, exceptional knowledge and power.

  All this swept through Alan’s mind as he made ready to attack the enemy forces that confronted them at the south gate.

  Lifting his gaze above the mist-covered approaches, he took in the panorama of the slopes and the two hundred foot high walls that rose from them, and highest of all, the reinforced fortress that enclosed the south gate. Surely this Septemvile, Lightbane, would prove to be equally defeatable?

  Alan began to climb again when he heard a warning cry from Iyezzz, high in the air above him. The Garg prince had spotted something new up ahead. Alan called, mind-to-mind, to the Kyra and warned her. His senses were on high alert as he spurred his resistant mount upwards. The onkkh beneath him reared. Its clawed legs were slipping and sliding. It was beginning to topple over. Alan’s grip on the beast was slipping, his body toppling forwards, over its lowered shoulders. He leaned all of his weight back, hauling the beast back into its stride.

  He heard the Kyra roar ahead and to his right. He contacted her urgently, oraculum-to-oraculum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  The onkkh all around Alan were honking madly, reacting to the uncertain footing. His mount swayed violently from side to side, shifting from one clawed paw to another. At any moment it would throw him and flee the battlefield.

  What was he to do?

  Alan stared anew into the foggy scene ahead. He could make out nothing that would possibly help him command the attack. His nostrils retracted from the acrid stink of the blinding mist. He must surely be closer to the Legun, Lightbane. He had to challenge it – kill it.

  ‘Qwenqwo?’ he shouted.

  ‘By your right flank!’

  ‘Your advice – quickly?’

  ‘We are losing this war of attrition. We should throw caution to the wind. Charge forward immediately. At close quarters we might get to grips with it.’

  Alan spurred the onkkh ahead, the Spear of Lug pressed before him.

  There was a scream from Kate inside his head. She was calling out to him:

 

  Alan understood now why the Tyrant had played with them on their march to this confrontation: Ghork Mega
was itself the trap. Never had he anticipated such ferociously opposing power. His senses were overwhelmed with the violence of attack.

  Still, the blinded Shee continued to fight using their other senses and their acute sense of smell, to battle on. For a single extraordinary moment he was one with them, sharing the common heart and mind of the Kyra that spurred them onwards. Their vanguard was within a hundred yards of the south gate. They ripped with their claws and snapped with their fangs at the nets and spears that were hurled upon them, refusing to be defeated. But they were fighting overwhelming odds and Alan sensed thousands falling as the mist reached them, their flesh boiling, their bodies reduced to living skeletons before death.

  Damnation!

  The losses he sensed were enormous. He saw, through his oraculum, that as they died, their soul spirits rose into the air, wailing – pining for the unbroken circle. He tried to communicate with them, but their dying spirits could not see him, their eyes blank, opened onto darkness. Despair rose inside him. He didn’t know what to do to halt it.

  Alan reminded himself: Think of Mom and Dad.

  The need for action overtook him. ‘Qwenqwo – quickly – loft your runestone!’

  ‘To what purpose? There are no Fir Bolg on this battlefield. All lie dead and buried in the Vale of Tazan, a thousand leagues to the west of here.’

  ‘Qwenqwo, please, for my sake – do what I ask!’

  ‘The Powers preserve us!’

  Qwenqwo’s words struck Alan like a physical blow. They echoed in his mind, provoking an extraordinary, maybe outrageous, idea. He recalled a terrifying experience right at the beginning of their journey into this war-ravaged world. They had made their way to the summit of Slievenamon, the so-called magic mountain, where they had discovered an Ogham-inscribed stone bowl in the cumulus of stones on the summit. Here they did what had been suggested to them by Alan’s grandfather, Padraig: they had gathered the waters of the three rivers that flowed into the estuary of Waterford, the Suir, the Nore and the Barrow. The rivers were sacred to the Trídédana of Celtic legend – Mab, who together with her daughters, had cured Mo after she was spiritually damaged by the Legun known as the Captain; Bave, the goddess of the land and elements, whose ruby oraculum Alan still bore in his brow; and Mórígán . . . Mórígán, the dreaded goddess of death . . . death and the battlefield . . .

  The goddess of the battlefield!

  Alan recalled how, in a moment of terrifying threat on the summit of Slievenamon, he had been consumed by the impulse to incant the name of the goddess of death . . .

  Alan wheeled his onkkh around to discover the Kyra nearby. He shouted to her: ‘Ainé! Have the Shee form up in a new triple-pronged attack.’

  ‘It will be done.’

  Alan took a firm grip of his agitated mount. He turned his face skywards, where the air was being poisoned by Lightbane.

  He allowed the oraculum to turn inwards, invading his flesh to glow fiercely within the core of his being. With every last ounce of his strength, Alan hurled a name into the sky:

  ‘Mó-rí-gááán!’

  He sensed the name condense into a point of utter darkness, which became the focus of his own oraculum.

 

  Alan did not know if she could hear him, but he issued the words through his oraculum anyway.

  Then he saw the pinpoint of black expanding. He was one with the darkness as it proliferated and took form: a gigantic triangle of black consuming the light. He was one with the mountainous skull with its cavernous pits for eyes – one with the slow beating of the leviathan wings. He was one with the almighty raven that expanded until it circumscribed the heavens.

 

  Who was speaking?

  Pain exploded in Alan’s head. He was flung off the back of the rearing onkkh to crash against the rocky ground, the breath ripped from his lungs, his thoughts a confusion of rage and need.

  Before him, a great force assuming the form of a pillar manifested. Within the pillar he saw a cowled figure. The Tyrant! He probed it through his oraculum, discovering a spiritual being, a blazing storm of power, a face that was a matrix of dark and light.

 

 

  A new voice, more friendly, inside his head, one he recognised from what now seemed half a lifetime ago. The growling cadences of Granny Dew!

 

 

 

 

  Alan’s spirit was torn from the battlefield to wheel through caverns bedecked with stalactites and stalagmites as fine as hair, their crystals glittering like diamonds. He entered a circle of petrified trees. In the centre was a single stone figure, cowled and shawled. As he grew nearer, he saw that it was blue-black and flickering with light. He could smell something like incense, oils . . . Grimy taloned fingers grasped his shoulders and propelled him forward, into the maelstrom of power. The deep voice he recognised as Granny Dew’s growled another warning, but it was also a demand for veneration:

 

  Danger . . .

  A face manifested in the head of the stone figure: a skull that was only half emerged from terrifying shadow. Its teeth were bared in a dreadful smile . . .

  He was unable to resist the impulse to touch the skull. He brushed the ivory teeth, which felt colder than ice. There was an overwhelming instinct to withdraw, to run . . . but he fought against it.

  A new impulse compelled him to bring his brow against the rounded bone. He could smell herbs and oils. He could feel the area of contact condense to follow the triangular shape of the oraculum. He felt a new overwhelming compulsion to kiss the smiling mouth, the rictus of teeth. Lacking the strength to hold back any longer, he kissed the teeth that passed for its mouth, tasting earth, the cloyingly sweet taste of aromatic oils . . .

  A new shock of union rippled through him like an electrical discharge, thrilling to the very tips of his fingers and toes. A deep, animal part of him exulted. He was back on the battlefield, but he felt different. His heart, his spirit, felt indomitable.

  There was no time to think. He raised his right arm, the Spear of Lug blazing with the ruby glow of his oraculum. ‘Now let Death take force in me. Let Death become me. Let me kill them all – all that remains of the Tyrant’s Septemviles – every last one of them in this city.’

  Death moved through him like a hurricane, robbing him of thought and feeling. Blue-black lightning rose out of his arm into the Spear of Lug, then struck out from the blade in all directions. He could see the Septemvile, Lightbane, up close ahead – pallid as wax, with eyes that were all black – restored to its waxy glowing figure within the towering arch of the south gate. A sneer of triumph stretched its pallid lips. Focusing all of his rage, Alan hurled the Spear of Lug at the approaching Legun. The force of the throw threw him backwards through the air. But he had no care for his own safety. As he landed, he felt an expanding wave of darkness strike his target and heard the dying roar of the Legun. He curled up as the blast hit him; his hair and skin burned inside his armour, as if a furnace had suddenly opened its gates before him.

  He lay on the ground in a maelstrom of fire and lightning. He was losing consciousness, but he still registered the changes taking place around him and the Kyra’s roar: ‘Forward – through the broken gate!’

  Voices calling . . . Alien voices . . . Voices shrieking things he did not understand. He had visited this place of terror and pain before.

  Something was moving inside him; trying to break free. It made him wonder if he was dying. At the same time his consciousness was being probed by an external force: a vast impersonal matrix. There was an awaken
ing agony in which his limbs felt as if they were being torn from their sockets. The suffering deepened. It became so agonising he would have welcomed the liberation of death. It was simply unbearable, as if he were a mote of concentrated agony utterly lost.

  Then, a new voice . . . a kind voice. More voices . . . Among them a voice of love . . .

 

  Kate . . . Kate’s thoughts: he was hearing her thoughts enter his mind.

  A kiss on his feverish lips.

  The return of his sight began with a cooling aura of green as Kate healed him, beginning at his brow and then expanding her power down through his head and neck and out into his chest, his arms, then further into his abdomen, his legs, to the tips of his fingers, the tips of his toes.

  ‘He’s coming to.’

  ‘What ails him?’

  ‘He embraced Death.’

  ‘Why in the name of the Powers?’

  ‘To destroy the Septemviles.’

  ‘Are they gone?’

  ‘I think so – I very much hope so.’

  ‘But at what terrible cost?’

  That was his thought, too.

  He recognised the voices as Kate’s and Qwenqwo’s: ‘The Shee are pouring into the city through the breached gate.’

  ‘Qwenqwo,’ he whispered. ‘Help me up!’

  He could no longer make out Qwenqwo’s reply in the rising babble of a great many raised voices.

  For some reason he could not understand, he was gazing out onto an ocean. He was looking at gentle waves coming and going, and he had no idea what it meant. But it was a very restful vision. He tried to speak.

  Kate’s voice: ‘Hush now – rest! You have exhausted yourself. The aides are coming with healwell. In the meantime, let me help your body and spirit recover.’

  He tried to tell her he loved her. But his whisper was inaudible.

  ‘Hush now!’

  Mo’s Fate

 

  Mo heard the voice inside her mind. It came from the Torus. She knew that it was the voice of one of the True Believers: