The Celtic Mirror

by Louis Phillippi

  On the chain about her neck, Morgan saw, she wore a gold pendant that matched his ring in design. She noted his glance, reached up slowly and enclosed the pendant with her hand. Just as deliberately she brought it to her lips and held it there, looking at Morgan with dark fire in her eyes.

  Explosively, his repressed passion for the Druidess resurfaced, and he took a stumbling step toward her. For an uncontrolled moment he intended insanely to take her on the spot, to claim her with the act, and, if necessary, to fight Ian and the entire Connach clan to keep her.

  She released the pendant before he could reach her, and he staggered in mid-stride, unable to take a step in another direction. He had done nothing, but he had been helplessly close to committing a suicidal act. He shook his head dumbly, like a battered prizefighter and began to stammer his apologies to her, but she stopped him with a word.

  “Morgan.” There was magic in the way she pronounced his name. Her eyes glittered strangely. “There is nothing to forgive.” That closed the subject, forever.

  “Come, my countryman. It is time to view the kingdom with me.” One spell was thus broken, but only one.

  They passed through marble halls and out into the sun. A moving walkway moved them into the center of Verulamium at a leisurely pace.

  .

  “Walking” with her, Morgan was no longer an obvious outsider. He aroused no special attention, except for the idly curious who wondered who was favored with the beautiful priestess’s company. Unadorned and nearly completely covered by her robes of office, she eclipsed any woman Morgan could ever remember seeing, and Verulamium, he decided, could well be famous for the unselfconscious grace and beauty of its female inhabitants. If that was racial degeneracy, Morgan was all for it.

  Together, they visited a hundred small shops, a museum and a large, open-air market. He learned the names of a thousand items and promptly forgot them, concentrating instead on the ones he dared not touch in public and might never dare touch in private. On impulse he bought an armful of flowers and presented them to her.

  The smile she gave him was slow and full of an intimacy he could not deny. The intimacy was one-sided, Morgan realized, with an answering, rueful smile. She was intimate with every detail of his past. He knew none of hers.

  “These are perfect, Kerry,” she said, accepting the blooms from him.

  Kerry! She called me Kerry! The wall kept going up then was tumbled down again with a word.

  A few moments later, she placed the flowers at the feet of a little bronze figure that stood in the middle of a park-like grove of oaks that stood in the center of the marketplace.

  “I have just made an offering to Aiofe in your name,” she explained quite seriously. “Now she will surely grant you her protection.” The caring apparent in her knitted brows touched him deeply. “Remember her name if the Dark Ones come.”

  “Dark Ones?” he asked, perplexed. “And who might they be?” He kept his tone light, but there was something troubling her that transmitted itself to him. He touched her chin with an index finger and tilted her head so that their eyes met.

  She wet her lips nervously. “I dare not speak of them further. Just remember Aiofe’s name. Call upon her if your own strength to resist evil fails you.”

  He did not know how to respond, but he knew with a part of his being that was awakening slowly that Aiofe’s powers to protect might be tested all too soon. Then he looked at the noisy, boisterous street and the clean skies above, then back at the desirable woman who stood before him, and the Dark Ones disappeared like smoke blown into the wind. He offered her an arm, and she took it.

  The streets were deep in shadow when they rode the walks toward home, and for Morgan at least, a difficult separation until the following morning. She had not allowed him any further overt intimacy but he felt that the barrier between them had been permanently pulled down. He also knew that he was certain to risk Connach’s anger. He no longer questioned the undiminished strength of his desire for Brigid and could by then imagine no other feelings toward her.

  They were carried into a deserted section of the city where shattered buildings had been transformed into hills of rubble. A backing wind tore the cowl again from Brigid’s face as she stepped from the slidewalk and stared thoughtfully at one of the mounds. Her loose hair writhed like black serpents in the freshening gusts. She fought coils that lashed at her eyes with an almost desperate savagery. Tears that might have been caused by the whipping of her hair started to wet her cheeks.

  “This was once a temple school,” she said, shivering with the unaccustomed chill of the invading breeze. Morgan was tempted to take her into his arms but prudently kept his distance. “I studied here for twelve years. Now it is nothing. A pile of broken walls.”

  Morgan could say nothing but silently kept pace with her as she picked her way through the scattered stones. A powerful yet unidentifiable sense of wrongness pervaded the atmosphere, and he wished he had come armed. Decorum be damned! He glanced down at his companion. The unfocused look in her eyes told Morgan that she was seeing the buildings as they had once been. She did not appear to share his soldier’s apprehension. She picked her lithe way through the rubble like a cat, and then paused, turning to him.

  She pointed to a medium-sized hill of granite blocks. “There was the Sanctuary of Nemasus. One of the columns is all that is left standing.” Her voice was choked with sadness.

  The column was the only outward sign that a structure had ever been erected on the site. The rest of the building had collapsed upon itself—all but that one scarred pillar guarding an obscured staircase to a subterranean portion of the destroyed school.

  “What lies below?” Morgan asked, scanning the grounds for the source of the urgent signals that screamed inside his head. He could see nothing that represented danger in the ordinary sense. He cursed his imagination and the strangely chilling wind.

  “Oh, just some storage rooms and the Guardian’s chambers.” Something of Morgan’s alertness seemed to have been transmitted to Brigid. Her eyes widened and she began to glance about with quick, bird-like movements. Then, before he could stop her, she darted into the debris and returned seconds later with a mangled scroll in her hands. “Kerry, here’s a book. I studied from one just like it when I attended school here.” She handed the tattered relic to him precisely at the moment that a discordant shrilling trumpeted over the city. The flat crump of explosives reached Morgan’s ears as the city screamed for help.

  “Quick! Down here!” Brigid clutched at his hands and pulled him down the choked staircase below the pillar.

  A double door barred their way into the sheltering depths, and Morgan cursed aloud.

  “Damn it! Let’s hope your Guardian didn’t lock up when he cut out.”

  “I’ve never known them to be locked.”

  “I hope the Guardian didn’t change his habits,” The explosions marched nearer, increasing in volume. He pulled on the doors. They did not move. He took a better grip on the handles and heaved until the tendons in his elbows and shoulders ached. There was no movement at all.

  “Wait here!”

  He left her at the doorway and ran back up into the grounds and freed part of a broken bench he had earlier seen wedged in the wreckage. The dust from disintegrating stone and mortar rose above the stricken city like a fog. Then Morgan spotted the source of the attack—vaguely blimp-shaped gray leviathans, which rode the perverse, wind that snatched at his hair and tunic. A single gaff-rigged sail powered each war craft, while a heavy fighting gondola and fixed staysail acted as a keel, enabling the craft to gibe back and forth across the strong air currents aloft. Round canisters fell by the hundreds on helpless Verulamium as Morgan watched.

  One fighting machine edged slowly toward the schoolyard. Morgan clenched his teeth together and wrenched one wooden slat free, staggering a pace backward with the sudden release. He half-dragged it across the uneven ground and down the steps. Brigid stopped her fruitless pulling on the jammed d
oors and stepped back, craning her neck to observe the rectangle of sky above them.

  “How did those abortions sail here?” Morgan shouted through the hellish thunder, unconsciously battering the metal doors in rhythm with the exploding missiles.

  “They ride the Hellwinds of Odinn!” She screamed back, across the scant meter that separated them.

  “Hellwinds, hunh?” He put his lips to her ear. “Why don’t you get your Aiofe to blow the bastards right back?”

  She ignored his derisive tone and answered with as much dignity as yelling permitted. “Odinn is the Father of their gods. Aiofe is a lesser spirit and cannot withstand his power.”

  Morgan shook his head in weary negation. “You are something else, lady.” He pointed at the doors. “Then how about getting her to huff and puff and blow these doors down?” He looked to see if he had offended her then was knocked to the ground by a nearby detonation that staggered the earth.

  “Christ! That was close!” Brigid’s face was next to his, dirt-smeared and wide-eyed. She looked unharmed, but Morgan understood too well that concussion injuries often did not show to casual examination. “Are you OK?” he asked during a momentary lull, filled with concern.

  She looked beyond him and began to laugh a low, hysterical sound that made Morgan take her face in both his hands.

  “Brigid! Snap out of it.” He kissed her on the eyelids. “Get hold of yourself!”

  She pushed him away, but continued to laugh. Tears cut muddy paths down her cheeks. “I’m all right, Kerry. Look behind you.”

  Morgan turned his face to the door. A gap two fingers wide showed a strip of utter blackness and emitted a cool, dry breath on his hot face. “I’ll be damned!” he whispered in awe. He scrambled to his feet, pulling Brigid upright after him. “That’s some lesser spirit you’ve got there.” He smiled a gritty smile at her. “Thanks, Aiofe! We needed that.”

  A second close blast threw them to the ground once again.

  “All right! All right!” Morgan yelled to the sky. “Thanks be to Odinn, then! How was I to know?” He dragged Brigid to her feet once more.

  “Hey, I don’t know who’s pulling the strings here, but we’ve got to get inside while they’re deciding.” He picked up the plank and inserted one end into the opening. Veins bulged on his forehead with the effort as he managed to lever the gap wide enough for her to slip inside. Ahead was a claustrophobic darkness; behind, daylight and falling death. What’s better, he asked himself, not wanting to alarm Brigid with the exposure of his indecision, shall we risk our lives up there, or shall we face a possible entombment below if the stairwell collapses during the attack? Only half seen in the gloom, Brigid looked at Morgan, as if questioning his hesitation. Then he remembered the no longer human rags left behind when an Islamic suicide bomber managed to walk into an officer’s club he had just left. He pushed Brigid unceremoniously through the tight opening then forced his greater bulk after, tearing his tunic on the jamb. He took one last look outside before pulling the doors shut. A bulbous shape obscured his view of the sky.

  Morgan could not guess why the airship crew chose to bomb the already destroyed school. Perhaps it was a purely gratuitous act. He did not have a chance to warn Brigid before the next blast knocked him from his feet, and he fell hard on his back, choking on the dust raised by the explosion. Heavy objects drummed against the outer doors. Only the faint glow of an eerie luminescence on the ceiling above showed him that he had not lost his sight. There was a faint scraping sound behind him and a low moan. Brigid!

  “My Lady?” He struggled to his knees and crawled blindly, painfully in the direction of the sounds. He encountered only the hard surface of a wall. He listened again, holding his breath, straining in the darkness for another audible clue. Blood pounded in his ears and the sliding noises of settling earth and stone, the soft pats of small objects dropping to the floor filled his hearing. Brigid made no sound at all.

  “Brigid? Brigid?” His call echoed in the crypt, mocking him. There was no other response. “Brigid!” he yelled. He thought he detected a trace of fear in the taunting reflection of his voice. He detected something else as well, a sobbing intake of breath too low to be called a moan, and too low to evoke an echo.

  He swung his head from right to left like a tracking animal searching for a spoor. He heard the low susurration again and padded on lacerated hands and knees in that direction. His reaching fingers encountered soft flesh.

  Her hand was limp when he took it in his—cold and sticky. The unmistakable coppery smell of blood met his nostrils. Morgan felt for her pulse. It was barely detectable and her breathing was ragged. Shock killed, and Morgan knew he had to act quickly or lose her. He squatted on his heels and tried to orient himself, remembering the brief glimpse he had had of the corridor in the half gloom. Brigid lay in a corner formed by the junction of the dead end of the corridor and the inside wall. He sensed that the outer doors should lie almost directly opposite her. He placed his back against the inner wall and duck-walked forward. His outstretched hands encountered the smooth door surface almost at once. He felt for the handle, found it, and pushed. He might as well have been pushing on the wall behind him. He tried again, feeling the pop of straining tendons, bruising his shoulders on the unyielding doors with no luck and considerable pain.

  “Damn it!” he growled. “You got us in here, Odinn! Now get us the hell out!” He lunged at the doors repeatedly until he dropped, exhausted and bleeding to the floor. Groaning, he turned one hundred and eighty degrees and crawled back to her. He stripped off his tunic and placed it over her, then he elevated her feet by placing the broken slat under her legs and propping it up with a piece of loose masonry he had encountered with a bare knee.

  “Not going to lose another one,” he panted. “No way. Not this time.” He fought his disorientation and forced himself to think calmly. Guardian’s chambers. Somewhere down here. He rose unsteadily to his feet, feeling dizzy in the featureless dark and began counting his steps as he inched away from the helpless Brigid, hugging the wall to his left. He located an open doorway ten paces beyond her and felt around the doorjamb for a light plate. It was where it should have been. He passed his palm over the card-sized rectangle but the room remained dark. Connach’s gods were evidently out to lunch whenever Morgan needed them. He dropped to his torn knees again and crawled without dignity into the room. He bumped headlong into a stack of scrolls that collapsed into roller bearings on a smooth floor. He had found the storeroom.

  Morgan carefully backed out of the storage area and chanced standing erect. Once more he felt his way forward. The passageway abruptly turned to his left. Twenty-five paces to the turn. He groped his way to a second doorway. A closed door barred one, but the handle turned easily under his hand and the door swung open, soundlessly. He reached around the jamb but had the same results with the light plate as he had in the storage room.

  Muttering under his breath, he stretched his hands out before him and stepped into the room. Almost at once, his booted feet encountered a soft rug. Good! He had located the apartment. In confirmation, Morgan’s shin connected solidly with a tabletop. If this table is still in one piece, he reasoned, then the rest of the Guardian’s quarters stands a good chance of being intact. Right then, he wanted a light more than anything else, and for the first time in his life, Morgan regretted not smoking. Then the blind man recalled something Pierson had shown him, and he attacked the two-room apartment with relentless purpose. It was not until he had emptied the second compartment in a chest found near the table that his fingers closed around a familiar, smooth globe.

  He sat in agitated silence for a moment, trying to remember the prayer Brigid had taught him and that he had memorized as a joke. It was no longer a joke. Come on! Then he had it.

  He recited haltingly, hoping that Belenus would listen to a California Methodist.

  “Bless o chief of generous chiefs,

  Myself and anyone anear me,

  Make thou me safe
this day.

  “Be thou a bright flame before me,

  Be thou a guiding star above me,

  Make thou a light in mine hand.”

  As the last word bounced from the chamber walls, a faint, blue light emanated from the center of the crystal sphere, and he nearly dropped the glowlight in disbelief. “A card-carrying Druid might’ve done better,” he said in awe to the globe, “but this ain’t bad for a beginner. No sir.” He took a deep breath. “But it would help, ah…Belenus, sir, if you could make the light a little stronger.” He almost dropped the globe again when the emanation intensified enough to throw the contents of the Spartan apartment into sharp relief, casting distinct shadows.

  “Thanks.”

  Heartened, Morgan tightened his grip on the globe and ran from the room, the god-light showing him the way to Brigid’s side. He did not stop to examine her except to determine that she still lived. He gathered her gently into his arms and carried her into the apartment. There, he deposited her on a sleeping couch and covered her more warmly with a tapestry he tore from its frame. Carrying the glowlight, he searched the ransacked quarters for the familiar stone bottle found in most homes in Verulamium. He found it without effort, dust-covered but unbroken, on a high cupboard together with a number of metal cups. He gathered his booty in the crook of one arm and carried it to the room in which the she lay, unconscious. In the blue light she looked ethereal, ghostly. There had been too many faces like that in Morgan’s life, and he bent to her, anxiously.

  Her chest rose and fell with a regular motion that reassured him. Then he placed his burden on the floor and set the glowlight in its hanger. He pulled the tapestry down to her knees and loosened the cinglium, then the clasps that fastened her robes. Morgan wondered if her gods would consider his actions a violation, a desecration if he searched her body for injuries. The evidence of a power he did not understand cast pale shadows on the wall behind the couch. Braced for Belenus’s judgment, he stripped her garments away and stared in silence at her body, which, in that light, looked like a sculpture carved by a master. His hands trembled slightly as he examined her marble perfection for the flaws that might take her from him. He located a shallow gash just under her right breast and a knot the size of a golf ball on her temple. He could find no other injuries and thanked all the gods he could remember for her survival.