The Dark Thorn

by Shawn Speakman

  The glen disappeared as azure light suddenly flared around him, blinding Bran to the world. The heady darkness of rich earth was replaced by the feel of cold fire licking his body, entering his soul, as if he had been plunged into the deepest crystal-clear lake and the water had infiltrated his very pores.

  Help me, he croaked. No one answered.

  As despair born of uncertainty heightened, what had been his fingers suddenly grasped fiery blue steel, its strength resilient as it gave him inner strength, sharing with him a modicum of hope.

  He gripped it tighter. It was solid and comforting.

  It felt right.

  It would always be there when he had need of it.

  Comforting darkness cradled him, and he slept.

  Standing next to Pope Clement XV, Cormac clutched a Bible over his red and white vestment as if it were a lifeline, fighting the anger threatening to overwhelm him.

  The problem was he didn’t know if he wanted to be saved.

  He wanted to laugh like a madman.

  “To celebrate this solemn time, we are united in Christ, who died and too rose from the dead,’’ the pontiff said, his voice echoing in the low-ceiled tomb. ‘‘Cardinal Donato Javier Ramirez has now passed over from death to life through the blessings that he received in his association with Christ.’’

  Cormac barely heard a word, the wheels of reprisal spinning. The closed coffin of Donato rested to the side of a hole chiseled into the rock far beneath St. Peter’s Basilica. Cormac could not take his eyes from it. The Bible favored by Donato lay on the casket, and baptismal water the Pope had sprinkled shined in the candlelight. The Vigilo were deep within Vatican Hill in a series of secret rooms few knew existed, below even the Sacred Grotto where more than ninety Popes and other distinguished dead lay interred. The funeral was the first Mass conducted in these depths during his Cardinalship and the proper forms were being witnessed.

  The Pope conducted the private requiem, beginning with the Introit and orchestrating each rite with the respect Donato deserved.

  Cormac hated that he couldn’t keep his oldest friend safe.

  After an opening reading by Cardinal Villenza, Clement cleared his throat to read from the New Testament.

  “‘Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God,’” Clement orated, his deep voice echoing, before looking at the members of the Vigilo. “In this letter to the Colossians, Paul reminds us all to renounce other worldly gods, maintain our focus on the work of the Lord, and deny evil that which takes our heart from Him. Cardinal Ramirez knew this better than anyone. He led a long life with the basic but fundamental insight of not only looking to Christ for salvation but protecting His flock from Annwn and those who would remove the focus of our faith.”

  Clement began the Sanctus then. The Vigilo joined him like they had the previous prayers, their voices raised together.

  The Cardinal Vicar welcomed the bit of solace the familiar chant gave.

  With the appeal to God finished, Clement turned to Cormac. The Cardinal Vicar stepped forward and opened his Bible. The pages turned at once to the Gospel of Mark, bookmarked with the thick silken red ribbon. Tracing each familiar verse, Cormac stopped at the appropriate one, his voice shaky but growing in steadfast strength.

  “The Passover Supper as told by Mark,” Cormac started. “Jesus offered His disciples bread and, after blessing it, He gave it to them, saying, ‘Take this, this is my body.’ The Lord then took a cup of wine, thanked God, and shared His cup with the others. ‘This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out of many. Truly I say to you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.’” Cormac closed the Bible. “Donato is released to the glory of our Lord. He is now exalted and safe from sin, just as he kept us safe for the entirety of his days. Donato was a tireless man, given vast energy by the Lord no matter how many decades passed; he used his boundless wisdom to enrich our lives in the Lord and see the doctrine Saint Peter entrusted the Vigilo carried out as it was decreed.”

  Cormac swallowed hard. “In his duty, the Cardinal Seer was the type of rock the Lord charged Saint Peter with being—growing the flock and keeping it safe.

  “Let us pray the Angus Dei.”

  When they were done with the Angus Dei, Cormac nodded to the pontiff.

  Clement turned to face each Cardinal.

  “Let us take Communion.”

  As the members of the Vigilo knelt to the cold stone, the Pope offered each a wheaten wafer and a lone sip of wine from a golden chalice as he repeated the tradition with his Cardinals. Cormac accepted the offering from Christ, but it was like wet ash in his mouth. The man responsible for the strength Cormac carried had been murdered, taken from the world by an insidious evil wishing the Church blind, the very role of Seer used against Donato through the Fionúir Mirror.

  He had died saving Cormac.

  God had a plan Donato had shared in the chamber before his death.

  It was not the only time he had reiterated that belief…Cormac had been twenty years old, a young priest in an ancient Church. Long gone from his native home of Ireland and finished helping his parents in the Middle East, Cormac had been studying and working in the Vatican for two years. The time was very different then, the ruin of the Second World War behind them, and Catholicism under Pope John XIII waning in popularity to a liberal cultural explosion in the world. But the Baroque and Renaissance beauty permeated St. Peter’s Basilica as it had for centuries, and the arms of Bernini’s colonnade permanently welcomed people into the bosom of the Catholic Church.

  The Lord could be seen in every piece of artwork around Cormac until he absorbed the beauty and humility like a sponge.

  Sitting on a bench in the nave of the Basilica and ignoring the wide-eyed tourists, Cormac read the Historia Brittonum for his studies. Sunshine from the dome fell over the massive bronze baldacchino while marble statues set into the walls watched from eternally frozen positions those who milled below.

  The spot was one of his favorite places to read and think, despite the noise.

  White robes swirled to a stop before Cormac.

  Lowering the book, he glanced up.

  “A word with you, young O’Connor,” an older man said in lilted Spanish, his robes those of a Bishop, his coal-like eyes staring sadly at Cormac. “I was told I might find you here.”

  “I am at your service, Bishop…?”

  “Bishop Donato Javier Ramirez, of the Vatican Archives,” he said as he handed Cormac a browned letter, already opened, from the folds of his robe.

  “A missive for me?” Cormac asked, taking the letter.

  “I am afraid so, my son.”

  Cormac frowned. Red inked Arabic markings voided multiple stamps on the envelope, his name and the Vatican address labeled in scrawled calligraphic script, the dry paper light as a feather in his hand. Cormac paused. He often received letters from his father and family in the Middle East, who worked hard to convert the Islamic peoples to Christianity, but what he held was not written in his father’s hand.

  One end was slit open, the actual letter cradled inside.

  Cormac removed and unfolded the letter—and upon reading it had a mixture of disbelief, heart-stopping sorrow, and rage sweep through him like the angriest of storms.

  The world blurred.

  His heart hammered.

  A paralyzed scream exploded in his head.

  The letter notified His Eminence Pope John XIII in two short paragraphs that fanatical Shiite purists in the city of Kut had murdered Cormac’s father, mother, and sister.

  The foundation of Cormac crumbled.

  “This cannot be…” he shook his head. “Cannot…”
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  The Bishop sat beside him and firmly gripped the young man’s hands, praying to the Lord for guidance even as the first spark of furious ire lit inside Cormac.

  “God has a plan, my son,” Bishop Ramirez finished. “Always.”

  It took two weeks for the bodies of his family to be returned. The mass conducted in Ireland was a closed-casket affair; the whole village witnessed the ceremony and burial of his family. Cormac stood alone, aloof, his childhood home foreign and lost forever. As their coffins were slowly lowered into the peaty soil, the crisp wind of the Isles chilled cheeks to the numbness his heart already carried. He let them go, vowing to keep the pain of their deaths rooted in his being.

  For years afterward, Donato mentored Cormac to view the Lord as the way to enact world change—that not all people different from the Church were evil but merely misguided.

  After four decades, he remembered that day as if it were yesterday.

  As he stood within the cold catacombs, he laid to rest one of his best friends and a second father, a man murdered by extreme hate just as his first had been.

  It was hard for Cormac to see the plan God had put into play.

  The final communion given, Clement stepped forward and baptized the coffin of the Cardinal Seer once more. He removed the Bible, left the cross in the center of the oak box, and stepped away. Cardinals Villenza and Tucci slowly lowered Donato into the chiseled hole until the coffin came to its final place of rest. For Cormac, it was hard to watch. Despite Donato carrying humility to the end, the Seer deserved a grand majestic Mass in the beautiful nave and halls above rather than a small funeral in the depths of the Basilica. But the role of Seer came with restrictions, and the world had to remain ignorant of Annwn and all of those who kept its existence secret.

  “Until we also come to the Lord’s doorstep,” Clement said, forming the cross over his heart. “The Catholic Church and the Vigilo say farewell to you, Cardinal Seer Donato Javier Ramirez.”

  The Vigilo also made the sign of the cross.

  Cormac helped the others move a plain stone slab featuring a simple rose carved in relief with opened petals, his name, and the dates of his birth, service, and death. As the casket disappeared from view, tears burned. The boom of the stone fitting snuggly into place echoed like the final strike of a clock tower bell that would never ring again.

  The Pope looked to Cormac.

  The Cardinal Vicar stepped to the head of the tomb. “Lord, grant him eternal rest, and may perpetual light shine upon him within your vaunted love. Amen.”

  The Vigilo repeated the final prayer. With a sad nod, Clement left the room, his robes a whisper. The Cardinals also left, some sharing words of solace with Cormac, others stopping to squeeze his hands in faith and sharing of grief.

  After they left, the catacomb room returned to cold silence.

  Cormac knelt at the foot of the tomb and wept.

  It was a long time before he left.

  With a bright lantern held high and midnight having come and gone, Cormac entered the depths of the Vatican once more, this time leading Swiss Guard Captain Finn Arne and his team of soldiers.

  After the burial of Donato, Cormac and the Vigilo had spent a somber dinner remembering the Cardinal Seer. Eventually discussion changed to Annwn and the evil festering there. The Fionúir Mirror had been covered by its shroud and would remain so without a Seer, the Church blind to Annwn—and Philip Plantagenet. Names of possible candidates for the role went long into the night. They settled on no one. It would be some time before they found a man sharing the convictions and doctrine of the Vigilo to take on the mantle of Cardinal Seer.

  Unable to sleep and the murder of Donato galvanizing him, Cormac enacted plans known to be heretical.

  “If I may say, your Lordship, you seem quite tired. Is all well?”

  “You may not say, Finn,” Cormac warned. “You have more pressing matters to worry about than my feelings.”

  Finn Arne shrugged beside Cormac, a dark tool of fortune as they descended into the depths of Italy. Dressed entirely in black lightweight clothing and a number of pistols, knives, and semi-automatic rifles belted to his person, the Captain of the Swiss Guard watched Cormac with a dead eye alongside one burning with confidence. Two dozen armed soldiers of the Swiss Guard followed, allowed to pass through the Sacred Grotto where pontiffs of ages past were buried and into the secret catacombs beneath, armed like their captain. According to Finn, the guards were well trained and discretionary for the right price, the hardest men to have walked the Holy See.

  “You have briefed your men of what they might encounter?”

  “I have,” Finn replied. “They are the best in the Guard. Several of them were in Seattle with me and have shared what they experienced with the others.”

  “Let’s hope the best is enough,” Cormac muttered. “And they all lack family?”

  “Not so much a cousin among them, your Grace.”

  “Good. Good. I want you to find him, Finn. No excuses. Observe Caer Llion if you have the chance but do not return without Ardall.”

  “With the trackers and firepower assembled at my back, it will be done.”

  “Do not underestimate McAllister again,” Cormac warned sternly. “He has almost as many tricks as the wizard.” He paused. “There are also those you should turn from, fey creatures who possess far more power than any of you. Do not enter into contest like you did with the Kreche. Stealth will serve you better until you find Ardall. The longer you stay hidden from those who exist in Annwn, the better chance you will have of completing what I ask of you.”

  “As you have said already.”

  “You are sure you can track the boy?”

  “With certainty. There are three men in this group who track.” Finn patted the pack on his hip. “The map you’ve supplied will also guide us. When we gain the Carn Cavall, we will ferret him out and bring him to Rome.”

  Pleased, Cormac nodded. He had spent hours in the chamber of the Seer, pouring over archives of information to help better direct the captain once he arrived in Annwn. After Cormac notified the pontiff of Donato’s murder, Clement had also bequeathed what knowledge he possessed as Pope. With that information and the journals of Donato to aid him, Cormac spent a sleepless night studying Annwn and, having witnessed the path McAllister and Ardall had taken after fleeing Dryvyd Wood, put Finn on the trail to gain what the Cardinal Vicar desired.

  Even from the grave, Donato would help bring death to his killers. Through Finn, Cormac would control the Heliwr and use him to hunt those responsible for the murder of the Cardinal Seer.

  “Kill the knight if you must,” Cormac commanded. “Richard McAllister has become a serious liability. He has deviated from his role and in so doing has corrupted his purpose the Vigilo and the Catholic Church entrusted him.”

  “If all is equal, McAllister will pose no threat,” Finn said, eagerness gleaming in his one good eye. “Not this time.”

  “Do not worry about Myrddin Emrys,” Cormac acknowledged. “Without his power he is merely an old man and he cannot aid the boy. Destroy McAllister first. The boy will be yours after that. Bring him straight here, to me. No one else need know of this excursion.”

  “It will be done, your Lordship,” Finn said. “I will not fail again.”

  Cormac leaned in closely. “Do this, and you will have whatever you wish.”

  Avarice twinkled in the depths of Finn’s good eye.

  The air grew chillier the deeper the men delved, every level producing older and older carved sarcophagi and tombs dating back centuries, their artwork eroded by age. After coming to a large four-door intersection, Cormac paused, bringing the group to a halt, emotion coursing through him. The right doorway led to the chamber Donato had once called home, the place of his death. Instead Cormac walked through the opposite doorway. Damper air rushed over his cheeks. He stole through the hundreds of yards of twisting corridors, leading many into a world only seen by a few, the sound of moving water gr
owing stronger with every step he took.

  Coming to a gaping black doorway, Cormac entered a new cavern. Wet minerals tinged the air. Four lanterns bolted into the low ceiling cast yellow light in a wide circle until snuffed by a cocoon of darkness, the illumination encapsulating a sandy bank where the movement of an underground branch of the Tiber River passed black as an oil slick. Near the shore, two rectangular stones erupted and were carved with hundreds of glowing white runes between which flashes of silver lightning arced within a shimmering void.

  Ennio Rossi, his dark eyes haggard but back straight, waited by the portal, his hands thrust into his pants pockets.

  Cormac gave the knight a cordial nod. “Captain Arne, Ennio Rossi here will see you and your men through to Annwn.”

  “Bearer of Prydwen,” Ennio greeted Finn. “Shield of Mother Church.”

  “Knight of the Seven, it is with great honor we meet,” Finn said, removing his eye from the portal. “My men are prepared for what is to come once through the portal. Expect our return soon.”

  Ennio deferred his gaze and stepped aside.

  “Kneel, Swiss Guard of the Vatican,” the Cardinal Vicar ordered.

  Cormac blessed the group of soldiers for a safe return, but his thoughts were of Ennio. The knight remained hesitant to break the canon handed to him by the Church and Myrddin Emrys. No one was meant to pass either direction—not fairy creature, not man. Only the Heliwr had the ability to do so, and even the Unfettered Knight did so at great peril of spilling the long-held secret of the Vigilo. But the death of Donato had reinforced the need to enter Annwn, and without the Heliwr, Ennio knew he had no other choice.

  When the prayer was finished, Cormac turned to Finn. “Remember what I told you,” Cormac said, mostly so Ennio would hear. “Stealth is your weapon, not might of arms. Spy on Caer Llion, watch for any army being built. Return as quickly as you can.”

  Finn nodded, his face set stone, and entered the swirling portal. The men under his command followed their captain as well, disappearing as if through a veil of falling water. None turned back; none deviated. After seconds, Finn and his group of heavily armed warriors had disappeared from Rome.