The Sign of the Moonbow

by Andrew J Offutt

  “You will come at once, my trenfher?” She did not let go the man who stood so tall over her.

  “An he agrees, Balan and I will wait until all others are gone-lest our arms be needed here.”

  Riora met his eyes, nodded, and released him. She turned to Dithorba. Cormac saw that she knew the old man’s abilities; she stretched forth her hand to him. Seconds later, queen and mage vanished.

  “One wishes you had not bent Elatha’s sword, Cormac mac Art,” Balan said.

  He was a large man, far from unhandsome, strongly built and with uncommonly short hair. He was in perhaps the third decade of his life. Both bruises and the marks of hot irons darkened areas of his ribs and chest, and his beard was singed. The man seemed unconcerned by his nudity; his body was good.

  Cormac recognized his statement as a challenge, nor had he any desire on him for conflict with the commander of the royal bodyguard. “It’s truth ye speak, Balan. I should not have done. Will ye be straightening the blade, or shall I?”

  “I will,” Balan said dourly, and, using his foot and the table of torment on which lay Elatha’s bloody body, he did.

  The others stood by, nude or nearly, injured and weakened and some with scars on them they’d be bearing to the end of life. They were a pitiful group of tortured nobles and highplaced slaves, all accustomed to the good life around the throne, and Cormac mac Art was far from comfortable among them. That poor girl who was Captain Tathill’s sweetheart; could they withstand what had been done to them here? Could he bear the awful marks and scars she’d wear; could the very young woman stand the knowledge that he found her far less beautiful than she had been?

  “Who will bleed for those who have bled and will bleed in years to come?” Cormac mac Art muttered, stroking the hilt of his sword with his fingertips. “Elatha, a tool, is not vengeance enow.”

  Before any could ask what he’d said so quietly and grimly, Dithorba was back-and with him Queen Riora.

  “Cormac! Wulfhere and Thulsa are gone!”

  Cormac felt as if he’d taken a blow to the belly. Then worms seemed to crawl within him. He fingered the Moonbow on his chest. He was concerned about Wulfhere, aye, and if the man were dead blood would flow like a river. But… Thulsa Doom in the hands of others was worse, aye, and enough to put fright in strong heart. For if some fool were to remove the Chain of Danu from that vengeance-driven monster and end Cormac’s control over him…

  He remembered to ask about loyal little Erris, unmentioned by Dithorba. Riora answered in a dull voice, turning partway from all eyes; Erris was there, in the secret room that now had a gaping hole smashed through one wall; she was there still, though without head or breasts.

  “So we’re found out, and your enemies have my friend and my prisoner, and are my enemies,” Cormac snapped. “They will shortly come here, for they know too that Dithorba is free, and surely his powers are known to your cousin and the mage. Dithorba! Where lies a place of safety for us all?” He glanced about at the pitiful little group of people become his responsibility. “A safe place with food;” he added, for it was obvious the prisoners had been fed but whimsically.

  “Lughan… is dead,” the older woman said, rising from the naked body.

  Riora came to the Gael, who had spoken so swiftly and decisively while Balan and her advisers remained as if in shock. Cormac noted again how Balan watched, frowning, and he saw the man’s Danan-pale knuckles go even whiter around the short sword that had been Elatha’s.

  Balan has an eye for the queen, and mayhap there’s been aught between them, for sure and she’s a passionate woman, Cormac thought, and he’d not be forgetting.

  It was Torna who spoke, the only one among them who bore some fat. “The rear room of the Inn of Red Rory! Ye know it, Dithorba.”

  “O’course. But… if he be not loyal?”

  Balan shrugged, stepping forward with some dignity despite his nakedness. “Cite me our choices,” he said, and all were aware of the sword in the naked man’s hand.

  It was at Cormac Dithorba glanced; the Gael kept his eyes on Balan. Dithorba devised his meaning, and he too looked at the Guard commander for decision.

  “My lord Torna first,” Balan said, “as he must seek to make… arrangements, with Red Rory.”

  Dithorba took the hand of the queen’s chief adviser. They disappeared. The queen continued to press herself to Cormac, all heedless of his chainmail-and Balan. Cormac was most aware of that man, and of the others as well. Dithorba was soon back, alone; all seemed well at Red Rory’s.

  “Lady Queen? Will yourself come now?”

  “Take Balan,” she said, and turned only partway from Cormac, from whom she took not his hands.

  “See that Commander Balan is clothed and armed immediately. Balan: have thoughts of raising a force of men for us.”

  Balan had opened his mouth to speak; meeting his queen’s eyes and hearing her last words, he nodded and said naught. His gaze raked Cormac as he took Dithorba’s hand, and then they were gone. Cormac had not put his hands on the blue-gowned Riora, while hers had not left him.

  Again Dithorba returned; this time he took young Captain Tathill. Six females remained, and Riora and Cormac. Instantly Tathill was gone, she stretched herself long to seek Cormac’s lips with her own, all heedless of the watching girls and woman. He saw that the woman of middle age was aware of his discomfort. She gave him a small understanding smile across the top of her monarch’s head.

  When Dithorba returned once more, the discomfited mac Art wrapped powerful fingers around the queen’s azure-sleeved arm, and let her feel their strength. “Take the queen now, Dithorba.”

  “No!”

  Riora’s voice was loud and peremptory. Regaining her composure swiftly, she turned and coolly bade Dithorba take the others first. Her arm remained around the Gael, on the side of him away from Dithorba and her women. He wondered if she felt safe with him but had doubts about the Inn of Red Rory and was thus a wise ruler aware of her own value, or… if she wanted merely to continue possessively holding him she had called her champion.

  Embarrassed and looking as if in some pain, Cormac shot Dithorba a look. The old man would not meet his gaze; he was less capable of making demurrers to his lady queen than the tall, rangy man she presently clung to. And with her free and no emergency on them, Cormac dared not countermand her or attempt even to argue. A sensible reason for her tarrying here was too obvious.

  Dithorba took Tathill’s sweetheart, who was definitely in need of bed and blankets and whatever these people had of poultices and potions. Five remained; four were young and well-formed. The usurpers and Elatha the Whip had obviously been more than pleased to imprison the queen’s fetching handmaidens with her.

  As they were taken unnaturally elsewhere, Riora pressed to Cormac and her lips were warm and soft and partway open, seeking and moving on his mouth. Her hands found his, drew them inward to her breasts. In seconds the links of his mail were marking his knuckles, for she pushed herself in forcefully as if her goal were the crushing of her bosom. Her breathing heightening, Riora had no care for the presence and eyes of her girls; Cormac had, but he was soon made to forget.

  He responded helplessly to Riora’s insistent lips, her urgency… aye, and Cormac mac Art responded to the flattery, to the fact that this warm body crushed so urgently to his was that of a ruler of men… other men. His pulse began to be a drum in his temples.

  “Ah! Alone but not alone-I want you, Cormac mac Art! You must remain here, remain in Moytura with me!”

  Cormac sought words and sought not to be stiff. “Much… remains to be done, lady Queen, ere the crown is restored to yourself. The future is far from now and it’s injury ye do yourself by this behavior before your… intimates.”

  “Intimates! I have no intimates-my lessers!” She thrust herself back from him, though with both hands still on his arms. Her faintly tawny eyes flashed and seemed to flame. “You dare much, Cormac the Gael!”

  His face worked. Ho
w to tell any woman, much less a queen, that she put much discomfort on him, that he was embarrassed for her? And this was a dangerous woman as well, passionate and swift to change her mood. His melancholy troubled look was not mirrored in her features, which drew and writhed with emotion. Was it anger? Was she acting? He did not know. He could not know; he knew this woman not at all. Certainly she could be cruel as a cat: witness Elatha’s slow, agonized death.

  Though he’d never have expected such a feeling of himself, he was glad that he wore mail and that Dithorba had brought the gown for her to clothe her nakedness.

  He was still seeking words when he heard the noises.

  Far away behind her, chains rattled. That scrape and creak was of a great door’s being opened. Now he could detect the murmurous undertone of several voices, male. Aye, and those tiny clinks; he knew the sound of weighted scabbards sliding and thumping against mail under the impetus of the wearers’ steps.

  Cormac’s arms rose and his wrists turned so that his hands moved over and in close on both her forearms. Riora mistook his intent, apparently not having heard the coming of men, though he was not sure whether her eyes shone or glittered. He forced her hands from him.

  “Men come,” he whispered, looking past her into darkness, that part of the dungeon that was a corridor leading, to steps and the great door for sealing in prisoners. “They descend steps-hear ye, Queen Riora? Armed men approach, nor can they be other than minions of your cousin Cairluh. Get ye behind me. Ye have my dagger still?”

  She heard them then, and in a rustling whisper of skirts Riora hurried to the iron-toothed table whereon lay the bloody corpse of Elatha. Swiftly she returned, bearing Cormac’s knife. It was marked with blood. The sound of muttering men drew closer and Cormac could see on the wall well up ahead the dance of yellow light; torches borne by striding men.

  “Elatha!” a voice called, but the shouter was too far up the passage to be seen.

  Coming instantly after that call, Dithorba’s appearance a few feet away brought a jerking response from Cormac mac Art.

  “Give me the dagger, lady Queen Dithorba! Men come. Take her and hasten back for me, man!”

  Riora clung to both dagger and Cormac while Dithorba looked confused. The Gael’s hand leaped out to grasp her slim wrist. Riora gasped, and his dagger clinked to the floor. Immediately he flung the queen of Moytura to Dithorba, and Cormac was quietly talking the while.

  “Take her hence. Return ye to the chamber of her late punishment, Dithorba!”

  Snatching up the knife he’d taken long ago from a Saxon who had no further use for it, Cormac mac Art wheeled. Crouching, he ran with a cat-footed lack of sound into the depths of the dungeon. Behind him he heard a squeaking sound from a human throat and knew Riora’s protest had been continued into a room elsewhere in Moytura.

  Just as he was rushing at the doorway to that which had been Riora’s prison chamber, mac Art remembered her warning that the entry was guarded by some wizard-sent murder.

  Too late now to stop, he instead drove himself forward with a renewed burst of momentum. He sprang through the doorway and as far into the chamber as he could hurl himself. He was drawing steel even while he turned.

  There was no attack, no menace. Here was the great stone wheel on which Riora Feachtnachis had been bound; here lay his former foe, the untenanted suit of armour he had chopped to bits. Without, he heard the clamor of excited exclamations of consternation and rage; the Danan soldiery had found the broad area that was empty of all but the corpse of him who had presided over it.

  Within the chamber was no menace; perhaps the slayer at the door had died with the destruction of the Guardian, or the removal of the prisoner. Cormac’s dagger was in its sheath and now he scabbarded his sword. Stepping quickly back around the mill-wheel, he squatted. Mayhap someone would come and but glance in, then rush back to report the place empty; astonished by that fact, he might miss the man squatting in the shadows behind the wheel standing in its frame of stone and wood. If not, the Gael should be able to hold the chamber, provided he could reach the door and remain just within.

  “The queen!” he heard a yell, and after an instant of silence he heard the steady jingle and clink of mail on running men. A Danan weapon-man appeared at the entry.

  “Dung and darkness! She’s not here! Danu’s eyes-what’s this?”

  With another crowding close behind, the Danan in silver-winged helm and scalemail of dark iron entered. He squatted to examine the remains of the Guardian.

  “It-it be just armour, Din, empty armour! and hacked as if-”

  He broke off, having raised his head to find himself looking directly into the deepset eyes of Cormac mac Art. The Danan’s own glims grew wider when the man behind the torture device stood and was revealed to be impossibly dark of skin; by Danan standards, he was no less than a giant.

  “The queen is gone from here, traitor. It’s soon back on the throne she’ll be, and best ye begin to run, now.”

  Both Danan weapon-men were frozen in staring silence. Then, “You… you… what are you?”

  “Him who conquered Elatha and that toy there at your feet, a monstrosity set by Tarmur Roag to guard the queen.”

  The man in the doorway jerked his head back in the direction of the torturemaster’s grisly corpse. “You… you did that to Elatha?”

  Cormac hesitated only for a moment. “Aye, and it’s shame on me for letting the beast die so quickly. An ye’d seen the condition of the queen’s maidens, of her high advisers and Commander Balan-ye’s serve no longer bloody-handed men who conscioned such and who employed such a spider as Elatha.

  The two exchanged a look. “Uh-but you… never have I seen such skin. And-be all your hair… black? It is not possible! Who-what are ye?”

  “An elemental, called up by Tarmur Roag,” Cormac said, who had previously called himself Partha mac Othna, and Curoi mac Dairi, aye and even Kull, to an equally mazed Briton one night on a dark strand. “But even I could not hold with what he has caused to be done, and… I rebelled. It’s to no one I belong now, though I’m after pledging loyalty and aid to the queen-your queen.”

  The two men continued to hesitate, eyeing him. Believe him or no, it was plain that neither relished a passage at arms with this over-tall stranger with the dark skin and hair they knew to be impossible. Yet neither wished to lose face-or life, by means of sorcery?-by calling for the help of their companions. No challenge had been issued, either by the Danans or the “elemental”; all three swords remained sheathed, though two wan hands and one dark gripped their three several hilts.

  One of them decided to stave off the decision a bit longer. “Where-where is… Riora Feachtnachis?”

  “I call her Riora, little man. It is of your queen ye speak? Dithorba! Behind the wheel!”

  The robed Danan had appeared, well within the chamber and facing the weapon-men.

  “It’s Dithorba Loingsech! Swiftly Dungan-seize him!”

  Dithorba whirled; the man named Dungan shot out a hand to catch at his robe; Cormac swung around the millwheel. Dungan released Dithorba and reached for his sword. While Cormac’s right hand stretched toward the mage, his shield drove forward as if bow-shot. Dungan’s arm came up just in time to parry the unorthodox attack with his own buckler, shield against shield. There was a great crash and Dungan’s shield-arm slammed back into his face. At the same time, Cormac caught Dithorba’s hand. Ten fingers linked and pressed.

  Ere the man called Din could blink, his companion was down with blood on his mouth and both the big dark man with the scars and the queen’s mage had vanished from the chamber.

  It was a strange and motley group that gathered in the back room of the inn of highly trusted Red Rory. Motley too was the manner of their clothing, which included bedsheets. The innkeeper’s own wife was tending the hurts of the former prisoners, aided by the older woman. Balan was gone when Cormac arrived, sent by his queen to find loyal men and bring a report of the activities of the usurpers. />
  The Gael was not long in that crowded room ere he was certain the queen had bade her girls be silent. They stared, large-eyed, while he bent and wriggled his way out of his mailcoat. His assortment of small wounds complained. Ale there was; food, a well-fed man in an apron told them, was coming; there could not be much bustle, so as not to arouse the attention of the patrons in the inn’s main room. Riora was in a corner, talking quietly with Torna. While she paused to shoot Cormac a hot-eyed look, Dithorba hurried to join that conference.

  Cormac did not. He drank off a draught of ale, but glanced at Riora, and approached the aproned man. The Gael carried his pouch, slid from his weapon-belt.

  “Ye be Red Rory?”

  “Aye,” the fellow said though there was no sign of red in his cloud-pale hair and no ruddiness on his face. “And you are the hero of us all, he who-”

  “Aye, all ye’ve been told-none of which I could have come close to accomplishing without Dithorba Loingsech, true hero of Moytura. And see that ye remember, Red Rory: your queen is a strong and heroic woman! It’s a physician that’s needed here, man, and here’s what ye’ll be needing to do to avoid suspicions of other guests: go to the kitchen, cry out, emerge with your hand wrapped in much cloth, and send for one with knowledge of wounds and the potions for them.”

  Red Rory smiled. “A clever hero as well,” he said. “None of us had thought of such a ruse. Indeed, we all feared calling for skilled help, that someone might be suspicious of his coming.”

  “There are those here who have need of it. My name is Cormac; call me that, not hero. Need there is for the placing of Captain Tathill and his dairlin’ into a room of themselves, very alone. As for me-none others must see me.”

  Rory nodded. “That I know, having seen yourself now, Cormac!”

  “In minutes, Rory, I’ll be dropping for need of sleep. Food can wait until I wake; a little more ale I’d be appreciating. First this day I did much walking, and that on a hillside-seeking the Doorway to Moytura, ye see. Then another and I were forced to do death on the six set by the usurpers to watch over Dithorba. Next it was Elatha, and then a thing created or raised up by Tarmur Roag to hold the queen. It’s hours and hours I’ve been on these feet and at hard exertions, Red Rory, and I will be needed here. That must be later-I’m nigh onto collapsing. Ye’ve a brewing room below-can I reach it without being seen?”