Ciarán looked up. In the blackness glittered the constellations of Scorpio and Sagittarius, and between them blazed a reddish star. For Mars ruled the night.
*
Smoke from the burning tents wafted through the camp like an acrid fog. Ciarán glanced back at the main encampment, where William’s spearmen mustered in the broad field between the encampment and the fortress. From the battlements of Castle Brosse, swords drummed on shields, and the taunting howls grew to a fierce roar.
Ciarán grabbed a still-burning firebrand and followed Khalil, who held another. Dónall led the way to the forest’s edge, Isaac struggling to match his stride.
Ahead, the treetops at the forest’s edge reached out over the grassy field like the grasping claws of some wild beast, while the arcing limbs of the massive oaks formed shadowy corridors into the forest’s hidden depths. Dónall chose the nearest opening: a wide seam between two oaks whose trunks were covered in a web of twisting brambles. The wind whistled faintly through the gaps between the beeches and oaks, as if the forest itself were breathing.
Khalil stepped first into the seam. His torch illuminated a chaotic maze of tree trunks and brambles and a deep carpet of dead leaves. Toadstools and mushrooms of every shape and size sprouted from the huge gnarled roots, and overhead, moss hung like cobwebs from the branches, obscuring any glimpse of the night sky and making the place seem more cavern than woodland. From the forest’s depths, leaves rustled as something beat a hasty retreat from the torch’s glow.
Dónall glanced warily at Khalil and then followed him into the forest. Isaac went next. Behind him, Alais hesitated.
“It’ll be all right,” Ciarán said, although the feeling in the pit of his stomach suggested otherwise.
He took her hand and slipped sideways between the massive roots bracketing the seam. Breathing in the thick smell of damp earth and dead leaves, he was reminded of Derry’s grove, but there was something far more ancient and primeval in these woods.
Dónall and Khalil led them, stepping over moss-cloaked roots and wending their way ever deeper through the gnarled pathways between the trees. The crunch of leaves beneath their feet made it difficult to tell what else moved in the forest, though things certainly did. An owl’s low “Who? Who?” above them made Ciarán jump, putting his nerves further on edge. Looking for any sign of wolf or boar, he saw only the shadows that shifted and danced with every movement of his torch, though he felt as if hundreds of eyes peered out at him from the gloom. He tried to shake the feeling, telling himself it was just the way the flickering torchlight moved over the vine-covered trunks, but then a twig would snap or a branch would rustle in the darkness, and his anxious imagination was off and running again. Beside him, Alais gasped and squeezed his arm at every strange sound and whisper of the breeze that stirred the moss dripping from the branches in their path.
The deeper they traveled into the forest, the more Ciarán began to wonder whether they would ever find their way out. He could still hear the drumming of swords on shields on the battlements of Castle Brosse, but the sound grew fainter with every new turn through the maze of trees. Sometimes it all felt like too much—that he and his ragtag band of visionaries were laughably unequal to the task before them.
*
Soon the faint light of dawn began to penetrate the treetops. In the distance, a war horn sounded. Alais looked to Ciarán and Khalil for answers.
“The battle has begun,” Khalil told her.
Her eyes welled with tears. “Then William stayed to fight.”
Ahead of them, Dónall had stopped. “Look,” he said. Beyond the next line of trees, a curtain of mist obscured everything. “See how the mist doesn’t seep past those trees? It just hangs there, like a barrier. Nothing natural about it. If I’m not mistaken, that’s our gateway.”
“This?” Khalil asked skeptically. He passed his hand through the gray shroud. “It’s just a fog bank,” he said. Then he stepped through a gap between two trees.
“No!” Dónall shouted, grabbing Khalil by the arm and yanking him back. “Don’t be a fool!”
Khalil flashed an angry stare, but Dónall pointed to the base of the trees just beyond the misty verge. “Do you want to end up like them?”
Amid the mist, what looked at first like moss-covered tree stumps or fallen limbs now appeared as skeletons, hunched over and clinging desperately to the trees and massive roots. Green moss covered every inch of bone, and freckled orange toadstools sprouted between the fingers and toes. The skeletons lay everywhere beyond the misty border, their hollow eyes and gaping mouths a grim, silent testament to their fate.
Khalil recoiled, and Ciarán realized that it was the first time he had seen fear in the Persian’s eyes.
“Turpin said the gateways to the Otherworld can be disastrous for men who do not know the proper way to enter them,” Dónall said. “You might have wandered through the mist forever, lost until you met the same fate.”
Ciarán glanced at the moss-laden bones and shook his head. “What is the right way to enter?”
Dónall frowned and rubbed his beard. “Turpin never was too clear on that point. Thomas and I always figured we’d solve that problem when we came to it.”
“And now we have,” Khalil said, having regained his composure. “Do you have any bright ideas?”
“Not yet,” Dónall grumbled.
“What about the light?” Isaac said. “Is that not how you discovered the secrets of Maugis’ book, which set you on this path? It would seem that the light should show us the right path through the mist.” He held out his hand. “May I?”
Ciarán knew that Isaac was keen on Dónall’s crystal, for the old rabbi had mastered many of Maugis’ secrets during their voyage from Spain, perhaps through his knowledge of Jewish mysticism.
Dónall looked back at the mist, then handed Isaac the crystal. “Let’s hope you’re right.”
Isaac cupped the crystal in his hands, closing his eyes, then blew softly on it and murmured the Fae incantation: “Eoh.”
White light blazed from his palms. Holding the crystal, he extended his right hand into the barrier, and the mist parted before him, forming a clear path through the trees.
“Patrick’s beard!” Dónall whispered. “Lead the way, my friend.”
Isaac stepped onto the path, and as he moved his hand, the breach in the mist shifted slightly, though staying true toward a gap between the trees. The mist now formed a wall on each side of the path, faintly obscuring the moss-covered bones that blended in with the tree trunks and sprawling roots.
Isaac led the way, followed by Dónall and then Khalil, his right hand resting on the pommel of his sword, while Ciarán and Alais took up the rear. As they moved in single file, Alais glanced fearfully at the bones so near her feet.
As they walked, Ciarán glanced behind him. With each step, the pathway they had traversed the moment before filled in with mist and was gone. As Isaac moved, so did the path, winding through the ever-twisting maze of trees. In the beginning, the only sound on the path was the soft crunch of forest duff beneath their feet, but as they traveled deeper into the mist a new sound emerged. At first, it was a faint beating, and Ciarán wondered whether they had turned back toward the valley and were once more hearing the drumming from the walls of Castle Brosse. But this sound was different—sudden and without any discernible rhythm. As they ventured farther, the sound grew louder, like random muffled thunderclaps.
“I see a clearing up ahead,” Isaac said.
In the faint light that spilled through the trees, the gray mist faded to a reddish haze as it neared the ground. At the edge of the trees, the air grew bitterly cold. Then another low, booming explosion shook the ground. Isaac stopped dead in his tracks, and the light in his palm dimmed. Dónall reached for the sword sheathed beneath his habit. Khalil glanced back at Ciarán, and seeing the Persian’s look of alarm, Ciarán rushed forward to see what was happening. When he arrived at Dónall’s side, his jaw fell slack.
“Holy Mother of God,” he muttered, struggling to comprehend all that he beheld.
For at the forest’s edge, they gazed upon an alien land: a vast plain of reddish clay, smoothed by the wind and strewn with narrow fissures so that the ground appeared made of geometric plates. The rock features reminded him of the Giant’s Causeway back in Northern Ireland, only perfectly flat and somehow strangely grim. In the center of the plain stood a spire that seemed hewn of a single piece of reddish stone. Rising more than two hundred feet, it was carved with what appeared to be windows and balconies, suggesting it was the work of some craftsman instead of a natural phenomenon. But the strangeness of the landscape was not the cause of Ciarán’s alarm. For behind the spire billowed a broad column of smoke, forming a swirling vortex over the plain, and around the spire amassed a besieging army conjured from the darkest Enochian myth.
Hundreds of mail-clad Franks with shields and spears made up most of this army, but more than three score were gigantic warriors a full head taller than the Franks and thickly muscled, with skin the color of bleached bone. Their heads were shaven, although a few had beards, and all wore armor from some ancient time, with iron breastplates, and carried spears as long as a ship’s oar.
“Nephilim,” Isaac said softly. “As in my dream.”
“They must dwell now in the Otherworld,” Dónall said. “Gog and Magog.”
Ciarán gazed in horrified awe at the pale giants halfway across the plain—and at the massive beasts beside them. For amid the besieging army were five enormous wheeled carts, pulled by long-horned aurochs larger than any bull. The carts carried great iron beasts, barrel-shaped, with stout necks ending in dragonlike heads with gaping maws. Smoke rose from their mouths and nostrils, lacing the air with the stench of brimstone.
Suddenly, one of the beasts belched a stream of fire, accompanied by a thunderous roar. Ciarán covered his ears as the fiery vomit blasted against the side of the spire, shattering rock into fragments and leaving a smoking divot in its side. A myriad of similar wounds pocked the spire in other places.
“The tower,” Ciarán said. “They will destroy Rosefleur.”
Khalil stared hopelessly into the reddish plain. “They have already destroyed its defenders.”
Eighty yards ahead, the carcasses of white and gray chargers lay in heaps—so many dead, it seemed a small cavalry had met its end. And the riders, too, for near the horses sprawled crumpled bodies clad in silvery mail. Tendrils of smoke wafted up from the fallen riders, who numbered a score or more. In their midst, spears jutted from the bodies of hundreds of men, their round shields laying beside them. Other men, still living, traipsed through the field, stabbing any horse or silver-clad rider who showed signs of life.
“Is there anyone left?” Ciarán asked, beginning to comprehend what had happened.
Isaac was shaking as he peered through the crystal. “Many of those are not normal men,” he said grimly. “They are possessed. I can see the demon forms clinging to their flesh. Dozens more of them, ruhin, rule the sky, circling within those clouds. This is very bad, and whatever is happening behind that tower is worse. That smoke is red like fire, gathering in the sky above as if it is feeding the ruhin.”
“Those riders . . .” Alais pointed but twenty yards from where they stood, where one of the mail-clad figures sprawled dead on the red plain. Where its armor was not streaked with blood, it shone like polished silver. It was mail, not of chain but of scales, like silver feathers that fit snug against the rider’s lithe form. Beneath its plumed helm, the flesh of the rider’s female face was in a state of rapid decay. Particles wafted like dusty smoke from the rider’s skull, revealing the origins of the wispy strands rising from the field.
“Are they the Fae?” Alais managed to ask.
Dónall shook his head sadly. “They were.” He ran a hand nervously across his face. “It’s everything Remi and Thomas feared, everything the prophecy had warned of. We’re too late.”
“But the device?” Ciarán asked, alarmed by the despair in Dónall’s voice.
“You’ll never get inside that tower,” Khalil muttered.
Behind them, something moved in the forest. Khalil snapped alert and drew his curved blade.
A spear shaft appeared through the thick growth, and Khalil readied to meet this new threat. Brushing past the low-hanging tree branches, a figure emerged, and Ciarán wondered for an instant whether he gazed upon one of the Tuatha Dé Danann or, perhaps, a Valkyrie of Norse myth. For the slender figure, clad in a tight-fitting hauberk of scaled mail stained red with blood, had long copper tresses and a face as beautiful and pure as any he could imagine. As she opened her lips to speak, her eyes were wide and pleading.
“Who among you is the champion?”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
THIS IS OUR PURGATORY
Ciarán had not expected to hear those words. In the red plain beyond the trees, the iron beasts unleashed another booming roar, belching their fire at the walls of Rosefleur and filling the air with brimstone.
The warrior woman eyed them carefully. She held a hand over her abdomen, where blood seeped from a gash in her mail.
“You’re hurt,” Ciarán said.
“It is no matter now,” she said. “I must know: who among you is the champion?”
Dónall stepped forward, his despair from a moment ago having given way to awe. He gestured toward Alais, barely taking his eyes off the woman standing before them. “She is the one descended from Charlemagne.”
Ciarán turned to Alais and said, “You don’t have to do this.”
She looked into his eyes and nodded, then turned to the woman in mail. “It’s true.”
“If you are the champion,” the woman said, “then you must come with me.”
Alais nodded solemnly. “I’m going with her,” Ciarán insisted.
The woman flashed him a curious look. “The choice is yours, but we must hurry, for there is little time.”
“First,” Khalil demanded, having lowered his blade, “who are you? And where are we?”
“I am Una of the Fae,” she said, “and this is our purgatory, the realm where we have lived since before the Deluge, when we were forbidden to return to our true home.”
Isaac, who had been listening in rapt silence, found his voice at last and said, “What is happening?”
“Before dawn,” she said, “the Nephilim sailed up the river Lethe with their engines of war to lay siege to Rosefleur. They are led by a Nephilim prince of the Dragon’s line, who gathered his own army of Franks from your world. From beyond the forest wall, he led this second army through the misty gate and then poisoned them with the breath of the demons who rule the sky overhead. Human sorcerers aid the ultimate purpose of this attack. For the Dragon’s bonds are weakening, and they seek to draw him from his prison to this realm.”
Dónall’s expression turned grim. “What sorcerers?”
“Men willing to sacrifice their souls for answers to mysteries they were never meant to know. They have made a death pit behind the tower, and there they feed its magic with sacrifices of blood. That smoke,” Una said, tilting her spear toward the billowing column behind the spire, “rises from the underworld. Soon the Dragon shall come, and nothing here can stand against him.”
Ciarán felt queasy. “What about Enoch’s device?”
“That is why we must ride,” Una said. “To save it.”
Overhead, the smoke swirled over Rosefleur and threatened to blot out the faint sunlight that penetrated through the blackening sky. She glanced at Dónall and the leaf-shaped blade in his hand. “You can use the power?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Can you slow their sorcery?” she asked.
Resolve settled in Dónall’s brow. “Lucien was a brother of mine at Reims, and those sorcerers are his men. We’re due for a reckoning.”
Isaac placed a hand on Dónall’s arm. “You will not go alone, my friend.” Dónall smiled faintly. Then Isaac tu
rned to Khalil and said, “We could use your sword.”
Khalil drew a deep breath and nodded to Dónall. “I will follow your lead.” He looked to Una. “But how will we ever cross that plain?”
“Travel along the forest’s edge. The Nephilim and their men will not be watching you. And we can provide ample distraction.”
Una whistled a long, melodic note. From the forest came a loud rustling of foliage as two pale mares emerged from the trees. Both were well-muscled chargers, each with a saddle and bridle. Una mounted the first charger.
“You two,” she told Ciarán and Alais, “ride close, and do not stray.”
Ciarán swung up into the second mare’s saddle, then helped Alais up behind him. As soon as they had mounted, Una turned toward Dónall, Isaac, and Khalil.
“You fight today to save your world. Go now, and Godspeed.”
Dónall nodded grimly as Una raised her spear and kicked her charger’s flanks. Ciarán gave his horse rein, and the powerful animal bolted after her. He felt the exhilaration of the charge, only to realize a moment later that he had not given a parting glance to Dónall or the others. Yet by then it was too late, for Una was riding like the wind across the red plain, and an army of the apocalypse stood before them.
*
Five hundred yards across the plain loomed Rosefleur. Ciarán’s charger darted through the carnage of men and horses and the decaying bodies of Una’s fallen sisters, whose remains wafted up into the air like windblown dust. For an instant, he wondered what had happened to these women, for their wounds on the battlefield looked no different from those on the hundreds of Franks who also lay dead and bleeding on the plain, yet the flesh and bone of these warrior maidens was decomposing so fast that soon only their scaled silver armor would remain. He had no time to ponder this thought, however, for the mail-clad spearmen ahead had seen them, and more than a score of Franks rallied for an attack, raising their spears and painted shields and howling crazed battle cries.
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