I looked up, drifted through the roof of the tent and then shot up, high into the air, way above the tops of the trees. The Mercian army’s camp was laid out below me like a chaotic patchwork quilt, shrinking and shrinking as I flew further into the sky. I could see Oswy’s army, as well. They were pitching camp a few miles north-west of Penda’s. Its extent confirmed my original estimate of its numbers; it was no more than one-third the size of the force opposing it. But that wasn’t my mission this afternoon; Penda wanted me to look further and make sure there was no second army, approaching by another route.
The most vulnerable side would be to the rear so I first headed south. At this altitude it took very little time to determine that there was no activity along Penda’s already-taken route that was in any way out of place. Farmers were farming, villagers were villaging, townspeople were gathering and dispersing, buying and exchanging goods. It was as peaceful as any kingdom got in these times. Penda was a harsh king but the ordinary people were able to live a peaceful existence, by and large.
Sweeping across to the west of the Pennine hills, again I saw no reason to be disturbed, and I paid particular attention to any evidence of cloaking; there was, simply, none. I then directed my spirit round to the north of Oswy’s camp, tracking back along his route to see if there was any sign of a reinforcing army. Again, nothing. That left only the north-east. I swept over towards Eboracum - and I saw it. They were making progress stealthily, were widely spread out in an attempt to avoid looking like an army and thus escape detection, but at this height - and with my Powers - I could see activity, both at a physical and emotional level.
Oswy had another army, coming in from the north-east. I swooped down to get an idea of its size. That wasn’t easy, as it was thinly-spread, so I regained altitude and considered. I reckoned it was smaller than the force we knew about - maybe three-quarters of its size. So that would mean that the Northumbrians were bringing, at most, seven thousand to the field. An impressive force but still only a third the size of Penda’s.
Only if the army holds firm.
The warning came as a shock, and jolted me out of any complacency I might have had. What if there was treachery in the Mercian camp? If any of the allies or tributaries deserted -
I noticed a strange formation in the sky. Two clouds - two stretched, straight clouds - had aligned themselves across each other. They made an image like a Christian cross. I paid it no attention - such things happened. It was a phenomenon brought on by different air currents at high altitudes.
I became aware of a danger much closer to myself. I felt a tremor in the Otherworld, as if a surge of Power had been released. There was something wrong about it - it had the feel of death. Almost before I could think of investigating and analysing it, I became aware that something was attacking my spirit umbilical cord. I raced back down its length, which I had allowed to extend rather too far. I had been careless - why was I careless again? I had received very strong warnings, including the attacks by the archers. Yes, the archers. But I had a more pressing issue to attend. If the cord was cut, my spirit would be separated from my body and would wander without hope of return. I had to stop whoever - or whatever - was attacking me. I rushed back, driven by fear and anger alike.
Rats! The attack was manifested as grey, shining rodents, gnawing at the cord. I roared into them and scattered them to infinity. They had tiny umbilical cords as well; I had no hesitation in snapping them and cutting them off from their life force. I had split half a dozen or so when the rest of the pack chittered off into what was becoming an enveloping darkness. Where the hell had that come from? It should be mid-afternoon; the light should still be strong.
Good evening, Ciaran.
It was the handsome young man I had encountered previously in France.
Would you like to see your mother? Of course you would. I’m sure she would love to see you, as well. I have her here, somewhere, I’m sure of it…
He reached two fingers and his thumb into his mouth and dug around between his teeth. He had reached the third row as I watched - distracted, and realised something was coming up behind me just before it arrived. I willed myself out of the way. A rock hurtled past. The young man laughed. We were in red-tinged darkness; no sign now of the Earth. This was somewhere in the Otherworld.
Here she is.
He held a tiny, white wriggling figure between a thumb and forefinger. It grew until it resolved itself into the shape of a woman. She was young, as I remembered, naked and covered with some kind of obscene slime - completely covered in it. Around her eyes were dark smudges.
You are lucky to see her. She is in great demand. Her skills are a byword in my realm. Perhaps you would like to try her out? I’m sure she would make a special effort for her son. He bent her like an artist’s doll into an obscene, receptive pose.
Without thinking, my fists formed into rocks and I smashed into the face of the young man and his leering mouth. He shattered into a million fragments.
Behind the shattering image I saw a small creature - much smaller than the image - with a shocked expression on his face. I didn’t recognise him but I was pretty sure he was of the same lineage as the enemies at the Ballaugh, and at Innisgarbh before. I hadn’t thought before acting and that had caught him by surprise; he had no idea of what I was going to do and couldn’t defend the image he had created before I destroyed it. He scuttled off with a contemptuous shriek; he was to learn better of that. He dived down a hole and my arm followed him, faster than he could run away. As quickly as he skittered down the hole, my arm extended, reaching round every corner and corkscrew he could invent. This was the Otherworld and I was far, far more experienced at it than he was. I caught him and grabbed his feet - or was it his tail? - and pulled him back to the surface. I held him, upside down, while he wriggled, desperate to break free. He was tiny against my gigantic spirit. He could not put up any sort of defence against the Power I possessed - had always possessed, from back in Innisgarbh, though it took me years to realise its full extent - and he was no match for it. And certainly not on his own.
Of course, he wasn’t alone.
A slimy, shiny grey tentacle slithered along the ground and wrapped itself around my ankles and was beginning to work its way up my legs. I could not pay attention to both at the same time - the tiny, rodent-like creature I was holding between my fingers and the tentacle creature, whatever it was. I conjured up a box made of adamantine granite and dropped him in it, sealed it with a lid that immediately fused into the rest of the rock, and bound it with seamless gold. A small herd of rats swarmed over it and sought to find a corner or an edge that they could get at and begin to gnaw but there was none. If I wasn’t able to deal with this second adversary quickly, the first one would suffocate and die. I wasn’t too bothered about that, of itself, but he might be able to give me some useful information but if it was not to be, it was not to be. He had tried to kill me; he lost.
The tentacles - more of them, now - tugged sharply at my ankles and pulled me over. They then began to drag me along the ground, back to whatever unpleasant maw their creator had in mind. I turned over almost lethargically and summoned my Big Blade. The tentacles were cut in less than a second. A screaming gibber pierced the reddening darkness. I stood up and looked into the dark that the tentacles were retreating into. I followed them; I had no fear about what I would find at the end. This was adolescent fantasy, the sort of thing that two Seers would do to each other during inebriated revels on a Friday night.
I felt another shudder - the Otherworld rocked at the impact of a surge in psychic energy. It was drawn from pain - from terminal pain someone was feeding Power with human sacrifice. It was so pure, unsullied and racked with pain that I knew, deep in my gut, what it was. Not just any human sacrifice; an unsullied virgin. Worse than that; a child. By all the gods, the horror was back. And it was powerful. More powerful than I? I did not want to think about that.
I felt an attack on my umbilicus again. The rats were
swarming; even more than before. They were trying to cut off my spirit. I had to protect myself; the tentacle-bearer would have to wait. If I was cut off from my body I would be lost forever, no use to anyone, ever again. I shot into the swarm and threw them in all directions, away from my cord. Those that persisted, I rewarded with shredding their cords and tossing them into the darkness. Their screams were altogether too faint to achieve what I wanted; to inject the fear of death into every rodent currently in the Otherworld. I caught a few and squeezed them. I relished it. I held them in place as I pulled their cords apart and showed them their doom. They were just animals, recruited from the camp and riverbanks, but they were intelligent enough to see that they were destroyed. I squeezed them while they shrieked in agony and despair. Their fear and desolation got to the rest of their kind. I caught another few, looked into their eyes, made sure they were in touch with their comrades and did it again. It was cruel, it was monstrous and I found myself enjoying it. So much, I was almost distracted from my objective.
The last few rats fled shrieking back to their own bodies as I approached, at the speed of light, sucking my umbilicus back into my spirit body. I had to get back to Penda and warn him; there was another army on the way - his suspicion was right; and they had demonic, Otherworld help.
As I approached my still-comatose form I could tell something was wrong. The light had changed; it was no longer afternoon - it was morning. I had been Away for hours, overnight!
Before I could get there, a tentacle reached my ankle and tripped me up. It tried to drag me back but I was in no mood for games. I didn’t try to follow it; I grabbed it, as if it was a thread in my gigantic hands, and pulled, hard. A figure came shooting out of the darkness. His face was a mask of surprise. Whether he had been told he would be triumphant, whether he had been told I wasn’t there, or if he had been given a misleading idea of my Power, I neither knew nor cared. The momentum of his flight carried him onto my fist - a huge thin, made of the hardest granite - and his head snapped back, breaking his neck in an instant. He was finished. He would trouble me no more - nor anyone else.
But Penda was still in danger. I turned again to get back to my body, and became aware of a deepening red in the darkness. I had to turn back to see what was happening.
There were three of them!
Of course there were three - there were always three. Always. How could I forget?
A blood-red tide was pouring across an endless plain towards me. It overwhelmed bushes. It smashed over trees. It infected the grass and the very land on which I stood and across which it poured. I could try to run but that would be pointless. This was it. This was the Blood red Game.
When you play the Blood Red Game you will lose!
A thousand voices called out, some gloating, some prematurely triumphant, some in fear.
When you play the Blood Red Game you will lose!
I could try to run, try to outflank it, try to use cunning and subterfuge to defeat it - but there was no hiding place from this red tide.
Even the mountains bounding the plain were infected, overwhelmed and brought to nothing. I felt the Otherworld shudder again as - dear gods, no! - another child was killed. I could sense what was happening to it - slit from throat to crotch and its still-beating heart cut out from its chest, offered in obscenity to a god who should have been long dead.
The blood-red tide gathered strength. It was towering over me.
When you play the Blood-Red Game you will lose!
The wave was about to crash onto me and obliterate me - there would be nothing left. Not my spirit, not my soul, nothing, no essence or suggestion of Ciaran McAidh, Ciaran the Damned, Prince Ciaran of Donegal. Everything I was, had been and could be would be obliterated, and there was nowhere I could run to get away from it.
So I didn’t run away. I formed myself into a massive, irrestible battering ram and threw myself at the blood-red tide. I would smash through it and confront, fight and defeat the entity controlling it. The tide could not resist, for I was irrestible, unstoppable, the Seer with the most Power of my generation - of the entire century. Nothing could stop me.
It didn’t stop me. It infected me. My fists of granite, adamantine and unstoppable, were infected through unseen veins of quartz, which gleamed whitely and then were turned red as the tide insidiously felt out and infected every possible line of weakness. It bled itself through the grains of the rock, between the very atoms that made them up. My fists began to crumble. They were dissolving. They would soon be nothing.
Turn now and run! Save yourself! You cannot win!
When you play the Blood Red Game you will lose!
Fly! You cannot defy this Power!
I would not. I would not fly. I would not retreat. I flew on, through the awful, stinging tide, as my fists were dissolved and the Blood Red Tide started to eat into the flesh of my arms. It was like acid - it was acid, parting my skin from the layers of flesh underneath.
And still I flew on, through an eternity of agonising burning, smoking ruination.
I smashed through the last membrane and saw the figure of the controller. It twitched away from me. I did not stop to try and identify it or to ask its name or motivation. I had a nail left on the little finger of my right hand. The Blood Red Tide had reduced it to a thin, pointed sliver. I put all my remaining strength into it and lunged at the controller’s neck. I did not bend, hesitate or deviate. The spike that was my fingernail sliced open his carotid artery. His own blood began to spout from him, and all of a sudden - the Blood Red Tide was gone. He turned and ran. I was going to follow him when a massive, solid wall of obsidian crashed down in front of me. I could see myself in its shiny blackness. It was not pretty. The flesh on my arms was gone, leaving just the bones. Even they had been eaten away at the wrists and hands. The hair on my head, and the skin of my scalp, had been stripped away. My face looked like a joint of meat with eyes. It was an illusion, I knew, but an illusion that made very clear that I was seriously injured. I needed help, and soon - or rest, at the very least. I had defeated the psychic elements supporting Oswy’s army. I focused on regeneration and saw my muscles, tendons and skin regrow. I could get back to Penda’s camp, take some time, rest and recover.
When I played the Blood Red Game - I won.
I WON!
Chapter Eighteen
The Apple of Discord
I may have won but I was in no mood for celebration. My umbilicus was hanging limp; even it had little vitality. Just enough to guide me back to my body. I was exhausted. I had won the Blood Red Game but Oswy’s second army was still on its way. Penda had to be told. I pulled myself back, hand over hand, for what seemed like an eternity itself. I was so tired. My body was starting to regenerate but it - I - needed time to recover. To rest and recuperate. And Penda needed time to prepare he had to be warned.
Eventually, after lifetimes of painstaking travel, I could see Penda’s tent again, and my umbilicus stretching and flexing down to my body. I heaved a heavy sigh of relief - but that relief did not last long. There was something wrong. Not with my body - that was where I had left it. But I could see that Wolf was standing up. He was in an aggressive stance; he was defending me from something. There was some kind of commotion going on. The sooner I got back, the better. I pulled myself the last few yards and absorbed myself back into my sleeping body. It felt quite good; whatever I had gone through in the Otherworld, my physical body had, in the end, not suffered. If I had died, it would have, too - but I hadn’t. My wounds were psychic, and would heal. I took a deep breath, shuddered, braced myself for the headache and awoke -
“Penda, we have been lured to our deaths. There is treachery; Oswy has another army -” I stopped short. I had awoken to mayhem. There was fighting in the king’s tent, in the very heart of his camp, where he should have been safest. I recognised faces but I could not make out the sides - until they became very apparent. Penda had no need of any warning from me of treachery; he was a few yards away, on his kn
ees. He looked at me as his head was held back by his hair. His neck was exposed and Cadfael of Gwynedd cut into it with his own Great Sword, cutting deep. Blood spurted from several severed vessels. He hauled the blade free and swung again, bringing all his strength to bear. This time, the head was cut free; the body pitched forward and spreadeagled on the ground before Penda’s council-chair. The flow of blood from his neck and torso eased; there was no more power to pump his great heart. It was a brutal death for a brutal man, but one met in battle. His warrior spirit would feast with his ancestors.
“He is down! The king is down!”
As for Cadfael, he would feast with no-one. As he held Penda’s head aloft in triumph, Mangan O’Sullivan, King of Powys, brought his Great Blade smashing down on his former ally’s shoulder, slicing through bone, flesh and vital arteries. Blood soared in a fountain from arteries and veins. Cadfael looked surprised as the momentum of the blow that killed him drove him to his knees, and to the floor, spreadeagled alongside Penda’s. His last gaze in life was over to the map table, where the treasure I had brought from Clovis the Frank had been stowed. His hand dropped his sword and twitched over towards the treasure and
Lockeran (Prince Ciaran the Damned Book 2) Page 19
