by Peter Green
Not only was he facing the most notorious stretch of ocean and potentially the most inclement weather at this time of the autumn equinox, but he was facing a fiercesome adversary racing him to the Northern Province to gather reinforcements! “This is a race to the death!” Amergin must use all his guile...He faced in to the sea breeze, raising his arms aloft, he called out to the sea god Manannan, “I am but a child of the ocean, a messenger sent by the Great Spirit. Guide us safely through your domain. By the grace of the Guardians of Light, I implore you!”
Amergin could feel the ionised energy of the infinite. He could feel the universal life force entering him, inspiring him and guiding him... he must have faith!
Hour by hour they sailed, watching the outer islands go by and disappearing over the Southern horizon. This was the point of no return! Open ocean now... the place where Maccuill had scratched his X on the parchment. They were already rolling and pitching in the long distance swell that had travelled a thousand miles in the unencumbered storm track of the Northern Ocean.
On a fair day, a mariner’s delight! Today was such a day... a following wind, a significantly large swell, rolling but not cresting. Steady progress being made...
Xomas rejoined Amergin. He rejoiced in the day, “A mighty sailing day my lord!” Amergin agreed with Xomas, glad to have the company of his faithful helmsman. He pointed to the east. A good five miles distance away, three vessels, fully rigged, were on course for the Cape of Wrath.
Xomas felt the pain endured by the Sea Druid Amergin. His own flagship manned by a crew of ghosts under the spell of Zendris. The flagship began to edge ahead. Magire and Zendris know these waters well. They know exactly where the deep water channels are, where the tide raced the swiftest and more importantly where the back eddies and whirlpools are to be encountered.
The skies were still clear, but the wind speed increased as they ventured further North. They were flying! A following wind and a tide in full flood and pushed on by large, rolling, long distance waves.
The watchman yelled out, “Land ahoy!” pointing to the north-east. Way in the distance the outline of a mighty headland. Huge sea cliffs, only the tops could be seen at this distance. Still a good half days sailing away. The Cape of Wrath already imposed itself on the horizon.
The flooding tide pushed them onwards. Amergin observed, “This equinox tide is the highest of the year Xomas! Our timing around the Cape of Wrath will be critical. This tide, with these winds and the size of the swell... when it meets the tide flowing west along the coast of the Northern Province... there will be mayhem! The whirlpool Coirin will be fed by these conditions!”
Xomas had been informed by MacCuill of the mountainous seas, rapid rip tides and the mariner’s worst nightmare, the whirlpool known as The Coirin, “Timing will be key my lord! We must tack and tack again, until the tide has slackened. Only then can we risk rounding the Cape of Wrath!”
“Get this wrong,”Amergin thought, “we will either be smashed by rogue waves in colliding tides or swallowed up by the ever hungry Whirlpool of Coirin, or swept away to the north in to the storm track of the Northern Ocean!”
The entire fleet must round the Cape of Wrath, a sea window of no more than two hours. Amergin would have to show the Milesian fleet the way in strange and dangerous seas…
Amergin and Xomas conferred. They discussed the state of the tide and sea, and the distance to the Cape of Wrath. These and many more questions needed to be considered before the strategy could be put in place. Amergin soon made his first decision, “We will tack to the north-west for ten nautical miles, and tack back south-east after that. Then we will reassess our position, check our drift and gauge the tide!”
Xomas agreed with this nautical strategy. He immediately organised for a message to be sent to the fleet. He asked the watchmen to let him know of any course change by the three other vessels. Soon enough they all tacked to the north-west. The race of death was on. Timing was all!
Thankfully, the weather was remaining kind to them. Amergin prayed to the sea god Manannan and the Great Spirit, asking for a safe passage around the cape. The swell was building! Long distance storm swell, of mast height now, rolled ominously through. Sometimes even the distant headland of the Cape of Wrath disappeared out of sight as they dropped in to trough after trough.The waves were not cresting out here in the deep ocean. This swell meeting the opposing tide flowing from the coast of the Northern Province would bring catastrophic sea conditions.
Ten nautical miles to the north-west they tacked back again. Amergin and Xomas estimated the time to slack tide, “We have been sailing with the flooding tide for a good three hours now my lord. One more hour and the tide should slacken!” Amergin agreed, “Bring us down wind my good helmsman!”
The following wind, the still flooding, but slowing tide, the fleet should be at the Cape of Wrath in one hour. The cry of the watchman, as if to confirm this, “The three vessels are sailing down wind too! They sail on a route that will take them closer to the Cape of Wrath!” thought Amergin out aloud, “Risky!” There again, Magire and Zendris know this ocean, but Senet and the Pirates of Grannh do not! The margins will be finer, the sea window reduced, the closer to the Cape of Wrath they sailed.
The Cape of Wrath was a magnificent spectacle, the highest cliffs in the entire land. Mountainous and steeply sloping at first, becoming precipitous and sheer for the last eight hundred feet. “An extraordinary place!” enthused Xomas. The headland created its own weather. Orographic rain clouds swept up the face, creating rain and mist on the windward, top slopes. The clouds built and accumulated over the three thousand foot summit, piling skywards before being scattered and dissipated in a streaming banner in the lee of the cape.
Now with the final stages of the flooding tide, the next hours sailing would be critical. The fleet seemed akin to jockeys riding temperamental stallions. They were on a wider ocean downward course. The three vessels of their enemy had tacked again, to go as close to the headland as they possibly dare.
Amergin assumed that here the affect of the tide flowing from the Northern Province would be minimised, giving a prolonged window of slack tide and more time to round the Cape of Wrath. Otherwise why risk such a route? Fine for those familiar with these waters, but the long distance ground swell, now over mast height created unimaginable hazards. The twin masted vessels sailed by Senet and the Pirates of Grannh had never sailed these waters before and were in real peril.
The ground swell hammered in to the headland in a slow motion white water fury. The three vessels had jockeyed in to a position where normally the effect of slackening tide would make for a quiet zone under the headland. But with the mast high intensely powerful swell, the waves were reflecting and rebounding, creating damaging interference patterns. The three vessels including Amergin’s flagship, under the control of Magire and the siren Zendris, were heading for the demented backwash. “Still an hour to go to absolute slack tide!” reckoned Amergin, “Xomas we must tack again and let our drift coincide with slack tide!”
Xomas barked instructions to his well trained seamen, “Bring her around one more time!” and they headed out in to open ocean... the entire fleet followed. They were all soon drifting in an ever reducing tidal race. Jockeying and holding their ground, tacking to slow their arrival at the Cape of Wrath. The Milesian fleet now five miles out to sea in deep water. The rolling ground swell picking them up, but gently putting them down, the fresh south-westerly pushing them on...
Towards the headland it was a different scenario! Still a while off slack tide, the tidal races from the south-west and the north collided! The deep ocean rolling swell powered in to a maelstrom of confused and clashing tides, compounded by the violent backwash, reflecting and rebounding off the base of the Cape of Wrath. “They have their timing all wrong!” Amergin feared for the wayward vessels, “Get out of there!” He willed them to safety. Enemies or not, he could not watch any vessel go to an awful watery grave and certainly not the crew of hi
s flagship!
The flagship tacked first, his comrades still under the spell of the siren Zendris. They had realised their mistake, they had misjudged the tides and the size of the swell. They sailed for their lives!
The twin masted, red sailed vessels followed suit, but their reaction was slower. Senet, the leader of the Pirates of Grannh did not know these waters. They underestimated the power of the tides and the huge volumes of bulging ocean at the time of the autumn equinox, driven on by the conveyer belt of intense Northern Ocean storms.
The Cape of Wrath was like no place they had ever encountered. They were at the edge of the death zone. Magire and Zendris had sensed that and reacted, they were tacking away just in time!
Senet responded too late! Their twin masted sister ship even later! Little did they know, that for the sake of one more tack, the tidal race would have slackened, the collision zone quietened! Such are the margins of the sea...
Amergin watched from a deep water channel as the two vessels careered in to the tidal maelstrom. Both vessels fully rigged, battling to escape the grip of the tide. They leaned in to the strengthening South Wester funnelling around the Cape of Wrath. An endless battering ensued. Waves from all directions caught and swamped them, pushing them towards the Whirlpool of Coirin. Rudderless, directionless, they were out of control!
Amergin and the fleet still waited for the tide and weather window. They drifted, they waited. They were in control... Even with the ground swell, double mast high now, they were in charge of their own destiny. Unlike the poor wretches on the two twin-masted, red sailed vessels which were being assaulted by incessant, chaotic waves. Senet had never known such aquatic hell! Unbeknownst to him, beyond the collision zone, where the tides began to merge and synchronise, lurked the deadly immensity of the infamous whirlpool known as the Coirin... feeding now at full intensity, at the full height of the combined flood tides. Soon, both red sailed vessels were being swept along, drawn by the unifying currents, straight towards the watery singularity of the Coirin. This singularity was a dark sea of brooding salinity, consuming everything, ejecting huge spinning eddies of turbulence in to the Northern Ocean...
Senet, the leader of the Pirates of Grannh, was resigned to his fate. His vessel swept on faster and faster in to a spinning, spiralling current of death. The Whirlpool of Coirin feeding, consuming, feasting... these few unfortunate mariners were joining the hundreds of lost adventurers taken to their watery doom over the millennia.
The oceanic vortex sucked everything in, Senet’s vessel drifting in to a spin, towards the violent eddying turbulence. Then! With a surge of tide they were shot in to the spiralling vortex. They were in the wall of the whirlpool as the next pulse of burgeoning tide plucked them out and shot them towards the northern horizon, like a comet escaping the sun’s gravity... they were free! Masts and rigging had been destroyed, sails shredded, they were destined to drift for days in the conveyer belt of storms in the Northern Ocean...
Senet, paralysed with shock, turned to see their twin masted, red sailed sister vessel disappear in to the Coirin. Sucked down, consumed, the whirlpool had been fed...
Amergin and the entire Milesian fleet watched on in horror. They had been so close to the same fate! Even now they were being drawn in by the Whirlpool of Coirin, its deadly gripping, watery tentacles pulling them in...
But the tides were slackening. A few more minutes and the turbulence had dissipated. The death zone of colliding tides quietening, just the rolling deep water swell remaining. This was the window of relative calm they had been waiting for. Xomas climbed to the lookout position, to get their bearing. He saw calm water in all directions, “We have a good sea and weather window now my lord!” The Sea Druid Amergin stood resolutely at the helm. Today he had earned his title as the Champion of Milesia, “What of the flagship Xomas?” The helmsman scanned the horizon, “They round the Cape of Wrath now!” Amergin was pleased to see that they had a good lead on Magire and Zendris.
The fleet pressed on, all were safely away from the dizzying, vertigo inducing sea cliffs of the Cape of Wrath. “We must keep that lead Xomas! The race is still on! We must get to Land’s End first. Before the Shamen of Land’s End have a chance to prepare for us!”
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE:
THE CYCLE OF XUSTRA
Far, far from the extremities of the Northern Province and its majestic headlands jutting out in to the limitless Northern Ocean, in the Mountains of Iveare, the dark forces were stirring. The army of lost souls had begun to march east from the high mountain fortress of Hawardden. The dark one MacCuacht watched from the impregnable battlements as his battalions crossed the draw bridge.
“We finally go to the Temple of Xhara in the Eastern Province!” he sneered to the captain of his elite bodyguard, a select group that was always at his side. Daxid replied with venom, “The High Priests of the Temple of Xhara will submit to the dark Sidhe... then nothing will stop us! Any who try will perish!” MacCuacht grimaced with his inimitable twisted smile, a contorted expression oozing bedevilment. He was pleased, he had chosen well! Daxid is a loyal servant of the dark Sidhe with a ruthless and uncompromising character. Woe betide any mere mortal that crossed him, his black arts, though not yet a match for MacCuacht’s dark skills, would deter the most zealous of adversaries.
The army of lost souls, more than a thousand strong, numbering one for every year of darkness that would fall over this land, should the High Priests of Xhara be taken and the High Priestess Sceine, the Princess of the Western Province, be slain…
MacCuacht revelled in the horror that his mission will bring to the Island of Destiny, the sending of the whole of this land, including the Western Province, in to a winter of a dark cycle. In particular he revelled in the notion of the demons and denizens of the dark Sidhe pouring forth from the portals, protected by his oh so pure sister Sceine, in the Western Province. He would avenge the pain, the indignity and the humiliation foisted upon him by the recently departed High King Antiem. All the provinces of the land would be his... his reign over the darkened realm shall commence and the dark Sidhe will endure for the next thousand years.
Xustra is an epoch of time discovered by the ancient ones. A cycle during which the planets Saturn and Jupiter are in the closest orbit to earth, and the earth is on a trajectory that takes it furthest away from the sun. The combined effects of the proximity of the gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, and the increased distance of the earth from the sun, bring the veil between the mortal realm and the spirit world precariously closer, a time when the veil is more vulnerable to intrusion and corruption by the dark forces. A time, the ancients identified, that will continue until the sun returns on its trajectory a thousand years on.
This equinox not only represents the annual cycle from light in to dark, as days shorten and the balance between light and dark tips, but in this astral year it signifies the commencement of the epoch of time named by the ancients as “Xustra.” The High Priests of Xhara and the Chapter of Mystics are acutely aware of the commencement of this epoch. Sceine, the Princess of the Western Province, became aware of the significance of the commencement of this epoch on her initiation as High Priestess of the Temple of Xhara.
The High Priests of Xhara and the priests of the Chapter of Mystics are sworn to secrecy during the annual ceremony at the Tree of Life in the Inner Sanctum at the Temple of Xhara. They all gather in secrecy at the equinox in a ritual ceremony, when the veil is at its closest and thinnest, permitting them to journey beyond the veil and commune with the Guardians of Light. This ceremony aims to maintain the equilibrium between the mortal realm and the spirit world.
MacCuacht knows that the High Priests of Xhara are gathering at the Temple now. Gonne, the High Priest of the Chapter of Mystics, Machiavellian orchestrator, who has turned to the dark Sidhe, has informed his dark master of this. The priests of the Chapter of Mystics are scattered to the four provinces of the Island of Destiny, very few are present at the Temple of Xhara. MacCuacht is a
ware of the imbalance in the equilibrium between the spirit world and the mortal realm at this time. He intends to catch the High Priests of Xhara offguard when they journey beyond the veil, and the balance will tip towards the dark Sidhe.
MacCuacht, in league with Gonne, delights in the prospect that the time of Xustra commences and the land will be condemned to a thousand years of rule by the dark Sidhe. That same twisted grimace of a smile spread across his countenance. He was pleased at his work. Nothing will stop him and his army of lost souls from reaching Xhara. He watched as the last of them crossed the draw bridge and marched in to the desolate high mountain wilderness of the Shadowlands that lay to the East of the mountain fortress of Hawardden. MacCuacht gestured to Daxid and the elite corps of bodyguards to follow him…As the light of the day dwindled they yomped in to the gloom of the Shadowlands. They would march through the nights and through the days to reach Xhara. The army of lost souls did not need sleep. They lived off the dark energy of the spirit world. MacCuacht observed contentedly, “An invincible army, on a terrible mission!” This pleased him even more...
The Shadowlands felt like a familiar universe to MacCuacht. This was how he imagined the future.
This was a dark, inhospitable, alien land devoid of radiant Light. Most of the portals of the Eastern Province were now infected. The further east in to the Shadowlands they marched, the less the radiant Light could penetrate. Not even the pure, radiant Light of the great portals of the Western Province could penetrate this nightmarish place. If MacCuacht could be happy in any place, then this was that place...
MacCuacht was satisfied in the knowledge that nothing could challenge his mission. Satisfied too, that the three raven haired Witches of Hawardden were on a mission to slay his beloved sister, the High Priestess of Xhara and the Princess of the Western Province, Sceine!
He was satisfied to the core of his demonic being that the so called “destined one “, the Sea Druid and champion of Milesia, Amergin, was nowhere to be found on this island. His spies have reported that he was driven out to sea in the direction of the Magine Islands. Word has it that his fleet had been consumed by the silver scaled monsters of the Magine Islands...
