Dark Lord of Geeragh

by Veronica Geoghegan Sweeney

  Lord Bress seemed to come to himself. He looked at Burdock and then gazed about at the courtiers and soldiers - then he looked at me. “What do you know of this?” he asked, taking my shoulder and moving away a little. No one, perhaps with the exception of Burdock, would have heard his words. “That creature knew you. It said, ‘Bring the boy here,’ and when I brought you to it, it seemed to know you. Who are you, that you have truck with such folk as that being? It was not human. Are you?”

  “Aye, My Lord,” I managed, amazed at such a suggestion. “I know nothing, My Lord.”

  “You know nothing, Fen who is known to the Fairie Folk.” The grim smile did not touch his eyes, it mocked about the corners of the broad mouth. “Tell me the truth - is this a trap?”

  “N…No, My Lord,” I stammered, “I d… don’t know any Fairie Folk. The Shee is the first I have ever met and I don’t think I like her. Him. It.”

  The face above me was very grim, the eyes very dark, the gaze penetrating. I felt them scraping my thoughts from my head - and then he straightened, and walked away a little. I had the feeling he wished to ask me more, but Burdock looked on, and so, at a distance, did a large section of his court.

  “Are you cold, boy?” It was Burdock speaking to me. The broad face with its bright green eyes held something of concern. It was only then I realised I was trembling. I shook my head. I was not cold, I did not know what was wrong with me, but, with hindsight, that day had just been too much: the hated and feared ogre of my childhood suddenly become a terrifying master; this place where nothing was what it seemed - and magic mirrors, silver deer, Fairies, dead pageboys…

  I started when Lord Bress turned back towards me abruptly.

  “You’re to come back to the castle with me,” he announced. “I want to see what Crorliss makes of you.”

  He walked to his horse. “where’s the Captain of the Guard? I’ll take half-a-dozen men with me. Stay here, all of you,” he added to his knights, “no need to waste the day’s outing.”

  I rode pillion behind one of the soldiers on that first journey to the castle of Geeragh. Lord Bress rode on ahead on his black stallion, and spoke to no one. The half-dozen men who rode with him were quiet for the most part, too. It was as if what had happened back there in the Forest of Lirr had cast a spell upon all who had been there.

  Lord Bress turned about in his saddle quite frequently, and once or twice, rode back through the men and made his stallion keep pace with the horse I was riding. He asked questions, nothing awkward, I was glad to find: how old was I, were my parents living… I answered him readily enough. There was only one odd question. “Have you ever been to Foyrr?” he asked.

  I stared at him. Did anyone go to Foyrr? We were at war with that country, were we not? “No, sir,” I murmured. “The borders are closed, are they not?”

  “Aye.” He scowled. “I forget how young you are - or how long the War has been fought.”

  He was riding beside me when the castle came into view. It was breathtaking, its pale walls reflected in the lake which surrounded it, and gardens and trees cultivated all around. The turrets seemed to rise impossibly high, and the whole thing was made of some light stone that seemed to glow - marble? Was this what marble walls were like?

  “That is High Geeragh?” I could not keep the amazement and delight out of my voice. “But… it’s beautiful! I never thought it -” I stopped abruptly, and stole a look at Lord Bress. Did he know the stories of his castle, what a dismal and terrifying place it was purported to be?

  Lord Bress’s gaze was on the castle before us. “That’s the Palace of the Twelve Princess - you saw them at the hunt. I wouldn’t want to live there. It looks like a table decoration made of marzipan, don’t you think?”

  I murmured, “I don’t know what marzipan is, sir.”

  Coming down a mountainside, we had plenty of time to study the castle of the Twelve Princesses; and climbing a slope on the other side of the valley I found I was able to keep it in sight for a long time, turning my head back to look at it, bathed in the afternoon light. There was a warmth and comfort about the place, despite its size. I found myself wishing it was High Geeragh.

  We rode down into another valley, and followed a stream that gradually broadened. A village, partly in ruins, deserted, clung to the water’s edge and there was a smell of low-tide and decay. Shutters slammed as we passed. But that was not the worst of it.

  I gazed in dismay at the bulk of the huge edifice that hung over the river’s edge. We were still some distance away, but I could make out the rooks, wheeling and cawing in the sky above it, and I could see how ancient were the stones that made up the walls, roofs, and the flying buttresses, covered with ivies that were almost the size of trees. It was as if the woods, growing up against the walls of the castle, had overtaken it, and the Dark Lord seemed not to care. There was no glass in the windows, as there had been in the bright and cheerful Palace of the Princesses: here, tall, narrow apertures in the heavy stone walls before me stared like hollow eyes. I shivered.

  But as we grew closer I began to notice that the place looked even more deserted than the sorry village we had just passed. No smoking chimneys - no chimneys at all. In sheer size it was probably bigger than the Palace of the Twelve Princesses - but there were no fortifications, no moat, no drawbridge…

  “My Lord?” I was emboldened to ask, “That’s not…?”

  “Geeragh? Don’t be a fool, boy! That was the Great Abbey - sight of more corruption than your young head could possibly comprehend.”

  We rode closer, and I could see clearly, now. The stones still stood, in all their majesty, but the ivy had claimed it within as well as without: the vine-covered roof was not a roof at all, but the tops of trees that grew within the great walls, grown from seeds dropped by the rooks that cried overhead.

  “Where are the people who lived here?” I asked, and was sorry I did. I braced myself for an answer I might not wish to hear.

  “Gone,” the Dark Lord stated, adding cryptically, “Gone as the stone walls should be gone. It was too large to obliterate entirely - but time will do the rest.”

  When I saw Geeragh, the real castle of Geeragh, I was not in any doubt. I was exhausted, my head nodding tiredly onto the back of the soldier in front of me, but when I saw the castle I was suddenly wide awake and fearful.

  Set on a promontory on the most north-eastern tip of Tieranor, it had a view of the sea on three sides. To the west, the sun was setting behind the far mountains that divided us from Arrach, and the sea in that direction was as flat and golden as a sheet of gold leaf. It was not a high promontory, but the castle made it taller: larger than the Great Abbey, built of black stones and crouched on its low cliff as if it defended the land from the sea itself, it appeared to have been there since the beginnings of time. It did not look as if hands had made it, it was at one with the landscape, and it was as dismal and lonely and windswept a landscape as one could find. And it was huge, it seemed to spread out in all directions, prescribed only by the sea, and with the grey haze of smoke or fog hanging over it like a malevolent spell.

  “That,” said the Dark Lord, with some pride in his voice, “is High Geeragh.”

  There was a moat, on the landward side, and a drawbridge. This was lowered when we were at some distance, the Dark Lord and the standard carried by one of the soldiers having been recognised by someone within those massive walls. We clattered across the drawbridge and as soon as we were over, it cranked and groaned its way upwards until it slammed with a hollow kind of finality.

  High Geeragh was not as confining as I had thought: it was a small city, true enough, but within these walls there was much open space and greenery and the people seemed cheerful enough. The fog, I realised, was the result of the hundreds of chimneys, spewing smoke into the air, for it was now the time of the evening meal. I caught the scents of bread, of onions, of meat cooking, and my stomach growled.

  Above us, the castle loomed. We rode across two small
bridges and along a road between neat fields and orchards, climbing upwards towards the massive structure at the pinnacle of the slope. It was not a welcoming sight. Everywhere, the black stonework: enormous battlements enclosed square towers, round towers, squat fat ones and cone-tipped eyries that rose like needles… Even if an army could breach the city walls, with battlements such as those before us, the castle of Geeragh itself looked impregnable, as much, it seemed to me, from within as without. Within its hundreds of windows, high and narrow, the glass panes seemed lifeless, matt black, as if bricked up from within. Though that might have been my imagination; some windows, at least, must had held glass, for they reflected the dying light of the sun and glowed blood red.

  Servants took the horses’ reins and led them away; only Lord Bress headed for the great main doors. “Here, boy!” A black scowl in my direction over his shoulder, and I hurried to catch up to him.

  Loud, so loud in my ears, the never-before heard sound of a trumpet fanfare; servants and courtiers were running from every direction, lining up to await their lord; eager and obsequious hands took Lord Bress’s cape and gloves and sword. Respectful greetings were murmured to him but he walked through all this, not speaking except to bark an occasional direction at me, “This way,” or “Keep up.”

  We climbed stairs, past guards that snapped to attention, past courtiers and servants who bowed or curtsied before this imposing man; along galleries and through great halls we passed - more guards, courtiers, servants. Already I had seen more people than I would see in a year back in Clonmara. My leg was hurting and I was very tired, but I dared not slacken my pace, and this tall dark man before me seemed to notice nothing but the way that lay before him, a goal that only he knew and only he cared about.

  It was the room that contained the Mirror. I was so exhausted by this time that I was barely noticing which way we were going: all corridors, all room seemed the same; black stone walls and polished black slate floors. My eyes were more and more upon the floors and Lord Bress’s long striding boots by this time, for it was hard to concentrate, hard to keep my legs moving at all…

  And then a door shut behind us, and I looked up.

  A turret room, not very large, only one window, with a view down the cliff and out to sea. The sunset lit the small room with a scarlet glow and I could just make out, in the gloom, one chair, a small carved desk, an uncomfortable-looking couch, a few faded tapestries on the walls…

  And an enormous, broken mirror.

  It leapt into life, throwing shards of brilliance in scarlet and gold, and I put up my hand to shield my eyes. But it was Lord Bress who was responsible: he stood against the wall, lighting a large sconce of three torches that filled the room with light and warmth and made the knife-blade edges of the shattered mirror dance as if it had a life of its own.

  I said, as only a tired foolish child would say, “But it’s broken.”

  “Aye,” the Dark Lord said and walked to stand before it. “The Great Mirror of Geeragh,” he murmured, his mouth twisted with some emotion, but it was not a smile.

  Lord Bress was a tall man, but the Great Mirror was twice as tall as he; its frame was of heavy gold, but it might have been of wood and covered with gold leaf. It was carved with strange, twisted, unfamiliar creatures, all of which looked extremely unpleasant. “It comes from a land beyond Iera, they say. It belonged to my father. A memento,” and there was that sardonic twist to his mouth once more, “of better days.”

  “Who broke it?”

  His eyes clouded over a little, I watched it happen, then glanced in the mirror; a kind of sadness in Lord Bress’s face was, in the mirror, distorted into a look of malevolent spite. “An old man,” he murmured. “A very foolish old man.”

  “Why don’t you have it fixed?” He turned and looked at me. “I mean, have a new piece of glass put in the -” That was as far as I was able to speak, for he had reached for my upper arm and yanked me in front of him. Now we were both standing, gazing at our distorted reflections.

  “This is not a piece of glass, you stupid boy. Don’t you know? You who know about the Shee and its ways must know of the Great Mirror.”

  I stared at our two figures, reflected and segmented, the edges of the shards throwing flame-coloured light back at us. “No sir, I do not.” I tried to stop myself trembling under those hard hands, but it was difficult.

  “We shall see.” and the voice of Lord Bress did not give me any feeling of confidence.

  He held me by the shoulders and asked, “What do you know of this boy?” in a louder voice.

  I thought he was speaking to me, trying to confuse me, and I did not know how to answer, did not understand what he required of me.

  And then I saw that this man, who must be mad, had been addressing the Mirror. And madder still, the Mirror was answering him.

  Whatever I had been expecting, it was not this. The reflection in the Mirror changed; a ripple seemed to run across its surface, as if someone had thrown a pebble into a pool, and suddenly, in place of the tall man in black and the small boy in green and russet, we were gazing, instead, at an elderly woman, drinking from an earthenware flagon, greedily yet surreptitiously.

  I stared. The Dark Lord stared. There was no sound in the room, no sound from the Mirror, though it was like looking through a cracked window at the old woman, turning to smile at…

  A young woman lying on a bed in what I can only describe as a lewd and embarrassing position. And then the old woman was reaching down and taking up…

  A disgusting baby covered with the fates-only-knew-what, blood, it looked like, and some paler stuff. It was limp, and the woman had difficulty holding it, for she still had the small flagon in her hand. She went to put it down, there on a dresser close by, the better to hold the still child - and she fumbled -

  She dropped the child. She dropped it!

  The woman on the bed sat up, she sat straight up on the bed and screamed, and held out her arms…

  The old woman was backing towards the door, her mouth, a working gash filled with yellowed stumps, mouthed silent words, silent cries. She bumped into the door and fled outside, into the night.

  The younger woman half-rolled, half-fell out of the bed onto the floor. She crawled across the packed earth and scattered rushes, and cradled the still form of the filthy child in her arms. But the child was not still. Its mouth opened, its small and ugly face puckered and became red and even more ugly. The woman looked pleased; she laughed, and laughed, and rocked the child in her arms. The child wriggled, it waved both puny, bloody fists, it flexed one leg, one foot…

  Only one leg. Only one foot.

  The reflection in the Great Mirror showed a tall dark man and a fair-haired boy. It had, I realised, shown them, and only them, for some time.

  “Who was that?” Lord Bress made it a statement rather than a question, for he already knew.

  “My mother.” why was it so difficult to speak?

  Mam, you told me I’d been born this way. You told me I’d been born this way…

  I should, given the circumstances of my coming to Geeragh, have been relieved that this early truth was all that the Mirror chose to tell of my past. But I was confused.

  “The Shee said your mirror never lied. Is that all that it wishes to say, or all that it can say?”

  Lord Bress was scowling at the Mirror. “It is broken, after all. It’s able to give me a guide, of sorts. It shows me half-truths.”

  “Half-truths can be half-lies.”

  I was not aware I had spoken aloud until he turned, very slowly, and looked down at me. “A philosopher at your young age,” he mocked. Then, “Come, I’ll take you to Crorliss.”

  We left the turret room, and he locked it after us. Then, another journey down interminable corridors. We stopped at the foot of a narrow, twisted staircase, curving upwards. Someone had lit the sconces on the walls, for the hour was past darkness, now; the flames lit an ancient suit of armour that stood in a threatening pose against the
wall opposite the staircase. Lord Bress climbed upwards easily, and I struggled along, cursing my tired leg and hoping he did not see my discomfort.

  There was a small, arched door of heavy wood at the top of the staircase. That was all. “Wait here,” the Dark Lord commanded, and he entered the room without knocking.

  This turret staircase was old, the woodwork was ancient and had shrunk, or perhaps warped with the damp sea breezes that flowed, over the centuries, through the open slits in the stone walls. The arched door shut - and opened again of its own volition. It was like an invitation to eavesdrop. So for the first - and certainly not the last - time during my stay in the castle of Geeragh, I moved closer to the door, and listened.

  “So,” began a voice higher pitched, and older than Lord Bress. “I thought you were taking rest and recreation in the Mara Woods. What brings you back early - not news of Foyrr?” There was some consternation in the voice.

  “No. I…we… went to the Forest of Lirr.”

  “Bress, you fool. After what happened last year -”

  “I know,” impatiently from the Dark Lord, “but the finest game is to be found there - I’ve known some good hunting years - many of them - before Loosestrife…” He stopped.

  “Trifle with magic and sooner or later there’ll be trouble.”

  “There was, of sorts.” And Lord Bress told of how the three knights had brought me to the woods, and how the Shee had been cornered, and how I had given the suggestion that wishes were to be traded for its freedom.

  Crorliss - so I judged him to be - said, sharply, “How does the son of a common sailor know such things?”

  Wryly, Lord Bress replied, “He says such knowledge is common amongst the people.”

  There was a pause, then Crorliss went on, “Perhaps he’s right. They have a rich oral tradition. And the Shee on Iera were much disposed to mingle with common folk. They preferred them to our race. Jealous, probably.”

  “Could this boy be a pawn? Perhaps the Shee have joined forces with the Foyrrians - what do you think?”