Stephen Lawhead - The Realms Thereunder

Daniel took a step back and turned his face up to Nemain. “What is it?” he asked.

“It is a chronicle of our people-our history, our heroes, our knowledge, our genius . . .”

“It’s beautiful.”

Nemain gave a stiff-necked bow.

Freya turned back to the book and to Daniel, who was staring at the page showing the beast, his jaw slack and his face pale.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“How does it end?” Daniel asked.

Nemain didn’t respond. Freya turned some more pages, eventually coming to the end and the final spread. On the left-hand page-the next to last page-there were four pictures of a large group of people walking down a long slope, like a mountainside. As they descended, flames appeared. Each picture underneath showed the flames growing taller. There was no writing. The last page was a single image of a massive sheet of fire. Freya looked up at Nemain, whose smile now looked sad to her.

“How long have you been down here?” Daniel asked.

Freya, leafing back through more of the pages, felt her heart ache. It seemed so forlorn. She wished she knew the language the text was written in so that she could read it. She wanted to sit down with it and devour it-to get lost in its glorious pages for days, swim around in it. To find a work of such unimaginable beauty in a place like this, in the possession of a person like that . . .

“How should I be able to tell? Four years? Forty? Four hundred? Time isn’t important when you’re a prisoner.”

Freya held her breath. She tingled with the sudden feeling that she was on the brink of understanding something important and that to move or even breathe might take it from her. She turned her gaze from the book to Nemain and then to the wretched figures standing against the wall.

“And you haven’t had anything to read except this book?”

Daniel asked Nemain.

“Why would I want anything else?”

“I-” she started, but choked. “I think I have it.” She looked at the door and smiled. “I think I figured it out!”

“Think about it,” Freya said to Daniel and the knights. “The door-Nemain-why would you need them?”

“Need them?” asked Daniel. “What do you mean?”

“I mean-” Freya forced herself to slow down. “I mean, why do you have them both ? If you have the amazingly complex door that’s almost impossible to open, why do you also need Nemain?

If you have a clever Faerie with razor-sharp nails that can move as fast as a cheetah, why do you need an enormous iron door?”

“So?”

“I don’t think it is a door at all. I think that it’s a fake. Everything here is for show. Nemain isn’t a prisoner-prisoners don’t keep prisoners. And anyway, he can leave through the ceiling, the tunnels we came through, or, even more conveniently . . .”

Nemain’s expression did not change; he just stared calmly at Swi?gar’s spear point in front of him, raking long, bony nails against the ground. The large knight tightened his grip on the weapon.

Freya moved to the door. “Ecgbryt, hold the door right here,” she said, tapping one of the larger wheels, “and give it a good pull- don’t turn it, just give it a firm pull.”

Swi?gar grabbed the wheel and pulled against it with all of his weight. It was a long moment before anything happened, and then, slowly and soundlessly, the whole door started to move.

“Yes!” Freya punched the air. “Ha!”

Daniel’s jaw dropped and his eyes bulged as he saw the complex mechanism move away from the large bolts, which were revealed to be just metal stumps set into the stone. “It was never even locked.”

“It didn’t need to be, as long as everyone assumed it was. All these poor people-we thought they were prisoners, but they were just part of the illusion.”

The next thing that anyone knew, Nemain was flying through the air towards Daniel, launching himself like a cat. Daniel registered the movement out of the corner of his eye and by the time he started to turn his head, Nemain was already flying towards him, his clawlike hands slicing the air in front of him.

Everything seemed to slow for Daniel. He tried to duck out of the way but could not move fast enough. He felt the burning pain of four razor-sharp fingertips rake across his upper arm. He screamed and fell.

He landed on the wooden bookrack, knocking it over and sending the enormous painted book crashing to the floor next to Nemain.

The Faerie shrieked in horror and rushed over to the book.

“You! You creased it! ” Nemain picked it up, smoothed one of the bent pages, and shut it just as Swi?gar’s massive hand clutched him around the neck and shoulders. With a fierce and brutal violence, he slammed Nemain’s chest into the ground several times, the book bouncing in his hands. He was stopped by Freya’s shouting.

“No! Swi?gar, stop! Please, stop!”

Swi?gar relaxed his hold on the Faerie, who gave a whimpering moan and crawled back to the book. He drew it close to himself and curled up into a ball, whimpering slightly.

Daniel writhed in agony on the floor. He would have been crying out with pain, but he couldn’t catch his breath. His arm hurt terribly, and he was gripping it as hard as he could, not wanting to let go. He felt Ecgbryt’s hands pull his own away and tug at the cloth of his shirt, examining the wound.

Freya stood above them as Ecgbryt untied the strings on Daniel’s shirt and opened it slightly. He very carefully pulled Daniel’s arm out of its sleeve. There was starting to be a lot of blood. Ecgbryt took the water pouch from his belt and washed the arm. Daniel found his breath finally and let out a howl of pain.

Ecgbryt tried to sooth him with low words while giving his arm a few very careful prods.

“How is he?” Swi?gar asked.

“Not so bad for all of that. Do you hear, boy? You fought with one of the Tuatha De and will live to tell the tale. Not many can say as much.” He asked Freya to fetch a small tin from his pack that contained a poultice-a dry, mossy substance with healing properties. He laid that to one side and then pulled a small knife from his belt; he cut a long strip off the bottom of one of the oilcloth blankets, then he placed the mossy material over the gashes on Daniel’s arm and bandaged it up. “You know, ?lfred had his share of scars, and more besides. Did I ever tell you-?”

Ecgbryt’s voice dulled to a pleasant murmur as Freya turned her attention to Nemain.

“Don’t get too close to him,” Swi?gar said. His spear was in his hand, angled downwards once again at the creature. Freya stood just next to the knight and looked down at the Faerie who was sobbing quietly. She frowned at his pathetic shape, chewing her lower lip.

“I don’t think that you’re a bad person,” Freya said to Nemain. “You love the book because it’s beautiful, and it’s good to love beautiful things.”

She crouched down and spoke in a lower voice. “But Daniel is worth more to us than the most expensive book in the world, and you damaged him. I think you know where we’re going and what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to make sure that many more people are going to be safe from harm-we’re going to try to stop someone from destroying a lot more than just one beautiful book-we’re trying to save people. I don’t know why you would want to stop us from doing that.”

Nemain’s sobs stilled to a broken, jagged breathing, allowing them to hear Daniel’s gasps as Ecgbryt helped him sit up. Freya looked into the face of the Faerie for a little while longer and then stood. She walked over to the wall where the silent women were huddled. “You can leave now. The door’s open. Follow us, if you like.”