Andrew Offutt - The Sign of the Moonbow

Excitement was on mac Art, and he nodded several times. “Aye! Sinshi-please ye lovely dairlin’-be there more ale?”

I should not have said those words , Cormac mac Art thought, as she happily refilled his fine wooden mug-and took again his arm, pressing her hip close to his mail-skirted thigh. He glanced down at the shining top of that black-crowned little head. A sensuous little tawny maid, by Crom of Eirrin!

“What it is with such as this one ye describe,” Cathbadh said, “is that he need not wait for action of the gods upon his death, but can transfer his mind, himself , into another body of his own choosing. As he has doubtless done thousands of times.”

“That body he wears now,” Cormac said grimly, “has no face, only a skull without flesh.”

Cathbadh frowned. “I can hold him, Cormac of the Gaels. I can give ye the means to hold him. I shall. Flaen, no argument-I go with Cormac.”

“Ah, Protector of Daneira,” Cormac said with a grateful fervor he seldom expressed, “great wizardpriest of Danu… it’s better news and more hope ye offer me than I’ve known in a moon’s worth of days.”

Flaen was shaking his head. “Master-”

“All of us will be most pleased,” Cathbadh said, ignoring his apprentice, “to be able to do this for ye, Cormac of the Gaels-and for Consaer and Sinshi who were lost to us but for yourself.”

Chapter Five:

The Chains of Danu

Three strong young men of Daneira accompanied Cormac mac Art and Cathbadh through the woods of the Isle of Danu. Woodsmen’s axes the three carried in their belts, and stout staves in their hands, staves the length of their bodies. A staff carried the wizard-priest too, though his was for a different purpose, and tipped with a golden image combining a hunter’s bow with a three-quarter moon-cresent. His ceremonial robe of lacquered leaves Cathbadh had left behind, to walk the forest in stout leathern leggings and a sideslit tunic, green in hue, to the knees.

With them too went Sinshi daughter of Duach, for the elf-like young woman clung to mac Art as a grapevine clamps and entwines the tree it climbs in quest of the sunlight. Nor would she be left behind.

Along the way betwixt village and sea. Cormac posed the query he’d set aside till now, when there was time and no press of other business.

“It’s of Eirrin I am, a Gaelic descendant of Celts who have been long on this earth. Yet so too seem to be the people of Daneira out of Eirrin… but not latterly.”

“Aye.” Cathbadh walked energetically enow for an old man, after his collapse and his partaking of his wizard’s herbs and goat’s milk. “And it is no brag I make in saying that my people preceded the Celts onto the world as they did onto Eirrin’s shores-as Danu had her followers ere Behl of the sun was born.”

Cormac saw only trouble in discussing that matter, and avoided it. “Then… when came the Daneirans from Eirrin’? Who are ye; whence are ye, Cathbadh?”

“Why Cormac… can ye not see? We are of the goddess Danu.”

“Aye, of course I know ye follow the old goddess, but-” Cormac broke off. “Ye mean… of old? In Eirrin afore we-ye be of the Tuatha de Danann ?”

Cathbadh chuckled. “So I’ve said. The People of Danu. So ye’ve observed.”

“Cathbadh! The Tuatha de Danann were rulers of Eirrin when the Celts came, the sons of Mil… there have been no People of Danu in Eirrin for nigh a thousand of years!”

“That is partially true, Cormac. In truth, the time has been less than ten hundreds of years, and it’s on Eirrin ye mean we’ve not been, not in. Aye, we of this isle are Tuatha de Danann. And this walking requires my breath, as will the ford we must presently make.

Cormac saw only trouble in discussing that matter, and avoid edit. “Then… when came the Daneirans from Eirrin? Who are ye; whence are ye, Cathbadh?”

Cormac walked in silence, marveling.

Revelation after revelation! These strange small people were those who anciently ruled Eirrin-who were Eirrin, Eiru- and were supplanted and conquered by my people! Some think them only legend-and none has any idea that they fled here, to this tiny isle that has been an unmenacing paradise to them. The Tuatha de Danann-the People of Dana! Here, surviving!

And too there was the other astonishment: the man walking beside him was of age eighty years and seven. The de Danann were remembered as a people of great powers of magic- and so they have proven! Or at least this one has, striding-well, walking strongly and without footgear-through the forest, at an age well past that when most lie in their graves. Blood of the gods, what a people!

A certain morose longing stole into the Gael’s mind then, with the wistful thought: Would that their ruler were a woman!

Still… an I can control Thulsa Doom as Cathbadh said, we need not be constantly fearful of his wresting free of our bonds and destroying us with his evil. It’s the rest of my life I could spend at the task of finding a woman who rules in this world of men…

In silence then the six made their way to their goal, and they reached the waterfall and thus the two ships anchored below, in the rockbound inlet.

Seeing the approach of Cormac and strangers who knew naught of him, Thulsa Doom instantly took: the form of a slim, elfin-faced young woman-Sinshi! With a shriek, Sinshi herself drew away from her rescuer for the first time. What she saw with her own eyes was her double, writhing and moaning at the mast with two terrible swords of steel standing forth from her slim body. And there nearby was the redbearded giant, even taller than Cormac whose boon companion he was-this same Cormac was leader among the foul monsters who so tortured a girl just like herself!

“Cathbadh,” Cormac said quietly, with only a glance at Sinshi who had both let’ go his arm and shrunk away among the three men of her own people. “It’s but one woman there is aboard my ship, she there in the flaming hair and tall black boots. Samaire. That at the mast is the ancient and unslayable mage I told ye of-Thulsa Doom. In past he has approached me in the likeness of Samaire, and in the form too of the giant ye see. As him, my weapon-companion for years and years, my blood-brother, in truth, the monster attacked me so that I was forced to defend-and slay. It was then he struck grue and dismay in me, for he vanished ere I knew what and who he was. He dies not. Now he seeks to, gain sympathy from you, for-”

Cathbadh was nodding. “Aye,” he said, and spoke loudly enough for Sinshi and the escort to hear. “For it’s no double Sinshi daughter of Duach has; I know every person of the Daneirans. And that be your precise image, Sinshi, see-even to the stain at the knee of your leggings!”

They six stood staring at that image of sorcerous horror, and she sobbed out a piteous moan.

“Danu be my light,” Sinshi herself said, in a little gasp of ritual. “But she looks so-”

“He,” Cathbadh corrected.

“It,” Cormac said through tightpressed teeth.

“Cormac!” That from Wulfhere, for the six had emerged at water level and could hear and be heard, and now seen by other than the undying wizard.

Then Samaire saw, and she too cried out, and Brian, while Bas smiled and lifted a hand in greeting and benison all at once. Sinshi had returned to Cormac’s side as he made his way to the ship. They must wade the last few yards, and Cathbadh unblushingly suffered himself to be carried above the water by the three men of Daneira. Noting the water rose above Sinshi’s chest, Cormac picked her up, bade her hold up the skirts of his mail without a thought for the weight of that linked chain, and made his way out to Quester . She clung close, her breath warm on his cheek. Nor was it without nervousness and apprehension that four of the five from Daneira approached that ship to whose mast was bound the image of Sinshi.