Andrew Offutt - The Sign of the Moonbow

Nor did their captive provide any problem. It was the growing feeling of fruitlessness that preyed on their minds.

Despair was a brooding shadow that hovered over them and their thoughts were dark with it. Surely they had trod every inch of this mocking hill, and of the greensward at its base. They had found no Doorway, not even a cave; there was no sign. They were weary of the search, and nervous that it was to come to naught.

Samaire, with Bas and Brian, had reluctantly parted their company and gone on to Tara. With Thulsa Doom in the likeness of Bas as he was now, the two weapon-men had struck westward-afoot. Neither was accustomed to horses, and Cormac hated that sort of transport that made a man’s tailbones and thighs sore-and worse next day. Too, he stated a further reason for walking. What would they do with their mounts once they discovered the Doorway and entered the earth? The horses could not remain tethered. Nor could they be turned loose to roam free and doubtless cause consternation and damage for others. Nor, on this mission, was there a way to hire someone, even a boy, to accompany them and return the mounts once the Doorway was found. He’d likely become a flying gibbering idiot when his employers vanished… and might well be waiting with an army of angry, fearful men and stern druids when Cormac and Wulfhere emerged from below ground. If they emerged, after-how long a while within the earth?

And so they had walked, and, waded, and forded, and slept out in damp chill, and now two days and two nights had passed here, and the third day still brought them nothing to lift sagging spirits. And so Cormac mac Art was morose, and Wulfhere grumbled about Eirrin and its clime.

Yester eve they had conferred. For two days, confident, excited, they had merely walked about, hither and thither, each expecting at any second to espy the object of their quest. When whim struck, one announced and both hastened to that place, only to experience a renewal of disappointment. Cormac felt no qualm about asking Thulsa Doom for the location of this Doorway. But Thulsa Doom did not know.

Last night they had decided to do what they should have done on arrival after their trek from the coast: put the quest on a systematic basis. Walk every inch of the hill. They would not admit defeat and leave this area until they had walked, one behind the other, around and around over every finger’s breadth of the hill and its perimeter.

With them trudged the cause of this anguish and so much else that was unpleasant and evil, him whose death they sought, and him dead beforetimes. His green robe was a mockery that rustled as he walked. Nor, seemingly, did Thulsa Doom tire.

“An we find it now,” Wulfhere said from behind the Gael, “we’ll have to decide whether to rest ere we… go in. My belly’s begun to growl.”

“When has it not? When have ye not? Wulfhere!” Cormac jerked and came to a halt so that the Dane ran full into his back. “It… it be time to make that decision,” Cormac said, in a voice that was not without a bit of quaver.

All weariness flowed from mac Art’s limbs and spirit as he stared at it: a wound had opened or appeared , huge and gaping in the hillside. A dark hole it was, twice the breadth of his shoulders though several inches shorter than his height. But a moment ago had been naught here but grass. Now gaped the cave, closer to him than the length of his forearm. It yawned darkly, a cavern into the hill but a few steps above its base. Wide enow for two men to walk abreast-two short men. And women. And the animals the Tuatha de Danann had taken with them from the face of Eirrin…

The diffused sunlight spilled into the cave for a little way, then paled to grey. The grey became black. There was no gauging the depth or length of this tunnel into Eirrin’s depths; there was only blackness.

“Cormac?”

Stepping a half-pace downward, Cormac turned to look at Wulfhere. He swept an arm at the gaping hole in the earth, large enough to be visible for many many feet, much less these few.

Wulfhere turned his gaze that way. He frowned. He turned the frown on his companion.

“See ye nothing, itch-beard?”

“The hill,” the Dane said. “And grass. Cormac-has the damp and our frustration got to ye, man?”

Cormac looked again. The cave was there. With a glance at Wulfhere, he stepped forward. Within the hole in the hill of Bri Leith, he turned to look again at Wulfhere Hausakluifr, and him who appeared to be Bas the Druid.

“Cormac!”

Wulfhere’s eyes had gone wide. He hurled badly shaken glances this way and that. Cormac saw those eyes fall on him-and knew that Wulfhere saw him not, from a distance of less than a body length. Cormac mac Art remembered, and stepped forth. Waving aside the Dane’s excited demands as to what had happened to him, he explained: Cathbadh had advised that the Doorways to the Danans would reveal themselves to him who wore the Moonbow.

“It is… there?”

“It is there, Wulfhere.”

“The… Doorway.”

“Aye. The Doorway to the People of Danu. We have found our goal.” He looked again into the blackness that Wulfhere could not see. “Ye have but to tread in my tracks, and-”

“Cormac mac Art.”

It was the voice of Bas; both men turned to look at him-or rather, his likeness.

“Forget this ill-advised adventure, Cormac mac Art. Ye know not what lies in that dark pit. Your own doom, perhaps. Think you a Gael will be welcomed by those the Gaels drove into this land’s subterranean depths, into the cold and the dark? Take from me this Chain of Danu; free me, and neither Wulfhere, nor Eirrin, nor any born of Eirrin anywhere will suffer the slightest from me-aye, you and yours will be the chosen people! And too any others ye name, elsewhere. Riches will be yours, Cormac mac Art… no more exile, no more wandering… shall there be again one named Cormac mac Art who rules supreme in Eirrin?”

“Thulsa Doom! Hush . Say no more. Keep silent.”

Knowing his commands were irresistible, Cormac turned from the mage at once. He found Wulfhere looking thoughtfully on him.

“Ye’d not be king over this land, blood-brother?”

“It’s nothing that one says and no promises of his I’d believe, blood-brother.”

Slowly, Wulfhere nodded. “It is tempting, though.” The Dane was musing aloud.

“Oh aye. Aye, temptation is on me. Doubtless others have been tempted. I hold myself no good man, Wulfhere.” Cormac held up his hands before his face, and there were scars on both. He examined the palms and dark long fingers. “It’s much blood these hands have spilled, Wulfhere.” The Gael’s voice was inordinately quiet. “Widows have been created to weep because of the son of Art of Connacht. Had that Art not been slain, murdered with treachery done on him, none can say what might have been. But… to be given the choice now of allying myself with purest evil, or of striving to rid this world of it… no choice exists, Wulfhere. It’s no bad man I am, either.” Cormac gestured to the cave invisible to the other. “We enter, Wulfhere. Is it still with me ye go?”

Wulfhere was smiling. “Was you said the words, Cormac. I see no cave-but I can see where ye go, Wolf. And I follow.”

At last the torches they’d brought would be put to use. Cormac entered the Doorway. Wulfhere followed. Aye, and now he could see: sunlit Eirrin behind, and the black darkness of the cave before. The huge Dane had to stoop even more than his friend, but this was no time to make complaint. With Thulsa Doom in the likeness of Bas of Tir Connail, they entered the cavern.

They walked between gloomy walls of earth and stone, on a floor of the same. It was bare and hardpacked and dustless beneath their feet. Uplifted torches surrounded them in a bright yellow glow that was engulfed by darkness but a few paces ahead. They advanced; the dark retreated, but was ever there, lurking, waiting, closing in behind them as they ranged downward into the earth.