Andrew Offutt - The Sign of the Moonbow

Cormac looked at Wulfhere. The giant’s mighty chest heaved a great sigh.

“Methinks it’s either that we trust him, battlebrother, or remain here and see how many of Tarmur Roag’s Danans we can slay ere they give us our deaths.”

“I see which of ye counsels well,” Dithorba said, and Wulfhere grinned.

Cormac did not essay to answer the unanswerable. He took the Danan’s small, dry old hand.

He knew an instant of complete mental dissociation, as though his brain were aswirl amid blinding sulphurous mists that would swallow it and choke him to death… and then his legs were jarred badly, as though he’d taken a downward step when he’d surmised himself on level ground. He straightened, feeling the spinning of his brain, the tingling that ran up his legs. As if coming from the dark into the light, he became aware-and was looking at Erris.

“A law should be passed to force ye to wear a tunic such, slitted to your waist,” he told her inanely, and was instantly aware of it, for his brain had not yet been his own. He looked about.

He was elsewhere.

Dithorba had brought him hence from the chamber outside Moytura as swiftly and simply as that, and he was none the worse for the instantaneous transfer. They were in another room of stone, this one decorated and with a floor of handsome, well-fitted stones, smoothly polished. The walls were hung with draperies in rust-red bordered with silver; the cloth was the same fine, scintillant stuff of which Erris’s tunic was made-and indeed, Dithorba’s breechclout as well. Shelves and niches and an alcove had been fashioned into the stone itself; in them rested utensils and clothing, various closed pots and caskets of assorted sizes. There squatted a stone table; there a bench onto which were bound red pillows, there another, its pillows of blue. Light illuminated the room, without apparent source. Nor was Dithorba present-

But he was, and with Thulsa Doom.

“The giant bade me bring this one first-he’s nigh attacked!” Dithorba said, and was not there.

Without patience or peace of mind Cormac waited, and then here was Dithorba once more, with Wulfhere Hausakluifr. The Dane grunted; his legs bent and he nearly fell. Cormac saw that the shorter Dithorba had miscalculated for them both; Wulfhere had been conveyed here at a level different from the Danan and like Cormac had… arrived off balance.

“We must not talk loudly, though as ye see, this chamber has no door. It is most privately mine; to my knowledge none other in Moytura possesses my ability to mind-travel. Yet we can be heard, for my apartment is just beyond that wall and through that one is a guardpost. Too, none can be sure of Tarmur Roag’s power; a man who either raised a lamia or created the queen’s exact likeness, even unto the voice and mannerisms, is not one to wager lives against. Finally… even stone walls can be broke through, should we be heard.”

In seconds the wizard had clothed himself in a robe of the same cloth as the draperies that mitigated the cold grey roughness of stone walls. Cormac was able to assume that lichens existed here within the earth; the robe’s purple must have resulted from the action of stale urine on such growths. The rust colour of the drapes, he supposed, came from just that: rust, or the paint-stone from which came iron. The sleeves of Dithorba’s robe, which fell past his ankles, were round, open, and three-quarters the length of his arms. Wulfhere paid him no mind, but was staring unashamedly though shamelessly at Erris. She appeared not to notice, which Cormac mac Art assumed was a pose.

Behind a drape Dithorba opened a wooden door; from within that little chamber he drew forth a leathern bag. It sloshed; Erris lost Wulfhere’s attention. Soon the three men were appreciatively wetting their throats with ale, at which Erris turned up her nose. Under other circumstances so might Cormac have done; the stuff was hardly of the best and he feared to ask what served as grain, beneath the earth where no sun shone.

“I ask again, son of Gaels. Why came you two here?”

“A wizard stalks this world, all the world, like a plotting spider,” Cormac said. He pointed at the long dark robe surmounted by the head of death itself. “Thulsa Doom. Anciently dead he is and raiser of the dead; master of illusion and enemy of all men; a servant of the serpent god he is, time out of mind.” And he told Dithorba of the wizard who was dead and yet not dead, and how they believed he could be slain for good and all. “Only the Chains of Danu hold him at bay now, or he’d be snarling like an animal-and worse.”

“Well I know the efficacy of the silver chain and Moonbow!”

While Cormac had spoken, Wulfhere laid buckler and ax and helmet on the long table of stone. Leaning against it, he combed hair and beard with his fingers and kept the corner of his eye occupied with the watching of Erris.

“My blade sliced that tunic not enough,” he muttered, when she handed him another cup of ale. Most valuable that cup; the Danans must have found a vein of precious metal and mined it well, for the cup, like the chains and the trim of draperies and of Dithorba’s robe, was of silver.

She gave the big man a look that was part archness and part defiance, and turned away-though, he noted, with a swift movement that made her sideslashed skirts fly. Abruptly that little face was smiling back at him over her shoulder.

“Ye be so clever, my lord-without knowing that handmaidens of the queen accustomedly wear only these bracelets and a girdle suspending two long strips of cloth!”

“It’s danger you’ve brought to Moytura then,” Dithorba said, “Cormac mac Art of the Gaels.”

“As ye’ve said, your goddess protects us and Moytura through her silver chains and Sign, wizard of under-earth. Now tell me of your queen.”

Dithorba did. Riora Feachtnachis she was called, the very young ruler of the Danans within Eirrin; Riora the Fair, righteous One. The story of the treachery done on her and her intimates and advisers, and of their imprisonment, was as Erris had told it. Simulacrum or Riora-mimicking lamia wore the coral crown and sat the throne of Moytura. Through her or rather it Cairluh ruled; he in turn was dominated by Tarmur Roag. The queen was endungeoned, watched over and tormented by one named Elatha the Whip. About her were her handmaidens and others, as well as her ministers and the commander of her guard. Others had been slain.

Cormac thought on it. It occurred to him that he need not worry about gaining entrance to the dungeon; surely this man could convey him there by his own unique means!

“And Tarmur Roag is powerful. What powers else have ye, Dithorba Loingsech?”

“With a few little abilities learned in time,” the Moyturan said quietly, “ye’ve seen most of my powers, Cormac mac Art. Much can be accomplished by a clever, thinking man who can disappear and reappear where he will-unless he is fed a drug, and taken in his sleep as I was. Oh, I am not without other abilities, but Tarmur Roag is my superior. If only I possessed the martial skills of your extraordinary self, Cormac of the Gaels, Elatha the Whip were no deterrent to the freedom of my lady Queen!”

Cormac showed the Danan his ghost of a smile. It little resembled pleasantry or mirth, but few others living had seen more. “Ye need not seek to persuade me; ye know my purpose and the necessity of its doing. Ye have my size and skills, Dithorba, so long as ye can take me anywhere at all, and that faster than the curvet of a trout! Anywhere at all-such as into the queen’s dungeon.”

“Cormac!” Wulfhere was distracted even from Erris.

Cormac turned on his friend a mild look, then returned his slit-eyed gaze to Dithorba. “Be there a bit of food hereabouts, Lord Dithorba?”