Andrew Offutt - The Undying Wizard

“Woman! One knows of tears shed, of fears that rise unbidden, of imagined gulf betwixt princess and exile! One knows of love, and who holds love for whom in a stout heart and firm, stubborn mind. Woman! Know that ye love not alone, know that ye are needed and that what ye do, weeping and nurturing fears and self-pity in the dark is an unworthy luxury-and an unaffordable one. Be ye woman indeed, Samaire of Leinster, or mere mewling whimpering girl? For there’s another who too would weep, were he able, and the better be for it.

“Woman-he needs us , this man, for that is coming which shall shake the roots of his soul and aye of the world itself, the foundation stones upon which is builded the ridge of the world-shall shake and echo among the dimensions that are, and it’s he will be at fulcrum, hated and menaced and tormented. Power ye have, Samaire of Leinster. For ye can add to that torture-and he to yours-or ye can be great.”

Bas peered into the shadows betwixt natural walls of granite and basalt and castle walls reared eighteen thousand years agone.

Bas said, “Decide!”

And Bas passed into the Castle of Atlantis.

The sun shed warmth and light on that castle, and on its valley and the man who sat as if struck by the hand of Death or powered over by the grim claws of age. He stared at the ground… and after a time there before his eyes were two small feet in unusual dark boots. Another voice came to his ears, and not, this time, from his mind or from Bas.

“It’s like children we are, my love,” that voice said, softly. A hand came onto his bowed head. “You hurt me, and so I sought to hurt you. Too there was confusion upon me. It’s companion I must be, hulking hero, boon companion. For I be no squirming flirting fluttering woman likely to swoon, but Samaire of Leinster, companion to Cormac mac Art. It’s destroyed I’d be an ye treated me as no more than comrade, but… when ye seek to protect me, it must be as companion, not something soft and vulnerable that belongs to you and that you want not marred.”

The woman in the tall soft boots and loose coat of mail heaved up a great sigh. “Thrust me from yourself no more, my love, my dairlin boy, for it’s no favour to me to force safety upon me whiles you face that which may slay you out of my sight. We must face together what is to be, as once we did here, as we did those Pictish raiders on Munster’s coast and again on our ship just yester day but three, as we did in the wood of Brosna, as we did in treacherous Cashel. Lovers, aye… but companions , Cormac, by night and day!”

He looked up. “Princess born, you must not say ‘my love’ to me.”

“Och! Fah, I say it by night, as do yourself… Companions by day and night, aye, and my love by night and day! Now come up, my love, and let us go inside this ancient keep you have made your own.”

My own , Cormac thought rising. The Castle of Kull of Atlantis… my own… my castle. My…

“My woman!” he said hoarsely, seizing her arms above the elbows.

Samaire strove for control, and she looked at him and spoke as coolly as she was able. “Of course. My man.”

They looked at each other a long while in the sunlight. Then, each with an arm about the other, they went for Bas, in the Castle of Atlantis.

Chapter Eight:

Footprints

“It was in this room that the man held her, Bas, that druid out of place among Vikings. Cutha Atheldane. Some plan he had for Samaire’s marriage to one of the Norse. As I think on it now, I remember me that we’ve talked not of that, Samaire and I; I’d forgot. I came upon them, and saw him staring into my eyes with a gaze sharp as a raven’s. Ere I knew what was afoot, it was Wulfhere I was looking upon!”

“Seemed to be looking upon,” Bas corrected, nodding without apparent surprise.

“Just so,” Cormac said. “I like to have died then, until Samaire made a great shout. Then it was like waking from a dream-fraught sleep. Not Wulfhere I saw then but the man Cutha Atheldane in his nightdark robe-almost upon me with a dagger naked in his hand. In avoiding his attack with my mind still befogged, I fell-here, across that chair. I only just saw him as he oped a door, here in this wall, and with Samaire fled within.”

Cormac had found the mechanism he had marked; after a few minutes of striving, he sprang open the panel in the wall. Beyond was the corridor that became the tunnel he remembered too well. Bas peered within. The druid’s nose wrinkled as it was assailed by the musty, mephitic odour of ages agone.

“It was with that chair I propped open the door,” Cormac told him, “that it might not seal us within. I pursued. But he had a torch, taken from that sconce there, while I was in darkness. The tunnel twists. Here.”

With the strike-a-light of iron and flint that no sensible man went without, Cormac mac Art raised a flame on a slow-burning torch. He looked at Bas and Samaire; the three of them entered into the wall.

“Ah, see how the corridor runs straight and seems to end at a wall-I ran up against that, and with force! After that, once I’d found the turn, I was forced to less speed.”

The three came to the apparently blank wall, but the flickering torchlight in Cormac’s hand showed them how the tunnel continued, merely bending sharply leftward. A short distance past that, they turned again to the right.

“I soon learned that these constant turn-asides run ever in twos, so that this tunnel proceeds ever in the same direction.”

“The musty odour of this place has not improved since last we trod here,” Samaire said.

“Age, mere age,” Bas said as though to himself. “And the tunnel must be open at the far end, since there’s air to breathe and to burn.”

The torch burned; Cormac nodded.

“Ah-we go down,” Bas said.

“And we turn. An ancient escape-route, methought, made so full of turns to slow and baffle pursuit-as it did me! And man-made all, as ye see by the smoothness of the walls. Else I’d have thought this tunnel was carved out here by a man both blind and blind-drunk-and led the while by a lazy serpent.” Remembering, he added, “Perhaps I was partly aright…”

Their feet scuffed through dust that lifted up and hovered about. Their nostrils were constantly assaulted by fetor. Once Cormac had blown through his nostrils like a tracking hound, Samaire and Bas did the same. The dust was instep deep, for in centuries no feet had trod here but Samaire’s, and Cormac’s, and Cutha Atheldane’s. The men’s buskins and Samaire’s boots hissed susurrantly through dust older than they could conceive in their minds. Each essayed to breathe shallowly, to inspire less vitiated, fetid air.

’Ah! Here, Druid, I stopped. For it was here I beheld a woman of passing beauty of face and form. Like a queen she was, with plaited hair like corn and soft folds of silk robing her. I remember, sandals… of white bronze they were, and so too was she: white as though she’d known no sun. She spoke; she strove to tempt me. She warned that for me to pursue was to find death before the next dawn. I demanded her name. Only one who wished me well, she said, and I bade her swear on my sword.”

Bas nodded.

“Was she fairer than I,” Samaire asked, “this temptress you say was of such passing beauty?”

“Aye, for of what avail a sorcerous temptress, an she were not more beautiful than normal folk… companion? But she called me handsome, and would not swear on my sword. Then knew I she was not what she appeared, for none can call me handsome in honesty! And whether she was a shade of the sidhe or a demon of those cold Northlands whence came Cutha Atheldane, or indeed he himself in a new disguise, I knew she was no woman of woman born!”