Andrew Offutt - The Undying Wizard

“She would not swear on your sword,” Bas said, nodding again. “For though the walking dead can, no demon can abide iron!”

“Aye. And I lunged, and spitted her on my blade.”

“Whereupon she vanished?”

Cormac looked at Bas, and his lips made as if to smile; it was good, these reminders that the man was wise, and not one to come apart like old cloth, as that Briton Osbrit had done.

“Whereupon,” Cormac confirmed, “she vanished.” Then he turned about. “And I walked on, in the dark, though were we without this torch, ye’d see that the walls themselves emit some strange light of their own. Around this bending…”

They turned to pace leftward, then were forced by the smooth walls to turn right again.

“Around that bending, even here,” Cormac said, halting again, “I stopped once more. My short hairs stood right up! There facing me were three men, war girt and with their swords naked. One a Norse, and one a Pict, and the third a Norse as well, though he served in Dalriada of Alba when last I’d seen him… and slain him.”

Bas stepped past Cormac, turned so that he could look into his face. “This ye’ve told me not-that ye’d fought the walking dead before this day."

“There was a difference, Bas. Mayhap the spell was of less power, or mayhap it was more. One called Sigrel and I fought briefly, just here, and I broke his wrist and skewered his belly. And he laughed. Then did I remember the woman I’d just stabbed in the same manner, and I shouted to them to get hence, that I had business beyond, with their master-and I charged them. Whereupon, like smoke in a goodly wind, they vanished.”

Bas thought upon that. “A spell of less power, I’d venture to say. If a spell at all-thus Cutha Atheldane had the power of the eyes , Cormac. The illusion-power over men’s minds, as did he who sent darkness on ye in Eirrin that day of your testing. Only your eyes beheld that darkness that was not. Nor were there dead men here, nor was the woman a demon. All sprang from the mind of Cutha Atheldane as did the darkness that later came from that foul Leinsterish druid-and from your own mind, Cormac mac Art."

“So it can be done, the seizing of a man’s mind and making him to see what is not there, without sorcery?”

Bas nodded. “It can, though whether it is of sorcery or no-who can say?”

“You have this power, this knowledge?” Samaire asked.

“It is available to me.”

“I’ll be asking ye about that again, Druid,” Cormac mac Art assured him. “And methinks yours is the explanation, for those men in the great hall today were there , and so are their bones still. But the woman and the men who braced me here, all three slain before by me… those were not here, sure, for they left no prints at all in the dust, no sign.”

Automatically Samaire looked down though Bas did not.

“Cormac! Bas!”

They whirled about; they followed her down-directed gaze. The trio stared at the footprints in the dust, only a little of which had dribbled down into the depressions. Cormac stepped forward, moving the torch. The prints of shod feet continued. They faded away into the darkness ahead of them whence that walker had come-for these prints led to the castle, not from it. In the darkness before, and with the torch held well up, none had noticed.

“Yours,” Bas said, “from that other time.”

“There be but one set,” Samaire said.

Cormac squatted. “Nor are they yours… nor mine! Here, look here. These are ours, nearly gone now in the three months since we were here.”

The three looked at the impressions in the dust and, in the light of the flickering torch, at each other. None needed to speak. The evidence was there. Someone, a man wearing buskins or sandals, had paced this subterrene corridor since Cormac and Samaire had, nor had it been one of the slain Britons. For there was but one set of prints, and they came from… wherever this tunnel led. To the sea, Cormac had previously assumed; he’d not gone on to be sure, for he’d been in haste to return to the great hall and the battle he had known was taking place there. It was in that fierce and bloody fight had been slain the Danes and Norse who had returned to slay again.

“Cutha Atheldane we left dead,” Samaire whispered.

“Aye, and the serpent,” Cormac said. “There was no other. But… from the sea, one must think, someone else has walked this ancient corridor- to the castle, but never from it.”

Bas straightened up. “A mystery we can think on later,” he said. “He be not before us, and he be not in the castle either.”

“Nevertheless,” Samaire said, and she unsheathed her sword.

The three went on, in silence.

The odour of the decay of death came to their nostrils before they reached the physical evidence. With wrinkled noses, they came to where lay the remains of the mighty serpent that had attacked Cormac.

He told Bas of how he had nearly died from his error then; since he had been twice set upon by those that were not truly there, he had assumed the serpent-three times his length and more thick than his arm-to have been the same.

“It was real enough,” he said. “And it took a lot of killing.”

Despite the odour of putrefaction, Bas was pacing along the curving length of the dead reptile. Turning away, he sucked in a deep breath and released it, then sucked in another, which he held. The druid squatted beside the dead monster.

“What is it, lord Druid?”

“It is a dead serpent of impossible size, Cormac. A sea monster, one must suppose, for all know such frightful monsters inhabit the keep of Manannan mac Lyr. A serpent… dead, from the smell and the extent of its decay, less than a month. ”

Nor, could all Cormac’s and Samaire’s gasping and denials belie the evidence.

Fact: near unto death in squeezing coils and with his shield ruined and his sword-arm pinned to his side, the son of Art had drawn his dagger, lefthanded, and stabbed his reptilian attacker many times in the space of a few seconds. Fact: he had slain the serpent, and gone on in pursuit of Samaire and the anomaly of a druid of the Norse. Fact: when they two had come back this way not long after, the great creature had lain dead as now, though without any decay at all. There had been a lake of blood, and Cormac had retrieved his sax-knife from the monster’s mouth.

Fact, then: this enormous snake had been slain three months agone.

Evidence: that it had begun to decay but a few more than a score of days before now; it had lain here two full months before began that ugly and stenchy process that begins in all creatures immediately after death, whether there be flies to lay their maggot-spawning eggs in the swelling corpse or no.

There was no explanation. No… natural explanation.

They went on, and soon Cormac was saying, “Ah. It was just beyond this bend that I came upon them at last-Cutha Atheldane and Samaire.”

“I like not the way ye do put his name first,” Samaire said with a smile.

Bas did not smile. “And here ye killed him.”

“No no-here Samaire killed him! It was she who was the captive maid, ye see, and I the pursuing warrior. I suppose he heard my approach, and turned from her to stand ready to face me-doubtless to use his eyes and brain, and my eyes and brain, to confound me with more illusions. But the poor son of a donkey had turned his back on a warrior , not a helpless girl he’d kidnaped! He dropped to his knees and then stretched his length just as I caught sight of him… it was his own dagger he wore in him, to the hilt.”

About to follow the turn of the passage, Cormac glanced back to show one of his almost-smiles. He directed at Samaire a look that saw past the prettiness of face and well-wrought womanly form. Then he went on and stopped with an oath.