Andrew Offutt - The Undying Wizard

When Brian looked not just doubting but shocked, Cormac twitched his mouth in what might have been taken for the hint of a smile. He said, “Very well then, Wulfhere be the worth of any five men-save myself. Ah, I see that goes down better-but see ye that ye make me no god, Brian I-Love-To-Fight of fair Meath! And see ye that all know this: it was for years I was the only man of Eirrin among a crew of Danes… his Danes… and we were comrades-at-arms, Brian; it’s brothers we all were.”

Brian blinked more than once. “Champion of Eirrin, I meant not to imply that we respect him not, or that there be any sigh of trouble among us. Only a… certain… lack of comfort.”

Cormac nodded shortly. “My name for that is foolishness; see that all know it. Now there is a place I wish to go, alone.”

The young man took his dismissal with aplomb, as Cormac’s due. He returned to carry the plans to Wulfhere-and the leader’s words, quietly, among the others. Cormac, knowing where he went though not what he might find, took with him the long, long coil of rope he’d used to gain entry to the castle.

Drawn somehow though he knew not by what, he ascended to the second floor again. He paced thoughtfully along the corridor until he reached a well-remembered room. Carrying a lighted torch in his hand and with sword loosened in sheath, he entered the fetid passageway that became subterranean tunnel. The old secret door he braced open after him.

Chapter Ten:

The Roof of the World

Cormac mac Art was not certain why he paced again along this gloomy stone-braced corridor that had been so haunted by sorcery… and was now haunted by footprints of mystery. Perhaps he was deliberately-foolishly-tempting his new enemy, him he had not laid eyes upon.

Foolhardy this trek again beneath the earth, and especially so with Bas, and the Gael knew it. Yet it was… irresistible. He was as if compelled, drawn by unseen hands or command, as those strange shipguiding stones were drawn ever to the north. Nor was it any new mood of Cormac’s, this need to be alone with his busy mind.

Busy his mind was-and confused.

It hummed and thrummed now with that sonorous name of menace: Thulsa Doom, Doom…

Dust whispered beneath his feet and he fought the ugliness, the foreboding drumbeat inside his head. With will and stern determination, he wrestled his mind from its ugly thoughts elsewhere, to beauty…

Samaire.

Face and form to stir a man’s blood and rouse his body, to make his fingers fair tingle for the feel of her under them; these were Samaire of Leinster.

A woman with the highness of pride in bearing and in those wide eyes the colour of grass in high summer, was Samaire daughter of Ulad Ceannselaigh. Slim and well-curved her body, full and well-curved her lips, which, as their ancestors in poet-honouring Eirrin would have told it, were red as the berries of the rowan-tree.

Firm those lips became against him, and warm as if fiery so that there had been times when her mouth had seemed to burn while he listened to her quickening breath and felt her arms about him, felt her straining against him until his own arms were pulling her feverishly close.

Yet there was more to Samaire, far more. Swift and skilled and unblanching in danger and combat she was; a warrior’s companion for she was herself a warrior.

Cormac let his mind slip to her as he paced along the tunnel beneath the earth, breathing its fetid, vitiated air.

She’d been wed, naturally enough, betwixt the time of his leaving Eirrin ( when we were both but children , he now thought) and their coming together again on this rocky speck on the ocean. She was wed by her father to a prince of Osraige, a small strip of land that was to all but its proud king a part of Leinster. Samaire was not long a wife. Whilst aiding the Munstermen in resisting a Pictish incursion into their lands, the prince of Osraige took an arrow in the chest. It gave him his death, even as his men carried him homeward. Childless Samaire was, and no friend of her late husband’s mother. She returned to the home of her ancestors.

Already death had visited that home, coming suddenly and without blood upon her father. His firstborn ascended to the high seat of proud but tributeladen Leinster. That son sat the throne well. He became it, as it did him. Though he retained close to hand most of those who had counseled his father, he created his brother Feredach high minister.

Another brother there was still: Ceann mong Ruadh, whose wife had died in her bearing him a child. Widow and widower, Samaire and Ceann became the good friends and companions that they had not been, as children, for friendship were a difficult matter for siblings.

The king was dead within a year, nor was there much doubt that it was his brother Feredach had him slain.

And Feredach was king. He was soon called an Dubh , the Dark. A mean, unpopular, grasping and ever suspicious man was he, with the schemer’s usual suspicion that others were ascheming against him. Much time Ceann and Samaire spent together, for it was much they had in common. Feredach suspected them; Feredach feared them; Feredach did treachery on his younger brother and sister as he had on his elder.

In a scurrilous bargain made worse because it was with Norsemen , Feredach saw that there was no possible claim on Leinster’s throne save his own. The men of Norge kidnaped and carried off Ceann and Samaire as one day they rode near the sea.

Then had chance or the gods taken a hand-if Chance were not indeed a god. To this haunted isle whirlpool and storm brought Cormac and Wulfhere; here too the Norsemen brought Ceann and Samaire. Soon Feredach’s Viking hirelings were well paid in scarlet coin. Once he was freed of bonds and had snatched up sharp steel, the minstrel-prince Ceann took good toll among his own captors; all were slain.

Across the sea Cormac escorted Ceann and Samaire, and across a third of Eirrin; through Picts and a lustful Munsterish soldier and an honour-less Munsterish king-and his honourable son. Through highwaymen in the Wood of Brosna and into Meath Cormac escorted them, and to Tara Hill and the palace of the High-king. Nor was the relationship of Cormac and Samaire less than one of friendship and companionry-nor still was it limited so, for they were man and woman. Each had been, long ago, the other’s first lover.

Now a protected ward of the Ard-righ, Ceann remained in Eirrin but durst not go into his own Leinster. He was saying and doing the things that princes without crowns say and do when they’d have the throne of their fathers, but will not resort to murder. Such activities had much need of financing. And so Cormac had come back here, to a lonely, uncharted isle of rock and its castle peopled by ghosts and the crimsoned corpses of slain men. For here was the price of many cattle, and Ceann and Samaire needed such in their endeavours.

With Cormac had come Samaire, for she’d not stay behind. And they’d met the grimmest and most horrible of powerful enemies, who sought dark vengeance on Cormac mac Art, though for nothing done by Cormac mac Art. And if the subterrene corridor were his haunt and den-Cormac walked now its dusty floor, alone.

In that smooth-walled hallway of earth and stone, the thoughtful Cormac of Connacht came again upon the remains of the awesome serpent he’d slain. Called back by sight and smell from his thoughts to the present, he paused, staring.

Then he went on, for this was not his goal.

He came to that place where had lain Cutha Atheldane, and he paused. Thulsa Doom, Doom…

Cormac gave his head a jerk to clear it of the drum-thrum and went on. On both the previous occasions of his being here-the second but a few hours past-there had been reason not to go on, but swiftly to return. Now there was no such reason. He would see what lay ahead, toward what Cutha Atheldane had fled. He walked on, through untrod dust, dust that had lain here without stirring for… what man could know how long? Dust rose in little clouds at each step, so that he was able to see his feet only when one lifted in a step.