Andrew Offutt - The Undying Wizard

“Is that the very top, Cormac? Cormac?”

She’s fearful as I and needs the sound of my voice constantly-and she has even less knowledge of the why! Which of us be the worse off; I who know and yet know nothing, or she who-

“Aye,” he answered, “Lugh’s ‘Roof of the World.’”

”Won’t you be giving me a hand up, then, love,” she said, too rapidly, and he knew she was covering, too. “I want to see.”

“All… all right,” Cormac said, and steeled himself anew.

Rolling over once more, he gazed down at her wan face. Was that a sparkle of tears? The Gael lowered a hand, and she stretched up hers. But he had to rise and squat, to draw her up with her feet “walking” up the rock. With ease then he handed her up, and fell back as he drew her over the edge and onto the mesa. She fell upon him as he lay there at the edge of that sprawling flatland of stone.

“Oh love,” she murmured, so close he could feel her lips move against his face, “it’s cold you are!”

He was; there was nothing he could think of to say; he said nothing.

He felt a transfer of warmth, hers to him as ‘ the loving woman lay over him, holding him, though he wore mail and she her byrnie of boiled leather.

Tremulously, seeking the comforting texture of reality, his hands slipped up into the richness of her hair while she pressed her warm mouth down on his. Her lips seemed hot, which told him that his own were cold. Soft was her hair against his hands, soft as he’d known it in her cousin’s manse on Tara Hill. Strange, after their days asea and her long wearing of a leather helm under a sun that boiled forth sweat, and them with no extra water for such as the washing of hair. But he had other things to think of now.

Marvelous soft was her hair to his weapon-man’s calloused hands, and her weight on him, too, was good. The needs that rose in him were not of the sort that brooked thought or enhanced the reasoning process.

The sun chilled as it grew distant. It deepened in colour to a gold that shaded into orange and seemed to set Samaire’s tresses aflame. Still the two at the very top of Samaire-heim lay together, moving but a little. Hands and mouths moved restlessly and were not satisfied. Coats of steel chain and leather were discarded with weapon belts, with neither ceremony nor sensible orderliness.

Her large eyes seemed to smoulder and yet at once to deepen into pools for the falling into. His blood was wine coursing in his veins, hot and strong. Restless womanly hands transferred their warmth and their insistence to the very core of him. They moved as his did, tracing out every line and hollow and curve of his hard body as though she were determined to commit all to memory.

God of my father , he marveled as he had before, how at once soft and firm, slim and rounded, is this woman who calls me love!

Though his throat was dry and there was a strong hunger for her on him, he teased, “Companions…”

She did not smile, but stared hungrily as she panted, and she pulled at him with hands that at once begged and demanded, the princess of the landless warrior.

Prim and discreet, the sun hid its face in a great final glow of orange and blood that hurled blotting shadows across the sky. But the shameless moon rode up to stare down at the couple so totally alone on a great seabound chunk of rock like a desert surrounded by ocean. The moon had seen such, millions of times over the eons, hundreds of millions. It took no note but remained cold of light and face. Warmthless light bathed them when they’d shared and transferred their warmth and lay still and lazy while their breathing returned to normal.

Then a shamelessly naked Samaire, her skin all snow and coal in moonlight and shadow, knelt up over the supine man. She smiled down on Cormac mac Art, and lazily he smiled in return. Fear and horror were far from his mind.

And then he saw the glint of steel in her hand, and the skin fell from her face all in an instant so that it was a ghastly apparition he stared up at, his eyes dilated and his hair striving to leave his head.

A faceless fleshless skull grinned down upon him as long bony fingers curled into a fist around the dagger’s hilt, and raised it and drove it down at Cormac’s bare chest, and with a wild cry of horror and soul-deep torment he moved convulsively and hurled, not Samaire, but Thulsa Doom over the cliff to hurtle down as had the other of the only two Cormac mac Art loved on the ridge of the world.

And a shuddering, madness-tinged Cormac mac Art… wept.

Chapter Thirteen:

To Die Twice

Cormac awoke to physical discomfort, as mental agony had tormented him for hours ere he’d sunk into sleep.

A stabbing brightness struck through his eyelids so that he saw blazing yellow without opening his eyes. Realizing that he lay on his back in the open and that the sun of morning was swinging up over him, he kept his lids fast shut until he rolled over onto his side. That brought lancing twinges of pain and a grunt, which was followed by a curse at his own stupidity.

For any person to sleep lying on his back on solid stone was stupid. For a weapon-man to do so, and in his armour with the dampness of sea-breeze on him; that was worse than stupid. It was a sin.

On hands and knees, near the edge of the precipice overlooking the sea, Cormac mac Art was assaulted by memory.

Oh gods and blood of the gods! Wulfhere and then Samaire-even Samaire! O gods, how-

Unworthy!

The Gael set his strength against the horror and despair that were a pall over his mind, as if they were a binding chain on his sanity. By superior strength and a complete exertion of a will more powerful than sorcerous mental chains, he snapped them.

Cormac rose from hands and knees to his feet. He ignored his stiffness of back and limbs and the complaining twinges from every area of his body-including his empty belly. Back went his mailclad shoulders. It was a weapon-man of Eirrin who stood stalwart and proud-and angry.

The sun of early morning flashed off his coat of linked chain as he turned all about; flashed even more blindingly from the broad long blade of the sword he brandished aloft. Atop the mesa that was Samaire-heim high above the sea, he waved his sword high at the end of a stiff-held arm. But it was not the gods to whom Cormac mac Art issued shouted challenge.

He bellowed it forth, and his voice raced like the wind out over the sea and the sprawling mesa.

“ Thulsa Doom! Twice have ye sought my blood, man out of time! Twice, Thulsa Doom, and in the most cowardly possible manner!” Deliberately he repeated that fearsome name, that by shouting it out again and again he might tear its thrumming repetition from his mind.

“As my best friend ye’ve come, Thulsa Doom, and as my-as Samaire ye’ve come to do death on me, Thulsa Doom- scum of ancient Valusia! It is as Bas ye’ll come death-seeking on me next, Thulsa Doom who should be dead? Come Yourself , sea-slime, cowardly mage, in your own form, and face me direct! Cormac despises you, Thulsa Doom! It’s Cormac calls you, Thulsa Doom… COME!”

But Thulsa Doom came not, though Cormac waited long. His only reply was a rumbling growl from his empty stomach.

Samaire of Leinster knew fear and horror and pain, and she knew not why.

Long had she waited for Cormac’s return, and then it had come upon her where he must have gone, though for what reason she could not fathom. Then it was long and long she waited for the others to fall into sleep. At last all had done, or so she supposed, and she had crept through the dark castle of Atlantis with an unlighted torch in her hand. Not until she was in the passageway of sorcery that lurked behind a small room’s wall did she pause and use her strike-a-light to ignite her torch.