Andrew Offutt: The Undying Wizard

It was he sent the wind; it was he held ships and crew landbound; it was by his magicking that the gale shifted so unnaturally in an arrogant show of his powers.

Drenched and miserable, the thirteen with Cormac mac Art could only huddle far up the beach against the wall of rock, and watch. The wind drove sand into their faces and whipped their hair so that it stung their cheeks. Salt spray made sodden their clothing, sluiced off their armour, and sought entry into sheaths and scabbards. Those they protected as best they could.

Thulsa Doom was cursed in thirteen voices, and one of them not male.

Three times had the wind and the sea subsided, and three times had the thirteen men and a woman sought to float their ships and depart the hellish island that Thulsa Doom was determined should hold their common weird. Each time, after long labours in shifting the ships, they had been mocked anew. The lunatic wind had arisen again to whip the sea into ally, willing or unwilling. Nor could the harried knot of humans flee amain. First they must haul their craft back up the strand and, all efforts frustrated, scurry like driven mice up the sands beyond the range of the unnatural tide. The minor tidal waves that hurtled in and up the beach were major threats to frail human bodies.

Was the ban-sidhe indeed, Samaire of Leinster had made plaint; the banshee, those ancient preternatural harridans who were wont to mock the families of Eirrin by warning them of an impending death among those they loved.

Now the darkened sky became darker still. The sun, though visible for hour after hour through the grey only as a steadily westering glow, was setting once more on the mage-damned island. The day had passed. Nor had aught been accomplished by the handful of adventurers suddenly become fugitives from the wrath of the skull-faced thrice-ancient wizard who had challenged and bested them all.

With the suddenness of a blinking eye, the wind dropped.

The sea retreated from the beach, gurgling. Several feet from Quester and turned partially sidewise, the Britonish craft was still.

Cormac straightened and gave his head a shake like a drenched dog. His eyes were fierce.

“It’s another night we’ll be spending here,” he growled, thinking of a dwindling supply of food and fresh water. “Come-we’ll get the ships farther up the shore, and betake ourselves to that damned castle again!”

Weary men groaned, but none demurred. Should the wind arise again during the night, with the sea already tide-swollen, their only means of departure-escape? -might well be floated away. Squelching pitifully, the woebegone company trooped back down the beach.

Bas had responded to nothing for hours, so deep in his praying or conjuring was the druid. Cormac would not interrupt the man in the sodden robe of olive green; instead he laid hold of his upper arms with both hands and paced the druid, like a fear-paralyzed child, out from the seawall. Bas took no note. His eyes remained fast shut and his lips moved; his hand was at his throat where lay the symbols of the gods of Eirrin.

Curbing a shiver, Cormac paced down to join the others. Wulfhere was frowning at him. The Dane glanced past his old reaving-companion to the stationary druid.

“Why did ye that, Wolf?”

Cormac gave him a look; swept the others with it. “None of us will be out of sight of all the others,” he said grimly.

“Gods,” Samaire grumbled, “yet another reminder of that skullhead!”

“We will be reminded of his presence again and again if not every moment,” Cormac told her, taking up a station at Quester’s stern, “until we find a means of dealing with him.”

Wulfhere snarled obscene words in the tongue of his people.

“Think ye we will deal with him?” a man asked; it was Ruadan mac Mogcorf, whose ax-haft mac Art had used against the living dead.

’Aye,” Cormac said shortly, and stopped further nervous comment or questions. “Now lean into it, all, and heave on the count of three.”

“Lean indeed, boys,” Wulfhere growled. He planted his feet, stamped, reset that foot in waterlogged sand. “This wet sand will do its best to hold our ship-ye’ll not be defeated by mere crushed rock, will ye?”

No, and amid groans and grunts and tremendous effort from all, the ship was forced, inch by inch, farther up the beach. Cormac and Wulfhere would not let them stop until Quester’s prow was merely the length of a man from the towering natural wall of granite and basalt. Then all stood gasping and panting-and prideful.

Next the ship from Britain, bearing the name of Amber Rowan for reasons known only to him who had named it-a dead man-had to be forced and boosted farther ashore. To men already wearied from many such exertions this day, it seemed no less heavy than Quester . Nor did Samaire shirk. It was even she who helped up Ros when his foot found softer sand than he’d expected and he fell with a splat.

It was done. All stood heaving their chests, staring balefully at the two well-beached craft in what was now less than twilight.

“The food,” Brian said.

“And ale!” Wulfhere added without necessity of thought.

“Aye, we must take both with us, and what water remains. All of it.”

They stared at Cormac mac Art. “All!”

He nodded. “Lest we discover on the morrow that he had visited here whilst we slept…”

“Gods!” Wulfhere burst out, and his eyes were wide. “Aye! An he spoils our provender…” He broke off, nor did any wish to hear him finish.

Now Osbrit was staring with eyes wide in revelation. “And-the trove! What if he steals and secretes that while we sleep?”

Cormac was boosting Brian aboard Quester . He turned his head only partway in Osbrit’s direction to make reply: “An ye care to bear it all back to the castle, Osbrit, do so. I’ll not.”

“I will remain and keep guard!” Brian volunteered. “And I,” Ros mac Dairb said, though with more resignation than enthusiasm.

Cormac shook his head. “No. All go to the castle. All remain in sight of all others.”

“It’s all this way we’ve come for this load of treasure,” Findbar mac Lirchain said. “Are we to leave it here now, for that… creature to steal from us?”

Cormac turned slowly to face the man from Meath. “Aye, son of Lirchin, we are. Think, man. How many treks made all to fetch it here? It’s the same number will be necessary to carry it back!”

Findbar stood gazing at his leader, and his eyes dropped before the staring challenge. “We… could hide it, bury it in the sand…”

Wulfhere looked about in the deep greyness. “And who’s to say boneface be not looking on the while?”

Samaire touched Cormac’s arm. “Mayhap… we should remain here…”

“It’s of no moment to me,” Cormac told her, and the others as well, for they were gathered close and he raised his voice. “I and Wulfhere have spent many nights sleeping under stars, even in rain and worse, with wood or sand or stone for beds. Is that what ye’d do?”

The voice of Bas, so long absent, made all jump. “ Quester will not be touched by Thulsa Doom,” he said. “All will be here when next the sun comes. It’s we who will be in danger.”

All the company stared at the druid who had rejoined them as it were after being so long far distant his mind. None asked whence came his certainty.

They decided to carry all provisions to the castle, and to leave the treasure aboard their ship. In darkness, led by Wulfhere and herded close by Cormac who walked last, they made their way through the narrow and winding corridor in the stone. Onto the castle’s plain they emerged, and across it they marched, and once more they entered the ancient citadel of horror. Chunks of wood from old furniture provided firelight once it had been carved by sword and dagger and rent apart by strong hands. They ate lightly and drank even more sparingly, for their tyrannical leader would allow them little. His reminder that they were growing short of provisions had to be made but once.