Andrew Offutt - The Undying Wizard

“Kull had his own mage by then,” the druid spoke on, “and besides Kull was of the mightiest of men ever to walk the ridge of the world. By sword and sorcery he and his prevailed, and raised a great castle over the ensorceled mage of evil. Some say those men ranged on, even to Eirrin where there were then no men, and that terrible war upon the Great Serpent’s last servant is the reason our green fens and blue hills are marred even today by no slithering serpent.”

Bas came to a halt in his murmurous narrative-which was more like unto a remembrance, or a day-dreaming recall of the tiniest part of the lore that belonged to the druids. As though lost still within himself, he looked not at Cormac or Samaire. The grey eyes of the High-king’s brother-in-law stared ahead as though seeing only things that lay behind his eyes, not before.

Dully Cormac said, “It is more than story, O Druid. It is Kull’s isle, and his castle. I… know . And beneath it… I like to have ended my days in this form. To a serpent , Lord Druid… a serpent several times the length of my body. And once I’d slain him… he bled scarlet, like a man.”

“O Behl,” the druid murmured, “I am your servant. Lord of Sun and Oak, accept poor thanks and promise of restoration. That I should be the one who sees the castle of my father’s father’s fathers half a million times removed!”

The trio at Quester’s prow fell silent.

Samaire, herself no mewling girl nor yet a small souled person, but a woman of will and determination even among the free women of Eirrin, looked from one of those men to the other. Gaels both, dark of hair and pale of eye. The weapon-man and the druid; the eternal twain: warrior and priest. Samaire could not help but feel that she stood in the presence of giants, and of the eerie. These were men sure who stood above other men, whose lines ran back into the mists of time out of mind, and were likely to continue into the far mistier future, even as far.

These two had been here again and again, and would tread this earth again and again still.

And she knew too, with an absolute though never explicable certitude, that she had known at least one of them before.

She was a princess born, and had been wed as a King’s daughter must be, to a prince now dead in his youth. But their relationship had been a tiny and tenuous thing in the immensity of time, even in the limited sweep of this lifetime. He could not have been the man Cormac mac Art was, that prince of Osraige whose loveless wife she had been; nay, not even in his dreams.

And now she was certain too that there was no way she and Cormac could have failed to meet-again-or could part, not ever. She had known him before this life, she now realized, and she would know him again, and again in the unwoven tapestry of the sprawling time-to-come.

Then she looked out before their gliding ship, and what she saw interrupted her reverie and drove it from her mind.

“Cormac-land! Islands!”

And he looked, and gave the orders to swing Quester sharply to starboard, and hold that westward course until they dared turn south again, safely around the Ire of Manannan and the Wind Among the Isles.

Chapter Three:

Death-tide

The man had been roped to the great rounded spire of sea-rooted rock for hours.

From the sea that tall chunk of granite rose, at the very edge of a rocky isle, before which it stood like a sentinel: With the sun shining down, men had walked to it from shore in no more than a foot of water. At high tide, only its upper two feet were visible.

The monument of water-smoothed white stone rose twice the height of a man.

The man bound to it was tall, taller than tall. Nevertheless, both he and those who had bound him here knew that he was not tall enough. The salt sea was coming for him. The water had lapped about his ankles when his captors had left him, well tied. Now it quivered just below his nipples, and crept ever upward. High tide was but a little over an hour away. Sooner than that, he knew, was death.

First there would be the desperate tipping back of his bearded head, the desperate straining to remain above the salt water that lapped at his lips… into his mouth… until it at last rose to his moustache… and above his nostrils. And then he would see the one-eyed All-father, Odin… if the Valkyries could find him, at the time of tide’s ebb.

Behind the mighty rock and the giant with the fiery beard bound to it, another man sat. Well back up the beach was he, with a goatskin bag to hand. It gurgled with the thin, sour wine of Briton grapes. He had situated himself so that he could see the rockbound man, to whom from time to time he called taunting words.

The seated sentry’s shield lay beside him, upturned, and at his other hand was his spear. Between his outstretched legs, though he expected no trouble, lay his ax, a thin broad blade with a hook at its top edge. Down his back fell a thick straw-coloured braid from just behind his right ear; the left braid lay on his shoulder. Both were wound about with two plaited strips of leather, brown and red and tightly bound.

“I’m having another fine sip of wine, now, son of a Danish dog and a piggish slut; can ye hear its gurgle as it goes down to quench my thirst? Or… can ye hear only the gurgle of… water? ” He laughed. “Well, drunken dog of Dane-mark, it’s soon your own thirst will be quenched… with salt water! ”

Chuckling, the man drank.

Awaiting death, the Dane made no answer. He was a big man, and many heads had fallen to his ax, and making answer to such a one as his Briton ghoul-guard was beneath him. He’d plead with Odin and Thor, Woden and Thunor, until the end of time itself, to be allowed to come back and meet this taunting midden rat as men should meet, and to end his days… slowly.

“Ahhhhhhh,” the man from Britain sighed, with much exaggeration. First licking his lips, he wiped them with the back of his hand and set the goatskin bag aside.

“Tide,” he called out, “come! Bledyn of Gwent grows weary of watching this ugly Danish body swallowed by the sea!”

“Then rise, Bledyn, pig of Gwent, and let me aid you in the shortening of your vigil.”

For a moment Bledyn froze at that cold voice that came from behind, where no man should be. Then he hurled himself to roll sidewise, snatching at both spear and buckler even as, backing like a crab, he drove himself to his feet by main will.

Brooding dark and menacing before him, a tall man stood, lean and chainmailed. Deepset eyes were only just visible in a scarred, grim face set like death itself. Though this challenger was helmeted, Bledyn saw that he was dark of hair. On his left arm the man wore a small buckler, a targe, with a ferocious boar emblazoned on its face. The shield was seemingly negligently held, nor did the man from the night have a spear. He held a goodly sword whose double-edged blade was nigh straight, and slimmer than Bledyn’s own glaive.

“Who… be you?” Bledyn demanded, speaking with care to keep the quiver from out his voice. “Kull of Atlantis. You Britons profane my castle and raise a stench therein, by your piggish presence.” The accent was none Bledyn knew, and thus was

barbarous. And… Atlantis?

“What… do you want here of me, outlander?”

“It’s yourself’s the outlander, man; ye be not now on your own piteous isle, which you first gave to the Romans and now suffer to be taken by all who come from oversea with a few spears! As to what I want… the man on yon rock. It’s a better man than you he is, and I like not your taunting of him. He dies not this night.”

Bledyn’s fingers tightened sweatily about his spear. From out the haunted dark of this unknown bit of rocky land came this strange dark man, calling himself by no name known to Bledyn of Gwent, and calling that fantastic inland keep his . Holding lips and teeth tight, the Briton spoke.