A Cage of Roots (15 page)

Now Sean was close enough to see. A colossal, gargantuan brute squatted before him: six metres tall even on his haunches. He was fat around the belly, but heavily muscled in the arms and shoulders. His body was covered in scars: thousands of them. They looked like nicks on his vast torso, but in reality were a metre or two long. Embedded here and there were weapons – swords, spears, arrows – all like splinters, and there for so long that they were nearly fossilised on the rough flesh. His head sported two very strange horns on the thick brow; instead of animal horns, they were like trees with clutches of oblong red leaves. Greasy wild hair fell around pointy ears.

In the monster's vast hands, tipped with long grey nails, he held the carcass of a huge male elk. He was gorging himself on it, the bones clicking and snapping between his blood-soaked teeth. The animal's once noble head, crowned with wide antlers, hung slack between the ogre's fingers, the eyes rolled back to the whites and jaw agape.

Sean had not been noticed yet. He thought about running, but then, inexplicably, his mouth opened and he said, ‘Excuse me.'

The ogre looked up from its meal instantly, turning its head left and right with the poor elk still clamped in his jaws.

‘Down here!' Sean shouted. He could not believe himself. The creature looked down at him, its dark eyes boring into his. It let the carcass drop; blood slid down its chin in heavy drops. For a moment there was utter silence. Then the ogre rose to its feet, opened its mouth wide and bellowed long and hard into Sean's face. The boy's ears popped and rang; his cheeks flapped as if he was in a wind tunnel. He fell backwards, his glasses coated in blood and green spittle.

Scuttling desperately to his feet, he found he could see nothing around him, but he realised he was not being eaten, yet. Sean wiped away the thick grease from his glasses and looked ahead. The ogre was standing back a few feet from him. It looked confused, even a little
frightened
.

It seemed to be staring at something by Sean's feet. Sean looked to the ground beside him and saw his bag. It had fallen when he was knocked back, and spilled its contents. The monster kept glancing between the bag and the boy while shuffling backwards.

This makes no sense,
Sean thought. Then, once again, he did something completely independently of his own will (which wanted him to run): he leaned down and picked up one of his books from the wet grass. It was the hardcover
he had bought in the Ailwee Caves:
Symbols in Stone: Celtic Carvings of Ancient Ireland.
The cover sported a photograph of stones around an ancient burial mound, each coated in spirals. The monster flinched, holding up a huge arm as if to defend itself from a blow. Sean held the book up higher and the ogre shuffled back, visibly cowed. Sean started to understand.

‘Eh … foul beast!' he shouted, ‘I am the great … uh … the great … Zed! Yes, I am Zed the Powerful! Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' He waved the book threateningly. The monster groaned and turned in a circle, as if searching for an escape.

‘This is my book of spells! And now … uh,' Sean was really thinking on his feet here.
Keep going,
said an inner voice. ‘And now, I shall read from it and you will be killed!'

The ogre was beginning to look completely confused. It frowned, snuffled out a low growl and pounded its great fist on the earth. Sean took a step backwards, tripped over his bag and fell onto his backside. The creature slammed a fist into the ground again and stepped closer. It was not as afraid as Sean had hoped.

He held up the book again and with his free hand groped on the ground around him. He found his other book – his fantasy paperback. He held it aloft for the goliath to see, and when the ogre noticed the image of swords and lightning on the cover, with the foil catching the grey
light just enough to shimmer slightly, it roared into the air and leaped back again. Getting to his feet and keeping the shiny paperback aloft, Sean opened a random page of the
Symbols in Stone
hardback and started to read:

‘Iron Age carved head.' He waved the book around his head for effect, and stepped towards the cowering beast. ‘Found in 1927 in the area of Oristown, County Meath, this stone figure is thought to portray the god Dagda.'

The ogre began to weep.

It fell to its knees and bowed its head, scratching the ground around itself, pulling up soil and rock, and beating itself around the shoulders with fistfuls of earth. It glanced up once and then curled up, tucking its face into its chest. It peeked out from between its fingers, then reached behind its back and produced a huge hammer, easily the height of the boy and probably twice his weight. The monster set it down at his feet, whining. The shaft was bound in leather; the head was moulded to the shape of a fist.

When Fergus saw the boy appear over the crest of the hill, his heart leapt for joy, and then fell again when he could not see the hammer. He hurried to meet him.

‘No weapon, lad?' he asked, sadly. ‘You are alive at least.'

Sean whistled.

The ground shook, and the goliath stomped out of the mist. It grumbled at Fergus, set the hammer down and then turned. Roaring once, it slipped back into the fog. The bellow echoed through the mountains and out onto the cold ocean.

Consciousness came back to Ayla slowly, in surges of dull pain and nausea. When she opened her eyes, she could just make out a thin beam of brilliant light shimmying before her. She groaned and squinted, and the blurriness abated slightly. At least three of the goblin creatures were scurrying around her, pulling parts of the contraption across and down expertly. It shunted and clicked noisily as they worked, the wooden parts sliding and lifting, folding the string of light into a weave and carrying it off somewhere to her left. When they noticed her wake, they cackled and said:

‘
Not long now, Princess Piglet! The loom works quickly!
'

Ayla focused on the light. It was a taut beam, painfully bright, and it pointed directly down onto her body. It danced from left to right and back again, burning her where it touched. It was focused on her right arm now, biting sharply into the flesh at the elbow joint.

She raised her head weakly to see better, and screamed in horror. Below the elbow, her lower arm was transformed.
The skin was charred: blacker than black. Her hand was long and crooked, with gnarled, claw-like fingers, curling up into a fist. Frantically she tried to lift her head higher again, to inspect the rest of her body, and cried out again at the sight of her right leg: it too was changed. It was thin and bent, with a long foot and grasping toes. The pitch-black-coloured skin extended to her hip and up to the lower ribs.

‘What are you doing to me?' she wailed.

The red roots of the king's face appeared far above her, then descended, crimson sparks falling from his eyes and mouth. The heat stung her entire body. He smelled of rotten earth.

‘LOOK!'

The voice boomed like a piece of a cliff crashing into the sea. His hand of tangled vines pointed to her right.

Ayla looked. From the machinations of the loom a tapestry of light emerged and, guided by teams of goblins, trailed across the great hall and into the wretched form that hung from the wall. The form was nearly whole now; Ayla could see the shapes of two arms hanging down on either side of an open torso, though they still draped lifelessly. Goblins threaded the weave among the roots, and as they worked, Ayla saw it twitch violently. Whatever she was, she was beginning to stir.

The king spoke again.

‘Long have we searched for you.'

Ayla looked back at him, horrified.

‘Many times we thought we had found you.'

The goblins howled.

‘Now our daughter has returned to us, and my love can be whole again.'

Finny, Benvy and Sean were hugging feverishly, none of them willing to break the embrace. At last, Benvy pushed them off in mock disgust. They laughed and hugged again.

‘I never thought I'd see you again!' Finny shouted.

‘I never thought I'd see anything again!' Benvy replied, tousling his hair.

Lann and Fergus stood on a ridge a few metres away, deep in conversation. Taig sat on a boulder alone. They were on a flat plain of limestone rock, which cracked into deep fissures. The landscape rolled away around them into round hills, with only splashes of green where stubborn plants grew between the slabs. The sky was ashen, and laden with fat clouds. The brothers beckoned the three friends over to them.

‘We have to set off. Night will fall soon,' announced Lann. ‘We have only an hour or so of a march, but we will be moving quickly. If you have any food and water left, I
suggest you take it now.'

Sean shared some biscuit among them, and they wolfed it down gratefully. They shared their flasks too, and lifted their bags onto each others' backs.

Lann and Fergus started off ahead of them, heading across the plain to a cluster of small mountains. Taig was still sitting in the distance, on his boulder. The friends looked at each other, sharing the same expression of concern.

‘They don't look well,' Sean said. ‘Fergus has been struggling for a while.'

‘They look older,' added Finny. ‘And what's up with Taig, Benv?'

‘I'm not sure,' she replied. ‘He's been in a right grump since I got the javelin. I don't think he feels so good.'

They watched the youngest brother lift himself heavily from his seat and trudge off in the direction of the mountains.

‘Well, who's going to go first?' asked Finny.

‘Allow me,' Sean said quickly, and began to recount his tale in great detail as they walked.

By the time they arrived at the mountains, each had had a chance to tell their story. They had gasped in astonishment at each others' accounts, still finding their situation hard to believe. They could only imagine what lay ahead of them now. But all three admitted to feeling more ready for whatever was thrown at them. They just wanted to find Ayla.

Fergus and Lann did not stop, continuing on a rough path between the flanks of the rocky mountains. It grew colder with every step, and the going was difficult. Wide cracks had to be crossed; the ground was ridged and hard on their feet.

When they began the climb up the tallest of the peaks, they saw no more tufts of sturdy grass, nor heard any trickles of lively streams. They each got the unpleasant sense that they were going to a place where even the most determined life had no foothold. This place was dead – a purgatory of hard, unending limestone.

Taig lagged far behind for the whole of the unceasing climb, but every time Benvy checked, he was still there at least, hauling himself slowly up.

At the top, it was bitingly cold, despite there being no hint of a breeze. Ahead of them, Lann and Fergus had stopped and gestured down to the other side.

A craggy escarpment tumbled down to a deep-set canyon. While the land around them had been sterile and colourless, this valley was worse still. It was harsh – cruel even. The three friends each had a strong distaste for going anywhere near it.