Weird cries echoed across the land, drifting down from the higher slopes and playing out across the rolling foothills towards the distant glimmering sea. He could see dark-robed shapes scattered between the high rocks, the
flash of iron, the gleam of light on rich white hair, uncut since birth and tied in tight coils as was the ancient tradition.
A child’s wailing caught his attention, just for a moment, and he wondered at it.
Before he began to climb the steepest part of the mountainside he cried the appeasement song that would allow him safe passage.
‘As the people of Danann dance in their graveyard forests,
so they dance in my heart.
No Fomorion am I,
who comes to these ancient lands.
As the bright sun gleams on the heathen crosses of Rome,
so it gleams on my sword as I cut them down.
No Christian am I,
who comes to these ancient lands.
As the wild sea beats against our blood-stained shores,
so it beats against the defiant blade of a true born Celt.
No sea-ghost of Atlantis am I,
who comes to these ancient lands.
As the greed of Kings seeks beyond the mortal veil for secrets,
so I stand a simple warrior.
No seeker after magic iron am I,
who comes to these ancient lands.’
As if his words put even the clouds at their ease, the high white mists slipped away from the peaks, and bright sun showed him the profusion of caves that was his destination.
Taking a deep breath, shifting his snow-sword so that it hung more comfortably behind him, he began to run.
He lost track of time, but the sun had moved a considerable distance by the time he crawled along a narrow ledge and peered into the nearest cave.
The cave was empty, but he felt instinctively that he should enter it, and this he did, crouched low to avoid gashing his head on the naked rock ceiling. He crawled to the back of the hole in the cliff and sat there, staring into the daylight, listening to the sound the wind made as it whistled between the crannies and through the holes in the rock. Skulls were scattered around the walls, most of them split or holed in the obvious way of battle. Apart from these trophies of past glory, the cave was empty.
It was also cold. Niall, dressed only in his sleeveless jerkin and knee-length breeches inherited from a man he killed, shivered.
At length he heard the sound of approach along the ledge outside, and the
cave mouth darkened as a black-robed man blocked the entrance with his body, staring at the intruder with deep set, grey eyes.
Niall didn’t move, made no sign of being afraid, and he left his sword conspicuously at arm’s reach, the belt wrapped around the hilt so that to draw it would be difficult.
‘I need help,’ he said simply.
The Druid edged into the cave and sat down, wrapped his arms around his knees and cocked his head to one side. Niall could see his face more clearly now: it was rich with lines, the nose squashed and ugly, unnaturally so, as if he had been hit a violent blow there; his lips thin, almost totally hidden beneath the fine white down of his beard and moustache. His eyes were brightly alive, glittering grey, sparkling with interest in this new arrival.
‘I am Iurstil,’ said the Druid, ‘which in the old tongue means “creator of dreams”. But I can destroy dreams too, and can do many things of the old order, many magic tricks, many ancient rituals. Here on this mountain we have preserved an ancient knowledge. There is a mountain to the far north, across the great ice sea, where in a vast hall all knowledge is kept and guarded. But here on Slieve Aaran we have retained the knowledge of the people of Danann, and of the gold-skinned race that lived here before them, after the Stone Builders, who came themselves after the Atlanteans and the Sky Riders. To have come here took great courage, and you have stepped into a place where time becomes meaningless, for we have the secrets of so many ages. But the price for entering here is very high. Are you prepared to pay it?’
‘I am,’ said Niall.
‘Then come,’ said Iurstil, and he led Niall out of this lowest cave and up the mountain, higher to where the air was bitterly cold, and the view across the land extended to the offshore islands, and beyond even to the ocean wastes where the Sky Riders had lived in eons past.
Here, where the slope of the mountainside decreased for a few paces, a henge of dark, crystalline stones faced Niall, and drew him towards it.
Iurstil sensed Niall’s hesitation as he fought against the supernatural beckoning of the standing stones. He grinned at the boy, waved him calm as he saw the young man’s sword arm raised, the short, snow-forged blade gleaming in the bright daylight, the fear of the unknown as bright as light in his fierce green eyes.
‘This is a simple gate to a simple cave; no horrors lie beyond it.’
‘What lies beyond it, then?’ asked Niall, suspicious, remembering in some dark corner of his mind a similar gate in the high mountains of a land to which, as Niall the Mad Bear, he had never been.
‘Old men, an old woman,’ said Iurstil. ‘Old remnants of an ancient tradition.’
‘Tell me before I pass through,’ demanded Niall, and Iurstil sighed.
‘Beyond the gate – which is a simple trick to hide us from the hawk eyes of men on the plains below – live in sorry poverty the last of the Pai Iair, an ancient sect of Druids of whom you shall learn more beyond the gate. We are here to help, not to hinder. This is why the sect was created in the early years of the iron swords of the distant lakelands, across two shallow channels to the east.’
His tone was calm, his manner reassuring, and as Iurstil bowed his head and turned three times round in the shadow of the henge before stepping through, so Niall found his legs moving him forward. He copied the action of Iurstil, turning thrice round in the direction of the sun, before stepping across the threshold. There was a chill on his skin, and a tingling at the roots of his swept-back hair – still standing out stiff and noble from his crown after his last greasing, some days before – with a cluster of spears worn in place of a war helmet.
He sheathed his sword as he stepped on to the mountainside beyond the henge. He found there to be no difference in warmth or wind, in slope or colour of the view he had had a moment before, save that a small cave mouth now greeted his gaze, where before there had been just decorated rock.
‘Enter before me,’ said Iurstil. ‘As a minor practitioner of the magic arts I am not permitted inside the hall, though I shall hear you and converse with you if you feel the need.’
‘Who’s inside?’ asked the Mad Bear, uneasy at the thought of entering alone.
‘Old men, an old woman,’ repeated Iurstil, then dropping his voice to a whisper designed to be heard only by Niall, ‘All a little eccentric, though undisputed masters of their craft. Go on, now, go in.’
Niall stooped and entered the cave, crawling for a few seconds along the narrow, musty-smelling passageway until at last he passed between two spiral decorated stones placed artificially across the mouth of the passage and found himself in a wide, low-ceilinged chamber, sweet-smelling and pleasant to observe. The floor was deep in fur rugs; the walls were hung with exotic tapestries, showing pictures of the gods that Niall still worshipped, despite his state of mind, and despite the brown-robed pagans from Rome.
Seated in a half circle, watching him, were nine withered specimens of humanity, identical in their purple robing, in their long, straight white hair, in the rich tapestry of wrinkles on their faces, in their wise and thoughtful gazes, in their placid postures and easy breathing. Yet each as different from the others in subtle, sometimes indefinable ways; just as Niall was different from Iurstil. One was larger built than the others, and one far thinner; one kept his head cocked to the left, and one to the right; one was a woman (which was difficult, because of her great age, to really notice), and one was darker of skin; one wore a small and rather silly sword, a decorative
ornament really, and one wore neck and wrist torques fashioned out of gold cable; one was covered with sea-shells, which he kept holding out to the others and smiling at them.
Niall was suddenly too shocked by their bizarre appearance to be at all afraid.
The first of the old men rose and beckoned to Niall to sit at the centre of the circle they half formed. ‘We shall know of you in good time,’ he said. ‘First you shall know of us.’ This Druid carried on his belt a tiny abacus, and his fingers clutched at this as he spoke, the first sign of nervousness that Niall had seen. He sat down, cross-legged, on the thick rugs and watched the magic men before him, saying nothing, listening for the slightest heartbeat of treachery.
‘I am Aundru, son of Palessi of the Ligian Eogonacht, which were previously the tribes of Ailill mac Demerthe; my ancestry is of these lands, and I am the last of my kind, the Pai Iairian order of Druids in these provinces. My pocket abacus is my link with the Universe of numbers, and until I die I shall seek an answer to all questions in that Universe; but my magic skills are traditional, as are all our skills.
‘This,’ he pointed to the wrinkled old woman whose sparkling brown eyes watched Niall with great warmth, ‘is Dian ni Di, of the tribe of the Epsomi in the country of Cymri, and she can listen to the voices of the gods as they drift around the world on the currents and waves of the air.
‘This,’ he indicated the darker skinned Druid, who licked his lips as if tasting flesh, ‘is Mrogaan, known as the Bluffer of the gods. He is of the Cenel nOengusa and can trace his ancestry back to a prince of the Fir Bolg who learned the magic ways from the severed head of Cathbad, the great Druid of Uliad. He can foretell the future using the shells of the eastern seas.
‘This,’ the Druid with his head cocked to the left, ‘is Davad, son of Twyldu, of the Neuteriona tribe of Albion. He listens only with his right ear, whilst with his left he listens to the voices of the stars.
‘This,’ the thinnest of the Druids, ‘is Ceivin, from the islands between Uliad and Albion called Mann; he once rode upon a magic sphinx, and his greatest ability is the casting of spells in Latin numbers.
‘This,’ the Druid with his head cocked to the right, ‘is Rohaan, of the Pictish Celts, north of Albion; he gains his strength from a potion made from barley and tree fungus growing wild in the Glens of Feediech.
‘This is Gaurix, a Gaul,’ Aundru indicated the Druid with the golden cabled torques about his body. ‘He is the oldest of us, remembering even the great conqueror of the Gaulish provinces, Julius Caesar. His tribe, the Annetix, were saved from slaughter by Gaurix’s magic, but for a hundred years he was required to fulfil the terms of his spell by laying a line of golden cable around the belly of the world along which the spirits of the gods can flow.
‘This last,’ the Druid with the sword, who placed an ill-fitting horned
helmet on his head as he became the focus of Niall’s attention, ‘is Allaunix, also of Gaul. He has seen into the Rock of Far Seeing and observed your previous life, and he has travelled through the Crystal of Far Travel and experienced the wrath of the warriors known as Norsemen, who will soon arise in their northern Holds and pirate the souls of the provinces of Ireland. He, of all of us, understands who you are and what you are.’
Aundru sat down, then, gathering his robe about his body and adding his own stare to the stares of the others, a fixed contemplation of the beardless youth before them. Perhaps they were confused by his lack of years and yet his obvious warrior’s bearing and temperament. Whatever it was about him that puzzled those eight, with the exception of Allaunix, Niall felt distinctly withered beneath their scrutiny and wished that the comforting old Druid Iurstil were here.
‘I am Niall mac Amalgaid, also known as Niall the Mad Bear, also known as Snow Destroyer because of my sword which was fashioned from the ice of winter, also known as Nightmare Dreamer, also known as Father Slayer. I am an outcast from my tuath, among the Ui Fiachrach. There is a spirit inside me which is called Swiftaxe and Berserker, and which is shaped like a bear, and I fear this demon and wish to escape it. I don’t know how it has come there.’
Ceivin spoke first. ‘Do you manifest as a bear?’
Niall nodded, ‘When the fury is with me, when I spill blood uncontrollably, my face distorts into the mask of a bear, yes.’
‘He looks like a bear now,’ said Dian ni Di, shivering. ‘Perhaps he’s about to throw a fit of fury.’
‘No,’ said Niall loudly. ‘I am quite calm now.’ There was not even a rumble of dissension from within his skull.
‘The bear,’ observed Rohaan, slowly and slightly slurred, ‘is a handsome animal. Full of music.’
‘Too much potion,’ murmured Gaurix quietly.
‘One day, by the grace of the gods, you’ll strangle yourself on your own gold cable.’ Rohaan smiled broadly, then said to Niall, ‘It sounds like a god-possession to me.’
‘My thoughts exactly,’ said the Druid, Davad; he spoke very quickly, almost too quickly for Niall to catch the words. Others of the Pai Iairian Druids spoke too, and it became impossible to understand the gist of any argument.
Niall settled back on his heels and folded his arms, watching the eccentric exhibition with silent despair.
These
wise men were to help him? He began to lose hope.
Aundru spluttered for a moment, then shouted loudly, ‘Please! One at a time. This case needs very careful analysis if we’re to pin down the trouble and get the correct spell to alleviate it.’
Mrogaan banged two intricately coloured shells together and then blew a note from one of them.
‘For an ancient sect of Druids,’ said Rohaan loudly, ‘some of your techniques of spellbinding would benefit from a touch of criticism.’
‘I’d suggest the touch of death,’ said Mrogaan, with a laugh.
‘Crawl back in your shell,’ said Dian ni Di.
‘
Your
obscure spells are nothing to be proud of,’ rankled Ceivin.