The Sword of Feimhin (17 page)

In Alan's memory the former Kyra, the present Kyra's mother-sister, spoke with great urgency. ‘
Our cause is desperate. Our enemies outnumber us perhaps twenty to one
.'

In the same memory Alan wheeled about, taking in the desperate fight against overwhelming odds. The monstrous figure of the Legun incarnate reared in front of him, half emerging from the flames and ruin. A gigantic creature with the face of a skull, it sat astride a giant battle charger, with fangs for teeth and a frame armoured and powerful as a rhinoceros. Malice glimmered about the Legun as if a dark sun were continually reforming out of the voids of space. The Kyra attacked, but there was no pause, not even a shudder in her terrible enemy, her sword merely sliced through darkness with a blaze of green sparks. The Legun struck out with taloned claws while she was still in flight, catching her shoulder with an immense reach. Blood spurted from the previously healing wounds as the Kyra fell back against the wrack of bodies. The Legun picked her up by her tawny hair, dangling her body high above Alan as if she were a figure of straw, then cut deep with an extended talon, reopening the scars on the left side of her face.

Alan hurled the Spear of Lug, flaring Ogham runes, into the figure of darkness. With a roar the Legun dropped the Kyra. But, though Alan had attacked it with all of his power, he had not destroyed it and the Legun expanded even more until it became a thunderhead of dark power, devouring the light.

The Kyra clambered back onto uncertain feet, mortally injured, her right arm dangling uselessly by her side. ‘
There is little more I can do
,' she groaned. Then her blue eyes widened and a spark of awe lit them, as if from her inner spirit. ‘
Yet I thank the Powers that I should have lived to see the arrival of the Heralded One
.'

Her left hand moved to touch his brow and her oraculum pulsated stronger, taking power from him. ‘
Your duty is clear. You must support me in my instructions, Mage Lord Duval
.'

In his memory Alan looked into the eyes of the wounded Kyra. ‘
How can I help you?
'

He heard her, and Ainé heard her with him. ‘
Preserve these, my memories, for my daughter-sister
.'

Alan felt the squeeze of the Ainé's grip, so powerful it almost broke the bones of his fingers. His head fell. Only now, with the renewed chanting of the excited Shee, did he gently break contact, oraculum-to-oraculum.

The Kyra spoke softly, her own head lowered. ‘Her actions make it clear there is no blasphemy. Yet, I would wish to know what became of my mother-sister?'

‘She asked me to let her draw on the power of my oraculum, to allow her a final blood-rage.'

The young Kyra's voice was little above a whisper. ‘I sense that you are protecting me from what you imagine to be the pain of loss. I need to know how she died.'

Alan closed his eyes. In his memory he heard the mother-sister demand of him, ‘
Give me this comfort. I would enter blood rage but my body is too weak. For this I must draw power from you
.'

He recalled focusing all of his power on the Kyra's oraculum of Bree and recoiled from the vision as he remembered the explosive union throwing them both backwards.

He saw his condensation of oracular energy strike the white tigress, the First Power turning her into a soul spirit of incandescent wrath. Each movement of her limbs caused arcs of lighting to spill onto the adjacent ground and her eyes radiated light, like miniature furnaces. With a roar that shook the ground, she pounced at the Legun, great jaws spilling lightning, her huge weight and energy tearing into its body, her maw directed at its throat while she retained the last vestiges of life.

The young Kyra watched with Alan, entranced and astonished. ‘She made her dying self into a living weapon.'

Alan nodded. ‘In doing so she saved many lives, including my own. She bought us time.'

As the moon fully eclipsed the sun, Ainé stood, still and silent, in the resultant gloom. It was as if the fighting spirit of the former Kyra, the mother-sister, still reared before them in the eye of memory, her soul spirit preserved within their shared minds.

The daughter-sister's form began to change. Her clothing fell away from her and she became the great snow tigress that was her soul spirit. The encircling Shee began to sing a new hymn, closing in to fashion a protective circle around the central trio.

Alan murmured, ‘Bétaald?'

‘The Kyra does you honour, Mage Lord Duval.'

Then Bétaald spoke gentle words of command, in a language that sounded older than the mountains. Alan stood still, his heart in his throat, as the snow tigress approached him, her muzzle brushing against his shoulder, her throat purring, so he felt the vibrations resonate in his chest.

He spoke again to Bétaald. ‘Is it time?'

She nodded. ‘The Oraculum of Bree must now be confirmed with the Kyra in her ancestral form.'

Then he spoke the words that were obvious to him now, whispering them through the pulsating oraculum in his brow, which became the sole illumination in the darkened landscape, highlighting the figure of the gigantic snow tigress in brilliant rubicund light.

‘I hereby return the memories that were entrusted to me by the former Kyra, who was my friend. I'm honoured to have been the carrier of this sacred trust. May it comfort and enlighten you, her daughter-sister, Ainé, the new Kyra.'

*

From his skulking position in a shadowed crevice a third of the way up the cliff, Snakoil Kawkaw cringed before the
thunderous detonation as the brat and the witch warrior made some kind of extraordinary contact. An eruption of red lightning broke out from the tiny cluster of three at the heart of the great gathering, catching the curves of shields and then radiating back into the sky, where the vast army of Gargs observed and wheeled.

‘Odoriferous batshit!'

The hackles on his neck rose as the white tigress at the heart of it all lifted her enormous head and roared.

The blaze over the great spiral of shields coincided with the first brilliant flash of the sun emerging out of the darkness. Kawkaw's eyes lifted to the ledge high overhead and the figures of the watching king and the Garg high shaman, Mahteman. Kawkaw could see how the thunder and lightning must have appeared, to their superstitious eyes, as if the meeting below had re-ignited sun.

His guess was confirmed as a loud moaning issued from the gill-throats of the Eyrie people – a reaction to what they had witnessed.

‘Execrable brat!' he muttered. He couldn't see how the lovely lady, for all of her face painting and celebration, could prevent the now inevitable union of the flying gargoyles with the witch warriors. They would march on Ghork Mega soon – a nightmare journey that he, no doubt, would be forced to join.

It took a few moments for Mark to become aware that he and Nan had arrived at their destination: a roomy windowless building that had once been industrial premises. In front of the broken bull bar of heavy vehicle, a figure was kneeling on an oil-stained fragment of carpet. The figure was that of a muscular male in jeans and a short-sleeved navy shirt, with an oxyacetylene torch in his hand. For another moment or two Mark was too disorientated to think clearly. He could hear nothing other than the roar of the torch.

Henriette had triggered it. He had no idea how. She had gathered him and Nan together behind the soup kitchen mission and she had sent them here, through the conduit of the Temple Ship.

He called out to her mind to mind.

The kneeling man, his face protected behind a visor, was
still concentrating on the jet of flame, but it was no longer directed at the white-hot metal, which was rapidly cooling to brilliant pink. In the fraction of a second that Mark registered this, he saw the hackles rise on the back of the man's neck and he turned, lifting the visor, his thumb automatically brushing the knurled valve that turned off the flame. He dropped the burner onto the floor with a clatter.

In the man's mind, Mark registered the recognition that there was somebody else in the gloom; a stranger, with his face lit up. Shit – Mark was looking at his own face, looking like that of a ghost.

The kneeling man said, ‘What the hell?'

Mark glanced behind him at Nan and the blue-black zigzag of the lightning that coursed from her brow, lighting up her features. More of the tiny bolts ran in arabesques and rivulets over her head, coming together in a spider's web over her shoulders. The oraculum was pulsating strongly, aglow with a livid fire.

‘Please – don't be alarmed. We mean you no harm.'

He heard the man growl, ‘Shit!'

‘My name is Mark Grimstone. My friend's name is Nan.'

The man appeared to be transfixed with shock, but Mark thought that was hardly surprising. He sensed the prickling of gooseflesh that was running like a cold shower down the man's back. He read it in the man's mind that the building was a barn, somewhere in the rural wilds north of the M25, and that his name was Cal.

He said, ‘Take it easy, Cal. We want to work with you.'

Mark was sensing three or four other presences within the barn. He heard a click and assumed it was the priming of a weapon.

Cal said, ‘What's going on? This some kind of a joke?'

‘It isn't a joke.'

‘Tajh!' Cal shouted.

Mark held his hands out, to reassure all present that he was no threat. ‘I realise you weren't expecting us, but we're on the same side.'

Mark sensed the sweat oozing freely from Cal's face, itching in the ridge across his forehead created by the strap. He felt him dump the headgear.

‘Tajh – dammit!'

A woman spoke from surprisingly close, in a matter-of-fact Scottish accent. ‘Cool it, Cal. Let's hear what they have to say.'

She was carrying a weapon. It must have been her priming the gun. She was close enough now to be visible. Mark saw that the weapon was a submachine gun and that it was pointed directly at his own chest.

‘You must be Tajh.'

‘You say you want to work with us? You just turn up out of the blue to tell us that? Why didn't somebody warn us you were coming?'

‘We didn't know how to warn you.'

‘You say your name is Mark Grimstone? You related to the Reverend of the same name?'

‘My adoptive father.'

Nan spoke, with icy calm. ‘You should tell Cal to bridle his anger. We have no desire to hurt you.'

Cal hooted with laughter. ‘Shit! Shit! Shit!'

Nan spoke again, with the same cool authority. ‘If my suspicions are correct, there is good reason for us to combine forces. The danger facing you is far greater than you imagine.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?' That was another voice entirely, a male voice, from somewhere deeper in the gloom, close to where Mark figured the barn doors were. Tajh raised her voice to shout over her shoulder. ‘Sharkey – I know you're there. I don't want you do anything stupid.'

Mark caught a glimpse of a tall, lean figure. He appeared to be unarmed.

‘I won't, but I want to know what madam here means by all that stuff about danger.'

‘We arrived in London only a day ago, but in that day we have encountered strangeness beyond anything we expected: dark magic. In my world that would provoke suspicion.'

‘Dark magic?' The man called Sharkey was cackling with amusement.

‘Indeed.'

Cal said, ‘Bloody hell! This is bonkers. I'm telling you, the both of you, to cut the bullshit. How the hell did you find us?'

Mark thought it prudent to intervene. ‘That would take some explaining.'

‘That's it, Tajh, I'm not putting up with this.'

Tajh motioned to Nan to come closer to Mark. That way she could cover them both with the submachine gun. Nan did so, but without any hurry. Mark could see that she was bristling with anger. Tajh must have noticed it too. ‘You'll forgive the fact we're all a little tense.' She took a step closer, to take a good look at Nan's face. ‘What's that in your head? Some kind of jewel?'

Nan answered coolly, ‘It's called an oraculum.'

Tajh peered more closely at Nan's oraculum. ‘My God, it's luminous – pulsating.' Tajh blinked with astonishment, stepping back again, but she kept the submachine gun directed at Mark, who kept his hands wide in that same non-threatening gesture. She said, ‘You cool, Cal?'

‘I'm far from cool!'

‘Sharkey?'

‘As the proverbial breeze.'

Tajh said, ‘Okay. We all need to calm down.' She threw Cal a towel to wipe the sweat from his face. ‘What's an oraculum?' The question was addressed to Nan.

‘A gateway to power – it works through a crystal.'

Tajh was shaking her head. ‘What – so you're saying you and Mark here have crystals of power embedded in your heads?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's the reason your hair's standing on end full of some kind of electrical charge? Och, there are sparks in your hair – blue-black lightning running over both your heads.'

‘It's what happens when people aim guns at us.'

‘I still want to know how these people located us,' Cal said. ‘How they found their way past Bull on security. What's the matter with everybody? Don't you folks understand the risks we're running every bloody moment?'

Tajh sighed. ‘One thing at a time. What's all this talk about dark magic and the danger being worse than we think?'

Mark shrugged, let his hands fall by his sides. ‘I could try to explain – but we'd need a deal of time and you're unlikely to believe me at the end of it.'

Cal shook his head. ‘The crazy kind of stuff the guy is coming out with! And yet you're just nodding your head, Tajh.'

Tajh frowned, ignoring Cal. ‘Tell me about this,' she pointed, ‘this axe strapped to your back – this is your weapon?'

‘Yeah.'

‘An old-fashioned medieval battleaxe?'

‘A battleaxe, but it's not medieval. It's nothing like any battleaxe you know about.'

Mark caught the glance Tajh passed to Cal, who just stood there with frank disbelief written all over his face.

Cal said, ‘You know this is insane.'

Tajh said, ‘You're right. It's insane, but insane things are going on in the streets of London right now. Things you and I just don't understand.'

Cal had had enough. He grabbed the gun from Tajh and
stepped up in front of Mark, training it into his face. ‘I don't know who you are. I don't know where you come from – or what you're doing here. I don't understand shit of what you're telling us. The only thing keeping you alive right now is the fact I need to know how the hell you found us.'

Mark was aware of Sharkey moving around behind them as he and Nan took several more steps into the barn, coming within feet of the man called Cal. He kept a close eye on Cal, who appeared to be the leader of the group. Judging from his accent, he was likely to be London-born. Even in the gloom Mark could see that Cal was shaven-headed, his cheeks and chin stubbled with a two-day growth of beard. The woman, Tajh, was brown-haired, slightly gangly, with big silver pendants dangling from fleshy ear lobes.

Mark sensed at least two other presences, only one of whom had been identified: Sharkey. The other, a male presence, was creeping up on them. Mark wondered if it was the one Cal had called Bull. Mark kept the presence in his mind, deciding whether it was he or Nan that was the focus of the attack. He sensed rage in the attacking mind only a moment or so before the attack was upon them, then he froze the attacker, turning round to discover an extremely heavy-set man dressed only in boxer shorts. A heavy machine gun was clutched in his hands, with a belt full of bullets dangling over his left forearm. The rage Mark had detected in the man's mind was still apparent in his frozen eyes.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to inject any common sense into the situation. Mark watched Cal blinking. He was aware that the gun in Cal's hands had been primed earlier ready to fire. Sweat was once more running openly into Cal's eyes. Although Cal was unaware of it, a matrix of blue-black lightning focused on the submachine gun was subtly bathing him in electricity. Tajh had to be aware of it. Mark kept his eyes on Cal while appealing to Tajh. ‘Can't we just talk through this, coolly and rationally? Surely you can see that we're trying to be reasonable?'

Tajh went to Cal's side and threw her arms around him. Mark signalled Nan to make sure she didn't overreact.

‘If you care for him,' Mark told Tajh gently, ‘get him to put down the gun.' He turned slowly, speaking to each of them. ‘I'm addressing all of you. I'm not expecting any of you to just trust us. All I am asking is we all take a mental step back. And could somebody please put some more lights on so we can all clearly see one another?'

A raft of lights erupted overhead.

Mark's eyes had been so adjusted to the murky dark it was like being caught in a searchlight. He let his hands fall by his sides, and saw that Nan did the same. Tajh was staring at him, breathing heavily. Cal was also staring at the both of them, his eyes moving from one to the other, but the gun had fallen to his side. Mark released the frozen man and he fell to his knees with a grunt.

Sharkey was standing several feet inside the doorway of
the barn, next to the light switches. His hair was grey, tied back into a ponytail, and held with a Navajo ring. His face was so gaunt it resembled a mask, with a Zapata moustache dangling over his upper lip. His voice mimicked a sing-song Jamaican patois. ‘Before Babylon fall, jackals goin' raise their voices in falsehood. All af us done killin'. An' we lookin' to plenty more. But us also had killin' done to us.'

‘Then,' Mark answered, ‘Nan and I find ourselves amongst friends.'

Tajh squeezed Cal, as if to reassure him. She said, ‘Okay – my vote, if it comes to a vote, is we all sit down and talk.'

Cal's voice was husky, low-pitched, his face lowered so Mark had to struggle even to hear him. ‘I'm talking to nobody. Not until they tell us how they found us. We're always on the move. So how the hell did they do that?'

Mark said nothing. How in the world could he possibly explain, in this fraught situation, how they had arrived here. He wasn't even sure where “here” really was, other than the fact it was somewhere rural, and a distance from London. The fact was,
he
didn't even quite know how such a thing could happen.

‘You have special powers?' It was Tajh who came to his rescue.

‘That's a good way of looking at it, yeah.'

Mark watched Sharkey produce a spliff before lighting it off a butane ring. He took a puff then passed it on to Cal.

Cal smoked it automatically, just standing there, his
eyes glittering. Tajh was slowly studying Mark and Nan with flickering movements of her eyes from one to the other.

Mark laughed softly. ‘Look – I can see that our arrival here has come as a shock. But we really mean you no harm. My name really is Mark Grimstone, but I'm no friend of my adoptive father's. Nan and I, we want to be your allies.'

Tajh spoke quietly, urgently. ‘If only you knew, Mark and Nan, what we – the Resistance – have been through, you'd realise how hard it is for us to trust strangers.' Her chin jutted out. ‘The Skulls murdered Cal's father and they murdered Sharkey's son.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that.'

‘The paramilitaries call us terrorists, but terrorists aim to victimise ordinary, decent people. We don't do that. We try to defend them.'

‘So you're freedom fighters?'

A dwarf in a wheelchair astonished both Mark and Nan by rolling out from the far side of the huge vehicle that Cal had been working on. Neither of them had been aware of his presence. He said, ‘Let me answer that. What we are is a crew – one small cog in the mighty Resistance.'

Mark grinned. ‘Okay.'

The dwarf grinned back, ‘Talking of cogs, I'm Cogwheel.'

Nan, who was closest to him, shook his hand. ‘Glad to meet you, Cogwheel.'

‘Likewise, Nan.'

Cal handed what was left of the spliff back to Sharkey.
‘What if these two lunatics have a truckload of pals out there? What if, right now, they're in the process of surrounding us while these two divert us with this crap?'

Tajh spoke tiredly. ‘Cal – think about it. Would they have come in openly among us if they were out to kill us?'

‘It isn't that simple.' Cal turned back to glare at Mark. ‘What the fuck are you people really up to? Why have you really come here looking for us?'

‘Well, at least we're talking.' Tajh put herself between Mark and Cal. ‘What do you say we all sit down and have a nice cup of tea?'