The Sword of Feimhin (27 page)

Alan shook his head. ‘I think the surrounding landscape of bones has already answered that.'

‘Maybe it has, but perhaps not quite as you think. Is this not a migration of a kind? We must presume that the River of Bones has been here for centuries, and it must have seen many similar migrations. Had the migrations failed, the beasts would have been exterminated long ago. Yet here they gather, in their millions.'

‘I don't think we shall be kept waiting long.' Iyezzz stared up into the sky, where fireballs were crackling and
fizzing with increasing force and frequency as the heat of the morning scourged the parched landscape.

The Garg's words were prophetic. The first major lightning strike came out of the blue, setting fire to the desiccated gorse and shrub a few hundred yards from the perimeter of the camp. The tinder burned with a fierce crackling as flames danced from spinney to spinney, provoking clouds of sparks and spreading rapidly. The aides rushed about taking down tents and covering belongings with sand while the Shee distributed themselves around the perimeter of the camp with blankets to douse any spread of the flames.

Within an hour the land all around them was aflame, with fire devils rising hundreds of feet into the air. The screams of the herds rose to a crescendo. The heralded stampede announced itself with a deafening thunder of hooves. It was led by the zebra-like beasts, which charged in a solid wall of flesh and tossing horns, trampling smaller creatures under their hooves as they thundered straight into the obscenity of the river.

Bétaald and Ainé took command of the protective wall of Shee, stabbing and slashing with javelin and sword, keeping the perimeter of the camp safe as the landscape turned to bedlam around them.

Alan roared above the din, ‘Mo, Turkeya, keep an eye on those rocky islands in the stream!'

‘Why – what are they?'

‘For sure they're not islands.'

Then Mo screamed.

What resembled spiky rocks, each perhaps forty or fifty feet in diameter, yawned open to reveal blood red mouths, ringed by enormous fangs. Huge diaphanous shrouds like gaping nets shot out of them trapping several of the terrified beasts at once and dragging them back into the rending jaws.

Turkeya's voice shook with horror. ‘I think those shrouds—'

‘Are stomachs,' Alan agreed.

‘Ugh! The poor things are being consumed whole!'

Still the stampede forged out into the blood-drenched stream, so those at the front were pushed relentlessly into the waiting maws. Hour after hour the frenzy continued. The screaming of the dying was continuous, the fountains of blood had grown to a red cloud that hung over the carnage, and everywhere the vast proliferation of mouths gaped open, fangs ripping.

‘You were right, Magtokk,' Mo whispered, her voice filled with tears. ‘It is a dreadful kind of ecosystem, based on agony and blood.'

It was many hours later when Turkeya hugged her to him. ‘Look, Mo! The river channel – it's filling up with the bodies of the dead.'

At last the giant carnivores became sated. They could consume no more. Their bony shells that had appeared to be islands of stone, were closing, the spiky domes submerging. But still the stampede continued with wave after
wave of the herds breaching the blood-drenched stream and crossing the bridge made of the bodies of the dead. The River of Bones struck the dam and, with a torrent of water, it began to flow outwards in a vast encircling tide, to become a flood plain of blood and ravaged flesh and bones.

‘Make ready!' The Kyra's command ran throughout the Shee. Trumpets sounded and the huge camp woke in a flurry of preparation.

Alan climbed back onto the shoulders of his onkkh. The columns formed again and the army was once more on the move. They started out across the horrific dam, the onkkh sure-footedly picking their way over the packed flesh and bones with claws extended, following the stragglers of the herds. Alan's eyes fixed on where they were heading: the looming foothills of the Flamestruck Mountains and the beginnings of what promised to be an arduous and hazard-filled ascent.

Kate knew that Granny Dew was nearby. She could sense her heavy head nodding, those all-seeing eyes staring down at the stupid girl whose eyes were caked shut, ensnared within the roots in the Momu's chamber. Kate heard a heavy bare foot stamp against the floor of the chamber and that growly voice rise in fury.

‘
Foolish child!'

‘I'm not foolish. I'm doing what I have to do.'

‘
What madness possessed you?'

‘The Momu is dying.'

‘What is this obsession?'

Kate heard the roar of frustration and the thunderous detonations as the wooden staff crashed against the stony floor. The impact echoed and eddied around the walls with their proliferation of trunks and branches. Kate felt the force of the blow vibrate the cage of thick, fleshy roots that
enclosed her body, leaving barely enough room for her chest to expand so she could breathe.

‘They're all connected: the Momu, the Cill, the One Tree, the serpent-dragon, Nidhoggr. It's all part of what the Tyrant is doing. All part of some kind of labyrinthine plan.'

‘Gullible heart! And how easily led is the mind that guides it. Little good would you do this confounded Momu, whose life you consider more precious than your own, with such a threat to your mortal self.'

‘My mortal self?'

‘See how the roots have gathered you up. The tree you thought to cure is now infesting you.'

‘Infesting?'

‘Never will it release you from its fastness – not willingly.'

‘But the tree is dying – and the roots …'

‘Pah! I know not if it is dying. But ravenous it most certainly is. And you have become a meal to its hunger.'

The idea was too frightening to bear thinking about. Kate's eyes struggled to break open, but the lids were sewn up tight with gritty crud and she couldn't free her hands. She fought to break one eye open a slit, but the effort utterly exhausted her.

‘What's wrong with me?' Her voice was the tiniest whisper. ‘What's happening to me?'

‘
When did you last taste a morsel of food? Or a sip of water? Have you entirely lost your wits, child?'

‘I – I just lay down here.'

‘And where, pray tell, is here? Look around. Look within and without.'

‘I'm imprisoned by the roots. I can't move a muscle.'

Kate caught a blurry glimpse of Granny Dew through the slit of the one eye she had managed to open, her brooding face silhouetted against a flickering light. As she fought again, squeezing her eyes shut, then haltingly, agonisingly, forcing the lids a fraction more open, she saw the brooding figure squatting down in the dirt; her grey hair a flood that overflowed to the floor, the red pin-points that were the eyes of the spiders glinting in her dress. She felt the movement of the spiders as they forced their way in between the mesh of roots to wrap Kate's shivering body in a weave of cobwebs.

‘Thank you. I knew you would save me.'

‘
Ach – foolish girl!'

With a prolonged litany of curses, Granny Dew tore the roots from around Kate's face and body, those powerful fingers freeing her left hand so she could rub at the caked eyelids. The roots provided kindling for a crackling fire in the dirt.

‘As the roots will never cease in their efforts to consume you, so shall the fire never cease to draw off them. It is all I can do for you. Ach, so must these opposing forces battle on if you are to survive. Simple warmth will you need – and sustenance aplenty. Can you not feel how you are wasting away even as we speak?'

‘The Cathedral of Death – I know it's the Tyrant's work.'

‘Pah!'

‘I sense it. The death of the Momu – the destruction of the Ulla Quemar – the end of the Cill! It means something to him. It is all part of his plan.'

‘You sense nothing.'

‘I know that I sense it. Just as I now realise that I have to stop him. I sense it, overwhelmingly, that it is my purpose in coming to this world, just as the war against Ghork Mega is Alan's purpose. Poor Alan, who will be pining for me all the while I've been here.'

‘She worries over others. When her concern should be herself.'

‘But it's true. I think I understand it better now. All of us – we were brought here by Ussha De Danaan, each with a specific purpose, but always to oppose the Tyrant.'

Granny Dew's all-black eyes regarded her for several moments in contemplative silence.

‘I – I'm reminded of something the Momu showed me, something she warned me about when I first arrived in Ulla Quemar.'

‘Speak no more of the Momu, or Ulla Quemar. The Cill and their city are lost to this world. We must ensure that you do not follow their example. And that risk to you is growing moment by moment. These are not the roots of any ordinary tree. This one is needful beyond your ken. It will be all that I can do to delay its devouring you. Did you not consider your so-called purpose when you lay down here? Had you no thought in your head as to your mortal – aye, and spiritual – danger?'

Kate blinked her gritty eyes more fully open. She did her best to wriggle what she could of her arms and legs. What she felt of her body, her limbs, terrified her.

Her voice had never risen beyond a whisper. ‘I'm so thin.'

‘Skin and bone is what you have been reduced to.'

‘Can't you help me?'

‘Alas, and witless also!'

‘Help me. Help me, please?'

She attempted, with every fibre of her being, to engage the oraculum of power in her brow, but there was barely a flicker of a response.

‘What's wrong? Why won't my power work here?'

‘Can it be that she still fails to understand?'

The old woman's head lifted as if she were sniffing the morning air. Her eyes, black as a robin's, reflected the flickering flames of the fire. Her tongue, green with mould, licked over black tombstones of her widely spaced teeth. Kate heard the rattling sound of her breath emerge from deep in her chest. Only then did she notice the black pot simmering over the flames of the fire.

‘Cha-teh-teh-teh-teh-teh!'

A thrill of fright swept over Kate's body. She knew what that strange expression meant. It was Granny Dew's word for danger – danger in the extreme.

‘Cha-teh-teh-teh-teh-teh!' she warned Kate again.

A vision flooded Kate's mind. She saw millions of tiny threads, rootlets so fine that they were invisible to her
ordinary sight, invading her skin, slithering down her nostrils and throat and poking into every other orifice, sucking the life forces out of her.

‘What's happening to me?'

‘The One Tree has you in its thrall.'

She began to realise the enormity of what that meant. Not just her flesh and bone and blood. ‘It's feeding off my spirit too – my power! The power of my oraculum!'

‘There is mystery here – mystery aplenty. You are right in your conclusions, and it is a lesson even to me, but why should it suffer such insatiable need?'

Granny Dew was stirring the stew with her elongated index finger. Kate could smell the contents of the pot by now. An acrid-smelling gruel with the strangest medley of smells, mushroomy, fleshy, spicy.

‘You have the arrogance to think you could heal the Tree of Life?'

‘I never attempted to cure the Tree of Life.'

The black teeth bared in a throaty cackle. ‘Where did you think to lay yourself down? Whose offspring is the One Tree of Ulla Quemar?'

Kate attempted to shake her head. ‘I was thinking only of the Momu.'

‘“I was thinking only of the Momu”,' Granny Dew growled. ‘When the truth is she was not thinking at all.'

‘I
was
thinking. Please don't tell me otherwise. Maybe I don't fully understand what's happening, maybe you understand it much better than I do, but I know it is part
of what is expected of me. Please don't scold me, Granny Dew. Can't you just free me?'

‘ “Oh, pity me! I don't understand. Oh, please, free me!” So does she beg. She who has laid herself down in a bower of teeth and claws and given herself body and spirit to a dying world.'

‘I was trying to help.'

‘Hark at she who has exposed her very soul to the hunger of Nidhoggr.'

Kate wept with terror. ‘Well if you can't, or won't, save me, save the Momu. Save her dying people.'

Granny Dew ripped out more of the roots around Kate's head to feed the flames, all the while stirring the pot with her elongated finger. The crooning stopped. The heavy face, as lined as a walnut, lifted so her basilisk eyes reflected the roaring flames. ‘Hmmmm! A conundrum has her witlessness provoked. A purse of tidbits will hardly suffice. Small creatures come! You who would be the sole survivors of this doomed city. Come – come quickly! Hear my call.'

Kate looked around in horror. She beheld columns of creeping and crawling things. Sea creatures such as baby starfish, sea urchins, baby periwinkles and cockles slithered and wobbled out of the birthing pool behind the fire, making their way into the waiting hand that was feeding the pot. Other columns were skirting the fire and the heavy figure that squatted by it, heading onwards towards Kate herself, still trapped amid the roots.

‘What are they doing?'

‘Eat!' The old woman growled, reaching towards Kate with an arm that seemed to elongate, forcing a fistful of the living ingredients between her chattering teeth.

Kate wheezed. ‘Stop it. I'll choke. I – I can't even chew it.'

‘Eat!' The old woman insisted again, shoving a second fistful into the back of Kate's throat, a finger pushing the piping hot wedge of food down.

Granny Dew continued to push food into Kate's throat, forcing her to swallow it down without chewing until the pot was empty. In spite of the hot food, Kate's entire head drenched in a freezing cold sweat. The feeding had utterly exhausted her, but the old woman took little notice, rocking backwards and forwards and crooning to herself.

‘Ach! No matter if she feeds and feeds, the roots will leech off her still.'

The soup was reviving her, if slowly. Kate felt an increase of vigour in her muscles and limbs.

‘I … I saw the soul-spirit of the Momu. He – the Tyrant – is holding her in the Cathedral of Death.'

‘
Pah! So stubbornly naïve still. And all the while the seeds of chaos are flowering. Soon – soon enough – the consequences may be too grievous to bear.'

‘Why do you talk like this? I'm doing what is expected of me. Why won't you explain what's wrong in words I understand?'

‘She would understand? How could she possibly understand?'

‘Please try – do try to explain.'

The old woman's head fell so that she became a squat triangular shape, indomitable as a mountain. ‘Methinks,' she growled, ‘there is another player in the game. A cunning trickster, who has already engaged her naïvety. I would protect her, foolish as she is. But even I am constrained by the opposing forces.'

‘For heaven's sake – what opposing forces?'

The growling continued while Granny Dew mused aloud. ‘Surely her life is now one with the Tree. She must solve the riddle for herself if she is to escape the trap she so foolishly fell into.'

‘Help me to use my oraculum – the power of the goddess.'

The triangular shape was rocking to and fro by the fire, her humming interrupting the grumbling soliloquy. ‘Ach – she must be fed, continuously, if we are to compensate for such hunger. She must consume, as she is consumed, in flesh and in spirit.'

‘Oh, Granny Dew – why won't you answer me?'

Kate had already exhausted what little strength she had regained from the gruel. She knew that Granny Dew was furious with her, but was also attempting to assist her.

Trying to assist me
, Kate made herself believe.

But her thinking had become increasingly hazy. Her thoughts were dissolving into inchoate fragments in her mind. Whether it was the gruel that Granny Dew had fed her, or some stupefying effect of the myriad rootlets that
were invading her body, Kate felt sleepy, intoxicated, as if her consciousness were melting away into a world of dreams in which these hordes of little creatures were coming to her aid, building a cocoon about her.

What's happening to me?

A residuum of her need, her restlessness, quivered about her lips, but she no longer had the capacity to speak her thoughts aloud.

Kate roused herself a moment. How had she allowed her eyelids to close? She had to force them open again.

No!
She tried to clench her mouth closed against the squirming, wriggling things that moved through her lips and into her throat. Others were invading her nostrils, her breathing passages. She should gag, choke – if only her body was not too weak to react.

Yet at last she understood some small part of it. Granny Dew would not allow her to starve. The little creatures, which felt so like worms, creeping and crawling and slithering grotesquely inside her – they would feed her, keep her alive, at least for a while. A war was taking place
between opposing forces and it was an integral part of that war that the little creatures would do battle with the invading roots. As the roots sucked her strength and the power of her spirit, the little creatures would fight back by nourishing her in equal measure. Oh, yes – Kate understood this small part of some bigger picture in which she was caught up. The fight would endure while her strength remained. Only thus trapped between the opposing forces would she be allowed to travel further and enter the dangerous portal she had discovered.