The Sword of Feimhin (5 page)

Kate Shaunessy's teeth were chattering with cold as the dragon Driftwood descended from the obscuring banks of pure white cloud onto a vista that took her breath away. This couldn't possibly be their island: huge rocky buttresses rose sheer out of forested slopes and needle-like pillars soared into the air. Yet even these, as they descended and neared them, were capped by small plains dotted with mature pine trees. It was in a wheeling arc, directly towards one of the tallest of these pinnacles, that the dragon's descent took them. Major changes were in the air. But then, how could she have possibly imagined that there would be no changes when Driftwood himself had changed so very much?

Somehow, and she hadn't understood it then any more than she did now, the power bestowed on her by Granny Dew – the Second Power of the Holy Trídédana – had resurrected him from a petrified death. He had perished long
ago at the end of a terrible war fought between the dragons and titans, led by Fangorath, a being that was half divine. Driftwood – or Omdorrréilliuc, as the Gargs had called him – had been the King of the Dragons and himself half divine. To save the world from imminent destruction, the dragons had sacrificed themselves to Mórígán, the goddess of death. Mórígán had defied Fate to accept the sacrifice, thus bringing an end to the Age of Dragons. But this had ultimately led to her arrival here on Tír, along with her three friends: Alan Duval, the young man she loved, and the adoptive brother and sister, Mark and Mo Grimstone.

And now she was returning to the same land where she had been tormented and hunted by the Great Witch, Olc, to see if she could save the Momu and thus restore the hope of fertility and rebirth to the people known as the Cill.

They were alighting on a broad, flat ledge of stone hundreds of feet above a valley verdant with trees. The dragon had become so enormous that their landing involved Kate first climbing down from her comfortable nest in the brilliant green and yellow feathers of his ruff, then making her way through the valley of his wings and down the stairway of his spine, to the very tip of the hundred yards of tail. She walked around the scaly body until she could sit, cross-legged, by the grounded head, to one side of a huge nostril and beneath a reptilian orange eye as large as a tractor tyre. The membrane of the eye performed one of the dragon's sideways blinks.

His voice was so deep it rumbled like thunder through
the ground beneath her. Kate knew that she could not possibly interpret his communication through the minuscule ossicles of her human ears. She was hearing his words and translating them from the language of beginnings, through the oraculum in her brow, which was one with her mind and her being – what the people here called her soul-spirit.

‘I wanted you to see our island once again.'

‘Oh, Driftwood, I'm enchanted by it – what you have made of it.'

‘I did not create this wonder – you did.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘The bed of rock on which you slept – it was not a single grave. It was the graveyard of many.'

Kate's heartbeat rose into her throat. Was Driftwood saying what she thought he was? Had she resurrected not just one dragon, but a race of such extraordinary and wonderful beings?

She had to take his word for the fact that this was the same island where she had discovered him. How it had changed! It was as if a magic inherent in the land itself had been awakened. The ecology, even the geology of the entire island landscape had evolved. It was as if aeons, rather than weeks, had passed, during which time it had become lusher than before. Even the trees had changed. Staring up into a dense canopy hundreds of feet overhead, Kate saw that these were no longer the oaks and birches that she herself had planted. These soaring titans resembled …

‘Oh, my! They're the ancient trees you showed me – they
really are. It's where the baby dragons nested in your dreams.'

‘Not my dreams. In the memories you saw as dreams. You and I, Kate, girl-thing – we need to talk.'

‘I love to talk with you.'

His snort rumbled and echoed throughout the ground beneath her feet. ‘You must understand the value of patience – and the need for caution.'

‘Caution?'

‘Blood 'n' bones! Guts 'n' gizzards!'

He had resurrected his childish exclamations. She didn't know if he was joking with her or genuinely mad with her.

‘Don't be cross with me.'

‘Pah!'

‘Please?'

‘This has ever been a perilous world. And things have begun to change.'

‘What changes are you talking about?'

‘The Tyrant feels threatened. The situation has become far more dangerous even than the struggle with the Great Witch. It is inevitable that he will take measures to rid himself of that threat.

‘But you are hungry, and weak. You need to rest and prepare yourself for the ordeal that is to come.'

Ordeal?

Oh, heavens! Driftwood was right, as always. She really was starving, and frightened too. The use of her oraculum, the Second Power, had drained what little remained of her
reserves of strength and will. She was only slowly recovering from her torture in the Tower of Bones, where she had been Olc's prisoner. She needed to rest.

‘Should I be worried, even when I'm here with you?'

‘You should be worried anywhere and everywhere.'

‘What am I to do?'

‘You must heed the fact that the Tyrant has access to the Fáil.'

Kate shivered, recalling what she had witnessed of the third portal. It had been hidden within Dromenon, at the spot marked by the Great Witch's Tower of Bones. The colossal power of it frightened her – the danger it represented.

Driftwood pressed her, gently. ‘But there is a more immediate danger.'

‘There is?'

‘You think of the Cill as pure.'

‘I wouldn't have put it that way.'

‘How would you have put it?'

‘I think they live in innate harmony with nature: they have a sense of oneness with what is good in the world. This, surely, was why the Great Witch, Olc, tried to destroy them.'

Driftwood took a great breath in through those scaly nostrils. When he exhaled his breath was hot, sulphurous, like throwing open the gate on a furnace capable of melting iron. ‘You are indeed naïve, Kate girl-thing. There were other reasons why the Witch sought to destroy them.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘A conflict of power.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘Your kindness, when coupled with your oracular gift, is a temptation more dangerous than you might realise.'

‘For goodness' sake!'

‘Have you already forgotten your time spent with the Momu?'

She had spent many hours in the company of the Momu, during which she had been introduced to mysteries of being that were deeper than mere images, or words, or even feelings. She had experienced a transcendent level of communication, something deeply intimate, enabled by the harmony of thought and being that was intrinsic to the Cill – even now the memory of it was so moving she didn't want to lose it. Still, Kate recalled how Driftwood had warned her even then to beware the Momu.

‘
Beware her hunger
…'

But what had he meant by hunger?

Kate wasn't altogether sure. She felt so ordinary in herself. She wasn't brave. All she had, she believed, was a deep, instinctive empathy with what was natural, what was living – and somehow, although she couldn't define it altogether logically – with what was decent. Yet the Momu had sensed something special about her. They had become very close, spiritually intimate – whatever that really entailed.

Kate had no memory of being brought back to her chamber in the Cill city of Ulla Quemar from the cave of
the Momu, and yet, at the moment of first waking, it felt as if her mind had expanded with important knowledge. It was as if she had, during the short time they had spent together, absorbed a new level of … the word that came into her mind was wisdom.

‘I don't have your understanding of what's going on, Driftwood. It all seems so complicated.'

‘Yet you know what I mean by understanding the need for patience. And you know what caution means.'

‘Yes, of course.'

Her lips were pressed together to stop the tears of frustration that threatened to break free.

Wisdom!
It was such a weighty word!

I'm frightened that too much might be expected of me. I'm terrified that I'll make a dreadful mess of things
.

The one thing she did understand, something vital to the survival of the Cill and their lovely underwater city, was the fact the Momu was dying. It was clear that her time was very limited. And this presented Kate with a dilemma.

‘A new Momu, young and fertile, must be born.'

Driftwood snorted again, provoking another echoing rumble through the landscape. The membrane over those enormous orange eyes performed another sideways blink.

But before the Momu could give birth to her successor, or whatever was necessary – Kate felt a stab of panic in realising that she had no real idea what would be required – she would have to get over her feelings of inadequacy. And to do this she must have hope.

Driftwood's grumble cut across her thoughts. ‘I cannot accompany you into the city of the Cill. As for you, I very much doubt you are ready for such a trial. Yet I can see you are determined on this course.'

*

She found her perch again within the sanctuary of his neck, ready to soar above the mists that were rising.

‘Remember – there is no happenstance, only Fate.'

‘You're teasing me with riddles.'

‘Friendship is not a matter of reason or even of experience.'

‘No. It's a question of caring.'

‘Pah!'

‘Thank you, Driftwood. You know that I care for you and I know you care for me, but we're never going to agree on this.'

‘For a trifling girl-thing, you require a considerable bulk of caring.'

Kate smiled, despite her misgivings. ‘Is that a joke?'

‘I might fail to make you laugh, but I do care for you and you have little understanding of the perils of what you are attempting to do.'

‘I will do my best to be scrupulously careful – I promise.'

‘Such a promise is doomed in its very inception. To do one's best implies the potential for failure.'

‘I can only try.'

‘No, you must do better.'

‘How?'

‘You must determine to do, not to try.'

Kate hesitated. In the distance a giant bird, possibly an eagle, hovered over a pinnacle on which she presumed there might be a nest. The bird was magnificent in its ordered movement, the perfect symmetry of its flight and its delicate landing on the topmost point.

Then she realised that it was no eagle.

‘Oh, my goodness – it's another dragon!' There had to be … oh, wonder of wonders, a nest. Baby dragons.

Driftwood ignored her wonderment. ‘I fear for you.'

‘What exactly do you fear for me?'

‘Of all the races on this world, the Cill are the least predictable.'

‘In what way?'

‘They answer to a central being – a force, a mind – which can hardly be entirely unselfish.'

‘You're talking about the Momu?'

He made a sound that might have been the dragon equivalent of a
tsk
. She looked around herself again, with new eyes. How exhilarating was this landscape? It had been a dragon graveyard, but was now utterly transformed into a landscape of life.

‘Please explain to me what you are really worrying about.'

‘I would urge you to think again – to consider the true nature of the people you call the Cill.'

‘Why? They are the most beautiful, the most perfect beings I have ever seen. Their city is a wonderful union of
ocean and land. They take pains to protect the ecology and environment of their world. They venerate the cycle of life, in a perfect balance of people and nature.'

‘There are no perfect beings any more than there are perfect worlds.'

‘The Great Witch, Olc, weakened it, as she destroyed all the other Cill worlds.'

‘No.'

‘No?'

‘You were invited into her realm. What did you learn from your time with the Momu?'

‘I – I don't rightly remember all of it.'

The dragon snorted. Maybe it was meant to convey irony.

‘We met in her chamber – well more like a cave. There was a birthing pool I had to wade across. She was waiting for me in the roots of the One Tree.'

The dragon reared, his wings extending to a monstrous proportion, before settling back onto their beautiful, if terrifying, prominence. Kate had to cling on to her perch at the root of his long neck.

‘There you have it.'

‘What do I have?'

‘The nature of what will most likely threaten you.'

‘And what is that?'

‘Where is her power derived from?'

‘The One Tree?'

‘And the One Tree in turn?'

Kate recalled her experiences back in the roots of the
Tree. The Momu had attempted to persuade her to stay in Ulla Quemar, when she was so desperately needed to help end the tyranny of the Great Witch, Olc, and the more dangerous Fangorath. She recalled the words of the Momu, desperate to save her world.

‘Nidhoggr, the serpent-dragon – who gnawed at the roots of the world – fertilised a seed of the Tree of Life. That seed grew into the One Tree whose branches make up the roof this chamber: a chimera of serpent-dragon and Tree of Life. Sadly, the One Tree is dying, as is her beautiful city, Ulla Quemar. I, the first child of Ulla Quemar, I who am almost as old as the One Tree herself, am dying with her. There will be no more Shaamis.'

‘The One Tree is an offshoot of the Tree of Life.'