A Cage of Roots (10 page)

‘Not an ounce of power! Sure they have it all wrong,’ he said. ‘For starters, they think there’s some good in it.’ But Benvy didn’t quite understand what he meant.

While they waited patiently near the entrance, with a good ten minutes to go before their tour began, Benvy studied the strange ‘druids’ that were scattered around the field. They all had long hair and flowing robes, and nearly all of them carried those branches or banged on drums. They pranced around like shamans, singing to the sky and waving their bodies around with clenched eyes.
Bloody hippies
, she thought, casting her eyes up to heaven.

Then she noticed one of the hippies, a lady, had stopped
dancing and was staring directly at them. She looked different to the others – more bedraggled and dirty. She had wild, thick grey hair that shot out in all directions. Her robes were filthy and torn, and rather than carrying a branch, hers were stuffed into her gown, and leaves poked out from each sleeve. Around her neck she wore a stack of leather necklaces, all carrying oddly shaped stones and tangerine-coloured brass.

Strangest of all were the markings on her face: her cheeks and forehead were scored with wavy lines. Benvy couldn’t take her eyes off her – this strange, wild lady that stood so eerily still amongst her gyrating cohorts. Her feral stare bore back at them as she started to move towards them.

A lanky young adolescent addressed the waiting group: ‘Ladies and gents, we will shortly begin our tour inside the burial chamber. Before we begin, a quick outline of the history of Newgrange.’

‘Taig, I think we might have made a new friend,’ Benvy said, tugging on her companion’s arm.

‘What?’ he asked, turning around. He squinted at the advancing woman. ‘Oh sh–. Deirdre!’

‘Taig McCORMAC!’ the woman howled, pointing a long finger at the pair and quickening to a run.

‘Benvy, inside: NOW!’ he shouted, grabbing her arm and hauling her up the steps and into the chamber. The poor young guide was tossed aside, eliciting gasps in the flock
of tourists around them. The sky dimmed and thunder boomed in clouds that suddenly gathered with unnatural haste. Benvy looked back to see the woman sprinting after them. Her eyes shone bright, vivid blue. She seemed to pull the thunder down with clenched fists. Taig dragged Benvy further down the narrowing corridor, their way lit in flashes as the sudden storm threw lightning after the thunderclaps.

‘Taig McCormac! YOU CHEATING SWINE!’ came the howl from the entrance, the wild woman filling it now, eyes aglow, and the air charged with electricity around her.

‘Here!’ shouted Taig, turning into a small annex that housed a broad stone bowl. The walls around it were engraved with zigzag grooves. He put his arms under the bowl and lifted it, turning it upside-down with a grunt of effort. It must have weighed thirty kilos. The underside of the bowl was marked with more oscillating lines. Taig put a finger to it and began to hum as the air around them filled with sparks. Benvy’s sandy waves lifted above her head, and the fillings in her teeth throbbed as the wild woman rounded the corner and stood at the opening of the recess. The woman’s expression held more rage than a hundred thunderstorms. Through rotten, mud-brown teeth she seethed, ‘YOU CHEATING SWINE, RAT, WORM! I’LL K–’

And then there was darkness, before Benvy was dragged out of the void through a tight hole and into blazing daylight.

Chapter 8

A Map Misread

A
yla had run ceaselessly though countless burrows, shafts, pits and passages, scratching and groping with bloodied hands, blind in the inky dark. Rough walls of stone and muck, laced with thick roots, shouldered her aggressively as she scrambled, desperate and breathless. Eventually, when her adrenaline faded, she had to stop and be sick.

She had fled, haunted by the thought of her captors right behind her, for what seemed at least an hour. The tunnels had oscillated steeply, forcing her to clamber up and slip painfully down on sharp roots and pebbles. Passages veered and arced with no pattern or reason; they fattened to cold chambers and contracted to airless cracks like the belly of a vast snake.

Now Ayla sat against the coarse wall, wiping sick from her lips and tears from her cheeks. A chill draught cooled the sweat on the back of her neck and told her that the passage was long. She shut her eyes tightly and tried to take stock.

I’m out of that damn cell. That’s the main thing,
she thought.
One thing at a time. Next: try to find a way out of here
. She had her breath back, but she still felt weak.
Just a few more minutes,
she promised herself. But just as she rested her head against the wall, she frowned.
Was that a noise
?

Then, there it was again. She lurched to her feet, straining to hear. There was no mistake. It came loud and long, ricocheting down the passage in a shuddering echo – the howl of those horrible wretches. She choked back fresh tears and ran.

Finny and Lann emerged, not into the daylight they had just left, but panting into crisp night, the sky deepest blue and pierced by stars. Finny rested his hands on his knees, sucking down air greedily, not even noticing his surroundings. He had a huge grin on his face.

‘WOO HOO! Did you see that bad boy drop?’ he laughed. ‘Quite a diversion, eh?’

‘If you ever get home, you’ll be paying for that for the rest of your days,’ Lann replied coldly. Finny’s grin disappeared. ‘But it was some shot,’ Lann added, looking into
the boy’s eyes. Finny’s smile returned.

‘I never meant to wreck the poor guy’s car,’ he admitted, ‘but it sure as hell worked! He …’ His voice trailed off as he glanced up at the shimmering stars. ‘Uh, Lann? Why is it night-time all of a sudden?’ he asked.

They were on the side of a hill, which rolled down to undulating land like a black blanket. Finny could just make out an endless line of trees in silhouette. Behind them, a stand of huge rocks was fixed into the hillside. They were faced with complex spirals, cut deep. At the centre of the stones was a gap: the one they had emerged from. Lann drew in a long, savouring breath, and reached down to pull up a fistful of wet grass, bringing it to his face to inhale like the hair of a lost love. Finny watched the ritual, waiting for an answer. After a long moment, Lann muttered, ‘We’ll make a fire. Then I’ll explain.’

He left Finny to clear a space in the grass, while he fetched kindling and a few large logs from the blackness beneath them. He was gone a while, and the boy shivered in the cool night, damp and bewildered. When Lann returned, he made short work of the fire, pulling flames from the woodpile within moments. Finny laid his coat down as a seat and held his hands out to the fire, shuddering as the worst of the cold left him.

‘So? Where are we?’ he asked.

‘Home’ came the short reply.

Finny threw his eyes to heaven, but before he could ask for a little more information, the hulking Lann cleared his throat, his face cast in the firelight.

‘My home at least. My land – Fal. What is now known as Ireland. Actually, we’re not far from what will become Limerick. But we’re an age before it. We’ve gone back three thousand years, lad. And I suppose it’s time I told you a little more about our story.’

Finny silently agreed.

The blaze danced in the uncle’s eyes. He continued, ‘Well, we already told you that my three brothers and I are old, thousands of years old. We are – or were – warriors. Good, for the most part. Certainly brave in battle. We had our bad moments too, but we always had our honour.

‘Our father was a great champion. His name was Cormac, and he was respected and feared throughout all of Fal. He raised us in his image, taught us weapon skills and feats as soon as we could hold a rattle. Our mother died giving birth to Taig. I felt her loss more than my brothers, having known her longest.

‘Our lives were spent on the land, always moving. We went from king to king, carrying our father’s arms and minding his horses, until we were old enough to join him in the fray. We did that until the end, when he died beside me from a spear to the heart. Then we carried on doing the same thing, convinced we were honouring
him in our violence.

It was years of this before I realised we weren’t honouring him, but undoing all the good he had attempted. He had been trying to unite by the sword; we were just earning by it. We were paid most often in blood.

‘When I decided we would lay down arms, my brothers were relieved. Fergus only really wanted to fight with his fists, for fun, and Taig cared more about music and women than any battle (although he was good at all of them). We spent a few years wandering, avoiding trouble. I found some land and we threw down some roots. Fergus and I both found wives, but neither of us were blessed with children. That turned out to be a gift. We thought our days would end like this. We were happy.’

He put a log onto the flames and they grasped it hungrily. Finny blinked against the sudden brightness.

‘Of course we knew about magic things, and magic people. The elders of Fal were probably the only people we feared. They were called the “Old Ones” by us normal men. But we stayed clear of anything to do with magic or the magical realm: it only ever led to trouble.’

In the fire’s dancing light, Lann told Finny the long tale of a conniving queen, Maeve, and her lover, and her power with evil magic. He explained how the Old Ones had imprisoned Maeve and her lover deep underground, forever.

The big man trailed off into silence. For a long time the only noise was the snap of wood being devoured by the fire. Eventually, he continued, ‘Why the Old Ones chose us to sort it out, we still don’t know. But they did, and there was no refusing them. There was an unborn girl, still in the womb, and she was to be protected at all costs. She alone had the power to free Maeve and her consort.’

‘Ayla?’ Finny asked.

‘Yes, lad,’ Lann answered. ‘The old ones had used all of their power to send the girl away from trouble, to be reborn again, in another time. It was our task to wait for her and when she came, to keep her safe. It was a heavy burden. Our lives passed those of our loved ones. Everyone we knew died, and then everyone we came to know over the centuries died too.’

‘Couldn’t you just come back? I mean through the gates? To be with your wives again?’

‘No, these gates are not always open. There are rules which must be obeyed. They had to be opened for us. The most powerful Old Ones – those who had fought and banished Maeve – they paid a heavy price for their victory. They had to leave their mortal bodies and become spirits. But even in their exile, they still hold great influence: it was they who Cathbad called on to open the gates and let us through.’

‘Cathbad? Who’s Cathbad?’

Finny noticed the corners of Lann’s mouth twitch. It was the first time he had ever seen Ayla’s grim uncle even come close to a smile.

‘He’s your principal, Fr Shanlon. He’s no priest, lad. Even I’m only a fraction as old as that man. And he’s not to be messed with – but I gather you know that much.’

The grin broadened, but only briefly.

Finny could only manage a ‘
What?
’ before swallowing the wrong way in his shock, and fighting to regain his breath.

After a bout of hacking, he just managed to ask, hoarsely: ‘
The Streak
? The Streak? He’s one of these “old ones”?!’

He fell backwards into the wet grass and started to laugh.

‘Oh. My. God. This is just mental.’

Lann placed the last log on the fire. ‘I think that is enough for now. You should sleep. We have a long road ahead, and you will need all of your strength.’

Finny stopped laughing and sat up again.

‘What can
we
do here? I mean, I want to find Ayla, more than anything, but … Why do you need us? It seems like you could have done this yourselves, being warriors and all.’

‘Sleep, lad!’ was all Lann said, in that tone to which there was no answer but silence.

Finny couldn’t sleep a wink, but lay still, staring at the
numberless stars, his head a storm of questions.

Benvy was only stopped from a fall of two hundred metres by Taig’s hand grasping her arm. For a moment, his eyes looked down into hers and he held her there, frowning, before hauling her back up.

‘Careful, young lady,’ he said, as Benvy swallowed hard and let out a short shriek.

She had blacked out momentarily as they pushed through the gate, and when she came to, she was still in mind to run, afraid that the wild woman with lightning in her eyes was just behind. They had surfaced on a tiny outcrop on the side of a grassy mountain that fell vertically down to a rock-strewn valley, carved over eons by a noisy river. The drop would have killed Benvy.