The Exile (11 page)

Madness. That's what lies in here, warped one: the madness of a betrayer, the madness of a murderer, of a cold-blooded killer. The madness of- He silenced the voice. He needed to listen, to hear.

Not all of the Goddess's children were perfect, beautiful creations.

There was Avagddu, her firstborn: Avagddu, the vile personification of disease, decay and stupidity. Avagddu the essence of corruption, canker and treachery. Avagddu was a thing of the dark places. It shunned the light and contact with the Goddess's other children.

It couldn't be Avagddu.

Couldn't be.

The druids wouldn't shelter the monster.

They wouldn't.

Sláine pulled on his bonds but the chains were firm. He was trapped. He listened desperately for anything, any sound that might betray the beast.

Uncountable time slipped by.

More sounds haunted him and his mind began drawing wraiths to flit across the contours of the crypt.

Hunger ate at him.

His mouth dried up, his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth. His head swam. The darkness offered nothing for him to fix on, no detail to help him focus his balance. Instead it was a turmoil of ever-shifting black. His legs buckled and he sank-down but the chains wouldn't allow him to fall. The slump triggered a wave of nausea and a sunburst of pain from his wounded arm. The pain gave him something to focus on. Sláine latched on to it desperately. There was a world of pain. That was what it all came down to.

He imagined he heard the beasts prowling beneath him, imagined the diseased form of Avagddu trying futilely to find a way to the surface.

"He's in your mind, fool," Sláine told himself - or tried to. His voice died in his throat. Only shapeless words emerged, cracked and broken beyond recognition even in his own ears.

He lost himself in the darkness. Time drifted. He obsessed over his own ghosts, remembering over and over the look on Cullen of the Wide Mouth's face as he rammed the gáe bolga into his guts, hearing again the taunts of Conn of a Hundred Battles and the screams, and the screams. He couldn't shut out the screams. He moaned in the darkness, a pitiful sound that was only barely human.

He felt something brush up against his leg.

He heard the squeak of rats and surged upwards trying to lash out, but the chains restrained him.

Rats.

Rodents were scavengers. They stayed close to their food sources. He remembered the picked-clean bones he had caught glimpses of as he had been brought into the chamber.

The next time he felt the rodent brush up against his leg he stamped his foot down on it making sure the rat knew he was alive. The rodent's spine crunched beneath his foot. He had no desire to become lunch.

Fire burned in his arms and his back but even that numbed as his circulation dried up.

He lapsed in and out of consciousness.

He remembered Cathbad's words of how the dead would judge him, how the dead would find him wanting, how the dead would drag him kicking and screaming into the darkness of the Underworld.

He felt his blood slowing in his veins.

He imagined them, the dead, circling his body like vultures, waiting for the death rattle that could only be a few breaths away.

He felt his flesh hunger.

He looked up at the crack in the roof, willing the sun to come alive for him, for it to be over.

He faded again, head snapping up suddenly alert, unsure what had startled him.

In the blur where his eyes refused to focus he saw a bone white smear and painted it in to the head of some fell beast risen up from the Annwn, too impatient to wait for his passing.

Then he saw the single shaft of light on his hand. He looked up at the ceiling and saw the dust motes dancing in the thin beam of light. His fingers tingled. He closed his eyes trying to focus on the sensation, not at all sure what it meant. He flexed his fingers, stretching them open. His middle finger broke the beam of light. It was like touching lightning. A jolt of raw power surged through his body, causing his back to arch and his body to spasm in agony. It burned briefly but all the more intensely for it. His head swam. Even such a miniscule infusion of earth power was intoxicating. His body ached for more. Sláine stretched up, trying desperately to reach the light with more of his hand. He closed his eyes, succumbing to the agony and the ecstasy of it.

And it was both.

The power flowed through his fingers and down his arm, infusing every nerve and fibre as it searched to earth itself through him. His body bucked beneath the onslaught. His heart strained in his chest. His blood sang in his veins.

He had forgotten what it felt like to connect with the earth but here, in this most sacred place, he was reminded - and that reminder was brutal in the extreme.

His cries were terrible. He felt the monster rising inside him, felt the sudden and forceful surge of base instincts, to rut, to hunt, to kill, to feed, swelling up inside him like a siren from below - the call irresistible.

Sláine surrendered to it, and it was good.

A connection grew, slowly at first but he felt it building.

He felt the tie between his flesh, his spirit, and the earth itself. He felt Danu's strength flooding into his veins, and it refused to be tethered. It was power capable of shaping mountains, mere ropes could never hope to harness it. He pulled at the heavy iron chains binding him, testing their limits as well as his own. His arms trembled though not with weakness. It surpassed anger. He became the mountain, resolute, indomitable, and indefatigable. He became the river, decisive, driven, a torrent that refused to be quelled. He sacrificed himself to the power of the Goddess as it swarmed through him.

In a momentary lapse of reason he saw visions of who he might yet be if he walked from this tomb. They danced before his eyes, hallucinatory bursts of light and sound as his head swam with the earth sense. He saw the health of the land, and encroaching on it, the sickness of the Sourlands eating away at the lush pastures and rolling hills, devouring the very body of the Goddess - and it sickened him.

It sickened him enough that he knew it could not be allowed to happen, not while he lived and breathed. The earth power was inside him, a part of him, as much as his blood was. He was a child of the Goddess. Sláine thought of that ghostly maiden he had seen two summers gone, leading the dead king into the trees. He would not fail her.

He held his head high and leaned into the chains, all of the power in his shoulders and upper arms braced by his legs for one final massive push.

He felt the anchor pins straining. The sound of iron grating on rock betrayed their weakness.

It was surrendering, but it needed more.

His arms spasmed uncontrollably, the pressure so intense it came close to buckling his joints.

Raging, Sláine summoned every last ounce of strength and surged away from the wall. It was done. The sheer power of his final press was enough to rip the anchor pins out of the limestone wall.

The chains clattered about his feet. He staggered forwards, the shaft of sunlight finding his face, and as he breathed in he felt the fears of the mortal world fade away. He was the land. He was the mountain. He was the river. He was eternal.

He broke the ropes, banging his wrists together until the hasps shattered and the locks sprung open, and left them on the floor with the bones.

He knew, without needing to see, which of the stones was actually the door. He picked his way through the bones, breaking them underfoot in his urgency to be out.

"Lug be praised!" Dian cried, seeing the huge door-stone brushed aside as if it wasn't there.

Cathbad squinted and scowled at Sláine as he emerged, triumphant, from his trial.

The young Sessair warrior was changed by his ordeal.

He stood taller, his muscles more prominent, but wrong. His entire musculature was deformed.

"So it's true," the surly old druid muttered. "Sláine Mac Roth really is blessed of Danu." He shook his head in disbelief.

Others seemed less surprised by the young man's survival. King Grudnew appeared to be particularly happy with this latest turn of events. He turned to his warlord. "I'd say he's proven himself worthy, wouldn't you, my old friend?"

"Without doubt, the Goddess touches him, sire. That makes him more than worthy."

"Druid," Grudnew commanded, watching Sláine discard the door-stone. "The trial is satisfied, wouldn't you agree?"

"The boy is alive."

"No, druid, the man is alive. He has lived through your barbaric ritual and proven the right of Murdo's claims, that he is indeed gifted with the warp-spasm just as the greatest warriors of the Red Branch ever were. Right proven by your own trial absolves him of the deaths of Cullen Mac Conn, and his father Conn of a Hundred Battles. All shall know his innocence - and there shall be no hint of retribution lest the speaker would face my wrath. Am I understood?"

"Indeed, sire. It is clearly and plainly, and in all other ways, understood."

"Good, druid. I sense that great things await young Sláine Mac Roth. I would have you read him and divine what you may from the remnants of the earth power still surging within him. Gorian, I think it wise you escort Cathbad over to young Sláine and then see Bluth about fitting Sláine with a hero harness - if the old wisdom has not been forgotten."

"As you wish, Grudnew." Gorian turned to the druid and, leaning in close, slipped an arm around the old man's shoulder. "Come then, old man," his voice dropped to barely more than a whisper, "let's listen to you spin some lies in an attempt to sound portentous and impress our king. I trust you will make them good. No doubt you'll try to implicate the lad in some unknown future ill. Once a killer always a killer, eh?"

"Get your hands off me, warrior," Cathbad hissed, pulling free of Gorian's embrace.

"Not denying it then?"

"I revere all life, warrior. I serve Danu with my every breath. She has seen something in this lout. I pray that she reveals it to me so that I might know her purpose and help steer the boy. That is all. There is nothing to deny."

Gorian didn't believe a word of it. A fool could see the disappointment on Cathbad's mottled face as Sláine emerged from the tomb. He had wanted the lad to fail or at least emerge humbled and begging for mercy so that the druid could claim back some of his lost pride. He had been an idiot to proclaim Dian's drawings the wisdom of the ancients and vainglorious to pretended to be able to read them. There was no doubting that the old man still harboured a grudge. In Gorian's experience a petty man with power was a dangerous man, and for all that the druid tended to the spiritual wellbeing of the tribe, his was still a position of power, power that commanded respect. He had long ago proven himself petty enough for his dislike of young Sláine to cause the warlord concern.

The last of the empowering warp-spasm still flowed through the young warrior's veins. Gorian stood beside him. "Come, Sláine. You have proven your innocence. Walk into the sun where you belong."

"Aye," the druid decreed. "The innocence of Mac Roth is not in doubt. Danu herself has taken a hand in his affairs. He is judged worthy. Now come to me, Sláine Mac Roth. I would consult with Danu over your destiny, come to me boy."

"I am a man," Sláine said stubbornly.

"That you are," the old druid said placating. "Forgive me."

Sláine emerged fully into the dawn's early light, and walked up to the druid. Cathbad laid a wizened old hand on his forehead and lapsed into a curious muttering, half-words slipping from his mouth. A moment later the druid threw his head back and cried, "I see a hero swinging a crimson axe, I see red-mouthed screams, I see huge mounds of fallen, I see smashed shields, I see ravens gnawing at enemy necks on the field of slaughter... I see a... a curious rat-like dwarf? I see pain. I see a world of hurt." The druid lapsed into silence. When his eyes met Sláine's there were tears in them.

"A promising future, lad." Gorian said.

But of course there were repercussions.

Grudnew's claim that it all ended there, that morning, was nothing more than wishful thinking. Seven of Cullen's kin came out of the night, torches in hand. They circled his home in silence. With a nod from one, they touched their flames to the wattle and daub walls and the thatched roof, and the place went up in smoke. They moved back beyond the ring of fire and the flame's punishing kiss.

Macha came out first, in her night shift with a fur pulled over her head. She looked small, frightened, as she slumped against the wall of the neighbouring house and coughed up great lungfuls of smoke and phlegm. Bellyshaker staggered out behind her, his face flushed with the red sting of ale. He lurched around in almost comical circles, flapping his arms ineffectually at the flames as if he hoped to wave them away.

The cordon of the seven vigilantes closed around the burning hut.

One delivered a heavy blow to his father's temple with the butt of an axe, sending the old man sprawling in the dirt. The vigilante knelt to check if Bellyshaker was breathing. Evidently he was.

Sláine watched the scene play out.

He knew they had no intention of letting him leave.

They held him responsible for the lives of their kin. They would extract a blood price in retribution, as was their right - or as would have been their right, if Grudnew hadn't snatched it away from them.

Sláine found it hard to believe they would be willing to watch him burn to death. That was a barbaric fate if ever there was one. Of course if they hadn't been so stupid they might have realised that his mother wasn't screaming hysterically and trying to get back into the burning house to save him, which she would have done if she had thought he was in there.

He watched it all from the roof of a neighbouring house.

He had known they would come. They were cut from the same cloth as Cullen of the Wide Mouth. There was no way they could allow the deaths to go unanswered. It would be akin to accepting that their blood was wrong, that Cullen was a treacherous backstabbing weasel and Conn was just too stupid to admit it. To do so was to admit that the same flaws were inherent in their blood. It would never happen.