The Paradise War (32 page)

21
C
YTHRAWL

O
llathir did not return until the sun was well behind Ynys Bàinail across the water. I had occupied myself with fetching water and gathering firewood for our use through the night. For Sollen would soon be upon us and, despite the day’s warmth, once the sun had disappeared we would feel the cold. Indeed, I was kneeling over a pile of kindling, ready to strike the flame for the fire, when the Chief Bard stood over me.

“Do not kindle the flame,” he said. “Make ready a boat.” He spoke calmly, but I could see that he was distracted. He kept his eyes downcast and his arms crossed, with hands hidden in the sleeves of his siarc. His face was gray, the pallor of illness, although his voice was strong and his eyes clear.

I put aside the metal and flint and proceeded at once to the strand where the ranks of boats had been beached. Tegid joined me and we dragged one of the boats over the sand and pushed it into the water. I took up the oar and passed it to Tegid, standing by the prow until Ollathir was settled in, his rowan rod across his knees. Then I pushed the boat out into the water and clambered in.

Tegid worked the oar with some urgency, and I realized what drove him: the time-between-times. The sun was already sinking behind the White Rock; we must hurry if we were to reach the mound before twilight.

We made the crossing to Ynys Bàinail quickly, and just as quickly reached the winding hilltrack leading to the grassy plain. Ollathir led the way and Tegid followed. I came last, and felt once again that strange sensation of expanding—stretching, growing, becoming larger with every step. It was dizzying and unnerving. Yet I did not stop. I lowered my head, gulped deep breaths, and plunged after the others. Heedless of my awkward stumbling, I hastened along as quickly as prudence allowed, dreading the entire journey—that tight trail would be treacherous to retrace in the dark.

We gained the grassy plain just as the sun sank beneath the rim of the western sea, flaming the wavetops, and staining the sky red violet and orange. The first stars gleamed in the east as the sky darkened at the advance of night. Ollathir and Tegid hurried to the mound and began climbing the steep sides. This time, since I was not prevented, I went up with them.

The cone-shaped mound was flattened at the summit, much as I had envisaged from below. A few paces in from the outer edge, the circle was marked with several hundred round, white stones—each stone buried in the earth with just the top protruding. Smaller stones marked the radials like the spokes of a wheel, one spoke for each of the four quarters. The tall pillar stone marked the hub of the wheel and was covered from its buried base to its tapering point with intricate whorls and spirals, and the curious, dizzying circle maze which was a Celtic commonplace—the entire surface covered in a richly patterned union of designs, all intertwining, all cut in sharp relief into the surface of the white stone.

Some of the departing had deposited their branches of hazel at the base of the pillar stone. Tegid retrieved one of these and handed it to me. “Hold to this. Whatever happens, do not let it go from your hand.”

I was about to ask him what it was that he expected to happen, when he raised his hand and brushed his fingertips across my mouth. “This, too, is for your protection. See that you utter no sound.”

At once the words forming on the tip of my tongue deserted me; all desire to speak fled. I merely nodded in mute agreement and clutched the leafless hazel branch more tightly. “Stand outside the ring,” Tegid said, pointing to the outer circle of white stones. He glanced quickly at the sky, then turned, taking up his oaken staff, and hastened to join Ollathir, who had pulled his cloak over his head and begun pacing slowly around the pillar stone, his rowan rod clenched in his hands and held before him.

The two bards moved together around the standing stone, and the sun-flushed sky deepened into twilight. I looked to the east and saw the rising edge of the full moon just peeking above the sea rim. It was the time-between-times.

In that same moment, Ollathir, Chief Bard to Meldryn Mawr, stopped his pacing and raised his rowan rod to the sky, gripping it with both his hands. He called out in the secret language of the bards, his voice loud with the power of the
Taran Tafod.

From the leather bag at his belt, he brought out a handful of the precious dust the bards call
Nawglan
, the Sacred Nine, a specially prepared mixture of ashes obtained from the burning of the nine sacred woods: willow of the streams, hazel of the rocks, alder of the marshes, birch of the waterfalls, ash of the shadows, yew of the plain, elm of the glens, rowan of the mountains, oak of the sun. This he scattered to the four quarters—and to the four quarters between the quarters—as he began slowly pacing once more in a sunwise circle around the pillar stone, which is the sacred center of Albion, the Island of the Mighty.

Tegid also paced, following three steps behind the Chief Bard, holding tight to his staff of oak, a fold of his cloak over his head. Ollathir spoke out a word, and Tegid echoed it. Around and around the pillar stone they marched, speaking out their strange, secret incantation.

How long this continued, I cannot say. I stood as one bereft of wit or sense, mute and staring at all before me, yet beholding nothing, understanding nothing. Time passed. Long or short the span, I did not attend it. I was caught up in the relentless flow of Ollathir’s resounding voice and his peculiar words.

And then the words stopped.

All became quiet and still. It was but the peace before the storm. For, even as the thunder of the Taran Tafod faded into silence, I heard a sound like the rush of waters from a broken dam, or the sudden gush of a flood through a weed-dry riverbed: a boiling, bubbling tumult of sound, confused and striving, clashing, colliding, surging, breaking and forming, splashing and churning as it came.

I turned and saw that the plain below the mound was covered by a filthy yellow fog—inundating the land, whelming over all that stood before it like a plague. Seething, moiling, its ragged ropy tendrils curling ever and again upon itself, the foul fog began to swirl around the base of the mound. I watched, my skin turning cold and slick like clay, as the fog mounted up the sides of the sacred mound.

I lifted my head and looked to the sky. The stars seemed to streak and run together like molten silver. The new-risen moon burned red as blood. The darkness heaved and throbbed like the labored flanks of a beast in pain.

From out of the livid sky there came a thin, wailing shriek, bloodless and cold—like that of a Sollen wind when it howls down from the frozen northern heights. It grew louder, assailing the moundtop, drowning out the churning watersound, filling this worlds-realm with the sound of desolation and malice.

Even as I looked, I saw a ghastly form taking shape, monstrous as it was vast, and it was vast indeed. The thing seemed to come swimming out of the night air, out of the fabric of the sky itself, from out of the spaces between the streaming stars. From the heart of darkness was it formed, taking darkness as its flesh, and night airs and ethers as its blood and bones—screaming as it came, screaming with the agony of its own heinous creation.

The thing was no creature born of earth—it lived, and yet it was not alive; it moved, yet it was not animate; it cried out, yet possessed no tongue. Frightful to behold, it was a creature of the hell pit, possessing in itself not so much a body as a multitude of bodies, all of them forming and growing, separating and dividing, shriveling and decaying and melting into one another, always changing, yet ever presenting the same loathsome shape to view. A shape calculated to freeze the blood and to stop the warm heart beating in the breast.

I saw eyes—ten thousand glowing cats’ eyes: baleful, slit-pupiled, bulging, and yellow. I saw mouths: gaping, sucking, mewling, and drooling venom. I saw limbs: gross, misshapen, writhing, thrashing— many-handed on the ends of convulsive arms; club-footed on the stumped shanks of wasted legs. I saw torsos: bloated and obscene, shrunken, skeletal, rotting and putrid with crusted excrescence. I saw hideous heads: faces ravaged by disease and disfigured, hollow eyepits burning, noses eaten away by cancerous lesions, white skull plates gleaming beneath scragged hair, wattled jowls jiggling, corded necks straining, blackened teeth bleeding pus from suppurating gums.

This hell-spawned creature loomed closer, driving down from on high. Cruel and ravening, it drove to execute our destruction. But something yet held it suspended between Earth and the nether regions of its abysmal habitation; held it still, but would not so hold it for long. The thing drew strength to itself, and its appalling power increased as it wafted ever nearer, spinning and hovering, its myriad bodies squirming in tortured motion.

I could neither watch, nor could I refrain from watching, as the demonseed reached out a great clawed hand toward the moundtop. The hand, leprous and scaly, stole swiftly across the empty distance which had seemed our only protection.

As the enormous hand closed over us, Ollathir raised his voice in an anguished cry and swung his rowan staff in a sweeping arc around his head. I heard it whir as it ripped through the air. Once, twice, and then . . . CRACK! He struck the pillar rock, breaking the stout wooden rod in half.

In the same instant, a bright light flashed from the pillar stone. The Derwydd fell to his knees, gripping the broken half of his rod between his hands, his face contorted in fearful agony. Instinctively, I made to dash forward, but Tegid whirled and raised a warning hand to stay me.

From deep within the mound there came a sound as that of an earthquake shifting rocks and tumbling rubble deep underground. Yet I felt no tremor, nor even the slightest quaver of vibration. I could feel the sound low in my bowels and in my knees. It seemed to rise up through the soil and into my very bones, traveling up my spine and rattling the top of my skull. I swayed, suddenly weak, my muscles losing strength.

Ollathir, using the broken rowan staff as a crutch, heaved himself to his feet, tottered, and fell back against the pillar stone, which was now glowing with a soft, pearly light. Yet I did not wonder at this, for my attention was trained upon the figure of Ollathir, whose features had undergone a terrible transformation.

He stood with his back hard against the weird-figured stone, arms stiffly raised, still gripping half the broken rod between his hand, and bawling with a mighty voice. Mouth gaping, nostrils flared, and eyes bulging horribly from his head, he appeared less a human being than an animal: a black-faced, bellowing bull.

The bull roar did not emanate from the bard’s throat, but came up from out of the earth beneath us, through the pillar stone and thence through Ollathir who gave it voice. And such a voice! It was deep and dire, loud with sinewed strength, firm as rooted rock, and hollow as the mounded grave.

The sound became a wild, inchoate chant. At first I could not make out the words, but then I discerned a name—Ollathir was calling out a name. And the name was
Dagda Samildanac
.

The words of the name meant the Goodly-Wise Many-Gifted One. It was the secret name of the highest god known among the tribes of Albion.

“Dagda! Dagda Samildanac!” the resonant bull-voice boomed out. “Dagda! Samildanac Dagda!”

Again and again the eerie invocation sounded, taking shape and substance. Up it rose, spreading like a shield above us, enfolding us in a cloak of protection—a blessed lorica to hide us from the fell enemy of all living things.

“Samildanac! Dagda! Dagda Samildanac!” the great earth voice bellowed, louder and still louder until the very mound itself quivered and shook.

I could not stand before such a sound. I gripped my hazel branch and swayed dizzily on my feet. I squeezed my eyes shut, but that made the dizziness worse. I reeled backward and fell down on hands and knees, still clutching the hazel wand in my right hand. I could not breathe; I gasped for air. I tasted the salt-sweet taste of blood on my tongue and realized that I was grinding my lower lip between my teeth.

Fearfully, I turned my eyes toward the demon hand pressing down upon us. The lorica of Ollathir’s invocation had halted the thing’s advance but lacked the power to banish it. Not long could the Chief Bard endure the strain of his entreaty, for already I could see him tiring. He could no longer hold his head erect, and his arms began to sag.

Soon his strength would give out; the bull-voice of the Dark Tongue would falter. And the lorica of protection would fail. Then we would surely be crushed.

I dragged my feet under me and stood. Tegid lay before me on his side, bleeding from his nose and mouth, one arm flung over his head, the other stretched out as if trying to reach Ollathir. I saw Tegid’s reaching hand and determined what to do: I would uphold the Chief Bard’s hands; I would support his arms and keep them upraised. As long as the bard’s hands gripped the rowan rod, we would be safe.

I lurched into the circle toward the pillar stone, stumbling over the body of Tegid. Instantly, I was battered by a force of blinding power which struck me like the heat blast from a fire, swirling around me like wind-driven flames. My sight dimmed. I could not see. I fought blindly onward, step-by-faltering-step, my heart thumping hard against my ribs. I could feel my flesh withering on my bones.

I struggled toward the pillar stone where Ollathir stood. His head slumped on his chest. His arms sagged.