The Sword of Feimhin (24 page)

It was a very intimidating sound.

The bearded man had not joined in the thunderous percussion. He was watching her calmly. She paused, swallowing hard against the dryness that was gathering in her throat.

From somewhere within the building she heard what sounded like gunshots. Automatic fire. It seemed outrageous to her, but somebody was firing a weapon within the confines of a famous university college. The tension rose in her again, suddenly, screamingly. She knew now that her fears were realised. It
had
been a mistake to come. Her jaw clenched and she found she couldn't speak above a whisper. She watched as the bearded man crossed over to the doors and shot the bolts, locking them in. She assumed that he had done this to protect her, and her audience, from whatever was happening elsewhere in the building. He remained by the door, standing guard.

But he looked altogether too calm. The shocking thought occurred to her. Maybe he was part of it?

Jo Derby spun to face the audience with their pallid sweating faces, thunderous mocking feet and their cold eyes. Perhaps the bearded man was waiting by the door only to open it again.

There was a loud commotion in the corridor and the sound of much closer gunfire then running feet. The
bearded man was reaching to slide the bolt back when the doors exploded inwards, crushing him against the wall to their right. Two figures rushed in wearing the uniforms of police motorcyclists, including helmets. One of them, tall and moustached, was directing a belted machine gun into the lecture theatre. The other, shorter and built like a woman, was hurrying to the podium where Jo was standing. The audience were on their feet. Their faces had become ugly with hate, their lips drawn back into a common hissing. The tall figure fired the machine gun into the ceiling, a thunderous detonation in the close confines of the lecture theatre. Joanne felt close to fainting.

‘Miss Derby – you must come with us.'

The shorter of the two police riders had approached the podium and was speaking to her. The figure had a woman's voice and, from what Jo could see of her neck and hands, a bronzed complexion. As she pushed the visor on her helmet up, her eyes startled Joanne. There were no irises or whites – her eyes were all black.

Jo barely recognised her own husky croak. ‘Who are you?'

‘Friends.'

The young woman smiled, but there was a frightening quality to the smile on that face with the all black eyes. ‘Your life is threatened. We don't have time for explanation. You must come with us.'

To her right, the tall man was firing his machine gun again, lower this time, barely above the heads of the audience, keeping them at bay.

‘Quickly – you really are in danger.'

Jo allowed herself to be hauled off the podium and rushed through the splintered doors, where she had to step over one of the trailing legs of the bearded man, his grey trousers pulled up halfway up his calves, exposing a fawn-coloured sock. Behind her, she heard more shouts, then several deafening rounds of the pistol were directed away from them, down another corridor, where figures were diving, or possibly falling. On her other side, Joanne allowed her arm to be taken by the woman.

‘What's going on?'

‘We mustn't stop. We need to hurry.'

She was being hauled across a landing dead bodies lay. The floor was slick with blood.

She cried, ‘I don't believe this is happening!'

The tall man running alongside them grinned, a peculiarly toothy grin from what little Jo could see through the visor, framed by a straggly Mexican-style moustache. ‘Lady, it's real as fucking rain. You were just minutes from being dead.'

‘For pity's sake!'

‘Not much of that round here.'

*

Nan grabbed hold of the arm of the tall red-haired woman, who was fumbling with her spectacles, removing them from her nose and shoving them deep into the breast pocket of her bright green jacket, as if they were as needful of saving as she herself. ‘Keep close to me. We'll shelter you.'

As they emerged into the street and the pouring rain, Cal joined them from where he had been guarding their escape. He roared, ‘Watch out!'

Nan looked in the direction that Cal was pointing. The paramilitaries had created a barrier of vehicles that extended wall-to-wall across the T-junction with the main street. Gunfire erupted from the barrier from at least half a dozen different points. The oraculum in her brow flared and a bolt of blue-black lightning exploded against the barrier, electrifying bodies and burning out vehicles. Within moments the barrier was a wall of flames.

‘What now?' the woman asked.

‘We run.' Nan could feel the woman trembling as she hurried her down to where Mark was guarding the bikes. Nan slapped the saddle of the Harley. ‘Here – climb onto the pillion.'

The woman was still dazed, so Nan shoved her onto the seat, sprang into the saddle and immediately started up the engine, kicking back the strut and roaring out towards the lightning-ravaged T-junction. She heard the roar of Mark's engine, then Cal's and Sharkey's behind her. Arriving at the rubble-strewn T-junction at the top of the street, she took the right hand fork, where she received a flash of communication mind-to-mind. Nan saw what Mark had spotted: an armoured vehicle with a field gun on a rotating turret was wheeling into position on the roundabout ahead. The turret was swivelling around to face them as all four bikes roared towards it.

Mark and Nan's oracula erupted simultaneously and two bolts of blue-black lightning exploded into the armoured vehicle with ear-splitting detonations, ripping the roof from the vehicle.

As Nan screeched around into a U-turn, she caught a glimpse of the detached turret with the huge gun still attached, flying through the air, then crashing into the tarmac of the road surface and skidding towards them in a shower of sparks. It ground to a halt just a dozen yards from the bikes, now wheeling around to head left along the main street.

Nan looked around, searching for an alternative escape. Buildings had caught fire from the exploding vehicles and the glazed façade of a six-storey office block was in the process of disintegrating, with glass and debris showering down over the pavement and road.

‘We're trapped,' Cal shouted.

‘Not yet,' Mark called back. ‘Look for the Tube.'

‘You're bonkers.'

‘Do you have a better idea?'

Ignoring the small-arms fire splattering out from behind the blazing barriers at both ends of the street, Nan throttled towards the protruding sign of red circle bisected by a blue horizontal – a closed Underground station.

She burst through the boarded up entrance, switching on the headlights as she did so, then juddered down a flight of seven steps into what had been the main ticket concourse. Directing the bike through the wider gates intended
for wheelchairs she faced three escalators, all defunct. A sign overhead signalled the Northern Line. The others were close behind her, the bikes spreading out to take all three escalators, rattling down what seemed like a hundred steps through an accumulation of discarded rubbish. At the bottom, all three paused to recover their breath before following the signs once again for the Northern Line.

Nan heard Cal's husky whisper, ‘Let's hope the bloody line isn't electrified.'

Then it was Mark's voice, full of alarm. ‘We've got an even bigger problem.' He directed the beam of his headlight onto the tracks to reveal the deep central pit, too narrow to fit a bike.

‘Not so!' Nan shook her head. Mark underestimated the power in his brow. Through the oraculum of Mórígán, a cyclone of blue-black lightning ripped into the buried floor of the pit and forced it to erupt, rising level with the steel tracks. Nan laughed as she drove the machine-steed over the edge of the platform, landing with a slithering bounce onto the now-level ground between the tracks, then accelerated through the vaulted tunnels and roared ahead, with Jo Derby holding onto her for dear life.

It was Nan who first felt the alien power in the tunnels as she roared on through the dark – something immense and frightening.

She mind-sent her message to Mark.

Kate floated between whirling galaxies of raw, immensely beautiful, colours. Broad, pure planes of blue, yellow, red were suspended at their intersections, flaring into rainbows of every subtle shade in between. But they were hallucinatory distractions. Oh, if only in attempting to save the Momu she could do something that might oppose the Tyrant's will and so help Alan!

‘
Remember the immensities!
'

But how?

She knew she must search for the deeper truth behind the legendary stories of the One Tree and the serpent-dragon that was reputed to inhabit the roots.

The Momu, and Driftwood too, had talked about such mystical things as fate. Kate was too commonsensical to allow the mystical to carry her away, but in the lengthy and only half remembered conversations at their first meeting, the Momu had talked about how fate and mystery
were intrinsically linked to the everyday world. The Fáil was, perhaps, the most mysterious entity of all. She had also talked about the great richness of nature. The One Tree was linked to this holistic way of seeing things, to the cycles and balances of the terrestrial and oceanic worlds and the interactions of all that inhabited them – which were not and could never be benign. To accept nature, to truly understand it, you had to understand the need for its gargantuan cruelties and see past them, to grasp their quintessentially amoral nature. There were rules that governed life, and they applied throughout all of nature from the simplest of beings to humans – or the many different types of people and beings that inhabited Tír.

Rules!

Could it be that the One Tree had something to do with the deeply embedded rules that governed the great cycles of life?

The Momu had made this vision into the mysteries possible, and through it Kate saw how critical the sense of balance was. Her very power – the power of healing –was linked to such cycles and balances.

Kate felt that she half understood something that was at once exhilarating and terrifying. Birth, life, death – these were the immensities. And the One Tree and the serpent-dragon that inhabited its roots had something to do with them.

With a shiver Kate remembered the terrible place she had only recently fled: a landscape cold as space with
jarringly angular buildings made of black ice, the Land of the Dead. That place was still perilously close, a dimension just a faltering thought away. Death was one of the immensities and death was certainly involved in this battle. It sought to consume the soul spirit of the Momu, but this was not the everyday death of Tír, the death ruled over by the goddess Mórígán, this was the death beloved of the Great Witch – and of that other even greater malice, the Tyrant of the Wastelands. Was it possible that the Tyrant ruled here, in the Land of the Dead?

If so, what purpose did it serve him?

Could it be that the Tyrant had something to do with the spirit of the succubus, Elaru, whose every word was probably a lie? Kate just didn't know what to believe.

Think back. What else did the Momu try to teach you?

Kate recalled her time with the Momu within her natural chamber in Ulla Quemar. She remembered looking up into her enormous, gentle face, astonished at what the Momu was attempting to explain to her.

‘This gift – will you show me how I'm supposed to use it?'

She recalled how the crystal on its chain about the Momu's neck took fire. The explosion of light had filled the chamber. She saw the effort of will it took for the Momu to stay calm.
‘Greeneyes – child! Your naïvety leads you to flaunt such a temptation before me.'

‘But it's a power I don't understand. I don't know what's expected of me.'

Those enormous mother-of-pearl eyes had drawn so close
to Kate's own it felt as if the Momu were becoming one with her mind. She had watched, bewildered, as the Momu reached down with one great webbed hand and explored the base of the tree of life – the One Tree, whose fleshy branches, leaves and roots ramified everywhere within the chamber. She recalled the palm of the Momu as it was brought up under her chin, how she had stared at it, wondering what it was that the Momu was showing her. Decay! The heart of the great tree was rotten.

‘Beloved Greeneyes – now do you understand?'

She had seen that same decay in the houses and streets throughout the beautiful city of Ulla Quemar.

The Momu had blinked, as if to confirm Kate's observations, and put her arm around Kate's shoulders.
‘Nidhoggr, the serpent, fertilised a seed of the Tree of Life. That seed grew into the One Tree in whose roots we converse, a chimera of magic and being. But the One Tree is dying, and with it my beautiful Ulla Quemar. I, the first born of that chimera – who am almost as old as the One Tree itself – am dying with her
.

The Momu was born from some interaction between the Tree of Life and the serpent-dragon Nidhoggr. That interaction had given rise to the extension of the Tree of Life, the One Tree that filled the chamber, and whose roots ramified throughout the city of Ulla Quemar.

Kate thought hard. She considered what the Momu had shown her. There had been a reason she hadn't quite understood at the time, but she felt much closer to understanding that reason now.

She heard the Momu speak, words that praised her resurrection of the dragon Driftwood – a resurrection she felt no pride in, since the fossil of the dead dragon had spontaneously revived while Kate slept.

She had asked the Momu for an explanation.

‘You have a very great power. The gift of life, of rebirth.'

Why then couldn't she use this gift to cure the Momu, who was dying? What if the Momu had not meant to ask Kate to cure her? Kate considered the memory again. The One Tree was growing within the chamber of the Momu … What if the corruption extended not merely to the seedling, but to the great mother tree, the Tree of Life itself? What if that was the real explanation behind the decay of the city and the death of the Momu?

What if I am expected to cure the Tree of Life itself?

Even as she thought about it the realisation loomed, immense in her mind. A message had been carried to her in her memory of the Momu's words: ‘
Nidhoggr, the serpent! The serpent-dragon that coiled about the roots of the Tree … Nidhoggr, who gnawed at the roots of the world and fertilised a seed to give birth to the Tree of Life itself
.' Understanding struck her, swelled in her, filled every one of her senses. Nidhoggr gave birth to the Tree of Life. The same Tree of Life that was essential for the wellbeing and health of the Momu, of her people, the Cill and of her beautiful city, Ulla Quemar!

Nidhoggr and the Tree of Life are dependant on one another
.

*

She must have fallen asleep – or something deeper. But now, as if her new understanding had sounded a shrill alarm throughout her being, she was waking. Her imagination was filled with vague black shadows, like the scatter of arterial blood over a field of virgin snow. Only this blood was black – thick, curdling, threatening black. And even as she watched it continue to spread, the pattern of it altered shape and the clots assumed the form of a human; a tormented body rent into huge disjointed chunks. Three quarters of a head with half a jaw formed, then a brow with a chisel-shaped chunk of it missing; then one arm severed at the elbow, and half the neck, which dissolved into the leprous white of the snow, as if invisible shark-sized jaws were biting. They tore and devoured, ripping away the left hip and the left leg from the knee down, all eaten away.

A warning? But a warning of what?

Kate had no idea what it might mean. Only that it frightened her deeply.

Even as the visions slowly faded she saw that she was back among the glittering black ice monstrosities that were the architecture of the Land of the Dead.

‘No!'

Had her realisation about the potential meaning of the Tree of Life and the serpent-dragon Nidhoggr drawn the attention of some malignant intelligence? Had that malignant presence gained access to her mind? Had it warned her off with the dreadful evolving patters of black clots against virgin snow? Was this why she found herself back
here, in this terrible land of hopeless spirits and gaunt places with their spindly Gothic shapes and overwhelming sense of malice?

Kate heard her own voice tremble in her ears: ‘Whoever – whatever – you are, leave me alone. I don't want to come back here!'

‘Elaru – I am not your friend.'

‘I can't trust you.'

‘It isn't nearly enough.'

Kate looked down at herself, at what passed for her body. There was no true body there. Driftwood had warned her. He had warned her and she had taken no notice of his warnings and now she was reduced to what? A fleshless soul spirit?

‘Where is my body?'

She was panicking. She realised that she had abandoned her body in the drowning city of Ulla Quemar. It was devoid of nourishment. How long had she been adrift of her body already? Would it simply starve to death, or drown? Was that what this vile and terrifying imprisonment was meant to achieve? Parted from the body she needed, the body that should protect her just as she had a duty to protect it, her physical being would perish and then she really would be lost forever in this monstrous world.

‘Do you know what I am really doing here?'

‘To witness what?'

‘I didn't come here to witness the Momu's death. I can here to save her, and to save her people.'

‘Take me to her.'

Anger at the presumption of this deceptive spirit consumed Kate's mind. Anger, mistrust and a growing, creeping dread all came together in a dizzy, terrifying crescendo, overwhelming her senses, her mind. And then, in the time it took to blink, Kate recovered her equanimity and control
of her senses only to find herself drifting towards the building that was the source of the pallid light that illuminated the entire Land of the Dead. Although she resisted, she could do nothing to divert her path from the menacing Gothic cathedral, constructed out of glimmering black ice. It was so tall that the apices were out of sight in the gloom overhead. In the age it took her to approach it, it appeared to grow taller still. It flickered from within and twinkled and blurred, as if constantly reforming the dully-glowing needles of its construction; shimmering black crystals that were minuscule from a distance, but were miles high now.

When she finally stood before the entrance Kate felt utterly dwarfed by it. It was a portal so vast that its roof was lost in the gloom overhead and yet still it was only a minor arch against the vast and beckoning chamber within. A distant sound came from that chamber, faint but striking against the silence of the landscape without. It took another age for her to pass deeper into the building. She felt herself shrinking smaller and smaller, in being and courage, until she felt no bigger than a grain of sand. An eerie light swept upwards from the floor, pervading the lower portions of the encircling walls so that they positively glowed; the glow fading gradually as the walls soared to dizzying heights. The walls were so tall they became invisible and disappeared into pitch-black shadows overhead. The light was strangely iridescent with beautiful rainbow hues, like the colour that glimmered around the carapaces of black beetles or the scales of dead fish. That
eerie light moved, diffusing down the chamber like the fall of snowflakes.

Surely light in itself could not fall? It had to be something else; a never-ending drizzle of millions upon millions of weightless motes that reflected the light. When she reached out and allowed a few to land in her hand, she saw that they comprised needle-like crystals which glowed with that same rainbow-coloured iridescence that coloured the black ice surrounding her.

The crystals were the source of the light within the gigantic chamber. It was their glow that illuminated the meandering streets outside. Their eddying cascade was accompanied by a high-pitched keening sound, like …
like millions of tiny cries!
Kate thought, as they dropped to become one with the floor.

Kate gazed at the light as it fused with the substance on the floor around her feet. She saw there was no accumulation as there would be with snow. Instead, the crystals fused with and became the actual floor, continuing the same twirling, spiralling patterns of movement she had seen as they fell. It was a constantly metamorphosing carpet of ice, like a moving sea of diamonds, which twinkled and flowed away to meld with the walls, and then to rise again. It was breathtakingly beautiful to behold. But utterly cold, so cold it caused Kate to shiver.

The entire cathedral is recycling
.

She sensed a force of malice as unquenchable as it was pitiless, which drove the gargantuan edifice to grow ever
bigger, taller, more awesome and terrifying. A dread grew in her heart once more.

The vast structure, – which utterly dwarfed any notion of life – the keening cries and the source of the light – every aspect oppressed her spirit. She was numbed by its grandeur and scourged by its cold, though she should have been impervious to such feelings since she had no flesh. She began to feel exhausted again, though she should have no muscles to register exhaustion.