The Sign of the Moonbow

PART ONE

Chapter One:

“I slew Wulfhere years ago!”

The ship wallowed slowly along, towing Amber Rowan seaward on a northwesterly bearing, away from the isle of horror and death.

Aboard sat its pitifully tiny crew: a druid in lunula of gold and soiled robe of green; a weapon-woman whose hair blew orange in the sun of autumn, and three weapon-men-one of them but little past his first beard-growth. The woman bore a lurid bruise on one thigh, gained while wielding sword as few women had done.

These were the crew of Quester; the passenger stood bound to the mast in the only way he could be held. The picture he presented was monstrous and horrible. The owner of any onlooking eyes not aware of the prisoner’s nature and powers would surely have been shocked at the seeming cruelty of his captors.

He writhed, and now and again he complained of cold, the cold of steel blades piercing his body and holding open its wounds.

But he did not bleed.

The lovely little breeze had grown now, riffling the sea and tugging at their hair. Quester slid smoothly over the nigh flat plane of the sea. Amber Rowan followed like a dog at leash, in turn seeming to lead a long white trail of foam.

The second ship was empty, crewless, of no present value. It only slowed them, and already they had had to swing wide, to avoid the Wind Among the Isles that had once wrecked Cormac and Wulfhere, and to avoid too the isle the Gael had named after the sea-god of his people:, the Ire of Manannan Mac Lir. But Wulfhere Skullsplitter and Cormac called an Cliuin, the Wolf, had spent long years riding the breast of the sea, a-reaving. Wulfhere was not capable of leaving behind a perfectly good seaworthy craft. Cormac was not capable of leaving behind a perfectly serviceable ship either-unless it was absolutely necessary.

Fortunately, necessity had not risen. An it did, the son of Art hoped with sincerity that the necessity was direfully pressing. Else it was argument there’d be, between impetuous overconfidence heightened by headlong, bulling strength, and the practicality and ever-thinking mind of mac Art. There had been many such arguments. Nor had Cormac always won his way, and he bore scars and the memories of intimate acquaintances with death as mementoes of those times he had yielded to the Dane’s boyish inclination to bull forward regardless of odds or terrain.

Now, however, sea and wind were good, Thulsa Doom was their prisoner, and ahead lay the unnamed isle that was their immediate goal.

Cormac well remembered it. Here they had landed to tarry briefly afore, he and Wulfhere and Samaire and her brother Ceann mong Ruadh. As now, there had been then the need to take on water. Wulfhere had groaned when good ale had been emptied from leathern bags that they could be filled with fresh sweet water. Too, it was much in love with personal cleanliness the people of Eirrin were. Samaire and Ceann had insisted on bathing. At that Cormac had groaned-and climbed high to keep watch. Apparently the forested island was unpeopled, and Cormac had taken his turn abathing, whilst Wulfhere kept the needless lookout.

Now, cleverly making use of the wind and daringly defying it all at once, the Dane brought them skimming in to that same paradisic isle. It rode the sea south of Britain like a floating emerald, fragrant and richly green.

Trees still rose high and full-leafed from the high stony banks standing over the water, and birds still sang their joy of the place that seemed made for their kind. Crystal water still tumbled many feet from a pile of steep grey rocks to splash into the little inlet that formed a perfect sheltered harbour. Into it, with an expertise hardly equalled on the Narrow Sea or any other, Wulfhere of the Danes brought Quester.

Amber Rowan proved rather more difficult; laughing and splashing despite the horrid presence of their prisoner, they accomplished it.

Wulfhere aided Cormac into his mailcoat while Samaire reminded them both that this green spot on the sea had proved uninhabited. Her own jacket of leathern armour lay on the deck; she wore only a soiled tunic of blue, and the usual boots that rose up under it.

Cormac gave her a dark look.

“So was Doom-heim unpeopled,” he told her, and he buckled on his sword. He turned to Brian, who had his own coat of small-linked, Eirrin-made chain ready in his hands and was obviously preparing to accompany the man he adulated. Cormac raised a staying hand.

“I will climb up there, above the waterfall, and keep the watch. I have done it here afore. Do you help them take on water, Brian-and bathe.”

Brian frowned. He looked up at the tree-crowned cliff, back to Cormac, and glanced at Samaire. Bathe? Three men and a woman?

Cormac smiled. “The matter of bathing here has been accomplished afore, Brian I-love-to-fight. Surely ye can work it out, as we have the matter of answering calls of nature, four men and a woman aboard ship!” Cormac looked at Bas.

“I will remain aboard, with-him,” the druid said.

With a nod, the Gael turned and made his way to the prow, There he slung his buckler onto his back, girt high his sword, and squatted, measuring distance with his eyes. He sprang several feet onto a shelf of rock that sprouted curling roots like listless serpents. Mail jingling, his buckler thumping his back, he scaled the cliff’s face as he had done four months previous. It was not a difficult climb.

Samaire stood watching, shaking her head. Ever the so-cautious and ever-watchful pirate, her dairlin Cormac!

She sighed, watching him with a pensive smile. It was not that she had been instantly attracted to this hardly handsome man, back when she was but a girl and he a boy who concealed his age to fill the role of weapon-man in her father’s employ twelve years agone; she had recognized him even then, as did those others who liked or loved inexplicably at what they thought of as first sight.

It was first sighting only in this life, this one of many, last but not final in a long line of lives, an unending and unbreakable chain of carnate existences extending into the time that had been and aye, into the time that was yet to be. Samaire knew; whether Samaire Ceannselaigh of Leinster had been of Atlantis or Valusia, or indeed had even known this King Kull they spoke of, she was not certain. It mattered not. She was certain that afore now she had known the life-force or soul or ka that had been incarnate as Kull, and as Conan, and Cormac, and others between. The when of it was unimportant. The names they’d borne in past lives were unimportant. Now was important. This time, and the time to come, the beyond-Now. Cormac, and Samaire, and Tu, linked across the millennia that sprawled like the star-strewn skies.

Nor did Samaire of Leinster in Eirrin assume that there had been ease or would be; this life-force to which hers was connected throughout time was a key one, a volatile one. And now he was Cormac mac Art, and he was safely up the cliff, this man she loved and had loved-throughout time.

She smiled, and turned to join Wulfhere and Brian in collecting the containers to be filled with that which neither Doom-heim nor the sea offered: clear sweet water for drinking. Only Wulfhere made complaint that waterfalls bore not ale.

The rocky cliff, rearing forty or so feet above water, was so rough of face as to afford easy climbing. Cormac soon scaled it. His breathing was hardly accelerated when he squirmed on his belly over the lip of the cliff and onto level ground. The grass began a few feet away; the trees just beyond. He moved onto the grass and looked down the long incline that was crowded with trees and brush. It swept down and down, into the forest that seemed to cover all the island.

A beautiful place, he mused.

Small, grown up completely in greenery, fine oaks and nut-trees rearing high above lesser neighbours. Perhaps half their leaves had fallen with the onset of autumn, to strew the ground already richly carpeted with grasses, moss, creepers, weeds, bushes, and wildflowers that had long since bloomed and gone to seed. Back in the summer just past, it would have appeared as an enchanted isle of eternal summer, all richly green and colour-splashed by the blooms of weeds and wildflowers.

Now autumn had come, and it was little less beautiful.

Such a land, he thought, to be without people!

Then he saw that he was wrong.

There were people.

He froze, staring, a man who had barely heard the myth of Eden told by the adherents of the Dead God but who stood now overlooking paradise-and discovered the serpent. The humans he saw were engaged in the ugly business of their kind-his kind.

A youthful couple, boy and girl or perhaps young man and woman of small stature, were beset in an oak-bound clearing by four weapon-men; These wore round helmets and armour, two in coats of scalemail and two of leather. One was sword-armed; the other three wielded axes. All bore round shields and all four were bearded with flax or gold. The youths were prey, not opponents, for they were neither armoured nor armed-at least not with steel.

In truth they were doing well for themselves with nought but staves, which they plied with uncommon expertise. An ax flashed at the boy in a great half-circle, missed, and a swiftly plied stave, nigh the height of the youth himself, rushed so that the attacker only just interposed his shield.

The long-haired youngsters defended themselves well-but would of course fall before steel in the hands of skilled, armoured men. Nevertheless, Cormac mac Art set his lips and forced himself to turn his back.

Where there were four of the men of Norge, there were more. Their ship was drawn in somewhere on this island’s coast. Perhaps the pair under attack below were escaped captives-temporarily escaped. They are none of my business or concern.

He stared down at his own companions. They had nearly finished collecting their water and transferring it onto the long boat that was their ship, and the men were elaborately-and ridiculously-turning their faces seaward. This so that Samaire could bathe. As Cormac looked down, she doffed her last garment and glanced upward. The slim woman waved gaily and flashed him a smile. Then she plunged into the pool to betake herself in under the waterfall. If she had called out, its roar and splash swallowed the words and her voice.

She’ll not be tarrying, he mused. A few hundred heartbeats and it’s back on the ship she’ll be, swirling her hair in the sun, and the others in the water. Nor is if long they’ll be. I’ll take no turn; it’s dirty and smelly they can accept me! These others… this be no fight of mine, no concern. No. And four Norse on this isle means a ship, and that means twoscore and mayhap more, and-we are but five. We have fought enow! We must needs be going on, and about the business of ridding the world forever of Thulsa Doom!

He knew dismay at that thought; ending the menace of an illusion-spinning mage of eighteen thousand years’ age were bad enow-but to find a woman who ruled, to set him forever at rest-as well seek a serpent amid the green green grass of Eirrin or a shamrock growing from the solid rock of Doom-heim!

He looked all about, with care.

He saw no other ship. Below, Samaire was doubtless splashing and laughing, though the falling water isolated him from sound. No. He’d climb down and tell them now. They’d be off. They’d been at the sword-reddening combat enough and more than enough. An he interfered with the attack of four Norse on seeming innocents, they’d doubtless have then to face the Norsemen’s comrades, and surely in overwhelming numbers. Pretty young men had been slain afore ere they’d shaved and sown their seed, in thousands, in millions. Pretty young women with flying hair had been bruised and raped and slain or left moaning and bleeding, time and time again, time without end. It was the way of the world, and its history. It was no business of a harried weapon-man of Eirrin, and him with awful responsibility on him as well as a woman to cherish and watch over.

No. He’d merely not look. One need not have concern over that which one saw not.

Norsemen…

It was Norsemen their own brother had intrigued with, to have Samaire and her brother Ceann snatched from Eirrin’s own sod. The bloody dogs would rather leave their cold land and slay and steal than eat!

Aye and aye, but this time was no concern of his.

Below, Samaire emerged nude and glistening from the pool, her water-darkened hair falling past the middle of her back. Cormac smiled on the whiteness of her buttocks and the jiggle of bare white breasts, but try as he might it was a different urge he felt. He felt the ache in his jaw, too, and heard the gritting of his own teeth.

Deliberately he looked away from Samaire, who waved up to him. again.

He looked again inland, down the long green hill.

Axes flashed silvery menace in the sun that struck through half-leaved oaks into the glade. Backward the young man fell, against the base of a great-boled oak, and his quarterstaff dropped from unfeeling hands. He lay still. The young woman, moving lithe as a cat and built with the same economy of bone and flesh, rapped a Norseman’s helmeted head with her stave, which she held before her with both hands. She aimed almost instantly at the face of a second with the staff’s other end.

Grinning, the four men dropped their steel. Retaining their bucklers in necessary defense, they closed on her. The boy lay still.

Girl or woman, she was valiant and her hair a fine cloak of black spraying out from the yellow band at her nape. Almost, she might have been Samaire in days past. Or Brian’s sister of Killevy, if indeed Brian had siblings. Or-

Cormac turned and lunged down. Flat on his belly, he hung his head over the cliff and shouted. His companions did not hear him above the waterfall. At the mast, Thulsa Doom stood like a ghastly statue. In her shift, her hair wrung and close-bunched like a sheaf of gold thread, Samaire looked up. Cormac shouted; he saw her smile and shout in return. He heard only the hint of her voice above the sound of rushing water and its splashing below, sweet water into salt. The men turned, hearing her. Their gazes followed-hers upward.

Shoving himself up onto his feet, Cormac drew his sword, pointed inland, and waved sword and buckler.

Cormac turned and plunged down the long green hill, sure his companions had understood his silent message.

He ran as best he could, avoiding trees and berrybushes and entanglements of viny plants. Once he fell, instinctively flailing, wide his sword-arm so that he did not come to grief on his own blade. He rolled and slid, grunting. Getting his body turned crosswise to the slope, he stopped himself, lunged cursing to his feet, and hurried on. Behind him the sound of downrushing water dwindled. Now there were only the calls of birds and the wind of his own swift passage.

He heard the girl cry out, for girl he had decided she was, and her so tiny.

A shout from him would cause her attackers to turn from her to face him. Aye… and to be thus well prepared for him. Suffer a bit, girl, and it’s of more value I’ll be against unarmed men wearing tall horns!

He ran on in silence, hearing the sound of male laughter and shredding cloth.

So rapt and enwrapt were they in their own lust, laughing and calling encouragement to him who now had their prey down, that none heard either the passage of a rushing man between rustling bushes nor the jingling clink of his mailcoat.

Then the dark man was bursting from the forest into the glade, and one tow-bearded reveler turned in time to see his own coming weird before it was on him in a swift sword-slash that shivered the air and opened his throat and windpipe in a moment. Blood leaped from a severed caratid. The Norseman staggered, his eyes huge, his hand rising ineffectually to his throat. Already his knees were loosening; already his silent rushing attacker was half whirling to thrust at a second of the pale-haired men of Norge, the one with the dragon knife-etched and red-outlined on his round shield.

Driven by an experienced arm backed by rangy though unusually powerful muscles, the sword of the Gael split apart scalemail links and drove them before his point into the man’s belly, nigh the length of a hand. That raider, so far asea on the Viking trail, stopped short, shuddering. His mouth was wide as his eyes. Moving sidewise without interrupting his initial action, Cormac gave his sword a strong twist and a swift tug. It came free, scraping on destroyed scales of steel and followed by a spate of scarlet.

There had been four men of far cold Norge. Now two lay dying quietly, if not silently. There was a moment for Cormac mac Art to scan about, rather than attack as he had, slashing one man blindly and reacting to the movement of the second with the reflexes of a longtime weapon-man.

The slender girl with the long, midnight hair lay on her back, and her skin was much exposed and dark as Cormac’s own. Between her thrashing legs, mailcoat and all, lay a man from under whose helmet escaped a single thick braid that was almost yellow. Though she was kicking, writhing, flailing, he was getting his way with weight and strength. Nor could Cormac end that man’s efforts and his life; the fourth raider, buckler on right arm, had snatched up ax, and was lunging at the Gael. At the same time, he called a warning.

Cormac mac Art had oft avowed that he killed only when necessary. Challenged on the matter of the bloody wake of his past, he admitted that it was often necessary… it was necessary now. Where there were four raiders from the sea, there were others. None of these must go free to warn their fellows, wherever on this small tree-grown island they lurked.

A left-handed foe could be difficult. His disadvantages were his advantages. His shield was on Cormac’s shield side, his ax aligned with Cormac’s sword. Interpose a shield quickly across the body at his slash, and strike back at-what? Yet there was no time for difficulties and normal circle-and-feint this day. Cormac swung in a way that appeared wild. Nordic eyes gleamed at the invitation, and ax came arushing. The Gael was not there to stop its edge, either with buckler or flesh. He dodged and moved in, swinging his shield over and up to smash the wrist just back of the ax-wielding fist. Then he was past without waiting to watch the ax waver, lower, drop from fingers that flexed open.

The Norseman whirled. Cormac’s sword was a streak of silver that lifted the hem of a leathern coat of armour and plunged upward from groin into intestines and the floor of the man’s stomach. With the ugly noise of a sick rooster, the raider clutched at himself, bending, bloodying his hand on the skewering blade. The Norseman fell backward off Cormac’s point, still staring.

The Gael turned to face the fourth man-their leader of course, as he’d got first turn with the captive. He was up. He had his buckler, and his sword. And he was no small man, crouching so expertly with sword held just so and buckler at the precisely proper height and distance from his body.

Over their shields, the two men stared at each other, the scarred, black-stubbled Gael of Eirrin and the fully bearded blond of Norge.

“Cormac! It’s Cormac the Wolf-again! And here, both of us far from familiar haunts! Well, Cormac, well… it’s here you meet your weird, Skraeling of Eirrin! It’s here I do death on you at last, as I slew your fellow sea-thief Wulfhere of the Danes years ago!”

“Thorleif, “Cormac said, and he gasped the name.

O gods, would it never end? This was Thorleif Hordi’s son, whom Wulfhere had slain years agone, on the isle of Kaldjorn when he and Cormac had been at the matter of regaining the kidnaped sister of Gerinth of Britain.*

* See Tigers of the Sea, Ace Fantasy.

“Wulfhere slew you, Norseman! Must I spend my life facing dead men risen to challenge me anew?”

A frown darkened the wind-etched face of Hordi’s son of Norge.

“It’s madness on you in your declining years and last moments of life, Wolf,” he said. In a crouch, he twisted his buckler and waggled the powerful wrist of his sword-arm.

Blood of the gods! Cormac’s brain lurched. First it was those illusory men Cutha Atheldane of Norge set against me, in the passage beneath Kull’s castle-all men I myself had done death on in years past. Then a fullscore and more dead men, Danes and Norse alike, enemies and former comrades raised by Thulsa Doom’s’ horrid arts in that same castle less than a fortnight agone, and them not to be slain by mere steel. And now it’s Thorleif I face-whom Wulfhere slew!

Will steel prevail this time? Is this some trick of Thulsa Doom who is somehow also Cutha Atheldane? Can I put darkness of death on Thorleif’s eyes-again, with point and edge? Or need I mistletoe and holy oak to lay this life-like lich?

Or-is it mere illusion?

Thorleif lunged; Cormac dodged and cat-stepped aside without trying a counter-blow. If this were illusion, only the face was; the ringing blow on his shield and the jolt to that arm were real enow!

Thorleif turned, a big man light on his feet, to keep his eyes ever focused on his foe.

“You want this skinny little wench with the darkness of your own hide on her, Skaeling? Take her then-you have only to come through me!”

“I wear no horn for her, mad dog-but it’s two I’ll have, once I’ve sliced yours off!”

With an enraged cry Thorleif swung; Cormac’s buckler took the blow and his point leaped-to thud into the other man’s shield and be turned aside with a hideous scraping sound. Prepared to strike again, the Norseman saw his foe’s readiness and glittering eyes and thought better of it.

It was then that a slender leg whipped up from the leaf-strewn sward and a bare foot struck flat, hard-driven, into the back of Thorleif’s left knee.

The Norse raider lurched, staggered, sagging to leftward, and Cormac stabbed past his shield into Thorleif’s armpit. Thorleif gasped loudly, vocally. Gone suddenly all shivery, he tried an offensive swing of his buckler. Cormac was better at it; shield smashed the other man’s face and he showed his mercy by ending the Norseman’s misery: the point of his glaive leaped through blond beard into throat.

Breathing through his open mouth, Cormac went to one knee to wipe his sword on Thorleif’s leggings. The leg twitched. The Gael turned then to the girl for whom he’d acted so foolishly-and who had aided him in turn.

“It’s well we team,” he said, “and be easy-I seek no strength-taken woman.”

She blinked, frowned slightly-as if she did not understand-and then swung her head to her fallen companion. Without reply she went to him.

She was tiny, less than five feet in height, and passing slim as well. Her clothing had been torn away considerably more than half by her assailants, and certain attributes proclaimed her woman, though she appeared just to have come into her nubile days. Yet her startlingly dark eyes said otherwise. Mayhap she was not yet a score of years in age, Cormac mused, but it would not be long ere she observed that birthday.

She went down beside the fallen youth, murmuring. He looked much like her, the Gael saw; her brother, sure, lying asprawl on his back with a bloody gash on the right side of his head. He breathed, and the gash was not deep. Ere Cormac was to them in that glade of corpses, she was away into the edge of the woods, plucking the leaves from plants Cormac did not know.

He looked on while she pressed them to the youth’s head, murmuring, and the Gael saw that she knew what she was about. He could not help but note how dusky they both were. Black of hair both were too, like himself, but with a shortness of stature that surely could not mark Gaels. Their skin could be the result of much sun… but not those raven locks.

The youth groaned, muttered, groaned again, and only her hands stilled the movement of his ax-struck head. Cormac saw his eyelids flickering.

Her rescuer started to touch the girl, decided against it; she’d enough of the hands of strangers this day. “It’s no death-wound he’s taken,” he said, squatting beside that pair of dark slim youths. “Your brother?”

They spoke, both of them, as the young man gained a hold on consciousness and wits. Cormac was startled. He knew now why she had frowned and blinked at his first words; his reaction to hers was the same.

The words they uttered were recognizable, aye, but only just. Different. Old; they spoke in the old way. He had heard the druids pronounce the language of Eirrin in such a wise. They were of Eirrin, but as if from her past, or as if raised apart by some unchanging oldster without ever hearing others speak their tongue.

“It’s slowly we must speak,” Cormac said, enunciating carefully, with his hand on the boy’s arm and his gaze on the girl’s great eyes. They were brown as good walnut. Seldom did a man see such eyes, who-what were these people? “Slowly and with care, to understand one another. I am Cormac mac Art of Connacht-and ye be not of Eirrin as well, but know her, language.”

She gazed long into his eyes, then looked down at her brother.

“He saved us,” the youth said. His eyes were brown as good walnut…

“We are not enemies,” Cormac said, and added, “tongu do dia toinges mo thuath.”

She looked at him again. She nodded, touched his arm. “Tongu, do Dana’,” she said quietly.

Cormac’s eyes narrowed. He had spoken ritual to her: I swear to the god my people swear by. And she had replied that she swore by… Danu!

She went on, in her quiet voice, whilst her brother struggled up into a sitting position and looked about the blood-splashed clearing among the oaks. Her name was Sinshi, she told Cormac, and it was a name he had never heard. This her brother was Consaer, and he repeated it after her to be sure. Aye, Consaer. Far more familiar, that; “Con” was a common enough name-sound among the people of Eirrin, with others, including even Conn, of the Hundred Battles. And “saer” meant wright; carpenter. Yet her accent and inflections and even the turning of some phrases remained unfamiliar, as she told him that she and her brother were of a city or village inland, Daneira. And the eyes and hair…

“Of this isle? You are-of this land?”

She nodded. “Aye,” she said, and her brother echoed, “Aye.”

Cormac started to ask. He gave his head a jerk; questions born of astonishment could wait.

“Then it’s to Daneira we’d best be taking Consaer and yourself, for these men from a far land, enemy of mine, cannot be alone on this isle.”

Again Sinshi looked nervously at her brother-though her hand remained trustingly on Cormac’s wrist. Mayhap it was not a trusting touch at that, the Gael mused; the diminutive hand was after all on his sword arm.

It was then came the great crashing and jingle of mail in the brush to hillward, and even as Cormac sprang backward and up into a fighting stance the bushes burst inward to admit a rushing form to the clearing. A huge man he was, bigger than big and taller than tall, wielding ax and buckler and on him a great lurid beard the colour of dancing flames, Blue eyes darted a swift look about the glade, taking in the four fallen Norsemen. His face went disconsolate.

“Ah, ye gods-abandoned son of an Eirrin Pig-farmer,” Wulfhere cried accusingly, “could ye not have saved so much as one of these dogs for your old weapon-comrade?”

Chapter Two:

The People of Daneira

While Consaer of Daneira both steadied himself and comforted his sister with an arm across the shaky girl’s bared shoulders, she pressed close to Cormac. Her small hand remained on his arm. Wulfhere Hausakluifr examined the sprawled Norseman, one Hausakluifr examined the sprawled Norsemen, one by one. He kept his eyes carefully from Sinshi, who was more than half naked. Then the Dane came to the man last slain.

“Thorleif!”

The Gael nodded, grim-faced. “Aye.”

“But… Thorleif! Odin’s name, I slew the man, Cormac! My ax split this skull to the chin! What Loki-sent horror is this! More dead men to fight and slay again?”

“He was very alive, Wulfhere, and vaunting it that it was he slew you-years agone, he said.”

The two men stared frowning at each other. Then of a sudden the answer came to the Gael.

“The-the other ‘dimension’ Bas spoke of, whatever that means. Thulsa Doom’s refuge-world, like ours and yet unlike… blood of the gods! Mayhap in this dimension-och, we have much to talk on, and to learn, about this business of being in another dimension.”

“What? Think you that here… wherever here is… things are indeed different? Even the past? Dead men are not?”

“And mayhap living men are, Wulfhere. Consider. It would seem that here, in this… world, Thorleif killed you, old friend.”

“But…” Wulfhere broke off, struggling with the concept, visibly worrying it about in a mind that none had deemed overly speedy. “Does this mean “ He broke off again. “Could there be… have been… two of me here? Another Wulfhere Hausakluifr? Another me?”

Cormac shook his head. “Who knows? Mayhap Bas can tell us-and mayhap we must learn of ourselves, with time and experiences. But just now, Wulf-it’s other matters we must be giving heed to. It’s treasure we have on Quester, and Thulsa Doom-and were better sure to lose the booty than have him loosed again! Only Samaire and Brian and Bas be there with him-and there are Norse about.

“Ye allowed some to escape?

“I did not. Can ye imagine four alone?”

“Oh. No, no of course not. Ha! Enemies here on our island, is it! Well, they’ll find no easy road to Thulsa Doom or treasure or even ship!”

The Dane gave his ax such a ferocious sweep that it moaned in the air. Both Sinshi and Consaer drew back. Cormac felt her hand on his arm, suddenly clamping.

“Och, ye bullish madman, Wulfhere! A woman and a druid and a green weapon-man and him not even a Dane? Suppose the Norse discover them now, with you here?”

That ploy was instantly effective. “Aye, But-yourself, shipmate?”

Cormac looked at the youths of Daneira. “Wulfhere, there is mystery here. Let me be going with them. I will join ye soon. Do you remain with the ship.”

“Mystery? Hmp! Cormac, Cormac. The mystery is how she stands before the breeze, and her with so little womanly meat on her.”

Cormac gave him a look and spoke with his lips tightly together. “It is not, Wulf, this girl.”

“I know.” Wulfhere looked down and heaved a sigh. “I know, blood-brother. It’s just the prospect of climbing this accursed hill I descended for naught that makes me more than hesitant.”

“And surly.”

“Aye. Ye’ve noted how much longer hills are when one is climbing than when one is coming down?”

“Why-it’s scant attention I’ve paid, Wulfhere. Could it be age coming upon ye, man?”

Wulfhere stiffened, stared, turned with dignity, and re-entered the woods on the hill side of the glade. Cormac heard him muttering. So were Sinshi and Consaer; they were struck by the colour of Wulfhere’s hair.

Cormac considered the corpses; he decided it were better to gain Daneira swiftly than to attempt to conceal the Norsemen and all signs of their deaths. One trace of blood, found on a blade of grass, would set off a thorough search by their comrades. The people of Daneira could come and dispose of these, later; at present his efforts were better spent getting to them with the warning of danger he and these two would bear.

“Your people have armour? Where are your daggers? Swords?”

She looked at him with large eyes of soft dark doe-brown, and her voice was soft, gentle as that of a frightened or chastised child.

“We have no need, Cormac mac Art.” She was staring-at his eyes. Were grey eyes as unusual to her as her brown glims were to him?

“No need-Blood of the gods! But you must have axes.”

“My sister and I were not on a woodcutting expedition, Cormac mac Art.”

Cormac clamped his teeth in exasperation.

Consaer, asking his sister for help in drawing his tunic up over his head, started to undress. Already nonplussed, Cormac for a moment thought they must both be insane. Then he realized that the lad meant to clothe his sister’s near-nudity in his own garment.

“And then we can strip off at least one of these leathern coats for you, Consaer,” he said, indicating the bodies.

The youth chuckled. His tunic came off to reveal a lean dusky torso, with long stringy muscles that Cormac knew held considerable strength, if only the fellow were not so little above five and a half feet in height.

“I’d not wear such clothing of such men,” Consaer said, and he had to repeat it ere Cormac understood, for the Daneiran youth had forgot to speak with slow care against the difference in their accents and phrasing. “And what fits any of them would be far too large, anyhow.” He slapped his leg. “These leggings are leather, Cormac mac Art. I need no tunic-and Sinshi does.”

Hardly, Cormac thought, but he held silent with only a nod.

His sword sheathed, he gathered the Norsemen’s bucklers and burdened Sinshi with them, once she was enveloped in her brother’s tunic; he was both bigger built and a full eight inches taller than she. An ax the Gael handed to Consaer, who was none so steady on his feet and showed by little winces and the way he held his gashed head that it was a-throb. Cormac carried the other two axes and Thorleif’s sword, with five daggers in their sheaths fastened to his belt.

“Lead me to Daneira. At least four of your people will have shields, and decent weapons. These.”

Consaer and Sinshi but looked at him, whether in pity or incomprehension he could not be certain. Without speaking, they entered the woods. Long black hair trembled and swung down their backs. Cormac followed, but not too close, that there would be space for maneuvering if there was need. About them rose lofty trees in grey and black. A few leaves were green; most were the colourful hues of autumn. No one had ever swung ax here, Cormac knew. Insects flitted and buzzed; birds called and trilled and warbled-and now and again fluttered in bushes so that Cormac looked sharply that way.

He asked; no, there were no animals on this island, save those brought with them here by the Daneirans long and long ago; pigs and goats and sheep, for meat and milk, fleece and silky hair, and hides.

Paradise!

Cormac could hardly believe it. Serpents? Aye, they made reply, there were reptiles… though throughout all the history of Daneira none had got his death from a serpent’s bite. Cormac could but. shake his head. Paradise! The enchanted land of a chosen people!

Aye. An innocent and naif people, menaced by naught and thus unprepared for any menace; open to attack, the perfect prey for a score or two Norsemen unimpressed with gentle people living in idyllic circumstances. There would be no battle. There would be rape and butchery, and none left to know or to keen the red death of Daneira and its gentle people.

Possibly the Daneirans had naught worth coveting or stealing-save the isle itself and their very existence, their lives. No matter to the men of Norge! Their god was War; their gods were warriors. He who was chief among those nigh-guileless warrior-deities had but one eye and hurled lightning, while his simple-minded son used his hammer to create the thunder. He who was most intelligent among them was the villainous and crafty Loki, loved by none. Once the men of ice-ruled Norge got their crops out in the short growing season, they deserted their steadings, leaving the work of growing food to their women and children and oldsters. The younger men fared forth in ships laden with arms to go a-viking: a-reaving; a-killing.

For such, Cormac thought grimly, the Daneirans had enough of value: flesh for the cutting and buildings for the burning… and women and girls.

Following the weaponless, armour-less pair of sheep for Norse slaughterers, Cormac gritted his teeth. He should have stayed away. Did such foolish people deserve aid, rescue?

A short distance into the wood, the trio came onto a clear and well-trod trail, and Cormac realized how woods-wise were Sinshi and her brother. They went swiftly then, the youths in soft buskins and he bare above the waist-aye, and reeling a bit from the wound in his head. Cormac followed cautiously, alertly, marveling at people who were not cautious because they’d never been so-because they’d never had reason to be cautious or alert!

No beasts, he thought. No enemies. No swords!

They wended through the woods, two sheep and a wolf who trod a carpet of leaves in orange and yellow and scarlet, and Cormac wondered whether he felt pity for them-or envy. As for them-what felt they for him, a scarred and blood-splashed man of weapons who clinked when he walked for he wore steel, and whose narrowed eyes were constantly amove, seeking an enemy not there?

Cormac did not know. He could not imagine their lives. His had been a life of arms and combat, all his days. It seemed that he had been born with sword to hand.

In the time when Laegair’s son Lugaid was High-king in Eirrin, Art mac Comail was a member of the powerless bear sept of the clan na Morna of Connacht, though he was kinsman of the ua-Neill, the descendants of that great Niall, High-king. This same Art got a child on his wife, and it was a son. Cormac remembered Art’s telling him of his name.

“He was the greatest king that Eirrin ever knew,” the boy’s father told him, of that son of King Art the Lonely of a time long gone by. “In power and eloquence, in the vigour and splendour of his reign, he has not had his like before or since. In his reign none needed bar the door, no flocks need be guarded, nor was anyone in all Eirrin distressed for want of food or clothing. For all Eirrin that wise and just king made a beautiful land of promise. His grandfather was Conn of the Hundred Battles; his father was Art the Lonely; he was King Cormac. Like you, son, for I have given you the greatest name in the history of our land: Cormac mac Art.

The training of mind and body of that second Cormac, son of Art, began almost at his birth.

It was a proud name he bore-and it was the undoing both of himself and his father. For it made even more nervous the Ard-righ or High-king who sat his throne at Tara Hill with the shakiness of fear on him, for he ruled ever fearful of being toppled and slain. And Cormac mac Art was a magic name. And so mysterious death had come upon Art of Connacht, and his son had fled lest he suffer that same fate. Too, he concealed his great name.

Though far too young for the skill he had with arms, he was tall and strong for his age so that he could pass for one older. As “Partha mac Othna,” of Ulahd, he betook himself to Leinster. There, concealing age and name, he was employed as weapon-man in the service of the king.

Eirrin’s High-king was no emperor. Each kingdom ruled itself. Nor was the kingdom of Leinster a friend to its northerly neighbour Meath, where rose Tara, the Seat of Kings over Kings. Partha mac Othna served well and distinguished himself, and was given command-which gained him enemies, envious men. As none knew his age, none knew of his trysts with a girl who was his first love and he hers-Samaire, daughter of the king in Leinster.

Too well did “Partha” distinguish himself, and it was both Leinster’s monarch and High-king Lugaid did treachery on him. Was they saw that he was goaded until he slew a man at Fair-time, when the Peace of the King prevailed. Having broken that peace by doing arms-death, Partha/Cormac had no defense and no choice: he must die.

Again Cormac fled.

An exile from Connacht he had been; now he was exiled from all Eirrin, where among his ancestors had been rulers.

Northward on the Plain of the Sea he made his way, to Alba, land of the Scoti and the Picts. There he found employment on a farm-until there came a Pictish attack. His weaponish skills then showed themselves to the astonishment of all-and to the consternation and death of the attackers. Having thus betrayed his skills, he was recruited into the service of the king of Dal Riada of Alba or Scot-land. Again he fared well and distinguished himself-too well. Again was treachery done on him, and again by a crowned man, his own king. Betrayed to the Picts, he languished in a cold and filthy cell, an object of hatred and mockery. Nor was he fed; he was to die, and slowly.

He survived only because of a Pictish woman who had recently been bereft of both husband and babe; she gave him nourishment as only she could.

Eventually, Cormac mac Art escaped.

Alienated, hating kings and trusting none, he took up his career as a reaver or pirate of the Narrow Sea. Right well the well-born exile of Eirrin fared at piracy, with his own ship and his own crew. Yet there was that he would not do: never did he raid the shores or ships of Eirrin.

Time came when he was captured-and this time, flung into a cell even more cold and more filthy, he had a companion. The other’s name was Wulfhere, and he was a giant even among the tall Danes. Each was the only companion available to the other, the only voice and listening ears; they became friends. To him Cormac lied about his age. Wulfhere Splitter of Skulls was older, and must not know how young was this stout weapon-man whose brain was so keen and whose counsel so wise that Wulfhere gave listen, and was guided by it. It would never have occurred to Wulfhere to keep back a bit of their meagre food, that they might use it to lure and entrap more food: the rats of that prison in which they were to die. Thus they kept up their strength, though their warders knew not.

It was bloody their escape was, and not long after the two were again asea. Both joined the crew of a renegade Dane, a-reaving.

Their ship streamed a wake of blood, for their captain feared nothing and raided the shores of Britain and Alba as well. Nor could he listen to counsel, and he got his death in Britain of that arrogance and stupidity. Indeed it was the skill and wiles of Cormac and Wulfhere enabled the others to escape, and all knew it. Natheless the dead captain’s second took command, and him a man of foul disposition who showed considerably less than gratitude or respect to the two best among them, the Gael and the giant Dane.

It was Wulfhere slew that abominable man a few months later. A fair fight it was, and the dead man loved by none, and Wulfhere Hausaklulfr was captain. He was counseled by his friend from Eirrin, and his so dark and scarred and dour, a man whose life had been laid out for him by the treachery of kings and whose scars went all the way in, to the brain.

They two achieved a measure of fame, and infamy. Their ship was everywhere and undefeatable. Years passed, with them friend to few and feared by many. Yet they achieved no wealth and saved little. It was the weather itself, the wrath of Eirrin’s seagod Manannan mac Lir, that defeated them. Thus were they swept ashore on that nameless isle whereon they found Kull’s castle, sorcerously standing intact after so many millennia, now the keep for booty-storing of a band of renegade Norsemen.

And there was more slaying to be done.

There too, after so many years, Cormac found Samaire and Ceann her brother. Both were victims of the treachery of a king-their own older brother. Cormac and Wulfhere, with those few of their crew who had survived the wrath of Manannan, freed the two of Leinster from their Norse captors. It was Samaire who persuaded Cormac to return to Eirrin-and that only at night, apart from the others.

Long months later, having trekked across half of Eirrin and fought his way through Picts and highwaymen so that his exploits gave rise to legends, Cormac reached Tara in Meath.

By dint of arms at Fair-time, he won the title Champion of Eirrin-though under a false name. It was after that series of contests that he announced his true identity, before the great triennial meeting of all the kings of Eirrin. He was Champion; he had slain the highwaymen of Brosna Wood on whose hands was the blood of many; he had saved a fisherman and his family and doubtless others from a Pictish attack, so that none survived. (And in all these adventures had Samaire wielded arms alongside him). Yet death was demanded on that old charge-by Feredach, king in Leinster, the older brother of Samaire and Ceann. Despite him, Cormac was offered a single chance to save his own life, to prove his worthiness to the god Behl. He accepted instantly.

Under his own name at last, Cormac mac Art survived with honour the Trials for Him Who would be of the Fiann-though both a druidic mage-of Leinster-and two hired killers-of Leinster-attempted to slay him while he was unarmed and unsuspecting. And after twelve years he was Champion of Eirrin, and pronounced free and welcome both by High-king and druidic council-for the latter said that by passing the Tests of Finn he had been exonerated and welcomed by Behl of the sun, Himself.

Cormac soon interrupted his rest and his basking in the light of fame. With Samaire and Bas and an Eirrin-born crew, he returned to the isle of Kull. They would simply pick up all that Norse booty and return to Eirrin-to finance the maneuverings of Ceann and Samaire against their ruling brother-who had got the throne by the murder of his older brother. The isle they called Samaire-heim, of Wulfhere’s gallant naming.

It became Doom-heim, for there Thulsa Doom awaited, plotting blackest vengeance on him he knew to be Kull reborn.

During that time, so recently past, Cormac knew horror unequalled even in his extraordinary life. And more blood flowed. And eventually they had escaped, so few now of the two ships’ crews that had fared to the awful isle of bare stone. Now he was come here, to this tiny island of green and peace, for water-and once again Cormac had reddened his sword and added more deaths to his list of deeds.

Aye, was true; Cormac mac Art said that one should never kill save when it was necessary. And aye, it was distressingly true that in his thrice-hard life it had often been necessary that he deal death-lest it be dealt him.

He followed the lambish siblings he had rescued. Understand them? Understand Daneirans, conceive of Daneira and those who walked without wariness and caution and without weapons? Cormac mac Art could not, and it was no happy man who followed the long black hair of Consaer and Sinshi through the forest.

They came to Daneira.

First there was a vast sprawling field that had borne corn and flax. In a huge sickle-shape it was laid out, connecting far ahead of Cormac to a tall and steep hill. At its base lay Daneira, a sprawling town all of wood. It appeared to have grown naturally there, among trees grown up over the years or left standing long ago. The hill backed the village; to its left a stream ran, coming down and around the hill and burbling off into the woods that, apparently, otherwise covered the island. The land across the stream had been cleared but for a few spaced trees; there these people had their gardens.

No wall or even palisade enclosed Daneira. It was open to the breeze and the sun-and to attack, Cormac mused grimly. The only enclosures were for the animals they kept, and these Sinshi told him were pastured on around the hill, which was mostly rock and scrub behind the village.

Strange, Cormac mac Art thought; there were no dogs. Nor saw he either cats or fowls. Well inland these people had laid out their settlement, though surely some trekked to the sea to fish, and mayhap others brought down birds in the forest. And gathered birds’ eggs?

Sinshi and Consaer had thrown him constant glances, all along the way. Now all stared at the approaching trio-at the tall man in mail.

Daneira, Cormac saw, was beautiful. It gave pleasure just from the looking on it. The buildings were beautiful, superbly constructed with never a nail, and intricately adorned with carvings and with shells, with enamels and paints that were bright and bespoke happy people. He recognized the style and pattern of the decor, but only from relics of Eirrin’s distant past and on weathered rocks. How long had Daneira been here? Had there been no influx, no newcomers at all to bring trouble or new ideas, decorations, tools?

He saw naught that resembled weapons.

The people stared. They were small, no man above five and three quarters feet in height and most nearer five and a half. Black or dark brown was the hair of all, all, and brown or seemingly black their eyes, while their skin was as if deeply tanned. Aye, Consaer and Sinshi were typical. Could they be of Rome? Surely not Gaels, with their dark soft eyes. The Daneirans stared in silence at the tall man with his deepset pale eyes and his twinkling metal clothing. Aye, for there was no armour, though he saw leather aplenty; this was not armour but superbly tanned, softened hides of their goats and their sheep and their pigs. Feathers he saw, worn as decoration, and shells and crafted things, and dyed wool and flaxen linen coloured in hues drawn from sea creatures and the plants of the woods, pleated and wrinkled.

The people of Daneira seemed healthy enough, and happy as well, though it was hard to be sure of the latter; all froze to stare at the clinking stranger whose coat and helm and burden of axes caught the sun’s light.

Daneira was small. Less than a thousand people were here, all of one race and looking indeed as if sprung from a single family, one dusky, brown-eyed family whose hair ranged in hue from blackest night to medium brown. Oh, and aye-all were short of leg and unusually long of face.

The houses were sizable all, not peasantish or skimped in construction or, presumably, in inner space. He saw new decor, but no new homes. How long had the population been stable or declining? He had no, idea. Of the answers to many questions concerning these people, he had no idea.

Consaer and Sinshi led the Gael-the only Gael, as there were no Germanic peoples or fair Celts-to one of the homes. A murmurous crowd followed, staring but without clamour. A calm, complacent folk.

A man in a long blue tunic, without leggings, came hurrying and intersected their course as they reached the house. Cormac saw swiftly that this was a physician, concerned with the wound to Consaer’s head. Dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes. He entered the house of blue and green and brown with them, onto flooring that was gleaming, finely fitted hardwood planking strewn with rugs of dyed sheepskin and one that was intricately woven of coloured woolen yarn. A warm home it was, to mind and body both, with gourd-pots and pottery pans and a lute or something similar, a set of pipes, and various other utensils of the household of a farmer who was not starving.

Cormac mac Art saw no weapons, no armour.

The ax within the door was long of handle-a woodsman’s tool. There were other such tools, on nicely wrought and braced shelves.

The stranger with the odd grey eyes was welcomed by parents and the brother of Consaer and Sinshi, while the physician sat Consaer down and examined him. After congratulating Sinshi on her swift application of the proper herbs, he applied more, and a thick oil of some sort. Consaer’s younger brother Lugh helped him press together the edges of the wound and wrap his head tightly, around and around, with a cloth of undyed linen. Sinshi meanwhile vanished through a doorway into one of the house’s two other rooms.

Duach and his wife Elathu were neither ruddy nor fat, and it occurred to Cormac that he had seen no truly fat people among all the villagers. Too, most of these people’s longish faces held an elfin or birdlike quality, with no fleshy deposits lying beneath the skin, so that it was stretched directly over the bone. No one was round of face, or square either, like some of the blond northerners.

“You have saved my son and daughter from death and worse, Cormac mac Art,” Duach told him, a short rangy man with a beard of black-shot auburn. “Anything that is Duach Fedach’s son is yours.” His brown eyes unashamedly aglisten with tears, Duach son of Fedach of Daneira swept his arm in a gesture that included all his household.

“I would ask naught in recompense, Duach mac Fedach,” Cormac said. “But I would beg that which ye have that I’ve tasted not in many, many days-I see milk and I smell roasted pork.”

A hand came onto his arm then, a small hand whose skin was cooler than his, though of the same hue. Large walnut eyes looked up into his face from a pretty elfin visage in which the bone structure was unusually defined, even among the Daneirans. Already Sinshi was back from another room, having changed from her brother’s tunic into one of her own, blue linen over a pair of russet leggings of leather so soft it looked like wool. The girl was lovely, pretty as a tiny and fragile woods-flower.

“Sit, Cormac mac Art who saved me. I will serve you milk of the freshest and pork enow for ten, and be the milk not fresh I shall go and coax more from one of the goats, for we have seven!”

He caught the emphasis, and knew that Sinshi spoke with pride. In Eirrin, wealth had long been measured in cattle. Here, he realized, it was goats. Though seven was hardly a herd for the bragging of.

“It’s happy I’ll be with it, Sinshi, freshest or no, for I’m long without: Duach,” he said, instantly shifting his gaze to her father and dropping his pleasant expression. “Daneira is in danger, all Daneirans. Aye, and goats and sheep and hogs. Those men who attacked yours and whom I slew-they cannot have come here alone. Your people must prepare.”

Duach looked uncomprehending-or as if he thought Cormac did not understand. “We have seen none from outside but yourself, Cormac mac Art, not in any lifetime or in my father’s. Never have I seen such eyes, the colour of steel. We will offer these men what we have-food and drink. There is naught else, and what more can they want or ask?”

Cormac felt desperation on him. It was as if he talked to a child-no, for even a child knew of danger… except on Daneira.

“Duach,” he remonstrated, “these are Norsemen, my friend, and them on the viking trail!

For a long moment Duach was silent, gazing curiously into the excited eyes oЈ the other man. At last, he spoke. “What are Norsemen?”

Chapter Three:

The Wizard of Daneira

Cormac stared at the father of Consaer and Sinshi, and Duach Fedach’s son gazed mildly back into the dark, scarred face.

“What are Nor-blood of the gods, man! I answer Daneira? Your life, Duach! Your wife and your daughter! It’s savages we talk about, man!”

Duach gazed at him, having merely blinked. He could no more understand the concept than Cormac mac Art could understand Daneira and Daneirans. Close to hand, Sinshi bustled, with many glances from her pretty elfin face at her tall savior, the strange, sky-eyed man in the steel coat who stared speechless at her father.

It was then that another came to the house of Duach.

A very old man, he was deferentially welcomed and bade to enter. Like snow was his plaited beard, and his scalp was nigh onto hairless, shiny and deeply tan. The staff he bore was capped by a moon-sign of considerable age. Cormac’s eyes widened at sight of that gold emblem, for it was like unto a bow, the old man’s moon-sign. Cormac knew it but hazily; it was the ancient symbol of a goddess few thought of in Eirrin. Dana or Danu her name, she whose people were in Eirrin long before the Celts came-for what many said was the second time, after a thousand years-the bow because in addition to her being moon-connected mother goddess, she was warrior as well, remembered among Cormac’s people only as the Morrighan. The Morrighan was believed in, and spoke of-but none worshiped her on her moon-mother identity. It was the goddess Bridgid that had supplanted her, and who was herself worshiped in Eirrin long before that silly follower of Padraigh and the Dead God, Bridget the Gentle, called “Saint.”

Cormac marveled. As astounding were the old man’s clothes: he wore a robe of leaves of the forest, all shiningly enameled so that they made little clacking noises when he moved. Shown much deference, he accepted it with grace, in a manner clearly accustomed. After a glance about the main room of Duach’s home, he came to Cormac.

For some time he but stood there, gazing with fascination into the Gael’s icy steel eyes. Then, the old man spoke.

“You have come to our city from outside to save two of ours from other outsiders, tall man. Ye came here not with those who attacked Consaer and Sinshi?”

Cormac thought: City! But his inner smile did not show when he said, “No. They are of the Norse, from a far land called Norge. Ye know them not?”

The old man shook his head. His almost black eyes swiveled their gaze on Sinshi, who had come to stand close beside the Gael-and to cling to his arm. “No. And yourself?”

“It’s Cormac I am, son of Art of Connacht, in Eirrin-a Gael.”

“Eiru? With that hair and skin? But ye be no Celt-ah! It’s our blood ye bear! I do have knowledge on me of your kind. A Gael-the dark Celts.”

Cormac showed the oldster a wintry almost-smile. He thought of the fair-haired, fair-skinned Celts of Eirrin as pale Gaels.

“Aye,” Cormac said, for it was politick. What meant the oldster, “our blood”? Too, it was disturbing that it was his right arm to which the girl clung, for what knew these naif, unmenaced people of a weapon-man’s discomfort when his sword-arm was not free?

“Cormac?”

Her voice was soft and tiny, gentle as a spring zephyr that hardly riffles the new leaves. He looked down into her upturned face, and thought anew that she was less a child than he’d first thought. Those clever, womanish eyes… calculating? She handed him goat’s milk, in a beautifully wrought and intricately carved goblet of smoothly polished wood. The symbols with which it was indited were not familiar to him.

“With thanks, Sinshi-and it’s begging you I am not to hang on my… drinking arm.”

“Oh!”

With a contrite look, she released him-and immediately transferred her small self and her grasp to his left forearm. Cormac curbed his sigh and accepted what had become the inevitable and unavoidable. But now he would not drink, in the presence of so respected a man as the bald oldster with the plaited beard and lively eyes dark as peat-bogs.

Cormac returned full attention to the old man, who was staring at him. There was much quickness. and intelligence in those old eyes; they seemed to sparkle with life.

“These Norsemen, Gael of Eirrin. What sought they?”

“That which they will seek here, in far greater quantity. It is their way. They sought Consaer’s life and Sinshi’s body.”

The words were brittle and ugly, and so Cormac intended them. Someone had to be shocked into belief, into fear or anger or both, and this man was manifestly a respected leader-a priest, likely.

“They carry axes,” Cormac said into the silence. “They are short of haft and slim of blade, for they are not for the chopping of wood, but of flesh and bone. They carry swords, and they wear metal as I do, or leather with padding beneath and the leather itself hardened as armour against blades. Like those,” he said indicating the Norse blades he’d brought, “and this.”

With his left hand he plucked a Norse dagger from his belt, showed it to the leaf-robed man. The latter only glanced at it.

“And their hair is pale!” Sinshi put in, as though that were all that was different about those who’d sought her rape.

“Not a flensing blade,” Cormac said desperately. “Not a skinning blade, or one for the scraping of vegetable skins or animal hide either. This is for killing, for murder.”

The man of Danu looked more doubtful than affrighted. “Ah. Never have I seen such men. But… my mentor passed on to me a story of such. I had nigh forgot: there’s been no need to remember. Such men came here once, pale-haired men wearing tunics that clinked and carrying axes not for the chopping of wood. They slew. Aye-they slew even goats, my mentor told me.” He shook his head. “For no reason.”

“But Daneira is here,” Cormac said swiftly. “The Norse were repulsed then, driven off. You-may I be knowing your name, father?”

“I am Cathbadh.”

That was all; this man stood high, Cormac knew, and needed no other. Too old and too well known on his own reputation was Cathbadh to bother appending the name of his father to his own.

“It is Cathbadh who makes thanks to ye, Cormac, for the saving of Consaer and this nubile girl, so valuable to our people. And now-”

Cormac interrupted in growing frustration. “Cathbadh! Cathbadh, servant of Danu whom Eirrin’s all but forgot-it’s responsibility ye have here. Ye must prepare! Daneira has not so much even as a wall-Daneira must prepare. The Norsemen-”

From outside, a shriek arose in interruption, and then other cries.

The Norsemen had come to Daneira.

More cries rose from the other end of the sprawling lovely village of complacence, and they spread. Shrieks and screams and yells of warning and horror seemed to move closer. Grey eyes flashing like a lightning-lit sky, Cormac seized Cathbadh by both shoulders. His sudden movement hurled Sinshi’s hand from his arm, and the fine goblet of polished wood went rolling over a sheepskin rug tinted a deep red. Rich yellow milk splashed.

“Cathbadh! They are come! They will rape, and slay and slay, and it’s your homes they’ll be burning. Believe me man, I know! Your men who hew trees in the forest must come with their axes, and those who spear fish, if there are such here. I cannot defeat a shipload of Norsemen alone!”

Releasing the man, Cormac whirled to the door and stepped outside. From there, hardly aware of the small hand that almost instantly closed on his arm-his left arm-he stared the length of Daneira, at the invaders.

Not a mere score was their number, but nigh onto twice as many.

They were tall, grimly warlike men of frostbit Norge, who paused just within the village perimeter, staring about at the strangeness of its buildings and its people. Axes and shield-bosses glinted with sinister flashes. Cormac saw a blooded ax, another. Aye, and already there were captives, a girl squirming by her hair in that man’s big red-furred paw, her clothing torn to the waist, a young boy tugging at the grip around his wrist, the grip of a captor who hardly noted his struggles. A child of eleven or twelve squealed for her mother, for she too was held by the hair and tugged this way and that to keep her off-balance. A woman ran toward her, dark hair streaming and arms outstretched, and was struck easily away by a negligently flicked shield. One Norseman broke from the group to rush a house on the outskirts, and returned grinning, dragging a shrieking young woman by the ankle.

Cormac’s teeth gritted and he snarled. He was but one; they were nigh twoscore. What could he possibly do? And these Daneirans-he had found the complacently peaceful, childlike refugees from old Eirrin just in time to witness their removal from the earth-and to share it.

A bony hand fell on his shoulder, and he felt its strength through his mail.

“Do not move or speak, Cormac,” Cathbadh’s voice said, with a surprising firmness.

He moved past the Gael, out into the village. Trembling like a leashed hound, Cormac watched the old man in his weird robe, enameled leaves flashing, as he paced a few steps toward the invaders. Still they remained paused, poised, staring, unable to believe that none fled or came banding with arms. Cathbadh’s staff with its golden three-quarter moon bobbed along, carried in his right hand and pacing his left foot.

He stopped. His voice carried well. Every gaze was on him, Norse and Daneiran-and the single set of grey Gaelic eyes.

“I am Cathbadh, servant of Danu and protector of Daneira. Why have ye come to Daneira?”

The Norsemen looked at each other. One stepped forward, spoke to their leader. Cormac wondered; had Thorleif been their leader afore? This new man, his beard the colour of cheese, gave listen to his companion, and then he laughed. Laughing, he pointed at the old man who stood alone in the center of the village’s main open area. He bawled out words, in his own language.

“He sneers,” Cormac muttered. “He says that-”

But the man beside the Norse leader was interpreting, grinning, yelling out the words in staggering Gaelic.

“Protector? A spindly man with beard like the mountaintop snows? We spit on you, protector of Danererr. We spit on Danu, whatever that be! The Norsemen have come to you, Protector of Danererr, the men of Thorleif and Snorri.”

He gestured at the cheesebeard beside him, and that man braced his legs well apart and planted both hands on his hips. He looked upon Cathbadh as only a powerful and self-sure young weapon-man with no respect on him can stare at the old and helpless.

“We have eyes,” Cathbadh called back. “We see the men of… Shorleaf and Snoaree. We beg you to beware Danu-and we ask what it is you would have of us?”

A swift brief conference, and Snorri’s Gaelic-speaking lieutenant bawled back a single word.

“Everything!”

Snorri spoke more; the other man shouted his bad Gaelic. “We would have of Danererr all its gold and jewels, and its best food, and all its arms-and all its WOMEN-N-N!”

At that last bellowed word, the men of Thorleif and Snorri called out their echoes and their ayes, waving their axes and beating upon their shields. He who had fetched the blue-tunicked young woman from her very home hauled her to him by her ankle, rested his ax-haft against his calf whilst he grasped her between the legs. She cried out. From her home, a child screamed. Then a man came running, yelling hoarsely, his unbound hair streaming out behind. He waved both arms; in one hand was a quarterstaff. Two men he passed at the run on his way to his wife or sister, and the second swung his ax after him so that he bent in an impossible way ere he slid from the steel and lay on the ground. He did not so much as jerk with his back and vertebral tree and every nerve destroyed, but lay absolutely still.

Now it was Cathbadh who roared out one word, while he held his staff braced horizontally before him with both hands.

“GO!”

“Blood of the gods! Cormac gritted, through clenched teeth. “Crom’s beard-a city of children with a madman as father! Let-go-me, girl, it’s my buckler I must have on this arm-ah gods, the filthy bloodhanded bastard!”

The invaders’ shock at Cathbadh’s incredible command, the roar of a wolf without teeth, lasted but a few seconds. As Cormac jerked at Sinshi, who gripped his arm now with both hands, the man who held the child by her hair lifted her until her little feet left the ground and her eyes bulged. In one perfectly calculated sweep then he sheared her head from her body. His ax swept through, clear, hardly blooded by the swiftness of its slicing. The girl’s head remained dangling by its black sheaf of hair from his fist, enormous eyes staring: the pitiful little corpse dropped to the ground with blood fountaining from between headless shoulders.

Sinshi clung, weeping… Cormac started forward, dragging out his sword, lifting his unshielded left arm to hurl the girl from him… Cathbadh cried out and raised his face and staff to the sky, calling out words in a language Cormac had never heard…

And a streak of flame leaped up from the ground, all at once in a line across the village just before the Norse.

Even as they cried out and drew back, the yellow fire sprang up into a wall of dancing red and gold and orange… and extended itself, racing along the ground like two serpents that swept about either flank of the massed invaders. As that line rushed to encircle them, it grew swiftly up to form a wall, whipping around to encompass the yelling Norsemen as if it were a sentient creature, a live creature with a brain and purpose, an encircling serpent of living dancing licking flame-that made no sound.

The flame closed its circle. The Norsemen were prisoners within a ring of fire that danced up to twice the height of a man. It became an inferno.

Cormac stood trembling and staring, Sinshi hugging him, her face averted and pressed to him. Within the ring of awful flame there were shouts and shrieks, ghastly cries of horror and panic and suffering. A Norseman burst through, a falsetto-shrieking apparition with flaming hair and legs. Delirious in a frenzy of pain, he ran staggering, blinded, up the center of the village toward Cathbadh. The protector of Daneira stood unseeing; he stared at the sky, a seeming statue with uplifted staff. The gold Moonbow at its end flashed like fire.

Heedless of her falling, Cormac wrenched free of Sinshi. He ran straight at Cathbadh’s back, and past that living statue, at a dead run. He did not hear his cry; did not feel his arm when it drove his sword forward. A few feet in front of the wizard, Cormac took considerable pleasure in putting the fiery Norseman out of the misery no man should have to endure.

Like all others then, Cormac stared at the awful circle of fire.

The flames roared now, bellowed, and sprang higher, tall as the trees of the forest. The cries from within lessened in number and volume. The nauseous odour of burning cloth and meat drifted over Daneira, and Cormac heard wretching. His own belly heaved and rumbled and he was glad he’d had no time to partake of food.

The flames leaped, trembled, seemed to execute a ghastly dance of death, appeared to flow like some horrid liquid in halfscore everchanging hues. The constant roar of well-fed inferno rose to the sound of booming surf, of steady thunder closeby. Now no cries came from within the fiery circle. Silent too was the grim statue that was Cathbadh, his robe of enameled autumn leaves no longer ludicrous, but a symbol both of life and of death-dealing flame.

The old man stood silently, rigidly, and Cormac saw that he quivered all over in his stiffness. Not even his so-pale pupils showed now in their sockets; the eyes of Cathbadh the protector of Daneira were rolled back so that he had become something from which children would flee.

The protector of Daneira was Protector indeed. The wolf was far from toothless.

Sorcerous flames lapsed. The wall of dancing fire lowered. For the first time as he turned again to stare at the doom-fire of Snorri’s band, Cormac realized that he had felt but little heat. Yet it was fire. The man at his feet was burned; the ring looked like fire and sounded like fire, and beyond the lowering flames the Gael could see how treetops seemed to shimmer. Billowing gouts of black smoke boiled up-and up, lofting into the air without rolling over Daneira.

The sorcerous inferno died.

Cormac mac Art stared, paced forward, stared.

The Norsemen were gone. In the space of a few minutes, close onto twoscore men had been consumed. More, they’d been turned into ash-and the puddles of hideous bubbling smoking slag that Cormac realized with a chill horripilation of every limb was formed of melted axes, and swords, and the armour boiled from living men as their skin and hair and even bones burned away to ash.

Cormac turned slowly, to gaze at Cathbadh.

The stiffly upraised arms lowered. The staff fell to the ground. Slowly Cathbadh’s head came down, and for a moment his eyes focused, or seemed to focus, on the horror he had wrought in protection of his city of children. Then the man crumpled and fell to lie as if dead.

Only the Gael was close enough to see that Cathbadh’s chest rose and fell, and he knew that the wizard had utterly exhausted himself in the saving of Daneira.

Chapter Four:

The King of Daneira

It was the stranger to Daneira who carried the unconscious wizard to his own bed.

Amid the uproar of the people, a passing thin man had come to Cormac and the fallen Cathbadh. A long robe of plain homespun was upon him, undyed, and girt with a belt to which had been fastened lacquered oak leaves, all green. By this and the fact that he carried a staff surmounted by the three-quarter moonsign of Danu, though it was of yellow-painted wood rather than gold, Cormac took him to be another servant of the goddess. He bent at once to take Cathbadh’s hand and place an ear to his chest.

“He lives,” Cormac said. “You are a fellow servant of Danu?”

The man, perhaps in the third decade of his life, looked up. “I am his apprentice. He bade me stay behind when word came of your presence. Now he has exhausted himself.” He too stared, at the strange colour of Cormac’s eyes.

“Ah. Show me where to bear him, then, for this man must receive care, and live forever!”

The apprentice gazed at the tall man for a time, then nodded. He rose and watched while Cormac easily lifted the wizard-priest, whose strange robe clacked.

“I am Flaen. Follow.”

Cormac followed Flaen-and by the time they reached their destination Sinshi was with them, followed by a crowd of excited people. At the door of a house set apart and decorated only with a three-quarter moon on the lintel, Flaen stepped aside, motioned Cormac within, and stepped before the doorway.

“This day has Danu saved us all, and through the power of Cathbadh. Now he is but exhausted; he lives. Go and mourn the dead-and see about the business of… cleaning up. The metal can be of value to us.”

They dispersed, while within a dim, unlit room Cormac laid Cathbadh on a long cot set against a wall, though he noted it bore only a spread, cloth worked with moon-signs, and no padding or cushions. Wondering whether to cover the man or even to think about undressing such a one, he glanced at the doorway. Flaen entered, with two others.

One was Sinshi. She rushed to Cormac, and took his arm-the left. He patted her hand without looking at her.

The other wore a robe of fine white wool, girt with gold. Around his muscular neck he wore a golden chain, which suspended the sign of Danu on his chest. He was the first person Cormac had seen who was armed; the fellow wore a sheathed dagger slung from his belt of gold cloth. A symbol of office, or power? His hair was a deep brown, and so too his eyes; mustache and beard were auburn. No small man was he, in build, though he would be only average outside of these short, slight people.

His name was Uaisaer, and he was king over the Daneirans. Again Cormac noted the emphasis on woodworking; the king’s name meant Noble Wright, Noble Carpenter. And he was the ninth of that name to rule as king over these people. With no strong hand and no pomp, Cormac decided, noting that the king was dressed relatively simply-and barefoot-and came with no guard or retinue or even adviser. Further, he introduced himself, for Flaen went straight to his master.

The room held one chair, nicely wrought but unornamented, and a table and a bench, and naught else but shelving and things of strangeness hanging upon the walls. An undoored doorway led to another room, but Cormac had the feeling that Cathbadh had few possessions. He wondered about the barefoot king.

On all the ridge of the world, surely there were no people so strange and different as these of Daneira!

Again Cormac mac Art was heartily welcomed and profusely thanked for having saved Consaer and “this nubile young maid who is so necessary and valuable to our people.”

He wondered-was she valuable because she was nubile, or was there more he did not know? While the matter was intriguing in its cryptic nature to the Gael and thus of considerable interest, he set it aside in his mind, with other questions to be asked later.

He was hardly comfortable. He had watched at work a most potent mage indeed-and the man had then collapsed and had to be carried here like- one dead. Once again Sinshi was treating his arm as a possession-though at least she remembered, and confined her viny clinging to the shield-arm! Too, Cormac mac Art was not comfortable in the presence of any king. He had known several, and all had betrayed him, including that former High-king of Eirrin itself. Cormac mac Art had served royalty and he had been served badly in return. He was no lover of kings.

Sinshi crowded her rescuer. Her little hands seemed bent on piercing his armour, so closely and tightly did she cling, her hands so small against the Gael’s mailed sleeve and muscular arm.

“You are twice welcome here,” Uaisaer, king, said. “What would ye have of us?”

“Lord king, my thanks-”

“I am called Uaisaer.”

Cormac nodded. Not such a bad king at that, mayhap-though he stood back and allowed an old man to fight his battles without so much as ordering his people to withdraw or attack. Still-with such a man as Cathbadh about, what need was there of armour and shields, walls and royal orders?

“My thanks, Uaisaer. In truth, it’s others I have with me, a druid of Eirrin and a woman-” Sinshi’s hands tightened-“and two men, and-”

“Such as yourself?” The king was most interested.

“Aye, weapon-men, one of Eirrin and-oh. No, Lord k-Uaisaer, not with my hair and skin. The hair of one, whose name is Brian, is flax, and the other, him who is of the Danes and taller than I, constructed like a barrel, has hair and beard on him like the red of the rowan-berry. With us too is… a captive. A dread mage of evil, of whom I would talk with Cathbadh.”

“Ah. Well, I see that Flaen has brought his master’s chest, and is tending him as none other can. The king of a grateful people offers food and drink.”

Cormac smiled. King over a village! Aye-and food and drink. The goat’s milk he had never tasted.

“Fetch milk for Cathbadh,” Flaen said, “girl.”

“We have grapes,” Uaisaer said, “and too we have ale.”

“Ale? There be ale in Daneira?”

The king looked both astonished and a bit hurt. “We are men!” he said, and it was answer enow.

Though she was obviously not anxious to depart Cormac’s presence, Sinshi looked away before the gaze of her king and hurried from the little house. Cormac flexed his arm and glanced anxiously over at the unconscious priest-wizard. The old man’s night-black eyes flickered open even as he looked. They fixed on the Gael.

“Now, Cormac mac Art, ye know why none was affrighted.”

“Now I do, protector and saviour of Daneira! Were there more like yourself on the ridge of the world, it would be a peaceful place and it’s another life I’d have led-and a shepherd I’d probably be!”

Cathbadh smiled wanely. “But understand that one out there was sore afraid, Cormac. That one was I. Today I have done what I have never done afore.”

Cormac went to the cot, squatted beside it. “And-ye be not ill, Protector of Daneira?”

“Weakened. Drained, like a squeezed waterskin,” the old man said. “Never have I had to call on such powers. The small pigskin bag from the chest, Flaen,” he said, and looked again at Cormac. “Though those who look on see only the power, the manifestation of the goddess and ancient knowledge passed from one to one to another and so down to me, there is much labour in… what I did. It is exhausting. I lay unconscious?”

“You did: Was I bore ye here. And it’s glad I am ye be recovering, Cathbadh of Daneira. Memory will be on me as long as on the the people ye saved from the Norse this day.”

Cathbadh’s face clouded. “Not quite all. A girl not quite nubile died with them-and two childbearers.” He sighed. Glancing at Flaen’s movement, the old man’s eyes brightened, though Cormac had noted they had seemed not so weak as his body. The Gael-turned to follow their gaze.

The chest or casket Flaen had fetched was old, very old, of unbound wood and decorated only with an etched moon-sign. From it he had taken a small pouch of russet-hued pigskin, and opened its strings.

“Master,” he said, extending it.

“Come, I must needs sit up,” Cathbadh said, and received swift aid from the Gael. “Ahhh. Weak, weak as an infant.”

“It’s more need ye have for the ale Sinshi brings than I,” Cormac said. “And for red meat, methinks.”

Cathbadh was dipping his fingers into the pouch. Flaen said, “For such as my master and I, intoxicants are used, not quaffed in the way of other men. He will soon have a bit of milk. Nor do we eat meat, at all.”

Cormac shook his head. “It is no simple matter, this business of serving Danu and protecting her… city. No ale and no meat either!”

Though he was no such great tippler as Wulfhere, Cormac mac Art was hardly an enemy of ales or wines-and he could not imagine living without meat.

“It is no simple matter,” Cathbadh agreed. He looked up at Flaen. “Ye know, Flaen, that I shall not long survive this day’s work. Your time approaches, and I wish for you that no such need is pressed upon you as on me today-ever.”

Flaen sank down beside the cot. “Master!”

“Cathbadh!” That from the king, who stood silent and unassuming as no ruler Cormac had ever known or dreamed of. Nor did Uaisaer wear so much as a band about his head, much less a crown.

“Come, friends both-all three,” Cathbadh said. “Ye well know our geas and our limits, and the rewards and penalties for such as we.” Taking a pinch of finely crushed leaves from the pouch, he stared at them, muttered unintelligible words.

There was silence in that room then, and into it came Sinshi, bearing what was surely a sore insult to goats: a goatskin bag of goat’s milk. In her other hand a larger, fatter skin sloshed most pleasantly. Beautifully turned and carven mugs of wood there were in the house of Cathbadh, and them smooth and shiny as sword-steel.

Soon they were lifting well-filled mugs each to the other, a king over a few hundreds of people, and the man who served their deity and protected them at peril to his own resources, and a weapon-man of Eirrin. One cup contained milk.

They drank, and soon Cormac mac Art felt of far more cheer.

“Cathbadh, there is a place I must go, and my friends awaiting. And… another. Now I hold hope that ye can be helping us, an ye be recovered enow to hear of the evil we hold captive.”

“Ah,” Cathbadh said, less weakly still, having eaten twice of the herbs from the little russet pouch and, having quaffed. fresh rich milk. He sat up the straighter. “Daneira is in the debt of this man, Flaen, and hear him! We are fortunate that he has some need of us.” He turned, clear, coal-dark eyes on the Gael. “Cormac mac Art?”

“An ye can accept this, Master Cathbadh-”

“I am called Cathbadh, Cormac.”

“A king called by name and a genius among wizards the same!” Cormac exclaimed. He shook his head, and his lips drew back in a tiny smile. “On all the ridge of the world is no other place such as Daneira, and may none ever find ye!”

“May your words be naught but truth,” the crownless king said, from behind the Gael. And he drank again, of the ale of Daneira.

Cormac fixed Cathbadh with his slit-eyed gaze. “An ye can accept this, Cathbadh… on my ship is a most powerful mage, dedicated to evil. Divers forms can this one assume-and he cannot be slain, nor held by means other than the ghastliest of inhuman impalement. So is he held fast now, with my companions in constant dread lest he break somehow free. He is a creator of illusions, this one, who can assume the form of any man or woman, and a serpent as well.”

Cathbadh interrupted. “A serpent?”

Cormac blinked in surprise. “Aye.”

“Ah. A mage long upon the earth, is this one, and dedicated to naught but the doing of evil. Though it’s the image of humankind he wears, it is all humankind he hates and plots against.”

“Ye know him, then?”

Cathbadh shook his head. Black eyes glittered. “I know his kind. Many stories have come down, Cormac mac Art, over thousands of years from one servant of Danu to the next. Comal de Danann I am called, and so I am: Slave of Danu! But I had not thought that such as this one ye describe yet lived on this earth.”

“He does not live, Cathbadh. It’s dead he is-and thus he cannot be slain. But yet he does live, in some way not understandable to such as I. If knowledge were with ye of some means by which he could be held captive, whilst we seek his final doom-”

“A servant of the serpent god and he dead and yet alive; Undead! Ah, but he can be slain!”

“Cathbadh! You can do this?”

The old man shook his head. “I cannot, Cormac de Gaedhel; Cormac of the Gaels. Nay, for of old it was said that only a woman enthroned could be the ultimate death-giver of such.”

Cormac’s shoulders slumped. Suddenly he wished for all of him that this damned uncrowned King Uaisaer were a woman or that he had rescued not the daughter of a carpenter but a princess, like a self-respecting hero.

“Cormac.”

The Gael looked morosely into the wizard-priest’s eyes.

“Be of cheer,” Cathbadh said, and lifted his cup with its remainder of thick milk. “He can be held, or rendered rather powerless. I have the means. I have the means to make even such as you powerless, Cormac, or myself-in the mind. What boots the freedom of the body, an the mind belongs not to him who dwells in that body? Ye know that we all do but temporarily reside in these forms we wear, as a man lives in a house, and when it burns or falls into rot, he moves into another?”

Excitement was on mac Art, and he nodded several times. “Aye! Sinshi-please ye lovely dairlin’-be there more ale?”

I should not have said those words, Cormac mac Art thought, as she happily refilled his fine wooden mug-and took again his arm, pressing her hip close to his mail-skirted thigh. He glanced down at the shining top of that black-crowned little head. A sensuous little tawny maid, by Crom of Eirrin!

“What it is with such as this one ye describe,” Cathbadh said, “is that he need not wait for action of the gods upon his death, but can transfer his mind, himself, into another body of his own choosing. As he has doubtless done thousands of times.”

“That body he wears now,” Cormac said grimly, “has no face, only a skull without flesh.”

Cathbadh frowned. “I can hold him, Cormac of the Gaels. I can give ye the means to hold him. I shall. Flaen, no argument-I go with Cormac.”

“Ah, Protector of Daneira,” Cormac said with a grateful fervor he seldom expressed, “great wizardpriest of Danu… it’s better news and more hope ye offer me than I’ve known in a moon’s worth of days.”

Flaen was shaking his head. “Master-”

“All of us will be most pleased,” Cathbadh said, ignoring his apprentice, “to be able to do this for ye, Cormac of the Gaels-and for Consaer and Sinshi who were lost to us but for yourself.”

Chapter Five:

The Chains of Danu

Three strong young men of Daneira accompanied Cormac mac Art and Cathbadh through the woods of the Isle of Danu. Woodsmen’s axes the three carried in their belts, and stout staves in their hands, staves the length of their bodies. A staff carried the wizard-priest too, though his was for a different purpose, and tipped with a golden image combining a hunter’s bow with a three-quarter moon-cresent. His ceremonial robe of lacquered leaves Cathbadh had left behind, to walk the forest in stout leathern leggings and a sideslit tunic, green in hue, to the knees.

With them too went Sinshi daughter of Duach, for the elf-like young woman clung to mac Art as a grapevine clamps and entwines the tree it climbs in quest of the sunlight. Nor would she be left behind.

Along the way betwixt village and sea. Cormac posed the query he’d set aside till now, when there was time and no press of other business.

“It’s of Eirrin I am, a Gaelic descendant of Celts who have been long on this earth. Yet so too seem to be the people of Daneira out of Eirrin… but not latterly.”

“Aye.” Cathbadh walked energetically enow for an old man, after his collapse and his partaking of his wizard’s herbs and goat’s milk. “And it is no brag I make in saying that my people preceded the Celts onto the world as they did onto Eirrin’s shores-as Danu had her followers ere Behl of the sun was born.”

Cormac saw only trouble in discussing that matter, and avoided it. “Then… when came the Daneirans from Eirrin’? Who are ye; whence are ye, Cathbadh?”

“Why Cormac… can ye not see? We are of the goddess Danu.”

“Aye, of course I know ye follow the old goddess, but-” Cormac broke off. “Ye mean… of old? In Eirrin afore we-ye be of the Tuatha de Danann?”

Cathbadh chuckled. “So I’ve said. The People of Danu. So ye’ve observed.”

“Cathbadh! The Tuatha de Danann were rulers of Eirrin when the Celts came, the sons of Mil… there have been no People of Danu in Eirrin for nigh a thousand of years!”

“That is partially true, Cormac. In truth, the time has been less than ten hundreds of years, and it’s on Eirrin ye mean we’ve not been, not in. Aye, we of this isle are Tuatha de Danann. And this walking requires my breath, as will the ford we must presently make.

Cormac saw only trouble in discussing that matter, and avoid edit. “Then… when came the Daneirans from Eirrin? Who are ye; whence are ye, Cathbadh?”

Cormac walked in silence, marveling.

Revelation after revelation! These strange small people were those who anciently ruled Eirrin-who were Eirrin, Eiru-and were supplanted and conquered by my people! Some think them only legend-and none has any idea that they fled here, to this tiny isle that has been an unmenacing paradise to them. The Tuatha de Danann-the People of Dana! Here, surviving!

And too there was the other astonishment: the man walking beside him was of age eighty years and seven. The de Danann were remembered as a people of great powers of magic-and so they have proven! Or at least this one has, striding-well, walking strongly and without footgear-through the forest, at an age well past that when most lie in their graves. Blood of the gods, what a people!

A certain morose longing stole into the Gael’s mind then, with the wistful thought: Would that their ruler were a woman!

Still… an I can control Thulsa Doom as Cathbadh said, we need not be constantly fearful of his wresting free of our bonds and destroying us with his evil. It’s the rest of my life I could spend at the task of finding a woman who rules in this world of men…

In silence then the six made their way to their goal, and they reached the waterfall and thus the two ships anchored below, in the rockbound inlet.

Seeing the approach of Cormac and strangers who knew naught of him, Thulsa Doom instantly took: the form of a slim, elfin-faced young woman-Sinshi! With a shriek, Sinshi herself drew away from her rescuer for the first time. What she saw with her own eyes was her double, writhing and moaning at the mast with two terrible swords of steel standing forth from her slim body. And there nearby was the redbearded giant, even taller than Cormac whose boon companion he was-this same Cormac was leader among the foul monsters who so tortured a girl just like herself!

“Cathbadh,” Cormac said quietly, with only a glance at Sinshi who had both let’ go his arm and shrunk away among the three men of her own people. “It’s but one woman there is aboard my ship, she there in the flaming hair and tall black boots. Samaire. That at the mast is the ancient and unslayable mage I told ye of-Thulsa Doom. In past he has approached me in the likeness of Samaire, and in the form too of the giant ye see. As him, my weapon-companion for years and years, my blood-brother, in truth, the monster attacked me so that I was forced to defend-and slay. It was then he struck grue and dismay in me, for he vanished ere I knew what and who he was. He dies not. Now he seeks to, gain sympathy from you, for-”

Cathbadh was nodding. “Aye,” he said, and spoke loudly enough for Sinshi and the escort to hear. “For it’s no double Sinshi daughter of Duach has; I know every person of the Daneirans. And that be your precise image, Sinshi, see-even to the stain at the knee of your leggings!”

They six stood staring at that image of sorcerous horror, and she sobbed out a piteous moan.

“Danu be my light,” Sinshi herself said, in a little gasp of ritual. “But she looks so-”

“He,” Cathbadh corrected.

“It,” Cormac said through tightpressed teeth.

“Cormac!” That from Wulfhere, for the six had emerged at water level and could hear and be heard, and now seen by other than the undying wizard.

Then Samaire saw, and she too cried out, and Brian, while Bas smiled and lifted a hand in greeting and benison all at once. Sinshi had returned to Cormac’s side as he made his way to the ship. They must wade the last few yards, and Cathbadh unblushingly suffered himself to be carried above the water by the three men of Daneira. Noting the water rose above Sinshi’s chest, Cormac picked her up, bade her hold up the skirts of his mail without a thought for the weight of that linked chain, and made his way out to Quester. She clung close, her breath warm on his cheek. Nor was it without nervousness and apprehension that four of the five from Daneira approached that ship to whose mast was bound the image of Sinshi.

No apprehension was on Cormac’s companions now. True, all had had time more than adequate to grow worse than anxious about him, and were full of nervous queries. They helped him and the Daneirans aboard. The latter stared, remarking red hair and blond; blue eyes and green; fair skin.

After a moment of consideration, Cormac raised a hand. “Wait,” he said, and he removed his weapon-belt… Then he bent double: The Daneirans watched with wide dark eyes while he executed a strange little wiggle. Down onto his shoulders in a rush of clinks and jingles slithered his mail, and off over his head to form a small pile of blueblack on Quester’s deck. The Gael gathered it up, barely a couble handful now for all its twoscore pounds, and spread it on a rowing bench where struck the waning sun.

“Lest it be splashed,” he said-and rebuckled his weapon-belt about his hips.

“Ye left long hours ago, Wolf,” the Dane rumbled. “Now ye return with a regular retinue-including the girl ye wrested from the Norsemen. It’s much worriment we’ve wasted over your worthless hide.”

“And I perceive it’s no bathing ye’ve done, yet,” Samaire said, stepping back a pace from the man in the sweat-dark tunic. He’d not been still long enow for it to dry after his race down the hill and his encounter with the four men in the forest.

Their nervousness and wonder did not abate once he’d told them of his going to Daneira, and the attack, and the power of Cathbadh. No, they’d seen no evidence of fire nor smoke, and smelled none either. They gazed with respect on the old man. It was Bas who reacted more to the identity of the Daneirans than to the knowledge of Cathbadh’s sorcerous prowess.

“The Tuatha de Danann!” the druid repeated, in a low voice of wonder.

Samaire sent looks askance at Sinshi, who remained close by Cormac despite his sweat and its odour. He affected not to note the questioning glances Samaire directed at him.

The Gael was, in truth, more than uncomfortable. Sinshi’s attachment to him was worse than obvious, and both cloying and embarrassing. Yet how could he be harsh with the elfin creature, so quiet and gentle and filled with gratitude-and fascination with the tall, grey-eyed man unlike any she had ever seen? She had experienced horror far beyond any other who might have been assaulted as she’d been, for elsewhere victims of attack and attempted rape by barbarians at least knew of the existence of such men and such dangers. And… Cormac was warmed by the flattery of her attentions.

The three young escorts from Daneira, meanwhile, were gazing upon Samaire in much the same entranced way-hovering. Only one, Cormac had learned, was a family man. That is to say he had a wife, and their marriage of two years, though they were childless.

On Quester’s deck and not dripping as were his escort, Cathbadh leveled a cold stare on the poor moaning figure of pity who writhed moaning at the mast.

“We be not impressed by your sorcerous illusion, ancient mage of evil. Assume your own form.”

Thulsa Doom did not; instead the girl he was whimpered, “O please… great and kind grandfather… please.”

Clamping his jaws, Cathbadh strode to the pleading girl. He spoke words none knew, and set his staff crosswise against her sword-impaled chest. He pressed.

“Assume your true form, creature of the dark! The ancient Mother of All commands it-see her sign, the crescent of the moon and the bow of the warrior huntress!”

The skewered girl ceased her laments. Through that small body ran a quiver of rage. A little hand leaped clawing for the Daneiran-and changed in air, fingers lengthening and going all bony. The girl’s form became that of a tall thin man in a robe dark as night. Her hair and the flesh of her face dissolved before the eyes of all, like obscuring fog of the night before the light of the sun.

The awful death’s head of Thulsa Doom stared at them, and gnashed its teeth.

The bony hand spasmed ere it reached Cathbadh. It twitched, jerked, fell back-and then Thulsa Doom cried out in rage and pain.

Both his arms dropped limply.

The servant of Danu lowered his staff, set its end against the deck. He braced it so that the gold-wrought symbol of the goddess lay against the monster’s chest. Opening the pouch at his belt, Cathbadh took forth a slender chain of silver links. Thulsa Doom quivered in fruitless attempts to move, then, whilst Cathbadh slipped the silver necklace over the shining skull.

Onto the chest of Thulsa Doom dropped the Moonbow of Danu, and there it rested, undisturbed by breathing, for he who was dead and yet not dead breathed not.

Cathbadh turned. “Cormac,” he said, and he beckoned.

Cormac went to him while the others were as if frozen, staring. They were fearful in the presence of mighty contesting sorcerers-one of whom could control him they had thought more powerful than any. They saw Cathbadh clutch Cormac’s arm they heard a groan escape the Gael and saw him commence to shudder.

A terrible jolt went through Cormac mac Art at the first touch of the old man’s hand. Cormac’s head spun. The world rocked. Not just he, not just the ship, but sea and sky and all the world seemed to rock and shudder about him. He felt as he had not since that day on Ladhban when lightning had struck less than an arm’s length from him. His teeth chattered. He shivered. Awful images and impossible memories seemed to sweep through his mind like a flurry of autumn leaves before a northerly gale. No voluntary movement was possible to him.

“Be linked,” Cathbadh said quietly and without intended drama. “Be linked, as slave and master.”

Over Cormac’s head with one hand, his fingers propping it open, he lowered a necklace of silver links identical to that he had placed on Thulsa Doom. A few moments longer the Daneiran wizard held Cormac’s arm, and Thulsa Doom’s as well. Then he released both.

The Gael staggered as full normalcy returned to him and his brain cleared, all in an instant.

Deepset, narrowed grey eyes like Nordic ice stared into the black glims of Cathbadh of Daneira. “What have you-”

“Attend me,” Cathbadh interrupted. “Him you call Thulsa Doom is bound to you. He is your creature, so long as ye live-and so long as both of ye do wear this metal of mortal power against inhumanity and the emblem of the Mother of All. For’ she is the giver of life and the nourisher of life, Danu of the moon-while he is of the dead and the dark that fears the moon’s silver light.”

Cormac swallowed, regained control of himself. He touched the pendant on his chest, then lifted the Moonbow and slid it down within his tunic. When he turned his gaze on the death’s head wizard, Cormac’s face was sinister. Thulsa Doom stood stiff at the mast. The blaze of hate and malice seemed to have left the red lights in the black pits of his eye sockets.

“So long as we both do wear these chains and sigils?”

“Aye. He is yours to command and hold, with mind and words alone.”

“Then we must take care that he lose not his jewellery,” Cormac said darkly.

The Gael stepped forward. A few twists, a knotting of slim silver links, and he had tightened the necklace of control about the mage’s neck so that it would not slip off.

Instantly Thulsa Doom became a serpent that squirmed erect and lashed its tail. The huge head thrust at Cormac-who, after an instant of withdrawal, spat into its staring ophidian eyes.

The silver necklace did not slide along the reptilian body.

“The knot is unnecessary,” Cathbadh said. “The chain of control can be removed, but not by Thulsa Doom. Command him.”

“Resume your own form, filthy creature from the pits! I’d have thought over the span of eighteen times ten times a hundred centuries, ye’d have tired of the form of a serpent!”

The skull of Thulsa Doom faced him again. Nor longer did the baneful light glow in those red coals of eyes.

It was with the first real smile Cathbadh had seen on him that Cormac mac Art turned again to the wizard-priest of Danu.

“Ah, Lord Cathbadh of the Danann, this was the first foe ever I met and could not conquer and who struck horror and anguish to my very liver! And ye have rendered him powerless, and it’s only great gratitude and love I feel for ye, man. Would that there were aught I could do for yourself, give to yourself, wizard!”

Cathbadh gripped the other man’s arm. “Ye’ve done us service, Cormac of the Gaels. Nor do the Danans hate your people, nor I you. If I asked that which comes first into my mind, I’d bring misery upon ye, though, for it would be that ye remain among us in Daneira.”

Samaire gasped, but Cathbadh only smiled and shook his head at the anguish in the face of mac Art. Without looking at her, he stayed with a hand Sinshi’s forward rush.

“I said I’d not ask that. But I will ask one service of ye, Cormac mac Art of the Gaels, and one that is in your power to give without cost to yourself.”

“Granted without the hearing of it,” Cormac said, and for a long moment the two men looked each at the other, and Cathbadh nodded.

“This night ye will remain all with us in Daneira.”

Cormac blinked. Frowning, Samaire looked at Sinshi-and the way that tiny woman looked at Cormac-for Samaire of Leinster knew this little creature was no girl, but a woman looking with desire on her man. Brian started to smile, quelled it, though a glance told him the three men of Daneira were broadly grinning. Nothing sinister was there in those smiles, but only joy.

“Cathbadh-” Cormac began.

“Ye’ve given your word, Wolf,” Wulfhere rumbled. “And-this handsome Findhu here has assured me there is ale in Daneira that wants tasting by an expert.”

Cormac mac Art smiled. “This night we spend with ye in Daneira, Cathbadh. And… Cathbadh.” He turned to look again upon Thulsa Doom. “This… creature. He need no longer be transpierced thus, with our swords?”

“He need not, Cormac. He is powerless, and will obey you. Nor can he remove the chain of Danu’s power.”

Cormac nodded. “Then to leave him thus Sword-nailed is unnecessary, and needless cruelty as well?”

“I cannot judge ‘need’ and its lack, Cormac na Gaedhel: Cruelty to leave him thus? He feels little pain, in truth. But he does know terrible piercing cold, with the steel of this world of the living stabbing through and through his body without warmth, a body that should have lain so long in the grave as to be naught but dust.” Cathbadh nodded. “Aye, would be cruelty to leave him thus pinned, and it unnecessary.”

Cormac stared into the eye-sockets of Thulsa Doom. “Good,” he said. “The swords remain, then.”

Chapter Six:

The Problem of Daneira

Wolfhere, Brian, Bas and Samaire were happy to accompany Cormac and the Daneirans to their little city of highly decorated wooden houses.

After all their hardships in the month they’d been away from Eirrin, asea and on Doom-heim, the horror and constant tension whilst Thulsa Doom sorcerously sought vengeance on Cormac and the deaths of all his companions, and that final ghastly battle of friend against friend, engineered by the undying wizard-the companions of mac Art were more than glad to accept the hospitality of peaceful Daneira.

With them went Thulsa Doom.

It was not that Cormac relented; none wanted to leave Thulsa Doom, and Cathbadh demonstrated his confidence in the Chains of Danu by leading all of them to his “city”-the docile mage included.

A feast was set in preparation, to be served in the house of the king. It was a house, not a palace, no more ornately carven and painted than many, though considerably larger than all. Cormac bathed and enjoyed the luxury of a shave in warm water. His and the others’ hair was trimmed. Dinner robes were pressed upon them. These were dyed and patterned in the way of Daneira: gaily bright. Nor ever did they see their own tunics again, for by morning they had served as patterns for the stitching of new tunics for all-and a new robe of green woollen for Bas of Tir Connail. Many women worked at that task, and willingly. In Daneira the women sewed and tended the gardens, with the children; men and women alike saw to the arable land and the crops; the men tended the beasts, felled trees and stripped and trimmed them, and created furniture and new objects and utensils, all of wood. Both men and women cooked.

In Daneira there was one class of people.

In Daneira there were no warriors.

Nor had metal ore been found on the island of Danu the Mother. Cormac and his companions were not averse to pressing upon their hosts the arms and armour they had captured, for even shield bosses and belt buckles would make hoes and rakes, parts for woodworking tools, awls and scrapers and finepointed knives and chisels for carving and plowshares.

Both Cormac and Wulfhere winced at the thought of laboriously wrought mail being returned to liquid and beaten into new shapes, none for warfare or defense. For Brian the concept was repugnant; both the father and uncle of Brian-I-love-to-fight of Killevy in Airgialla were makers of armour. Yet neither of the two sons of Eirrin held scalemail in high regard, and donated much of that from dead Norsemen. Superb curers of hides and workers in leather, the Daneirans had no use for hardened leather that had served as armour.

The line was drawn at swords. Those the travellers would keep. Swords were valuable, for their making was a high art and a lengthy task. One blade Cormac did pronounce of dangerously inferior workmanship; two others were too badly pitted and deeply notched for the keeping. These, with every shield of Dane and Norse, Eirrish and Briton, were given to the people of Daneira. They would soon be tools for other tasks than slaying.

Far more numerous than swords were axes, for they were more commonly carried by men who could not afford the product of the swordmaker’s art and high craft. Every ax was proffered on Daneira as gift. They had only to be fitted with longer helves to become tools for the felling of trees rather than of men.

To Cathbadh his guests gave silver more than sufficient to replace the Chains of Danu that Cormac and Thulsa Doom now wore. The wizard-priest was hesitant to accept the valuable metal.

“It was stolen by the Norse,” Cormac told him, “who slew the original owners. We took it from the treasure-trove of the murderers. There is blood payment on it, Cathbadh-and it will all boil away in the melting down. When it is made into wire that becomes links of chain, know that ye have it of those men of that same Norge who cost ye so much this day.”

Cathbadh accepted the gift of blood-bought silver.

Nor would the Daneirans abide the departure of their strange-eyed guests without pressing on them fine gifts of magnificently wrought goblets and bowls, mugs and even belt-buckles and cloak-pins, all of wood. At the softly tanned leatherwear of Daneira Cormac drew line again, saying that animals were too few here for these people to be giving away the products of their hides. His companions looked down in silence at that announcement; none of them but coveted this finest of cured, supple leather.

On the king’s insistence, each traveller accepted a Daneiran belt, soft as thickly folded silk and fitted with buckles of wood, ornately carven and lacquered again and again.

Dinner in the hall of the king was a gala feast, with many present in their brightly hued dining robes. Nor could they get enough of the unusual hues of the hair and eyes of Cormac’s companions, colours none had seen ere this day.

There was no avoiding it: Sinshi was most attentive to Cormac mac Art, and so to Samaire was Findhu of Daneira. Other unwed Daneiran maids made kings of Wulfhere and Brian, whose head was soon turned. Much ale flowed. Sinshi kept Cormac’s carved, enameled cup of satin-smooth walnut ever full, while the two who flanked Wulfhere and saw to his cup were far busier. The capacity of the gigantic foreigner with the vast beard of flame and eyes like the sky would be legend in Daneira for many years.

Samaire shot green-eyed glances at Cormac and at Sinshi-who returned them with an apparent sweet guilelessness that Samaire saw as arch mockery. Yet so close was Findhu, and so charming and obviously charmed by the woman of Leinster, that Samaire was able to endure the younger woman’s competition.

“Tell us of the Tuatha de Danann,” Wulfhere said when his belly was full of food if not of ale-already he’d made one trip outside and there were wagers as to how long ere either he went again or his eyeballs turned amber.

A harper plucked and strummed and a poet of Daneira recited the old history that many of Eirrin now thought mere legend.

Long before the year that would be called 1000 BC, the Fir Dhomhnainn or Tuatha de Danann came to Eirrin-Eiru. There before them were the Fir Bholg. It was at Moytura the Danans put final defeat on the Firbolgs, and Danu ruled in Eirrin; she who was also the battle-goddess called Morrighu, and who may have been Diana, and who was to become Bhrigid and Bridget. The Firbolgs went off muttering, for they had been defeated by a people uncommonly skilled in crafts-one of which was necromancy. The Danans gained thus a name for sorcerous powers.

Long after came the sons of Mil, a few centuries before the birth of the carpenter’s son of Judaea who was to become the god of the New Faith, Iosa Chriost who was hanged by the Romans as a seditious rouser of the rabble-the Dead God. None knew whether there had been a Mil or Miledh, which the Romans and Romanized Britons called “Milesius.” Likely not. Likely he had been Mil Espaine-the Eirrish version of miles Hispaniae: soldier of Spain.

It was Celts he led, whatever his name, and Celts who had departed long ago to, pass through Greece and Spain and perhaps even Egypt, so that they had gained hair of colour other than red or blond, though their eyes remained blue or grey and occasionally green. They were the Gaels; Gailoin or Gaedhel, and it was at Bantry Bay they made landing.

Naturally the de Danann made resistance, and the war was joined.

Somehow the Gaels prevailed, despite the wizardry of the smaller defenders. Yet it was not quite a definitive victory; the Danans were neither slain to the last man nor forced to depart Eirrin. A bargain was struck, and it was strange indeed. The Danans went into the land. Their kingdom became a subterrene one, with the Gaels retaining control of the surface. Later many claimed that the Danans, the little people, were working their magicking on crops and livestock. The Poet of Daneira swore this was not true-though some Danan renegades may well have sought a harrying form of vengeance on the surface dwellers.

Above the tunnel of descent of each of the de Danann kings was erected a high sidh or fairy mound, and to the Gaels as time went on the Danans became the Sidhe. ‘Twas said by the Gaels that the Sidhe mocked them by crying out when one of the Gaelic number was to die. This was the fearsome wailing cry of the ban-Sidhe: the Banshee. With time, the Danans slid into Gaelic legend.

By their sorceries the Danans or Sidhe transformed the underworld into a place of beauty suitable for human habitation, and they throve there beneath the earth.

There was among them a source of constant contention: ever there were those who spoke out for their returning to make war on the Gaels, to reclaim their land. These agitators pointed out that the Danans were becoming even smaller in size and more and more pale, living forever without the sun. Aye, the wizards among them, the Servants of Danu, had created a moon for the goddess and to shed light on her people-but its light resulted in no tanning of the skin. Many among the Danans were ill and frail.

Gentler and more reasoned thoughts prevailed, for few doubted that were the Danans to attack those above, the Gaels would not stop this second time until there were no more of the de Danann on all the ridge of the world, north or south, east or west.

At last the Danans decided upon a more peaceful rule-of women, that there might be end to talk of war on those Gaels above, whom had become the Eirrish. It was an enormous step, long debated and decried by many.

Some among them continued to disagree, and could not reconcile themselves to the new way. At last they were sufficiently opposed to the gynecocracy to leave Eirrin. Here to this paradisic isle they journeyed, with a few animals and seeds and much hope. Daneira was founded at about the same time that a short dark man named Caius Julius Caesar led his hawknosed soldiers onto the shore of what to them was a new land: Britain. Here was founded the “city” of Danu of Eiru: Daneira.

As the poet recited the old story, heads in the hall of King Uaisaer came round and wide eyes exchanged looks. Excitement ran through the companions of mac Art like wind through a field of grain, stirring every head.

“Then… it’s possible there be de Danann yet, beneath fair Eirrin?” Samaire’s voice had risen in her excitement.

“Aye, o’course,” she was told, for why would there not be?

Art muttered.

“A crowned woman…”Wulfhere Skull-splitter muttered.

“Aye.”

Aye!

And Cormac told of the means by which Thulsa Doom could be lain to rest, and Cathbadh nodded agreement. The knowledge passed down from one Servant of Danu to the next confirmed the Gael’s belief. Cathbadh rose.

“Ye be friend to us, Cormac mac Art. Friend to the People of Danu. And the Tuatha de Danann, wherever they be, shall recognize ye as such by the necklace ye wear. An ye would seek out our cousins ’neath Eirrin and their queen-do so, in knowledge that welcome will be extended.”

Cormac frowned, fingering the pendant he wore on its silver chain-which tonight he wore outside the scarlet robe pressed upon him by his hosts. “But… Thulsa Doom too wears one…”

“The Moonbow on his chain is downside up, Cormac mac Art. Think ye I chose them not with care? His brands him in your control-and an enemy of humankind!”

“Blood of the gods! Then-it is possible after all. Thulsa Doom’s foul un-life must be ended-and it can be!”

“Cathbadh,” Samaire asked, quietly though with intenseness, “where be the Tuatha de Danann in Eirrin?”

“Aye,” Cathbadh said, “in Eirrin, not on. There are Doors, lady Princess of Leinster, that lead to the subterrene demesne of the people of Danu. These Doorways are disguised and invisible, no longer truly beneath the mounds called sidhe, for all do know the Danans possess powers of magic never shared with the Gaels… who, after all, drove our people from their lands, though it be long and long agone and all here be friends. One such Doorway lies within the two long, mounded hills in the southwest…”

The wizard-priest described the place, and suddenly Samaire knew whereof he spoke.

“The Breasts of Danu! I know those two hills-it’s the Breasts of Danu they be called, to this day!”

Cathbadh smiled and exchanged a look of some pride with Uaisaer; the Danans and their goddess were hardly forgot, in Eirrin that had once been theirs!

“Another of the Doors,” Cathbadh said, “is in the hill of Bri Leith-”

“Long-ford,” Cormac snapped. “The hill at Long-ford! Why-it’s but a day’s walk and less from Tara Hill that Long-ford lies! Cathbadh: how find we this… Doorway, to the land below?”

“Cormac: ye wear Her sign. Ye have my blessing. The Door will ope to ye, when ye arrive before it. More than that I cannot say with surety; we are gone long and long from Eirrin. It is nigh onto five centuries since the founding of the city of the people of Danu and Eiru-Daneira.”

Smiles flashed among the visitors, for a world that had gone dark with the presence of Thulsa Doom now brightened with the prospect of his removal. No matter what was required of him, Cormac mac Art knew that he must journey with the mage to Long-ford’s hill, and find the Door to the Tuatha de Danann. Sinshi shared his excitement and his happiness, but he hardly noted, for he was grinning at Samaire like a boy.

After a time it was thoughtful Bas who was gaining Cathbadh’s attention.

“It is little pride I swallow, Servant of Danu the Mother, to say to ye that ye possess knowledge and powers I would beg to know of.”

Cathbadh gazed upon the druid in his snowy dinner robe, a man whose hair was black and whose eyes were blue. “It is the moon goddess I serve in truth, and the sungod ye do. It has never been the way of the sun to share its daily brilliance with the moon that illumines the night, Servant of Behl and Crom… nor for the moon to share its silver with the sun’s god.”

There was silence for a time then, for Bas’s request had been rejected and the brains of Cormac and his companions churned with thoughts of Eirrin, and the land beneath and within Eirrin… and Thulsa Doom.

In his white robe purfled with yellow, King Uaisaer rose at the long table’s head, and in this wise he differed not from other monarchs. His rising signaled, the meal’s end. His people began to depart, taking their leave of king and guests. But Sinshi stayed, and Findhu, and soon there were but they, and Cathbadh and Uaisaer, and Cormac and his companions-and the maids whose names he could not remember, who hovered bright-faced about Wulfhere and Brian.

“Our hospitality is open here,” the king said, and he was looking at the young son of Eirrin and the thick-bearded Dane.

Wulfhere took his cue for behaviour from those words. Sitting back, he wrapped an arm about the young woman on either side of him and snuggled them close. Willingly they accepted such twofold embrace, and Cormac saw that the king looked pleased. The younger Brian was less demonstrative-it was just that his hands and those of the Daneiran maidens flanking him were all out of sight beneath the board.

King Uaisaer said, “We would have converse with you, Cormac mac Art na Gaedhel.”

As Cormac nodded, Sinshi pressed close, though already her hip had long warmed his. She squeezed his hand beneath the board, and leaned close to murmur for his ears alone.

“I know what words he’d have with you, Cormac. Please, please, dear Cormac… agree, agree!”

His companions were bade tarry or wend their way to the quarters assigned them, as they would. With Uaisaer and Cathbadh, Cormac adjourned privily to another and smaller room.

“Friend Cormac,” the king quietly said, “ye’ve noted how few we of Daneira are-and how alike.”

“Aye.”

“It was but two smallish tribes of the Danans left Eirrin five centuries agone. We survive today only because this is but the second ‘invasion’ of our isle.”

The king paused, glancing at Cathbadh; the wizard-priest spoke.

“I should not have slain all those Norsemen this day, Cormac. The people of Daneira are weak. We suffer no menaces, but are prey to illness and debilities that worsen as they are passed from parent to child again and again. Many die young, very young. Many women never bear. They cannot; some because the fault is in themselves, others because-we think-the answer lies in the weak seed of our men. We linger, but we do not thrive. Daneira may not survive another hundred years. All for lack of a new strain of blood and strength in us.”

Cormac nodded, thoughtfully.

“We… have great need of you, Cormac of the Gaels,” Cathbadh said most quietly indeed. “And of the handsome lad, Brian, and that gigantic friend of yours, he who is neither Gael nor Danan.”

Cormac mac Art understood. He knew now why earlier Cathbadh had not mentioned the slain man and boy, but had mourned the potential childbearers dead of the encounter with the Norse. And mayhap there had been hope as well as fear with Sinshi, on yester day out there in the forest with Thorleif fighting his way betwixt her legs. Aye, and he understood why he had been thanked by wizard-priest and then king in the same manner: for having saved a nubile maid. Her parents had borne three, and she and her brothers were valuable to the future of Daneira.

Children were the lifeblood of any people.

The blood of relentlessly, helplessly endogamic Daneira was running thin.

And here among them for but a night were three strapping males from outside, of entirely different blood and even race! Aye, Cormac knew why he and Wulfhere and Brian were so welcome here… and perhaps why Sinshi was so extremely, nigh-unconscionably attentive. At that thought his ego suffered a little.

“It’s our seed ye want-and direly.”

King and priest nodded. “Aye.”

Cormac glanced at the closed door behind him. “My lords, this need not have been said. Maidens attend both Brian and Wulfhere, who are men, and long without women. The normal course of nature will see to the sowing of their seed in Daneira, and I hold hope for ye that it falls into rich and fertile soil. An we’re to be a bit… cold about it-”

“As we are,” Cathbadh said; “as we must be.”

“-a fertile plot once seeded need only lie and be tended with care, whilst the gardener moves to another part of the garden. In this wise, my lords, the gardens need only depart to be replaced in the gardener’s chamber by another fertile plot…”

The king nodded. Cathbadh smiled.

“So much for Wulfhere and the lad,” Cormac went on. “As for myself-it’s with my woman I’ve come among ye, and her a weapon-companion as well. With her this night for the first time in so long and with privacy available to us through your kindness, no desire is on me for others. Nay-let there be no argument among us, and us friends, for that is the way of it.”

Their faces had fallen, but his last words and raised hand stilled any pleas or demurrers.

“Methinks Sinshi’s heart will hardly be broke,” Cormac said, with in truth a bit of bitterness, for certainly she had turned his head, and now he knew not her motive. “But it’s a coward Art’s son is in some matters, and this is one. I’ll not be going back into the hall where she sits waiting.” He nodded to indicate a deep red curtain beyond them. “That portal I remember takes me to the sleeping rooms ye’ve offered, lord king of Daneira, and it’s through it I go now, not back to say Sinshi nay.”

And he did.

The two men stared at the drapes that had fallen together behind him, and they knew that with such a man they were unopenable.

“I must… have meeting with Sinshi Duach’s daughter,” Cathbadh said quietly and with thought upon him. “Where are the clothes of the strangers?.”

“They will be brought to you,” Uaisaer said. “But-what of the woman of Eirrin?”

“Mmm.” Cathbadh nodded. “I must have meeting with both Sinshi and Findhu!”

That meeting was swiftly held, ere the guests could act to spoil the plan of the wizard-priest. In the darkness of a most private room of that king’s house Cormac prepared for bed, while to another went Samaire, knowing he had rejected the little Daneiran and would soon come to her, and in a third such private room three people stood while only a candle burned. Above, Danu, Mother and Huntress, rode the sky in Her silver chariot. In the dim-lit room stood Her servant with his staff bearing Her sign, and with his robe of lacquered leaves on him. The candle flickered and lit fleetingly the two who stood before him, Sinshi and Findhu, entirely naked though not quite as the day they were born. And he spoke, and intoned, and muttered and made gestures, speaking to his goddess. And he did place upon them garments that fit them ill, being too large, whereupon lo! Sinshi assumed of a sudden the likeness of Samaire of Leinster and Findhu seemed to become Cormac mac Art.

“Go with the goddess,” Cathbadh said. “Danu be thy light.”

The two departed his company in likenesses other than their own.

Soon, Samaire came to Cormac, and he smiled and called her dairlin’ girl.

But at the same time Cormac went to Samaire in her room, and she smiled and held forth her arms.

On the morning of the morrow, Wulfhere made brag of how he’d had no wish to be selfish, and so had toiled in the gardens of no less than four delightful and delighted maids of Daneira, all of whom he swore fainted in bliss; Brian but grinned and was silent, except to say quietly that he had been… less industrious in the numbers of garden plots, but had plowed more than once in two several Daneiran gardens, and therein sown his seed.

Cormac and Samaire said naught, for. each supposed to have spent the night with the other. And it was many a day ere they knew privacy again, and learned that each had received the other that night though neither had gone, whereupon realization came upon them that they had been tricked to no fell purpose by a great mage and two loving Daneirans, no boy and no girl. After a while they laughed on the matter, and wished Sinshi well, for she, unlike Samaire Ceannselaigh, had surely taken no precautions against get.

Chapter Seven:

Thulsa Doom

Wulfhere ruddered Quester around the Isle of Danu with great care-and skill seldom surpassed. Aboard were two men of Daneira, filled with wonder and going constantly from port to starboard, from stem to prow, ever looking; neither had been asea before. At last the Dane spotted that which they sought: the wolf’s head ship of the Norsemen.

Ashore, the woods trailed off into a short but deep strand that sloped gently to the water. On the sparkling pale sand of that beach, the ship from Norge had been drawn up to the edge of the trees. She’d been turned partially crosswise, for there was little more than sixty feet of depth to the beach betwixt trees and surf, and the Norse vessel was little more than ten feet shorter.

Quester hove in cautiously, without sail.

Those aboard saw no sign of men who might have been left to guard the scarlet vessel; there was naught here but sea and sand and woods and the ship, left whilst those who had plied her so far went ashore-to their deaths.

Taking Quester well into the shallows until it was nudging the beach, Cormac swung off, with Wulfhere and Brian. They moved up the strand, treading wet sand. Aboard the ship from Eirrin waited Bas and Samaire and Thulsa Doom, with the two from Daneira. They watched the trio of weapon-men move warily up glittering sand to the beached vessel. The beach twinkled as if strewn with gems, in the sunlight that struck white fire from helms and mail.

“Oh-what a beautiful ship!”

Wulfhere nodded. “Aye. None build ships better than those Norse fugitives from Hel’s domain, Cormac.”

Eyesight was sufficient to confirm the beauty of the knorr; only a few moments’ examination was necessary to ensure that it was unguarded and in perfect condition, a long curving sweep of seafaring beauty with a scarlet hull the height of Cormac’s shoulders. Her name was branded along her side; Odin’s Eye. The god of the northlands had but one, for he had given up the other in trade for great wisdom. The snarling wolf-heads of Odin’s Eye were in place at bow and stern, which meant they had been reset after the beaching, for they were removed ere a ship of the cold lands came in to shore, lest the spirits of the land be alarmed by the fearsome gaping wolf-mouths and resist the landing. None had; it was well inland that these men of Norge had met their weird.

“Be it likely that all the Norsemen went inland, and left none behind to mind this beauty?” Brian asked.

Wulfhere and Cormac, their eyes as if bedazzled and ensorceled by the vessel, nodded: “Aye,” the Gael said. “Such is their way, often. See you any sign of habitation on this isle? They saw none, either. But-it’s sure we want to be that no reavers remain.”

The two who’d sailed so long together, a-reaving, looked at each other.

“We must have her,” Cormac said. “Aye.”

They shouted then, above the liquid slapping of the surf. All three men clashed the flats of their blades on their bucklers to draw any who might have been left behind by Thorleif and Snorri, and who might now have fared into the forest.

“An any come,” Brian asked, “shall we tell them of the welcoming they’ll be receiving of those man-hungry maids of Daneira, and bid them go inland… provided they leave all arms here?-And armour as well?”

“No sensible man would agree to such a mad bargain,” Wulfhere said. “They’d show us refusal by attacking at once.” He thrust two knobby-knuckled fingers up into his beard. “I bathed not high enough! Umm… such seeming madness, I mean; I be sore tempted to remain and return to Daneira, myself.”

Cormac had shaken his head. “No, Brian. Armed or no, such wolves would soon eat the gentle lambs of Daneira, alive or dead. An any come in reply to our noise, it’s but one way there is to ensure the safety of Daneira.”

Beyond the ship, the trees rustled their tops in a breeze off the sea. Brian looked at Cormac, with his lip caught between his teeth.

“Aye, proper death-dealing,” Wulfhere rumbled, quietly for once.

“Murder,” Cormac said.

“We’d slay out of hand?”

“Oh, they’d make attack,” Cormac said. “But-aye. Daneira must be protected, and making sweet overtures to reavers is the fool’s way. Slay a few to protect a few hundred? Aye! An that goes against your feelings, Brian, lay you back. I and Wulfhere can handle any who come. And he’ll only begrudge ye those you account for, I-love-to-light.”

“Unnecessary chatter. None comes,” the Dane said.

Cormac sheathed his sword and rested a hand on Odin’s Eye by the slit that allowed an oar’s slim blade to be slid down into the round hole for its sweep. He gazed at the line of trees, from which no one emerged. The only sounds were of surf and treetops that seemed to rustle in a whisper.

“None comes,” he agreed. “Twoscore Norsemen fared here, on Odin’s Eye, and all found death here. Four by my hand, and the rest died of Cathbadh’s sorcery. As for yourself, Wulfhere, ye high-horned dreamer… remain then. It’s not a month ye’d last, in such an unexciting place.”

“Even a month,” Wulfhere said thoughtfully, and a smile twitched his beard. “I’d be the most popular man on the island, with the girls. And what fun to come back a year hence and see all the little redheaded offspring of Dane and Danu!” He grinned broadly, gazing inland.

Cormac shrugged. “Stay then, red bear of Loch-linn. It seems there be no Norse, as ye said, and it’s for Eirrin’s shores I am-with this ship.”

“Salvage.”

“Conquest!”

“Ye’d tow two craft, ye greedy Eirrisher?”

“Nay. The Daneirans want no ship. Nevertheless, it’s Amber Rowan we’ll be leaving with them, and all under the deck of Odin’s Eye. A Briton-built ship is best being pulled apart for whatever use the Daneirans have…”

He turned to hand-signal Quester. Immediately the two of Daneira swung over the side and came hurrying up the beach, with their staves.

“Your great Cathbadh slew all who fared here on this knorr,” the Gael told them. “The craft itself we take with us. All aboard her is yours. And that ship-the poor one made by the Britons, who learned naught of shipbuilding or much else in five centuries of Roman rule-it too is yours, for firewood or a clambering toy for Daneira’s children. Is it a good seafaring craft, Wulfhere?”

Wulfhere had come to Doom-heim on Amber Rowan-bound to the mast, a captive of Britons who’d learned of the spoils there from the Dane when he was deep in his cups. The Britons had little, save what the Romans had left behind eighty years agone when great Rome fell and they withdrew. Even now those Britonish shores were raided by Danes and Norsemen, Saxons and Angles, Frisians and Jutes, along with a few more from nearer to hand: Picts from other side Hadrian’s Wall, along with men of both Alba and Eirrin.

Wulfhere made reply: “Nay.”

“Remember that, sons of Danu. Now ye’ve had a taste of the sea, and it seemed marvelous to ye. But-the Daneirans are best where they are, living in peace and with hope that none find ye. Come, give us a bit of help now. We’ll see what the Norsemen are after bringing ye… aside from the metal melted in Daneira!”

The Daneirans stared at the painted heads on prow and stern, each with fangs meticulously carved in wide-open jaws; none of Daneira had seen a wolf, or even a dog.

Cormac and Wulfhere swung quickly aboard and raised the deckboards to bare the shallow space in which were stored those supplies that seafarers might need ashore, and they were forced to land and tarry, but had no need of while they voyaged. There was little; the ship stood not Cormac’s height from gunwale to keel and was only about twice as broad, amidships. The Gael and the Dane drew forth utensils that might or might not be of use to the Daneirans; the metal would be welcome.

Astern, the small chamber of the steering platform was empty; there had weapons been stored. Keel up on deck, a single afterboat was bound and secured with ropes of walrus hide. For it the Daneirans had no use; Cormac would leave it where it was, on his new ship.

“She seems a better craft than any we’ve sailed, Cormac.”

Cormac nodded. “So she seems. Come; we’ll be stripping. That Britonish craft will be easy to pull and push in.”

It was. The matter of coaxing and manhandling Odin’s Eye into the water was far more difficult. Samaire and Bas came to lend their strength. Without the prodigious strength of the Dane, they’d never have accomplished it and would have had to wait for the vessel to be floated by the tide. Then Odin’s Eye was partially afloat, and they tethered her behind Quester, as Amber Rowan had been. Cormac checked over every inch of the towline.

“I tell ye again, Wolf: If we encounter weather, real weather, ye’ll have to cut loose that leashed dog of a ship. She’ll be the death of us else.”

“The weather will hold,” Bas said.

It was a statement of absolute fact that made the Dane feel gooseflesh on his bare sweaty arms. Nevertheless he asked, “For a ship named for a god not of Eirrin?”

“The weather will hold.”

Cormac said nothing, but turned to the two of Daneira. “Mayhap this craft and these few things of Norge can be of use to ye,” he said. “It’s sure I am none will sneer at the metal ye bring home! Ye know the way to Daneira from here?

They but smiled at that. The people of Danu’s Isle knew its every inch, sure!

“Then it’s leave we’ll be taking of ye. May your goddess send happiness on ye both and all your people-and many children.” Cormac turned seaward. He was more ready to be off and away, and no love was on him for these weaponless people who had never known travail. It put a fog and a darkness on his mind, just the thought of their easy lives, for when ever had he known ease or lack of strife or the necessity of having his sword by him-aye, and shield?

“Danu be thy light, Cormac mac Art. Danu be thy light, friends of the Danans.”

“Danu be thy light, Cormac mac Art, and thou Wulfhere, and Brian. And thou Samaire-and yourself, holy druid.”

From the ship to which he’d returned to be by Thulsa Doom, Bas nodded.

Cormac boosted Samaire onto Quester and swung up. He gave her a swift crude fondle while there was none to see, and turned to aid Brian aboard. Then the Gael looked down at Wulfhere, who had turned to look back toward Daneira. Heavy laden, the two sons of Danu were lugging Norse utensils into the woods.

“Fare ye well, Wulfhere Hausakluifr,” Cormac said. “Many children. Oh-and may your goddess Danu shed her light-”

Wulfhere swung to glower up at his friend. “May plague fall on ye and the restless worms infest your anus, son of an Eirrish pig-farmer!” And the Dane swung aboard with such vehemence of motion that Quester’s planking creaked and water sloshed.

And this time they held out again to the open sea and, with sail opened to the wind, stood forth northwesterly for Eirrin. The water gurgled past the hull as if delighted to be bearing them homeward. It was a journey that might take a few days-or months, for none could ever be certain. Reckoning was worse than imprecise, and only gods might know or control the weather-which controlled both the sea and all those aboard its undulant plain.

A wind huffed without undue enthusiasm across the sea south of Britain, so that Quester’s green-latticed sail stood out nicely like a merchant’s belly. The Isle of Danu was left well behind and the voyagers were alone, as in a gigantic empty chamber that surrounded them on four sides with water and sheltered them only with a roof of sky that was nigh the same colour as the demesne of Manannan mac Lir.

The world was blue, green-blue, and white.

In the heavens Behl added the warm yellow of his smile. Cormac and his companions wore no armour, now. Mail and leathern coats were stored in the little compartment under the steering platform astern. They had buckled their weapon-belts on again; the sea was ever unpredictable and none wanted his most valuable possession swept overboard amid some emergency of wind, and wave… and three aboard had survived a volcanic eruption that brought new land onto this same ocean.

Nor could they bring themselves to store away sharp-edged steel, even though their dread enemy was now a helpless captive.

Scarlet tunics made in Daneira wore Brian and Wulfhere and Cormac, and on the chest of the latter’s new garment flashed the Moonbow on its silver chain. Rather higher up on the night-dark robe of Thulsa Doom rode his identical Chain of Danu, though with the Moonbow upside down; on him the goddess frowned and from him she turned away her face. The deadliest creature in the world sat at the mast. He was not bound. Nor could he change form or launch attack on mind or body; he wore the necklace. He sat still at the mast as he’d been bade by his master. The undying wizard was the creature of Cormac’s will, now, as before his will had commanded theirs and brought so much horror and agony on them all.

The ship slipped rapidly across the sea under swollen sail, straining toward Eirrin. Those it bore talked of what it might mean, this being in a “different dimension.” It was like unto the world they’d always known-with differences.

“What differences?”

They could not be sure. Perhaps in the world or dimension they had quit, the Isle of Danu was as uninhabited as they’d supposed.

“Mayhap,” Bas said. “Mayhap in our own dimension all that we now know of the People of Danu after our ancestors supplanted them-did not take place. Mayhap there they are not ruled by a woman at all. Or do not exist.”

“Let us hope they do,” Brian said, with a glance at their captive.

“And that a queen rules them,” Samaire added.

Wulfhere chuckled. “A niceness, if Thulsa Doom himself made it possible for us to be his weird for all and all, by bringing us here, where rules the crowned woman to end his foul existence!”

“If such does rule here,” Samaire said, for she was aware of the improbability even more than the others.

“But… where,” Brian wanted to know, “is here?”

“A plane of existence where at least one island does not exist,” the woman said, idly fingering the dark-bordered hem of the tunic made for her in Daneira; it was an almost yellow green. “Remember the isle that was suddenly not there and thereby told Bas we had been dragged here by Thulsa Doom, in his attempts to escape us.” She looked with malice on the undying mage. He sat moveless, an unwilling but helpless slave of the Chains of Danu; a slave of Cormac mac Art.

“A place where a Norseman named Thorleif, son of Hordi, once slew Wulfhere,” Cormac said.

“Hmp! That I refuse to believe! I could slay such as Thorleif all day and still have time for Daneiran maidens the whole night through!”

“They are so far astern now that not even their isle is in view,” Brian said from the tiller, where he was nervously, proudly in training-so long as the sea remained gentle. Nor was his statement made without some small wistfulness. He stared asea, his hair like a cloud about his head and his flaxen eyebrows all but invisible in the sunlight.

“An it be true what Thorleif avowed,” Bas said, “rejoice, Wulfhere. For else it’s two of ye there’d be in this plane-which is now our abode for good or ill!”

“Blood of the gods! Bas-think ye I be here-I mean… that there be two of me here?”

“Ha! An intolerable world then, two of ye, son of an Eirrish raiser of pigs!”

“Wulfhere old friend and drinker with Britons, much as hate’s upon me to tell ye of it and spoil your insults, my father was after being of the descendants of High-king Niall the Great, one of the ua-Neill of Connacht. It was no pigs my father raised. Nor in truth was he a farmer at all.”

“Nonsense, by Thor’s red beard! All the Eirrish raise pigs! Why, pork is surely the national dish and pigs’ bladders the only toy of the young!”

Samaire’s voice came in weary practicality, a whisper that forced them to fall silent in order to hear. “Truly there might be… another Samaire here, and another Cormac, and Brian, and you too, Bas?”

“Aye-but, Behl be praised, only one Thulsa Doom!”

“And only one Wulfhere,” Cormac said, “Behl be thanked nigh equally, if Thorleif did indeed kill you-him. Who could abide two of ye, with your ever-itchy beard and your babbling?”

“Ye look thirsty, Wolf of Eirrin. Could I be aiding ye into the water that ye might quench your pigfarmer’s thirst? Simple matter to hold ye by your heels-”

Samaire slapped her high-booted leg. “An ye two put not an end to your constant childness, it’s a mother ye’ll make me feel yet, the hapless dam of two bickersome boys!”

Wulfhere contritely ducked his head-in the manner, indeed, of a chastened boy. Cormac seemed not to notice her words. He’d gone all thoughtful, and gazed contemplatively at the skull-faced abomination sitting with back to mast. The Gael fingered the Moonbow on his chest.

“Thulsa Doom! It is my bidding ye obey, and naught else.

“Aye.” There was only resignation in that word from lipless mouth.

“I want information of ye, monster!”

The red points in the eyesockets of Thulsa Doom’s death’s-head stared at Cormac mac Art. But they were without their usual fire of malice, for Thulsa Doom’s mind was no longer his own.

“Ye’ll provide information, an I demand it.”

The mage’s voice bore no semblance of happiness, though his hissing malevolence was also missing. “Aye. I will tell you what I can.”

“Be there escape from this dimension of yours, a way back to-our own world?”

“I am trapped here. You are as well, as you came through with me though totally by accident. We cannot return.”

That felt like a blow to the stomach, and Cormac heard gasps from the others. He tried, hopefully but with his voice bordering on the desultory. “And if we order ye to return us, blackheart?”

“I cannot. The slip-through, the ‘gateway’ I have so long used is destroyed. Never have I been so sorely held fast as ye held me, with swords, and with that man of Behl striving with his powers. I strove more mightily than ever I have before. Thus by accident I tore the slip-through, and brought through all with me-even these ships. And thus destroyed the link between this dimension and that other. I know. I strove to go back there, with you here. I could not; no means exists.” The mage broke off and stared straight ahead.

“More,” Samaire urged.

“Thulsa Doom!” the Gael snapped. “Heard ye not Samaire?”

This time the wizard’s words emerged bitterly, defiantly. “She does not wear the chain linked in the Beyond to this one!”

“I do. Speak. Add to what ye’ve said.”

“You cannot return,” Thulsa Doom said at once, “because I cannot. Nor could I guarantee it if your coming through had not destroyed the means of transference, for it was all by accident and my desperate striving to break the hold of swords and the druid. Be assured that I brought you not here by design, Cormac mac Art who was my greatest enemy!”

Cormac’s half-smile was grim. “For once, monster, I’m believing ye. Well then, we must make the most of it. This dimension does differ from ours?”

“Aye. It is the same, but some things have not happened here. Others have happened here that have not, will not in the other plane that was your home. There is a, a fork, a branching, in history. Both nature’s forces and sorcery had do with that branching, long ago. Now there are two worlds, lying parallel and each invisible to the other. This one became my escape… for here I did not survive death, so long ago. Most things are the same. That would not have remained so, for-” the sorcerer broke off.

“For what, mage? Answer!”

“-for I would have taken possession of this world, and ruled it,” Thulsa Doom said. “From Rome.”

“Rome!” Brian echoed.

“Aye.”

“In this world… Rome fell not? Rome still rules… even Britain?”

“No no. All those things-are the same; all major matters are the same. No-it was my plan, my hope, to rid your world of yourself, and this one-and then to rule this plane. Rome would be the best capital-for I would have replaced the leader of those who called themselves first ‘Friends’ and now are known as ‘Christians.’ Their chief priest or bishop is in Rome-from there he seeks to rule, but of course does not. I will-would have done. The Pope whose image I would wear would never die, would rule forever, and soon all would believe in his faith and his claim of direct descent from him chosen by their god.”

“A lovely plan,” Cormac mac Art said quietly. “An undying dead man… ruling a world devoted to the Dead God, Iosa Chriost!”

“That island that was there but not here,” Brian said apprehensively, for he was more interested in the immediate and the personal than the inconceivable: unending world rule. “It is now… here? It is gone?”

Into the silence, Cormac said, “Answer questions from us all.”

“It is not here,” Thulsa Doom said. “It was never here.”

“Nev-oh gods! Eirrin… be it here?”

“Aye. Eirrin exists. Britain exists. Norge and Dane-land exist. Rome left the shores of Britain some eighty years ago. Al-ric, king of the Visigoths, took and sacked Rome in the four-hundred and tenth year of the era of the Christians. It is the same. The August date was the same. Eirrin’s kingdoms are the same.”

All eyes aboard Quester were fixed on the mage now, all ears drinking in his dull-voiced reluctant replies as if they were ale and all were dying of thirst. The sea rippled alongside the ship, and gurgled in its wake.

“Brian,” Cormac said. “Is there… another Brian here?”

“No.”

Brian gasped and jerked as though struck.

“He put to sea three years agone, the skullface said, “and has never been seen since. Indeed he never will, as he was slain on the coast of Alba by Picts-”

“Dead!” Brian said in a broken croak, and held up his hand before his face. It shook. He stared at that quivering hand, as though for assurance that he indeed lived.

“Then all ye need do,” Bas reminded the youth, “is pretend a bit-and return to the bosom of an overjoyed family! Any errors ye make, in memory, can be laid to captivity or some sea battle.

“That,” Brian said very quietly, “I have experienced.”

They were silent, gazing upon the youth from Killevy up in Airgialla. All remembered how he’d had to do death on his best friend Ros, another youth whose mind was possessed by Thulsa Doom and who’d been striving to slay Bas. Cormac, whose mind bore scars, knew that act had etched one into Brian’s brain, too, and Cormac felt both remorse and guilt, for it was in following him that Brian had come upon such horror and had manhood thrust upon him, ten or so years all at once.

“And Wulfhere?” Cormac asked.

“Aye-has Thorleif slain me here-my, uh, other self, I mean? Odin’s god-like patience but this is a thorny matter to think on-even to try to talk on!”

The death’s-head moved slightly to face the giant. “It is true. And aye, was Thorleif of Norge slew you, years past. There is no other Wulfhere here.”

Wulfhere stared, then rose and stalked aft, to mutter to Brian that it was his turn at watch and tiller.

“And… myself?” Cormac was asking.

“Another Cormac mac Art exists in this plane,” Thulsa Doom said, and it was as if the words were a palpable force that rocked Cormac where he sat, on a rowing bench. “No less scarred, no less skilled with weapons, no less deadly, this Cormac mac Art of Connacht. He is you; you are he.”

After a time of silence while he thought on that, hardly with understanding, Cormac glanced at Samaire. He looked again at Thulsa Doom. “I would know whether-”

“Cormac!”

At her cry, Cormac broke off to look at Samaire.

“Ask no more about yourself. It is… eerie. Awful. Please.”

After a moment, he nodded. “And yourself, dairlin girl. Are ye wanting to know about yourself?”

“I-I-” She bit her lip, looked at Thulsa Doom. “Aye!” she said, of a sudden. “I must know, and then it’s no more questions I’ll be asking. It is possible that here I am married yet to that prince who was my husband, in Osraigh… or that I died in childbirth… or… was slain by those Norse who, captured me from the shores of Leinster. Such things are possible, wizard?”

“Aye, all such things are possible,” Thulsa Doom said. “But-”

“Hold!” She thrust out a stopping hand. “Tell me only if there is another Samaire Ceannselaigh here, daughter of Leinster’s dead king.”

“Aye.”

Again her teeth worried her lip. “And… my brother?”

“Feredach your brother rules Leinster, him who is called an Dubh-the Dark.”

“My-other brother. Ceann of the Red Hair.”

“He was slain by those Norse ye spoke of, on the soil of Eirrin near the coast, whilst he resisted his kidnaping-and yours. They carried you away, once they’d knocked away your sword and overpowered you-and threw him into the sea along the Leinsterish coast.”

“Ceann!”

And even though Ceann mong Ruadh was alive in her own dimension, Samaire wept, mourning him, and commenced the keening in the manner of her people. Wulfhere turned, cast anxious looks about as if seeking escape. He’d had to give listen afore to the Eirrish mourn-keening; Samaire did it too well for his sensitive ears. Brian and Bas both looked as if they wanted to go to her; both looked at Cormac, with anxiousness on them.

The Gael said, “Weapon-companion!” and his voice was sharp.

Samaire stiffened and firmed her mouth. She stilled her laments for the Ceann of this dimension, a Ceann she had never known-and for that Ceann of the other plane, whom she’d never see again. And him waiting at Tara for their return with spoils to finance his plotting against his murderous brother!

“There is that which I must know,” Cormac said, “despite Samaire’s warning and my agreement. Thulsa Doom, blackhearted monster and my slave-answer. Am I welcome in this Eirrin, by the High-king on Tara Hill?”

The mage’s single word was the most awful and shattering he had uttered; the ugliest word in any language. “No.”

Then for a long while the ship scudded over the plain of the sea, and there were no words spoken aboard her. Only the sun smiled; only the waves rippling past the hull chuckled. Samaire turned her back, and began to weep, though quietly. Cormac merely stared at the decking beneath his feet. Brian managed to look anguished and angry all at once.

At last Cormac mac Art began to speak, in a low, disconsolate voice.

“I’ll not be asking if here I am trenfher na Eirrain, Champion of Eirrin, which I won by such great effort-in my own dimension from which ye’ve stolen me, scum of the ancient world! It’s for Eirrin we’re bound, and to Eirrin we go. Once again must I be someone else-and not my old ‘Partha mac Othna’ either, lest that name betray me. It’s directly to one of the Doorways to the Tuatha de Danann I must take Thulsa Doom.”

“Oh, Cormac!”

He nodded. “I know, dairlin girl-but it’s unwelcome in my own land I’ve been, for a dozen years of my life. Blows to the spirit I’ve taken before, as well. I shall abide; I shall survive. As to yourself-” He looked about at his little group of friends; weapon-companions, all. “Ye others can and will go to Tara. Wulfhere, ye can be taking Odin’s Eye, though it follows us with such docility. Though… once the High-king knows who ye be, Samaire, for your cousin Aine Cumalswife will recognize ye o’course, all will be well for ye. And for Bas, and Brian, aye and for Wulfhere, your friend from among the Danes who became friend of Eirrin by rescuing ye from the Norsemen, ye see!”

“In your company,” she said. “Aye. Mayhap then you too will be welcome at Tara Hill, my love.”

Cormac tightened his jaw and stiffened a bit, for she had not used those words to him afore, with others present. “Bas, of course, will… no mind. No matter. That be the way of it. It is what must be done.”

And again there was silence, for all knew he was right, and firm on it. Nor did any dare ask the enslaved mage where that other Cormac, that Cormac of this dimension was, or what he did. It was Wulfhere who broke the somber quiet that overshadowed them like brooding thunderclouds.

“Ye’ve taken leave of your senses, son of-Eirrin.”

Cormac swung to stare; all followed his gaze, looking at the giant Dane who stood astern with his fiery beard moving restlessly in the breeze.

“Blood-brother! I’ll not be going to the hall of Eirrin’s High-king, and I a Dane, in anyone’s company! Likely I’d never leave alive-and that means I’d be taking twenty or forty of Eirrin with me into death! Oh no, Wolf. Nor this time will I be taking a fine ship in quest of a crew-whilst ye go alone with… that, seeking a Doorway ye may not find, to people who may not exist, who may or may not be ruled by a woman!”

“Wulfhere-”

“Call me blood-brother!” Wulfhere snapped. “I go with you. This time aye, I will suffer these feet to tread the soil of your land. It was in a filthy prison we met, you and I, and we broke free together, and we took ship together, and we sailed together after. I owe you my life-and you owe me yours, for it’s more than once or even twice each of us had only just saved the other from ax or sword. But for you I’d have ridden a Valkyrie’s horse long ago.” Wulfhere stood solidly, stared and spoke stolidly. “We take Thulsa Doom to the Doorway, Cormac mac Art an cliuin-blood-brother!”

Cormac was obviously considering, though it was obvious there was nothing to be gained by raising argument. And true, in the decision he had announced, Cormac had felt much alone; egregiously alone. He knew loneliness, alone-ness well; he’d shared his life with it as other men with an ever-present dog. He could bear it. And… he’d be passing glad for the company of his longtime comrade.

“It is a matter of which Doorway we seek, then,” he said in a low voice, and they began to think and to discuss that problem, for Cathbadh had named them a choice of two locations.

The twin hills called the Breasts of Danu indeed resembled the mounded bosom of a woman reclining supine. They stretched long across the land but eighteen of the Roman miles northeast of the River Kenmare, which emptied into the sea down in the southwest of Eirrin. There they could go ashore, without danger of recognition.

The hill of Bri Leith was well north, sixty miles west of Tara Hill and south of Tailite. From Tara they must cross three rivers, the Boyne and the Deel and the Inny-and hills, and the bogs as well, or skirt them. It was Bas who then suggested that they could sail Quester down south of Eirrin, enter the Shannon and make their way up it to Lough Ree; thence up its length and onto the broad Shannon again, until they could make landing but a few miles east of Bri Leith and Long-ford.

Problems attended either choice. At last it was Cormac who decided. In manner most positive he stated what they would do. For gladness was on him to be positive about something, in this new life forced on him by a relentless enemy who hated him only for the man he’d been in a time incredibly long, long gone by.

“We will port at Balbriggan, but twenty or so miles from Tara. Ye others will go directly there, and to the home of your cousin Aine, Samaire. I and Wulfhere will skirt fair Tara, calling ourselves by other names-and taking Thulsa Doom to Long-ford, and the Doorway at Slieve Bri Leith.”

Fast on the heels of his words came another voice. “Release me, Cormac mac Art, release me now, and I renounce all vengeance on ye-and these your friends.”

Cormac stared at the death’s head, and he was tempted.

“Join me! Rule this world!”

“Thulsa Doom, no man but would be a fool to place faith in any such promise from you. And ye’ll not be ruling this world, mage. No. It’s no release ye’ll be having of me, whilst I live.”

Brian saw a matter for laughter, and seized on it, for in all wakes the time comes for gaiety. “Sure and it’s a sea of interesting looks ye three will be receiving, moving through our green Eirrin and one of ye with no face!”

Cormac showed him the pale reflection of a smile, and that seen dimly as in an old and filthy mirror of weathered bronze.

“No, Brian. For Thulsa Doom can be assuming any form he wishes-is it not true, mage?”

“Aye. The form of any person I have seen.”

Cormac nodded. “Then it’s a decent visage ye’ll wear in Meath of Eirrin, monster, not that hideous shining skull! It’s green your robe will be, and the symbols of Behl and Crom on ye-for I and Wulfhere will travel respectably, in company of what all will see as a druid!”