The mages who usually patrolled the site had long since retreated from the coming storm. Safe in the warmth of the mansion, they would be a mile away from the stones and rock of Rathcroghan in the howling winds of the night. Niall was alone save for his ever-present guardian.
He felt Mathanas' cloak spreading around him, the powerful masking of the spirit hiding his presence from any scrying. Soon, the storm would be so strong that the sheer power of it would hide him anyway.
He lashed a length of rope around one of the smaller, pillar-like rocks and knotted it around his waist. The physical force of the storm was threat enough in itself. It might be calm only a few miles away, but here the hurricane-force winds would be capable of knocking him over like a feather if he didn't take this simple precaution.
Niall had always dreaded this time, just as anyone of his Order would. A mage who died trying to take into himself the uncontrollable energies of the storm would be lost in limbo. None knew what fate he might meet, what unknown plane he might be flung into, what eternal ordeals he might suffer. He had not expected to have to face this for many, many years; perhaps never in this lifetime.
He had taken every precaution possible, cast every spell of defense and contingency he could call upon without draining himself. Now he could only wait for the surge and hold onto the enchanted golden vessel as tightly as to life itself.
The shrieks growing in the wind were as tormented souls, felt as much as heard, ripping right through him. He hardly felt the rain driving into him in the teeth of the gale as the sounds grew louder and nearer. It was as if the
Wild Hunt itself had been raised in all its implacable madness.
As the force of it grew, lightning forked above him and the rocks began to glow with a blue nimbus of energy, pure power flowing into and through them. Wisps of raw magical energy drifted lazily between them, a ghostly spider's web of power weaving itself around him. He summoned every last ounce of will and determination and drew the pattern toward himself.
As he held the cauldron, it felt as if razor blades were being driven under each fingernail, into the bones of his fingers, carving deeply into every sinew and ligament of his wrists. The pain was unbelievable, unimaginable, unbearable. He'd never dreamed that a body could hurt like this. There was no habituation, no release, no swooning, simply an overloading of sensation that grew and grew, ripping into him, tearing now into muscle and the long bones of his arms, rippling across his shoulders. As the elf bit hard into his tongue, trying to keep from screaming, blood dribbled from his mouth. His useless hands clung to the little gold cauldron and he tried to force the power down into it, out of the agony of the body and into the vessel, driving down this anguish.
The searing sensation arced down his spine, through every vertebra. He felt himself forced back against the rock, knobbles of rock sticking into his spine and ribs, fighting for every breath now. The spider's web grew white, pulsing, filled with wild, crackling energies.
Then he saw it. Nothing had led him to expect anything like this. An amorphous cloud of mist, blown together within the shrill whiteness, began to form into a larval, writhing form many meters in length. The worm-like thing struggled with its absurd, grotesquely under-sized arms to drag itself toward him, a great sucker-like mouth opening and closing in a grisly peristalsis. It radiated despair to him, wretchedness, the impossibility of what he was trying to do, the infinite release of abandoning the struggle against overwhelming pain and allowing the spirit to flee the tortured flesh.
For a split second it almost overcame him. But Niall's despair changed within his own mind to an image of an
endless chain of despairing humanity, a vision of what would happen to the world if Lutair was not stopped. His emotions changed to rage, and he forced the creature away from him with an effort of will beyond anything mortal. Impotent against him, the thing retreated back into whatever nightmare realm had spawned it.
Niall now felt himself rising above his own slumped body, not so much forced into the astral as ascended into it. He saw the whole of the pattern around him and drew it down, through the focal point within himself, concentrating it, filling the cauldron to overflowing. It shone like the bright Dagda's own, but around it the darkness of the vengeful Morrigan herself grew and cloaked his body like a black glove.
Then, like feeling the sun break through the clouds and begin to warm his face, he felt the presence of the spirit with him once more, searching for him, supporting him. He snapped back into his body, and was astonished at his own state. There was no pain, despite the blood on his hands and face. Not even any sense of fatigue. Within himself, Niall felt only power. It made him want to run forever, to go shouting down the stars with the sheer joy of it all, and at the same time wanting to be still, quiet, to save it, hoard it, to always feel like this. Blood mixed with salt as tears trickled from the aching corners of his eyes. He knew how very close he had been to death, and worse.
"Hold this," Mathanas whispered to him. "You are very vulnerable now, because you feel so strong. This is not the time to act."
The spirit held him and he felt pain return to his body. It was making him aware of the damage he had suffered, using its powers of healing on him; but making sure that Niall was not so intoxicated with his power that he became oblivious to the danger he was still in. He groaned as sensation returned to his chest and every breath felt like a tearing of his rib muscles. Even the touch of Mathanas, choosing to materialize himself just enough for the healing, was painful.
"Yes, I understand," he gasped. "Where can we be safe?"
The shimmering face of the spirit seemed to smile almost playfully. "You have asked me that these last six years," it said.
"This is no time for jest," Niall said huffily, aware that he was on the point of breaking into exultant, joyful laughter despite the painfulness of his chest. He began to untie the ropes, groaning again with the effort. Somehow, he was going to have to walk away from here. Even with Mathanas' powers, that would not be easy.
"I should have been an Arab sorcerer from the Arabian nights," he grumbled. "A flying carpet would be extremely useful right now."
"How do you know you weren't?" Mathanas shot back. The spirit was obviously in a flighty mood today. Niall wondered how the storm might have affected it; it was something he hadn't given enough thought to before.
"Let's worry about that later," Niall said, taking his first steps.
"I cannot change the terrain here. It would be detected," Mathanas said as the elf almost stumbled over the small stones littering the ground. "It would leave a trail."
"I know," Niall groaned. "And it's four miles to the car." He looked down at the cauldron, quite ordinary to the untrained eye, screaming with power to anyone who had the talent to penetrate its magical cloaking.
"Then again, having come so far, what are four miles?" he said in a voice far more cheerful than he felt.
The spirit followed him. It knew better than Niall how the delayed shock would affect the elf, who would need everything Mathanas could give in the form of concealment until he was able to rise and use the power he had gained. Mathanas loved Niall, feared for him, drew power of his own into that cloak around the cauldron. Within days they might yet be utterly destroyed.
"Frag off," Serrin growled sleepily, throwing a pillow at the door. If that fraggin' Englishman doesn't stop banging on the door, he thought angrily, I'm going to strangle him.
"Look, come on. The flight's in two hours. Be a good elf and get out of bed," the sniggering voice came from outside.
Serrin hadn't gotten much rest. Pumping music had kept him awake half the night, and clicking roaches most of the rest of it. Michael's idea about staying here might have been fine in theory. In practice it had turned out to be bad news. The clock said it was nine in the morning, his body told him it was still somewhere around midnight. And somewhere in between those times, Serrin remembered, was the commonest hour of death from natural causes, when the body just gave up on the struggle. It felt like it, too.
He felt slightly nauseous as he dragged his legs out of the bed and sat up. He wasn't entirely sure why; he'd drunk little and eaten still less the night before, happy to sit and listen to Kristen offering scraps of her past history, almost incredulous that he could possibly be interested in it. And, in all honesty, it was a small life; a drunken father, early abandonment, drifting and scavenging. In terms of significant events, it wasn't a footnote on a page. But she described people in ways that made their faces come alive in his mind's eye and she seemed to lack even a shred of bitterness or malice. Even when dismissing someone with that back-of-the-throat hiss she had, it was to mark them as an individual to avoided for the sake of survival and never as an object of revenge or even a grudge.
There hadn't been as long to talk as he'd have liked; she had to get the passport which looked like a decent enough fake, though Serrin doubted it would pass muster back in UCAS and unbeknownst to him, get a crash course in the hazards of the bush.
Halfway through brushing his teeth in the sterilized water from the jug beside the sink, he relented and opened the door. As usual, Michael was immaculately groomed. For that too Serrin could have strangled him.
"Everything's arranged. I've booked one of those tourist packages, camping in the veldt, that kind of thing. It'll give us the chance to ask questions when we get there. I've hired vans along the way as well. If we ever need to make a run for it, we'll have transport arranged. Here's
your copy of the paperwork," he said, stuffing a wad of paper into one of Serrin's back pockets.
"Fangyur," Serrin said through the toothpaste. He rinsed out his mouth, avoiding the tap water as Michael had urged him to do, then picked up a towel and headed for the bathroom. Opening the door without checking for occupancy first, he suddenly found himself with his arms full of the mostly naked girl stamping her way out of it. Startled, he began to mutter some apologies just as Kristen arrived at the top of the stairs.
The girl flounced past him, leaving him looking mortified. Michael creased up with laughter behind him.
"I didn't know it was occupied," he pleaded.
"So was Norway in the last World War and it put up a bit more resistance than you did," Michael shot back and vanished into his room, leaving a clear corridor between Serrin and Kristen. She hissed down the stairs at the girl, then glowered at him. He took refuge in the bathroom and drew the latch against her.
What the hell is this? he wondered, wetting his face and working up the soap. I'm thirty-five years old and she's half that. It's not lustful, not on my part. Is it a big-brother thing? Why does it feel like I've always known her when I don't feel that way with most of the people I have known for a long time?
Why the frag did I just cut my face?
The morning passed in a whirl of preparation, packing up, checking all the papers twice, then spending the inevitable extra hour hanging around the airport for the delayed flight.
This certainly wasn't any suborbital. More like the pride of Federated Boeing's 777A fleet, circa 2020. All that was missing was an ad for International Scrap Recovery Inc. adorning its tail.
"Oh swell," Serrin said miserably. "Did you dig out any data on aircraft disasters out here?"
"Yes, but I didn't want to worry you. There's a much higher chance of being murdered for your wallet on the cross-country trains anyway," Michael said coolly. Not sure whether or not the Englishman was joking, Serrin picked up his hand luggage and ambled through the heat haze toward the van offering to convey them the last hundred yards to the waiting flying coffin. It seemed singularly pointless. He could have walked it in a minute, but instead had to sweat it out for twenty inside the superheated van interior waiting for the last of the puffing tourists to board.
Then they were walking toward the plane, Kristen gripping his arm as they reached the collapsible metal stairs up to the hatch. It suddenly hit him that she couldn't have ever flown before, and he led her by the hand to a window seat beside him. In front of them sat Michael and Tom. As the engines began to roar to life, Michael craned his head around the side of the seat.
"Oh, and we got the medical kit delivered," he said. "All the usual things and one or two specialties. We have Kristen to thank for that; her doc did us well. Didn't overcharge, either." He turned back to the front and she smiled happily. Kristen didn't have much idea of where she was going or what these people were seeking, but her new clothes felt just fine and she hadn't ever expected a chance to fly.
The plane jolted into movement and accelerated with agonizing slowness along the runway. Serrin wanted to close his eyes against the mounting panic, but he had to try to seem relaxed for Kristen's sake. Her fingers, stub-tipped with nails bitten almost to the quick, were dug deep into his arm. She was terrified.
With all the elegance of an expiring hippopotamus, the plane finally lifted off the ground with a groan, then rose steeply into the clear sky. Seatbelts unclicked all around and suddenly Michael turned around toward them again, his face a mask of fear.
"Look out! Terrorists!" he hissed. There was a sharp bang from just ahead, the sound of a gun going off. Serrin through his body over Kristen, looking wildly around for the gunman. Michael's face turned to an evil smile as he raised the neck of the bottle toward Serrin, a little wisp of gas still curling from it as the first foamy bubbles began to pour out over the sides of the neck. His other hand proffered paired champagne glasses.
"You bastard," Serrin growled at him. "I might have had a heart condition for all you knew."
Michael hesitated and gave the elf a long, knowing look before Serrin finally took the glasses, blushing a little, leaning forward so Kristen couldn't see his reaction. The Englishman filled them and sat back to sip his own.
"Are all Englishmen champagne addicts?" Serrin asked, trying to think of a suitably childish revenge.
"Obligatory, dear boy. It's one of life's little ironies that even though, as every decent Englishman knows, the French are the most dastardly and treacherous nation of bounders in the history of the world, we buy three times as much of their fizz as any other nation does. More than they do themselves these days, but that's because they're too lazy and indolent to be able to afford it," he replied cheerfully.
"You're a clone. Of Geraint," Serrin groaned.
"Not quite, term. Not quite. I don't have that romantic Celtic thing. At Cambridge, he made out and I made computers. Anyway, enough of that. Read the tourist brochure. Make sure you can identify all the poisonous critters."
By the time the descent to New Hlobane came, Serrin had assumed his familiar dozing-in-flight posture, with Kristen, light-headed from champagne she'd never before tasted, tucked against his shoulder. Michael craned around at them again and nudged Tom. Turning to see their peaceful faces, Tom smiled. Michael looked thoughtful, even a little sad.
"I don't know how this is going to end up, Tom. I don't know what illusions she's got. He doesn't know himself well enough to figure her out," he said fretfully.
The troll looked at him uncertainly. He tended not to like this man who was so sure of himself, so quick with a smart answer to everything, so seemingly devoid of instinct. All of which Michael had sensed from the very beginning.
"Give me a break, Tom. Just because I don't wear my heart on my sleeve doesn't mean I haven't got eyes to see and ears to hear. I just do what I'm good at, and that's this," he said, tapping his temple with a finger.
That made the troll uncomfortable. Maybe that's me too, the troll thought, trying to be good at something and disliking someone because he's so much better at his craft than I am at mine. And if that's it, I'm being small.
"Sorry, chummer. I just take some time to get used to very different folks, that's all," the troll mumbled.
"I noticed. But sometimes I wish I could do some of the things you do," the Englishman said.
Tom was perplexed. "You're slottin' me."
"Well, on second thought, maybe not," Michael laughed. Tom realized that he'd never want to do what this man did for a living either, and began to laugh along with him.