Call of the Kings (9 page)

The old king’s chin dropped to his chest. Neither Twilight nor Tara would dare ask the question; it was too important.

‘He was my brother,’ he said eventually, looking up. ‘And I was the one who caught her. She disappeared instantly, with the blood and guts of my beloved Tadhg still running down her face.’

A heavy silence descended upon the large circular hall.

Eventually Donnchadh O’Brain, first son of Brian Boru and High King of all Ireland, looked up and addressed Twilight.

‘So, magic makers, you now know why you’re not wanted around here. We associate diabolism, dreadful torture, and cannibalism with your sort.’

Twilight bowed again and took Tara’s hand.

‘You will welcome us the next time we come, my lord. I promise you that.’

‘Phew,’ exclaimed Tara as they left Cill Dara and floated slowly in the still, clear air toward Skellighaven. ‘I feel sick. Is it alright for a tyro to be sick?’ ‘Yes, so long as it’s downwind of me.’

‘I didn’t realize just how much damage a veneficus can do if they are evil,’ she said thoughtfully.

The old astounder nodded. ‘The propensity for misuse is huge. Unfortunately there is evil in venefici just as in all other walks of life, although this Leannan Sidhe is a special one. As evil females go I thought Elelendise, the wolf woman, was bad enough, and Freyja and her twin daughter, Go-uan, pretty awful, but they were saints compared to this enchanted obscenity and her unspeakable perversions.’

‘It won’t be long before she starts torturing and eating those in Skellighaven.’ Tara shuddered. ‘They’ll be like lambs to the slaughter for her. Maybe we should just leave her to get on with it, do our job for us.’

‘If it was just the abbot and his monks, your father and grandmother, I’d be tempted,’ said Twilight. ‘But she will torture and eat folk indiscriminately. The innocent and the guilty will all be the same to her. And she will throw a few into the Devil’s Pit at the same time just to keep up appearances.’

‘I thought you said grown venefici didn’t eat?’

‘We don’t. What she’s doing couldn’t be classified as eating, not for sustenance purposes anyhow. What she’s doing is a form of perverted bestiality.’

‘Where are we going now?’

‘I thought we’d take a look at these dogs of yours before

anything else.’

‘Yes, yes . . . YES!’ Tara exclaimed. ‘If I didn’t feel so queasy I’d give you a big kiss for that.’

Twilight wrinkled his nose.

‘Save it for the wolfhounds. They’ll be so pleased to see you they won’t notice.’

The landowner, an old Irish thane called Flynn Deira, owned a large stretch of forestry inland of Skellighaven. He didn’t have much to do with the villagers, considering them a lazy bunch of thieving scavengers. If any of them were caught snooping around his estates he’d either hang them or put his dogs on them or anyone who questioned his right to do so. Hanging was the most merciful. He was irreligious to the point of atheism, but no one would ever throw him into the Devil’s Pit because he maintained a small army of at least one hundred and fifty soldiers. The various comings and goings of the grubby hovel scavengers of Skellighaven couldn’t have bothered him less. As long as they kept out of his way he was content to let them carry on in their little world of petty thievery, scant plant food husbandry, and poverty. Thus he lived in an isolated feudal world of doing whatever pleased him.

Which was hunting.

Flynn Deila lived on horseback. Every day he would sally forth from his large manor house at the head of a party of a dozen or so soldiers dressed for the hunt. Throughout the day they would chase and spear wolves, wild boar, and stags all around his vast forests, loosing off hundreds of arrows and spears and even running down the occasional fox if the mood took them.

To aid his all-consuming hobby, Flynn Deira bred horses, dogs, and falcons. The dogs were always huge, fierce, and lightning fast gray Irish wolfhounds. With a highly developed sense of smell they could track a wolf, boar, or deer from spore over a week old and bring it down by the throat if given the command to do so. Originally bred by the Celts as war dogs - they could take a knight off his horse with a mighty leap - they were mostly used to track and corner the target animals so that Flynn Deira and his men could finish them off with their spears. It was said that the walls of Flynn Deira’s large stone manor house was festooned with large antlered heads of stags, pale-eyed wolves, and the smaller but fiercely combative wild boar.

It was a pair of these fierce, full-grown wolfhounds that wandered into Skellighaven one quiet summer’s day. As everyone rushed fearfully into their hovels, flimsy and inadequate wattle and daub protection that would have collapsed immediately had the dogs decided to charge into them, the then tiny Tara, escaping from Kate’s watchful eye for just a few moments, walked toward the salivating dogs with her hands held out. With the villagers watching from behind their walls in horror, and after a brief bout of licking the top of her red hair with long, pink tongues, the two wolfhounds attached themselves to her and would not move from her side. Anyone who came close was treated to two sets of long, sharp teeth bared in a ferocious snarl that left them in no doubt that one step nearer and they were in big trouble. Eventually Tara had to command them to go back to their owner on the premise they could come back and play with her whenever their hunting services were not required.

Besides, little girls need their sleep, and at the time she was just four years old.

It got so bad that Flynn Deira had to pen the dogs up when they were not hunting because as soon as they saw an opening, they would be off to seek out their beloved little Tara. And on many an occasion Katre received the fright of her life when the pair of huge dogs padded expectantly into her hovel in search of her daughter.

Following their visit to Donnchadh O’Brain’s circular palace, Twilight and Tara suddenly appeared alongside Flynn Deira’s dog pens. There were eight dogs in the pen and every single one of them started howling as soon as they saw her. Climbing to their hind legs, they towered above Tara around the outer fence as they scrabbled and snapped at each other to get at the tiny hand she offered them.

‘Those are the pair that used to come and visit me,’ she said, pointing out the two biggest animals. ‘They are the mother and father of the rest of them here.’

She turned away from the noisy dogs and addressed Twilight.

‘Do they know they are in ligamen to me?’

‘Oh yes. They have known for a long time. Probably, as with my pica, before we were born.’

‘But I only chose them yesterday.’

‘That’s true, but for all the choices you could have made, you are still dancing to human tunes and timescales and, although we like to think such decisions are made by us, in truth they’re not. Animals move to altogether different rhythms involving preordination and eventuality. They knew their very own veneficus was coming. It was just a matter of time.’

‘What if I’d chosen the swans?’

‘Then we would be with them right now and they’d be just as happy as these wolfhounds. In the meantime they will wait.’

‘So every animal gets a veneficus eventually?’

‘Only those who deserve it,’ said the old enchanter obliquely.

‘I don’t understand,’ Tara said simply, stroking the floppy ear of one of the younger wolfhounds.

‘You will . . . eventually,’ said Twilight, pointing toward the stone manor house. ‘In the meantime you had better think up a reason for removing this man’s beloved animals.’

Tara followed his pointing finger and saw Flynn Deira and six of his men striding purposefully toward them.

‘Easy,’ said Tara, opening the heavy gate of the pen with a slight movement of her index finger. As the eight dogs sprang out of the open pen, Tara muttered a few words to them and waved the same index finger in a line across the front of where they stood. The dogs sprang into a straight line between them and the advancing Flynn Deira and his men. As the men hesitated, eight sets of dripping jowls opened and ferocious snarls began to rumble in their throats. The wolfhounds’ bodies tensed, ready to jump at their former master and his men.

‘Whoa there!’ A surprised Flynn Deira held his hand up and they came to a sudden stop.

‘Not you again,’ he said resignedly, eyeing Tara. ‘I thought I’d seen the back of you, my girl, and got my dogs back to myself.’

Tara smiled at him sweetly. ‘You can have six of them. I only want two.’ ‘Which two?’ Flynn Deira glared down at her.

‘Those.’ Tara pointed to the older mother and father pair. ‘Your old playmates, eh,’ said the huntsman. ‘I ought to have known it. I suppose they’ll all bite my head off if I don’t agree?’

Tara smiled again and sort of shrugged. ‘What do I get in return?’ ‘Something,’ said Tara mysteriously, ‘to hunt in your forest that you’ve never hunted before. A particularly fierce, difficult, and secretive animal that few have ever seen let alone hunted.’ ‘What animal is that?’ Flynn Deira showed his interest by the gleam in his eye.

‘A lynx,’ said Tara. ‘A great big, bad lynx.’

‘Because older venefici don’t sleep, some of our most productive work is done at night.’ Twilight spoke quietly to Tara, who was beginning to get heavy-eyed. They were sitting under an ancient elm tree in a small clearing outside of Skellighaven. Tara was curled up in between the two huge wolfhounds, the gray fur of their bodies encircling her like a protective wall.

‘How long will it be before I don’t need sleep?’ Her voice

was drowsy. ‘A few more years yet.’ ‘Hmmm . . .’ Moments later the regular hush of her breathing meant sleep.

Two pairs of intelligent brown eyes in huge heads covered in gray fur followed Twilight as he stood up.

‘Look after her, I won’t be long.’ The two wolfhounds named by Tara earlier as Feasa, the female, and Eoghan, the male, opened their great jaws in acknowledgment. Insisting that noble beasts should have noble names, Tara had asked Twilight to run through all the old Irish Gael kings as far back in time as he could. Then she chose the names.

One thing was certain, nothing would get close to their charge, and even the wind had to ask permission to ruffle her red hair. Tara awoke the following morning to the sound of cracking bones. Twilight was feeding the dogs. Still not leaving Tara’s side, they gnawed the meat and began to crunch the bones in their powerful jaws from the two large joints Twilight put in front of them.

‘Where did you get the meat from?’ Tara asked, rubbing her eyes. ‘The kitchen at the monastery.’ ‘You’ve been up to something?’ The old astounder smiled at her.

‘I’ve been the harbinger of haunted, hysterical horripilation hellfire on the hapless,’ he said. ‘The placer of petrified phantoms of pandemonius poltergeists in the stygian sleep patterns of the psychotically unpalatable.’

‘Ugh . . .’

‘Nightmares,’ said Twilight. ‘I’ve been giving people nightmares.’

Tara nodded as comprehension began to dawn.

‘Let me guess,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘The people are the abbot, my grandmother, and father, and the nightmares are about the Witch Queen herself.’

‘Precisely. As I said, some of our most productive work is done at night. Mortals have to sleep; it renders them defenseless and oblivious of what’s going on. That vulnerability can be exploited; we can interfere with their subliminal dreams through the conduit of the lightest touch to their foreheads. So those three are waking up about now screaming in abject terror at the very real spectre I planted, the reality of which will not leave them in peace until I remove it . . . or not.’

‘The reality of having their intestines drawn out on a stick and being eaten alive by Leannan Sidhe?’

‘Double precisely.’

‘What will they do?’

‘It should quickly drive them mad. Let’s go and find out, shall we?’

Leaving the dogs to sleep off their meal under the elm tree, Twilight and Tara transformed to the clouds over Skellighaven. The first thing they saw was Tara’s father rushing out of the illegally sequestered Delaneys’ hovel, shouting and clutching his bald head. Moments later the grandmother came out screaming at the top of her voice and beating at her head. After a few moments of caterwauling and jumping up and down on the spot, they both set off up the hill to the monastery. Before they got there, the abbot suddenly appeared in a similar state at the entrance to the monastery and ran down the hill to join them. After a brief dance of terror around each other, shouting and comparing the vivid horror of the implanted dreams, which would not leave their consciousness, the three of them slumped to the long grass and howled their painful images into one another’s faces.

Twilight pointed to the sky above them.

Leannan Sidhe, the Witch Queen herself, drawn like a starving wolf to a fresh blood scent, was descending very quickly toward the howling trio in the grass, the lynx pressed protectively to her side.

As she appeared alongside the abbot, it triggered a fresh bout of howling, and the three crazed mortals staggered to their feet and began to run away, still clutching and beating at their heads.

‘Stop!’ she ordered in a loud voice, freezing them in midflight. Slowly she walked around, pressing her hand to each forehead, the face beneath a study in abject, frozen terror. The image of herself greedily winding out their intestines on a stick came through very clear from each one. What’s more, she couldn’t remove it from their minds.