The Complete Compleat Enchanter (64 page)

Brodsky, from beside Shea spoke up. “He’s the guy that’s going to put one on Cuchulainn before the big mob takes him.”

“Wurra!”
said Cathbadh to Shea. “Your slave must have a second mind to go with his second sight. The last time he spoke, it would only be a spell that Ollgaeth would be putting on the Little Hound.”

“Listen, punk,” said Brodsky in a tone of exasperation, “get the stones out of your head. This is the pitch: this Maev and Ailill are mobbing up everybody that owes Cuchulainn here a score, and when they get them all together, they’re going to put a geas on him that will make him fight them all at once, and it’s too bad.”

Cathbadh combed his beard with his fingers. “If this be true . . .” he began.

“It’s the McCoy. Think I’m on the con?”

“I was going to say that if it be true, it is high tidings from a low source. Nor do I see precisely how it may be dealt with. If it were a matter of spells only . . .”

Cuchulainn said with mournful and slightly alcoholic gravity: “I would fight them all without the geas, but if I am fated to fall, then that is an end of me.”

Cathbadh turned to Shea. “You see the trouble we have with himself. Does your second sight reach further, slave?”

Brodsky said: “Okay, lug, you asked for it. After Cuchulainn gets rubbed out, there’ll be a war and practically everybody in the act gets knocked off, including you and Ailill and Maev. How do you like it?”

“As little as I like the look of your face,” said Cathbadh. He addressed Shea. “Can this foretelling be trusted?”

“I’ve never known him to be wrong.”

Cathbadh glanced from one to the other till one could almost hear his brains rumbling. Then he said: “I am thinking, Mac Shea, that you will be having business at Ailill’s court.”

“What gives you such an idea?”

“You will be wanting to see Ollgaeth in this matter of your wife’s geas, of course. A wife with a geas like that is like one with a bad eye, and you can never be happy until it is removed entirely. You will take your man with you, and he will tell his tale and let Maev know that we know of her schemings, and they will be no more use than trying to feed a boar on bracelets.”

Brodsky snapped his fingers and said: “Take him up,” in a heavy whisper, but Shea said, “Look here, I’m not at all sure that I want to go to Ailill’s court. Why should I? And if this Maev is as determined as she seems to be, I don’t think you’ll stop her by telling her you know what she’s up to.”

“On the first point,” said the druid, “there is the matter that Cucuc saved your life and all, and you would be grateful to him, not to mention the geas. And for the second, it is not so much Maev that I would be letting know we see through her planning as Ollgaeth. For he will know as well as yourself, that if we learn of the geas before he lays it, all the druids at Conchobar’s court will chant against him, and he will have no more chance of making it bite than a dog does of eating an apple.”

“Mmm,” said Shea. “Your point about gratitude is a good one, even if I can’t quite see the validity of the other. What we want mostly is to get to our own home, though.” He stifled a yawn. “We can take a night to sleep on it and decide in the morning. Where do we sleep?”

“Finn will show you to a chamber,” said Cuchulainn. “Myself and Cathbadh will be staying up the while to discuss on this matter of Maev.” He smiled his charming and melancholy smile.

Finn guided the couple to a guest room at the back of the building, handed Shea a rushlight and closed the door, as Belphebe put up her arms to be kissed.

The next second Shea was doubled up and knocked flat to the floor by a super-edition of the cramps.

Belphebe bent over him. “Are you hurt, Harold?” she asked.

He pulled himself to a sitting posture with his back against the wall. “Not—seriously,” he gasped. “It’s the geas. It doesn’t take any time out for husbands.”

The girl considered. “Could you not relieve me of it as you did the one who howled?”

Shea said: “I can try, but I can pretty well tell in advance that it won’t work. Your personality is too tightly integrated—just the opposite of these hysterics around here. That is, I wouldn’t stand a chance of hypnotizing you.”

“You might do it by magic.”

Shea scrambled the rest of the way to his feet. “Not till I know more. Haven’t you noticed I’ve been getting an overcharge—first that stroke of lightning and then the wine fountain? There’s something in this continuum that seems to reverse my kind of magic.”

She laughed a little. “If that’s the law, why there’s an end! You have but to summon Pete and make a magic that would call for us to stay here, then hey, presto! we are returned.”

“I don’t dare take the chance, darling. It might work and it might not—and even if it did, you’d be apt to wind up in Ohio with the geas still on you, and we really would be in trouble. We do take our characteristics along with us when we make the jump. And anyway, I don’t know
how
to get back to Ohio yet.”

“What’s to be done then?” the girl said. “For surely you have a plan, as always.”

“I think the only thing we can do is take up Cathbadh’s scheme and go see this Ollgaeth. At least, he ought to be able to get rid of that geas.”

All the same, Shea had to sleep on the floor.

Five

Harold Shea, Belphebe, and Pete Brodsky rode steadily at a walk across the central plain of Ireland, the Sheas on horses, Brodsky on a mule which he sat with some discomfort, leading a second mule carrying the provisions and equipment that Cuchulainn had pressed on them. Their accoutrements included serviceable broadswords at the hips of Shea and Brodsky and a neat dagger at Belphebe’s belt. Her request for a bow had brought forth only miserable sticks that pulled no farther than the breast and were quite useless beyond a range of fifty yards, and these she had refused.

All the first day they climbed slowly into the uplands of Monaghan. They followed the winding course of the Erne for some miles and splashed across it at a ford, then struck the boglands of western Cavan. Sometimes there was a road of sorts, sometimes they plodded across grassy moors, following the vague and verbose directions of peasants. As they skirted patches of forest, deer started and ran before them, and once a tongue-lolling wolf trotted parallel to their track for a while before abandoning the game.

By nightfall they had covered at least half their journey. Brodsky, who had begun by feeling sorry for himself, began to recover somewhat under the ministrations of Belphebe’s excellent camp cookery, and announced that he had seen quite enough of ancient Ireland and was ready to go back.

“I don’t get it,” said he. “Why don’t you just mooch off the way you came here?”

“Because I’m unskilled labor now,” explained Shea. “You saw Cathbadh make that spell—he started chanting in the archaic language and brought it down to date. I get the picture, but I’d have to learn the archaic. Unless I can get someone else to send us back. And I’m worried about that. As you said, we’ve got to work fast. What are you going to tell them if they’ve started looking for you when we get back?”

“Ah, nuts,” said Brodsky. “I’ll level with them. The force is so loused up with harps that are always cutting up touches about how hot Ireland is that they’ll give it a play whether they believe me or not.”

Belphebe said in a small voice: “But I would be at home.”

“I know, kid,” said Shea. “So would I. If I only knew how.”

Morning showed mountains on the right, with a round peak in the midst of them. The journey went more slowly than on the previous day, principally because all three had not developed riding callouses. They pulled up that evening at the hut of a peasant rather more prosperous than the rest, and Brodsky more than paid for their food and lodging with tales out of Celtic lore. The pseudo-Irishman certainly had his uses.

The next day woke in rain, and though the peasant assured them that Rath Cruachan was no more than a couple hours’ ride distant, the group became involved in fog and drizzle, so that it was not till afternoon that they skirted Loch Key and came to Magh Ai, the Plain of Livers. The cloaks with which Cuchulainn had furnished them were of fine wool, but all three were soaked and silent by the time a group of houses came into sight through air slightly clearing.

There were about as many of the buildings as would constitute an incorporated village in their own universe, surrounded by the usual stockade and wide gate—unmistakably Cruachan of the Poets, the capital of Connacht.

As they approached along an avenue of trees and shrubbery, a boy about thirteen, in shawl and kilt and carrying a miniature spear, popped out of the bushes and cried: “Stand there! Who is it you are and where are you going?”

It might be important not to smile at this diminutive warrior. Shea identified himself gravely and asked in turn: “And who are you, sir?”

“I am Goistan mac Idha, of the boy troop of Cruachan, and it is better not to interfere with me.”

Shea said: “We have come from a far country to see your King and Queen and the druid Ollgaeth.”

The boy turned and waved his spear towards where a building like that at Muirthemne, but more ornate, loomed over the stockade, then marched ahead of them down the road.

At the gate of the stockade was a pair of hairy soldiers, but their spears were leaning against the posts and they were too engrossed in a game of knuckle-bones even to look up as the party rode through. The clearing weather seemed to have brought activity to the town. A number of people were moving about, most of whom paused to stare at Brodsky, who had flatly refused to discard the pants of his brown business suit and was evidently not dressed for the occasion.

The big house was built of heavy oak beams and had wooden shingles instead of the usual thatch. Shea stared with interest at windows with real glass in them, even though the panes were little diamond-shaped pieces half the size of a hand and far too irregular to see through.

There was a doorkeeper with a beard badly in need of trimming and lopsided to the right. Shea got off his horse and advanced to him, saying: “I am Mac Shea, a traveler from beyond the island of the Fomorians, with my wife and bodyguard. May we have an audience with their majesties, and their great druid, Ollgaeth?”

The doorkeeper inspected the party with care and then grinned. “I am thinking,” he said, “that your honor will please the Queen with your looks, and your lady will please himself, so you had best go along in. But this ugly lump of a bodyguard will please neither, and as they are very sensitive and this is judgment day, he will no doubt be made a head shorter for the coming, so he had best stay with your mounts.”

Shea glanced round in time to see Brodsky replace his expression of fury with the carefully cultivated blank that policemen use, and helped Belphebe off her horse.

Inside, the main hall stretched away with the usual swords and spears in the usual places on the wall, and a rack of heads, not as large as Cuchulainn’s. In the middle of the hall, surrounded at a respectful distance by retainers and armed soldiers, stood an oaken dais, ornamented with strips of bronze and silver. It held two big carven armchairs, in which lounged, rather than sat, the famous sovereigns of Connacht.

Maev might have been in her early forties, still strikingly beautiful, with a long, pale, unlined face, pale blue eyes and yellow hair, hanging in long braids. For a blonde without the aid of cosmetics, she had remarkably red lips.

King Ailill was a less impressive figure than his consort, some inches shorter, fat and paunchy, with small close-set eyes constantly moving and a straggly pepper-and-salt beard. He seemed unable to keep his fingers still. An ulcer type, thought Shea; would be a chain smoker if tobacco existed in this part of the space-time continuum.

A young man in a blue kilt, wearing a silver-hilted shortsword over a tunic embroidered with gold thread, seemed to be acting as usher to make sure that nobody got to the royal couple out of turn. He spotted the newcomers at once, and worked his way towards them.

“Will you be seeking an audience, or have you come merely to look at the greatest King in Ireland?” he asked. His eyes ran appreciatively over Belphebe’s contours.

Shea identified himself, adding, “We have come to pay our respects to the King and Queen . . . ah . . .”

“Maine mac Ailill, Maine mo Epert,” said the young man. This would be one of the numerous sons of Ailill and Maev, who had all been given the same name. But he stood in their path without moving.

“Can we speak to them?” Shea said.

Maine mo Epert put back his head and looked down an aristocratic nose. “Since you are foreigners, you are evidently not knowing that it is the custom in Connacht to have a present for the man who brings you before a King. But I will be forgiving your ignorance.” He smiled a charming smile.

Shea glanced at Belphebe and she looked back in dismay. Their total possessions consisted of what they stood in. “But we have to see them,” he said. “It may be as important to them as to us.”

Maine mo Epert smiled again.

Shea said, “How about a nice broadsword?” and pushed forward his hilt.

“I have a better one,” said Maine mo Epert, exasperatingly, and pushed forward his. “If it were a jewel, now . . .”

“How about seeing Ollgaeth the druid?”

“It is a rule that he will see none but those the Queen sends him.”

Shea felt like whipping out the broadsword and taking a crack at him, but that would probably not be considered polite. Suddenly Belphebe beside him said: “Jewels have we none, sirrah, but from your glances, there is something you would prize more. I am sure that in accordance with your custom, my husband would be glad to lend me to you for the night.”

Shea gasped, and then remembered. That geas she had acquired could be handy as well as troublesome. But it had better not be taken off till morning.

Maine mo Epert’s smile turned into a grin that made Shea want more than ever to swat him, but he clapped his hands and began to push people aside. Shea had just time to whisper: “Nice work, kid,” when the usher pushed a couple of people from the end of a bench and sat them down in the front row, facing the royal pair. At the moment a couple of spearmen were holding a serf and giving evidence that he had stolen a pork shop.