The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) (8 page)

“Grandad, you’ve got to be kidding!”

Mark snorted. “Come on, Alan. Don’t you believe in fairy tales?”

“Skepticism is only natural. And sure fairy tales is how most people think of the legends.” Padraig gazed at Mark with the same wan smile he had earlier bestowed on Mo. “Indeed I wish, with all of my heart and soul, that
Sidhe ár Feimhin
truly did belong to the world of fairy tales. But alas, young Mark, fairy tales do not come with such a terrible burden of responsibility.”

Alan pressed him. “What do you mean?”

“There’s something I am now obliged to show you. Something long guarded from skeptical eyes. A link to that old world of terror and ruin. I would have preferred it to remain lost and forgotten. But I can see that you’re special, all four of you, though I cannot even begin to imagine why, or what will come of it.”

Mark cried, “Mr. O’Brien, you should stop this now!”

“Ah, now, young Mark. As I see it, it would appear that the mountain is calling you, like it or not. Moreover, the dangers that threaten you are real enough. Knowledge, be it of the most ancient and forbidden nature, is also a weapon of kinds. And if I can arm you in any way at all, if I can give you some means of protecting yourselves, I will.”

Alan saw the patent honesty in Padraig’s worried face. He felt a tiny thrill of fright invade his being.

“The burden eventually would have become yours, Alan, but I would have put it aside for many a year if the
choice were mine. But the coming of Grimstone to this town has robbed me of that choice. What Mark and Mo have told me about their adoptive father makes plain that he is not the preacher he pretends to be. The sigil he adores confirms my worst fears. And this in turn tells me that it is hardly accidental that you—Mark and Mo—fell into his clutches at such a precious and early age—though the fact he kept you close to him all of your young years, however far from paternal his instincts would have been, is equally revealing. His coming here, to Clonmel, was no accident. Time, therefore, is pressing.” Padraig stood. “Come, then, if your skepticism is to be answered! I’ll take you to the place that Grimstone is really searching for, a place of secrets that must be concealed from him at all costs. Then surely your eyes will be opened. But I warrant you’ll not thank me for it.”

The Grave of Feimhin

With Padraig’s machete hacking through the profusion of nettles and spiky brambles, they made their way up a twisting climb through the dense woodland that coated the foothills of the Comeraghs, finally emerging into a shadowed bower. The surrounding trees were ancient oaks, their barks hoary and fissured from centuries of winters and mottled with the bright greens and yellows of mosses. To an unknowing eye, it would have hinted at nothing of any special importance. At the center, reached by more hacking with the machete, a mound appeared, standing no more than a yard above the leaf-strewn floor.

The entrance to the barrow was covered with a great flat stone, itself buried under brambles and soil. Padraig cleared the surface of the stone using the machete.
With growing excitement the four friends discovered that, with the cover stone removed, they were gazing into a stone-lined tunnel burrowing into darkness. They switched on the flashlights, brought at Padraig’s insistence, cutting through the gloom of what now appeared to be a narrow, descending shaft, and they followed Padraig’s lead into the tunnel on hands and knees. After twenty yards of crawling through dirt and roots, they stumbled into an octagonal stone-lined chamber, tall enough for everyone, other than Padraig, to stand upright. Here, in the light of their flashlights, they stared awestruck at a skeleton, as long as Padraig was tall, and laid in final repose upon a bier of solid stone.

“Mind you keep well back. Touch nothing of the mortal remains!”

“Who is it?” Kate couldn’t keep a quaver from her voice.

“I’ll leave you to decide that for yourselves!”

The fragments of armor, the great bronze helm, filigreed in gold amid the greens and yellows of rimy decay, told them it must be the remains of some warrior prince, laid to rest a very long time ago. The flesh and clothing had rotted away but the skeleton was preserved—the huge skull ivory-white, as if it belonged to somebody more recently buried. The face of the skull was long and lean, with jaws of yellowing teeth that appeared to gather together with a snarl, and garnets filling the eye-sockets, as if fixing for eternity the rage that had burned in them in life. A cuirass of
bronze enveloped the enormous rib cage, decorated and emblazoned with a similar filigree as the helm.

“Look more closely, if you will, at the brow!”

They gathered around, holding the flashlights closer.

“Holy shit!”

Alan’s exclamation was quickly followed by three others.

The blow that killed this fearsome warrior was visible in the great slash that had cut through the helmet and the head within it, from the crown to the top of his left eye-socket.

“Now mark you his weapon!”

Their lights picked out a great sword, with a blade blacker than pitch, which ran diagonally across the lower body and legs. The hilt was still grasped by the skeletal hand within a heavy gauntlet of metal turned green by the verdigris of time.

“Look!” Mo murmured. She pointed to the hilt.

Mark saw it too and he shivered with fright. Then Alan and Kate, their hearts pounding, stared at the sigil of the triple infinity, embossed in a silvery outline on the hilt of the sword.

“Yes, Mo—the same symbol I recognized in your notebook the day I first met you. So now you know why I realized your arrival was no accident.”

“Buh-buh-buh-but what does it muh-mean?”

“You’re surprised to find this symbol on a sword and not a cross? Things are not always as they appear. I’ll wager that what you imagined to be a cross in
Grimstone’s hand was originally the hilt and crosspiece and a stub of blade of the dagger that was the companion piece to the weapon you now see. Did you not say it came from a barrow such as this one?”

Mark, his voice taut with shock, answered for Mo. “Grimstone told us he got it from some collector. The collector told him it came from a barrow grave but Grimstone refused to believe it. He pretended it came from Christian times, with some link to the Knights Templar.”

“This collector was almost certainly a grave robber, and one that, if what you suspect is true, your adoptive father killed because he coveted the robber’s most precious possession.”

“Mr. O’Brien—do you think it came from this same grave?”

“I think not, Kate. This grave has never been looted. My family has watched over it for a thousand years—and likely much longer. Our original name was not O’Brien but d’Eiragh. And even the very mountains here still bear the family name, in Comeragh—Cum Eiragh. Which means the fort of Eiragh. And your family too, Kate, was once tied to ours—the name was not always Shaunessy.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Shaunessys and Eiraghs are distantly related.”

Padraig directed the beam of his flashlight over walls of masoned stone incised with a dense profusion of pictures and scored everywhere with narrow lines, cut across with verticals and diagonals.

“D’you recognize the nature of these?”

Kate’s voice was trembling. “They’re runes.”

“Ogham, Kate! An alphabetical script older than runes, though some experts believe they became the basis of Nordic runes. These tell the story of the grave in detail. The Ogham itself is somewhat less than two thousand years old but the grave is a good deal older. I have spent many years studying that history. Indeed, I suspect the Ogham captures what might earlier have been carried down in words, or more likely song.”

“What do they say, Grandad?”

“Tales that must have been retold around many a campfire before the very wonder and terror of them was captured in the stone. But it is this symbol here that will most interest you!”

Padraig ran his fingers over the chiseled outline, first in one place, then again here and there, as if it represented such a dark and terrible potency it reproduced itself over the confining six walls.

“Is it the name of the warrior?”

“Indeed not!” The old man’s voice fell to a low-pitched murmur. “Never the name—that curse could not be carved in stone.” He took a breath and calmed himself, allowing his voice to fall to his normal quiet tone. “These inscriptions are a ward.”

“What’s a ward?” Alan asked.

“A protection against evil,” Kate breathed, reaching out to take Alan’s hand.

“Kate is right. They ward against a dark force with such a hunger for domination that none could control their own destiny once under its mantle.”

Mark’s voice sounded taut but curious. “All these stories in the Ogham—they tell of war, don’t they, Mr. O’Brien?”

“Yes, so they do, Mark. This warrior prince was buried at the close of wars that must have seemed hopeless in those far-off days, wars without end. To stop the slaughter, the wise men of their time made sacrifices. They called upon ancient forces, such as might defeat a warrior prince who wielded such a blade of darkness—a blade, as is written here in the very stone, a hundred times blacker than midnight yet forged neither of iron nor bronze. An iron blade would be long rusted away in this damp air. You can see for yourself that even the bronze of his armor, which would last better than iron, is almost worn away to dust. Yet the sword has survived. Only with help could they defeat this warrior and thus end the chaos. The grave was cut and sealed with warded stone—magic to you, young Mark. But what appears magic today was knowledge in those far-off days.”

Mark’s face was ghostly in the dim light. “All I can see is an old grave, with pictures and fairy tales on the walls.”

“Ah, now! Must I awaken this thing in order to convince you of something that is staring you in the face?”

There were cries of disagreement from Alan and the two girls. But Mark shook his head, still struggling to believe any of this.

“Stay here a moment and touch nothing. I’ll be back.”

Padraig left them and went to the surface, returning in a few minutes with his hands cupped in the shape of a bowl. Under the light, he opened them to reveal a mass of woodlice, ants and centipedes from some rotting tree trunk.

“Ugh!” Kate made a face.

“Now switch off your flashlights for a moment and watch—you, Mark, in particular.” In the pitch dark, they stared with a prickling awe as they saw how the sigil of the triple infinity glowed, like a silvery malignant eye. “Bear with me a moment longer,” bade Padraig, as he poured the insects in a living trickle over the black blade. There was a sparking, like an electric discharge, on contact, and then a fierce smoky flame. The insects convulsed and burned.

The four friends jerked back, their nostrils filled with the acrid stench. The flashlights flared back on, in trembling hands.

“Whuh-whuh-what does it muh-mean, Mr. O’Brien?”

“Even today, thousands of years after it was forged, the blade still retains its ancient power. Such is its potency it is still deadly to anything it touches. A formidable weapon. And I’m afraid that you but glimpse its real potential for malice—undimmed by time.”

Alan’s eyes narrowed. “Who was he?”

“I think you have guessed that by now, every one of you!”

“This is Feimhin?”

“The warrior prince himself.”

“But who defeated him? Who killed him?” Kate’s finger was pointing to the cloven skull.

“The Ogham tells of a warrior tribe that was not native to Ireland. They talk about little people, no taller than children, who were the fiercest warriors. Some say they were called to assist another tribe, known as Tuatha De Danaan—the people of Diana—when the De Danaans were being conquered by the newly arriving Celts. More likely it was civil warfare within the Tuatha De Danaan themselves. The name of these ferocious warriors was Fir Bolg. The words, in that old language, are believed to mean something like ‘Warriors of Destiny.’

“According to the legends, it was Feimhin himself who, in his lust for power, first opened the gate on Slievenamon. His call was answered by a force of darkness, perhaps the same force that forged the sword—and Grimstone’s broken dagger.

“What followed was chaos, raging throughout the length and breadth of Ireland, and extending far beyond, to Britain, as it is now known, and further still, deep into Europe, and even beyond. Never-ending war, all driven by that unassuageable malice. The slaughter is described as fearsome. Everywhere throughout these lands you find funeral mounds and circles of wood and stone, calling on the gods and goddesses to save the tormented people.

“The wisest of counsels suggested the boldest possible answer. Since the chaos had been imported from
another world, through Feimhin’s gate, they called for assistance through that same portal. In answer to their call came the Fir Bolg, who had long perfected the arts of warfare in combat against that same dark force in that other world.”

Padraig ran his finger over the Ogham.

“‘Here,’” he read, “‘the strangers came, in answer to our prayers. They fought through rack and ruin, with indomitable courage.’” Padraig’s finger ran farther along the chiseled lines. “
Fir is Mna
—they fought men and women, side by side, spurning the weapons of local tribes and princes and favoring their own ward-strengthened axes of bronze. Look here at this description. I’ll read it so you can see for yourselves—‘
Men and women of unearthly countenance . . . Warriors whose very hair turned to flame in battle
.’ The inscriptions go on to describe them as fearing nothing, not even the darkness that had taken this prince’s soul. The terror was finally brought to an end when the Fir Bolg overcame Feimhin’s armies and slew the prince himself in the heat of battle, ending the chaos.”

Padraig’s eyes fell from the Ogham to turn and look at the cloven helmet and skull of the warrior. “A blow,” he murmured, “from the battle-axe of a Fir Bolg.”

Kate murmured, “What did they mean, describing the Fir Bolg as looking unearthly?”

Padraig shrugged. “The legends refer to them as strangers, warriors from another world. Perhaps some elements of the stories are fables. People of other races—but from Earth—might have been mistaken for beings from another
world. But is it not also possible the storytellers were merely recounting the truth?”

Mark muttered, “Like Tír na n’Og—the land of eternal youth.”

“Indeed, Mark, the story of fair Niamh, who fell in love with Oisín the hunter and poet and took him to her land of perpetual youth. But even in your English legends, don’t you have Avalon?”

Mo was staring at Padraig, her eyes round with a mixture of terror and wonder. In her fright the stammer had worsened. “Whu-whu-whu-wh . . . what if—if suh-suh-some-buh-body—?”

“If somebody bad were to take up the weapon of Feimhin again?”

Mo nodded.

“Well, now, hasn’t the same thought entered my head!” Padraig ruffled her hair, in reassurance, then spoke abruptly to all four of the friends. “Enough of this talk of wars and ruin. I think we’ve spent sufficient time in the company of that sword.”

Back at the sawmill, sitting in a daze of wonderment on the grass in the late-afternoon sunshine, Alan continued to question Padraig. “Did Mom know about Feimhin’s grave?”

“I had no son, nor was I likely to have one since my wife died giving birth to Geraldine. So I was obliged to pass the knowledge to my daughter.”

All of these new facts were starting to make sense to Alan. “That was why Mom ran away? She ran because she was frightened?”

Padraig turned to gaze at their faces, one by one. “Knowledge of Feimhin’s grave, and his black blade, is a great responsibility. Its existence must remain our absolute secret.”

There was a tremor of anguish Alan could not keep from his voice. “Then why did you show us, Grandad?”

“Are you not being called to the gate? The same gate through which both darkness and the Fir Bolg were summoned long ago?”

Mo spoke softly, “Buh-buh-but we’re not wuh-wuh-warriors!”

Padraig nodded, his face grim.

Kate agreed with Mo. “We know nothing about those sorts of things. What could we possibly have to offer some . . . some other world?”

Padraig reached out and briefly squeezed her hand. “You do have something special about you. The killing of your family tells me that. My Geraldine! I have to wonder if what happened is linked with the same burden, and now your involvement. Ah, sure this is an accursed place!”