The Tower of Bones (50 page)

He lowered his head to the ground in acknowledgement as she drew near. Yellow pollen from the proliferating young trees gusted in the breeze.

Kate hesitated a short distance away, keeping enough distance so she could comfortably look up into his eyes. They appeared to be the same eyes she recalled, bulging orbs of a brilliant orange, but now they were as big as tractor wheels. The crescents of pupils yawned, lustrous mirrors in which she saw her own reflection. When she spoke, she couldn’t stop her voice from quavering:

‘Are you really my Driftwood?’

His answering whisper vibrated in the rocky ground beneath her feet. ‘You know that is not my name.’

‘Even so, it’s how I want to remember you.’

‘Then Driftwood it shall be.’

‘Thank you – for saving us!’

The great eyes blinked, that strange membrane flitting sideways over them.

‘I returned what you so generously gave me.’

‘I … I didn’t know – when we met earlier – that you were some kind of a god.’

‘I had forgotten myself.’

She hesitated, a wan smile drifting over her face. ‘It’s pathetic, I know, but I want to remember you as my friend. But now you’re not little any more. You’re not pining for your shiny things.’

‘I recall the pleasure of grooming your hair.’

There was a new commotion among the Gargs. A great flock of them appeared in the sky, bearing some huge burden. Kate stared in astonishment at the gigantic leafless tree they were carrying into the valley. They had dug up the upended tree from the cavern of the City of the Ancients. Hundreds of Gargs milled about in the air and on the ground, manoeuvring the enormous structure into the precise position where the Tower had stood. She watched as they rotated it around, so the roots were once more facing the ground and the branches returned to the original crown.

‘What are they up to?’

‘They are constructing a new altar.’

‘An altar to what?’

‘To life – what you have returned to them!’

There was a whispered discussion, and then the masses of Gargs spread out, forming a triangle, its apex directed to where Kate was standing. The stubborn old shaman, Mahteman, appeared before them, casting pollen onto the breeze. The Gargs went down onto their knees, spreading their wings flat on the ground in homage.

‘What do they want?’

‘Your blessing.’

The Gargs were intoning some kind of hymn. Kate wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her forearm. She couldn’t even pretend to understand the monumental events that were taking place here, in the valley of the Tower of Bones.

Bending down, she picked up a handful of the pollen that covered the ground at her feet. She held it in her open palm, facing the Gargs, and she blew on the pollen, gazing out at them and at the altar they had constructed of the fossil tree. She had no need even to think of what they wanted of her. Her oraculum flared.

She watched as the tree sprouted buds and, within moments, fresh green leaves. The old shaman fell onto his knees in front of her and chanted again – two names, it now seemed. One of them was Omdorrréilliuc, and the second, sounding utterly alien to Kate’s ears, must be her own: Greeneyes, the life-giver!

The dragon rumbled: ‘I think it is time.’

Kate turned away from the chanting Gargs. She smiled up at the dragon. ‘You’re so restless. You can’t wait to leave?’

‘A sea dragon hungers for the deep.’

She closed the small distance between them, then reached out to touch him, the lowest edge of one nostril, which was as high as she could reach. She brushed her fingers against the scaly flesh, as hard as iron.

‘Will you take me back – to Ulla Quemar?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you understand …?’

‘A new Momu must be born.’

He made a staircase of one wing so she could climb to the natural seat at the back of his neck, between the mountainous shoulder-blades, amid the brilliant green and yellow feathers of his ruff. Even climbing onto his neck, ascending the valley between his wings, the ground already seemed so far below it was like sitting on the top of a tall building. Kate discovered a secure-looking perch. She lashed herself to him, using some of the finest feather-hairs, which were as tough to manipulate as cables. She became aware of the extraordinary silence that had taken hold of the multitude below, the gathering of the Gargs, now on their feet. Her eyes found Alan, leaning on his spear, in the company of Mo, Turkeya, Qwenqwo and the towering figure of Ainé. They were all watching her. Tears sprang into her eyes. As she lifted
her hand to wave the great wings were already starting to beat.

‘The ocean is in your eyes again.’

‘I know.’

Already they were rising. The power in each massive wing-beat simply took her breath away.

‘Driftwood dreams of eatings.’

‘Stop it!’

‘Ummmm! Of swallowing um whole, squirming and wriggling!’

‘Please don’t.’

Her eyes still wept, but her tears had turned to laughter. She shrieked with the mad, careening pleasure of winged flight, clinging on to whatever came to hand in the nest of dragon feathers as they soared into the sky.

‘Juicy bones – crunchy!’

Mark kissed Nan in the grass down by the river, ignoring the rain bucketing down on them out of a cloud-wracked sky. She was wearing the familiar white linen gown edged with silver he remembered from the vision through the stellate window. The material was so gossamer-fine it clung to her skin with the rain. She must have worn the same gown two thousand years before at the very moment when she had been subsumed by the Third Power. The very thought of it caused him to laugh with disbelief before taking a shuddering breath.

We’re alive! We made it!

He took a deeper, gulping breath. His limbs felt jittery, as if unsure of themselves, but they also felt healthy. His heart was pounding but it was through excitement – sheer exhilaration!

She whispered, ‘Do you love me still?’

He kissed her again. They kissed one another with
their eyes wide open. Neither could get enough of just looking at the other – of staring into each other’s eyes – of touching, holding, hugging, kissing.

‘I bloody-well adore you.’

He too was wearing the same clothes as when he had been subsumed, the leather jacket over the Olhyiu seal skins. But now the jacket felt too small. That puzzled him until he realised that he must have grown. The oracula were still present in both their brows. He could see Nan’s and he could feel his own, pulsating strongly. He brought his left hand back over his shoulder to confirm that the battleaxe was also there, suspended in the leather harness. He got to his knees so he could shed the harness. Then he removed the jacket, wrapping it about her shivering body.

He reckoned that it was the closing hour of daylight in what, judging from the yellowing of the leaves, must be early autumn.

The doctor’s house. Clonmel – Earth!

Just the thought of it was enough to make him want to shout out with triumph. He felt giddy. When he staggered onto uncertain feet, it provoked a roaring in his ears. In re-strapping the battleaxe to his rain-soaked back, rivulets of static electricity, like minuscule bolts of lightning, ran over his body before discharging through his feet into the earth. He helped Nan onto her feet in the sodden grass, supporting her unsteady legs.

Even as he struggled to comprehend what was
happening, a blue-black flame burst out of his brow. The clouds became transparent, so he could see beyond them to something else: a streamlined raptor shape, shimmering against the fading blue of evening. It had been the oraculum that had erupted into blue-black fire. Maybe it was the same power that had burned the poisons out of his blood?

She whispered, ‘You’re growing a boyish beard.’

He felt at his chin and confirmed it. So much appeared to have changed! He hugged her, supported her with his arm around her shoulders, kissed her blue-black hair, flattened to her brow.

Their muscles were still jittery as they walked up the garden through the mud and puddles. The Doctor’s House looked every bit as strange as he remembered it from when he and Mo had occasionally met up here with Kate and Alan. He looked up at the Georgian paned windows, standing proud of the walls with their bases and porticos, and the pentagonal tower on the corner with its dilapidated flagpole, bearing the drooping tricolour. They made their way to the heavy front door, where he knocked hard enough to be heard in the cavernous old building, his teeth chattering and his fingers trembling.

‘Hello, Bridey! I’m Kate’s friend, Mark.’

The stout woman who came out of the door in response to his knocking narrowed her eyes against the downpour. A small black and white sheepdog – Mark recognised Kate’s beloved Darkie – scampered about her ankles, her feet
wrapped in worn-out slippers on the worn stone step. She stared at him, and then at Nan.

‘And who’s she?’

‘Nan – Nantosueta! Queen of Ossierel!’

Bridey exclaimed: ‘Glory be!’

An attack of the shivers ran through Mark’s body. ‘Sorry if we’ve startled you, Bridey. But we’re freezing out here.’

‘Ye better come in, then, young Mark – ye and yeer Queen. Sure ye look like a couple of drownded rats!’

‘Are ye ghosts?’

‘No. But I can imagine we might look like it.’

Their arrival had been a considerable shock to her. And it wasn’t likely to get any easier. But there was also something disturbing about Bridey’s appearance. She looked bleary-eyed and dishevelled. They were sitting on either side of the big square table in the kitchen, on which Mark had placed the Fir Bolg battleaxe. Upstairs he had discovered some jeans and a denim shirt belonging to Kate’s uncle, Fergal, that went close enough to fitting him, and Nan was wearing jeans and a knitted pullover of Kate’s. She looked remarkably close to how he had imagined her in Dromenon. Upstairs he had also found the bathroom, with its sink-top mirror. The face that gazed back at him from the glass looked like somebody else’s. A grown-up man’s face with a sprinkle of gingery blond beard. He had shaved off that beard with Fergal’s razor. And he had stared at the clean-shaven face that remained, stared at
the black triangle, with its metamorphosing arabesques of silver pulsating in time with his heartbeat.

Nothing is the same …

He had to force the memory out of his mind as he now sipped at a mug of strong coffee by the big square table. ‘Bridey – Kate’s alive.’

Bridey’s face paled. But still there was a dogged look in her eyes. ‘Alive …?’

She was sitting in a chair across from him, her elbows resting on the table, rubbing work-reddened hands one over the other. Her eyes stared fixedly at the rune-glowing blades of the battleaxe. Darkie whined, twining itself around her feet. Nan, a glass of water clutched in her hand, stood in the doorway and stared about the kitchen, with its pots and pans, and the turf fire blazing in the cast-iron range.

Bridey exhaled. ‘Are ye goin’ to tell me what happened to Kate?’

‘I’m afraid that you’ll find it hard to believe.’ Mark took a breath. ‘And I need to know if you’re on your own here.’

‘Fergal doesn’t spend much time here any more – not now …’ Her eyes grew moist, but she shook it off. ‘Sure I can’t wait all day. Why, ye’re making me dizzy just looking at the pair a ye. There are rainbows running over yeer skin.’

Mark nodded, then began to tell her their story. It took him quite a while. Darkie seemed to lift up its eyes every
time he mentioned Kate’s name. When he got to the part where Kate was injured, Bridey poured herself a large whiskey. Mark had the impression this was nothing unusual for Bridey these days. She grabbed the dog by the scruff of the neck and hauled it up onto her lap, fondling it distractedly, squashing its ears flat onto its head as she listened and, when she needed to, she asked questions. She seemed unable to keep eye-to-eye contact with Mark. Her gaze kept wandering back to the battleaxe, with its glowing blades.

‘Sure it’s the strangest story I’ve ever heard.’

‘I suppose it must be.’

‘You say that Kate’s lost? She’s a prisoner of a … a witch?’

‘So Alan told me. By the time that happened I was … Well I was out of the picture.’

‘And that’s why I haven’t heard a word from her in two years?’

Mark thought:
Two years! In Tír it had seemed no more than one
.

‘She’s a prisoner – but alive, as far as I know. Alan has gone to rescue her, with the help of the army of the Shee.’

‘Dear lord!’ Bridey’s hands loosened on the dog, which took the opportunity of scrambling out of her lap. But it only moved a foot or two away from her, staring up at her bewildered face. ‘Sure none of it makes a bit of sense!’

Mark hesitated, uncertain how to convince Bridey of
what he was telling her. ‘Look at me, Bridey. Look at my face!’

Bridey’s gaze lifted to Mark’s face, her eyes fastening on the black triangle in his brow. She could hardly miss the silver motes and arabesques that were pulsating within it in time with his heartbeat.

‘Look at Nan – at her face.’

Bridey gazed from one to the other.

‘They’re not birthmarks.’ Mark’s own eyes wandered over the central portion of the table surface, which was covered by an accumulation of newspapers. Everywhere he saw pictures of a world in turmoil. Buildings, whole streets, in flames.

‘There’s something going on here. I didn’t guide the Temple Ship to you, Bridey. I had the image of the sawmill in my mind.’

Bridey sighed, looking down at the dog.

‘You know, just to look at us, that we haven’t come from anywhere normal or nice. But things seem to be wrong here too. What’s going on?’

Bridey murmured, barely audibly, but clearly expecting him to hear. ‘Could be that madman of a father sent ye?’

The triangle pulsated violently in Mark’s brow. It brought a rush of sweat to his face.

‘What has Grimstone got to do with it?’

‘Don’t pretend ye don’t know.’

‘What am I supposed to know?’

‘What he did to Padraig!’

‘What did he do, Bridey?’