The Tower of Bones (7 page)

Hocht fell silent, her face haggard with presentiment.

‘What’s really going on?’

‘This we do not know. Only that the De Danaan perceived forces that threatened all we hold dear.’

‘What happened to the High Architect’s oraculum – the Oraculum of the Moon?’

‘Fallen, alas, into the hands of evil.’

‘Does that mean that you, the Council-in-Exile, are no longer able to test the integrity of the Fáil?’

A murmur of despair passed Hocht’s lips. ‘Perhaps,’ she murmured, ‘even the Fáil itself cannot last for ever. Perhaps even to hope so was the ultimate vanity. Yet belief in its power for salvation was a vanity to good purpose. Through such belief good was venerated over evil. All manner of beauty and harmony prospered under the protection and guidance of the Arinn’s creation in beloved Ossierel – alas, what grief that loss still harbours in my heart.’

Alan was silent for a moment, thinking about what she had said. ‘I’m grateful to you, Sister, for your concern and your advice. But there are things I have to ask.’

‘Ask, then.’

‘First – the Ambassador, Milish. I don’t want her to get into trouble for risking her life to save me.’

‘The Princess of Laása will suffer no punishment. Even if there were none amongst us who remember what we owe to the family of Xhosa – and in truth there are many – is she not a friend and counsellor to the Kyra of the Shee? Her enemies would do well to consider that.’

Alan nodded. Ainé would allow no harm to come to Milish.

‘You have another question?’

He hesitated. ‘I need to know as much as I can about the creature that’s holding Kate prisoner in that horrible place. This so-called Great Witch, Olc.’

‘Be warned again. Though it is said that you have led the forces that defeated a Legun in battle, Olc’s power is
greater than any Legun. And her cunning, as necromancer, is more deadly. Though she may well be working in league with the Tyrant, nevertheless she resents his supremacy and craves to usurp him. In her Tower of Bones, which is set in a desolate plain known as the Bitter Marshes – a place of extraordinary conflict in times past – she seeks to reawaken a force that once resurrected would mean ruin and desolation for all.’

‘Why would she do this?’

‘In her lust for power she seeks to resurrect a soul spirit of truly immense power and evil. If ever she succeeds her Tower of Bones might rival Ghork Mega in power and darkness. More I cannot add since, thanks to the vigilance of her succubi and Gargs, none who has entered her domain has emerged to tell the tale.’

‘What are these succubi?’

‘The succubi are Olc’s own offspring, spawned from her corrupted spirit.’ Hocht hesitated. ‘Would you, in spite of all I have warned you, be so foolish as to challenge the Witch in that terrible fastness?’

Alan gazed away from the focus of her clouded eyes. Something was wrong. The oraculum in his brow was pulsating.

He said: ‘Ma’am – I sense danger.’

She crashed her staff against the flagstones, causing echoes to crack and reverberate through the cloisters.

‘Come then –
quickly
!’ She clutched at his arm, blinking away what might have been her own presentiments and
fears. ‘Such talk has reminded me. There is something, a relic of your own world, I need to show you.’

The sense of danger was so tangible that Alan probed every alcove and crevice as Sister Hocht led him to a door of black oak that opened off the labyrinth of corridors. The door appeared to be locked, without a handle, not even so much as a keyhole. With a chant, strangely vibrant and reverential from her otherwise dry throat, the old woman performed a spiral with the head of her staff, then lifted her left hand in a simple gesture and the heavy door fell open.

‘Welcome, Duval, Mage Lord of Earth,’ she said, ‘to the Chamber of Enlightenment!’

Such was the brilliant glow of light that flowed out of the parted door that Alan couldn’t help but hurry through to explore the brightly lit chamber. Astonished at the beauty that confronted him, his instincts carried him to the dead centre of a floor that was a perfect circle perhaps a hundred feet wide, finding himself at the heart of an exquisite mosaic of multicoloured marble inset with semi-precious gemstones. The scenes in the mosaic appeared to represent life in all of its wonder, from intertwining forest trees and brilliantly plumaged birds to the richness of life in the oceans.

But Alan’s attention was distracted by the fact that his oraculum was still pulsing strongly with the presentiment of danger.

‘Where does the light come from?’ He stared about the domed walls and ceiling, carved of a fine ivory-coloured marble, and illuminated by a perfectly even glow of light that filled the chamber.

‘The walls and ceiling are but a single carved glowstone.’

‘Wow!’

‘Ach – such beauty as you behold is but a shell of vanity. The real illumination is the blessed light of knowledge.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Behold!’

With another spiral motion of her staff Sister Hocht caused the walls to change. Where there had been a seamless glowing shell Alan now saw a honeycomb of small repositories – pigeonholes. He looked closer and saw that each pigeonhole was annotated, in a script he couldn’t read, and filled with parchment scrolls.

‘What is it – some kind of a library?’

‘A scriptorium. A poor copy of the blessed scriptorium of Ossierel, where the greatest wisdom of our age was gathered. We saved what we could in the weeks before Ossierel was attacked, and brought it here.’

Alan gazed about him at hundreds of scrolls filling every shelf and niche. ‘There’s something among these scrolls that might help me?’

Hocht gazed about her, found the niche she was searching for, plucked a single scroll from the many and handed it to him.

A growing impatience caused Alan to snatch at the leather thong that bound it, attempting to tear it open in his hurry to see what was inside.

The old woman’s hand enfolded his wrist. It felt surprisingly strong, forcing him to patience. ‘Hsst! Now I too sense it.’

He stared at her, tense with the imminence of danger.

‘My young friend – should we not regard each other as friends!’ She turned from side to side, as if searching for the source of their common presentiment. ‘Quickly –
quickly!
’ With a sigh of concern she waved her staff at the walls, causing the honeycomb to meld back into its glowing blankness, then spun away from him as if to hurry him back out into the marble cloisters. Once outside she lifted her face and sniffed at the air. ‘Ach – already it comes! Such little time do I have!’

‘What is it? What do you know?’

Scurrying as fast as her tired old bones could carry her she led Alan into a new cloister, with a colonnade to his left that opened directly onto the moonlit estuary. With a wave of her staff she slammed shut all doors opening into the cloister before settling into a small niche, illuminated by torchlight, where she unwrapped the binding thong and then handed him the scroll, which unfurled to a single oblong of yellowed vellum on which he saw five faded lines inscribed with strokes, some perpendicular and some slanted …

‘It’s Ogham?’

‘What you see is only a fragment of a greater whole, though scripted in the poet’s own hand.’

Alan couldn’t help recalling, with grief, his grandfather, Padraig, who had known how to read the ancient writing. But it was Mark, and not Alan, who had gone to the trouble of learning Ogham from Padraig.

The oraculum flared.

His eyes lifted from the fragment of parchment to see a growing consternation in the eyes of the old woman. He followed her gaze backwards along the corridor to where a wraith of mist had appeared.

‘Sister Hocht – I can’t read it.’

‘Well then,’ her eyes turned from the corridor to confront his gaze, ‘I shall read it for you. It is but a fragment from the Prophecies of Diarmuid in the
Book of Omens.’

His voice was hushed, as gentle as his anxiety would allow: ‘Read it to me – please?’

‘Hsst!’ She silenced him, looking back to where the mist spiralled and turned, as if searching, then grasped the hilt of her staff in both hands and closed her eyes tight in circles of concentric wrinkles. ‘It comes –
it comes
!’

The oraculum began to pulsate rapidly and powerfully.

‘What is it?’

‘A deathmaw.’

Alan froze, recalling the deathmaw that had threatened the Temple Ship over the river in the Vale of Tazan. The oraculum burst into a lurid red flame in his brow. ‘Tell me what to do. How do I fight it?’

‘Alas, it is too late for that. To fight it will only delay it rather than defeat it. And that might expose you to its master’s attention. I must make use of what time yet remains. Ach! I have journeyed far. I have known Dromenon. Let me translate the prophecy in what little time is left to me.

‘A dragon is rising

Over the Rath of Bones

Blacker than night his wings

Trailing rainbows

Over the bog of slaughter.’

Alan shook his head. ‘What does it mean?’

She whispered urgently. ‘A fragment of a longer prophecy, the meaning of which is obscure. But my attention was drawn to its mention of the Rath of Bones. Could it be that same Tower in which your friend, Kate, is imprisoned?’

Alan felt the icy mist envelop them. He pressed her: ‘Is there no way I can stop this – use my powers to heal you?’

Her hand, shrunken as a claw, clasped his own.

‘Do not even think to do so. Then it would have you too. Save yourself. In doing so, you will aid what purpose I still serve.’

Alan turned the power of the oraculum inwards. His body was flooded with the power spreading throughout
his bloodstream. He felt the hairs spring erect on his head. Yet still he returned the fierce clasp of the old woman’s hand, seeing blood appear from her nostrils and run, dripping, from the point of her chin. Her gown was smoking, not from the power of his oraculum but from a fouler flame that was consuming her. Her face was turned away from his, upwards, as if towards some visions she saw in the heavens. ‘My death I embrace willingly. My body is weak and easily conquered, but my spirit is strong. My spirit will join the De Danaan in her sacrifice.’

Blood issued from the old woman’s eyes. Her breath came in gasps. Alan couldn’t just stand aside and ignore her torment. He had to help her.

Placing his arm around her shoulders he extended the oracular protection from his own body to hers, allowing her fallen head to rest against his shoulder.

‘Foolish! Ach …!’

‘Please, tell me! You sense something important in the words of the prophecy? Something that connects to Kate?’

‘I … I cannot be sure. But Diarmuid … a great Seer … Ach … I burn!’

‘Diarmuid – what did he mean?’

‘Such a spirit … omens …’

He was losing her. Alan wished he had a little heal-well to ease her suffering. ‘Hold on – please. Just a moment longer!’ He brushed her brow again, cupped it in his pulsating hand. Though it seemed cruel to press the
tormented Sister for more information, yet he felt he had to. ‘What do you mean?’

Her voice gathered a shrill crackling strength from his embrace. ‘The Great Witch … she resurrects the soul spirit of Fangorath. Fangorath … the most dreadful … the Dragonbane …’

‘Fangorath?’

‘Half divine …’ Hocht’s voice was the merest whisper, so he had to listen closely to her dying breath to catch her words. ‘A god’s own son … a titan of darkness.’ Her hand flailed, clutched at his face, as if in warning.
‘Beware …’

‘Beware this Fangorath?’

The old woman’s blood was soaking into his shoulder. His hand was dripping with her blood, yet still he held her to him, infusing what he could of his own life force into her, to keep her alive for mere moments longer.

‘What will happen if Olc resurrects Fangorath? She plans to use him – to use Fangorath’s soul spirit – to give her the power she craves?’

Hocht clutched at his face with fingers over which the parchment skin and even the very nails had been stripped to bare bone. ‘Worse!’

‘What could be worse? What is it about the Tower of Bones?’

She whispered a few words, so slurred it was almost impossible to make them out. But he saw the shape of them come from her destroyed lips. And he heard them,
like a thunderclap, through the oraculum in his brow.

‘The Third Portal!’

Alan realised what she must mean. He recalled the advice given to him in Dromenon:
In Carfon is one of the three portals
…

‘The Tower of Bones – it’s a portal? A Third Portal to the Fáil?’

Sister Hocht sighed, a low-pitched guttural croak, and her head fell back, her eyes boiled white.

Kate knew that Faltana was nearby even though she couldn’t see her. She could smell the rancid odour of her and she could hear her laboured breathing in the glimmerless dark as she arrived to grasp her arm and check her pulse. Though any sense of contact should have been welcome in this chamber of unfeeling, Kate felt nothing but disgust at the regular visits from her tormentor, knowing that Faltana was terrified of what would happen if Kate died on her before the Witch’s purpose was served.

A flare of light: it was no more than the sickly glow of a wyre-stone, its candle-like illumination framing Faltana’s hand, but Kate was so accustomed to pitch dark it forced her to clench her eyes tightly shut as if she were staring into the noonday sun.

Faltana’s voice hissed so close into Kate’s ear she felt the wet of her spittle, ‘Open your eyes, lizard-dung. I know you hear me.’

Through lids swollen with cold and hunger, Kate struggled to see the creature she so hated, etched in sweat by the lurid glow. Seeing Faltana gave her a focus for her loathing, that dark bulk, that slug-beast, a denser evil within the darkness, her empty eye socket rimed where the light glittered over her sweaty countenance.

‘Why don’t you just kill me?’

‘I shall – be assured of it. But not yet. No! In her wisdom my mistress orders that killing is too pleasant an end for you. But pain! Ah, the delicious thoughts of that. I crave your pain as you crave the coming of your saviour.’