The Defiler Read online

  "It wasn't that kind of dream," Sláine said, explaining how the Weatherwitch had melded with him and the visions he had had in response to her invasion of his sleep.

  "It wasn't natural," he finished, as though that explained everything, the harper, the dream of the dead witch and the disappearing bird. "By that I mean not a dream as much as a prophetic vision. I am not even sure the harper was real."

  "Well his drink was real enough. My head is still throbbing, thank you very much."

  "If he was, he was not a mortal man. His skin was too pale, face too thin, fingers too long. No, I'd wager he was one of the Sidhe."

  At the mention of the fey folk from beyond the veil all colour left the dwarf's face.

  "We need to follow the bird."

  "You don't really mean that."

  "The bird is the key, thrice doesil around the broken stones and it left. We must follow it and find the Skinless Man."

  "Have you listened to yourself? Find the Skinless Man, because you had a dream. And now you want to track a vanishing bird. Now I know why I am not a hero," Ukko shook his head. "And the best part is you say that as though disappearing into thin air is the easiest thing in the world. Why is nothing ever simple with you?"

  "Probably because, as you like to remind me, I am a hero," Sláine said, a hint of mirth reaching his eyes.

  "Lug save me from heroes," Ukko muttered. "I just want to mention again, just in case you missed it first time, this whole thing makes me very uncomfortable."

  Sláine walked back to the bedrolls and gathered his possessions together. Slough Feg's accursed book lay open on Ukko's cloak. Sláine could not make hide nor hair out of the spidery scrawl of Ogham. "Found anything of interest?" he asked, not that he trusted Ukko to tell the truth even if he could decipher the runes. That was why he had decided to take the book to Tall Iesin. The wanderer would be able to interpret the full implications of Feg's plans and the impact they would have on the Land of the Young if they ever came to fruition.

  "Enough to know I don't want to go chasing after some vanishing bird," Ukko said, closing the book and stowing it in his pack. "Ever heard of the word 'trap'? No, didn't think you had," Ukko answered himself before Sláine could. The dwarf had an annoying habit of running off at the mouth when he was nervous - which was more often than not. "Let's just say there is a reason Throt called it Feg's Ragnarok book. You do know what Ragnarok is, right? End of the world stuff. The cataclysm. We're talking about epic storms riving the world asunder, oceans rising to swallow the land, wiping out humanity. Feg's spewing his bile onto vellum. It's little more than a monotonous screed denouncing the depravity of the world. After reading a few pages of his book I can see why so much of the south has gone sour; it must have withered beneath his tongue. Feg is one bitter old cuss, believe me."

  Sláine had no liking for what he heard. But could the ravings of a lunatic really be the key to regaining his honour amongst his people? It was doubtful, but then it was equally doubtful Ukko had understood one word in ten and was doing anything but fabricating a lot of stuff and nonsense to justify his fear. The bird's disappearance had unnerved Sláine, but coupled with the things he had seen during Caoilfhionn's violation, it only served to pique his curiosity. Who, or what, could the Skinless Man be? No man could live without skin to seal his flesh; surely he would bleed to death. He had seen a burned man die because his skin could not breathe. No, this Skinless Man he sought could not be a literal Skinless Man. An entity, perhaps? A wraith or revenant shade? A statue or even a story? The Sidhe were fond of tales. Perhaps that was it. The notion just confirmed his need to find Tall Iesin; if there was such a being in the stuff of stories the wanderer would know.

  "Tell me."

  A yellow-jacketed corn fly buzzed from dead head to dead head of corn. Aside from Siothrún it was the first living thing he had seen since leaving Dardun. It was such an unremarkable thing, yet watching it drew a smile from the young warrior. The minutiae of life did not stop. Once more he thrilled at the sheer wonder of creation. Even now, with the reek of Slough Feg's Sourlands spreading, the smallest of Danu's creatures sought to flourish. The fly would lay eggs in the corn, the eggs would hatch into maggots which in turn would bloat on the dead corn and transform into flies themselves - a perfect cycle of life. Even the ash from the victims of the skull swords would nourish the earth, enriching the soil and so feeding the Goddess, just as he himself would one day: from dust to dust returned, as the druid, Cathbad, had liked to say. In time the air would be thick with flies.

  "What is there to tell? He uses the word vile a lot and babbles about the need for cleansing the sickness from the carcass of the Danu. No, that's not quite what he said... the pox-crusted carcass, that was it: cleansing the sickness from the pox-crusted carcass of Danu. I get the impression he is none too fond of your Goddess. Then again his weirdness is not overly enamoured with anything," Ukko tapped at his temple with a dirty finger. "He is a raving loon. Some words - even complete sentences - appear over and over. One he fixates on is deluge; I found five separate pleas for tidal waves and lashing storms to savage the land. Like I said, cataclysmic stuff. If wishes were fishes, we'd all be very wet. So how about we forget about the bird and forge on towards your old homestead and surprise that chief of yours with the ravings of this homicidal lunatic?" Ukko said, hopefully.

  "I am going after the bird," Sláine said, reasonably. He stretched, working the muscles in his shoulders and then lower back. He made a show of looking left and right slowly, scanning the blighted harvest and lingering on the ruins of the nameless hamlet. "If you wish to remain here, alone, so close to where skull swords burned down a village and put the inhabitants to death, well, by all means. You are right, following the bird, if even possible, could be walking into danger. A friend would not force another to join his folly. So in the name of our friendship, it would be unfair of me to force you into risking your life. You should trust your finely honed self-preservation instinct. Stay here. I'll just take the book off you and we'll make our farewells. I'll go my way, alone, and you will go yours. Alone. I am sure you will make it out of here alive just fine without me. You're a resourceful one, hard to kill, right?"

  Ukko scratched behind his ear. "Have I told you lately that I hate you, Sláine?"

  "And there was me thinking you wanted to be my friend?"

  Sláine turned his back on Ukko, shouldered his pack and walked back to the stones. Ukko came scurrying behind him, grunting and grumbling as he tried to wriggle into his pack and fasten his thick wool cloak at the same time. He looked at the sky. It was heavy with thick white cloud, though not unbroken. The sun streamed down in bright unbroken beams through the breaches. Without waiting to see if Ukko was with him, Sláine made the first circuit of the stones counter-sunwise. Halfway through the second a tiny static charge thrilled across the tips of his fingers and through the roots of his hair, barely touching the extremities of his being. He took another step and felt the tingle chase down the nape of his neck and into the core of his spine. Two more and it gripped his heart. "No matter what you feel, keep walking!" Sláine urged, pushing on another step to complete the second circuit of the smashed cairn.

  The earth power rose within him, swelling to fill his flesh. No, he felt the difference. It was not the earth power swelling into him. He was not feeding off the world. This was different. He was feeding the world. It was his strength. It was being drawn from his marrow, teased out slowly at first and then with more and more urgency as he made the circle. The sensation of power flooding through his body was almost erotic in its intensity. He felt his body swelling, his heart beating arrhythmatically as the peculiar journey took its toll on his flesh.

  A sudden thrill surged through his blood, pulsing through heart and mind with equal fervour.

  The Serpent coiled through every fibre of his flesh in answer to the call of the stones.

  Sláine walked on. His vision swam and blurred, pulsing black.

  He closed his e
yes against the erratic strobing of pitch black and bright light but it helped little. Pain flared at the base of his skull and rooted down through the ladder of his spine. He felt his knees buckle but refused to fall until he had completed the final circuit to wherever this doorway between worlds took him. The pain intensified. He felt the flesh of his face strain against the bone beneath, lips peeling back with his grimace, forcing his mouth unnaturally wide in a macabre parody of a smile. The pink of his gums pulled back, stretched until they bled around the white of his teeth. Sláine dug deep, drawing on a well of strength outside his body to make the final step. His eyes rolled up inside his skull rendering him blind and still Sláine forced himself to step into the darkness. It hit him like an axe to the chest, slamming into his body with raw elemental force as he completed the third and final circle.

  Sláine pushed through the haze of pain and fell to his knees on the other side of the invisible doorway.

  His chest heaved. The journey had cost him far more than a few laps around a pile of stones. His head pounded savagely, the blood pressing against the inside of his skull. He looked up. It was immediately obvious he was nowhere near the Forest of Dardun or the burned village. The sky was black, the clouds reduced to a few wisps in the otherwise clear night. A gibbous moon hung low, silver moonlight shining on an empty plain. He had lost more than a few hours of daylight making the passage - last night the moon had hung full and bright, more than a week must have passed for the moon to have grown. There was something uncanny about it. Indeed, the moon's position in the sky was wrong - for it to be where it was months had to have passed in a single heart beat.

  The pain receded slowly. He slumped forwards, retching, and wiped the bile from his lips with the back of his hand.

  He tried to absorb the most immediate and obvious changes in his surroundings while at the same time struggling to make sense of the time shift, the sudden return to night, and cope with the agonies the journey had wrought.

  The landscape was too much for his mind to translate; it stretched on and on and on, unbroken and featureless. He turned to look behind him and saw more of the same nothingness. The absence of landmarks was disquieting.

  The quality of the dark itself was thicker.

  There were no stars.

  The ground was coarse, ever-shifting to the whims of the wind, like sand but not like any sand he had ever seen.

  "I can't see the damned bird."

  Sláine looked up to see Ukko standing over him, scanning the horizon. He tried to speak but could not. The little runt seemed utterly unphased by the transition between worlds. Sláine's head lolled on his shoulders and he slumped back to the ground. Fine grains of not-sand pressed into his cheek. They were cold, like tiny chips of ice.

  "What's wrong with you?"

  "He is stripped of all bonds to the earth," a coarse voice answered. He hadn't seen anyone approach and there was no way they could sneak up unseen in this barren wilderness. Sláine looked up to see a black-cloaked figure standing beside the dwarf. "Not only is there is no power in the earth here, there can be no residual or latent power in anything that resides here. He is, for the first time in his life, bereft." Caught suddenly in the moonlight Sláine saw its face was that of an enormous crow, its cloak fashioned from slick black feathers.

  "Ah," said Ukko, his face betraying the fact that he didn't have even the slightest inkling what the cloaked figure was talking about.

  Sláine knew: some called her the Great Queen, others the Queen of Phantoms. His mother, Macha, had called her the Spectre Queen; the Crone; Great Mother; Moon Goddess; Great White Goddess; Queen of the Fey. The Goddess of war, fate and death, the Morrigan.

  "We are in the el between realms," the crow-faced aspect of the divine cawed.

  She stank of death.

  "What? We're in hell?"

  "No," the Morrigan said, "We are in the space between worlds. You are in a doorway of sorts, a portal between today and tomorrow and yesterday. Or at least your spirit is. Your flesh lies on the floor beside a pile of rocks. When you leave this place you will return to it."

  "Er, can't we just go back there now then? I mean, I'm kind of attached to my body. At least I was."

  "When it is time, not before. From here you can go anywhere, anywhen. Tir-Nan-Og is not the only place of life. There are other realms. Being between them like this, in this place, means that nothing of Tir-Nan-Og is sustained here. Sláine is suffering because of his link to the Earth Goddess. She completes him just as he completes her."

  "Ah," Ukko said again. "Oh." The dwarf's eyes widened in fear as something, a phantom shape, rose up out of the sand at his feet. He backed up a step. "Shoo, get away from me, gah!" It would have been comic but for the fact that his panicked hand passed straight through the formless face of the phantom.

  The crow woman laughed callously. "Do my children frighten you, little man?"

  Ukko stumbled backwards, tripping over his feet and landing on his backside with a grunt.

  The rolling glass sands stirred as one by one, more silhouettes shimmered into dubious life. Sláine stared at them, trying to focus on the ever-shifting shapes but there was no substance or definition to the blurs beyond the most basic outline. It took him a moment to recognise the play of movement but when he did it was unmistakable: they were victims, half-dead, trapped in this place, re-enacting their deaths, or more accurately reliving them: thrust and parry, savage blows raining down, arms thrown up in defence, bodies crumpling. Sláine knew what they were - or rather what they represented. Ghosts of sound rang out, just above and just below the register of normal sounds so they came through both dull and blunted while simultaneously being sharp and insistent, clashing swords, screams, death rattles. These were the lost souls trapped between realms, unable to pass on into death as long as they were held here by the Morrigan.

  There were thousands of them, hundreds of thousands, more - their number beyond counting. The shadow-shapes stretched as far as the eye could see, coming to life in all directions. They were legion.

  Sláine struggled to stand.

  "We can go anywhere, Crone?" He fought to get the words out between fresh waves of agony that tore at his flesh.

  The crow's beady yellow eyes turned on the warrior, radiating sickness. "Anywhere, anywhen," she said.

  "I would travel to the land of the Sidhe, to find the Skinless Man."

  The Morrigan's laughter brayed out harshly. "You would, would you? And why should I aid you, son of the Sessair? Why should I not leave your soul here with the rest of my children to live and die through an infinite cycle of suffering?"

  Sláine had no answer for that.

  "What you would do is impossible - these are not the same things. One does not immediately facilitate the other. You cannot travel into the Sidhe and find the Skinless Man. He is not there. I am helping you already, warrior. For more, you must offer me something I desire."

  "What do you desire, Crone? What would you have from me?"

  "I desire nothing, mortal. I have lived too long to crave things."

  "Then why goad me? Why not leave me here to rot?"

  "The future is one of infinite possibilities, every action and interaction influencing the play of life. In some you and the dwarf are no doubt great heroes to your people, in others little more than drunken lecherous buffoons. In some, no doubt the very best thing I could do for the Land of the Young would be to leave you here to feed the sands, but in others keeping you here could damn the whole world. I cannot know what will come to pass any more than you, but dare I risk damning creation?"

  "You are the aspect of battle and death. How does it hurt you if you deny salvation? Surely it feeds you, no? Gives you more fighting and agony to glut on, to gorge yourself and grow fat."

  "I am old, warrior. I have lived a thousand life times. I have come to love the land - because more than it is your land, it is my land. Walk with me, Sláine." The crow woman held out a clawed hand, gesturing for him to follow as
she set off, walking towards the moon. "Is it better to have a debt owed or a promise fulfilled?"

  "Is this idle speculation, witch?"

  "There is a purpose to everything in this life, warrior. Everything, every word, every action, be it from spite or kindness."

  "So what is your purpose?"

  "Ever the aurochs charging in headlong, take your time, think for yourself, Sláine. Do not expect answers on a platter of silver."

  "There's no point in beating around the bush, Crone. You want something from me, that much is obvious, and in turn I need something from you, it seems. You have the upper hand. All the rest is bull turd."

  The Crone ruffled her feathers.

  "Think of it as mutual back scratching, we have itches we can help each other with. My purpose is simple. I would have you do something for me. A favour, nothing more."

  "What?" Sláine said, suspiciously. He knew enough not to trust the Morrigan. The words that came out of her mouth were always bitter, twisting around from promises to lies, offering hope and delivering despair. She was a traitorous bitch. His doubts reflected in his face.

  The Crone craned her head, first to the left, then the right. "Do not be in such a hurry to anger, barbarian. I would merely have your word on something."

  "On what? Just spit it out."

  "A promise. Promise to obey a single command from my mouth without question and I will grant you what you desire. That is my offer, take it or be damned, it matters little to me. How dangerous can a promise be?"

  Sláine had no liking for such an anonymous promise. It was ludicrous for the Morrigan to expect him to bind himself unthinkingly to her. "I am not a fool, hag. To the likes of you a promise could be the end of all things as likely as it could be their salvation. What would you have me promise? And speak plainly; I'll have none of your riddles or half-truths."

  "Patience, the time will come for you to know. Now is not that time."

  "You expect me to pledge myself to an unknown promise - and to keep it? You're a bigger fool than I took you for. Tell me, in those many futures, do I ever actually keep this blind faith pledge?"