Crimson Spear Read online

  The furs trembled and shook.

  2. The Ancestor

  Down in the dark of the hot moist furs, Senchan rocked with uncontrollable laughter. Even so, a faint exhortatory voice cried out in his mind that he should not be acting this way—just a second ago he was frightened, wasn’t he? But he couldn’t contain the urge to laugh. He lifted his head and, with it, a huge piled cap of furs, and peeked out again.

  The man in the cauldron disappeared below the rim with a splash, but the top of his head bobbed into view every few moments. Senchan heard gargling, followed by a spume of sparkling water. With the greatest of care, the boy burrowed like a timid mole out of the furs and began to crawl on elbows and knees across the smoky room. Discovery! The cauldron wasn’t black at all, but copper gone glaucous, thick with verdigris as if dredged up out of a lake this morning. That old devil, the Dagda, sat in cross-legged bas-relief inviting the boy to pause and chat beside the fire.

  A particularly loud splash sent a huge wave breaking over the rim above. Senchan had a moment to see it, but no time to crab away before it drenched his head and neck.

  He got up on his feet, all fear and humor forgotten. The water should have turned to steam, he was so mad, stinking of those furs, dripping like a sheepdog. The man in the cauldron just floated, complacently naked. A bit of mockery was suggested by the look he tossed up to Senchan. What lustrous eyes! They were probably blue, but seen in this light the irises were barely distinguishable from the whites. As if acknowledging this problem, the light dimmed immediately, enough to let some color bleed in. The bather was revealed as flesh and blood rather than ghostly vapor. His hair was blond streaked with red, pulled back and drawn to the side of his head, behind his ear. A small filigreed device like a thimble-cup held it there, by what property Senchan couldn’t imagine. At the man’s throat, a thick silver necklace duplicated the fine work of the thimble-cup.

  The overall impression the bather gave was of emaciation, dissipation: puckers of skin rode the recesses below his eyes; his cheeks were drawn, with fine lines in the hollows and around his bearded mouth. His body was pale, almost fish-belly blue; freckles stood out like pebbles on a beach. Below his navel was a round dark scar, looking slick and fresh. The bather, however, appeared not the least bothered by it.

  “Who are you?” asked Senchan, no longer angered or scared. The bather had leached away his emotions with those moon-eyes and that smile full of irony and the promise of great japery. “My name,” the bather said, “is Laeg mac Riangabra.” His tone suggested that Senchan ought to be impressed. The pale eyes searched him for some reaction and he grew uncomfortably embarrassed, enough that he had to look away—up.

  “I shouldn’t do that were I you,” Laeg gently warned. “Often they prefer to keep a distance and would rather you didn’t pry. They could for instance make you blind.” He paddled up near Senchan. “Me, they keep blind drunk, which is not quite the same but does alter one’s perceptions as unconditionally.”

  “Who are they?”

  “What do you think of this gravid pot?” He slapped the rim. “The Druids used to bring dead warriors back to life in this very cauldron, back before the magic faded …” He inhaled deeply through his nose, which did have a wicked scar across the bridge. “Good for the mind, a humid air is, especially a mind besotted for centuries. Are you aware that you have battle-dye under your eyes?”

  Confused by this question, Senchan reached up and dabbed the hollows of his eyes, then saw the dirt on his fingertips. He made fists and rubbed hard at his stinging cheeks. Defiantly, he said, “Don’t you answer people’s questions?”

  Laeg abruptly ended his deep breathing exercise. “Lugh’s nuts, lad, don’t you recognize a visitation when you see one? Or do you perhaps stumble upon my likes all the time? Seen a lot of pots like this?” He rapped the side and the cauldron bonged like a monastery bell.

  “Of course not.”

  “Fine.” He stretched out in the water once more. “Ask your critical questions then. I’m prepared to answer all inquiries.”

  Senchan repeated what he had already asked.

  “They,” replied Laeg, “are the Sídhe, the people of the mounds. The mounds also are called síd. The Sídhe live in síd. Naturally. I trust that clarifies everything?”

  Senchan looked blank. Laeg might as well have quoted Tacitus at him. The joy went out of the man’s eyes; the light surrounding him dimmed. In the cauldron, steam had ceased to wreathe off the water. Softly, almost fearfully, he asked the boy, “What is this at my throat?” His hand closed around the thick silver necklace. Senchan could only shake his head. Tension replaced the steam. “This is a torc. It is the symbol of the Dagda, lord of all animals, of forests everywhere. It girds the soul and binds us to nature, to the world, to the gods . . . nothing, I see it in your eyes,” pondered for a moment, then, “What about Druidry? Macha? Tell me at least that you know of Cu Chulainn?”

  “I think, it means someone’s dog?” hazarded Senchan, hysterically hopeful.

  Laeg stared at the hole in the roof. “You were right, he doesn’t know,” he said. Then, his eyes rolled up and he slid down into the water, turning to float there like a corpse, longer than was possible. Senchan fidgeted until he couldn’t stand it any more. He reached in, grabbed the body by the hair. It listed, then rolled over. In those few seconds the face had already begun to decay, the skin become yellowish, puffy. Senchan gasped and dropped the head. It sank out of sight. “No!” he cried. He thrust his hand into the milky water, grabbed the hair again and pulled, but looked away before everything below the eyes was revealed. Those eyes stared straight up but did not see him or anything else this side of the grave. “Please,” he begged. “Stay up, wait.” He towed the body to the edge of the cauldron and hung it from the rim by its dripping chin. “I’ll be back. I’ll get Selden and the others to help.”

  With a clot in his throat, he turned away.

  “Stop!”

  Senchan halted. His head hunched down—he didn’t want to look back at that ghastly face, but finally he did. Laeg was whole again. Senchan’s mouth dropped open.

  “Surely not Selden?” Laeg continued. “That overbearing, solipsistic, base and vile example of the slug in human form? Think, Senchan, what he would do to you if you dragged him in here for any reason. Skin you, I don’t doubt. Take your head and crush it in his fat hands like a grouse egg.

  “And you,” Laeg said as he rose up like a sea god, “you’d like to do the same to him, wouldn’t you? Like to grab him by the balls and make him obey your every whim; like to beat his stubbly face to a purple dough. Wouldn’t you?” He gripped the edge of the pot to lean forward at Senchan, who was too stunned to move. “Well, you ought to feel that way! He’s a domineering swine. His like have caused all our deeds to be forgotten. He’s chosen to be dim-witted, actually chose it, you understand. It couldn’t be worse if the fornicating bastards all inbred! History’s twisted up like this neckring.” He grabbed fiercely at the torc surrounding his throat, and in so doing lost his balance and fell with a great splash back into the tub. With orange hair dripping gray water, he eyed Senchan balefully. “And what’s most ignominious of all is that your foster-father is descended from my line.” He reached out then toward the hesitating boy and Senchan returned to him as if tied by an invisible thread. Laeg gripped Senchan’s shoulder. “It’s you I’m for. You’re young, you can be shaped. A destiny awaits you, but you’ll have to go backwards to get it. Future answers lie in past deeds, Senchan. I’ve come to give you what that wormy descendent of mine can’t—purpose and direction. A reason to be.”

  The shaft of light flared up. Senchan came out of his trance into blindness as if a white sheet had shrouded him. Behind him the copper screens swung shut; he heard them clank together, turned and ran, sightless, at the sound—two steps and clang! he found them with his nose and chin.

  He sat down.

  From behind, Laeg’s voice whispered into his ears. “There’s no escap
ing destiny, lad. You were yoked to yours the day Selden accepted those flatulent cows.”

  Hands cupped over his bruised nose, Senchan noticed water dripping onto his shoulder. He asked, “What’s happening?” and was surprised at how calm he sounded.

  “We’re traveling.”

  “I feel sick.”

  “Myself, as well. A good ale would have helped settle our stomachs. I’ve asked a dozen times before, but they never think of your needs any more than they consider your pride. Why, I once saw a fellow—he had stumbled upon a sid at night by accident, obviously didn’t know where he was—suddenly pop into the middle of a Sídhe feast, both feet in the meat platter. And his pants down, tunic up, displaying both cheeks most rudely.”

  “What happened?” asked Senchan, his queasiness and bruised chin forgotten.

  Laeg cast him that mocking glance. “Well, we all stood up and clapped.”

  Senchan eyed him askance. We, he had said. Didn’t that mean that this man was one of those Sídhe? If not, then what else could he be? The screens shook, then rattled as thunder filled the air and Senchan cast speculation aside. “We’re stopping,” said Laeg.

  3. The Circle of Stones

  The light vanished so fast that Senchan and Laeg both gasped and looked up, snow-blind to the normal light. Above them now was sky—a great cloudy swatch the color of an oyster. Senchan pushed one foot against the cold copper screen in front of him. The screen dragged in the long grass, but opened. Through the slit he could see a sliver of gentle slope, a field not far below in which stood a huge dark rock. Laeg hissed like a firestone dropped in water. Senchan looked up at him looming above and could see his coloration clearly now—the face, the orange freckles, the hair, and the clothing. When had he put on clothes? Maybe they had just appeared on him. After everything else that had happened, Senchan wouldn’t have been at all surprised. The clothes were similar to his own clothing, but different in design. Laeg’s tunic, for instance, was muslin white, but with a pattern of green chain links woven in, and sleeveless in structure. The edges actually seemed worked in gold. His knee-high boots—Senchan had to twist around to see them—were nothing more than wide strips of cracked leather wound around his feet and calves and tied down with thongs. They looked as if he had worn them since the Creation. Tight, quilted leather breeches were tucked into the boots. Four bracelets encircled his left wrist, all similar in design to the thing he called a torc. His stringy arms were criss-crossed with scars.

  All the while Senchan studied him, Laeg had not taken his eyes off that stone out on the field. The boy dragged himself up finally. Even then Laeg seemed to stare through him to that stone. Why? Senchan shoved the screens further apart.

  The whole picture was of a wide plateau decorated with a ring of standing stones. The cauldron and screens perched on a knoll above the stones. Beyond them the ground disappeared down into a valley; far away, small dark hills clustered, patchy with the grayness of limestone.

  “Where are we?”

  “This is Muirthemne Plain. I hadn’t—” he had to clear his throat “—hadn’t seen it since long ago, right after the Wars when the Sídhe assembled the ring.” Like one possessed, he drifted past Senchan and down the hill Once again the boy was reminded of a spirit, not a corporeal man. And Muirthemne Plain? He knew of such a place, in the southeastern part of Ulster Province. But was it possible they had travelled that far north? How? The screens shifted slightly. Hinges groaned. He decided it might be wise to follow Laeg rather than have one of those things fall on him.

  Laeg strode into the circle, straight to the immense black rock in the center. He pressed his whole body against it, ran his palm down its one smooth face as if caressing a lover. His fingers found and traced a wide gouge in the center. Senchan followed as far as the edge of the ring, but hesitated to enter the circle. Places like this were scattered all over Ireland and, the story was, they were haunted.

  Eight stones composed the outer ring, some half his height and others higher than his head. None of them resembled any other, which seemed to Senchan very odd. Rings that he had seen before had always been composed of similar stones. He crept along the periphery, careful to stay outside the ring. The stones looked as if the centuries had not worn, had not even touched them.

  When he finished the circuit, Senchan had discovered that the stones shared at least one trait. All of them bore peculiar indentations—lines scratched down one face, some horizontal, some diagonal. He wondered if perhaps the stonecutter was inexperienced with a chisel.

  “Do you read Ogham?” asked Laeg, so close by that Senchan jumped at the sound of his voice.

  “Read what?” the boy asked shakily.

  Laeg pointed at the chiseled lines along the stone. “This. Ogham. Druids’ alphabet.”

  “You mean this is writing?”

  “Druids controlled written words for as long as they lived. Words were power, weapons that could penetrate deeper than any blade, imparting wounds that never healed. Druids kept writing a secret so that words would carry weight, the weight of truth. Such truth died on the day writing became known. Now it isn’t your word, it’s your signature, that carries that weight. Yes, it’s writing.”

  “But we still have words.”

  “Empty words are all you have, flung by fools who lack the subtlety of mind to recognize the force of a geis of a riddle or a threat. Druids knew all that. They made laws—”

  “But they s-sacrificed children,” Senchan stammered. “And worshipped the Devil!”

  Laeg laughed. “So rules the newest order. In truth they sacrificed no children of which I’m aware. Criminals, yes, but what do you do with a murderer? Teach him to fish? And your evil Prince of Darkness hadn’t been invented yet so how could they worship him? Lies boy, all lies—even if, perhaps, well-meaning ones.” He stopped speaking then, remembering suddenly through a vision how he came to know so much of a life that did not come into being until after he had departed this life. He saw in his mind’s eye a circle of women there in Magh Mell. The women were all speaking at once in their secret tongue the words winding, weaving in and out. Now it was as if his brain was a loom and the patterns of their speech were becoming comprehensible. He reached up, touched his temples. They told him that a new order had arisen, one that wanted all the magic in the world to belong to its god. That order had devised stories to repudiate Druid knowledge. “This is not new,” the women had told him. “It has happened since the first time a new people conquered an old. It happened to the Fomoiri, to the Fir Bolg, to us. Our secrets are hidden from the Druids just as their knowledge is forever lost to the Christians. The head is always cut off before the tongue can tell its tale.”

  He repeated this last statement for Senchan but the boy disappointed him once more by not comprehending, requiring further elucidation. “The new order hounded the Druids. Some were even tortured and burned. The new society opposed them and it’s society that’s let the knowledge be lost. The few survivors remember scraps. No more.” How odd he felt saying this, recalling the women chanting. He had thought them part of a drunkard’s dream.

  “Do you read it?” asked Senchan.

  “Very little. But I know these stones as if I’d carved them.

  “What do they mean?”

  “I can’t tell you that—I have to show you. Come.” He got up and led Senchan to the highest point in the circle, also the smallest stone. “This is the first and the last stone,” he explained, “the beginning and end of the circle. It’s called the Pigstone. You see how it’s fissured down the center? How the two dissimilar halves fit together?”

  “Yes.”

  “You must touch it. Here, like so.” He took Senchan’s hands and pressed them into the Ogham notches. “Close your eyes and clear your mind.” Senchan obeyed, but warily. Then, a moment later his eyes opened wide and he looked at Laeg with startlement and wonder. Laeg smiled. “You felt it, didn’t you? The words have power still, provided one knows how to find it. Again, clo
se your eyes.”

  Senchan wasn’t sure he liked this, but he obeyed. Laeg began speaking to him, softly. “Your hands are on the hearts of two men who were not men.”

  Senchan felt a dull throb, monotonous, rhythmic, like the pulsation of the earth.

  “Once those hearts were tissue and muscle, but two angry Sídhe kings turned them into stone.”

  “How is that possible?” Senchan could not say for sure if he had spoken aloud, or if the thought had just echoed loudly in his head. But Laeg answered him, a voice very close now, hot upon his ear.

  “I’ll tell you. It happened in the following manner and because of it thousands of people died in combats and old enmities burned like sulphur. One hero was made and more unmade. And all because of pigs.”

  Senchan fell away from himself, entering another realm of time and place. Seasons swirled around him, through him. He saw himself as if he were someone else, standing on the hill slightly above the circle of stones. He saw Laeg take his arm and gently draw him forward. The stone that he hugged became soft, then misty, and he passed through it.

  He became the beginning of the tale.

  “There were once two pig keepers …

  Part One

  I.

  THE PIG-KEEPERS' TALE

  1. The Mast

  There were once two pig-keepers named Friuch and Rucht, charged with maintaining the pig-herds of two Sídhe kings.

  Rucht, whose name meant “the snort of a pig,” was short and so stout that a rope tied above his belly was the only thing that would hold up his baggy woolen trousers. His hair, which was the color of oak leaves on a cloudy fall day, sprouted like a tangled bramble bush from his scalp. Seen from a distance or amidst his huge herd of pigs, Rucht looked like a bulbous primeval plant root animated by some mischievous spirit. His pouchy eyes never quite agreed on where they were looking and his broad lower lip jutted out as if he had stumbled into eternal cogitation.