The Defiler (27 page)

Sláine ground his teeth in frustration, scratching at his scalp. "Then what can be done? I will not sit here idly fishing for the rest of my days."

"Finvarra will have his life back, and the only way he can achieve this is through the same Cauldron that we seek for the Morrigan, the gift that will supposedly return you to your people. Perhaps this was the Crone's ultimate intention, to bind the three of us together. She prophesied his return at the time of the land's greatest need. Initially I did not believe our fates were interlinked but now I am seeing it all as part of an elaborate weave, each life of possibilities a thread that the Crone has laid into the pattern. With that in mind it is not unreasonable to believe that Finvarra's return is dependent upon our actions."

"What is your meaning, druid? Speak plainly for once, my head tires of trying to fathom the logic you and the dwarf seem to delight in."

Myrrdin smiled, his peculiar wooden eyes coming to life in the dawn's early light. "I have been thinking about this a lot, my young friend. We are little more than puppets in her shadow play."

"I said plainly, Myrrdin."

"Plainly, yes. As with so much of what has happened, I sense the meddling fingers of the Crone at play here. Can you not feel her work? Consider what little we know: like you, Finvarra cannot leave this place because to do so would shatter the very geas that keeps him breathing despite the mortal wound that ought to have ended his life centuries ago. It is no coincidence that he now has two of the four pieces of the Morrigan's Cauldron in his possession, he sees it as his salvation. To enter the Cauldron is to be born again, that is the magic of the artefact. It is not merely legend. Finvarra has not forgotten the Morrigan's words, he bides his time, gathering treasures to him, but all the while his interest is in the Cauldron because without it he can never leave this place to fulfil his destiny. He cannot be reborn. He cannot return to serve the land once more. He cannot die his hero's death."

"I understand this," Sláine said.

"Good, now consider: both the dwarf and I can come and go as we please, we are not snared here in the same way that you are. The magic is not what keeps us alive. If we were to return with the reforged Cauldron of Rebirth both you and the Wounded King would be saved, born again, and the enchantment could be willingly torn asunder."

Sláine mulled the druid's words over for a moment, considering the implications of them. "So you propose to abandon me?"

"You cannot come with us," Myrrdin said, unable to look him in the eye.

"Which amounts to the same thing, does it not?"

Before the druid could answer a clarion bell clamoured, its shrill harmonic shattering the serenity of the courtyard, and a moment later Ukko slammed through the door, his stunted legs buckling beneath the weight of the pack slung over his shoulder. The miserable little scoundrel had a ferocious grin pasted on his face. He clutched Sláine's huge axe in his hands.

"Time," Ukko gasped between breath, "to make a sharp exit." He dumped the pack at Sláine's feet and thrust Brain-Biter into the barbarian's hands. "Before someone notices their precious collection's been plundered. I've got everything, the book, both pieces of the Cauldron, and ahh, a few trinkets to cover the inconvenience. So come on."

The shrill harmonic gradually subsided, fading to nothing, a ghost in the glass, a memory.

"Not that I don't appreciate your thieving, stumpy, because believe me I do, I do. But there's one slight problem you seem to have overlooked in your opportunism," Sláine muttered. He looked up at the row of windows that overlooked the courtyard and saw the sharp features of Leanan Sidhe looking down at them. It was impossible to read her expression. She didn't move from the glass. "You know, the whole 'one of us can't leave the island without dying' kind of puts a dampener on things."

"Oh ye of little faith, Sláine. I've got a plan," said Ukko, flashing the warrior an annoyingly smug grin. "Trust Ukko, eh, just this once? I mean, when have I ever let you down?"

"You really want me to list them now? I mean, I can, but surely we ought to be running for our lives?" The sarcasm dripped off Sláine's words. "Oh, wait, we can't die here can we, so actually we ought to be running to save our hides from an eternity of torture, that's
so
much better, isn't it?"

Ukko ignored him. "Just carry the gear down to the jetty, I'll meet you there in five minutes," and before either of them could argue, Ukko took off, racing back into the Glass House and the shrill harmonic rose again, as the voice of the building itself cried out:
intruder!

"I dread to think what the little runt is up to now," said Sláine, dropping the sack on the rotting boards of the old jetty. He had expected Finvarra himself to be sat on the dock, fishing pole in hand, waiting for another silver fish to bite. He shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun. The monsters of the maze looked on impassively, the breeze rustling through the topiaries giving the impression of movement as the leaves stirred. "This is pointless, you said yourself, I cannot leave this place so why run now and risk the wrath of the king of this twisted domain?"

"You are quick to judge ill, friend Sláine," the druid said, "Size and muscle are no measure of the heart. Ukko has stood side by side with you through more than most would, standing resolute despite his fear. Occasionally it would not hurt to just trust the little man."

"Now that's a sentiment to strike fear into the heart of the hardiest warrior," Sláine said. He sat cross-legged on the boards, digging at the splinters with his fingers. The jetty was riddled with woodworm, and crumbled like powder beneath his picking. "Do you have any idea what he is up to? Have you pair been hatching mad schemes behind my back? I wouldn't put it past either of you..."

"Rest easy, my suspicious friend, I am as in the dark as you are, but perhaps I choose to see young Ukko as the spark of light we need."

"To burn the whole bloody barn down, maybe."

They felt the wingbeats, like the dull pounding of a leather drum resonating through the air, before they heard them.

A shadow of movement caught his eye; a blurred smudge of black on soot grey. "What in all the els... ?" Sláine gasped, staring over the druid's shoulder at the great black shadow of the Knucker cresting the spires of the Glass House, filling the sky with the filthy promise of fire and pain.

The immense fell beast banked, wings stretched taut, talons clawing at the thermals, and swooped down low.

Sláine pushed himself to his feet, grabbing Brain-Biter from the wooden planking. The weight of the axe in his hands was reassuring, familiar - not that the stone head could do any significant damage to the great winged wyrm.

"This is where trust gets you with the dwarf, druid. Fire-breathing drakes turning your bones to bloody charcoal! Come on then, beastie," he yelled at the sky, "let's see which of us can cause the most pain!"

Beside him, the druid gasped, pointing: "Well I'll be damned... seems our little friend is even more resourceful than I thought."

Sláine followed the direction of his finger. It took him a moment to distinguish the smudge of colour on its spine, and a moment more to realise that it was actually the dwarf clinging desperately to the ridge of the Knucker's saddle horn for dear life. He almost dropped the axe.

"Now he's trying to steal the fething dragon!"

The Knucker hit the ground, hard, claws churning up sod and black loam and then the weathered stones of the beach as the great beast battled the momentum of its wild descent. Ukko tumbled out of the saddle, hitting the ground in a whorish sprawl. The impact failed to jar the idiot grin from his face. The Knucker's serpentine head snaked forwards, the ridges of its brow knuckling up feet from the Sessair's face. It sniffed the air, scenting meat, threw its head back and roared its hunger, a second tongue of flame lashing out to scorch the moisture from the air. Ukko rolled over and out from beneath the wyrm's enormous clawed foot even as the Knucker's forked tongue laved across razor-sharp incisors. A fatty string of meat from the beast's last meal still clung to a crack between its teeth, with blood-matted fur still tangled around the rope of gristle. It looked like part of a lamb's carcass. The tip of the Knucker's split tongue caught the edge of the meat, worrying it back into its mouth. The beast chewed on the flesh for a moment, its ancient eyes falling on Sláine. Cruelty smouldered within the great wyrm's scrutiny. The young Sessair was left in no doubt that the beast could smell the spice of blood pumping through his body, the sweat salting his flesh; to the Knucker he was a meal like any other.

"Your chariot awaits, m'lud," Ukko grinned, spreading his arms wide.

"You have got to be joking," Sláine said, struggling to come to terms with the sheer audacity of the dwarf's theft. Finvarra's own mount! The Sidhe king's wrath would be monumental. "I'm not mounting anything that looks like it wants to eat me."

Ukko turned to the druid. "You see what he does to me, Myrrdin? I try. I
really
try but he has to keep saying things like mounting and eating." The dwarf clutched at his temples theatrically, spinning on his heel as though going into a swoon. "Too many jokes. Head going to explode."

"I'm still not getting on the damned thing," Sláine grumbled, matching the Knucker's hungry stare with one of his own.

He almost missed the druid's low chant; if the dwarf hadn't drawn his attention to him the sub-vocalised invocation would have bled forever into the susurrus of the breeze. "Oh, no," Sláine said, stepping back half a step. "No, no, no. You're not abandoning me here to clean up your bloody mess." His foot hit the hessian pack, causing the metal plates of the Cauldron to clang against each other.

"Then maybe you want to get on the
damned thing
, your warpedness?"

In a trance now, the insistent rush of the words spilling from his tongue, Myrrdin raised his hands, drawing the first coil of vapour from the water, and began to open the mists.

Modron saw the smoke on the water first, then the sudden flare of fire in the sky as the Knucker belched a tongue of flame that licked across the low-lying clouds. The great wyrm's powerful wings lifted it high into the grey sky, carrying it out over the water.

Finvarra's prisoners rode its back.

Her hand went instinctively to her stomach. "What is the fool doing? He cannot leave... the geas will be broken."

She had to warn the others but there was no time.

The betrayal would kill Finvarra.

It would kill all of them.

The air rippled around the Knucker, as though gathering shape and substance to stop the beast from penetrating the mist, but the great wyrm's powerful wings tore its resistance to shreds. The mist thickened and then seemed to blow away on the wind as the drake banked and drove, angling for the very heart of it, and then the smoke engulfed the beast and the Knucker was gone.

"He is our doom, sister," Leanan said, beside her. Together, they watched through the hospice's single window, aware of the bitter irony that their last breaths would be drawn in the chamber where the Defiler drew his first. "He always was. He cannot help but kill, it is his destiny."

"The Defiler? He is nothing but a child in a man's body."

"And a pretty body it is." Leanan laid a hand on her sister's shoulder. "But no, your beloved druid, sister. Our pain began with him, and now it ends with him."

"No," Modron said. It was a weak denial. "I cannot believe he would harm his own flesh and blood, Leanan Sidhe, he is not that kind of monster."

"Perhaps not, sister, but you have not told him, have you?"

Modron shook her head. The floor shifted beneath her feet, a sharp crack reporting as the first fissure opened up between the amber of the glass wall and the suddenly crimson floor.

"Then how can you expect him to save your child, sister?"

"We cannot stay here, Leanan. We cannot simply cease to be!"

"There is nowhere to go, Modron."

"But there is." The Sidhe woman pointed out through the window to the smoke on the water and the ghosts of fire in the sky. "Out there."

"We cannot leave - you cannot... your child was given life in here."

"The geas is broken, sister. The world is falling down," and as though to emphasise her point a second detonation resounded, the retort tearing through the very heart of the chamber. A huge slab of the ceiling tore loose under the sudden strain as the building's weight shifted. It shattered on the floor in thousands of shards and viciously sharp splinters. "There is nothing to keep us here now. We need not perish with the Wounded King."

"Finvarra! We have to go to him now, Modron. We have to be with him!" Leanan Sidhe gasped as understanding hit, with the geas broken the wound would bleed out. The king would die.

"No, sister-mine, I am done with servitude, now I claim my freedom. My son's freedom. Mabon will be born in the land of his father. He will live and breathe and grow knowing the ecstasy of love and life and death as it should be."

"Then go, Sister Modron, before the druid closes the mists and you are trapped here to die with us. Think of me, lying beside our king one last time, his life bleeding out beneath us. Think of it as duty, think of it as devotion, think of it as our curse or think of it as our love. Just think of it, do us that kindness. Now go."

Leanan Sidhe ran through the swirling dust and falling debris as the Glass House came down all around her. She slipped on a polished smooth sheet of glass and fell, sprawling. She pushed herself to her feet even as the wicked slivers of glass dug into her palms, opening her flesh. Leanan Sidhe bled, the red staining the perfect white of her dress. The Sidhe held her bleeding palms up to her face, her mind swimming with the horror of dissolution as her world came apart at the seams. She had forgotten what her own blood looked like, the viscosity, the rich ruby red of it. All around her colour leaked back into the world - real colour. For too long she had forgotten what it was like to see such a vibrant world.