CúChulainn of Eirú Book II

Chapter 3

12.

Inferno

After descending into a deep, gorse-filled hollow, CúChulainn and Amergin followed Nett and his men through a gloomy, twisting path through a huge conglomeration of briars and brambles. The foliage grew together over their heads forming a tunnel that obscured practically all of the morning’s pale light. Whatever faint rays that filtered through served merely to illuminate the long, ghostly strips of spiders’ webs that ran all along the inside of the funnel-like passage.

‘You would think they might at least try and make us feel that this isn’t a trap,’ CúChulainn grumbled softly to Amergin who rode closely at his side and just ahead of the rearguard of Sluagh.

‘This is far from the easiest route to the fortress. You wouldn’t have to be a Connachtman to know that!’

Amergin closed his eyes and nodded, gesturing as he did so with one hand that CúChulainn should soften his voice.

‘There would have been very little diplomacy in denying their escort,’ he said lowly. ‘Foul or fair, in the end this will reveal to us how Ailill plays his battles. Meanwhile, we can always observe and learn.’

CúChulainn shook his head, brushing away another film of cobweb from his hair and out of his face.

‘Learn, he says. Lessons our corpses will never be able to teach, Amergin!’

Learn

The sage merely repeated his advice that they be patient and fell into silence; a condition that was always uncomfortable for CúChulainn. He groaned audibly for the next while until finally the thorny tunnel ended and they emerged into a larger area, no less eerie and utterly silent, in the centre of which stood an earthy mound piled high with dead or dying vegetation. There were a number of small standing stones ringing the structure and two tall, tapering boulders covered in spirals and queer shapes to either side of the small, dark entrance over which jutted forth an intricately carved lintel stone.

CúChulainn noticed that Amergin’s early demeanour of calm and patience had instantly vanished,replaced by one of shock and worry. Nett and the other Sluagh rode up and took place around the entrance to the forbidding rath.

‘This is where Ailill wants to parley with us?’ CúChulainn asked dubiously. Already his hand was drifting back behind him to where his weapon hung wrapped and hidden.

This

Nett unhooked his spear from his saddle and pointed it at the black, web-filled entrance of the mound.

‘Great Ailill, king of Connacht, awaits within. Enter and say your piece.’

‘This is one of the ancient Sídhe,’ said Amergin in an authoritative and accusing tone. ‘A place of the Elder Folk, demons from the countless Aeder worlds. Such locations are forbidden to us all. That we can even be here should be impossible. I doubt the words you speak to us.’

Aederbe

Nett made no sign in the slightest at being offended by the accusation of bearing falsehoods.

‘All is possible for the ones who sit in power at Cruachán. The power of the Faerie is theirs to wield. That is the way of it here.’ He jabbed again with his spear towards the entrance.

‘Enter, you are expected.’

CúChulainn surmised that he understood what this was all about.

‘This, then, is the point Ailill and Medb are trying to make by having us here. A show of strength, a mastery of the wyrding ways.’

Nett inclined his masked head slightly in agreement to that.

Amergin was fidgeting at his beard, making no effort at all to hide his apprehension.

‘This is a strange turn, CúChulainn. Caution… caution...’

That was one word that the Hound of Uladh could never tolerate for long. He leaped from his horse with aplomb and drew out his weapon, seeing no further reason to hide it since it was clear that the Sluagh knew who he was.

‘If a Connachtman walked in there then the son of Lugh can certainly do the same. In with us!’

Amergin exhaled in heavy exasperation and took his forehead in his hand as he watched the younger man disappear into the darkness.

*****

The screams and shouts of a battle, the very sight of which would have driven a normal man insane, echoed around the sacred hall of the Craobh Ruadh.

Craobh Ruadh.

But king Conchobar sat numbly watching the events as if he were observing nothing more than a training fight between Machra lads with wooden swords and leather shields, instead of the blood-drenched steel, the severed limbs and the leering demonic apparition before him.

Now and again he winced and clutched at his wound, and it was only his faithful page Muirgen, still fretfully in attendance, who noticed, between his terror, that a slender tentacle writhed out between the king’s fingers as he did so.

Then the body of his father Fergus hurtled through the air, landing heavily amongst a rack of spears and shields, his arms and chest sorely lacerated. He ran forward to where Caladbolg had come to a rest on the floor having spun from the champion’s grasp, picked up the weapon and thrust it back at his father who was already to his feet with his hand open to receive it.

Caladbolg

‘Good lad! Get back behind the throne there, now!’ said he, tightly.

Muirgen nodded and scuttled back to safety behind the king’s heavy chair where Conchobar still sat with his vacant expression.

Despite his wounds and confusion Fergus felt pride at his son’s loyalty and courage. However misplaced the first seemed to be at this moment, and however the second would always lead him to danger in his life, he was certainly a MacRoth! He charged forward to rejoin the fray but was immediately struck to the ground again when a tentacle flipped up a great flagstone from the earth and sent it hurtling into his shoulder and head with a bone-shattering thud.

Meanwhile the battle raged about the creature, who had - between bouts of depraved, mocking laughter - called himself Crommlai, and though the ShadowKin exiles fought with abilities far beyond the ken of normal men, the thing they were fighting had accumulated all of the skills of so many champions and veterans at this stage that it was simply invincible. One by one they fell, and were absorbed.

Finally Naoise himself tumbled down to the ground in front of the Great Red Branch, bloody and ragged before Crommlai who advanced slowly, relishing the inevitable, if hard-fought, victory.

The brave warrior and once champion-at-arms to the king was already missing his left arm and right leg at the knee, but in his good arm he still held his sword aloft, and his oaths had lost nothing of their deep force and conviction as he cursed Crommlai.

The creature only laughed and dismissed his invectives with a casual wave of the hand.

‘One by one we shall make them all pay, Conchobar!’ crowed the demon in triumph. ‘Then strip from them everything they are.’

Naoise pushed feebly with his remaining leg and came to sit against the Red Branch. He was weak now, his death hovered over him. He turned his head to where the king sat upon his throne.

‘C… Conchobar… you must fight this evil. Protect Eamhain… protect…’

The king stood up then and moved slowly forward to observe the last moments of Naoise Uisliú with an expression of vague recognition and curiosity.

Then Crommlai opened his hand and sent six tentacles deep into Naoise’s body to absorb the last vestiges of the former champion. His passing was painful in the extreme: the fiend desired to make this extraction as slow and, for him, as delectable, as possible. Naoise’s brown eyes, which had charmed so many of the handsome warrior’s female conquests in the past - including Conchobar’s beloved Deirdre Dall - were still staring imploringly up at the king right up to the moment when they were sucked back into their sockets.

Crommlai exhaled heartily, as a man does after the first sup of a tankard of ale, and turned to beam at Conchobar when the deed was done.

‘I should have done this centuries ago!’ he exclaimed in exultation and unleashed a long peal of sickly satisfied laughter.

But it was sharply interrupted by the flight of a spear that took him between the shoulder blades, piercing his chest and impaling him firmly against the very bark of the Red Branch.

Fergus appeared behind Conchobar, burning with rage, his face a crimson mask of blood.

‘Damned be your name, Mac Neasa!’ he thundered. In his arms he held the broken body of Muirgen. The boy had had come forward from his cover behind the king’s chair to aide his stricken father but was punished for his bravery by having his head crushed with a rock flung from the earth by Crommlai’s trashing tentacles.

‘All those warriors, brave Naoise Uisliú… and my boy.’

He laid Muirgen gently down to the earth and stepped forward, rage and madness in his eyes.

The king frowned and dropped his hand to the hilt of his blade but he could not, in his dazed state, compare with the fury of Fergus who smashed him twice with mighty blows to the head, knocking him senseless to the floor.

Crommlai at this time was trying to free himself from his impalement, but the golden bark of the Red Branch was searing and burning his skin, preventing him from laying his hands upon it to get full leverage. All he could do was squeal and smoke.

‘As for you, demon!’ Fergus shouted, picking up an amphora of oil from among the smashed racks and tables. He hurled its contents over the struggling form, which hissed and cursed at him as he did so, but every tentacle he tried to unleash from his body withered away due to the proximity of the Quicken Tree branch.

Fergus then seized up a torch from the fire at the other end of the chamber and brought it to Crommlai’s face.

‘Your death will be atrocious, human!’ the creature shrieked. ‘You can count on…’

But Fergus would hear no more. Instead he rammed the flaming brand with force into Crommlai’s mouth. The boy, covered as he was now in the oil, went up like a scarecrow - the fire playing on his pointed shafts of fair hair, crowning them with even longer tongues of flame.

Fergus stepped back to grimly admire his handiwork, but frowned then when Crommlai abandoned all human shape, reverting to a mass of tentacles that writhed uncontrollably as he screamed. The enflamed members wrapped up around the length of the branch, setting the whole thing ablaze.

‘Sweet Danú!’ called a voice. Fergus would have sworn it was his own for they were the very words he wished to utter.

But the true speaker ran forward then into the Craobh Ruadh. It was Conall Cearnach.

Craobh Ruadh

He had just returned from Fort Culainn, having heard strange reports about Conchobar’s behaviour and the news that his name had been put upon a spancel hoop.

And now he arrived to see the sacred hall in a state of total devastation and Fergus MacRoth setting the Red Branch alight.

‘Traitor! Traitor!’

Traitor!

Fergus turned his head from the sad sight of Conall’s disbelieving face - it was Conchobar who was shouting, his mouth full of blood and swelling red around one eye.

‘MacRoth has attacked his king and shown his true colours! He’s now and forever an enemy of Eamhain!’

Fergus could only shake his head at that. He turned back to Conall once more, the boy was walking slowly forward on unsteady legs, staring agape at the mighty pillar of Lugh going up in flames.

‘You see no weapon in my hand, Conall, for I don’t take arms against those to whom I am loyal, and it’s well…’

This time it was Fergus who would not complete his sentence, for Conall had pivoted with great speed and brought his famous long-handled cudgel Lamhtapaidh hard against the older man’s temple.

Lamhtapaidh

Fergus staggered forward to his hands and knees and bellowed an unintelligible cry of grief and pain.

Conall had his cudgel up again, but he hesitated a moment. He was reluctant to smash open the head of his old mentor, yet Conchobar was urging him to do so.

And though this hesitation would earn him great pain now, he would be glad of it and its consequences in years to come. Fergus, the mighty, the legendary, roared up onto his feet once again and smote Conall down with six rapid blasts of his granite hands, knocking most of the younger man’s lower teeth halfway across the Craobh Ruadh.

Craobh Ruadh

Conall lay stunned on the broken floor while Fergus walked over and retrieved both the body of his son and Caladbolg where they lay.

Caladbolg

He stared across at Conchobar, who was on his feet and silent. The flames were beginning to spread from the Branch to the beams and wattle of the ceiling, thence to the walls, threatening to consume the entire sacred chamber all around them.

‘I am done with this place. It is hateful to me now’ he said at last.

Then Fergus MacRoth walked out of the Craobh Ruadh, and Eamhain Mhacha, forever.

Craobh Ruadh

None dared bar his path.

What he did not see, however, was that Crommlai was yet living. The Red Branch, aflame, dying, was losing its magickal energies and thus, feebly and in atrocious pain, the twisted re-incarnation of the Crom Cruach was able to dislodge itself from the incinerated spear shaft that had held him fixed to the now-charred bark of the sacred tree.

Yet he burned still and with a mind-splitting scream of agony he abandoned his human form and, seemingly no more than an indescribable blistered mass of unwholesome tissue, he buried down into the cracked earth and disappeared, issuing another wall of flame, rock and dirt up against the roaring fires still consuming the hall.

King Conchobar, standing mutely in the middle of this chaotic inferno, suddenly seized his abdominal wound, for a blossom of flame had erupted from it as the tendril of Crommlai lodged there exploded, its master too weak to maintain control over the mind-disrupting tumour.

The king staggered to his knees, coughing in the heavy pall of black smoke around him, his eyes stinging, his legs weak beyond measure and his mind in a state of utter confusion. He suddenly became aware of the tremendous heat around him and his beard and hair started to singe.

He would have been immolated in the next instants had Conall Cearnach, who had at last come to his senses, not seized him and, with his head tucked under the king’s arm, stumbled as fast as he could manage through the cloying smoke and out the burning door of the Craobh Ruadh.

Craobh Ruadh

‘Come, my king! Take your eyes away from all this calamity!’ he yelled over the roar of flame and crackling of wood.

Conchobar turned and took Conall by the other shoulder once they were safely outside; his voice was hoarse and bewildered.

‘What… what has happened?’

‘The worst of all things I’d say,’ said the groggy young man, turning to look back at the blaze and seeing the great drums above the Craobh Ruadh consumed by flames.

Craobh Ruadh

‘Where is CúChulainn? Call for CúChulainn, and Fergus!’ said the king, seemingly baffled by every sight around him.

Conall frowned and regarded Conchobar with a look of pity, the kind one normally reserved for the very old when they begin to lose their wits. It was a look he never thought he would have cause to use on the king of Uladh.

He spat blood and another tooth to the grass.

‘I’ll send word for CúChulainn. As for Fergus… you won’t be seeing Fergus around here too soon. I can tell you that.’

Some of the womenfolk of Eamhain had rushed forward and insisted on taking the king from Conall’s shoulder. They began to examine his wound, their faces ashen. As were the faces of all those present at Eamhain, man, woman or child, who witnessed the conflagration before them. Some stood silent with mouths sagging open, others took to keening and wailing.

‘Or if you do, things won’t be going well for us,’ Conall added, and his voice and heart had never been heavier with dread.