CúChulainn of Eirú Book II

Chapter 4

1.

Fata Morgana

Having passed through the narrow, pillar-flanked entrance of the mound, CúChulainn and Amergin descended by some erratically-placed stones barely visible in the crumbling earth. The steep passage was dank and supported by stones etched with peculiar markings; spirals, whorls and runes, and so completely invaded by spider webs which clung to their faces that they eventually gave up brushing them away. Worrying sounds drifted up from below, low unidentifiable moans and creaks. Eventually, the passage opened into a larger chamber illuminated by a single shaft of pale light that lanced in from high above through a small hole in the ceiling of roots and compacted earth.

And there, standing in one gloomy corner, was King Ailill.

CúChulainn stepped forward cautiously; Amergin seemed more interested in intently scanning the marks upon the rocks by the light of a torch that he had swiftly brought to flame by some druidic trick. This little turn did not fail to impress CúChulainn despite his familiarity with his mentor.

‘Ailill of Connacht? We have come, and it seems that our identity is no secret to you,’ he said in a firm voice. ‘I trust our conversation will be loyal, and that no harm need befall you or your men.’

The king stood in the shadows, unmoving and silent for some moments, both hands resting upon the pommel of the long sword that he held vertically before him.

Amergin moved forward with his torch to afford them a better look at their host but, oddly, the light of the flame seemed to cause the gloom about the other man to deepen, obscuring him further from their view.

‘You almost disappoint me, CúChulainn,’ said the king.

‘How so?’

The Uladhman discreetly turned his hips and heels, ready for sudden combat.

Next, an echoing, crashing noise hammered down the passage by which they had descended. CúChulainn whirled about and was engulfed, along with Amergin, in a thick grey cloud of dust, pebbles, fragments of web and other detritus.

‘They have sealed the entrance,’ gasped the sage when the dust had died down and their throats had cleared. The blast had extinguished his torch.

‘I thought you might have known me from before,’ continued Ailill, but his voice sounded different, void of emotion and profoundly disturbing. ‘For it is not the first time you have been in my presence. Yet, you seem to perceive little, son of Lugh.’

CúChulainn and Amergin could finally see the vague outline of the Connacht king again now that the dust had settled, and he was stepping forward, through and beyond the shaft of pale light.

As he did so his body began to blur and change, twist and grow until looming before them appeared the dire, true shape of the Morrigan, presenting herself in her utmost form in this supernatural place. And, despite all the horrors both men could claim to have beheld already in their lives, they shrank back from it.

Amergin had borne witness to the sight of the Goddess of Death in one of her more hideous aspects when he had unmasked the woman calling herself Mag in the Craobh Ruadh. But here, in a Sídhe, a door to the other realms, she more closely resembled her true nature: it was terrible to look upon, for she embodied the mortal fear of extinction from which nothing living can ever be fully immune.

Craobh Ruadh

That tall, pale grey body with its sinewy, anatomically contradictory structure appeared to flow like liquid when she moved. An enormous dark veil of inky blackness spread from her back, something analogous to wings but were also part of the darkly shimmering cloak that hovered and drifted about her, suspended by an eldritch wind that the two mortals could neither feel nor hear.

Then there was the face, as much as was clearly visible when the drifting shroud revealed it. Her mouth was a soul-shrivelling rictus of long, broken and yellowed teeth. Too many teeth! Some growing one over another from the dead purple flesh revealed behind peeled-back lips. There was no skin or muscle upon her cheeks, just sheer white of bone jutting out to either side and tapering to a point. And above all that burned two amber eyes of such profound evil that Amergin’s knees gave out and he stumbled to the dusty floor.

‘Sweet Danú…’ he managed to mutter.

The Morrigan loomed above them, raising one sharp-clawed hand before her with an affected flourish, and spreading the cloak of wings about her in a bizarre gesture of vanity.

‘But then all come to know me. All come to fear me!’ she rasped. ‘It cannot be otherwise. To live is to cower before The Morrigan!’

all

But CúChulainn did not fall. He had mastered himself in the time it took the evil goddess to fully exhibit herself, and his incredible sense of battle strategy had already supplied him with a plan.

They were in a Sídhe. In such places the normal laws of the world could not be relied upon. Here the powers of the Dananns were at their purest, for their own luminous realm could be reached through this nexus. Here he could amplify the power of Lugh, if he was swift!

He rushed forward past The Morrigan and into the shaft of light drawing forth The Answerer, bathing the blade in the pale beam and calling the name of his father.

‘Lugh Samildánach, be with your sword Freagartach! Be with me now!’

Freagartach

Instantly, powerful energy crackled around him as he drew Lugh’s strength into him and The Answerer burned with a golden light.

‘Yes!’ he cried when he saw the horrendous lips of the Morrigan peel back in what he imagined might have been an expression of disgust, but which also hinted at uncertainty.

‘The Light of Lugh can pierce even your darkness in a place such as this, vile creature!’

So saying, CúChulainn leaped high into the dusty air of the Sídhe and plunged his gleaming sword at the goddess who screeched and folded away from the strike with eerie, liquid speed. She quickly shrank in size and retreated back into the shadows as the hero landed and spun The Answerer around him, seeking his mercurial target.

Amergin, taking courage from this, got to his feet and quickly muttered an incantation that reignited his torch.

‘Danann magic is at its full in this place,’ he said, voicing now what CúChulainn had already instinctively realised. Together they advanced into the dark corner where the Morrigan had fled.

‘We can perhaps...’

Suddenly she reared up before them, and faster than even CúChulainn with his tremendous speed could lay a strike, she reduced herself into the shape and size of a crow and took off out the hole in the root-infested ceiling of the chamber far above. Her croaking laughter rang in their ears as she did so.

‘Don’t die CúChulainn! I have such plans for you!’

The Hound of Uladh ran to the shaft of light and roared up after her.

‘Coward!’

Suddenly the expression of rage upon his face turned to one of horror for, high above he glimpsed the leering mask of Nett.

‘Feast upon one other, you miserable fools!’ called the Sluagh.

Then with a heavy, dull thud the light above was abruptly cut off and the Uladh men were plunged into total darkness.

Outside, Nett stood watching in satisfaction as his men lay the last boulder over the hole at the top of the Sídhe. He then strode down the hill and took one final look at the mighty rocks that now stood in front of the entrance passage. He congratulated himself on his rune-lore, without which he could never have accomplished this feat. Further proof that he was so superior to the pathetic insects of Eirú, or even the other Sluagh.

Only his twin Midac had been his equal. Once they had hatched great plans to dominate these fertile lands, to raise themselves up as supreme overlords of an invincible empire. To one day overthrow even the old Dananns themselves.

Then Midac had fallen to CúChulainn during Aifé’s failed invasion, and Nett was forced to concede that he could not undo Medb alone. He would have to accept his role as enduring vassal for as long as the witch held power.

So be it.

But at least now he had condemned CúChulainn, the man that had destroyed his secret schemes, to an eternity of suffering in the Aeder Worlds.

Nett might have smiled at this thought, had he even the slightest shred of humanity. Or a soul to contain it.

*****

Ferdia stood, sweating.

That was all he could say for certain about anything. That he stood… somewhere. And that his nerves were on end. Now and again some horror would surge from the impossible darkness around him, he could never tell from which direction; from above, below, left or right. Nothing would herald its arrival; no scent or sound, and each time he only barely managed to fend off the lightning attacks.

somewhere

Once again he called upon his shadowsight, which normally allowed him to see in the deepest of nights, but here it was useless. He tensed himself once again and looked down at his sword. At least he still had that! Then, at the very upper limits of his keen hearing, he perceived a soft, regular patter, like drops of water hitting stone.

He whirled around and cut down his would-be assailant, discovering in the same instant that it was a man made entirely of blood, and it was the pearls of scarlet life-fluid falling from that hideous body that had alerted him despite the sudden materialisation of the phantom.

The chimera, neatly halved by Ferdia’s instinctive strike, lost solidity and splashed to the ground creating an even darker hole in the black nothingness around him. Ferdia suddenly found himself dragged down towards the newly-created vortex, fighting uselessly against its irresistible pull.

Inside he fell as surely and steadily as a rock in a well. Ferdia twisted about as he fell and below him he saw, growing in size as he plummeted, the shape of an enormous hand. He fell into that colossal palm and the fingers closed around him.

Ferdia climbed to his feet and looked frantically about him. Was he in the grasp of some giant now? No. Now that he looked carefully it was no longer a hand that surrounded him, but a bizarre spherical cage composed of interlaced human arms. He roared in frustration, trying to clear his head from the unrelenting madness of the realm in which he had somehow become a prisoner.

Anybody else, however, would only see the ShadowKin captain lying on the floor of Aifé’s chamber, kicking and grunting impotently, trapped in the illusion created by the Danann sorceress.

But in his mind, the arms suddenly unfurled and grabbed hold of him. In anger he pulled himself free but the cage was getting smaller and smaller, and arms from every angle reached for him, digging their filthy nails into his eyes and mouth. He was quickly engulfed.

Then he heard a voice. One that was inexpressibly hateful to him.

‘You can endure much horror, Ferdia, proud captain of the ShadowKin!’

Two hands parted from his face, freeing only Ferdia’s staring, maddened eyes. He could now see the arms of the cage wall opposite releasing their grasp upon one another, folding back to allow Aifé to walk inside. Hands caressed her hair and body lovingly as she passed, then re-sealed behind her.

‘But you are resolve without intelligence,’ she chided in a playful voice, tinged with mock disappointment. ‘To think you could ambush me! You should have realised by now how easily I can bend what you think of as reality. Remember how went the death of Scátach, your mistress? Too easily done for all that.’

More hands parted from Ferdia’s chest, tearing his tunic as they did so, leaving his naked breast exposed. Aifé produced a long, pearl-handled dagger and rested the point upon his heart, her other palm on the hilt, ready for the fatal push that would end the sad tale of Ferdia MacDamann.

‘For all your brilliance, you never had a chance,’ she sighed, then granted him one last wickedly beautiful little smile.

But before she eased the dagger into his pounding heart a thin line of blood appeared at her throat and the smile disappeared. She stepped back in shock, her free hand flying up to stem the flow. Suddenly the cage of arms and all other illusions blurred and hazed out of existence, and Ferdia found himself standing on the tips of his toes in the bed chamber, watching as Aifé backed away clutching her throat, hacking blood.

Behind her Ferdia noticed a silver-haired woman, a bloody knife in her hand and a hard expression on her face. When Aifé backed into her, the other woman shoved her forward onto her knees. Aifé turned her head and her green eyes grew wide as she recognised her sister.

‘M…Medb… What… aaah?’ was all she could croak.

Before Ferdia could collect his wits the woman with the knife spoke.

‘Ferdia. I am Medb, sister of Scátach. I grant you revenge upon your nemesis. Strike swiftly and hard, she is Danann and even that wound I gave her will not suffice to finish her days.’

Ferdia did not allow himself to hesitate. He fell immediately upon the stricken sorceress, plunging the sword Deshkil into each of her vitals with fatal precision.

‘Now back!’ Medb commanded.

Ferdia stepped away uncertainly, Medb’s voice had a power to it that he found difficult to disobey. At that moment the hundreds of candles of the chamber guttered out and a great black shape swooped in through one of the high windows. The winged demon alit beside the bloodied and dying Aifé, transforming - to Ferdia’s astonishment - into no more than a wizened, filthy hag.

The old creature took the sublime beauty of Aifé’s face in her grubby, claw-like hands, appraising it.

‘No. This is no illusion, my pretty,’ she crooned. ‘Crom Cruach’s favourite! Come to me at last!’

Aifé could only manage to utter one final, pained word:

‘Crommlai…’

Then her ancient and powerful life-force was absorbed into the Morrigan, and as the waves of Danann energy moved up her body and across her face the hideous features of Cáit became young and comely for an instant, savouring the vain pride and once eternal beauty of Aifé.

Finally the Mistress of Illusion simply disappeared, every mote, every wisp of her was taken into the Battle Crow just as Scátach had been before her.

Nothing remained.