“Thulsa Doom! It is my bidding ye obey, and naught else.
“Aye.” There was only resignation in that word from lipless mouth.
“I want information of ye, monster!”
The red points in the eyesockets of Thulsa Doom’s death’s-head stared at Cormac mac Art. But they were without their usual fire of malice, for Thulsa Doom’s mind was no longer his own.
“Ye’ll provide information, an I demand it.”
The mage’s voice bore no semblance of happiness, though his hissing malevolence was also missing. “Aye. I will tell you what I can.”
“Be there escape from this dimension of yours, a way back to-our own world?”
“I am trapped here. You are as well, as you came through with me though totally by accident. We cannot return.”
That felt like a blow to the stomach, and Cormac heard gasps from the others. He tried, hopefully but with his voice bordering on the desultory. “And if we order ye to return us, blackheart?”
“I cannot. The slip-through, the ‘gateway’ I have so long used is destroyed. Never have I been so sorely held fast as ye held me, with swords, and with that man of Behl striving with his powers. I strove more mightily than ever I have before. Thus by accident I tore the slip-through, and brought through all with me-even these ships. And thus destroyed the link between this dimension and that other. I know. I strove to go back there, with you here. I could not; no means exists.” The mage broke off and stared straight ahead.
“More,” Samaire urged.
“Thulsa Doom!” the Gael snapped. “Heard ye not Samaire?”
This time the wizard’s words emerged bitterly, defiantly. “She does not wear the chain linked in the Beyond to this one!”
“I do. Speak. Add to what ye’ve said.”
“You cannot return,” Thulsa Doom said at once, “because I cannot. Nor could I guarantee it if your coming through had not destroyed the means of transference, for it was all by accident and my desperate striving to break the hold of swords and the druid. Be assured that I brought you not here by design, Cormac mac Art who was my greatest enemy!”
Cormac’s half-smile was grim. “For once, monster, I’m believing ye. Well then, we must make the most of it. This dimension does differ from ours?”
“Aye. It is the same, but some things have not happened here. Others have happened here that have not, will not in the other plane that was your home. There is a, a fork, a branching, in history. Both nature’s forces and sorcery had do with that branching, long ago. Now there are two worlds, lying parallel and each invisible to the other. This one became my escape… for here I did not survive death, so long ago. Most things are the same. That would not have remained so, for-” the sorcerer broke off.
“For what, mage? Answer!”
“-for I would have taken possession of this world, and ruled it,” Thulsa Doom said. “From Rome.”
“Rome!” Brian echoed.
“Aye.”
“In this world… Rome fell not? Rome still rules… even Britain?”
“No no. All those things-are the same; all major matters are the same. No-it was my plan, my hope, to rid your world of yourself, and this one-and then to rule this plane. Rome would be the best capital-for I would have replaced the leader of those who called themselves first ‘Friends’ and now are known as ‘Christians.’ Their chief priest or bishop is in Rome-from there he seeks to rule, but of course does not. I will-would have done. The Pope whose image I would wear would never die, would rule forever, and soon all would believe in his faith and his claim of direct descent from him chosen by their god.”
“A lovely plan,” Cormac mac Art said quietly. “An undying dead man… ruling a world devoted to the Dead God, Iosa Chriost!”
“That island that was there but not here,” Brian said apprehensively, for he was more interested in the immediate and the personal than the inconceivable: unending world rule. “It is now… here? It is gone?”
Into the silence, Cormac said, “Answer questions from us all.”
“It is not here,” Thulsa Doom said. “It was never here.”
“Nev-oh gods! Eirrin… be it here?”
“Aye. Eirrin exists. Britain exists. Norge and Dane-land exist. Rome left the shores of Britain some eighty years ago. Al-ric, king of the Visigoths, took and sacked Rome in the four-hundred and tenth year of the era of the Christians. It is the same. The August date was the same. Eirrin’s kingdoms are the same.”
All eyes aboard Quester were fixed on the mage now, all ears drinking in his dull-voiced reluctant replies as if they were ale and all were dying of thirst. The sea rippled alongside the ship, and gurgled in its wake.
“Brian,” Cormac said. “Is there… another Brian here?”
“No.”
Brian gasped and jerked as though struck.
“He put to sea three years agone, the skullface said, “and has never been seen since. Indeed he never will, as he was slain on the coast of Alba by Picts-”
“Dead!” Brian said in a broken croak, and held up his hand before his face. It shook. He stared at that quivering hand, as though for assurance that he indeed lived.
“Then all ye need do,” Bas reminded the youth, “is pretend a bit-and return to the bosom of an overjoyed family! Any errors ye make, in memory, can be laid to captivity or some sea battle.
“That,” Brian said very quietly, “I have experienced.”
They were silent, gazing upon the youth from Killevy up in Airgialla. All remembered how he’d had to do death on his best friend Ros, another youth whose mind was possessed by Thulsa Doom and who’d been striving to slay Bas. Cormac, whose mind bore scars, knew that act had etched one into Brian’s brain, too, and Cormac felt both remorse and guilt, for it was in following him that Brian had come upon such horror and had manhood thrust upon him, ten or so years all at once.
“And Wulfhere?” Cormac asked.
“Aye-has Thorleif slain me here-my, uh, other self, I mean? Odin’s god-like patience but this is a thorny matter to think on-even to try to talk on!”
The death’s-head moved slightly to face the giant. “It is true. And aye, was Thorleif of Norge slew you, years past. There is no other Wulfhere here.”
Wulfhere stared, then rose and stalked aft, to mutter to Brian that it was his turn at watch and tiller.
“And… myself?” Cormac was asking.
“Another Cormac mac Art exists in this plane,” Thulsa Doom said, and it was as if the words were a palpable force that rocked Cormac where he sat, on a rowing bench. “No less scarred, no less skilled with weapons, no less deadly, this Cormac mac Art of Connacht. He is you; you are he.”
After a time of silence while he thought on that, hardly with understanding, Cormac glanced at Samaire. He looked again at Thulsa Doom. “I would know whether-”
“Cormac!”
At her cry, Cormac broke off to look at Samaire.
“Ask no more about yourself. It is… eerie. Awful. Please.”
After a moment, he nodded. “And yourself, dairlin girl. Are ye wanting to know about yourself?”
“I-I-” She bit her lip, looked at Thulsa Doom. “Aye!” she said, of a sudden. “I must know, and then it’s no more questions I’ll be asking. It is possible that here I am married yet to that prince who was my husband, in Osraigh… or that I died in childbirth… or… was slain by those Norse who, captured me from the shores of Leinster. Such things are possible, wizard?”
“Aye, all such things are possible,” Thulsa Doom said. “But-”
“Hold!” She thrust out a stopping hand. “Tell me only if there is another Samaire Ceannselaigh here, daughter of Leinster’s dead king.”
“Aye.”
Again her teeth worried her lip. “And… my brother?”
“Feredach your brother rules Leinster, him who is called an Dubh-the Dark.”
“My-other brother. Ceann of the Red Hair.”
“He was slain by those Norse ye spoke of, on the soil of Eirrin near the coast, whilst he resisted his kidnaping-and yours. They carried you away, once they’d knocked away your sword and overpowered you-and threw him into the sea along the Leinsterish coast.”