The diffused sunlight spilled into the cave for a little way, then paled to grey. The grey became black. There was no gauging the depth or length of this tunnel into Eirrin’s depths; there was only blackness.
“Cormac?”
Stepping a half-pace downward, Cormac turned to look at Wulfhere. He swept an arm at the gaping hole in the earth, large enough to be visible for many many feet, much less these few.
Wulfhere turned his gaze that way. He frowned. He turned the frown on his companion.
“See ye nothing, itch-beard?”
“The hill,” the Dane said. “And grass. Cormac-has the damp and our frustration got to ye, man?”
Cormac looked again. The cave was there. With a glance at Wulfhere, he stepped forward. Within the hole in the hill of Bri Leith, he turned to look again at Wulfhere Hausakluifr, and him who appeared to be Bas the Druid.
“Cormac!”
Wulfhere’s eyes had gone wide. He hurled badly shaken glances this way and that. Cormac saw those eyes fall on him-and knew that Wulfhere saw him not, from a distance of less than a body length. Cormac mac Art remembered, and stepped forth. Waving aside the Dane’s excited demands as to what had happened to him, he explained: Cathbadh had advised that the Doorways to the Danans would reveal themselves to him who wore the Moonbow.
“It is… there?”
“It is there, Wulfhere.”
“The… Doorway.”
“Aye. The Doorway to the People of Danu. We have found our goal.” He looked again into the blackness that Wulfhere could not see. “Ye have but to tread in my tracks, and-”
“Cormac mac Art.”
It was the voice of Bas; both men turned to look at him-or rather, his likeness.
“Forget this ill-advised adventure, Cormac mac Art. Ye know not what lies in that dark pit. Your own doom, perhaps. Think you a Gael will be welcomed by those the Gaels drove into this land’s subterranean depths, into the cold and the dark? Take from me this Chain of Danu; free me, and neither Wulfhere, nor Eirrin, nor any born of Eirrin anywhere will suffer the slightest from me-aye, you and yours will be the chosen people! And too any others ye name, elsewhere. Riches will be yours, Cormac mac Art… no more exile, no more wandering… shall there be again one named Cormac mac Art who rules supreme in Eirrin?”
“Thulsa Doom! Hush. Say no more. Keep silent.”
Knowing his commands were irresistible, Cormac turned from the mage at once. He found Wulfhere looking thoughtfully on him.
“Ye’d not be king over this land, blood-brother?”
“It’s nothing that one says and no promises of his I’d believe, blood-brother.”
Slowly, Wulfhere nodded. “It is tempting, though.” The Dane was musing aloud.
“Oh aye. Aye, temptation is on me. Doubtless others have been tempted. I hold myself no good man, Wulfhere.” Cormac held up his hands before his face, and there were scars on both. He examined the palms and dark long fingers. “It’s much blood these hands have spilled, Wulfhere.” The Gael’s voice was inordinately quiet. “Widows have been created to weep because of the son of Art of Connacht. Had that Art not been slain, murdered with treachery done on him, none can say what might have been. But… to be given the choice now of allying myself with purest evil, or of striving to rid this world of it… no choice exists, Wulfhere. It’s no bad man I am, either.” Cormac gestured to the cave invisible to the other. “We enter, Wulfhere. Is it still with me ye go?”
Wulfhere was smiling. “Was you said the words, Cormac. I see no cave-but I can see where ye go, Wolf. And I follow.”
At last the torches they’d brought would be put to use. Cormac entered the Doorway. Wulfhere followed. Aye, and now he could see: sunlit Eirrin behind, and the black darkness of the cave before. The huge Dane had to stoop even more than his friend, but this was no time to make complaint. With Thulsa Doom in the likeness of Bas of Tir Connail, they entered the cavern.
They walked between gloomy walls of earth and stone, on a floor of the same. It was bare and hardpacked and dustless beneath their feet. Uplifted torches surrounded them in a bright yellow glow that was engulfed by darkness but a few paces ahead. They advanced; the dark retreated, but was ever there, lurking, waiting, closing in behind them as they ranged downward into the earth.
Wulfhere glanced back, and his helmet clonked dully against a low ceil of solid stone. He saw only the darkness; they had followed the cavern downward, and its mouth had vanished.
“How can people, live down here, in this blackness? Cormac… there cannot be people down here!”
Cormac said nothing. Doubts plucked at his confidence and his hopes, too, but he’d go on until uncertainty became certainty-one way or another. An there be a crowned woman down here, he mused, sure it’s Queen of the Dark she is!
So, and so. Let it be that, then. If such there were, he’d be finding her. Behind him paced Thulsa Doom in silence; last came Wulfhere Hausakluifr. Cormac walked on, leading the others ever deeper into the earth. A silence surrounded them, and it seemed ominous, brooding, a menace. Waiting. Silence and darkness swallowed them. The air grew heavy with the odour of damp loam.
Their footsteps and the clink of chainmail were the only sounds, and close-pressing walls gave off echoes. Even their breathing seemed loud, echoic in this subterrene silence.
Cormac mac Art knew not how long they’d paced forward, ever downward, but his back had begun to complain of having been so long bowed. Many minutes, he knew; many, many minutes. He was sure that Wulfhere suffered even more, by reason of his great height. But the Dane did not complain. Cormac realized, and appreciated. Wulfhere Skullsplitter was no child. He knew when not to jest or jape or make complaints.
Aye-and surely the ceiling’s height is proof enow of the origin of this endless tunnel, added to the sorcerous invisibility of its mouth; this passage was constructed for people far shorter than I, than men of normal height… the Tuatha de Danann.
“Cormac!” Wulfhere’s voice came in a rumblous whisper.
“Aye.”
Cormac’s voice, too, was cautiously low, for there was light ahead. They advanced toward the pallid grey glow. Now the walls ahead became visible, in a dim pearly light that seemed to have no source and yet was like… moonlight. It did not grow brighter as they approached, though they were soon able to see more clearly. The illumination was like that of earliest dawn just when the birds commence to sing, rather than the final blush at day’s end. Toward that light the three walked-and what they became able to see directly ahead was a blank wall of stone.
Just as they reached that dead end of the passage they trekked, they saw that it was not; the tunnel split and went off at angles to left and right. In the broader space formed by the three openings in the earth, they paused, peering down each arm of the Y and looking at each other.
There came help then in the matter of choosing: from. along the leftward passage came sound. It was that of weeping, in the naturally high voice of a woman or an adolescent.
After the exchange of another glance-and one directed at Thulsa Doom-they turned and entered the channel to the left.
Was it an omen of ill favour that the first sound they heard in this subterrene road to the tuatha de Danann was of sobbing; that the first person they met here inside Eirrin was deep in sadness?
The passageway descended, angled-and they saw the weeper.
She was a girl or young woman, huddled on the cavern floor, close to the far wall with her legs drawn up and her head in her hands.
She was entirely naked but for a bracelet, which looked like bronze.
Deciding as he had about Sinshi that this nude little weeper was more girl than woman, Cormac paused, lifted a hand to halt the others. His buckler was on his arm and his sword in his sheath. They gazed on the girl, whose head was down while she wept with quaking shoulders and yet little sound as though she strove not to be heard; nevertheless she had neither seen nor heard their approach. In silence, the three trespassers of under-earth stared.