“Well I know the efficacy of the silver chain and Moonbow!”
While Cormac had spoken, Wulfhere laid buckler and ax and helmet on the long table of stone. Leaning against it, he combed hair and beard with his fingers and kept the corner of his eye occupied with the watching of Erris.
“My blade sliced that tunic not enough,” he muttered, when she handed him another cup of ale. Most valuable that cup; the Danans must have found a vein of precious metal and mined it well, for the cup, like the chains and the trim of draperies and of Dithorba’s robe, was of silver.
She gave the big man a look that was part archness and part defiance, and turned away-though, he noted, with a swift movement that made her sideslashed skirts fly. Abruptly that little face was smiling back at him over her shoulder.
“Ye be so clever, my lord-without knowing that handmaidens of the queen accustomedly wear only these bracelets and a girdle suspending two long strips of cloth!”
“It’s danger you’ve brought to Moytura then,” Dithorba said, “Cormac mac Art of the Gaels.”
“As ye’ve said, your goddess protects us and Moytura through her silver chains and Sign, wizard of under-earth. Now tell me of your queen.”
Dithorba did. Riora Feachtnachis she was called, the very young ruler of the Danans within Eirrin; Riora the Fair, righteous One. The story of the treachery done on her and her intimates and advisers, and of their imprisonment, was as Erris had told it. Simulacrum or Riora-mimicking lamia wore the coral crown and sat the throne of Moytura. Through her or rather it Cairluh ruled; he in turn was dominated by Tarmur Roag. The queen was endungeoned, watched over and tormented by one named Elatha the Whip. About her were her handmaidens and others, as well as her ministers and the commander of her guard. Others had been slain.
Cormac thought on it. It occurred to him that he need not worry about gaining entrance to the dungeon; surely this man could convey him there by his own unique means!
“And Tarmur Roag is powerful. What powers else have ye, Dithorba Loingsech?”
“With a few little abilities learned in time,” the Moyturan said quietly, “ye’ve seen most of my powers, Cormac mac Art. Much can be accomplished by a clever, thinking man who can disappear and reappear where he will-unless he is fed a drug, and taken in his sleep as I was. Oh, I am not without other abilities, but Tarmur Roag is my superior. If only I possessed the martial skills of your extraordinary self, Cormac of the Gaels, Elatha the Whip were no deterrent to the freedom of my lady Queen!”
Cormac showed the Danan his ghost of a smile. It little resembled pleasantry or mirth, but few others living had seen more. “Ye need not seek to persuade me; ye know my purpose and the necessity of its doing. Ye have my size and skills, Dithorba, so long as ye can take me anywhere at all, and that faster than the curvet of a trout! Anywhere at all-such as into the queen’s dungeon.”
“Cormac!” Wulfhere was distracted even from Erris.
Cormac turned on his friend a mild look, then returned his slit-eyed gaze to Dithorba. “Be there a bit of food hereabouts, Lord Dithorba?”
The old man looked most sorrowful indeed. “Not a morsel.” He sighed. “The queen’s own advisor-reduced to thievery!” And he vanished.
“Ouch!” Wulfhere grunted. “Erris! I did but fondle what normally ye wear bare-where’s he gone now, Wolf?”
“To someone’s kitchen or storehouse, there to snatch provender for us, poor man,” the Gael said. “Do ye have animals in Moytura, Erris?”
She frowned. “Animals… oh! I’ve heard of such-no. They live on that which we cannot grow here, Cormac mac Art. Wulfhere-please! Many kinds of mollusc we have, for we have cultured them and coaxed them over the years to… modify, so I’m taught. And fish aplenty too, of many varieties. And lichens, and oh! marvelous mushrooms of more than one variety. Ye-ye’ve seen… animals? Legend has it such were here, once, but could not survive. Beasts that walk like… like us?”
“On four legs. But whence comes the cloth for your clothing, for these drapes?”
“The mif and the great spiders,” she said, and when questioned she explained that the mif was a great worm that throve here within the earth, and of its dried slime excellent cloth was made, along of course with the filaments spun by spiders Cormac did not care to see.
“Ugh,” Wulfhere said succinctly and with fervour.
“An ye like not our cloth,” Erris said, low-voiced, “keep your enormous hands away from this I wear, then.”
“Mayhap we can find time and place to remove it together,” Wulfhere said, “later.”
Cormac sighed, turning away-and Dithorba was there, bearing food stolen from someone’s very cookfire, for the pot was hot and issuing a most savoury aroma.
Thrice he left them, and thrice he returned laden, and none asked questions. They ate and drank then, four of them; Thulsa Doom required no nourishment.
The visitors learned that nay, not all rooms in Moytura were carved from living rock as was this one; stone was cut and used in building, and there was a mortaring paste they had made, too, to hold together blocks of stone in this land of no baking sun, no softening rain, no freezing snow or ice. In a great pool and in the two rivers that ran near there were creatures of sea and fresh water, and some were of a sort never seen above. Their hides were much used; as mining was constant and iron and silver plentiful, frames were easily made for the stretching of hides of walrus and water-creatures even bigger. Every scrap of cloth otherwise came from spiders and mifhe; the large snow-hued worms fed on the gigantic mushrooms that throve here within the earth. The queen’s adviser, the handmaiden, and the two weapon-men from above dined well on dishes of various fish and molluscs and mushrooms, and when Wulfhere made brag on one dish, he was advised that it was comprised of mushrooms, a mussel they called ab, snails and two kinds of lichen. Whereupon the Dane deemed himself sufficiently well fed to confine his grinding teeth to fish and a mushroom dish.
And what of the pearly light that bathed sunless Moytura?
Dithorba, who was indeed possessor of few necromantic and thaumaturgic powers or knowledge, could not tell them. It had been devised, or brought by the first settlers from the land above, long and long agone. It was Danu’s light. She shed her silvery moonish glow on her own that they might not have to dwell in darkness but were ever in this soft twilight, and no more Dithorba Loingsech knew.
Nor did he know what was meant by steel. None such was there in all Moytura, a land sprawling, large as Meath above, among natural caverns and chambers and those created by men, beneath and within a seabound land anchored to the ocean’s floor. Too, the working of iron was no ancient skill with them, and it became plain, now, how long ago the Gaels had bested the People of Danu, for all their magickal powers.
For it was the Gaels had brought iron to Eirrin, whose people-the Tuatha de Danann-were workers and users only of bronze; the tin they needed for their plentiful copper came from Britain. Since then the Gaels had learned to modify their iron unto the making of steel, while those of Moytura had progressed only so far, as iron. All was wrought, and impregnated with tiny bits of slag. Apparently bars of wrought iron were not here packed with charcoal in containers of clay, so that with sufficient heat it became steel. Nor did Cormac or Wulfhere advise Dithorba of the process.
“Steel,” Gael said to Dane, “cuts iron.”
“And these men are small,” Wulfhere said, with a hand beneath the table of stone; despite her protestations, Erris had taken seat beside him. “Umm. Fair odds for me here would be about a half-score to my one, then.”
Cormac gave him a look. Seeing that the man was serious, mac Art rose and roamed the room, high-bending his legs, swinging and cranking his arms, now and again bending suddenly or dropping into a squat. He had just eaten well, and would not ask for possible danger and the necessity of all skill and agility until he was certain his body was ready.