Cormac had found the mechanism he had marked; after a few minutes of striving, he sprang open the panel in the wall. Beyond was the corridor that became the tunnel he remembered too well. Bas peered within. The druid’s nose wrinkled as it was assailed by the musty, mephitic odour of ages agone.
“It was with that chair I propped open the door,” Cormac told him, “that it might not seal us within. I pursued. But he had a torch, taken from that sconce there, while I was in darkness. The tunnel twists. Here.”
With the strike-a-light of iron and flint that no sensible man went without, Cormac mac Art raised a flame on a slow-burning torch. He looked at Bas and Samaire; the three of them entered into the wall.
“Ah, see how the corridor runs straight and seems to end at a wall-I ran up against that, and with force! After that, once I’d found the turn, I was forced to less speed.”
The three came to the apparently blank wall, but the flickering torchlight in Cormac’s hand showed them how the tunnel continued, merely bending sharply leftward. A short distance past that, they turned again to the right.
“I soon learned that these constant turn-asides run ever in twos, so that this tunnel proceeds ever in the same direction.”
“The musty odour of this place has not improved since last we trod here,” Samaire said.
“Age, mere age,” Bas said as though to himself. “And the tunnel must be open at the far end, since there’s air to breathe and to burn.”
The torch burned; Cormac nodded.
“Ah-we go down,” Bas said.
“And we turn. An ancient escape-route, methought, made so full of turns to slow and baffle pursuit-as it did me! And man-made all, as ye see by the smoothness of the walls. Else I’d have thought this tunnel was carved out here by a man both blind and blind-drunk-and led the while by a lazy serpent.” Remembering, he added, “Perhaps I was partly aright…”
Their feet scuffed through dust that lifted up and hovered about. Their nostrils were constantly assaulted by fetor. Once Cormac had blown through his nostrils like a tracking hound, Samaire and Bas did the same. The dust was instep deep, for in centuries no feet had trod here but Samaire’s, and Cormac’s, and Cutha Atheldane’s. The men’s buskins and Samaire’s boots hissed susurrantly through dust older than they could conceive in their minds. Each essayed to breathe shallowly, to inspire less vitiated, fetid air.
’Ah! Here, Druid, I stopped. For it was here I beheld a woman of passing beauty of face and form. Like a queen she was, with plaited hair like corn and soft folds of silk robing her. I remember, sandals… of white bronze they were, and so too was she: white as though she’d known no sun. She spoke; she strove to tempt me. She warned that for me to pursue was to find death before the next dawn. I demanded her name. Only one who wished me well, she said, and I bade her swear on my sword.”
Bas nodded.
“Was she fairer than I,” Samaire asked, “this temptress you say was of such passing beauty?”
“Aye, for of what avail a sorcerous temptress, an she were not more beautiful than normal folk… companion? But she called me handsome, and would not swear on my sword. Then knew I she was not what she appeared, for none can call me handsome in honesty! And whether she was a shade of the sidhe or a demon of those cold Northlands whence came Cutha Atheldane, or indeed he himself in a new disguise, I knew she was no woman of woman born!”
“She would not swear on your sword,” Bas said, nodding again. “For though the walking dead can, no demon can abide iron!”
“Aye. And I lunged, and spitted her on my blade.”
“Whereupon she vanished?”
Cormac looked at Bas, and his lips made as if to smile; it was good, these reminders that the man was wise, and not one to come apart like old cloth, as that Briton Osbrit had done.
“Whereupon,” Cormac confirmed, “she vanished.” Then he turned about. “And I walked on, in the dark, though were we without this torch, ye’d see that the walls themselves emit some strange light of their own. Around this bending…”
They turned to pace leftward, then were forced by the smooth walls to turn right again.
“Around that bending, even here,” Cormac said, halting again, “I stopped once more. My short hairs stood right up! There facing me were three men, war girt and with their swords naked. One a Norse, and one a Pict, and the third a Norse as well, though he served in Dalriada of Alba when last I’d seen him… and slain him.”
Bas stepped past Cormac, turned so that he could look into his face. “This ye’ve told me not-that ye’d fought the walking dead before this day."
“There was a difference, Bas. Mayhap the spell was of less power, or mayhap it was more. One called Sigrel and I fought briefly, just here, and I broke his wrist and skewered his belly. And he laughed. Then did I remember the woman I’d just stabbed in the same manner, and I shouted to them to get hence, that I had business beyond, with their master-and I charged them. Whereupon, like smoke in a goodly wind, they vanished.”
Bas thought upon that. “A spell of less power, I’d venture to say. If a spell at all-thus Cutha Atheldane had the power of the eyes, Cormac. The illusion-power over men’s minds, as did he who sent darkness on ye in Eirrin that day of your testing. Only your eyes beheld that darkness that was not. Nor were there dead men here, nor was the woman a demon. All sprang from the mind of Cutha Atheldane as did the darkness that later came from that foul Leinsterish druid-and from your own mind, Cormac mac Art."
“So it can be done, the seizing of a man’s mind and making him to see what is not there, without sorcery?”
Bas nodded. “It can, though whether it is of sorcery or no-who can say?”
“You have this power, this knowledge?” Samaire asked.
“It is available to me.”
“I’ll be asking ye about that again, Druid,” Cormac mac Art assured him. “And methinks yours is the explanation, for those men in the great hall today were there, and so are their bones still. But the woman and the men who braced me here, all three slain before by me… those were not here, sure, for they left no prints at all in the dust, no sign.”
Automatically Samaire looked down though Bas did not.
“Cormac! Bas!”
They whirled about; they followed her down-directed gaze. The trio stared at the footprints in the dust, only a little of which had dribbled down into the depressions. Cormac stepped forward, moving the torch. The prints of shod feet continued. They faded away into the darkness ahead of them whence that walker had come-for these prints led to the castle, not from it. In the darkness before, and with the torch held well up, none had noticed.
“Yours,” Bas said, “from that other time.”
“There be but one set,” Samaire said.
Cormac squatted. “Nor are they yours… nor mine! Here, look here. These are ours, nearly gone now in the three months since we were here.”
The three looked at the impressions in the dust and, in the light of the flickering torch, at each other. None needed to speak. The evidence was there. Someone, a man wearing buskins or sandals, had paced this subterrene corridor since Cormac and Samaire had, nor had it been one of the slain Britons. For there was but one set of prints, and they came from… wherever this tunnel led. To the sea, Cormac had previously assumed; he’d not gone on to be sure, for he’d been in haste to return to the great hall and the battle he had known was taking place there. It was in that fierce and bloody fight had been slain the Danes and Norse who had returned to slay again.
“Cutha Atheldane we left dead,” Samaire whispered.
“Aye, and the serpent,” Cormac said. “There was no other. But… from the sea, one must think, someone else has walked this ancient corridor-to the castle, but never from it.”