“We found a castle on that island, Druid, a prodigious towering pile of superbly-stacked stones more thousands of years old than I’d care to say-or than ye’d believe.”
Bas was staring, with more than interest now in his expression, in his entire attitude. His fingers toyed idly with the sprig of dried mistletoe he wore about his neck.
“Think ye so, descendant of Gaels?”
The two descendants of Gaels stared at each other, warrior and priest.
“What… found you there, Cormac mac Art?”
“Booty! A treasure-trove. The castle had been found afore us, and was the lair of a band of Norse reavers. We awaited them. When they came, they had as captive the Princess Samaire and her brother Prince Ceann. Their murdering, throne-thieving brother had arranged for these his younger siblings to fall into the hands of those men of Norge.”
“Ah-it was thus you and Samaire met and linked destinies.”
“We knew each other long before, twelve years and more agone, when she was but a girl and I a boy, a weapon-man in the employ of her father.”
Bas nodded. He had heard the tale. First, because of the plotting of a fearful High-king, Cormac’s father had been slain. The boy, well trained and big for his age, had fled his native Connacht, to serve in Leinster under an assumed name. Later discovered there, he’d been forced to flee that kingdom too… and then Eirrin. For twelve long years he’d been an exile. There was a story that he had crossed the King of DalRiada, too, up in Alba. A man to rouse the fickleness of men and gods, was Cormac of Connacht.
He was speaking on: “None of the Vikings survived. Of us, only Wulfhere and I did-and Samaire and Ceann. And the Norsemen’s ship. It was no easy mater, but the four of us reached Eirrin aboard that ship.”
“When last we saw it,” Samaire said, with a reminiscent sadness in voice and face, “Wulfhere plied it alone, on a northerly bearing, ‘twixt Eirrin and Britain.”
Bas was shaking his head. “What lifetimes of adventure and horror ye’ve crowded into your short term in this body, son of Crom Cruach! Oh… and sith I note how ye call my lord and lady the prince and princess of Leinster by their given names, Cormac, call me Bas.”
“It’s Lord Bas ye be, or should. Ye gave up much to don druidic robes, man!”
“I gained much, Cormac.”
Again they gazed upon each other in silence for a time, and not without admiration and respect. Then Bas spoke.
“And so this voyage is to take ye back to this isle your Danish friend named Samaire-heim, and carry off the rest of the Norsemen’s sword-gains.”
“It is, Lor-Bas. That be the reason we few sail on a ship large enough to bear twice our number. Were the Lord Cumal Uais not so… cautious, we’d have two ships and more armed escort. The pr-Samaire and Ceann, ye see, need the wealth.”
“It’s no comment I’d be making on what seems implicit in that, Cormac, my lady-”
“Samaire,” she corrected, the orange-haired warrior. “No comment is necessary, Bas. My brother Ceann and I are what we are. When our father died, Leinster’s throne passed to his eldest. Within the year he was dead-slain, we know, by our brother Feredach’s scheming. Next it was us Feredach the Dark did treachery upon. Mayhap it’s grateful we should be that he did not have us slain. He is our older brother, and so Ceann and I have no claim on the throne.”
“While Feredach lives,” Cormac added.
Bas nodded, taking no note of Cormac’s sinister addition to Samaire’s words. “All this I know, sweet lady; I was present during the drama of accusation at the Council of Kings on Tara Hill but a month agone. Nor still will I comment, nor on Cormac’s dark remark. But… Cormac. Why am I along on this quest?”
“Why-ye asked to come!” Samaire blurted.
Cormac almost smiled. “Nay, so I told you, and it’s apology I make, dairl-Samaire. It was I asked my lord Bas the Druid to accompany us. There is sorcery on that isle, or was, and any who believe druids know naught but such as oak and mistletoe and the rites of Behltain and Samain be a fool before the gods.”
Bas neither smiled, nor affirmed nor denied; that was affirmation enow.
“The castle, Cormac,” he said, after a time of silence. “It is older than old?”
“Men of Atlantis builded it, Bas.”
“Ye know this.”
“I know it.”
Bas looked at neither of them, but straight ahead, and he spoke as if to himself.
“A castle of Atlantis… There is a story, a story passed down through thousands and thousands of generations of druids. It speaks of Kull, King of Valusia and an Atlantean born, and another man, a mage. Through some means Kull was able to best this wizard, who is variously said to have been a servant of the serpent god far more ancient than Atlantis… and to be immortal… and to be already dead but not dead, alive yet not alive, a man stronger than the grave, whose true face was that of death itself: a fleshless skull. There is a story… It is to these climes Kull is said to have sailed, where again he met that dread sorcerer. With the latter now was a legion of allies: serpents. Perhaps the serpent-god himself, who ruled the earth before we men came up from the seas… or, as some say it, down from the trees! Thus man met serpent again in a last great battle, and King Kull prevailed…”
“Gods of my ancestors,” Samaire murmured, “against such a foe-how?”
The closing of Cormac’s fingers on her arm deeply indented the flesh, and made her flinch. Hush, that sudden squeeze and grip bade her, without a spoken word.
“Kull had his own mage by then,” the druid spoke on, “and besides Kull was of the mightiest of men ever to walk the ridge of the world. By sword and sorcery he and his prevailed, and raised a great castle over the ensorceled mage of evil. Some say those men ranged on, even to Eirrin where there were then no men, and that terrible war upon the Great Serpent’s last servant is the reason our green fens and blue hills are marred even today by no slithering serpent.”
Bas came to a halt in his murmurous narrative-which was more like unto a remembrance, or a day-dreaming recall of the tiniest part of the lore that belonged to the druids. As though lost still within himself, he looked not at Cormac or Samaire. The grey eyes of the High-king’s brother-in-law stared ahead as though seeing only things that lay behind his eyes, not before.
Dully Cormac said, “It is more than story, O Druid. It is Kull’s isle, and his castle. I… know. And beneath it… I like to have ended my days in this form. To a serpent, Lord Druid… a serpent several times the length of my body. And once I’d slain him… he bled scarlet, like a man.”
“O Behl,” the druid murmured, “I am your servant. Lord of Sun and Oak, accept poor thanks and promise of restoration. That I should be the one who sees the castle of my father’s father’s fathers half a million times removed!”
The trio at Quester’s prow fell silent.
Samaire, herself no mewling girl nor yet a small souled person, but a woman of will and determination even among the free women of Eirrin, looked from one of those men to the other. Gaels both, dark of hair and pale of eye. The weapon-man and the druid; the eternal twain: warrior and priest. Samaire could not help but feel that she stood in the presence of giants, and of the eerie. These were men sure who stood above other men, whose lines ran back into the mists of time out of mind, and were likely to continue into the far mistier future, even as far.
These two had been here again and again, and would tread this earth again and again still.