Part 11 (1/2)

Somewhat taken aback, for he told himself he did not believe in any of this, John allowed himself to be guided on past the monoliths toward the entrance to the citadel, hurriedly reexamining his previous a.s.sumptions. He knew, from his father's stories, that this was where the last of the Pictish rebels had been burned to death by King Malcolm Canmore's men, calling upon their G.o.ds for vengeance as they perished in the flames. The elder Comyn more than once had made vague allusion to the extinction of the Canmore line as a long-awaited act of retribution: blood for blood, almost as if he had played some part in it.

Wondering whether it could possibly be so-and he found a part of him hoping that it was-John suppressed a shudder for the fates of his ill-starred forebears. Very briefly, as he and his father continued on toward the citadel, a final intimation of the latter refused to be put by. His mouth went dry as he became aware of a ghostly crackling in his ears, like the distant roar of a bonfire. A spectral gust of heat swept past him, bringing with it the stench of burning flesh-imagination, surely.

Shaking his head to banish such echoes of the past, he turned his gaze to the present. Like the outer ramparts, the walls of the ruined citadel had been partially repaired. Embedded here and there among the plain building stones and rubble were other blocks inscribed with figures of charging bulls-fragments of structures long ago tumbled to ruin in the wake of the White Christ's triumph over the G.o.ds of the Picts.

Well did John remember the night his father had been instructed to restore it thus. Only just coming into his beard, at last permitted to sit with the men at table, he had listened enthralled at his father's side as the man called Torgon, purporting to be a priest of the old G.o.ds, had declaimed the past glories of his ancient deities with an eloquence and fervor rivaling that of the White Christ's devotees, calling upon the true sons of Alba to rebuild the ancient holy places for her native G.o.ds. In specific, Torgon had instructed that stone fragments bearing images or sigils of bulls should be inserted into the restored walls. So sited, the array of bulls would present simultaneously a defensive barrier and an invocation of indomitable strength.

And it clearly had been done, according to Torgon's instructions!

The younger Comyn roughly recalled himself to the present as his father's voice intruded on his amazement, speaking to one of his lieutenants, a powerful bearded battle veteran called Seward, who had appeared within the open doorway to the citadel. The man's bare arms were painted with runic symbols traced out in blue, and upon his forehead he bore the blue-traced head of a bull, the long horns extending to the temples.

”Has all been prepared in accordance with my instructions?” Comyn demanded.

Seward inclined his head. ”It has, my lord.”

”Away with you, then, and see that the men remain withdrawn from this ward,” Comyn ordered. ”I will brook no intrusion or interruption of the proceedings.”

With a parting salute, Seward loped off down the hill to carry out his orders, leaving the Comyns to enter the citadel unattended. The enclosure was roofless, and the dull daylight did little to dispel the deep shadows oozing along its walls. Within the circuit of those walls had been erected a broad altar stone, its low sides carved with runic inscriptions that John knew were intended to invoke the intercession of the old G.o.ds, who demanded blood in tribute and to whom captured enemies were sacrificed by drowning.

Both had been offered on the occasion of the younger Comyn's last visit to Burghead, though he had seen only the sacrifice of a bull like the one tethered just behind the altar, whose blood had been smeared on his face and hands in mark of his coming of age; and he had understood what would be the fate of the trembling youth, no older than himself, whom the high priest Torgon led down into that dark stairwell, out beside the monoliths, nude save for a crown of mistletoe and rowan, and with wrists bound behind his back. Only Torgon had come out. On the ride back home, his father had a.s.sured him that the boy was from without the land of Alba, taken in a raid across the borders far to the south, and therefore of little consequence.

He therefore was not surprised to see another bull today-and vaguely wondered whether another captive would be drowned. But behind the bull were ranged only a pair of soldiers to tend it, the bull sigil upon their foreheads and garlands of rowan and mistletoe wound around their left arms to show that they had been inducted into the mysteries; and to either side of them, the white-robed forms of Torgon and a younger a.s.sistant, both of them bearded and tonsured ear to ear in the Celtic manner, the remaining hair plaited in greasy braids to either side of their heads, both marked with the bull sigil and crowned with leafy garlands. Torgon had around his neck a golden torc denoting his rank, and iron bracelets upon his forearms, and in one hand a staff of gnarled black wood. The younger priest was holding the tether of the bull, letting it nose among a few spa.r.s.e tufts of gra.s.s springing from between uneven flagstones surrounding the altar.

Comyn raised his hand in salute, and the priests bowed their heads in acknowledgment. At a sign from Torgon, his priestly companion helped the soldiers heave the bullock up onto the altar slab-so placid, John suspected it had been drugged-while Torgon himself took up a bowl with a leafy aspergillum and began circling the altar widders.h.i.+ns, sprinkling it and the bull with aspersions of water infused with mistletoe berries.

While this was taking place, the Black Comyn disarmed himself and stripped off to the waist, gesturing for his son to do the same, letting the younger priest paint the bull sigil upon his brow. As the younger Comyn also submitted to the ritual marking and joined his father in kneeling before the altar, he felt the gooseflesh rising on his arms, not alone because of the chill and damp, this near the sea.

Lifting his hands, the elder Comyn now began an invocation in the Pictish tongue-words he had recently taught his son in preparation for this day, and in which the younger Comyn haltingly joined. When the prayer ended, Torgon thrust his staff over the bullock in a gesture of bidding and began a long, keening chant of his own, which sent chills up young Comyn's spine.

The younger priest and the soldiers had bowed their heads, but still held the bullock's legs from kicking.

John Comyn could comprehend only a little of what was said, but he clearly heard Torgon calling upon the names of Siohnie and Gruagagh, then of Briochan, their priest: first vanquished by the Christian Saint Columba, then banished from the court of his lord, the Pictish King Brude, who had been converted to the new faith. Briochan had died in exile somewhere in the Scottish borders, his resting place unknown.

But his name continued to be a talisman and touchstone for those struggling to preserve the old faith; and it was Briochan's service to his G.o.ds that Torgon invoked upon himself in closing, before laying aside his staff.

Without further ado, the shaman-priest then detached a bronze hand sickle from the cincture at his waist and set its blade to the bullock's throat, abruptly jerking it toward him in a single swift stroke. Young Comyn flinched as blood gushed from the wound like ale bursting from a spiked barrel, spurting over the front of Torgon's robe and down the side of the altar as the victim thrashed in its death throes and gave a gurgling groan.

Impa.s.sive, Torgon put aside his bloodied sickle and held a stone bowl beneath the stream, filling it almost to the brim. Hands still reeking with the blood, he then carried the bowl before the Comyns, sire and son, signing each with b.l.o.o.d.y sigils upon cheeks and palms before placing the bowl in the elder Comyn's hands.

Comyn inclined his head in a stiff gesture and let Torgon help him to his feet, allowing the younger priest to lay a crimson cloak around his shoulders-a mark of the authority of the Pictish kings, which Comyn believed was his by right. Thus arrayed, holding the b.l.o.o.d.y bowl like a precious treasure, he turned to his son, who only now dared to rise.

”Follow me now, boy,” he commanded, ”for I bring you now into the presence of our G.o.ds.”

Preceded by Torgon, he moved toward the doorway back to the yard where stood the monoliths-and that dark slit in the earth-not looking to see whether his son followed. The cool dispa.s.sion of his tone sparked a queasy pang of apprehension in the younger Comyn's belly, but he followed resolutely, knowing that he must see this through before riding south to seek more tangible glory on the battlefield.

His uneasiness increased as they reached the stairwell and Torgon stepped aside, clearly not intending to accompany them.

Without hesitation the Black Comyn began his descent, each probing step downward a measure only of his care that he not spill even a drop of the bowl's precious contents. The younger Comyn cast a last look over his shoulder before reluctantly following his sire into increasing darkness.

The stair took a dogleg turn-and then another-cutting them off from what little light penetrated the narrow shaft. The younger Comyn had caught a fold of his father's red cloak when they first started down, mainly so he would not tread upon it, but now it became his lifeline in the darkness. As they continued downward, a dank chill seemed to curl itself around his ankles and slither ever higher up his body, wrapping him in dread, threatening to turn his bowels to water. Though reason told him his father would not bring him into peril of his life, he could not shake the impression that this was surely an entrance to the underworld, where mortal men were foolish to tread.

Another turn of the stair gave access to a level pa.s.sageway where, beyond his father's broad shoulders, he could see a faint glow ahead. The pa.s.sage gave way at last to a cavernous room-whether natural or dug out of the solid rock, he could not tell-lit by a single smoking torch fixed to a bracket on the opposite wall, and surely kindled by one of the priests, for no one else willingly would have ventured down here.

Not hesitating, the elder Comyn bore his bowl of blood into the chamber like a precious talisman, his son still close behind him, straining to see in the dimness. Directly before them, like a gaping wound in the center of the floor, lay a pool or well of still, black water, as wide as the span of a man's two arms and contained by a raised lip of stone.

Opaque and impenetrable, the water reflected not the faintest glimmer of torchlight-as if the meager glow were being swallowed and extinguished by that smothering darkness. Craning for a better look, John tried to dispel the illusion, but the pool appeared bottomless; and softly stirring upward from its depths, more felt in the bowels than heard, came a remote booming sound, like the clas.h.i.+ng waves of a sunless, subterranean sea.

”Hold your tongue, and neither do nor say anything unless it is asked of you,” the elder Comyn said softly, casting an admonitory glance at his son and then moving hard against the stone curbing, signing for John to do the same.

John nervously obeyed. His father's jaw was grimly set, his eyes reflecting red from the flickering torchlight. The torch itself guttered and wavered as though starving for air. Should it go out, John feared he might go mad in the smothering darkness.

Lifting the bowl of blood above the pool in a gesture of oblation, the Black Comyn began to chant softly in the Pictish tongue: the ancient words of another pagan prayer that rustled sibilantly amid the shadows, sending back echoing whispers that rose like an eerie chorus. As the last of the whispers faded away, Comyn reverted to the common tongue.

”Therefore, Mother Gruagagh, accept this blood of your lover Siohnie, to mark the communion of heaving sea and fertile earth! Accept his seed in your watery womb, and open for us the gateway of ages past and ages yet to come!”

So saying, he tipped the bowl. With seeming sluggishness, the blood snaked downward into that midnight blackness, thick and viscous, tendrils of paler darkness blossoming outward to stir the inky water into uneasy motion, spinning the tendrils in a pattern of s.h.i.+fting whorls and spirals suggestive of the monoliths above ground.

Tiny bubbles began to break the surface in the center of the pool-small ones at first, but quickly growing larger. The water churned and roiled like a witch's cauldron. The temperature dropped, and John instinctively hugged bare arms across bare chest in s.h.i.+vering embrace until his father's hiss called him sharply to order.

Eyes fixed apprehensively on the bubbling water, John began to fancy he could see a baleful point of cold green light awakening in the depths of the pool, now rising swiftly toward the surface, growing brighter and more virulent as it came. The patterns on the water dispersed as the emerald glare spread throughout the chamber, reducing the torchlight to a puny flicker. The b.u.mps and cracks that seamed the surrounding walls took on the aspect of leering faces, like the visages of the dead. A gust of icy air swirled around the chamber with force enough nearly to kill the torch-earthy and wormy, like freshly turned soil.

With it came the noxious stench of rotted flesh and stale blood, like the stink of an open grave. John Comyn's first whiff of it caused his stomach to heave, but his second breath fired his blood with a strange intoxication, like a draft of strong whisky.

At the same time, the roiling waters began to calm, permitting glimpses of some vague but repulsive form beginning to take shape beneath the murky surface, limned in green flame. John flinched from it in instinct, a gasp filling his lungs a third time, but his father at once seized his arms and checked any would-be retreat.

”Stand your ground!” the elder Comyn warned through gritted teeth. His grip on his son's biceps was strong enough to bruise as he began to chant: ”Death and decay lend life to the earth.

The serpent's tooth and the beast's sharp horn Give wors.h.i.+p to thee, O Gruagagh, With blood and the fruits of the sea.”

In answer, the churning waters were burst asunder by the upper half of a giant, loathsome figure whose head nearly touched the chamber's curved ceiling, its emergence slos.h.i.+ng an icy wave over the stone curbing.

Female it was, with pendulous b.r.e.a.s.t.s and wild hair streaming over raw-boned shoulders to float like rotting tangles of seaweed and kelp on the water surrounding it. The cold eyes smoldered with a muted green phosph.o.r.escence; the sharp-planed face was wrinkled and ravaged, the mouth contorted by a gleaming pair of boar's tusks. And yet, the being had a transparency about it, as if it occupied no physical s.p.a.ce in fact. The voice that spoke was like a winter's gale ripping the bare branches from dead trees.

”Aye, doom and decay shall come to thee, mortal, unless thou wors.h.i.+p me and feed my blood-thirst again!”

”Enough blood for now, Mother,” the Black Comyn answered, in a voice as steady as a rock. ”When all the kingdom falls once more at your feet, then shall you drink your fill.”

Astonished at his sire's fearlessness in the face of such an apparition, young Comyn drew himself up, determined not to be put to shame by the older man's example. He could sense his father's approval as his arm was released-but in the next instant, the creature turned her dreadful gaze upon him, and her fearsome lips curled in contempt.

”And what is this whelp thou hast brought before me?” she rasped. ”Fresh sacrifice, to be drowned in my sacred waters?”

”This is my son, John,” Comyn told her. ”He is setting out for war, to win back what was ours of old, and seeks your blessing to protect him in battle.”

”Will he wors.h.i.+p me as I desire, and bend himself to be my tool?”

”He knows his duty,” the Black Comyn replied.