Part 11 (2/2)
The figure's grotesque features contorted in a hideous semblance of a smile.
”Then let him drink from the water of my plenty, and savor the sweetness of his G.o.ddessss,” she hissed.
Her breath was like an arctic blast, fetid and revolting, but John stood his ground. Though his heart was pounding like a hammer on an anvil, he met the lambent eyes without flinching.
Comyn handed his son the empty bowl and motioned him to fill it from the pool. Hardly daring to think, for fear of losing his nerve-still half convinced that the figure must be some illusion-John took the bowl and hunkered down at the lip of the pool. A strange sense of fatalism took hold of him as he dipped the bowl and brought it out again br.i.m.m.i.n.g, tainted with the skim of blood still clotted on the rough stone.
Cupping the bowl in both his hands, he raised it to his lips and boldly drank.
Icy liquid gushed into his throat, both sour and cloying, but he made himself gag it down, not daring to do otherwise, increasingly convinced that any failure to comply might cost him his life. Only when the bowl was empty did he dare to lower it, setting it gingerly on the pool's stone curbing.
Almost at once, a clap of force seemed to strike him hard between the eyes, reverberating in his head like the tolling of a ma.s.sive bell. Aghast, he sat back hard on the stone floor, senses reeling, arms only barely catching him from bowling over backward. For an interminable instant, the chamber seemed to expand and contract with the heaving of his own lungs, like being a part of the breathing of some fearful leviathan.
Then the dizziness abruptly subsided, and he found that his earlier fear and revulsion had vanished, leaving him faintly giddy but steady enough to take the hand his father offered and scramble self-consciously to his feet, strangely purged of all human weakness.
”Has he not drunk bravely from your well, O G.o.ddess?” the Black Comyn declared proudly. ”Has he not proved himself worthy of a warrior's blessing?”
In answer, their loathsome familiar moved suddenly closer, slos.h.i.+ng another wave over the edge of the pool, the taloned fingers of one grasping hand flexing as they stretched toward young John's widely staring eyes. Only minutes earlier, he would have drawn back in alarm, thrown up his arms to s.h.i.+eld himself, but now he felt no inclination to do so-not through any confidence that she would not harm him, but rather an acceptance of her right to do so if she wished.
The fingers hovered a few inches before his awestruck gaze, describing a complex pattern with their movement-compelling, seductive-then tapped once between his eyes with a taloned forefinger before she pulled back into the pool.
”It is done,” came the rasping declaration. ”Any blood he spills belongs to me, and his trophies of war must be hung in my honor.”
”And will you grant us victory,” the Black Comyn asked, ”that we may once more raise your temples under the sun, and chant your name in the streets of cities?”
”Will I grant victory?” she repeated, the lambent eyes flas.h.i.+ng. ”That lies yet in the days to come, and will have its cost. Ye shall seek my servant Briochan to be thy guide in the ways of my power, so that my wors.h.i.+p may spread and my armies may cover the land, laying waste to the unbelievers and those who have defiled what was once my kingdom. I must call him forth! Briochannnnn.”
Her cry shook her hair like the branches of a great tree beaten by the wind, and her face convulsed in a rictus of longing. The atmosphere grew thicker, and soon both Comyns found it difficult to breathe.
A sensation of great weight pounded at the air, like the thunder of a thousand hooves trampling over the land with untamable force. The strength of the bull and the ferocity of the boar, which once had shaken the mountain heights and echoed through the depths of the sea, became focused in the chamber as the G.o.ddess stretched her perception across the land and past the gulf of death itself.
Then suddenly the close s.p.a.ce was riven by a clamorous shriek.
”Briochan?” she cried. ”Briochan, beloved, come to my call, and lead my servants along the paths they must walk!”
Then she howled like a hound caught in a trap. The sound was rending. Young Comyn gasped aloud and clapped his hands to his ears. His father bit his lips and clenched his fists tight to withstand the torment of the G.o.ddess's desolation.
”He lies no longer in the earth!” she keened. ”His bones, his lore, and all his potency-all locked in thrall by servants of the lost temple, the white-robed ones-they who bear the hated symbol of the murdered G.o.d!”
She tore at her hair, her glowing eyes lending a sickly pallor to the torchlight as her lament took on the cadence of a dirge.
”They seek, as well, that thing by which reigned the heirs of Ceann Mor-thrice-cursed palladium from far across the sea. And soon comes the reign of the Uncrowned King-he who can give renewal to that which our ancient foe brought to this land-that by which may founder all thy desires.”
The heaviness of the air was almost suffocating, and the words made little sense to the young John Comyn. The beating pressure of her fury came close to forcing him to his knees, and only his pride kept him upright.
”Faithless mortals-it must not be!” she cried. ”Briochan must be freed-and before the seven years have pa.s.sed, the Uncrowned King must be untimely slain. Do this or seek no more my favor!”
On this demand, she quickly withdrew into the depths of the pool, hair writhing around her like a nest of serpents before she vanished from sight. The light from the pool faded to nothing, and young John found himself suddenly drained of strength. He teetered before the lip of the pool, and only his father's firm grasp kept him from falling in.
”Do not falter now,” the Black Comyn said dazedly. ”You did well, my son. You bore yourself like a man. But there is more than courage needed yet, if we are to win through.”
”But-what did it mean?” young Comyn whispered.
The elder Comyn's bearded face was pale. For the first time he appeared shaken. When he spoke again, it was more to himself than to his son.
”The die is already cast,” he murmured. ”The Scottish host is gathering in the south, ready to spring on the backs of the English as the wolf slaughters sheep. We cannot go back. We must ponder the meaning of what we have heard, but with or without the favor of our patroness, we must go on, trusting in our own valor to carry the day. And always, in the heat of battle, we must seek out those whom our G.o.ddess has named as her offenders. When they are found and slain, then we shall stand doubly in her favor.”
John's head was still swimming, so that he found it difficult to follow his father's words.
”I don't understand,” he said weakly. ”What was she talking about? What was all that about Briochan?
He's been dead for centuries!”
His father drew a deep breath and gustily exhaled. ”Death is a barrier only to the weak,” he declared.
”Briochan's spirit has always lived on to guide us in the faith that he gave us, but his physical legacy-the means by which he may return to us in fact-have been seized by those not of our blood. And the G.o.ddess has told us by whom.”
”By the servants of the lost temple?” John said doubtfully. ”Does she mean the Knights Templar?”
”Aye, the white-robed ones, who bear the symbol of the murdered G.o.d, the White Christ,” the elder Comyn said fiercely. ”At least a few of them have power that I fear. But for Templar intervention, the innocence of the last Canmore heir would have been offered to appease the ancient G.o.ds- not merely severed from earthly life. And it was because of Templar presence when John Balliol was crowned that I made a point to spurn their Christian sacrament. Little did they know how that act leached at the potency of what they tried to guard.”
”Surely the fact that they serve the English is reason enough to scorn them,” John said, again uncertain what his father meant.
”They serve the Temple-and that is far greater cause to beware of them,” the Black Comyn returned.
”But now we know the face of our true enemies-may it be long before they realize that we are theirs-and if we are to prevail, then the Templars first must die!”
Chapter Fourteen.
IN THE SPRING OF 1296, IN RESPONSE TO AN INCREASING number of reports of Scottish defiance, and English troops ma.s.sing for a punitive march northward, Frre Arnault de Saint Clair at last found himself aboard a s.h.i.+p bound for Scotland, for the first time in three years-for the Temple's time was reckoned in decades and even centuries, not in mere months and years.
Up in the bow of the sleek Templar galley, hunkered down behind the forward railings, he could see Torquil Lennox squinting happily against the salt-spray, eager to be going home, a sharp North Sea wind whipping at his white mantle and coppery hair. It bellied the s.h.i.+p's square sail, painted with the eight-pointed red cross of the Order, driving them westward at a spanking pace. Behind them lay the lowlands of Holland, recently disaffected from a long-standing alliance with England. Ahead, obscured by a chilly haze of spring mist, lay the coast of Scotland-a nation equally determined to shake loose from England's leading-strings.
Arnault made his way forward, nodding amiably to members of the crew, and came to join Torquil in the bow, one gloved hand holding his white mantle closed over quilted gambeson and mail hauberk.
”Trying to see into the future?” he asked.
Torquil pulled a face. ”If only I could. Unfortunately, my hindsight is far clearer than my foresight.”
”You are not alone in that,” Arnault replied, with a grimace of his own as he sank down beside the younger man in companionable silence.
In his own case, it was tantamount to a confession of helplessness. Since their departure from Scotland, in the spring following John Balliol's enthronement, he had found himself increasingly distracted from the use of his gifts of discernment by the onslaught of growing turmoil threatening to overtake the whole of Christendom.
Even at Balantrodoch, they had seen the warning signs. Now the coming storm was imminent, and he could only stake his faith blindly to the revelation vouchsafed to him at Cyprus: that the underlying order of the world at large was somehow inextricably intertwined with the political order of Scotland.
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