Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles (54 page)

Uabhar seized the druid’s scrawny shoulder in a powerful grip, murmuring rapidly and urgently. All the while his gaze roved the scene, flitting across the milling crowd of armed men, the stamping horses between the chariot shafts, the flaring brands and lanterns, the distant glare of the burning lodge across a vale of darkness, and the dim outline of the ferny hilltop beneath churning clouds. His eyes coasted back and forth, while his free hand plucked at his own fur-lined garments, and twisted the rich fabric.

“Of course I will not destroy them. Do you take me for a fool?” he said in a low voice. “I pledge that I will wreak no harm upon the weathermasters if I can but imprison them in my dungeons, and bind them so that they cannot speak their brí-commands or make their gestures of power. I will not take their lives, Virosus, I swear it.” The sage regarded his sovereign dubiously. Infuriated by this hesitation, Uabhar clenched his fist. “Most esteemed Primoris,” the king said abruptly, “you bestow your advice freely. I can be equally generous. Know this: if you believe the wrath of the puddle-makers can be severe, you have failed to accurately observe the world around you. Perhaps the front of your cowl has been slumping across your eyes. The vengeance of Uabhar Ó Maoldúin makes that of Ellenhall dwindle to insignificance, and the palace is closer at hand than Rowan Green.” He released his grip on the druid’s shoulder.

The Druid Imperius was not unaware of the king’s power over his own person; nevertheless the expression on his puckered countenance did not alter. He was too wily to allow his true feelings to reveal themselves.

“Well,” he said at last, “you have made a pledge, and I understand well that Uabhar Ó Maoldúin would never be forsworn. I am pleased to obey the royal command. Have more water-wagons brought up, and direct the men to arrange ramparts of brushwood around the hilltop where the weather-masters are holding out. Ádh’s chosen ones will do the rest.”

“Would you burn the storm-bringers, then, after all your lip service to gentleness?” Uabhar uttered a short, hard burst of laughter.

“Nay. Long have I harbored a better scheme, should such a pinch arise.” The druid sucked on his own index finger, then held it high. “The wind swings now towards the east,” he said. “Now, Majesty, if you value your senses you had better hie in the opposite direction.” Without saluting, he vanished out of the king’s sight, into the wind-battered shadows. “Hasten,” said the Tongue of the Fates to his chief scribe, “and tell the acolytes to fetch great quantity of the Leaves of Sleeping.”

Swiftly the king’s servants did as they were bade and piled up brushwood in embankments, yet even as torch-bearers set fire to them, the first sparse droplets of the oncoming storm commenced to patter down. Captains and overseers cursed the laborers for their imagined sluggishness. “Hurry! Hurry, ere the rains begin to fall!” The dry boughs quickly caught alight. For the second time that night newborn flames soared, the fuel crackling and spitting. Yet lightning flared in bluish sheets across the sky, and the clouds groaned.

Fire raced uphill through the bracken, but the weatherlords parried it with chill blasts, the effort costing them much of their failing strength. Huddled together on the hilltop, they pondered on their straits.

“Uabhar seems determined to roast us,” Sir Isleif said grimly. The bandage across his brow was soaked with blood.

“Hold fast!” Ryence encouraged his brí-wielding comrades. He wiped his perspiring forehead with a soot-smudged hand. “There is yet hope!”

“I fear the rains shall arrive too late!” warned Engres. “The fire is swifter than the storm.”

“Yet ’twould be bootless to change the local wind’s direction,” Baldulf rasped. “We are encircled. No matter which way it blows, it blows the flames to us.”

“We can only wait,” said Galiene, “and continue weather-working, and keep the fire at bay until the clouds loose the downpour and Thorgild comes to our aid!”

“What’s this?” said Engres, squinting with watering eyes against the flames’ glare. “Now they are piling green hazel branches upon the fires. What are they up to?”

Shadowy surges of asphyxiating smoke poured from the sap-filled hazel stems. Through the curding fumes the besieging host was blotted from view, and no one could rightly see them; only dim, choking figures emerging from the gloom or disappearing into it as they cast armfuls of callow boughs upon the pyres. Notwithstanding, the weathermasters bade the nearby air currents blow the worst of the fumes away in other directions.

Had they been able to penetrate the haze, the company trapped on the hilltop would have witnessed a strange phenomenon. After the hazel stems began to smoke, more men came, bearing bulky hempen sacks from which they extracted string-tied bundles of dried leaves and twigs; but after they had cast these offerings upon the infernos they fell down in a faint. Indeed, some who tried to approach were unable to do so, swooning before they reached their target. The weathermasters, however, were blinded to this.

“We may yet turn Uabhar’s tricks to our advantage,” Galiene gasped, breathing with difficulty in the toxic atmosphere. “Under cover of this smoke screen we might create a cool gap in the ring of fire and slip away.”

“An excellent plan,” agreed Ryence.

All the weathermasters and knights were of one accord, and those who had been lying exhausted amidst the bracken clambered to their feet, aided
by their companions. After wrapping cloths about their mouths and noses, they renewed their grip on their weapons, holding them at the ready. A light pre-storm shower briefly brushed their faces as they commanded small, local puffs of air to clear a path before them.

Yet even as they stepped forward, uttering the brí-commands to drive the heat out of their way, the weatherlords faltered. The pall of carbonaceous particles pressed on all sides, engulfing them like acrid blankets, smothering them, irritating their eyes, infiltrating their airways, somehow penetrating—evidently—even into their bloodstreams. They became light-headed, and as they staggered down the hill it seemed to them that they were cast adrift upon an ocean of clammy combers, so that they were persuaded that they must swim, instead of walking.

“Alas,” Ryence said to Galiene, in a voice that was scarcely more than a whisper, “this is no ordinary fume. We have been undone, after all.”

“Dear friend,” was all that Galiene could manage to say as she leaned against him, barely able to remain upright. Dazed, the entire company let fall their weapons and extended their arms like swimmers striking out, but instead of floating they crumpled to the ground, rendered insensible by some curious property of the vapors. They lay unmoving, slumped upon the hillside, And as they breathed, strange gases entered deeper into their bodies, and they succumbed to a profound slumber.

Darkness gave way to a dim, overcast dawn. Then at last, too late, the heavens let loose their flood. Upon and around the bodies of the fallen, the long-awaited rain began to pour in escalating torrents. Voluminous clouds of smoke and steam issued from the ramparts of burning brushwood. The wood hissed and fumed until the increasing deluge drowned all flame and spark, but even before the furnaces were extinguished, men had surged forth and borne away the sleeping forms of the weathermasters and their guardian knights without striking any further blow.

So it was that the senior weathermages—the Councilors of Ellenhall and others—were overthrown. Paralyzed and insensate, they and their guardians—the valiant knights—and the five remaining prentices were brought, bound hand and foot, before Uabhar, who waited in the company of his High Commander, the Druid Imperius and Chohrab Shechem. The desert ruler had grown quieter by now, his face as grey as spoiled oatmeal as he mumbled desperate pleas to Ádh, Lord of Prosperity, as well as the other three Fates for good measure.

Canvas awnings on poles, supported by footmen, sheltered the statesmen
from the downpour. Most of Uabhar’s soldiers and servants had been ordered to depart forthwith and return to shelter, along with all Chohrab’s knights, bar one. Uabhar had carefully chosen those who stayed, and not a first-rate man was among them, save for Mac Brádaigh and the sole remaining Paladin. The rest, bedraggled in the deluge, were in the class of the lowest ranking, the weakest, the most useless of subordinates; the soldiers stupefied with inebriation, the servants dull-witted. Chohrab was in such a state that he failed to note so few of his household were left. With only his personal butler and a single knight left to him, he knelt upon a sodden carpet with his head in his hands, his eyes covered, and would not look up. A circle of wagons and horses fanned out before the kings, the entire scene lit by a feeble glow from the east, and flashes of lightning, and covered lanterns, every naked flame having been extinguished by the teeming rain. In the center of the circle, unprotected from the elements, lay the bodies of three-and-fifty sleeping weathermasters and knights.

“See what your
fell noxasm
has done,” Uabhar said to the Druid Imperius, smiling silkily.

“We have gone too far. I wash my hands of these matters,” said Virosus, and he swiftly returned to the Sanctorum with his attendants.

Uabhar looked a little put out, but the response of his ally was extreme. Aghast at the primoris’s reaction, Chohrab heaved himself to his feet. He turned to Uabhar, screaming, “The druids have withdrawn their support! It has come to this! What will the weathermasters do when they awaken in your dungeons?”

Commander Mac Brádaigh stepped in, his tone soothing. “They can do nought, Lord. They will be gagged and manacled—”

Uabhar was not listening to either of them. “Deeds have been done, Chohrab, and the Sanctorum refuses to share the blame!” He chewed his lips in seeming agitation. “It is of no use to merely imprison the meddlers, because long as they lived, dear brother, they would be a threat. There would be rescue attempts, and they might become a figurehead representing your enemies. You and I must ensure that they are wiped from the face of the world forever. There is nothing else for it. The weathermasters must all be put to death.”

As the full significance of this statement sank in, a stunned look grew on the face of the desert king. His butler shrank back in fear.

“Virosus, no doubt,” Uabhar continued, “would have been unreasonable about it, for alas, he is a coward. It is well that he has turned tail for the nonce.” In case the comment appeared irreverent, he appended, “All praise to Lord Ádh.”

At the mention of the Druid Imperius, Chohrab gazed about with a wild look in his eyes. “But the druids have deserted us!” he exclaimed.

“Do not for one moment be deceived by the primoris’s bluffing,” Uabhar replied with urbanity. “He will return. Instead, be overjoyed! Your wish has been granted, and victory is ours!”

Chohrab chewed at his nails, darting sidelong glances at the mages, prentices and knights lying in a swoon amongst the ferns, as if he hoped they were an illusion that would disappear when he looked away.

“Behold, my dear colleague!” said Uabhar said genially, “all has turned out as you planned. Your enemies are within our grasp. I have played my role in this affair. In return for what I have done for you, you shall slay them.”

The jaw of Chohrab flapped as if on hinges, but he uttered no sound.

“Your sword Hesam dangles at your side—as befits a military overlord—and a fine weapon it is, comparable only to my own blade, Gorm Glas,” said Uabhar. “Use it, brother, to end these lives once and for all, that they may no longer support the northerners who would invade your lands.”

The King of Ashqalêth failed to move so much as a fingertip.

“Come now! You yourself told me it is your wish that they should perish.”

Chohrab appeared, briefly, to choke.

“Now it is time,” insisted Uabhar, “for you to demonstrate that my loyalty is reciprocated. I have done my part. It is your turn. The time is ripe to prove your fidelity. If you truly mean to ally yourself with me, treat these foes as you promised.”

Drug-addled King Chohrab, appalled by the atrocities he had witnessed, and terrified of the revenge of Rowan Green, had fallen completely into Uabhar’s power. “Lord Ádh! Lord Míchinniúint!” he jabbered in fear and confusion.

Uabhar said, “You have cast down the meddlers and the druids have deserted you. Who now will stand between you and your foes? Who else but Slievmordhu? Would you refuse this deed and cause a rift between us?”

“I vow to do anything you command, if only you will remain my ally and keep me safe!” So saying, Chohrab drew his sword and handed it to his most doughty Paladin, the only one who remained. “Slay them,” he said shrilly.

A murmur of horror went through the select few who had been permitted to remain and watch the proceedings.

Chohrab’s knight stoically took the weapon and began his gruesome task, while the tears of the firmament fell down, and the skies mourned. The warrior hewed off the heads of the sleepers, and their blood mingled with the rainwater,
flowing into the fescue and ferns, while those who witnessed this deed could not help but groan and sigh, as if they were in agony, each time a sword-stroke fell. It was impossible for them to comprehend the enormity of the atrocities being carried out before their eyes. Some of the observers turned their faces away and wept, their tears unnoticed in the deluge of the crying storm.

“Load the remains on covered carts, and carry them far from here, to some remote location,” the King of Slievmordhu ordered his men. “Bury them. Let heavy stones be piled upon their graves.”

Uabhar contrived, with the utmost cunning and ruthlessness, to have those who had witnessed the slaughter murdered immediately thereafter, that no whisper of what had occurred could enter into public knowledge. He bade them drink a toast to victory over the weathermasters, but Chohrab’s personal butler had been made to surreptitiously mix wolfsbane with the wine. Shortly after the cups were raised on high and the liquor downed to the last drop—at the king’s insistence—the doomed drinkers experienced numbness, giddiness, and severe restriction of breath. They fell to the ground gasping, under the pitiless eye of Uabhar, who looked on as their heartbeats slowed and eventually ceased.