Enoch's Device (33 page)

O
utside the tent, wolflike howls
mixed with the screams of men. Ciarán scrambled to his knees, his mind racing.

Alais grabbed his shoulder. “What’s happening?”

Khalil gripped the hilt of his scimitar. “Another skirmish,” he said, bolting from the tent. Ciarán hurried after him into the foul-smelling air. Above him, stars shone in the night sky.

The clamor came from the western edge of the encampment, near the riverbank, where glowing flames engulfed two of the tents. A band of warriors, howling like wolves, hurled firebrands into tents and engaged the loose muster of spearmen who hurried to protect the camp. Panicked horses whinnied. Spearmen rushed into the fray, raising their shields and rallying the camp as their comrades, surprised by the initial attack, lay wounded and moaning on the ground wet with dew.

From the surrounding tents scurried women and monks, crying out at the sight of the conflict scarcely forty yards away. Another firebrand streaked through the sky, and several monks crossed themselves, muttering prayers. Alais hurried next to Ciarán, followed by Dónall and Isaac. The rabbi bore the befuddled look of a man woken from a deep sleep.

“They came up the riverbank,” Ciarán told Dónall.

Ahead, the skirmishers hurled axes and spears into the growing wave of William’s spearmen. One of William’s white-cloaked lords charged toward the black-garbed raiders, who cast their remaining firebrands before making a fast retreat down the riverbank. Breaking ranks, the spearmen pursued them. In the main encampment, men tore down the burning tents, trying to stop the spread of the flames.

“Look!” Alais cried.

Atop the hill, the battlements of Castle Brosse suddenly ignited.

“Holy mother,” Ciarán said under his breath.

Rows of torches bathed the fortress in a hellish glow, illuminating the warriors assembled on the walls, and the corpses of William’s dead dangling in a ghoulish fringe below. The warriors beat their swords against shields in a thunderous din. Then a crease of light appeared down the center of the castle’s gate, and a great roar resounded from the walls. The gates opened, unveiling an army of warriors who shook torches and shields, howling like beasts. They mocked the spearmen, who pursued the skirmishers fleeing toward the castle.

“This is bad,” Isaac said.

Khalil nodded. “They are welcoming an attack.”

The drumming from the castle grew louder. Stone-faced, Dónall seemed lost in his own thoughts until, behind them, one of the women gave a panicked scream.

Ciarán whirled to his right as a firebrand streaked overhead to land on a nearby tent, setting it ablaze. From the riverbank charged a half-dozen men, shrieking like madmen, their dark cloaks stuck with leaves and mud, their bearded faces contorted with drunken rage. The women scattered, and monks hurried toward the infirmary as two flaming brands fell on its main tent. The cloth ignited, and panicked cries rose from within.

“Into the forest!” Dónall cried, gripping his leaf-shaped blade.

Ciarán took Alais’ arm, but she stood frozen. One of the skirmishers charged toward her, eyes burning with carnal fire, and waving a sword above his head. In three strides, he was on them. Ciarán pushed Alais behind him and stood between her and the attacker’s blade, raising his arms as if he could somehow ward off the blow.

“Ciarán!” Alais screamed.

Instinctively he closed his eyes, and for an instant he felt as if he were back in Derry, about to join his fallen brethren. But his attacker’s howling cry suddenly became a choking gasp, for Khalil had reached the attacker first. A fount of blood jetted out from the man’s throat, darkening his beard as he dropped his blade and tried in vain to stanch the flow. Khalil nodded to Ciarán, who nodded back, still stunned. Alais tugged urgently at his arm as the remaining attackers beheld their fallen comrade. Their eyes filled with hate, and on they came.

Ciarán felt the sizzle in the air, and the sudden wind whipping the hem of his cloak an instant before the ghostly blue flames wreathed the treetops at the river’s edge. The skirmishers did not realize what was happening until it was on them. A ferocious gust tore the flaming tents from their stakes and sent a curtain of fire onto the charging men. Their dark cloaks exploded into flame, and their lupine howling soon turned to horrified screams.

Dónall stood defiantly against them, making a circle with his leaf-shape blade, and the wind whipped the flames up into an inferno.

Behind them, men were shouting. Ciarán spun around. At the edge of the main camp, a group of spearmen looked on. Duke William, wearing a hastily donned hauberk, was among them. By his side, Lord Raymond tried to pull the duke toward the front of the camp, but William just stood there, staring aghast at the raging fire. In the glow of the flames, his handsome face looked pale and frightened, like that of a lost child stunned by the chaos all around him.

“William!” Alais screamed. “Pull your men back! It’s a trap!”

“Alais?” William gasped, but did not move.

“My lord,” Ciarán yelled, “listen to her. More is afoot than you suppose!”

A corpulent man in a black habit pushed his way through the crowd of spearmen. It was Prior Bernard, wearing a crazed look. “The witch!” he bellowed. “Ignore her lies, my lord! You must fight. God favors the victor!”

Dónall tugged Alais back and grabbed Ciarán by his cloak. “Let’s go,” he said, glancing to the sky. “We’re out of time.”

Ciarán looked up. In the blackness glittered the constellations of Scorpio and Sagittarius, and between them blazed a reddish star. For Mars ruled the night.

*

Smoke from the burning tents wafted through the camp like an acrid fog. Ciarán glanced back at the main encampment, where William’s spearmen mustered in the broad field between the encampment and the fortress. From the battlements of Castle Brosse, swords drummed on shields, and the taunting howls grew to a fierce roar.

Ciarán grabbed a still-burning firebrand and followed Khalil, who held another. Dónall led the way to the forest’s edge, Isaac struggling to match his stride.

Ahead, the treetops at the forest’s edge reached out over the grassy field like the grasping claws of some wild beast, while the arcing limbs of the massive oaks formed shadowy corridors into the forest’s hidden depths. Dónall chose the nearest opening: a wide seam between two oaks whose trunks were covered in a web of twisting brambles. The wind whistled faintly through the gaps between the beeches and oaks, as if the forest itself were breathing.

Khalil stepped first into the seam. His torch illuminated a chaotic maze of tree trunks and brambles and a deep carpet of dead leaves. Toadstools and mushrooms of every shape and size sprouted from the huge gnarled roots, and overhead, moss hung like cobwebs from the branches, obscuring any glimpse of the night sky and making the place seem more cavern than woodland. From the forest’s depths, leaves rustled as something beat a hasty retreat from the torch’s glow.

Dónall glanced warily at Khalil and then followed him into the forest. Isaac went next. Behind him, Alais hesitated.

“It’ll be all right,” Ciarán said, although the feeling in the pit of his stomach suggested otherwise.

He took her hand and slipped sideways between the massive roots bracketing the seam. Breathing in the thick smell of damp earth and dead leaves, he was reminded of Derry’s grove, but there was something far more ancient and primeval in these woods.

Dónall and Khalil led them, stepping over moss-cloaked roots and wending their way ever deeper through the gnarled pathways between the trees. The crunch of leaves beneath their feet made it difficult to tell what else moved in the forest, though things certainly did. An owl’s low “
Who? Who?
” above them made Ciarán jump, putting his nerves further on edge. Looking for any sign of wolf or boar, he saw only the shadows that shifted and danced with every movement of his torch, though he felt as if hundreds of eyes peered out at him from the gloom. He tried to shake the feeling, telling himself it was just the way the flickering torchlight moved over the vine-covered trunks, but then a twig would snap or a branch would rustle in the darkness, and his anxious imagination was off and running again. Beside him, Alais gasped and squeezed his arm at every strange sound and whisper of the breeze that stirred the moss dripping from the branches in their path.

The deeper they traveled into the forest, the more Ciarán began to wonder whether they would ever find their way out. He could still hear the drumming of swords on shields on the battlements of Castle Brosse, but the sound grew fainter with every new turn through the maze of trees. Sometimes it all felt like too much—that he and his ragtag band of visionaries were laughably unequal to the task before them.

*

Soon the faint light of dawn began to penetrate the treetops. In the distance, a war horn sounded. Alais looked to Ciarán and Khalil for answers.

“The battle has begun,” Khalil told her.

Her eyes welled with tears. “Then William stayed to fight.”

Ahead of them, Dónall had stopped. “Look,” he said. Beyond the next line of trees, a curtain of mist obscured everything. “See how the mist doesn’t seep past those trees? It just hangs there, like a barrier. Nothing natural about it. If I’m not mistaken, that’s our gateway.”

“
This?
” Khalil asked skeptically. He passed his hand through the gray shroud. “It’s just a fog bank,” he said. Then he stepped through a gap between two trees.

“No!” Dónall shouted, grabbing Khalil by the arm and yanking him back. “Don’t be a fool!”

Khalil flashed an angry stare, but Dónall pointed to the base of the trees just beyond the misty verge. “Do you want to end up like
them
?”

Amid the mist, what looked at first like moss-covered tree stumps or fallen limbs now appeared as skeletons, hunched over and clinging desperately to the trees and massive roots. Green moss covered every inch of bone, and freckled orange toadstools sprouted between the fingers and toes. The skeletons lay everywhere beyond the misty border, their hollow eyes and gaping mouths a grim, silent testament to their fate.

Khalil recoiled, and Ciarán realized that it was the first time he had seen fear in the Persian’s eyes.

“Turpin said the gateways to the Otherworld can be disastrous for men who do not know the proper way to enter them,” Dónall said. “You might have wandered through the mist forever, lost until you met the same fate.”

Ciarán glanced at the moss-laden bones and shook his head. “What
is
the right way to enter?”

Dónall frowned and rubbed his beard. “Turpin never was too clear on that point. Thomas and I always figured we’d solve that problem when we came to it.”

“And now we have,” Khalil said, having regained his composure. “Do you have any bright ideas?”

“Not yet,” Dónall grumbled.

“What about the light?” Isaac said. “Is that not how you discovered the secrets of Maugis’ book, which set you on this path? It would seem that the light should show us the right path through the mist.” He held out his hand. “May I?”

Ciarán knew that Isaac was keen on Dónall’s crystal, for the old rabbi had mastered many of Maugis’ secrets during their voyage from Spain, perhaps through his knowledge of Jewish mysticism.

Dónall looked back at the mist, then handed Isaac the crystal. “Let’s hope you’re right.”

Isaac cupped the crystal in his hands, closing his eyes, then blew softly on it and murmured the Fae incantation: “
Eoh.
”

White light blazed from his palms. Holding the crystal, he extended his right hand into the barrier, and the mist parted before him, forming a clear path through the trees.

“Patrick’s beard!” Dónall whispered. “Lead the way, my friend.”

Isaac stepped onto the path, and as he moved his hand, the breach in the mist shifted slightly, though staying true toward a gap between the trees. The mist now formed a wall on each side of the path, faintly obscuring the moss-covered bones that blended in with the tree trunks and sprawling roots.

Isaac led the way, followed by Dónall and then Khalil, his right hand resting on the pommel of his sword, while Ciarán and Alais took up the rear. As they moved in single file, Alais glanced fearfully at the bones so near her feet.

As they walked, Ciarán glanced behind him. With each step, the pathway they had traversed the moment before filled in with mist and was gone. As Isaac moved, so did the path, winding through the ever-twisting maze of trees. In the beginning, the only sound on the path was the soft crunch of forest duff beneath their feet, but as they traveled deeper into the mist a new sound emerged. At first, it was a faint beating, and Ciarán wondered whether they had turned back toward the valley and were once more hearing the drumming from the walls of Castle Brosse. But this sound was different—sudden and without any discernible rhythm. As they ventured farther, the sound grew louder, like random muffled thunderclaps.

“I see a clearing up ahead,” Isaac said.

In the faint light that spilled through the trees, the gray mist faded to a reddish haze as it neared the ground. At the edge of the trees, the air grew bitterly cold. Then another low, booming explosion shook the ground. Isaac stopped dead in his tracks, and the light in his palm dimmed. Dónall reached for the sword sheathed beneath his habit. Khalil glanced back at Ciarán, and seeing the Persian’s look of alarm, Ciarán rushed forward to see what was happening. When he arrived at Dónall’s side, his jaw fell slack.

“Holy Mother of God,” he muttered, struggling to comprehend all that he beheld.

For at the forest’s edge, they gazed upon an alien land: a vast plain of reddish clay, smoothed by the wind and strewn with narrow fissures so that the ground appeared made of geometric plates. The rock features reminded him of the Giant’s Causeway back in Northern Ireland, only perfectly flat and somehow strangely grim. In the center of the plain stood a spire that seemed hewn of a single piece of reddish stone. Rising more than two hundred feet, it was carved with what appeared to be windows and balconies, suggesting it was the work of some craftsman instead of a natural phenomenon. But the strangeness of the landscape was not the cause of Ciarán’s alarm. For behind the spire billowed a broad column of smoke, forming a swirling vortex over the plain, and around the spire amassed a besieging army conjured from the darkest Enochian myth.