As soon as Fiain's hooves hit the rocky surface of the island, Collun jumped off. He touched the Ellyl horse lightly on his hindquarters, sending him toward the cave.
Collun broke into a run, his layers of clothing making him clumsy and slow. As he ran toward the Firewurme, he tried to dodge the puddles of sram, but in some places they were too large. He landed flat in the middle of one. The ooze began melting through the bottom layer covering his feet. It made a soft hissing noise as it burned.
The Firewurme's head suddenly moved with a swiftness that took Collun by surprise. He looked up to see its face above him, the black tongue dangling not more than an arm's length from his shoulder. He heard a splat and a fizz as sram dripped onto the ground.
His heart pounding, Collun lifted the fire stick to light the torch, but Naid's tongue suddenly snapped and extended. Collun felt a line of fire along his right jaw.
He fell to the ground, clutching at his chin in agony. There was a hissing sound as sram ate into his top layer of clothing. He rolled desperately until the sound stopped.
He was lying on a dry patch of rock, his face on fire. He could hear the sound of water lapping nearby and realized he must have rolled near the edge of the island. He longed to crawl to the shoreline and sink his face into the cooling water. But he painfully raised himself on one elbow. The Firewurme was watching him. Then it swiveled its head toward the cave, its tongue flicking in and out of its mouth. Collun's heart pumped. He leaped to his feet.
"Brie!" he cried out.
He charged at the coil of flesh nearest him. Dropping the torch, he unsheathed his dagger. Collun fiercely swung the blade down, biting into the dirty white flesh.
It was like cutting open a ripe fruit. As the skin opened, a thin stream of yellowish juice trickled out. Collun cut deeper, ignoring the sram that was melting his mitten. But when he had made a valley in the flesh the length of his arm, he had to pull out. His mitten was gone and blisters were forming on his hand.
Then, in a matter of moments, the deep cut Collun had made knitted itself back together. Collun watched, unbelieving, as the flesh was regenerated. Where it had been riven there was now a large smooth hump.
The Wurme had turned its head back toward Collun, and again there was laughter in the flat eyes.
Collun sheathed his dagger. As he bent to retrieve the torch, a deep blank feeling of hopelessness washed over him. His face and hand were on fire. Sweat was pouring off him. What had he been thinking? That a cowardly farm boy would be able to defeat Naid, the deadly Firewurme from Cruachan's cave?
Naid's body abruptly shifted, and Collun had to dive to his left to avoid getting suffocated by the lurching flesh. The heel of his left hand skidded into a pool of sram. Collun let out a yell of pain, rolling onto his back. His nose was full of the stench of his corroded skin.
Naid had now positioned itself between the boy and the cave's entrance. Its blunt snout hung high in the air. Collun stared up at the enormous creature.
Using all his willpower, Collun pulled himself into a sitting position. He was down to one layer of leather on his feet, and his clothing was in tatters; in some places it was gone altogether. But in his burned left hand the small fire stick still glowed.
The Firewurme watched Collun as he rose to his feet and began to move forward.
When Collun had come within a hundred paces, the Wurme dropped its head. It began to undulate across the ground toward him.
The urge to turn and run was overwhelming, but he stopped and stood still, waiting. When the tongue was no more than twenty paces from him, Collun brought his two shaking hands together. The small speck of fire touched the agaric torch.
A blinding column of flame burst up from the torch. Naid's head arched up, tongue dangling. It hung motionless above Collun. The Wurme's black pupils widened until more black showed than yellow. Collun shifted the torch to his left hand and swiftly drew his dagger. He aimed the dagger directly at the center of the Firewurme's right pupil and catapulted himself forward.
Just as he was about to plunge the dagger into its mark, there was a flicker of movement beside him. The Firewurme's tongue.
Before Collun could react, the black thing had coiled itself around his arm, from shoulder to wrist. An indescribable pain coursed through his body. His vision clouded. Streaks of gray swam over his eyes. He heard someone screaming, and he realized it was himself. He began to lose consciousness.
Collun struggled against the grayness. Then, he saw something flying through the air. It was an arrow. One of Breo-Saight's arrows.
The arrow, looking no larger than a tiny dart, fell short of its mark. It disintegrated in a puddle of sram. Then came another arrow, and it, too, turned to a smear on the ground.
As if from a distance Collun felt his feet begin to sear. The soles of his boots were gone.
Suddenly he felt a sharp, choking hatred toward the monster that had turned his body to fire. His thoughts hardened, and his head came up.
Collun looked into the Firewurme's face. The creature's pupils had begun to contract. He didn't remember dropping it, but the torch lay useless nearby, extinguished by the sram. Amazingly, though, the dagger was still in his mangled right hand, as if it had been forged there with fire. Collun painfully shifted the blade to his left hand and grasped the handle tightly. Then, with a hoarse shout of rage and horror, he launched himself again at the shrinking black center of the yellow eye above him.
As he pierced the Firewurme's pupil, the yellow surface wrinkled. The blade met no resistance. Collun's arm followed until it was immersed in amber-colored jelly. Then a black, oily liquid pulsed forth, splashing Collun's face and chest.
A hard, sharp object slammed into his forehead, and he knew no more.
TWENTY-FIVE
Nessa
When Collun awoke he saw Brie's face. He felt a searing pain across his shoulder and arm. He screamed. Then he lost consciousness again.
He woke a second time, and he saw another face above him. It looked like Nessa. Or her ghost. Thin and stretched and dead white. Perhaps this was what dying was, he thought. Dark and scorching hot, with the dreamlike faces of the people you loved floating over you.
"Collun?"
Yes, it must be Nessa's ghost. Her voice was as hollow and thin as her white face.
Brie suddenly loomed up beside Nessa's ghost face.
"Collun? Can you hear me?"
He wanted to brush the sweat from his eyes. Maybe if he could see more clearly ... But when he tried to move his arm, his vision went black, and he gasped for breath. He must have screamed again, for there was a high-pitched noise echoing in his ears. He thought to himself it wasn't fair that he still had to feel pain even after he was dead.
"He needs water."
"There is a spring. Freshwater."
Collun could hear the voices, but they sounded miles away. He could not see anything.
"Can you help me carry him?"
"I'll try."
There were hands at his armpits and feet, gentle and careful, but the fire on his skin was unbearable. He wanted to tell them to stop. He could not move his mouth.
When he woke again he was lying in something cool Water, he thought. The burning was less with the cool water against his skin. For the first time it occurred to him that he might not be dead after all. A light flickered somewhere near. He tried to fix his wavering vision.
"Brie?" he croaked.
Her face appeared.
"Oh, Collun!" The ghost face of his sister came up beside Brie. Its eyes were brimming with tears.
It was Nessa. She was not a ghost after all. Nessa was alive. His heart beat faster with joy.
"Collun." It was Brie again. "Naid is dead. You killed it. You have been sorely injured, but you are alive. And Nessa is here, safe."
"Where...?"
"We are in the cave. Where Nessa has been kept prisoner. There is a spring here. The water is helping you. But Collun"—her voice was urgent—"did you not tell me o
f a remedy for burns, an herb from the hag's garden? Please, try to think."
Collun tried to focus on Brie's words. His wallet of herbs. It had been almost empty, but he had filled it again at Mordu's garden. There was an herb he had found there.... Then he remembered the crone who sold him a cure for burns and insect bites. Was a Wurme an insect? he wondered, his thoughts becoming loose and unconnected. He willed himself to concentrate.
He had plucked the herb from Mordu's garden. Mallow. That was it. And Mordu had told him the recipe. But it would probably not work.
"Collun? Tell us."
"Mallow," he rasped out painfully. "Leaves are round with points, bright red flowers, dried. Boil them ... with leek juice ... gentian ... goat's thorn leaves. Two parts mallow ... one of the others ... Make a paste. Mordu said..." He trailed off.
Brie disappeared.
Nessa stayed beside him. He looked up at his sister's face in wonder. Her skin was pale as curds, and the bones of her face stuck out sharply. There were purple-black shadows under her eyes, and her lips looked bloodless and thin.
"Nessa," he whispered.
"Collun." He could barely hear her voice.
"You are alive."
She nodded and covered his left hand with hers. Then he slept.
When he woke he was no longer in the water. Nessa and Brie were gently trying to peel away the layers of his clothing. In some places flesh and cloth stuck together, and during the agony of undressing, Collun lost consciousness several more times. Finally he lay shivering, both hot and cold, in a thin layer of sweat-soaked underclothing. He saw his sister holding something in her hands. He didn't recognize it at first, but then realized the sodden lump was the book she'd given him.
"Your ... book," he quavered.
"I'll make you another," she whispered.
The mallow paste was ready, and Brie slowly began to rub it into a patch of fire that burned at Collun's wrist. He let out a high-pitched animal sound. From then on, they told him later, he was delirious. Nessa said it was Brie, her face pale and set, who rubbed the mallow salve into Collun's raw, mangled flesh, reapplying it several times.
When he finally came out of the delirium, Brie bathed Collun's flaming face in freshwater. She told him she thought the salve was already beginning to heal the oozing weals on his body.
They got him to drink an herbal broth that Brie had improvised, sweetened with bits of Mealladh's apple. Collun felt weak and wrung out, but his heartbeat was steady and the gray streaks only occasionally darkened his vision.
His jaw throbbed. It hurt to move it. In the wavering light of a candle nearby, Collun could see his arm. It had been burned in a spiral pattern where the Wurme's tongue had wrapped around it. Undamaged skin alternated with festering ribbons of red. His shoulder was a mass of blistered flesh, and his hand was swollen and seeped with red-and-yellow pus. He remembered what the Wurme's tongue had done to the thick branch on the shore and wondered why he had any arm left at all. Perhaps, he thought, the Cailceadon Lir had protected him.
The soles of his feet had been badly burned. He wondered how he was going to walk again. And yet he was alive, and the mallow salve was healing his body more quickly than he would have thought possible.
As Brie sat by him, bathing his face, Collun noticed that her hands were covered with blisters. She told him she had gotten them while pulling him away from the dead Firewurme and onto the Ellyl horse.
"Fiain," Collun said, suddenly afraid. "Where is he?"
"He is fine," answered Brie. "The cave is too cramped for him, I think. He prefers to wait outside. He gallops around the causeway at low tide."
Nessa joined them then with a new batch of herbal broth. Collun looked again at his sister's emaciated face, and his heart twisted in his chest.
"What did they do to you, Nessa?" Collun asked.
Nessa looked at her brother. For a moment her eyes were unfocused and strange, as if she did not know where she was or even who she was. Collun anxiously reached over and touched her hand. "Nessa?"
The girl's eyes suddenly refocused, and they filled with tears.
"Crann said you must have held out for a long time, because Urlacan set out late to find me," Collun said painfully.
Nessa nodded, covering her eyes with her hands. "For as long as I could. But in the end..." She dropped her hands, her mouth twisted in anguish.
Collun held her hand tightly. "It was Bricriu, wasn't it?"
"Yes. The night before my coming-of-age ceremony, there was a feast at his dun. Halfway through the evening, Lord Bricriu asked to speak to me privately in his library. I entered the room, and then everything went blank. I woke in the darkness in a dungeon below Bricriu's dun."
"The labyrinth," said Collun.
"Was it? I knew it only as darkness. Each day Lord Bricriu came, carrying a candle. He said I would be given nothing to eat or drink until I told him where the chalcedony was. I told him I didn't know what he was talking about, but he only laughed. Days went by, and I grew weaker and weaker. Every day Bricriu came. 'Where is the chalcedony?' he'd shout. 'Where is it?' Soon I became too weak to answer.
"I think he believed, finally, that I knew nothing of the stone. The next time he came he brought a piece of bread, some cheese, and a flagon of cold water. He said I could have them if I would tell him about my brother and my mother. I sensed that to speak might bring harm to you and Mother, though I did not know why. So I kept silent. Bricriu was very angry. After that he used needlelike pieces of metal, which he heated in a torch's flame." Nessa shuddered and bowed her head. After a while she spoke. "I don't remember much beyond that. Except that somehow I did not tell him what he wanted to know.
"There was a journey on horseback then. I was given a little to eat and drink, but it made me sick. Finally we came to a rocky land with air that hurt to breathe. By then I was able to eat again. It was night and we were camped by a large river. There were many Scathians around the fire, as well as a number of hooded creatures with yellow eyes that frightened me."
"Morgs," Collun interjected.
"There was suddenly a great commotion," Nessa continued. "Another large group of Scathians arrived, and at their head was a tall, fair woman. She wore a strange war helmet with two silver horns rising from the crown. It hung low on her forehead and over her nose, curving into the beak of a large bird of prey.
"I did not know at first who she was," said Nessa, "but then I heard one of the men call her queen, and I knew she must be Medb."
"You saw Medb herself?" asked Collun, his eyes wide.
Nessa nodded, her hands clenching and unclenching. Her face had gone white.
"What did she do to you, Nessa?" Collun cried out.
The tears came again. "I'm sorry, Collun," she whispered. "But her eyes..." Nessa faltered. "They were so pale, almost white, like her hair. And when she stared down at me I felt so cold, colder than I've ever felt before. I almost fainted, I think." She paused, then began again, her voice still a whisper. "I could bear Bricriu's needles better than those eyes..."
Brie poured Nessa a cup of chicory and handed it to the trembling girl.
"I was lying on my side, near the fire, my hands and feet bound. Medb stood looking down at me; she took off her war helmet, and her hair fell straight and white to her shoulders. She was beautiful, but in a cruel, frightening way.
"Then she leaned over and picked me up. Her arms were like iron. She carried me as if I were a baby and walked to the edge of the causeway. She lowered me into the rancid water until I was completely submerged except for my head. Then she took hold of my hair with one hand, pulling it so tight I cried aloud.
"With the other hand she rummaged in the folds of her white cloak, then pulled out a stone. She held it up in front of my face. Something about the blue stone looked familiar to me, but I was too terrified and ill to remember what it was. 'Where is the stone like this one?' she demanded. I told her I didn't know. With the hand gripping my hair she pushed my head underwater and
held it there. I was on the verge of losing consciousness when she roughly pulled me up again. I gasped for breath and she stared down at me, no expression at all on her face.
"'Where is the stone?' she said again. I told her I didn't know. Then she changed tack and began asking me the same things Bricriu had—where I was from, if I had a brother, if my mother was Emer. And on and on. She would ask, I wouldn't answer, then she'd put my head underwater just to the point when I thought I was dying. Then she'd pull me up and ask again. Finally, I broke. I told her about you and Emer and Aonarach. When I finished, all she said was, 'Does he have the stone?' And suddenly I remembered where I had seen a stone like the queen's: in the handle of your trine. I did not speak, but she abruptly let go of my hair. 'Yes,' she said. 'I thought so.'
"She lifted me back up in her arms and carried me across the causeway. I saw the Firewurme then. It was watching us. I think I was in a state of shock. I remember looking at the Firewurme's tongue and wondering what you and Mother were doing in Aonarach. Medb took me into this cave. She told me I would stay alive only if I remained inside. She pointed to a clear, wet-looking substance that lay on the ground, the Wurme'ssram; she said it would burn me.
"As she turned to leave, I finally found my voice and asked the queen why she was doing this to me. She smiled again, her eyes like ice. 'A little experiment,' she said, 'in brotherly devotion.' Then she was gone. I went to the cave's entrance and watched her cross the island. She walked directly up to the Firewurme. They seemed to be communicating in some way, then the Wurme opened its horrible maw and slid its tongue to one side. I'm not sure what I saw next. It was like a nightmare. But I could have sworn that the queen reached her arm into the Wurme's mouth, right up to her shoulder. She kept it there for only a moment and then turned and left the island.
"I saw her ride off with her men. When they were out of sight, I tried to leave the cave, in spite of what she had said about the sram." Nessa lifted her feet, showing them the burn scars on her soles and on her knees and the palms of her hands. "When my feet could no longer hold me, I crawled. But the Firewurme came with its yellow eyes and black tongue..." She faltered.