Yule Quest

  ~~~~~

  The horse was magical; he just seemed to eat up the miles and they hit the edge of Tipperary late in the afternoon.

  Bayard insisted on going to one particular church ruin. He said he felt it was the right place. It didn’t look like the right place to Andrew, but Bayard assured him there was a magical barrier that hid the true building from sight. They were standing at what would have been the door to the church; the western end that opened into the nave.

  “So we need the password, if you think there is a magical barrier,” Andrew said.

  “Ay, a word of entry.”

  “Oh, oh, I know this one,” Andrew said, excitedly. “Tolkien used it in the Lord of the Rings. Gandalf spends hours trying to find the password to the mines of Moria, because the door said ‘speak friend and enter’. In the end, the password was the word ‘friend’. It was a riddle, see?”

  “Friend?” said Bayard.

  “Try it.”

  “Mo chara,” said Bayard ponderously. [my friend in Irish Gaelic]

  There was a shiver in the air, that prickled the hairs on his arms, and then the image of the ruined church seemed to shiver. A massive building came into focus in front of them.

  Bayard made a happy horsey sound. “Well done.”

  They reverently entered. Andrew had to stop himself reaching for the holy water to bless himself as he entered. Old habits die hard.

  The walked down the aisle of the nave silently and approached the crossing; the space where the eastern arms [the transept] crossed, forming the shape of the cross like all traditional churches.

  They stood in the crossing and looked up. The dome was awe-inspiring and at least four storeys high. The light streamed in the upper windows; remarkably unbroken. But the signs of battle damage were obvious. There were pockmarks and scratches in the stone pillars to his right. A massive chain hung empty, from the centre of the dome.

  “The thurible is missing,” said Bayard.

  “The what?”

  “Incense burner.”

  “Oh, you think there might be another message in it.” Andrew pointed to claw marks in the pillar closest to where the thurible would have been anchored. “These marks look like something climbed the stone to tear it down.” He thought about what he had just said. “Okay now, that is just plain scary.”

  Andrew shook himself. “Well, let’s get looking. Can you sniff it out? Do you have a better sense of smell than me?”

  Bayard looked insulted that he might even have the same sense of smell as Andrew, and clomped off to the side, nosing at the ground. Andrew headed off to search on the other side, not that he really knew what he was looking for. He had a vague memory of the incense burner used in important masses; a guy walking along and swinging the burner on a chain, so that the smoke spread through the church.

  “What do they call the guy who carries the burner?” he whispered.

  “Why do you whisper?” asked Bayard.

  “It’s a church.”

  “The thurifer,” said Bayard.

  “Easy for you to say.”

  Bayard rolled his eyes again.

  It was an extremely large building and it took them some time to find their target. Bayard found the thurible in the end because Andrew would never have guessed it was that large. It was massive like the dome. It must have been a metre tall.

  In amongst the dust and ash inside it, they found another message tube. Andrew had to dig it out because Bayard pointed out that he had opposable thumbs. Andrew was sure he was having a go at him.

  “I’m kind of disappointed,” confessed Andrew. “I would love to have explored this whole building.”

  “Another day,” suggested Bayard.

  “Hmmm,” said Andrew. He hadn’t actually stopped to think about this adventure and what would happen next. He wondered what he had to go back to.

  They cleaned the tube off with a cloth, they found on the floor, and opened it carefully on the altar. It seemed appropriate somehow. Andrew took another photo.

  “Poison,” said Bayard.

  “It is?” Andrew panicked for a second. He had been touching the paper.

  “No, the word.”

  “Just that… what kind of a clue is that?”

  “Ireland,” said the horse and he shook his head as if he didn’t understand the Irish.

  “Wait a sec… there is a poison place, Poisoned Glen. There’s a ruined church there, too. I have seen it in stock photos for advertising jobs. I thought it was pretty new though, too modern for you. Oh, hang on; it could be another layered disguise thingy… like this one.”

  “Poisoned Glen,” repeated the horse.

  “Yeah, it’s way up north in Dunlewy, near Donegal. Gotta be a good five hours from here by car. Do we have time?”

  “It is Christmas eve.”

  “Shit, I had forgotten about that. Do you think the date is significant?” The horse looked at him. “Sorry, of course the date is significant. A Christian sword, found on the day of the birth of Christ, oopsies, my bad.” Andrew brushed some extra ash off his clothes. “Well, come on, we had better get going.” He put the message tube in his jacket pocket, and patted it carefully. The other one was still in the other pocket. He checked. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it had just disappeared.

  They headed out the door. Andrew had to take a final look before they exited and the magical disguise shimmered back into place. He found a wall to stand on and climbed back up on the horse.

  They stopped at another roadside place for a lunch and another bathroom stop. Andrew was starting to feel a little worn out and sore from horse riding. It was not a usual occupation for him. He usually rode a desk chair.

  Bayard said some words in a language Andrew didn’t understand. They clearly had some kind of magic force, because the road just flew past them, as if they were in fast forward; ahead of the rest of the world.

  It was nausea inducing, though. He shut his eyes and clung to Bayard. He must have fallen asleep because when he woke, they were standing in front of the ruined church he had only seen in photos before.

  “Oh, well done!” he told the horse.

  He looked pleased by the compliment.

  “Magic!” he checked his watch and just over an hour had passed. “Oh, you are good,” he told the horse and patted him on the neck. He looked around. The roofless church stood in the valley with the bare hills rising behind it. “It was built for the local Lord, from local materials, but as the area declined and the numbers of the congregation dropped, it fell into disuse. In the 1950’s they took the roof off as a safety measure, rather than repair it. Pity.”

  “County Donegal is very picturesque,” Bayard said, diplomatically. Andrew suspected there was not enough grass for his liking.

  “Same word?” he checked.

  “We can but try,” said Bayard. “Mo chara.”

  This time the building hidden inside was no bigger than its outer cloak. But it did have a roof. They entered with the same reverence as before. The windows were broken and stones lay on the floor. It was as if someone had thrown stones at the disguise and hit the hidden church as well.

  “What a pity,” said Andrew. Fine, net curtains billowed with the gentle breeze through the ruined windows.

  At least in such a small building, there were not that many hiding places for a magical sword. Andrew voted for the altar and, for once, Bayard agreed with him. The top of the altar was a solid piece of dark blue stone like the local quartzite. The horse placed his rump against it and pushed. It slid, agonizingly slowly and with a screeching sound, that made Andrew’s teeth hurt. But it did move. When a gap had been made, large enough for his arm to fit in, the horse stopped and looked at him expectantly.

  “You want me to stick my arm in there?”

  The horse rolled its eyes again and emitted a very un-horsey huff of frustration.

  “Yeah, okay, I know… time is fleeting blah, blah.”

  Andrew was more than half-con
cerned about sticking his arm in, but he did not want to push the lid off completely; it felt wrong to damage the altar.

  He reached in and felt around with his hand. “There is something in here… hang on… if I can just get my hand around it… shit… it’s heavy… get your big head out of the way…” Bayard had tried to look in the opening. He decided to help by pushing the stone off to the side a little more. Andrew pulled out a long bundle wrapped in rags and tied with a leather thong that had dried and cracked around it. It looked a lot like a wrapped up sword.

  He looked at the horse who lifted his feet excitedly.

  Andrew placed the bundle on the stone lid and tried to unwrap it. The leather cord fell apart when he put stress on it. As he unwrapped the rags, a beam of golden light shone out from the hilt. It was untarnished.

  “It’s gold,” Andrew breathed, “and massive.”

  “Forty six inches long,” stated Bayard.

  “It weighs a ton! I couldn’t lift this for long, let alone flail it around.”

  The horse looked pained. “Flail,” it muttered.

  “What?”

  “You are just like him. He hated swords, too. Was always giving them away.”

  “I forgot, this was Maugris’s sword first, wasn’t it? This is Durendal?”

  “Ay, he gave it to Roland.”

  “What other blades did he give away?” Andrew got the impression that there was more than one.

  Bayard said, “He defeated the Saracen admiral Anthenor, who came to win the lands and castle of Oriande, and gained the sword Flamberge.”

  “Oriande? She was the fae, right? Ho ho, bet he didn’t like someone beating up his woman.”

  “Nay, he gave the sword, together with Bayard, to