The Tower of Death

CHAPTER NINE: Zarabdas of Palmyra

Cormac could not believe it. He searched his room again, both disturbed and greatly surprised. He was one to sleep like a cat and awake at the sound of a busy spider dropping to a ship’s deck from a taut sail. Yet while he had slept this first night in the hall of the King of Galicia, someone had entered the room and taken the Egyptian sigil on its chain!

He wore the linen under-leggings on which he’d laid it, and was sure it had not been there. At last, convinced that the medallion was indeed gone, he drew on his leathern leggings and tunic. He stood thinking a moment, narrow-eyed. And arranged his mailcoat on the bed, and slipped into its jingling, heavy links. Straightening, he buckled on weapons and pouch.

When he left the chamber, he took with him everything that was his. Only the buckler he would not carry, so as not to appear the prowling soldier and do insult to Veremund’s hospitality. Near the front door was a place reserved for the shields of weapon-men entering the hall; there Cormac left his own round buckler, made of the yew of Britain and braced and strengthened by bands of steel.

That day, when their paths happened to cross outside, he learned that Clodia had availed herself of her newfound nobility; she had nighted with none other than the king.

“Ye can hardly be continuing your masquerade of the highborn lady in his intimate company,” Cormac pointed out.

“Oh… he knows,” she said, and accompanied the words with an arch look. “Was you claimed I was a lady after all, not I. Once I knew he knew, I told him the truth.”

’The truth?”

“Aye!” The look she gave him this time was appealing. “You’ll not tell him different, will you, Cormac?”

“Different from what?”

“That I’m the daughter of a chieftain of the ancient Alani though I dare not name the specific house, for my father fell out with the Caesar before this one. I was raised by a rich merchant of Nantes.”

Cormac shook his head, eyebrows up. “No, Clodia, it’s no different tale I’ll be telling the king. In truth, ye lie as well as I. Do let me know, though, an ye change that story.” And he went on his way, his face looking strange wearing a whimsical little smile.

A mounted Irnic came upon him, and reined in. “Cormac! Why in full armour?”

Cormac looked mildly up at the Sueve. “It’s a weapon-man I am, Irnic. This is the way I am comfortable. Relieve me of the weight of forty pounds of mail and another dozen of weapons and belt, and I might float!”

Laughing, Irnic rode on, and the story had spread through all the comites and half the soldiers by nightfall. The peasants would have it by the morrow’s night.

A short time later, Cormac first saw Lucanor of Antioch. The leech was a portly man in a wine-dark robe who wore his curly, grease-glossy black hair to his shoulders. A gold ring flashed in his left ear. An unhappy look shadowed the fellow’s mouth and brow, which were separated by a thin nose with a bit of a crook. He was emerging from a noble house where he’d presumably been at the plying of his trade, and Cormac saw the gratitude on the face of the woman who saw the physician off.

He looked like the offspring of a Greek and an Armenian, Cormac thought, though in truth he’d never seen an Armenian.

It’s prosperous enow the fellow looks, and Rhodoghast never said he wasn’t competent. Just unhappy, for he’s been the king’s physician and is no longer. Well Lucanor, well… we all have our valleys and peaks and cliffs, in this life. Once I was a noble’s son of Connacht in Eirrin, and later a hero of Leinster, and I’ve been lover to a princess and… something similar to another. Are you too an exile who dreams of your homeland, old hawk faced greasehead?

He visited the heat-shimmering place wherein aproned men sweated and wore heavy gauntlets and boots of leather. There was one wall only. Five men laboured here. Three fed fuel constantly to keep their fire blazing high and hot. The others, with even more care, handled the lime from the Galician hills, calcining it into the more volatile quicklime. It seemed a simple enough process of heavy unpleasant labour, demanding constant exposure to the searing heat and the dangerous dust of the stinging lime, as well as poisonous fumes. Mac Art, who’d been feeling sorry for himself since his thoughts of Eirrin, decided he’d rather be in a battle against double odds than one of these sweating, miserable-looking men with their several lime-burns.

Later he had himself escorted to the coast. Wulfhere was already asea, with some of his crew along with Sueves: training. Cormac stood for a time, gazing across at the lonely, grim old tower. Restlessly the sea slapped at the jumble of rocks at its base, and Cormac wondered how long that salty assault had gone on.

The Romans built well, he mused, as he’d thought numerous times afore. And he was glad they had not builded and maintained their empire as well as they had their walls and forts and light-towers, their aqueducts and roads and superb bridges.

And now… who possessed this grim old pile of stone? Or-what?

He approached the cylindrical tower, accompanied by two nervous Suevi with their strange back-of-the-head hairknots. They walked all round about it, and once Cormac drew steel and prodded at lank runners of brown algae. The kelp acted like nothing but kelp. The three men ascended to the light-chamber. Here only rusty brown stains now gave evidence of the ugly occurrences here.

Eight men, he reflected, looking slit-eyed about, slain and sucked dry by… seaweed?

Was it possible?

Had it really happened, that viney thing locking onto his flesh and starting in at once to feed on his blood? Those dehiscent pods that had burst like pig’s bladders to spurt blood over a foot across the floor? Could he really hold belief that the seaweed was sentient or nearly, that it had been sent and recalled once its ghastly murders were accomplished?

Cormac peered out on the sea, thinking, wondering at how much kelp the oceans held, thinking of masses of it crawling like worms in rich soil after a rain. And tiny cold feet seemed to walk up his spine, under mailcoat and padded jacket and tunic, and Cormac mac Art sweated. He turned to stare along the brooding, craggy coast backed by its dark trees.

“There is adequate fuel lying there, in the woods. I’ll want some dry old rotted wood, and a fine supply of slim sticks, also dry.”

“It will be done.” Irnic had bade these men accept Cormac’s suggestions as orders and carry out his instructions as if they were royal proclamations.

“Well. Let’s be going down. It’s naught there is to see now, and we do want that wood gathered.”

“I don’t envy you your vigil here, Captain Cormac,” the Sueve said as they descended the narrow staircase of stone.

“Just Cormac will do, Eudo. I’ve not captained my own ship for some years now, and have little use for titles.”

“Is’t true you and the Dane have sent full a score of ships to the bottom, Cormac?”

Cormac sighed. “No, it is not true. We have sunk two. Nor have we ever done death on so many as one single man who did not have steel in his hand. Why, I’ve never even raped a woman!”

“Not one?” Eudo’s companion said disbelievingly, and Eudo chuckled, “How about girls, then?”

“It’s never been necessary,” Cormac said, without thinking that he was not lessening his legend, but adding another line that would become paragraphs. “Ah, attend me, Eudo; I’m thinking of something else. See that a cauldron of grease is provided us here.”

“Grease?”

“Animal, aye, and coagulated. I just want it after it’s been boiled down, so that it will liquefy swiftly, rather than big chunks of fat.”

“A cauldron.”

They emerged into the sunlight. “Aye, and I’d not be minding in the least if the pot were not one of those monstrous heavy things. Bronze or iron; makes no difference. And it’s welcome your lads are to carry up the grease in ewers or skinbags, and transfer it into the cauldron up in the light-chamber. I’m not bent on breaking backs!”

“Aye, Cormac. Very well. It will be done. And where will ye be?”

Cormac turned to look at the long-faced Sueve, and the Gael’s face was open, almost ingenuous-if a visage so marked by experience was capable of anything approaching a boyish expression. “Why, right here, Eudo. It’s only my life’s at stake, man; I’ll not be wandering off afishing while my little castle is being prepared to withstand siege!”

Eudo nodded with a chastened little smile, and he and his aide hurried away to see to the gathering of wood.

Cormac walked along the shore, ascending slowly. He knew would be no easy matter, muscling a huge iron vat of hardened grease up to the light-chamber of yon tower of death. Cauldrons were built to last, and they were not light. Nor was a solid mass of melted and resolidified animal fat. Too, Cormac had never seen a cauldron that was provided with more than two lugs, or handles.

Better that job than calcining lime, he thought, and tugged off his horsehair-crested helm. The salt-fresh air over the sea stirred but little this afternoon, but each little zephyr was most welcome. He whipped his head back and forth, shaking sweat and kinks from his black mass of hair.

He entered the woods that ended just above the bluff overlooking the sea, ascended, and emerged to sit in shade and gaze out on the water. From time to time he glanced at the beacon tower, or gazed speculatively at that enigmatic pile of brine-white stone. A sentry and a haven, turned into a trap of horror and a grave. How? By what?

As the afternoon wore on he twice rose and changed his position, seeking shade in the manner of a lounging dog. But Cormac mac Art was hardly at his ease. While his body rested his brain laboured and winged afar in both space and the misty past, planning, seeking clues to the root of this new menace that had fallen athwart his life-path.

He could think of no precedent, nothing similar in all his experience asea, and in Eirrin and Alba and Britain. He stared seaward, thinking, and from time to time Wulfhere went by…

The Dane was shouting and cursing. His flaming beard bristled as he turned face and supplicating hands up to Asgard. He had taken aboard Raven a score of his own Danish seamen, with half that number of Suevi, for training. Wulfhere had not the patience to train a genius to pick his nose, Cormac reflected, smiling. Back and forth the ship went, up and down the coast, back and forth… and all the while Wulfhere Skull-splitter railed at his tyroes.

He should have come in earlier. Toward sundown a wind rose up and whipped the sea into prancing choppy waves and breakers that crashed onto the rocks below Cormac’s perch. Wulfhere’s trainees gain their seasoning now, the Gael grinned, hearing the Dane’s bellow even through the wind.

Raven plunged and beat up and down for a long hour ere the wind eased and they dared swing her swiftly in to gain shore. By then the sun had gone orange and was perching at the edge of the world.

Cormac rose and hurried down to meet the men from Raven.

Wulfhere snorted as he watched the half-score Suevi stagger and lurch ashore. Each quivered in every part and the skin of more than one showed a definite green tinge.

“Och, Cormac! We have a helpless task with these landbound plow-pushers! They’ll never make seamen!”

But Knud the Swift winked at Cormac, which told him the Sueves had done rather well.

“And what saw you, Wulf, on your little pleasure cruise?”

The Dane tried to fry Cormac with a look, then doffed his helm and slammed it at his comrade with a swift tensing thrust of both arms, from the chest. Cormac caught the iron pot in both his hands, and aye, mac Art rocked with the impact. He said nothing of the pain to the middle finger of his left hand, but did toss the helm aside for Wulfhere to pick up.

“Nothing!” the flame-haired giant said explosively. “We saw nothing! No sign of wrecked ships, not even a plank. And no slain men, sucked dry or otherwise.”

Cormac made a sympathetic face and gave his head a jerk. “Will ye be ready to-morrow evening?”

“Aye,” Wulfhere nodded. “To-morrow e’en. And… I’ll not be sleeping in our chamber this night, again.

“My chamber,” Cormac corrected. “Not a married lady, I hope.”

“Frey’s stones, No! Neither of them!”

As they were finishing dinner, Zarabdas quietly let Cormac know that he would have converse. The Gael was none loath and they went outside for a walk about the grounds of the king’s hall. The sky was still a deep slate colour, rather than black. They talked, but nothing was said.

“Was you suggested a talk,” Cormac said at last, “but we talk not. It’s but tentatively feinting each of us is, and almost desperately parrying. Methinks is because neither of us really wishes to tell the other aught of his knowledge and arcane powers.” Of which I have none, Cormac added, but only in his own mind.

“Straightforward words. And true. Might one ask how came ye by the medallion ye showed us?”

Cormac but smiled, very slightly. He could be seen; it was answer enow.

“Well then… might I see it again, now we are sure we serve the same king?”

Cormac paused, turned to the other man, and stared.

Zarabdas at last frowned. “Ye seem to have suffered a seizure of the tongue, mac Art.”

“What I have suffered, mage, is a seizure of the sigil! It vanished during the night just passed. Nor can I fathom how anyone entered my chamber without awaking me-unless by some sorcerous means. Too, Zarabdas, no one has been so interested as yourself, in that… bauble.”

“Stolen!” Zarabdas hissed. “And I hear myself being accused without so many words… mac Art, I have it not. I do not steal. Nor do I believe that medallion to be other than a piece of Egyptian jewellery of no great age.”

“Then why would someone in the hall of the king himself be going to such trouble to steal it? Surely no paupers sleep within the keep!”

“I cannot say,” Zarabdas said, meeting Cormac’s slitted eyes straight on; the two men stood still now, face to face. “Mayhap I am wrong about the medallion’s meaning, and possible… use. And mayhap another thought it to be valuable, of thaumaturgic use. Hmm. The thief woke neither you nor your bearish friend?”

“He… took his rest elsewhere.”

“Ah. Rest, eh?” Almost, Zarabdas smiled. “Of course… Cormac mac Art: do you bolt your door this night.”

“It had occurred to me,” Cormac said with exaggerated dryness. “It’s thinking too I’ve been of leaving it unlocked-and sleeping not, but waiting with sword in hand.”

“Not unwise; save that when one sleeps in the hall of the mighty, one must be most cautious as to whom one attacks, in one’s own chamber or no.”

“I do not believe it’s the king will be visiting me this night,” Cormac said.

“I will think on this,” Zarabdas said, and turned and returned to the hall while a surprised Cormac stood and watched.

Things were seldom what they seemed; Cormac mac Art had learned that, and too many times had he learned and re-learned the lesson to his anguish. Could Zarabdas be sincere, and guiltless, and without knowledge of the accursed sigil?

Mayhap I be well rid of the damned bauble! Well, I’ll be going on in and-oh, blood of the gods! Trapped!

It was the Lody Plotina, wearing a darkish dress draped with care to disguise the fact that her belly extended considerably farther than her bosom, which was a considerable distance. Nothing sinister, at least, in that dissemblage-or in her brazen suggestion.

“My lady is a follower of the dead-of Our Lord the Nazarene?”

Frowning, Plotina asked, “Aye-and why do you ask? What has that to do with thee and me?”

“It means that you will understand my sad state, my gracious lady; I have taken a vow of chastity.”

“Oh!”

She was most sorry, and departed with little grace, though she tried. A grimly smiling mac Art reflected on his lie and was most happy that Behl and Crom of Eirrin were not like the Dead God of the Saints or Christians, threatening vengeance on those who professed a faith other than theirs.

He made a little bargain with a kitchen maid, who was not unhappy to be groped or to proffer a jug of wine and a cup on the king’s guest. She asked twice, looking up from under long darkened lashes, if that were all “my lord Mackert” wanted of her. He assured her that it was, and was wondering at his own sanity by the time he was in his room and sitting back, sipping the best fate of Hispanic grapes. It was not the best wine he’d tasted-though it far exceeded in quality that stuff the Britons made from the wrinkly grapes their chill wet climate produced.

He filled a second cup, thinking, and was soon yawning-when there came a tap at his door. He set down the pottery mug, looked thoughtfully at his mailcoat and sword, and have his head a jerk. In the manner of a civilized man, he inquired who was there. It was Zarabdas. Cormac admitted him.

Zarabdas, whose pate was so clear of hair and yet whose beard was so dark, wore a different robe, light and ungirt. And he held a stemmed, round object with a piebald pattern on its knob, which was a bit larger than the Gael’s fist. Merely a dried gourd, Cormac saw.

“A talisman?”

Zarabdas smiled, and shook the gourd. It rattled, dried with its seeds within. A nice children’s toy; some folk hung them outside the door to rattle in the wind and frighten night-demons.

“No,” the Palmyran said, “a doorstop.”

Cormac blinked, then nodded his understanding.

“Ah.” He took the gourd, thanked the mage, and closed the door. He set the gourd carefully against its base.

And he retired, dagger close to hand and his sword standing in a corner on the other side of the bed. The wine soon enveloped him in sleep.

A strange sound aroused him. Cormac awoke as fully alert as any pirate, and but a moment passed before he realized that what he was hearing was a child’s rattleball rolling along the floor. He had his dagger in his fist and was out of bed and several feet from it in an instant.

“It’s in me hand my sword is, and if ye ope the door to depart ye’ll become a sheath. Came ye to slay, or to steal more than ye did yester night?”

“Neither,” a tiny female voice quavered. “I am come to return that which I… borrowed on yester even.”

“Eurica?”

“Aye,” she squeaked, and there was a pause while she swallowed and found her voice, which was very small even when she’d not been terrified. “And unarmed. Please don’t hurt me-I am walking toward your voice. I bear no arms. Shall I stretch out my hands or put them behind my back?”

“Behind your back,” he said, and stretched out his left hand. He heard the approach of her voice, but now she had fallen silent he heard not even the whisper of feet.

So! Who’d have guessed a girl who liked so to stamp her feet could be as silent as a cat walking on velvet! His armpits prickled, and he held forth his left hand, while his right held the dagger ready to strike upward. Then he heard a whisper of cloth, and knew she was close enough to touch, and damned himself mentally for a fool: she was short, and he was holding his hand too high. He lowered it-directly onto her head, and she made a frightened mouse sound.

“Hands at your sides. Be perfectly still. My blade is ready in my other hand.”

He felt her, with his left. A long cloak, silk sewn to wool. An empty hand; another. Aye, and within the cloak a slender chain. Tracing his hand down, he found two well-spaced little hills of flesh, almost hard in youthful firmness. Betwixt them was the winged medallion. And a low-necked shift of some gauzy stuff. Her under-dress, or perhaps a nightdress; he knew some wore such, even when the weather was far from wintry.

“Why took ye this?”

“I-came for an-another purpose,” she said, and he both felt and heard that the girl trembled still. “I had not the-the courage, once I was within and found ye-s-s-sleeping. But-I took the sigil I knew you had worn. I… have liked having it between my breasts, this day.’;

“Ye’ve warmed it for me.”

“Aye,” she said, signally tiny of voice.

“And shall I be taking it now?”

In an even tinier voice: “Aye.”

“Uh-oh, sorry. Hmmm.” He groped under her hair, which was very soft. “Think ye I can be taking this from ye without your undressing?”

“…no…”

Cormac heaved an elaborate sigh. “Ah, then I must be begging ye to hand it me on the morrow, lady Princess.”

“Wh-wh-but-”

He leaned close, so that her hair brushed his lips. “It’s not alone I am, here.”

“But-the Dane is with-”

“It’s not the Dane I speak of, lady Princess.”

“Then you-Oh!”

“Shhhh-it’s asleep she is, and we’d not want her awake and knowing the royal princess is here.”

“oh!”

Cormac remained silent. Go, damn ye girl, go-and all the gods save Art’s poor dear boy of Connacht from still another princess-this is one king I’d rather not befalling out with!

“I hadn’t realized you…”

“Cormac the Bold; was yourself said it, lady Princess. It’s flattered I am, and forever grateful. Have care that none sees ye now, returning to your own quarters.”

Something jingle-clattered on the floor. “Take your damned bauble, pirate!”

The door opened and closed. Blowing out his lips, Cormac sighed again-this time genuinely, in relief. King’s daughters were his bane, and would be his weird unless he protected himself. Aye, and king’s sisters. Kings had a habit of thinking the royal women should leave alone un-royal males. Nor, an the ladies disagreed and took action elsewise, was it they on whom royal anger and punishment fell.

Yet he was not unaroused, and was long gaining his sleep that night. On the morrow he’d a few words with a lowborn and extraordinarily well-constructed wench, and she passed a few words back, and he and she exchanged a few more, and agreement was reached. He had his self defense, he thought, and besides, it was hardly meet for a man to have to lie to a princess more than once, that he was not alone!