Offutt, Andrew J - The Undying Wizard  
None there are to believe how long I have lived, or how long I have waited, 
while uncounted millions of little mortal men have strutted the earth, and bred 
like the pigs they are, and slew and slew. So much of the Old Knowledge was lost 
that what remains—in the hands of these “Druids”—is but the ghost of the shadow 
of the shadow of what I know! 
But I have lived; I have remained on this earth in this dimension, whilst others 
have died and returned scores of times. And now... at last I will have my 
vengeance, after a hundred and eighty centuries... 
THE UNDYING WIZARD 



The Cormac mac Art Series 
THE MISTS OF DOOM by Andrew J. Offutt
THE TOWER OF DEATH by Andrew J. Offutt & Keith Taylor
WHEN DEATH BIRDS FLY by Andrew J. Offutt & Keith Taylor
TIGERS OF THE SEA by Robert E. Howard
THE SWORD OF THE GAEL by Andrew J. Offutt
THE UNDYING WIZARD by Andrew J. Offutt
THE SIGN OF THE MOONBOW by Andrew J. Offutt & Keith Taylor 
War of the Gods on Earth Series by Andrew J. Offutt 
THE IRON LORDS
SHADOW OUT OF HELL
THE LADY OF THE SNOWMIST 



THE UNDYING WIZARD 
If any man has earned peace, the man should be Cormac
mac Art, exiled son of an Irish king, freed after years of
outlawry from the shame of a crime falsely laid at his feet,
exonerated by the High King of Eirrin. 
But Cormac’s troubles have only begun, as he finds himself
stalked by an evil sorcerer from the dim past, an occult
nightmare who has sworn revenge. 
ROBERT E. HOWARD’S 
OTHER GREAT HERO 
CORMAC MAC ART 



to
Jodie of the Erin-born
until further notice



THE UNDYING WIZARD

An Ace Fantasy Book / published by arrangement with
the author and Glenn Lord, agent for the Estate of Robert E. Howard

PRINTING HISTORY
Ace edition / February 1982
Fourth printing / June 1984

All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1976 by Andrew J. Offutt and Glenn Lord, 
agent for the Estate of Robert E. Howard
Cover art by Romas
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10016

ISBN: 0-441-84516-9

Ace Fantasy Books are published by the Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10016
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


Contents
        Prologue 
      1 Eight-and-Twenty Picts 
      2 Warrior and Priest 
      3 Death-Tide 
      4 The Castle-of Atlantis 
      5 The Living Dead 
      6 The Throne of Kull 
      7 Pacts 
      8 Footprints 
      9 Memories 
      10 The Roof of the World 
      11 When Friend Becomes Foe 
      12 When Companion Becomes Lover 
      13 To Die Twice 
      14 The Undying Wizard 
      15 The Wizard’s Challenge 
      16 The Wizard’s Power 
      17 The Wizard Strides 
      18 Steel Against Sorcery 
      19 Doom-heim 



The Undying Wizard
Andrew J. Offutt
ACE FANTASY BOOKS
NEW YORK 



Acknowledgments 
The author wishes to express thanks to Robert Adams and Chuck Holst and others 
who helped with information and books (including the authors of 131 books and 
encyclopedic articles); and Kirby; and, for letting him see and feel what it’s 
really like: 
HRM Albert Von Dreckenveldt,
Baron Wurm Wald, MK, KSCA, OL 
Sir Polidor Haraldsson, KSCA, OL, OGW 
—and others of the Middle Kingdom 



Prologue
The enormous reptile lay in a cavern passage, eerily lit by some means surely 
preternatural; sorcerous, perhaps. Walls and ceiling glowed. The strange 
illumination was dim, pearly, hardly akin to that of torch or lamp, much less 
the sun—which could not pierce the cavern’s ceil of earth and rock beneath the 
man-made pile of masonry that capped the thick natural layer. The pale light 
emanated from the very walls of the world-old tunnel itself. 
In this weird luminous emanation from a source not visible the great reptile 
lay, a green monster twisted as a vine on rocky soil. 
Several times the length of a man the creature was, and nigh as thick. It lay 
motionless in a great lake of red-brown cruor. The blood had thickened and 
crusted over in coagulation, so that it shone as if glowing, reflecting the 
wall-light. The serpent was still. Its eyes, the colour of new flax and large as 
a man’s eyes, were filmed over. 
Yet it gave off no stench, nor was it bloated. There was no sign of 
putrefaction. Nevertheless, the monster was dead. Its great twisted tree-trunk 
of a body bore the many wounds that had ended its life. It had been stabbed and 
hacked, sliced and chopped. No juices remained in that prodigious corpse; the 
number of wounds and its own volcanically violent death throes had seen to that. 

It was fearsome, even in death. No ordinary man had brought red death upon this 
haunter of subterrene passageways. 
In a somber cavern beneath the earth beneath a towering castle of extraordinary 
antiquity, the reptile that appeared to be the father of all snakes lay dead. 
And... it moved. 
Only the hint of a shudder was that movement—but no, it was a shimmer, giving 
but the weird illusion of motion. A Something stirred within the corpse. Some... 
thing was struggling to gain freedom from its prison of death. 
In the whelming silence of a tomb, the air stirred about the great snout. 
Slowly, above the moribund shell of the reptile, a haze formed. It spread, 
lengthened, billowed only slightly, and rose. Tenuous, wavering creepers of mist 
shuddered on the stale air of the cavern. Luminous walls were clearly visible 
through the gossamer floating haze. It was blue-grey, that ever-shifting 
amorphous cloudlet; the colour of human death. 
Yet about it there was nothing human. 
For just a moment among the fleeting motes of time, the necrotic haze seemed to 
coalesce, as if attempting to form a shape: rounded at the top, pierced below by 
two holes, narrow and latticed below—a death’s head. 
But that was gone in an instant, nor were there living eyes present to have 
seen. 
The mist floated up, free of the serpentine corpse that had spawned it. It 
moved, and surely there was purpose in the flowing movement of that faint cloud 
of haze along the subterranean corridor. 
The passage bent and twisted again and again, as though formed by a restless 
reptile—or by long-dead men who had sought to confuse and slow possible pursuit. 
For though the mist-thing moved away from it, the tunnel gave off a concealed 
passage in the centuries-old castle above. 
The mist-thing drifted along above a dusty, ever-descending floor of packed 
earth. Around convoluted turnings and twistings writhed the wraithy haze, and it 
touched nothing but air, this form of life from death that trailed in eerie 
silence through the soundless channel beneath the earth. 
Then it paused, writhing in air. It hovered above... another corpse. 
The body was that of a man. Old he had been, aged enough to have died of natural 
causes. But there was visible evidence to the contrary. He who had been tall and 
unusually thin wore a cowled robe, dark as night. Cloth covered his reed-thin 
body from head to instep. He lay belly down, and in the center of the robe’s 
back a darker stain spread. Dried trails of it led over the fabric to the 
corridor’s floor of packed, dust-piled earth. The splotch and its coagulated 
runnels were a reddish brown, like old rust. The robed man had been stabbed from 
behind and had got his death thereby. 
Grey and white, forming silver, were his beard and the hair that straggled limp 
as corn tassels from his head over his cheek. Grey too were his eyes, nearly 
white in the paleness. Though open, they saw nothing. Bony hands with fingers 
like claws had not even torn at the tunnel floor; he had been dead even as he 
fell. Open too was his mouth in a rictus that had been a gasp or cry. 
The hovering mist lowered. Wraithy tendrils of transparent blue-grey touched the 
corpse, as though the amorphous haze-thing was putting forth exploratory 
pseudopods. 
One of them entered the open mouth of the dead man. 
Swiftly then, like smoke somehow filtering into a bottle, the haze entered the 
corpse. 
Then all was quiet and still, and none was there to measure the passage of time. 
Minutes, or hours, or days, or weeks or months... they were as nothing to the 
dead-and to the mist-thing. 
The seagreen serpent lay dead, and it began to rot. Well away along the twisting 
corridor beneath the earth, the robed man lay dead. And the mist had vanished, 
as silently and hazily as it had appeared, from one corpse and into another. 
The body of the robed man did not swell, or rot. 
Then, in that silence and motionlessness of death, there was movement. 
It was fingers that twitched; the fingers of the right hand of the dead man. 
They curled, clawing inward and leaving trails in the dust of the ancient 
cavern. Hardly more than bone, these fingers straightened again. And curled once 
more. 
A ripple flowed through night-dark fabric as the dead man’s left leg moved, only 
a twitch like the rigour after death—but he had been dead far too long for that. 

Both arms bent. Both bone-lean hands moved back toward the body. They planted 
themselves, palms down, at the shoulders. The head moved. Lank silver hair 
stirred. The hands pressed down. Buskin-shod feet scraped. 
The corpse pushed itself up from the dusty floor. 
On its feet, the dead man who was not dead wavered, tottered on long-still legs. 
A hand swung out to slap the earthen wall, as a brace for a body that had long 
lain prone. A long moaning sound issued from the thin slash of a mouth. All 
through the tall form, a great shudder ran. Then, as though just remembering, 
the mouth closed. 
The head turned on its thin neck with another stirring of shoulder-length hair 
like lifeless silver thread. One hand, the right, rose before the face. It 
turned there, like a specimen the dead eyes studied, while the robe’s dolmen 
sleeve slid down. Revealed was a wrist that was only skin drawn over bone like 
hide tedded for its tanning. 
The skin was not tan, but nearly white, like new linen. 
The hand slapped the chest, moved over the face. It traced out the high 
forehead, the deep crag-surmounted sockets of the pale, pale eyes, that thin 
nose with its porcelain-like nostrils, the gaunt cheeks, the mouth that was 
little more than a horizontal gash between mustache and ashy beard. 
The resurrected corpse, alone beneath the earth... spoke. 
“Thin, O Great Serpent, this body—merely skin over bone like the fine parchment 
of Vanara stretched over stone to dry!” The voice that issued from the corpse 
was soft, almost a whisper. “A lean body, far from young. A priest, a seer, a 
mage—a Druid, it is called. From a land called Norge, where the ice remains long 
and snow falls and lies ever atop the craggy peaks, and wind howls cold to cut 
like a chariot-wheel’s scythe.” 
Up leaped robe-swathed arms, to raise clenched fists on high. 
“ALIVE! Alive and in the form of a man once more, with hands, aye and feet to 
walk the earth again! Cutha Atheldane. That was the name of the life-force that 
quickened this body before mine animated it anew.” 
The Undead man laughed aloud and turned quite around in its jubilation. 
“ALIVE! One is grateful for having been snatched from eternal exile in that 
other dimension that would have been like mortal death, from the life-sucking 
sword. Yet... to have lain here, waiting, handless and voiceless in the body of 
a son of the Great Serpent... for eighteen thousand years! Ah!” 
Again he turned about, he who had been Cutha Atheldane, Druid of Norway and was 
now... someone else, some Thing else. His movements were quick and more sure 
now, animated by one of the strongest life-forces that had ever existed, one 
that had lived and trod the earth before Atlantis rose from the deeps, let alone 
sank. 
“Cutha Atheldane am I, then!” And he laughed. Exultant, was the new Cutha 
Atheldane. He moved, he cried out his joy. 
But he did not breathe. 
“One hundred eighty centuries! Ah, Chaos that existed before all and will reign 
again, a hundred and eighty times a hundred years! But, a moment in eternity, 
aye—but what an eternity to have been held here by both stone and spell... and 
in a body with neither voice nor hands! And liberated...” 
Cutha Atheldane, who was not Cutha Atheldane, broke off in a short laugh that 
would have raised the hackles of a dog and sent birds aflying. 
“Ah I knew him, I recognized him at once, ere even he came floundering like a 
barbarian puppet down into my prison... to release me by slaying the serpent’s 
body that incarcerated me! I know ye for who ye were, not who ye are now! In any 
incarnation would I know thee, ancient enemy, barbarian king on a throne of 
fiery gems—a throne you usurped after slaying the noble lord who sat it!” 
The voice trailed off like whispering leaves when the wind dies. When it 
commenced anew it was much lower, quiet now, and full of menace and deadly 
purpose. 
“None there are to believe how long I have lived, or how long I have waited, 
while uncounted millions of little mortal men have strutted the earth, and bred 
like the pigs they are, and slew and slew, and so much of the Old Knowledge was 
lost that what remains—in the hands of these ‘Druids’—is but the ghost of the 
shadow of the shadow of what I know! But I have LIVED, I have remained on this 
earth in this dimension, whilst others died and returned scores of times. And 
now... at last I will have my vengeance, after a hundred and eighty centuries.” 
The risen dead man looked about, ruminating. “First I must be invited to leave 
this isle, for still I am bound here by the old spell. But... I shall come to 
thee, you who men know now as Cormac mac Art of Connacht in Eirrin! I... will... 
have... my... VENGEANCE!” 
And as the tall and cadaverous figure in the night-dark robe hurled aloft both 
arms amid a flapping of full tapering sleeves, the eyes and lips of his visage 
seemed to waver and vanish, to be replaced for an instant by a ghastly, 
grinning, chalk-white skull! 
The most powerful and dedicatedly evil sorcerer in the world’s history was loose 
again on the face of the earth. 
Chapter One:
Eight-and-twenty Picts
Sped by strong hands at its ten banks of oars, the hide-covered ship—or long 
boat—clove the water as though with good wind behind. Yet its blue sail was 
furled, for no air stirred the sea that basked so lazily in the sun betwixt 
Britain and Eirrin. Only where the ship passed was the blue-green water 
disturbed; it foamed cloud-white along the little ship and for a short distance 
in its wake. 
The men at the oars had set aside their helmets, some of which sprouted horns, 
while one was decorated with feathers and still another trailed a horsehair 
plume after the Roman fashion. Long was the hair of these men, plaited or caught 
back by a thong, and there was but one among the crew of that lone vessel whose 
locks were more dark than the colour of new copper. Some of the oarsmen were 
daubed on face and arms with blue paint or dye. Others wore no such paint, 
though the face of one huge-armed fellow was etched with a scar so fierce it 
might have been mistaken for a red dye, only slightly faded. 
Three men were aboard who rowed not. 
One stood well forward; another manned the tiller. Wargirt they both were, and 
brawny. 
He at the prow wore no helm, but he had chosen to crown his dark yellow hair 
with a cap made of catskins. From that barred cap sprouted a little plume of 
seven eagle feathers. Bronze were the bracers on his arms, one blade-etched from 
some past time when it had saved his shield-hand. His tunic was blue; over it he 
wore an excellent leathern jerkin that covered him from collarbones to his 
thighs just below his genitals. The cordwain belt slung at his hips supported a 
dagger on either side. He wore no sword. This man’s weapon, with a broad thong 
forming a loop where it had been stoutly wet-tied in a groove ringing the haft, 
was an ax. Its head was invisible, covered with an oiled cowhide bag against the 
salt spray. 
The ax-man’s feet and ankles were laced into what were unmistakably caligulae, 
the short boots of the Roman legionaries who had for so long ruled his land... 
and protected it from those many who now came from oversea to carve it up among 
themselves; Saxons and Angles, Jutes and Frisians, Irish and Danes; aye, and 
from the north over the old wall, Picts and the Scoti of Alba that the Romans 
had called Caledonia. 
The blond ax-man at the prow looked asea. 
The man at the stern wore a sword, long at his left hip and down his leg. Though 
he stood the deck of a hide-covered longboat and with his light auburn hair 
plaited behind each ear to fall down his back, the sword had surely belonged to 
a darker man more at home astride a horse; it was a spatha, a Roman cavalryman’s 
sword. No adornment relieved his helmet, which was composed of four bands of 
dull grey metal laid onto a soft leathern caul. He too wore a jerkin of boiled 
leather, over a tunic of grey wool. The score or more steel rings fixed to the 
front of that plain lorica were as much reinforcing protection as decoration. 
This man’s full drooping mustachioes contained more bronze-red than his braids. 
Oars creaked and thumped. Men grunted; water gurgled and swished, and the 
twenty-oared boat seemed to scud on the very surface of the sea as it swept 
forward, with unusual smoothness. Its heading was southerly. 
The man at the bow was gazing southwestward, ahead and to starboard. Gazing that 
way as well were the auburn-haired man at the tiller and the third of those who 
did not row. 
The blond ax-man at the prow moved his left arm out from his side, almost 
stiffly. It was fisted but for the forefinger, which pointed. With a nod, though 
no eyes were turned his way, the man at the stern changed the pressure of his 
tanned hands on the tiller. The ship, which was little more than fifty feet in 
length, did not veer, but angled to port; eastward, on its southerly bearing. 
The blond at the bow glanced back. His nose had once been broken and was askew, 
nor did he quite close his mouth, ever. 
“Irish,” he grunted, just loud enough to be heard by three-and-twenty men. 
An oarsman to port asked, “Reavers?” 
“I think not. Cynwas?” 
“I think not,” the steersman said, just as quietly. “They’d be fighting else, 
Bedwyr, not suffering that... harassment.” 
“Leaguered about by wolves,” Bedwyr the blond ax-man said, and there was 
amusement in his voice. “They’ll not see this sun set, though it’s soon crimson 
they’ll see!” 
“Wolves?” This from another oar-plier, a man with a break in his beard from an 
old slash of sword or knife; surely no ax could have sliced him so without 
wrecking his jaw. 
Bedwyr said, “Aye.” 
“Picts,” Cynwas said from the stern. 
“This far south? What be Picts doing this far south of their damned heather?” 
“Or this far east,” Bedwyr said. “Mayhap they be Picts from far side Hibernia.” 
Silent had been the third man who was not rowing, and him nigh-naked. Now he 
spoke. 
“Eirrin, ye corn-headed ass. Eirrin! Ye talk like a Roman... miss ye your 
masters so much, ye Briton molester of ewes?” 
The blond at the prow turned to stare at the speaker. He was a great burly giant 
of a man with a red mane and full bushy beard. 
“Ye talk foolishly free for a man bound to a ship’s mast, Dane! Be ye so anxious 
to be oped up for the sun to bake your drunkard’s gizzard?” 
The bound man grinned. He wore only a dirty tunic that had been red before its 
dyes succumbed to wear and sun and salt water and sweat. Now, but for the soil, 
it was lighter in colour than his full beard. 
“It were better than having to list to your stupidity, Briton.” 
Bedwyr of Britain cheated his captive, who was bound so that he must remain 
standing and stare straight ahead, like a strange bow ornament moved back 
amidships. The blond Briton only grinned, and turned away. 
“Row. An they see us, they all be far too busy—and about to be busier still—to 
trouble us. Nor need we have worry of them.” 
The oarsmen rowed. The ship of Britons—and captive Dane—swept on to the south 
and east, well east of the Eirrinish craft “leaguered about by wolves.” 
Aboard that beleaguered ship from the land of Eirrin, caught by the same calm 
and now by the swift boats of its harriers, a man watched the vessel from 
Britain. A tall, rangily built man he was, deep-chested and manifestly strong, 
his eyes deeply planted and slitted, grey as steel or ice. The distance was too 
great for faces to be seen; had there been aught of the crew of the other craft 
he knew, he’d not have recognized him. The hair of the ax-man at the prow seemed 
sunwhite from this vantage. 
“They go on.” 
The words came from the warrior beside the tall and rangy man; this one was both 
short and slight, and wearing a bronze-studded leathern cap that covered brow 
and cheeks, ears and nape. 
“Aye. Ours be no business of theirs. It’s a broad sea, and it bears up many 
peoples. Those be neither Gaul nor Pict, and if it’s Celts they are—not 
likely—it’s not from Eirrin but Britain they sail.” 
“Britain!” called up one of the men at the oars. “The Britons be no seafarers!” 
“Some fare asea.” 
The small beardless warrior spoke nervously: “Could... might their destination 
be the same as ours?” 
“No no, dairlin’ girl,” the tall man said. He too was beardless, his 
narrow-slitted eyes giving him a peculiarly sinister aspect. Though he was of 
Eirrin, his squarecut hair was black as the shaggy mops of the men in their 
hideboats round about them. He wore neither beard nor jewellery. 
He went on, “How could they be knowing of it? Samaire-heim be not known in their 
land—nor any other, save wherever it is Wulfhere may be. Nay, they be reavers as 
I was, though Crom and Manannan only know what they do so far south—HA!” 
His shout was elicited by the arcing up of an arrow from one of the little 
hideboats that sought to encircle his vessel of fourteen oars; the flint tipped 
shaft fell short. 
“HA!” the tall man barked out again. “Try on, Picts—once one of ye comes close 
enough to bounce one of your puny sticks off this ship, I’ll huff and puff until 
I blow over your snailshell!” 
A cry of rage was the reply from the archer; the dark, squat men of Pictdom were 
not known for sense of humour. 
In the Irish craft, a man called. “A fine threat, Cormac. But... what do we do? 
There be fourteen of these ‘snail-shells’ as ye’re after styling them, and us 
between them like a man running the Behlfires!” 
The dark man named Cormac looked about. 
Two Pictish boats trailed the little ship he commanded. Six paced it on either 
side. They might have been an escort, save that the Picts were friend to none in 
the world but themselves. Cormac knew that an ancestor of his had been friend 
and fighting companion to the last great Pictish king, Bran Mak Morn, years ago. 
That meant nothing now, either to the squat swarthy men or to the current bearer 
of the name Cormac mac Art of Connacht in Eirrin. 
Small were the Pictish boats, of well-scraped hide rubbed with butter so that 
they were as if faced with glass that sparkled in the sun flashing on the placid 
waters. In each were two Picts, armed with spear and knife—and oar. A few had 
bows and arrows. The two-man craft were light and swift-gliding. Full a hand’s 
breadth had the sun moved in the sky since the little flotilla had intersected 
the ship’s course. Nor did the barrel-chested rowers seem in the least winded, 
nor minded to abandon their odd, paralleling chase. 
“Ah for a wind,” Cormac said with anger and longing, “a wind, that we might 
leave behind these apish scum from Time’s dawn who seek our very hearts!” 
He glowered ferociously about at the ringing skinboats, de curucis or curraghs: 
caracks. All remained just outside the distance to which any sensible man would 
seek to speed a spear. And few used the bow, which was a hunting tool, rather 
than a weapon of war. 
Cormac snapped, “A-port!” 
The steersman responded at once. Swiftly his craft began to move away from the 
caracks on their right. Nearly as swiftly, the Pictish boats to port swung away, 
nimble little craft rowed by experts. 
In his anger and desperation Cormac himself snatched up arrow and bow of yew and 
sent a shaft at that skinboat which seemed nearest. The Picts howled in 
derision; Cormac mac Art was an indifferent archer at best. 
“What do we do?” 
Cormac looked at the short, leather-capped warrior at his side. “Row,” he said, 
in a snarl. “Go on. And hope for wind!” He glanced half the length of the ship 
at the druid. 
The man in the robe of forest green either did not notice, or affected not to 
feel the accusing gaze. But he made answer, staring straight before him as 
though talking to himself. 
“Behl and Crom,” he said, “cede power asea to Manannan mac Lyr and the Morrigu 
of the waves. And Manannan, as all seafarers know, is deaf from the roar of the 
surf.” 
Cormac blinked. “In all my years asea,” he muttered, “I never heard that.” 
The warrior beside him smiled, but wisely kept silent. 
“CORMAC!” 
The Gael spun at the alarmed shout of his name. Seeing the pointing finger, he 
wheeled. The Pictish boats to starboard, all six, were closing on his ship. 
Cormac’s reaction was not understood by those possessed of more patience and 
less experience and warlike joy than this Gael among Celts: Cormac grinned. 
“Lugh!” he snapped. “Ferdiad!” 
With grunts Lugh and Ferdiad shipped their oars, Ferdiad the first to starboard, 
Lugh the last. So had Cormac placed them, after giving both careful instructions 
and some small rehearsal. These two were better archers than their comrades 
along that side, and they knew their duties. Each man snatched up bow and 
clapped on helmet; each wore a jerkin of well-boiled leather, and long bracers 
on both arms. 
Lugh and Ferdiad moved quickly into position at the starboard hull’s bulwark, 
looked, ducked, nocked, pulled string, rose, released, ducked again. The shafts 
may perhaps have taught some small respect; otherwise they were ineffective. 
Cormac’s grin faltered not. He’d trained these two hunters well. No sooner were 
they again hunkered below the top of the bulwark than four arrows whished over 
their heads. The Pictish shafts passed completely over the ship. One persuaded a 
portside oarsman to helmet himself. 
“HARD A-PORT!” Cormac bawled. 
At the same time, he pounced like a panther to Ferdiad’s oar. A mighty pull he 
gave that foremost oar, so that the men behind him felt the sudden ease in their 
own pulling. Their lean captain’s strength was astonishing. The steersman had 
responded, and Cormac’s impulsive move added to the ship’s sharp swerve. Ferdiad 
sprawled; Lugh again straightened and launched an arrow. Like all others thus 
far, it found no fleshy home. 
The ship’s stern was more effective. It crushed a carack in its swing. With a 
cry, one nearly naked Pict went flying to splash, thrown twice the length of his 
own body. The other man of that boat was surely more fortunate than brilliant; 
with a warrior’s reflexes he was able to grasp the tiller even as his boat, 
spear, oar and bow were lost to him. 
Like most of his kind he was a short, dark man with long arms slung from 
prodigiously broad, meaty shoulders. He clung fast to the tiller. The ship 
lurched. The steersman cursed. Cormac’s voice rose too, cursing magnificently in 
two, then three languages. 
“The fatherless dog clings to the tiller!” the steersman cried. 
“Shake him off!” Cormac wrestled with his oar. “Up oars and sweep: One... Two... 
Ferdiad! No!” 
“It’s shaking him off I’ll be,” the hunter had muttered, and he rose to hurry 
sternward and put an arrow into the clinging enemy. 
Even as Cormac shouted his warning, Ferdiad’s right cheek sprouted a gout of 
blood and a flint arrowhead. The shaft had entered his other cheek to smash 
through his mouth and pass completely through his. face. Ferdiad was choking on 
his own blood even as he fell—onto the third starboard oar. Both that oarsman’s 
curse and his look of horror were purely reflexive. Again Cormac too cursed; 
already chaos threatened, rising and shaking its shoulders like a grim spectre 
over his ship. 
Shouts arose both within the Irish vessel and on both sides now, and the ship 
wheeled insanely. Its oars whipped back and forth less than a meter above water 
level. 
To a god looking down from the dual vantage points of height and immortal lack 
of concern, the scene might have been amusing. 
The Irish ship was like a mighty horse, beset by a swarm of rabid cats. Already 
it had kicked one—and been scratched. Those to port had started to close just 
after their comrades on the far side, and then suddenly their prey had swung 
about, like a mindlessly bucking stallion. It bore down upon them to divide 
their number yet again or crush one of them under its hard hooves. Next it was 
bucking like an unbroken colt under its first rider, swinging this way and that, 
oars lashing out like flying deadly hooves, while one tenacious attacker clung 
to the hoof that was its tiller. 
And now the ship lost momentum. Pictish yells rose triumphant on both sides. 
They howled like wolves now, not cats. 
“Stupid,” Cormac muttered, to none save himself. “Had I known these men to be 
seasoned competents, and Samaire not aboard, I’d have ordered all oars shipped 
and allowed this attack, long ago!” 
Now battle had been forced upon him, nor was he unhappy. 
Jerking in his oar, he bellowed the order for the other rowers to do the same. 
Then the mail-coated Gael was on his feet and snatching up spear and buckler. 
The sword at his side was a fine weapon—once the enemy had pressed in too close 
for good spear-work. 
“The mad-dogs want to board!” he bawled. “The worse for them... 
EIR-R-R-R-RINN-N-N-NNNN!” 
It was merely the first rallying shout that sprang into his mind; long a weapon 
man and a sea-roving reaver as well, Cormac well knew the value to men of a 
battle cry—any battle cry. It was one more aid to the heating of the blood. 
Naturally the shout was instantly taken up by those about him, as would have 
been any but the most ridiculous. The fire-eyed screamers included the short 
warrior in the studded leathern cap and strange high boots who’d stood beside 
him... Samaire that warrior’s name. Samaire of Leinster of Eirrin. 
Weighted ropes flew. Some ended in grappling hooks. Others were knotted about 
stones, one of which sent a son of Eirrin to his knees, clutching his arm. Then 
Cormac was beside him, his eyes terrible. Without releasing either spear or 
buckler, the Gael boosted the jagged stone up with his bronze-bossed shield, 
lifted, and hurled it back over the side. 
And ten more came over the bulwarks of the hull, on either side. 
The Picts kept up their awful wolf-howling as they attacked, for this was their 
battle cry both to spur and excite themselves and to shake the enemy. Frail 
skin-boats rocked as squat men stood in them, tugging at their grapple-ropes. 
Men from time’s dawn they were, avatars. out of place in this age—and knowing 
it. 
Deagad mac Damain, who’d kissed his plump Dairine farewell and vowed they’d 
demand her hand of her father on his return, a hero, thrust with his good spear 
at a burly dark man who stood below, in his boat. The nearly naked Pict 
deflected the spearpoint with a twisting movement of his shield that turned the 
jab into a scraping carom accompanied by a grating ear-assaulting noise. At the 
same time, he miraculously kept his footing in the rocking carack. Without pause 
the black-haired man drove the tip of his own spear, a jagged wedge of flint the 
length of his hand, straight up into young Deagad’s eye. It ran deep, destroying 
eye and pricking brain. Deagad lurched backward with a moan rather than a cry. 
The Pict, whipping back his spear, cocked his arm and launched the death-tipped 
stave at another man who leaned over his ship’s bulwark fifteen feet away, 
engaged in a thrust-and-parry spear-duel with another attacker. 
Deagad’s killer looked astonished when a dark, scarred son of Eirrin appeared 
and, swifter than any man should have moved, bashed the spear away, only inches 
from its intended victim. 
“Take MY spear, Pict!” Cormac yelled. 
His hurled spear burst into the chest of Deagad’s slayer with such force that it 
tore out of his back to the length of a tall man’s foot. Pict and boat went 
over; only the shining skinboat remained on the surface of the water. Its 
surface darkened suddenly as with red dye. 
Cormac’s crew were not seasoned seamen, nor had any save one so much as seen a 
Pict before. While they howled like the dread wolves of the forests they loved, 
the little apelike men the Romans had called Pictii—the very old ones, or 
aborigines—fought like bulls. They charged, heedless of defense against them. 
Mothers of Eirrin frightened their children with tales of the awful Picts, with 
long greasy black hair and woad-daubed faces. It was said too, and often, that a 
Pict was harder to reduce to that final twitchless death than a cat. 
With a battle-mad, blood-loving ferocity and overwhelming momentum, several had 
gained the ship. It was not that those who should have kept them away were 
terrified; they were worse: disconcerted, and caught up in memories of old and 
horrid tales. 
Nevertheless Cormac brought death of wound or water on three, and one pouncing 
man of Pictdom drove his head straight onto the point of Samaire’s spear, which 
was wrenched from her hands as he dropped into the water. Her arm whipped across 
her belly under her loose mailcoat and dragged out her sword; Picts were aboard 
and sons of Eirrin were down. 
Hand in hand with the grim god of war, red chaos, the oldest god of all, seized 
the rocking ship. 
Steel flashed in the sunlight like behlfire. 
Men—and a woman—shouted and screamed and iron clangour rose loudly. Spears 
jabbed, knives and swords and two axes flashed and swept. Men reeled on 
hard-braced feet. Blood spattered and flowed. 
A slashing sword taken from the corpse of a slain Irish struck blue sparks from 
the helm of another son of Eirrin. Beside him another sword struck through 
hide-armour and flesh and muscle and into bone, and whipped back trailing a 
flying wake of blood that spattered and smeared ship and woundless men. 
Dark eyes blazed with animal blood-lust while whistling blades clanged on 
shields, skittered skirling over mail byrnies, found vulnerable flesh. Even 
though the short-hafted ax that struck his shield nigh broke that arm against 
his own body, Ros mac Dairb of far Dun Dalgan remembered their captain’s counsel 
to thrust, not slash. He thrust, and was rather surprised at feel of resistance 
at his point, then a lessening as it went on, as though into a good haunch of 
meat. Surprising too was the sudden flare of the dark eyes of the stock man 
before him, and his guttural gasp. Ros of Dun Dalgan remembered to yank back his 
blade, and saw the bubble of blood over the Pict’s lips even as he stuck him 
again, though it were unnecessary. 
A Pictish head with a gaping mouth flew from one side of the ship to the other 
in a shower of blood. The man who had swung that decapitating blow so dear to 
the heart of a weapon-man set his lips and teeth in a grim, ugly grin. For 
beside him was the former exile from Eirrin’s shores, the former reaver of 
several coasts, the reigning Champion of Eirrin, Cormac mac Art an Cliuin-and 
Cormac said “Beautifully done, Connla!” and Connla glowed, and struck with sword 
and parried with buckler, and he died not that day but emerged scatheless as 
though god-protected. 
There were few duels in that howling, clangourous melee. A man parrying the 
stroke of a second while slashing or stabbing at a third was often wounded or, 
given his death by a fourth, and sometimes by accident. Bright red dotted the 
air and gleamed on helm and mailcoat, jerkin and blade and skin. And on the 
deck, where footing grew precarious with flowing scarlet and moveless corpses. 
“Och, I love to fight!” Brian of Killevy enthused, and hewed away an arm. 
Men died, or were sore wounded, or were wounded and got their deaths from 
another’s hand, almost negligently, or took wounds that slew them later rather 
than at once. A hacked calf guaranteed a Pict a limp the rest of his days—had 
not the boss of Cormac mac Art’s shield smashed his face and, in crushing his 
nose, driven splinters of its bone into his brain. 
Some who fell or reeled had eyes of blue or grey; others’ were black as the 
bracelets of polished coal they wore on their thick dark arms. 
It was a princess of Eirrin’s Leinster who took a swordcut on the helm that made 
her head ring and formless grey dance before her eyes, and who drove a booted 
foot into the crotch of him who had landed that blow turned by her bronze-bossed 
helmet, then spitted the enemy’s mouth and nose and most of his chin on her 
sword. The Pict died without even knowing it was a woman had sped his soul. 
Samaire took a cut on the hand too, and was pinked in the right forearm, but 
managed to crush that attacker’s face with her buckler’s boss even as his sword 
dropped. 
Sons of Eirrin fought the better for her presence among them, for she was like 
unto Agron goddess of slaughter that day, or Scathach, the war goddess whose 
tutoring had made invincible the hero Cuchulain of Muirthemne. 
It was she who ferociously out-shouted the Picts, and was hoarse three days 
after, while limping from the thwack of a shield-edge against her leathershod 
shin. 
And then the ship was clear of living Picts. 
So too was the sea all about, save for one. He had plunged overside and, gaining 
a carack, began paddling madly away. A hard-flung spear missed him but brast 
through the bottom of his boat, so that he was forced to leave it there, a 
strange sail-less mast, lest by withdrawing the point he was reduced to floating 
while he baled. 
Yet there could be no immediate rest for the victors, each of whom was 
ghoulishly blood-spattered, for it had fountained on that weltering ship this 
day and those without scathe were bloody as their wounded comrades. 
There was the gory, twice-unpleasant business of pitching overside Pictish 
corpses—and pieces, including three limbs, a grimacing head, and a ghastly long 
coil of pink sausage from a sundered belly. 
Even then none could sink down gasping to rest; there were the wounded to see 
to, and the dying to comfort, and the dead to be buried in the only available 
grave, that great endless tomb of the sea. Too, the tyrant who commanded them 
insisted that every inch of blade and mail be wiped of blood and gore, then 
greased against salt spray. 
“Ye fought well,” he told them, “and these weapons served us well. It may be 
we’ll be having need of them another day—and rust, lads, is the weapon-man’s 
worst enemy!” He grinned. “Aye, and were some of ye hardly weapon-men this 
morning—so ye be all now!” 
The final words assured willing compliance with the unwelcome command. 
Then the sun died, as bloody-red on the horizon as the many battles it had 
witnessed, and eleven men and a woman sank down to the sleep of exhaustion, 
while the ship wallowed. 
Chapter Two:
Warrior and Priest
The wind was hardly worthy of the name. A gentle breeze, it was just enough to 
fill the sails. Laeg mac Senain was well chosen, and Cormac was grateful to have 
the man aboard. Laeg the navigator made the most of even this pallid stir of 
air, with hardly a limp nor complaint whatever of the cut he’d taken in his 
right thigh. It was as much Laeg’s skill that made the vessel skim over the 
water, oarless, as the breeze that others might have thought too little. 
The Cormacanacht—so were the men happy to call themselves, men of the Champion 
of Eirrin who’d bested even Bress Long-hand of Leinster at the great Feis of 
Tara—took their ease. They lounged, or exercised, or talked idly and looked 
about, though there was only water to see. Not so glassily flat as on the 
battle-day afore, Manannan mac Lyr’s bluegreen demesne was nevertheless quiet. 
The breeze turned only little ripples that gleamed in the sun like twinkling 
gems. 
At the prow, Cormac son of Art of Connacht leaned on the bulwark, gazing ahead. 
Beside him was the short, slight warrior. The strange high boots still sheathed 
her legs above midthigh. Overlarge for those slim firm thighs, the rare boots 
she loved were held up by thongs she’d fastened to the belt of her tunic, under 
her coat of good mail. The yellow tunic covered her legs to the knees. Of linked 
steel in the Irish fashion, her mailcoat fell almost as far, and covered her 
upper body to the throat. 
Discarded this day was her bronze-studded cap of leather. Her hair, which was of 
a light golden red that might be called orange, blew this way and that, caught 
by the wind of their passage and by the wind that pushed them so gently. 
They’d launched the light Irish longboat with its single sail from the baile or 
town called Atha Cliath, which some called Darkpool, or Dubh-linn. The vessel 
skimmed along east by south. Well behind them now was the Pictish attack, and 
the bodies of good sons of Eirrin that nurtured the ever-hungry sea. They were 
mourned, though none aboard Quester was of the New Faith, whose adherents 
believed in an eerie bodily afterlife not of this earth, but cluttered all 
together in a sky-place called coelis or heaven. There they lived eternally, 
with their god Iosa Chriost. They did naught, so far as Cormac mac Art had been 
able to ascertain; he held no discourse with the dark-robed priests that had 
followed Padraigh to Eirrin. 
A venerated Druid rode this ship of men of the old beliefs. None had failed to 
note that he lifted no weapon against the Picts, nor was he menaced by them... 
which would hardly have been the case, had he been a priest of the new god from 
the East—and Rome. The Druid’s robe remained green. All aboard were of his 
belief, for Cormac mac Art had no Christians about him. These men knew that 
their slain comrades would return to tread this earth, though with different 
visages and names. 
“Cormac,” the orange-haired warrior said, “is’t true what that man of Baile Atha 
Cliath said, that once he sailed with you?” 
“Aye. Tiobraide lost his arm with me, Samaire, in a battle with the men of Norge 
up north of Britain.” 
“He called you Wolf.” 
“So did they all. It was Cormac an-cliuin I was then; Captain Wolf.” 
“How came you by that name?” 
“Men are fanciful, Samaire.” 
“And ye be evasive, dairlin’ boy. Come—how came you by that fierce name?” 
Cormac continued to look ahead, on the sea. “I earned it.” 
Samaire daughter of Ulad Ceannselaigh heard, and heard more than his spare 
words. She queried no further into that matter. 
“He said too that it was your wont ever to counsel that one should kill only 
when necessary.” 
Staring ahead, the one-time wolf of the sea said nothing. 
“Cormac?” 
“Aye.” 
“Be it true?” 
“Aye. Often I said it,” he said, with a catch in his voice that was not quite a 
sigh. 
“And... but... was it meaning that, ye were?” 
He nodded, without turning his face toward hers. He was aware of her bright 
green eyes—and of nine other men. 
“Aye. I meant it. Ye’ll be asking further, and I’ll make answer first. It’s 
true, Samaire: I believe that one should kill only when necessary. Unfortunately 
it is more often necessary than not.” 
The daughter of Leinster’s murdered king was silent for a space, whilst Cormac 
stared ahead and the sea furrowed past Quester’s prow to ripple all along her 
length. 
“I know not whether to laugh or sigh,” she said at last. 
“Nor do I, Samaire. It’s a world of killing we habit, and it’s good at it I am.” 
His tone and mien were matter-of-fact, and without pride. 
“I want to hug you.” 
A crease deepened at the edge of his mouth, in the slightest of smiles. “I hear 
you, dairlin girl. And it’s the hug I’d like to be feeling... but I salute you 
for the saying of it, rather than the doing.” 
“Had I known there’d be so much discomfort for all, I might not have come.” 
“’Twas you insisted, Samaire,” he said, noting that she’d said “might” not. A 
princess asea, among weapon men! 
“I remember, dairlin boy.” 
“None dare call me boy, save you, woman.” 
“Think you I’d suffer being called ‘dairlin girl’ by any other than yourself, 
man?” 
Cormac chuckled. “Likely not. And discomfort is the word. It’s why I insisted 
that ye dress as ye have, and keep on that mailcoat ungirt. No man asea should 
have a woman’s form flaunted to his eyes.” 
Samaire heaved a sigh and tucked back her nether lip. “It’s not that I meant by 
discomfort, though I understand it, too.” 
“Oh. Well... methinks it hardly inconveniences these men to look away now and 
again, whiles you do that which is necessary. It’s knowing they all are, too, 
that on yester day you were a warrior among warriors.” 
“It inconveniences them to worry about whether I be looking away!” Samaire 
assured him, and they chuckled together. “I try, Cormac. And... I miss your 
touch, your arm around me, and mine about you.” 
“Not aboard this ship.” 
“I know,” she said, with a hint of exasperation; she need not, Samaire of 
Leinster was saying, be told that again. 
“I have a question of my own,” he told her, turning his face at last toward 
hers. 
The lift of her brows was invitation enough to the asking of it. 
“Our... benefactor,” Cormac said. “He who provided money for this boat and crew, 
your cousin Aine’s husb—” 
Samaire was laughing, though not in amusement. “Benefactor! Dealing with Cumal 
Uais was worse than bargaining in the marketplace of Tara! The tenth portion of 
what we bring back we must give him, for financing our quest—and that after 
bargaining him down from the third he demanded! And him the husband of my own 
cousin... and his coffers full already with the price of five hundreds of cattle 
won by his wagers on you in the championship games! Benefactor!” 
Cormac was smiling. “Well, he did a bit of losing that day, too... sith he also 
placed wagers on Bress.” 
Samaire looked at him in shock, her green eyes huge and indignant. “No!” 
“Aye. He did risk more on my prowess, though—fortunately for him. Besides, it 
were a better return: the odds were against me.” 
She shook her head. “Oh gods defend us, why is it thus? Cumal was born wealthy, 
Cormac! And all his life he’s spent adding to that wealth.”’ 
“And counting it,” Cormac said. “And eating,” he added, for Cumal’s girth was 
nigh as fulsome as his tally sheets. “At any rate... it’s his name I wanted to 
question, Samaire. How could parents nobly born and with wealth, and them 
residents of royal Tara as well, name a son Cumal Uais... ‘Slavegirl the 
Noble’?” 
For a moment Samaire stared at him. Then she was laughing. 
His cool stare stopped her. “Oh, Cormac! It’s not his name... he’s but called 
that. His name is Tuathal, though he likes not being called after a High-king of 
four centuries agone, a king whom Cumal considers to have been no good man. He 
welcomes being called Cumal, ye see, though in truth it began as but a bit of 
waggery, poking fun at him for his love of gains!” 
Cormac understood now. And to think he’d not asked before out of... manners. 
Until a few months agone it was long and long he was out of Eirrin, an exile for 
the old “crime” of which he was now absolved by Council, High-king, and druids 
alike, after his testing. He’d forgot. “Cumal” meant slavegirl, aye. It also 
meant a unit of exchange, as the Romans used their coins stamped with the faces 
of rulers with bird-of-prey beaks. A cumal was a unit of exchange worth the 
value of three cattle; it was by cows, boru, that those of Eirrin had long 
measured value and wealth. 
Not often was Cormac mac Art embarrassed. 
Samaire was still a-chuckle. “Hush,” she was bade, and she gave him a look that 
invited him to force her, even as she ceased. 
Cormac was rescued; sensing movement, he turned to see that Bas the Druid had 
come to join them. 
“It’s a god’s blessing ye have on ye, Druid,” the Gael said, “for of all aboard 
I see no drop of blood on ye.” Then, lest the man think he was being denigrated 
for having had no part in the battle with the Picts, Cormac added more. “It’s 
glad I am to have ye aboard, beloved of the gods.” 
Bas nodded acknowledgment. “There be two of us, Champion of Eirrin, for as ye 
proved when ye underwent the Trials of the Fian and had sorcery done upon ye as 
well, all saw that Behl and Crom do love their staunch defender, Cormac mac 
Art.” 
“I hope it’s right we both are, Druid, and that we live to count many grey 
hairs. Being a staunch defender, as ye put it, be easier now, and all a true man 
can do, with the priests of the Dead God upon our land like a plague.” 
Art’s son of Connacht was ever wont to call the god of Rome and the bishops “the 
Dead God,” since all knew he’d been executed on a Roman cross by some forgotten 
procurator enforcing the sedition laws. 
Bas sighed. “Say not ‘No true man,’ mac Art, with so many in high places 
converted from the ways of Eirrin to the new faith.” 
“Perverted,” Samaire corrected. 
“There’ll come a time for the dealing with that problem, Lord Bas, and none will 
find my blade averse to being wetted through black robes!” 
“They are holy men, Cormac mac Art—or think themselves so. But I came to ask ye 
of our destination. How much farther?” 
Cormac looked upon the priest of Behl and the ancient god of the Gaels of older 
Eirrin, Crom Cruach. He did not smile as he said, “I cannot tell you, Druid.” 
Bas lifted his brows. “Cannot? Still, this far on our way—and you will not tell 
me?” 
Cormac gave his head a jerk. “No no, Lord Bas of Tara. Cannot, I said, and it’s 
cannot I meant; Druid or no, be assured that had I meant ‘will not’ I’d have 
spoke it so. It’s enough years I’ve spent asea that I have an animal’s sense of 
direction. Though there were changes in the seascape... land rose even as we 
sailed, and—” 
“Land rose?” 
Samaire shuddered in memory. “Aye. In fire and thunder! Rock and ash mingled 
with flame vomited up to slash the clouds and rain down upon us. The winds from 
that eruption of angry gods drove us far to the south and west, and we missed by 
mere fingerlengths smashing into a new isle even as it rose from the sea 
bottom!” 
“So that,” Cormac said, “we returned by a somewhat different route, from far off 
our course. What I know is how we came to the isle that Wulfhere named 
Samaire-heim. Even so we cannot approach it as we did afore...” 
The Gael trailed off. The face of the druid showed thorough confusion; Samaire 
was smiling. 
“Wulfhere Skullsplitter,” she told the druid, “is a Dane. A huge great towering 
oak of a man with hair and a beard—oh, a great full beard, Bas—like uncarded 
wool dyed red. He and Cormac are... were...” 
“Companions asea,” Cormac swiftly interjected. Most knew he’d been a reaver, a 
pirate, and he saw no reason to remind Bas, whose sister was the wife of 
Eirrin’s High-king. “When first we see land ahead, we must swing well to the 
west. For full ahead lies a combination of horror and death, a whirlpool called 
the Ire of Manannan, and then the Wind Among the Isles. We discovered them not 
ere they discovered us, to our dismay. Many jagged little rock-isles cluster 
there, and the wind that howls among them is insane. First we were whirled and 
spun and dunked and hurled helpless as a child’s boat when he tires and tosses 
stones at it. Three-and-twenty of us there were aboard Wolfsail; when we awoke 
on the beach of a tiny, rocky isle on no maps, we were but nine. The sea ate the 
rest, and our ship. 
“We found a castle on that island, Druid, a prodigious towering pile of 
superbly-stacked stones more thousands of years old than I’d care to say—or than 
ye’d believe.” 
Bas was staring, with more than interest now in his expression, in his entire 
attitude. His fingers toyed idly with the sprig of dried mistletoe he wore about 
his neck. 
“Think ye so, descendant of Gaels?” 
The two descendants of Gaels stared at each other, warrior and priest. 
“What... found you there, Cormac mac Art?” 
“Booty! A treasure-trove. The castle had been found afore us, and was the lair 
of a band of Norse reavers. We awaited them. When they came, they had as captive 
the Princess Samaire and her brother Prince Ceann. Their murdering, 
throne-thieving brother had arranged for these his younger siblings to fall into 
the hands of those men of Norge.” 
“Ah—it was thus you and Samaire met and linked destinies.” 
“We knew each other long before, twelve years and more agone, when she was but a 
girl and I a boy, a weapon-man in the employ of her father.” 
Bas nodded. He had heard the tale. First, because of the plotting of a fearful 
High-king, Cormac’s father had been slain. The boy, well trained and big for his 
age, had fled his native Connacht, to serve in Leinster under an assumed name. 
Later discovered there, he’d been forced to flee that kingdom too... and then 
Eirrin. For twelve long years he’d been an exile. There was a story that he had 
crossed the King of DalRiada, too, up in Alba. A man to rouse the fickleness of 
men and gods, was Cormac of Connacht. 
He was speaking on: “None of the Vikings survived. Of us, only Wulfhere and I 
did—and Samaire and Ceann. And the Norsemen’s ship. It was no easy mater, but 
the four of us reached Eirrin aboard that ship.” 
“When last we saw it,” Samaire said, with a reminiscent sadness in voice and 
face, “Wulfhere plied it alone, on a northerly bearing, ‘twixt Eirrin and 
Britain.” 
Bas was shaking his head. “What lifetimes of adventure and horror ye’ve crowded 
into your short term in this body, son of Crom Cruach! Oh... and sith I note how 
ye call my lord and lady the prince and princess of Leinster by their given 
names, Cormac, call me Bas.” 
“It’s Lord Bas ye be, or should. Ye gave up much to don druidic robes, man!” 
“I gained much, Cormac.” 
Again they gazed upon each other in silence for a time, and not without 
admiration and respect. Then Bas spoke. 
“And so this voyage is to take ye back to this isle your Danish friend named 
Samaire-heim, and carry off the rest of the Norsemen’s sword-gains.” 
“It is, Lor—Bas. That be the reason we few sail on a ship large enough to bear 
twice our number. Were the Lord Cumal Uais not so... cautious, we’d have two 
ships and more armed escort. The pr—Samaire and Ceann, ye see, need the wealth.” 

“It’s no comment I’d be making on what seems implicit in that, Cormac, my lady—” 

“Samaire,” she corrected, the orange-haired warrior. “No comment is necessary, 
Bas. My brother Ceann and I are what we are. When our father died, Leinster’s 
throne passed to his eldest. Within the year he was dead—slain, we know, by our 
brother Feredach’s scheming. Next it was us Feredach the Dark did treachery 
upon. Mayhap it’s grateful we should be that he did not have us slain. He is our 
older brother, and so Ceann and I have no claim on the throne.” 
“While Feredach lives,” Cormac added. 
Bas nodded, taking no note of Cormac’s sinister addition to Samaire’s words. 
“All this I know, sweet lady; I was present during the drama of accusation at 
the Council of Kings on Tara Hill but a month agone. Nor still will I comment, 
nor on Cormac’s dark remark. But... Cormac. Why am I along on this quest?” 
“Why—ye asked to come!” Samaire blurted. 
Cormac almost smiled. “Nay, so I told you, and it’s apology I make, 
dairl—Samaire. It was I asked my lord Bas the Druid to accompany us. There is 
sorcery on that isle, or was, and any who believe druids know naught but such as 
oak and mistletoe and the rites of Behltain and Samain be a fool before the 
gods.” 
Bas neither smiled, nor affirmed nor denied; that was affirmation enow. 
“The castle, Cormac,” he said, after a time of silence. “It is older than old?” 
“Men of Atlantis builded it, Bas.” 
“Ye know this.” 
“I know it.” 
Bas looked at neither of them, but straight ahead, and he spoke as if to 
himself. 
“A castle of Atlantis... There is a story, a story passed down through thousands 
and thousands of generations of druids. It speaks of Kull, King of Valusia and 
an Atlantean born, and another man, a mage. Through some means Kull was able to 
best this wizard, who is variously said to have been a servant of the serpent 
god far more ancient than Atlantis... and to be immortal... and to be already 
dead but not dead, alive yet not alive, a man stronger than the grave, whose 
true face was that of death itself: a fleshless skull. There is a story... It is 
to these climes Kull is said to have sailed, where again he met that dread 
sorcerer. With the latter now was a legion of allies: serpents. Perhaps the 
serpent-god himself, who ruled the earth before we men came up from the seas... 
or, as some say it, down from the trees! Thus man met serpent again in a last 
great battle, and King Kull prevailed...” 
“Gods of my ancestors,” Samaire murmured, “against such a foe—how?” 
The closing of Cormac’s fingers on her arm deeply indented the flesh, and made 
her flinch. Hush, that sudden squeeze and grip bade her, without a spoken word. 
“Kull had his own mage by then,” the druid spoke on, “and besides Kull was of 
the mightiest of men ever to walk the ridge of the world. By sword and sorcery 
he and his prevailed, and raised a great castle over the ensorceled mage of 
evil. Some say those men ranged on, even to Eirrin where there were then no men, 
and that terrible war upon the Great Serpent’s last servant is the reason our 
green fens and blue hills are marred even today by no slithering serpent.” 
Bas came to a halt in his murmurous narrative—which was more like unto a 
remembrance, or a day-dreaming recall of the tiniest part of the lore that 
belonged to the druids. As though lost still within himself, he looked not at 
Cormac or Samaire. The grey eyes of the High-king’s brother-in-law stared ahead 
as though seeing only things that lay behind his eyes, not before. 
Dully Cormac said, “It is more than story, O Druid. It is Kull’s isle, and his 
castle. I... know. And beneath it... I like to have ended my days in this form. 
To a serpent, Lord Druid... a serpent several times the length of my body. And 
once I’d slain him... he bled scarlet, like a man.” 
“O Behl,” the druid murmured, “I am your servant. Lord of Sun and Oak, accept 
poor thanks and promise of restoration. That I should be the one who sees the 
castle of my father’s father’s fathers half a million times removed!” 
The trio at Quester’s prow fell silent. 
Samaire, herself no mewling girl nor yet a small souled person, but a woman of 
will and determination even among the free women of Eirrin, looked from one of 
those men to the other. Gaels both, dark of hair and pale of eye. The weapon-man 
and the druid; the eternal twain: warrior and priest. Samaire could not help but 
feel that she stood in the presence of giants, and of the eerie. These were men 
sure who stood above other men, whose lines ran back into the mists of time out 
of mind, and were likely to continue into the far mistier future, even as far. 
These two had been here again and again, and would tread this earth again and 
again still. 
And she knew too, with an absolute though never explicable certitude, that she 
had known at least one of them before. 
She was a princess born, and had been wed as a King’s daughter must be, to a 
prince now dead in his youth. But their relationship had been a tiny and tenuous 
thing in the immensity of time, even in the limited sweep of this lifetime. He 
could not have been the man Cormac mac Art was, that prince of Osraige whose 
loveless wife she had been; nay, not even in his dreams. 
And now she was certain too that there was no way she and Cormac could have 
failed to meet—again—or could part, not ever. She had known him before this 
life, she now realized, and she would know him again, and again in the unwoven 
tapestry of the sprawling time-to-come. 
Then she looked out before their gliding ship, and what she saw interrupted her 
reverie and drove it from her mind. 
“Cormac—land! Islands!” 
And he looked, and gave the orders to swing Quester sharply to starboard, and 
hold that westward course until they dared turn south again, safely around the 
Ire of Manannan and the Wind Among the Isles. 
Chapter Three:
Death-tide
The man had been roped to the great rounded spire of sea-rooted rock for hours. 
From the sea that tall chunk of granite rose, at the very edge of a rocky isle, 
before which it stood like a sentinel: With the sun shining down, men had walked 
to it from shore in no more than a foot of water. At high tide, only its upper 
two feet were visible. 
The monument of water-smoothed white stone rose twice the height of a man. 
The man bound to it was tall, taller than tall. Nevertheless, both he and those 
who had bound him here knew that he was not tall enough. The salt sea was coming 
for him. The water had lapped about his ankles when his captors had left him, 
well tied. Now it quivered just below his nipples, and crept ever upward. High 
tide was but a little over an hour away. Sooner than that, he knew, was death. 
First there would be the desperate tipping back of his bearded head, the 
desperate straining to remain above the salt water that lapped at his lips... 
into his mouth... until it at last rose to his moustache... and above his 
nostrils. And then he would see the one-eyed All-father, Odin... if the 
Valkyries could find him, at the time of tide’s ebb. 
Behind the mighty rock and the giant with the fiery beard bound to it, another 
man sat. Well back up the beach was he, with a goatskin bag to hand. It gurgled 
with the thin, sour wine of Briton grapes. He had situated himself so that he 
could see the rockbound man, to whom from time to time he called taunting words. 

The seated sentry’s shield lay beside him, upturned, and at his other hand was 
his spear. Between his outstretched legs, though he expected no trouble, lay his 
ax, a thin broad blade with a hook at its top edge. Down his back fell a thick 
straw-coloured braid from just behind his right ear; the left braid lay on his 
shoulder. Both were wound about with two plaited strips of leather, brown and 
red and tightly bound. 
“I’m having another fine sip of wine, now, son of a Danish dog and a piggish 
slut; can ye hear its gurgle as it goes down to quench my thirst? Or... can ye 
hear only the gurgle of... water?” He laughed. “Well, drunken dog of Dane-mark, 
it’s soon your own thirst will be quenched... with salt water!” 
Chuckling, the man drank. 
Awaiting death, the Dane made no answer. He was a big man, and many heads had 
fallen to his ax, and making answer to such a one as his Briton ghoul-guard was 
beneath him. He’d plead with Odin and Thor, Woden and Thunor, until the end of 
time itself, to be allowed to come back and meet this taunting midden rat as men 
should meet, and to end his days... slowly. 
“Ahhhhhhh,” the man from Britain sighed, with much exaggeration. First licking 
his lips, he wiped them with the back of his hand and set the goatskin bag 
aside. 
“Tide,” he called out, “come! Bledyn of Gwent grows weary of watching this ugly 
Danish body swallowed by the sea!” 
“Then rise, Bledyn, pig of Gwent, and let me aid you in the shortening of your 
vigil.” 
For a moment Bledyn froze at that cold voice that came from behind, where no man 
should be. Then he hurled himself to roll sidewise, snatching at both spear and 
buckler even as, backing like a crab, he drove himself to his feet by main will. 

Brooding dark and menacing before him, a tall man stood, lean and chainmailed. 
Deepset eyes were only just visible in a scarred, grim face set like death 
itself. Though this challenger was helmeted, Bledyn saw that he was dark of 
hair. On his left arm the man wore a small buckler, a targe, with a ferocious 
boar emblazoned on its face. The shield was seemingly negligently held, nor did 
the man from the night have a spear. He held a goodly sword whose double-edged 
blade was nigh straight, and slimmer than Bledyn’s own glaive. 
“Who... be you?” Bledyn demanded, speaking with care to keep the quiver from out 
his voice. “Kull of Atlantis. You Britons profane my castle and raise a stench 
therein, by your piggish presence.” The accent was none Bledyn knew, and thus 
was 
barbarous. And... Atlantis? 
“What... do you want here of me, outlander?” 
“It’s yourself’s the outlander, man; ye be not now on your own piteous isle, 
which you first gave to the Romans and now suffer to be taken by all who come 
from oversea with a few spears! As to what I want... the man on yon rock. It’s a 
better man than you he is, and I like not your taunting of him. He dies not this 
night.” 
Bledyn’s fingers tightened sweatily about his spear. From out the haunted dark 
of this unknown bit of rocky land came this strange dark man, calling himself by 
no name known to Bledyn of Gwent, and calling that fantastic inland keep his. 
Holding lips and teeth tight, the Briton spoke. 
“Be ye man or shade, the Dane dies. So be the decision of us all, and so be the 
decree of Bedwyr son of Ingcel, and so it’s to be. Begone, man of night, an ye 
value your hide.” 
“I do not.” 
That flat stark statement sent Bledyn’s short hairs astriving against the 
pressure of his helm. Best to move swiftly and end this menace, this insanity, 
ere the other made the first move. Spear against sword, the Briton of Gwent was 
sure, were no contest—particularly when he struck first. 
Bledyn of Gwent drove his spear with its long leafshaped blade at the man’s 
belly. At the last moment he twitched it upward, to skewer the face of this 
“Kull of Atlantis” whilst he strove to protect his vitals. 
The other man’s shield was a blur. There was a clang accompanied by Bledyn’s 
grunt as his spearpoint struck that small buckler which, twisted slightly in a 
hand both expert and signally swift, sent his weapon aside. Then in another 
blurring motion that was silvery in the moonlight, the stranger’s sword swept. 
Again Bledyn grunted; the blow of the blade not only sheared away two feet of 
his spear, but slammed its haft into his side with its terrible force. 
Rather than follow up the advantage that so shocked his opponent, the stranger 
was still, staring, hardly so much as crouched in combative stance. 
“Quarterstaff against sword be no good match, Bledyn of Gwent. Best pick up that 
ax, or yield your self. Yield and live.” 
Still feeling as though he were a wanderer in some weird dream, Bledyn stared at 
his decapitated spear a few seconds more. Then he dropped it even as he bent and 
snatched up his good ax all in one swift motion. Nor had it ended; in a 
continuation of the same movement, he lunged. The ax-head rushed straight 
upward. One step backward the dark man took, and then with a frightful clang ax 
rang off the very boss of the stranger’s shield. It was sped so swiftly aside 
that Bledyn thought his arm would come off. 
“The same tactic twice? Pitiful, Bledyn. Best ye yield, man; I kill only when I 
must, and there are few enough Britons on the ridge of the world to face off the 
invaders of your land.” 
Bledyn yielded not. Grim, back-prickling fear lent strength to his body and 
skill to his attack. His great swinging slice was aimed at the other man’s 
sword-arm. 
Somehow that seemingly magic shield was there again, the stranger turning 
partway aside—and then completely around, to crash his buckler against Bledyn’s 
with such force that he groaned and felt his shield-arm strike his mouth with a 
splitting of lip. Desperately he tried to chop. Upward whipping shield-edge 
struck his arm, his fingers flew open, and his ax went sailing. 
At the same time the other man used his sword against the Briton for the first 
time. He drove it with jolting power into Bledyn’s belly, through leathern 
jerkin and blue-dyed tunic. A strong arm gave the imbedded blade a half-twist 
before whipping it free. 
The tall slender man stepped back while the Briton, in his eyes a startled look, 
stretched his length on the sand. 
“Ye were warned, Briton,” the man from the night said with a sigh. He half-bent 
to thrust his sword into the sand. “Unfortunately, killing is usually necessary, 
though one does try...” 
With care, he returned his sand-cleaned blade to the sheath he had slung across 
his back. Bledyn made no reply, nor did he see aught, for all that his eyes were 
wide. His feet kicked the sand in spastic jerks. 
First looking all about, straining his eyes against the moon-shot dark,. 
Bledyn’s slayer nodded; the Gwentish Briton had been alone. The tall man walked 
down the strand to water’s edge, behind the rock to which was bound the 
red-bearded captive. There he left his targe, and waded out through the 
tidewaters. 
Coming around the huge rock rising up from the sea, he looked into the face of 
the outsized man bound there. The latter’s eyes widened. 
“Cormac! Thunor singe my beard—it’s CORMAC!” 
Cormac shook his head. “For shame, Wulfhere, leading total strangers to our 
island. Ah, Samaire’ll not be liking this, after it was you your self named this 
isle for her! And man, man, the vanity in ye... bathing your ugly self at this 
hour!” 
Wulfhere Hausakliufr’s fiery beard twitched as the giant’s mouth writhed. He was 
able to curb hot rejoinder: “It’s shame upon me on both counts in truth, Wolf. 
But meseems to’ve got entangled... might ye be prevailed upon to lend a poor 
shame-filled son of Woden a sharp blade?” 
Cormac showed his old comrade his dagger, a Saxon’s sax-knife the length of his 
forearm. “Why o’course, old friend. Where would he like it best: across the 
throat, or the belly, or straight into the heart?” 
After a moment, Wulfhere made reply, “The heart were best; I’d prefer death to 
come all at once.” 
“Aye.” 
Unsmiling, Cormac, put up his left hand to the Dane’s massive chest, which even 
in naught but sodden tunic looked as if he wore one of those moulded cuirasses 
that gleamed on the high officers of the Romans. 
“And whiles I be finding the exact spot—so as to be sure to miss it first time, 
old friend—suppose ye occupy your gross self with the telling me of how it is ye 
came here in company with Britons. When I last saw ye it was crew ye were going 
in quest of—and naturally methought they’d be Danes, sith ye could not afford 
the best—Eirrin’s sons. But... Britons! And to our island!” 
“Cormac!” Hurt broidered Wulfhere’s tone. 
Cormac lifted his brows. “This grows more difficult. Your nipples are already 
under water.” He glanced about, then up at the moon. “Well, ye probably have 
time for the telling of your tale, ere the tide silences ye.” 
“Cormac! Ye... ye demand explanation of ME, battle brother?” 
“Humour me.” 
“Use your reason, man! Those Britons tethered me here to die as the tide came 
in. Now no great brain be needed to know we are not allies, they and I! Nor to 
know that the man ye’ve just come through had an ax, which is my weapon. Now if 
it’s Britonish blood ye’d be seeing and our booty ye’d prevent their taking, 
it’s much worse ye could do than to have with you a man in search of the same 
goal—vengeance sped!” 
“A good argument,” Cormac said in the same flat, emotionless tone that was all 
Wulfhere had heard this night. “And unsullied by statements of old friendship 
and the like. But Wulfhere... how came ye here in their company?” 
Wulfhere sighed. When Cormac the Wolf had a point to make or to hear, he was 
tenacious as the jaws of his namesake. Nevertheless, Wulfhere tried still again. 
“How know ye I did?” 
“This water grows chill, Wulfhere. Saw you a ship of Eirrin a day or two agone, 
and it ringed about by Picts?” 
“Aye—was you, then!” 
“We were too far to recognize, but I know now who was the big fellow standing so 
close against the mast of the ship I saw.” 
“Then ye know I was their prisoner,” Wulfhere said in his chesty rumbling voice, 
“and roped to that mast. That, Cormac who sore injures me with his doubts, is 
how I came here ‘in their company.’” 
Cormac nodded. He said nothing. 
Wulfhere waited, hopefully. Still the Gael spoke not, and the Dane realized that 
Cormac, too, was waiting. At last the huge man heaved a sigh and gave it up. 
Looking straight ahead into the darkness so as not to meet the other’s eyes, he 
told his tale in a swift-running string of words that were quietly spoken 
indeed. 
“I left ye, with Ceann and Samaire, on Eirrin’s shore, nor will I ask aught of 
what befell ye after. As for me, Odin smiled. I had crew before I reached 
Dane-mark. Next we found an easy, ah, prey, and soon we were as happy as men can 
be, with a good ship and no wounds and the wherewithal to buy the best ale. That 
we did—unwisely, though, for one of my company told me this townlet of Britain, 
at the Demetian point, was open and there we’d be welcome. Too, he spake of a 
fine inn, and a great thirst was upon us. There we put in, and went to the ratty 
inn of that mud-heim, and whilst I wet my throat I let it be known I was alook 
for more seamen. None came forward, though there were friendly spirits there—” 
“Meaning you bought the ale.” 
“—and, to my eternal shame, a tavern-wench, an exotic Romish looking girl with 
shield-broad hips—and may she be accursed with lice, piles, and phlegmy throat 
all her days! I... she...” 
“Ye got drunk with her and your lip flapped like a loose sail in the wind.” 
The massive chest rose and fell in another great dolorous sigh that rippled the 
waters. “Aye, old comrade. When I awoke, my men were gone and I was captive. The 
wench had two brothers and she brought them fast enow, once I was asleep.” 
“Blood of the gods,” Cormac said, his wondering tone not all feigned. “You, 
drunk unto sleep! Why ye must’ve drunk the land dry as far inland as Powys and 
Gwent!” 
“The place was... well stocked,” Wulfhere admitted. “Naturally it was only 
denials I made, despite some small pain... I be missing a fingernail now. But 
these fellows had a ship, and plenty there were about who sought any sort of 
hope other than being pushed into the sea by the Saxons—ye know how goes it with 
the Britonish.” 
“Ye denied what ye drunkenly blabbed to the wench, but they elected to come and 
look for themselves.” 
“Ah, that brain—how I’ve missed ye and your wise counsel, Cormac!” 
Cormac said nothing. Wulfhere, waiting, realized then that so was his 
fellow-pirate of old. He went on, dully. 
“Aye, they decided to sail down here anyhow. With me bound to the mast, stiff 
and baking by day and shivering by night.” 
Such things Wulfhere Skull-splitter was not wont to admit, Cormac knew; how 
anxious the giant was becoming, with the water approaching his collarbones! 
“Were there no such isle they said, or no such castle upon it, they avowed it 
was back they’d take me, and mayhap even aid me in seeking out my crew and the 
ship they stole from me. An it were here, I’d die though, for having lied that 
it wasn’t. They, claim to set great store by the truth, these lying Britons!” 
“It’s considerable regard for it I’ve always been having myself,” Cormac said 
musingly. 
He ruminated. He believed most of the woeful story, and decided to press no 
further into the matter of a few points he believed not, and some few details he 
was sure had been left unmentioned. He knew Wulfhere. He understood. 
Cormac was sure that the Dane’s shame was unfeigned. Mayhap he had foolishly 
made alliance with the wrong men, who’d turned on him when he spoke too much of 
their destination and what it held—though he’d split many skulls indeed, 
Wulfhere might too have been surnamed “the Impetuous.” Or mayhap he had indeed 
fallen deep into his cups and blabbed to some Roman-descended Briton temptress 
who knew how to love a man and bring his secrets from out him—particularly when 
they were bragging matters. And mayhap there was another explanation altogether. 

It did not matter. Cormac knew he’d been told the greater part of the truth, and 
that assured him Wulfhere remained the same, and his friend. The Dane had ever 
been too much given to the moment’s call and too little to thinking a bit. It 
was a fortunate good pairing they’d made, after they’d met in that foul prison 
years ago; the Dane had always bent ear to his Gaelic comrade’s counsel, and 
nearly always abided by it. 
With a few swift movements of his knife, Cormac cut Wulfhere loose. He waded 
back onto the beach while the giant stood flexing his great arms and sucking up 
vasty breaths. 
Following, Wulfhere picked up the Briton ax. He hefted it, plucked up the 
buckler, with its large protruding boss—which Bledyn had failed to use as he 
should have done. Wulfhere rushed the ax through the air, swung the shield in a 
blow that would have sent a foeman flying. 
“Nice of ye not to carve up his shield, old Wolf!” 
“It was on you my mind was, o’course. I fear his armour won’t be fitting you, 
though.” 
Wulfhere chuckled. “Well, it seems to be leaky in the area of the stomach, 
anyhow. Mayhap this.” But no, the helmet would not encompass his head. He tossed 
it aside. “Where be your ship?” 
“You know. Down below the spur of rock that cuts down to sea’s edge and ends 
this pretty beach.” “Umm. How, many men have we, Cormac?” 
“I have ten, not counting Samaire—and I do. The Picts robbed me of a few.” 
“Samaire!” But Wulfhere said no more. If he refrained from asking aught of mac 
Art—such as what he was doing traveling asea from Eirrin with the princess he’d 
taken so much trouble to convey there—perhaps Cormac would ask no more questions 
either. 
“There be two-and-twenty with Bedwyr—oh.” Wulfhere looked down at his former 
death-watcher, and his big strong teeth flashed in a grin. “One-and-twenty, and 
Bedwyr. Good odds, surely: one for each of your men and seven for me. Ye can 
handle five, Crom’s own son?” 
“Four is what your accounting left for me, ye rapacious barbarian.” 
Wulfhere shrugged. “Four, then. Whatever. Saw you their ship?” 
“Hours ago.” Cormac pointed; Wulfhere nodded. 
The beached longship of the Britons, so painstakingly hide-covered, lay ten tens 
of paces up the strand. Cormac had come along the beach from the opposite 
direction. It was the ship he’d had as goal in his reconnoitering; his discovery 
of Wulfhere and Bledyn had been accidental. 
Wulfhere nodded. “Bedwyr left two men aboard.” The Dane scratched under his 
beard. 
“Two. Apparently they be earless!” 
Wulfhere made a foul noise. “You know how it is with men fit for naught but 
crewing, when their chief’s not at hand to bid them scratch their itches. They 
were drunk hours ago.” Having recalled that sore subject to his mind and his 
friend’s, Wulfhere looked away. “That leaves a score for us to brace. Tonight, 
or by ambush on the morrow, when they return from the castle.” 
“Mmm. Ye recall how we hid the Norsemen’s ship, when last we bode here?” 
Wulfhere’s teeth flashed. “Aye! Your men are with your ship?” 
“Aye.” 
The Dane hefted his new ax. “Do you fetch them then, old friend, whilst I stroll 
up the beach and discuss possession of yon ship with its present occupants.” 
“Ye’ve no armour man, and no helmet, and ye be wet and muscle-tight from long 
strain, and...” 
Cormac’s voice trailed off. Wulfhere had turned to look at him. 
The Gael read what was in those blue eyes, and he understood. Wulfhere had lost 
much face, and nearly his life. Helpless as a hare in a Dumnonion snare, he’d 
had to be rescued from death, and that rescuer had not so much as left him 
Bledyn for the venting of his spleen and the betterment of his sore-wounded 
pride. Wulfhere wanted atonement, and needed it. Those two Britons on the 
beached ship would be only a beginning, but his bracing them alone, Cormac knew, 
would help. Too, he knew that this giant Dane with his prodigious reach and 
mighty thews was a match for any five men... and probably eight of Britain. 
Besides, Wulfhere had said the two men were drunk. 
With a nod, Cormac turned without a word. He set off back along the 
moon-sparkled strand, to bring his crew for the floating and concealing of the 
Briton ship. 
Chapter Four:
The Castle of Atlantis
The ship of the Britons, its two guardians afloat facedown, was concealed near 
the Irish vessel. The latter, just in case, was hidden even more thoroughly. 
This island south of Britain was a bare and inhospitable one, despite the 
incredible structure inland. There was only one slender strip of sandy, 
sparkling beach that split a coast otherwise stony and high and forbidding, 
and... of rock. Brooding granite rose like a bulwark just back of the beach, and 
the darker stone too of basalt, igneous rock that was like petrified sponge. 
Their visit here before had established it: Samaireheim was one great wall of 
stone like a giant’s castle. Even its coast consisted mainly of precipitous 
stony faces, totally without promise. It seemed minded to wear an attractive 
face, like an aged and tired tavern-doxy: the dark, high coastline gleamed 
jewel-like here and there with veins of lipartite and studs of twinkling quartz. 

They were a lie, as the sandy beach was a lie. There was no life on this island 
of stone, no hint of green. 
Into the wall of rock ran a slim declivity, like an unceiled tunnel that was 
braced on either side by nature’s high-looming walls. So narrow was the 
passageway in places that two men could not walk abreast, while elsewhere it 
widened to accommodate five. In addition it wound about, as though some 
whimsical god had raised walls on either side of a path laid out by a meandering 
cow, time out of mind. 
Well back within the grim shadow of the barren cliff-walls, that natural 
corridor widened to become a canyon, which debouched into a valley carelessly 
strewn with pebbles and boulders ranging up to the size of houses in Eirrin. 
Save for the winding natural “hallway,” the canyon was bounded about by rocky 
cliffs, more often sheer and unscalable than not. Yet at its far end, against 
that rearward cliff that dropped sheer to the sea, rose other walls: man-made 
walls. The castle of Atlantis. There last night had slept the Britons; from 
there today they must come. 
Cormac and his nine men, with Wulfhere and Samaire and Bas the Druid, awaited 
them. Their vigil had been taken up before dawn. When the men of Britain came 
along the narrow, twisting defile, doubtless bearing booty, half their number 
would be down ere they could draw steel. Ambush was the only sensible course 
when twelve men sought to best a score; the druid, of course, would not take up 
arms. 
But the sun was high, and the Britons had not come. 
Long and too frequently had Cormac stayed his companions. Now he, too, was 
beyond curbing his natural impatience. The sun’s light should have brought the 
foe happily along the natural hallway walled with sombre basalt and roofed with 
naught but cloud-strewn sky. Surely they were anxious to see Wulfhere’s 
corpse... and to load, their ship with what Cormac and Wulfhere had found here 
months before, at summer’s beginning: the sword-won spoils Norse reavers had 
stored in a castle whose origin and existence they doubtless never questioned. 
But the Britons came not. 
At last Cormac took Lugh and Bas, and scaled a talus formed by the slippage of 
rock over thousands of years. Up they climbed, onto the nigh-flat mesa that was 
the island’s main surface. Over one shoulder Cormac bore many loops of stout 
rope. 
The others had to stay and maintain the ambuscade, lest the Britons come forth. 
There’d be noise aplenty then, Cormac had pointed out, and he and Lugh would be 
terribly effective against the men of Britain from above! Wulfhere was 
troublesome. Him Cormac persuaded to remain with the others only by reminding, 
quietly, that the Dane was the most experienced fighting man among them, and 
worth any five others as well. 
Any seven others, Wulfhere corrected, and stayed, scratching under his beard. 
With Bas and the archer, Cormac moved inland, well above the level of the beach, 
the valley of the castle, and his own men. 
“Like walking the roof of the world it is!” Lugh commented. 
Above them the golden eye of Behl moved steadily and unconcernedly toward its 
zenith. It was by that watchful god Lugh swore when they caught sight of their 
goal: soaring, straight stone walls raised by the hands of men skilled beyond 
any now alive. 
“Behl’s eye!” 
Cormac half-smiled at the man’s astonishment and awe, though he felt it, too. 
Towered and columned, builded of stone laid upon stone by master builders, the 
thrice-ancient keep was of spectacular proportion. The whole was no less than 
awe-inspiring, topped off by flashing rays of bronze standing out from the 
towers near their tops, like sun-rays. 
“Ah,” Bas the Druid whispered. “No Roman hands raised this magnificence. See the 
carving—see the Behl-rays on the towers!” 
Cormac nodded. “It’s from the Celtish ancestors of Lugh that we Gaels sprang, 
Druid,” he said in a fervidly quiet voice, “and from those fierce men of 
forgotten Cimmeria came the Celts, and in the oldest land of all, the Sunken 
Land, that the Cimmerians had their birth.” 
“World-spanning Atlantis,” Bas breathed. 
Lugh ignored the Gaels; he was content to stare in silence. 
“It came upon me when first I set eyes to it, Bas, that which affrights other 
men around me. My... remembering. I saw it, and I knew.” Then Cormac laid a hand 
on Lugh’s shoulder, which he found aquiver. “See you the two pillars and the 
deep shadow between, Lugh mac Cellach, like a black gaping mouth?” 
“Aye “ 
“That be the doorway... the only doorway. No door binds it now; it hangs by one 
hinge-strap and the entry gapes full the length of a man. Just within is a blank 
wall... to enter the keep itself, one must turn to the upper level. It is a 
defensive hall: see ye its windows, like slitted dark eyes? Archers’ windows! 
Behind the rear wall of that defense-hall is a gallery, and below that... a 
vasty room into which fifty, a hundred longships might be piled.” 
“Gods of my ancestors, a half-score men could defend it against an army!” 
“Exactly. Hunter or no, Lugh, it’s a fighting man’s instincts ye have. Our few 
then, would never win past our own number, were they inside, much less a score 
of men!” 
“Even Britons, aye. Then... but we’ve seen them not, and heard naught of them... 
must we wait forever, then, for them to come forth to us?” 
“Why no, Lugh,” Cormac told the archer with the hair like corn and the knotty, 
bandy legs. “You are our hope, man.” 
While Lugh stared at him, Cormac peeled from his shoulder the coils of rope. It 
was of two sizes, one less thick than the little finger of a thin man. 
“See how those projections stand out from the castle’s towers like slim straight 
horns or the sun-king’s rayed crown?” 
“And so they are,” Bas said quietly. His thin face remained turned toward the 
awesome castle. “They knew Behl, those men of that land so long ago swallowed up 
by sea and time.” 
“By whatever name, aye,” Cormac agreed. “Now first, see you how this ‘roof of 
the world’ as ye put it runs so closely alongside the castle. There go we first, 
where man-built walls cast gloom between them and these natural ones. Then... we 
climb down. And then, Lugh, it’s you who will gain us safe entry!” 
Neither Lugh nor Bas fathomed that plan, but both saw now the reason for the 
rope, or so they thought: on it they would climb down, beside the castle in the 
gloom, rather than risk being seen in a frontal approach—and be dropped by 
arrows with them powerless as fish flopping on land. 
Along the mesa they went, and beside the castle, until its pillar-flanked entry 
was invisible to them—and thus they to it. Cormac gazed with longing across at 
the stone wall, from which they were separated by a chasm more than three 
man-lengths across. 
“Had we brought a grappling iron...” Bas murmured, gazing fixedly at slitted 
windows so near—and too far. 
“We’d have made noise,” Cormac finished for him, “steel on stone. No. First I 
secure this rope, thus and thus. Then I bid ye both farewell, and hold on here 
whilst you climb down and await me.” 
The druid looked at him a moment, thinking perhaps to challenge that which 
resembled an order. Then, with a glance back at the castle, he sighed. Its walls 
tugged like the eyes of an enchantress. Without a word, he followed Lugh down on 
the dangling rope—bordering on the ludicrous, with the skirts of his robe 
hitched up to bare that which a druid seemed not to have: legs. His leggings, 
his companions saw, were the same deep, foresty green of his robe. 
At their tug on the rope, Cormac loosed it and let it slide over the edge, into 
the deep shadow where they waited. Then he followed. 
The Gael went slowly, testing each little ledge or rocky projection before 
giving it his weight. His feet were sea-sure, and he had done more than his 
share of scaling. Down he went, with but one slip that fingers like cables 
turned into no more than a delay. A few feet above the upturned faces of the 
other two men, he dropped and alit like a cat on bent legs. His hands slapped 
the earth a second after his feet. 
“Crom’s eyes,” Lugh said in a gasp, “an I dropped that’ distance I’d be wearing 
my stones around my knees!” 
“An ever-active man learns to keep them bound up tight to his body,” Cormac 
assured him. “And learns how to fold up when he drops so. Now, Lugh. It’s your 
bow and skill we depend upon, all. Pluck you forth a good straight shaft with a 
wicked heavy head, and let us tie this little cord to it.” 
Three times Lugh assayed to arc an arrow up and up and over one of the bronze 
poles standing out like sun’s rays from the castle. On the third try, three 
delighted men watched the cord-trailing shaft sail up and over its target. It 
dropped; the cord caught, lying across the pole: the arrow dangled well above 
their heads. 
First Cormac gave the hunter’s shoulder a squeeze of congratulations and thanks. 
Then he began working the cord up, shaking it, lifting, coaxing... 
Jerking and swaying like an erratic pendulum, the arrow descended. Cormac 
flashed one of his tight almost-smiles as he caught hold of it. He began 
pulling. Up went the slender cord, followed by the stout ship’s rope knotted to 
its tail. And over the projection, and down. And then the thick rope was in 
Cormac’s hand. There was just enough cordage; only one end touched the ground 
now, and with little to spare. 
“Another man’s length and we’d have failed for my lack of planning!” he snapped, 
while his companions silently wondered at his excellence of forethought. “Now, 
we haven’t enough rope to tie off. But if you will wind yourself with it, Lugh, 
and brace your feet against the castle wall, I can climb up—without, hopefully, 
breaking either of our backs.” 
Lugh gazed at him, amazed at the ingeniousness, and he smiled at the joke his 
leader made, between comrades. 
“My back will hold, mac Art!” 
The cleverer Bas bobbed his head in one nod, and stepped forward. 
“Mac Art would not ask a druid to hold the rope’s end, as he would any other 
man. I will. Come, Lugh. An we stand side by side, facing the castle, we can 
draw the rope across our backs and brace it well. It’s a brave man we’re to 
support and keep safe... and him no boy whose weight might be measured against 
feathers!” 
The two men braced themselves. 
By all the gods, Cormac thought, that I should see the day! I entrust my very 
life to an army composed of a farm-born hunter of hare and boar, and a robed 
druid whose strength I know not... but would hardly make wager on! 
First he tugged at the dangling rope with all his strength. Then he gave it his 
weight. With no word of apology, he hung from it—and set himself a-swinging. 
Lugh gasped and Bas grunted openly. The rope held. 
“Rest,” Cormac bade them, and prepared for his climb. 
His buskins he hung by their laces around his neck. Buckler he fastened to his 
belt behind, its curve hugging that of his backside. By a thong, he made his 
sword-scabbard immobile against his thigh. 
He looked at the two men who were ready to lean back against the rope, their 
feet against the base of the wall they faced, while he climbed. He nodded. And 
he went up. 
The two men gasped, and Lugh cursed without heed of the druid beside him. Each 
held fast, and Cormac’s strength and superb physical condition steaded him well. 
Hand over hand, not hurriedly so as to avoid jerking Bas and Lugh, he went up, 
and up. 
Lugh’s arrow had had to go far higher than Cormac. He’d snugged the rope in 
close to the castle itself, and the narrow window he sought was little more than 
a dozen feet above the ground. The sunray projection held; the rope held; the 
men below held. Cormac climbed. 
When he peered into the gloomy niche, he saw no man within the room. Muscles 
knotted and strained then, for he could not edge through that air-and-arrow 
embrasure while wearing his buckler behind. Dangling by one hand, he reached 
back and untethered it. He eased the targe into the slice in the stone wall, 
which was thick as the length of his arm. 
Cormac glanced down. Then he put out his bare right foot and set it into the 
niche. In a swift movement then that scraped chainmail on stone, he lunged into 
the open window. 
There he stood a moment, drawing shallow breath, for chest and shoulderblades 
touched the sides of the embrasure. He was wedged snugly into an opening that 
was as if designed to accommodate his body—sidewise. 
A gliding step rightward, another... and he eased himself silently as a stalking 
panther down into the room. He stood in one of the several chambers that lined 
the castle’s pillar-supported second floor—or half-floor, for the vaulted 
ceiling of the main great hall soared to the roof. 
Ancient hangings that surely were once more beauteous than the famed product of 
Eirrin’s women hung now in tatters and were dust at the base of the walls. Yet 
two chairs and a low table, brassbound all, somehow remained. Cormac looked upon 
them, his teeth pressed tightly together; only through some sorcerous means 
surely could those furnishings have survived the millenia. 
The feeling came upon him. 
Hair prickled at his nape and cold fingers seemed to trail up his back. He’d 
been here afore of a certitude... but not in this lifetime. Neither had anyone 
else: the floor’s thick layer of dust was long undisturbed. 
Slowly so as to be more silent than a mouse seeking indoors for sustenance in 
winter, he picked up his buckler and drew his sword. There was no door; only a 
doorway, where long ago had hung a curtain or arras. Cormac paced to the portal. 
His bare feet were silent in the soft dust. No sound stirred the stillness. He 
peered out. There was no one in the corridor. 
Cormac mac Art sat down in the dust and put on his buskins. 
Out he went into the dingy hallway, and he turned right toward the castle’s 
front. All was silent and gloomy; only the single window-niche in each room 
admitted light, and that but little, so that by the time it found its way out to 
the hall it was the merest glim. In that upper hallway of the anciently brooding 
castle, it may as well have been night. On a carpet of dust, in silence, Cormac 
walked through night at nigh-midday. 
He was unable to understand the total lack of sound, unless all the Britons were 
somewhere outside. In that event, they and his comrades—and Samaire, far more 
than comrade—might well be at the grim business of death-dealing even now. But 
he forced himself not to hurry, and paced forward in a semicrouch. He let his 
soles glide over the dust, so as to make no sound of footfalls. 
He moved only as swiftly as he thought he dared, with no more noise than a 
pacing cat. 
Cormac passed the room wherein Wulfhere and Ceann had spent a night, while he 
had preferred to sleep out under the watchful moon. He passed the room in which 
Samaire was to have spent that same night. Almost he smiled; she had instead 
joined him outside, though he had stated clearly that he was exile, and would 
not return to Eirrin. In the morning, he had announced that he would... 
He reached the end of the corridor, and was wary anew. 
There was no man in view. There was no sound. 
With caution, he moved past the stairway that led down to the narrow cul-de-sac 
of an entry hail. Here had knelt Norse archers; here was the window from whence 
they’d sped their whistling shafts at himself and Wulfhere and their approaching 
band of Danes. Now Cormac obtained the same view those Norgeborn bowmen had. He 
peered without, and caution eased. 
There was only the empty plain and, far off, the entry into the twisting passage 
through the rock that connected this valley with the beach. 
A new feeling of nervousness akin to fear drifted over the Gael like a dark 
mist. The castle... deserted? And without... no matter how he turned his head to 
peer this way and that, and strained his ears, there was no sound of shout or 
clash of arms to seaward. 
Cormac mac Art walked the length of that defense-hall, hardly pausing to peer 
out at each of the other three windows. At the head of the second flight of 
steps, he glanced back. He saw nothing, no one. He crept down the stairs to the 
landing, peered around. 
Below was nothing, no one. 
Re-ascending, he passed around the hall’s back wall and onto the railed gallery 
that overlooked the vast main hall of the eerily silent castle. 
Below, sprawled amid great dark splashes, were the bodies of strong men. 
Cormac’s and Wulfhere’s Danes had died down there, three months agone, along 
with fifteen Norsemen. Cormac had been pursuing Samaire and Cutha Atheldane, a 
druid among Vikings, and had no part in the terrible battle. Only Wulfhere and 
Samaire’s brother Ceann survived. 
Despite some objection from the more civilized prince and princess of Leinster, 
Wulfhere and Cormac had deemed this great structure a fine tomb indeed. They had 
left the dead here, friend and foe alike, corpses all. It was these considerably 
decayed bodies Cormac expected to find this day. 
He did not. Not even the bones of those two-and-twenty men remained. 
Instead, the scent of new-spilled blood was on the air. It lay barely dry below 
in splashes and pools, amid the hideously staring, sprawled corpses of 
eighteen... Britons! 
Chapter Five:
The Living Dead
Cormac was outside in the bright sunlight, summoning Bas the Druid and Lugh, the 
Meathish hunter whom the Gael had surnamed the Manhunter. 
Then came the clamor, and the three men whirled. A clot of weapon-men burst into 
the far end of the Valley of the Castle. A huge red-bearded, ax-wielding Dane... 
a small warrior in leathern boots with a bronze-studded leathern helmet... three 
chainmailed men with bows and feather-bristling quivers... others: all of 
Eirrin. And with them, a stumbling, mumbling Briton. 
The man appeared mad and his gibbering was audible to Cormac long before his 
main party reached him. Great glazed eyes stared awfully from out a pallid 
Briton face twisted and set in horror. 
“That man looks as if he has gazed upon the face of Death itself,” Bas said. 
“Mayhap he has,” Cormac said very quietly. “He is the last of his entire crew.” 
The three waited; the fourteen came on. All were united before the gaping dark 
maw of the castle, where its big iron-bound door sagged forlornly from one 
rotting hinge. 
“You’ve been within?” Wulfhere demanded, ere any other could direct coherent 
words. 
“Aye” 
“What... did you find?” Samaire asked. 
Cormac jerked a gesture at the sagging Briton. “This one’s companions. All of 
them save the three Wulfhere and I accounted for. All are dead; all of them. 
Hacked and stabbed and cut to pieces.” 
“Gods of my ancestors,” Samaire said, little above a whisper. “This sniveler 
spoke true, then.” 
Wulfhere’s big hand clamped the back of the Briton’s neck. “Tell this man, 
Briton. Tell him—and the druid.” 
The Briton made as if to hurl himself to his knees before Bas; Wulfhere held him 
back and on his feet, by main strength. “Speak!” 
The man did not speak; he babbled, high-voiced, “Druid, Holy Druid, call 
upon—uhk!” 
“I said speak, not beg,” Wulfhere rumbled, squeezing until the Briton’s eyes 
bulged and his lean fox-face gained a bit of colour. 
“I... I... we were... within,” he said, and he shuddered when he cast a fearful 
glance in the direction of the castle’s doorway. “Drinking, talking of what we’d 
do with our booty on our return to Silurnum. All was merriment—this 
demon-haunted keep is overflowing with the loot of a dozen raids!” 
“We know that, man,” Cormac said impatiently. He drew deep breath. His gaze 
flickered up to Wulfhere; back to the Briton. “Your name, man. What be your 
name? He’d never seen a man so in need of calming. 
“Os... Osbrit son of Drostan, of Wroxeter.” 
“And I be Cormac, Art’s son of Connacht, Osbrit of Wroxeter. Be mindful of 
yourself as a surrounded captive, Osbrit Drostan’s son, and attend me: no harm 
will come to ye. My word on it, before the druid. Now tell me how died those men 
in there, Osbrit. Who else be on this isle—and how is it you alone made escape?” 
Cormac raised his eyes. “Wulfhere—let go his neck. He’s a man. He can stand.” 
“We... we were... they just appeared, among us, about us! Men of the north 
countries oversea, all of them. Most were Norse, though too there were Danes—” 
“Danes and Norse together? Allies?” 
“I swear it! Behl witness—I swear it! Danes and Norse, aye. They just... they 
were just there. Out of the very air they came, all with axes and swords naked 
in their hands: No word they spoke—not ever, not one among them uttered aught 
that I heard. Their faces were grim-set, awful... their business was slaughter! 
Naught else but to bring red death upon us. Four of our number were down bloody 
ere we even knew, realized! My cousin Anir... Bedwyr’s brother Cei... oh, ye 
GODS!” The man paused to shudder and draw a deep uneven breath. 
“Then we were snatching up spear and ax and sword and bucklers,” he went on, 
“wallowing on the floor, stumbling to our feet and defending ourselves as best 
we could. But... what boots defense, when a man cannot injure his foe!” 
“What?” 
“Truth! They would not bleed, they could not be hurt. Struck, they bled not. 
Arms, slashed through, remained attached to body.” A terrible shudder took 
Osbrit’s body. “They would not die, not even when I passed my spear through the 
belly of one till the point brast through his backbone.” 
“What?” 
Osbrit babbled. Tears shimmered in his eyes and spittle flecked his lips to 
drool upon his chin. “I SWEAR it! I myself faced a Dane, a man with a scar on 
his cheek like a fork for the snaring of hares, and an ax-haft dyed red and what 
I took for the emblem of the new faith on his black shield. He—” 
Cormac stared with stricken, fixed eyes. “Wait, man. This Dane... his belt 
buckle... his buckler...” 
“The bands of bronze on his black shield I at first thought was the cross of the 
Christians, and aye, his belt buckle ... the face of a wing-eared man it was, 
moulded of br—” 
“Crom and the Dagda!” Cormac gasped. “Wulfhere... it’s Guthrun he describes!” 
“He lies! Guthrun Jarl’s son fell beside me these three months agone, in that 
same great hall of this keep! You yourself saw his body, with his head attached 
by only a string of tendon. This fellow lies—he saw Guthrun’s remains within—” 
Cormac interrupted. “There are no remains within, Wulfhere. All are gone. There 
are only the new-dead: eighteen Britons.” 
“Aye, Behl show mercy,” Osbrit said with a sobbing catch in his voice. “All 
eighteen cut down by men who would neither wound nor bleed nor die! I slashed a 
face, I tell you, and that Norseman did not even bleed! At that I backed away in 
horror, for I knew there was evil upon us, dark magic. All around me good men 
screamed as they were hacked to death by... by man-things they could neither 
slay nor even wound! He came on, him whose face I slashed. He said nothing, he 
neither grinned nor frowned, but only just stared, stared into my soul, like... 
like a dead man! His ax caught in my shield. I fell back, stumbled—and then to 
catch my balance I was sitting in that huge curulechair in there.” 
“The huge... what?” Samaire asked. 
“The Roman influence,” Cormac said. “He speaks of the throne. So you gave ground 
because ye must, in horror I’ve no doubt, and ye lost your balance and fell back 
into the lord’s chair.” 
“Aye!” Osbrit nodded madly. “And—and... he drew back. He turned from me! I saw 
Dyfnwal thrust into him... I saw the point of Dyfnwal’s sword emerge at that 
man’s back!” 
With a great shudder Osbrit sagged. Samaire gripped his arm and the man beside 
her held the Briton up merely by his presence; Osbrit leaned weakly against lean 
young Ros mac Dairb, nor did either seem to take note. 
At last, dully, Osbrit regained life, and talked on. 
“They... they killed them all. All my companions. All... all of them. No 
Norsemen fell or bled, no Dane, none of them, and they must have numbered a 
score. Then in the midst of the red carnage they’d wrought, they... they turned. 
All of them, as though one had given a signal, though none spoke. They turned to 
face me. They stared. None spoke. They looked upon me like hungry wolves just 
beyond the firelight, staring in, waiting, hoping... Gods! O mother... in awful 
silence they just stared at me thus, and none spoke ever, or so much as frowned. 
Like masks their faces were, with burning pale fires for eyes. I... sat. Behl’s 
Name, Fire of Life, I could do naught else! I admit it—nay, I swear it: I was 
frozen with fear! There must have been a score—” 
“Sixteen Norse,” Cormac mac Art said in a quiet, dull voice, and he knew horror 
at his own thoughts, hearing his own matter-of-fact tone and chilled by it, 
“and... six Danes, I should say.” 
Wulfhere stared at him with wide eyes. “Cormac!” 
Cormac met those blue eyes. “Aye.” His gaze returned to what had been a man and 
was now a frightmad, gibbering creature for pity. “Osbrit... and then...” 
“I remained where I was. And then... Fire of Life! I swear it by the sun and the 
moon—they vanished! Like smoke, like mist in the morning sun.” 
Cormac laid a hand on the man’s shoulder; he did not drop it there, but laid 
hand on the other in commiseration, in a strange, understanding tenderness. “I 
believe you, Osbrit. Think. Describe others...” 
Osbrit described two Norsemen, to be interrupted by Wulfhere; with an oath, the 
Dane swore he’d cloven the head of one of those Vikings from crown to chin, 
three months agone. 
Cormac nodded. He accepted what he must, and turned to Bas. 
“It is a castle of dark sorcery, my lord Bas. The Britons were attacked by men 
already slain... when last we were here! And when we left, those same slain 
slayers lay on the floor within. Now there is no sign of them. Only the Briton 
dead. And the throne... somehow it be safe from their attack.” 
Bas was silent in thought. None broke that reverie. 
“Such things,” Bas said, “are said to be possible... to have been possible. We 
druids have no such power, nor do we covet it. It is black sorcery, the sorcery 
of death, the Old Magick. To raise the dead against the living... to cheat the 
dead of their rest and return for any purpose... Behl protect and Crom defend! 
It is too horrible. It is against all that is decent on the ridge of the world. 
Kull’s or no, this is a place of evil!” 
“It’s not Kull’s evil, I’m thinking. Will ye go in with me?” 
“Cormac! No!” 
Cormac ignored Samaire and her hand on his arm. He continued to look 
questioningly on the. greenrobed servant of Celtic and Gaelic gods, Bas of Tir 
Conaill who had been a noble of Eirrin. 
Bas nodded. He looked about, seeming taller with purpose. He fingered his 
mistletoe pendant. “Who among ye bears oak? Be there the All-healer among us, an 
t’uil: Mistletoe?” 
“The haft of my ax be oak,” a man said, and so called another, hefting his 
shiny-bladed ax. Hopefully Ros mac Dairb bared a lunula from under his mailcoat; 
another drew forth, almost embarrassedly, a dried old sprig of mistletoe from 
his sword scabbard. His wife, he claimed, had insisted on his carrying it... 
Bas took the mistletoe, and an oak-hafted ax Cormac thought too light for war. 
Its owner had a Briton sword now, given him by Wulfhere in a moment of 
camaraderie the night previous. 
Of course the druid wore a lunula, a moon-disk on a cord woven of gold wire 
about his neck. Larger it was than those of the three men present who also wore 
them, and surely more potent. Bas looked at Cormac, who wore the usual Celtic 
torc, and no other jewellery; the leather band about his right wrist was a brace 
for his sword-arm, not decoration. 
“Yourself?” 
Cormac gestured helplessly, in some embarrassment. He had little to do with 
gods, and never had, nor did he encumber himself with their trappings. Bas only 
put his hands on the other Gael, mistletoe to flesh, and murmured to himself—and 
to his gods. All heard the names, Behl of the shining sun and great Crom who was 
older than Eirrin, and the Dagda—the Good God—his son mac Og, and others as 
well. 
Bas’s voice rose and his words became discernible: “...who protected Cuchulain 
and the first mac Art, Cormac Mor, and the great Finn... protect this Cormac mac 
Art too, for no more loyal servant of your reveredness exists on all the ridge 
of the sprawling world.” 
Cormac looked around at the others. “Remain without. Bas and I go within, armed 
by our faith and his knowledge.” 
“I go with you, Cormac mac Art,” Brian na Killevy said, a not-unhandsome young 
man whose face, Cormac felt, was so smooth because fair young Brian could raise 
no fur on it. The youth’s hair was the colour of flax. 
Another young man pressed forward. “It’s not here I’ll be remaining whilst my 
captain go into danger.” Ros mac Dairb said, just as firmly. 
Samaire said only, “No. I choose not to remain without.” Her lower lip pushed 
forth, nor did it tremble; Cormac knew the sign. 
Wulfhere’s rumble summed up: “Lead on Druid. We go where you go; I go where 
Cormac goes. Damn you, son of an Eirish pig-farmer, I owe you this life!” 
“No,” Cormac said. “No. Wulfhere, ye must stay here with these men, who will not 
object to being termed... indifferent sailors.” He looked at Brian and Ros, like 
eager-eyed pups when the master makes hunting preparations. “It’s death inside, 
and sorcerous death at that. I would not bring the red blood on your bodies for 
it, south or north, east or west.” 
“Would be grief to me all my days, Cormac mac Art, if I went not with you after 
I’ve declared!” Brian of Killevy in Airgialla showed in his face that he’d not 
remain outside. “And ye know,” he grinned, “I love to fight!” 
“And I, son of Art,” Dairb’s son Ros said, a fair young man and lean, with a 
golden bush of hair like a halo. “And unless the sky fall on me, or the earth 
gave way beneath these feet, I will not move from your side.” 
“Ye be insane both,” Cormac said. “And ye honour your mothers and your people. 
Very well. It’s this we know: if we be set upon within, it’s no living hands 
will bring steel upon us, but dead men. No. You two are ordered to go up onto 
the gallery which I shall show you, and there remain. On your oath.” 
Neither looking very happy, the two young men agreed. Cormac looked at Wulfhere. 
“An we shriek and scream and there be the clangour of arms, come not within. 
Wulfhere old cleaver of skulls, d’ye hear?” 
If Ros and Brian were young dogs eager for the hunt, Wulfhere was an old hunting 
hound, envious, morose; saddened that he was to be left behind. Stiffly, sadly 
he said, “Aye.” His right forefinger scratched within his beard. 
“If such be the case, if ye hear us attacked and we come not forth... take these 
men from this place, Wulfhere. And slay a fine calf to the end that this dread 
Samaire-heim joins her mother Atlantis beneath the eternal sea. You’re agreed?” 
Unenthusiastically as before: “Aye.” 
Cormac nodded. “Bas... Brian... Ros...” 
The three stood ready. Bas muttered, but naught that he said was understood by 
any present. 
“Wulfhere?” 
“The All-father’s one eye be upon you, bloodbrother.” 
Cormac nodded shortly. “Wulfhere... seize Samaire, and hold her fast!” 
Though he’d paid her no mind while he issued his instructions, Samaire was 
unprepared for this treachery. For a moment she was still in shock. Then she 
started forward, her grass-green eyes widening. 
The man who towered behind her, topping her height by more than the length of 
her two hands combined, enfolded her in arms that were like tree limbs. 
Instantly she was kicking and squirming. 
“NO! Cormac! No no—Wulfhere, you ugly goatsmelling bull—let me GO!” 
Wulfhere held fast. Without a word, Cormac and his trio turned to the castle. 
They passed between the pillars, and were lost to sight. 
Behind them Samaire still combined pleading and demanding in no small voice as 
Cormac pointed to the stairs and issued swift instructions to Brian and Ros. 
They all ascended. The younger men went round and out onto the gallery; Cormac 
and Bas descended into the prodigious expanse of the castle’s high-domed main 
hall. 
Great pillars rose from the tiled floor, propping the gallery and the semi-floor 
that ran all about the walls, ten feet and more above the floor. The walls were 
engraved and indited with scenes not discernible until one went close, so that 
all appeared to be mere decor. The bodies of eighteen Britons still strewed the 
floor, in pools and splashes of the blood that was solely theirs, amid weapons 
and pieces of their corpses. Full forty good paces away, back of the sprawling 
hall’s center, rested the carven throne. Despite the lofty pillars, the 
closely-etched walls, the decorated ceiling; despite even the dead, that regal 
throne dominated the hall and the castle; it surveyed all and seemed to own all. 

Bas stopped suddenly as if he’d run into some barrier Cormac could not see. The 
druid looked all about, then lifted oak and mistletoe at the ends of green-robed 
arms. 
“Hail O warming Sun in your bright rising, our shield of gold and our eternal 
heat-fire; give us good fortune! Hail O Behl lord of earth and sky; You we call 
now upon to perform a work only you can! A work of the Light to hurl down foul 
work that comes from the Dark!” 
Bas began walking forward, among the corpses toward the throne. 
“Soothe pains until they are painless... let the dead sink in rightful unpained 
slumber with woundy hurts smarting no more... let them rest and begin the Ring 
of Return, not as shades bearing evil but as Rightful Men in your Name!” 
Cormac stood still, feeling a horripilation on him, as the man in the 
forest-green robe advanced into the immense room, walking amid corpses without 
looking down to guide his steps, without stilling his voice. But his steps were 
guided; his feet touched neither blood nor sheared away member nor corpse nor 
fallen weapon, and Cormac knew that the god was upon the druid. 
“Agron, slaughter’s noble mistress: attend us not! 
“Shadowy Scathach who did tutor Cuchulain of Muirthemne, grant us invincibility 
as ye did him! 
“Cu Roi mac Dairi, twice-noble master of sorcerers, note ye here Cormac mac 
Art—lend him your sword! 
“Go along now those unneeded, come along now those we need, and perform for the 
sons of men the work of laying the dead, the word of the Light against the Dark! 
Hear us, warming Sun in your bright rising! Let not this mortal blood be 
spilled—we BEG! Let not evil strike down these fair mortal forms-WE PLEAD! Behl, 
Crom, Cu Roi, Great Dagda... behold your servant Cormac, behold your servant 
Bas, behold—an t’uil!” 
Bas lifted high the all-healing mistletoe to the unseeing walls and the 
high-domed ceiling and, Cormac fervently hoped, to observant gods. All-healer 
was the wax-green plant that grew not from the ground but magickally on the 
sacred oaks in Eirrin, and in Gaul, and in Britain, and put forth its pure white 
berries: an t’uil! 
“By mistletoe and oak, by Sun and moon, by fire and water we call for help, we 
pledge the good, the Light; we abjure the Dark of sorcerous evil; we proclaim 
that we be not ready to face Donn, Lord of the Dead, that so well we like this 
land we are not ready to view splendid I-breasil...” 
Cormac’s voice rose, and it seemed of its own accord, for he had no thought of 
speaking whilst holy words were intoned. The words merely... emerged. 
“And I pledge body and brain,” mac Art said, “spear and sword, voice and arms, 
to drive out from our fair green Eirrin those raven-robed, raven-tongued 
usurpers and proclaimers of the New Faith!” 
Cormac frowned, shocked and astonished he’d spoken so. 
Bas had stopped still at that sudden interruption of his speaking to his gods. 
But then, there amid the gory dead of Britain, he nodded, and bent, and took up 
a sword and a dagger. These he held high, one across the other so that they 
formed the execution symbol of the Romans and the priests of Rome. 
“Behold the Cross, symbol of slow and agonized Death!” he cried, and dashed down 
the two blades with a great clang. 
The druid was at pains to tread upon the broken cross as he resumed his slow 
trek to the throne. Now he muttered, and Cormac, understanding no word, knew 
that Bas spoke in the Old Tongue that only druids knew. 
“In the name of the Sun and the moon,” Cormac said, rather haltingly, wondering 
how to pray, wondering if indeed the gods of his fathers would listen to such a 
red-handed dealer of death as he. “This I say truly and swear by the gods the 
great clans of Eirrin swear by: All foemen I face. And this I ask: if foes must 
come, let them be of living flesh, that I may fight as a man fights.” 
At the far end of the sprawling room, ringed about by pillars with squared decor 
of bronze and gilt, the stately chair rested. From it, Cormac remembered, had 
one of his own men swept a fine bale of rich cloth, to cover one of their dead. 
Now green-robed Bas reached that kingly seat, and turned, and sat. Cormac 
stared, taken aback. 
Kings Cormac had seen, and kings he had served, and on him by kings had 
treachery been done. But only one had he seen who looked so kingly, so made for 
such a chair, as this Bas mac Miall of the Northern ui-Neill of Tir Conaill; 
grandson of a king, brother of a king, brother in law to Eirrin’s Highking—and 
by choice Druid of the Old Faith. 
Then, as the seated Bas spoke on, droning now, Cormac took note of that rich and 
outsized chair. 
It was of wood, bound with bronze, decorated in silver and onyx and gold itself, 
and all the decor in squared figures, for those of Atlantis and Valusia of old 
never broidered with reminders of their dread enemy: the sons of the Great 
Serpent, who owned the earth before man. 
But the chair... the chair itself... that huge highbacked throne of wood... 
Cormac mac Art strode out amid the gore and weapons and ghastly remains 
littering the floor, treading with care to avoid the awful clutter. He turned, 
and looked up. From the gallery at the front of the castle, Brian and Ros gazed 
down upon him. 
“Go ye together. Remain together!” Cormac gestured. “Go along that corridor 
until ye come to a room piled with booty like the treasure trove of an Eastern 
prince. Gather what your arms can carry, and proceed back, and down, and out the 
door into the sun. An ye succeed unchallenged, return for more. WAIT! If aught 
amiss occurs .. if it’s foemen ye see... drop the booty, lads, and RUN! Draw ye 
no sword and stand to fight—FLEE, for heed me: it’s fleeing mac Art will be!” 
Without waiting for an answer, he whirled again and strode, a dark and lean man 
in rustling chain who stepped over a headless body and a cloven shield and then 
an armless hand as he paced to the stately chair where sat Bas. 
“Bas... your pardon, Holy Druid... what say ye this chair be made of?” 
’Bas stared, blinking, obviously having been far and now coming back but slowly. 

“Cormac mac Art,” he said in a strange voice that came as if from that faraway 
place, “see ye that so long as ye live ye do never again interrupt a Druid in 
converse with Those he serves!” 
It was Cormac’s turn to blink. His armpits prickled and a chill touched his 
back. Almost, he who bent knee to no man, not even crowned head, considered 
kneeling... almost. He made no reply, for he could think of naught to say. 
Now Bas, with no visible rancor whatever, looked down at the ancient throne, ran 
his hands over it. The druidic ring flashed. His head came up, long dark hair 
flurrying at his shoulder, and there was enlightenment in his clear eyes. 
“Oak!” 
“Aye, so I thought even from afar. Oak! From the tree holy and beloved to Behl 
and—” 
But the druid’s grey eyes had swerved to look past him, widening. Cormac broke 
off. He knew what he’d see ere he turned, for he felt it: Silent menace and the 
chill of the grave had entered the lofty hall of Atlantis. The air hung thick 
with a loathsome aura of blood-freezing horror and the cruelest sorcery devised 
by demonic mind. 
He turned, and they were there. 
There had been no sound; there was none now. They were there. 
Men in plain helmets of iron bands and helms with horns like the Old God, 
Cernunnos the Horned One; men with eyes of blue and grey, and drooping pale 
moustaches; men carrying axes and swords and the round shields of far Norge. 
And... others... 
Cormac’s body went all overchill and damp, and the sweat was atrickle in armpits 
and palms. Ah, gods! He knew them, those Danes... Hrothgar of the bent broken 
nose and brilliant swordwork, and Hrut Forkbeard with his ornately hilted sword 
and silver-chased leather jerkin and vainly twisted mustachioes... and there 
Edric, aye and Hnaef... 
“Gods! Oh my old comrades... I saw ye all dead on this very floor!” 
Chapter Six:
The Throne of Kull
Dull eyes staring fixedly from faces like pasty masks, the men who were at once 
dead and not-dead began to move forward. 
Bas rose to his feet. Deeply green sleeves slid back over surprisingly thick 
wrists as the druid extended his arms. Toward those stalking shades he held out 
mistletoe and oak. They stared, every one with naked sword or ax in hand, and no 
wounds upon them. 
“Be at rest! By Sun and Moon, fire and water, oak and the green mistletoe that 
lives all the year... BEGONE! Mead awaits you in Valhal... your Valkyries cannot 
find you... bodies unborn await you in the land of the living! Your mighty god 
Odin of the Single Eye awaits you! Journey to him—Leave us! This is the realm of 
the living, where there is no place for slain men... and... ye be dead!” 
They stared dully, fixedly, those horrid spectres that looked so unlike 
spectres, but living men. Two-and-twenty, they ceased their slow forward 
movement. Every eye, Cormac saw, was on the druid’s hands... 
Then they began their ghastly silent moving again, edging around sidewise, 
avoiding Bas... coming at Cormac. In winged helm and shining scale-mail, one 
Norseman was well ahead of his fellows. Blue eyes, dull as though mindless, 
stared at Cormac mac Art. 
Cormac’s buckler was on his arm and sword in hand. The Gael attacked, for all 
the prickle of horripilation up his back and on his arms. 
His sword swept out and around like a gale, humming through the air, and he 
watched it slash through the Viking’s bronze-cuffed sword-arm. Watched it 
slash... through... without resistance... without blood... and with no effect on 
the arm, which continued rising. It descended in a rush. The Gael’s shield 
leaped up and he shuddered as the descending sword crashed onto its metal-ringed 
edge. 
“By all the gods! My steel has no effect on him—none! But his blade’s as deadly 
as ever steel is! A man has no chance against this horror—BAS!” 
Cormac could only retreat or die; a swift jab showed him that the Norseman’s 
shield, too, was fit to defend a living man. An unslayable kill-machine, the 
Viking swept up his terrible ax. 
For the first time in his life, Cormac mac Art turned and ran from a foeman. 
From the shocked druid’s hand he tore the oaken hafted ax of Ruadan mac Mogcorf. 
He was unsure why; it was as if some instinct drove him. His sword he left 
against the throne-chair as useless, nor did he wield the ax as a man should. 
Holding it close to the head he’d thought overlight for a fighting man, he drove 
the end of the haft at the Norseman who had followed—but had stopped three paces 
from the throne. 
The ax was poorly balanced for a thrusting weapon, held thus wrong end before, 
but with it Cormac thrust. Nor was he averse to using the Saxon tactic of 
feinting at the body and stabbing at the face. 
The tip of the haft jolted home as if against living flesh and bone. Cormac 
could have wept for happiness at the shock to his arm. 
A horrid groan filled that soaring chamber, and seconds later an equally horrid 
stench, the stomach-turning fetor of putrefaction and decay. And the Norseman 
seemed to melt, the flesh fading from his bones, hanging in tatters, vanishing 
into the air. His body quivered all over. 
While his back crawled, Cormac watched what oaken stave had wrought, when steely 
brand was of no avail. 
Bronze armlets dropped to ring on the floor, and one rolled noisily. Coat of 
scalemail caved in, cleaving to a form suddenly fleshless. For a brief moment 
Cormac stared into the eye-holes of a skull, a whiteboned death’s head bereft of 
so much as a scrap of flesh. 
Then the lifeless skeleton crumpled to the floor with a rattle. It lay there, as 
should have done the bony structure of a man slain three months before. 
“It’s the O-O-O-OAKHH!” Cormac mac Art shouted, partly in triumph and partly in 
a release of fear and horror, tension close to hysteria. “The OAK, Druid! Behl’s 
symbol of LIFE—the dead cannot withstand its touch! This be why that man Osbrit 
alone survived, for he sat that oaken throne! Here is why they sought to avoid 
you and come ‘round at me, Bas—you held this ax!” 
Then Cormac did that which was alien to a weaponman, and against the grain of 
his very nature. 
With all his might, he swung the ax against a broad thick pillar of smooth, 
time-darkened stone. His hands shifted so that it was the side of the steel head 
that struck with a great ringing thump and a terrible jar to his arms. A loud 
crack split the air as the haft broke. With another swift stroke Cormac smashed 
the head from his ax so that it hurtled through the air until it struck another 
pillar—and rebounded, and rebounded, and drove bloodlessly through one of those 
horrid foes to ring and clatter on the floor. 
The Dane was unharmed; the ax was an ax no longer; Cormac held a thick oaken 
stave as long as his arm, to the fingers. 
With it he drove at another man of the Norse. A whirring ax-blade rushed past 
his head, while he slammed the haft of what had been Ruadan’s ax into the 
shield-arm of the Viking. An awful death-cry rose; again came the stench of a 
mouldering putrid corpse—and a second skeleton clattered horribly to the floor. 
Bas stared with half-glazed eyes as the tall weaponman of Eirrin fell to one 
knee to avoid a swordthrust, and cracked that attacker’s knee with his strange 
cudgel. And there were three skeletons amid the corpses on the floor of Kull’s 
Castle. 
They closed in now, and Cormac did what he must to avoid death-dealing thrusts 
and slashes of un-dead men whose blades his targe could not turn all at once; he 
hurled himself aside. 
Then he ran, racing around the seated druid to come upon a Dane at the edge of 
the cluster. Cormac knew that lightly bearded man; had fought beside him and 
trod the decks of ships named Raven and Wolfsail with him. But the Gael was 
steeled, sure now that he had the means of providing rest for these men brought 
back from the land of the dead on the murderous mission of some unknown mage. 
Cormac was the means. 
Before the Dane could swing his weapon into line, a truncated ax-haft struck his 
shield and then his arm. As silently as he’d done three months before, Cormac’s 
comrade of erst died again, and there were four skeletons. 
Bas jerked erect as though waking from some dark dream. 
“Cu Roi mac Dairi,” he said in a shaky voice as his hand closed around the hilt 
of Cormac’s sword, “son of Behl, servant of Crom, be with me! And... King 
Kull... pardon!” 
With that the druid crashed Cormac’s sword down onto one arm of the priceless 
ancient throne. The blade bit deep; wood older than old splintered and broke. 
The throne shuddered—as did Bas’s surprisingly powerful arm. 
A man in an iron-banded helm of dented grey rushed past the oaken throne to 
swing his shining glaive at Cormac mac Art—and Bas the Druid smashed a ragged 
chunk of chair—arm into the Viking’s back. Released by fingers from which the 
flesh began instantly to dangle in tatters like old draperies, the Norse sword 
rushed past Cormac to clang and clatter far across the room. A thrice-banded 
helmet slipped down over the shining white mound of bone that had been a human 
head. A skeleton once more, the Norseman fell. 
Cormac too had struck, and six skeletons lay on the tiles. 
A sword crashed off Cormac’s shield and he saw another rushing in from the side. 
Desperately he struck at it with his oaken club just as he’d have done with his 
own good sword—which was now so horribly useless. Ax-haft deflected 
glaive-blade; the point tore a channel up the Gael’s forearm. Later he would 
feel pain and be discommoded by the rip in the skin and flesh; now he did not so 
much as notice. Ax-haft thunked into mailed hip, jerked away, leaped sidewise 
swift as a striking adder. Oak met skin; skin became tatters; tatters vanished 
to leave only bone. 
The two skeletons fell almost together, with a rattle as of many games of 
knuckle-bones at once. 
The ghastly battle continued. It was two against fourteen now, and one of the 
two unarmoured. Unhelmeted too he was, and cumbered by rustling robes of woolen 
girt with a rope composed of four intricately plaited strands. 
“Bas, Bas! Back to the throne, man, ere ye be slain for naught! Hack the 
throne... and hurl the pieces!” 
Bas skipped away from an overweight man of Norge. He turned—and faced an ax that 
had already commended its downward rush. Reflexively the holy druid jerked up 
his splintry chunk of ancient oak, and up leaped his other hand to brace it with 
a grip on either end. 
The ax rushed down to cleave through that time-weakened slab of wood so that it 
was two, and had only slowed the descent of steel death. Bas went to one knee. 
His shocked arms quivered. From one nerve-tingling hand, even as the un-dead 
drew up his ax for the death-stroke, a piece of ragged wood fell. It struck the 
floor and bounded, just a little, onto the buskined foot of the ax-wielding 
Dane. 
From above his head Bas heard a grunt. Then there was the stench of death’s 
decay eerily accelerated, and then that was gone, as Guthrun Black-shield died 
once more. Again he returned to pallid smooth bones that clattered on the tiles. 

Ten skeletons lay on the floor in their mail or leather; twelve men who were not 
men shuffled on. Twelve Un-dead men continued to do what they must: endeavour to 
slay the living. Helpless voiceless minions of the ghoulish sorcery that had 
raised them, they clove blindly to their one purpose: murder. 
Bas of Tir Conaill gained the throne-chair and turned to look upon the awful 
sight. 
The floor was strewn with corpses and man-shaped collections of bones. Bleeding 
from right forearm and left shoulder where the capping sleeve of his mailcoat 
was shredded, Cormac mac Art leaped and dodged, ducked and skidded, lunged and 
jabbed and swung. He danced, armour a-jingle; he raced away to attack again like 
a great spitting cat amid harrying dogs. Succor he knew lay only in nimbleness; 
a dash here, a jab there with his headless ax, and duck and dodge to continue 
the grim work from a new direction. 
One advantage was held by the living man among the Un-dead; when his stave 
struck other than shield or enemy blade, an enemy fell. 
The wood of the god-tree met sorcery-driven steel. Another of the resurrected 
dead was struck. Another skeleton crashed to the floor. A hand broke, and 
fingerbones rattled free to roll about. It was then Cormac fell backward across 
a Briton corpse. Ghoulmen who had been enemies, allied now in death, leaped in 
concert to carve the fallen man like a ham at feast-time. 
Bas groaned in horror. But the other Gael was lean and more than passing quick. 
Cormac rolled, contriving to hurl himself several feet along the floor with a 
wrenching twisting exertion that would have crippled the back of a man whose 
body was not so agile and muscle-sheathed. Armour screamed on tile. A rushing ax 
chopped down the corpse of the Briton over which Cormac had fallen, and where 
he’d sprawled but a second before. Already he was scrambling to his feet, aiding 
himself with his hands like the animals that were his remotest ancestors. To 
such was he reduced. 
A brief glance showed the Gael five foes converging on him. These were uncanny 
foes, unnatural foes, impervious to aught but the headless ax in his hand. Again 
he must needs run, fleet as a hare before hounds, racing around and between 
pillars tall as oaks—which he wished they were. 
In shuddery silence, dead men followed, to join him with them. 
Bas saw that Cormac was bent on making his way around and back to him. He saw 
too how the Dane hurried to cut off his former piratic comrade—and the druid 
hurled the broken piece of oak in his hand. The dead man moved too fast to be 
struck where Bas aimed, between the shoulder blades. The splinter-bristling 
chunk of wood fell short. 
Yet again the druid was lucky or Behl-blessed; it struck the back of his knotty 
calf. In seconds he became mere bone. Again the ghastly cycle: man who had 
turned into corpse and then into bone and then into man—returned to bone. 
With cries of rage and challenge that rang and echoed in the room, Ros and Brian 
burst into the hall of horror. Having heard the clangour and Cormac’s shouts, 
they’d hurried onto the gallery to stare down at that which erupted their bodies 
into gooseflesh. The two youths withstood the moveless watching as long as they 
could without intervening. Swallowing all fear, they came now loping like young 
hounds with more enthusiasm than knowledge or sense. 
“STOP!” Bas bellowed, and it was no small voice the druid possessed. “Hold—only 
oak slays them—only oak!” 
The two young men looked at him, at Cormac and his assailants—who though eerily 
silent looked quite natural—and at each other, and back to the druid. 
Bas chopped a piece of splintery wood from the ruined airm of the throne of 
Kull. As though he’d commanded men all his life, as though he wore a crown and 
mail rather than robe and center-parted black hair that was rope-held about his 
forehead above his brows, Bas the Druid called out again. 
“Come ye hither, both!” 
Cormac was parrying a vicious sword-stroke from a man whose sword-wound he’d 
once treated, off Rechru isle after an encounter with a boat too full of 
Frisians. His hurried swing of his makeshift stave at the attacker was well 
caught on oval shield, even as Cormac blunted the ax-swing of a second foe on 
his own buckler. 
“GET TO BAS!” he bellowed, without looking from his foemen. 
Brian and Ros, as confused as they were quiveringly excited, were already doing 
so in obedience to the sword-wielding druid. Like a man whose wife is dying for 
lack of wood on the fire, the robed man chopped at the magnificent old throne 
with Cormac’s sword. 
Diving headlong between two attackers and beneath their rushing blades, Cormac 
was able to strike a leg in passing with his strange weapon. 
Nine of the Un-dead remained. 
A flying chunk of wood struck one and rebounded to thud into the leg of a 
second. Brian of Killevy cried out in high glee at the double result of his 
throw. 
Seven Un-dead stalked Cormac mac Art. 
He fell before the simultaneous crash of two axes on his shield, which divided 
in twain nearly to the boss. Yet a moment later there were six of the enemy 
remaining, and then five, for Ros and the druid each hurled an oaken missile 
true. Brian’s second throw missed his target. 
Slammed into a knee with a jolting force and then struck with a rushing sword, 
the splinter-tipped stave in Cormac’s hand bit his wrist... and went clattering 
and rolling noisily across the floor. 
Without smiles of triumph on their mask-like faces, four grim, silent spectres 
from the other side of the grave closed on him. Blades rushed down— 
And Cormac hurled himself, not between, but through the legs of one Un-dead 
enemy! 
The cold of death stabbed through mail and tunic like an icy knife, and then he 
was landing on his hands without so much as a grunt. He skidded, rolled, came up 
running. The Gael sprinted for the throne and the three allies there. Ere he 
joined them, Bas had stepped away. His eyes blazed with an unearthly fire and 
his gesturing hands were like the claws of a rearing bear. Strange words issued 
from his lips, guttural words from the dim past of the race of man. 
Three horrors that had been men—and more lately corpses—stalked toward him with 
uplifted weapons. From the throne-chair oaken chunks whizzed. Two of the Un-dead 
became first putrefying corpses once again, then bones—and as they dropped, so 
fell the last of their number—with his flesh still sheathing his skeleton. 
“HOLD!” Cormac called, and his hand leapt out to stay Brian’s arm. “That be the 
last—and he remains flesh, if not blood! The druid has wrought a spell upon 
him... upon it.” 
The eyes of three weapon-men of Eirrin turned their gazes upon Bas. Still 
gesturing and still gutturally murmuring, he advanced upon the fallen Viking. 
The man, if such he could be called, lay still in his horn-sprouting helm and 
fine scalemail corselet and steel-bossed seagreen belt. 
“...hear me?” the druid said aloud. “By all those names and conjuries and by the 
eternal golden sun and silv’ry moon, lord of day and lord of night, I conjure 
you... I command you. Answer! Your name, your name!” 
The dead man’s chest did not move. The dead man’s voice rasped up from his 
throat like wood dragged over whetstone, and words emerged as though he had to 
think hard to form each one, and three men shivered who had never quaked in 
combat. 
“Thor Bast... Shield - hewer-r-r-” 
“Ah!” The druid stood now over the living dead man he had bound by ancient words 
to the floor. Now he forced him to speak on, by dint of powers greater even than 
the speechlessness of death. “And are ye dead, Thorgast Shield-hewer?” 
Rasping and dry: “Ay-ye...” 
“Gods,” Brian whispered, and beside him Ros gasped out, “Crom Cruach stead me!” 
“Why came ye back, ye who were dead, to war thus on the living?” 
“...sent—called, forced—I wa-as... had to—commme ba-a-ack... co-ol-l-ld...” 
“Aye, colder than your northern home it is, for ye were not meant to be here 
thus. Release is at hand, Thorgast Shield-hewer, but first—answer! Why came ye 
back? What was your mission?” 
“Kill-all who ca-ame... herre—kill—Ku-K... Cor-r-mac—mac—Aar-r-r-tt...” 
Brian of Killevy saw it, as the dead spoke, but never did flaxen-haired Brian 
tell what he saw: Cormac mac Art shuddered and paled. 
“Why him?” the druid demanded. “Speak, Thorgast Shield-hewer!” 
“Let—me-e-ee—go-oh...” 
“SPEAK, damned spirit that was a man, answer! Why must ye seek to slay Cormac 
mac Art?” 
“...ha-ad to-ooo—ven—geann-ccce-” 
“Vengeance? Ye knew him before?” 
N-O-oh—passst—pa-a-ast—li-i-ife...” 
“Ah.” The druid crouched close to the dead man, motionless but for the tortured 
moving of his lips. “And, Thorgast Shield-hewer, dead and not dead, poor cold 
shade dragged back from the Otherwhere... who called you here?” 
“C—C-uth—no-o-ohh,” the corpse moaned, as though confused. “L-et me-go-oh...” 
“Speak the name, Thorgast Shield-hewer that was. Who? Speak—and these will be 
your last words; speak, and return where you belong... dead man!” 
Staring, his face pale, Cormac strained to hear. 
Thorgast Shield-hewer spoke two words, a strange name if it was a name, and then 
he was still, and the flesh faded from his white face to leave behind only the 
eternally grinning death’s head on the skeleton he had been before he was called 
back by him whose name he pronounced: “Thulsa Doom!” 
Chapter Seven:
Pacts
Brian and Ros were heroes. Both slim, and neither ill-favoured, the excited 
young men reminded Cormac of tail-wagging dogs after their first hunt. The 
hounds of Cormac, he thought, and wondered if he were not crediting himself with 
overmuch. His head had been swelled a bit by that name the crew had begun 
applying to themselves after the successful fighting off of the Pictish attack 
asea: the Cormacanachta; descendants or followers of Cormac. 
So Ros and Brian-I-love-to-fight were heroes, and the two youthful weapon-men 
strutted and figuratively wagged their tails before the others, while responding 
to questions with answers longer than necessary. If those who had abided outside 
did not quite fawn on the two who with Cormac and Bas had “slain” no less than 
two-and-twenty ghastly un-men, they did certainly show their envy and adulation. 

Most of the others, just as naturally, expressed the wish that they’d been 
allowed to go within, rather than remaining without; but... captain’s orders. 
During that great deal of chatter, Cormac caught the eye of a rather sombre 
Lugh, and he winked. Lugh’s looks improved; Ros and Brian were the heroes of the 
hour—or moment—but that wink advised the archer that Cormac mac Art still 
remembered how initial entry had been gained to the Castle of Kull of Atlantis. 
Bas ruminated apart, while Cormac, the dead man’s words having discovered to him 
his extraordinary danger from whom or whatever Thulsa Doom was, brooded on his 
future. How, he wondered, as Ros na Dun Dalgan and Brian na Killevy received the 
adulation and envy of their comrades, did a mere weapon-man protect himself, 
much less do combat against a sorcerer so powerful as to raise the dead and turn 
them into fighting men? 
Wulfhere meanwhile was grim. The Dane was essaying not to show his unhappiness 
at being left out of the steel-wielding action—and probably suspecting Cormac of 
having cheated him of his beloved sport: the splitting of shields and helms and 
skulls. Cormac said nothing to the giant from Dane-mark. He had no doubt that 
impatient and impetuous Wulfhere would have been slain within. The Dane’s pride 
and concept of manhood would have prevented his employing the dodging, fleeing, 
circling, snapping-wolf tactics that Cormac had used—to the saving of his own 
life. 
And Samaire sulked. 
Wulfhere had held her fast, nor had she ceased struggling and railing at him 
until Cormac reappeared; four ashy-faced men emerging from the reeking 
charnel-house of the thrice-ancient castle. Released then, Samaire had not run 
to Cormac as all would have thought natural, but had turned from him. Nor would 
she say aught to the Dane or accept his bumbling friendly overtures. 
Now, either forgetting their leader with two younger heroes to raise on high or 
perhaps respecting Cormac’s withdrawal into himself, all trooped inside to see 
what little there was to be viewed: corpse-slain corpses and oak-made skeletons. 
Eighteen of the former there were, mingled among a score and two of the latter. 
Blood and cruor, weapons and rattly bones, dismembered and beheaded corpses and 
a chopped-up throne; these were what remained to be seen. 
And so they were noted and exclaimed over—along with the excited words of Ros 
and Brian, but one of whom was so much as a score of years of age. 
Others remained outside in the still-warm sunlight of early fall. 
With his soiled robe flapping in a little breeze, Bas walked away to be alone 
with himself and his gods. Cormac sat on a rounded stone, heedless of his 
wounds. Someone or other had salved and bandaged them; someone or other not 
Samaire. Again and again he examined and worked at his doffed coat of linked 
steel chain, though he was hardly aware of what he did. Cormac spoke not now to 
gods; he was alone with his thoughts. 
Samaire, too, had remained outside. Around the castle she had walked, into the 
shadowy gloom betwixt it and the cliff. Her helmet of lacquered and 
bronze-studded cowhide she had removed, so that her wealth of orange-and-gold 
hair stirred about her shoulders and bounced when she walked. 
Cormac noted well her departure, while making sure his noticing went unnoticed. 
He assumed she had gone to relieve herself; it was no privacy she’d had on the 
ship, and soon they’d be aboard again. Morosely, he ruminated. 
Thulsa Doom. 
Thulsa Doom, Doom, Doom, Thool-sah... Doooommmm. The name and its ominous sound 
pulsed within his head like a gloomy drum, thrumming there and somberly booming. 
Thulsa Doooommmm... 
What was a Thulsa Doom? 
Who was Thuls— 
He knew. 
He saw. It was what his former crewmen had called “the remembering” that was 
upon him once again; the pictures, the words and memories or “memories” within 
his brain. 
A bronzed hand tore away the shielding veil from a tall, spectrally thin man in 
a dark, well-made robe. A woman screamed; white faces, including those of 
soldiers in uniforms and with weapons unfamiliar to Cormac mac Art, shrank bank. 
Revealed behind the veil was the face of the living man in the robe. But it was 
no living face; it was a bare white skull, in whose eye sockets flamed livid 
fire! 
Cormac heard... a voice thrumming in his mind as if in an echoic cavern, and he 
knew that this was the voice of the faceless man... 
“Aye, Thulsa Doom, fools! The greatest of all wizards and your eternal foe, Kull 
of Atlantis! You have won this tilt, but beware, there shall be others.” 
Cormac saw that death’s head man burst the cords that bound him; saw him swing 
to stalk, dark robe whirling and flapping about his heels to the tall ornate 
door. The back of his head, too, was the skull of a man long dead. Cormac saw a 
sharp blade transpierce the tall figure... and emerge unblooded. Seated on a 
stone on a lonely island plain incalculable years later, Cormac saw the 
skull-faced mage turn, saw him laugh, heard him speak, sneering— 
“Ages ago I died as men die! Nay, I shall pass to some other sphere when my time 
comes, not before. I bleed not, for my veins are empty... Stand back, fool, your 
master goes. But he shall come again to you, and you shall scream and shrivel 
and die in that coming!” 
Cormac saw... 
The skull faced wizard step to a door bordered all about with squared, runic 
decor, and pass through it, and... vanish. 
He heard... a man’s voice—what man? Could there be men with names such as Ka-nu, 
and Tu? 
Aye, there had been, time out of mind. 
“Next time we must be more wary, “ one said, within the mind of the seemingly 
stricken mac Art, “for he is a fiend incarnate—an owner of magic black and 
unholy. He hates you, for he is a satellite of the Great Serpent.” 
“Me? Hates me? I broke? I broke his power, I? But I am... I am...” 
“He has the gift of illusion and invisibility... you must beware of Thulsa Doom, 
for he vanished into another dimension, and as long as he is there he is 
invisible and harmless to us... but he will come again.” 
Dimension? What other dimension? 
What is a “dimension”? 
And Cormac saw... 
...a death-duel with swords, all shrouded in a swirling eerie mist not of nature 
born. One man fought with a green-glowing blade, and his face was a pallid, 
awful skull... Thulsa Doom once again! The other man Cormac could not see... the 
other man was himself. 
And they fought well and with the clangour of blades of steel within the mist, 
and the wizard’s flashing green glaive was ensorceled, so I (he? I? He? He is I; 
I was he; I am he!) contrived to switch swords, warned by some shade or god from 
without the machina and aye, he was stronger at once, for the enchanted green 
brand of the wizard drank the source of life and energy itself, and gave it to 
the wielder that he became ever more strong and virile. 
Cormac spoke aloud, dully, sitting and staring down at the earth. His voice was 
that of an old and weary man. 
“And I grew strong and he weak, until he was drained. Then sank he down into 
naught but dust for the fickle winds to play with. For dust he was or should 
have been afore, a man long dead, a servant of... a servantish minion of... ka 
nama kaa lajerama!” 
Well away along the plain of the Castle of Atlantis, another robed man with 
knowledge arcane stood, ruminating. At sound of those words he whirled about. A 
great look of surprise, of astonishment was writ on his well-boned face... 
well-boned, but fleshy that face, and not unpleasant to look upon, while his 
robe was of Nature’s green, not night-dark like that of the mage whose age was 
measured in millenia. A servant of the gods of men was this man, not of rustling 
spiteful serpents who must ever hate the race possessed of voices and legs. 
“Ka nama kaa lajerama,” Bas repeated. “La ka nam’an vorankh amarejal!” Sweat 
stood out on the druid’s brow as he stared at the hunched and slackfaced Cormac 
mac Art. “And he thinks he be but a descendant of that great ancient Kull, King 
Kull, that once and always King Kull! For it is all the same, Celt and Kelt, the 
Keltoi of the Greeks and the Celtii/Keltii of the Latins. All the same: Cormac 
and Kull, Cull and Kormak!” 
The druid shook as with palsy. He murmured on, “And that I, I, Miall’s son Bas 
of Tir Conaill, am alive at this time, and him alive and abroad in goodly body 
once more. Aye... and menaced!” 
Bas the Druid strode to the seated, bowed man. His hand fell gently on Cormac’s 
shoulder. 
Up jerked a dark head, and eyes like ice from within the crevasses of their 
slits stared wildly up at Bas. “Tu! It’s he! We must—” 
Cormac broke off. Bas waited a moment longer, feeling his own hand quiver on 
that powerful shoulder. He saw Cormac’s eyes come into focus. Then the druid 
said what he had come to say, what he must say. 
“Cormac mac Art! You are in more danger than any man on earth, for a timeless 
master of evil and illusion has marked you for his own. Vengeance he seeks, not 
on you whom he knows not in this life, but on him ye once were. Cormac mac Art! 
I who was there too, as councillor and enemy of the same enemy... I shall not 
leave your side, for sword and prowess alone will not prevail against the one 
who seeks grim vengeance from a time so far removed from this that men have not 
the numbers to count the years!” 
Cormac did not move; it was as if the powerful weapon-man did not hear, so lost 
was he in visions and memories that were not memories, and voices of the past 
that was never past, never wholly gone, but one more portion of the flowing 
river of the eternal present. 
With a hand on the shoulder of ‘that seated, hunched man, Bas looked about. His 
chin rose and he put back his shoulders. The robe flapping like massy foliage in 
the wind, he strode to the far corner of the Castle of Atlantis. The druid 
looked into the gloom alongside it; he spoke into the gloom. 
“Woman! One knows of tears shed, of fears that rise unbidden, of imagined gulf 
betwixt princess and exile! One knows of love, and who holds love for whom in a 
stout heart and firm, stubborn mind. Woman! Know that ye love not alone, know 
that ye are needed and that what ye do, weeping and nurturing fears and 
self-pity in the dark is an unworthy luxury—and an unaffordable one. Be ye woman 
indeed, Samaire of Leinster, or mere mewling whimpering girl? For there’s 
another who too would weep, were he able, and the better be for it. 
“Woman—he needs us, this man, for that is coming which shall shake the roots of 
his soul and aye of the world itself, the foundation stones upon which is 
builded the ridge of the world—shall shake and echo among the dimensions that 
are, and it’s he will be at fulcrum, hated and menaced and tormented. Power ye 
have, Samaire of Leinster. For ye can add to that torture—and he to yours—or ye 
can be great.” 
Bas peered into the shadows betwixt natural walls of granite and basalt and 
castle walls reared eighteen thousand years agone. 
Bas said, “Decide!” 
And Bas passed into the Castle of Atlantis. 
The sun shed warmth and light on that castle, and on its valley and the man who 
sat as if struck by the hand of Death or powered over by the grim claws of age. 
He stared at the ground... and after a time there before his eyes were two small 
feet in unusual dark boots. Another voice came to his ears, and not, this time, 
from his mind or from Bas. 
“It’s like children we are, my love,” that voice said, softly. A hand came onto 
his bowed head. “You hurt me, and so I sought to hurt you. Too there was 
confusion upon me. It’s companion I must be, hulking hero, boon companion. For I 
be no squirming flirting fluttering woman likely to swoon, but Samaire of 
Leinster, companion to Cormac mac Art. It’s destroyed I’d be an ye treated me as 
no more than comrade, but... when ye seek to protect me, it must be as 
companion, not something soft and vulnerable that belongs to you and that you 
want not marred.” 
The woman in the tall soft boots and loose coat of mail heaved up a great sigh. 
“Thrust me from yourself no more, my love, my dairlin boy, for it’s no favour to 
me to force safety upon me whiles you face that which may slay you out of my 
sight. We must face together what is to be, as once we did here, as we did those 
Pictish raiders on Munster’s coast and again on our ship just yester day but 
three, as we did in the wood of Brosna, as we did in treacherous Cashel. Lovers, 
aye... but companions, Cormac, by night and day!” 
He looked up. “Princess born, you must not say ‘my love’ to me.” 
“Och! Fah, I say it by night, as do yourself... Companions by day and night, 
aye, and my love by night and day! Now come up, my love, and let us go inside 
this ancient keep you have made your own.” 
My own, Cormac thought rising. The Castle of Kull of Atlantis... my own... my 
castle. My... 
“My woman!” he said hoarsely, seizing her arms above the elbows. 
Samaire strove for control, and she looked at him and spoke as coolly as she was 
able. “Of course. My man.” 
They looked at each other a long while in the sunlight. Then, each with an arm 
about the other, they went for Bas, in the Castle of Atlantis. 
Chapter Eight:
Footprints
“It was in this room that the man held her, Bas, that druid out of place among 
Vikings. Cutha Atheldane. Some plan he had for Samaire’s marriage to one of the 
Norse. As I think on it now, I remember me that we’ve talked not of that, 
Samaire and I; I’d forgot. I came upon them, and saw him staring into my eyes 
with a gaze sharp as a raven’s. Ere I knew what was afoot, it was Wulfhere I was 
looking upon!” 
“Seemed to be looking upon,” Bas corrected, nodding without apparent surprise. 
“Just so,” Cormac said. “I like to have died then, until Samaire made a great 
shout. Then it was like waking from a dream-fraught sleep. Not Wulfhere I saw 
then but the man Cutha Atheldane in his nightdark robe—almost upon me with a 
dagger naked in his hand. In avoiding his attack with my mind still befogged, I 
fell—here, across that chair. I only just saw him as he oped a door, here in 
this wall, and with Samaire fled within.” 
Cormac had found the mechanism he had marked; after a few minutes of striving, 
he sprang open the panel in the wall. Beyond was the corridor that became the 
tunnel he remembered too well. Bas peered within. The druid’s nose wrinkled as 
it was assailed by the musty, mephitic odour of ages agone. 
“It was with that chair I propped open the door,” Cormac told him, “that it 
might not seal us within. I pursued. But he had a torch, taken from that sconce 
there, while I was in darkness. The tunnel twists. Here.” 
With the strike-a-light of iron and flint that no sensible man went without, 
Cormac mac Art raised a flame on a slow-burning torch. He looked at Bas and 
Samaire; the three of them entered into the wall. 
“Ah, see how the corridor runs straight and seems to end at a wall—I ran up 
against that, and with force! After that, once I’d found the turn, I was forced 
to less speed.” 
The three came to the apparently blank wall, but the flickering torchlight in 
Cormac’s hand showed them how the tunnel continued, merely bending sharply 
leftward. A short distance past that, they turned again to the right. 
“I soon learned that these constant turn-asides run ever in twos, so that this 
tunnel proceeds ever in the same direction.” 
“The musty odour of this place has not improved since last we trod here,” 
Samaire said. 
“Age, mere age,” Bas said as though to himself. “And the tunnel must be open at 
the far end, since there’s air to breathe and to burn.” 
The torch burned; Cormac nodded. 
“Ah—we go down,” Bas said. 
“And we turn. An ancient escape-route, methought, made so full of turns to slow 
and baffle pursuit—as it did me! And man-made all, as ye see by the smoothness 
of the walls. Else I’d have thought this tunnel was carved out here by a man 
both blind and blind-drunk—and led the while by a lazy serpent.” Remembering, he 
added, “Perhaps I was partly aright...” 
Their feet scuffed through dust that lifted up and hovered about. Their nostrils 
were constantly assaulted by fetor. Once Cormac had blown through his nostrils 
like a tracking hound, Samaire and Bas did the same. The dust was instep deep, 
for in centuries no feet had trod here but Samaire’s, and Cormac’s, and Cutha 
Atheldane’s. The men’s buskins and Samaire’s boots hissed susurrantly through 
dust older than they could conceive in their minds. Each essayed to breathe 
shallowly, to inspire less vitiated, fetid air. 
’Ah! Here, Druid, I stopped. For it was here I beheld a woman of passing beauty 
of face and form. Like a queen she was, with plaited hair like corn and soft 
folds of silk robing her. I remember, sandals... of white bronze they were, and 
so too was she: white as though she’d known no sun. She spoke; she strove to 
tempt me. She warned that for me to pursue was to find death before the next 
dawn. I demanded her name. Only one who wished me well, she said, and I bade her 
swear on my sword.” 
Bas nodded. 
“Was she fairer than I,” Samaire asked, “this temptress you say was of such 
passing beauty?” 
“Aye, for of what avail a sorcerous temptress, an she were not more beautiful 
than normal folk... companion? But she called me handsome, and would not swear 
on my sword. Then knew I she was not what she appeared, for none can call me 
handsome in honesty! And whether she was a shade of the sidhe or a demon of 
those cold Northlands whence came Cutha Atheldane, or indeed he himself in a new 
disguise, I knew she was no woman of woman born!” 
“She would not swear on your sword,” Bas said, nodding again. “For though the 
walking dead can, no demon can abide iron!” 
“Aye. And I lunged, and spitted her on my blade.” 
“Whereupon she vanished?” 
Cormac looked at Bas, and his lips made as if to smile; it was good, these 
reminders that the man was wise, and not one to come apart like old cloth, as 
that Briton Osbrit had done. 
“Whereupon,” Cormac confirmed, “she vanished.” Then he turned about. “And I 
walked on, in the dark, though were we without this torch, ye’d see that the 
walls themselves emit some strange light of their own. Around this bending...” 
They turned to pace leftward, then were forced by the smooth walls to turn right 
again. 
“Around that bending, even here,” Cormac said, halting again, “I stopped once 
more. My short hairs stood right up! There facing me were three men, war girt 
and with their swords naked. One a Norse, and one a Pict, and the third a Norse 
as well, though he served in Dalriada of Alba when last I’d seen him... and 
slain him.” 
Bas stepped past Cormac, turned so that he could look into his face. “This ye’ve 
told me not—that ye’d fought the walking dead before this day." 
“There was a difference, Bas. Mayhap the spell was of less power, or mayhap it 
was more. One called Sigrel and I fought briefly, just here, and I broke his 
wrist and skewered his belly. And he laughed. Then did I remember the woman I’d 
just stabbed in the same manner, and I shouted to them to get hence, that I had 
business beyond, with their master—and I charged them. Whereupon, like smoke in 
a goodly wind, they vanished.” 
Bas thought upon that. “A spell of less power, I’d venture to say. If a spell at 
all—thus Cutha Atheldane had the power of the eyes, Cormac. The illusion-power 
over men’s minds, as did he who sent darkness on ye in Eirrin that day of your 
testing. Only your eyes beheld that darkness that was not. Nor were there dead 
men here, nor was the woman a demon. All sprang from the mind of Cutha Atheldane 
as did the darkness that later came from that foul Leinsterish druid—and from 
your own mind, Cormac mac Art." 
“So it can be done, the seizing of a man’s mind and making him to see what is 
not there, without sorcery?” 
Bas nodded. “It can, though whether it is of sorcery or no—who can say?” 
“You have this power, this knowledge?” Samaire asked. 
“It is available to me.” 
“I’ll be asking ye about that again, Druid,” Cormac mac Art assured him. “And 
methinks yours is the explanation, for those men in the great hall today were 
there, and so are their bones still. But the woman and the men who braced me 
here, all three slain before by me... those were not here, sure, for they left 
no prints at all in the dust, no sign.” 
Automatically Samaire looked down though Bas did not. 
“Cormac! Bas!” 
They whirled about; they followed her down-directed gaze. The trio stared at the 
footprints in the dust, only a little of which had dribbled down into the 
depressions. Cormac stepped forward, moving the torch. The prints of shod feet 
continued. They faded away into the darkness ahead of them whence that walker 
had come—for these prints led to the castle, not from it. In the darkness 
before, and with the torch held well up, none had noticed. 
“Yours,” Bas said, “from that other time.” 
“There be but one set,” Samaire said. 
Cormac squatted. “Nor are they yours... nor mine! Here, look here. These are 
ours, nearly gone now in the three months since we were here.” 
The three looked at the impressions in the dust and, in the light of the 
flickering torch, at each other. None needed to speak. The evidence was there. 
Someone, a man wearing buskins or sandals, had paced this subterrene corridor 
since Cormac and Samaire had, nor had it been one of the slain Britons. For 
there was but one set of prints, and they came from... wherever this tunnel led. 
To the sea, Cormac had previously assumed; he’d not gone on to be sure, for he’d 
been in haste to return to the great hall and the battle he had known was taking 
place there. It was in that fierce and bloody fight had been slain the Danes and 
Norse who had returned to slay again. 
“Cutha Atheldane we left dead,” Samaire whispered. 
“Aye, and the serpent,” Cormac said. “There was no other. But... from the sea, 
one must think, someone else has walked this ancient corridor—to the castle, but 
never from it.” 
Bas straightened up. “A mystery we can think on later,” he said. “He be not 
before us, and he be not in the castle either.” 
“Nevertheless,” Samaire said, and she unsheathed her sword. 
The three went on, in silence. 
The odour of the decay of death came to their nostrils before they reached the 
physical evidence. With wrinkled noses, they came to where lay the remains of 
the mighty serpent that had attacked Cormac. 
He told Bas of how he had nearly died from his error then; since he had been 
twice set upon by those that were not truly there, he had assumed the 
serpent—three times his length and more thick than his arm—to have been the 
same. 
“It was real enough,” he said. “And it took a lot of killing.” 
Despite the odour of putrefaction, Bas was pacing along the curving length of 
the dead reptile. Turning away, he sucked in a deep breath and released it, then 
sucked in another, which he held. The druid squatted beside the dead monster. 
“What is it, lord Druid?” 
“It is a dead serpent of impossible size, Cormac. A sea monster, one must 
suppose, for all know such frightful monsters inhabit the keep of Manannan mac 
Lyr. A serpent... dead, from the smell and the extent of its decay, less than a 
month.” 
Nor, could all Cormac’s and Samaire’s gasping and denials belie the evidence. 
Fact: near unto death in squeezing coils and with his shield ruined and his 
sword-arm pinned to his side, the son of Art had drawn his dagger, lefthanded, 
and stabbed his reptilian attacker many times in the space of a few seconds. 
Fact: he had slain the serpent, and gone on in pursuit of Samaire and the 
anomaly of a druid of the Norse. Fact: when they two had come back this way not 
long after, the great creature had lain dead as now, though without any decay at 
all. There had been a lake of blood, and Cormac had retrieved his sax-knife from 
the monster’s mouth. 
Fact, then: this enormous snake had been slain three months agone. 
Evidence: that it had begun to decay but a few more than a score of days before 
now; it had lain here two full months before began that ugly and stenchy process 
that begins in all creatures immediately after death, whether there be flies to 
lay their maggot-spawning eggs in the swelling corpse or no. 
There was no explanation. No... natural explanation. 
They went on, and soon Cormac was saying, “Ah. It was just beyond this bend that 
I came upon them at last—Cutha Atheldane and Samaire.” 
“I like not the way ye do put his name first,” Samaire said with a smile. 
Bas did not smile. “And here ye killed him.” 
“No no—here Samaire killed him! It was she who was the captive maid, ye see, and 
I the pursuing warrior. I suppose he heard my approach, and turned from her to 
stand ready to face me—doubtless to use his eyes and brain, and my eyes and 
brain, to confound me with more illusions. But the poor son of a donkey had 
turned his back on a warrior, not a helpless girl he’d kidnaped! He dropped to 
his knees and then stretched his length just as I caught sight of him... it was 
his own dagger he wore in him, to the hilt.” 
About to follow the turn of the passage, Cormac glanced back to show one of his 
almost-smiles. He directed at Samaire a look that saw past the prettiness of 
face and well-wrought womanly form. Then he went on and stopped with an oath. 
The others crowded in to look upon what his astonished eyes beheld: nothing. 
Of course they were certain, Samaire and Cormac told Bas with some heat; here 
had lain Cutha Atheldane. Aye, and he was dead. Here, this was his blood, Cormac 
said, holding up the dark-threaded dust. 
But Cutha Atheldane lay there no longer. 
The three stood close. None of them even approached comfort in the mind. 
“The footprints...” 
“Aye...” 
“A dead man... walked out of here...” 
“And... raised... others to await our return!” 
“Bas!” Cormac’s eyes were grimly bright. “That dead Norseman ye made to 
speak—can you remember that ye asked him twice for his name? First he commenced 
to reply ‘Cuth,’ and then said ‘no,’ for it was the wrong name. It was after ye 
asked him again that he pronounced that other name.” 
Bas nodded. “It’s right ye must have it, Cormac. It’s Cutha Atheldane Samaire 
slew, and Cutha Atheldane is dead. His body walks the earth, though, a husk now, 
guided by the brain of another. An undying brain, and how it came to be here, or 
where it lay all these centuries, who can say? But that brain is amove again, 
within a human body, and it seeks an ancient revenge, Cormac, on you.” 
“O ye gods,” Samaire murmured, “why talk ye so? Surely such things cannot be—a 
man from the past, who can resurrect the body of a man slain in the present—his 
future, and—” 
“A man,” Cormac said, with an arm across her back and a hand on her waist, “with 
naught for a face but bones—a death’s head!” 
Bas spoke, and in that place of eeriness and deathconquering sorcery his voice 
was passing quiet. 
“The man ye slew here, Princess Samaire, is dead, make no mistake. Like those we 
defeated today, and yet unlike them, he is... un-dead. For though he lay here in 
death, now he walks and plots again—Cutha Atheldane, driven by the vengeful mind 
of an ancient wizard... Thulsa Doom!” 
Chapter Nine: 
Memories
The men of Cormac mac Art went through the halls and rooms of the castle, 
collecting the booty stored there by Norse rievers or reavers: raiders from the 
sea. They gathered it in a glittering pile along the defense-hall across the 
fore of the castle. From there it would be carried down and through the winding 
pass to the shore, and thence onto the ships. 
Aye, ships, for now they possessed two, though their number totaled but 
fourteen: Cormac, and Bas the Druid, and Samaire and Wulfhere Skullsplitter of 
the Danes, and their Briton captive Osbrit, and nine men of Eirrin. 
Few of the company had ever seen so much wealth or such splendour. Often they 
paused in their work to exclaim or merely stare, dazzled by the brilliancy of 
jewels and the handsome richness of fine fabrics. 
There were bales and folded piles of standard fabrics—and of fine linens and 
silks and wools that were dyed in divers hues and often purfled or cunningly 
broidered with panels and strips of other colours. There was even a strip of 
cloth-of-silver, twice the length of Cormac—the second tallest man among them, 
after Wulfhere—and just under half as wide. Men blinked at its lustre. 
Earrings there were, and brooches and torts, and other ornaments. Two of the 
torts were so large and ornate as to constitute carcanets rather than the normal 
neck-rings worn by nearly every Celt of every land, whether Eirrin or Gaul or 
Britain. No less than a dozen good bracelets from the hand of the same artisan 
they discovered, in folds of the imperial red cloth of the Romans. Trade 
articles, Wulfhere opined. Of wrought bronze the wristlets were, and inlaid with 
gold, each decorated too with insets of agate and jasper in dark green and 
opaque yellow. 
Cormac and Samaire conferred briefly; soon nine men, aye and the armoured woman 
among them, happily wore each a new bracelet. 
Pearls there were too, though few really precious gems. A number of belts, 
scabbards, and two bracelets were studded with the red volcanic stones so 
popular among the Romans, porphyry. 
A single gold plate, so finely wrought that it must have been stolen by the 
Romans from the Greeks, they found too: surely it had been stolen in turn by the 
Vikings off the ship of some wealthy Roman en route to—or, more likely, 
from—Britain. Its value was obviously considerable. Samaire soon made it vanish 
amid folds and folds of excellent white linen—which was surely of Eirrin. 
Wulfhere approached the expedition’s leader, who stood thoughtfully in the great 
hall of butchery. The giant gestured. 
“The gold and jewels in that throne, Wolf, would ransom a king—and perhaps buy 
the retainers of one... such as Samaire’s murderous older brother.” 
“I’ll not be touching it, or have it touched,” Cormac said, gazing upon the 
great chair. It remained stately, despite the sword-hacking inflicted upon it by 
Bas. It was as if the chair itself owned and presided over the broad hall. 
Wulfhere thought upon that, and nodded. “Another time I’d call ye mad, Cormac. 
Now, knowing what I know of this place... I’d not touch it either.” 
“Then we’ll be asking no other man to theft from the king that caused this 
throne to be placed—to brood here for thousands of years.” 
“Some time,” Wulfhere said, “this year or next or twenty or fifty years hence, 
others will come here. It’s they will pry forth that silver chasing, the gold 
inlays, those emeralds and rubies and those strange stones that are like clear 
glass with their many faces.” 
“Diamonds,” Cormac said, “stones that cannot be cut. Aye. But not us.” Then he 
said, “But there’s naught to stop ye from returning, splitter of skulls, to 
collect what be here.” 
“There is,” Wulfhere assured him. “It’s happy I’ll be to leave this isle 
behind—and alone!” 
Cormac’s voice was almost a whisper: “Aye...” 
“It’s Samaire and Ceann her princely brother have such need for... the financing 
of their enterprise, Cormac. Is it fair to them, to leave all this?” 
Cormac looked into the other man’s eyes. Around them, as around his own, years 
in wind and sun and salt spray had worn and incised fine lines like the nascent 
erosion of a rain-swept plain. Above the flaming beard, Wulfhere’s face was like 
old ship’s wood. 
“An Prince Ceann wants that throne—I’ll tell him of it—he may return here for it 
himself!” 
Wulfhere’s grunting noise was a comment. He smiled, not with humour. “Ye have 
little love for our onetime companion... though much, methinks, for his sister.” 

“There’s no quarrel I have with Samaire’s brother, Wulfhere, and naught I 
harbour against him. He is the king’s son of Leinster, and the time I have spent 
in his company, good times and bad, convince me it’s a good ruler he’d be 
making.” 
“Still...” 
“It matters not,” Cormac said, with an impatient jerk of his head. 
Ceann he knew only tolerated Samaire’s relationship with him who’d once been a 
weapon-man in her father’s employ—and more latterly a pirate. Too. Ceann seemed 
at times to forget his own anomalous position—and who had rescued him and his 
sister from their Norse captors. Ceann Red-hair acted the role of the king he 
was not. To Wulfhere, though, Cormac mac Art saw no reason to tell any of this. 
He had braced Ceann Ceannselaigh afore, and doubtless would again. They’d also 
fought side by side, and endured and won through much, and accepted each the 
other’s counsel. 
And... though it might mean the state marriage de convenance of a kingly Ceann’s 
sister and Cormac’s last sight of her, he knew that the time would come when 
he’d be working to topple Feredach an Dubh and place Ceann on Leinster’s throne. 

Cormac glanced over to find that Wulfhere had departed from his side. They had 
long been companions; the Dane recognized at once when thought came heavily upon 
mac Art. Thinking was not Wulfhere’s province, and he well respected it in the 
Gael. Neither of them had a better friend than the other—until, perhaps, 
Samaire. Cormac noted that the fiery-haired giant had appropriated the largest 
of the axes dropped on this floor of bloody tiles, and the mailcoat that had 
belonged to the burliest of the Norsemen. 
Alone with the dead, the Gael returned again within himself. Wulfhere had called 
up Ceann into his mind, but it was of the prince’s sister Cormac thought. 
Samaire. 
He’d known her long, the princess with the Eirrin-green eyes. Long before his 
own years and years as blood-splashed reaver, an exile... 
Both bright and sturdy had been Art’s boy Cormac; the old druid Sualtim saw to 
the training of the lad’s mind while his father taught him the wielding of arms. 
Auspicious the name of Cormac son of Art of Connacht, for it had belonged 
centuries before to one of Eirrin’s very greatest kings. Unfortunately the boy’s 
stoutness and skill at arms, combined with the very name, attracted the notice 
of a man whose crown rested shakily on his aging head; High-king Lugaid was a 
fearful man on a throne that had been sat afore him by giants among men. Young 
Cormac knew naught of plots and scheming. His father paid no heed, he who was a 
descendant of great men though he wore no crown. But treachery was done by a man 
with fear upon him, and came the time when Art of Connacht was slain, and that 
mysteriously by an unknown hand. 
Young Cormac mac Art was not slow, either to learn or to adapt. His judgment was 
astonishingly logical, and good, for so Sualtim had trained his good mind. There 
could be no blood-feud with the Ard-righ, the High-king, not for a boy of 
Connacht and him both fatherless and motherless. 
Not yet a man, Cormac did what he must: he fled Connacht, ere his father’s fate 
could overtake him. 
The Connachtish youth was not recognized as the “Partha mac Othna of Ulahd” 
who—lying about his years—took warrior service in Leinster. He proved a good 
soldier and a good man, for all his being not yet a man. He remained apart from 
his fellow weaponmen in Leinsterish blue, lest they learn age or origin. Partha 
mac Othna kept his counsel, and was promoted even to the Command of a Hundred. 
Eventually he had still another secret, a dangerous one: a friend who became 
more than a friend, a girl but a year younger than himself. Fair and freckled 
she was, with eyes of a startling green and hair like a rich October sunset. 
Forfeit would have been the head of Partha/Cormac, had His Highness known of the 
young weapon-man’s friend and paramour—the king of Leinster’s own royal and 
well-betrothed daughter Samaire. 
Came the day when young Partha mac Othna well represented Leinster in the 
too-frequent warring between Leinster and Tara over the latter’s collection of 
the ancient and much-hated Boru Tribute. Spawn of a long-ago quarrel it was, and 
like a wedge driven into the heart of Eirrin or an insurmountable fence across 
the land. But it lingered on; no High-king forewent its collection or declared 
it banned. Leinsterish kings but tried... 
In that year, though the “tribute” was gained, the hero of the skirmishes was 
Partha mac Othna. 
He was so accomplished and valiant a weapon-man that some compared him with the 
legendary Cuchulain of old. And soon, on Tara Hill of Meath, High-king Lugaid 
learned the real name of the so-called son of Othna. It was High-kingly gold 
brought to an end that era of Cormac’s life. He was goaded, carefully and 
deliberately, into drawing steel at the Great Fair. Thus he slew; thus he broke 
the King’s Peace; thus he condemned himself. For he who broke the King’s peace 
at Fair-time stepped instantly outside the law, and must die—or flee. 
Samaire had wept that night, and assured him that she loved him. And then Cormac 
mac Art, driven already from home and home-land, was driven from Eirrin. He 
fled, outlaw. 
Then came the long years in which he was a farmhand, little more, in Dal Riada, 
on the southern coast of Alba. Next he was a warrior in the service of that 
king—until once again royal treachery was done on him. Pictish captivity 
followed, a captivity during which he’d have died had it not been for a Pictish 
girl, widowed but recently in her youth. After that came escape and the years as 
coastal raider, and then capture and imprisonment anew... and escape with a 
prison-made friend, a mighty and outsized man from the cold north. 
It was then Cormac and that new friend and comrade, Wulfhere the Dane, became a 
perfect pairing. With a crew of Danes, they raided every coast save that of 
Dane-mark and Eirrin—and far Norge. 
Was a vicious wind swept them here, an unfathomable whim of capricious gods. 
Then, by similar caprice, the gods saw that the life-line of Samaire of Leinster 
again intersected that of Cormac of Connacht, after over a half-score of years. 
That first night she had joined him as he lay beneath the sky, in whose chill 
starlight he’d slept so often. That night he slept but little, and he and 
Samaire had not been apart since. And now she had told him they’d part no 
more... 
She told me, aye, he mused, and I said naught to the contrary! 
Standing in the great hall of Kull’s Castle and gazing in silence upon corpses 
and skeletons and a floor cluttered too with dropped weapons and shields and 
helms, the memory-bound Cormac heaved a great sigh—and heard the approach of 
footsteps from behind. Instantly he turned, to see bright-eyed young Brian. 
Once I was bright of eye and clear of mind and bushy of tail, Cormac mused, 
cheerlessly, but he showed nothing. 
First making apology for the interruption of thoughts, Brian said, “All the 
booty be gathered at the tops of the stairs, Captain.” 
Cormac nodded. “It is late of afternoon for the loading of ships—and after that 
too late to launch them. It must be tomorrow we leave, Brian.” 
Brian looked about them with distaste, though Cormac saw no fear on the youth. 
“It’s another night we’ll be spending on this isle, then.” 
“Aye,” Cormac said. “Though some prefer to be away from this place and remain 
with the ships, I’ll wager there are others who’d be averse to leaving the 
amassed treasure!” 
Brian grinned. “True. And... Osbrit?” 
“Brian,” Cormac said, seeking to be gentle, “it’s... not my second ye be.” 
Brian slapped his head. “Och, it’s the Dane who sent me, my lord.” 
“Oh. Wulfhere.” Cormac nodded. Without appointment, Wulfhere had become his 
second in command. “But I be no man’s lord, Brian na Killevy. Hm; Osbrit. A 
badly frightened man. Not likely to attempt aught against one man, I’m thinking, 
much less a dozen. Nor likely, either, to want to be apart from the company of 
others... nor will he be attempting to sail off alone! Only Wulfhere could ever 
accomplish such as that. A man not to be worried over then, is Osbrit of 
Britain. Nor I noted has Wulfhere aught against him that be personal, from his 
captivity of the Britons.” 
“I think not, Captain—other than that Osbrit be neither Dane nor yourself! He be 
unsure of us, methinks, and... we be of him.” 
“Osbrit.” 
“The Dane, Captain.” 
“Wulfhere?” 
“Aye,” Brian said. “It be obvious he trusts none and is friend of none save 
yourself, Captain. We others are, after all, of Eirrin save Osbrit, who is a 
prisoner. Wulfhere is... neither.” 
Cormac faced about to fix Brian’s clear large eyes with his own dark gaze. 
“Brian: see you that all understand this, though quietly apprised. Wulfhere 
Hausakluifr is my blood-brother. It’s five men he’s worth, in any passage of 
arms.” 
When Brian looked not just doubting but shocked, Cormac twitched his mouth in 
what might have been taken for the hint of a smile. He said, “Very well then, 
Wulfhere be the worth of any five men—save myself. Ah, I see that goes down 
better—but see ye that ye make me no god, Brian I-Love-To-Fight of fair Meath! 
And see ye that all know this: it was for years I was the only man of Eirrin 
among a crew of Danes... his Danes... and we were comrades-at-arms, Brian; it’s 
brothers we all were.” 
Brian blinked more than once. “Champion of Eirrin, I meant not to imply that we 
respect him not, or that there be any sigh of trouble among us. Only a... 
certain... lack of comfort.” 
Cormac nodded shortly. “My name for that is foolishness; see that all know it. 
Now there is a place I wish to go, alone.” 
The young man took his dismissal with aplomb, as Cormac’s due. He returned to 
carry the plans to Wulfhere—and the leader’s words, quietly, among the others. 
Cormac, knowing where he went though not what he might find, took with him the 
long, long coil of rope he’d used to gain entry to the castle. 
Drawn somehow though he knew not by what, he ascended to the second floor again. 
He paced thoughtfully along the corridor until he reached a well-remembered 
room. Carrying a lighted torch in his hand and with sword loosened in sheath, he 
entered the fetid passageway that became subterranean tunnel. The old secret 
door he braced open after him. 
Chapter Ten:
The Roof of the World
Cormac mac Art was not certain why he paced again along this gloomy stone-braced 
corridor that had been so haunted by sorcery... and was now haunted by 
footprints of mystery. Perhaps he was deliberately—foolishly—tempting his new 
enemy, him he had not laid eyes upon. 
Foolhardy this trek again beneath the earth, and especially so with Bas, and the 
Gael knew it. Yet it was... irresistible. He was as if compelled, drawn by 
unseen hands or command, as those strange shipguiding stones were drawn ever to 
the north. Nor was it any new mood of Cormac’s, this need to be alone with his 
busy mind. 
Busy his mind was—and confused. 
It hummed and thrummed now with that sonorous name of menace: Thulsa Doom, 
Doom... 
Dust whispered beneath his feet and he fought the ugliness, the foreboding 
drumbeat inside his head. With will and stern determination, he wrestled his 
mind from its ugly thoughts elsewhere, to beauty... 
Samaire. 
Face and form to stir a man’s blood and rouse his body, to make his fingers fair 
tingle for the feel of her under them; these were Samaire of Leinster. 
A woman with the highness of pride in bearing and in those wide eyes the colour 
of grass in high summer, was Samaire daughter of Ulad Ceannselaigh. Slim and 
well-curved her body, full and well-curved her lips, which, as their ancestors 
in poet-honouring Eirrin would have told it, were red as the berries of the 
rowan-tree. 
Firm those lips became against him, and warm as if fiery so that there had been 
times when her mouth had seemed to burn while he listened to her quickening 
breath and felt her arms about him, felt her straining against him until his own 
arms were pulling her feverishly close. 
Yet there was more to Samaire, far more. Swift and skilled and unblanching in 
danger and combat she was; a warrior’s companion for she was herself a warrior. 
Cormac let his mind slip to her as he paced along the tunnel beneath the earth, 
breathing its fetid, vitiated air. 
She’d been wed, naturally enough, betwixt the time of his leaving Eirrin (when 
we were both but children, he now thought) and their coming together again on 
this rocky speck on the ocean. She was wed by her father to a prince of Osraige, 
a small strip of land that was to all but its proud king a part of Leinster. 
Samaire was not long a wife. Whilst aiding the Munstermen in resisting a Pictish 
incursion into their lands, the prince of Osraige took an arrow in the chest. It 
gave him his death, even as his men carried him homeward. Childless Samaire was, 
and no friend of her late husband’s mother. She returned to the home of her 
ancestors. 
Already death had visited that home, coming suddenly and without blood upon her 
father. His firstborn ascended to the high seat of proud but tributeladen 
Leinster. That son sat the throne well. He became it, as it did him. Though he 
retained close to hand most of those who had counseled his father, he created 
his brother Feredach high minister. 
Another brother there was still: Ceann mong Ruadh, whose wife had died in her 
bearing him a child. Widow and widower, Samaire and Ceann became the good 
friends and companions that they had not been, as children, for friendship were 
a difficult matter for siblings. 
The king was dead within a year, nor was there much doubt that it was his 
brother Feredach had him slain. 
And Feredach was king. He was soon called an Dubh, the Dark. A mean, unpopular, 
grasping and ever suspicious man was he, with the schemer’s usual suspicion that 
others were ascheming against him. Much time Ceann and Samaire spent together, 
for it was much they had in common. Feredach suspected them; Feredach feared 
them; Feredach did treachery on his younger brother and sister as he had on his 
elder. 
In a scurrilous bargain made worse because it was with Norsemen, Feredach saw 
that there was no possible claim on Leinster’s throne save his own. The men of 
Norge kidnaped and carried off Ceann and Samaire as one day they rode near the 
sea. 
Then had chance or the gods taken a hand—if Chance were not indeed a god. To 
this haunted isle whirlpool and storm brought Cormac and Wulfhere; here too the 
Norsemen brought Ceann and Samaire. Soon Feredach’s Viking hirelings were well 
paid in scarlet coin. Once he was freed of bonds and had snatched up sharp 
steel, the minstrel-prince Ceann took good toll among his own captors; all were 
slain. 
Across the sea Cormac escorted Ceann and Samaire, and across a third of Eirrin; 
through Picts and a lustful Munsterish soldier and an honour-less Munsterish 
king—and his honourable son. Through highwaymen in the Wood of Brosna and into 
Meath Cormac escorted them, and to Tara Hill and the palace of the High-king. 
Nor was the relationship of Cormac and Samaire less than one of friendship and 
companionry—nor still was it limited so, for they were man and woman. Each had 
been, long ago, the other’s first lover. 
Now a protected ward of the Ard-righ, Ceann remained in Eirrin but durst not go 
into his own Leinster. He was saying and doing the things that princes without 
crowns say and do when they’d have the throne of their fathers, but will not 
resort to murder. Such activities had much need of financing. And so Cormac had 
come back here, to a lonely, uncharted isle of rock and its castle peopled by 
ghosts and the crimsoned corpses of slain men. For here was the price of many 
cattle, and Ceann and Samaire needed such in their endeavours. 
With Cormac had come Samaire, for she’d not stay behind. And they’d met the 
grimmest and most horrible of powerful enemies, who sought dark vengeance on 
Cormac mac Art, though for nothing done by Cormac mac Art. And if the subterrene 
corridor were his haunt and den—Cormac walked now its dusty floor, alone. 
In that smooth-walled hallway of earth and stone, the thoughtful Cormac of 
Connacht came again upon the remains of the awesome serpent he’d slain. Called 
back by sight and smell from his thoughts to the present, he paused, staring. 
Then he went on, for this was not his goal. 
He came to that place where had lain Cutha Atheldane, and he paused. Thulsa 
Doom, Doom... 
Cormac gave his head a jerk to clear it of the drum-thrum and went on. On both 
the previous occasions of his being here—the second but a few hours past—there 
had been reason not to go on, but swiftly to return. Now there was no such 
reason. He would see what lay ahead, toward what Cutha Atheldane had fled. He 
walked on, through untrod dust, dust that had lain here without stirring for... 
what man could know how long? Dust rose in little clouds at each step, so that 
he was able to see his feet only when one lifted in a step. 
Thulsa Doom, Doom... 
The torchlight flickered off smooth, close-set walls and floor smooth and soft 
with its layer of dust. The tunnel ran straight now, without the constant 
leftthen-right baffles. 
Though he was not able to see ahead more than a few body-lengths, Cormac knew by 
the sensation in legs and broad back that he had begun to ascend. He was 
surprised. He had assumed the tunnel ran on down, to the sea. Instead, it 
leveled at about the place where Cutha Atheldane had died... and risen again... 
and then it began to elevate once more, though at a most gentle incline. 
Cormac walked on, ascending. 
Was the tunnel turning, bending? He could not be sure; he was unable to see far 
enough ahead to make such a determination. It seemed so; he felt that he was 
both ascending and rounding a long gentle bend. 
He walked on. Dust puffed up about his legs. The name walked with him, grimly 
stalking the hallways of his mind. Thulsa Doom, Doom... 
Now he saw clearly a curve up ahead, for it was somehow illumined. The tremulous 
light from the glim he carried rayed out not so far, but by some other light he 
could see that curving wall, could see the tunnel disappear to the left. A 
feeling of the eerie eddied about him with the dust. It strove to settle between 
his shoulder blades and chill his back, a nervousness and foreboding that had no 
name and could not be explained. 
Cormac shrugged and twitched his shoulders as if to free them of something 
palpable. 
He had reached across his lean, mailcoated belly to set hand to his sword 
pommel, shaped for enwrapping fingers. His fingers enwrapped it. He felt 
well-shaped, heat-hardened wood and the cool touch of insets of bronze and 
silver, tooled and chiseled. He drew the long sword slowly; there was only the 
faintest of sounds as steel blade slid from leather-covered, bronze encircled 
scabbard. Dust hissing and eddying about his feet and lower legs, he paced 
watchfully forward. 
Cormac began rounding the long curve in the tunnel, and two facts made 
themselves known to his senses. The light came not from the walls, but from 
ahead. It grew brighter. And the air was better, far less stagnant, imbued with 
less of that unpleasant mephitic odour. 
Tunnel’s end at last, he thought, and stopped. 
First he checked his strike-a-light. Then, snuffing the torch in thick dust, he 
placed it against the wall of the corridor. He gripped his shield; while he had 
carried the torch, he had but “worn” the targe, with his arm through its straps. 
Above, over his shoulders, was the coil of rope. 
Sword and shield at ready, he advanced along the curving hall, of earth and 
stone. The light grew and the air became sweeter still. He felt the stir of a 
faint breeze. 
Then he saw daylight. A patch of fleece-decorated cerulean sky formed the very 
top of a slender oval opening; below the sky reared shadowed rock of grey and 
black. Unmenaced but silent and ready, he went forward. The patch of sky grew. 
He saw that the aperture through which he must pass was little more than the 
width of his shoulders. Clean air wafted in, bearing with it the familiar saline 
tang of the sea. 
Cormac mac Art emerged from the subterrene escape-route from the Castle of 
Atlantis, and he drew in great lungsful of clear clean air, which he released in 
long suspirations. He looked about. 
Above him: the sky of autumn, in late afternoon. To his left, a stony wall, 
slightly convex, so that a man standing above might well look down into the 
shadowy slice in the rock without seeing the niche that was the tunnel’s mouth. 
Directly ahead: the same dark stone. Behind him: the niche; a doorway opening 
into the tunnel. And to his right: another niche, also slender and framed all in 
sky. The tunnel emerged through a cleft into another, then, a sort of roofless 
vestibule. 
After a few moments, Cormac left it. The coiled rope on his shoulder brushed the 
stone on his left. 
First he saw the sea, far below. At nearly the same time, he both saw and felt 
the existence of another natural phenomenon, a sinister one. Cormac stopped, 
very suddenly indeed. Simultaneously he did his best to lean backward. 
He was on the brink of death. 
Once, a long granitic slope had perhaps swept down to the dark sea. Surely only 
if that were true would the tunnel have been brought to its terminus here. But 
inconceivable time had passed, and wrought its changes. Now an escape tunnel 
ending at this place was no less than insanity. Over the thousands of years, 
wind and sea had done their work. The slope had been chewed up and swallowed, 
the ocean moving in as a predator on its quarry. 
Yet Cormac knew how great rearing formations of solid granite could break; he 
remembered the “earth”-quake he himself had experienced so recently at sea, not 
far from here. Perhaps there had been no slow relentless chewing away at all. 
Perhaps the slope’s death had not been the result of weathering, but had taken 
place all in a day—or within seconds. 
Whatever the cause, the Gael was now on the brink of a cliff. 
He stood on a short narrow shelf atop a sheer beetling precipice that could have 
been laid with a plumb-line. The basaltic butte dropped from his feet straight 
to a jumble of jagged rocks against which the restless sea lapped. It was a 
nigh-straight wall, as though he stood atop an unusually high watch tower of one 
of those Roman forts in Britain, or a Cromlech raised to the glory of Crom by an 
army of devoted giants. 
He stood as if on a natural balcony above the abyss. 
How far below were those ominous crags and uprearing rocks and lapping waters he 
could not know; there was no measurement available, no frame of reference. The 
vertical distance was many times his own height: many. 
Nor yet was he at the very summit of this wall of rock that frowned down upon 
the hungry sea as though erected as a bulwark against it. Granite and anciently 
piled ejecta rose behind him a spear-length more. 
Cormac stood gazing out over the ocean. It was dark from this height, not blue 
but a vast lonely plain of opaque, dark green glass. Well out-probably a day’s 
journey away, were one able to walk that porphyritic plain-the water shone where 
the sun’s slanting rays turned it into an opalescent mirror. On and on, out and 
out the ocean ran uninterrupted, until it met a sky going deep blue; the sun was 
behind Cormac. 
Here was the nearest to any concept of eternity, Cormac mac Art mused, that 
living man could approach in his limited mind: Timeless sea becoming sky across 
untold distance, seen from many spearlengths above. 
That thought brought taunting horror and menace swooping back into his brain 
like hungering vultures. Their wings thrummed... Any living man. But Cutha 
Atheldane; was he a living man? This Thulsa Doom who had lived and practiced his 
evil sorceries so long ago, so incredibly long ago—was he a living man? 
By some unholy and totally arcane means Thulsa Doom seemed to have survived the 
enormous span of years separating Cormac’s time from that of Kull. The wizard 
must have a more knowledgeable concept of inconceivable eternity than any man on 
the ridge of the world, whether living or dead... or Undead. 
Cormac jerked his head as if he’d been struck on the helm and sought to clear 
his brain of the awful sound-from-within known to many warriors. 
Turning, he squinted to look upward. Then he lowered his head to peer within the 
sheltered crevice into which the tunnel debouched. Aye... that was a handhold 
sure, and that little eruption of basaltic rock would bear his foot, and that 
depression would accept two fingers... 
He stood high up, but it were possible to stand higher still. The call to ascend 
to the summit was irresistible. Entering the little alcove of rock once more, so 
that a fall would not mean automatic death, he ascended. 
A few minutes later Cormac mac Art stood atop what a swift sweep of his slitted 
eyes assured him was the highest point on the isle Wulfhere had named 
Samaire-heim. 
Samaire-heim possessed neither the beauty nor warmth of its namesake. From 
Cormac sloped away a lifeless plain of granite and igneous rock. The sprawling 
desolate plateau showed the wearing of relentless time only by the dark shadows 
of pockmarks and small eruptions of harder stone that had resisted the 
weathering. 
A desert of rock it was, and it mocked him with a taunting dead silence. 
Glints in the rays of the lowering sun fixed the castle’s location for him. He 
knew those glittery reflections marked the bronze projections set high up on the 
walls of the keep. From his feet this broad mesa sloped down to that point and 
flanked the valley that sliced through it. Studying, he tried to calculate. The 
distance between himself and the castle, he judged, might be just under that 
measurement the Romans had named after their own marching legionaires: a mile. 
The roof of the world, Lugh Man-hunter had said. Lonely and desolate that roof, 
a bleak plain unmarked by the green of life. 
Aye, Lugh, Cormac mused, and if so, this spot marks the edge of the world! And 
it’s nigh flat the top of the world is, and the world no more than two of those 
Roman miles long and perhaps one and a half across. And surrounded by water! 
Aye, and with but one valley, like a slice out of the middle of a loaf of bread. 

Almost he smiled. It was an interesting concept, but one for poets and 
philosophers. He heard the call of a wild goose and saw it flapping over the 
“roof of the world.” Behind him, a soaring waterfowl screeked as if in reply. 
Another sound from behind and below attracted his attention. He forgot the 
birds. Cormac spun, sword scraping out, and looked down. But he saw nothing, and 
had to step to the very edge of the cleft in order to peer down into the little 
rocky alcove. 
Below, obviously having just emerged from the tunnel, a huge red-bearded man was 
looking up at him. 
“Wulfhere! What—why be ye here, man?” “Seeking a hand up,” Wulfhere said, 
stretching up a brawny arm. 
Chapter Eleven:
When Friend becomes Foe
First passing up ax and shield, a helmeted and mailcoated Wulfhere took the hand 
of his old comrade. With a few grunts on both sides, two and a half hundred 
pounds of Danish giant joined Cormac on the island’s very summit. 
“Now why came you here, Wulf, other than to strain my arms?” 
Wulfhere bent to pick up his buckler and slide it onto his arm, then he fetched 
up the great ax. Its thick helve matched the length of his arm; its head was 
nearly twice the size of his hand. 
“Not the ax ye took from our Briton friend on the strand,” Cormac observed, “nor 
yet the one ye plucked up from the floor in the castle. It’s fickle ye grow in 
your declining years, O drinker of overmuch Briton ale!” 
Cormac’s scarred, dark face had just commenced to form one of his almost-smiles. 
It died there as he called on battle-born reflexes to hurl himself away from the 
edge of the giddy precipice—and away from the rushing ax of his friend. 
Cormac hit the ground and rolled. Without terminating the rolling movement, he 
came to his feet as smoothly as flowing water. And somehow, nearly exceeding the 
possible, his sword was in his hand. He much regretted having slipped his shield 
off his arm to aid Wulfhere’s climb. 
“Wulfhere! Has all sense of humour fled ye too, man?” 
The Dane’s only reply was in the form of motion. Already charging after the 
other man, he was bringing his ax back across in a new sweep to cleave Cormac in 
twain. 
Too late for Cormac to adopt a favourite tactic and lunge forward within the 
sweep of the whizzing ax. Too late to parry or duck; he drove down with his 
right leg to hurl himself in the same direction as the ax’s swing. He heard 
death whish through the air as it rushed past his head. Cormac kept moving. 
Swinging back, squatting and rising all in a single fluid movement while his 
gaze remained on the big man, he snatched up his shield. 
“I put down this shield to aid up my best friend, man! Wulfhere! STOP! What are 
ye DOING, man?” 
Cormac’s voice slapped hollowly out across bare rock mesa and the darkling 
flatness of the sea. It seemed to echo from the thick broad form of Wulfhere 
Hausakluifr too; certainly voice and words had no other effect. Even while he 
brought his ax from its rightward-terminating backswing, the Dane was rushing 
forward to crush and overwhelm his chosen foe with silent ferocity. 
Cormac backed, watching, thinking rapidly. 
Cormac mac Art had never fought this man. He had battled beside Wulfhere, 
though, for several years. Each had saved the life of the other far more than 
once, directly and indirectly in the swift-moving matter of immeasurable 
seconds, split instants. 
Lean and wiry, Cormac fought with swiftness—and brain. He observed even those 
who were his allies. He knew Wulfhere’s fighting methods. He knew the mighty 
ax-swing that must be arrested by the arm that guided it, knew the almost 
inevitable looping backswing, lower, curving upward, during which the outsized 
man covered himself with heavy buckler. Occasionally he exerted some little 
offensive efforts with that buckler; seldom were they more than reflexive, 
defensive movements of his left arm until his right could launch its attack 
anew. He had seen, too, the way Wulfhere closed with opponents; seen him bowl 
them over with the momentum of his bullish charges. Backed by gigantic height, 
great bulk, and tremendous strength, those closing charges were irresistible. 
Wulfhere fought as he was constructed. Wulfhere Skull-splitter of Dane-mark was 
not a thinker; he was animal, he was brute strength, he was nigh onto 
indefatigable and thus undefeatable. 
But not, Cormac hoped, irresistible and undefeatable by a man who knew how he 
fought! 
Though unusually tall, Cormac was a lean man whose musculature did not bulge, 
but flowed sinuously to knot here and there in stress. Like steel wire his 
muscles were, and yet, at the same time, fluid. Cormac’s strength was great, 
shocking, because he knew how to use it. 
The Gael’s way was to hew and stab, aye, but not to seek to overwhelm. He 
pounced and struck, and was away and back again in seconds, like the gaunt wolf 
that was his namesake. There was no way his size could overwhelm a foeman, save 
in his reach; he fought viciously, and that overwhelmed. Nor could Cormac be 
bothered with what some called “civilized fighting.” Battling for one’s life 
could not, to him, be bounded about with rules. Thus with wooden sword and light 
buckler he had shocked his opponents in contests in Eirrin, and thus defeated 
them to become champion, but a month gone by. 
He was a man who battled with sword or dagger or ax... and shield, and knee and 
foot and rush. Strike and sweep and thrust, smash and delicately stab and 
withdraw; all were within his unwritten book of combat. He was the consummate 
fighter, in whom a barbarian leapt to the fore when he faced a death-bringing 
antagonist. On more than one occasion Wulfhere had avowed that his Gaelic friend 
had no specific style at which to point. 
And Cormac was intelligent. 
If he had a rule, it was a simple one: learn swiftly from successes and from 
errors, so as never to make the same mistake twice. He had become, in this the 
year the Christians were calling four-hundred eighty-eight or ninety, or 
ninety-one or -two, the most terrible of warriors: an intellect-backed barbarian 
of great strength, shocking swiftness, and few scruples; in combat, he had none. 

These attributes Cormac mac Art was now forced to pit against the brutish 
strength and attack of his friend and longtime fellow reaver. With awful silent 
ferocity, Wulfhere charged him. 
High above the lapping dark sea, the wolf fought the bear. 
Cormac waited until the last possible moment as that great bulk rushed upon him, 
like a thick grappling bear. 
Then the Gael dodged to his left with a speed Wulfhere could not match—and as 
Cormac made that gliding sideward motion, his sword leaped out like a striking 
snake. The point just touched, with a tiny ting sound, Wulfhere’s coat of 
scalemail. 
“Stop this, Wulfhere! Three killing strokes I’ve avoided—and could have slain 
ye, then. Stop it, man!” 
Still the Dane said nothing. He lashed out with the edge of his shield at 
Cormac’s sword. A blur of silvery steel, that brand flicked away to spoil, with 
its flickering serpentine readiness and speed, the short ax-cut Wulfhere made. 
That tactic, too, Cormac knew. 
“You are open at this instant, Wulfhere!” 
But the Dane made no reply. 
Instead that grim silent killing machine lashed back with the ax in a cut so 
much more vicious that Cormac dared not meet it with his buckler. With a 
skillful twist of his arm he used the targe to bash away the heavy steel blade. 
Impact and crashing clang were enormous. At the same time he sought to give 
Wulfhere a bash in the side with his sword, a stroke that would hurt and leave a 
bruise without cutting the scales of steel mail. For still Cormac mac Art could 
not bring himself to launch a killing attack on his friend. 
That gentler stroke the giant with the bushy red beard avoided with a writhing 
movement. Around came his shield, and Cormac’s only just caught the blow. The 
two bucklers slammed together with a terrific crash and clanging thud, and 
Cormac was hurled backward. 
Still the Dane came. 
His friend flailed, backing precipitately inland along the sloping mesa of 
stone—until his foot came down on a fist-sized upcrop of rock. 
Cormac felt himself falling back and knew that he was going to stretch his 
length. It was not instinct but self-control and the result of long experience 
that prevented him from windmilling his arms. 
Before his buttocks struck unyielding ophitic rock, Cormac’s sword-arm was 
before him, and not only to protect elbow and grip. His wrist was amove, his 
swordblade weaving a silvery net of defense and steel menace before him. And 
then above him, for with a grunt and jingle of steel links and a jarring impact 
that clashed his teeth, he struck the rocky mesa. His eyes saw lightning-shot 
darkness as he sprawled full length on his back. 
His head continued to buzz; his eyes he cleared. 
Wulfhere came on, still in morbid silence that was more blood-chilling than the 
man’s usual battle-cries, curses, and fabulous threats. The battle-light was in 
his eyes, and Cormac knew horror. He knew, finally, that this was no joke, no 
game. 
Wulfhere Hausakluifr meant to kill his best friend. 
Already the Dane’s shield was in position as protective barrier against the 
fallen man’s sword. Wulfhere’s other arm was rising. The lowering sun flashed 
off the broad steel blade. In seconds it would descend to hurtle down in a 
totally irresistible chop that would drive the terrible blade through the body 
of his longtime piratic comrade until it rang off the rock beneath him. 
Perhaps Cormac could roll and escape, then in a swift movement chop into the 
back of the man’s legs. But... cripple Wulfhere forever? No, better to slay 
him—if he could. Once that swift thought and decision had formed in his mind, it 
was too late to roll, and no sensible man would attempt to brace a shield 
against such a blow. 
Cormac drove both feet straight up under the short skirt of the other man’s 
tunic and coat of scale mail. 
Wulfhere’s eyes went spherical and bulged as he was jolted to a halt. His ax 
descended, but weakly and erratically. The Gael was able to turn that blow with 
his shield, though it split. 
Wulfhere was busy trying very hard to breathe, and to see past the tears that 
filled his eyes, as though his crotch and his lachrymal glands were directly 
connected. 
Cormac’s body catapulted upward; his sword crashed against the Dane’s helmet 
with a frightful ringing clang. The blade he was willing to sacrifice, if he 
could knock the man unconscious so as to hear what he had to say while bound and 
with dagger at his throat. 
The blade did not break; Wulfhere remained conscious. Momentum, the weakness the 
other man’s kick had sent into his legs, and the blow to his helmeted head drove 
him to his knees. Cormac pounced away behind him. Wedge-shaped sword-point 
touched scales of steel where they lay between muscle-layered shoulder blades. 
“Release the ax, Wulfhere. It’s no wish I have to lean on this sword—and 
remember that I could have chopped or stabbed ye already.” 
Wulfhere swept back his right hand. Cormac had the barest instant in which to 
decide: drive with his blade into the big man’s back, or get his legs out of 
reach of the ax Wulfhere sent blindly around and back to shorten him. 
Cormac did both. Pressure on his point did not send it through the Dane’s 
scalemail, but provided Cormac the leverage and pivot-point he needed to spring 
into the air. The ax missed his legs; his weight on his own sword drove Wulfhere 
forward and down. 
The Gael alighted. He stepped back, unwinded and unscathed, and ran his tongue 
over his lips. He waited. 
Wulfhere rolled over and glowered up at him. 
“I had rather talk about whatever it be that’s driving ye to attack me thus, my 
friend,” Cormac said. “Twice I have had the opportunity to slay; twice I have 
not, for my last wish is to kill Wulfhere Skullsplitter! Now what means this 
maniacal attack on me your friend, man—and this silence that becomes ye not?” 
Without a word, Wulfhere rose. He hefted ax and buckler. Looked at the other 
man. And bent his knees in warrior’s combative crouch. Nor was there friendship 
in his eyes. 
Still without a word, the towering Dane put up his shield before him, holding it 
like a battering ram, and came rushing. The mighty ax swung on high even as he 
charged—maintaining his eerie silence. 
“DAMN ye, man!” Cormac bellowed in his horror and frustration. 
He stood his ground. To the left he let his dark eyes flicker, a telltale act to 
a man of Wulfhere’s experience and expertise. At the last possible instant in 
the face of the other’s rushing charge, Cormac hurled himself to his right. 
Wulfhere’s stroke had already commenced, and the adjustment of his aim to his 
own right was begun, for the Dane knew when he saw an opponent’s eyes picking 
out the direction of his evasive dodge! 
But that sideward glance had been a sophisticated feint on Cormac’s part. Nor 
was Wulfhere swift enough now to halt his charge and ax-swing... nor, 
disconcerted by his chosen enemy’s leaping in the direction opposite the 
expected, to avoid tripping over the leg Cormac left stretched behind. 
Wulfhere must have felt triumphant to see that his foeman had inadvertently got 
his back to the cliff and could no longer give ground with such facility. Cormac 
had given no thought to the cliff but indeed had backed to within arm’s length 
of it without knowing, so overwhelmed was his mind by this inexplicable attack. 
Without so much as a cry of any sort, Wulfhere Skullsplitter flew out into 
cavernous space and rushed down through the depthy void that separated cliff 
from sea. 
“NO!” Cormac roared, and jerked himself up into a squat, twisting half about to 
stare... down. 
Now he had his frame of reference for measuring distance from cliff’s edge to 
tide-washed rocks. Now he had a point of comparison that enabled a man with a 
seaman’s eye to judge distance. 
The twisted, mailed body that lay on the ragged rocks below could be concealed 
by his uplifted index finger. Now Cormac could assume that the distance 
separating him from the broken, stone-pierced corpse of his former comrade and 
friend was more than twenty times the length of his own body. 
Wulfhere did not so much as twitch. 
“Ah, Wulfhere,” Cormac muttered, and his voice caught in his throat. “Damn ye, 
man... why?” 
Chapter Twelve:
When Companion becomes Lover
Cormac mac Art slumped, lying on his side and breathing through his open mouth. 
He stared down and down at the moveless, broken body of him who had been his 
best friend. But the Gael’s dark, stricken eyes hardly saw that smashed, twisted 
form that lay over a hundred feet below. 
What he saw was behind his eyes. Wulfhere was dead. Cormac remembered all the 
years with Wulfhere... 
There had been the time on dreary little Iona, off Alba’s rocky westward coast. 
He had been climbing, foolishly and rashly as it fell out. And fell was the 
word. Tumbling and rolling and flailing, Cormac fell—and Wulfhere Skullsplitter 
moved his bulk with astonishing swiftness. He broke the Gael’s fall with his own 
huge body, not without a sore bruising to both men. 
“It’s wolf ye are, not goat,” the Dane had said with equanimity, once they were 
again on their feet. “And do shout out next time ye be of a mind to try such a 
leap, Gaelic madman... this time I barely moved fast enow!” 
Madman, Cormac thought now, and he heaved a sigh. Surely he had just been 
attacked by a madman. 
Why? 
Cormac recalled those several occasions on which he had, according to the 
battle-loving Dane, “cheated” him of his beloved ax-hewing. 
“Selfish son of an Irish pig-farmer!” Aye, Cormac could hear the huge man’s 
grumble even now, chiding him for such as having “slain more than his share,” or 
silently, savagely striking down foemen ere Wulfhere had reached the scene of 
sword-reddening combat. 
“This world holds no place for a lone wolf, Wolf,” Wulfhere had told him once, 
off the Isles of Orkney. Aye, and it was a team they’d become. 
Cormac remembered a daring raid on Saxon shores. He shook his black-maned head, 
remembering... 
Wulfhere, slipping in a glittering sheet of blood to fall with heels high, had 
been fair game for a grinning Saxon wielding an ax that rivaled the weight of 
Wulfhere’s own. In his desperate rush to be there in time, Cormac had been 
forced to set foot on the fallen Dane’s broad chest in order to drive his blade 
straight up through the Saxon’s intestines. The man died with his triumphant 
grin replaced by a look of great surprise. His own momentum bore him down on the 
Gael’s blade so that its point appeared reddripping at his back. In toppling, 
the Saxon downed his slayer. Onto Wulfhere both fell. Beneath the two bodies, 
one quick and one stare-eyed dead, Wulfhere Hausakluifr had groaned. 
“Get ye off me, black-eyed Gaelic hog! Think ye that ye be without weight?” 
Cormac shoved away the corpse and scrambled off his friend. “It’s your worthless 
life I’m after saving,” he grumbled, dragging himself to his feet to find none 
remaining afoot but Danes; he and Wulfhere and their company had triumphed once 
more. 
“HA!” Wulfhere bellowed, grunting his way to his feet. “I merely lay taking my 
rest, in wait for him! Wouldn’t he have been surprised when I caught his ax in 
both hands and gelded him with it! And ye had to spoil it, and walk all over me 
withal! Think ye I be a carpet, Cormac, damn ye?” 
“Nay, Wulfhere, only the greatest liar abroad on the Narrow Seas!” 
The two battle-reddened men had looked at each other, and about them their crew, 
men of Wulfhere’s Dane-mark, awaited their countryman’s reaction to that 
insufferable word. 
The tension lasted not long. 
Dark, cleanshaven Gael and huge red-bearded Dane were soon both laughing, with 
the bigger man clapping a ham-like hand to each of the other’s shoulders with 
force enow to stagger him. 
“Liar am I, eh?” Wulfhere Hausakluifr roared. “Blood brother!” 
“Blood brother!” Cormac called, and all about them gore-shining blades rose in a 
delighted Danish hail. 
Blood brothers, the dark Eirrin-born Gael and the red-bearded ruddy-cheeked 
northerner. 
Remembering, Cormac bit into his lower lip and sighed again, heavily. He 
recalled the depth of their relationship, their way of working together... For 
gold, the two reavers had undertaken to contract their crew to a mission for an 
unlikely employer: Gerinth, one of the Britonish kings. With care and shrewdness 
the Gael had worked out his plan. It was beyond Wulfhere’s understanding. 
“I am done seeking to reason out your actions,” Wulfhere had growled. And he had 
acquiesced to Cormac’s plan, which led to battle after gore-smeared battle. A 
fine scheme it had been—and that fine scheme might well have come to naught 
without the giant Dane and his flailing ax. 
Aye, Cormac thought now. Wulfhere had said the same afore that time, and after. 
And always he had followed Cormac’s stratagems natheless. But... what mad reason 
was there now for this action of Wulfhere... his last action? 
Cormac stared down twenty times the length of his body at the corpse of the best 
fighting man, the best companion he had ever known. Misery and despair fell on 
mac Art. They added their burden to that of foreboding, the menace of resistless 
vengeance from an unknown sorcerer for reasons no better understood. 
Why, Blood-brother? 
Cormac turned away, blinking. 
Lying there at cliff’s edge, he touched his coil of rope. He considered the 
ridiculous: to make it fast and clamber down, back-walking the sheer seawall. To 
what purpose? To twist the blade of self-torturing remorse in himself by looking 
upon a dead friend?—he felt it sharply enow already. To see the bright 
too-familiar scarlet of Wulfhere’s life all over those rocks? To look into 
staring eyes and force himself to tears? To see the face of a dead blood-brother 
whose blood had all run out? To ask of an unhearing corpse his torturing 
question... why? 
He shook his head. No. Let Bas demand answers of raised corpses. Cormac would 
not—nor would Wulfhere be rising. 
Yet... to let him lie asprawl there so, a huge robust hearty giant of a man now 
hanging like a bit of sail-cloth caught over stones to dry... 
Cormac mac Art ground his teeth. Last night, he thought, I saved him from the 
sea. Today he tried to slay me. Now it’s back at the sea’s edge he is, and dusk 
comes soon, and then the tide. From the sea I saved him; on the sea he chose to 
live; let the sea have him in death. 
“Return to the sea, Wulfhere,” he said, aloud, though without looking down again 
at the Dane. Cormac would look on him no more. 
“Cormac?” 
Blood of the gods! So distrait was Cormac that he started violently, an unworthy 
reaction in a man who’d let a Briton serpent wriggle across his prone body not 
once but twice, on that dusky day when he’d lain in wait for a Saxon raiding 
party. 
He felt himself quiver, and knew what a pitiful state he’d let himself get to, 
over a friend who had betrayed and attacked him and whose death was none of 
Cormac’s doing, but the same as suicide—with justice for his last acts. 
The voice came again. “Cormac?” 
He turned over to peer down into the little alcove of rock that was tunnel’s 
end. It was darker now, with the sun lower and the sky starting to frown at its 
leavetaking. He could just see her face, a pale oval as she gazed up at him. 
“Cormac!” Samaire repeated, not merely questioning now but in fearful anxiety. 
“What’s amiss—did I startle you?” 
He forced himself to make reply. “A—aye. You... startled me.” 
“It’s sorry I am. I heard you speak...” 
He frowned. “No, I said nothing.” 
“It sounded like, uh, ‘Turn to the sea, Wulfhere.’” 
“Oh.” Cormac strove to clear his brain, to adjust to this intrusion on his 
anguish and to speak normally. “Oh. Spoke I aloud?” 
“Aye,” she said. She was still frowning. Her knowledge that something was amiss 
prevented her remarking on their odd position for such converse: she standing 
below and craning her neck, he asprawl and looking down at her. “But my love... 
Wulfhere? I just left him, as I came to seek you.” 
Cormac’s stomach lurched. He made two attempts before he was able to form words. 
“You just... what... what did Wulfhere, when ye saw him last?” Gods; it was as 
if worms crawled about on his body and within his guts. 
“Why, it’s back in the castle the overgrown boy is, and half drunk already.” 
With amusement in her voice: “He was bawling out challenge to all and any from 
the Other Side of death who’d care to come forth and face his ax, dead foes or 
live sorcerer!” 
Samaire chuckled, for she could not see Cormac’s expression. 
“Wulf... but—but Sa... Samaire...” 
“Cormac!” 
He fought to control himself; be strong, why alarm her so? “He was thus, and ye 
came directly along the passage, along the tunnel, so that he can... he cannot 
be aught else but behind you?” 
“Aye. O’course. Cormac, methinks—” 
“Bear... with me,” he said, more confused and truly fearful than ever before in 
his life. Resistless sorcery stalked him, loomed grim and threatening, and he 
could not know B from L or what was white and what black. 
“I’m all right... dairlin girl,” he said huskily, striving with all his might to 
give the semblance of truth to the lie. A thousand ants seemed at the running of 
footraces over his body, while his arms and back had gone chill under tunic and 
mailcoat. Seeking sanity, he fled the dread impossible and spoke the mundane. 
“Why have you followed me?” 
Samaire answered with seductive softness, “Why, to be alone with you, love.” 
He stared down at her. “You came not to attack me?” 
Again she cried out his name, this time more in confused accusation than 
apprehension. “Cormac!” 
Before he could wrestle forth words from his clouded mind and tense lips, 
Samaire chuckled. It was a rippling throaty sound that he liked much and had so 
told her. 
“Oh!” she said. “Aye then... I came to attack you, king of my heart. I followed 
you because I want you.” 
He knew that he was not responding properly, in words or body, to that frank 
statement. But he could not, not yet. “Samaire,” he said with a grave 
seriousness that sent her smile afleeting. He heard his own voice shake. Cormac 
took control of himself as though he were a nervous but strong-willed rider on a 
worse than nervous horse. He had to. Else he’d be gibbering, and Cormac mac Art 
knew it. 
“Behind ye,” he said, intoning words in the manner of a druid at his most solemn 
rites, “is the only way out of that pit, save the tunnel. Have care—one step 
through and it’s death. But... do you look forth, and down... and tell me what 
you see.” 
He clenched his teeth, angered that he’d let those last several words tumble 
forth in such a rush. 
Samaire raised her hand to her cheek. An extended finger rubbed nervously in her 
hair, at the ear, where she had the wispiest of golden sideburns. She was 
frowning and a tremor rode her voice. 
“What is it, my love? It’s far from natural you are!” 
He heard the pleading note and was moved—but he firmed his jaw. “Please, 
Samaire. Do you look as I asked.” 
After a moment, she did so without a word, and he knew he’d put hurt upon her. 
From above he gazed at her back, with the thick mass of curling vermillion 
tresses bright against the dark leather. Her hair appeared recently to have been 
much-combed. 
Samaire emitted a startled “oh” on discovering the sheer drop at her feet, and 
clutched at the edge of that doorway that oped upon plummeting death. 
“The sea,” the woman said. “The endless ocean I see, and awful rocks like teeth 
directly below. Ugh! Far below.” 
O ye gods my ancestors swore by and found solace... “Look... look ye to the left 
along those rocks!” he commanded with a sudden desperate urgency. He could not 
look. 
She did, and he watched her head turn both to the left and then rightward. 
“Cormac... the sea. Water. And more rocks. Stones and great rearing boulders. A 
spot of sand here and there. And it’s not happy I am looking down on such; it 
puts a dizziness on me. Cormac? What—love, what am I to see?” 
But Cormac lay shuddering, holding his breath, clenching fingers into palms 
until the nails deeply dented even that calloused skin. He nerved himself. With 
a sudden lurch, he twisted onto his side. And he looked down. 
He remembered the words of Osbrit the Briton. O ye gods, he’d babbled in his 
horror, and Behl show mercy, and the most poignant, man reduced to boy by horror 
and the unknown: Gods! O mother... 
“Behl help!” Cormac exclaimed, and his voice broke as it teetered on hysteria’s 
brink. 
Wulfhere’s body was no longer there. 
Cormac fell back. He stared at the lowering sky. Wulfhere was dead, he told 
himself. Wulfhere was dead. He knew it. The man had not dragged his broken body 
off those rocks and crawled or walked anywhere. Cormac had seen him fall; Cormac 
had long stared down. Nor had there been the merest whit of movement. 
A feeling of the eerie crept over him like palpable fog. 
The Gael moved now, though not voluntarily; he was so tense that he shivered. 
His heart slammed at his chest like a great fist within him and the pulse was 
thunder in his temples. He was cold and hot both at once. Dusk-shot and darkly 
streaked, the sky seemed to glower above a world peopled with slavering fangs 
and dead-who-walked and unknowable evil and a lurking black abyss of 
unconsciousness and madness. 
Cormac wrestled with his own mind. Desperately he sought logic, some sane 
explanation. 
Wulfhere had landed on the jaggedly rearing rocks below, and was dead. He had 
seen that. Yet Samaire said the Dane was in the castle a mile distant, drunk and 
foolishly challenging a power that hacked at Cormac’s horror-distorted mind as 
with a blade steeped in some numbing, insanity producing toxin. Wulfhere lay 
dead... Wulfhere was in the castle... Wulfhere’s corpse had vanished. At one and 
the same time Wulfhere had been here, and fallen to his death, and lain 
there—and had not been here at all; he had fallen/stood roaring out defiance; he 
had died, burst and shredded on rearing rocks like gigantic fangs/he was merely, 
predictably and characteristically, drunk... 
No! 
No. Fight! Fight to regain control of a mind staggering like a man with an 
adder’s venom turning his blood to consuming fire. Cormac shuddered—and was hot. 
He became aware that pain was on his fingers. So tightly did he clutch the edge 
of the precipice that his knuckles had gone white as the sea’s foam on the rocks 
so far below. The Gael was hanging onto the solid tangible rock for fear of 
flying off into a redshot void of black horror and insanity. 
He heard her voice. He began breathing deeply, pushing out his stomach as he 
filled his lungs to bursting before expelling that air to the last flutter and 
dragging in more. She was begging, she was tearful in her fear for him. 
“Samaire!” He spoke to the sky. “Step back. Into the tunnel and out of the way 
with ye, lustful woman!” he said, trying to cover his staggered mind with 
lightness. “It’s down I’m coming.” 
“Ohh... I’d hoped to come up, love. Oh my love—let me hold you... the tunnel is 
so dusty, Cormac...” 
“Oh. Aye. Of... course.” 
Pretending all was aright, she was, that strong magnificent woman he called 
dairlin girl. Almost, he smiled. 
“Is that the very top, Cormac? Cormac?” 
She’s fearful as I and needs the sound of my voice constantly—and she has even 
less knowledge of the why! Which of us be the worse off; I who know and yet know 
nothing, or she who— 
“Aye,” he answered, “Lugh’s ‘Roof of the World.’” 
”Won’t you be giving me a hand up, then, love,” she said, too rapidly, and he 
knew she was covering, too. “I want to see.” 
“All... all right,” Cormac said, and steeled himself anew. 
Rolling over once more, he gazed down at her wan face. Was that a sparkle of 
tears? The Gael lowered a hand, and she stretched up hers. But he had to rise 
and squat, to draw her up with her feet “walking” up the rock. With ease then he 
handed her up, and fell back as he drew her over the edge and onto the mesa. She 
fell upon him as he lay there at the edge of that sprawling flatland of stone. 
“Oh love,” she murmured, so close he could feel her lips move against his face, 
“it’s cold you are!” 
He was; there was nothing he could think of to say; he said nothing. 
He felt a transfer of warmth, hers to him as ‘ the loving woman lay over him, 
holding him, though he wore mail and she her byrnie of boiled leather. 
Tremulously, seeking the comforting texture of reality, his hands slipped up 
into the richness of her hair while she pressed her warm mouth down on his. Her 
lips seemed hot, which told him that his own were cold. Soft was her hair 
against his hands, soft as he’d known it in her cousin’s manse on Tara Hill. 
Strange, after their days asea and her long wearing of a leather helm under a 
sun that boiled forth sweat, and them with no extra water for such as the 
washing of hair. But he had other things to think of now. 
Marvelous soft was her hair to his weapon-man’s calloused hands, and her weight 
on him, too, was good. The needs that rose in him were not of the sort that 
brooked thought or enhanced the reasoning process. 
The sun chilled as it grew distant. It deepened in colour to a gold that shaded 
into orange and seemed to set Samaire’s tresses aflame. Still the two at the 
very top of Samaire-heim lay together, moving but a little. Hands and mouths 
moved restlessly and were not satisfied. Coats of steel chain and leather were 
discarded with weapon belts, with neither ceremony nor sensible orderliness. 
Her large eyes seemed to smoulder and yet at once to deepen into pools for the 
falling into. His blood was wine coursing in his veins, hot and strong. Restless 
womanly hands transferred their warmth and their insistence to the very core of 
him. They moved as his did, tracing out every line and hollow and curve of his 
hard body as though she were determined to commit all to memory. 
God of my father, he marveled as he had before, how at once soft and firm, slim 
and rounded, is this woman who calls me love! 
Though his throat was dry and there was a strong hunger for her on him, he 
teased, “Companions...” 
She did not smile, but stared hungrily as she panted, and she pulled at him with 
hands that at once begged and demanded, the princess of the landless warrior. 
Prim and discreet, the sun hid its face in a great final glow of orange and 
blood that hurled blotting shadows across the sky. But the shameless moon rode 
up to stare down at the couple so totally alone on a great seabound chunk of 
rock like a desert surrounded by ocean. The moon had seen such, millions of 
times over the eons, hundreds of millions. It took no note but remained cold of 
light and face. Warmthless light bathed them when they’d shared and transferred 
their warmth and lay still and lazy while their breathing returned to normal. 
Then a shamelessly naked Samaire, her skin all snow and coal in moonlight and 
shadow, knelt up over the supine man. She smiled down on Cormac mac Art, and 
lazily he smiled in return. Fear and horror were far from his mind. 
And then he saw the glint of steel in her hand, and the skin fell from her face 
all in an instant so that it was a ghastly apparition he stared up at, his eyes 
dilated and his hair striving to leave his head. 
A faceless fleshless skull grinned down upon him as long bony fingers curled 
into a fist around the dagger’s hilt, and raised it and drove it down at 
Cormac’s bare chest, and with a wild cry of horror and soul-deep torment he 
moved convulsively and hurled, not Samaire, but Thulsa Doom over the cliff to 
hurtle down as had the other of the only two Cormac mac Art loved on the ridge 
of the world. 
And a shuddering, madness-tinged Cormac mac Art... wept. 
Chapter Thirteen:
To Die Twice
Cormac awoke to physical discomfort, as mental agony had tormented him for hours 
ere he’d sunk into sleep. 
A stabbing brightness struck through his eyelids so that he saw blazing yellow 
without opening his eyes. Realizing that he lay on his back in the open and that 
the sun of morning was swinging up over him, he kept his lids fast shut until he 
rolled over onto his side. That brought lancing twinges of pain and a grunt, 
which was followed by a curse at his own stupidity. 
For any person to sleep lying on his back on solid stone was stupid. For a 
weapon-man to do so, and in his armour with the dampness of sea-breeze on him; 
that was worse than stupid. It was a sin. 
On hands and knees, near the edge of the precipice overlooking the sea, Cormac 
mac Art was assaulted by memory. 
Oh gods and blood of the gods! Wulfhere and then Samaire—even Samaire! O gods, 
how— 
Unworthy! 
The Gael set his strength against the horror and despair that were a pall over 
his mind, as if they were a binding chain on his sanity. By superior strength 
and a complete exertion of a will more powerful than sorcerous mental chains, he 
snapped them. 
Cormac rose from hands and knees to his feet. He ignored his stiffness of back 
and limbs and the complaining twinges from every area of his body-including his 
empty belly. Back went his mailclad shoulders. It was a weapon-man of Eirrin who 
stood stalwart and proud—and angry. 
The sun of early morning flashed off his coat of linked chain as he turned all 
about; flashed even more blindingly from the broad long blade of the sword he 
brandished aloft. Atop the mesa that was Samaire-heim high above the sea, he 
waved his sword high at the end of a stiff-held arm. But it was not the gods to 
whom Cormac mac Art issued shouted challenge. 
He bellowed it forth, and his voice raced like the wind out over the sea and the 
sprawling mesa. 
“Thulsa Doom! Twice have ye sought my blood, man out of time! Twice, Thulsa 
Doom, and in the most cowardly possible manner!” Deliberately he repeated that 
fearsome name, that by shouting it out again and again he might tear its 
thrumming repetition from his mind. 
“As my best friend ye’ve come, Thulsa Doom, and as my—as Samaire ye’ve come to 
do death on me, Thulsa Doom—scum of ancient Valusia! It is as Bas ye’ll come 
death-seeking on me next, Thulsa Doom who should be dead? Come Yourself, 
sea-slime, cowardly mage, in your own form, and face me direct! Cormac despises 
you, Thulsa Doom! It’s Cormac calls you, Thulsa Doom... COME!” 
But Thulsa Doom came not, though Cormac waited long. His only reply was a 
rumbling growl from his empty stomach. 
Samaire of Leinster knew fear and horror and pain, and she knew not why. 
Long had she waited for Cormac’s return, and then it had come upon her where he 
must have gone, though for what reason she could not fathom. Then it was long 
and long she waited for the others to fall into sleep. At last all had done, or 
so she supposed, and she had crept through the dark castle of Atlantis with an 
unlighted torch in her hand. Not until she was in the passageway of sorcery that 
lurked behind a small room’s wall did she pause and use her strike-a-light to 
ignite her torch. 
With it held high in her left hand and her sword naked in her right, Samaire had 
trod that ever-turning passage in quest of Cormac mac Art. 
She was well past the remains of the slain monster serpent when, though she felt 
no breath of wind, her torch made a windswept, snarling noise—and went out. 
Instantly clutching cold hands fell upon her. 
She fought. Back she jammed her feet and elbows, and she attempted to cut behind 
her at him who held her in the darkness. Yet she succeeded not in slashing him. 
The blows of her elbows and heels he took without letting go, and in silence. An 
arm came over her “shoulder and across her neck, where it pressed and steadily 
forced up the chin she strove to clamp down in protection of her throat. Another 
arm enwrapped her at the waist, and a powerful hand clamped viciously. 
As if her silent assailant knew her thoughts, that hand leaped away when, with 
care for herself, she brought her sword down to slice at it. With a jolt as of a 
bar of steel the hand slammed into her wrist, and clamped. She moaned. The sword 
fell into the dust. Then the hard-chested man behind her had inveigled his arm 
under her chin, and it continued to clamp. 
Long she held her breath and struggled without panting to free herself. At last 
the air had to be expelled from her seemingly bursting lungs—and the arm across 
her throat prevented her drawing another breath. 
She knew that she made hideous sounds. Her head grew enormous. Pain like ice 
grew until it owned her chest. Her ears reported a roaring that she knew was not 
there, and a redness seemed to grow in the darkness, and Samaire knew that she 
was beginning to die. 
Samaire began to shiver, almost violently. 
Not to be able to speak, even to cry out or know her killer or the reason for 
her death! She felt tears ooze from her eyes. The trickles were first warm, then 
cool on her cheeks. Her eyes were huge, her staring gaze like claws scratching 
at the dark in an effort to tear it away. Growing weaker and weaker, she writhed 
helplessly and strove to cry out. 
She heard her own sounds; tiny hints of voice emerged from her gaping mouth, 
pitiful sick-chicken noises. Her skin goosefleshed. 
The darkness was gone. There was only the deep glowing red that seemed to 
undulate and pulse like visible heat before her staring, aching eyes. She 
shivered again. Her intestines seemed to knot themselves. 
Desperately, ridiculously, she tried to fight death from powerful hands that 
could not be fought. 
The breathless woman felt herself go absolutely limp throughout her body; felt 
the tickly trickle of perspiration down the insides of her arms and her flanks; 
felt the oozing dampness on her forehead and between her breasts. She felt the 
numbness coming. 
I... die. 
The thought made her angry. She was dying, dying at the hands of a grimly silent 
and unknown coward who would not face even a woman, but somehow took away her 
light and then seized upon her in the dark, from behind, and continued 
strangling her thus until there was no longer any need. 
More anger than fear Samaire of Leinster knew, and then she knew nothing. 
Consciousness, full of throbbing pain, seeped back to her. There was an ache in 
her head, which felt enormously swollen, a dull throbbing that increased in 
tempo and volume when she moved it. She strove now to dispel the confusion 
within that aching head, to think. Surely this was not death. Surely pain ended 
with death. 
He but choked me into unconsciousness, then ceased, and I began to breathe 
again. Another thought followed close: How long ago? How long have I... slept? 
She was aware of a pressure against her forehead. She could not account for it. 
Am I lying face down? No... no... I stand... 
Slowly, finding it an effort, she peeled open her eyes. 
Before her was a wall of stone. She stood leaning against it. Her head scraped 
the smooth surface as she turned it to left and to right. Gone was the darkness; 
no less than two torches burned. The flickering flame sent dancing ghost-shadows 
about her, upon her. Her body ached. Her chest hurt and breathing came hard. She 
tried to think about that, seeking the cause with a mind that refused to work 
properly but oozed along the thought process like honey poured in January. 
Her body was constricted. She was not lying down. Yet—an she had been 
unconscious, asleep, how was it that she was standing? Each limb ached and 
quivered. Blinking again and again, she looked at herself in the flickering 
yellow light of the two gums. Her cheek rubbed smooth stone as she turned her 
head this way and that. 
Samaire saw that both her modesty and her freedom were gone. 
She was both bound and naked. 
Though she was hardly in possession of the full awareness and reasoning powers 
choked away from her, the confused captive was aware that she was still in the 
passageway beneath the castle. Somehow... yes: she was bound to the very wall 
itself. How... how possible... Spikes, driven into the stone? 
She had no idea. She could not see her wrists. But she was bound, and she was in 
worse than discomfort. 
Her ribs felt crushed by the tautness of her body, stretched and flattened, the 
skin drawn tight over each several rib because her arms were drawn up and out 
and made fast. Her breasts pressed against the stone worse than uncomfortably; 
they were naked and vulnerable and the stone was cold. She felt her heart 
pounding, felt the ache in her limbs, and she felt the fluttering in her bare 
stomach with her laborious breathing. 
Awareness increased. Pain sharpened her senses, hastened her return from 
near-death to full consciousness. Nevertheless, thinking remained an effort of 
conscious will. 
She took stock of her situation, like a barely-competent steward tallying the 
master’s holdings. And she would again be master of her own body and brain... 
She was bound facing the wall, standing close against it with her arms dragged 
out at worse than right angles to her body, so that she formed a living Y. 
Almost rigid were her arms; the binding at the wrists she could not see were 
almost without slack. Relief came from the simple completed chore of discovering 
how it was she had stood while unconscious. To such had she been reduced, a 
heady appreciation of the simplest realization. 
Samaire Ceannselaigh wondered how long ago she had been secured thus. How long 
had she stood sagging against the unyielding wall in a way that in creased the 
terrible strain on her arms and shoulders? —and back, she realized, and chest, 
and tautened stomach... 
Slim, smooth-muscled thighs quivered. Realizing only now that they were braced 
wide apart and that her knees were pressed against the cavern wall, Samaire 
thought on that. No intuitive leap aided her; she was forced to labour through 
the entire thinking process. 
Aye. Her wide-braced legs lowered her posture, and thus added to the burden of 
her arms. She willed aching muscles to serve her. They complained. She winced 
and a little groan escaped her when she straightened, bringing her legs 
together. Gods be thanked, they were not bound! 
Other sinews shrieked, for now her elbows were able to bend, however slightly, 
and every long-strained muscle in each arm hurled icy stabs of pain along its 
length and into her torso. Her shoulders burned. Both hands remained bound above 
the level of her head. 
And then it occurred to her, with the return of full intelligence and ability to 
reason, to wonder. About the torches, about the who—she wondered where he was, 
and that thought was like a cruel hand that clutched at her stomach from within. 

Her mouth was open to call out. She reconsidered, and compressed her lips. 
Not knowing who had strangled her into unconsciousness and bound her here, or 
why, she held herself in check. There was determination upon her not to be some 
pleading quavery-voiced captive. She was Samaire of Leinster, she was a 
weapon-woman of Eirrin, and she did not speak until she knew she could trust her 
voice and had chosen her words. 
“It’s awake I am. Which am I to be, raped or tortured? Or do we continue with 
the cowardice of you behind me in silence?” 
Her voice was hollow in the cavern, and it welled about her like a physical 
object. She was grateful for the sound. 
No voice answered. 
It was then she heard the leathery rustling sound, the little snap from well 
behind her, followed closely by the fweep noise that was as of a rushing arrow 
cleaving the air. Nor had she time to flinch or tense before the loud cracking 
sound came. It was so loud and close to her ears, taking her so by surprise that 
she gasped and lurched painfully against the wall. 
For just an instant there was the feeling as of ice on her back. 
Then sudden white-hot pain burst there. It engulfed her back in a blazing agony 
that misted her mind. Her eyes opened wide and stared, bulging, at nothing. Her 
breath exploded from her in an ugly grunt. Involuntary tears rushed hot down her 
cheeks in a watery cascade. She jerked violently and tried to put back her 
shoulderblades against the pain. She felt her knees buckle at the sudden 
weakness the pain imbued, but at the same time she knew there was no escape, 
nowhere to go, nothing she could do about the pain—and that which was to come. 
She knew what she’d felt, what had been done to her. 
She had been struck with a whip. 
Now she felt it slither down her back, catch for a moment on the shelf of her 
backside, and drop from her. 
The agonized woman’s skin rippled and tensed with sudden desperate efforts to 
break free. The ropes only chewed remorselessly at her wrists when she tried to 
jerk her way to freedom. She could not. The awful thought struck her that the 
raw pain and sudden warmth at her wrists meant that the ropes had bitten in, 
that each torn wrist was now streaming blood. 
She could not tear free. She had accomplished only the spilling of her own 
blood. 
Again the vicious lash came, a leather serpent that dashed onto her shoulder 
this time, and again her eyes snapped wide and spurted tears and her body 
lurched from the fiery caress. It was all she could do to keep from screeching 
as new searing fire tore through her. 
Silent and unseen, her captor struck again. 
The sinews of Samaire’s arms and thighs and calves knotted and bulged outward at 
the strain, for she could riot help tugging at her bonds. Her chest ground 
painfully into stone and stone-hard earth. She knew that rivulets of blood 
streaked her arms. Constant shudders of pain and anguish twitched through the 
flesh of her beaten body, and she knew frustration with the pain, and then 
anger. 
I will not be reduced. 
Even with that determined vow she felt a blow of monstrous agony between her 
shoulders. A lancing pain began there and raced down to her heels and out to the 
tips of her flexing fingers. Surely she’d not have been stung so had a knife 
transpierced her. Again the lash hissed downwards, streaking through the air to 
streak her skin with scarlet. 
Now the first whip-cut was a pleasant memory, a sweet caress compared with the 
fifth, which cut across her full calves. She felt the quivering of her every 
nerve, from scalp to toenails. The pain in her lungs seemed more severe than it 
had while she was strangled. Ignominy struck with the whip, for her body failed 
her and released the valve of her kidneys. 
The rushing leathern lash struck, and struck again, and then again until the 
white-faced victim knew she was crossed and crisscrossed with purple-red welts 
that were like ugly serpents writhing across her scarified flesh. 
A princess born, she had never known such pain and terrible anguish, mental and 
physical. She felt as if she would surely burst in the internal parts of her 
body. 
Samaire’s determination held. Not giving the unseen him the satisfaction of 
making her cry out became the sole object of her concentration, the entire 
purpose of her existence. When she realized on the fiery falling of, the twelfth 
or twentieth lash that she had emitted a groaning sound, she mentally cursed its 
utterance. To prevent repetition, she thrust her tongue between her teeth and 
clamped. She held it there with no care whether she bit through. 
Every stroke seemed to penetrate more deeply into her flesh, and now the filthy 
jackal behind her was aiming his lash so as to torment her with the most 
reviling violation of her body. 
Samaire felt as if she had lived all the time of this life in pain and torture, 
and that the time when existence was painless, much less pleasurable, was but a 
dimly-remembered fantasy. The whip hissed and cracked. 
Who and why no longer mattered. Nothing mattered. Relief, perhaps: death would 
bring that. For she knew that he was leaving bloody gashes on what had been the 
white flesh of her body. 
Maintaining silence with an effort of sheer will and a surely ridiculous 
determination, she sobbed without sound at the agony in her back and shoulders, 
the throbbing in her wounded haunches and legs, the wounds that quivered and 
swelled and seethed with a liquid fury—while leaking forth the blood of life. 
She could feel it trickling in warm rivulets that went swiftly cold and thick. 
Nameless and nigh-mindless, the victim knew that she was washed with crimson, 
that she would soon bleed to death. She wished sincerely that she had died 
before, of strangulation. Logic had left her, and Samaire’s thought was only 
that it was not fair that one should be made to die twice. 
The princess of Leinster knew the absolute depths of human despair as she felt 
her skin being flayed off by the cruel whip. From tear-dimmed eyes she stared at 
nothing. Shaking in constant spasms, her body moved weakly. She ground herself 
against the wall hewn from stone and earth as though that pain could alleviate 
the other. Desperately she reminded herself to keep her blood-washed thighs 
together. 
In silence, unseen and unknown, he struck on. 
Idiot, she thought incongruously, that stripped a woman and beat her, rather 
than used her! 
A new, surely insane thought filled her reeling mind: She was bitterly sorry not 
to be able to aid Cormac in his struggle against the undying wizard Thulsa Doom, 
not even to be able to be with him... and then she broke, and Samaire of 
Leinster tore her body against the stone wall of the cavern while she screamed 
and screamed. 
Chapter Fourteen:
The Undying Wizard
Cormac heard the strange little snapping sounds long before he reached their 
source. Pacing determinedly back along the subterrene passage from sea to 
castle, he wondered at those inexplicable sounds well ahead, with no idea as to 
what they might be.. 
He did not walk like a man who had been subjected to the most cruel of torments 
and had been reduced to quaking shudders. He had rescued himself from insanity. 
He had stood tall and angry and bellowed forth his challenge to his enemy. He 
had waited grimly, prepared for anything at all. 
Thulsa Doom had not responded. 
He’ll not be meeting me face-on in sunlight then, Cormac mused, and he had 
shouted that aloud, as a new challenge and a taunt. 
Mayhap then it’s given up he has, and fled this isle or withdrawn into “that 
other dimension,” whatever be the meaning of that. In which case—there are ships 
to be loaded and sails to be spread! And if he be here still—I’ll see that no 
man is out of sight of all others. And if it’s Cutha Atheldane comes walking 
among us—why then we’ll be hewing him into so many pieces none will recognize so 
much as a toe! 
And back along the corridor beneath the island Cormac mac Art strode, a man full 
of mettle and unwavering purpose. 
Then the screaming began. 
The shrieks that fled to him down the tunnel were those of a woman in unbearable 
agony, and there was but one woman on this accursed isle that wrongly bore her 
name, and Cormac mac Art broke into a mindless run. 
His re-lit torch roared and streamed fire in his wake with his running along 
that dark cavern beneath the earth. He raced as though a thousand demons sent 
from the Norse Hel slavered on his trail. The corridor’s squared turnings he 
took at the run, so that he struck the wall again and again. And he paid no 
mind. 
Cormac ran, and the dust of centuries flew up from his feet. 
He came upon the strange scene, and it brought no horror but only puzzlement—and 
anger. Cormac took it all in with slitted eyes-while never slowing his pace. 
Against one wall of the cavern stood Samaire, pressed to the stone with her arms 
outstretched. Vermillion hair sprayed out over her leather coat of armour; in 
their tall boots of gleaming, soft black leather her legs quivered. Indeed her 
entire body quaked as though freezing cold, while she stood fully clothed and 
armoured, stretched and tense as if she were frozen in place—or bound by 
invisible cords or chains. 
Behind her stood Osbrit the Briton of Wroxeter. 
The only survivor of his crew was steadily tapping the woman’s back with a 
folded belt. Though he was only tapping her leather-sheathed legs and back, not 
striking her, the walls echoed Samaire’s constant shrill, throat-tearing cries. 
She squirmed and lunged against the wall as though bound to it and afflicted 
with awful torment. 
Cormac did not pause to consider or question. With the full unthinking fury of 
his dash, he charged the Briton. With such force did the Gael smash into Osbrit 
that the bronze-haired warrior was knocked off his feet and hurled through the 
air. 
Cormac paid the flying body no heed, but plowed to a stop ere he crashed into 
the cowering woman. His torch he held high; his other hand and arm slid around 
the seemingly agonized Samaire’s waist from behind. 
“Samaire... Samaire!” 
Once more the screamed, in mortal agony. Then, “Cormac,” she gasped in a weak 
sigh, and she sagged back against him. Yet her arms remained in place, stretched 
along the wall higher than her head. “Oh... oh Cormac... cut free my wrists!” 
Cormac’s stomach lurched and his scalp prickled. She was not bound, but thought 
she was... Wulfhere was not there, but I thought he was... she had not been 
whipped, but thought she had been... O ye gods, he torments her too! 
“There, my love,” he told her, “I have done. You’re free.” 
On the instant, her arms dropped, falling as if her hands were leaden weights. 
With a groan she began sliding down, so that only his hand under her breast 
prevented her dropping into the dust of the cavern’s floor. 
No sound warned the Gael, and he was not aware of seeing aught from the edge of 
his eye. Nevertheless he twitched his head rightward in a weapon-man’s 
instinct—to see Osbrit’ Drostan’s son coming at him with naked sword. A 
malevolent smile of anticipated death-dealing twisted the man’s mouth. 
Cormac’s hands were full of torch and limp woman. The one he released, pushing 
her sideward so that again she sagged against the tunnel wall; the other he 
swung before him as both defensive shield and fiery offensive weapon. Flame 
streamed and roared in the tunnel’s fetid air. 
The rush of fire gave Osbrit of Wroxeter pause, and that swiftly Cormac’s sword 
rushed from its sheath. A ferocious delight was upon him; here was something he 
could fight, here was a living body to receive the frustration and 
vengeance-need that were like a canker in his guts. 
The Gael did not strike, but advanced a foot and thrust with all his strength. 
He felt the familiar jolt of glaive-point against mail, metal against metal, and 
the resistance, then the rushing of his extended arm as scales bent and twisted 
and snapped and sharp steel buried itself in flesh and blood. 
Belly-stabbed, Osbrit stared at the other man. 
“Treacherous snake! Was I showed ye kindness, and I alone!” Cormac snarled, and 
gave his wrist a twist before he yanked forth his blade. 
It emerged agleam. No blood followed the emergence of steel blade from sundered 
flesh. 
Osbrit’s lips writhed in a smile. “Aye... so ye did... kindness. For it was you 
slew serpent and robed Norseman, and freed me from the one that I might animate 
the other!” 
Then that smile widened, and the lips shriveled up as the skin writhed and moved 
on that tanned face, and it paled and paled while the skin left it, and once 
more Cormac mac Art stared into the death’s head face of Thulsa Doom. 
Knowing the man had shown pain when the sword went into him, Cormac stabbed 
again. His blade plunged into the robed body just below the ribs. This time he 
drove forward with knotting calves to hurl the wizard backward and to the cavern 
floor, impaled on two feet of steel. 
Dust flew up as his foeman fell, and again when Cormac dropped beside him, to 
his knees. Maintaining his grip on his pommel, he ground the sword in, seeking 
to pin the other man, if man he was, to the cavern’s floor. 
“Ahgh—it hurts, lowborn vulture! It—hurts! It’s cold!” 
“But kills ye—not!” Cormac grunted, exerting his strength to twist the impaling 
blade. 
The supine body lurched and writhed. “Aahhhhhh! Son... of a moment’s 
dalliance... that is pain-n-nn!” 
Cormac kept his eyes on the skull face, his squeezing, downpressing hand on his 
pommel. “Samaire—I need you!” 
She must have turned then, and seen for the first time what he held pinned down 
like some unslayable writhing serpent. 
“Gods of my—he has no face!” 
“Nor blood, but he’s a body, and it’s helpless I have it, and there’s cord enow 
on my arm to enwrap two such! Hither, love, and bind him with this rope!” 
Samaire’s horror at the awful apparition did not prevent her responding to 
Cormac’s need for aid in subduing... the thing. Already he was changing his 
squatting position and leaning hard on his pommel with his right hand, while he 
held out his shield-arm. Samaire hurried to remove the coil of rope. 
And Thulsa Doom changed. The gaunt but powerful weapon-man’s body shivered—but 
the shiver was a shimmer, as eerie metamorphosis commenced. Flesh and bone 
changed... 
“Demon!” Cormac cried out in his surprise. 
“Cormac—it’s Bas!” 
“Cor... mac,” gasped the druid, his face stricken. His hands shook as they went 
to the steel blade that pinned him down, hovered there as if he only just 
prevented himself from seizing the sharp steel. “Why... ? Let me up, Cormac... 
I... I can exert druidic powers to heal myself... but... not if you will not let 
me up swiftly—” 
Cormac spoke betwixt clenched teeth. And he leaned on his sword, though 
instinctive horror and unease at apparently thus pinning the druid he respected 
brought the sweat starting from his palm. 
“No, ancient monster! It’s as Wulfhere I’ve seen ye, and then as Samaire 
herself; there can be no using this trick on me again! This time ye grow 
desperate, Thulsa Doom! Now I know the horrors of wizardry ye be capable of, I 
might not be surprised to see the face of Bas become your ugly relic from a 
boneyard. But... to see you become Bas? It’s not such a fool I am, skullface. I 
know who ye are, creature, and it’s hard your sorceries have made my heart. 
So—writhe and wriggle, Thulsa Doom, and if ye choose to retain the face of Bas 
the Druid—then so be it. I am unmoved by such petty attempts!” 
“Barbarian scum!” Bas snarled. “Nescient as a foal newly born ye are, and proud 
and crowing of what ye think is knowledge! I cannot be killed, barbarian! 
Already I have known death, and longer ago by thousands of years than your 
simple mind can comprehend!” 
Cormac braced himself, leaned on his sword with his right hand, and again 
extended the left arm. “Prate on, wizard. Samaire—the rope.” 
The head of Bas the Druid whipped toward the woman. “Aye, fetch the rope, 
ignorant blowze. And note well that my hands are not pinned down—bend to me and 
I’ll tear your head from your shoulders!” 
Cormac’s swift-flicking eyes caught Samaire’s shiver, and he doubted her. But in 
that he erred against her. 
Samaire drew the dagger that had never left her sheath whilst she had thought 
herself naked and beaten. “Then I shall have to be pinning your hands to the 
earth, one by one!” 
The teeth of Bas of Tir Connail clashed in rage—and then the lips fell away from 
those teeth, and again there was only the fearsome skull with its teeth that 
seemed ever to grin. Skull-set eyes burned in a face that was bare white 
bones... 
Next instant it was changing, growing new skin, and slitted eyes, and a snouted 
mouth from which a long forked tongue flickered and plunged. The flattened head 
that was bigger than her hand lashed at Samaire, and instinct made her flinch 
away. 
Cormac was hard put to hold down, with point of sword, what Thulsa Doom had now 
become: a serpent. A writhing thick cable of muscle it was that lashed and 
snapped its cold slender barrel of a body. 
“Cormac,” Samaire called, and there was a shrill pleading note to her voice that 
ascended toward hysteria. “I—I cannot bind a serpent!” 
“No,” the Gael said grimly. “But I can lean on this good glaive so that—” 
With a sibilant hiss of waist-thick body, the serpent hurled itself halfway up 
the sword. As it dropped back, the scaly form twisted and wrenched wildly. These 
were not death-throes, but a fresh attempt at escape. Partway through its barrel 
form Cormac’s sword sliced—and then its tail lashed. Thicker than his wrist it 
was, and it slammed against his shins with every bit of force Thulsa Doom could 
concentrate there. 
Cormac fell sidewise. His hand on the sword twisted, and the blade sliced 
crosswise a bit more... 
But such was not the escape scheme of a man who had survived unbelievable 
centuries. With Cormac fallen on his side and striving to maintain grip on 
pommel to hold the impaling brand in place, the wizard resumed his own form once 
more. 
Hands that were like steel cables and hardly less cold clamped the Gael’s wrist. 
Hand and pommel were slicked with the sweat of both exertion and instinctive 
horror; no supreme effort was required to force away the fallen man’s fingers. 
Thulsa Doom was rising triumphantly to his feet even as he drew the blade 
bloodlessly from his abdomen. Raising the sword, he turned to loom over his 
fallen enemy. 
Both Cormac’s feet struck the wizard’s knees with sufficient force to cripple a 
normal man for life. But Thulsa Doom was neither a normal man nor alive—nor yet 
dead. He was hurled backward against the cavern wall, and the sword went 
flying—but the sorcerer did not fall. 
“Damn you!” The skullface’s voice was little above a whisper in its rage, and 
filled with the most baleful hatred. The eyes that seemed to burn in that mask 
of death followed Samaire’s rush to snatch up the sword. 
“And damn you, pigeon-chested wench... ye should be on your knees and babbling 
like the pretty-faced little girl ye are, not mindful of what you’re about. Next 
time, carrot-tressed bitch, it will be no mere illusion I work to amuse myself 
with you—I will whip you till the blood flows like a mountain stream rushing 
after the rain!” 
“Pretty faced little girl is it,” she said, whirling up Cormac’s sword. 
“Monster!” And she rushed the mocking wizard. 
Thulsa Doom vanished and Samaire crashed into the wall of stone and earth. 
Chapter Fifteen:
The Wizard’s Challenge
“HO! Cormac old wolf—where have ye been, man?” 
Wulfhere’s cry was as that of a parent nervous over a supposedly lost child; 
relief and happiness were mingled with irritation and a touch of accusation. 
Others lifted their heads or whirled about to look on the man and woman coming 
along the beach toward them. They had emerged from the defile leading to the 
castle, the black-haired Gael and the Leinsterish woman whose hair was a spray 
of gold and bronze and new brass in the sunlight. 
“Working up a terrible hunger and thirst,” Cormac called equably, and looked 
about. 
The ships with their furled sails and banked oars were here, Britonish and 
Eirish, drawn up close on the beach like allies. Judging from the small quantity 
of litter left on the sand, the last of the booty was being stored aboard 
Quester. Helmets and armour were spread on the beach, while men in tunics, some 
dark with sweat, handed up their loads or reached down from the long boat to 
accept it. Autumn or no, the sun was bright and warm. 
Cormac and Samaire continued to stride toward them, seeming oddly martial with 
him in his clinking mailcoat and her in her leather armour. They did carry their 
helmets. Mac Art’s eyes roamed about, bright and intent, taking in the scene and 
considering, planning, re-acclimating himself to reality and the mundane 
after... horror. 
“Are all here?” 
Wulfhere nodded and swept a brawny arm. “Aye. Osbrit works with us. It was that 
or be bound, and he prefers a bit of labour to bonds. The druid is yon, at the 
business of talking to your gods.” The Dane smiled. “Odin hears too, surely!” 
Cormac glanced in the direction indicated by Wulfhere’s nod. There was nothing 
dramatic to be seen, no lean tall priest standing atop a promontory with 
outstretched arms and the wind flapping white robe and flowing beard. Instead, 
in his robe of dark olive girt with a brown-dyed cord, Bas of Tir Connail stood 
a little way down the beach, nor was there wind to stir his jetty hair or robe. 
Gazing out to sea he was, past the murderously rearing offshore rocks that were 
like vicious teeth ever ready to chew ship and crew. His arms were not 
a-gesture, or even upraised. He merely stood, gazing seaward. Cormac could not 
see the druid’s mouth, but assumed his lips were moving. 
If prayer and spelling be of value, Cormac thought, we need all of both Bas 
knows! 
He came up to Wulfhere, who stood a little way from the ships, 
supervising—probably having convinced them a lookout was needed. 
“All has been brought away from the castle?” 
“This is the last of it. We’ve searched for ye, Cormac, as best we could! 
Where—” 
“Has aught... untoward happened?” 
The Dane shook his head, noting from Cormac’s eyes that the question was not so 
casual as it might have sounded. He’d get his explanation later, and answered 
rather than repeated his own question. “No.” 
“Nothing?” 
“No. Should it have done?” 
“Much untoward has befallen us since last we saw ye, Wulfhere. Methought the 
mage had been busy enow with the two of us so that ye’d not been troubled. But—” 

“Ye’ve seen him? Him, himself?” “Aye.” 
“It’s much we’ve been through,” Samaire said. 
Cormac nodded. “It’s to be feared, and talked of.” Cormac’s voice was passing 
quiet; he spoke for Wulfhere’s ears only. “The sorcerer is still here, and he 
cannot be slain. Not for the lack of our trying!” 
“He—has no face,” Samaire said, not without a bit of shudder in her voice. 
“No f—” Wulfhere broke off, staring from one to the other of them. 
“A skull,” the Gael told him. “And more... Since yester even, when last I saw 
ye, it’s several faces I’ve seen him wear. A serpent’s, and Samaire’s, and that 
of Bas, and... yours, Wulfhere.” Cormac swallowed and reached out to touch the 
other man’s great knotty arm, as if to assure himself his old friend was indeed 
yet alive and unscathed. 
Wulfhere clamped his jaws and his eyes blazed. He too sought reassurance; his 
hand rose to touch his fiery beard, then tarried there to scratch within the 
curling long hairs. “He... this ghoulish raiser of the dead imitates others? He 
wore my face?” 
“And body, and voice,” Cormac told him quietly. “And he fought as you fight.” 
“Fought?” 
“Aye—” Cormac broke off and almost smiled, eyebrows curving ruefully up. He was 
covering; he did not care to tell Wulfhere just now that he had... slain the 
Dane, only last night. “Heard ye that?” 
The Dane went all fighting man and looked about. “What?” 
“I heard it,” Samaire said. “Cormac’s stomach! Our bellies are angry, Wulfhere, 
and snarl like gryphons. We are long without food, and have endured much.” 
“Ah. But ye must tell me—” 
“In a little,” Cormac said. He glanced down the strand, at Bas. “Mayhap it were 
best to save our chatter yet awhile, till it’s off this misnamed isle we are, 
and asea. For now, though—an all provisions are on the ships, it’s onto the 
ships Samaire and I go. Hunger’s upon us Wulfhere, and we thirst.” He slapped 
the other man’s belly, unarmoured and tautening his tunic of faded red. “You 
understand that.” 
“Aye, but—” Wulfhere broke off. He bobbed his head in a swift nod. “Feed your 
belly then, gluttonous son of a pig-farmer, an that’s all ye can think of. But 
it’s no need of armour ye have, in this unseasonable sun. 
Cormac glanced skyward, squinting. Though the time of autumn was upon land and 
sea, Behl seemed not to know it. Closer to Samain, the sun seemed to celebrate 
Beltain. The Gael’s eyes dropped to lock onto the Dane’s. 
“Haven’t I?” 
Wanting no answer, Cormac and Samaire walked to Quester. 
“Missed the work ye have, Captain,” Ros mac Dairb called, grinning. More 
seriously he added, “We’ve worried over ye.” 
Cormac nodded, but made no answer to the implicit question despite the hopeful, 
even expectant gazes of the other men. Their hustle and bustle had come to 
pause; their converse and jibing jests had ceased. 
“We’ve broke no fast since yester day,” Cormac said, reaching up to the ship 
drawn onto the sperkling sand. “Where be food stored?” 
“And water,” Samaire said fervently, “or ale.” 
They had returned into the Castle of Kull to find no one and nothing, not so 
much as a morsel of food or a discarded skin with the slosh of ale remaining in 
it. Nor had they tarried for the intimacy they both wanted, perhaps needed. The 
skull-faced wizard was still abroad, in addition to the hunger and thirst that 
drove them to hurry from castle and through the wall of rock to the shore. 
Now, aboard Quester, they quaffed ale and chewed dried meat. Cormac regarded the 
empty skins. Too much space had of necessity been given over on this voyage to 
water and ale, with their attendant weight. Even so, they had expected to be 
aweigh again yesterday, and barren Samaire-heim offered nought to quench the 
thirst that slew more swiftly than hunger or even the fever born of one of those 
wounds that swelled and sent a red line out from themselves to bring babbling 
delirium upon a man. 
The Gael jerked his head up and his hand actually started toward his pommel when 
Osbrit fared close. Cormac quelled the motion and Osbrit stared, having stopped 
very still. 
“In peace, Osbrit Drostan’s son,” Cormac told the man in the feathered cap and 
streaky blue tunic, and the Gael’s face was pleasant enow. On the instant, he 
decided to speak and end their sapping suspense. “Has been a short time, 
indeed,” he said in no quiet voice, “since I fought him responsible for the 
deaths of your fellows and the... resurrection of mine. And he wore your face 
and form.” 
Osbrit continued to stare, and like Wulfhere he put a hand to his own features. 
Cormac saw a tic come into the Briton’s face, while his raised hand was 
atremble. “Ye’ve... fought a mage.” 
“Aye.” Cormac squeezed Samaire’s arm. “Both of us.” 
“And ye be unscathed?” 
“Our minds bear scars. Our bodies, none.” 
“And... him?” 
Cormac bit, chewed, looked at the other man. Around them, others had stopped all 
motion to stare at the Gael. They listened, Cormac knew, and he thought it best 
to say it. In enemy country, one did not hold back knowledge of the enemy, 
however fearsome; all must be ever on guard. 
“I killed him.” 
Osbrit’s eyes flared, then grew less wide than be tore. Osbrit smiled; a cheer 
rose and smiles flashed on Celtic faces round about. 
Cormac rose from his seat on a rowing bench, and he raised the hand that held a 
gnawed brisket. The noise subsided; smiles remained, as did veneration in blue 
eyes and grey. It will soon die, he mused, with a sigh. 
“I slew him, aye... six times.” 
Sunny smiles faded as though cloud-darkened. A deathly silence enwrapped them 
all. Every man stared. Lips moved; no voice rose. 
Cormac spoke for all ears, now. 
“A wizard has stalked us like a plotting spider. Was he dragged back the dead 
themselves from their rest and set them against us. Was he last night came upon 
me in the form of Wulfhere and sought to slay me by a treacherous swift stroke 
of his ax—or what appeared to be Wulfhere, splitter of skulls. Was he sought me 
again, this time monstrously in the form of Samaire that I might be even more 
off guard, and sought to dagger me in the night. Was he seized her yester night, 
and inflicted a foul illusion on her so that she thought she was being whipped 
to death in sheets of blood.” 
Cormac paused, looking around at faces gone pale even in the bright sunlight. 
“His name be Thulsa Doom, and it’s older than old he is. Old? It’s dead he is; 
he died long ago! I slew him as Wulfhere, by a fall none could survive, though I 
but defended myself for then I did not understand his evil powers. As Samaire 
too I saw him die, in the same way. Corpses of those two, my boon sword-comrades 
and friends on all the ridge of the world, lay blood-splashed on rearing rocks a 
dozen shiplengths below. And both vanished in seconds, so that I knew they were 
the enemy.” 
The faces of strong fighting men turned one to the other, and they frowned and 
muttered. Dead long ago... vanished corpses... the likenesses of others... 
“I slew him later as you, Osbrit! And as Bas yonder too, and as a serpent. As 
his own dread self too I put death on him, for he flickered from guise to guise 
swift as the jagged god-spear flashes across the sky. With this steel, I slew 
them all—him all.” His sword scraped out to glitter and gleam in the sun, 
catching every eye. “Nor have I wiped it since plunging it through his several 
bodies.” 
“Behl protect,” someone whispered. “He... cannot be slain?” 
“So it seems,” Cormac told him, without apparent emotion. 
“By all the gods!” Wulfhere’s voice came loudly. “Then what do we do, Wolf?” 
Cormac looked at him. “We retain our armour and arms, and we depart this isle of 
sorcery with all swiftness!” He looked at them. “And we stay all in the sight of 
each—” 
Cormac broke off to stare down the strand at the solitary figure- of Bas. 
“Blood of the gods! We stay all in sight of each other—at all times!” he 
snapped, pouncing to the ship’s side. “Prepare both ships for sea. Sail or oars, 
we depart the instant they are in readiness!” 
He swung over the side of the long boat and, with mailcoat clinking, he ran down 
the sandy shore to the druid. The others stared after him, shocked into 
brainless immobility. Until Wulfhere shouted, in a roar. 
“Ye heard him! Wind or no, it’s a beautiful day for being asea! Prepare to 
depart this abode of Loki and fire-eyed Hel!” 
“But a day since,” a grim-faced Bas said, “I bade ye never interrupt me and 
those I serve. Ye try me sore and risk godlike anger as well, son of Art.” 
“To Bas and Behl and all the gods I make apology,” Cormac said, bowing his 
head—shallowly and briefly. “But there is reason, Bas, or I’d not have done and 
it’s thanking ye I’ll be for no further chiding of me like a father to a child, 
druid or no. Make no answer: attend. We must leave this place, Bas, and at 
once.” 
Bas spoke with a coldness Cormac had not previously known: “So I was assured, 
and I was begging good seas and homeward winds, that we must not row all the way 
to Eirrin as we rowed nearly all the way to this... place.” 
“Bas. No man must be apart from the others. None must leave the sight of all. 
Best indeed that we set sail in one ship—but I’ll not have one left here for him 
to use.” 
Bas’s eyes flared and gleamed and his chin lifted attentively. “Ye’ve been long 
gone—ye’ve seen him?” 
“Ah, Bas! I’ve seen him, aye!” And hurriedly, Cormac told of it, all of it, 
including that which Samaire had already related to him befell her, body and 
mind. Bas gave ear in silence, though his face spoke much. The druid’s 
expression changed many times during the other man’s hurried and abbreviated 
narrative. 
At last that surprisingly strong hand came out to close on the other Gael’s 
mailed shoulder. “It’s much ye’ve endured, much ye’ve won past... won through, 
Cormac of Connacht. The gods have blessed ye, that ye’ve kept sanity through 
such a night! Samaire?” 
“—keeps hers as well. The gods blessed us both long ago, with endurance and 
strength of mind.” 
“Umm. And... but... what ye’ve told me is that at this moment you might be 
Thulsa Doom.” 
“Or you, since I know I’m not he.” 
The druid’s eyes went past Cormac’s, to the ships. 
“Or... any man of those.” 
“Aye, though I think not—now. Ye see why I durst not allow ye to remain here 
alone, Bas.” 
Bas, considered, and shook his head slowly. “We must talk on this, when there be 
more time. But... your view of it is a sideward one, Cormac. I standing here 
alone am in no danger, and represent none to others. While all others are 
together, he could come upon me only in his own form—” 
“Cutha Atheldane’s.” 
“It’s if I were to go away from sight and then return... aye, then might I be 
this form-changing wizard. For it’s not bodies themselves he seizes, but the 
forms of bodies he assumes.” 
Cormac nodded, having considered and seen and agreed ere Bas finished. “Well 
stated. Natheless—we leave this place, now.” 
“Aye. Strand the monster here, forever, and hope he cannot move by means 
arcane.” 
A frown came on the instant into Cormac’s face, and he wore it through every 
step back up the beach to the ships. Eleven men and a woman waited—all now in 
their armour and with weapons buckled on. 
“We are ready to sail,” Wulfhere greeted him. “Or to row.” 
Without speaking, Cormac boarded Quester, though it still lay drawn up on the 
strand. He placed himself then so as to face them all; the Gaelic druid, the 
woman, the giant Dane, the Briton with his thong-held hair, and nine sons of 
Eirrin. 
“Attend me now. The druid has said something that makes me think beyond 
myself—which is all I’ve considered since Princess Samaire and I drove the dark 
mage from us but a short time ago. Consider. We are here, and we know that he is 
here. Thulsa Doom, anciently dead and raiser of the dead; master of illusion, 
enemy of humankind, servant of the serpent-god time out of mind. We know of what 
he is capable—and mayhap of what he is not.” He half-turned to nod at the 
brooding pile of lock called Samaire-heim. 
“Power he has, but it is not without limit. Somewhere there, he is. In the body 
of a slain man, a priest or druid or whatever it is the Norse call their wise 
men, though he has re-assumed his own form, his own face—a death’s head. He 
waits, Thulsa Doom does... waits for another body, another disguise. 
“Let him wait until he rots!” Wulfhere rumbled, and there were nodded heads and 
sounds of “Aye.” 
“But will he rot?” Cormac pursued. “Can he? And... consider. Does he wait until 
he rots as ye put it, or... until another ship haps all unsuspecting on this 
place?” 
There was silence. They gazed at him, waiting. 
“Is it right,” Cormac asked, “that we depart this place, knowing that someday, 
somewhere, even on our own soil, before our very hearths, we may have to face 
him again... Thulsa Doom?” He paused, shook his head. “Nay. It is not meet. It 
is I his quarrel is with. Ye must—” 
Cormac broke off. He knew abruptly that he was no longer heard. Every eye was 
wide, and every gaze was directed past him. His stomach twisted and went acid. 
His nape prickled. Heat invaded his armpits and his heartbeat speeded. 
Slowly, Cormac turned to face what held their gazes. 
He stood not on the beach but atop the grim pile of granite rising above it. 
Tall and thin he was, in a night-dark robe that broke over his insteps. Its hood 
was up, so that his face was invisible in shadow, yet Cormac felt the predatory 
stare. An arm rose and a finger extended, a finger that was but skin drawn 
tautly over bone and knobby knuckles. 
“Go then,” he shouted, and alive or dead there was much power in that pitiless 
voice. “Go, all of ye... save... HIM!” The finger was pointed at the lone man in 
Quester’s bow. “It’s him I seek, it’s with him I have quarrel older than your 
conception of time! Go in safety, little men, and leave—” 
But one among them found voice; and she dared interrupt to shout out her 
challenge. “Leave Cormac for you to murder, creature of evil? Only him, you 
without heart? Do you not want me too, monster, whom you called pigeon-chested 
blowze? Only Cormac? O ye coward who be more at home in the slithering cold body 
of a crawling serpent than the hide of a man—a dead man!” 
“Samaire!” Cormac snapped, turning only his head to look at the woman in the 
stern. 
She lashed at him with angry eyes. “You! You were about to tell us that his 
quarrel lies only with you, weren’t you? You were about to suggest that we 
remain behind, to—” 
Cormac turned. “No. I was about to suggest that ye all take the Britonish ship, 
loaded with our gains, and leave me this one. Wulfhere brought a ship to shore 
alone; so can I!” 
“Go your way, melon-butted slut!” Thulsa Doom roared out from the rocky 
promontory. “I want only him ye know as Cormac mac Art!” 
None noted Bas, who had swung wide his left arm and was muttering, not for their 
ears. His right hand was at his throat, fingers splayed out to touch, 
simultaneously, the lunula and sun-disk and mistletoe he wore. His eyes stared 
into the sky, and his words were in the language only druids knew. 
“I go nowhere without you, Cormac!” Samaire said, so vehemently it seemed as 
much fierce challenge as promise made in love. 
“It be true he wants only you, Wolf?” 
“Aye, Wulfhere. Only me. Now do you take the Briton craft, and—” 
Wulfhere bellowed so that his voice might have raised the heads of drowsing dogs 
in far Eirrin. “I go nowhere without Cormac mac Art!” 
A slender young man with flaxen hair brushed past the defiant reaver, and Brian 
na Killevy took his stance beside his leader. “I move not from the side of 
Cormac mac Art. Come down here, wizard, that I may show you this steel close to 
hand!” And he added, waving his sword on high, “Close to HEAD!” 
Standing on the high rocks, the challenged enemy withdrew his pointing hand—and 
thrust back his hood. All gasped, even Wulfhere, at sight of that fleshlessly 
gleaming skull atop the long dark robe. 
“Head?” he sneered. “Strike at this head, little boy?” Thulsa Doom laughed, and 
the sound was not pleasant. 
Only Cormac’s hand stayed the angry Brian from plunging off the boat and 
charging up the beach at the mage. 
“Brian: already ye’ve spoke like a fool; be not twice one by acting so as 
well!”. 
Another shout rose from one aboard Quester: “And what if that ugly skull flies 
grinning in the air to bounce on the ground, creature of a dead god?” It was Ros 
mac Dairb who challenged now, and he who shouldered forward to stand beside 
Cormac. 
That which needed to be proved to them all was proven then by Lugh Man-hunter, 
though not by design. He’d been squatting, busy with something; now he 
straightened to reveal a strung bow and ready arrow. He aimed, lifted a whit in 
windless air, and loosed his shaft. The arrow sped lofting above the beach 
separating them from the wall of granite, and dropped—and all heard the chunk 
sound as the dart drove into the body of Thulsa Doom. 
All saw how the wizard staggered at the impact, saw how half the feather-tipped 
shaft stood out from him, the width of two fingers above the cincture of his 
robe. All saw the death’s head tilt forward, dark eyes staring down at the 
arrow. 
But none saw him fall, or so much as stagger the more. 
And all saw him seize that slim shaft of death, and pull it from himself, broad 
steely tip and all, to hold it high above his head—unmarked with blood. 
“You poor little fools will soon reduce me to begging for clothing, with the 
holes you put in this robe,” he called in a triumphant and mocking voice. 
The words that rose among the watching men were quite different: “Gods 
preserve!” and “Behl protect and Crom defend!” and “Fire of Life!” Many too was 
the hair that strove serpent-like to depart its mooring place on a horripilating 
scalp. 
“Be ye impervious to arrow or no, I stay with Cormac mac Art,” Lugh shouted, 
though in truth there was a quaver buried deep in his voice. 
“I remain!” Ruadan mac Mogcorf called out. 
“I stay with Cormac!” Laig mac Senain shouted, and the navigator stepped forward 
to join the others at the prow. 
Others called out the same, and who was to say whether their cries lacked total 
steadiness or conviction? Osbrit of Britain started forward— 
And then a rumble came from the clear sunny sky. A startled Wulfhere first 
glanced up, then bellowed out his laughter. 
“Odin and the Hammerer declare for mac Art!” 
But the words that issued from the mouth of the man alone at Quester’s stern 
were in Cormac’s language, not Wulfhere’s. “...and cast darkness over him,” Bas 
said, aloud now, “and smite him with the fire from the sky that shrivels even 
the oak-and turns bone into dust!” 
Again the skies grumbled. Clouds, though not dark, billowed wildly in elemental 
madness. 
“Fools, fools all!” the skull-face shouted. “BE fools then, and DIE like 
fools—for none of ye shall leave this island ALIVE!” 
Two phenomena, at once natural and yet not natural, came together. Wulfhere 
would claim for the One-eyed Allfather the one, while Bas knew whose pleas, to 
Behl had brought it. As for the other—all knew it was the work of Thulsa Doom, 
old before sunken Atlantis rose. 
Simultaneously, wind came screaming in from seaward to send hair streaming and 
whipping at shocked, paling faces—and from a dark cloud that suddenly appeared 
above, a yellow-white bolt of lightning slashed down at Thulsa Doom. 
Thulsa Doom vanished, and none knew whether before the bolt arrived or after; 
whether he had escaped or been riven by the god-fire that sent dust and pebbles 
and great shards of sundered rock tumbling down onto the beach from where the 
mage had stood. 
Chapter Sixteen:
The Wizard’s Power
Sea and sky went mad. 
The wind came shrieking in from the southwest with a force to hurl sand up into 
swirling clouds like fine dust and to tear the sails of any so foolish as to 
spread them. Mighty waves rushed viciously in to shore, hissing and roaring as 
they tumbled over one another in spectacular spumes of spray. Foaming water 
struck with crashes as of solid matter against the granitic seawalls that 
towered on either end of the small area of sandy strand. Wind-thrust sea came 
racing up the beach in a hurtling foaming insanity of angry water. Beached like 
helpless sea-turtles, the two ships rocked and shuddered with groans of tortured 
timbers despite their being drawn well ashore. 
In that mad melée of motion and ear-battering cacophony of noise, one sound 
reigned supreme over all others; the wind. The forces of nature ruled, and the 
wind was High-king. 
The wind’s howl transcended the sea’s rushing hiss and roar. It was the wind 
that drove the sea like an unwilling stallion. The wind was god; the gale from 
the ocean was prime mover in this savage flaunting of nature’s elemental powers. 
Its sustained shrieking was as if boasting its awareness of a transcendent 
supremacy. 
Air and water pounded the earth. Behind a grey sky, the sun’s fire was dimmed as 
though even Behl was powerless. 
Farther and farther up the sand the waters made their incursion. And then the 
water eddied, shivered while it paused as though confused, confounded by a 
source of enforced movement not of itself. Its anger was more than apparent, yet 
was not enough. The sea that had swallowed so many lives was powerless. The wind 
controlled; the sea could only be driven. Now those waters hesitated in their 
greedy landward lunge. The water shuddered. It began moving along the 
strand—sidewise. 
Westward the bubble-strewn foam moved, now. Proving its insanity or at the least 
its capricious whimsy, the wind had shifted through many degrees. No longer did 
it scream its way from the southwest. Now it was from east by southeast it 
emanated, still blowing in to shore that no ships might leave, and it howled the 
while like a thousand banshees of Eirrin come to harry the living with warnings 
of inexorable death. 
Despite its natural, gravity-dictated inclination to slip back from the strand’s 
upward slope, the water was forced westward by the prodigious force of the gale. 

More sea came to shore, sluicing in a defiant flood up the beach, and side by 
side the long boats from Eirrin and Britain rocked dangerously. For the sea they 
had been constructed; of the sea they were, more than of man, who had made them 
to further his pretense of conquering the domain of Manannan mac Lyr; landbound 
those craft were now, but surrounded by tugging extensions of the sea like 
foam-shot tentacles lapping and splashing all about them. 
With a creaking of stout wood and a constant shifting of cargo, the vessels 
seemed full striving to resume their natural abode. The wind thrust at them. The 
water coaxed and tugged. 
The craft of Britain was of less heavy construction and more buoyant as well, 
owing to the fact that Quester alone had been laden from the inland castle’s 
trove. Dead Bedwyr’s vessel shifted. It slid slightly crabwise with the 
gale-driven waters that rushed around it and broke over its stern in spectacular 
leaping gouts of white spray. The ship of Eirrin but rocked, and groaned as 
though in pain or frustrated desire to join its partially floating comrade. 
The gale shouted down the creaking complaints of straining wood. 
Nature rampaged in chaotic motion and sound and sky-darkening anger. 
But it was not Nature, nor yet again the gods, that provided catalyst and 
control of this demonstration of enormous elemental force. 
No deity was Thulsa Doom of eighteen millenia’s lifespan, nor was he natural, of 
Nature, the dead man who was not dead. And it was Thulsa Doom who controlled, 
who conjured and sent wind and challenging sea onto land. Thulsa Doom had not 
threatened, but promised, and the undying wizard kept his promise. None on the 
accursed isle of Kull’s abandoned castle thought this horror of natural force 
with a berserker rage upon it was of else than Thulsa Doom. 
It was he sent the wind; it was he held ships and crew landbound; it was by his 
magicking that the gale shifted so unnaturally in an arrogant show of his 
powers. 
Drenched and miserable, the thirteen with Cormac mac Art could only huddle far 
up the beach against the wall of rock, and watch. The wind drove sand into their 
faces and whipped their hair so that it stung their cheeks. Salt spray made 
sodden their clothing, sluiced off their armour, and sought entry into sheaths 
and scabbards. Those they protected as best they could. 
Thulsa Doom was cursed in thirteen voices, and one of them not male. 
Three times had the wind and the sea subsided, and three times had the thirteen 
men and a woman sought to float their ships and depart the hellish island that 
Thulsa Doom was determined should hold their common weird. Each time, after long 
labours in shifting the ships, they had been mocked anew. The lunatic wind had 
arisen again to whip the sea into ally, willing or unwilling. Nor could the 
harried knot of humans flee amain. First they must haul their craft back up the 
strand and, all efforts frustrated, scurry like driven mice up the sands beyond 
the range of the unnatural tide. The minor tidal waves that hurtled in and up 
the beach were major threats to frail human bodies. 
Was the ban-sidhe indeed, Samaire of Leinster had made plaint; the banshee, 
those ancient preternatural harridans who were wont to mock the families of 
Eirrin by warning them of an impending death among those they loved. 
Now the darkened sky became darker still. The sun, though visible for hour after 
hour through the grey only as a steadily westering glow, was setting once more 
on the mage-damned island. The day had passed. Nor had aught been accomplished 
by the handful of adventurers suddenly become fugitives from the wrath of the 
skull-faced thrice-ancient wizard who had challenged and bested them all. 
With the suddenness of a blinking eye, the wind dropped. 
The sea retreated from the beach, gurgling. Several feet from Quester and turned 
partially sidewise, the Britonish craft was still. 
Cormac straightened and gave his head a shake like a drenched dog. His eyes were 
fierce. 
“It’s another night we’ll be spending here,” he growled, thinking of a dwindling 
supply of food and fresh water. “Come—we’ll get the ships farther up the shore, 
and betake ourselves to that damned castle again!” 
Weary men groaned, but none demurred. Should the wind arise again during the 
night, with the sea already tide-swollen, their only means of departure—escape? 
—might well be floated away. Squelching pitifully, the woebegone company trooped 
back down the beach. 
Bas had responded to nothing for hours, so deep in his praying or conjuring was 
the druid. Cormac would not interrupt the man in the sodden robe of olive green; 
instead he laid hold of his upper arms with both hands and paced the druid, like 
a fear-paralyzed child, out from the seawall. Bas took no note. His eyes 
remained fast shut and his lips moved; his hand was at his throat where lay the 
symbols of the gods of Eirrin. 
Curbing a shiver, Cormac paced down to join the others. Wulfhere was frowning at 
him. The Dane glanced past his old reaving-companion to the stationary druid. 
“Why did ye that, Wolf?” 
Cormac gave him a look; swept the others with it. “None of us will be out of 
sight of all the others,” he said grimly. 
“Gods,” Samaire grumbled, “yet another reminder of that skullhead!” 
“We will be reminded of his presence again and again if not every moment,” 
Cormac told her, taking up a station at Quester’s stern, “until we find a means 
of dealing with him.” 
Wulfhere snarled obscene words in the tongue of his people. 
“Think ye we will deal with him?” a man asked; it was Ruadan mac Mogcorf, whose 
ax-haft mac Art had used against the living dead. 
’Aye,” Cormac said shortly, and stopped further nervous comment or questions. 
“Now lean into it, all, and heave on the count of three.” 
“Lean indeed, boys,” Wulfhere growled. He planted his feet, stamped, reset that 
foot in waterlogged sand. “This wet sand will do its best to hold our ship—ye’ll 
not be defeated by mere crushed rock, will ye?” 
No, and amid groans and grunts and tremendous effort from all, the ship was 
forced, inch by inch, farther up the beach. Cormac and Wulfhere would not let 
them stop until Quester’s prow was merely the length of a man from the towering 
natural wall of granite and basalt. Then all stood gasping and panting—and 
prideful. 
Next the ship from Britain, bearing the name of Amber Rowan for reasons known 
only to him who had named it—a dead man—had to be forced and boosted farther 
ashore. To men already wearied from many such exertions this day, it seemed no 
less heavy than Quester. Nor did Samaire shirk. It was even she who helped up 
Ros when his foot found softer sand than he’d expected and he fell with a splat. 

It was done. All stood heaving their chests, staring balefully at the two 
well-beached craft in what was now less than twilight. 
“The food,” Brian said. 
“And ale!” Wulfhere added without necessity of thought. 
“Aye, we must take both with us, and what water remains. All of it.” 
They stared at Cormac mac Art. “All!” 
He nodded. “Lest we discover on the morrow that he had visited here whilst we 
slept...” 
“Gods!” Wulfhere burst out, and his eyes were wide. “Aye! An he spoils our 
provender...” He broke off, nor did any wish to hear him finish. 
Now Osbrit was staring with eyes wide in revelation. “And—the trove! What if he 
steals and secretes that while we sleep?” 
Cormac was boosting Brian aboard Quester. He turned his head only partway in 
Osbrit’s direction to make reply: “An ye care to bear it all back to the castle, 
Osbrit, do so. I’ll not.” 
“I will remain and keep guard!” Brian volunteered. “And I,” Ros mac Dairb said, 
though with more resignation than enthusiasm. 
Cormac shook his head. “No. All go to the castle. All remain in sight of all 
others.” 
“It’s all this way we’ve come for this load of treasure,” Findbar mac Lirchain 
said. “Are we to leave it here now, for that... creature to steal from us?” 
Cormac turned slowly to face the man from Meath. “Aye, son of Lirchin, we are. 
Think, man. How many treks made all to fetch it here? It’s the same number will 
be necessary to carry it back!” 
Findbar stood gazing at his leader, and his eyes dropped before the staring 
challenge. “We... could hide it, bury it in the sand...” 
Wulfhere looked about in the deep greyness. “And who’s to say boneface be not 
looking on the while?” 
Samaire touched Cormac’s arm. “Mayhap... we should remain here...” 
“It’s of no moment to me,” Cormac told her, and the others as well, for they 
were gathered close and he raised his voice. “I and Wulfhere have spent many 
nights sleeping under stars, even in rain and worse, with wood or sand or stone 
for beds. Is that what ye’d do?” 
The voice of Bas, so long absent, made all jump. “Quester will not be touched by 
Thulsa Doom,” he said. “All will be here when next the sun comes. It’s we who 
will be in danger.” 
All the company stared at the druid who had rejoined them as it were after being 
so long far distant his mind. None asked whence came his certainty. 
They decided to carry all provisions to the castle, and to leave the treasure 
aboard their ship. In darkness, led by Wulfhere and herded close by Cormac who 
walked last, they made their way through the narrow and winding corridor in the 
stone. Onto the castle’s plain they emerged, and across it they marched, and 
once more they entered the ancient citadel of horror. Chunks of wood from old 
furniture provided firelight once it had been carved by sword and dagger and 
rent apart by strong hands. They ate lightly and drank even more sparingly, for 
their tyrannical leader would allow them little. His reminder that they were 
growing short of provisions had to be made but once. 
It was on the landing above the sprawling main chamber they sat and ate, for 
they would not join those corpses and bones and tattered clothing below, nor 
cared any to remove the remains of corpse-slain Britons and the others... men on 
whom death had heeds been brought twice. 
Cormac rose, stretched, looked about, and gave them a wolfish grin. 
“We should have seen to armour and weapons afore we fed our bellies,” he said, 
and there were sour looks and groans. “But—hunger spoke more loudly than the 
weapon-man’s instinct. Now, though... we must rub and with care, for water is no 
friend to steel, and salt water is worse—and in our steel rests our lives!” 
“What boots steel against an enemy already dead?” Findbar grumbled. 
“Leave your blades and armour as they are then, son of Lirchin,” Cormac said, 
and he assumed the posture familiar to those who wore coats or shirts of linked 
steel. Once his belt was opened and removed, he hitched up the skirts of his 
mailcoat-and bent forward from the waist until his hands slapped the 
floor. With legs braced, he wiggled his torso and shook his shoulders—and forty 
pounds of steel links slid clinking and jingling down his body and arms. With 
one hand he coaxed the weighty mass at his neck, and his mailcoat jingled off 
over his head to form a smallish pile on the floor. Only fools attempted to 
press such weight as if removing an ordinary shirt, and then but once. 
Straightening, he peeled off the padded coat beneath, and with a wrinkling of 
noses all knew that soon they must endure not just that of Cormac mac Art, but 
the odorous sweat of all their number. 
Seating himself on the floor in wet tunic and leggings, Cormac proceeded to the 
examination and rubbing of his armour. His sword scabbard was propped against 
the wall upside down. The long brand lay beside it, though it bore no trace of 
seawater. He had been more than mindful of protecting blade and sheath, and had 
reminded and warned his companion. 
The oil all weapon-men carried was rubbed into leathern armour; steel coats were 
carefully rubbed and wiped with cloth; a bale of linen had been brought from the 
ship for that purpose, though it was far too fine. 
Armour, Wulfhere Hausakluifr of the Danes observed, was finer. 
“Someone stinks abominably,” he also observed, without looking up from his 
clinking mail. 
“Someone!” 
Wulfhere grinned; Cormac chuckled. “Would that all that bluster today had 
brought rain as well,” Samaire said, aware of her own addition to the odour in 
the narrow, longish defense hall. 
“Rain will come,” Bas said, and once again the entire company stared at him. 
Cormac pursed his lips. “Tonight?” 
“On the morrow, more likely,” the druid said in a careless tone. 
“Ye know this?” Brian asked in a voice little above a whisper. 
“Rain will come,” Bas said, and seemed to vanish within himself once more. He 
had no armour to see to, but sat crosslegged in his woolen robe that must have 
weighed twenty pounds with its burden of sea water. 
“Druid,” Wulfhere said, rubbing and rubbing, shifting links, rubbing and 
rubbing. “Ye said it was your talk to Behl and Crom and whatever other gods of 
Eirrin brought down the sky-fire at... him. I had as much reason to believe it 
was Father Odin and his son the Thunderer. Now ye’ve said that Quester and all 
aboard it will be safe on the morrow, and too that rain will come. No such 
clouds I saw today—nor does this old wound in my... ham bespeak its coming.” The 
Dane paused; Bas mac Miall said naught. “An all this comes to pass, Druid of 
Eirrin, I shall bethink myself of... changing my allegiances.” 
Far away, thunder rumbled. 
Samaire smiled. “Thor heard, Wulfhere—or is it Thunor?” 
“Behl,” the druid said, sounding as though he spoke from a deep well, “heard.” 
There was silence long upon them, then, but for the clink of mail and the swish 
of cloth. 
At last Ros mac Dairb of Dun Dalgan rose and started for the steps. Instantly 
Cormac challenged. 
“Where go ye, Darb’s son?” 
Ros paused, looked back. “Nature calls.” Then he remembered,’ catching his lip 
in his teeth for a moment like a child caught in the wrong. “Och! Each in sight 
of the others—but mayhap two or several others also have need to make a little 
rain of our own?” 
Cormac showed them his almost-smile, nodded, and returned his attention to his 
mailcoat. It had been long with him, and was valuable, and had proven itself 
among his best friends—with sword and buckler—on many occasions. He was more 
methodical in its cleaning than any man he had ever known. A single rust spot 
could weaken a link so that a swordpoint would enter! Never had mac Art lost so 
much as one link to rust. 
Ros and three others left, close together. 
“Small value that be to me,” Samaire muttered. 
“When they return,” Cormac said, “you and Wulfhere and I will go and examine the 
stars.” 
Samaire’s eyes rose; so did the Dane’s. “Wulfhere!” 
After a moment he rumbled, “I know how to stand close, with my back turned, 
weapon-companion.” 
After another moment, Samaire and another actually managed to laugh. 
And so it was accomplished, and when all had sallied forth and returned, Cormac 
rose, stripped his leggings to reveal what none but Wulfhere and Samaire had 
seen afore: very pale, hairy legs with bulging calves and thighs solid as 
biceps. He spread padded coat and leggings on the floor and leaned against the 
outer wall to gaze upon them. 
He told, then, all he knew of Thulsa Doom, and when he’d done, their 
exclamations and questions consumed as much time as his narrative. 
“It is only with me, then, that Thulsa Doom had quarrel,” he said quietly, when 
questions had dribbled away and he had silenced them again. “To-day or on the 
morrow, all of you could take your leave, and most likely in safety.” 
“Methinks we have covered this point afore,” Brian na Killevy said. 
“Aye,” Wulfhere said, and others nodded. 
“It’s foolish ye all be,” Cormac told them. 
“No more foolish than yourself,” Wulfhere told him in an equable tone. 
“Time approaches, Champion of Eirrin,” Samaire said, “when ye should still your 
foolish tongue that we may all sleep.” 
Cormac appeared to take no note of either remark. It’s not giving myself up for 
dead I am. Ye all can take Amber Rowan, and the booty, and go. I shall follow, 
in Quester. I have coped with Thulsa Doom afore, and—” 
“You and I will. follow in Quester,” Wulfhere said. 
“And I,” Brian said, and they began again, until Cormac’s look again brought 
silence. 
Into that new quiet Osbrit said hopefully, “I was navigator on Amber Rowan. The 
sea I know, and—” 
Ros was staring at the Briton; he interrupted. “Can ye handle her alone?” 
Osbrit shook his head. 
“Then ye’ll not be going,” Ros told him, and Brian and Wulfhere grinned. 
Cormac said, “We must sleep. After this day of fruitless toil, it will not come 
hard. Remember: None must leave this group.” He swept them with his gaze, and 
decided to be more graphic. “For he who does will then be prey for Thulsa Doom, 
and when next we see our companion he will be Thulsa Doom.” 
He looked around about at them, and he saw fear and apprehension in their faces. 
Good, Cormac mac Art thought. Let them be fearful—let us all be fearful. 
Else—Thulsa Doom wins, and I am no such fool as to believe he will let any of 
this company live. 
Next day it did indeed rain, and they were able to catch drinking water aplenty. 
It was good that they did; they left not the island that day, either. 
Chapter Seventeen:
The Wizard Strikes
Three more days passed, and still the will of Thulsa Doom prevailed. 
At least there was the fresh water Bas had promised. As he had said too, the 
ship from Eirrin was found each morning untouched by the baleful wizard. They 
saw him no more; daily they saw evidence of his power. 
Lugh contrived to gain them fresh meat. Though it was stringy, there were few 
complaints about the two birds he brought down with his bow—at cost of one 
broken arrow, three lost, and two retrieved from the bodies of the pale 
seafaring birds. Others of their ilk, too far distant to be reached by arrows no 
matter how strongly loosed and skillfully directed, the company looked upon with 
open envy. 
The soaring, inanely screeking birds came and went as they pleased. The birds 
were free. The birds found what food they needed on other islands less 
inhospitable than Samaire-heim and, faring as they did well asea on their broad, 
current-catching wings, plucked forth those shining fish so careless as to 
cavort at the surface. The birds were free, mobile, and free too of the 
frustrating overwork and muscles strained for naught. 
Thulsa Doom had no quarrel with birds. 
Salt water fish seemed to avoid the isle, but meagre and dwindling supplies of 
food were supplemented by the catching of one great silver-blue denizen of 
Manannan’s abode—upon the spearing and landing of which burly Cet mac Fergus 
became a hero. Two other smaller fish were merely picked unheroically up from 
the sands whence they had been borne and tossed by wind-swept water, and left 
gasping behind when the wind died and the sea receded. 
Men sought shellfish among the rocks surrounding the island that had become 
their prison, and were unrewarded—though punished with skinned shins and one 
wrenched wrist. 
“It’s only me right wrist,” Duach said with an attempt at a shrug and a grin, 
for the slim but accomplished swordsman from the Slieve Cuilinn area of northern 
Dalriadia was left-handed. But no one laughed. 
The druid had drunk little, eaten nothing at all, and spoken hardly more. Bas 
remained busy with his accumulation of oak and patched-together symbols and his 
muttering—and, ever accompanied by at least two others, his “reading” of the 
many pictures and glyphs on the castle walls. All knew he was working on their 
behalf against a wizard far more accomplished and experienced. Nevertheless that 
failed to prevent a growing impatience with Bas as day followed dreary day of 
imprisonment; the men of Eirrin fell out of infatuation with him on whom they’d 
set such hopes. 
“He seeks to save us all, and he fasts on our behalf,” Cormac told Findbar mac 
Lirchain, after the Meathman had snarled against Bas. 
“Fasts—so do we all fast!” Findbar retorted. “And what sustenance has our 
enemy?” 
“Ye saw his... face,” Samaire said. “The wizard died years agone—centuries 
agone. He has no need of sustenance—as ye will not, an ye lean not on that 
hull—here comes the wind again!” 
Day after day, winds that rose on the instant from nowhere drove them back—and 
then died as abruptly once they’d manhandled the ships well up the strand and 
taken what shelter they could against the island’s forbidding walls of stone; 
there was no lee side. 
Night after night they slept in the castle, all together along the upper defense 
hall and complaining of the snoring of Wulfhere and Cet and Lugh. Thence they 
repaired each even at dusk, carrying their provisions—which they returned to the 
ships each day in their new attempts to depart this place of Hel. 
With ample opportunity to grow sick at the sight and smell and sound of each 
other in this constant frustration and enforced proximity, they did. Laden with 
the spoils of Norsemen they’d not had even to slay, they sought only to leave 
Samaire-heim. And daily the power of Thulsa Doom drove them back. 
Cormac had still his confidence and his rope, and he plotted and murmured a 
secret plan. Thus, on the second night after their confrontation with the wizard 
they’d not seen since, the company of fourteen laboriously gained the mesa 
paralleling the castle’s upper storey. Thence they hurried silently in the dark 
to the ships. In silence they forced Quester down to the tidewaters for a 
perilous attempt to ply treacherous shoreward waters by night. 
The wind came, and cursing they set their shoulders to the stern of the long 
boat whose bow they’d just been apushing. Then the wind died... and on its last 
sighs came borne the sound of mocking laughter. 
There were more frowns and angry words and curses than cooperation that third 
day. Returned to the castle once more, Cormac mac Art relieved himself of a 
lecture. Some received it with set teeth; others with sheepish looks; Findbar 
with a sneer he would not disguise. 
Thulsa Doom must have had means of witnessing that scene, for that night he made 
another direct attempt at gaining his ends. Later, the survivors of that new 
horror could only reconstruct what took place from imagination and supposition. 
Somehow the wizard must have lured Findbar from their midst while all others 
slept; that, or the sullen Meathman awoke to nature’s call and ignored the one 
overweening rule. He fared from his companions, and outside, and there he found 
his weird. Dawn was acoming, the sky going from black to deep blue lightening to 
an orange-shot grey in the east, but the enemy worked swiftly. 
Some faint noise awoke Wulfhere rather than Cormac, who had striven the hardest 
on the day previous and, his brain full of frustration and plans that came to 
naught even in the thinking, had lain long awake. It was Wulfhere awoke his 
former reaving companion, quietly. 
“Half our number have left us,” he whispered. “Look.” 
Creep-footed, Cormac moved to one of the arrow-niches from which their first 
approach to this isle, months agone, had been contested by the two Norsemen left 
as guards. He peered forth into a chill morning just greyed with dawn. 
Far out across the plain, a knot of men was just on the point of entering the 
narrow gorge slicing through the towering wall of stone that separated plain 
from beach. Cormac opened his mouth to call out; closed it. He sighed. 
“Let them go Wulfhere “ he murmured “It’s not they are Thulsa Doom’s prey; they 
can escape him thus, without me.” 
“And if they take Quester rather than the Britonish ship?” 
Again Cormac mac Art heaved a weary sigh. “Can we have the heart to contest 
them? Fight those men, my picked men, for the right to leave me—and live?” 
Wulfhere frowned deeply, but said nothing, and his friend turned from the 
embrasure. He glanced about at those remaining, all asleep—and then he went 
spear-stiff and peered close. 
“Blood of the gods! Up, up all, and into your armour!” 
While those sprawled lumps of shadow stirred and sat up to become human beings 
and then rose, Cormac’s words drove sleep from them and determination into their 
hearts. 
“All the others have departed us, but a few minutes past. Look about ye—it’s all 
the water and all the food they’ve taken! It’s abandoned to die we are, not from 
the sorcerer, but from the death that comes more swiftly than 
starvation—thirst!” 
Chapter Eighteen:
Steel Against Sorcery
They clad themselves hurriedly in armour of leather and steel. Buckling on 
sheaths and scabbard belts, they settled helmets over skulls and took up their 
bucklers. When they left the castle of Atlantis at a trot, ax or sword was naked 
in every hand, including that of Bas. Solemnly, without a word, the druid had 
descended to the great hall and there girt up his robe with a Norseman’s broad 
belt. He took up a Norse ax as well, after slipping the buckler of a dead Dane 
up his arm as though he well knew how to wear and use it. 
Even so, weapon-gripping hands were few. The loyal remnant of Cormac’s fourteen 
now consisted only of Samaire, Wulfhere, Brian, Lugh called Manhunter, and Bas. 
They were six; eight had left surreptitiously, apparently to abandon them with 
nothing to quench their thirst. 
Though his blood was high and the desire to run at full speed was on him, Cormac 
forced them to walk, once they were in the deep-cut corridor that led through 
solid rock to the beach. Two reasons he had for slowing, both good. 
There was no way the narrow and twisty defile could be traversed at any gait 
above a speedy walk without running into or scraping the stone walls again and 
again, with the danger of injuring leg or arm, or falling. Too, as Cormac told 
his tiny company, they were far better to arrive on the strand unwinded. 
Brian could not understand that Ros could have gone with the others, and said so 
repeatedly. 
“Aye, I thought Laig and I were friends,” Wulfhere said as they walked in the 
gloom, hurriedly, quivering the while like eager hounds held on taut leashes. 
“It’s none of them I understand,” Samaire said. “Leaving, perhaps... but taking 
all ale and water—evil!” 
“Worse than evil,” Wulfhere growled from behind her. 
“Findbar perhaps, the constant complainer. And Osbrit I suppose—though it’s not 
as a captive we’ve treated that Briton we found so prostrate in fear. But Ros, 
and Laig...” Samaire gave her leather-helmeted head a jerk. “Yet no more can I 
understand Ruadan’s leaving us, taking all food and drink, or big Cet either... 
and Duach, and Laegair...” 
“It is the wizard’s dark work,” Bas muttered. “I’m after seeing to the 
protection of ship and spoils, day after day, aye, and all of ye as well, whilst 
ye’ve been at fruitless toil with the ships. But while we slept... somehow, he 
struck.” 
“That ever-snarling Findbar may have struck a bargain even with him,” Wulfhere 
snarled. 
“But the others?” Brian’s voice was plaintive, disbelieving. “Even Ros? Why?” 
“How,” Lugh said, and the others were silent; that question seemed more to the 
point. 
“Cormac,” Bas said quietly. “I’m thinking that it’s his creatures they may well 
all be.” 
Cormac made no reply. The thought was already in his mind. But if that were 
true, then— 
“We may have to fight them,” Wulfhere said, as if for his longtime 
sword-companion. Nor did the rumbly Dane sound overmuch perturbed at the 
possibility of such ghastly civil war among the members of a company already 
passing small. 
Brian’s tone was fraught with worry: “Might they be lying in wait? Even one Cet, 
mayhap. One man could hold us at bay in this narrow passageway with no room to 
pass him, and Cet be the biggest among us.” And sadly he corrected: “Among 
them.” 
Cormac mac Art led the way. His voice came back to the others hoarse, and far 
from pleasant. “An such be the case, it’s not long Cet mac Fergus will bar my 
way, for all our being comrades and his good fighting against those Picts!” 
Sword held ready, he went on as if there were absolutely no danger. 
That proved to be the case; reaching the point at which the shadowed defile 
debouched onto the sunlit beach, Cormac paused. 
“I will talk,” he said. “Follow my lead. And make no hostile move on your own. 
Now—sheathe our swords.” And he did, silently. 
From Wulfhere, a low chuckle: “Ye’ll not be minding that the druid and I keep 
our axes naked in hand, will you, Wolf?” 
“Be not overweening anxious to bear arms against our own comrades,” Cormac 
reminded. “But, as we move toward them, stay not too close together to... hamper 
one another.” 
“An we cease not this chatter and move,” Wulfhere grumbled, “it’s naught we’ll 
see but Quester’s stern and that well out to sea!” 
But Cormac had already stepped forward and out into the sunlight. 
They were a hundred paces away on the beach, not asea, but the eight men were 
well about the business of taking leave of the island. Already the foremost 
reach of Quester’s keel lay in the water, though the grunting men had not yet 
got it far enough out to float. Cormac could see five of them, straining the 
long boat down to the water’s edge. 
Pausing at the entrance to the sharply sliced defile so that his companions were 
blocked within, Cormac shouted. 
“Ho, comrades—had ye but waited a little I’d have helped ye—since there’s more 
strength in me than any of ye!” 
At that affable shout all activity ceased. Five men stared at him, and then 
eight, for Osbrit and Duach and burly Cet Fergus’s son came around from the far 
side Quester. They stared, with their faces showing them surprised and far from 
happy at the appearance of their leader. 
“Let there be no discussion of strength,” Findbar said, and he gestured at Cet 
mac Fergus. 
Cet strutted a chest like a barrel split lengthwise from its center. But he said 
nothing. Indeed, confusion appeared on his jowly face, and he glanced at 
Findbar, for Cormac’s eyes had never left that less burly Meathman. 
“It’s yourself had bade us leave, again and again,” Findbar said. He paused, but 
Cormac said nothing, holding his cold blue eyes on the man who’d made so many 
disgruntled noises in the past few days of their adversity. 
Then Cormac moved, and Findbar’s eyes flickered. From behind the Gael came the 
others, one by one; Brian and Lugh and Samaire and then Bas, his robe girt and 
an ax in his hand. Wulfhere appeared last, great ax on one broad shoulder in the 
manner of a woodsman. 
“We want no help,” Findbar said. 
“And none offered,” Cormac said as he strolled down the strand toward Findbar’s 
company. “It’s fit enough ye all look this morning. Nay, we but followed to call 
to your forgetful minds two matters ye doubtless forgot in your haste.” 
“We’ve forgot nothing, Cormac mac Art!” 
Cormac’s eyes swerved to the speaker. “At least ye’ve not forgot the name of the 
man who spoke softly to ye when ye had the fear of a nightmarish child on ye, 
Osbrit of Britain, and treated ye not as an enemy!” 
“Slow your steps, Wolf,” Wulfhere muttered, so low of voice as not to be heard 
by the men about the ship. “See them squint; the sun’s behind us. I’d be keeping 
it there.” 
Cormac was only ambling; aware of the warrior’s wisdom of the Dane’s words, he 
paused. “Two matters, as I said, want more than discussion ere ye sail, Findbar. 
The first is that it’s all the food and drink ye’ve brought away.” He made a 
boyishly reproachful face. “For shame. A serious oversight, that; we’d be dead 
in three or so days, and ye’d have the blood of both a druid and a royal 
princess on your hands.” 
“And a Dane not yet ready to dine in Odin’s hall!” Wulfhere added, from just 
behind Cormac and to his left. 
“And too, if ye be of no mind to sail with Lady Samaire and the Splitter of 
Skulls, ye must leave a goodly portion of Quester’s cargo for them.” 
Cormac noted that all the men with Findbar looked both confused and stiff—save 
Findbar himself. And all watched Findbar. He spoke. 
“The dead have no use for water or spoils,” he said. “And those who remain with 
you, accursed mac Art, are dead.” 
“Murdered by comrades who abandon us to die of thirst?” Samaire demanded; she 
was between Cormac and Wulfhere, at a distance of four or more paces from each. 
Ros looked stricken by her words. 
“Ros!” Brian called from Cormac’s right. “Sword Companion!” 
Young Ros of Dun Dalgan shook his fair head in its gleaming helm and knitted his 
brows, as though torn by painful thought. This Findbar saw, and he spoke three 
words. 
“Ros mac Dairb!” 
The youth stiffened; trembled. Then his face lost all expression. It was as if 
his mind left his body. 
“Behl protect,” Samaire murmured. 
“And Crom defend,” Lugh added, with fervor. 
“You will leave half the castle’s trove,” Cormac told Findbar, less equably now. 
Though he looked not at Ros, he felt his skin a-crawl from that one brief 
glance. “And a like amount of ale and water. Ye be but two days from an isle 
with a fine spring, and fresh waterfall tumbling into the sea.” 
“Fare there in Amber Rowan, then,” Findbar said. “We leave nothing.” 
“Then ye’ll not be departing.” 
Findbar’s eyes remained fixed an Cormac, but he said, “Cet! There stands your 
enemy. Ye heard him, man; he’ll not suffer ye to depart this place! It’s Cormac 
mac Art stands betwixt ye and the Eirrin ye long to be in—kill him!” 
“No, Cet! We’ve sailed together, man, fought Picts together, bled together and 
endured the horror of Thulsa Doom together, day after day. Blood of the gods, 
Cet—ye and me cannot war one with the other!” 
Cet paid the Gael’s words no mind. He came on past Findbar with buckler high and 
ax low and balanced to swing, a thick man of surpassing strength who lacked only 
Wulfhere’s height to balance him in size. Nor was he without skill at weapons, 
else Cormac would not have picked him as part of a carefully chosen crew. 
“Cet!” Cormac called out as the big man neared. 
“Cet!” Findbar echoed from behind Cet mac Fergus. “Kill him!” 
Cet essayed to do. Cormac waited until the ax was swinging in a blur of silvered 
grey ere he spun away, drawing steel on the move, coming about to face Cet 
across the three feet of space through which the ax had whished. 
“This must not be, Cet Son of Fergus!” 
Cet spoke not, and Cormac remembered Wulfhere that day on the mesa. And like 
Wulfhere then, Cet and his ax now came attacking still. 
Cormac contrived to twist his buckler as he swung it to meet the ax, deflecting 
it with a great grating cran-n-ngg of ax on shield of ironbound wood thick with 
enamel. At the same time the Gael aimed a stroke at the bigger man’s head. This 
Cet’s greenand-blue targe caught with a great noise; surprisingly, he 
anticipated and caught, too, Cormac’s murderous backswing. 
The two men circled, fighting with brain rather than with the necessity of the 
combat among many, or the berserker rage upon them. Each eyed the other, ever 
shifting their feet in the sand, flexing muscles to keep shields and weapons 
amove. 
Cormac feinted low; Cet met point with buckler and tried a sidearm chop. That 
Cormac both ducked and deflected with interposed shield. The bear emblazonment 
of Carnal Uais was long since ruined, though the buckler was undented. Steel on 
wood hardened to the likeness of iron boomed out. Once more the two men’s arms 
were stilled but for a constant swaying as each sought an opening or slip on the 
other’s part; either would lead to the one cut that was frequently all that was 
necessary. 
Moving warily, each made small feinting movement, the other’s obvious readiness 
for which stopped them short of full cuts or stabs. 
Shaken still as Cet seemed not to be, Cormac made an error. Circling, testing 
each several step in the sand, he moved more to his right, until he was unable 
to see the ship and the seven men before it. He had accepted the unstated but 
tacit understanding that he and Cet would duel whilst the others awaited the 
outcome and the decision it brought. 
He was wrong. 
Findbar spoke no word; he must have gestured. Cormac saw nothing; heard nothing 
until Wulfhere shouted. 
“Cormac! FALL!” 
The Gael reacted instantly, as if instinctively. Many months had passed, over a 
year had gone since Cormac had heard that cry. He knew its meaning. It told him 
that he was in danger from someone other than him he faced. He was to betake 
himself from that attack with all swiftness—and down, not merely aside. With a 
feint at Cet’s legs, the Gael lunged sideward and let his knees drop him to a 
squat. His sword he held upward to keep Cet back; at the same time he rolled his 
eyes to the side. 
Cormac saw Laegair mac Gol in the act of attacking him where he’d been; he heard 
the rush overhead of Wulfhere’s thrown ax; he saw it smash fully into Laegair’s 
face. Laegair mac Gol of Tir Edgain died on the instant of a crushed skull, far 
from his home in Ailech of Eirrin. 
Cormac thought, Why? 
Then he was up, meeting a vicious whirring stroke of Cet’s ax and doing his very 
best to chop off the burly Meathman’s sword-arm. 
Wulfhere was meanwhile taking two strides to the side and with a swift twist, 
plucking the ax from the hand of Bas the Druid. 
“Your pardon, Druid, but I have more need of this than you!” The Danish giant 
strode forward past Cormac and Cet to face the other followers of Findbar. “Stay 
back. These two fight. I’ll not interfere on Cormac’s behalf. We all wait, 
unless any of you is of a mind to join that treacherous weasel!” He jerked his 
shield-arm at the fallen Laegair, whose face was no longer recognizable. 
Findbar turned, and in a passionless voice he pronounced a sort of litany: 
“Ruadan mac Mogcorf... Ros mac Dairb... Laig Senain’s son... Osbrit Drostan’s 
son of Britain... Duach mac Laig of Airgialla.” As men aslumber and yet afoot 
they stared at him. Findbar pointed at Wulfhere. “Slay the foreigner; kill the 
Dane!” 
Every man raised weapon and shield and turned eyes on Wulfhere. 
With a twinned yell, Brian and Samaire came running. Lugh was close on their 
heels. All three armoured attackers held shields and long swords up for combat. 
It was chance set Samaire against Duach, who was also left-handed. Though 
willowl-slim, Duach had been picked by Cormac for the expedition because of the 
speed and agility that made him, with some skill, a formidable swordsman. He 
wheeled and braced round shield against Samaire’s rushing sword and sent his own 
forward in a blur of silver-grey steel to open her face. Her buckler whipped up; 
both blades clanged harmlessly on bucklers. 
Brian’s initial charge would have done for Laig the navigator, but Ruadan cut at 
the youth, and on the instant he who loved to fight gained opportunity more than 
enow. Brian was beset by two countrymen bent on the sight of his blood. 
After a wild passing swipe at Samaire that she surprised them both by 
sword-blocking, young Ros of Dun Dalgan met Lugh with a new ring and skirl of 
clashing steel. But a little distance removed, Osbrit and Findbar harried 
Wulfhere like cautious but fierce dogs, while he kept the two busy ducking and 
fending off his swooping ax. 
The sound of battle cries, challenges, and curses rose on the air to mingle in 
cacophony with the steely clangor of blade on helm and buckler and armour. 
Stamping, twisting, sliding feet churned up the sand around the twelve unevenly 
divided opponents. This was battle indeed, made more horrible by the fact that 
all were shipmates. 
The broad side of Cet’s ax slammed into the mailed leg of a twisting Cormac, and 
with a grunt of pain he was knocked off his feet. Grinning, Cet raised his ax 
for a killing stroke. Hastily he aborted that attack when he found himself 
staring at a swordpoint extended upward so as to spit him with his own movement. 
He rushed sideward, ax still on high; Cormac kicked himself over and rose 
fluidly with sand falling from his steel links. A swift lunge forced Cet to 
parry with buckler and back away to seek another opportunity. 
Findbar, in ducking, lost his footing and sprawled backward. Wulfhere hove up 
his ax for the stroke of death but Osbrit interfered; his sudden rain of 
stabbing, hacking steel kept the Dane busy long enow for Findbar to scramble up. 
A bear-like stroke tore through the edge of Osbrit’s shield and down so that 
ax-edge rang on iron boss. 
As the ax caught momentarily in sheared iron and splintered wood, only 
Wulfhere’s swiftly swung shield prevented Findbar’s blade from splitting his 
scalemail and flesh—his shield, and the vicious hopping kick Wulfhere gave the 
other man’s calf. The Dane’s ax came free; the flurry ended. The three men moved 
warily, watching each other. 
Duach was perhaps stronger, but Samaire was not only good with sword, she had 
been shown certain concepts of tactic by Cormac, who had surprisedly pronounced 
her an instinctive weapon... woman. In swiftness she and Duach were well 
matched. The lean man of five-and-twenty or so, with his fortnight-old orange 
beard, was hard pressed physically and mentally to protect himself from her 
unpredictability, while Samaire must guard against the man’s longer reach. 
Both wielded sword in the off-hand and buckler in right; both were armoured in 
leather, though Duach had got a round Norse helmet from the throne room of 
Kull’s castle. His shield was new and Norse, too, blazoned with a blue dragon on 
a deep red facing. Samaire’s long-bossed buckler was painted and enameled the 
blue of Leinster—though it bore the angry boar of her cousin’s husband Cumal. 
Swiftly Duach learned of her unorthodox methods, learned of Cormac mac Art who’d 
learned them elsewhere than in Eirrin. Duach was not prepared for the maneuver 
when her shield flashed out defensively. Though he back-lunged with sufficient 
swiftness to prevent the stoving in of his face, her buckler’s outside boss tore 
his cheek. 
After that they fought as intelligent weapon-men fight who respect each other, 
not in a mad flurry of cuts and lunges but with much watchful movement that 
erupted from time to time into a sudden clangorous exchange. 
The two hounds of Cormac were young, exuberant, and skillful. This Lugh learned, 
though it was his last knowledge gained in this life. The flashing brand of 
golden-haired Ros tore through mail and flesh and bone and the horrified Lugh 
stared down at his right arm. It flopped to the sand, spraying scarlet as did 
its stump. Then the archer only gurgled as Ros slashed away half his face and 
more. 
Without so much as a pause in elation, Ros whirled, another instinctive 
weapon-man. It was at Wulfhere’s rear he moved. Osbrit and Findbar kept the big 
red-beard passing busy; he was an easy target. 
“STOP AND TURN!” 
At that challenging roar Ros froze for an instant, in his youth. Then he spun. 
The youth found with a blink that he faced Bas the Druid, who had already 
appropriated Lugh’s sword from the archer’s severed hand. 
“Ye’d slay from behind, Boy; I’d not!” And Bas attacked as though he’d borne 
arms all his days. 
“Druid—I—” Ros blocked a fierce cut that dented his shield’s iron rim and 
buckled the wood so that it crackled and bulged outward. The young man’s pale 
eyes again mirrored confusion and agony, and he backed. To launch death-bringing 
blows at a druid... 
“Break it, Ros mac Dairb!” Bas bade him sharply. “Break the hold of Thulsa Doom, 
who is evil incarnate! Fight me not, Ros mac Dairb—it’s a druid of your own 
people ye face with naked steel in hand!” 
Perhaps Findbar heard and perhaps it was but unfortunate coincidence. Again he 
bellowed out the name of each of his followers, shouted after each name the 
single word: “Kill!” 
And Ros, jerking his head as if arousing from slumber, attacked the druid of his 
people. 
Eyes glinted with the bright madness of slaughter-lust and swords and axes 
flashed in the sun like silver lightning. Already the sand looked as if torn by 
a passing horde of galloping horses. Helmets and armour and blades, ever amove, 
sent back bursts of light at the fire of Behl on its ascent into the heavens. 
Like a carrion-eating beast the shade of death stalked grimly among the stamping 
slashing combatants in that horrid battle among comrades and countrymen. 
The shade of death, stalked, chose... 
Its icy hand fell on Ruadan mac Mogcorf. With an awful cry he fell, his thigh 
chopped more than half through by Brian’s downward-curving backstroke. Brian 
gave him no death-stroke but lunged away from Laig’s ferocious chopping slash. 
Too shocked to do aught for himself, Ruadan lay shuddering while he bled to 
death. 
Samaire was prey to a similar stroke from Duach’s brand. But she had been 
twisting away, and his steel failed to open her leather-clad leg. She felt as if 
struck with a battering-ram nonetheless, and fell. A-wallow on the sand, she 
gritted her teeth and strained to keep her eyes open. Pain was like a dark cloud 
striving to fall over her brain. 
At almost the same instant, a few feet away, Wulfhere’s rushing ax was not even 
slowed by a thick Briton neck. Osbrit’s head went flying twenty feet on a wake 
of scarlet. Spatters fell on Samaire and Duach, who was chopping down at her. 
She rolled with a desperate speed she could not have matched outside the 
superhuman stimulus of combat and lifesaving desperation. Duach’s sword actually 
scraped the boiled leather at her shoulder on its downward rush. The blade 
buried itself in the beach with a crunching of sand on steel. 
Like an animal, Samaire was scoot-boosting herself to her feet and then running 
headlong to stay on them, despite her limp and the screaming of her leg. 
Wrenching his shining glaive from the sand, Duach rushed after her. 
She turned as he made his thrusting charge. Even as her leg failed her and she 
tilted crazily sideways, the fugitive princess caught his rushing point on a 
moving shield. Wideswept, the buckler sent the swordblade and Duach’s left arm 
with it swinging wide of his body. Immediately and desperately he covered with a 
crossing-over buckler—and Samaire chopped into his right side. 
She fell to her knees then, watching the young man’s sky-coloured eyes go 
enormously wide, watching him gasp and stagger, seeing the appearance of blood 
at the lips of an inches-deep wound at his belt line. His sword dropped and he 
clamped that hand to the wound, half-turning—but her following stroke was 
already in motion. 
Grimly, teeth clenched, she chopped again from her kneeling posture. Her edge 
clove through leather and flesh and then bone, in almost precisely the same area 
in Duach’s left side. Come far from Slieve Cuilinn in quest of adventure and 
spoils, Duach Laig’s son of Airgailla became a twinned fountain of blood. He 
fell, dying as his life’s blood rushed from him—slain by a woman of Leinster. 
In horror Samaire turned her face from that former shipmate. But yesterday they 
had heaved side by side at the ship... 
She looked among the others just as Wulfhere booted Findbar so violently under 
the front of his tunic that both the man’s feet left the ground. And a 
triumphant Wulfhere nearly died then, for incredibly Findbar caught his balance 
and seemed unharmed by what should have dropped him with his mouth wide in a 
soundless scream. Not only that, he slashed, and the astounded Dane had to hurl 
himself sidewise and full length to avoid the opening of his neck. 
Samaire saw him sprawl, saw him roll and flounder away, saw him bash aside 
Findbar’s next sally, saw the Dane rise unharmed and back a bit while he 
recollected his shock-scattered wits. A lunatic cry caused Samaire to jerk her 
eyes to stare elsewhere. 
With the Pictish battle scream Cormac put his entire body behind a shield-lunge. 
His and Cet’s bucklers were in line; the Gael struck the other’s with such force 
that Cet’s brawny arm was smashed back into his face. Blood spurted from his 
nose, hot on his arm. He was given no time to reflect on his destroyed nose; 
Cormac thrust the big Meathish ax-man through the belly and was looking about 
him ere he’d given his blade a twist and yanked it free. 
Seeing that ugly wolfish grin contort Cormac’s scarred face, Samaire followed 
his gaze with her own. Both Brian’s blood-streaming sword and Laig’s head were 
still in the air. For a moment Laig’s body stood quivering, and then the crimson 
jet erupted from the stump between his shoulders. Jerking as though in some 
horrid dance of the dead, the body fell into its own blood. 
With others stilled, Wulfhere and Findbar circling, the sound of a single 
encounter rose loudly now. 
Brian and Samaire and Cormac looked in the direction of that constant sound of 
hammer and hack. They saw Bas well up the beach, backing and backing, his sword 
not in use as he could only defend against the incessant fierce battering of 
young Ros of Dun Dalgan. 
A thought that was not rational and the more horrible under the circumstances 
jolted through Cormac mac Art’s weapon-man’s brain: Och, what a beautiful young 
fighter he is! The magnificent berserker rage has come on him, and him not even 
one of mine! 
He charged after druid and youthful warrior, roaring out a new cry in hopes of 
disconcerting the fiercely hacking Ros. 
But the other hound of Cormac was there before him. 
“Ros! Friend, sword-comrade—STOP this!” 
Ros turned on Brian. Aye, there was the madness in his eyes, though a deep 
torment seemed too to haunt them. Brian na Killevy could not believe, as Cormac 
could not believe Wulfhere’s attack that afternoon on the “Roof of the World”, 
and it nigh cost him his life. Only a reflexive interposing of his sword saved 
his entrails from, Ros’s blade-edge. With a screeching ear-torturing crang of 
steel on steel, Brian’s brand went flying from his hand. 
Samaire noted that Ros did not grin in triumph. Later she told the others; there 
was no victor’s joy on the one youth’s face as he moved confidently to put death 
on the other. 
He was over-confident. A man at death’s-point would either freeze, or accept, or 
scream and run, or adopt the role of beleaguered wolf—and weaponman—and do all 
in his power to avoid doom and destroy its bringer. Brian I-love-to-fight, 
Cormac saw then, was not only a good man, a born weapon-man, but a wolfish 
Cormac as well. 
Viciously and desperately his shield whipped back and forth in a blurring wall 
of defense that kept Ros’s sword at bay. And Brian braced his left leg, and with 
the force of rushing adrenalin he kicked his former friend in the calf. 
The leg buckled. Ros fell. 
“Brian!” he gasped. Staring up, his eyes went bright as though he’d awoken. 
“Br—got to wake Brian! The wiz—” 
Then Brian’s shield-edge smashed down on his nose and drove splintered shards of 
bone into his brain. 
Brian knelt aside the dead man with whom he had found and felt such camaraderie. 
In his eyes now was the same torment and confusion that had been in Ros’s just 
before he died. 
“Damn you, Ros,” he choked, “you could have bested me!” The pitiful cry was an 
anguished accusation. 
Brian and Bas missed what Cormac saw, then. 
With one of those full-circle swings of his terrible ax, Wulfhere took off the 
head of Findbar of Meath with such perfection that Findbar might have been a 
stuffed dummy positioned for the stroke. The head, eyes and mouth gaping, rolled 
on the sand with a grating of its helmet. And... like a stuffed dummy... no 
blood spurted up from the headless shoulders. 
Wulfhere was struck motionless in renewed shock at a foeman who fought on after 
a crotch-kick that should have ruined him forever, and who now bled not from the 
loss of his head. In those instants of the Dane’s frozen staring, the arm of the 
headless man swung. Edge of sword met the rounded side of steel helmet with a 
great crashing clang. So great was the force of that blow that Wulfhere fell 
sidewise without a grunt. 
The corpse-strewn beach was suddenly horribly silent. 
A moment the headless man stood over the fallen Wulfhere Hausakliufr. Then a 
death’s-head appeared on the shoulders of Findbar, and his body changed, and he 
stood there in a night-dark robe already rent by sword and arrow. Dark 
eyesockets gleamed in their depths like rubies and Findbar’s sword whipped high 
in a fist suddenly become mere skin stretched over knobby bones. 
The silence that had closed like a death-shroud over the strand so long 
chaotically alive with the shouts and clangor of combat was split, seconds after 
it fell. For the third time that bloody morning the ghastly shrieking cry of a 
charging Pict clove the air and ululated. The skull of Thulsa Doom jerked 
sidewise and up, and he was only just able to meet the mad sword-rushing charge 
of Cormac mac Art. 
Blade rang on shield anew. But it had been long and long since Thulsa Doom had 
entered swordwielding combat; long and long since he and a sorcerous sword had 
been able to hold off a weakening King Kull for hours. 
Three violently slashing strokes bent his shield, split his shield, and then 
tore it from his arm. The fourth slash Cormac turned into the thrust that he 
favoured. The long blade of his sword drove into Thulsa Doom as it had that 
other time, widening the same tear in the robe. 
Once again Cormac bore his sorcerous foe back and down, and held him spitted. 
The impaled mage groaned, writhed—and struck with his sword. That cut Cormac met 
with his shield, so that its edge drove into a bony wrist. The fingers flexed 
open; the sword dropped. Cormac leaned on his own pommel while he shook off his 
buckler. 
“BRIAN! I NEEEED YE!” 
Behind him Wulfhere moaned; a score and more feet away Samaire got to her feet. 
Her face twisting in pain, she began hobbling toward him. Thulsa Doom writhed 
like a gaffed eel on the impaling sword. Hands cold as a serpent’s hide closed 
on Cormac’s wrists. He grunted, pressed down. The hilt of his brand ground into 
the mage’s abdomen. The blade was buried in the beach beneath Thulsa Doom, and 
Cormac feared the impermanent lack of solidity of sand. 
Samaire was staggering laboriously toward him, and he durst not glance back to 
see if Brian had recovered from his horrified, self-blaming reverie. Then there 
were crunching footsteps, and Bas was there. 
“My buckler, Bas! Lay it there beside him, boss up!” 
Bas did as he was bade, without a word. The buckler formed an overturned bowl 
beside Thulsa Doom, the iron boss gleaming. Cormac’s flesh twitched and raised 
the million excrescences of horripilation as he thought on the ghastly plan he 
had devised. 
“The blade hurts him and is cold to him,” he grunted through his teeth. “Nor can 
he vanish or escape whilst he be—uh!—impaled thus!” The mage’s hands were 
seeking to break his wrist, and those hands were strong. “I dare not let go this 
sword with either hand—one cannot hold against his sorcerous strength. Here, 
Bas—LEAN on this brand!” 
Almost, while Bas and Cormac exchanged hands on the pommel, Thulsa Doom escaped, 
for he writhed and strove and his strength was far more than normal. But the 
maneuver was effected—though Bas gasped in horror when the mage’s face took on 
the likeness of the Princess of Leinster. 
“Bas! Bas! Oh Druid it hurts... please...” 
Cormac had risen to stand over the hideous tableau of druid kneeling over 
Samaire, pinning her to the earth on the point of a sword. 
“Obscene monster, we can both see Samaire, but paces away!” And Cormac entered 
into what seemed ghoulish madness. 
Motion followed swift motion as he seized Bas by the shoulders. By main force he 
tumbled the druid backward onto the sands. The sword came partway forth, and 
Samaire became Thulsa Doom once more as the real Samaire reached them. Cormac 
was still in swift action, executing his desperate plan with as much speed as 
ever he’d shown in his life. He drew his sword free; it emerged easily. Ere 
Thulsa Doom could take advantage of his instant of freedom, the vengeful Gael 
turned him over—on the buckler with its upstanding metal boss, fist thick, over 
three inches long, and not-quite pointed. 
Without pause Cormac’s right fist leaped up and rushed down like a hammer. 
Thulsa Doom emitted a hideous groan and shuddered when he was struck on the back 
just above the waist and the metal boss drove into his belly. 
With both hands and all his might Cormac mac Art drove his sword into the mage’s 
back, through his body, and into the shield. 
On her knees, Samaire faced him across the spitted body. “Gods,” she murmured, 
and shivered. 
The writhing form of the wizard strove to break the impaling prison. Like claws 
his hands tore at the sand. Suddenly he changed again, into a whipping lunging 
serpent, but still he could not break free. Again he resumed man-shape, and put 
back his hands in an attempt to tear the blade free of his back. 
“My next shield,” Cormac muttered, “will have a sharpened boss!” He grunted the 
words with exertion; With the flat of Wulfhere’s ax he struck his sword’s 
upstanding pommel. The sword seemed to shorten as its tip drove farther into the 
buckler. No splintering sound came; the shield held. Again, Cormac struck. 
Wulfhere sat up, touching the small trickle of blood that ran down from under 
the helmet that had skinned his head, even with its shaggy mop of hair, before 
the unnatural force of Thulsa Doom’s blow. 
“Odin and Thor and Woten and Thunor, my he—by all the gods! What are ye about, 
Wolf?” 
“Carpentry.” 
Cormac stood over the wizard who was helplessly impaled, face down, betwixt 
sword-hilt, and stout shield. Bas and Samaire, the one sitting dazedly as 
Wulfhere and the other on one knee, stared at the constantly moaning, twisting 
mage. 
“Making fast one who cannot be slain,” Cormac said in a sepulchral voice. 
“Thulsa Doom: You are my prisoner!” 
Chapter Nineteen:
Doom-heim
“In times more ancient than we count,” Bas said, “an exile from Atlantis found 
employment as weaponman in a land called Valusia. Time came when he made 
challenge to the king, and brought defeat and death on him, and the Atlantean 
was king over Valusia. His name was Kull. Trusted counsellor to him was a man 
named Tu; just that: Tu. I am... I was Tu, as I have been others since, in the 
endless cycle of birth and death and rebirth. And Cormac, who has been others as 
well, is and was Kull.” 
Wulfhere Skullsplitter of the Danes gave ear in silence. This talk was alien to 
that which he had been taught, but others of the beliefs he’d held true had been 
shaken, more than once. Father Odin... will I not dine and drink with you, but 
return once more in another body to live another life on this same Midgard? 
Brian, too, listened, and Samaire. She believed. She knew; certainty was upon 
her that she had known Cormac mac Art in a life lived out before this one. 
Though actual memory was not there, knowledge was. She had not been attracted 
instantly to him; she had recognized him, as did others who liked or loved at 
first sight. Whether she had been of Atlantis or Valusia or indeed had known of 
Kull or no, she did not know. It mattered not; afore now she had known the 
life-force that had been Kull, and Conan, and Cormac, and others. The when of it 
was of no import. Now was important. This time, and the time to come. Nor did 
she assume there had been or would be ease; this life-force to which hers was 
connected throughout time was a volatile one. 
Cormac was most likely Cuchulain himself, Brian mac Dairb thought, and was glad 
and proud. 
“A great enemy and plotter against King Kull,” Bas who had been Tu went on, “was 
Thulsa Doom. In no less than four several plots did Kull foil the wizard and put 
defeat on him, though in each wise Thulsa Doom prevailed for a time. On two 
occasions did the king like to lose his life to this unrelenting enemy. And 
eventually Kull and Tu and a mage on Kull’s behalf won the final victory—on the 
isle where we’re just after being.” 
At those reminding words all looked back to where Samaire-heim was receding 
behind their ship—very slowly, in the gentlest and most unsteady of little 
breezes. 
There were but five of them, and their captive, and Quester was both large and 
well-laden. Not for them was the using of oars. Cormac and Wulfhere did give 
constant attention to sail and rudder. Bas had promised better winds; they had 
learned to listen to Bas, and to believe. 
The druid spoke on. 
“There Thulsa Doom was left, trapped by sorcerous bonds; the bondage of a body 
without hands or feet or voice. There he existed for eighteen thousand years. 
Then those forces that control such matters brought Thulsa Doom’s ancient enemy 
himself to the isle, and another too; Cutha Atheldane from Norge. It fell out 
that Cormac himself proved the instrument of the wizard’s release, for it was 
you slew the serpent, son of Art. Thus was liberated the wizard’s life force—and 
in time he found a home in the body of Cutha Atheldane. With his powers he 
replaced it with one like his own, of old, though it’s Cutha Atheldane’s robe he 
wears yet. It was on him then to remain yet, for there was no means of leaving 
the island.” 
“Doom-heim,” Wulfhere muttered, for all had been happy to rename the isle that 
had eaten so many men. 
“He used that time of his further incarceration,” Bas the Druid said, “to 
practice his dark arts, and raised the dead as his legion. All else we know.” 
“Vengeance over eighteen thousand years!” Brian said in a voice quieted by awe. 
“Was all that sustained him,” Bas said, with a glance at the wizard. Though it 
made or kept him less than sane, he mused, while that hideous travesty of a face 
clashed its lipless teeth in fury. 
“And the vanishing?” Samaire asked. “Those several times he vanished whilst we 
laboured to place the dead aboard Amber Rowan, when we saw only the buckler 
impaled by Cormac’s sword, and the mage both there and not there?” 
Laden with their dead, Amber Rowan wallowed behind them, slowing them the more. 
“Of old,” Bas made reply, “Thulsa Doom effected escape into another dimension, a 
sort of world parallel to this and not unlike it and yet different. There he is 
invisible to eyes from this world of ours. That explains his disappearings; he 
sought similar escape from us. But his body holds him. Sword and shield held him 
fast, pinioned between them in the only way he can be held. Was Cormac saw the 
key to this, when he pinned him that morn in the corridor beneath the castle of 
Kull.” 
“He will... attempt again?” Brian asked. 
“Yessss,” Thulsa Doom hissed in rage, and he vanished from Quester. 
“He be still here,” Cormac said grimly. 
“During the night he somehow gained control of Findbar,” Samaire began, after 
their awestruck silence and Cormac’s words of certainty. But Bas shook his head. 

“Nay. He was Findbar. Rather he was not; he slew Findbar and assumed his form. 
Mayhap Findbar rose to fare outside for a natural reason—and such was his mental 
state by then he paid no mind to our one overweening rule. Or flaunted it.” 
“He paid,” Wulfhere said in a rumble. 
“Aye. Then did he return—but he was Findbar mac Lirchain no more. One by one, he 
gained control of the minds of the others—” 
“Why not us? Brian demanded. 
“Mayhap only we were too determined of purpose,” the druid said. 
“Too staunch,” Cormac mac Art said. 
“Too loyal to yourself,” Samaire said, looking at him. 
Cormac glanced at Brian, and he thought of Lugh, who had been loyal, and who had 
been of them, and who was dead for his determination and staunchness and 
loyalty. Brian’s face had gone dour again, and none doubted but that his 
thoughts were again on Ros. Brian, Cormac reflected without pride or comfort, 
was young; he’d not experienced the loss of friends and comrades-at-arms again 
and again. It never became commonplace and easy; that it was now so readily 
bearable, Cormac thought, bespoke the existence of as many inner scars as he 
bore on his body. 
“Bas,” he said, “what have ye done? What know ye now that we must needs know?” 
He glanced aside; Thulsa Doom was there once more, and the eye-spots in the 
deeply cratered sockets glowed rage-red. 
“I was able to protect us all during our waking hours. And Quester and all 
aboard, for it’s of Eirrin this ship is, and my powers are strongest on our own 
soil and with those that were born there—human or no. And... there are other 
things. Let me keep their knowledge; the telling ye of them will avail ye naught 
and may weaken me—and empower him.” 
They looked at the undying wizard. 
The ship wallowed slowly along, towing Amber Rowan seaward from the isle of 
horror and death. Aboard sat its pitifully tiny crew; a druid, a weaponwoman, 
and three weapon-men—one of them but little past his first beard-growth. The 
woman suffered of a thigh bearing a large and lurid bruise. 
These were Quester’s crew. Quester carried but one passenger. 
He stood helpless where Cormac had forced and imprisoned him in ghastly 
impalement, for only so could Thulsa Doom be held. The picture he presented was 
monstrous and horrible. The owner of any eyes not cognizant of the situation or 
of Thulsa Doom’s powers and nature would have been shocked at the seeming 
cruelty of his captors. 
As Wulfhere had done southward from Britain, the mage stood against the thick 
mast. He was bound there, but not with ropes. Cords could not hold a man not 
alive and who could assume the form of a slithering serpent; nor could leather 
or chains of iron or steel. Two sword-pommels stood out from the erect body of 
the wizard. Thulsa Doom was held in the only way he could be held; impaled and 
pinned to the motionless and unmovable. The swords nailed him to the mast. 
No blood flowed. 
“I will tell ye of what I read on those castle walls,” Bas said, and their gazes 
returned to him, leaving the wizard’s dreadful aspect and plight with more than 
willingness. 
“Those pictures did speak, then!” Wulfhere glanced at Cormac, remembering how 
when first they’d come here the Gael had gone to those walls as if 
preternaturally drawn. Cormac had stared at them long, and his eerie remembering 
had come upon him. 
“Aye, the pictures and certain markings. Runes. Some of what I learned I will 
tell you of... later. But this—this I shall enjoy speaking in his presence, that 
he will know we know the means of destroying him. For it is only vengeful and 
hateful I feel toward ye, Thulsa Doom, who exist only in vengefulness and hate. 
The wall told of how ye may be slain again, Skull-face, and permanently!” 
The death’s-head mage snarled like an animal, and the teeth of that dread 
faceless skull clashed and ground in frustration and overweening hatred. 
“That skull,” Bas said, staring not at his companions but at Thulsa Doom, 
“severed and wrapped in good leather, must be put into the hands of a crowned 
woman. She—” 
Thulsa Doom writhed and strained and gnashed his teeth with a clack and clash. 
The ship was suddenly amove, rocking with much noise of slapping sloshing 
waters. Such was the fury-heightened strength of the sorcerer from the past. 
Another sound came from him, a hiss—and an enormous serpent replaced him at the 
mast. It sought to writhe and whip and tear itself free of the impaling swords. 
Cormac came hurriedly to his feet, pulling steel partway out of scabbard. But 
the reptile was no more able to escape those bonds like gigantic nails than the 
manshape. That form the mage resumed. 
Again, Thulsa Doom disappeared. 
“It is strange,” Brian said, and there was a quaver in his voice he sought to 
conceal. “In such a short while have I learned to accept the impossible; I do 
not even gooseflesh now at his vanishing!” 
The boat lurched so wildly that Samaire slid along the rowing-deck and groaned 
at the leap of pain in her leg. Cormac staggered. Water splashed high. The Gael 
looked about. There was no wind. 
“He is not gone from us,” Bas the Druid said. 
“A crowned woman, though,” Wulfhere said. “Of what value be that—no such 
exists!” 
Bas made a gesture. “Perhaps such does, or will. Meanwhile, we know how to hold 
him against the day we find her—or until I devise another means.” 
“More sorcery,” Brian said, little above a whisper. 
Bas only looked upon him with coolly wide grey eyes. “Will ye hear the rest?” 
“We will,” Cormac said. 
Samaire added, “Please.” 
“This crowned woman must then pound the skull into dust, with a hammer of iron.” 

“Iron?” 
“Aye, so I believe the ancient picture-writing tells us. Mayhap there was no 
steel in the days of Atlantis.” 
Cormac’s face was grim and hopeful. “But—a crowned woman! Where rules a woman?” 
“Nowhere,” Samaire said, with a sigh. Her face went reflective. 
“Then—” 
“Then,” Bas began. But he gave pause at a renewed turmoil. Their craft rocked 
violently. When it abated, eyes were fearful and knuckles white from gripping 
handholds as though to keep from being hurled off the ridge of the world. 
Bas began anew, “Then we must keep him our prisoner, as our duty to all 
humankind, for dead Thulsa Doom cannot otherwise be slain.” 
As they sat in tight-lipped silence, the ship on that calm sea rocked as though 
gale-struck. Then it was still, and Thulsa Doom reappeared, helpless at the 
mast. 
“Dam-m-mnnnye!” he ground out. 
The eyes of Bas were very bright and wide, and he looked skyward. His fingers 
fingered the symbols of his gods and their powers, which were those of nature. 
The others felt that he wrestled now with Thulsa Doom, whose powers were of else 
than nature. 
Then Samaire was calling out. “There was a little island—there! It—it’s gone!” 
Her companions looked about, and in a babble of voices they agreed that she was 
right. The sea had changed; the world had changed. Bas turned from them, paced 
in his woods-green robe to the wizard. 
“May ye be damned! It’s again and again ye’ve tried, tried amain, and it’s both 
failure and success ye’ve grasped, isn’t it? Ye did break through into your 
other dimension—but ye’ve brought us with ye, into a different world!”