The Celtic Mirror Page 5

  Once away from Brigid’s disturbing presence, Morgan regained a small part of his lost composure and attempted to observe that section of Verulamium that he crossed with his escorts. Thoughts of her kept interposing themselves on his mind, making concentration difficult.

  He struggled.

  The city’s main construction material was stone. That, he had seen during Tanaris’ approach, but as he entered the city on foot, Verulamium became a place far different from any other seaport he had ever visited. Broad, straight avenues were flanked by massive structures, built for the ages. Morgan felt he had stepped backward in time as he walked in their shadows. Yet, beside ageless buildings, moving sidewalks carried Verulamium’s pedestrians along the broad streets and under shaded promenades.

  The trio stepped onto one of the moving strips. It rumbled under Morgan’s feet like a tired machine making a last effort. His companions seemed unconcerned for their safety, so he assumed a relaxed posture and tried to enjoy the somewhat unsettling experience. The stone structures that rattled past at a fast walking pace looked cool behind thick walls, and Morgan wished he could duck into an inviting doorway to escape the oppressive sun. Wares of every description were displayed in open stalls that hugged the narrow spaces between the moving walk and the walls. Food smells of meats and vegetables simmering over charcoal braziers made him ravenously hungry. His guides, however, seemed disinclined to stop, and ignored Morgan’s pointed and longing looks at the delicious spread of tempting delights that rolled past. The path through the marketplace was definitely one of Connach’s devious tactics, calculated to break down Morgan’s resistance; it was more than unfair; it was decidedly inhuman.

  As he penetrated deeper into the city, frequent gaps appeared between buildings, gaps that were filled with rubble carefully cleared from the walks and streets, but rubble nonetheless. Twice on the trek they skirted gangs of laborers struggling to fill fresh holes in the roadway. Once they were forced to leave their strip when an intersecting walkway terminated at a berm thrown around a crater. Exposed belts and twisted cogwheels lay open to the sky.

  “This happened three weeks ago,” Pierson said, nodding his head in the direction of the damaged pedestrian way. “The Vik hyenas hit us with high explosives. They’ve got war balloons, and a definite desire to destroy the last Free State. Maybe they want to erase Verulamium most of all since it is the capital of Reged and the center of what resistance there is left anymore.”

  “Wait a minute!” Morgan interrupted. “War balloons, as in the American Civil War?”

  “No, not quite. These things aren’t tethered to the ground anywhere, and they’ve got some sort of maneuverability. Nobody has developed heavier-than-air flight on this planet, but the Hellwind Riders are devastating enough. Kim and I can swear to that from first-hand experience. Up until now,” he continued as if he had said nothing out of the ordinary, “the people here have had to endure these raids helplessly, but Connach says that things will be different now. I pray to God that he’s right.”

  Pierson halted, and Morgan sensed that he was searching for the right words. Nobody seemed to want him to freely make up his own mind and he was growing increasingly resentful. However, when he glanced at Pierson’s face, he knew that the earlier recruit was not simply trying to convert him; Pierson’s manner actually seemed open and sincere. Morgan knew that his guide had just stated his honest feelings. There was no doubt in Morgan’s mind that Pierson had “gone native” as completely as old T. E. Lawrence had done. Kim clung to Pierson’s arm, looking into his eyes approvingly. The expression on her delicate oriental face matched his, exactly.

  “You know what kind of things you brought with you on Le Fay, right?”

  Morgan snorted. “You’d be holding a monologue if I hadn’t found part of the cargo.”

  Pierson nodded agreement. “Well—each of us brought Connach’s supporters some similar goodies. This might turn out to be one of the slickest gunrunning tricks in the history of two worlds. Maybe one of the most justified to boot.”

  The people who belong to Connach’s country club do seem to be a little higher caliber than the “just plain folks” who swim in the friendly Ultra-Republican scum-bucket sludge, Morgan admitted to himself but said nothing to either encourage or discourage Pierson.

  They mounted a last “slidewalk,” Pierson’s term for Verulamium’s rumbling relics, and traveled into an area that contained apartments rather than public buildings. The journey ended outside of a formidable bronze gate.

  “The PacSail 4D is Connach’s secret weapon,” Pierson told Morgan seriously as he placed the palm of his right hand on an opaque panel inset into the stone wall. As his hand rested there the rectangle glowed into a brilliant Mirror blue life then darkened to opacity again. The gate swung noiselessly open.

  “I think,” Pierson said, entering first, “you might want to stay here for the final outcome like the rest of us.”

  Morgan stubbornly decided again not to make any noises that sounded like a commitment and only grunted in reply. It was not an act of cowardice, he told himself emphatically. He followed the hurrying pair through a large foyer hung with tapestries and made cooler by the play of a fountain in its center. Pierson gave Morgan no time to absorb any of his new surroundings but quickly led him to a louvered door at the end of a corridor. He worked the lever and gently pushed Morgan inside.

  “Your new home, temporarily, anyway,” Pierson announced, unconsciously echoing Connach. “Make yourself comfortable. It’s my guess that Castillo won’t be back tonight, so you’ve got the run of the place for a while.” He cleared his throat and took Kim’s hand in his. “We may be back later, but don’t count on it,” he added. “We’ve been looking for you nearly a week.”

  Kim unsuccessfully suppressed an embarrassed giggle. It bubbled through her tightly pursed lips like fine champagne around a cork. “We have a reunion of our own to celebrate,” she said, pressing her free hand to her mouth, blushing brightly at her own boldness. Then the door whispered shut and Morgan stood in the center of the room, alone again.

  He lay in the cylindrical sunken tub and soaked, chin deep, for over an hour, letting his weariness and unresolved apprehensions float away like the clustered soap bubbles that nudged the smooth, worn surface of the sides. The massive, stone cylinder was obviously designed with more than one bather in mind, and Morgan’s thoughts drifted, fantasizing a half-seen, copper-skinned companion who shared the waters and soaped him with marvelously dexterous hands. Breasts like soft bubbles wetly caressed the back of his neck as she bent over his head to kiss him—breathlessly. He imagined himself reaching back, and....

  The discreet cough was a cannon crack in Morgan’s fevered brain, shattering his erotic musings into a thousand pieces. He opened his eyes cautiously and was once more alone in the great tub, but not in the room. A man’s booted legs intruded into his vision. Apprehensively, Morgan slid his eyes upward and noted that two ordinary male legs ended inside customary, local linen shorts, and that the shorts were surmounted by a familiar tunic and plaid tartan. The arms and head that protruded from the garments also seemed ordinary enough for that place, although that place could hardly be deemed ordinary in Morgan’s opinion. Satisfied that no danger came from that direction, he impolitely began to drowse again, conjuring the bubble maiden back from the fragments of the interrupted dream.

  Once more the discreet cough intruded, forbidding the tantalizingly familiar-seeming houri to reassemble and please him. He opened his eyes again, irritated. The legs were still there.

  He directed a polite smile toward the face that hovered above him, and the boy it belonged to returned Morgan’s fabricated smile with obvious relief. Silently he bent low and offered Morgan a folded slip of paper. When Morgan’s wet fingers took the note, the youth straightened again and waited patiently, impassively.

  Morgan’s damp touch did the paper no good, and he had a difficult time undoing the stuck-together quarters. He finally succeeded.<
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  “Friend Morgan, my valet, Eogan, has been sent to prepare you for this evening and to guide you to my House. He speaks no English at all, but I trust him to convey his meaning to you as he is a clever lad.” It was signed in a bold, back slanting scrawl, “Ian.”

  Morgan sighed deeply then resigned himself into the young valet’s care. Wordlessly, he was toweled dry, combed and dressed. When soft boots had been eased onto feet long unused to dry footgear, he stood and inspected himself in the curiously framed, polished-metal mirror that hung in the bathing chamber. He saw a naval officer of Connach’s world looking quizzically back at him. The opening of his tunic was trimmed in gold thread, and at his waist he wore the cinglium carried by Pierson and the other officers. While he stood gazing at the dashing stranger, his temporary servant hung a gold-hilted dirk at his side and artistically draped a tartan about his shoulders.

  Morgan was impressed. “This is one hell of a costume, Eogan me lad.”

  The valet shrugged his incomprehension but was evidently satisfied with his efforts on Morgan’s behalf. He strode to the door of the main chamber and swung it open, bowing to Morgan and at the same time inviting him with an expressive gesture to follow.

  They walked out into the night, gentleman and servant, hastening to keep an important engagement as naturally as if they had followed the same ritual, evening upon evening.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Morgan’s immediate impression of the House of Connach, as did the bits of Verulamium he had seen, was of Imperial Rome. It was the extensive use of marble inside that misled him initially. At any rate, Eogan led him much too quickly through the maze of corridors for him to gain anything but indistinct views of his surroundings. One curious fact surfaced nonetheless; within the walls were regularly spaced niches, which contained vaguely seen ivory objects, roughly globular in shape. He attempted several times to inspect those curios, but Eogan steadfastly ignored Morgan’s gestures and unrelentingly whisked him along the shadowy way.

  Any latent thoughts of Connach’s city being an anachronistic, push-button Roman colony were dispelled as soon as Morgan was ushered into the great hall. It was when he finally entered that space that he realized that the House Connach was a huge, entirely Celtic pile, twice the size of the old Palladium dance hall where he had trod upon scores of feminine toes during his high school days. The walls were tapestry-hung, but Morgan could not determine the details of any but those he closely passed when entering, so vast was the room. Those he could see were crowded with oddly stylized battle scenes in which the dead and wounded bled vermilion thread onto needlework forest floors and onto the streets of woven and embattled cities.

  The ceiling was a full two stories high and open in its center to the dark moonless night. The ceiling vent and its surrounding stonework were blackened, no doubt, by countless fires like the one that blazed in an open hearth beneath it. The Reged climate hardly demanded such an heroic attempt at central heating, but the two sizzling carcasses that were being hand-turned on spits over the cooking pit evidently did. Morgan’s fresh tunic wilted as he sweated profusely in the hot, smoky atmosphere, and his eyes were painfully stung into near closure.

  He stumbled, perspiration-drenched and half-blinded, after Eogan to the table that stood the farthest from the fire and was seated at a carven stool with a flourish by “his” servant. At the remaining tables, which had been arranged to complete a precise square, other servants stood behind certain of the fifty or so seated men. The assembled guests wore a diversity of colors, styles and ornamentation, but each of the man seated at any given table carried identical tartans, and about half wore torcs, Celtic necklaces of braided gold that did not close to form complete circles.

  Morgan glanced surreptitiously at his own tartan, and then turned to look at the man to his left, his eyes still watering from the acrid smoke pall. A metal goblet was thrust into his hand. It was filled to the brim with a murky red wine.

  “You’re wearing the family colors, all right. Here, drink this down. It’s good for the eyes. At least it matches yours.”

  “Ian!” The redhead swam into Morgan’s blurred vision.

  “The same. Now drink like a man of the Clan Connach.”

  Morgan poured the rough wine down his throat. It was not a drink for the squeamish or for connoisseurs. It had been fermented for serious drinkers, and Morgan’s eyes did feel better once he finished coughing. He looked at his old, sometime friend, appraisingly. There was a glint of gold at Connach’s throat. Costume complete. Here we have the perfect Celtic warrior-prince. He grinned at Connach, ready to make a joke about the movie set that surrounded him. Connach’s mouth returned the smile but his eyes, cold as Arctic ice, reflected anything but good humor.

  “Tonight you are my clansman and brother. Every man here knows that. Eogan stands behind you to reinforce your status in my House. And, believe me; a foreigner here needs special status. Outsiders are not welcomed with open arms in my land as you will discover soon enough, Brother.” Connach bit off his words as if they were particularly distasteful to him, and his voice held an unfamiliar edge to it. He stared morosely at his own empty goblet.

  Cheered by the wine, Morgan refused to let Connach’s somber mood affect him. His cup was refilled as soon as it was set down, but he did not immediately drink. The smoky air was rich with the odors of the cooking meat and his stomach asserted itself with a musical rumble, fortunately lost in the growing din. Men’s voices were raised, and a spate of hearty laughter rang out. Those and the wheezing skirls of a pipe played desultorily by an already drunken piper, helped mask Morgan’s insistent visceral outcry. He longed, lusted almost, for a chunk of dripping beef but restrained the overpowering impulse to help himself without ceremony. Instead, he studied his table companions through reddening eyes, hoping to find the disquieting Brigid seated somewhere in the hall. He could not locate her in the room at all; there were no women of high rank present. There were only those who served at the tables and tended the cooking fires. The total masculinity of the setting and guest list struck Morgan strangely. It was like a fraternity smoker—or better still, a gathering of players and alumni the night after a big game—or maybe the night before. Unease welled up inside him like bile, threatening to choke him with its bitterness. When Morgan looked beyond Connach, the acid that burned at his mind was already beginning to dissolve his remaining illusions.

  Behind Connach’s grandfather stood the hostile priest whose angry gaze crossed Morgan’s like a drawn sword. An anger of his own flared in Morgan’s heart, and remembering a childish game he used to play, he stared at a spot a meter beyond the holy man’s head and pretended to look, unblinking into the other man’s eyes. It was the not blinking that was the hardest. The smoke made his eyes feel like coarse-grit sandpaper, but he willed himself to maintain the unmoving pose, a challenge Kerry Morgan had not met since he passed his twelfth birthday.

  He was dimly aware that the priest clutched at his pectoral and spoke quickly in Morgan’s direction. For a moment, Morgan’s adversary seemed to grow taller, then with a shake of his head, contact was broken, and he shrank back into himself, looking more cadaverous than before.

  Grinning and feeling quite smug, Morgan blinked to clear his vision and found Connach studying him with approval written on his own unconcealed smile.

  “Not many people can best Reged’s High Priest in a childish contest like that,” Connach told Morgan. “And to lose is dangerous.”

  “The cost?” Morgan asked, feeling cocky.

  “The cost is very high, Kerry. The price of your small victory may well be borne by all of us here tonight. He will never forget and certainly never forgive.

  “In addition to being the High Priest of Reged, that bastard is the official spiritual advisor to the Council of Ten. I can imagine the kind of advice he’s going to offer concerning you tonight.” Connach’s voice was heavily laced with a hatred that Morgan knew could not have been sparked by the grammar school staring contest. Mor
gan turned his gaze back to the priest.

  Whatever advice he was offering Connach’s grandfather was angry, terse, and when the elder Connach answered, the priest rejected the response with a slash of his hand. There was going to be more than prime rib served up that night; Morgan realized that all too clearly. The thought gave him no comfort. Connach’s familiar voice droned in Morgan’s ear and dragged his attention away from the verbal sparring that continued on his left.

  “...And, up to a point, the development of our history bears a strong similarity to the history of your Earth,” his friend was saying in a tone only slightly less bitter than before. “My people began as Celts and Picts in what you call the British Isles and on the European mainland. But we were all united early under Rome and the Great Peacemaker, becoming one people. On your world, the various inhabitants, particularly of those islands, continued to war and kill one another up to your own time.

  “But in my world,” Connach said sharply, “the most respected fighters of Europe had ever spawned, traded the sword for the Wheel when they were taught compelling lessons of love and tolerance and were left wide open for conquest. As a result, the peoples of the Free States were practically annihilated by barbarian raids after the supporting Roman framework collapsed of its own weight and the Legions dissolved for want of soldiers.”

  “Sounds like ancient history to me,” Morgan said, more deeply interested in the charring carcasses than Connach’s chronicle. “Besides, don’t most folks argue that love is one hell of a lot better for you than hate?” he mused, more to himself than to Connach, thinking of Brigid.

  “Love?” Connach’s voice strained through clenched teeth. “Of course I believe in love.” He bunched Morgan’s tartan in his fist, and Morgan felt Connach’s powerful hand tremble with a barely leashed passion. “Listen, Kerry. I love my family, my clan, my land. But I sure as hell don’t love the miserable bastards who kill and enslave my people on the mainland! And I don’t find it very easy to love the sanctimonious priests who suck up to the Vik butchers.” His face was contorted with an old, nurtured rage. “Sure, everything that I was telling you was ancient history. But we’re living with the consequences of that history right now! It might have been nearly twenty centuries ago that Lord Nero dedicated and doomed the Empire with his doctrine of unilateral love, but his lesson still rules us, and my people are dying because of it!” He roughly fingered the torc that confined his corded neck. Firelight reflected from the two-headed dragon’s blind eyes.