Saga Mac Brón: Chapter 15

10 minutes

Violence

The Monster

Tammet opened his eyes. The divine gift, the king’s touch, whose every use reminded him of his father’s death, had been meant only for others. To escape the death-sleep, he’d used it on himself. There was a price to be paid for that. Had it been only a small wound, the price would also have been small, perhaps unnoticeable. But the poison ran deep, so he’d paid almost in full. He could feel the cost in his body, but he could not yet see it.

A sidelong glance confirmed that he wasn’t alone. One of the horrible, insectile dogs that had stung him paced the floor, its many feet clicking in multitudinous tandem. The cage was an iron cube, and it hung by a great chain from the ceiling in the middle of a nearly lightless room. Only the glimmer of a dying torch revealed that Mac Brón was there with him. Both men had been stripped of their clothes and weapons, and now wore the same sacrificial garment as the one who’d been fed to the Worm.

The barbarian appeared dead. Tammet waited until the creature was facing away from him, then inched toward Mac Brón. The northman’s chest neither rose nor fell. There was a rigidity to him that made Tammet near certain he was too late. But Tammet had also felt dead, while still alive, buried deep within himself; cocooned in darkness. He placed his palm on the northman’s heart, then grimaced. Tammet saw his own hand in the torchlight. His skin was not that of a youth, but of a man in middle age. There was a stiffness and heaviness to his joints that felt unnatural. He tried to put it from his mind.

He pressed down on Mac Brón’s chest. Warmth seeped from his fingers, and into the barbarian’s heart. After a few moments, Tammet felt a heartbeat. The chest rose and fell. But something was wrong. Something moved beneath the man’s skin. Mac Brón opened his mouth, screamed, and then fell back.

Immediately, the devil-dog shot up from the floor. It clamped its many-clawed legs to the bars. The beast opened its mouth against the cage, exposing numerous, pin-like teeth. This mouth then tripled in size, opening outward like a fleshy double-door. Lips unfolded from within the mouth, and a second mouth appeared. A sharp, wet proboscis shot out from this hole, which the creature extended through the bars. Its end was curved, like a hornet’s sting. Tammet crawled back just in time, for the stinger quickly pierced down, striking the place where his leg had just been.

He crawled to the other side of the cage but the beast scampered around the bars as quickly as he could get there. Again it shot its stinger towards him, and again he moved away just in time. Mac Brón lay shrouded in darkness, shivering.

“Wake up, Mac Brón!” Tammet cried.

The beast darted around to the other side, and Tammet scrambled beyond its range. His bones hurt. Every dash and crawl sent sharp knives through his joints, and he had no time to wonder if that was the poison’s lingering effects, or the price he’d paid in age. He kept moving, and was able to stay just outside the stinger’s range. But Tammet knew he couldn’t keep up the effort. He kicked at Mac Brón.

“Wake up!”

The warrior stirred again, then coughed, a harsh and oddly deep sound. The creature’s stinger came through the bars, and poked through the fabric just above his shoulder. Tammet tried to keep in the middle of the cage, but the monster was faster than he, and it was not slowing down.

“Please, Mac Brón! Help!”

He was forced to leap back yet again. As Tammet leaned against the opposite corner of the cage, the stinger stretching out to mere inches from his face, the beast suddenly pulled it back, then barked out the same gurgling chirp that he’d heard in the mines. There was a clink of metal outside. A key was turned in a lock, and a heavy door opened. Light flooded in from behind. For an instant, Tammet saw Mac Brón’s body clearly.

“What?” he gasped.

“Indeed, what have we here?” said a mellifluous voice; then, “Go, my sweet.”

The heavy door shut. Behind him, Tammet heard the clicking of more feet rushing from the other side. There were two of them now. Tammet was confused by what he had just seen in the light, but too terrified to dwell on it. Seeing that its victim could not escape, the first creature clung to its corner of the cage, and waited. Somewhere nearby, the Péistghrá guard chuckled. Tammet felt the other beast hit the cage at his back, felt its clawed feet grazing his shirt. He threw himself to the floor bars, covering his head; knowing it wouldn’t help. There was a wet schunk as the proboscis shot out. Tammet braced himself, but felt nothing.

“No!” screamed the Péistghrá.

Mac Brón was up, and on his knees. He’d caught the proboscis in two hands. Two hands?! Yet one was not a hand at all! The barbarian braced a bare foot on the cage bars, and yanked. The lips of the creature’s inside mouth now slid in through the bars. Mac Brón made an inhuman sound, and the proboscis tore off, coming through the bars, lips and all. The beast’s insides spilled out through the hole that had been its second mouth, the vile stuff splattering the cage’s interior.

The black-robed figure drew a dagger and ran toward the cage. It was a long, cruel knife, and he rammed it like a sword through the gap in the bars. The blade ought to have pierced Mac Brón, but he dodged with demon-speed, and clapped a hand—No! Not a hand! A gnarled, black thing—over the man’s wrist, holding it inside the cage. In the same motion, the barbarian snatched up the stinger that he’d torn from the devil dog, swung around, and drove it into the exposed flesh surrounding the open mouth of the beast still clinging to the opposite end. It wriggled, and pulled, and tried to release the bars, but the warrior pushed the dead stinger further in, then grabbed the struggling creature’s own limp proboscis, and dealt with it as he had the first.

The Péistghrá guard labored to free his wrist from the dark, viny clamp that held it, but now Mac Brón was free to deal with him alone. He stood within the cage, and pulled the man’s arm until the wretch’s face was pressed hard against the bars. The man yelped in pain. His hood slipped back, and, for the first time, Tammet saw what it concealed. A sallow, painted face looked up in terror. The man’s lips were painted red, his lashes were long, and womanish. Even his eyelids were painted, and the skin of his face was covered in a soft powder. But now that face was transported in agony, as the barbarian took the arm, and twisted it like rope.

“Key!” said Mac Brón, but the voice was not a man’s voice.

Tammet rushed over to the side of the cage. The guard’s keys dangled on a hook at his waist, but Mac Brón was twisting and pulling with such violence that they might slip off at any moment. Tammet got on his belly, and reached as far as he could. His fingers just grazed the top of the key ring.

“Pull him up, Mac Brón!”

The man came up suddenly, crying out in fresh agony.

“Shut your mouth or I’ll rip it off!” growled Mac Brón.

The hapless creature tried, but the barbarian gave him no respite. Tammet got hold of the keys, and carefully pulled them in. The Péistghrá guard saw this, then looked at Mac Brón pleadingly. Tammet also looked, and saw him plainly for the first time. Tammet clutched his own head in horror.

Mac Brón’s eyes were black; blacker than the iron cage itself. His skin, now partially exposed from the struggle, was covered in sharp gray hairs, and something moved under the skin, pulsing up, pushing out—trying to escape. It grew out from the stump of his wrist, adding matter to the claw-like appendage that sprouted from his arm. Meanwhile, Mac Brón’s body had swelled in size, his gums had receded, and his front teeth were sharp and long. As Tammet watched, the gray hairs grew still longer.

“Pity! Pity!” squealed the painted man.

“Behold, our pity!” said the inhuman voice.

He took the Péistghrá’s throat within one awful, hairy hand, and crushed it. The prince of Talahm-lár looked away, and began to wretch. When he could again bring himself to look, the Mac Brón-thing leaned over him on its haunches. Ape-like, it leered, and licked its sharp incisors. Tammet had the sense that it did not know him, and would soon tear him apart.

“I…I have the key,” muttered the boy.

Mac Brón crawled closer to him. His black eyes squinted. His body trembled, as if still caught in the frenzy of killing.

“Mac Brón,” whispered the boy, “do you know that name?”

Mac Brón, or the thing that had been Mac Brón, hesitated. The name had done something to give it pause.

“What name?” he said.

“Mac Brón,” repeated the prince, trembling. “That is your name.”

What had happened to the man? His hand! His voice! That terrible voice!

The warrior seemed confused. He shook his head. Tammet forced himself to look into Mac Brón’s ink-black eyes. The man’s face was twisted, and terrible; all killing, and wrath, and animality.

“We know it not,” said the Mac Brón. “We are Sorrow, and Loss, and Betrayal!”

Tammet clutched the bars behind him. The voice was deep, and fell. Aged, and wrong it was. Truly, it sounded as if several voices spoke at once, while the voice that had been Mac Brón’s lay trapped, buried beneath these others. For a moment, Tammet considered that he might reach out, and try again to heal Mac Brón, but some instinct warned him against it. His healing gift had not have worked, or else, it had gone twisted and wrong within the man. Then, all at once, the prince had a glimmer of insight. Whatever had happened to Mac Brón was tied to the things that had been trailing him all these miles. His shades. And now the empress was gone, and those dark things were nowhere to be seen. They had finally gotten inside of him.

“Do you…do you remember the empress?” asked Tammet.

The animal face grew longer. Mac Brón appeared to soften.

“Where?” said Mac Brón, and now the voices were more like his own.

“I don’t know,” said Tammet. “Not in here with us. But she’s in danger. She is special, Mac Brón. More special then you know. She had some great task here. Only, it all went wrong. We have to find her! Can you help me find her? Please, I can’t do it alone!”

As if to prove his point, Tammet held up the keys. Mac Brón stared at them. Though his mouth was closed, the voices within him began to chuckle. Then they moaned, and the warrior fell backward against the cage bars.

“Help?” said the Mac Brón-thing. “No boy, we can only kill.”

Tammet studied him a moment. Crawling to his feet, feeling the brittleness that had crept into his young sinews and bones, he began trying keys in the lock at the top of the cage. The fourth key slipped in cleanly. He turned it, and sighed as the latch released. Tammet looked down at Mac Brón.

“Only kill?” said the boy.

Mac Brón stared down at his hands. One was covered in a sharp gray fur. One was not a hand at all, but a thing like thick, black wires that came to points. Without looking up, he nodded.

“Very well then,” said the Prince of Talahm-lár. “You shall have your chance.”

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