«And you could remove the geas on this woman and return the pair to their own place?»
«On the wings of the wild swan.»
«Then hear our judgment.»King Briun stretched forth a hand. «It is the command of the gods on all of us to help others fulfill their obligations, and this we will do. Yet it is equally true that a doing should be met with a doing in return, and this we cannot escape. Now, Mac Shea has killed our champion, and does not wish to take his place. There must be a balance against this, and we set it that it shall be this wonder-working bow of his wife’s, which if it is as good as his magic, will surely shoot holes through the walls of the mountains.»
He paused and Shea nodded. The man could be quite reasonable after all.
«Secondly,» Briun went on, «there is the matter of removing his wife’s geas. Against this we will place the teaching of this new magic to our druid. Now respecting the transfer of these two to their own country, there is no counterweight, and it is our judgement that it should be paid for by having Mac Shea undertake to rid us of the sinech, since it is so troublesome a monster and he is so great a champion and magician.»
«Just a minute,» said Shea. «That doesn’t help us find Pete or get him back, and we’ll be in trouble if we don’t. And we really ought to do something for Cuchulainn. Maev is going through with her plan against him.»
«We would most willingly help you in this matter, but you have no other prices to pay.»
Miach said, «Yet there is a way to accomplish all they ask, save the matter of the man Pete, in the finding of whom I have no power.»
Briun said, «You will be telling us about it, then.»
«Touching the geas,» said Miach. «Since it is one that was imposed, and not a thing natural, it can be lifted at the place and in the presence of the druid who laid it, and it will be needful for me to accompany these two to the place where it was put on.
Touching the sinech, it is so dreadful a monster that even Mac Shea will be hard put against it by his own strength. Therefore let us lend him the great invincible sword of Nuada, which is forbidden to us by its geas, but which he will be able to handle without trouble, at all. Then he can lend it to this hero Cuchulainn, who will make a mighty slaughter of the Connachta we detest, and as I will be with the sword and Mac Shea, I can see that it is returned.»
The King leaned his chin on one hand and frowned for a minute. Then he said, «It is our command that this be done as you advise.»
IX
Miach was an apt pupil. At the third try he succeeded in making a man he did not like break out in a series of beautiful yellow splotches, and he was so delighted with the result that he promised Shea for the hunting of the sinech not only the sword of Nuada, but the enchanted shoes of Iubdan, that would enable him to walk on water. He explained that the reason for the overcharge in Shea’s magic was that the spells were in the wrong tongue; but, as the magic wouldn’t work at all without a spell of some kind and Shea didn’t have time to learn another language, this was not much help.
About the sinech itself he was more encouraging. He did a series of divinations with bowls of water and blackthorn twigs. Although Shea himself did not know enough of the magic of this continuum to make out anything but a confused and cloudy movement below the clear surface of the bowl, Miach assured him that in coming to this world of legendary Ireland, he had himself acquired a geas that would not allow his release until he had accomplished something that would alter the pattern of the continuum itself.
«Now tell me, Mac Shea,» he said, «was it not so in the other lands you visted? For I see by my divinations that you have visited many.»
Shea, thinking of how he had helped break up the chapter of magicians in Faerie and rescued his wife from the Saracens of theOrlando Furioso, was forced to agree.
«It is just as I am telling you, for sure,» said Miach. «And I am thinking that this geas has been with you since the day you were born without your ever knowing it. We all of us have them, we do, just as I have one that keeps me from eating pig’s liver, and a good man it is that does not have trouble with his geasa.»
Belphebe looked up from the arrow she was shaping. Her bow was a success, but finding seasoned material from which to build shafts was a problem. «Still, master druid,» she said, «it is no less than a problem to us that we may return to our own place late, and without our friend Pete. For this would place us deeply in trouble.»
«Now I would not be worrying about that at all, at all,» said Miach. «For the nature of a geas is that once it is accomplished, it gives you no more trouble at all. And the time you are spending in the country of the Sidhe will be no more than a minute in the time of your own land, so that you need not be troubling until you are back among the Gaels.»
«That’s a break,» said Shea. «Only I wish I could do something about Pete.»
«Unless I can see him, my divination will not work on him at all,» said Miach. «And now I am thinking it is time for you to try the shoes. King Fergus of Rury waseat up by this same sinech because he did not know how to use them, or another pair like them.»
He accompanied Shea to one of the smaller lakes, not haunted by sinechs, and the latter stepped out cautiously from the shore. The shoes sank a little, forming a meniscus around them, but they seemed to give the lake-water beneath a jellylike consistency just strong enough to support him. A regular walking motion failed to yield good results. He found he had to skate along, and he knew that, if he tripped over a wave, the result would be unfortunate. The shoes would not keep the rest of him from breaking through the surface and, once submerged, would keep his head down. But he found he could work up quite good speed and practiced making hairpin turns until night put an end to the operation.
Next morning they went out in a procession to Loch Gara, the haunt of the monster, with King Briun, Belphebe, and the assorted warriors of the Tuatha De Danaan. The latter had spears, but they did not look as though they would be much help. Two or three of them fell out and sat under trees to compose poems, and the rest were a dreamy-eyed lot.
Miach murmured a druid spell, unwrapped the sword of Nuada, and handed it to Shea. It was better balanced than his own broadsword, coming down to a beautiful laurel-leaf point. As Shea swung it appreciatively, the blade began to ripple with light, as though there were some source of it within the steel itself.
He looked around. «Look, King,» he said, «I’m going to try to do this smart. If you’ll cut down that small tree there, then hitch a rope to the top of that other tree beside it. We’ll bend down the second tree.»
Under his direction the Tuatha did away with one tree and bent the other down by a rope running to the stump of the first. This rope continued on, Shea holding the rest of it in a coil. «Ready?» he called.
«We are that,» said King Briun. Belphebe took up her shooting stance, with a row of arrows in the ground beside her.
Shea skated well out in the lake, paying out the rope, which dragged in the water behind him. The monster seemed in no hurry to put in an appearance.
«Hey!» called Shea. «Where are you, sinech? Come on out, Loch Ness!»
As if in answer, the still surface of the lake broke like a shattered mirror some fifty yards away. Through the surface there appeared something black and rubbery, which vanished and appeared again, much closer. The sinech was moving toward him at a speed which did credit to its muscles.
Shea gripped the rope with both hands and shouted, «Let her go!»
The little figures on shore moved around, and there was a tremendous tug on the rope. The men had untied the tackle, so that the bent tree sprang upright. The pull on the rope sent Shea skidding shoreward as though he were water-skiing behind a motorboat. An arrow went past him and then another. Shea began to slow down, then picked up again as a squad of King Briun’s soldiers took hold of the rope and ran inland with it as fast as they could. His theory was that the sinech would ground, and in that condition could be dispatched by a combination of himself, the soldiers with spears, and Belphebe’s arrows.
But the soldiers on the rope did not yank hard enough to take up all the slack before Shea slowed down almost to a stop. Still twenty yards from shore, he could see the sandy bottom below him, looking a mere yard down.
Behind him he heard the water boiling and swishing under the urge of the sinech’s progress. Shea risked a
