Sláine stepped up beside him, dragging Ukko with him. If all of the inhabitants of this city bore the same ruinous flesh and animalistic features they would need to find themselves cloaks and hoods or they would draw every eye in the damned place.
They reached the gate side by side.
Still mumbling incoherently, the traveller looked up to meet the guard's eye. Sláine read the unquenchable fire of madness blazed behind his dark eyes. The guard backed up a step under the sheer intensity of his stare. A crazed smile spread slowly across the traveller's face, his bloodless lips curling back to bare a mouthful of rotten teeth, many of which had been replaced by small wooden pegs. There was almost no trace of sanity - no trace of humanity - within the little man's gaze. Instead, his dark eyes promised that all the torments of purgatory were locked up tight within his skull.
The traveller reached out, his hand touching the warden's throat as though offering a blessing.
"Balor spare you, boy." He breathed, in a small, raspy voice. It was a ritual greeting, no more portentous or omen-laden than a simple hello, and yet it placed a chill in Sláine's heart.
Balor One-Eye spare you from the plague of man is the full greeting,
Sláine heard the voice of the Crone inside his skull.
The plague of man being evil, if you haven't worked that out yet. The idea is simple enough, before the advent of man there was no evil.
He pressed at his temple, pushing the heel of his hand into his eye. Her words were like steel spikes being driven into his brain.
"Get... out of... my... head," Sláine rasped, earning a puzzled look from Ukko.
"I don't like this place, Sláine. I really don't like it."
"You are not alone, dwarf," Sláine blinked back the sudden flare of pain. His mouth was parched, and his head swam, the ground shifting treacherously beneath his feet as he walked on past the guards, ignoring their stares.
None of them moved to stop him.
The gates of Purgadair were, like the city itself, immense structures more than five times the height of the men guarding it. Each railing in the gigantic framework was thicker than a man's arm and carved with the finest details. The weather-rot had begun to claim some of the finesse from the masonry but as Sláine reached out for the support of an iron handrail, his hand closed around the brooding likeness of a demon that had been woven into the pitted iron. Red tears of rust ran down its anguished face so it was impossible to tell if the demon regretted the rise of Purgadair or thrived on its soullessness. Together, the sand-blasted weathering and corrosion lent the demon the appearance of a desperate captive trapped within an iron prison.
Beside him, Ukko peered down a long and winding street at the array of insanities on display. Sláine followed the direction of his gaze. There were no people, at least none like him, but there were crowds and mad delights. The street was filled with everything from puppet shows and the mimes plying their trade, weasel-faced children looking on in rapt delight; butchers and bakers filling their windows with foods and smells that tantalised the nose and revolted the eye; to the crazy warren of alleyways and curved stairways that wriggled between the buildings and the barrage of colours seemingly strung across every available inch of sky. Brightly coloured silks tied to bone-white tusks formed canopies over part of the street, shielding the bazaar of the bizarre from the worst of the sun.
Seeing them, the children chittered and squawked animatedly, gesturing wildly at the strange intruders. The commotion served to draw even more unwanted attention to them.
"I think we need to move on," Ukko said, pointedly. "Find this Skinless Man, make like a shepherd and get the flock out of here."
"For once, you'll get no argument from me," Sláine rubbed at his chin, feeling the stubble rasp beneath his fingers. He turned too quickly, a wave of nausea welling up inside him. The pain in his head burned. He winced as he backed away into one of the countless cramped byways leading into the belly of the great city. "Come on."
Purgadair was a place of vile wonder.
Distant roars rumbled, chased by a rolling wave of cheers.
Everything was so daunting, every building a behemoth of stone, every street horribly claustrophobic. Worst of all though were the denizens of the strange city. They were all slants on the same demonic fusion of animal and human, a different blend of species dominant in each of the inhabitants they saw. Their perversion was repulsive to look upon - and yet it was impossible to look away. They were everywhere, on street corners, in windows, gathered around stalls, walking. Sláine felt utterly exposed. The city was populated by monsters. Sláine and Ukko walked side by side, trying to take it all in.
The crack of a whip startled Sláine. A slave driver hustled a group of beaten-down prisoners across the street towards the roar of the distant crowd. A familiar face stared hatefully at Sláine - a face he had never thought to see again: Cullen of the Wide Mouth. The wrongness of seeing his childhood nemesis here in these strange streets where he hadn't seen another human being was undeniable. Cullen was dead - killed by his own gae bolga after his jealousy had bettered the tenuous bonds of friendship the young men of the Red Branch shared. Cullen was dead and yet here he was, captive to these diabolic creatures. The slave driver lashed his prisoners on, steering them towards a wider street.
"I can save him," Sláine breathed, unaware that he had actually given voice to the thought. It felt right. He started forwards.
Ukko snagged ahold of his belt and pulled him up short. "Oh, no you don't, big man. Rein in those suicidal instincts."
"I-"
"I said no you don't. Remember what the crow-woman said. Things you see here aren't real."
"She didn't say that," said Sláine, remembering full well what the Crone had said.
"Might as well have. The street's empty, Sláine. There's nothing there except the ghosts inside your head. We need to find the Skinless Man, right? So let's just concentrate on doing that. This place feeds on your guilt, remember?"
"I remember," said Sláine, grudgingly. "But-"
"Why does there always have to be a 'but' with you? Huh? The Morrigan warned you that the city would manifest your guilt if you let it, and now you would go chasing after the ghost of some long-buried shame. Does that not strike you as, I don't know... erm... stupid?"
"But-"
"Crom's hairy gonads! Don't you ever just
listen
? There's nothing there. The street is empty. I can't see anything, so whatever you
are
seeing, it isn't there. It's in your head. Which means it isn't real. Which means it
is
trouble."
Ignoring the dwarf, Sláine set off after Cullen.
The slave driver herded them on mercilessly, his whip biting into the bare backs of his prisoners, the lash drawing weals and blood. No matter how quickly Sláine ran the slaver kept his captives just out of reach. Cullen looked back imploringly at Sláine, blame in his hate-filled eyes. Sláine could hear Ukko grunting and huffing behind him as he struggled to keep up.
The roars of the crowd grew nearer until, finally, they reached a mighty coliseum. The stone here was red with the blood of the fallen who had given their lives for the sport of the beasts of Purgadair. Through the ground-level arches Sláine could see the track, where charioteers lashed their teams into a frenzy, steel wheels eating the dirt of the arena as they raced for glory.
Sláine stopped, frozen in horror at the sight of his mother, running for her life before the pounding hooves of the teams and the wicked steel barbs set into the wheels. She was fast but she couldn't possibly win. The crowd bayed for her blood. The charioteers yelled at their teams, goading them on faster and still faster, until they were bearing down on the terrified Macha, and still she ran, head back, tears streaming down her cheeks, arms pumping desperately.
Sláine stumbled forwards a step, bumping into one of the hungry-eyed onlookers.
Macha turned into the home straight, the chariots on her heels. Fear and determination burned in her face - until she saw her son, on the side of the track. There was a moment, the space between heartbeats, when they looked at each other and the track, Purgadair, the world, ceased to exist. It was only the two of them.
Her lips moved. He could read their accusation:
you could have saved me.
But he knew he couldn't - that was his guilt talking - and it all came back, the world, the city, the track and the raging stampede of the teams driven by men he knew, men he had left behind in Murias. Men his drunken sot of a father had called friends.
It wasn't real. None of it was real.
Macha went down beneath the wheels and hooves but before they could trample her to death she faded into nothing, her spirit released as Sláine came to terms with his own failure. "I couldn't save you then and I can't save you now," he breathed. A lone tear rolled down his cheek. He felt so utterly alone. Bereft. Losing her once had been hard. Losing her twice was devastating; a loss no son should have to bear.
Sláine turned his back on the ghosts of the coliseum track and walked away.
"We find this skinless one and get out of here."
Beside him, Ukko nodded.
There were no jokes or admonishments this time.
THREE
Understanding came to Sláine.
The city was a reflection of its people.
At the base it was corrupt, like the flesh and blood of the mortal being, craving and obsessive. Vice dominated the claustrophobic lower streets. The sins of need and desire subjugated anything more spiritual. There was no Earth Power because there was no connection to the land. The creatures that lived on these lower tiers were parasites, bloating themselves on the carcass of civilisation. Sláine and Ukko scoured the streets but found no sign of the Skinless Man. None of the denizens of Purgadair deigned to talk with them. The animals turned up their beaks and snouts and made as though they were nothing more than a bad smell to be ignored. But through each tier rising towards the highest level of the city matters of the flesh dwindled until, on the top tiers they encountered no one, the streets dedicated to dreams and souls and men no longer living.
"This place," said Ukko, "is downright creepy. It's like a ghost town."
"That is exactly what it is," Sláine agreed, pushing open a door and stepping into an abandoned house. The room was dark, the table still set for a dinner that was never eaten. The food had rotted on the plate.
Ukko shivered as he crossed the threshold. The house reeked of abandonment.
"It's like they went out and never came home."
Giving voice to their fears didn't make them any less pressing. Sláine moved through the room, looking for significations for its recent desertion. Wooden shades had been shuttered to keep out the worst of the endless day's heat.
Sláine backed out of the room.
The house next door was much the same, though the shutters were open and instead of food on the table there was a single overturned tankard and a dark circle stained into the wood. The next two houses were derelict, empty but for an uncomfortable sulphuric aroma.
"Perhaps they went down below and became those abominations." He stopped talking as he pushed open the door of the next hovel. The table was set, as with the first house, but the centrepiece was a young man, trussed up, naked, flayed and partially carved. The soft meat of his belly glistened redly on the huge platter. The corpse was surrounded by succulent roots slathered in butter. Unlike all the other food they had found, this feast was fresh.
Ukko pushed in past him. "Is that? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. I mean... urgh. Cannibals?"
"Is it cannibalism when there's no trace of humanity in these predators? By the looks of things we're nothing more than cattle to them, to be bred, slaughtered, gutted and carved up."
"Can't say I really care about definitions right now. Maybe it's because when mummy dearest gets home she'll take one look at me and think: ooh, din dins." Ukko turned away from the feast, his face suddenly a bilious shade of green. "You don't think that is what the witch meant by Skinless Man do you? Find the dead guy on the plate, he's the key? He was flayed before they laid him out to eat... flayed... no skin."
"No," Sláine said, quite certain the meal was not what they had come looking for. They had found a skinless man, not the Skinless Man. "It feels like a title, not an ingredient. Come on."
"You're the hero, I'm just the lackey."
They moved down the row of abandoned houses quickly, pushing doors open, looking for signs of life, secretly grateful every time they found none.
The sun was relentless. Twilight offered no respite, ceding the sky to the second sun long before it had cooled the streets. Sláine felt his headache returning with a vengeance. At the far end of the street lay a series of troughs used for watering the animals. They might as well have been a mirage; they were dried up, as were the barrels beside them. Sláine cracked the lids off all of them, just to be sure. As Brain-Biter splintered the last piece of wood, a second crack echoed somewhere behind him. Sláine lowered the axe to his side and leaned over the cask, fascinated. He strained to listen, to hear anything else out of place. Ukko scuffed about in the dust for a moment, then even he stopped and the silence was complete. He had almost succeeded in convincing himself that they were alone when he heard it again: a slow drawn-out sighing followed by a
crump
.
Sláine rose slowly, and turned.
The street behind him was empty.
"Did you hear it?" he asked the dwarf, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Aye, I did."
"Stay close to me," Sláine said, hefting his axe and resting it lightly on his shoulder.
"I've got no intention of going anywhere," Ukko said. His resolve lasted exactly thirty-nine steps. On the fortieth the sky caved in - or at least that was how it appeared at first as streaks of fire rained down from above. Ukko bolted. Sláine threw his left arm up to shield his face from the flames. Cinders bit into his flesh, searing through the skin all the way to the bone in four places, like fang-marks. He jerked his arm back, barely ducking out of the way of another trailing flare. He looked up to see five huge carapaced insectoid warriors scuttle out into the street before him. Their mandibles dripped ichor as they skittered forwards, pincers clacking on the hard sand of the street.