The spring-festival of Orcus was one that celebrated his death and return to the world of the living, with the lord of light and death said to have perished thousands of years ago. He had it was said, descended into the realm of the death with his bride Venus following after him, in the hopes to restore him to the realm of the living. Legend had it that in the winter he descended into the underworld where he was to judge the souls of the deceased, only for him to return in the spring.

  The festival for this reason was a popular one for weddings, with some such as Kenna and her husband Murchadh having celebrated their own upon the formal celebration of spring, in Glasvhail. That memory, when she had sewn a lovely yellow dress for herself of fine wool bought from Norlion. Murchadh had had his hair combed his beard trimmed and had worn a green-tunic and trousers, colours that had gone well with his blue-eyes.

  As to this festival, it was celebrated in a rather different manner than how Glasvhail enjoyed the festival. In Sgain, the festival comprised yes of a large feast, though this was to last for a week, with the monks paying for the finest food to be served to all the people present in Sgain. At other times the monarch and his bride came, to pay for and join in the feast. Once this done, prayers were offered in every camp outside of the walls, in the outer-city, with the statue of Orcus, his wife Venus and the goddess Scota were removed from their place of residence inside of the monastery-walls. Wherefore they are place in the middle of the city, with twelve maidens selected to dance all around Orcus, twelve male youths to do the same for Venus’s statue and Scota’s was to be twelve elders. Before all of the dancers were to intermingle, lilies in their hair and a powerful hymn upon their lips, in celebration of the spring and of the three gods in question.

  “As a sun was the light of Orcus Snow-Hair’d,

  Venus first beheld the Light-Laird,

  Isles arose and the earth shone,

  Awed as a maid before the moon,

  The isles were green, high did they loom,

  In the day as in the night he shone,

  Jewels she sent him, long did he gaze at them,

  With a hey and a ho he toss’d them,

  Red as the fire were her cheeks,

  Wherefore she had Ares throw him down the peaks,

  With a hey and a ho he leapt away,

  In sorrow did Venus weep when he flew away,

  Sword-glancing in his eyes and flowers in hand

  Did he return!

  Eyes as starlight, hair sun-bright,

  Smile as snowfall, thus she clung to her shawl,

  O how they danced hand in hand!

  Across all the green lands,

  Until dark-eyed Ares did arrive hither,

  Blade in hand to send Orcus whither,

  With a hey and a ho did Scota sing this tale,

  As a matron did Venus teach it in a vale,

  Thus is how all loves,

  May they grow!

  All hemlocks and leaves do so tumble,

  Summer lilies in the vast fields,

  As the winter-plums do so grow in the valleys!”

  This along with the hymn of Cormac was the most beloved of all the songs of the Caled. The song of Cormac was that which recounted how Cormac the Hero had discovered the Golem, Sgain’s heart in a cavern near where the monastery lay hundred and fifty years prior, and given it over to Causantín II. So that it was he who sat first upon it, at his coronation with Cormac the Hero having been the one who slew the usurper Geric who had slain Causantín’s father, and seized his throne for a time.

  This Cormac had his own statue that was placed just behind that of Causantín, with the two along with Causantín’s heir Siomon the Thistle-King, were placed at the summit of the coronation-hill. The statue of the old man was notable for his long beard and hair, and severe expression while the other bore an uncanny resemblance to Kenna’s son. Alarmed by how he had the same high-cheekbones, the same tall figure and smiling lips there was, however a certain strength about his figure and eyes that served as the sole difference from him.

  It was then that the three Paragons were worshiped and offered up green apples, thistles and carvings of lions and in recent years, unicorns in honour of the current rulers of Caledonia.

  The dancing, singing and celebration that was to follow was to last for two nights, before one of the High-King’s court-poets was to mount the coronation-hill and sing the epic-song of Causantín and Cormac the Hero.

  This Cormac was the namesake of Kenna’s own son. The name having come to her in a dream, wherein she was drifting away at sea, the sound of the ocean and the scent of the salt-water still remained in her ears and nostrils even nigh on fifteen years after that day. The birth-dream was one of the few details about her son’s birth that she had only ever told Murchadh and Olith, preferring to keep it as private as ever before. The thought of which, now filled her with an ache of grief and sorrow even years after the death of the two whom she had always, loved more than life itself.

  In the days that led up to the festival could properly begin though, was the great mercantile festival which involved all goods being sold in the week before the feasts, due to the Temple forbidding the sale of goods outside of food, and tools during religious celebrations.

  For this reason, Corin’s eagerness to sell all the tools and weapons he could, before the celebration could begin in earnest could well be understood. Though she had little love for him, Kenna was not unsympathetic towards his desperation, to hurry through the sales in question.

  They stayed for one night, with Kenna staying in a small inn by the sea, as the promontory of Sgain loomed over the Firth of the Thern, with there being a port that often welcomed trade and goods from farther south, and the Continent. The inn had a cozy bed, of far better quality than her own in Glasvhail, so that the next morn’ she had little desire to actually leave her room.

  Responsibility ruled supreme over her as always, so that she left to join Corin who had preferred to sleep under his wagon out of worry that someone may rob him of his iron and steel goods.

  Unfortunately for Corin though, as great as his goods were in terms of quality, he did not sell quite as much as she and by the end of the day was ready to leave to return home to Glasvhail. Pleased that they were to leave rather than staying for the festival, due in no small part to her desire to return home to toil upon new dresses and tunics, to sell later in the year should the Queen not call for her.

  This thought nearly made her heart stop due to despair, so that she suppressed it to the best of her ability. Kenna therefore was prepared, for their return trip, with a bought-lunch that consisted of fish, beef and cheese along with a fresh barrel of wine for the return-trip to Glasvhail.

  “Curse my ill-fortune and curse this year,” Corin was heard to say as they whipped down the road for the village they had come from.

  “If you did so poorly, why not stay several more days?” Kenna asked him from where she sat in the back of the wagon, grumbling beneath her breath as they appeared to hit every stone and bump on the thistle-road. “Surely you might, sell more tools under such circumstances?”

  “Mayhap though I had a sense whilst watching your growing impatience that you might do something impulsive, such as return to Glasvhail on foot,” He replied to her sharply with a dark glance in her direction.

  Indignant at his casting blame upon her, Kenna snapped back at him, “Why cast blame unto me, when it was your own decision to return home?”

  Corin did not answer her, not at once. This annoyed her for some time, and though they were to fall back into the silence that had haunted their journey north-east, this return trip’s silence of a distinctly different nature. Before, they had passed their time ignoring one another, whereas this silence was one that stung both of them. With the coldness exhibited as they refused to so much as glance at once another, even when they ate together.

  It was so bad that when Kenna attempted to sing one extract of the hymn of Orcus, Corin snarled at her to be quiet. Indignant she fulminated, and came near to shrieking back at him before deciding to do otherwise.

  Their trip was therefore a moody, stormy affair with much bitterness passing between the two of them with Kenna swearing to herself with every passing day to take Daegan away with Cormac and her. This, along with a great many other muttered gripes, complaints and small character flaws were noted and exacerbated, so that neither of them had a moment’s peace.

  The week and a half that it took for them to return hither to Glasvhail was a long one, by the end of which they had fallen to stiffly ignoring one another once again after a few icy words in the morn’.

  It was shortly after lunch (eaten as they travelled); Kenna for her own part was in the midst of staring up at the skies dreamily. The memory of the sea-dream she had had during the whole of the week that led up to the birth of and during the birth itself of Cormac, once more arose in her mind. For some reason she could no more chase it away, or ignore it in recent days. Not that she tried all that hard, to do either of those things as they brought with them a feeling of warmth. Just as surely, as star-gazing with Murchadh once had, she remembered once doing so by the quay, with Cormac in her arms and her husband by her side, whilst Corin and Olith took the boat out to sea to star-gaze out there. At the time Kenna had been worried, however Daegan’s mother (who was pregnant then) had persisted that it was what she had wished for, and that she needed to see the stars from the boat, so Murchadh had given in to her and Corin’s pleas. It was then that… With a start Corin shook her with a hand to her mouth and the other index finger pressed against his own lips.

  “Tush Kenna,” He warned her, as she resisted a feeling of outrage at him for grabbing her so suddenly. Her indignation though was swiftly forgotten though, a moment later when he opted to take them off the road.

  “What are you doing?” Kenna demanded of him, sharply.

  “It is just that whilst you were drifting away, I thought I had heard horse-hooves.”

  “What of it?”

  Corin did not answer her at once, as he took them off the main road. Curious now that she could see how stiff with fear and anxiety he was, she soon had her own answer to why he had reacted so. There was a sudden sensation of dread, of horrid nausea that pervaded her being several heartbeats later. Such was the feeling of terror, of wrongness in the world that Kenna could no more help herself from breaking into a cold sweat than she could from vomiting over the side of the wagon once they were off the road.

  It was as they hid, with their small wagon being pulled deeper into the foliage by Corin and Romulus who had decided at that moment to pull with all they had. Apparently seized by the same shock of terror that had just gripped the seamstress, his jolt thither into the forest they were traveling through sent her rolling back before she could help herself.

  “Quiet Romulus!” Corin hissed at the panicked animal, at last pulling on the reins hard enough to re-introduce reason to the poor, frightened pony. With the beast of burden calm once more, he turned about where he was seated to the front, of the wagon to face her and whispered, “Stay here.”

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  Nodding fearfully, Kenna did as she was told, the thought of refusing never once crossed Kenna’s mind. For his own part, Corin leaped down and climbing up a little ways to the edge of the forest that was to the right-hand side of the road, to stare out at it, with nary a thought to his own safety.

  It was some time, before Kenna understood what had happened, her head throbbing from where she had struck it in the back of the caravan. She froze when a strange hissing sound was heard to pierce throughout the area. This happened just after the horse-hooves that Corin had sworn he had seen, slowed to a complete halt.

  To the seamstress’s horror there atop a great black steed, sat a terrible shadow of some sort, dressed in a black hauberk with a dark helm which appeared to devour all the light that touched it. The strange shadow snuffled and hissed as it sucked in a breath, then another only for a sound somewhere between steel scraping against steel and another hiss escaped from it and its mount.

  Transfixed, Kenna could no more move than she could scream, so gripped was she by fear and horror at the sight of the shadow that loomed over them.

  Corin she could see was likewise frozen, pressed against the ground underneath the upraised root of a nearby ash-tree, she could see him trembling as he stared up at the monster.

  Her heart beat against her chest with all the force of a sword-blow or from that of a horse’s kick, the seamstress attempted to restrain her own breathing.

  The shadow though leaned ever nearer, from atop its horse only for a breeze to flow, one that made Kenna’s skin shiver, as surely as it drew a sob of some sort from poor Romulus. The sound awoke in the seamstress the fear that they would soon be discovered, however in the next moment the shadow grew less distinctive.

  Blown away by the winds that swept it back to the south from whence it had come, the shadow passed just as the clouds in the heavens ceased covering the twin-suns.

  For a time neither Corin nor Kenna moved, both were too afraid to do so.

  It was Romulus’s sneeze that broke them from the fog which had settled upon both of their spirits. With a start, the blacksmith pulled himself up to his feet, shaking and gasping from the fright induced by the terrible shadow. Pulling himself up onto the road he stared first in one direction the in the other, whilst biting his lower lip.

  The moment they were back upon the road, Kenna spoke at last still trembling as she did so, regardless how it had been more than an hour since the encounter. “What in the name of Ziu’s flaming sword was that creature?”

  “I am not certain,” Corin answered her.

  “It was so horrible, how could such a thing ever come to be?” She whimpered clutching at her dark chocolate brown tresses in a fit of fear, “Why o gods does such a beast wander our fair, green lands?”

  “Kenna!” Corin yelled pulling the pony to a sudden, miserable stop in order to look at her over his shoulder, after he had slammed his fist upon the wood of the wagon, the sound of his flesh striking the wood made her leap.

  “What?” She stammered with uncharacteristic hesitancy.

  “Calm yourself!” He hissed at her, “You appear to be losing your wits, and I need to think!”

  Kenna subsided into stunned silence for a moment. Chastened she did not know how to answer him, nor did she know how to respond.

  Especially after a new thought entered into her mind, so that she all but leapt to her knees, to crawl over, covering the distance between them to say to him in a tremulous voice. “Corin! That rider came from the south!”

  “O-oui…”

  “Do you think it came from the village?” She asked fearfully.

  Corin turned to regard her with open-mouthed horror, as all colour left his face so that even his dark-blonde hair which was sweat-slicked against his face and which had long since begun to turn grey, appeared to whiten more than it had ever hitherto then.

  He turned about to whip the reins attached to poor Romulus so hurriedly that the pony took a moment to jump a little before he threw himself forward, as though his very life depend upon his moving. It may have, Kenna for her part was once again thrown back, with a terrible curse for which she apologised to the gods for her impious behaviour.

  “Wait darn you, wait not so fast!” She shrieked as she very near tumbled out of the back of the wagon.

  Corin for his part was heedless of her concerns. Seized as he was by panic he hardly registered her complaints until they were well within the village. Whereupon a great many of those who lived there, and who tended their flocks or fields raised their heads to stare in amazed fascination at the ridiculous sight of Romulus bouncing down the main road. The sound of Kenna being thrown all about on the wagon, cursing and shrieking discernible all along the tumbling road.

  Some of the children hurried over, whether out of concern for the poor seamstress who ordinarily doted upon them, or to point and giggle, were hardly of any interest to her then. Her ears ringing, her skull and rear-end aching with pain, her cries of anger and anguish intermingling so that not even she knew whether, she was more filled with pain or frustration.

  “Wait,” She all but whimpered once they had pulled to a sudden stop, rubbing at her head and rear with her hands. “Stop this caravan, less I really get mad you fool!”

  Corin paid her little mind, not that it mattered to her for some time, she thought as she held her head between her hands until it had ceased throbbing. When she at last looked up, it was to find that a great many people were in the midst of racing on over, to join her. Kenna though paid them little mind, distracted as she was by her horror at the sight of what had befallen Corin’s home. Built decades ago, by his master Fearchar, the father of Olith it had been rebuilt sixteen years or so before by Corin himself, shortly before the birth of Daegan. Though she had never felt much love, for the blacksmith Kenna could not count any moment when she had seriously thought that she wished for this house to burn to the ground.

  The sight of the smouldering ruins was enough to make her knees shaky. Her mouth gaping open as memories of girlhood playing with Ida and Olith poured through her mind. The original house had collapsed years prior yet there had remained a fondness on her part towards the rebuilt building.

  “What happened here?” Kenna demanded dumbly, unable to believe that the house in which her friend had passed days after the birth of Deagan, and where old man Faerchar had died four years before that event. There was such history in the small house, and all of that had been lost forever!

  Appearing by her side, Elspet the wife of one of the fishermen explained to her, “Cormac burnt the house down alongside that old man Wulfnoth, just before they kidnapped a number of the youths.”

  Her explanation struck the seamstress with the force of a club. Ripping her gaze at once away from the ruins of the once magnificent forge, she could hardly believe her ears. “What?”

  She stared at the thin, beak-nosed young woman who had the sort of puritanical temperament that had made her unpopular, throughout the whole of Glasvhail.

  For this reason Kenna should not have been surprised by the younger woman’s accusation against Cormac, as she had never much liked him. Notably after he had disappeared, from the sight of the temple at the time of Inga’s death (not that Elspet had much love for the Salmon’s granddaughter).

  “It is true, I was there,” Elspet insisted as she always did whenever she wished to condemn one person or another.

  This instantly served to feed into Kenna’s scepticism. “What do you mean that Cormac and Wulfnoth kidnapped several youths?”

  “They stole away Daegan, Indulf and Trygve.”

  “How are an old man too plump to properly cross a room properly, and a lazy lad almost half the weight of one of the lads in question, supposed to have stolen them away?” Kenna asked genuinely stunned by the folly of the accusation. The other woman glowered back at her with a stony expression upon her long-face, with a sigh of exasperation the seamstress rounded upon the rest of the ground, “Are there any others who might know of what happened?”

  “A fire began,” Said one voice from the rear of the small crowd of muttering farmers and shepherds. It was Helga; she spoke a little shyly as her face reddened when Cormac’s mother frowned at her. “Cormac was there, along with Daegan and Wulfnoth there was a fire, but then they moved to your home before they disappeared the day after.”

  “When was this?”

  “Nigh on a fortnight ago.”

  The shock that washed over Kenna was not near as fierce as the previous blow that had been delivered by the sight of the ruined smith’s home. It was nonetheless one that made the woman who had by then descended from the wagon lean against it to keep from falling, so terrible was the trembling of her legs. “Wh-what? Cormac is missing?”

  There was a time she might well have wished for such an event, likely during one of her harsher moments of anger and yet now all she could feel was a sense of loss, of pain and guilt, such that she had not felt in all her years.

  The force of her misery was evident to all who beheld her expression then, so that one of the men; Callum was quick to hurry to her side. A fisherman of some fifty-eight years, he had once been friendly with her master and was a shepherd renowned for his geniality, especially towards the children though he was often gullible with the children prone to playing tricks on him.

  “There, there Kenna, Cormac has that wise old paragon by his side alongside Ida’s lads Indulf and Trygve, no harm shall come to him.” He said in a gentle voice that she wished so very ardently to believe.

  Looking away from him helplessly, Kenna found that her gaze fell upon Corin, who was in the midst of kneeling in the doorway where his home had once been. Rocking himself back and forth, though his shoulders failed to shake there was visible anguish carved into the stone of his back and head.

  Hardly a friend to him, she nonetheless knew him well if only by association. Save for during the time that followed Olith’s death, he had never appeared so lost, so full of grief and pain, such was the depth of his grief that Kenna was moved to pity.

  It was this pity that surprised her as surely as it moved her to think at last of him, rather than her own feelings and fears though they remained as present and horrible as upon her arrival. The very fact that Corin refused to move, since his arrival told her far, far more about how shaken he was, than any physical movement or posture could have.

  Murchadh might well have approached him to lay a comforting hand upon his shoulder, where Cormac might have spoken to him with utter sympathy. Kenna was entirely unlike her men-folk in that she had very little familiarity with supplying comfort or any sort of gesture of pity for others.

  “Kenna! You have indeed returned!” Ida exclaimed bursting forth from the crowd, her round red face panting from the exertion of racing on over from her own home and farm.

  Kenna paid her scant attention, distracted as she was by her pity for Corin and fear for the children who had left home.

  “Where did the children go?” She asked wearily of her friend.

  “They have left, for the south I know not where, only that it involved the phantom-riders who have haunted our lands for weeks.” Ida explained just before a number of people began muttering amongst themselves, with Kenna understanding why they reacted so.

  There was a great deal of doubt towards the existence of the phantoms, though a great many others found it a simple matter to believe in them. Between Conn who had expressed uncertainty at the time of Kenna’s departure for Sgain, and many of the locals swearing to have seen them, if only later when they were alone with her.

  The knowledge that Cormac had left for the south struck with all the force of a battering-ram, little reason could she see in the reasoning behind his decision to head south, with his friends. The decision was so impulsive, so strange that Kenna could not grasp it.

  “Why head south?” She asked of Ida.

  “To pursue the phantom-riders,” Repeated her friend grasping her by the hand, her hand was warm and she pinched the skin of the back of it between two nails which awoke the seamstress from her stupor. “They did it to give chase after the phantom-rider and to take away some sort of cursed gem.”

  “Cursed gem? Of what nonsense do you speak, Ida?” The brown-haired woman asked, afraid that her voice had begun to sound shrill.

  “It is the cursed ‘Blood-Gem of Aganippe’,” Said Corin grimly, appearing at that moment behind Kenna who had not heard him move. At the sight of the confusion of those amassed before him, he added with eyes that appeared to almost cast lightning, so furious was he then. “The cursed gem was brought hither, by a dying man whom entrusted it to me. It was then that the phantom-riders appeared for they, desired the power of the Blood-Gem for themselves, it was for this reason that Wiglaf also left all those months ago.”

  Silence ensued.

  Then Helga asked curiously, “Who was this man?”

  “Murchadh the fisherman,” He revealed.

  There was a collection of snorts, scoffs and muttered comments about his failing wits. Some cautioned him to speak sense with concerned glances in Kenna’s direction.

  Corin though remained resolute, meeting every stare with a stern gleam in his eyes, as he huffed out, “I shall give chase after my daughter and her friends. Murchadh entrusted the gem to me, before he passed away therefore it is my burden to bear rather than that of the children.”

  “Then why did you leave it behind?” Someone asked scornfully.

  At this query he jumped a little, thought at some length only to become grimmer than before.

  There was something there in that grimace and the troubled downturn of his gaze, convinced Kenna who had frozen until that moment, of the veracity of his words. Having not expected Murchadh’s name to come up, she could hardly bring herself to believe it, however all thoughts soon left her.

  “How could Murchadh survive the storm?” At first she was under the impression that she had thought this question, but it was when she noticed from the corner of her gaze several nodded heads all around her.

  “He drifted ashore to the Misty-Isle,” Corin answered sorrowfully. “He was enslaved for a time before he fled with the gem, arriving here mortally wounded.”

  It was too much for Kenna, who came close to falling into a swoon. No silly weakling in matters of the mind, she caught herself though ignoring as she did the doubt and uncertainty of those around her. There was the question of what had become of the man’s body. To which Corin explained that they cremated it in the forge, before they had buried the ashes in the man’s proper resting place.

  “Blasphemy!” Someone called, but he was shouted down by Corin.

  “Non! We had Wulfnoth bless the spot anew therefore there was no blasphemy save that which led to his unnatural and premature death.”

  This quieted some, and it was an immense comfort to Kenna, for she could not have imagined what she might well have done had Murchadh, not received the proper funerary rites.

  It was with a start at that moment that she realized that she did indeed believe the blacksmith. Licking her lips she whispered more to herself, “I must sit down. I shan’t believe he was alive, all these years.”

  “Poor dear, what a shock!” Ida said with some feeling, before she turned to her newly arrived husband, “Freygil do not just stand there, like a fool! Get a move on, Kenna must return to her home.”

  “Aye Ida,” Freygil murmured before he moved to help her, in the guiding of the seamstress across he fields that separated Corin’s home from that of Kenna’s.

  “Corin, you come along also, you will have to sleep in Cormac’s room as the suns do appear to be descending,” Ida added fiercely before she barked out to all those still gathered about them, “Off with the rest of you! You still have much to do, and no time to be dawdling about staring at Corin or Kenna as though ye have all lost your wits.”

  They reached her home a few minutes later, with the house bereft of food so Freygil had to race back to his own home, to fetch some fish and ham for her and Corin. Both of whom ate quietly, it was not long though before Kenna, her mind abuzz with questions felt the last of her strength begin to drain from her.

  It was as though the fear of just how much her husband had suffered, all those years had been stolen from her. As though in her sudden surge of grief and pain at how the truth had been hidden from her by all those she knew that after she ate she felt a sudden fatigue.

  The thought that she might see Murchadh in her dreams, was to encourage to go to bed early, long before the suns had fully descended in the west. For his own part Corin left for Cormac’s room, long before she had retired for the night. That night Ida stayed with her, seating herself in a nearby chair by her bed, where she was heard to snore loudly just before Kenna’s eyelids at last shuttered closed for the last time that night.

  *****

  In the morn’ the two ladies descended early, just before dawn. They failed to find the blacksmith, and together resolved to get the last of this wretched story about Murchadh. What neither of them expected, was to find Cormac’s hay-bed empty and the blacksmith nowhere to be found.

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