We took as much care as we could to not announce our entrance with loud noises, but the tight stone walls caused even our comparatively soft footsteps to echo noticeably. I almost wondered how it was that John could even fit through those stone passages as they were so narrow that they compressed even my modest shoulders. His were a couple of inches broader on either side. Some of the soldiers with us were broader still. Among all of us, Sir Lucas likely found the descent the most leisurely with his diminutive frame allowing for easy passage.
The air in these passages was as stale as anything I had ever encountered. If what Robert told us was true, much of the air and whatever hung in it had been down there for more than a millennium, even allowing for the occasional intruder. Also old was the artwork on the walls, written in a script far older than contemporary Welsh, straining our abilities to discern its meaning. This led me to conclude that the writing on the stones above us must have been some time more recent.
“Robert, do you have any idea what any of this says?” Thomas whispered behind me.
“No. Far too old. This isn’t written in a Latinized version of Welsh,” Robert whispered back, his voice a touch louder. “It’s all Ogham, at least I think it is. Just lines and scratches, really.”
“Silence,” I commanded.
The space around us opened up as we came to a more level portion of the crypts. We had descended at such a steep angle for so many minutes that I wondered if we were now well below the base of Moel Famau. If so, it was an impressive achievement for whomever had dug the passage. Moel Famau stands better than eight hundred feet from its base from my understanding. Suffice it to say, there are few places in the world that extend so far beneath the earth.
In the large, open chamber we found ourselves in were a series of statues of pagan Celtic deities, all of which were minor compared to a hulking bronze statue of a grotesque one-eyed creature. The other statues were diminutive, in servile poses toward the one-eyed bronze giant.
“Balor,” Robert said. “They’re all offering themselves to Balor. Celtic God of, as I understand it, death, drought, and plague. Nasty bloke.”
“Yes, yes!” Sir Lucas concurred excitedly, almost hopping in place. “But in Celtic myth, Balor himself was killed, yes?”
“By his grandson Lugh,” Robert answered. “Though I believe that’s the Irish telling. The Irish and Welsh had different versions of the same stories. All of them are likely true to an extent, but only to an extent.”
“So, this is some cult to Balor, yes?” Sir Lucas asked aloud, bringing himself closer to the statue.
“A reasonable guess,” Robert said, scanning his head around the chamber. “I would give almost anything to have someone here who can actually read this lettering all over the walls. It’s Ogham. I’m sure of it now.”
“Og-what?” John asked as he carefully paced around the chamber, looking down the two doorways leading further into the crypts.
“Ogham. The old Celtic script of these parts as well as Ireland,” Robert pompously recounted. “I never spent any time learning it even though I learned Welsh at Oxford. No one in Wales still uses Ogham nor should they.”
“It’d probably help us now if you had studied it,” Thomas lightly chuckled. Robert shot a stern glare at him.
As the soldiers paced around the chamber, they found a long-desiccated corpse holding what appeared to be a silver mirror. Based on the crude leather and metal comprising the man’s armor, he would appear to have been a Dark Ages or early Medieval soldier of some fashion. I pried the silver mirror from his bones and examined it.
“A fine specimen of its kind,” I said. “This is newer than these chambers. Far newer. This was an intruder.”
As I further examined the mirror, more of its origins became clear to me. There was an incantation inscribed on an ornamental silver rim around the polished silver. Most of the writing had faded badly over time and the quality of the inscription was poor to begin with, but I recognized the old English in one portion well enough.
“It’s imbued with a blessing of sorts,” I continued. “The essence of it is that it provides a reflection of the soul. There is more to it than that, but that’s all I can read. Whatever it was meant to do, it obviously gave this poor man no protection.”
I moved to set it down, but Thomas interceded.
“You should probably keep it with you, father. Just in case,” he said, grabbing my arm. “You never know.”
It was not terribly large, the mirror itself only slightly wider than the span of my fingers and its handle was short. I tucked it in to one of my coat’s front pockets. It was an awkward fit, but that was hardly the greatest of my troubles at that moment.
“Here, I think we go down the right corridor. Seems to go deeper,” John said, pointing down that dark passageway. It was a path cut in a somewhat circular pattern through the rock and earth, supported by a handful of pillars upholding a hewn stone ceiling.
“Lead the way,” I reluctantly ordered.
The path was wide enough to allow for us to advance three across. John, the sergeant, and one soldier led us forward while Robert, Thomas, and I formed the next row. Sir Lucas followed close behind with the remainder of the soldiers trailing him.
After what seemed to be a couple of minutes, we happened across a massive open chamber lined in a bright red rock unlike anything I had ever seen before. There was a sporadic ring of candles around the chamber’s rim, providing intermittent light. On the chamber’s opposite side was what appeared to be a crude altar of some kind. It was a flat grey slab of stone covered in all manner of Celtic markings. Knelt before it, I recognized the figure of Cael Powys. He did not acknowledge our presence until he was done with whatever ritual he had performed.
“So, I’ve heard your voices since you entered,” he said before turning around. “What’s taken you so long to get down here?”
The soldiers all took aim at him, to which he chuckled.
“Hold your fire,” the sergeant commanded. “He’s unarmed.”
“Really was too bad about Noah. Here’s the thing, though. She, the Cyhyraeth, really needed some more blood,” Cael said impishly.
“Did you have anything to do with that?” I inquired, stepping forward toward him.
“Oh, no. No, not at all.”
“What are you doing here?”
“We have been the keepers of our traditions here in Clwyd,” he proudly declared. “Many spirits protect our lands, but they need a little guidance to help. We have helped them.”
“We? I only see you,” I riposted.
Cael hung his head, almost touching his chin to his chest before again looking back at me.
“There were certain casualties in the process,” he lamented. “Untamed and primal forces have their reputations for a reason. This is meant to be an untamed island, Doctor Willis.”
“How much of this is your doing? You’ve been party to all of this, yes?” Sir Lucas angrily queried.
Shaking his head, Cael stepped back a couple of paces while holding his hands up.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“You flatter me, Sir Lucas,” he said while letting loose a twisted laugh. “I merely help where I can here and there. Sean was really the one who came up with the idea of projecting a curse onto the King. Clever man. I’m not quite sure how he did that and I’ll never know now because, well.”
With such a languid delivery and flat recounting of these terrible events, Cael presented himself as a man seemingly without a conscience. I had judged his character to be deficient in our couple of prior encounters, but I had never imagined he had this in him.
“He sacrificed his own family!” I shouted. “His wife and two children!”
“Yes, well, all victories come at a cost,” he said, smirking. “She demands quite a lot for what she has planned.”
“She?” I asked, but then I realized he spoke of the red banshee or cyhyraeth. “And she speaks to you?”
“Only in the ways she speaks to others, well, those she hasn’t marked for death of course. Speaking of which, I should think she’ll be back soon,” he said excitedly. “I know she took a quick pass through your men when you clashed with the Dullahan, but she had other business to attend to south of Ruthin, I believe. You won’t get me out of here before she returns. You’ll all die down here.”
John stepped forward and turned his head to me.
“Father, may I?” he asked, clenching his fist.
I nodded. John rushed toward the notary. Cael recoiled, but not quickly enough. With a sweep of his arm, John struck Cael in the face. Cael tumbled to the ground screaming. Judging by the crack I heard when John’s fist struck Cael’s jaw, I surmised that he may have fractured a bone in Cael’s face.
To my surprise, though, Cael only stood back up and started laughing.
“Well, you’ve had your fun,” he mumbled, holding the side of his face.
A horrifying wail swept down through corridors behind us. Every muscle in my body tensed. I grabbed Saint Augustine’s cudgel and withdrew it from my coat. My boys, Sir Lucas, and the soldiers all braced themselves.
“Don’t look directly at her when she comes in,” I said. “She’ll disappear. We need to kill her, not chase her off.”
“Oh, that’s simply precious,” Cael chuckled. “You see these strange stones and markings. They’re runes. You won’t find anything like it elsewhere. She doesn’t need to hide from you here. This is her home!”
Another deathly wail echoed through the corridors; this time far closer. It had a maddening quality to it, with each reverberation causing my rage to build in uncontrollable ways. I had, only then, come to understand how it was that this creature might be linked to the madness in Ruthin and, more importantly, how its influence may have driven His Majesty to irretrievable insanity.
Silence reigned for a few more seconds. All that I heard was a gust of wind from the passages above. It sounded like a weak puff of air coursing through a flute.
A foul, pungent blast blew in from the hall, casting a dark aura upon the chamber. Candles and lanterns all saw their flames diminish. My heart beat with such speed and force I feared it would tear in twain. Painful, oppressive silence fell upon us, like our heads had been suddenly submerged in water. Then, with a thunderous screech that shook me to my bones, a bright red blur swept through the chamber’s entrance, cutting through three of the soldiers.
All I heard from the soldiers were moans as they tumbled to the ground, landing with dull thuds. In the dimmed light, I could only, mercifully, see vague outlines of their entrails as they spilled upon the floor. Squishing splattering as their viscera impacted the hewn stone below provided as much an image in my head as I could care to see.
We all turned toward the chamber’s rear to see before us, floating in the air, the whole of this red banshee. It, or rather she, was lovingly dressed. Her flowing red gown danced before us like drapes blowing in a strong wind. It was immaculate, as though it had just been sold to her by a fine London clothier. Indeed, watching the dress float in the air before us was a very nearly hypnotic sight.
Her body, however, was another matter entirely. Her arms and legs were withered to the bone, her desiccated skin, a reddish black in colour, forming a thin translucent papery cover of those twisted and malformed bones. Her fingernails, long and curled, extended out from strange hands that more resembled a reptilian paw than a human’s. As for her face, I try to avoid thinking of it too often. Her jaw distended nearly a full foot below where a human’s jaw would sit, resembling a snake’s jaw as it swallows its prey. Flanking her teeth, her withered skin had holes where her cheeks should have been. Above those were sunken eye sockets, appearing unfathomably deep, far more so than should be possible. Sitting at the bottom of them were those iridescent eyes that flashed, alternatingly, from emerald to crimson. Wreathing it all was a flowing mass of spindly dry white hair.
Our soldiers took aim and fired at her with a full volley. All of the smoke that hung in the air afterwards was a mockery of their efforts. Every musket ball harmlessly sailed through her body, if it was indeed corporeal, and cracked to pieces against the wall.
Cael laughed maniacally, throwing his head back in amusement.
“You’ve all—” he started.
The banshee screeched. We all fell to our knees as the piercing cry escalated. It grew so loud that it felt as though all my blood rippled. I saw flashes of my life’s every horrid event ranging from the deaths of my parents to the grisly demises of so many we had met in Ruthin. I wanted to end my life to make it all stop. Each second that abominable creature shrieked felt as long as an hour.
At last, she stopped. The relief from that torture was jarring in its own right. I gradually turned my gaze upward at the beast as she still hovered above. To my immeasurable surprise, her focus was not upon her intruders, but rather that contemptible notary.
“Fe wnaethoch chi eu harwain yma,” she sang in a wrathful, yet wispy tone.
“You led them here,” Robert translated, his voice breaking.
Cael shook his head and tried backing away.
“No! No, I didn’t! They found it out on their—AHHHHHHH!” he screamed as blood began leaving his body in a fine red mist toward the banshee. His skin turned pale and then wrinkled as the cloud of blood continued to flow into the banshee’s red gown.
He collapsed to the ground, his body as withered as a raisin. Meanwhile, a dark pulse briefly emanated from the banshee and she snapped her head back at us, eyes flashing.
Our soldiers futilely began to reload their muskets.
“Don’t bother!” the sergeant commanded as he stood far to the banshee’s left. “They won’t do anything. Bayonets only.”
A particularly brave soldier, a tall and lanky lad, charged straight at the creature, shouting as he did. She passed straight through him, causing a cloud of blood to leave the young man. Withered and desiccated, the soldier crumpled to the ground. The red banshee again loosed a brief dark pulse, this time further dampening the light of the candles and lanterns to a mere glimmer of what they had been when we entered. Only traces of her were now visible, just outlines of her red gown, face, and putrid skin.
Next, her head turned toward me.
Panicked, I withdrew the golden spike and hurled it, as though it were a javelin, at her. Having seen the futility of trying to pierce her body, I instead aimed at her head. The spike bounced harmlessly off her ghastly face, sounding as though it had struck rock.
Her jaw distended even further, forming a cavernous maw before me. It loosed a thousand tortured screams, the lamentations of the young and old, men and women. Each one was distinct and yet they were all melded together. I know not how to explain what I heard other than that.
Suddenly, they all became a single voice.
“Willllliiiiiissssssss,” she hissed, her wispy voice echoing. Then, in a screeching wail, she sang, “Byd gwallgof. Yn anochel ac yn greulon. Tywyll a sgrechian. Am byth ac am byth.”
As I found later, that verse means “A mad world. Unavoidable and cruel. Dark and screaming. Forever and ever.” I did not know then what it meant precisely, but the enfeebling tone slithering forth out of the abyssal maw made her intent clear enough.
I drew Saint Augustine’s cudgel and lunged forward, swinging wildly at her. I savagely struck her arm. She withdrew slightly but did not show any signs of distress. Her arm seemed as solid as steel. That is the only way I know to describe it. I could have swung at it with an axe a thousand times and not made a dent.
Her horrible maw closed for a moment to form a devilish smirk. Then, she again screeched in a deafening roar swinging her arms wildly to knock me onto my back. Saint Augustine’s cudgel flew across the chamber and skidded across the floor, crashing into a corner.
My boys all charged forward, brandishing their swords and letting loose wild war cries. She simply ignored them as they swung at her. None of those blades made the slightest impact. She continued to drift toward me, her mouth again opening wide.
“Byd gwallgof. Yn anochel ac yn greulon. Tywyll a sgrechian. Am byth ac am byth.”
A couple of the soldiers again tried firing their muskets, this time aiming for her head. The musket balls disintegrated as they struck her skull. All they had succeeded in doing is further filling the dank air of the chamber with smoke.
I fumbled about my coat to find anything that might have an effect. Thomas threw his golden cross at the banshee, sobbing helplessly as he did. From my front pocket, I grasped that silver mirror that we had found earlier. Assuming I was a dead man, I nevertheless held it up toward the red banshee.
“BYD GWALL—” she began, but then her eyes flashed a pale silver.
Her jaw fell off altogether and she clawed at her face, screeching. Her hair burst into flames and quickly wilted away. What approximated her skin sloughed off, flaking into ash and then into oblivion. The gown comprising her body fell to the floor as blood. Her bones, once so seemingly solid, crumbled to dust. All that lingered as she perished was an echoing screech that gradually diminished until there was silence.
The candles and lanterns brightened greatly, fully illuminating that accursed chamber. Nothing remained of the banshee aside from the blood that had once been its gown.
Thomas, still whimpering, scurried across the floor, and embraced me. Sir Lucas, John, Robert, and all of the soldiers simply stood about, rightly astonished at what they had just seen.
“Father!” he cried. “I thought you were—”
“I know,” I hushed him. “I thought so, too.”
It was, however, all over.