The Second Circlet: The Old Places - 6. Segment 6:
The Sieges Perilous

Joraan's glaive rang in resonance with Excalibur as Moira raised the Great Sword over her head where it rang out with its own peel. The glaive then stood, of its own, upon its hilt and leaped into Joraan's hand where it then proceeded to hold itself aloft without his prompting or effort! Joraan was flabbergasted! Never in all of his fathomless years had he seen his weapon do such things!

But, then the Claíomh Solais, as Myra called it, began pulling Joraan toward Moira! More accurately, it began pulling itself toward Excalibur with poor Joraan merely in toe!

To Moira's dismay, Excalibur made to do the same in her hand! In fact, the Great Sword was so 'eager' to join with Joraan's bizarrely behaving weapon that it nearly launched out of her hand! She could swear it was like two long lost lovers 'running' into each other's arms, but using Moira's and Joraan's legs to do the running! She found she had to hold on to the sword's hilt with both hands so as not to lose the thing and have it go flying, possibly lopping someone's head off in the so doing!

Like crazed magnets, the two glowing weapons lunged at one another until, with another almighty clang and an unaccountably bright flash of greenish-white light that was near to blinding, the two blades connected! Before their heads, Moira's and Joraan's blades were locked together in a perfect 'X'! Try as either of them might, neither could separate the two! It was, as if, they had both been fused together!

Then both blades became unaccountably heavy to the point where neither party was capable of holding the crossed blades aloft anymore. With another clang mixed with a thunder-clap and a violent shaking of the ground, the two weapons hit the ground. Upon the thunderous smiting of the two blades upon the earth, they split apart. From between the two blades, a third came to exist!

This blade was the same bright silver as both Excalibur and the Claíomh Solais, but its length was much shorter. It was in the leaf-like shape of a dirk or Scots dagger.

"Well, I'll be damned to Hades and back! Those two just went and made a wee babe!" Sean blurted incredulously. At that, the dirk began to shake and rattle upon the earth as if it were alive!

Myra cautioned: "Sean Pierceye, you should stand away if you value your safety. I do not believe that Carnwennan is meant for your use. I feel it seeks another . . ."

Sean blinked at this beautiful Blue Fairy from flipping Pinocchio and then managed to get out of the way just in time to miss being skewered by the suddenly flying dirk!

The weapon made a bee-line for one in particular and it was only due to his unnatural reflexes that M'yn was able to catch the blade. The force of its impact knocked the red-haired Leprechaun on his behind. Then, with no warning at all, M'yn totally disappeared from sight!

"M'yn!" Joraan exclaimed as he began to race over to the place where his brother-in-law once stood. Before reaching the destination, however, Joraan plowed into something invisible to him. Something that complained!

"Och! You fool! Could you not see a person before plowing into him?" Said the nothing that had suddenly caused a flurry of dust to puff up from the ground!

"M'yn? No! In fact, I can't see you for lookin' at ya! You're totally invisible!" Joraan exclaimed.

"Nonsense, I can see my hand just fine!" Said the M'yn pitched voice coming from nowhere. Joraan heard a scuffling in front of him that drew closer and then had the strangest sensation of air moving about his face as if someone were fanning him!

"By the Star of Rhiannon! You really can't see me, can you?" M'yn was all bafflement and anxiety! How is it he can see his own hand, but Joraan and, by the looks of them, the others could not?

"Release Carnwennan, M'yn! You will find yourself returned to sight once you do." Myra instructed.

M'yn did as told and suddenly reappeared to everyone's sight as the dagger clanked to the ground.

"Well, I'll be my brother's wife! Moira, lass, are ye sure I ever woke up from bumping me poor head out on the road the week before last?" Sean rubbed the back of his head dubiously.

"Yes, alas, Sean me feen, you are as awake as I am . . . or, at least, think I am!" Moira stood feeling suddenly numb from the unending strangeness she'd experienced of late. 'Queer Happenings' hardly seemed a fitting description of her life these past weeks. She felt very much like Alice must have felt after going down the rabbit hole!

"Carnwennan is the third shard of the Great Gladius Archangeli, the holy sword of Michael the Archangel himself! The three shards were dispersed along the summer solstice path of his Sword In Abstract, a straight leyline bridging seven sacred sites from Skellig in Ireland to Mount Carmel in Israel. The three shards came to be known as the Excalibur of Men, the Claíomh Solais of Sídhe, the Carnwennan of . . . Fae." At this, Myra looked strangely upon M'yn who stood staring at Carnwennan, as he regarded it upon the ground at his feet.

As the focus of everyone turned to him, M'yn looked up and shrank a bit from all the attention as he suddenly began to feel quite conspicuous. Without meaning to, by complete reflex, M'yn took the blade by the hilt and held it aloft before himself pointing it upwards at a slant. When he did so, he vanished again!

"Well, isn't that a fine thing! You've all made him go and hide on purpose with your gawking! Now we'll never find him if he doesn't want to come out again!" Viviane chastised.

"Perhaps he has good reason to be hidin'. If Moira has the blade of men and Joraan has the blade of leprechauns then why should the blade of fairies leap into M'yn's hand?" Sean said, showing a side to himself that he rarely allowed: a certain deductive reasoning built on years of practicality and patience.

"That's a strange question, Sean. Perhaps, it simply went to the user most attuned to its obvious power! M'yn's shy and retiring personality seems to give him an instinct as to how to use the artifact to 'cloak' himself." Moira gave some reasoning of her own.

"That may be. The Shards each have a will of their own that seems connected to the will of Michael. Perhaps, he judged M'yn a fit substitute for the use of Carnwennan in the absence of another Fae other than myself. However, the blade should have come to me per the knowledge I have been given of it. It is meant for a Fae hand! The Twining of the Three requires it." Myra's caveat only served to confuse the issue more and with M'yn, literally, nowhere to be seen or sensed, it was an issue that would have to wait.

"Ridiculous! M'yn is as Sídhe as I! He . . . smells right. So, enough of the why he got his weapon. I'm sure he'll be having plenty of need of it before long if Morgana's coming is nigh! He'd also be wise to come out of hiding too if he knows what's good for him! We need to move on to whatever is next. Time slows for no-one and I feel that this is only the beginning of a quest for us." Joraan said decisively and sagely.

"Indeed, you are correct, Lord Joraan. Time grows desperately short. Already in the aether, I can sense movements and alignments at work! Machinations that will be opening more tears in the Veil that separates us from the Dark Fae!" Myra added with a note of dread disturbing her usual serenity.

"Then, to be sure as we're all blatherin' here wastin' time, what is next? We came here. We found the 'Jewel' and now have three nifty magic weapons. That's all that great green fire-ghost said we had to do!" Sean was beginning to lose patience with this lot. He was still half-way convinced that this was all some nightmare that he'd wake up from soon and soon couldn't come soon enough for Sean!

"Well, that's simple. We need more recruits." Viviane said with uncanny discernment.

"More recruits?" A voice filtered in from the air next to Joraan's ear which caused the Sídhe King to start in shock. He turned to see M'yn suddenly standing right next to him!

"Och! Screamin' Banshees, M'yn! Don't be doin' that to a soul with that thing!" Joraan sighed after managing to catch his breath.

"Oh. So very sorry." M'yn apologized sheepishly bowing his head but did remain among the visible this time.

"That sounds to be a wise course of action and I have heard tell of other artifacts and wielders we will want with us when comes Morgana. We must fill the remaining Sieges Perilous to complete our circle." Myra said.

"Sieges Perilous? You mean, like the seats of Arthur's round table?" Moira asked wonderingly.

"Indeed! Just so! You'll need all your knights about you when comes Morgana!" Myra answered again with dread portent.

"The Shards of the Gladius Archangelus have now been distributed. Each has its own power and each will be sufficient for its user and for the Circle. But, there are other places in this world where there are foci of Power that must be ascertained, accessed, and their particular artifact revealed! Also, in these places, we may find paladins fit for a Siege Perilous within the Circle. But, here-to-fore all but one has been found with a weapon to place them within a seat at the Circle. Sean Pierceye . . . we next must find the weapon you are destined to wield in service to your Queen as her right hand!" Myra pronounced.

"My pardon, but where do I fit into all this and what weapon do I get? This stick seems hardly capable of fending off supernatural nasties!" Viviane asked pointedly. Interestingly, she didn't seem in any way concerned about the fact that she'd not been, quite, read into the quest before them that she now found herself so inextricably entangled!

"Your's is a most singular part to play, Viviane Menethiri. You will find your 'weapon' to be your faith and your mind! YOU, yourself, will become a weapon as you were born to wield Magic!" Myra said.

Viviane merely stood silent a moment looking puzzled, then she proceeded to kneel onto the ground. Using the end of her staff, she began scratching designs into the loose dirt with the alacrity of a woman possessed! When she was finished she had made a great circle. Within the circle, she'd drawn rough, but amazingly accurate representations of all the continents of the earth. She then circumscribed certain areas and drew a symbol in each one.

Everyone came around to observe this bizarre fit of behaviour. They all looked to the design that she began to enhance by, somehow, drawing iron filings out of the soil and into her traces in the ground.

"I don't know why, but I feel this is important," Viviane said when she was finished.

Joraan mused that this Viviane was acting as if she were not completely with them and yet was completely present at the same time. She seemed unaffected by the fact that she had unwittingly been roped into an interdimensional crisis and that she was doing uncanny things with powers she did not seem to understand at all!

It was, as if, something else was working through Viviane and she was merely a vessel to contain this something else. In fact, she'd been acting queerly ever since landing in Wales!

"I would suspect that those are the old places we are supposed to be goin' to ta find these weapons or Sieges or what have you," Sean observed.

"Indeed so! Viviane has discerned what, so far, I have been unable to. I rather understand now too since I recognise the pattern these circumscribed places are representing. Behold, each area is the loci of a ley-nexus!" Myra said drifting her ethereal finger from one circle to the next.

Viviane made a strange gesture and new lines appeared on her 'chart' that radiated out from the places she had circled. Within the strangely ordered crisscrossing of these lines, it became clear that each of these places was a 'hub' of some kind of network.

Moira, of course, knew the metaphysical pseudo-scientific explanation for leylines. These, so-called, paths of 'Earth Energy' create a network of channels where a primal force supposedly flows across the earth. At various nexi in this network, sacred sites are often found with one of the largest a mere train-ride away from their current location. This, of course, being Stonehenge - the proverbial 'hub of hubs' for the ley-network. In recent years, the study of these mystical pathways has been linked to the discovery of the shape of the earth's electromagnetic field actually coinciding with these leyline paths!

Perhaps, in light of everything else beyond reason Moira had experienced of late, this ley-network theory wasn't as far fetched as originally thought!

"Gungnir," Sean said for no apparent reason.

"Um, pardon?" Moira asked as she looked askance at Sean.

"I dunno, Moira, me Luv. T'is a word that just came into me head like so. I think I've taken a toot of me 'tea' one too many." Sean shrugged.

"You might've at that had I not replaced your 'tea' with Sídhe ale, Seaney-lad," Joraan pronounced matter-of-factly.

Moira rolled her eyes! "How'm I ta be dealin' with any of this balderdash if you two keep getting your snoots full? Men ~huff~!"

"There's no worry of inebriation from Sídhe ale since it is basically herbal tea, Mistress. What is Gungnir, Me'rah?" M'yn assured Moira while at the same time asking Myra after the name Sean had uttered inexplicably.

"I admit to not knowing . . . M'yn. It is from a language I know nothing of. But, alas, unless I am given knowledge of things that happened after my banishment to the Amazon, I cannot give any answers." Myra said with a touch of defeat in her voice.

"It is a Norse word. I believe it is the name of the Odinspear: the particularly favorite weapon of the Norse Allfather, Wodin." Moira said ruffling her windblown red hair.

"That would make sense for these patterns then. Watch . . ." Viviane took up stones and cast them into her sand-drawing on the ground. All three stones landed in such a way as to triangulate Iceland. Interestingly, the stones managed to situate themselves at the points of three leylines that put Iceland inside a perfect equilateral triangle.

"That must be our next destination then: Iceland! I must say, that is one place I never thought I'd end up going!" Joraan pondered.

"Why not Norway, Denmark, or Sweden?" Sean wondered since that is where Vikings came from and that was who worshiped 'Wodin' or Odin as he'd learned to pronounce the name from the Thor movies. For certain, he felt like he was living in a comic book-based fantasy already!

"No, that actually makes some sense. Oddly enough, Icelanders are closer to the old Norse ways than are the other Scandinavian countries. There are even still practitioners of the Old Religion who make up a fair population there." Moira said, leaning on her anthropology degree.

"If what I'm suspecting is true, then, this will be the next leg of the quest. Sean must be taken to Iceland to find Gungnir, the weapon chosen for his Siege. He must represent the Northern Peoples as this is his heritage of old." Myra proclaimed.

"Lovely. I just 'love' cold weather." Moira groused.

"Elves!" Joraan said with sudden mysterious knowing.

"You mean, there might still be Elves upon the earth?" M'yn questioned.

"Yes. The Aesir yet live. They are much diminished from their former selves, however." Viviane said, again coming up with knowledge from nowhere.

"To think, the kindred have been with us all this time and I never knew to look for them! For all these centuries, I've been alone and I needn't have been!" Joraan said with unaccountable sorrow.

"I would not be so sad, Joraan! If what Merlin is telling me is true, the Aesir aren't anything like they once were. They have . . . forgotten much." Viviane came up behind Joraan and hugged him close from behind. It was a tender, comforting gesture that Joraan would have balked at ordinarily, but welcomed at that moment.

After centuries wandering and anchored to his native Ireland, Joraan had never considered that there might be other of the Sídhe kindred left in the world. He presumed they had all perished at the hands of the Fae across the world.

"Elves, Pixies, Gnomes, Menehunes, Mannegishi, Korpokkur, etcetera. These have been names for 'little people' all over the world. It would make sense, then, that there might be other varieties in other places similar to Joraan and M'yn! The Icelanders still have a strong belief in Elves on their island. There have been enough witnesses to garner true curiosity among the scientific community. However, no evidence has ever been found of their existence. But, then, leprechauns were relegated to myth along with faeries and wizards, etc." Moira remarked.

"Oh, lovely! I'm going to have to put up with more crazed 'little people' like Joraan here just to get a bloody spear?" Sean sputtered.

"You'll be lucky they're as nice as I am, Seanie-buck!" Joraan groused.

"We'll just have to make them help us! Time is short and there are other sites to find with other weapons if Viviane's scrying is correct." Myra warned.

"That is a lot of ground to cover in less than a year, Myra, much less weeks. We'll never make it using traditional transport. Plane reservations, trains, cars . . . these all take time and money and that isn't even including the time we'll need to locate these things archeologically." Moira reasoned nervously.

"There are ways, though we shall only be able to do it a handful of times before finding better forms of teleportation. But, I have a spell that can move us along the leylines to the spots we need to visit." Viviane's voice was no longer her own! It was gravelly, like that of an old man's!

"Myra, I need three bars of silver and a siderite stone to effect the displacement." The voice coming out of Viviane recommended.

"Silver and a magnetic meteorite? How are we supposed to come up with such minerals on such short notice? Also, what on earth is wrong with your voice, Viviane?" Moira wanted to know.

"Since her coming into the Realm, I, Merlin Menethiri, have taken residence. Viviane, being a long descendant of mine, is the first of my line with the full harmonic sympathy to conduct my spirit that has been locked within the Jewel all of these ages of the World!" The voice said through Viviane.

"Don't worry, guys. I'm still here too, just that Grandfather Merlin has been with me ever since I picked up his staff from the ground over there!" Viviane chimed in suddenly and cheerfully.

"Oh, for the love of Jesus! Now the girl has gone all Exorcist on us? I need another drink!" Sean bemoaned as he reached for his flask and then whined remembering Joraan's 'tea' being there and not whiskey.

Before long, Myra had conjured the necessary minerals required and Viviane/Merlin had arranged them in just the right way to form a portal and ley-conduit to Iceland. She spoke a word with a lot of 'ththsz' and with it came a great humming and then a crackling sound like an electrical short.

The mystical doorway that appeared before them was held between the three elements like a great glowing gothic arch only flattened to the ground like a trapdoor! Through the archway, one could see the sparse green-black volcanic rock and light snows of an Icelandic volcanic plane.

With trepidation, the company stepped down into the doorway and found themselves instantly standing in Iceland! As soon as the last of the company had entered, the archway, which had somehow become vertical upon coming to Iceland, simply blinked out of existence!

"That beats a plane ride any day of the week!" Sean remarked.

"Hmm, it is as I figured! The Director seems to be indicating something." Joraan said as he stared at his strange gold and bejeweled compass. The diamond-tipped golden needle inside the device was swiveling to and fro, first pointing at Sean and then at a mount in the distance.

"I supposed it wants us to go in that direction, or, at least it expects Sean to go that way. You might take the Director, Sean. It seems to 'want' you for this." Joraan said handing the golden device to Sean.

"Ok? I supposed I should, erm, lead the way . . ." Sean was most unsure of this, but felt the need to take point for some reason.

However . . .

"You may go that way if you are a fool. The Draugur have been without a meal for many a moon." A strange, lilting voice said off to the right of Sean. He looked but saw nothing.

"Oh dear . . ." Joraan murmured.

It was not M'yn playing tricks this time either because he was quite present and just as stunned as the rest of the company.

It was then that the green and gray surroundings began to shift and move as if heat waves were shimmering through the air. Only, this shimmering made an odd outline of three humanoid figures and they looked like they were carrying long spears!

The shimmering silhouettes then resolved into living forms as tall as men, but much thinner. Each was pale like snow with hair long and silver. They all had strange eyes that seemed sharper than a normal man's. Then, of course, they had the same pointed ears that Joraan and M'yn sported.

These were not 'Little People' at all and each seemed armed with long wooden poles like quarterstaves though they were using them like hiking staves and not raised in a combat stance.

"We have been expecting you for some time now. We were told of your coming by Hermóðr the God-Messenger. We were to prepare for your arrival as a Great Hero of Olde was to pay us a visit and believe on us as the Ælfs of this land," Said the centermost elf.

"I, um, suppose that would be me, I'm guessin'?" Sean asked without confidence.

"I believe so," Joraan said, coming to stand next to Sean in a show of solicitude.

"Yes. Hermóðr did say that this one is to come with companions, two of which would be Ælfs of the Emerald Island that was once the Island of Aflönheim. The Elders." The center one continued to speak.

"I am Hemdaer. This is Spoldgrif and that is Eadenstel. We would be honoured to give you rest and refreshment in our hall. Actually, the Lord of Midheim cannot take no for an answer. Long has he waited to meet you." Hemdaer said and, actually, smiled a friendly smile while putting a three-fingered hand up to his heart.

But, friendly or not, Joraan was unsure. He had long since ceased to trust in things not well understood and these . . . elves . . . seemed quite inscrutable!

Sean looked around and saw the confusion on all faces. No assurances were to be found there so he simply began to follow the three Elves to whatever doom awaited him.

"Sean, wait! Are you sure about this?" Moira called to him.

"What else can I do? I certainly don't want to face something called a 'Draugur' without help! If I can put up with two smaller versions of these fellows, I suppose, I can put up with the taller versions too. Besides . . . perhaps they have a brew or two. Something stronger than 'tea'!" Sean turned back to his trudge.

The others looked to one another, shrugged, and followed suit . . .

. . . into what home or hell none could tell.