The Torc Part Three World's Desire

By Gordon M Burns

Nursed from the addiction caused by Petrus, Arianwyn now faces fresh challenges from a range of people who have joined her disparate group. Each skilful but flawed in their own way, they appear to place their hope in Arianwyn and her goal to return to her homeland. Arianwyn, now in late adolescence, feels inundated by their demands of her to be a mother figure and their leader but Grainne, now joined by the forceful Tammazult, seems to persuade her to serve the role. An adventurous journey north becomes an emotional turmoil for Arianwyn as Servanius, a bishop fleeing Rome, challenges her beliefs. In part, she counters these but cannot escape the relentless pursuit of her by Petrus. Each time she feels credence gained, the ground is swept from beneath her by events and her own nature, leaving her weak and helpless. Finally trapped by Petrus in Spain, Arianwyn finds herself trying to do the better of two worlds - causing no harm to others and gaining time for the women who trust her to escape to her homeland. A pyrrhic victory sees her, Grainne and the men who have followed her, captured and Petrus remorseful. However, Arianwyn has matured and though still flawed by her passionate nature is optimistic of the future. For Grainne, concerned on how Arianwyn interprets their relationship, it is still too early to tell her what that is as, in chains, to Constantinople they sail.

In World’s Desire, the dark romantic adventure of The Torc continues. Set in a Byzantine past events reflect issue relevant to the present age. At one level, ostensibly one girl’s struggle with adolescence - where pressures of self-image, failed relationships and an outlook influenced by her perceived misgivings of self and others viewpoints - the tale begins to take on deeper aspects. A friend, the girl has known and trusted all her life, takes on a strange new light and suggests hidden intentions with their relationship, which shimmer uncertainly between intimate closeness and a wider spiritual meaning. Whatever purpose Grainne has for Arianwyn, it is not anything she has encountered in the world and as if by sixth sense or design, others join her seeking a greater understanding of themselves and their lives. Along the way events, thrilling and mysterious, shape Arianwyn into a young woman capable of making mistakes but also able to play a crafty strategic hand in outwitting dark forces bent on destroying her constrasting band.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gordon M Burns
• Release date: Aug 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310486210

Gordon M Burns

Writer living in Abernethy Perth Scotland. see my website for more details.

Book preview

THE TORC

Part Three

WORLD’S DESIRE

Gordon M Burns

August 2014 copyright©

Disclaimer : This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

©Cover design by G M Burns July 2014

Published by Gordon Moncrieff Burns at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support

PART THREE

WORLD’S DESIRE

CHAPTERS

1. CATATCOMBS

2. SEARCHES IN THE DARK

3. SOPHIA

4. BREAKING WALLS

5. BOANN’S FIRST STORY

6. TRIDUANNA

7. THE LEAVING OF TAMMAZULT

8. A CHALLENGE

9. FOGIVENESS

10. ARIANWYN STAYS UP

11. SNOW BLINDNESS

12 GAUL

13 IBERIA

14 BEFORE TURRACO

15 SHACKLED

END OF BOOK ONE

OTHER WORKS BY THE AUTHOR

A Look at Part Four WAGGLE DANCER

THE TORC

Glossary: yowe trummle: (Scots) a cold, wet fortnight around midsummer, after the sheep shearing.wizzen: (Scots) v shrivelled, shrunken. n the breath of life.

"Hope not in hope Malachias, for struggle is our shield and our tale the sword to fight the Word that would condemn us."

1

CATACOMBS

AD 543

Arianwyn, having no remembrance of the jet-raven arms that bore her to the catacombs, there was only blankness darker than ebony before the tethering eruptions of red-wrenching stomach pains began. An endless torment of rip and ruin which, borne from an acidic core of burning bile, scraped her throat’s craving in thirst of wine. Her lamenting refrain - ‘wine and white from out the chalice filled by his own hand, I beg you, for only it will cool my thirsting hunger for that grace’ - wailed pathetically like a pibroch from her lips, as a soul-plea offering in return for that nectar to calm her rivers of rampant fevers. Her whole being beseeched the honeyed drips to appease her shivers of sweats and lift from her blanched skin the clung-cold sodden-threads of debauched party-stain and, thereby, make her pure again. Shadow figures, mosquitoes zinging in her ears, told her it could not be and in gruesome irony withheld the griefless grail of granting from her abandoned lips.

On that rebuttal, riled up from some inner core, sourness suffused her mouth, wretching her corps up through her mouth but the swollen blockage resisted movement to the contracting spasms trying spew forth onto the ground; a surface that must be there for, though she could not place its existence, it supported her open sprawl upon its cold-grey riven-crust. It was a floor that demanded her, sucked her down so that she could not rise and from its ghastly aspect that poured an agitation of troubled dreams of skulls and bones into her mind-eye sockets. Here, daunt-numbing, Samhain skulls floated around the nightmares of her delirium in which, only her heaving stomach, breathlessly painful, sent them away as her gut wrenched itself towards her mouth.

Scenting between her legs, the floor cast up to her a boar that tantalised her to implore it gore her and once it had, she cried tears on abject knees and clamped-clenched at the cramped-worries swelling below her waist. Through tears streaked by shameful regret, she watched it further gorge white rock from which more skulls tumbled, causing more bitterness to flavour her mouth in censure. The rock cracked and burning stabs shot through her, running before her screams up arms and legs that thrashed about off the unyielding walls until a cooling touch upon her thighs calmed them. A firm hand of moderation, muscular and black, that wrapped the arm above its wrist around her disgust of quaking tremors.

The cup of wine rose before her like a welcome in which, as true as pledge of word, all those ambrosian contents promised forgiving salvation for her pleading lips. And yet, hallucination fooled with some liquid falsely given, a sting of acid hit her mouth as a caustic chastisement, coating her throat with a voice-stifling catarrh which, rasping and gulped into her inner being creating a rack of back-writhing thrusts. Next - and how long had she lain? - flooding came from the nose, red rawness cracked her upper lip and a span beneath her naval, where the stigma showed, a crimson stain with dark and shrivelled berries in the mix showed where the floor began and where the hope had ended.

Her clothes stuck to her as an accusation, outlining her and dragging her down into wretched place where peasant faces looked away from her contempt. She begged at those uncaring backs, with blockaded ears and earth-clamped hands, for wine, more white wine, only a glass that, in indifference of her plight, they palmed back at her to float in disdain before her face as a mocking enticement. She tried to grasp the cup to sup its hidden contents and stop the anguish crossing from inferno into hell but hands held her and she submitted to their gentle touch.

There was a moment of relief under those hands before a trembling protest at them soaked her, issuing fluid from every orifice and pore and she knew, was fully aware, its stink filled the air as a stopper for her mouth and nose with its polluting reek that fouled the space around her. Horse hooves pounded her abdomen, within and without, and she crumpled beneath them, curling round her craving pains until a man of stone cooled her with his gaze. She yearned to reach behind the eyes for his comforting hold but with his rod, he warded her away and she felt her body leap dismayed in an ache of blighted desire. She felt herself willingly surrender to his hands and the pain went as still water of cool submission until the stomach pains returned, stirred by a sword that stirred her round and round remorselessly into a pool of mud and blood and mire.

The returned the blankness with a painless tranquillity that soothed her. She lay still, calm and grateful in remittance. She tried to rise and thank the face but with a sulphur kiss, it snarled her in a spit of spite, red staining in her face. More chill sweats and more firm gentle hands until she saw bound wrists beside her and a neck with a boar scored into the skin. Immediately, the vision, stone splintered cracked and dust filled her mouth. Choking, she tried to raise herself from out the mire that soaked her. Her palm-upward, shaking hand reached a circle of confusing merging faces she recognised. Nechtan, her father melded with Artuir, Nechtanson, her brother fused with Galam, her spouse, and yet others that she feared to hold in the scandal of recall. Talorcan, the heartless lover, blended with Rory, Gwaethen and Petrus, all of whom past before her as a smear of regret and mortification. They stared at her with no affection and so she sank into a nervous stank of doubt and self-loathing.

Black wings rose above her. Her belly swelled beneath. She tore where something forced itself downwards. In pulses of a wracking that magnifying her agony of pain, she pressed into a pant of breathing that flushed her into a crimson face until came a joy of passing, cries and tears of sheer delight as, of a passing between open limbs, came a blessed deliverance falling into gentle hands. Firm hands, accepting palms, a calming grip that set her at peace and took away the pains with the voice she loved, which told her - ‘No, no, my dearie. No rending breach for this is now - the expected’. And all discomfort and all craving ebbed from Arianwyn for, now emptied and delivered up of that which scoured her, she flowed into a deep sleep and longed to wake and hold it in her arms.

Arianwyn lay still within a body attached only to consciousness by a dry mouth and grating throat. She tried to salivate and ease the arid dryness but she could not. A dry cough tickled for release, which she fought because by conquering it she might prove something to herself, prove that within her, she still had will to move past this and emerge renewed, reborn the stronger for the passage. However, she was weak and unable to move, so she rested unwilling to open her eyes. Her body, still a claylike part of the ground lay on and she imagined hands moulding her form into shape. Reforming not just her body but rebuilding the nature of her spirit in which, though no stranger to her, possessed of it a beauty that she never felt she had.

Discharging herself from the cold, hard rock below her, she became aware of someone close nearby breathing the steady rhythm of sleep. Whosesoever slumber it be was disturbing to them and concerning to her, for it would cease its assured pulsing, pause into a silence of trapped air within a body unable to exhale until on disturbing, fitful, nasal gasps came the relief to slumbering lungs and listener’s worry, on the return of the sleeper’s steady rhythmic breathing. She willed her eyes open into the dim light and found she was in a place of skulls and bones stacked on shelves. She thought she had died and been lain in the earth-kist of her ancestors but the body beside her breathed and she became aware of a warm, stale air entering her and filling with life. The light was dim, but she could see who was beside her. It was Galam.

There was no delight in her, only a fading of her new-felt beauty and a grimy acceptance, which soon became fatalistically despondent as she began to recall the events before her sickness. She called Galam’s name and offered hers to him, awaken him from his sleep. Wilting eyes gave no recognition that he, Galam, knew who she, Arianwyn, was. He could only dumbly repeat his own name in a monotone reply and that of Arianwyn was just a word to echo back.

She felt a sorrow rising in the dark and with her arms around him, held tight the body memory of him to her but he shrank, stiffened against her embrace and she recalled the bad words they parted on. Words, mouthed sounds posted on the air and caught within the ear. Shapeless and unseen with no weight other than sharp edge and nasty bite gave them. Was it they that had dissolved Galam into this crippled condition? Those words that she instigated in her disappointment of all those men she had held in regard some way or another - father, friend, and lover. Tearfully, a salt of self-pity rolled the brimming remorse glistening the edges of her eyes and she hated herself. Galam had not wanted her love that way. He had not been her father’s choice and her compromise was not even to her own liking for she knew she loved another. One that seemed incapable of feeling, one that she had not been ready to match, one whose voice modulated deeply as if gavel scrunched beneath her feet but sought to callous her soul – Talorcan.

A breast twinge of emotion, light and leaping to the throat, shivered through her like an inner tickle and she wiped her tears away for that was then and this was now and decisions made then had brought this and they were all stuck with that. She casketed Galam’s rigid casing within her arms and rendered tears of consolation onto his head but felt the rough ugliness of stone return.

Gradually, she became aware of another presence in the room, one that laid a comfort on her, softening the presence of the hardening rock by drawing her away into forgiving arms and authorise her weeping. It was Grainne. She held Arianwyn securely in her clutch of tightening torc-constriction for Grainne, understanding how Arianwyn felt, knew the words she had for her were hard and firmly structured. Pull yourself together and know yourself. Crying won’t make things any better and do not try to wriggle from me clasp and cast a pathetic look on me. Within the grip, Arianwyn struggled to show the displeasure on her face but Grainne’s hand forced the young woman’s head onto her breast and held it there. You’re just sorry for yourself, I know you’ve been through a lot, but you’re through it now. Your body’s recovering, next you need to heal the mind, and then search for the light within you that waits rekindling. So buck up, it will help look to others; look to Galam’s needs. Take care for him. It will help you temper your psyche to become fit and resolute. You will be a Silver Queen and more yet, you will be what you are, a guiding path for others. Grainne’s vice slackened but Arianwyn, deflated in body and soul, could not rise from the comfort moulded to her by her friend. Only not just yet.

Or ever for I cannot, I am too weak. I almost handed myself on a plate to that man, she told Grainne. I would have let him take me in the ego of his lust to ravage body and smite soul to worthlessness for this ever is what I am.

Exactly as I saw it and not a pretty sight, but nothing happen, so you’d notice, for your friends stood by you all the time.

She looked at Grainne, smiled and hugged her body close into her warmth, breathed deeply of her reminiscent redolence of a certain past. She wanted her self-loathing hid in Grainne’s arms, perhaps even be absorbed by her but she bit her lip upon that selfish thought. Yet, she could not show her face, not until she had made full confession. Aye, but, Grainne, I wanted it to happen. I wanted to give myself to him. I wanted him to have me. As if she had not heard this heart confession, Grainne stirred not a troubled jot. Aye, Grainne, what think you of me know and where my purity? Don’t think I was not fully aware of his cruelty, the shallowness, his treachery and his evil. I knew he’d have me and throw me aside, yet I would have let him. How can I care for others? I can’t care for myself. A guide for others? Where to, Grainne, the stank?

Humph! You speak very highly of Petrus, that’s for sure. I think you’re getting all your men mixed up you het-up bitch. Aye, het-up, on the boil and over spilling and for what? Personally speaking, Petrus didn’t do it for me. I saw him as too insecure, a ‘where-is-my-mummy’ boy. Did you not notice how he followed you around like he was the lap dog licker, but then, no, you wouldn’t would you? Your mind was as bright as this stone floor which, at least, answers as expected when you knock it. She knuckled the floor, it returned a hard, dead and hollow sound. "But then, with a besom in your condition, what else was to expect?’

Och, Grainne please, swept it past and don’t scrub it in, I feel bad enough.

Just saying that I never understood your choice in men. Always for the taller man of never mind the cooking arm for the wee girl of blank-all Beltane years and porridge plainly put is smouldering in the peats and needs the poker taken to her.

I’m not sure I see myself quite like that.

"No? ‘Och, here’s the cherry. Talorcan, come taste it.’"

It was not like that, he forced himself and, besides, there are no cherry trees in Forternn.

Nor peach trees come to that and you never were a peach. However, have you seen yourself lately? This is like cradling a pot of night soil in my arms, I can tell you. How we’re going to clean you up, I’ve no idea.

Arianwyn looked down at her stained clothing, her eyes and nose informed her Grainne was right. I must look like the Spaewife, she admitted.

Indeed and more exact than you might think.

Pardon? She asked for in the comment was an enigma which, she questioned it with a pinched expression.

Hmm? a sound which held its own question. A query asked before waters to be crossed. How strong the flow, how deep the waters and what lies underneath? However, barriers need overcoming if your intention is to move beyond, Grainne did, so care and feeling Arianwyn needed and, to find the way, trust in knowledge Grainne took to find the crossing point. I mean nothing by it of note, it’s just a passing thought that everything within and without is a part of our whole being. Look, how do you know there are no cherry trees back home or that your clothes are like the Spaewife?

Silly, question, I just do.

Exact, you just do because the I within does. I, remembers what it is a part of - all the people you know, the places you have seen, the things that have happened all around you, seen, unseen and more.

More?

Always more with you. Did you understand what I just told you?

Arianwyn sniffed sharply through her nose, a weak acceptance or rejection of a foolish notion but perhaps a mixture of the two that which was still insubstantial and ethereal. Maybe, she said without conviction. The cold floor was real; the dim light revealing skeletons all around was fact as was Galam, her husband. All were solid and sure as her adulteress longings for Talorcan and if he were here, Petrus. She gave an ‘ochtie-acht’ of exasperation into the room. What sort of person was she, for, after all this cleansing renewal, she rapidly deteriorated to the being she had always been a sponge, obvious in touting her experience, lack of it, desire for it to want to come and claim her. Don’t you ever feel the need a man, Grainne? I see how men look at you, drown in the deep pool of your beauty, and you could take your pick of the best amongst them and have them guddled by your disregard.

"I told you once before of Ru. He was I and I was he. Perhaps, with goatish sizing, even you would not have given him a second glance, thinking him short of outwardly taller men, but he was all the things the men