The Sword of Feimhin Read Online Free PDF Page A

around the psalm again, as if the words were metamorphosing into something deeper, something solid as a shield, against the morbid hush of the empty church.
    If Thou, O Lord, shall observe iniquity, Lord who shall endure it?
    For with the Lord there is mercy and with him plentiful redemption
    And He will redeem Israel from all its iniquities
.
    â€˜Hurry up, Fadah!’
    â€˜I’m doing my best.’
    Father Noel had been thinking about the message from his niece, Bridey. Lost in his thoughts, he was startled by the arrival of a high pitched musical tone, as if the finestpipe in an organ were sounding directly into his ears. The hackles rose on the back of his neck.
    â€˜Hurry up! It startin’ again.’
    He was struggling to think clearly, already sensing the change. There was a tingling over his skin, as if the air had become charged with static electricity. Then the eruption of shouts and cries from outside.
    â€˜What in the world?’
    â€˜De Razzamatazz, Fadah.’
    â€˜The what?’
    â€˜De young people. Jigi-jigi!’
    Her patois was so strong at times he had to stop and try to figure out what she was saying. Did jigi-jigi mean what he suspected?
    â€˜Are we secure?’
    â€˜I lock all de doors. But de light … !’ He followed her gaze to the uncurtained windows. His trembling hands were unable to do it. It was Henriette, wetting finger and thumb in the pail of holy water, who snuffed out the flame, plunging the church, and Father Touhey, into deeper shadow.

The Feral Girl
    Oggy’s Café was on Lower John Street, the bottom floor of an ancient multi-storey block in which all of the upper floors looked forsaken. Inside Mark and Nan found a half dozen or so Formica-topped tables in an otherwise empty room. They chose one by the window, with stools that were screwed to the floor. Outside the window the air was so smoggy it felt as if dusk were falling.
    The situation in London was far worse than Mark had anticipated. It had been such a miraculous stroke of luck when they found a way of returning to Earth from Tír. Being subsumed, body and spirit, by the Third Power had left him and Nan marooned in Dromenon. They had been devoid of physical substance. For all they knew they might have been dead. They had risked everything on a foolhardy plan. Recalling a legend told around the fireside by his friend, the dwarf mage Qwenqwo Cuatzel, in which the Temple Ship was referred to as the Ark of the Arinn, Markhad gambled on the possibility that the ship might carry them back to Earth. The gamble had paid off.
    Just to have made it back, to have recovered his flesh and blood again, should have been more than enough to satisfy Mark. But now, with the discovery that Padraig was missing and the Sword of Feimhin stolen, their joy had been short-lived. And now they had arrived in London he and Nan found themselves lost in a dystopic nightmare, with raving mobs rioting in the streets and fires making a wasteland of large areas of the city.
    And now, heading over to the galvanised-zinc counter in the greasy café, Mark was confronted by the male reincarnation of the Willendorf Venus. The eponymous Oggy was no more than five foot four, but looked equally wide, with pendulous man boobs and a belly wrapped in a curtain-sized apron that overflowed half way across the counter. A wicked-looking meat cleaver dangled from a hook by his shoulder.
    â€˜Yeah?’
    Mark looked over the menu, which had been drawn in chalk on a blackboard amid numerous ‘For Sale’ posters and ads for cheap accommodation. The safest item looked to be the English breakfast.
    â€˜English breakfast – for two, please.’
    Dark eyes in a face that merged, with a mere dimple of a chin, into a truck-sized chest, looked Mark up and down. The voice that wheezed out of the fag-decorated mouth said, ‘That’ll be twenny pahnd.’
    The price was outrageous. But very few cafés had survived