ONE

SPECIAL AGENT MURANO

He wasn’t a Scranton cop. I could tell that as soon as he walked in. The pressed suit and the newly cut hair made me suspicious but the Italian shoes were a dead giveaway.

‘Conor O’Neil?’ he said in a low voice that made me think he had been practising it in a mirror.

‘Hay-na,’ I replied using the local vernacular. His confused look confirmed that he was an out-of-towner. Not that I minded; the local police had been none too gentle with me. Understandable, considering they were certain that I killed my father, bombed their police station, hospitalised about two dozen of their fellow officers and kidnapped their favourite detective. So when a Scranton cop elbowed me in the ribs when no one was looking it was forgivable but not pleasant. This new guy was a relief. He looked like he played by the book – hell, he looked like he wrote the book.

‘My name is Special Agent Andrew Murano.’

‘You’re a Fed?’

He flashed his identification card emblazoned with a big ‘FBI’ across it.

‘Wow, what did I do to deserve the Eliot Ness treatment?’

‘Kidnapping is a federal crime.’

‘Well then you can go home, I didn’t kidnap anybody.’

‘That’s not what Detective Fallon tells us,’ the FBI man said, opening a folder on the table between us.

‘Well Detective Fallon can kiss my …’

‘You claim,’ Murano interrupted, ‘that you accidentally took Detective Fallon to a magical land where you rode dragons together.’

I winced. ‘Well, when you say it like that, it sounds a bit far fetched.’

‘No, not at all, Mr O’Neil. Do go on.’

I really didn’t want to. Telling a story as crazy as mine is kind of fun the first time around but after a while it loses its appeal. I’ve often heard that women hate it when men mentally undress them with their eyes – well, I had the opposite problem. Everyone I told my story to mentally dressed me in a straitjacket. But I recounted my tale once again, ’cause Brendan told me to tell the truth.

Brendan and I had arrived from Tir na Nog into the Real World not far from Brendan’s house. The portal connecting The Land to the Real World deposited us inside a small patch of trees exactly at the spot where Brendan’s mother said mystical ley-lines converged. Brendan had always considered that just another one of his mother’s hippy-trippy crazy ideas, but he was learning that many of her crazy ideas were turning out to be true. Detective Fallon and I were the only ones who made the trip. Essa was supposed to join us but she was still mad at me for the Graysea thing.

Brendan’s mother Nora was one of those older women who looked great even into her seventies. You could see by her face that she had all of her marbles (and then some) and her physique showed that she was still strong. Good thing too, ’cause the shock that Brendan and I gave her when we showed up to the front door on horseback would probably have killed a lesser senior citizen.

When his mother asked him where he had been, Brendan started by saying, ‘You’re not going to believe this.’ But only a couple of minutes into the story it was plain to see that she did. She had believed in Filis and Faeries and Brownies and Tir na Nog all of her life and tears came to her eyes as Brendan told her that the Queen of the Druids recognised him as one of their own.

Brendan’s daughter Ruby was at school. He wanted to go and get her but Nora convinced him that that was a bad idea. He was apparently a very famous missing person. There had even been a TV show recreating Mom and Nieve’s attack on the police station and Brendan’s picture had been on every TV, newspaper and Internet screen in the country. Showing up in a third-grade classroom, we decided, might cause a bit of a commotion.

We were sitting down to a nice cup of tea in the kitchen when Brendan saw something outside the window and said, ‘Oh my gods.’ He jumped up and took a big carving knife out of a wooden block on the counter and said ‘Take it!’

I did.

‘Now drop it.’

I didn’t have a clue what was going on. ‘What?’

‘I said drop it.’

He was so frantic I did what I was told.

Then he said, ‘Tell the truth – it’ll keep you out of a serious jail until I can figure things out.’

Before I even had time to say, ‘Huh?’ a zillion screaming cops barrelled in the front and back doors with guns drawn. Brendan hit me in the stomach, spun me around and dropped me to the ground with my arm twisted behind my back. ‘I’ve got him,’ he shouted. ‘He’s disarmed!’

I was cuffed, dragged to my feet by my hair, slammed against the wall and then tossed head first into a police wagon. All the while I kept hearing cops asking Brendan how he was. I saw Brendan’s mother on her porch as they were closing the doors of the van.

‘It was very nice to meet you, Mrs Fallon,’ I said.

Brendan was right. Telling the truth got me a room in a secure mental hospital where my daily interrogators alternated between cops who wanted to kill me and shrinks who wanted to understand me. I couldn’t decide which I liked better. Special Agent Murano was my first change in a couple of days.

I took a deep breath and told the story of how my dad was not dead. That he was alive and well in Tir na Nog, the mythical Irish Land of Eternal Youth, where I assisted him regaining the throne by helping him attach his missing hand and then chopping off my uncle’s hand.

Then I narrated the story of how, when I got back home, Detective Fallon arrested me for my father’s murder and how my mother and aunt busted me out of jail and how they took me back to The Land and how Detective Fallon got transported with us by accident and then we had to search all over The Land and had to fight a battle and ride a dragon so I could use its blood to save my father’s life. And now we are back again so Brendan can see his daughter and tell his mother that he is a Druid. I left out the mermaid stuff ’cause that just sounded kooky.

When I finished I had a long hard look at Special Agent Murano to see if I could figure out which group he was going to join. The group that thought I was crazy or the group that thought I was pretending to be crazy. Agent Andy was difficult to read. He clicked off his tape recorder and tilted his head towards the armed guard that was standing by the door.

‘Would you object, Conor, if we had a little conversation in private?’

‘Why?’

Agent Murano leaned in so close I could smell his heavy cologne. ‘I have a lot of experience with unusual events,’ he said in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Let’s just say I would prefer to talk about your situation without prying eyes.’ Then he winked at me.

‘What, are you like an X-File guy?’

He smiled. ‘When we are alone.’

‘OK,’ I said.

The FBI man dismissed the guard and then lowered the Venetian blinds that were in front of what I assumed was a two-way mirror.

I started to get excited. When you tell a story as crazy as mine, to as many people as I had and none of them believe you – you start to doubt your sanity. Could it be that I had finally met someone who truly believed me?

‘Have you met people from The Land before?’

The agent shushed me, took off his jacket and covered the security camera that was mounted on the corner of the wall.

‘So you have a file on Tir na Nog, right?’

Once again he raised his finger in front of his lips, picked the intercom off the table and unplugged it. Then after looking around to see that no one or nothing could overhear us, he covertly gestured for me to come close. I stood and looked around myself. It was very cloak and dagger. I just got within striking distance of him when – that is exactly what he did – he struck. He slammed the intercom into my stomach just below my ribs. Whether he had been trained or had lots of practice in using office equipment to cause pain, I don’t know, but he was certainly good at it. Every molecule of air flew out of my body and the agonising spasms in my solar plexus made it so I was having a hard time replacing any of them. I was on the ground, doing a convincing impression of a fish out of water, when he bent down and slammed the intercom into my right shin.

I once heard that the only good thing about pain is that you can only experience it in one place – let me tell you now: that’s not true. Getting slammed in the shin just meant that I hurt from my chest to my toes. Then he slammed the damn thing into my head and I hurt all over. I tried to ask why but my breathing still wasn’t working and then I had a thought that terrified me so much I didn’t even care about the pain.

‘Did Cialtie send you?’ I said as loud as I could.

Apparently it wasn’t very loud at all because Agent Murano leaned over and said: ‘What did you say?’

‘Were you sent by my Uncle Cialtie to kill me?’

He grabbed me by my hair and dragged me back into a chair where he handcuffed my hands behind my back.

‘Still with the Faerieland stories. Do you want me to kick the crap out of you again?’

‘No,’ I answered honestly.

‘Then enough with the dragons and the Pixies.’

‘There are no Pixies in Tir na Nog.’

That line earned me a backhand across the face that made my vision swim for a second. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want you to knock it off with the insanity talk. The last four federal crimes I have investigated in this state have all gotten off with insanity pleas. My nickname in the office is The Shrink. I refuse to lose another case to the nuthouse.’

Relief washed over me; he was not an assassin hired by my uncle, he was a plain old ordinary Real World jerk. I smiled.

‘What, O’Neil, is so funny?’

‘The Shrink,’ I said laughing.

Murano flew into a rage, he re-hit me in the stomach and overturned the chair I was cuffed to, my head bounced off the floor and I thought I was going to throw up. I really didn’t want to get hit again but I couldn’t help it, I was still laughing.

‘OK, OK,’ I said, my face pressed against the linoleum. ‘What do you want me to do?’

The agent picked me off the floor – the cuffs cut in to my wrists. He put his face inches from mine. For a horrible second I thought he was going to kiss me. ‘You are going to confess to being a terrorist.’

‘What?’

‘You’re going to admit that you are a terrorist. You don’t have to name names. You can claim that you never met your masters but you kidnapped Detective Fallon because you hate your country.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘Maybe I am,’ Murano said, ‘but I’m going to make sure you are not crazy.’

‘So let me get this straight – you are punching a man who is tied to a chair and I’m the terrorist?’

The crazy G-man tipped my chair over once again. This time I think I did black out for a short time. The next thing I remember there was drool on the floor and I finally had a pain in my head that hurt enough to block out all of the other pains in my body.

‘OK, OK, I said, ‘I’ll say anything you want. Let’s just try and keep my grey matter inside my skull.’

You know all that talk about how advanced interrogation techniques are no good because a tortured prisoner will tell you anything? Well, it’s all true. I talked about how Tir na Nog was really a code word for a bunch of anarchists that wanted to overthrow the United States of America and then the world. When I started to get too outlandish, Agent Murano shook his head until eventually I just let him write my confession. We started getting along so well I even persuaded him to get me a burger and a shake. Don’t get me wrong, I still loathed the man. Anyone who would use their power to beat a shackled insane person (I know I’m not really insane but he didn’t know that) is just below snakes – and that’s giving snakes a bad name. I was slurping at the last of my shake when Murano came in holding my ‘confession’.

I hesitated before signing. I had been called a lot of nasty things in my day. Once I had even been called ‘unfunny’ (can you believe that?). But ‘terrorist’ was not something I wanted people saying about me. I imagined that in prison hierarchy, a terrorist would be just a tiny step above a guy who cooks puppies for supper.

‘I don’t think I can sign this,’ I said.

‘You want we go through all this again, O’Neil?’ Agent Murano said, rubbing his knuckles.

‘Well the way I figure it, either I get a beating from you today or I get one every day from my white supremacist flag-loving cellmate. Sorry, Andy, but I’m sticking with the fire-breathing dragon story.’

‘Sign it,’ the FBI man said as he stepped menacingly towards me.

‘No.’

‘SIGN IT!’

‘Sign what?’ Brendan said as he entered the room. The so-called kidnap victim was flanked by a local cop in uniform and an old, grey-haired lady that I at first thought was his mother. Brendan picked up my confession and scanned it. I kept staring at the wrinkled face of the old lady – something about her intrigued me.

‘So you’re a terrorist now?’ Brendan said to me.

‘Special Agent Murano thinks so.’

‘Did he coerce you?’

‘I’d say he counselled me,’ I replied. ‘Agent Andy is like a shrink.’

Murano bristled and pulled Fallon into the corner. I’m sure the special agent meant to whisper but he was worked up and not doing it very well. I could hear every word.

‘What do you care if I rough him up a bit? According to the report he had you locked up in a closet for a couple of months.’

‘It wasn’t that bad.’

‘Come on,’ Murano said, ‘you probably want to take a few pops yourself.’

‘I’m not sure his attorney would approve,’ Fallon said, pointing to the old woman.

‘No,’ the grey-haired woman said, ‘I’d be fine with that.’

At the sound of her voice all the hairs on the back of my neck stood straight out.

‘No you are not,’ Fallon said to her. ‘You were about to tell your client not to sign anything.’

‘My what?’

‘Your client, Mr O’Neil?’ Brendan said pointing to me. ‘You were about to tell him not to say or sign anything.’

‘Oh yes, I was.’ A look of confusion crossed her face – it was maddeningly familiar. ‘Yes, what Brendan said – do. Or don’t do.’

The old woman tilted her head down and with inordinate interest began inspecting the bulb on the desk lamp.

‘She was also about to say that she would like some time alone with her client.’ Brendan stared at the woman again. ‘Wasn’t she?’

The woman straightened up and hurriedly said, ‘Yes, I’d like to be alone with Master On-el.’

‘O’Neil,’ Brendan corrected.

‘Yes, Prin— Mr O’Neil.’

Agent Murano finally took notice of the woman. ‘Can I see some identification please?’

‘Some what?’

‘Identification.’

The old woman looked like she didn’t know what he was talking about. She looked over to Brendan and said, ‘Can we get on with this?’

‘Yeah,’ Brendan said with a sigh, ‘go for it.’

The woman reached up to her ears and pulled off the marble-sized gold earrings that were hanging from her lobes. She held the two shiny spheres in her palm and incanted under her breath. The gold balls glowed then rose from her palm and encircled each other like tiny binary stars.

The uniformed cop stepped in to get a better look but Murano backed up and said, ‘What the—’ He didn’t get to finish before the two balls shot through the air and exploded into the chests of the two officers. They were thrown against the wall in a shower of light. When I could see again it looked like they weren’t getting up any time soon.

Brendan went through the FBI man’s pockets for the handcuff key while the old woman checked on the health of the cop.

‘’Bout time you got here,’ I said to Brendan. ‘That Fed is a nutcase. It was only a matter of time before he dropped a starving rodent down my trousers.’

I stood up and went over to where the old woman was holding the policeman’s head. I leaned in and took a close-up look at the old woman.

‘Essa?’

She smiled – it wrinkled up her whole face. ‘Miss me?’

TWO

RUBY

‘Essa, you’re so …’

‘I’m so what?’ she said in a tone that sent warning bells exploding in my brain. ‘How do I look, Conor? Tell me.’

‘Well, you look …’

‘If you say “wrinkled” I’m going to chain you back to that chair. For you, I got off my horse and set foot on the ground in the Real World. Because you and Brendan don’t know how to hide, I am what an eighty-year-old woman looks like in this gods forsaken land. So once again, how do I look?’

‘I was just about to say that you don’t look a day over seventy.’

‘Can we get out of here please,’ Brendan said, ‘I’ve just assaulted a federal agent. I’d like to be gone before that appears on my permanent record.’

Essa opened her briefcase and took out a jar of Vaseline.

‘Are we going to slide out of here?’

Essa didn’t even bother with a dirty look.

‘Oak tree sap,’ Brendan said. ‘It was my mother’s idea to put it in a Vaseline jar to get it past security.’

Essa smeared the sap in a circle on the windowless wall. Then she placed her hand on the sticky circle and incanted. When she removed her hand a gold handprint glowed in the brown circle. She straightened up, groaned and rubbed her back.

‘Ready to leave?’

‘I sure am, grandma.’ That got me a dirty look.

She shouted a single word that sounded like a sneeze and the circle silently blew out of the wall. Daylight poured in among the dust and I could see parked cars through what moments earlier had been a wall.

Brendan crouched down and pointed. ‘We have to get past that gate. My car is parked on the other side.’

I walked over to the unconscious Agent Murano. He was starting to come round and if I was honest, I’d have to admit that I was toying with the idea of kicking him in the ribs so he would have something to remember me by. That’s when I saw it. Brendan had emptied the FBI man’s pockets looking for the handcuff key. In a pile on the floor, was scattered change and car keys attached to a keychain that said Porsche.

‘I’ve got a better idea.’

In the parking lot I pressed the fob attached to the keychain and lights on Agent Andy’s white sports car blinked. It was almost like his car was saying ‘Steal me.’ The car, like the special agent’s shoes, was meticulously cleaned and waxed. It wasn’t new but he tried to make it look like it was – right up to the new-car smell air freshener. It was obvious that my torturer loved this vehicle and I was looking forward to smashing it through the front gate. I didn’t get a chance. Brendan wouldn’t let me behind the wheel. He pointed out that he’d been trained in high-speed driving and I had only been driving for a year. I wouldn’t have gotten to smash it into the gate anyway because it was open. We zoomed past a surprised (and soon-to-be unemployed) guard without even a scratch.

It was a tight fit in the car. I got stuffed in to the back and we broke all Pennsylvania speeding laws. After my incarceration I needed some air, so I reached into the front and pulled the latch for the convertible top. The wind took the roof and ripped it right off the car.

‘Oops,’ I said with a smile worthy of Fergal.

‘Yeeha!’ Essa whooped.

I laughed and shouted over the sound of the rushing wind, ‘Where did you learn to do that?’

‘Isn’t that what you and Fergal used to do when you were excited?’ Essa said, her grey hair swirling around the car.

‘It is – well remembered.’

Brendan was tearing around the back country road at an alarming speed. I would have thought that Essa would be terrified but she loved it.

‘This is like being on dragon-back,’ she shouted. ‘Can everybody go around in contraptions like this?’

‘If they go this fast they get in trouble from the police,’ Brendan answered.

‘But it’s OK because you are police – right?’

‘Not any more,’ Brendan said, ‘I handed in my badge the instant the FBI man hit the wall.’

Brendan slowed a little bit as we turned onto the narrow roads that led to his house. At last we skidded around a corner and saw Brendan’s mother and daughter waiting for us at the exact place where Brendan and I had arrived from Tir na Nog a week earlier.

It was the first time I had ever seen Brendan’s daughter. She stood there in a purple tie-dye tee-shirt, a small pack on her back, a white stick in her hand and classic full-sized Ray-Ban sunglasses that took over her whole face.

Essa quickly busied herself opening the portal. Brendan’s mother, Nora, said, ‘It is very nice to see you again, Conor. Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine, Mrs Fallon.’

I crouched down and addressed Ruby. ‘And you must be Brendan’s little Gem?’

Ruby straightened up and said, ‘Only Daddy can call me Gem.’

‘Oh, sorry. It is very nice to meet you, Miss Fallon.’

She shot her hand straight out in front of her. ‘It is nice to meet you, Mr O’Neil.’

We shook. ‘Call me Conor, Mr O’Neil is my dad. Can I call you Ruby?’

‘You can call me Miss Fallon.’

‘That’s my Gem,’ Brendan said smiling.

‘Well, Miss Fallon, I like your shades.’

Ruby adjusted the huge sunglasses. ‘If they’re good enough for Ray Charles,’ she said, ‘then they’re good enough for me.’

‘Indubitably,’ I agreed.

The sound of distant sirens pulled my attention away from the undersized child in the oversized sunglasses. Essa had started the portal to Tir na Nog – there was an outline hanging in the air but it didn’t look like anything I wanted to step into.

‘Pick up the pace, old lady,’ I said. ‘We’ll soon have company.’

‘You want to do this, Duir Boy?’ she grumbled. ‘Stepping through an unstable portal is almost as dangerous as calling me “old lady”.’

‘Seriously,’ Brendan said. There was concern in his voice. ‘How long?’

‘It could be soon if you would allow me to concentrate.’

Brendan and I left her alone. The noise of the approaching sirens meant the cops were almost there.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ Brendan said.

‘You think?’

‘Essa wields our only non-lethal weapon and she’s busy opening the magic thingy.’

‘You missing your bow and arrows?’

‘If the cops get here before she finishes they’ll shoot you.’

‘Me?’ I said. ‘What about you? How about when they get here, I tell them that this is all your fault, ’cause now that I think about it – it is.’

‘I’ve got an idea of how to slow them down,’ Brendan said, ‘if Ruby is game.’

For the record I thought it was a dreadful idea. And it certainly made it so I can never return to the Real World. When the two cop cars screeched to a halt in the gravel road, Brendan and his mother stood in front of me frantically waving their hands. Three policemen and Special Agent Murano all got out – guns drawn.

‘Don’t shoot,’ Brendan shouted. ‘He’s got my daughter.’

What the cops saw was me holding a knife to little Ruby’s throat. Actually it was the nail file from Brendan’s Swiss army knife but hopefully none of the cops’ eyesight was good enough to notice that.

‘Stand back coppers,’ I said in my best Jimmy Cagney voice, ‘or I’ll let the girl have it.’

That was Ruby’s cue to let loose what her father called one of her ‘migraine screams’. Despite the name, I was unprepared for the ear bleeding, high-pitched volume of the screech. I almost dropped the knife and I’m sure that every dog in a five-mile radius ran underneath a sofa.

‘Ow,’ I said.

Brendan turned around and whispered, ‘Told you so.’

‘Take it easy, O’Neil,’ one of the policemen shouted.

‘I don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to The Shrink.’

‘OK, O’Neil, we’ll get you a psychologist,’ the cop replied. ‘It’s just going to take a little time.’

‘I don’t want to talk to a psychologist, I want to talk to THE SHRINK aka Agent Andy. Didn’t you guys know? That’s what they call him at FBI central.’

‘Don’t hurt the girl, O’Neil,’ Murano shouted.

Ruby let loose another one of her sonic screams that made us all tilt our head a bit until it was over. I was surprised that the lenses in her Ray-Bans didn’t shatter.

‘This is your fault, Shrink,’ I shouted. ‘I was a mild-mannered fantasist before you tied me to a chair and tortured me. You turned me into a child killer.’ I gave Ruby a shake for effect and she bit my arm. It really hurt. I lowered the knife and I saw the cops levelling their guns.

Brendan stepped in front fast and said, ‘Don’t shoot,’ while I repositioned the nail file. I whispered to Ruby, ‘What you bite me for?’

She whispered, ‘I’m trying to make it look good.’

‘Well, ow,’ I said and then got back to work on the FBI man. ‘So is attacking a shackled man in the FBI interrogation book?’

‘I never …’

‘Don’t make me do it,’ I shouted. ‘You know what you did. You tortured me and wrote out a fake confession.’

I was stalling for time but I also wanted Murano to feel a little bit guilty about all this. I’m sure in his mind he now felt exonerated about how he treated me. After all, I wasn’t being very chivalrous – I had a knife to the throat of a young blind girl – but I hoped that someone would investigate his actions and get him busted to airport bathroom security.

‘Almost there,’ Essa shouted.

‘Thank the gods,’ I said.

‘O’Neil,’ Murano said, ‘what is the old woman doing?’

The familiar ring of an active portal reached my ears as Essa said, ‘Who you calling old?’

Mom, Dad and Nieve burst through the portal on horseback. Mom threw two of her Shadowmagic exploding light bombs at the two cops on the left and Dad and Nieve threw what looked like small knives at the other cop and the FBI man. The knives swerved directly into the chests of the cop and Agent Murano.

While Mom’s victims were blown off their feet, the cop and the FBI man just looked at the knives sticking out of their chests and fell over backwards.

‘Hi, son,’ Dad said casually as he rode over to Murano.

‘You didn’t have to kill them!’ Brendan shouted as he ran to the FBI man and reached for the knife sticking out of his chest.

Dad stopped him. ‘It’s not a knife.’

‘I can … I can’t move,’ the Fed said.

‘It’s a knife handle but no blade,’ Dad explained, ‘instead of a blade it has one of Nieve’s paralysing pins in it. Pull it out.’ Brendan pulled the knife blade out of the FBI man’s chest and looked at the gold pin.

‘Cool,’ Brendan said and handed it to me.

Murano sat up and felt his chest. ‘I can mo—’

I stuck the pin/knife back in his chest and he fell over like a stuffed teddy bear.

Nieve rode over and while hanging dangerously low to the side of her saddle, gave Brendan a long kiss. When it seemed like it would never stop, Brendan’s mother gave a discreet cough. Brendan looked up to see his mother staring at him with her arms crossed.

‘Oh yeah. Um, Mom, Gem, this is my … friend, Nieve. Nieve, this is my mother Nora and my daughter Ruby.’

Nieve replied, ‘It is very nice to meet you, I’ve heard so much about you both.’

‘We’ll have plenty of time for niceties once we are back in The Land,’ Mom said, riding by. ‘Let us leave this place.’

Brendan turned to his mother and daughter. ‘Are you sure you want to do this? You might not ever get to come back.’

‘We have already discussed this,’ Nora said. ‘What you did today was right and I am proud of you but your actions mean you can no longer stay here.’

‘We want to be with you, Daddy,’ Ruby said taking her father’s hand. His mother took the other and the three of them walked through the portal.

Mom was next. I asked her to relay a message to Tuan for me when she got back to Tir na Nog then I cuffed the cop with his own handcuffs and hog-tied the FBI man with his belt. I took back the paralysing throwing pins and made sure that Murano could see both the portal and his car. The Fed was obviously very shook up and when he finally could find his voice he asked, ‘Who are you people?’

‘We’re Faeries from Pixieland and you, Agent Andy, are a jerk, but you were right about one thing – I’m not crazy. I really did ride a dragon and to prove it to you …’ I grabbed his hair and turned his head towards the portal. Tuan in all of his dragon splendour popped his head through and Agent Andy gasped.

‘I was thinking about having him eat you,’ I said as I walked over and gave Tuan a rub on the snout, ‘but then I had a better idea.’

I whispered into Tuan’s earhole and stepped back. He gave a shrug that meant, ‘If that’s what you want’, and puffed a perfect little ball of fire directly at Agent Murano’s precious Porsche. The car exploded and as the radiator ruptured it gave out a little squeal like a dying mouse. The look on Murano’s face almost made this whole debacle seem worthwhile.

THREE

MACHA

Ruby stood in the centre of the Hall of Spells. She tilted her head and spun, dragging her stick on the tiles that represented all of the major runes. ‘We’re not in Scranton any more.’

‘How can you tell that?’ I asked.

‘I’m blind, not stupid.’

‘Ruby!’ her father and grandmother shouted simultaneously.

The young girl shrugged, turned to me and said sorry, but it didn’t seem like her heart was in it. I laughed.

‘Don’t encourage her,’ Brendan said. ‘We are working on Ruby’s rudeness.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘it sounds like frankness to me. If I need an honest opinion I will know who to ask.’

‘See?’ Ruby said to her father.

‘Ruby’s opinions tend to be too honest.’

I looked up to see Mom and Dad standing waiting for our discussion to end. I cleared my throat and pointed to Brendan’s mother and daughter.

‘Nora and Ruby, may I present to you Lord Oisin of Duir and Princess Deirdre of Cull – my mom and dad.’

Nora bowed then whispered to Ruby who bowed too. As she did, Ruby’s huge sunglasses dropped from her face. Her eyes were dark blue and seemingly unharmed but scars were still visible high on her cheeks where the shards of glass had entered her face and ruined her optic nerve.

Mom stepped up and took Brendan’s mother by the shoulders. ‘It is I who should be bowing to you,’ she said with a nod of the head. ‘You risked your lives today in aid of my son.’

‘I would hardly say our lives were at risk, Your Highness,’ Nora said.

‘You went toe to toe with the FBI and the Scranton cops,’ Dad piped in, ‘I’d say you were risking something. Welcome to Castle Duir. This is our home and for as long as we live here, it is your home as well.’

I leaned in to Nora and whispered, ‘And people live a long time around here.’

‘Daddy promised me a huge bedroom,’ Ruby announced. ‘I’d like to see it now.’

‘Ruby,’ Nora and Brendan again admonished in unison, but Mom, Dad and Nieve just laughed.

‘Of course,’ Mom said. ‘You must be tired. Let me show you to your rooms.’

As Mom and Nieve escorted the Fallons to the west wing, I looked about for Essa and Tuan but they had left.

‘I think she is off with Tuan getting a dragon blood youth tonic,’ Dad said.

‘Who?’ I said nonchalantly.

‘Who?’ Dad scoffed. ‘Essa, the princess that you are looking for.’

‘Who said I was looking for Essa?’

‘Oh, my mistake,’ Dad said sarcastically, ‘maybe you were looking for Graysea? By the way, how are the princess and the mermaid getting along?’

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you Dad?’

‘Oh yes,’ Dad said over his shoulder as he ran to catch up with Mom.

Dad came into my room as I was practising my knife throwing. He gingerly pulled the dagger from the wall and inspected the woodwork. ‘Don’t do that.’

‘Mom and Aein told me that you used to do it.’

‘Yes and I got in trouble with my father for it too. I’ll get you a dart board or something. Just go easy on the walls. It probably took an elf fifty years to carve this little section.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘sorry.’

Dad laid the knife across his palm, feeling its balance. ‘You’re not using one of Dahy’s gold-tipped specials?’

‘No, it’s too easy. Also I don’t like seeing the way the knife swerves in the air. It … it reminds me of how Spideog died.’

‘Oh, of course,’ he said, handing me back the knife, ‘I was sorry to hear about that. You really liked him, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah, I did. You didn’t though, did you?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say I didn’t like Spideog, it was just … well, now that I think about it, I really didn’t know him very well. You have to realise that I was Dahy’s student from a young age so I just took my master’s side. I never really knew what those two guys were feuding over until you told me. It makes sense now. Dad never talked about my mother much. Most of the things I know about her are from what Dahy told me.’

‘Don’t you remember Macha at all?’

‘Oh, I have a memory of smiling eyes, but maybe it’s just a false memory that my child mind conjured up while looking at her portrait.’

‘Is there a picture of her in the castle?’

‘Sure – in the north wing.’

‘Can we go see it?’

‘Now?’

‘Why not?’

We walked through the castle together. Jeez, I thought the bowing and scraping was bad with me but for Dad it was just short of grovelling. He didn’t try to discourage it. It was the way I was dealing with it too. You just can’t spend all day saying ‘Stop that.’

Even though Dad looked like my fraternal twin he was starting to regain the grown-up manner that I remembered. When he first regained his youth by drinking Tuan’s dragon blood he acted exactly as he looked – like a teenager. He still drags Mom giggling into private corners of the castle but he doesn’t do it all the time and he has stopped challenging me to wrestling matches.

‘So how’s the kinging going?’ I asked as we walked.

‘To be honest, it’s a lot of paperwork,’ he said. ‘All of the kingdoms are kicking up a fuss about the volatility in Duir and especially how unreliable the gold stipends have been. Mom’s been a huge help. She has been holding them off while I was … resting – but now everybody is looking for stability. I’d like a little stability myself but I think pretty soon my brother is going to do some serious destabilising.’

‘He told me he wants the throne.’

‘Not surprising. Once a guy like Cialtie gets a taste of power – it’s hard to let it go.’

‘I don’t think it’s that,’ I said. ‘I mean it’s not just that. He told me that if he became king he would be safe.’

‘I wonder where he got that idea.’

‘Ona’s book.’

That stopped Dad in his tracks. ‘What book?’

‘Cialtie showed me a book that he found in Ona’s bedroom the day he killed her.’

‘He told you that?’

‘Yeah, but he wasn’t bragging. He really believes that he can do nothing except what she wrote in that book.’

Dad started walking again. ‘And she wrote that he would be safe if he was king?’ When he spoke it was more like it was to himself than me. ‘If he had just told me that, maybe I would have renounced the throne … but I did renounce the throne. He had the throne. Why did he insist on trying to blow things up?’

‘He told me that he wanted to free The Land of Ona’s prophetic chains.’

Dad snorted with derision. ‘Freeing The Land by destroying it – typical Cialtie.’

We rounded a corner and entered the north wing’s portrait gallery. Pictures lined the walls stretching into what seemed like infinity. That’s the funky thing about living in a huge castle. You think you have explored every nook and cranny and then you come across an amazing place you have never seen before.

‘Wow,’ I said, ‘Who are all these people?’

‘These are portraits of all of the major and minor rune holders in The Land, and all holders of a yew wand.’ Dad pointed far into the distance. ‘Your grandmother is over here with the House of Nuin.’

As we walked I asked, ‘Can I get one of these?’

‘I’d love to have a picture of you if you would ever hold still long enough to sit for one, but I can’t hang it in the north hall until you have taken your choosing. I don’t have a portrait yet either. Tell you what, after your choosing we should get our pictures painted together.’

‘OK,’ I said, but didn’t relish the idea of having to have to sit still for hours while Dad bestowed his pearls of wisdom.

I spotted the portrait of Macha before Dad pointed it out to me. She had amber hair like Nieve and Dad’s long face but her eyes weren’t dark like her children’s. Her eyes were clear blue – like mine. She was portrayed sitting astride a black horse holding the reins with one hand and her yew wand in the other. Behind her was a hawthorn in full bloom.

‘She’s definitely your mother,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said dreamily like he was lost in the picture.

‘You once told me she went on a sorceress’ quest and never returned.’

‘That is what my father told me but I had a talk with Dahy recently and he says one day – she just vanished.’

‘You talked to Dahy about her?’

‘How could I not? That’s all he wants to speak about since you came back from Mount Cas with that knife.’

I smiled at the memory of the helpful message that had been hidden inside the gold-tipped knife and thrown at us on that mountain pass. ‘He thinks Macha is up there with the Oracle?’

‘He does,’ Dad said.

‘But you don’t?’

‘Actually I’m starting to think that Dahy and Spideog are right. Well, maybe not right but that knife of yours and the message you found with it raises enough doubts in my head to make me think we should find out for sure.’

‘Wait,’ I said, ‘we’re gonna storm the Oracle’s Yew House?’

He didn’t answer at first. He just kept looking at the picture of his mother and then, as if he was making the decision right there on the spot, he said, ‘Yes.’

‘How? That guy is seriously bad ass. He took out Spideog with a flick of the wrist. And I have no doubt he could drop half of that mountain on your head if he wanted to.’

‘Dahy thinks it can be done. There is planning to do. I’ll keep you posted.’

Dad ruffled my hair in a way that he knew really annoyed me and rushed off for a meeting with some runelord who I’m sure had a good reason why he needed more gold in his stipend. I was left alone under the dark stare of yet another grandparent I never knew. As much as I didn’t want to face the Oracle guy on Mount Cas again – I sure wanted to meet my grandmother. Well, if anybody could come up with a working plan of attack, it was Dahy.

I arrived back in my chamber to find Ruby waiting for me. She sat almost swallowed by an overstuffed chair, her feet sticking straight out, her stick folded across her lap. I don’t know if it’s the huge sunglasses or just her general demeanour but every time I saw this kid I got the distinct feeling that I was in trouble.

‘Where have you been?’

I was a bit shocked by the abruptness of the question and when I didn’t answer right away, Ruby said, ‘You were probably smooching with your mermaid girlfriend.’

‘I was not,’ I said and sounded to myself like I was ten years old. ‘I was in a meeting with the king.’ I thought that sounded better than ‘I was with my daddy.’

She seemed to find that acceptable.

‘How do you know about Graysea?’

‘My father brought her to me to have a look at my eyes. She cooed and ooed and cried and kissed me. She’s not very clever, is she?’

‘Graysea has other talents,’ I said.

‘Yeah right. Well, she said she couldn’t fix my eyes. That I had waited too long.’

‘Oh, I’m … I’m sorry.’

‘It’s nothing I haven’t heard before,’ Ruby said dismissively as she stood. ‘Now, I would like my pony.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘My pony. Father said I would have a pony when I came to Tir na Nog. When I asked him about it he said he had to talk to you. Since he hasn’t yet, I am. I’d like my pony please.’

‘I … I don’t know where I’d get a pony at this time of day.’

‘I would assume,’ Ruby said as she opened the door for me, ‘that we will find one in the stables.’ She motioned me out of my room like it was hers. I started to protest but then just decided that getting her a pony was probably the path of least resistance.

‘I feel sorry for your future husband,’ I said.

‘Funny, that’s what Father says.’

Ruby grabbed my arm and then swung her stick back and forth as she walked so fast I thought we were going to break into a jog.

‘You know, Ruby,’ I said, ‘I’m not sure if I can get you a pony.’

‘Why not?’ she asked without slowing down in the slightest.

‘I don’t think they’re just going to give me one.’

‘Your father is the king – right?

‘Yes but …’

‘And you are a prince?’

‘Well, yeah.’

‘So just ask for a pony. What is your problem?’

The stable master saw us coming and greeted me at the entrance. He was an old one. It had gotten to the point where I could spot one from a mile away. ‘I am Pilib,’ he said without bowing or even offering to shake my hand.

‘Hi, I’m Conor.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘You have your grandmother’s eyes.’

‘Oh, did you know Macha?’

‘Of course, she held the Capall yew wand. She had the supremacy over horses. When she lived in Duir she was only ever truly happy when she was here.’

As he spoke Pilib’s eyes glossed over lost in the memory. I remembered Spideog telling me that my grandmother loved him and Dahy at the same time. I wondered if I should add the stable master to that list.

Ruby hit me in the shin with her stick. ‘Ask him.’

‘Ah … Master Pilib, I was wondering if I could have a pony.’

‘Certainly. Am I safe to assume that it is for this little lady?’

‘I’m not a lady, I’m a young girl.’

I looked down at Ruby, astonished. ‘You speak Ancient Gaelic?’

‘Grandma taught me some words.’

‘OK,’ I said turning back to Pilib. ‘Can we get this young girl a young-girl-sized pony?’

‘Right this way, Prince Conor.’

The stables were quite an operation here at Castle Duir. He led us past what must have been a hundred stalls and then outside to a paddock that contained four ponies.

‘Spirited or docile?’ Pilib asked.

I toyed with the idea of answering, ‘Super spirited.’ That would teach her a lesson for putting me through this but I had to remember that no matter how bossy she was – the kid was blind. ‘Docile please.’

Pilib placed his fingers in his mouth and emitted a series of whistles. The ponies looked up and then at each other as if saying, ‘Who, me?’ The smallest of the ponies slowly walked over to us. She was glossy black, just like Ruby’s sunglasses. I picked Ruby up and placed her feet on the bottom wooden rail of the corral so she could reach over. The stable master whistled again, this time quietly without the fingers in the mouth and then pointed to the young girl. The pony walked slowly up to Ruby as I guided her hand to the animal’s snout.

‘This is Feochadán,’ Pilib said.

I remembered a story my father used to tell me when I was young about a sheep that got covered with feochadán. As Ruby tentatively stroked her pony’s nose I said, ‘It means thistle.’

A huge smile crossed Ruby’s face. It was the first smile I had ever seen on that face and it changed her from a bossy tyrant to the young girl that she was. ‘Thistle, that’s a lovely name for a pony. Hello Thistle.’

That pony looked up and I could have sworn it recognised its new name. A stable hand showed up with a saddle.

‘Oh no, I’m not teaching her to ride.’

‘On the day a young girl receives her first pony,’ Pilib said, ‘surely she must ride it. I wouldn’t worry, Feochadán is very easy to ride. Shall I get Acorn for you, Your Highness?’

Acorn, I thought, I did so want to see Acorn and it was a beautiful spring day. Well, I could see no harm in having a quick wander around Castle Duir.

Ruby allowed herself to be hoisted onto Thistle without any of her usual I can do it myself fuss. Acorn was brought to me and even though he tried to hide it, I could tell he was pleased to see me. I mounted up and we left through the stable exit. True to Pilib’s word, Thistle was the calmest mount I had ever seen. Ruby showed no signs of being scared. She sat on her pony like she had been doing it all of her life.

Outside the castle walls the sun from a cloudless sky stopped the cool spring breeze from being too cold.

‘I would like to talk to a tree,’ Ruby said.

‘You want to talk to a tree?’

‘Yes, now. Father said I would have a big bedroom, a pony and I would get to talk to a tree. I’d like to talk to a tree now.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to just ride for a bit and save some of the other stuff for later?’

‘No.’

The best tree to have a conversation with is, of course, Mother Oak but Glen Duir is almost a day away at a hard ride. With Thistle it would probably take a month. Well, Duir doesn’t mean oak for nothing. Castle Duir was certainly surrounded by oaks – so I just started for the nearest treeline.

When I got to the edge of the oak forest I had some misgivings. These trees didn’t have the same welcoming feel that Mother Oak has – but then what tree does? I dismounted and walked up to a huge snarly barked oak and wrapped my arms around it. Instantly I knew I was in big trouble.

FOUR

THE OAK

This was different from any tree I had ever communicated with. When I touched it I knew instantly that I wouldn’t be able to let go until it released me. The world disappeared. All of my senses were lost except for the touch of where I was held to the bark. This tree didn’t talk, it probed my mind. What it found it brought to the fore and what it found was stuff that I had buried for a reason.

I was in grade school and all of the kids were bullying Jimmy Murphy. Jimmy was overweight and crap at sports. I just stood there. I should have done something but I just stood there. I liked Jimmy but I just couldn’t be seen being his friend. Then the memory I had long tried to forget. He came to me for help and I pushed him over. Aw Jimmy, I’m so sorry.

Then my mind conjured up the image of a Banshee growing up with his family. I saw his entire life, right up to the moment when I stabbed him at the edge of the Reedlands. He was the first man I had ever killed. As my sword pierced his chest I could see everyone he had ever known and loved watching me with eyes filled with hate. I tried to protest, I tried to say that I didn’t mean to kill him. That he was trying to kill me. But the words wouldn’t come. My mind was not my own. I felt a pain rise in my chest.

That Banshee was replaced by another. This one I knew. This one I loved. I was lying on my sleeping roll the night before we snuck into Castle Duir. Don’t make me watch this, I tried to scream. I tried to pull away but my hands, like they were latched onto a high-voltage wire, wouldn’t let go. I remember that night. He came to talk to me but I was too tired and I sent him away, but as this memory progressed, instead of sending him away, I sat up and said, ‘What’s on your mind, cuz?’

He told me about his plans to kill Cialtie. I told him he was nuts and talked him out of it. After Cialtie was kicked out of Castle Duir – Fergal lived. We talked and drank. He met a lovely girl and I was his best man at the wedding. At the wedding reception he stood and tapped his wineglass with a spoon. He turned to me and said, ‘I’d like to propose a toast to the man who saved my life …’ The memories abruptly ran in reverse and then the scene in the camp played as it really happened. I fobbed Fergal off and then I watched as the next day Cialtie humiliated and killed him. Then I saw it again … and again … and again. The pain in my chest intensified. My head felt like it was going to explode. I watched again as the sword pierced his chest. I watched but this time the man who was wielding the sword – was me.

I screamed.

I was lost. Down so dark a well that I couldn’t see the top. The walls of the well weren’t made of stone or dirt, they were made of … me. I was lost deep in my own mind. Deeper even than after the shock of killing the Banshee at the edge of the Fililands. But it was safe down there. Up there was The Tree. The Tree that grew its roots into my memories and plucked out of them everything I had ever regretted and feared. I was safe down here. I had to shut down; I couldn’t let him into the brain cells that contained the faces of the scores of Banshees and Brownies I had killed during the battle of the Hall of Knowledge. I wouldn’t survive that. Protests, like I had no choice and We were at war, cut no mustard with the oak. I couldn’t let him in there – I was safe in my well. I wasn’t ever coming up. I was safe in my well I was never coming up. I was …

The walls of my well, the walls of my self, my refuge, started to shake. A far-off voice called my name but they would never find me. I was deep, deep in my …

The voice became louder but still it was tiny, tinny, miles away. I could never be harmed … would never let him …

The walls of my sub-subconscious shook more. The voice … I heard the voice. It was … it was … Ruby. I laughed. You’ll never find me down here, Ruby. I’m safe. Safe from the forest of trees … I’m safe. But then I heard her scream. It was that high-pitched piercing scream that she does. The one her father calls The Migraine Scream. I forced myself to think. Where are you, Ruby? It doesn’t matter I am here and I … I am safe. But where are you Ruby? You were with me. I took you riding. You are alone and blind in the Forest of Duir. But I’m safe here. But little Ruby you are not. I must … safe. Safe here. Safe. No. Save. Save her. I must save her.

I reached to the walls of the well. No. I forced myself to think. Not a well – the walls of my mind. I placed my back against a corner of my brain and I climbed. I climbed. I climbed to the sound of that scream. I still couldn’t see anything but the further I went, the closer the sound became. It got so loud it hurt.

I opened my eyes to see Ruby taking another big breath in preparation for another scream. I reached up to stop her but my arm was blocked by a white bed sheet. As she screamed again I freed my hand and caught her by the arm.

‘Ruby,’ I said.

She stopped, smiled and then started hopping around. ‘You see,’ she almost sang, ‘it worked. It worked. I told you it would work.’

I was very confused. I was indoors and in a clean bed. All around me people were rushing into the room. Presumably to see what all the screaming was about. I looked to my left and saw Dad chuckling.

‘Dad? What happened?’

‘I’ve been waiting three days to ask you that,’ he answered.

‘Why was Ruby screaming?’

‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘She has been waiting by your side for most of the three days that you’ve been in this coma. Just a minute ago she said to me, “Can I try something?” I said yes and she started screaming.’

‘And it worked!’ Ruby said returning to my bed and bouncing her arms off the mattress. ‘Daddy always said my scream could wake the dead and it can. It can, it can. It can. I’m going to tell Daddy.’ And she was off.

‘Where am I?’

‘You’re in one of Fand’s healing rooms.’

‘How did I get here?’

Dad pulled up a chair. ‘That’s an interesting story. Three days ago, the sergeant at arms was shocked to find a seven-year-old blind girl screaming at the Great Gates of Duir. She told him that you were in trouble and he sent a detail out to investigate. They found you curled up on the ground at the edge of the oak perimeter. Ruby says you went out there to talk to a tree – but you’re not that stupid – are you?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘Ruby wanted to talk to a tree. I, of course, would have liked to have introduced her to Mother Oak but she was too far away …’

‘So you just went out and wrapped your arms around any old oak?’ Dad was almost shouting. ‘What is wrong with you?’

‘What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with that tree? It was like it grew roots into my head.’

‘Didn’t anybody ever tell you about the Oaks of Duir?’

‘No. No one did and whose fault is that – do you think?’

That stopped Dad’s anger. ‘Oh, well, I guess I should have told you.’

‘You think?’

‘Yeah, sorry.’

‘So what did that tree do to me?’

‘Oaks are dangerous trees, son. If you even brush past one it can snare you. We seem to have no defence against them. They can access our memories and then manipulate our emotions. That’s one of the things that makes Mother Oak so wonderful. She searches out the best in people and reminds you that you are a good person but not all oaks are so affirmative. In fact, almost none are. For the most part, oaks are nasty pieces of wood. I liked to think of them as the junkyard dogs of Castle Duir.’

‘Gosh, and I thought yews were the dangerous ones.’

‘Yews can snare you without touching them but yews aren’t nasty. Yews are the judges of The Land – oaks are the criminals.’

‘But yews can kill you, right?’ I asked.

‘True,’ said Dad, ‘but oaks can drive you mad. Speaking of which – are you OK?’

‘I think so, the worst part was …’

‘You don’t have to tell me. I assure you that whatever the oak stirred up in your mind is nowhere near as bad as he made it seem.’

‘Yeah, it was awful, all of the stuff that filled my head but the oak was right about one thing. I did let Fergal down.’

‘We all dropped the ball on that one, son. We should have seen it coming but never forget – the one who stuck the sword in Fergal was Cialtie.’

Fand entered and told us that there was a host of people wanting to visit with me. Dad picked up a vial from the bedside table.

‘Your mother told me to give you this as soon as you awoke and seemed OK.’

‘I’m fine Dad, I don’t need any medicine.’

‘So you want me to go back to your mother and say that you are defying her?’

I looked at him and frowned. ‘You wouldn’t do that – would you?’

‘Hey, this is your mother we’re talking about. You’re on your own here, pal.’

I took the vial of liquid. ‘OK, I’ll take it,’ I said, ‘but I would really like to …’ That’s the thing about medicines in Tir na Nog – you don’t have to wonder if they are working. There was no possible way I could have even finished that sentence and whatever I thought I wanted to do was instantly of no concern to me. I was back down in my well but this time it was only about six inches deep and lined with satin. Dad said I passed out with a huge smile on my face.

I woke to a question. ‘Are you nuts?’

‘No, I’m OK; the oak tree didn’t drive me mad,’ I said before I opened my eyes.

‘Oh, that’s a huge relief,’ the voice said with an uncaring tone that I didn’t like. I opened my eyes to see a very angry Brendan looming over me. I instantly sat up and backed into the headboard – he looked like he was going to hit me. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘I … I …’

‘Nora and I didn’t know where Ruby was and then you plop her on a horse and take her out to the most dangerous forest in The Land – where you abandon her – on a horse.’

Second most dangerous forest, and it was a pony, I said – to myself, because I knew if I said that to Brendan, there would have been some police brutality.

‘You’re right, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

‘You’re damn right you weren’t thinking. She could have been killed, or driven insane. What possessed you to do it?’

‘Ruby showed up in my room and said that you promised her a pony but were being slow about it.’

‘So you just went and got her a pony?’

‘Well,’ I shrugged, ‘she’s kinda hard to say no to.’

Brendan relaxed and sat down. ‘Yeah, I can’t argue with that, but you’ve got to remember that even though she acts like she’s forty-two she’s only twelve.’

‘I know, and I’m really sorry. I promise it won’t happen again and I won’t take her anywhere without you knowing about it.’

He patted me on the head like I was a schoolboy. ‘You are forgiven, Mr O’Neil. So,’ he said, changing the subject, ‘how are you?’

‘I’m fine. Dad said I was out of it for three days.’

‘The oak roughed you up a bit, eh?’

‘The specifics of what happened are fading now. All I remember is that he made me remember every bad thing I had ever done and I couldn’t stop it. It was horrible.’

‘As bad as being arrested for your dad’s murder?’

‘I don’t want to bruise your ego, Detective Fallon, but compared to the oak – you’re a pushover.’

A commotion outside the door made us both turn. A woman was screaming and guards were shouting.

‘O gods,’ Brendan said, ‘I might be a pushover but my mother is not. If she gets in here she’s going to tear your head off.’

The door opened and a very fierce looking Nora stomped towards me in a way that reminded me of an attacking Banshee. I looked to my left and saw there was a vial of that medicine on my bedside table. I grabbed it and downed it in one. Nora started screaming. I heard it but really didn’t care as I snuggled blissfully down into the satin bed of my unconsciousness.

When you take one of Mom/Fand’s potions you really do go out. No dreams, no visions, no nothing. I had no idea how long I had been asleep. It could have been days or minutes. When I woke up I opened one eye and had a look around. Sitting at my bedside, reading a book, was Essa.

She was back to her beautiful young-looking self. I just watched as she brushed a wisp of hair away from her forehead with a gesture that I knew oh so well.

‘Hey, old lady,’ I said and then braced myself. Essa had been plenty mad at me for so much of the time that I knew her that I was never sure if our meeting was going to be pleasant or not. But then she smiled and my body relaxed and my heart pounded.

‘Hi, I … was worried about you.’

I looked around the room to see if anybody else was there. ‘You talkin’ to me?’

She laughed. ‘Yes I am. Are you OK?’

I sat up. ‘I am now.’ There was an awkward silence where we just stared at each, other until I broke it with, ‘You look good without the wrinkles and the grey hair.’

‘Why, thank you,’ she said with a nod of her head.

‘What’s it like drinking Tuan’s blood?’

‘Gross but kind of – wonderful. I haven’t felt this good in years. I have tons of energy.’

‘Maybe I should order a green dragon cocktail for myself?’

‘Maybe we should get my father to whip up some Tuan blood wine?’

We both laughed. It was nice – normal. Could it be that I was forgiven? I wondered. Could Essa and I ever be – normal?

The question was cut short by the sound of bare feet slapping against the stone floor. I was smothered in kisses even before I could see whose lips were administering them. Not that I had to look, there’s only one mermaid in all of The Land that greets me like that.

‘Oh Conor,’ kiss, kiss, ‘I have been so worried about you,’ kiss, kiss, kiss.

‘Hi Graysea,’ I garbled between smooches, ‘have you met Essa?’

The introduction had the desired effect of getting Graysea to let up on my face.

‘I remember Essa,’ Graysea said in a tone I had never heard from her before. ‘The first time I saw her she hit you in the head with a stick.’

I expected Essa to storm off, hopefully without hitting me in the head, but instead she stood her ground. ‘What are you still doing here?’

Oh my, I thought to myself, this has the potential to turn into a serious cat fight – or a cat and fish fight and they usually don’t turn out very well for the fish. I know it was cowardly of me – I reached for the bedside table but, damn it, there wasn’t any of that knock-out medicine there.

‘Where else should I be but by my beloved Conor’s side?’

To be perfectly honest I wasn’t the only reason she was still here – Graysea had nowhere else to go. When the Mertain King found out that she had stolen his dragon’s blood to give to me, he banished her.

Essa was close to snarling when she said, ‘I can think of several places I would rather you to be.’

‘Essa,’ I said as gingerly as I could, ‘Graysea helped me escape from a very difficult situation.’

‘Oh, did she?’ the Princess said. ‘And what other situations did she help you in or out of?’

‘I don’t understand you,’ my mermaid said with her usual tilt of the head. ‘Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be mourning the loss of your fiancé?’

I instantly popped up on my knees on the mattress between them. Essa had stepped back in what I recognised as a preparation to spring. I really didn’t want to be in the middle of this and suspected that any second I was going to get the worst of it.

‘Everyone out,’ came a command from the doorway. Dad was standing there in his drill suit. He wore that kingly face that made the two women snap to attention and then quickly leave. Neither said goodbye to me as they never really took their eyes off each other for the entire exit.

‘Thank you,’ I said when the Princess and the mermaid were out of earshot.

‘Don’t thank me too soon,’ Dad said, throwing me the clothes that he had been carrying. ‘Your mother and Fand have given you a clean bill of health, so come with me – it’s time for some training.’

‘Training for what?’

‘We’re going to launch an assault on the Oracle of Mount Cas.’

I thought about the prospect of going into battle again and then thought about the skirmish that Dad had just saved me from. War didn’t seem that bad at all.

FIVE

GRAYSEA AND ESSA

I was back in Dahy’s boot camp. This time it was worse than the first time. The first time I knew I didn’t know anything. This time I thought I knew everything and Dahy proved to me that I once again knew nothing. We were learning a new technique. The master didn’t have a name for it so I called it ninja school – ’cause that’s what it felt like. None of us were allowed to execute any of our showy spins or flip manoeuvres. Every movement had to be minimal. All over the armoury, where we practised, were wooden dowels balanced upright with feathers perched on top. Every time one of us disturbed a feather, or worse, knocked over a dowel, Dahy would shoot us in the legs with a crossbow bolt that had a woollen ball stuck on the end. If you think that doesn’t sound like it would hurt – then think again.

Araf was really good at it. It wasn’t until I saw him in a room full of feathers did I realise just how economical a fighting style he had. Except for his figure of eight propeller-like stick move, Araf hardly had to change his technique at all. Essa was lucky she didn’t have to learn this stuff. Without all of her flipping and twirling she would have been very unhappy. And when Essa is unhappy – everyone is unhappy.

Gerard, Essa’s father, forbade her to go into the Oracle’s house. She wasn’t about to let her father boss her around like that but when Gerard threatened to withdraw all of Castle Duir’s wine shipments – Oisin took Essa off active duty. She was furious and Dad had to remind her that he was, like, a king. She stormed off kicking anything, and anyone, in her path. In short, Essa was to be avoided, but I was doing that already.

Even though our practice was deadly serious it was also fun. Dad joined us and so did Mom and Aunt Nieve. The ladies had a hard time casting spells without all of that dramatic wicked-witch arm waving. Dad, who already had, like, a hundred years’ worth of Dahy tutelage, just seemed to do whatever the master told him to do without any effort at all. One time I pushed Dad over, just to see if Dahy would shoot the king with his crossbow. He didn’t, he shot me.

Brendan trained with us but he wasn’t going either. He wanted to come, just like he wanted to ask the yew trees if he could use Spideog’s bow, but he had a responsibility to his daughter Ruby not to put himself in harm’s way.

‘And actually,’ he confided to me one day at lunch, ‘I’m in no hurry to see that Oracle guy again. If I recall he kicked our butts good with just a flick of the wrist.’

I pointed that out to Dahy but he said he had a plan. So by day we continued to practise our non-feather-disturbing fighting techniques and by night I rubbed healing salve into the black and blue bruises on my legs that Dahy gave me with his crossbow.

The banging on my bedroom door would have busted any Real World door off its hinges but Duir doors are made of hardy stuff.

‘Conor,’ the voice on the other side bellowed, ‘I want to talk to you.’ I knew who it was right away – everyone in the castle was talking about it. New wine is news around here but when it’s delivered by the master winemaker himself – that’s big news.

I opened the door and there stood the largest of all of the larger-than-life characters in Tir na Nog. Gerard stepped into the doorway, blocking out all of the light beyond. In his hand he held a metal bucket with a piece of cloth over the top – it didn’t look like a weapon but I kept my eye on it.

He strode further into the room, forcing me to back up, and said, ‘If I didn’t know better I would think that you have been hiding from me.’

‘I … maybe I have been,’ I confessed.

‘Why would you do that?’

‘I guess you haven’t spoken to Essa yet?’

Gerard frowned and placed his bucket on the floor. ‘Oh, I have spoken to my daughter all right. She is mighty mad at you and this – what did she call her – “fishy floozy” of yours.’

‘That’s why I’ve been avoiding you,’ I said.

‘Let me get this straight, you think that because my daughter is angry with you, that I will be too.’

‘Aren’t you?’

He came at me with his arms outstretched. I had a brief flashback of the bear attack in the Pookalands. He wrapped his arms around me and gave me one of his laughing hugs that lifted me off the ground. ‘Oh my boy,’ he said, and I relaxed even though my ribs were threatening to crack. ‘If Essa is mad at you, then you already have more enemies than any one man can stand.’ He let go of me and I tested my diaphragm to see if I could still breathe. ‘Good gods and monsters, if I had to be angry at everyone that my little darling was irritated with – I would not have any friends or customers at all.’

‘So you’re not here to give me the “don’t you dare hurt my daughter” speech?’

Gerard laughed, picked up his bucket and moved over to the table on the other side of the room. ‘Oh, I don’t give that speech. I usually just try to discourage Essa’s beaus for their own safety.’

We laughed at that as he whipped the cloth off his bucket like a TV magician. ‘I’ve brought you a gift.’ Buried deep in snow, with only their necks sticking out, were four bottles. I grabbed one, releasing it from its icy bed.

‘Beer!’ I shouted.

‘I remembered that last time you were in Castle Muhn you said you wanted beer that is “lighter, fizzier and colder” – well, try this.’ He reached over and placed his hand on the neck of the bottle and mumbled. The cork began to spin and then rise until it shot out of the bottle with a satisfying pop.

I took a quick gulp to catch the foam from overflowing onto the floor. Gerard scrutinised my face for any hint of criticism. ‘Well?’ he asked as I wiped my mouth with my sleeve.

‘I think you should give up on this wine stuff and become a full-time brewer.’

Gerard beamed like a child who had just received a stick-on star on his homework.

‘Did I hear someone shouting beer?’ It was Brendan at the door.

‘Brendan,’ I said. ‘Come in and meet Essa’s father, Lord Gerard of Muhn.’

‘Oh,’ Brendan said, a bit surprised while improvising a bow. ‘How do you do? I’m a big fan of your wine.’

‘Well, come in and try my beer,’ Gerard said without standing.

Brendan hesitated and said, ‘Actually I was just passing with my mother.’ Brendan reached into the hallway and took his mother’s hand and guided her into the room. ‘Lord Gerard, may I introduce Nora Fallon.’

I hadn’t seen Brendan’s mother since she arrived in the Hall of Spells. She was dressed in a green felt-ish tunic with gold embroidery and leather trousers – pretty much what everyone around here wears and it suited her to a T.

Gerard jumped to his feet, and bowed. ‘Of course I have heard about both of you. Welcome home, Druids. Please join us in a drink.’

Nora bowed. ‘Thank you, my lord, but no. I have to tend to my granddaughter.’ Brendan started to go with her when Nora said to her son, ‘No, please stay. I know how much you are missing beer.’ She bowed once again to us and left.

‘Your mother,’ Gerard said after seating Brendan and uncorking a beer for him, ‘is … old.’

‘Yes, try not to point that out to her when you meet her next. She’s getting a bit tired of that.’

‘But according to my daughter a couple of drops of blood from that remarkable Pooka friend of yours would change that – would it not?’

‘Tuan has offered my mother some dragon blood but she says she feels great and likes herself the way she is.’

‘Well, it sounds as if your mother knows her own mind. I like that in a woman.’ Gerard slapped Brendan on the shoulder, changing the subject. ‘My daughter speaks highly of you, Druid.’

‘Well, she hasn’t hit me yet,’ the cop said.

Gerard laughed, ‘It’s a shame you are not going on our little expedition but I understand about parental responsibilities.’

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Are you coming?’

‘Oh yes,’ Gerard said, ‘Oisin has summoned me – I am an integral part of the plan.’

‘Look it’s a three and a half day ride to the base of Mount Cas,’ I said. ‘There is no reason to leave at dawn. We can leave at, like, ten and still be there way before it’s dark on the fourth day.’

‘Son, we leave at dawn – that’s how it is.’

‘Who says? Where is it etched in stone that all expeditions must leave at dawn?’

Finally Dad gave me one of his patented withering stares that, although he looked like my annoying younger cousin, still worked.

‘Yes sir. See you in the morning.’

‘Before the morning,’ he called after me.

So here I was, yawning while dragging my pack on the ground behind me, trying to get some kind of enthusiasm for the adventure ahead.

Believe it or not, I was early. The only ones in the stable before me were Gerard and four brawny soldiers. I watched and yawned as they hoisted a huge wine barrel on to Gerard’s cart.

‘Are we planning to get sloshed on this trip?’

‘I wish,’ Gerard said. ‘There is no wine in that barrel.’

‘What’s in there?’

‘Salt water.’

I was about to ask why we needed a barrel of salt water when I was blinded by a pair of hands covering my eyes from behind. ‘Guess who?’ said the unmistakable voice.

‘Is it a person or a fish?’ I asked.

‘Both.’

I turned to see the ever bubbly Graysea standing behind me. She kissed me on both cheeks and said, ‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning to you too – how nice of you to see me off.’

‘Oh, I’m not seeing you off. I’m going with you.’

‘Graysea, this is a very dangerous mission. I really don’t think you should come.’

‘Think again, son,’ Dad said while arriving around the corner with his mount.

I walked Dad out of earshot. ‘Why is Graysea coming with us?’

‘Because we are going up against a tough customer and I want a healer with us, and I have never seen anything like that Mertain healing power of hers.’

‘Yes, Dad, but she’s …’ I tried to remember what matron had said about Graysea. ‘She’s a sensitive fishy.’

‘I think you underestimate your mermaid, son. Graysea saved your butt out there in the ocean and defied her king. She can handle a three-day hike.’

‘Don’t you want me with you?’ Graysea asked when I got back to her.

‘No, I … I’m just worried about you.’

‘It’ll be fun.’

‘Graysea, we are going into battle.’

She put on her serious face but then smiled that room-lighting smile of hers. ‘Well, it will be fun until we get there.’

I just couldn’t resist the infectious joy of that girl’s smile. ‘You’re right,’ I agreed, ‘welcome along.’

Who knew what we were going into? At least until then I would have some pleasant company along the way. And luckily Essa wasn’t coming so I wouldn’t be caught in the middle of a week-long oestrogen nightmare.

Araf showed up and I grunted at him – I’ve discovered that wordless communication is best with the taciturn Imp. Mom, Nieve and Dahy all dramatically feigned surprise at me being ready before them. I saddled up Acorn (I was tempted to take Cloud but she was Brendan’s horse now) and then helped Gerard hitch up the wagon to his monsta-horses.

Actually it was nice being early and not having everybody scowling at me to hurry. I was mounted up, waking up and starting to feel good about this expedition when my spirits were dashed by the arrival of the last two of the party – Tuan and Essa.

I cantered Acorn over to Dad. ‘I thought you forbade Essa from coming?’ I said in a harsh whisper.

‘Gerard had forbidden her to enter the Oracle’s house on Mount Cas so she and Tuan are performing a different task.’

‘You did this on purpose.’

‘What, son, do you accuse me of doing on purpose?’

‘You know perfectly well what you did. You invited Graysea and Essa on this trip so you could watch me suffer.’

Dad, who had been wearing the slightest of smirks, became gravely serious. ‘Essa is a very important part of Dahy’s plan and as I said before, Graysea is the finest healer I have ever seen. The world does not revolve around you, son. I would never ask anyone to join an undertaking as perilous as this just to annoy you.’ He kicked his horse away but as he did he said, ‘That’s just an added bonus.’

We took the main road out and travelled three abreast. On my left was Graysea and on my right was Essa. No one said a word. I was even afraid to shift in my saddle lest the noise break the agonisingly painful silence. Dad looked around and didn’t even try to stifle his chuckle. This was going to be a long, long trip. I thought, maybe if I’m lucky I’ll die a horrible death on Mount Cas. At least then I’ll be saved from a trip home with these two.

SIX

THE YEW HOUSE

We travelled like that for a day and a half. No one said a word. Anybody who knows me understands that I’m uneasy with uncomfortable silences. This was pure torment. I thought my head was going to explode. On the first night I ate and went straight to bed. I was hoping I could get to sleep quickly so I would have someone in dreamland to talk to, but sleep wouldn’t come. I was sharing a tent with Araf and still wasn’t asleep by the time he came to bed. I was so desperate for conversation I said, ‘Say something.’

‘What would you like me to say?’ he answered, without the puzzlement in his voice that he should have had.

‘I don’t care – anything. You can tell me about crop rotation if you want.’

‘Really?’ he said, with more excitement than I have ever heard from him before.

‘Yes, anything.’

So off he went babbling on about plants and seeds and hoeing and dirt and bugs. He was so wrapped up in his subject I’m sure he didn’t notice me nodding off with a smile on my face. Anything was better than the silence I had been enduring sandwiched between the icy glares of those two women.

I got a reprieve the next day when Essa dropped back to have a planning chat with Tuan.

Graysea startled me when she spoke. ‘Do you still care for her?’

‘Who?’ I said lamely.

‘Conor, I’m stupid but not that stupid.’

‘You’re not stupid,’ I said, ‘you’re the cleverest mermaid I know.’

‘And how many mermaids do you know?’

‘Well, that’s not the point.’

‘No it’s not,’ she said. ‘The point, which you seem to be avoiding, is whether or not you still have feelings for Essa.’

‘Well, that’s complicated.’

‘And you think I am too stupid to understand. Is that it?’

‘No,’ I said looking around hoping that a pack of wolves would attack and get me out of this conversation. ‘Essa and I have a history.’

‘You still haven’t answered the question,’ she said and then mercifully continued so I didn’t have to. ‘I just don’t understand. When you were on the island with me she was engaged to that Turlow fella – right?’

‘Yes.’

‘So she is mad at you for being with me when she was engaged to somebody else. That doesn’t seem fair.’

‘Well, ah …’

‘And she hits you all the time.’

‘Well, I don’t know about all the time … but often.’

‘And is it true that last summer she tried to kill you?’

‘She … she didn’t try to kill me,’ I stammered, ‘she was just part of a plot to have me killed.’

Graysea shook her head and sighed. ‘And people think I’m stupid.’ She kicked her horse and sped ahead.

Gosh, I thought, when you add it all up like that she had a point. Araf had silently sidled up next to me. I turned to him and said, ‘What do you think, big guy?’

‘About what?’

‘About my women problems?’

‘I think,’ the Imp said, ‘I was more comfortable with questions about crop rotation.’

I got another reprieve that night when they both ignored me. Essa finally came up to me after dinner. A firefly sat on her shoulder illuminating one side of her face.

‘Your little mackerel is lounging in her barrel.’

‘She is not a mackerel, she’s a Mertain. She is a healer from the Grotto of Health on the Mertain islands. And she is not lounging. She is recharging – preparing herself so she can help any of us in case we are injured.’

Essa was taken aback by my tone. She stood.

‘Maybe you would prefer to join her in her bath tub.’

‘Maybe I would. At least she’s not mad at me all the time and she never hits me with sticks.’

Essa looked at me like she had never seen me before. I stood and faced her. ‘Anyway, I haven’t seen you for an hour or so – are you sure you haven’t gotten engaged to someone in that time?’

Essa looked like she had been slapped. ‘You promised you would never mention that.’

‘No I didn’t. You told me not to mention it. I never got a chance to promise. Well, maybe I’m tired of being bossed around by you.’

It didn’t take long for the surprised Essa to kick back. ‘Fine,’ she hissed. ‘I hope you and your fish will be happy together.’ She stomped away, leaving her firefly to flutter around confused, and then she turned. I took a step back expecting a blow. ‘Now that I think of it, you and your fish are perfect together – because you’re an eel.’

I tried riding with Araf the next day but he insisted on continuing his dissertation on agriculture so I dropped to the rear to have a long overdue catch-up with Tuan. Araf didn’t even notice I was gone.

‘Councillor Tuan,’ I said, ‘I’m surprised you’re still in Duir. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great having you around, but shouldn’t you be in the Pinelands impressing girls with your super-Pooka act?’

‘Girls,’ Tuan sighed, ‘are the reason I am here.’

‘Oh?’ I said with my inflection going up.

‘My mother wants me to marry.’

‘Oh,’ I said with my tone going down.

‘Yes, Mother wants me to marry a mousy woman from the council.’

‘When you say mousy, Tuan, do you mean she’s small or that she changes into a mouse?’

‘Both.’

‘And you’re not into rodents?’

‘It’s not that …’

‘What is it then?’

Tuan looked around to make sure no one could overhear. ‘There’s this girl in Castle Duir.’

‘Oh, do tell.’

‘This mustn’t get back to my mother.’

‘I’ll be as quiet as the mouse you’re cheating on.’

Tuan snarled at me then straightened up in his saddle and said, ‘Never mind.’

‘No, no, I’m sorry T. I promise I won’t make jokes. Who is she?’

‘I better not say.’

‘Aw come on, what’s the big secret?’

‘She is an Imp.’

‘Oh, and Mom’s not into mixed marriages?’

‘Mother thinks that Pooka power as strong as mine shouldn’t be diluted.’

‘So she’s hooking you up with a mouse?’

Tuan shrugged.

‘Why don’t you just tell your mother to get stuffed?’ I said. ‘You do realise you’re a dragon?’

Tuan laughed. ‘Being one of the most powerful creatures in The Land has little sway with my mother.’

‘Yeah, big guy,’ I said, nodding. ‘I guess I can relate to that.’

We made good time and got to the base of Mount Cas on the evening of the third day. As we set up a base camp, I expected Dad to make some comment like, ‘Aren’t you glad we left at dawn?’ but all he gave me was that look that said it all. Where do parents learn that all-encompassing look? Is there some sort of instructional video you get when you have your first kid? Does it come with a mirror to practise in?

Gerard brought out a couple of bottles of dark red wine. It was fabulous. I wasn’t worried about the upcoming confrontation until I tasted it. When Gerard brings out the special stuff then you know there’s going to be hard times ahead.

That night I dreamt about the Oracle. He leaned forward into the light. As his wispy grey hair blew in a breeze, his wrinkled eyes smiled at me. Then with the tiniest flick of the wrist, he sent me sailing off the side of Mount Cas. I screamed all the way down until the moment I hit the ground. I sat bolt upright in my tent and stared into the darkness, willing my breath to calm and my heartbeat to return to normal. Was that just a nightmare, I wondered – or a prophecy?

We set out long before dawn. Every campaign seemed to be getting earlier and earlier. Soon we would be leaving before we even went to bed. Essa, Tuan, Gerard and Graysea stayed behind in base camp. The last time I climbed Mount Cas it took us three days but that was in the winter. This day was dry and sunny and we set a ridiculous pace. We hiked way into the cold night and found a place to camp on the opposite side of the mountain from where the Yew House stood. We didn’t know if the Oracle had enough power over the mountain to cause avalanches, but didn’t want to chance it.

Mom sat next to me over what was laughingly called dinner. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

‘Other than the fact that my legs feel like jelly after that climb and I have to sleep on cold hard stone on the edge of a cliff the night before I re-tangle with the nastiest sorcerer I have ever seen – yeah, I’m fine.’

‘I was talking about your girlfriend problems.’

‘Oh, well I don’t think I have a problem any more ’cause after this trip I probably won’t have any girlfriends.’

‘Well, that would suit me fine. Then I would have you all to myself.’

She put her arm around me and gave me a hug that made me feel like I was five. I placed my head on her shoulder and closed my eyes. I was awfully tired. I don’t know if it was Shadowmagic or just Mom magic but the next thing I noticed I was in my sleeping roll and Dahy was shaking me awake and offering me a cup of breakfast tea.

If yesterday my legs felt like jelly, today they felt like lead. Dad, in front, set a stride that some would call a sprint. We only slowed down on the parts of the trail that were visible from the Yew House above, then we would press against the rock face and slink along in single file so as not to be seen.

It was nightfall when we reached the wide shelf where, months before, Araf and I had almost fallen off the side when caught in an ice slide. If we had been spotted during our ascent, we figured that the Brownie guards would be there to meet us as they had done the last time. Since they didn’t, we decided to camp the night there and meet the Oracle guy in the morning. We didn’t risk a fire but Nieve got some water hot using gold wire she incanted over and then dropped into the kettle. Dad hadn’t spoken all day and looked kinda off. I made him a cup of tea and then pointed to the stone wall next to him. ‘Excuse me sir, is this seat taken?’ I asked.

He was lost in thought but then finally said, ‘No,’ without even noticing any irony in the question.

‘You OK, Dad?’

He noticed me then and said, ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.’

‘You know I’m old enough that you don’t have to play Strong Dad for me. You’re obviously distracted. What’s on your mind?’

‘It’s nothing. I’m just mulling over tomorrow.’

‘Or maybe you’re nervous about meeting a mother that you hardly even remember?’

Dad looked shocked – then smiled. ‘How did you get so smart?’

‘I actually have experience in meeting a mother for the first time in adulthood, remember?’

‘Yeah, I guess you do. Any advice?’

‘Yes, I do,’ I said, sipping my tea. ‘Get some rest, ’cause it’s nothing you can prepare for.’

The next morning as we walked to the front porch of the Yew House, Dahy threw something off the side of the mountain. There was no one outside the house so we opened the door and let ourselves in. We obviously caught everyone napping. A Brownie saw us in the hallway and yelped like a puppy that had accidentally been trodden on. He scurried away and it wasn’t long before there was a wall of armed Brownies between us and the end of the hallway.

I recognised the tall Brownie in front as the one that, months earlier, I had pinned to a wall by the neck. I knew that these guys weren’t as tough as they looked.

‘You are not welcome here,’ tall guy said.

‘We are not looking for a welcome. We are looking for Macha,’ Dahy said.

They all flinched in surprise at the mention of her name. If I had any doubts that my grandmother was there they left me then.

Tall guy repeated himself. ‘You are not welcome here.’ This time he emphasised his words by levelling a crossbow at us. Or I should say started to level a crossbow at us, because he never got it even close to level. As soon as the weapon started to rise, Mom and Nieve performed some kind of magic. There was a flash of light and the Brownies went down like bowling pins.

‘Strike,’ I said, and Dad gave me a smile.

We walked the length of that dark stone cold corridor until we reached the yew door with the Eioho Rune carved into the finish.

‘Ready?’ Dahy asked and in response we fanned out into our rehearsed positions.

The room beyond was exactly as it had been the last time I was there. Light shining from round discs set into the ceiling refused to bounce off the pitch-black floors. On a dais in the centre of the room, bathed in shadows, sat the Oracle on his Yew Throne. You couldn’t see his face, only the outline of his hair and robe as both fluttered in the wind that whistled through the room.

We stepped through the doorway, spread out and awaited Dahy’s command.

I stood at the back and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. I wasn’t interested in having my conversation with him pick up where it had last left off.

‘Where is Macha?’ Dahy demanded.

Oracle guy leaned in, letting the light hit his face for the first time. It was as effective as any lighting trick done in a Hollywood horror movie and I’m sure he did it for its impact. The next time I had to scare the crap out of someone I decided I would hire this guy to do my special effects.

‘The last time I spoke to a Lord of Duir, he had manners,’ he said, looking at Dahy, but then he turned to my father and said, ‘and the last time I spoke to a Lord of Duir, he spoke for himself.’

‘I have had reports of the reception you offered my son at his last visit,’ Dad said, ‘the time for manners was then.’

The Oracle cast an eye in my direction. I wish you’d leave me out of this, Dad, I thought to myself.

‘As for my general’s question,’ Dad continued, ‘I shall repeat it. Where is my mother?’

The Oracle started to smile and then sat back into the shadows and laughed. One of those bad-guy laughs that irritates everyone except the laugher. We waited.

‘I never thought I would see the day when the Lord of Duir would climb up my mountain only to say, ‘I want my mommy.’ He laughed again. I’m glad it was dark in there ’cause I smiled too.

‘Conor, welcome back,’ he said, wiping the smile from my face, ‘I see you have brought your Imp with you. But where are the archer and the Druid? Oh dear, did I kill them?’

‘No,’ I said trying hard not to let my voice wobble. ‘Not that you didn’t try.’

‘Impudent as ever,’ he said in a tone that almost had some warmth in it. ‘Someday that will get you killed.’

‘I would advise you not to threaten my son.’ Dad obviously had heard something different in his tone than I had.

‘Or what? Your Shadowwitch will cover me with sap?’ Oracle looked to Mom and Nieve. ‘Which one of you is the Daughter of Hazel that practises the forbidden lore?’

Mom stepped forward but didn’t say a word.

‘So who are you?’ the Oracle asked pointing to Nieve.

‘I am Nieve of Duir and I too want my mommy.’

That should have been funny, but the way my aunt said it made it sound menacing. Saying that, Oracle guy laughed – apparently he doesn’t menace easily.

‘Well, now that we are all introduced,’ the Oracle said rising, ‘it is time for you to go. Apologise to my Brownies on your way out.’

Dahy is not the kind of guy who lets emotions get in the way of his tactics but on this day, the arrogance of the Oracle and the anticipation of seeing Macha again got the best of him and he jumped the gun. He raised his banta and stepped towards the dais. All I remember of the next ten seconds was: G-forces, wind and pain. By the time I came back to my senses I saw that I, like everyone in my party, was pinned to the wall by a force of wind that made our faces scrunch up like astronauts during take-off. When I finally could force my head to move, I saw I was three feet off the ground.

Oracle guy was standing in front of his dais with his arms outstretched as dust and leaves swirled around him under the light from the ceiling discs. If before I thought that this plan was maybe a mistake, now, seeing Oracle guy looking so all-powerful, I wondered if this was actually a fatal mistake.

‘What arrogance,’ he said; his voice, carried on the wind, was so loud it made my head vibrate against the stone. ‘To imagine that sticks and swords – and even Shadowmagic are enough to defeat ME!’

SEVEN

DIDDO

I tried to speak and then yell but the wind seemed to push my words back in to my head. I wasn’t party to the entire plan for this campaign but I was pretty sure that getting pinned to a wall wasn’t part of it. I could only hope that we got back on schedule before Oracle guy killed us.

The pressure of the wind was so intense that I was starting to have trouble breathing. Now that would be one for the books – being suffocated because of too much air. I looked to my left. Not because I wanted to, it was just that I could no longer keep my head straight. As my cheek pressed painfully against the stone wall I saw Mom moving her hand into her pouch. I don’t know how she did it, I couldn’t move a thing. Her hand came out with one of those gold and amber balls that she had invented. It was a hybrid weapon made from Real and Shadowmagic. I had never seen it fail to kick the crap out of anybody she had lobbed it at. Ever so slowly she brought her hand to her lips and incanted directly onto the ball. The gold and amber glowed and then despite the force of the wind it started towards the Oracle – but not for long. I heard him laugh through the howl as Mom’s bomb came back at her and silently exploded as it reached her chest. Normally I would have had to turn my head or cover my face at the brightness of it but all I could do was close my eyes. When the flash blindness finally receded to small black dots I saw that Mom was out cold. At least, I hoped she was just unconscious. For all I could tell she might have been dead.

The horror of that thought hit me at the same time as all the noise stopped. Blessed quiet filled the room as the wind and pressure ceased and I slid down the wall onto my feet. Mom crumpled to the ground. As I ran to her I heard Dahy’s voice shouting the word that I had taught him, ‘Ninja!’ My training kicked in and I slowed to a crawl. Mom looked like she was still breathing so I slowly turned to see that the rest of my team had already gently flowed into action. Oracle guy looked very confused. He waved his arms and flicked his wrists but in the windless chamber he seemed powerless.

I breathed a small sigh of relief, making sure I created no air current. We had all been working on the assumption that Oracle guy’s powers came from wind. It seemed not to be such a stretch after seeing how the Mertain harvested power from ocean currents. Days before, Tuan in the form of a crow had carried a parcel of stuff that Mom, Essa, Nieve and Fand had come up with. I know it sounds silly but it was like magic expanding cavity filler. As a test they had set off a teaspoon of it in Castle Duir. It filled the room with an amber coloured substance with the consistency of light pumice. It kept going into the hallway and for a minute Mom was worried that it was going to take over the entire floor. There were people back at the castle who were still trying to dig out the room.

Tuan had reconnoitred the mountain and discovered two large holes at about the height of the Yew Throne Room. We figured that if we plugged those holes, the wind in the chamber would stop and Oracle guy would be powerless. The Shadowmagic baton Dahy threw off the mountain just before we entered the Yew House was Essa’s signal to ride Dragon Tuan up to the summit, detonate the parcels and draught-proof the throne room. If Dahy hadn’t jumped the gun maybe we could have done all this without so much pain.

Once the wind stopped, subduing Oracle guy was easier than any of us expected. He was still trying to figure out what had happened to his powers when Nieve came up behind him and pinned him with one of her paralysing specials. As soon as he was incapacitated Dad and Nieve went to Mom. Nieve placed her hands on both sides of Mom’s head. She was like that for a long time before she said, ‘I think she will be fine, but I would like to get her to your mermaid as quickly as we can.’ I didn’t like hearing Nieve using words like ‘I think’. I sat and held Mom’s hand, not knowing what else to do.

Dahy made us all jump when he shouted into the darkness, ‘MACHA.’ Just the sound of that one word spoke the decades of loss the old warrior felt. Dad rose and stood beside him.

A form in a black hooded cloak seemed to appear out of the darkness as it stepped into the light. It made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I was half expecting the hood to drop back to reveal the face of The Grim Reaper. As if we were still in our ninja mode none of us even breathed. The reaper raised her hands and pushed back the hood. Amber hair, just like Nieve’s, fell across her face. As she pushed it away I saw her eyes. They weren’t dark brown like Dad’s and his sister’s but pale blue – like mine. Then I remembered something that Spideog had said to me: ‘You have your grandmother’s eyes, you know.’

No one said a word. Like a bunch of zombies, we all stood and stared at each other until I just couldn’t stand it any more.

‘Are you my grandmother?’ I asked.

She smiled at me then. It was strange. Not the grandmotherly smile that I had ever imagined. She was far too young looking and beautiful for that. ‘Yes, I am,’ she said. ‘I see you received my message.’ She looked to my father.

Dad stood stock still as she walked up to him, placed her hands on both sides of his face and tenderly kissed him on the forehead. ‘I thought, my son, I had lost you to the Real World and when I heard Conor’s tale of your strange illness, I thought I had lost you again. But here you are and looking fit and well.’

Dad was at a loss for words. They stared at each other and as every agonisingly long second passed, my father seemed to lose a year. When he finally spoke he sounded like a five-year-old. ‘Where have you been?’

Tears welled up in Macha’s eyes. ‘Here my son, locked in this dreadful place.’

Nieve stepped into the light and quietly said, ‘Hello Mother.’

Macha looked to her daughter and then took her hand. ‘You have become a proper sorceress, my child.’

Nieve could only nod yes.

Macha hugged her and then turned to Dahy. ‘General, can you take me away from here?’

‘I can, my Queen,’ Dahy said dropping to one knee.

My grandmother walked over to him, knelt down and placed her hand on his cheek. ‘Not your queen, Diddo, only me, Macha.’

‘Did you just call Dahy Diddo?’ I blurted.

Dahy stood and gave me a look that made me think he was going to snap me in half. And considering that Dahy can snap me in half, it was a pretty scary look.

‘Hey,’ I said, raising my hands in a gesture of surrender, ‘I’m sorry to break this tearful reunion, but we have an injured Shadowwitch here and I for one would sorely like to get the hell off this mountain. What do you say, guys?’

Dahy kicked into leader mode, with a little more chest-puffing gusto than normal. If I didn’t know better, I would have said he was showing off. ‘How many others are in the house?’ he asked Macha.

‘There are seven Brownies that live here,’ she replied, ‘but I think one is away from the mountain.’

‘Well, we took out six on the way in. Conor and Nieve, go see if the ones in the hallway are still down.’

Nieve and I opened the door and peeped around the corner. The pile of Brownies were still there but they were moaning and moving. Nieve dashed up and quickly poked all of them in the butt with one of her pins while I picked up the weapons.

The tall Brownie opened his eyes fully and then a look of panic crossed his face. ‘I cannot move my legs! What have you done to me?’

‘Relax,’ I said, trying to pat him on the shoulder but he took a swipe at me when I got close. ‘Seriously, chill. You just got pinned by one of my aunt’s specials. You’ll be fine in a couple of hours.’ He sat up and then pushed himself along the floor until he had his back to the wall. I felt sorry for him.

‘Where is Lugh?’

‘Lugh?’

‘Yes, the master of this house is Lugh. Lord of All. Where is he?’

As if to answer the Brownie’s question my party came into the hallway. Dad was carrying Mom and Araf had ‘The Lord of All’ hoisted over his shoulder like a bag of manure. Most of the Brownies, now conscious, watched with open mouths as their master was carried to the front door.

‘Did you kill him?’ the tall Brownie asked.

‘No,’ I said, ‘but we are taking him back to Castle Duir. You’re free now. Go back to the Brownielands, he no longer has a hold on you.’

He smiled at me then. One of those smiles that lets you know that the smile-ee knows something you don’t. ‘As long as he lives,’ he said, ‘we will never be free. We will await Lord Lugh’s return. It will not be long.’

I left them with a canteen of water and they left me with a feeling of … doom.

Outside, Dragon Tuan began to ferry all of us off the mountain. Early on in his dragon life, Tuan made it perfectly clear that he was not going to be an air taxi service for the House of Duir so this was a favour I really appreciated. I had no desire to ever see this mountain again and getting off it as fast as I could was a top priority.

Dad and the unconscious Mom went first, then Araf and the unconscious Lugh, followed by Dahy and Nieve. As my grandmother and I waited for Tuan to return she said, ‘I worried about you trying to get blood from a fire worm, I worried that I led you on an impossible task – never in my life did I imagine that you could enslave a dragon.’

As I started to reply, Dragon Tuan flapped up onto the shelf. We had to cover our faces to protect our eyes from the swirling dust. ‘Oh, I wish he was my slave,’ I shouted over the noise, ‘then I wouldn’t have to walk as much as I do.’

I took Macha by the arm and led her over to the green lizard. ‘Grandma, I would like you to meet my friend, Councillor Tuan.’ Tuan rocked his head back and blew a puff of fire that finished with a perfect smoke ring.

Macha bravely walked right up to him and patted him on the snout like he was a horse. Tuan dropped to one knee and lowered his head as Grandma said, ‘I am honoured to meet you, Councillor.’

The flight down was the scariest ride I had ever had with a dragon – and that included when Dragon Red tried to kill me. Tuan was so tired from all the upping and downing that he pretty much just dive-bombed off the mountain. I screamed like a little girl all the way down but Grandma didn’t make a peep even during the G-force-inducing last second level-out. When Tuan became Tuan again I promised I would punch him for that – immediately after I threw up.

I was expecting Macha to be open-mouthed like everyone else who witnesses Tuan’s transformation for the first time but when I looked at her, she had her eyes closed and her arms outstretched. I heard a snort from Acorn – looking not like the bold stallion that often gives me a hard time but more like a colt approaching his mother. That’s when I noticed that all the horses were doing the same thing. They slowly approached Macha with their heads down and then shivered with delight as my grandmother caressed each one of them. It was remarkable to watch. It was like she was part of them but also above them, like a horse god. Macha the Horse Enchantress – the yews had given her the power over horses, and there in front of us was the proof. She hugged each horse in turn. The look on her face was like a mother returning to her children after a long time away.

Mom was awake, sitting with her back against a rock, with a blanket on her lap and drinking willow tea when I found her. She gave me one of those forced smiles that let me know she was OK.

‘Hey Mom, it’s good to see you with your eyes open. You gave me a scare. How do you feel?’

‘Good, considering. Your Graysea is a remarkable healer. I’m starting to see what you see in her. I don’t think she is as witless as she would have us believe.’

‘That depends on which side of her brain she is using.’

‘Seriously?’

I nodded and she laughed but stopped right away and held her chest in pain.

‘I think you need another session. I’ll see if she’s up for it.’

I found Graysea and asked her if she could gill-up for Mom again. She said she was on her way to do just that now that she had seen that everyone else was OK. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gerard’s big fist hand me a glass.

‘Is that wine?’

‘It’s something a bit stronger,’ the big man replied.

‘Good,’ I said, knocking whatever it was back in one. The whole world wobbled like I was about to do a flashback on a bad sitcom.

When I could risk moving again without falling over, Gerard said, ‘More?’

‘Yes please,’ I replied holding out my glass.

‘You wouldn’t have any of your wine with you, Gerard?’ Macha asked, coming over to the fire. Behind her stood all of the horses, like groupies awaiting the beckon of a prima donna rock star.

‘You know I do.’ Gerard poured her a glass and she took a sip with her eyes closed like it was a chalice filled with the elixir of youth.

‘Oh, it has been so long,’ she sighed.

‘It has indeed,’ Gerard said. ‘You look good for a dead woman.’

Macha smiled at him but he didn’t return it. ‘I’m surprised to find you here, winemaker. Thank you for coming to save me.’

‘Spend no thanks on me, my Queen, I came because of Dahy. I would follow that man to the gates of hell if he wished it and I will defend him from all harm.’

‘Well then let us both make sure no harm befalls him,’ Macha said, still smiling but not as much.

‘Let’s,’ Gerard said. ‘More wine?’

‘No,’ she said, placing her hand over the top of her glass. ‘I have been long away from your wine for too long. Like your company, too much of it would be overly intoxicating, but thank you.’ She handed me her empty glass and walked away.

‘So you two have met?’ I asked Gerard.

‘Oh yes,’ he replied. ‘We have met.’

Tuan offered to fly Mom home. She must have still felt pretty banged up ’cause she accepted. Oracle guy was given something that put him into a coma, and then stuffed in the barrel that just yesterday had held Graysea’s saltwater bath. For good measure he also had a paralysing pin stuck in his neck. I wanted to feel sorry for him but I once had travelled on a wagon in a barrel and I’m sure that it was much more comfortable to do it unconscious. Still I made sure he had a few pillows in there with him.

As Gerard hammered the barrel lid closed I said, ‘Well, Lugh is lugh-ed up tight.’

‘What did you say?’ Dad asked, and I also noticed that everyone else had stopped in their tracks.

‘It was a joke. You know, locked up tight?’

‘But what did you call him?’

‘Lugh, the Brownies said Oracle guy’s name is Lugh.’

Gerard stepped back like the barrel was about to bite him. All eyes shot to Macha.

‘Is this true?’ Dad asked.

She looked surprised. ‘I thought you knew.’

Nieve stepped up to Macha. She had a look on her face I’m pretty sure I had never seen before. She looked – frightened. ‘Are you saying that the one who had kept you prisoner for all of these years is Lugh of the Samildanack?’

‘Yes,’ Macha replied.

Gerard actually stumbled into me when he heard this. I steadied him and said, ‘What does this mean?’

‘It means,’ he said, looking at the mallet in his hand, ‘that in that barrel, I have just sealed – a god.’

EIGHT

LUGH

Macha rode in front on the way home. Not because she was a queen, but because we quickly figured out that if she wasn’t in front then all of the horses would keep trying to look around to see where she was. Dahy rode with her and the two of them chatted the entire time like teenagers on the telephone. Dad and Nieve rode wordlessly behind. If Macha had any guilt in leaving them motherless for so long, she showed no sign of now trying to make up for it. I couldn’t see their faces but their body language in the saddle made them look like unhappy children forced to ride a pony at a birthday party.

I was behind them with Araf – tantamount to riding alone – and behind me rode my girls, Essa and Graysea. I didn’t hear them share even one syllable and I wasn’t about to turn around to see if they were OK. The tension permeated the entire group to the point where Gerard, riding in the cart at the rear, was singing dirges as opposed to his usual ditties.

It wasn’t just the imminent outbreak of a cat fight that was upsetting the group, it was like the whole party was spooked. And the thing that was spooking everybody was the guy locked in the barrel on Gerard’s cart. I needed more details on this ‘Lugh being a god’ thing but Mom and Nieve were not in a talkative mood and Gerard didn’t like talking to me when Essa was around, in case she thought he was taking sides. (Even a father can be afraid of a child like Essa.) And I could never get Dahy away from Macha.

At night I tried to entice Grandma into talking about Lugh and her imprisonment but she said that it was far too horrid to speak of. She went to bed early every night with a horse standing guard outside her tent.

I was reduced to spending my days staring at the scenery – not a bad thing. Spring had fully sprung and summer was once again upon The Land. The vibrancy, the … aliveness permeated everything, and – if they were like me – everyone. The feeling – no, not the feeling – the knowledge that you can live for ever came from days like these.

News of Queen Macha’s return preceded us. An hour before our arrival at Castle Duir a rumble and a cloud of dust could be seen in the distance. Dahy and Dad sped to the front and were about to throw us all into battle stations when Macha said, ‘There is no need for concern. It is just my children.’

Sensing the Horse Enchantress’s approach, the horses in Castle Duir’s stables had become anxious. The master of the stables, having heard that Macha was soon to arrive, left open all the stable doors and let the horses run to meet their mistress.

Macha dismounted and walked ahead of us as the sound of thundering hooves intensified. What a scary and magnificent sight: Macha standing alone in an open field, her hands held out as a stampede of galloping horses came directly at her. As they got nearer they squeezed together so as to be close to the Horse Enchantress as they passed. I thought for sure they were going to trample her but at the last second they parted. They swarmed past her like a flock of birds – her hands brushing the charging beasts. They swung around for another pass. They did this three times and I’m sure they would have done it all day if Macha hadn’t put a stop to it. She raised her yew wand and the horses swung in front of her and then stopped as if at attention. From the middle of the herd came a huge silver stallion. I recognised him. The stable master had told me that his name was Echo because he was the spitting image of the horse that sired him – King Finn’s horse. When I once asked if I could ride him I was told that he was wild – unrideable. Yet here he was, head down, offering himself to the Horse Enchantress. Macha patted him on the snout and Echo quivered. Then, fast as a tree monkey, she mounted him and galloped towards Castle Duir. The herd whinnied and followed – leaving us behind.

We didn’t even have to kick our horses to catch up; Acorn leapt to join the herd whether I liked it or not. I galloped up next to Dad and Nieve. ‘I’ll say this about Grandma,’ I shouted into the dust-filled air, ‘she knows how to make an entrance.’

Mom had not been idle with the days that travelling dragonback had given her. She had prepared a special airtight cell and had a Leprechaun smith make a pair of silver gloves/handcuffs that would hopefully render Lugh unable to whip up a breeze or any magic. While Dad and Nieve secured the prisoner, I went in search of answers.

I found Fand in the Shadowmagic laboratory she set up with Mom. She was stirring something in a small pot.

‘If that’s a super delicate Shadowpotion you’re working on,’ I said, ‘I can come back later.’

‘It’s tea,’ Fand replied reaching under the counter and producing two cups. ‘Would you like some?’

‘Oh, yes, thank you.’

She stirred the pot with a gold stick and when she removed it all of the used tea leaves had stuck to it. She mumbled something and the leaves all fell into a rubbish bin. Then she poured us both a cup.

‘What brings you down here, Prince Conor?’

‘I want to know who Lugh is.’

That query made Fand lean back and sigh. She took a sip of tea before she answered. ‘Maybe that is the wrong question,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should be asking: what is Lugh? A question that many have been asking for a long time. Or maybe the most important question is: who is the man we have locked up in the windless cell? I’m not certain he is Lugh.’

‘Gerard said he was a god.’

‘A god. One man’s god is another man’s false idol. What is a god?’

‘I don’t want to interrupt you mid-flow, Fand, but do you think maybe you could answer one of my questions with something other than another question?’

Fand laughed; it was not something I had ever heard her do before. It was sweet. ‘Sorry Conor, it is just that this appearance of Lugh, or whoever he is, has raised many questions.’

‘OK,’ I said, ‘let’s forget about this Oracle guy we have locked up. What are the old stories about Lugh?’

‘Well, that depends on who you are talking to. Among most of the houses of Tir na Nog, Lugh is thought of simply as Banbha’s consort.’

Banbha, there was that name again. Whenever there are dark tales of the early days of The Land, Banbha is the name that usually comes up. ‘Banbha was one of the three original sisters that founded Tir na Nog right?’

Fand nodded.

‘So Lugh was Banbha’s husband.’

‘This was long before customs such as marriage came about but that is essentially the idea.’

‘So why did Gerard call him a god?’

‘Well, as you know, many in The Land worship one or all of the sisters as gods. Leprechauns pray to Ériu for gold and most Imps venerate Fódla.’

‘I’ve seen Araf make a blessing gesture when hears Fódla’s name.’

‘Yes, I imagine he does,’ she said. ‘But others in The Land revere Lugh as much more than a consort. There are many, especially the Brownies, who look at him as a deity.’

‘Why?’

‘Most in The Land believe that the first land of Tir na Nog was Duir – the Oaklands – and this was found or created by Ériu who then sent for her sisters who in turn created other lands.’

‘I know this much,’ I said. ‘Fódla created Ur – the Heatherlands – and Banbha created Iodhadh – the Yewlands.’

‘That is what the Faeries believe, but lore reads differently. Most Brownies believe that the Yewlands were first and that Lugh was already there when Banbha found it. They say Banbha was the first sister and that Ériu and Fódla betrayed and banished her. What happened to Banbha no one knows but when she vanished – so did Lugh.’

‘Yeah, but the Brownies will believe anything if it gets them closer to Duir’s gold.’

‘It is not only the Brownies that believe that Lugh was The First – my mother believed it too.’

Fand’s mother was Maeve. As the inventor of Shadowmagic, she had decimated a forest to steal sap, the blood of trees, to fuel a war against my grandfather and the House of Duir. At almost her moment of triumph she blew herself up along with many of the Fili, with a giant Shadowspell that went terribly wrong.

‘No offence, Fand, but your mother had a lot of wrong ideas.’

‘I will not argue with you on that point, Conor, but she once told me that she learned these tales from an Elf.’

‘So the Elves are in the Lugh-is-a-god camp too?’

‘Who can tell what the Elves think. I’ve never had a conversation with an Elf that was not about trees or wine. They do know the yews though. They are the only ones that can pass through the Yewlands unmolested by the trees.’

‘I’ve been to this Oracle guy’s house. You know it’s made from yew wood.’

Fand thought and then poured us both some more tea. ‘As I said, Conor, this man raises many more questions than he answers.’

When I got back to my room Ruby was waiting for me. She was sitting in my big leather chair.

‘How did you get in here?’

It was like a scene from a spy movie.

‘I walked in. I’m blind, not lame.’

‘Well, you can walk right out again. Last time you came here I almost got killed by a tree and then again by your father and now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure your grandmother wants to kill me too.’

‘Yeah,’ she said with no intention of leaving, ‘sorry about that.’

‘Are you?’

‘Of course I am. It was very nice of you to take me riding and I’m sorry you got hurt and I’m sorry you got in trouble.’

I took a hard look at her with her huge sunglasses and her feet sticking straight out from my chair and I reminded myself that even though she acted like she was forty-two, she was still only twelve. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘and I’m sorry you had to fend for yourself outside the wall. Let’s not do that again. OK?’

‘Deal,’ she said, sticking her hand out, not quite towards me, to shake.

‘Deal,’ I said, shaking. ‘So what are you doing in my room?’

‘I need something Daddy and Grandma can’t give me.’

‘Hold on, isn’t this how we got into trouble last time?

‘Relax, O’Neil,’ she said, and I had to laugh. She sounded so much like her father. ‘I just need some advice.’

‘About what?’

‘I want to be a sorceress. How do I do it?’

‘Oh, I don’t really know.’

‘Who does?’

‘Well, my mother is a sorceress.’

‘OK,’ she said, sliding off the chair and striding to the door. I just stood there befuddled until she turned around and said, ‘Are you coming or what?’

Now I promised myself the last time Ruby got me into trouble that I wouldn’t allow myself to be bossed around by someone a third of my weight, but I had planned to check in on Mom later anyway, and I really wouldn’t mind knowing how she had become a sorceress myself.

‘Fine,’ I said, taking her by the hand. ‘We’ll see if she’s busy.’

While Dad was ill, Mom had set up the room next to the master bedroom as her queenly office. As we drew closer I saw that the door was ajar and stuck my nose through the crack.

Mom was down on all fours behind her desk, I could only see her feet sticking out. I heard what sounded like hammering and then wood splintering.

I walked over and said, ‘Are we doing a little remodelling?’ It wasn’t Mom. Macha popped up so quick that I jumped and almost fell over Ruby.

‘Ow,’ Ruby squealed. ‘Watch it. There’s a blind kid here you know.’

Macha initially looked like I had just caught her with a hand in the cookie jar, but when she noticed Ruby she became very interested. She walked around the desk, took Ruby’s sunglasses off, then placed her hands on both sides of her head and tilted her face up so she could look closely into Ruby’s sightless eyes.

‘Hey, who are you?’ Ruby demanded.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Macha was being awfully rough with Ruby, but then she was my grandmother and what do I know about how to treat kids? Still, it was plain to see that Ruby didn’t like it. When I saw Ruby cock her blind stick back ready for a strike, I grabbed her wrist and got between the two of them. I never saw Ruby hit anybody with her stick but I’d bet money that she was good at it. Macha looked angrily at me.

‘Sorry Macha,’ I said trying to explain myself, ‘but she can’t see, you know.’

‘I do know,’ Macha said. ‘I have been waiting for you, little girl.’

‘Is my mother here?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Macha answered absently, never taking her eyes off Ruby.

‘Are you waiting for her?’

Macha didn’t even answer that. I walked over and looked behind the desk. There was a dagger on the floor and the skirting board had been prised away from the wall.

‘What were you doing behind the desk?’ When she didn’t answer me I said, ‘Does Deirdre know you are here?’

That seemed to get her attention. She started to answer then looked to Ruby then back to me like she was trying to make up her mind about something. ‘Oh well,’ she said reaching into a fold on the side of her dress. ‘I was hoping that I could be around for longer but it seems that now is the time.’ Out of a pocket she produced a lace fan that she snapped open like a Spanish lady at the opera. With a flick of her wrist the door to Mom’s room slammed closed in a way that looked a lot like the magic that Oracle guy used on the mountain. I started to ask her how she had done that but I only got as far as, ‘How …’ before her fan flicked in my direction and I sailed across the room and into the wall. By the time I came to my senses she was sitting on my chest painfully holding my nose. I opened my mouth to gasp for air and when I did I felt and tasted some kind of liquid hitting the back of my throat. She then pushed my mouth closed and jumped on my chest – it was swallow or drown. It tasted awful and I coughed and rolled onto my side as Macha jumped off me.

Ruby let loose one of her migraine-inducing screams. Macha was on her in an instant, covering her mouth, snatching her stick and throwing it across the room. I got up to help her but Macha shouted at me, ‘Stay where you are!’ And I did. Unlike one of my aunt’s paralysing pins it wasn’t like I couldn’t move, it was like my body just didn’t want to move.

‘What have you done to me?’ I said, desperately trying to move my legs.

‘That fluid I placed in your mouth was horse … well you are better off not knowing what part of a horse it was but now that you have ingested it, I have control of your body. Sit,’ she commanded and I dropped hard on my butt. ‘See?’

‘What do you want?’

Ruby squirmed and then Macha pulled her hand away in pain. Ruby had obviously bitten her. As she started to scream again Macha gave her a hard slap. Shock and then tears came to the poor kid’s face. She went instantly from the woman-child that bosses me around to an all-too-fragile twelve-year old.

‘What I want,’ Macha said, looking at her bitten hand, ‘is this child to be silent.’ She reached into her pocket and produced a handkerchief. ‘Come over here, Conor, and gag her.’

I almost laughed. There was no way I was going to do that but even as the smirk hit my face my body stood up, took the handkerchief from my puppet-master grandmother and pulled it across the child’s mouth.

Macha said, ‘Make sure it’s tight,’ and, despite every cell in my brain telling me to stop, I pulled it tighter before I tied it in the back. A muffled cry of pain came from Ruby and the only thing I could do was say ‘Sorry.’

Macha went back down onto the floor and recommenced ripping up the skirting boards. I looked to the door and felt that with Macha’s attention elsewhere I could pick up Ruby and make a break for the door, but when I tried Macha said, ‘Don’t even think about leaving.’

‘What are you doing?’ I tried to ask and was surprised to find I could.

Macha didn’t stand up but from the floor said, ‘Do you know whose room this is?’

‘Yes, it’s my mother’s.’

‘Do you know whose room this was before your mother?’

‘No.’

There was another sound of splintering and wrenching of wood. I heard Macha exclaim, ‘Ah ha,’ followed by the sound of scraping. Macha then reappeared from behind the desk in a plume of dust and loudly dropped on it – a leather-bound manuscript. ‘This room was once Ona’s lair.’

Holy cow, I said to myself. A manuscript chock full of Ona’s predictions. As if her prophecies hadn’t caused enough problems – here were a stack more.

‘Where are they keeping Lord Lugh?’

I didn’t want to answer her but found myself saying, ‘The guest chambers, one floor down.’

‘Come. Bring the girl and make sure you are not seen.’

My possession was the strangest thing. I was still able to do ordinary things as long as they didn’t seem to contradict the will of Macha. Before we left the room I picked up Ruby’s sunglasses and put them on her face. I pushed her hair back and told her everything would be OK just before I gruffly dragged her by the arm. I stuck my head through a crack in the door and saw a guard on his usual patrol. I tried to shout to him but instead I unwillingly ducked back inside the room and waited for him to pass. When he had gone I led us past my room and down the servants’ staircase.

The floor had been cleared of all guests except Lugh. There were two guards posted outside the door and another two walking a patrol. Macha waited for one of the patrol guards to come past and blew him hard into the wall with her fan. I was surprised his head didn’t crack open.

Macha pointed to the unconscious guard and said, ‘Take his sword and kill the other one.’

‘No,’ I said. I was proud of myself when that came out. All the way down the steps I had been incanting a Fili meditation chant and was beginning to think I was getting control again.

Macha spun on me, ‘I said … take his sword and kill the other guard.’

I felt a strange nauseous pressure building in my stomach and chest. ‘I … I will not … not kill one of my … my own guards.’

‘Kneel, Conor,’ Macha commanded and I dropped to my knees. ‘You will …’

With all of my will power I struck at her. I wanted to get her in the head and hopefully knock her out against the wall but she hissed, ‘Stop,’ just as I began to move and I only succeeded in slapping Ona’s manuscript out of her hand.

‘You cannot breathe,’ she said to me and instantly the breath that I had been taking at that second stopped in my throat. My lungs and diaphragm seemed to still be working but nothing could get past my throat. She rolled me on my back and said, ‘You will kill that guard or I will have you strangle the little girl. Do you understand?’

I nodded, clutching my throat, I couldn’t even gasp. Tears flooded from under Ruby’s Ray-Bans as she whimpered, lost in this confusing darkness.

‘Good,’ Macha said, ‘then breathe.’

Precious air filled my lungs as I propped myself up on all fours.

‘Now hand me the manuscript and kill that guard.’

I did as she commanded and handed her Ona’s book from the floor, then went to the fallen guard. As I reached for his sword I said, ‘Please Grandma, don’t make me do this.’

‘Fine,’ she said, ‘take the stick. Just get it done.’

I walked the length of the hall past the two guards at the door and met the second patrolling guard around the corner. He was an Imp and was surprised to see me.

‘Prince Conor,’ he said, ‘I … I don’t think you are supposed to be here.’

‘Relax, I’m the Prince of Hazel and Oak,’ I said and then pointed behind him saying, ‘and he’s the King of Duir.’

The guard looked around and I clocked him high in the neck with the banta. I caught him before his head hit the stone floor. I wished I had a willow tea bag to put in his pocket for when he woke up.

I was just about to walk back to the guest room/cell when the two guards sailed past me in the air and smashed into the wall in front of me. Two more victims of my grandmother’s hurricane fan. Since Macha was out of vision I felt I could make a run for it but just as I took my first steps to leave Macha said, ‘Conor,’ and I could do nothing but follow that voice. Macha was at the door holding Ruby in front of her by both shoulders.

‘Search the guards for keys,’ she said and I obeyed.

I tried not to give the keys to her but was unsuccessful in operating my hand. I did manage to get a question out. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Why am I following Lugh’s plan? Because dear boy, he is a god and not to would be a sin.’

‘But you also helped Cialtie, didn’t you? Why help him?’

Macha turned the key in the lock. We walked in and then opened the inner doors that had been newly constructed to prevent any wind from entering the room when the outer door was opened. Lugh was chained to the bed. A muslin cloth across his mouth stopped him from even whistling and his hands were shackled in silver gloves. Macha pointed to him.

‘I did not want to take sides when it came to my children,’ Macha said, ‘but Lugh insisted on helping – his son.’

NINE

ONA’S BOOK

Cialtie is not Finn’s son, he’s Lugh’s son. He’s Dad’s half-brother. I imagine news like that would shock some people but as soon she said it I thought, that makes sense. Sure Dad and Uncle Cialtie looked alike, but I could never get over how differently their minds worked. Now that I had met Lugh and then heard this news – it all started to make sense.

Lugh, still under the influence of one of my mother’s specials, was awake but looked pretty out of it. Grandma ordered me to unlock his custom-made silver gloves and chains. Macha then stood over him and fanned his face like a trainer between rounds in a boxing match. The more the wind hit his face the clearer his eyes became until he reached out and grabbed her fan. Macha backed away as Lugh ripped the sheets from the bed. In one hand he fluttered the fan towards his chest. Even to me, uneducated in the ways of wind magic, it looked like he was building up energy. In his other hand he swirled the sheet around his head. He then turned to the window that only days before had been bricked up and let loose a scream. A blast of air blew the bricks and the window right out into the night.

‘Open the doors,’ Lugh commanded.

Macha looked to me and said, ‘Well? Open them.’

I opened the inner and outer doors and a breeze flew through the room. Lugh stood on the bed feeding on the air. The colour returned to his cheeks and lips; it almost looked like he grew muscles and a couple of inches. He took in a huge gasp of air, then turned and vomited out of the blown-out window. He turned back to us, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and smiling.

‘Excuse me, my love, I had to purge the poisons that that Shadowwitch had filled my body with.’

Macha let go of Ruby and ran into Lugh’s arms. As they embraced, Ruby made a pitiful attempt to find her way out of the room. Macha saw her as Lugh’s embrace spun her around. ‘Stop her,’ she said and I did.

‘I’m sorry Ruby,’ I whispered, ‘she has control of me but I’ll find a way to get us out of this. I promise.’ She buried her face in my stomach and hugged me. I hugged her back, glad that I could at least do that but desperately wishing I could do more.

I looked up to see Macha kissing Lugh. If there was any part of me that wasn’t sure that these two were in love and in league with each other, it was dispelled then. Anybody that kisses someone immediately after seeing him puke … well … that’s true love.

‘How long have I been here?’ Lugh asked.

‘Not even a day, my love.’

‘And so soon you have found the girl, Ona’s writings and the bows?’

‘The girl came to me as I was searching for the book. As for the bows – they are in the armoury. Not far from here in the north wing.’

‘What do you want with Ruby?’ I said.

Lugh looked shocked and turned to Macha. ‘I thought you had him under your control.’

‘His body and will are mine, my love, but that impudent tongue is harder to subdue.’

Lugh laughed. ‘Well, he is your grandson. Would you prefer if I killed him?’

I felt Ruby’s shoulders begin to shake, or maybe it was me.

‘There is no need, my lord, he knows no more than they will deduce when we are gone.’

‘He is a loose end and you know how I hate loose ends, but I understand your sentimentality, I will do it.’

‘No,’ she said, and for a moment I thought she was about to fight for me until she said, ‘Let me. Sleep.’

I felt my knees buckle but then I heard her speak again and my body stopped its race to unconsciousness just long enough to hear my own grandmother say, ‘Sleep and never awaken.’

Sleep and never awaken. That refrain followed me down into the well of unconsciousness. Sleep and never awaken. Unlike the well of despair the oak tree had dragged me into, this well had no sides, no bottom, no top. No nothing. Calling it a well was wrong. I wasn’t falling, because falling would imply I fell from somewhere and there was no longer a somewhere to fall from. As I existed in a void so lacking anything, my mind tried to grasp onto thoughts. Thoughts of a world where senses actually sensed things. Things, tangibles, objects began to be impossible for me to even imagine. As I fell … no, drifted … even words to represent anything were slipping away from me. I forced myself to at least remember where I was.

I remembered going to an old cemetery once when I was a kid and seeing names on gravestones where underneath it said ‘Sleeping’, and I remembered thinking, they’re not sleeping – they’re dead. But now I was doomed to an eternal sleep and I thought maybe those stonemasons got it right. But I didn’t think that for long because my thoughts were fleeting. Or maybe my thoughts were long thoughts and just seemed fleeting because I had thought them for a long, long time. Never is a long time to not awaken. What is time when the last hour on the clock – is for ever?

It was only a matter of time in that un-land of timelessness before I would go mad. Either that or sail into nothingness. Madness or nothingness, here’s a choice you don’t get every day, said the man existing in a realm with no days.

Vivid memories filled my thoughts. I was a child. I was sick. My mother sang to me in a language so old I couldn’t understand it but I felt it healing me. My mother placed a cool compress on my brow. I could feel her smile but not see it. Then it came to me that this couldn’t be a memory. My mother was never there when I was a child. These memories were false and I was losing it. I was slipping into a world made only of my own making. Madness – that’s what my mind had chosen – an eternity of madness. I wanted to shout and wondered if I could. I almost felt my lungs expand, I …

I shot up in bed and screamed, ‘NO!’ The cold compress fell onto my lap. Mom had her arms around me in a second.

‘It’s all right, Conor,’ my mother said, patting my hair. ‘You’re safe, you’re with me, it’s Deirdre.’

I reached up and felt her hand – the first sensation I had actually felt in … I don’t know how long. I looked and she was there. I touched her face and she felt real.

‘Mother?’ I asked and was surprised at the sound of my own voice. It was deep. I felt my chin and the stubble there brought me forward in time – I was not a boy – I was a man. ‘Where am I?’

‘You’re safe, my son, you’re with me in your own room.’

I looked around and saw the knife-marked wood panelling and said, ‘In Duir?’

‘Yes.’

I pushed myself higher in the bed. The world around me solidified as the dream world I had been lost in receded. ‘How long have I been gone?’

‘You have been asleep for two days. We could not wake you.’

‘Two days?’

‘Yes I have been worried about you. How do you feel?’

‘Only two days? I feel like I have been gone for … ever.’ I smiled then as that blessed relief hit me. The relief that comes with the realisation that the nightmare was only a dream and its burdens were only an illusion. But as the problems of the dream realm faded into smoke, the waking world crashed down on me. ‘Ruby!’ I swung my legs out of the bed. ‘Where is she?’

‘Easy, Conor,’ Mom said placing her hand on my shoulders, ‘She’s missing. We have scoured the castle and the grounds but she is gone.’

‘They have her.’

‘Who?’

‘Macha and Lugh.’

I dropped back into bed and for the first time looked in to my mother’s eyes. She had that haggard look that moms get when their children are sick. I never saw it when I was young but it was instantly recognisable now. I reached up and touched the side of her face. ‘I’m OK, Mom. I think. Macha forced some sort of essence of horse down my throat and I was like a zombie.’ When she looked confused I said, ‘It was like she had control over me and I had to do what she told me to do. The last thing she commanded me to do was, “Sleep and never awaken.” I thought she had killed me.’

Mom thought for a bit. ‘That would make sense. Her power over you only lasted for as long as the horse essence was in your system.’

‘You’re saying the reason I woke up was that … I, like, sobered up from the spell?’

‘Basically.’

So I filled Mom in on how I caught Macha searching her room and finding Ona’s book of prophecies and then how they said they wanted the book, the girl and the bows.

‘The bows on the wall of the armoury – the ones left by the dead Fili – are they the bows they were talking about?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘they are gone.’

‘All of them?’

She nodded.

The door opened and when Brendan stuck his face in the room and saw me awake, he ran up to the bed.

‘Where is she?’

He had the same look on his face that I had seen on my mother’s just moments before, except he looked a lot worse. Brendan wore the frantic face of a parent who had lost a child and I could tell just by looking at him that he had been playing worst-case scenarios over and over in his head for the last two days. ‘I don’t know where she is. Macha and Lugh took her.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I do know that it was not a whim. From the way they were talking, it seemed that kidnapping Ruby and stealing the yew bows was part of a plan.’

Brendan sat on the bed and hung his head. ‘But it doesn’t make sense.’

‘I know,’ I said, placing my hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off. This was Detective Fallon and he wasn’t looking for sympathy.

‘Taking my Ruby makes no sense, but taking the bows makes no sense either. I once asked Master Spideog if I could use his bow and he said I could not. I thought he meant I wasn’t allowed but he said I couldn’t because I wouldn’t be strong enough to pull the string back. I scoffed, so he handed over his bow with that all knowing look on his face and – he was right. I couldn’t even bend the bow an inch. Spideog explained to me that a yew bow changes its tension in tune with the archer that owns it. The wood is flexible when the string is drawn back and then stiffens when the arrow is being released. Only the person who has been judged by a yew, and given that piece of wood, can operate that bow. Those bows should be useless to all except their owners.’

‘Lugh has proved himself to be a master of yew wood so who knows what his plans for the bows are,’ Mom said. ‘One thing is clear: it seems that we have all been unwitting players in Macha and Lugh’s puppet play. And we have lost an important clue – the book of Ona’s writings that Macha found in my office.’

A memory flashed in my mind. A memory of something that seemed like years ago but as I smiled, I knew it was just from a couple of days earlier. I reached for my pocket and then realised I was in bedclothes. ‘Where are my clothes?’

Mom pointed to a chair in the corner of the room. I ran to them and found in a pocket what I was looking for.

‘When I was under Macha’s control I had a moment when I almost broke free. I slapped Ona’s book from her hand, but then she regained control and made me pick it up for her.’ I held out a small ripped piece of paper. ‘But as I was giving it back, I ripped a corner from a page.’

Mom removed an amber stone that was clipped onto the collar of her robe. It was one of her Shadowmagic book clips. She attached it to the sliver of paper I had given her and almost instantly a ghost of a book appeared in her hand. It was a shimmering translucent replica of the one I had seen Macha remove from under Mom’s desk.

‘Is that a book full of predictions from that prophet Ona you guys keep talking about?’ Brendan asked.

‘Yes,’ Mom said, ‘I believe it is.’

‘So with this maybe we can learn why they took my little girl?’

‘Perhaps,’ Mom said, holding the Shadowbook like it was about to explode, ‘but are you sure you wish to learn whatever else this contains?’

‘I don’t care. I want my daughter back.’

‘As do I, Brendan,’ Mom said, but learning one’s future is not a soothing thing. It has sent many over the brink of madness. In others, like Cialtie, foreknowledge is the fruit that eventually distils into evil.

‘I will read it,’ said a woman as she entered through the door. She was beautiful, tall with a huge mane of dark brown hair tied back into a ponytail; her cheekbones were high and rosy with youth. She stormed in like she owned the place but I had never seen her before.

‘I had thought my future was already written and almost ended,’ she said in a voice so pure that I almost wanted to hear her sing. ‘I now have a new lease of life and I shall use it for the sole purpose of saving Ruby. The only fear I have of that book is that it will not tell me where the child is.’

Brendan stood up and faced the woman, then crouched down a bit to look directly in her eyes and said, ‘Mom?’

TEN

NORA

Later in the council room it was decided that Fand should read Macha’s manuscript. Everyone agreed that knowledge of the future was a dangerous thing. Fand would tell us if she found anything relevant that could help us find Ruby and then, using her Fili mind juju, she would forget the rest.

‘You can do that?’ I asked

‘No problem-o,’ she replied using the phrase I had taught her.

‘Wow, can you teach me? I’ve done a couple of stupid things in my day that I’d like to forget.’ Fand smiled but never took her eyes from the book.

‘Only a couple?’ Essa piped in.

Dad held his hands up and shot both Essa and me a look that said, not now kids. ‘Let’s keep focused people. If Fand can find out why my mother took the girl then maybe we can figure out where she is. Deirdre, could you perform a Shadowcasting?’

‘I will try,’ Mom said, ‘but Shadowcasting is not a reliable locator. It is good at predicting events but as a tracking spell it is often lacking.’

‘Surely she is either on Mount Cas or in the Reedlands,’ Nora said. It still unnerved me a bit when Brendan’s mother spoke. Her voice was completely different and she was so young looking.

When Nora heard that her granddaughter had been kidnapped she immediately went to Tuan and took him up on his offer of dragon’s blood to make her young again. She said she needed to be strong if she was going to fight to get her Ruby back. It was going to take me a while before I got used to equating the wise deliberate old lady, whom I had originally met, with this jumpy, young and, I’m a bit embarrassed to say, fanciable woman before me.

‘The Reedlands is not a place to enter blindly,’ Dahy said.

‘I can vouch for that,’ I said. ‘I almost died the two times I went there and you know what they say: the third time’s the charm.’

‘And I believe,’ Dahy continued, ‘that our assault on Mount Cas was easy because it was part of Lugh’s plan. If he were to oppose us he could defend his Yew House easily – with disastrous results for us.’

‘We can’t just sit here!’ Nora banged the table then closed her eyes to compose herself. ‘I apologise, with this body comes the hormones of the young.’

‘No apologies are necessary,’ Dad said. ‘Deirdre, how long will it take to set up a Shadowcasting?’

‘Two days,’ she said, reaching across and taking Nora’s hand. ‘That is the very soonest I could be ready.’

‘Then I’m going to the Yewlands,’ Brendan said.

‘What?’ was pretty much the reply from everyone there.

‘If we are going to war, I want a bow. A yew bow. Spideog said I could have his if the yews allowed it. I’m going to ask the yews for his bow.’

‘Brendan, love,’ Nieve said, ‘it takes decades of study to prepare for a judgement by a yew.’

Brendan stood. ‘I have studied with the greatest archer in The Land. He has deemed me worthy and my quest is to save my daughter. I dare them to find me unworthy.’

I expected someone to object but that statement shut everyone up.

‘I’ll take you,’ I said.

‘Conor,’ Mom said, ‘you cannot enter Ioho. The yews will kill you.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, Mom. I ain’t going in there again. I’ll just take him to the edge and wait. I know the way.’

‘I will accompany them,’ Araf said, and as usual everybody jumped a bit.

‘Great,’ I said, ‘I’ll have somebody to talk to while I wait.’

‘I’m going too,’ Nora said. Before anybody could say that that was a bad idea she explained: ‘This new body has too much energy for me to be sitting at home and waiting. I’ll travel with my son.’

Later that night I stuck my nose into Dad’s study. He was busy doing kingy stuff: allotting the stipends to all of the different kingdoms. He looked up and said, ‘Do you want me to give more gold to the Vinelands and maybe Essa will start talking to you again?’

‘I don’t think you have that kind of money, Dad.’

‘You looking for advice on your love life?’

‘You got any?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Go ask your mother.’

He dropped his pen and got serious. ‘Do you think Brendan’s mother will be OK with you outside of the castle walls?’

‘Well, back in the Real World when, like, a thousand cops invaded her home, she hardly even batted an eyelid. She’s coping with all of the turmoil around here pretty well and Brendan says she’s a good rider. So I think she’ll be fine. And anyway, if she is anything like her son – she’ll come whether I let her or not.’

‘All right then. I’ve had scouts patrolling for quite a while now and it’s been library-quiet out that way but still – be careful, OK?’

‘Hey Dad, it’s me. What kind of trouble can I get into?’

The look from Dad said it all.

‘Dad? I want to tell you something but I don’t know how to, other than to just say it.’

‘Shoot.’

‘Before Macha left she told me that Lugh was Cialtie’s father.’

Dad leaned forward and did that thing he always did when he was deep in thought. He reached up with his left hand and attempted to take off his reading glasses, except he didn’t have glasses on. Since his dragon blood rebirth he didn’t need them any more. He smiled self-consciously then covered his mouth with his hand. That’s the other thing he does when he’s deliberating or stressed. It’s like he’s stopping himself from saying anything stupid before he has thoroughly thought things out. Finally he leaned back and said, ‘Good.’

‘Good?’

‘Conor, it is an awful thing to hate one’s brother. Now I only have to hate half of him.’

We left at, you guessed it, dawn. Even when my parents weren’t going on the trip, I had to get up before the sun. I didn’t try to talk Brendan into leaving later. He was not in the kind of mood where you could joke. Not that I blamed him. The way my luck with women is going these days I will probably never have kids, but I imagine having your child kidnapped is enough to literally drive you crazy. I was impressed with how well Brendan was holding up. He was acting with a swift and deliberate purpose that was hard to keep up with but on the whole he was pretty together. Saying that, he reminded me of the cartoon character that after falling off a cliff only needs one pebble to hit him in the head before he crumbles into tiny pieces. I didn’t want to be that pebble.

Nora I could no longer read. She seemed to be all over the place. She was a good rider. The stable master, hearing that she was new to The Land, gave her a gentle mare that she instantly returned like he was a used-car dealer who had tried to sell her a lemon. He shrugged and gave her a frisky stallion named Blackberry. Nora handled him but it took some time. Periodically Blackberry would try it on with his novice rider and bolt or try to rear onto his hind legs, but Nora was up to the challenge and finally got him to calm down. When I felt it was safe enough I rode next to her.

‘You’ve got your hands full with that one,’ I said, pointing to her horse.

‘I’ve raised a son,’ she said with a nod towards Brendan. ‘You just have to set some boundaries and then they’re OK.’

‘Yes, but baby Brendan couldn’t throw you and break your neck.’

‘You would be surprised as to what kind of trouble baby Brendan could get into,’ Nora replied looking over to her son, who smiled with the forced smile of a man who just couldn’t come up with a real one. We slowed a bit to leave him with his thoughts.

‘I wish there was more I could do to assure him … and you … that Ruby will be all right.’

‘You can’t assure that, Conor,’ Nora said, ‘that’s the problem.’

‘No, I guess I can’t. But she just has to be.’

‘Amen to that.’

Blackberry snorted then threw his head back while almost sidestepping into me. Nora tightened the reins and pulled him back into line like an old pro.

‘How are you doing?’ I asked.

‘Ol’ Blackberry and I will be OK,’ she said patting his neck, ‘we just need to get to know each other.’

‘No I mean how are you doing?’

She laughed a sad laugh. ‘Well my body is raging with hormones and wild energy – it’s like I went through puberty in a day. And then there is the anger – they took my little Ruby. I want to kill them with a baseball bat – you know?’

I nodded yes – ’cause I did too.

‘And then there’s this place. Just because I believed in Tir na Nog all of my life doesn’t mean I always believed it. When you have faith in things that everyone else thinks are crazy, you often have doubts. But here I am. And it’s more than just seeing Tir na Nog or smelling it or touching it … I feel it … inside. I feel …’

I waited for her to find the word. When she failed I offered it to her. ‘Immortal?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

We rode in silence for a while. This route was almost identical to the first trip I had ever taken in The Land, except that this time there was no one firing arrows at the back of my head. This was the same place where I first felt what Nora was feeling now. This was where I first learned that beech trees were gossipy and where I caught my first sight of the white plumes of the mountain ash. Riding, with my mother behind me, this was where the vitalising energy of The Land transformed me. It was here where I, too, learned how it felt to live for ever.

We followed the path. It was mid-morning when we came to water.

‘River Lugar,’ Araf said as he dismounted and then washed his face in the water in a way that seemed more like an ablution.

‘Lugar?’ Nora said. ‘That sounds too much like Lugh for my liking.’

‘I was taught that the river was named after him,’ Araf said.

‘If only the man were as easy to find as the river,’ Brendan said.

We followed the river path until we came to the Duir boathouse. Inside were half a dozen small riverboats. Dad said we could take the royal barge with its gold-plated rudder that would propel us if we incanted to it in Ogham. Back at the castle I made Araf learn the mumbo jumbo. Having Dad teach me words in an ancient language was too much like my schooldays.

Just because we were being propelled by magic didn’t mean that we were breaking any speedboat records. The ride was less like a high-speed chase from a spy movie and more like that old science experiment where you put a sliver of soap on the back of a bit of balsa wood. But as the old saying goes, beggars who don’t want to row can’t be choosers – or something like that.

There was plenty of light left in the day but we had been warned by everyone that if you have to disturb a yew, then it should be done in the morning. I wanted to know why. ‘Do they get grumpy in the afternoons?’ – No one was sure but as a matter of statistics more people survived a yew judging in the morning than in the afternoon. If I were a yew it would probably be the other way around. Gerard had told me that there was one of his luxury camping huts just before the last bend in the river before the Yewlands. I pointed it out to Araf and he beached the barge. After wrapping the rope from the boat around the base of a holly bush we all filed past and touched the tree to say thanks. Nora watched us and then did the same. A small squeal came out of her that at first I thought was a cry of pain but then I saw her face – she was elated.

‘You OK?’ I asked.

‘That tree just said, “You’re welcome.”’

‘Not all of them are so nice,’ I warned. ‘Trust me on that.’

Dinner was a stew prepared by the chef from Castle Duir that we only had to heat in the fireplace of Gerard’s hut. It was the closest thing The Land has to compare with a TV dinner. Actually if any of the Real World’s TV dinners were this good there wouldn’t be any restaurants. Nora ate like she had never seen food before. I worried that she might just eat her spoon.

She caught us all staring and apologised. ‘I haven’t had an appetite like this in fifty years.’ And then continued eating like there was no tomorrow.

Brendan was outside and the only one of us not chowing down.

‘You nervous, Detective?’ I asked.

‘I’d be lying if I said no.’

‘Are you ready for this?’

‘I’d better be.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I mean, have you prepared?’

‘Spideog, and others, told me that a judgement for an archer is different than for a sorceress. Sorceresses must prepare for their specialty but an archer need only be a good archer and Clathandian.’

‘Clathandian? What does that mean?’

‘There is no good English word for it. Even Nieve’s gold ear thingy doesn’t come up with a translation. The best I could get would be pure of spirit.’

‘And is your spirit pure?’

‘I once asked Spideog how I could tell if I was in the state of Clathandian and he said, “That is for the yew to decide.”’

‘That’s a drag. It would be nice if you could have, like, a breathalyser test before you risked your neck in there.’

Brendan laughed, the first laugh I had heard from him since Ruby was taken. ‘There’s a project for your mother – a Clathandian breathalyser. She’d make a fortune.’

But Brendan’s good humour didn’t last long and his attention drifted away to his daughter and his task ahead. Before I left him alone I said, ‘Try and eat something, my friend. I think you might need your strength tomorrow.’

Back inside, Nora, who had eaten probably half of the stew, was asking Araf if she could finish off his leftovers.

‘Your nice new body is going to get a bit big around the middle if you keep that up,’ I said.

‘You know, Conor, I have been given a new life and I think this time around, I’m not going to care.’ She smiled the same smile I saw on an older version of the same woman when she saw her son return to her; but then a shadow crossed the face. The smile vanished, replaced by a look of guilt – guilt for even allowing a smile. ‘First we find Ruby,’ she said.

‘You mentioned before that you had believed in Tir na Nog. How did you even know about it? How did you know you were Hawathiee?’

‘Hawathiee? What does that mean?’

Oh sorry, Hawathiee means … of The Land. It’s like in the Real World when we say human.’

‘Oh, my father told me that his father and his father’s father, going back to before there were calendars or even letters to write on them, told him that we came from a race that was banished from paradise for going against the laws of nature. He, and my mother too, believed that my ancestors arrived in the Real World in a barbarous age when Ireland was a vast forest. The newly banished arrivals were humbled by their experience and chose not to subjugate the barbarians of that island. Instead they chose to teach them.’

‘Druids,’ I said.

‘That is what my parents called themselves and their most important rule for me was to keep the faith. Their grandparents had come over to America during the Irish Famine. Keeping the faith was hard in the new world but just as I was about to lose mine to the modern world, I found a man whose parents had handed down to him the same family lore. We were made for each other. I had a friend who once said that rooms were brighter when we were in one together. He was my soulmate.’

‘Brendan’s father?’

‘Yes,’ she said with a sigh, ‘I lost him to war. He didn’t want to leave me but back then they made young men go to war. I was left alone to raise a son on my own. We did well until Brendan became a teen. Then he started to think that what I believed was crazy. I didn’t have his father to help me and I feared that I was going to be the first in all of that time to break the chain. To have a son who lost the faith.’ She looked out the doorway to her son pacing in the twilight. ‘But here I am. If not for you and all of the chaos you have inflicted on my son and my family – my heritage would have been lost.’ She reached across and placed her hand on my cheek.

‘You’re welcome,’ I said.

She gave me another one of those forced little laughs. The only kind of laugh I was going to get until Ruby was found.

I heard Araf douse the fire. I shouted out the door. ‘Hey copper, you sleepin’ tonight?’

‘Yeah, I’ll be in in a little while,’ Brendan called back.

I curled up in one of Gerard’s bunks – oh so much better than sleeping on hard ground – and was asleep before I heard him come in.

I awoke feeling great. I made another mental note in the imaginary book Things to Do When Life Calms Down Around Here. I promised myself that I would get a map from Essa’s dad and take a trip where I only slept in Gerard huts every night. Then I wondered if things ever did calm down around here. I washed in the River Lugar and shared a breakfast with Araf. The other two were too nervous to eat. Brendan sat waiting in the boat, his legs jittering, while Araf and I closed up the hut.

The river bent ahead and if I remembered rightly, as soon as we took it, we would be in view of the two guardian yews that stood on top of the boulders on either side of the river.

The yews were as scary and magnificent as I remembered. A cold sweat dripped down my back as I recalled the first time I had been here, as part of a desperate escape from my uncle’s dungeon. Then we travelled silently through the Yewlands hoping the deadly trees would take no notice. And they didn’t. I had no desire or intention of repeating that gambit and I worried for my friend who would soon be entering that forest and asking one of those trees to judge his worth – knowing that the price of failure was death.

I saw a small sandy bank on the left and told Araf to steer to it. He was just about to turn the rudder when I saw him bring his hand up fast to his neck like he was swatting a mosquito. He then stared at me wide eyed and fell over the side of the boat.

I was so shocked I didn’t do anything for a second, but when I saw him bobbing face down in the water I started to take off the Lawnmower – the Sword of Duir – and dive in after him. As I was fiddling with the buckle, a sharp pain in my neck made me turn. That’s when every muscle in my body turned to jelly. I crumpled into the bottom of the barge, but before the world went black I had a chance to see in what direction the boat was heading. It was sailing straight and true into – the Yewlands.

ELEVEN

JUDGEMENT

The stinging in my neck was the first thing I noticed when I awoke. I reached to the source of the pain and removed a gold dart that I only had a couple of seconds to inspect before it dissolved into smoke and ash between my fingers. I was alone in the barge. I knew where I was. The green light filtering through the canopy confirmed I was deep in the Yewlands. I popped my nose up over the side of the barge like a soldier sticking his head out from a foxhole. My travelling companions were nowhere to be seen. Where were they? What had happened? What should I do? I definitely should get out of the Yewlands but what about Brendan and Nora? And Araf? If he fell face down in the water with the same thing that got me in the neck then … he must have drowned. What the hell happened?

Think, Conor. I had to assume that the barge wasn’t too far into the Yewlands so if I could get it turned around without disturbing the yews, then I could get back and find Araf, or at least his body. If Brendan and Nora survived then that’s the only place I could think that they would know to go.

I crawled to the stern of the barge and then kicked myself, remembering that I hadn’t paid attention when my father was teaching Araf the magic words in Ogham that made the rudder propel the boat. Dad had said I should learn the ancient vocabulary too, but as usual I didn’t listen. Gods I hate it when he’s right.

I could see the entrance to the Yewlands off in the distance. I maybe could have swum that far if the current was with me, but against it I didn’t think I could make it. I knew instinctively I couldn’t walk along the banks of the river without the yews noticing me. I was literally up you-know-what creek without a paddle. My only other option was to push the barge back into the river and hope the current would eventually take me through the Yewlands without notice. What I would do on the other side was something I would have to deal with when, and if, I got there. This was the least worst of all my options. I hated the thought of abandoning my friends but I really had no way of getting to them even if I had a clue where they were – which I didn’t.

All my deliberations were for naught, ’cause when I placed one foot on land to push off the barge, every muscle in my body froze up. No, that’s not right, my muscles were fine, I could feel them trying to work. It was my bones. I felt like I was being pushed and pulled from the inside. I tried to yell but as soon as noise began to fly out of my mouth my jaw slammed shut making an audible clack of my molars, which thankfully didn’t crack. With one leg still in the barge and the other on the shore, I stiffened up like a guy in a body-cast from some old black and white comedy movie. I stood like this for a minute, only able to grunt and move my eyeballs and then was mercifully released. I instantly tried to push the barge out but as soon as I tried I was turned into a human board again. Whatever was holding me made me wait for several minutes before I was once again released. This time I dove into the river. My thinking (I admit there really wasn’t much thinking) was that if I could get some distance between me and whoever my puppet master was, I could get away. What happened was that I froze up again – this time in water with a heavy sword around my waist. I dropped like a stone. I hit the riverbed and said loud in my head, OK, I get it. I’ll go where you want me to. I didn’t know if that message went anywhere but I hoped that it went somewhere soon. I had about twenty seconds of air left in me.

In fact, I had forty seconds’ worth. Just as I thought my lungs were going to erupt blowing my head clean off, I was released and scrambled to the surface gasping and spluttering. I waded to the bank and asked the air, ‘Now what?’

What was a telekinetic game of hot and cold. Every time I went in a direction that my unseen force didn’t want me to go I froze up, usually falling over. I then had to change direction until I found the way it wanted me to go. This went on for quite a while. I was walking deep into the yew forest. Not good. I racked my brains trying to remember if I had ever heard a story about someone accidentally wandering into the Yewlands and making it out alive. I hadn’t, ’cause I suspected it had never happened. Finally I decided I wasn’t going to play this stupid game any more if it just meant I was prolonging my ultimate demise, so I sat down and refused to move. That’s when my possessor actually took control of my walking. Unkind invisible hands manipulated individual bones in my body forcing one foot in front of the other, and pressing so much strain on my knees and hips that I finally screamed and agreed to continue my guided walk on my own steam.

Eventually the powers that drove me only had to give my wrist a tweak to keep me in the right direction. All the while I kept a look out for Brendan and Nora. I hadn’t seen what had happened to them. They might have fallen in the water like Araf but if they were in here I worried most about Nora. She was unprepared for this – but then again, so was I. I decided to worry about myself for a while.

After what seemed like hours I came to a point where my spirit guide would only let me walk into a tree. Ahead was a yew that to me looked exactly like the zillions of ones I had been forced to walk past. I took a deep breath and said to myself this is it. After all I had been through, I was going to be killed alone in the forest by a tree. I pondered the philosophical implications of this. If a man falls over in a forest without making any noise is he really dead? I thought about that for a nanosecond and decided the answer was – yes. I felt a Fergalish smile light my face and wished my old cuz was here with me to share the joke.

I placed my hand on the bark and said, ‘What do you want?’

You would think a tree that was older than most dinosaur fossils would be beyond shocking, but I think I puzzled this one. A voice came into my head that was surprisingly pleasant.

You never know with trees. Some of them just reach into your brain and take what they want to know. Others can’t do that and wait for you to speak or at least think purposefully. With the reputation the yews had and the psychic push and pull I had just been through, I was expecting an unpleasant experience. Instead, my mind was filled with a voice (or a feeling of a voice) that was neither male nor female – or maybe it was both.

‘What do I want?’

‘Yeah, what do you what? You just pushed and pulled me like a hundred miles and now here I am so what the hell do you want?’

‘It is we that should be asking that question of you,’ the tree said, using ‘we’ like it was the ‘royal we’.

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘well, I asked first.’

That was the last thing I got to say for a while. If I can presume to know anything about yew tree behaviour I would have to guess that he/she got tired of this banter and just decided to go straight to the source. Pain and deafening white noise erupted from inside my head. I dropped to my knees, presumably screaming but I couldn’t hear anything over the internal commotion. I started to reach for my head but then stopped ’cause I was afraid that I wouldn’t find any top to my skull. I had a mental image of my brain being exposed and tree branches spinning around in my grey matter like it was soup.

‘You are terrified,’ the tree said, ‘yet you jest.’

‘You discovered my secret,’ I said through gritted teeth.

‘I do not understand you. Explain.’

‘Get it over with.’

I remembered seeing an old gory horror movie where people’s heads exploded and their insides splattered all over the room. I was now sure I was seconds away from decorating the yew forest in the same way. When I didn’t answer the tree, the pressure got worse, something I would have thought was impossible. I remembered the look on Spideog’s face when he realised he would have to go back to the Yewlands to be re-judged. The yews had subsequently found him again worthy but at the time he was sure he was going to die. The pain I experienced was so intense that I knew that if I somehow survived, I would choose death rather than go through this again.

‘You wish I should begin the judgement?’ the androgynous voice of the tree shouted in my head.

‘Whatever.’

The bush turned the egg beater in my head up to the frappe setting.

‘Once again,’ the tree said, ‘you are speaking in contrast to your true feelings.’

‘OK, you want my true feelings? I don’t want to be here. I didn’t mean to come into the Yewlands, I’m not prepared for a judgement and I don’t want to die. And while I’m at it could you loosen the vice on my head?’

Surprisingly he/she did and as soon as I could think properly I said, ‘I was unconscious when I entered the Yewlands. Has any of your kind seen my companions?’

‘We are yew. We are not here to answer your questions.’

‘But the woman that was with me, she is unprepared for judgement. Her son was with me too but at least he was trained by Master Spideog.’

‘You speak of the archer?’

‘Yes, his name is Brendan. Have you seen him?’

‘The archer you call Brendan spoke of Spideog’s death. Is this true?’

‘It is,’ I said, ‘I witnessed it.’

‘Let us see,’ the tree said and the pain returned with a vengeance. My brain, like a crappy video movie, fast-forwarded my memories. Stopping, then zooming ahead until once again I was forced to watch Spideog fall. Then the pain in my head subsided, only to be replaced by an ache in my chest.

‘He was killed by your knife,’ said the voice of the tree in my head, but only the male voice. In my defence the female voice said, ‘But not by his hand.’

What followed was a debate in a language (or maybe even a different plane) that I couldn’t begin to fathom. As best I could figure out it was a domestic squabble. Where before the voices of the tree were speaking as one, now the male and female were backing and forthing. As it got faster and seemingly more heated I wondered what would happen if they didn’t come to a conclusion. Can a tree get a divorce from itself? I wondered if there were yew trees all over the forest where the male and female parts hadn’t spoken to each other for centuries.

Finally the squabble ended. ‘We shall judge you now.’

‘What happened to the others?’

‘You will be judged.’

‘I don’t want to be judged, I’m not ready to be judged. I want to know what happened to my friends.’

‘If you will not be judged then you must eat of the fruit.’

A bough laden with red berries drifted before my face as I felt the bones in my arm and hand reach for the poisonous fruit.

‘Who died and made you god?’

The push on my arm stopped as the male voice said with a sneer, ‘We are before the gods. We have been makers of gods.’

‘I hope you didn’t make Lugh.’

‘What do you know of Lugh?’ the tree demanded but didn’t wait for an answer. Once again the pain dropped me to my knees as my encounters with the Oracle of Mount Cas were replayed for me and the timber sticking into my brain.

When it was done I felt the female tree ask, ‘Why would Macha take the child?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You will be judged,’ they both said.

‘I’m not ready.’

‘No matter,’ the yew replied, ‘we must know what you know.’

This wasn’t like the memories that flash before your eyes when you think you are going to die. I’ve been that close to death enough times since arriving at The Land to know what that is like. No, this remembering was like re-experiencing my life over again. Not just the sights and sounds and smells but also the emotions. The warmth of my father’s embrace, the sting of bullying at school, the pain of constantly moving home and the abandonment of friends. The loneliness of being the new kid. The excitement of that first kiss, puberty – oh gods, not again. The attack in my living room that changed my life for ever. The terror of Cialtie. The discovery of my mother – her first approving smile. The other smile – Fergal’s smile and then no … Fergal’s death. I knelt, paralysed, re-living my life and all the way through, stabbing like knives and caressing like velvet, were my emotions. My loves, my hates, my losses. Essa, Araf, Tuan, Spideog, Frank, Jesse, Brendan, Ruuuuuby.

When it ended I was in shock. Like when I killed my first person (an event I just replayed seconds ago) I was unable to think. I was unable to … be. I was emotionally spent, not even able to weep.

‘What can we give you?’ the tree spoke into my throbbing head.

I hardly heard the question. I fell prostrate on the ground. ‘I don’t ever want to go through that again,’ I moaned.

‘Very well,’ the tree replied, ‘from this day forth, you, Conor of Duir, have safe passage through Ioho.’

I rolled over on my back and looked up at the branches and needles blocking out the sky. I tried to imagine ever coming here again and knew I never would. At least not alone. ‘And any of my travelling companions?’

‘And all that travel with you,’ the tree said without hesitation.

I rolled over and propped myself up on all fours. Then, making sure I didn’t touch the tree, I tried to stand. I was wobbly but intact. I felt the tug of the yew and placed my hands once again on its rough bark.

‘You have given us much to contemplate, Prince of Hazel and Oak. We would like to give you a gift but you are unworthy of a wand or bow.’ The female voice then spoke. ‘We have seen that you often fight with banta. Accept this with our blessing. May it serve you well.’ The familiar sound that I now know is moisture being sucked from wood, followed by a crack, preceded a large branch falling from the tree. I picked up the staff and cracked off the smaller branches that were withering even as I looked at it. It wouldn’t take much work at all to make this into a proper banta stick. I guess I was supposed to say thank you but instead I placed my hand again on the trunk and asked, ‘Where are my companions?’ But the tree ignored me. I could feel a deep internal conversation that made me feel like I was a long-forgotten annoyance.

I tried to remember which direction I had come but couldn’t. That was a lifetime ago. I tried touching another tree to at least get directions, but it seemed that free passage also meant screw you. I was ignored. I wondered what would happen if I decided to carve my initials in one of these trees – would it ignore me then? I almost took out the Lawnmower and put that thought to the test but decided against it. I had just survived a yew judging unprepared – pushing my luck might be foolish. I closed my eyes, spun around and then started walking in the direction I was facing. It was as good a way to go as any.

Even though every cell in my body told me to be quiet, I shouted out, ‘BRENDAN, NORA,’ but eventually stopped. Not only because it felt so wrong to be making noise in here, but also because I’m sure if they heard me they would be too afraid to answer. Getting out of this forest was the only plan of action I could think of.

The day stretched on. The heat seemed to somehow radiate down from the closed green canopy. The air smelled of moss and didn’t move. I had a mental image of filling a balloon with this air and when I got out, watching it sink. Late in the day I heard water and then made it to the river. I began to walk back the way I had come. I must have been upriver from where the boat was beached, either that or somebody had stolen it, ’cause I didn’t once see it on my travels. All the while the yews ignored me. It was a strange feeling. Almost like being in a forest back in the Real World.

The sun was low with twilight threatening when I reached the sentinel yews at the entrance of the Yewlands. I had a choice of walking around deep into the forest or climbing the root-covered boulder on the riverside. As much as that tree scared me, I decided to test my freedom of the Yewlands and scrabbled up onto the arthritic roots of that ancient tree. The yew knew I was there. I could feel him/her but I wasn’t stopped or interfered with. At the top of the boulder I was rewarded with the sight of Araf and Nora sitting next to a small fire. I shouted to them and received an enthusiastic wave back.

I had so many questions for them but I never got to ask them. As I climbed down I was startled by what I thought was a large yellow insect. It buzzed past my ear and as I watched it fly by it looped in mid-air and came back at me. As it came towards my face I raised my hand to swat it. At first I thought it was a bee or wasp that had stung me but when I looked at the back of my hand I saw it was another gold amulet. I withdrew it from the flesh of my hand; it was shaped like a small tornado. I recognised it immediately. It was almost identical to the one my mother had once given me, except hers didn’t have a pin on the end. It was a rothlú amulet, and as soon as I recognised it it kicked in. After that, everything was pain.

TWELVE

THE HERMIT OF THUNDER BAY

Pain. Imagine each cell in your body being removed then scrubbed with a wire brush before it was popped back into place. That’s the feeling you get from a rothlú spell. I never thought I would be nostalgic about pain, but I remembered the last time I had this all-over body ache – my cousin was stealing my shoes. This time there was no tug on my foot to wake me. I opened my eyes the tiniest of cracks. I had no idea where I was but if it was daytime and out of doors, then the light was certainly going to be painful. Luckily when I opened my eyes I was greeted with gloom and deep shadows. I decided to give moving a try and discovered it wasn’t a good idea. I dropped my head back onto whatever I was on and slipped back into unconsciousness.

It was just as gloomy when I awoke again but this time, moving was only excruciating as opposed to being beyond the threshold of consciousness. I seemed to be lying on a pile of fresh straw in what I first thought was a dungeon. I crawled over to the only source of light. It was a candle infused with sparkling gold dust, Leprechaun-made – so I knew at least I wouldn’t be without light for a couple of years. Next to the candle was a shot glass with something that smelled mighty powerful. All of my instincts told me to leave it alone, but when I thought about it (which was difficult with the fife and drum band playing inside my head) I figured that if whoever got me here wanted me dead, I’d already be in the ground. I held my nose and knocked it back. My toes actually curled and my head tilted to a forty-five-degree angle. A full sweat broke out on my forehead and, even though there was no one there, I said the immortal words, ‘Haba yazza.’ When my vision cleared and the impulse to vomit passed, I felt much better.

I was in a cave. I guessed that was better than a dungeon. I grabbed the candle and, careful not to let it blow out, I explored the perimeter looking for an exit. After two trips around, I sat down, confused. There was no way out. I went around again – this time slowly looking for a hidden door or a crack or anything but there was nothing. I must have been dropped in from above, but the walls were so smooth there was no way of climbing or seeing what was up there. That’s when a memory hit me that filled me with panic. What if there is no way out? I remembered my father warning me that a rothlú spell could transport someone to the edge of a cliff. What if it stuck me in the middle of a cave that has no exit? What if I’m doomed to sit and thirst to death in a dark cave?

In all of my days and through all of my troubles I never had an actual panic attack. I was building to a good one but then thought, no, not a dark cave – a cave with a candle in it, a clean bed and a shot of hooch. Somebody brought me here, somebody wants me here. I relaxed, sat on my straw bed and thought. I had been stabbed twice with gold amulet darts. One knocked me out and the other brought me here. Somebody wanted me to drift into the Yewlands and whoever it was wanted me here. But who? I never heard of anybody using amulet darts but now that I thought on it – it was a pretty cool idea. And the rothlú that had got me in my hand honed in on me like one of Dahy’s knives. All of this information didn’t help me figure out who my captor was. Part of me, the same part that previously started to panic, feared that it was Cialtie but somehow this didn’t seem like his style.

With nothing better to do, I picked up the candle and climbed onto the rock in the centre of the cave. I was holding the candle up, hoping to see if there was a way out from above when I lost my footing. It was a tiny stumble, I didn’t fall but I jostled the flame enough to blow it out.

You just can’t imagine how dark cave-dark is, until you’re forced to endure it. The black seemed so opaque it felt like I could cut it. I dropped the candle and then carefully climbed down. Then on all fours I crawled until I found my pile of straw and sat. I sat staring into the sense-depriving darkness and started hallucinating shades of blackness. Imagine seeing wind – that was the kind of tricks my brain was playing with that total absence of light. I finally had to close my eyes. Strangely the darkness behind my eyelids was much more bearable.

I dozed again and in my dream, a small hand took my own hand in hers and led me out of the cave. Even though we were outside and I could feel the breeze and sunshine on my face I still couldn’t see.

‘Is this what it’s like for you, Ruby?’

She didn’t say anything but I sensed her nodding her head yes. She led me down a grassy hill and asked very politely of a tree if I could have a stick. Together we walked with our sticks sweeping before us as we listened and sensed and smelled our way through a day that – even though I couldn’t see – felt glorious.

‘See,’ she said, ‘It’s not so bad.’

Light. Blinding light entered the dream, bleaching out the mental image of Ruby and the pastoral scene. Painful blinding light burned into my eyes. I had to cover my face with my arm.

Where the dream ended and the reality began is open for debate. The blinding light focused itself into a doorway of light and in that doorway formed the shape of a man. It wasn’t until I pushed myself up into a sitting position and felt the straw underneath my hands that I knew for certain that this was real.

The silhouette in the doorway said, ‘Come,’ then turned and walked away.

The Lawnmower was still around my waist, so I drew it and walked towards the light.

My captor sat on a cave shelf looking out over a vista of endless sea. If I hadn’t heard the voice I would have thought that he was a she. Long brown hair fell to the middle of his back. His clothes were animal skins – not the nicely tailored stuff my Mom often wears, but home-made pelts that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a B grade caveman vs. dinosaur movie. He didn’t turn around.

‘Put away your sword, Prince of Hazel and Oak,’ he said in a croaky voice that made me think he didn’t use it very often.

‘First I want some answers,’ I said.

In reply, he threw a speck of gold out in front of him. It hovered in the air and then like a bullet zoomed in and hit me in the hand. I dropped the Lawnmower with a clang. When I tried to pick it up, I found that my right hand was numb and I couldn’t move my fingers.

When I reached for the sword with my left hand, he said, ‘Do you really wish to lose the use of that hand as well?’

He had turned around, and in his hand was another tiny amulet ready to make it so I would need assistance if I ever wanted to zip up my fly. The long hair down his back was matched by an even longer beard. Even though he looked like a children’s picture book version of a comic troll, his eyes told me that he meant business. I let go of the sword and stood. He turned back to his view.

‘What have you done to my hand?’

‘Sensation in your hand will return in a few moments. I have no desire to harm you, Conor. Come sit next to me and enjoy the vista.’

I’ve learned the hard way since arriving in The Land that when you’re outgunned and outmanoeuvred the best thing to do is just say OK. So I said, ‘OK,’ and sat. We dangled our legs over the ledge and looked out at a crystal blue sea edged by green rolling hills more manicured than any golf course. On a dock were two simple wooden sailboats. The place was postcard beautiful.

‘Where are we?’ I asked, trying to sound more conversational and less confrontational.

‘This is Ba Toirniúil.’

Ba Toirniúil means Thunder Bay. I had heard of this place. This is where immortals come when they no longer wish to live. This is where you go when you want to sail away into old age.

‘Whose boats are they?’ I asked.

When he didn’t answer, I figured this was going to be one of those I-ask-the-questions-around-here type situations but then he said, ‘I make them for whomever needs them.’

‘Wait a minute … are you the Hermit of Thunder Bay?’

He kept looking out to sea but I could see a small smile. ‘I suppose I am a hermit and I do live here in Thunder Bay. You have heard of me?’

‘I heard one of my guards say that his companion looked like the Hermit of Thunder Bay when he hadn’t shaved.’

He thought about this for a long while before he said, ‘So I’m famous in Duir for not shaving?’

‘Apparently so,’ I said.

After another long pause he whispered, almost to himself, ‘I suppose it is better than being entirely forgotten.’

I didn’t like the tone in his voice and decided that this line of conversation might bring us to morose musings that I wanted to avoid. So I said, ‘Should I call you Hermy? Or do you have a real name?’

He actually looked at me then. It’s unsettling when a guy as crazy looking as this one gives you a look like you’re the crazy one. ‘Hermy? Why would you call me Hermy?’

‘Everyone needs a name.’

The long pause kicked in again. I was starting to realise that chats with Hermy were about waiting a lot. Eventually he said, ‘A name is not something I require. One only needs a name if one is going to converse. I have not spoken to anyone but you, Conor of Duir, since … well, since long before you were born.’

‘But you’re talking to me now.’

Wait … ‘Yes, it appears I am.’

‘Were you the one who knocked me out so I would drift into the Yewlands?’

… ‘Yes.’

‘And did you throw that homing rothlú that brought me here?’

… ‘Yes.’

‘Why?’ He didn’t answer, or was taking his usual sweet time so I pressed him. ‘Why, Hermy?’

‘My mother instructed me.’

‘Your mother?’ I said looking around. ‘I thought the idea of being a hermit is that you live alone. You’re a hermit who lives with his mother?’

Hermy laughed at that. It was a sweet little chuckle, like he had only just remembered how to do it. ‘No, my mother is long dead.’

‘Oh, sorry.’

‘You should be. Your family holds the guilt of her murder.’

That reply made my stomach do a little flip-flop. Had he brought a son of Duir here to avenge his mother’s death? I looked down at the hundred foot drop and scooted over – out of shoving range.

‘Someone in my family killed your mother?’

Hermy nodded once.

‘Let me guess – Cialtie?’

Showing no emotion, Hermy nodded again.

Cialtie murdered his mother and this long-dead mother is leaving him instructions. I rattled that riddle around in my noggin and in less than the time it took for Hermy to say, ‘Hello,’ I came up with the answer.

‘You’re Ona’s son?’

… ‘I am,’ he said.

‘So why did Ona want me to enter the Yewlands?’

In reply he stood and walked over to a corner of his cave, picked up a long banta stick and handed it to me before re-sitting.

The wood was smooth and sticky, with the smell of fresh beeswax polish. ‘Is this the branch the yew gave me?’

… ‘It is.’

‘You finished it for me?’

… ‘I did.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Why does … did your mother want me to have this?’

… ‘You of all people, Son of the One-Handed Prince, should know that Ona’s will comes without explanation.’

‘I’m no longer the Son of the One-Handed Prince,’ I said quickly.

… ‘My point exactly,’ he said, standing. ‘Excuse my manners but it has been very long since I have had a guest. Would you like tea?’

‘Thank you,’ I said and watched him start a small fire with a fire coin then fill a kettle from a rain barrel.

‘If you haven’t talked to anybody in so long, how did you know I was the Son of the One-Handed Prince?’

My host placed a frying pan on the fire next to the kettle and then reached into a jar and pulled out a dripping handful of some seaweedy type stuff and threw it sizzling into the pan. ‘Would you like some …’ he stood frozen, looking up to the ceiling, then finally said, ‘I do not think I ever heard a word for what this is.’

I looked at whatever it was steaming in the pan and decided that it was probably better that it remained unnamed.

‘I have heard about your many exploits, Conor, from the beeches. Beech trees do love to gossip.’

‘I’ve heard that. So what did Ona say about me, exactly?’

I had to wait until Hermy finished making tea out of some sort of moss. When he handed it to me I was relieved to find that my fingers worked fine. It tasted exactly like tea made from moss.

‘She never mentioned you specifically.’

‘Wait, I thought you said Ona told you that I was to get a yew staff?’

… ‘No, Ona knew someone was to receive a yew staff – I just guessed it was you.’

‘You sent me into the Yewlands on a guess?’

In reply he shrugged.

‘And what if the yews had killed me?’

‘That would have been – unfortunate.’

‘Yeah, especially for me.’

He nodded in agreement like it was the first time it occurred to him. He stirred the dinner and then slid a portion into each of two wooden bowls. ‘Would you like some …’

‘Shall we call it gloop?’

He sighed in that exasperated way that made me realise he was getting to know me. ‘If we must.’

After tasting it, I decided that gloop was the perfect name for this stuff. It’s rare to get a dull meal in The Land but Hermy succeeded in cooking one.

‘Do you know what happened to my friends?’

‘The archer and the woman both survived their judgement. If that is what you wish to know. The archer exited the Yewlands not long after you. He held wood suitable for a bow.’

I hadn’t realised how much subconscious tension I had been holding in my shoulders until they relaxed with that news. ‘I must get to them – they will be worried about me.’

‘There is no need for them to worry, Conor. I will not harm you.’

‘They don’t know that.’

‘That your disappearance may cause your companions to fret is the least of your worries.’

‘So tell me, oh great bearded one who seems to know everything, if my friends are the least of my worries what is the worst of my worries?’

If Hermy noticed my annoyance it didn’t make him hurry up with his reply but when he did, he sure got my attention.

‘I would say your biggest worry should be – the blind child.’

‘What do you know about Ruby?’

This time the pregnant pause before his answer was unacceptable. I didn’t care if this guy had gadgets on him that could make me as limp as a Salvador Dali painting, I grabbed him by the arm and spun him to face me. ‘Tell me.’

‘Ruby,’ he said, ‘is that her name?’

‘What do you know?’

‘I, Conor, only know what my mother has written.’

‘And what did your mother say?’

‘Ona never spoke of these things, all of her prophecies were written.’

I stood. ‘Don’t screw with me, Hermy. What did your mother write?’

I had to take deep breaths while waiting for him to answer; otherwise, I think I would have stabbed him.

‘She said, “The blind child will need help from the bearer of the yew staff.”’

It took me a moment to realise he was talking about me. ‘Where is she?’

‘… According to the poplar trees your grandmother, Lugh and Cialtie are holding her in Castle Onn in the Gorselands.’

‘I have to get to Duir and put a rescue party together.’ I paced around the room looking for an exit. ‘How do I get out of here?’

Without looking at me, Hermy made a gesture with his right hand and another one of those damn flying amulets flew out and boomeranged into my neck. This time my whole body went limp and I crumpled to the ground, not even able to move my eyeballs. The hermit rolled me over on my back. His long beard swept over my face but I couldn’t feel it. He placed my new yew staff in my hand and said, ‘Ona did not write about a rescue party. She only mentioned you. I’m sorry if the paralysing amulet is uncomfortable but in the long run it speeds up the recovery from the rothlú. You will thank me later.’

He pulled a chain from round his neck and then from the hundreds of amulets hanging from it, he picked a tiny gold twin tornado. He looped it onto a chain and hung it around my neck. ‘If you find her, this will bring you home.’ Then he pulled a single twister from his collection, placed it in my palm and closed my fingers around it.

‘I have been thinking,’ he said, ‘and I do not like the name Hermy. If I must have a name then let it be the one I owned when I lived in Castle Duir. Call me Eth.’ Then he held my closed fist next to his mouth and incanted, ‘Rothlú.’

THIRTEEN

CAPTAIN JESSE

Eth? Eth? I knew that name and I had almost figured out where I had heard it when my brain was disassembled and scattered halfway across the land. By the time it got reassembled, that thought and any other was replaced by pain and unconsciousness.

Eth was right about one thing: this rothlú spell didn’t seem to hurt as much as usual. When I finally came to I had specific pains in my legs, wrists and neck but not the usual all-over pain that comes from being magically disappeared and reappeared somewhere else. It wasn’t until I attempted to sit up that I realised why I had pains in my wrists, neck and legs. I was hog-tied. I didn’t like waking up in bondage the first time it happened. Now that it seemed to be occurring with regularity, I really, really didn’t like it.

I was in a tent. Not an opulent dwelling that took a dozen servants to hump around and erect, like Cialtie had. No, this was a thin silken thing, designed to be light and small to carry. I rolled over – not easy with my legs tied bent and attached to a cord around my neck. I quickly learned that my binder knew what he was doing. I tried a couple of times to test my bonds but soon realised that every time I struggled, the rope tightened around my neck. So I decided to think rather than squirm.

Through the flap of the tent I saw a campfire. The smoke coming from the fire rose to a screen dome where it disappeared. This was a fire that belonged to someone who didn’t want anyone else to know he or she was here. Outside, the sound of approaching horses had my captors on their feet. I could see the shoes and dark leggings – my captors were Brownies.

I couldn’t quite hear all the conversation but my guard’s diction was as good as his knotsmanship. ‘Yes sir, I found him just lying unconscious in the middle of the field,’ he said but then added a coda to that sentence that sent a chill down my spine. He finished by saying, ‘Your Highness.’

On no, I thought, and began to struggle even if it was going to strangle me. The last time I had seen the Brownie King I had delivered to him the body of his dead son. He promised that the next time he saw me he would kill me. I rolled over and pushed up against the side of the tent almost knocking it over. I heard the footsteps as they entered but the noose around my neck was now so tight I could no longer turn my head. I heard a voice exclaim, ‘You!’ Then I heard the unmistakable sound of a knife being pulled from its sheath. I was wheezing, gasping for breath as the rope cut into my neck but that was the least of my problems. I closed my eyes and waited for the pain of the knife entering my back.

The knife cut through the rope in a spot that released everything. My legs dropped straight and my hands were freed. I immediately worked on loosening the rope around my neck and rolled on my back gasping for breath. My vision was blurry; I had been seconds away from passing out. I was expecting a view of Bwika, the hulking King of the Brownies, but as my vision cleared I was rewarded by the smiling face of his son Codna.

‘Conor?’ he said in a voice that changed an octave in the middle of a word. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Choking,’ I replied.

I tried sitting up as the prince motioned for the guard to leave us alone. Then he closed the tent flap, plopped down next to me and clumsily wrapped his arms around me. ‘I’m so glad to see you,’ he said.

I was a bit surprised by the attack hug but I returned it. ‘Hey Jesse,’ I said, using the nickname I had given him the first time we had met. ‘How you doing?’

Jesse looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening and then whispered, ‘Awful.’

I lowered my tone with him. ‘Is your dad outside?’

He looked confused. ‘No.’

‘Oh, I heard the guard “yes sir”-ing and saying “Your Highness.”’

Jesse looked embarrassed and then smiled, ‘He was talking about me. This is my troop. I’m the captain.’

‘You are?’

‘After I stood up to my father in the throne room,’ Jesse said. ‘Remember? It was over giving you your horse back.’

‘Oh I remember,’ I replied.

‘Well, after that, Dad said I had bivka.’

‘I have no idea what bivka is but you were pretty awesome that day.’

Jesse blushed. I almost expected him to say, ‘Aw shucks.’

‘When I came back with The Turlow’s horse, you know, the one you gave me, everybody assumed I stole it. Dad was so impressed with my transformation, he gave me a small troop to lead. They were the bottom of the barrel but I didn’t know that. I had watched Demne,’ Jesse stopped at the mention of his dead brother and swallowed hard. ‘You know Frank?’

I nodded. Of course I remembered Frank.

‘Well I had watched a lot of his training in the Torkc Guards and I just did the same drills his combat master had put him through. My men loved it. Last month we had war games in the Alderlands and my troop won. Dad promoted me to commander.’

‘Congratulations,’ I said, slapping him on the arm. ‘That’s wonderful.’

Jesse rubbed his arm where I had hit him. ‘No it’s not. I’m just pretending to be a leader. I go watch other commanders and just do what they do. Well, I change it so no one will notice, but I really have no idea what I’m doing. I just put on a gruff voice and make sure nobody sees me …’ He turned and looked away, covering his face.

‘Hey, guy, it’s OK.’

‘But it’s terrifying, Conor. I think any minute everybody is going to figure out that I’m faking it.’

I had to cover my mouth to stop from laughing. ‘Oh Jesse, we’re all faking it. Before the battle at the Hall of Knowledge last winter I figured out that bravery was just pretending not to be scared. You’re not doing anything every other commander hasn’t done. You learn by watching what others do, then you change it to suit you. It sounds to me like you’re pretty good at it.’

‘Really?’ he said, wiping his nose. ‘You’re not just saying that?’

‘If I had a Brownie troop that needed commanding – you would be the guy I would pick.’

‘Wow, really?’ he said, unconsciously sitting up straighter.

I nodded.

‘I’m so glad to see you, Conor. Say, what are you doing out here alone anyway?’

So I told him the whole story about the raid on Yew House on Mount Cas and how my grandmother and Lugh had kidnapped Ruby. Maybe I shouldn’t have. He was technically the enemy, but then I remembered what I had said to him so long ago in the Brownielands. ‘Others can make us enemies but no one can unmake us friends.’ Then I told him how the Hermit of Thunder Bay had puppeteered me into the situation I was in now.

‘You went into battle with Lugh? Weren’t you scared?’

‘I pretended not to be.’

Jesse nodded and smiled like a schoolboy remembering a lesson.

‘So I have to get to Castle Onn – the hermit told me that’s where they are holding Ruby. Do you know where it is?’

‘I’ve never been there,’ Jesse said, ‘but that’s where I’m going.’

Jesse went on to explain that his father had sent him to represent the Brownies at a meeting called by Cialtie. Apparently the new Turlow was going to attend, and there were rumours that Lugh was again abroad in The Land and that he would be there. Cialtie had promised he would reveal a secret weapon or something that would ensure that Duir would soon be liberated.

‘Liberated from its gold you mean,’ I said sarcastically.

Jesse laughed. ‘That’s what my father thinks.’

‘Jesse, do you really think that if you win this war Cialtie will just hand over Castle Duir to the Brownies?’

‘My father does.’

‘Yeah, but do you?’

Jesse thought for a time. It’s never an easy thing for a son to judge his father. Finally he looked up and said, ‘No, I do not.’

‘Can you tell your father that?’

‘I could, but he wouldn’t listen. What should I do, Conor?’

‘Aw, Jesse, I have no idea. He’s not only your father, he’s also your king. You kinda have to do what he says.’

‘Even if he’s wrong?’

I shrugged. A wilful father I had experience with, but a wilful and stupid father – would be awful.

‘The more pressing problem,’ I said, ‘is what are you going to do with me?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I’m your prisoner, aren’t I?’

Jesse thought for a second. ‘I suppose you are,’ he said, then giggled. ‘Maybe I should take your shoes.’

I started laughing too until Jesse shushed me and said, ‘Wait here.’

Jesse’s voice when addressing his scout was so different to the childlike tone he used with me. I couldn’t quite make out what was being said until the scout said, ‘Right away, sir’. Then I heard him gallop off.

Jesse came back into the tent with water and an apple. I drank deeply then devoured the apple.

‘OK,’ Jesse said, ‘I quizzed my scout and he hadn’t recognised you, so I told him you were one of Cialtie’s scouts that had been waylaid. I told him not to mention it to anyone for fear of embarrassing Cialtie. Then I sent everyone back to the main troop.’ He threw clothes at me. ‘Here, quickly, put these on.’

This wasn’t the meek weepy Jesse I knew – this was Captain Prince Codna of the Alderlands. His voice shocked me, so I just did what he said. I was bigger than the average Brownie but luckily Brownie clothes are pretty stretchy. Jesse held out a hooded cloak and I put it on. It was tight but if I didn’t move around too much it was OK. Jesse walked behind me and tied a triangular cloth across my face like a cowboy train robber’s bandana, and then he fixed a translucent piece of black muslin across my eyes. Finally he walked in front of me and lifted the hood over my head.

‘This is the uniform of the Brownies Shadowguard. Castle Onn is a half day’s ride. You can get to the outskirts of the castle if you run fast.’

We didn’t have a lot of time. Our plans were much more hurried than I liked.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I asked. ‘If this plan falls apart then you are going to be in a whole heap of trouble.’

‘I can’t defy my father, but I can’t let Cialtie kidnap a young girl.’

I placed my hand on Jesse’s shoulders. As I looked at him it was like looking into an illusion. I saw the young sweet kid I had always known at the same time as I saw the steely commander. ‘You’re a brave man, Captain Codna.’

‘As long as that’s what people believe.’ He tried to smile but just missed it.

I turned to leave.

‘Oh, and Conor – you can’t wear those shoes.’

I was never a runner before I got to The Land. I always figured that if the creator of the universe wanted human beings to jog he wouldn’t have allowed us to invent the Ferrari. But there was no sports car handy so I was hoofing it as fast as I could, hoping I could get to the place where Jesse and I had agreed to meet before his troop got there. He said he would try to delay them as much as possible but still they were on horseback and I was running. And I wasn’t in my Nikes. If I didn’t know better, I would have accused that Brownie of orchestrating this whole thing just so he could finally get his hands on my sneakers.

So I was trying to keep up a decent speed in these stupid Brownie slippers. They had stretchy sides so the fact that they were too small wasn’t too bad but the leather soles were so thin, I might as well have been barefoot. Every time I stepped on a sharp rock or a pointy twig, I shouted, ‘Slek,’ which is a very rude Brownie curse word that Jesse’s late brother Frank had taught me. I thought it only appropriate. I tried to separate my mind and body the way the Fili had taught me but every time I stubbed my toe, my mind and body came together and my mind told me that I was running too much. This Brownie outfit didn’t help either. I tried to remember if I had ever seen an Olympic marathon runner wearing woollen leggings and came up with nothing. Gosh, I wonder why not?

Through my discomfort, I remembered Dad telling me about the mantra that inspired him to win the boat race against his brother. He told me he kept saying, ‘Rowing beats Cialtie,’ over and over again in his head. I started saying that but then changed my chant to, ‘Running saves Ruby.’

My new yew banta staff was heavy in my hand. I said to myself, I wish this damn stick was lighter – and it was. That broke my concentration and I thought out loud, ‘I wish this stick was heavier.’ Even though I had asked for it I was unprepared for the sudden weight in my right hand. I tipped over at full speed and crashed painfully onto the ground. I sat up and when the cartoon tweeting birds that were flying around my head finally disappeared I said, ‘Cool,’ and then ‘Ow,’ but maybe not in that order. I started back at a jog and as I picked up speed I willed my stick to go light again and thought, I need to look into the stuff this stick can do but not now. Now – running saves Ruby. Running saves Ruby. Running …

My mindless-running-chanting universe was disturbed by a feeling of vulnerability. I looked around and found I was no longer in a forest. Jesse had told me that before you get to Castle Onn there is an expanse of treeless fields that borders the Hollylands. We had agreed to meet at the treeline. I looked behind me and saw that I had run past that. I circled back, hoping no one had seen me, and finally came to rest under a cherry tree. It was too early in the season for fruit and the tree constantly apologised for that, regardless of how many times I told him it was all right. I was sweating from head to toe and desperately wanted to peel off some of these hot clothes just for a second but was afraid that if I did, that would be the moment when Jesse and the Brownies arrived.

With the tree still pestering me if there was anything he could do, I asked if he minded if I climbed. Delighted that he could be of any service the cherry gladly agreed. I picked up my yew staff from the ground. It was regular yew weight again and I mentally asked it to lose its weight. As it grew lighter I flippantly asked the wood to become lighter than air. The stick shot up and out of my fingers then fell to the ground. I stared at it thinking then smiling. I picked it up again and this time held on tight with both hands.

Lighter than air, I said in my head and I instantly shot twenty feet in to the air until I let go screaming. I hit the ground hard and then was hit in the kidneys by my falling stick. After determining that none of my bones was broken I said, ‘Wow,’ and tried again. This time when I spoke to the wood I said, just a little bit lighter than air. The stick rose and I felt the pull on my outstretched arms. A tiny bit lighter, I said as my full weight was slowly pulled off the ground. I found I could regulate this anti-gravity effect. I could only go up and down but I figured if I gave myself enough time I could also get it to hover. But time I didn’t have, so I just used my new-found floating stick to propel me to the top of the cherry tree where under the cover of leaves I stripped off some of the sticky wool and let the breeze cool me down while I scratched.

The cherry tree told me of Jesse’s Brownie troop’s approach. It was something I asked him to do and the tree was delighted he could be of further assistance. Cherries are helpful to the point of annoyance. They are also not very inquisitive. The tree seemed to not notice that I flew into its top branches. I re-donned my damp, smelly Brownie-wear, covered my face and eyes with the Brownie ninja gear and waited until Jesse and his charges were almost below me. I then instructed my staff to go light-ish and jumped.

The effect was just as I had hoped. It looked like a slow motion scene from a bad action movie. I arrived from that dizzying height on my feet and then placed my hands on my hips. Jesse had told me that Shadowguards never speak. Good thing ’cause I almost said, ‘Ta da!’

Jesse’s troop was stunned and impressed. After their initial shock they gave a Brownie salute that I returned. The most shocked of the entire group was Jesse. I could tell he was dying to ask me how I had just jumped out of a four-storey-high tree but finally he just said, ‘Now that my Shadowguard is here, it is time to meet with Cialtie and Lord Lugh.’

FOURTEEN

IVY LODGE

The Ivy Lodge half lived up to its name. It was more of a castle than a lodge, but as for the ivy – it sure had a lot of that. From the outside it looked fine, majestic even, like the main building of some venerable old university. But once you got inside it was terrifyingly apparent that this place was going to come crashing down any second. It seemed that the ivy was the only thing holding it up.

The origins of Ivy Lodge lived in that timeline between history and legend. Apparently Mom and Dad weren’t the first to take a Choosing simultaneously. It had been done before, a long time ago. Supposedly these two lovers from an ancient time had a love so strong they couldn’t be apart from each other – even for an instant. Against all advice they performed the Rite of Choosing hand-in-hand. For their daring and effort they each received a major rune. The woman was given Gort – the man Tinne. They became the King and Queen of Holly and Ivy. Together they built Ivy Lodge in the new Hollylands far to the north. When the castle was completed they held a midwinter celebration that was ill-attended due to distance and bad weather. After that they never held another party, they never left the castle grounds or each other’s side. They received visitors with courtesy but never warmth. They had no children. Then one day, reports came back that the castle was deserted. The holly trees and the ivy, no longer tied to runes, spread across The Land and King Holly and Queen Ivy were never seen again.

The Hollylands we had just passed through were as wild as the inside of the Lodge. It felt cold up here, even though it was approaching high summer. The cool air still didn’t stop a trickle of sweat from sliding down my back, but that had less to do with the temperature than the anticipation of waltzing into a lion’s den.

Inside the Lodge was crawling with Banshees, which removed all doubt, if there was any, that this was Cialtie’s party. I drew some pretty serious stares with my hoodie, bandana-ed face and gauze-covered eyes but I must have been intimidating enough to stop anyone from saying, ‘Who are you supposed to be?’

We were ushered into a small room that contained a couple of chairs and a table with a pitcher of water and a bowl of apples. Cialtie obviously wasn’t maxing out his hospitality budget. Saying that, as soon as Jesse and I were alone I lifted my bandana and wolfed down an apple. Considering where I was, I wondered if this was to be my last meal. I laughed at that thought and then thought some more and realised it wasn’t funny.

‘Are you all right?’ I whispered to Jesse.

Without looking at me he replied, ‘I’m pretending to be fine.’

I smiled under my mask and tried to do the same.

After half an hour we were instructed by our Banshee party-planner that the meeting was about to begin. We were escorted through corridors where periodic cracks in the walls allowed vein-like ivy to push in and attach pale green leaves to the stonework. At the entrance to the main hall, a Banshee honour guard informed us that I could only enter if I unmasked and disarmed.

‘I am Prince Codna, Emissary and son of King Bwika of the Alderlands, this is my Shadowguard. We both enter unmolested or I return to my father now.’

Wow, Jesse really had this faking brave stuff down.

The guard didn’t protest. When we got inside it was obvious from all of the bodyguards present that he had gotten a similar response from everybody. Bad guys, it seems, like their henchmen.

I was very glad of my mask and eye gauze. Even though I was expecting to see my uncle, I’m pretty sure my heart-pounding terror combined with my overwhelming desire to attack him would have shown on my face. He was flanked by two Banshees: one a male archer and the other a sorceress wearing a thin leather belt that held her wand against her hip.

To his left were Grandma and her boyfriend Lugh. In a normal family, a grandson would be delighted to see his grandmother but normal my family was not. I hadn’t expected to see her but I was hoping Ruby would be with them. She had to be nearby – the question was how to find her.

To Cialtie’s right was a group of three Banshees, all dressed up in Banshee finery.

There were no chairs. We took our place standing in an empty space between two pillars.

‘Mother, Father,’ Cialtie said addressing Macha and Lugh, ‘may I introduce Prince Codna of the Brownielands.’

Jesse bowed formally. ‘Lord Lugh, it is an honour to finally see you. I am, as are all of the Brownie clan, at your service.’ He straightened up and then bowed again to my grandmother. ‘Lady Macha, The Land rejoices at the news of your reappearance. I am your humble servant.’

As Jesse instructed me, I only slightly bowed my head. I was supposed to act like I wasn’t there.

Then Cialtie gestured to his right. ‘And may I introduce you to the newly ascended Turlow.’

The new Banshee chief looked small and uncomfortable between his two beefy bodyguards. He bowed and mumbled, ‘My lord and lady.’

‘Our generals have already had several meetings about our upcoming siege of Castle Duir,’ Cialtie said.

Had they? I wanted to turn to Jesse and ask him but remembered I wasn’t supposed to be there.

‘Both Banshees and Brownies have expressed doubts about the success of such an attack, especially after your defeat at the Hall of Knowledge.’

I noticed Cialtie said ‘Your defeat’ like he had nothing to do with it. If I was the new Turlow or Jesse I would have pointed out that attacking the Hazellands was Cialtie’s idea, but these guys were too green to stand up to my uncle.

‘Your hesitations are not without merit, my friends, but worry no longer. As I have promised, we will soon have a new ally, one that will ensure our victory as foretold by Ona.’

Once again I was glad for the mask that covered my face. A new ally? I was expecting a new weapon, maybe, but an ally? Who’s left? I thought for a second that maybe it was the Mertain. They were plenty angry at me and Graysea for stealing the dragon blood but Red was furious with Cialtie and the Banshees, he wouldn’t allow his brother to fall in with this bunch. That only left the Elves. Dad told me it was hopeless trying to enlist the Elves. He said that when a conflict comes, they disappear into the forest. But if Cialtie could coopt them, then potentially that would mean the trees would be on my uncle’s side. At that moment I couldn’t imagine what the trees could do to help but I had been surprised by enough plants in The Land to know that making enemies of a tree is a bad idea.

‘Following the predictions of Ona has proved a folly for you before, Lord Cialtie,’ Jesse said. ‘What makes this time different?’

Wow, that snapped me out of my reverie. I take back what I said about Jesse being too green. Cialtie gave the Brownie prince a look that almost made me duck. If my uncle could shoot daggers from his eyes, then Jesse would have been a pegboard. Bringing up Cialtie’s unsuccessful tenure as Lord of Duir was either stupid or brave. I previously would have said that Jesse was being stupid but his recent behaviour was changing my opinion of the shoe thief.

After an interminable length of time Cialtie bowed his head as if to say, ‘Fair enough,’ and composed himself enough to answer. ‘It is true that Ona’s predictions are often obtuse but tonight you will see for yourself the fruit of our research.’ He turned to the Banshee sorceress and said, ‘Taline, is all prepared?’

‘Yes my lord,’ the witch answered.

‘Then begin.’

Taline let loose a modulating scream that made all of the non-Banshees in the room wince. From the corners of the chamber servants appeared carrying bowls. Five bowls in all were placed on the floor in a cross pattern. After the servants left, Taline walked to the centre of the receptacles. For a split second I thought I saw a woman walking with her but decided it was a trick of the gauze mask I was wearing. She began to speak in a Banshee dialect I did not understand. Periodically I almost caught a word that sounded like something my father had tried to make me learn as a child. She reached into the bowl in front of her and took out a small glob of sap. Then I heard her use the Ogham word, ‘Iodhadh.’ My heart pounded in my chest. She was using Shadowmagic and the sap she was using was yew.

I remembered overhearing my mother and Fand speculating about the kind of raw Shadowmagic power that might be attained using yew sap. They had both smiled at the thought of it then stopped themselves as if talking like that was too frightening a prospect.

The Banshee sorceress fanned her hands over the bowls to her right and left – pale Shadowflames sparked to life. Like Mom’s Shadowflames, these gave off neither heat nor light but unlike Mom’s Shadowmagic, these seemed to suck the light from the room. All around there were candelabras and chandeliers. None of the candles had gone out but it was noticeably darker in there – and colder. Maybe it just seemed colder because of the shiver that was running down my spine as I started to realise what I was witnessing.

When Taline closed her hand around the sap and placed her fist into the Shadowfire and incanted, ‘Duir’ – I was then sure she was doing something I thought only my mother and Fand could do. This was a Shadowcasting.

The Banshee sorceress rolled her head and warbled as if in a trance then opened her hand and dropped a translucent rune onto the floor. Emblazoned on its surface was the major rune of Duir. While continuing to moan and writhe she picked more sap from the bowl and began the long process of creating a shadow of all the major runes in Tir na Nog. ‘Fearn, Saille, Nuin, Tinne, Quert, Muhn, Ur, Nion, Gort, Getal, Straif, Ruis, Ailm, Onn, Eadth, Iodhadh, Beith, Luis’, and finally my mother’s rune – ‘Cull.’

When the formation of the Shadowrunes was complete, the sorceress then placed them in a grid on the floor in front of her and ignited them with Shadowflame. Then began the process of sorting the runes into the proper order for casting. This took longer than when Mom did it. The Banshee didn’t really know what she was doing. She looked like some old biddy wondering where to put the next piece in her jigsaw puzzle. That scared me most of all. It felt like I was watching a monkey spinning dials in a nuclear power plant.

All the while she moaned and rocked. The Shadowfire travelled up her hands and then engulfed both of her arms to the shoulder. She tore off her cloak and threw it into the corner where it continued to burn with a pale blue Shadowfire. I was tempted to go over and stamp it out. I wondered if that would even work.

This was taking a long time. I looked around the room. The Turlow and his guards, who had never seen anything like this before, looked on with a mixture of repulsion and anticipation. Jesse was successfully standing expressionless but I knew he was terrified. Lugh and Grandma held maniacal expressions but maybe that was just the way I will always see them now. Cialtie seemed to be getting impatient and then proved it by shouting, ‘When will you be ready?’

The sorceress held up a finger as if to say, ‘Wait a minute,’ but then her loss of concentration allowed the Shadowfire to rocket up her arms and engulf her whole body. She screamed for just a second as if she was being burned. Shadowfire doesn’t burn but I imagine if I instantly became covered with that stuff that I’d freak out a lot worse than her. She composed herself and using the palms of her hands she pushed the Shadowfire away from her face and let the rest of her body burn. She may not have been a competent Shadowwitch but no one could accuse her of being undramatic.

At the edges of the Shadowflame that surrounded her I began to see bits of a form: a leg, a hand. Just as I had decided that it must be a trick of the light, I saw the translucent face of a woman whisper into the sorceress’s ear. She obviously heard it because she stopped, listened and then changed the pattern of her Shadowcasting runes. The runes were now forming the shape of a star. It was very different from the periodic-table-like pattern my mother used. The ghostlike face continued to appear and instruct the sorceress until finally she rocked her head back and breathed deeply. Then from the bowl of yew sap she took a glob and prepared to make another rune. As she held it over the Shadowfire and incanted, the face that had only appeared at the edges of the fire began to take form. No longer a reflection of the fire, the face grew more substantial. She still was not real, still translucent, but she was no longer a trick of the Shadowlight. A whole woman appeared before us. I had seen visions in Shadowfire before but this wasn’t like that. This was a real rooting-tooting, I’m-about-to-pee-myself ghost.

The ghost, although insubstantial, had some power. She ran her hands over the sorceress and extinguished the Shadowfire on her head and shoulders, until only her hands once again were afire. Then she spoke into the witch’s ear. This time I almost heard something. The Banshee turned to Cialtie and said, ‘Now.’

Lugh and Macha smiled and left. As we waited, the ghost continued to instruct the sorceress. I shot a quick glance to Jesse and then regretted it. His eyes mirrored the wrongness that we were both feeling about whatever was happening in this place but he, unlike me, had no mask to hide it from Cialtie. But the wrongness had just begun.

I heard her before I saw Lugh roughly drag her in to the room. Little Ruby, not the obstreperous and defiant self-confident woman-child I had known but a scared and frightened blind girl who was alone and mistreated far from home. It took all of my will not to run to her. I remembered the last time I had to stand by and watch someone I love being mistreated by Cialtie. That time I had waited too long and Fergal died. This time I swore to myself I would not let that happen again. But what could I do?

My hand reached slowly up to my neck. If I had to I could rush Ruby and activate the twin rothlú amulet that the hermit had placed around my neck. I might make it, but if I did that would leave Jesse with questions he couldn’t answer. Questions that would get him killed. I had to wait and watch.

Lugh pushed Ruby to the centre of the flaming Shadowfire bowls. She had lost her sunglasses. Her hair covered half her face and was knotted and wild. Her visionless eyes darted frantically around the room. I so desperately wanted to shout to her to let her know that I was here and she was not alone.

Lugh drew a dagger from his belt and placed it at Ruby’s throat. I grabbed the rothlú amulet and yanked it. The silver chain broke and clattered loudly to the floor in the pin-dropping quiet chamber. I wondered if I could get to Ruby before Lugh cut. Just when I decided that I had to risk it, Jesse spoke.

‘Are you planning to kill that child?’

At first I didn’t even know it was Jesse, the voice was so forceful.

Macha answered. ‘Ona’s prophecy calls for the blood of the blind child.’

‘What does it say – exactly?’ Jesse almost shouted. ‘Does it demand her death?’

My grandmother was obviously not used to being spoken to like this. She replied with only an indignant glare.

Jesse, bless him, was undaunted. He spoke like the prince that he was. Only he and I knew just how badly he was shaking under his cloak. ‘If the spell calls for blood, take some blood, but I will not stand by and watch an unnecessary murder of the child.’

I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do or not, but I took that to be an order from my prince and stepped forward towards Lugh with my staff held ready to strike. This also got me that bit closer to Ruby if things got really sticky.

During all of this, the ghost impatiently circled around the centre of the room.

‘How dare you reproach me,’ Lugh said and lifted his hand in a gesture that I knew all too well. I braced myself for the inevitable gale that was about to smash me into the next state.

‘Father,’ Cialtie shouted. It was maybe the first time I had ever been glad to hear that voice. ‘The Brownie is right. There is no need to kill the child. She still may be of use to us.’

Lugh still didn’t take the knife away from Ruby’s throat. ‘Once we have the Shadowwitch we won’t need this child.’

‘You are probably right, Father, but why chance it? You of all people should know how swiftly winds can change.’

‘Very well,’ Lugh said and removed the dagger from Ruby’s neck. I relaxed then and stepped back into the room. That’s when Lugh grabbed the girl’s hand and in a flash ran the edge of the blade across Ruby’s palm. Ruby screamed and tried to pull away but Lugh held her wrist firm. Blood dripped from her hand as she stopped squirming and fainted dead away. The Banshee sorceress picked up a bowl and let the blood drip into it. The blood continued to drip as Lugh held Ruby’s pale lifeless body by her hair. I had to get her out of here. The sorceress held up a finger indicating that she had enough blood. One of the servants was called and Lugh handed Ruby over like she was a rag doll left after play.

‘Make sure her wound is dressed,’ a voice said, saying what I would have said if I could. It was the new Turlow. The Banshee servant bowed her head yes. I had assumed this Turlow was just a Cialtie lackey; maybe there was hope for him.

Lugh and Macha backed into their original positions as the ghost sat cross-legged across from the Banshee witch. Who was this ghost? Lugh said something about a Shadowwitch? I was pondering this when the Banshee finally opened her hand and revealed the last rune. It was less substantial than the others and was clearer than the blueish Shadowrunes that were scattered around the floor. It looked like it was made of the same stuff as the ghost. Then, proving that it was, the ghost picked it up. That’s when I came very close to giving myself away. An audible gasp left my bandana-covered mouth. Luckily only Jesse seemed to notice. He gave me a hard disapproving stare. The reason for my surprise was the rune. It was identical to the one my mother made when she undertook the Rite of Choosing using Shadowmagic as opposed to real magic. Mom for the first time ever used tree sap to fuel the changing as opposed to gold. The rune she received for her efforts was transparent and contained a rune that no one had ever seen before. No one knew its meaning and there had never been anything like it – until now.

The ghost held this new Shadowrune on the palms of her hands. Taline pushed all of the remaining runes into a pile underneath the hands and ignited them with Shadowflame. The ghost threw back her head in a silent scream – could the Shadowfire be burning her? Taline then poured Ruby’s blood from the bowl into the cupped hands and onto the rune. Smoke immediately poured up from the hands but then dissipated – there was no scent. Then the changes began in the ghost. First there was red. The major arteries began to form like those see-through pages in a biology book. Then the major organs darkened at the same time as the skeleton. Finally flesh began to appear as the sound of a faraway whine grew into a full-blown scream of agony.

When it was done a naked woman lay still, kneeling with her head in her lap like she was praying. Black hair fell in front of her face. My grandmother stepped forward and took the cloak off her back and laid it over the former ghost’s shoulders. Then she shushed the Banshee sorceress away and knelt across from the prostrate woman. She reached over, pushed back her hair and then placed her hands on each side of the woman’s face and lifted it to hers. I was amazed that the woman’s black eyes were open. My grandmother leaned in and stared directly into the woman’s eyes and said, ‘Welcome back, Maeve.’