Highland Tales Series Box Set

by Rory B. Byrne

  “It will be done, My Queen.”

  Morrigan stepped through the webbed curtain. She saw the man, scrawny, scared, and well out of his depth. He had accompaniment. The baobhan sìth stood very close to the human male. He had wounds and a wild look on his pasty face.

  Morrigan had encountered her share of Highlanders in the Elphame. Clansmen were hardened warriors and respectful of Nicneven. This man wasn’t a warrior or a Highlander. He reminded Morrigan of a teacher in school who tried to put his hand up her skirt once. The memory made it easier for her to do whatever it took to get the man’s information.

  “What is your name?” Morrigan asked.

  She looked at the boney souled vampire. The creature fed off the human’s life force. Most of his ability to function or think diminished when the baobhan sìth sapped his strength. It was in the kiss, and by the look of the man, he got a lot of kisses from the baobhan sìth.

  “You—you’re human,” he said. His voice sounded withdrawn, exhausted.

  “Step away,” Morrigan said to the baobhan sìth. The creature bristled. It wore the guise of a human female, including a black cardigan sweater and skin-tight nylon pants. Morrigan thought the current fashions on earth were favorable to women’s physiques since that was the trend since she left.

  “He is mine,” it said. It sounded human. Morrigan saw how the man held the soul eater’s spindly hand.

  “He belongs to Nicneven,” Morrigan warned. “Give him space, or I will remove you from Elphame.” It took only a low comment and a slight movement of her hand, but the baobhan sìth retreated from the man’s side and released his grip.

  Without the tactile contact, he began to come more into his senses.

  “Name,” Morrigan asked again. Less than five minutes in the company of humans again and already, he annoyed her.

  “I’m Simon. Simon Hinton.” He looked over his shoulder at the soul eater loitering in the corner. “Karen, what’s going on? Where are we?”

  “You are in the presence of me, for now. And I will ask the questions, Simon Hinton.” Morrigan understood why Nicneven asked her to speak to the man. It wasn’t because she shared human blood with him. It had to do with the position within the court. Morrigan was the queen’s surrogate daughter. But she wasn’t anyone else’s favorite. She wielded more power than most of the marquees, marchionesses, or viscounts and viscountesses. It took a lot of people to run an entire kingdom. In Morrigan’s ideal world, it was her and the queen and no one else. She had to play politics more than she wanted.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “I work for Brian MacIomhair at Equinox Technologies. I am a historian and philologist. I study the history of languages and liter—”

  “I know what a philologist is,” Morrigan said. “What are you doing here?”

  “It was Brian. He learned about the fairy mound. He spent the last ten years looking for a way into Elphame.”

  “You know of this place?”

  Simon looked at Morrigan with something of amazement and humility. “I spent my life trying to prove this place exists. How big is it? Where are all the fairies, I—”

  Morrigan lifted her right hand. “Agh, man, are you daft. I will ask the questions. You answer me.”

  It was an ordinary hand, just like her left hand. The baobhan sìth feared her. It knew what Morrigan was to the queen. Anyone who knew of the Black Hand feared Morrigan.

  “You are not alone?”

  “No, I think there are fifteen, maybe twenty well-trained and heavily armed men. They have ATVs and automatic weapons.”

  “ATV?”

  “It’s a—”

  The hand went up again. The baobhan sìth shifted against the wall. Morrigan looked at the soul eater. “You were in Scotland?”

  “Yes,” it said. The voice sounded feminine.

  “You were there for a long time?”

  “Yes, more than four hundred years.”

  “Did you pass through that fairy mound in Eskdale or a different one?”

  “Another mound to the southeast,” she said. “It was one the pech did not fully cover.”

  Morrigan nodded. She knew of the pech. They were loyalists who sacrificed their lives to live in a world of humans for eternity only to protect the gateways between the worlds. Morrigan knew the pech had a kinship to humans and had some intrinsic obligation to protect the borders between the worlds, though Morrigan felt the pech cared more for humans than Nicneven and Elphame.

  “Are you with this man?” she asked.

  The soul eater nodded. “I serve Nicneven. I come to seek her forgiveness for venturing into the world of men. I am unworthy of—”

  Morrigan lifted her hand. “Can you and him both just shut up and answer my questions. It will hurt much less if you just cooperate.” She turned back to Simon. The man gazed at Morrigan as if trying to peel away her façade and stare into her soul. “What?”

  “You’re human,” he said.

  “Aye, so what?”

  “You’re here in Elphame.”

  “You seem to know a little about this place.”

  “I do, yes, as I said, I—” He stopped and swallowed. “Sorry.”

  “These men, why are they here?”

  “Their leader, his name is Cole Fraser.”

  “I thought you said it was Brian MacIomhair.”

  Simon shook his head. “Brian didn’t make it through the gate before it closed. Cole and his men are mercenaries. They don’t know the meaning of subtly. They will kill anyone and everyone who gets close to them.”

  Morrigan stared at Simon with curiosity. She expected resistance. Morrigan kind of looked forward to torturing the guy. Instead, she got a coward and an open book, and someone who wasn’t dedicated to humans. Morrigan understood that place.

  “How did they open the gate?”

  “It was the Weatherspoons. I worked out that it was in their blood. I knew if they bled on the—”

  “You killed a Weatherspoon?”

  “No it wasn’t me, I swear. I only worked it out. I knew Brian and Cole intended to kill Beth and Rory. I think they’d probably kill Amy, too, but I knew when Phoebe and then Harper came through that—”

  “Oh my God, shut up! Just shut your mouth. You talk too fast, you sound like a fool. I don’t care about all that. We’ll get to the rest when I am ready. Tell me about why you shed the blood of Weatherspoons.”

  “Um, it’s the blood, the genetics, right?”

  “No, you idiot,” Morrigan said. “How can you have a trade route where you’re sacrificing people to open the gate? You moron.”

  “It wasn’t anyone who killed Beth Weatherspoon. It was the creature, the monster we had—”

  Morrigan lifted her hand. She looked from Brian to Karen. “What creature?”

  The baobhan sìth bowed her head. She spoke while looking at the floor. “It was a captive Cù-Sìth. It must have passed through the gate at some point, and those men caught it.”

  Morrigan’s eyebrows rose. “They captured a Cù-Sìth?”

  “It killed and wounded several men in the process. We had a former big-game hunter who looked after it in the pens, but—”

  “You clearly don’t understand this entire business, do you? I ask questions. I want short and precise answers. I want to know what the Cù-Sìth and a dead Weatherspoon have to do with you and those other men coming through the gate.”

  “The Cù-Sìth grabbed Beth Weatherspoon,” Simon said. “It carried her to the fairy mound. It was her blood on the stones that opened the portal.”

  “You really are an idiot. How did the Cù-Sìth get the Weatherspoon?”

  Simon didn’t answer. It was in his inability to speak that told Morrigan what she wanted to know. She looked from him to the baobhan sìth named Karen.

  “You
did this,” she hissed.

  Karen tried pressing deeper into the corner. The baobhan sìth understood Morrigan’s power. Even four hundred years in the world of men and it knew to fear the Black Hand of the Queen.

  “She will not forgive this,” Morrigan said. She moved passed Simon. He spun to see Morrigan reach for the soul eater. It cowered at her presence.

  “Forgive me,” it whimpered.

  “Unforgiveable,” Morrigan said and pressed her hands on the creature.

  Its wailing screeches echoed through the entire underground fortress. The baobhan sìth instantly withered under Morrigan’s touch. The creature turned to black ash, and its own weight made it crumple into a pile of blackened cinders on the floor.

  Morrigan turned to see Simon push by her. He shouldered her out of the way and dropped to his knees. His hands crawled at the pitch. He turned back to Morrigan with rage and tears.

  “You killed her,” he croaked.

  “Aye. And you will share her fate.”

  It didn’t take long for Simon to understand that he kneeled in the presence of a goddess of Elphame. The redheaded beauty with the emerald eyes and the touch of death was exactly what he probably expected to encounter. Morrigan didn’t want to disappoint him without a show of force.

  A growl erupted from Simon. As he stood, he spun to his right. It was the strange-looking right arm that connected with Morrigan. Simon anticipated knocking her off balance, retaliation for killing his pet. Instead, Morrigan had had years of counter-combat and knew when not to turn her back on a man.

  She caught the metal and plastic arm. Because of her strength and status as the queen’s hand, it was Simon who went off balance. His upper body jolted like he had struck a wall with his arm.

  Morrigan squeezed the limb. It surprised her when Simon didn’t cry out in pain. It surprised Morrigan more that when she turned her hand and yanked, the right arm came off at the shoulder. She looked at the appendage with some interest.

  “Cool prop. Is this something anyone can get or just you?”

  “I lost my arm some weeks ago.” Simon slipped back, stepping through the pile of ash on the floor that was the remains of his Karen. He attempted to step out of the collection, only spreading it more.

  “How did that happen?”

  “It was another Weatherspoon,” he said. He’d lost his fight when Morrigan killed the soul eater and took his arm. She knew if he came at her again, she’d beat him to death with his robotic limb.

  “You killed another Weatherspoon?”

  “No—no, I swear. It was a girl. She came to Scotland from America. She came looking for her mother. Her name is Harper Biel.” Simon shook his head. “I witnessed Harper’s mother pass through the portal eight years ago. Her name was Phoebe Biel. At the time, I didn’t know she was a Weatherspoon. Biel was her married name. It was when Harper went through the gate that I lost my arm somehow in the opening.”

  Morrigan nodded. “I heard that sometimes happened when the doorways were unstable. Tell me what happened to Harper. Was she alive when she came through?”

  “Yes.”

  “And her mother, Phoebe, was she alive, too?”

  “I believe so, yes. Look, I am sorry about Beth Weatherspoon. She had a son, Rory. Brian and Cole kidnapped them to use them for opening the gateway. I knew it was the Weatherspoons that were the key, but I didn’t understand how they connected to Elphame.”

  “That isn’t important.” Morrigan had to make a decision. She had to decide if keeping Simon Hinton alive or doing away with him in the same fashion as his soul eater was the best course. “What happened to the son, Rory Weatherspoon?”

  “He’s here in Elphame. He escaped with the help of a police officer. Inspector Alice Lemont,” Simon said.

  “Lemont?”

  “Yes. They passed through the gate with the help of a beautiful, nearly naked young woman. I never saw such feats of strength.”

  Morrigan nodded. “That was a pech. They were guardians of the gates. They were supposed to protect the—” Morrigan stopped because Simon was a man and was inconsequential. “What happened to the pech?”

  “I think they shot her. I think she died protecting the portal. She managed to close the gate by pushing Beth Weatherspoon’s body into Elphame.”

  “So, Lemont and Rory are here, too?”

  “Yes.”

  Morrigan looked at the sophisticated artificial limb in her grip.

  “Can I have my arm back?”

  Morrigan smiled at Simon. She saw his face turn to horror when the arm turned to ash and fell away from her grip. “No, you can’t have your arm back. You lost it, remember? When you let Harper Weatherspoon come into Elphame.”

  Morrigan wiped her hands together and turned to leave the room. As she reached the curtains, Simon asked, “Wait, what do I do now?”

  “You can try to escape, and something will kill you. Or you can stay here, and something will kill you. Or you can just shut up, and I’ll send something in here to kill you.” Morrigan went through the webbing.

  “So, right, I’ll uh, I’ll just wait here then.” Simon’s words made Morrigan smile as she strolled away from the room.

  It took some time before she found Nicneven again. The queen had a counsel with the rest of her emissaries from Elphame. They departed the throne room when they saw the Black Hand arrive. Morrigan sat on the stoop before the throne. She ran her hand over the snout of the sleeping beast next to the queen. Morrigan knew it liked when she scratched behind its ears.

  “What did you learn?”

  Morrigan sighed. She had a lot to say to the queen. But Morrigan didn’t know exactly where to start with the critical points.

  “I believe the men who breached the gateway are extremely dangerous. Simon Hinton had an artificial arm that I never saw in my time on earth. I think his warning about these men is something we need to consider.”

  “How many men?” Nicneven asked.

  “Let’s say, twenty men.”

  “That is no matter, I have faced legions of Roman centurions,” Nicneven said.

  Morrigan put her hand on Nicneven’s knuckles. She liked the feel of the woman’s velvety cool flesh. “My Queen, these men are dangerous to you and everyone in Elphame. They have guns. You fought men with swords and arrows. These men can kill us several meters away. If they have a vast arsenal, you can throw thousands of Coin-Sìth at them, and they might survive.”

  “That is not possible.”

  “They had a Cù-Sìth in their dungeons in Eskdale. They understand the creature’s anatomy. They might know how to kill them. They might have hundreds of guns and thousands of bullets. They might have more than just weapons, too.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  The queen rarely asked for anyone’s suggestions, only those who she trusted. Morrigan wasn’t experienced in warfare. Mostly people and things turned to ash when she touched them. She couldn’t kill the likes of twenty mercenaries when she couldn’t get close enough to contact them.

  “Did you kill the man?”

  “No, My Queen,” she said. “I dispatched the baobhan sìth. Her name was Karen.” Morrigan added the name like it mattered, but it didn’t. “She had the Cù-Sìth kill a Weatherspoon to return to Elphame.”

  The queen slammed her fist on the obsidian armrest of the throne, and the amethysts throughout the whole of Elphame flared. In the throne room, some of the crystals shattered. Glass tinkled on the marble floors from the crystals that burst overhead.

  “There are other Weatherspoons in Elphame.”

  “Are there? How many?”

  “Three, as near as I can guess,” Morrigan said. “A pech died protecting the gateway.”

  The queen needed time to lament the dead, but Morrigan knew they had to consider what to do next.

  “We must
find the Weatherspoons before one of them finds the dagger.”

  It was a trusted secret Nicneven told Morrigan of the time the Quintus Petillius Cerialis, the leader of the Roman Ninth Legion, once drew the queen’s blood with a surprise attack on her. The people of Elphame knew the legend. While the queen lived a very long time, only Morrigan knew she had vulnerabilities. The dirk that touched the queen took on the magic of Elphame. No one ever found the dagger. No one knew of its power. Morrigan felt Nicneven’s worry about a forgotten and ancient blade was excessive. Nicneven told Morrigan some secrets, but not everything.

  “I don’t think you have to worry about a Weatherspoon getting a hold of the dirk. It’s lost to time.”

  “Please, young one. It is not nice to patronize me.”

  “I’m sorry, My Queen. I just want what’s best for you and Elphame.”

  “Let us locate the Weatherspoons. I do not want them harmed. Anyone who aides the Weatherspoons must be brought to me as well. I need to know where they hold their alliances.”

  “I thought we should purge the lands of humans,” Morrigan said. “You allow the clans to continue to thrive here.”

  “I have my minions watching over the clansmen. I’d know if they are a threat to us. Do not be so quick to snuff out a life. They are your kin, too.”

  “I would give up my life, Mother, if it meant to save yours,” Morrigan said.

  “I know, my child. Let us not hope for anything so drastic.”

  “I will send scouts to watch the new army. If I believe we can destroy them, I will do it.”

  Morrigan stood from the dais. She left the queen and the sleeping creature. Nicneven had to rest and ready herself. If she intended to attack Scotland, Morrigan wanted in on the action. She wanted to get some payback for all the torment she faced growing up on earth. The strength of Elphame flowed through her, and its supremacy grew with each cast of the Black Hand.