by Sarah Rayne
‘Do you really mean that my father’s – that you’ve got him locked up somewhere?’ demanded Fael, incredulously. ‘And that unless I do what you want—’ She took a deep breath, and said, ‘What is it you want? Why am I here?’
He half-turned his head. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘No. But whatever it is you want of me I won’t do it.’ And then, as he did not answer, she said, ‘Have you really got Tod?’
‘You tell me. But he didn’t come home tonight, did he? And he vanished quite abruptly from the theatre. Everyone was commenting on it.’
‘How do you know that?’ demanded Fael.
‘How do you think I know it?’
‘You were there?’
‘Oh Fael,’ said Christian, and there was unmistakable affection in his voice. ‘Did you really think I would have stayed away? Of course I was there.’
Fael stared at him. ‘You really have taken him, haven’t you?’ she said, at last. ‘My God, you really have. What did you do – set some kind of trap?’
‘Some kind of.’
‘And he walked straight into it?’ said Fael, furiously. ‘Yes, of course he did!’
The gloved hands lifted from the steering wheel for a moment, in a deprecatory gesture. ‘You know Tod,’ said her companion.
‘Oh yes,’ said Fael. ‘It would be just like him to blunder head-first into a trap. And,’ she added, grimly, ‘to drag me in after him. Where is he now? What have you done with him?’
‘Oh, he’s quite safe. You don’t need to worry about him. He’s not going anywhere,’ said Christian, and incredibly there was a note of amusement in his voice. He glanced at her sideways. ‘You’d much better face the fact that you’re in my power, Fael.’
‘For a brilliant composer you’re dragging out all the old clichés,’ said Fael, caustically.
‘So I am. But you know, you haven’t a hope of getting away from me; no one’s going to challenge me. No one’s even going to question me.’
Fael felt panic rising all over again, because the appalling thing was that he was right. No one was going to question him and certainly no one was going to challenge him, because he carried with him that astonishing aura of authority and power. People in motorway service stations, or on the ferry, would see that his face was covered and that he wore a deep-brimmed hat, and they would think nothing more than that he had been in a bad road smash, or maybe a fire. They might feel a bit embarrassed, in the way people did feel embarrassed when faced with deformity or mutilation, but that would be all. I’ll have to go along with it, thought Fael. And if he really has got my father – Oh, curse Tod!
But the night’s events were starting to take their toll and the nervous energy that had driven her to fight him was draining so that she felt weak and a bit shivery, like the onset of flu. But beneath the physical exhaustion, her mind was still working, not thinking – not daring to think! – of what might be ahead, focusing instead on the enigmatic character of her abductor, on the strangeness, on the continual insistence on anonymity. Did he extend that anonymity to all levels of his life? Fael leaned her head back against the head-rest, her eyes half-closed, considering this. If he did, how did he cope with practical things – shopping and medical things and money? Yes, money – what did he live on? And how did he manage about buying or renting a house or a flat? He can drive, she thought; glancing across at him. In fact he drives very well: the car looked like a Jaguar when he threw me into it, but whatever it is, it’s big and very powerful and he’s handling it with a sort of careless expertise. This was unexpected, but Fael thought that was only because you did not associate anonymous midnight beings with such mundane things as coping with motorway traffic and tax discs, or checking tyre pressures. But there was also an inescapably sexual allure about a man – practically any man – handling a fast car efficiently. Blast him, thought Fael, staring crossly out of the passenger window. Blast him, I don’t want to see any sexual allure in him at all. I need to think of him as evil and cunning so that I can hate him and fight him.
She wondered how he had acquired the car, which did not appear to be a hired one. Had he simply walked into a car showroom and said, ‘I’ll take that one,’ and handed over a wad of cash for the correct amount? Or had he stolen a suitable model from a garage forecourt? There would be an enormous irony in discovering that this enigmatic Svengali was a common or garden car thief, although it was not very likely; petty crime was hardly his line. I suppose he might have paid for it with a bank draft, thought Fael, beginning to feel overwhelmingly tired now, and wondering if she dare give way to sleep. Yes, a bank draft would be anonymous enough. But then if you had enough money not to have to work you could presumably arrange things however you wanted. Money was the answer to most things; it would certainly let you buy a Jaguar . . . Her eyes were growing unbearably heavy, and it was probably safe to give in to sleep for a short while. She would need all her wits about her when they reached Ireland, but even Svengalis could not do anything to their victims while they were hurtling along a motorway at seventy miles an hour. She would probably be all right on the ferry as well. Having assured herself of this, she fell gratefully into soft, smothering sleep.
It was not until they had disembarked at Rosslare that she finally managed to ask precisely where they were heading. And when I know that, then I’ll ask again what he’s going to do with me – or should it be going to do to me?
They stopped at a small, nearly deserted restaurant, and Fael ate what was either a very late lunch or a very early supper. Her companion ate and drank nothing, simply sitting at the table with her, his back to the room, his eyes behind the mask unreadable Fael remembered how he had steadfastly refused all her offers of coffee or wine when they had been together. Because it meant removing the mask, you fool, said her mind. Then when does he eat and drink? Presumably when he is completely alone.
When they took to the road again the drowned evening light was stealing over the countryside, and the masked figure took on the remembered air of dark romance once more. Fael shivered. This was the persona to be wary of; this was the creature who could exert that silvery magnetism. But if ever there was a moment to find out what was ahead, this was it, and so she dredged up her courage and said, ‘Exactly where are you taking me?’
‘To the Moher cliffs on the west coast,’ said Christian, and now Fael heard the definite Irish lilt in his voice. A little like Flynn’s voice. Oh God, why didn’t I ask Flynn into the house that night?
‘We’re going to a very remote part of Ireland, Fael,’ said her companion, and this time there was no doubt about the difference in his voice. Because something within him was waking and responding to his surroundings? And whatever this place – Moher – was, it clearly held some deep significance for him.
‘It’s a strange place,’ said Christian, and Fael had the feeling that he was barely aware of her presence now. ‘It’s a place where the villagers and the crofters still double-lock their doors at Samhain and Beltane. And where people whisper fearfully about hearing strange, haunting music when the Purple Hour falls on the land.’
‘The Purple Hour?’
‘They use the old terms in Moher,’ said Christian. ‘The Purple Hour is what you call twilight.’ He sent her another of the sidelong looks.
And now I really could almost believe that he’s some kind of masquerade knight, thought Fael. Galloping off into the sunset with me flung across the saddle, unravelling dark tales of myths and legends as we go . . . Scheherezade’s masculine counterpart . . . Don’t be ridiculous, Fael, he’s a cold, selfish monster, he’s probably doing it deliberately and getting a tremendous kick out of it!
‘They believe the old stories out here, as well, Fael,’ said the soft voice, and Fael caught the purring note, and frowned, because he was doing it again, he was deliberately setting the spell working again. It was important to close her ears to the seductive beckoning in his voice, and to set a guard over her senses. It was important to remember that
he had forcibly brought her here – he had tied her up and gagged her, for heaven’s sake! – and he had trapped her father as well, and was using him as a hostage.
Christian said, ‘The people of Moher believe that there are times when evil prowls the world – real evil, not the watered-down substance of the Christian church.’
‘Catholic Ireland?’ said Fael, forcing her voice to sound hard and even a bit jeering.
‘Oh, you’d still find traces of paganism in Ireland if you scratched the surface in some parts,’ said Christian. ‘And the community where we’re going is a very old one indeed; some even say the people are the direct descendants of one of the lost tribes of Ireland.’ He sent her a quick glance. ‘The Cruithin,’ he said. ‘The little, dark, elfin people who ruled Ireland long before the Gaels or the Celts came. They once walked these cliffs, Fael, and they spoke the untainted speech of Ireland’s golden age. The druids would have been here as well then, and the Pretani and Qretani who traded with the East and were called the people of the misty blue and green northern isle.’ He looked across at her again. ‘How do you know I’m not one of those lost races, Fael; how do you know I’m not something not quite human?’ His voice was a low, menacing purr.
Fael shivered, and then said, ‘I can cope with lost races, but if you start on leprechauns and will o’ the wisps, I warn you I shall be sick.’ Her voice held the right note of sarcasm.
‘No, I won’t do that.’ She heard the smile in his voice and felt the dark menace recede a little. ‘But out here they believe that there are nights when the chill, inhuman beings, who once lived beneath the ocean, wake and creep onto the land, scouring the barren hills for human prey and human souls.’ He paused, and then said, half to himself, ‘And human babies to steal away . . .’
Fael stared at him, and then said, ‘Changelings.’
‘Yes.’
There was silence. Fael had the sudden disquieting feeling that she was being drawn deeper and deeper into a dark unknown world; a macabre realm that existed invisibly alongside the real world, and that was inhabited by fearsome half-beings and soaked in old, old magic, and where hobgoblin creatures and eldritch spirits might prowl.
And where hungering, soulless beings patrol the desolate shores, setting snares to catch human souls, and stealing away human babies . . .? She pushed the clustering images away sharply, because surely it was only in fiction – and a very particular kind of fiction at that – where those things happened?
At last she said, ‘Why are you taking me to this place? Moher?’
‘I’m taking you to my house, Fael. To the house that has been in my family for many generations, and that my father renamed in the hope that it would bring some happiness into his changeling child’s life. I’m taking you to Maise.’
Fael stared at him, and thought: But he still hasn’t answered my question.
When twilight stole over the cliffs, and the great oceans that lashed the shores turned black, and when the calendar showed certain significant dates in the year, the farmers and the crofters of the Moher cliffs did indeed double-lock their doors and huddle by their own firesides.
They kept to the old ways in Moher, and they believed the old beliefs. They believed that Samhain – what the English called Hallowe’en – was a time when the ancient music might be heard: when cold, beckoning cadences might drift eerily through the darkness, and a strange masked figure be glimpsed prowling the night.
He had not been seen for two or three years now, but one day he would return; there would come sightings, perhaps by a couple of bold girls giggling their way back from Flaherty’s Bar, or perhaps by Seamus O’Sullivan returning home the worse for drink, like he did most nights, the shame of it.
When he was there, there was a tendency for people to gather together; to assemble in Flaherty’s Bar, or Seamus O’Sullivan’s big, comfortable farmhouse where Sinead would bank up the fire and Seamus would hand round the drinks. Their ancestors had done exactly the same, and the only difference was that in those days the drink had come from the poteen jar, and now it came from a bottle, distilled in Galway or Cork. Most of them drank whiskey, except the women, who liked a glass of wine, and Father Mack, who enjoyed a nip of gin outside of Lent, and providing the bishop was not visiting.
The trouble was that the older people of the community had known a time when the house on top of the cliff had not been called Maise, but something darker, something that meant demon. Mera, it had been known as, said the people of Moher, flinching from the word. Because although you might alter the name a thousand times over, you would never alter the legend. Mera was sometimes pronounced and spelt mara, and it had long since found its way into the English word nightmare. But in Moher people had long memories, and they knew that mera had been one of the names for the sea-demons of Moher, the malicious and evilly beautiful leanan-sidhe.
Everyone in Moher knew the legend of the leanan-sidhe. It had been against them that their ancestors had double-locked their doors and barred their windows, for all of the old stories told how the leanan-sidhe had the way of creeping up onto the land, and snatching away human children and leaving their own warped, wizened offspring in their places. They did not really believe that any longer, they said, half-defiant, half-shamefaced. No one believed in such things these days. Sinead O’Sullivan’s grandmother had a tale about how a poor, dumb thing had been born in Moher back in the eighteen-nineties, and how it had been burned to death by officious neighbours who had believed it a leanan-sidhe creature, and had put it on a red-hot shovel in the expectation of it flying up the chimney. Sinead’s brother, Liam, told how you could still hear it shrieking in agony on the anniversary of its terrible death, and Seamus said wasn’t that very true, and it the most heart-rending sound you ever heard. No one actually believed any of this, because Liam would tell a good tale if it would inveigle a girl into bed with him, and Seamus would go along with anything he was told after he had taken a few drinks at Flaherty’s Bar.
It was all superstition, of course. But still, it did not hurt to be a bit watchful, especially at Samhain and Beltane. It did not hurt to take the long road home on those nights and so avoid Maise and the famous stone, with the sinister eyehole at its tip. Seamus O’Sullivan insisted that it was a Self-Bored Stone, and if you climbed up to the very top and looked through the eyelet at dawn – or maybe it had to be midnight, no one was quite sure on that point – you would glimpse dark underworlds you had never dreamed existed. They ought to publicise it as an attraction to rival the stone at Blarney, said Seamus firmly, and then the tourists would come and they would all make a lot of money. He had been saying this ever since anyone could remember, and it was a safe bet that he would never get around to doing anything about it.
It was towards the end of a damp, chill November that the message came from London – a phone call to Flaherty’s, it was – that Maise was to be cleaned and aired; provisions were to be delivered to the house and left in the scullery, and the fridge was to be switched on and left running. Beds were to be made up and fires laid in the main rooms. Flaherty’s daughter did this faithfully, making sure to take along a friend, because Maise was the scariest old house for a person to enter alone.
Partway into the bleakest December any of them had ever known Father Mack saw and then Seamus saw, and then everybody saw, lights burning in Maise’s windows.
He had come back.
Chapter Eighteen
Fael’s first sight of Maise set her heart racing with a mixture of fear and awe.
They had rounded a curve in the narrow cliff road, and the car was climbing a steep incline. Scathach – the name seemed to fit him even more strongly than ever out here – was leaning forward over the wheel, concentrating on negotiating the treacherously winding road. On their left huge black crags rose upwards, blotting out what was left of the failing daylight. Fael, leaning forward, made out one in particular: a thin, towering crag like a monolith, easily thirty feet high, tapering towards the top, but with a
round aperture at the pinnacle.
Christian glanced at her, and as if sensing her curiosity, said, ‘That’s what the local people will tell you is a Self-Bored Stone.’
‘What on earth is a Self-Bored Stone?’ The rearing black mass with the single circular hole was somehow menacing, like a one-eyed giant straddling the cliffs and staring down at the little scattering of houses at his feet.
‘It’s a stone believed to possess magical powers,’ said her companion. ‘The hole is bored through by some natural process – constant dripping of water or weather. You have to climb to the tip at dawn or midnight on certain nights in the year, and look through the aperture.’
‘You’d need nailed boots and mountaineering equipment,’ said Fael. ‘It’s over thirty feet high.’ She stared up at the stone. ‘If you got to the top and looked through the hole, what would you see?’
‘Other worlds. One legend tells that you would be able to read the ancient chronicles listing the names of creatures bound by the sidh’s dark enchantments.’
For some reason this struck a familiar note. But so many folk tales and legends had a common root; Fael thought there was probably an English version of the story. She glanced uneasily up at the rearing mass, and then the car rounded another of the sharp bends, and the stone dropped from view behind the crags. On their right the ground fell away in a terrifyingly sheer drop, and the bottom was the ocean. It lashed wildly against the rocks at the foot of the cliffs, throwing up pale spumy spray that seemed to rise and shroud the road in soft, clinging whiteness.
And then the house was there, looming up out of the mist, a stark silhouette against the darkening sky. Fael stared at it and felt ice close about her heart. There was surely never a more desolate, forbidding place anywhere in the world. And that’s where he’s taking me, she thought. He’s going to carry me inside and shut me away and I still haven’t found out what he intends. And once in there, I could scream until my lungs burst and no one would hear me.