by John Lenahan
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.’
Chapter 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 impos
sible 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 do
or. 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?’
Chapter 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.