Shadowmagic - Sons of Macha

by John Lenahan

  I relaxed. ‘That is very good to hear. So why the long face?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, looking down at her hands, ‘you know I am very fond of you?’

  Wait a minute, I thought, that’s what I was going to say.

  ‘You know I’m very fond of you,’ she repeated, ‘but I think that maybe we …’

  ‘Hold on – are you breaking up with me?’

  Graysea’s angelic face started to crumble into tears. ‘Oh, my poor sweet Conor. I don’t know what to say. I just don’t think it’s fair of me to lead you on any more.’

  ‘You are. You’re breaking up with me. Why?’ I said indignantly. I know it makes no sense. I should have been relieved. Hell, I had gone in there to break up with her but the male ego isn’t a logical thing. ‘Is there someone else?’

  She once again concentrated on her hands and then nodded yes without looking up.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I didn’t mean for anything to happen.’

  ‘Who?’

  She lifted her gaze and pointed over my shoulder. I turned to see Araf duck back behind the doorframe like a naughty schoolboy.

  ‘Araf! You’re dumping me for Araf?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Conor. I healed a small cut he had and then we started talking. It’s just I need someone who talks to me.’

  ‘And he does?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Conor.’

  I looked back and the Imp was once again peeping around the corner. ‘Araf,’ I shouted and he ducked back around again. ‘You come back here,’ I said as I stormed towards the door.

  ‘Don’t hurt him,’ Graysea called from her bed.

  When I got to the doorway Araf was already halfway down the hall speeding like he was in an Olympic walking race. The sight of Araf, the toughest guy I know, running away from me, added to Graysea saying, ‘Don’t hurt him’, made me smile and that smile popped the stupid male ego bubble that was growing in my head. I ran after Araf and as I did I started laughing. He looked behind and started running. As I have mentioned before, for a big guy Araf can move awfully fast. I finally had to call to some guards to stop him, ‘In the name of the prince.’

  ‘Honest to the gods, Conor,’ Araf said, panting, ‘nothing has happened.’

  I forced a stern countenance onto my face; it wasn’t easy.

  ‘We just started talking and then we talked some more. But nothing has happened. I haven’t even kissed her.’

  I just stared. It was fun watching Araf ramble.

  ‘I’ll leave Duir immediately.’

  I had to grit my teeth to stop from cracking up. ‘You haven’t kissed her?’ I asked.

  ‘No … Your Highness.’

  When he said that, I had to turn away. I’m pretty sure he thought I did it ’cause I was mad. When I composed myself I turned back and said, ‘I think it’s about time you did.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Araf looked very confused. ‘About time I did what?’

  ‘Kiss her, you idiot.’ I placed my hands on his broad shoulders as a Fergal-like ear to ear smile erupted on my face. ‘You are two of my favouritest people in all of The Land. I couldn’t be happier. I’m delighted for you both.’

  He tried to say something but nothing came out.

  ‘Now that’s the Araf I know and love.’

  He hugged me, almost breaking my back, and then ran off to the infirmary for that first kiss. With a sigh I remembered my first mermaid kiss – it’s worth running for.

  Speaking of kisses, now that she didn’t want to kill me, I thought it might be a good moment to spend a little time with Essa but Mom and Nieve had her working late. I had a meal with the Connemara Druids but didn’t have the strength to hang out with them. They were so enthusiastic. The older ones were getting that immortality buzz where they kept saying how they hadn’t felt this good in ages and all the rest were going on and on about how good the apples were. I know I was just like them but I was really tired after all the almost dying stuff, so I snuck away to my room.

  My head told me it was too early to go to bed but my body vetoed that thought as soon as I hit the mattress. It wasn’t until I was horizontal that I realised just how stressful a couple of days I had had. I closed my eyes for a long peaceful sleep. But as so often happens in The Land – dreamland was not restful.

  The entire night was a swordfight. I watched the Lawnmower face a thinner blade but the whole time I couldn’t see who was fighting. It was just sword vs. sword. Even though there didn’t seem to be anyone holding the blades the intensity was just the same as if it was a life and death battle. I squinted, trying to see who the fighters were. It wasn’t until the earthquake hit that the fighters came in to focus and I saw where I was. The earthquake struck again and I opened my eyes.

  The source of my dreamquake was Mom. She was shaking me with a voice and a facial expression that shot me instantly awake.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mom?’ I asked but I didn’t have to. My dream had told me all I needed to know.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she said.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The Twins of Macha

  The sunrise was beautiful from dragon-back but I hardly noticed. All I could think about was Dad. It was madness that he had gone off to fight Cialtie by himself. He had apparently slipped out not long after the non-battle. He wrote a note and gave it to a guard instructing him not to give it to Mom until morning. The note said what he intended to do, duel his brother, but it didn’t say where. I knew. My dream filled in that missing piece.

  This had to be a trap. What possessed Dad to just walk into a fight with his brother, I couldn’t imagine. Cialtie couldn’t be trusted – Dad of all people knows that.

  My flight wasn’t a long one but my mind was spinning back in time to cold winter mornings when I was a kid and Dad would make me cinnamon toast and hot chocolate. I remembered him biting into his toast, smiling and saying, ‘They didn’t have cinnamon when I was a boy.’ I promised myself that when I went back to the Real World to get Ruby I would get Dad some cinnamon.

  I frowned, remembering my behaviour as he forced me to learn dead languages. I felt goose bumps as I remembered him lifting the Sword of Duir high over the walls of Castle Duir. I started remembering the things he had said to me but I didn’t recall them all. For instance, I didn’t recollect him saying, ‘Don’t fly Dragon Tuan over Cialtie or his army, I’m sure by now he has come up with some sort of anti-dragon weapon.’ As usual Dad was right.

  I don’t know what hit us but Tuan folded his wings, dropped his head and went into a kamikaze nose dive. I kicked and shouted at him but he was out cold. I wrapped the reins around my yew staff and tried to slow the monster’s fall. I could hear my yew staff threatening to crack but it was working. I was actually slowing our descent – still the ground was coming at us faster than I would have liked. Finally it was the reins that couldn’t take the strain. They snapped and my stick kicked up and slammed into my chin. That is all I remember.

  ‘You are awake, oh my, I was worried about you.’

  I hadn’t opened my eyes but the person who was talking to me didn’t need to see me to know my brain was working again. Mother Oak? I thought.

  ‘You have been in a fall, young Conor. I was worried you would never wake up.’

  I tried to move and found that I couldn’t. My first thought was that I had hurt my spine but as I opened my eyes I saw that I was tied to a tree – to Mother Oak. I was sitting on the ground with my back to her trunk. A rope, entwined with fine gold wire, went across my chest and under my armpits. It made it hard to breathe. I reached up to see if I could push the rope down and maybe shimmy out but pain shot through my body when I tried to move my left arm. Little white dots swam in front of my vision as I almost blacked out. My left arm was definitely broken and I think my left leg too. I tried to push down on the rope with my right hand but the rope seemed to know I was trying to escape and tightened until I couldn’t breathe. I gave up and the rope actually cut me a little slack
.

  Can you get me out of this? I thought to Mother Oak.

  ‘Oh my poor sweet prince, if only I could.’

  My uncle tied me here didn’t he?

  ‘Yes,’ came the tree’s answer in my brain and I could feel the contempt she had for Cialtie. It was the first time I had ever felt anything but sweetness from the family tree.

  Do you know where Tuan is?

  ‘The Pooka is on the other side of the glen where you crashed. I do not know his health but he is breathing.’

  That’s good. Is my father here?

  ‘No, should Oisin be here?’

  He came to fight Cialtie.

  ‘Oh my, my, this is such an awful thing. The sons of Macha fighting.’ Then Mother Oak did what I can only describe as the tree equivalent of a sigh. ‘But dear me, I would not be completely honest if I said I am surprised.’

  I tried to reach to my sock for my throwing knife but that was gone.

  ‘Your uncle took your knife, young one. He leaned you against my trunk and then simply threw the rope that holds you. It seemed to tie itself. I think it is Brownie-made.’

  Did you speak to him?

  ‘No, he knows better than to talk to me. I’d give him a piece of my mind, I would.’

  Despite my pain and my dire situation, I had to smile at the old tree’s feistiness.

  ‘He is here,’ Mother Oak almost whispered in my head.

  Who?

  ‘Nephew,’ came the slimy salutation that answered my question.

  ‘Where is Tuan?’

  Cialtie shook his head. ‘What happened to, “Hello Uncle, it is good to see you again”? When the young forget their manners it is the beginning of the end of civilisation. But, if you must know, your Pooka flying horse woke up in considerable pain and I put him out of his misery.’

  ‘What did you do to him?’

  ‘Relax,’ Cialtie said, ‘I simply placed a sleeping coin under his head. I won’t kill him unless I have to. It would be handy having a dragon for a pet.’

  ‘Tuan will never be your pet.’

  ‘OK,’ Cialtie sighed. ‘I’ll kill him then – but not yet. There is a queue and you will be happy to know that you are in it. But first in the queue is your father. Where is he?’

  ‘I was about to ask you that.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I told your daddy that I was going to chop down Mother Tree here if he didn’t face me. Let me guess, he didn’t tell you he was coming and when you found what he was up to, you hopped on a dragon and beat him here?’ Cialtie laughed. ‘Oh, that’s good. Is anyone else coming?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘That’s a maldar rope you’re tied with. The Brownies use it for torture.’ Cialtie whistled and the rope around my chest tightened. ‘I can make you answer.’

  The pressure on my chest made it hard to breathe. I replied, ‘No’, even though I was sure Mom was on her way.

  ‘You are lying,’ Cialtie said then he whistled again this time in a lower tone and the rope slackened. ‘No matter. Any help leaving Duir on horseback will arrive long after this is done.’

  ‘My father will kill you. You know that’s what’s going to happen. Ona predicted it. You of all people should know you can’t thwart Ona’s predictions.’

  Cialtie turned on me with such fury that I was sure I had just moved up to the premier spot in his queue. ‘Do not presume to lecture me on Ona’s prophecies. This is the last prediction; there is none after this. You are right that Ona’s predictions cannot be thwarted but there are none to follow this. This prediction can last for ever and all I have to do is rid The Land of the holders of the Duir Runes. With you and your father dead the Banshees will return, and since I will hold the only Duir Rune, the Runelords will be forced to accept me on the Oak Throne. The age of Ona’s predictions will last for ever.’

  ‘Let Conor go,’ I heard Dad shout as he rode in to the field. ‘He has nothing to do with this.’

  ‘Hello brother.’ Cialtie spun and drew his sword. ‘He has everything to do with this. After I killed you, my plan was to track and kill Conor. It is so much more convenient that he is here. Now get down and let us commence.’

  Dad dismounted and slowly drew the Lawnmower.

  ‘I was foolish losing the Sword of Duir,’ Cialtie said, ‘I so wished to kill you with that blade. You wouldn’t lend it to me now, would you?’

  In reply Dad adopted an en garde position. If this was a fencing match he would have then saluted his opponent, but I had a feeling these guys were going to skip the niceties.

  ‘Do you remember our last swordfight, brother?’ Cialtie asked as he turned sideways and extended his sword with his left hand. Thanks to me it was the only one he had. His blade was thinner than the Lawnmower, just like in my dream.

  ‘I do,’ Dad said as he advanced on his brother. It wasn’t a serious attack, just a preliminary thrust followed by Cialtie’s back-handed parry. It was Dad’s way of saying, ‘Let’s get this done.’

  ‘I remember our father,’ Cialtie paused and thought, ‘or should I say your father, stopped the match before I killed you. Shame – imagine all of the trouble we could have avoided.’

  ‘Is that why you killed him?’ Dad said, attacking with a downward sweep that his brother easily deflected to the left.

  ‘Are you still annoyed I killed your father? You just killed mine. I say we are even.’ Cialtie threw himself at Dad with a ferocious attack that took him by surprise. He parried, back-pedalled and then stumbled but kept his footing. If I was Cialtie I would have followed it up with another attack but my uncle just stopped and laughed. Was he that confident or was it something else? Was he just past caring?

  Dad again looked to me and said, ‘Let the boy go.’

  ‘No,’ Cialtie replied as he wiped his nose with the stump of his right hand. Then he extended the hand-less arm to me. Around his wrist he wore a tight silver band. ‘Even if he leaves here alive he is not leaving with his runehand. Isn’t that the law in the Real World – an eye for an eye?’

  Dad kinda lost it then. Dahy had always warned us about letting emotions cloud our fighting but I have always found that a little bit of old-fashioned rage can come in handy as long as you don’t let your defences down. Dad came at his brother with a series of savage sweeping attacks alternating left and right. He even performed a full pirouette that brought with it 360 degrees of force. Cialtie went down blocking that one but quickly rolled. He was on one knee when Dad came at him with a sledgehammer attack. Cialtie blocked it above his head and their pommels locked.

  ‘Your fight is with me,’ Dad grunted

  ‘Everything is about you, isn’t it?’ Cialtie said. The strain of his defence showed in his voice.

  That’s when I saw Cialtie extend his arm. He turned his wrist back and forth. Since he had no hand, I at first didn’t recognise the gesture but then it hit me. I shouted, ‘Dad, watch out, he has a Banshee blade.’

  A short blade shot out and hooked on the band that encircled Cialtie’s stump. Dad took no time backing off and luckily wasn’t there when the blade sliced through the space he had just occupied.

  The sons of Macha, panting, once again faced off.

  ‘If you had come to me earlier, Cialtie, we could have worked something out.’

  ‘You don’t get it, do you, brother?’ Cialtie said. ‘I am not fighting you – I am fighting Ona. I have been Ona’s puppet since I was born. There is nothing you or anyone could have done. This now is the only chance I have at a life.’

  ‘I feel sorry for you, brother, I really do, but I can’t let you win.’

  Dad called up to the tree. ‘Mother Oak, can I have a banta stick?’

  Above I heard the familiar sound of water being drawn from wood. A perfect fighting-stick-sized branch fell just behind Dad. He picked it up and quickly shaved off the dead small twigs that stuck out from the side.

  Sword and sword vs. sword and stick – I remembered Dahy putting me through this muscle-aching drill. I
also remembered thinking why do I need to learn that – when will this ever happen? As usual Master Dahy was right.

  Cialtie didn’t seem as confident as he had been before. Dad performed stuff right out of Dahy’s drill book. Anything Cialtie tried was countered like Dad knew it was coming. But then Dad let his left hand drop. Cialtie came around with a full swing of his Banshee blade just as Dad brought the stick up to block. The blade stuck into the wood. Dad pulled the blade down and then kicked Cialtie in the wrist. The Banshee blade broke free from the silver cuff and then with another tug Dad snapped the gold wire that rode up my uncle’s sleeve. Dad threw the stick, with the Banshee blade still attached, away and it was sword vs. sword again.

  ‘When I took my Choosing,’ Dad said, ‘this is what I saw.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Cialtie said. ‘How did it end?’

  Dad launched himself at his brother, shouting, ‘Not well!’

  I was forced to watch the sons of Macha do battle and with every thrust and parry I strained my muscles against my bonds. I watched as the man who made me sword-fight with him every week before he gave me my pocket money fought for his life. In my mind’s eye I saw us sword-fighting in the backyard and sometimes in the living room and I watched him use the same techniques and tricks he taught me.

  The good thing was that Dad was in great shape. Not just because of the dragon blood youth tonic but he had also been practising his swordsmanship. When he first became young again he would draw on me almost every time he saw me. When I finally impressed on him how annoying that was, he started sparring with the young castle guards who couldn’t really complain about their king. Dad and Dahy still squared off periodically. The result was that Dad was a better swordsman than Cialtie and it was beginning to show. Cialtie was back-pedalling with every parry. Dad manoeuvred his opponent onto a downward slope. That was Dahy’s rule number three – find the high ground.

  Dad was now battling like a man possessed. Cialtie successfully turned and got the fight onto even ground and once again the swordsmen locked pommels.