Prince of Hazel and Oak (Shadowmagic Book 2)

by John Lenahan

  ‘Yeah,’ I screamed back as the wind roared around us. ‘It was very scary.’

  ‘Well, hold on, O’Neil, ’cause this is a whole lot worse.’

  As I held on for dear life, Brendan filled me in on what had happened.

  ‘That damn paralysing pin that the late Turlow stuck in Araf, Tuan and me was apparently placed high enough on our necks so that we couldn’t speak but our eyes and ears still worked. Tuan managed to do that Pooka transforming thing with the unparalysed part of his head. The top of his head changed into like a dozen different animals. Every time he grew feathers or fur or even scales, he managed to push out the pin just a little bit further, until it popped out completely. He saved us.’ Tuan, who had been listening, shook his head up and down.

  ‘Nice one, Councillor,’ I shouted.

  ‘We were just outside the back door of The Digs,’ continued Brendan, ‘when the fireball hit. We dived into the swampy bit behind the house to protect ourselves from the heat and by the time we popped out again, you were already being carried off into the wild blue yonder. Tuan used hawk eyes and said he saw you fall into the ocean. How’d you survive that one?’

  ‘Mermaids,’ I shouted over the sound of the swirling wind and laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of it.

  Brendan laughed with me. ‘A couple of months ago I’d have locked you up in the loony bin for saying stuff like that.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now’ – the cop thought for a second – ‘now my response is – yeah, that sounds about right.’

  ‘So what happened when Red came back?’

  ‘Well, he was surprised to see us alive, ’cause Turlow had told him we were dead. Also he had a problem.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘You stuck your sword in him in a spot that he couldn’t reach and he was afraid to change back to Red with it sticking out of him. Oh, that reminds me, I’ve got your sword.’ He patted the sword hanging on his belt. I peeped down and instantly recognised the Lawnmower’s pommel.

  ‘I hope it hurt him like hell,’ I said.

  ‘I think it did. Tuan agreed to pull it out if he consented to listen to us before he tried to kill us again. It didn’t take us long to convince him that The Turlow had duped us all. He was livid and zoomed off to try to find him, but he came back a week later having had no success.

  ‘While he was gone we found his house – or I guess I should call it his lair – and waited for him there. Tuan discovered all of these manuscripts in Pooka lingo and sat in the corner and read them the whole time – he hardly talked to us. When Red returned, Tuan and Red got talking shop. I tried to get Red to give me some blood and a lift off the island, but they were so into talking about changeling stuff that they acted like Araf and I weren’t even there. When I got mad at them for ignoring us, Red switched to dragon, grabbed Tuan and flew away. The two of them disappeared for another week. When Red came back there was a green dragon with him.

  ‘Apparently in order to become a dragon you have to study how to change into every animal there is and Tuan had done that already. Oh, and that problem that he had about not being able to hold a form – well, that’s gone.’ Brendan patted the dragon’s neck and looked over the side. ‘I hope.’

  I shivered in the cold air as the sun began to set in an explosion of reds and golds. ‘You know I had a dream about this. But I never …’ I chuckled to myself. ‘I never dreamt itould happen. I only hope we are in time.’

  The guards on the ramparts of Castle Duir shot arrows at us as we approached so we had to fly away and land in the field in front of the castle. By the time a whole battalion of soldiers came at us on horseback, Tuan was Tuan again. The captain recognised me – and recognised Brendan as that madman from the Real World – and once we convinced them that there was no dragon attack, he gave us horses and we galloped to the main gates.

  The three of us burst into Dad’s candlelit room. Mom and Fand and a handful of sorceresses were there. Dad, still encased in amber, looked like he was dead.

  Mom flew into my arms and hugged her head to my chest.

  ‘Is he gone?’ I asked. ‘Am I too late?’

  She held my face in her hands; her eyes were swimming in tears. ‘It’s not long now – I’m glad you are here.’

  ‘He’s not dead?’ I said excitedly. I looked to Fand. ‘He’s not dead?’

  ‘No,’ the Fili answered.

  I grabbed my mother by the shoulders. ‘Mom it’s not eel’s blood. It’s not red eel blood.’

  She looked at me confused. It had been so long since Mom and I had discovered that old manuscript that she had almost forgotten about it. She had given up hope.

  ‘Tughe tine – we thought it meant red eel; it doesn’t, it means fire worm. Fire worm,’ I said again louder, trying to make it sink in. ‘Dragon!’

  I turned to Tuan and motioned for him to change.

  ‘Here?’ he said, looking around. ‘Will I fit?’

  ‘We’ll find out. You better stick your nose out of the window.’

  He did as he was told and clasped his hands together and crouched down facing the window.

  OK, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have him change in Dad’s room, especially without warning anybody. Dragon Tuan was a lot bigger than I realised. His back pushed up against the ceiling as plaster cracked and rolled down his sides. Sorceresses were pushed into corners and furniture splintered against the walls. Dad’s bed was pushed at a forty-five-degree angle but remained unharmed. Deirdre and Fand, backs pressed against the wall, stared open-mouthed. I had to shake Mom to get her attention.

  ‘Dragon’s blood, Mom. The mermaids use it to become young again. It will reset Dad. It should save his life.’

  Finally Mom said, ‘How do we do it?’

  ‘Red told me that just a couple of drops in the mouth should do the trick,’ Brendan said.

  Mom found a crystal glass as I drew the Sword of Duir and cut a nick into Tuan’s wing. We were lucky that his head was out the window ’cause the pain caused him to cough a small fireball that, if it was in here, would have been enough to fricassee us all.

  Fand placed her hands on the sides of Dad’s head and incanted. The hard amber shell softened and then dripped like honey off of his face and head. She reached into his mouth and removed the gold disc. Brendan quickly held out his hand and the Fili gave it to him. Dad looked bad and he didn’t look like he was breathing. Fand placed her ear to his mouth and nose. When she came up she held her thumb and index finger just a quarter of an inch apart indicating that he was still breathing if only a tiny bit. Mom took her yew wand, dipped it into the dragon’s blood and then dripped three drops into Oisin’s mouth.

  The effects took hold almost immediately. First it was just the colour of his lips but then the wrinkles on his face vanished like someone under the bed was pulling his skin from behind. As Tuan changed back, giving everyone in the chamber some elbow room, Fand moved quickly and incanted over the rest of Dad’s shell and it dripped away. We watched as life and vigour radiated down his neck and all over his body. By the time the shell exposed his right arm there was no difference between his wrist and his runehand. Mom picked up his hand, looked at it from both sides and then gasped as Dad’s fingers entwined with her own. Dad opened his eyes and then amazingly propped himself up on his elbows. He looked like he could have been my fraternal twin.

  ‘Was I dreaming,’ he said, his voice betraying no hint of illness, ‘or was there just a dragon in my room?’

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Frie

  nds and Enemies

  ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘Oh my, no,’ she replied faster than I had anticipated. ‘Your father did that two days ago. I would have preferred to sleep for at least another moon. I am an old woman you know.’

  I had no idea what she looked like two days previously, but by this conversation new shoots and small, almost fluorescent leaves covered all of her boughs. She may be the oldest thing in The Lan
d but to me, she looked brand new.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mother Oak,’ I said.

  ‘Oh now, don’t listen to me, with all of the excitement in Duir I probably would have scolded you if you had not awoken me. But my, my, your father was a rude awakening. I have never seen a man with such energy. It was hard to keep up with his so many thoughts.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sorry about him too. He’s been pretty embarrassing lately.’

  ‘From what I can tell, it seems that it is a father’s responsibility to embarrass his offspring.’

  ‘Maybe so but he is taking it to a whole new level.’

  Dad had jumped out of his deathbed with the energy of a five-year-old who had just eaten an entire bag of Halloween candy. What really spooked me was that he looked my age – some said he even looked younger. After lots of hugging and kissing and jumping and stng into mirrors – and way too much loud whooping – he insisted I tell him everything that had happened since he had been paperweight-ed. When I finally finished the whole adventure, he ordered new clothes (he had been listening to my story wrapped only in a sheet, like some Roman emperor) and horses. We eventually convinced him that travelling in the pitch dark would be a bad idea, so he ordered a crack-of-dawn departure for the Hall of Knowledge. I really could have used a lie-in and a day off but Dad had lost the meaning of ‘lie-in’ along with his grey hair. I tried to convince Tuan to give me a lift but he made it clear that he was not an air taxi service.

  We rode to the Hazellands in record time. (There was none of that stopping and resting stuff.) We were greeted by Dahy and Queen Rhiannon. The Pookas had arrived with reinforcements only a day after I had left. Red/Moran had made peace with the Queen and had flown around long enough to make sure that Cialtie and his army had really retreated back into the Reed and Alderlands. Then he flew back to his island.

  Dad, despite his newly imposed adolescence, acted mostly kingly. He visited the wounded and held meetings about future defences and the allocation of the kingdom’s resources, but at other times he acted annoyingly juvenile, usually by challenging me to arm wrestles or grabbing Mom and dragging her kissing and giggling into any nearby tent.

  ‘I am sure he will calm down soon,’ Mother Oak said, reading my thoughts. ‘I have never grown young, but I have certainly grown old – it must be an exciting thing for him.’

  ‘I know. It’s just a bit – freaky.’

  ‘But enough about your father, Prince of Hazel and Oak, how went your winter?’

  How went my winter? Gods, now there was a question.

  ‘Busy,’ I said with a sarcastic laugh. ‘You know, the first time I came to The Land I was just trying to stay alive. This time I spent the whole time trying to keep my father alive. For once I would love to spend some time here having … fun.’

  ‘Oh my my,’ Mother Oak said and I could feel her sad smile. ‘Oh, I have heard that grumble before. Responsibility is what you complain about. As far as I can tell, as you get older, responsibility is what replaces fun.’

  ‘That sounds like a bad deal to me.’

  ‘To me as well, but I can tell you this. The ones that do not shoulder their responsibilities may stay young but – they never stay happy.’

  ‘So what,’ I said, ‘I should grow up, do my duty, and stop cracking jokes.’

  ‘I am not here to tell you any such thing,’ she said forcefully. ‘Who am I to give advice? I do nothing but stick in the ground and bathe in the sunlight all day. If you are looking for advice there are countless better than me. But it seems to me that you do not need advice. You did what needed to be done. You saved your father from death and the Pookas from extinction. You reunited Moran and Rhiannon, and were victorious against Cialtie and Turlow’s forces in the face of overwhelming odds. I have known men centuries older than you who have grown less. No one need counsel you on responsibility.’

  ‘You know, Mother Oak, I hink if I burned down a house you would probably compliment me on what nice ashes I made.’

  ‘As long as the house was not made of oak,’ she said and in my mind I felt her wooden smile.

  Maybe it wasn’t just hollow praise, maybe I had grown up a bit. I wasn’t sure I liked it. What had been bothering me most lately was the pain of Spideog’s loss. Not that it hurt too much but that it hurt too little. I knew war and death had become too commonplace for me, but even after all I had been through, I should have had tears for Spideog.

  ‘Do not worry that you have yet to grieve for the archer,’ Mother Oak said, interrupting my thoughts. ‘The tears will come soon, or perhaps not for a year, but they will come. Grief makes its own appointments.’

  I hugged her and hoped that she was right.

  ‘Conor,’ she said before I left, ‘although I never understand them, I think it would be a shame if you no longer told your jokes.’

  I whistled for my horse, gave Mother Oak one last hug and dropped directly into the saddle.

  I rode quickly back to Castle Duir. All this talk of responsibility made me realise I had one more thing to do.

  The cold thin air bounced off the warm woollen cap that Mom insisted I wear. At first she forbade me to go on this trip. Like almost everyone, she was dead set against me making this journey. When I put my foot down she actually threatened to have me locked in the dungeon. When I finally convinced her and everyone else that I would probably be OK, considering my travelling companion was a fire-breathing dragon, she insisted that at least I wear long underwear and the woollen cap. The cap I must admit was nice and toasty – the underwear itched a bit.

  I patted Dragon Tuan on his green scaly back and shouted, ‘You sure you’re not lost?’

  In reply he banked sharply to the left and bucked. I grabbed tight onto the makeshift dragon reins that the stable master and I had quickly invented earlier that day.

  ‘OK, OK,’ I shouted. ‘You lose all sense of humour when you’re in reptilian form.’

  I looked down at the passing Tir na Nogian topography below. Winter was in its last clutches. Every once in a while brave crocuses or a tree defiantly popped a dab of colour into the dying season’s grey and brown landscape. It wouldn’t be long before it was shorts and tee-shirt weather. I was looking forward to that.

  I breathed deeply and collected my thoughts. It was good to be alone for a moment – without Dad around. Since his re-adolescence, every time he saw me he challenged me to a sword-fight or, worse, a wrestling match. A couple of days ago, as he was pinning me with my arm twisted up my back, I asked him if we could talk without violence. I finally impressed on him that I would like it if he acted more like my father and less like an annoying younger brother. He promised he would be more fatherly and then punched me hard in the arm – this was going to take time.

  Dahy vehemently didn’t want me to go. The old master wasn’t big on giving succour to enemies. He also thought this trip was a waste of resources. Dahy was g ho about putting together an attack force to storm the Oracle on Mount Cas but Dad ordered him to calm down. Dahy insisted that Macha, Dad’s mother, was alive, but Dad said finding an old knife didn’t prove anything – no matter what some crazy old archer said. (Dad and Spideog had never seen eye to eye.) Dahy didn’t like it but he accepted the orders from the teenage-looking King. In fact everyone seemed to think that a king that looked like he wasn’t even old enough to drink was just fine.

  Essa and I started getting on very well indeed. I took Spideog’s dying advice and told her how I felt. I said if she promised not to try to kill me again that I would like to have a go at a relationship. She didn’t say yes but then again she didn’t say no either and we had been pretty snuggly ever since. She even said that she wanted to take a trip to see the Real World with me when we send Brendan back home.

  I looked up to the heavens and said a silent thanks to Spideog. If anybody saw my eyes at that point I would have told them they were watering because of the cold air, but the truth was the tears Mother Oak had promised would someday come – came. I finally felt the
loss of that strange but sweet old archer.

  I took out my white flag when I saw alder trees below. Our first pass over Fearn Keep was high, out of crossbow range. As we circled lower the Brownies showed uncharacteristic restraint and didn’t fire at us. Tuan banked sharply to the right and dropped altitude.

  ‘Hey,’ I shouted at him, ‘I almost fell off back there.’

  Tuan wasn’t the best flyer in the sky but I wasn’t going to tell him that. He was still a bit touchy about the ribbing he had been getting after he accidentally landed on two Leprechauns, breaking one of their arms.

  We landed far enough away from the main entrance so as to not freak everybody out and so that if Tuan landed on his face, people wouldn’t see. There have been smoother landings. I jumped off when we started tipping and Tuan hit the ground rolling.

  When he finally righted himself, I patted his side and said, ‘How are the ballet lessons going?’

  He turned and gave me the dragon equivalent of a dirty look – and when you are stared at by someone who can breathe fire, that’s pretty scary. Tuan stayed in his dragon form until a Brownie battalion arrived. Once they knew we were here on a diplomatic mission and not to eat ice cream and Brownies, Tuan became Tuan again.

  ‘There’s a saying that pilots use in the Real World that goes, “Any landing you walk away from is a good landing.”’

  Tuan delivered another dirty look – this one, less scary. ‘You want to walk home?’

  Tuan transformed into bodyguard bear and in his arms he carried the reason we had come. At the main gate I declared who I was to the sergeant at arms and asked for an audience with King Bwika. When he told us that we would have to wait in the guest wing, I informed him that we were to see the Brownie King now or we were going home. He came back ten minutes later and informed us that we were, ‘in luck’, and the King would see us immediately.