‘What, is that meant to be some kind of threat?’ he scoffed. ‘Come on, it’s well known that the Daughters of Morrigan can’t enchant their way out of a brown paper bag.’
‘You,’ I repeated. ‘Will rue this day.’ I knew I was making a mistake. Vengeance spells and curses had a habit of rebounding badly on the person who cast them, but I was past caring by this stage.
‘Bye, Kara,’ he said, leaving the interrogation room. I was alone with just my thoughts.
It was a lucky thing I’d entrusted the talisman and the spell book to the flock. They’d know what to do. They’d find someone to be acting high priestess until my release, which might be after the Reckoning.
I just hoped she was up to the task.
About the Author
Christine Murray is a bestselling contemporary fiction & fantasy author from Dublin, Ireland. Before embarking on a writing career, she studied history at university and has a master’s degree in medical history. She also worked as a freelance journalist and ghost-writer.
When not writing, Christine enjoys reading, watching spy thrillers and spending too much money at make-up counters. You can find out more about her on her website, or alternatively you can find her on Twitter and Facebook.
Website: www.christine-murray.com
Blog: www.mermaiden.ie
Twitter: www.twitter.com/MurrayChristine
Facebook: www.facebook.com/christinemurraybooks
Read more about life in Avalonia with Ravensborough, the first book in The Ravensborough Saga
Ravensborough
CHAPTER ONE
Chapter One
‘Scarlett?’
‘Huh?’
‘Scarlett it’s time to wake up,’ Mum said patiently. ‘We’re just coming into land and you need to put your seat back up.’
Sure enough, there was an air hostess standing in the aisle waiting to ensure that I did just that. Sighing I put my seat into the correct position for landing. I rubbed my neck, which hurt quite badly. I must have fallen asleep at an awkward angle.
I looked out the window to see the island of Avalonia coming into view below me. The people in the seat row behind me were trying to pick out features they recognised from their guide book, their voices high and excited. I, on the other hand, felt underwhelmed. After all, it wasn’t as if I’d wanted to leave Ireland. I’d lived there for sixteen years, and my whole life was there. I’d known my best friend Genevieve since the first day of playschool. Plus, after months of wondering whether I was completely unattractive to the opposite sex, I had finally found myself a boyfriend who was gorgeous, funny and, to top it all, played guitar. I was doing fairly well in school, well enough to keep Mum off my back anyway, and I had a good social life, with lots of friends. Written down like that, my life in Ireland sounded fairly idyllic. So why was I leaving it all behind?
That was the question I kept myself over and over, and as I stepped off the plane in Northport, the capital city of Avalonia, I was no nearer to finding an answer. First impressions did not bode well. Rain was falling down in heavy sheets and an icy wind was blowing in from the smudge of murky blue sea I could just about make out in the distance. My auburn hair was caught by the wind and whipped against my face, making it hard to see the rickety metal steps that led down from the plane to the tarmac. The sky overhead was the same bleak grey shade as the sky I had left behind in Dublin. Mum and I ran across the concourse to the airport terminal where it was warm and dry.
‘Well, Rupert did say autumn here was colder here than in Ireland,’ Mum said as we queued at passport control. ‘It makes sense. After all we are further north.’
I sighed. ‘If this is what the weather is like in autumn, can you imagine what winter will be like?’
When I got my suitcase back from baggage reclaim the first thing I did was fish out the big padded jacket that I’d bought the week before in an outdoor shop in Dublin - the first time I’d ever been in such a place. I was more of an indoor girl, truth be told. But if the weather was going to keep up like this all the time, it looked like fashion in Avalonia was going to be a matter of practicality over style.
We found a trolley for our luggage and wheeled it out into the arrivals hall. A big sign reading ‘Welcome to Avalonia’ was fixed to one wall, accompanied by the country crest, a lady’s arm coming out of a large lake holding aloft a medieval sword.
Rupert met us at arrivals. He was my mother’s fiancé, and the reason that I had packed up sixteen years of my life into an assortment of cardboard boxes and moved to this cold island situated roughly half way between Iceland and Ireland.
Rupert was dressed in his usual prim manner. Although today was a Sunday, he still dressed as if he was going to the office: plain grey trousers, white shirt and a royal blue tie. On his feet were expensive looking Italian leather loafers, and he was wearing a full length wool jacket.
‘Welcome to Avalonia!’ He smiled at me and gave me a stiff hug. I sighed inwardly. Why couldn’t the man my mother decided to marry be less awkward and self-conscious? He was kind, but I dreaded the moments where we were left alone together. Conversation didn’t exactly flow easily: we had absolutely nothing in common. Living with him was going to take some getting used to.
We made our way to the car park where Rupert’s car was waiting, a shiny black four wheel drive with thick tyres. I found his choice of car pretty surprising. Not only did it clash with his neat, almost prissy appearance but Rupert was always talking about the importance of being environmentally friendly, and those cars guzzled fuel.
As we made our way through Northport, I got my first look at Avalonia’s capital city. It was industrial, with factories and processing plants dominating the skyline. The port had a couple of large ships docked and heavy cranes and machinery lined the banks to unload cargo. Only a small portion of the port was being used and the warehouses at either end looked like they’d seen better days. I guessed that it had accommodated more ships in times gone by than it did in the twenty-first century.
The whole city was overwhelmingly ugly. My heart felt as leaden as the steel girders that seemed to be everywhere. It was just functional, with no beautiful buildings at all. I took my mobile phone out of my bag, checking to see if I had any messages from Genevieve or Sam, but my mobile still hadn’t managed to pick up an Avalonian network. I threw it to the bottom of my bag in frustration.
Some of the boats in the harbour had the same crest as I’d seen in the arrivals hall painted on their sides.
‘The country crest, is that something to do with the Arthurian legends?’ I asked Rupert as we left Northport turning onto a large highway. ‘You know, the Lady of the Lake?’
‘Yes, it is. The Arthurian legends are said to have taken place on the island of Avalon. When the first settlers came here in exile during the sixteenth century, they thought some of the scenery was reminiscent of those tales. So they called the country Avalonia.’
Thinking of the Northport docks that we’d just left behind, a hub of industrial energy with large, steel, no-nonsense boats and large cranes crowding its skyline, it was hard to believe that this was a country filled with legend and myth.
‘Did they really happen here?’ I asked.
‘I really don’t think so,’ he answered. ‘We’re just one of many countries who claim the stories. There are some people, though, who do take the legends seriously. Which is yet another reason why the rest of the world thinks that the people of Avalonia are all crazy.’
His voice was gruff with irritation, and I diplomatically stayed silent. It was a well known fact that a large proportion of the Avalonian population were more than a little wacky. They called themselves Pagans, and believed that they really had magic powers. They claimed that they were the descendants of the witches that fled to Avalonia to escape persecution and death. I knew in Iceland, a little further north, that the majority of the population refused to deny the existence of elves. Maybe that’s what northern climates did to you-they made
you believe that fairy tales were actually true.
I settled back in my seat, watching the scenery scroll by. As we left Northport behind, I began to see why Rupert drove a 4x4. The landscape was rocky, barren, and full of steep hills. Between that and the crosswinds pulling at the car, I guessed that cars built like tanks were a necessity in this country. I shook around in the back as we took hill after hill, bouncing downhill among the alien landscape peppered with brightly-coloured, sturdy looking plants. We were heading towards Avalonia’s second largest city, Ravensborough, the place that was to be my home for the next few years.
It had been a long day with a three am start and a six hour wait for a connection in London. The movement of the car made me drowsy. I can’t remember falling asleep, but when Mum woke me up it was dark outside and we seemed to be stuck in a traffic jam. She was shaking my shoulder and saying something to me that I couldn’t make out.
‘Your passport, Scarlett, where’s your passport?’
I rummaged in my shoulder bag sleepily and handed it to my mother. My eyes slowly began to adjust and I could see that we were in some sort of queue. Peering through the windscreen, I saw a group of men in uniform standing beside a trucks painted in army camouflage. A sign set up at the side of the road confirmed my suspicions: army checkpoint.
I’d only seen checkpoints in films. Our car slid up to the front of the line where a surly looking soldier grabbed asked for identification. Rupert handed over his identification card and our two passports. The soldier shone a torch at each of our faces, and threw light on empty seats, while another walked around the back of the vehicle. I guessed they were checking that we weren’t smuggling anyone else in with us.
‘Affiliation?’ he asked Rupert gruffly.
‘Rationalist.’
‘What is your business in this area, sir?’
‘We live in Chesterfield,’ Rupert answered.
‘And what about the two with the Irish passports?’
‘They’re moving here, their visas are in the back of the passports.’
He flicked through the passports, confirming that what Rupert said was true. Finally satisfied, he nodded at Rupert.
‘Ok. Make sure they get registered at their nearest office as soon as possible.’
‘No problem.’
‘That’s fine Sir. You can go now.’
He nodded to the soldiers standing in front of the car. They moved back and waved us through. The car sped up and we began to cross what looked like the Starling-Bird Bridge. I recognised it from a picture on the front of the guidebook that Genevieve had bought me as a leaving present. At the thought of Genevieve, I felt another pang in the pit of my stomach as I remembered just how far away I was from home.
‘Here we are, this is Chesterfield,’ Rupert says as he swung off the main road and into a large housing estate. I could tell from the large houses and the type of cars parked neatly in front of them that this must be a pretty comfortable area. The grass in the front gardens looked like it was all cut to a regulation length and the houses had names instead of numbers. Rupert pulled into the driveway of a huge rambling mock Tudor house called Lakeview. Sure enough when I got out of the car I could see the lights of the Starling-Bird Bridge twinkling where it crossed Lady’s Lake.
I had known that Rupert had a fairly good job, but I still wasn’t prepared for the size of his house. It was huge. Our house back home could have fitted into this house several times over. And up until now Rupert had lived here by himself!
My room was in the eaves, a large room with a dark wooden floor and a wrought iron bed placed under the window. Rupert had made a real effort to make it nice for me but, with no kids of his own, he had little idea of what I’d like. A patchwork quilt in a colour scheme so bright it made my eyes hurt was stretched over the bed. The wall beside the door was taken up with a desk and bookcase in dark mahogany, and a framed picture of the Starling-Bird Bridge was hanging above the desk, despite the fact that I could see it easily from my bedroom window. A wardrobe large enough to be the gateway between this land and Narnia took up most of another wall. A Nordic-style rug lay in front of a huge old cast iron fire-place. The wind blew down the chimney, which made the room a little draughty if atmospheric. Rupert promised that he would block it up for me.
I sat down on one of the bed and looked around. It was hard to believe that a few months ago Mum and I had never even heard of Rupert. He worked in one of Avalonia’s biggest investment banks and, as my Mum had been a legal advisor for a bank in Ireland, they had a lot in common. They had met at a networking dinner back home where Rupert was giving the keynote speech. They had instantly hit it off and, while I found it strange at first, I had gotten used to the fact that Mum had a boyfriend. But then, it was almost ten years since Dad had passed away. That was a long time for her to be on her own.
My room was full of packing crates that had been shipped over before I arrived. I reluctantly shifted to my knees and opened the first box. I hadn’t wanted to move here. It had taken a lot of persuasion to get me to agree to come with Mum, and now that we’d arrived here I couldn’t say that I was happy to be here. But I had agreed to come, so I couldn’t show my feelings to Mum. This was an exciting time for her, and I didn’t want to ruin it. Once I’d made up my mind, that was it: no going back. I hung my clothes up in the ancient wardrobe. There were way too many items of heavy thermal clothing in there, still with their tags attached. The thought of wearing them made me shudder.
I put most of my books in the battered bookcase. There wasn’t enough room for them all, so I stacked what wouldn’t fit on the ground beside it. Mum had wanted to be economic with the amount of books that I’d brought with me. Because of their weight, the price of shipping them over was pretty expensive. But I had a bargaining chip: I was moving countries so she could live with her fiancé. So I’d gotten my way in the end, and my entire collection had come with me.
I put some photos up on the dressing table. There were pictures of my friends and I at parties, a photo of myself and my boyfriend Sam taken last Christmas, and a picture of my dad and I on a beach twelve years ago.
I felt too tired to fully unpack just then. The last items I took out were my sketchbooks and charcoal, and I lay on my bed, letting my hand wander over the page absentmindedly. I sometimes sketched to relax, and I hardly noticed exactly what I was drawing. When I looked at it afterwards I noticed that I’d drawn a picture of a storm. Storms meant disturbance. I hoped it wasn’t prophetic
Portent, A Ravensborough Novella (The Ravensborough Saga) Page 5