On impulse, her heart lifting oddly, she went to the dress and stroked it; it smelled of salt; it had the feel of flight. A hint of wings, in the same way that the cloth held the hint of a lenanshee’s kiss. She took down the dress and stepped out of sight behind the thick pillar against which the copper mirror stood propped; jerked off the sweaty vest and gently eased on the feathered robe, which fitted her closely and brushed her knees. Long, close-fitting sleeves of white down covered the marks on her arms. She shed the teddy-bear-patterned pyjama bottoms, and was about to lob them away, when she suddenly remembered …
How could she have forgotten?
… and carefully parted the material of the pocket. The caterpillar was gone, but a pale blue-grey butterfly crawled out onto her finger, spreading its wings to dry; then fluttered upwards and clung to her breast like a brooch, entirely camouflaged against the grey feathers.
When she stepped out from behind the pillar, Killian’s eyes flickered over her, head to foot, and he smiled slightly and dropped the pearl dress he had chosen onto the stool – but then offered her, once again, the coronet of pearls. ‘Something to keep the hair out of your eyes?’
For some reason she took it.
And now Killian was cringing, and tugging at her hair.
‘Oh, give it up, Killian,’ said Aoife angrily, stepping away, re-fixing the pearls with both hands and settling the bodice. She didn’t even care for the stupid things, and she was obviously going to die any minute, but she was damned if she was going to be dressed and undressed in front of Dorocha like a doll, or have Killian jerking so clumsily at her hair.
It was only a small act of defiance, but the effect on the room was electric – as if she had been transformed from helpless slave into a dangerous beast.
‘Put down your hands!’ howled Dorocha, seizing a huge spear – a flint head lashed to a three-metre-long wooden shaft – from a tangle of ancient weapons piled in the corner. And the Deargdue cringed on her pile of furs, screaming: ‘Kill her! The boy brought her here unchained!’
‘Wait, she’s not dangerous!’ Again, Killian didn’t exactly throw himself in front of Aoife, but he stepped out from behind her, seizing one of her hands and holding it up, displaying the iron wire around her wrist. ‘Look – the iron is still blocking her power!’
Dorocha was already lowering the spear. But his skin was still pale as bone; his midnight eyes still bursting with angry stars. He had been afraid – very afraid of her: Aoife, with a shiver of triumph, could smell it on him – an acrid hint of sweat in the perfumed air of the treasure chamber. He had feared her power. Maybe she was stronger than she thought, even though she’d not yet turned sixteen.
Oh, if her hands were free!
The last time she had been in this chamber with Dorocha, she had fought him almost to the death. She had wielded Nuada’s bronze sword, now resting against the wall. And the sword had flung itself across the chamber and buried itself between Dorocha’s ribs.
(And then, with one smooth circular motion of his arms, he had wrenched the sword free with both hands and hurled it at her.)
Following her eyes to the huge bronze weapon, Dorocha grinned, hefted the massive spear up under his arm, and strolled across the chamber holding it like a lance. Standing at a distance, but only because of the length of the shaft, he pressed the point to Aoife’s neck, lifting her chin with it. ‘Perhaps we should have a rematch, Aoibheal? And this time you will be the one without a weapon?’
She raised her chin as high as possible, to get away from the cold flint, taking a step backwards – shoulders pressed to the golden door, behind which she knew seven dullahans stood guard.
Killian said pleadingly, in the voice he always used to get his own way with his human parents: ‘Father?’
Dorocha leaned on the spear, his left shoulder twisting; pressing the point further in. Wetness trickled down Aoife’s neck, and dripped like silver rain on the feathery dress. His rested his dark blue gaze on hers – as cruel and pointed as the spear resting against her neck. ‘Now, how does that feel, Aoibheal? Slave, I should call you, but thousand-year-old habits die hard! What do you think, slave?’
‘Father?’
Dorocha’s midnight eyes switched to his son, his perfect smile holding perfectly steady. ‘Is something the matter, my son?’
Killian smiled back at him – his charming, ever-persuasive, spoilt-brat smile: ‘I’d rather you didn’t hurt her.’
‘Not hurt her?’ Dorocha looked genuinely surprised, leaning a little harder, a little more painfully and dangerously, on the spear. ‘Why ever not?’
‘Because you gave her to me, and – you know – if you give something as a birthday present, you can’t really take it back.’
‘That’s true.’ And despite a hiss of irritation from the Deargdue, who was still crouched like a cat on top of her nest of wolf furs, Dorocha lowered the spear and stepped back. ‘You’re right. Her pain is your prerogative, my prince. Here …’ Spinning the huge spear upright, he tapped the end of its thick shaft on the flagged floor, then handed it to Killian. ‘You kill her.’
Aoife, her back pressed to the gold door, felt for the bolt behind her, to slip it aside. Sensing her plan, the iron bracelets stabbed at her: knives slicing across her wrists. Sweat pierced her skin, ice-cold.
Ignore the pain.
But it was paralysing …
The room turning grey …
She had to stop: she was about to faint.
Killian was saying in that nervous, squeaky voice to his demon father: ‘I still don’t think it’s fair to make me kill her – you let me go back for her because I wanted her, so if she’s dead that’s like taking her away, just like if the dogs ate her.’
Dorocha looked disgusted. ‘What are you afraid of? The slave is unarmed.’
‘I told you, I don’t want to kill her.’
Aoife’s vision was clearing. What little strength she had left was surging back. Fight the pain. The bolt was moving.
Oh God, the iron bracelets were burning into her flesh.
Let Dorocha not smell the smoke of scorching skin.
‘No! Wait!’ The Deargdue leaped down from her pile of furs. ‘Don’t use the spear! Use the iron knife! Where is it?’ Through the haze of her agony, Aoife could see the demon girl running around the chamber, digging her graceful arms through bronze chests that brimmed with the treasure of the Tuatha Dé Danann, tossing them aside: heaps of rubies and emeralds and diamonds; silver chains studded with precious stones; elaborate drinking cups; amber collars large enough to slip over a man’s head. ‘Where is the famous knife of Donn with which you murdered your true love, my Beloved? We don’t want this slave reborn – you never know how she might come back. As a rat or a weasel, maybe, getting into the barley fields and eating our sheaves! We want her to be dead like her mother, locked out of every world, like the sluagh before you freed them.’
The bolt shifted another centimetre … Sweat ran through Aoife’s hair, through the circlet of pearls.
‘Here it is, my wise and clever demon,’ cried Dorocha, snatching up a heavy chest of coins and upending it across the floor. A long, tapered wooden box washed out like a boat on a gleaming sea. ‘I have it hidden here among the gold, to fool the dullahan I stole it from. See?’ He flipped back the ivory lid, revealing to the cooing demon a long, extremely sharp, iron knife.
‘That’s so beautiful!’ she cried. ‘Give it to our son!’
Dorocha turned with it to Killian, exclaiming, ‘Now, my prince!’
But the pale boy was slumped at the foot of the wall, head tilted back and eyes closed, and the spear lying on the floor beside him.
Dorocha went to stand over him – his handsome mouth twisting with displeasure. ‘Look at this poor, weak lad. He’s fainted away altogether at the mere thought of murder. How pathetically feeble! Is he afraid of murder? Does no one kill anyone in the human world today? Are there no heroes any more? Maybe we should get rid of him, my love. He’s
no son of ours.’
‘Not yet!’ The Deargdue rushed across the chamber to seize the knife from Dorocha, as if she feared he would stab the unconscious Killian right there and then. ‘I will teach him to murder when he wakes up. I was a human once – and he is human-reared. My first kill terrified me too. I remember my darling’s face when I walked into his wedding celebrations. I had loved him so much, before I died! But I beckoned him away from his bride, and he came, even though he knew I was dead. And I brought him into my dark bed, and I sucked out his heart’s blood through a barley straw, night after night, and the taste was beautiful. And the next kill was so much easier. And after the thirteenth boy I felt nothing but pleasure.’
Dorocha caressed her. ‘You beauty. No wonder I love you. But what do you suggest?’
She kissed first him, and then the iron knife. ‘Our son can practise on my boys, now they are half alive again. They’re too weak to fight, but strong enough to die. And so he will learn the joy of killing, without any danger to himself – and that is by far the best way to enjoy murder! We will start with that one, who dared touch my hair just now …’ The Deargdue pointed to the black-haired, blue-eyed boy who still sat crouched with his back against the pile of wolf furs, gazing at her in adoration as she plotted his death. ‘If our son is too weak, we will throw him from the city walls. But if he comes to enjoy murder, I will reward him with diamonds, in a golden casket.’
Dorocha embraced his lover, spinning her around off her feet. ‘My angel! So you will sacrifice your boys, and your diamonds, just to make a man of our son?’
She laughed as he set her down. ‘I will! He deserves a second chance! And my boys behaved so badly when they came to life, I owe them no kindness. Mauling me with their greedy little hands.’
He drew her close again, showering kisses on her silky hair, closing his eyes as if overcome by emotion. ‘I promise you, my darling demon, your sacrifice will be rewarded. I will bring you hundreds more handsome boys from Connacht, with hearts full of fresh blood for you to sup. Maybe even as handsome as that foolish lenanshee boy you once liked so much. I was told by his own mother that he has a brother in Kilduff. I will find him for you.’
The bolt gave way. Aoife ran out into the stairwell. The dullahans on the stairs crowded around her, lifting their rotting heads high, mouths spitting a white froth of maggots. And a split second later, Dorocha dragged her back into the chamber and threw her face down on the floor with such crushing force that she lay stunned. ‘Now, isn’t this fun! Here she is again.’
‘Oh, get rid of the slave,’ snapped the Deargdue. ‘I hate the sight of her. Take her down to the queen’s bedroom and lock her in and let the dullahans guard her until our son is ready for her.’
‘Ugh, must I touch her again? The very smell of her revolts me. I feel as faint in her presence as our poor, weak son.’
A peal of lovely laughter: ‘Cowardly king! Then I’ll give her to one of the noble dullahans instead. You there, my brave one! Carry this little slave downstairs and put her into the queen’s bed, and five of you stay guard at the door and let the slave lie trembling in the dark with her mother’s ghost grinning at her, until my son is fit to come to her.’
Before Aoife could even try to crawl away, gloved hands lifted her from the floor and a massive dullahan crushed her in its arms, so that her face was pushed into its squelchy, grinning head and the thick, jointed whip of white human bone dug into her. The flies buzzed around her, getting into her mouth and ears and eyes; she spat and retched; the dullahan crushed her tighter, as it headed for the door, past the silent figure of Killian.
‘Wait! My pearls!’ The Deargdue ran after the dullahan and tore the circlet from Aoife’s hair, tossing it into a nearby casket of jewels. ‘There. Now you can go. I don’t care about the dress – I’ll take it from her when she’s dead. And remember – leave her no light. And send another of your kind to bring me my boys – but only one at a time, as needed.’
The dullahan carried Aoife on downwards, elbowing its way past its headless comrades, to where a beautiful door stood ajar at the turn of the stairs – a solid amber slab glowing a deep orange, filled with the shadowy wings of hundreds of bees, preserved as if in honey.
Under the dullahan’s kick, the door swung back, revealing a room where the walls were draped in black velvet. The light within came from a fat yellow wax taper, over a metre tall, burning brightly in a stone candlestick set between the door and a small four-poster bed, where the black curtains and covers were stained with streaks of silver.
The headless demon hurled Aoife across the room onto the bed, then kicked over the taper so that the flame went out, plunging the room into darkness. Then it left, slamming the amber door behind it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Blackness.
She lay in a crumpled heap, getting her breath, waiting for her nausea to subside, and sharp fairy vision to kick in.
Before long, she could make out faint light coming through the amber door – five fuzzy orange orbs, suspended in the stairwell. Dullahans with their foul heads on guard, in case she dared try to escape. Another glowing circle appeared, but that one passed out of sight as its owner pushed past the others and descended the stairs.
She turned her head; close by hung a pattern of silver dots and lines – the splashes and streaks of her murdered mother’s blood still staining the black curtains of the bed. In Aoife’s sad mind, the lines took the shape of a face – a delicate beauty smiling down at her. With a sob, she rolled over and buried her own face in the black pillows. A sweet, flowery smell filled her nostrils, and for a moment she was transported back to early childhood by the scent of ancient Mayo, thousands of years ago, where her mother had always taken her when she went to wash her hair under the hawthorns. That heathery scent of a younger world – brought straight here from ancient times, to this dark bed, carried on her mother’s hair and skin …
She had to stop crying like a child.
This was no time to give in to memory, or to sorrow.
She sat up, thrusting her own red-gold hair out of her face, wiping her eyes. Think. She had to stay alert and calm, or she was going to end up like her fairy mother, murdered in this bed. Think. (Be like Carla.) She remembered from before that the walls of this bedroom were hung with black velvet drapes, which she had never seen opened. Maybe there were windows behind them? Or a balcony? Sliding from the high bed, she went down on her hands and knees and groped her way across the darkened chamber until she found a curtain and lifted it aside. Soft light poured in: there were no windows, but the crystal walls were so pure that the moon shone through them. She pulled aside more drapes, in her hurry dragging them from their silver hooks to the floor. No windows. No doors leading onto a balcony, from which she could try to climb down. Only solid crystal walls, which gleamed pale pink in moonlight – washed by water pouring down from the pool at the summit of the tower, stained by the blood of her mother’s lover.
A terrible screaming pierced the room, and for a moment she thought it was a sluagh circling the tower. But it was coming from the room above, and it was a young male voice – horribly distorted by fear. Frightened sweat ran down Aoife’s face as she gazed upwards. Now she could hear Dorocha laughing, and the Deargdue shouting: ‘No – like this! No – higher! Don’t look so afraid – your father is holding him for you. Oh, let me help you!’
A heavy object thudded onto the ceiling, and the young man’s voice cut off, but another voice took over …
It was Killian this time, wailing in horror at what had just been done before his eyes. His first lesson in murder, and it sounded like he’d failed.
‘Will I kill our son now?’ cried Dorocha cheerfully.
‘Give him one more chance, Beloved!’
Oh, Killian …
In a fit of desperation, Aoife tugged with her fingers at the iron cuffs around her wrists, exerting all her strength. This time, the pain was so intense she ended up on her knees vomiting; her stomach was
empty; there was nothing to bring up; and yet she retched and retched again.
Beyond the amber door she could hear heavy feet coming back up from below. Seconds later, the dullahan’s shadow crossed the door, its glowing head held high – moving from one side of the amber slab to the other. Another tall, slender shadow was following behind with a lighter footfall. The feet, both heavy and light, continued upwards.
And minutes later came another terrible, wordless death cry from overhead, and Aoife sank to the floor, her face in her hands.
‘Worthy of a prince!’ cried the Deargdue’s voice, and there was a rattling on the ceiling as of small stones being tossed like confetti. Or maybe not stones, but diamonds. Killian’s second lesson in committing murder had clearly gone better than the first.
Outside, on the stairs, the dullahan’s booted feet were descending again, back down the tower.
Forcing herself to rise above despair, Aoife stood up and moved around the chamber, running her fingertips down the walls, feeling for invisible cracks. Maybe there was a private stairway, leading up through the walls to the hawthorn pool? The smooth crystal yielded nothing. But suddenly the moonlight shining in turned a darker pink, as if the water running down the outside of the tower had changed colour …
Aoife stared for a moment.
Then turned to search the chamber for a trapdoor, on her knees, feeling her way across the tiles. Nothing. She got down on her stomach to peer under the bed, and gasped when small crimson eyes peered back at her. But it wasn’t a rat – it was the round silver nails of a small box, reflecting the redder light coming through the walls. Reaching into the cobwebbed dark, she drew the box out; it was long and tapered, very similar to the one in which Dorocha kept his iron knife. To her pleasure, despite the iron around her wrist, the bronze lock clicked open under her fingers. It was nice to have some of her earliest power left in her hands – the ability to open locks, which she had had since a child. She glanced towards the door – behind the shadowy bees, the glowing heads of the dullahans were on guard. Maybe, just maybe …
The Hawthorn Crown Page 24