The Black Pool (Valhalla Book 3)

by Jennifer Willis

  “What did she used to say?” Niall whispered to no one in particular. He leaned forward and centered his weight over his hands. “What are the words she used?”

  Sally’s grip on her own shillelagh tightened as she watched him. “What are you doing?”

  “Spirit of the land,” Niall pleaded in a slightly louder voice. “Give me the words. Give me my grandmother’s teachings. Help me to end this violence on your soil.”

  Sally felt a tingle in the ground beneath her. She looked at Niall, her eyes wide. “I think I can help.”

  Leaning close, Sally let go of the ancient weapon and rested her hands on Niall’s spine. “Adding my power to yours,” she whispered.

  Sally waited a moment, then asked, “What are we trying to do, exactly?”

  “Calm the ground.” Niall’s breath was slow and even, his eyes still closed.

  “Calm the ground?” Sally repeated.

  “Calm the ground, calm the people standing on it,” Niall replied. “Calm the creatures still living in it.”

  “So they don’t come up to join the fight,” Sally said.

  Niall pushed his hands more firmly against the grass, and Sally increased the pressure of her palms on his back. Over the chaos of the battlefield, she could hear a low chanting in Niall’s throat, but in a language she didn’t understand. Ancient Gaelic, she guessed.

  Sally closed her eyes and willed her own magick into the ground, too, using Niall and his chant as a conduit.

  Thor stood back-to-back with Heimdall as a three-faerie-deep circle of mixed tribes bore down on them.

  Every few seconds, Thor lunged forward and swung his hammer at whatever creature was closest. He took out a winged-thing with pink eyes by catching it on the knee as it tried to dodge his attack. A growling clurichaun fell to his face to crawl toward Thor in an effort to stay out of range of the leprechaun hammer, but Thor kicked him back and then caught him under the chin with the hammer as the faerie scrambled to his feet.

  Three rat-looking boys—he’d heard Freya call them fir darrigs—charged him at once, two forward and one behind. He grabbed the one on the left by the shoulder of his shabby shirt while striking the one on the right in the chest. Thor ended up with a deep bite in his left forearm for his trouble.

  Yowling in angry pain, Thor picked up the rodent-faced faerie and used him as a club to beat down his remaining compatriot. Then he bludgeoned them both with his hammer.

  Gummy snakes and marshmallow crowns erupted with every blow, just as each faerie struck turned to smoking ash. Newly sprouted shamrock leaves and flowers grew in tangled clumps beneath Thor’s feet.

  “This isn’t so bad!” Thor shouted over his shoulder to Heimdall. He punched another clurichaun in the face and knocked him back a couple of yards, then knocked the foolish smile off a dirty-faced amadán with the flat of his hammer. A spray of blueberry licorice and Guinness-flavored gummy pints burst into the air.

  “I mean, I’m still not a fan of all these pixies trinkets,” Thor complained as he brushed a few gold harps from his beard. “But it’s not an unpleasant way to spend an afternoon.”

  “I think the aim is to wear us down,” Heimdall replied. There was a sharp crack as the heavy bulb of his shillelagh connected with the chest of a particularly feisty faerie. “Taken singly, these aren’t the most ferocious adversaries.”

  “But when there’s a mob . . .” Thor replied just as more faeries crowded around them, taking the places of the Vanir who had already fallen.

  “And there are a lot more of them than us,” Heimdall grunted.

  Thor felt the air move over his left ear as Heimdall pulled his shillelagh back to swing wide at a trio of buachailleens.

  “Watch that you don’t clip me with that thing, eh?” Thor called over his shoulder.

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Heimdall’s voice was strained as he struggled with the cold-eyed herding faeries. He’d knocked the first one down, but the blow from his shillelagh had done little more than upset the red cap of the second one, who now had his own hands on the shillelagh and was trying to wrestle it away from Heimdall.

  “You need help?” Thor called.

  “I think I’ve about got it.” Heimdall let go of the weapon with his right hand to punch the faerie in the face. He felt a burning sting in his left leg. A snake slithered away from Heimdall and then shook itself to transform back into the third buachailleen.

  “Shapeshifters!” Heimdall yelped and collapsed forward, barely managing to keep the faeries at bay.

  Thor turned and dispatched the buachailleens and then stomped on their smoldering ash. He bent over his fallen brother and picked the candies and shamrock seeds out of his hair. He didn’t like the sickly blue pallor of Heimdall’s face.

  “How bad is it?” Thor asked, just before a rat boy rushed forward and cracked Thor’s cranium with his skull-topped shillelagh.

  Badbh touched down atop the Oweynagat ogham stone and nodded at her sisters. Nemain and Macha stepped forward to stand by her side.

  “You still wish to negotiate with me?” Badbh cackled at Odin as he stood before her, a pair of shillelaghs stolen from the fir darrigs in his hands. He held the weapons out to his sides and shook them in frustration.

  “We can end this conflict now!” Odin threw the shillelaghs to the ground and spread his arms before him. “This battle does not have to become a global war. Only you can stop this.”

  Badbh laughed in honest surprise. “Why in the Nine Realms would I want to stop?”

  She looked past Odin to see the Æsir Chief’s two sons struggling on the ground beyond. Heimdall already wore the mask of death, and Thor fell under the pummeling he was taking from the Vanir soldiers rushing in for the kill.

  Badbh looked back at Odin and nodded to the scene unfolding behind him. “Tell me if you still want to negotiate.”

  A howl of despair escaped the one-eyed god’s lips as he turned and saw his two sons lying motionless in the grass. “What have you done?!” he screamed at Badbh. “Why do you lust for Æsir blood?”

  Badbh flashed him a pointed-toothed smile. “It’s not just Æsir,” she cooed. “Any blood will do.”

  Odin bent forward to pick up the shillelaghs he’d laid down. Before he could stand upright, Nemain rushed forward and leapt off the ogham stone, transforming into a massive black wolf in mid-air before she tackled Odin to the ground.

  Nemain pinned his arms down with her forepaws and ripped out his throat before he could so much as draw a breath.

  “Tuatha de Danann! Vanir!” Badbh laughed as the old god’s blood soaked into the green grass of Éireann.

  Thor blinked his eyes open as the faeries suddenly broke off their attack and retreated. Dazed and bloody, he propped himself up on his elbows and found Heimdall lying still beside him.

  His breath catching in his throat, Thor shook his brother hard.

  “Heimdall!” he shouted. He slapped his brother across the face.

  But there was no response. Heimdall’s body was already losing its heat to the damp grass, now more red than green.

  Thor grabbed the leprechaun hammer in one hand and Heimdall’s shillelagh in the other. He stumbled to his feet, and tried to find his balance. His vision was spotty after so many blows to the head and face.

  Blood mixed with sweat ran down into his eyes as he sought out some nearby faerie he could slaughter. But they all backed slowly away from him, laughing. They jeered and taunted in a language he didn’t understand. Thor responded in kind with his own curses.

  “Fight me, you cowards!” he bellowed, swinging the shillelagh at the empty air before him. “You’re no better than rancid rats wallowing in a vat of sow snot!”

  Forming a loose ring around the god of thunder, the faeries continued to taunt him. A few picked up small twigs and pebbles and tossed them at him. Thor kept moving forward, and finally understood that he was being herded.

  He didn’t care. The Vanir bastards would pay for what they’d done
to Heimdall. He just hoped Freya would understand.

  He swung his weapons in front of him again, barely catching the elbow of a skinny faerie with sharply pointed ears and huge eyes. She burst into flame at the touch of the hammer, and a mound of white shamrock flowers and a pile of candy appeared in her place.

  “Fight me!” Thor roared.

  The circle opened before him, and Thor stumbled forward. There was someone on the ground. He wiped his eyes clear and saw the desecrated corpse of his father. Odin’s chest had been torn open, and his blood still oozed from his wounds and soaked into the grass.

  “NO!” Thor gripped his weapons so tight that his fingers bled. Heart pounding, he stepped closer to his father’s body. Odin wasn’t breathing. His one eye was open and staring up at the sky.

  “Ragnarok,” Thor hissed.

  “If that is what you wish to call it,” Badbh announced from above.

  Thor looked up at the three sisters of The Morrigan standing together atop the cave entrance. The black one wiped dark blood away from her mouth with the back of her hand.

  Thor was surprised to be squinting at such bright sunlight. Wasn’t the moon supposed to swallow the sun on the day of Ragnarok? Day turning to eternal darkness as the world ripped itself open from the inside out?

  “Finish him,” Badbh commanded. The Tuatha de Danann who had been standing in a taunting circle around Thor crept forward. They picked up speed with each step, then leapt onto him in a writhing, violent mass, and tore the very life out of the Æsir god of thunder. Thor went down with a strangled shout and a geyser of bright red blood that shot upward toward the sun. Then he was swallowed by the slaughtering scrum and the wet sounds of tearing flesh.

  That business concluded, Badbh blinked her eyes at the clear sun overhead and stretched her arms up toward it.

  “The day has come!” she sang with tears in her voice. She gazed out across the field where so many of her kind lay slain, but she did not mourn. Theirs was a worthy and necessary sacrifice.

  But there were still the two humans to dispose of. She saw them crouched together in the grass. The boy’s lips were moving, no doubt in some fervent, frail prayer that he hoped might change the course of Éireann’s destiny.

  Then she recognized the girl with the red-blond hair—the little witch from the Black Pool. Badbh laughed.

  “Lunantisidhe!” she screeched. A pair of spindly, wizened creatures looked up from the pile still tearing at the lifeless body of Thor. Badbh nodded toward the two humans. The long teeth of the dark soldiers sharpened into points as they smiled.

  Sally opened her eyes to find a pair of wrinkled, gangling creatures loping toward her.

  “Niall!” She shook him hard. “We’ve got trouble!”

  In a single motion, Niall leapt up from the grass and swung out with Sally’s shillelagh.

  “Sally! Run!” he shouted as the sharp-toothed faeries dodged his advances.

  Sally looked at Niall in disbelief. “Where?”

  Niall took another swing at the faeries, and again he missed. “Just get out of here! Go to the cave.” He lunged forward and jabbed one of the creatures in the belly. The other laughed and shot past Niall to close in on Sally.

  Sally’s body was in motion before she realized her brain had even issued the command to run. She dashed toward the cave opening and tried to ignore the fact that she was racing into the arms of The Morrigan.

  “Keep going!” Niall shouted behind her. Then she heard a sharp CRACK and hoped beyond hope that it was the sound of Niall’s shillelagh splitting the faerie’s skull.

  After that, Niall was silent.

  Sally felt a tug at the back of her jacket. The second creature was nearly on top of her. It was reaching for her as they ran, and it kept snagging her clothing before losing its grip.

  “I have no quarrel with you!” Sally shouted, hoping the faerie understood English. “Not with you personally.”

  She ran around the bodies of Heimdall and Thor, swallowing her tears as she sped past. She kept her eyes on the cave.

  “Wherever are you going, little one?” Badbh asked.

  “Leave me alone!” Sally cried. She looked away from Odin’s corpse and kept moving. Another few strides, and she would be safe inside the cave—even though she wasn’t sure what “safe” entailed at this point.

  Out of nowhere, the long-limbed faerie appeared before her, landing on its feet as it completed its leap over her head.

  “Now, now, pretty thing,” it sang to her in what Sally decided was the creepiest voice she’d ever heard. “Won’t you stay to play with me?”

  “I don’t want to!” Sally shouted back. She grimaced at the childish whine of her own voice.

  “What shall we do with this one, then?” the creature lilted again. It looked up at Badbh.

  She waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Whatever you wish. I have no use for her.”

  The creature turned its eyes back on Sally. Its grin widened into a display of razor-sharp teeth that made Sally’s skin crawl.

  “What game shall we play?” The creature strode slowly toward Sally.

  She backed away and inched sideways, trying to maneuver her way closer to the cave entrance. The faerie guessed her strategy and laughed.

  “Try it,” it suggested, “if you fancy a game of prey.” The faerie’s long face grew suddenly sad. “But I’m afraid that game would be over and done with much too quickly. No, I much prefer something that will linger.”

  The creature started to close on her again. “Something full of tears and screaming.”

  “GET AWAY FROM ME!” Sally screamed at the top of her lungs.

  The creature grinned even wider than before.

  “Leave her alone!” cried a familiar voice from within the shadows of the cave.

  Sally squinted into the darkness. “Freyr?” She saw him move forward, still standing out of direct sunlight.

  The faerie halted its advance and eyed Freyr curiously. “My lord?”

  “You heard me!” Freyr bellowed. “Step back from the girl, now!”

  The creature dipped its head and moved away a few paces, but it kept its slanted eyes trained on Sally.

  “Freyr?” Sally gasped again. “What happened to you? I thought you were dead?”

  “You know me?” he asked, moving forward another half-step.

  “Freyr!” Sally nearly laughed. “Of course I know you. What are you talking about?”

  “I said, stay back!” Freyr shouted. Sally looked over her shoulder to find that the faerie had crept toward her.

  The faerie smirked at him. “But she is not yours to claim.”

  “Freyr?” Sally looked to her friend in confusion as she felt the faerie’s long, spindly fingers close over her shoulders. Then she felt a sharp pain in her neck as the creature bit into her flesh. “Freyr!” she screamed.

  “No!” Freyr shouted as he rushed out from the shadows of the cave and into the sunlight, where his body immediately burst into smoke and flame. Within less than a second, Freyr was reduced to nothing but smoldering embers. The wind lifted his ashes and scattered them across the blood-soaked field.

  “FREYR!” Badbh screamed from atop the ogham stone as the shade of her grandson—the heir to the throne of Éireann and all of Vanaheim—was vaporized by the sunlight.

  “It wasn’t yet time for you,” she sobbed. She felt strong hands gripping her arms and knew her sisters surrounded her.

  “All is not yet lost,” Macha whispered into Badbh’s ear.

  “There is one other,” Neiman added.

  Badbh pushed her sisters away. “Freya!” Her voice echoed across the grassy field. She had lost sight of her granddaughter as the battle had raged, but she had neither seen nor felt her death. If Freyr was truly lost, his sister could still rule in his stead.

  “Freya!” she cried out again, the edge of panic in her voice.

  “I am here, grandmother.”

  Badbh whirled around to find Freya climbi
ng to her feet as she finished her ascent of the earthworks atop Oweynagat. Freya was dirty from her climb, and her blond hair dripped red from the blood she had spilled to reach the ogham stone. She clasped her hands behind her back in obedience.

  Badbh felt a flood of relief as her granddaughter stood before her. She was surprised to feel the sting of tears at her eyes. “We’ve suffered a terrible loss, you and I,” Badbh said. “But this isn’t the end.”

  Freya laughed. “No, I’m sorry. I’m afraid it is.”

  Freya pulled her shillelagh from behind her back and gripped it with both hands as she swung it over her head and aimed for Badbh’s skull. “My life and my magick!”

  Before Badbh could utter a single syllable, Freya’s midsection exploded outward in a spray of blood and bile. Macha stood behind Freya, her hand sharpened into the point of a spear as she severed Freya’s spine and punctured her belly from the back.

  “Freya?” Badbh asked in disbelief.

  “It’s too bad,” Freya gurgled as the blood rose in her throat and trickled over her lips, “that it had to be like this.”

  Nemain sprang forward to hold Freya in place so that Macha could gouge her further.

  “What are you doing?!” Badbh screamed at her sisters. Badbh grabbed at Nemain’s arms and tried to pull her away. “She is our flesh and blood!”

  “And she attempted to destroy you!” Nemain hissed over her shoulder.

  With a pained smile, Freya reached up to clutch at Nemain. “But this is how it has to be.”

  With her last ounce of strength, Freya yanked Nemain forward onto Macha’s sharpened fingers, stabbing the dark sister through the gut.

  “Only Vanir can touch Vanir.” Freya smiled weakly.

  Macha pulled back the spear of her arm, dripping with blood. Freya and Nemain slumped toward each other, dead.

  Badbh blinked dumbly at Macha.

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” her sister said softly. “You know that.”

  Badbh did know. The Morrigan was three, not two or one. Badbh lifted her chin and tried to feel the stone beneath her feet, but her entire body was numb. The bodies of her sister and her grandchild lay before her.