Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

by White, Gwynn

  “It’s the land of the dead,” Alyx said. “The Otherworld. The place where the fey come from, where the saints go.”

  “Ah, God.”

  “There’s no God. Not here, anyway. Only the River of Sticks.”

  “What is it? The River of Sticks?”

  “It’s what we just bathed in. The cure for sickness. The cure for everything. My mother brought me here when I was thirteen.”

  The Shackler said eagerly, “The river. Yes, the river. Give me my relics and let me go to the river.” He started to cry. “It’s a hard world. I never fitted in. I wasn’t a bad man; I only hurt people because I was too scared to hurt myself. No one ever understood.”

  “Ah, give him his relics,” Alyx said. “He’s too recognizable to fence his head in Belfast, anyway.”

  Liam rooted through the gore-sopped sacks and tossed the Shackler’s head, hands, and heart at him. The ghost clasped the things to its breast. It was bizarre to see a man clutching his own head in his arms. “Thank you, thank you a thousand times.”

  “I’m sorry!” Randolph Sauvage blurted. “I didn’t mean to kill you! I just …”

  “You’re too young to be a killer. Ah, it’s a hard world.” The Shackler shuffled away into the fog.

  “He didn’t forgive me,” Randolph said. His mouth wobbled.

  “He was in too much of a hurry to get to the river,” Alyx said. “Weak-willed piece of shite.” She gestured upwards. “There’s saints up there in the mountains that have lasted centuries. Nowadays, they just fold like newspapers. We’d better get on the road.”

  A knocking noise came from the van’s engine compartment. Ragherty popped the bonnet, lifted it—and recoiled with a shout.

  Fur and claws and owlish eyes boiled in the engine compartment.

  “Gremlins!” Val exclaimed.

  The little fey sprang out of the engine in a storm of chittering shrieks and fled into the fog.

  The engine was a mass of twisted piping. The gremlins had done an astonishing amount of damage in a short time. The van was a write-off.

  37

  Ran

  That Afternoon

  They walked.

  “This was supposed to be a shortcut,” Alyx grumbled. “Fecking gremlins.”

  “You’ve been using the Otherworld as a shortcut?” said Val Sullivan, the scary magician. He seemed unable to say anything without turning red and furious anymore.

  “It’s handy when you’re short of petrol. Or when you don’t want to run into a checkpoint. How d’you think we got to London the last time?”

  The fog never lifted. It muffled their footfalls on the road, which was cobbled, with so many missing stones that you constantly had to watch your step. As they descended from the mountains, the road got even worse. Long stretches were all weeds. They occasionally saw a ghost stumbling across their path. Ran wondered whether they would meet Piers. He hoped they wouldn’t. He knew now that this was the same place he had visited in his dream. He also knew that Piers would not be happy to see him with Alyx and her friends.

  But Alyx had healed him by bringing him here. He relived the moment when he’d come to, floating in the river. Alive! He still felt great. Nothing hurt. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this good before.

  He was getting tired, though. And hungry . When they sat down for a break and Alyx handed around a half-loaf of sliced white bread, Ran gobbled it down, although it tasted like cardboard, compared to the bread they had at home.

  Alyx watched him fondly. “We’ll have something better for you when we get to Belfast. I know a pub where they do the best fry-up in the country. Sausages, mushrooms, black pudding, taties, eggs, and fried bread, how does that sound to you, my hero?”

  “Why do you keep calling me that?”

  “What?”

  “‘My hero.’”

  “Because you are.”

  “I’m not a hero. I’m just a child.”

  Val Sullivan laughed.

  Alyx’s face got funny. Her lips pressed together and she shook her head. “You wielded the Worldcracker. You slew the Shackler.”

  “I didn’t mean to.” Ran’s voice was tiny. He had killed a man.

  “What sort of attitude is that for a king?”

  “I’m not—”

  “Would you stop your cribbing!” Her sudden anger brought the tears to Ran’s eyes. He sat stiffly, knowing that to cry would make her even angrier. She jabbed his leg with the Worldcracker, dropped it in his lap. “This proves it,” she sadi bitterly. “You’re the true king. I’m not the true queen. The Sauvages were kings long ago, before the MacConns were ever heard of. So I suppose it makes sense, doesn’t it?” She looked around at the others. “Doesn’t it?”

  Donnchla said, “And now there’s nothing you can do about it, Alyx, eh? He’s bathed in the River of Sticks. You should have thought it through.”

  “He’s only wee! Would you have had me let him die?”

  They walked faster after that, Alyx setting a furious pace. The fog got darker. Ran had been able to see Conn in the lead before and now he could only see the reflective Overwhelm patch sewn on the back of Conn’s rucksack.

  “Can’t we stop for a while?” Gerry said. “My feet’re killing me, Alyx.”

  “You want to stop? You want to let the Hunt catch up with us?”

  Val said, “The Hunt?”

  “Whatever you want to call them. The hounds of Hell, that’s my mother’s name for them. When you’re in a car, you can be in and out before they know you’re here. But now we’ve been here too long. They’ll be onto us. Catching up.”

  Her anxiety affected them all. They hustled on in silence until Liam, in the rear, shouted, “I can hear them.”

  Soon Ran could hear them, too. When he was with Piers in the forest, they had sounded as if they were singing. Now they were clearly howling. The eerie noise grew louder.

  Ragherty crouched in front of Ran—”Get on my back!” And then they were all running and the hounds kept pace with them, invisible in the dark, howling their eerie song. Alyx shrieked: “Don’t leave the road! Don’t leave the fucking road,” and then she stopped. Everyone stopped. Ragherty set Ran down.

  Ahead, there were no more cobbles. Only weeds.

  Pinpoints of red blinked in the dark. Ran shrank against Ragherty’s side.

  The hounds of Hell moved, closing into a semicircle ahead of the travellers.

  “They can’t cross the road,” Alyx said. “The old straight road. My mother told me.”

  “Yeah, well, they are crossing it!” Gerry screamed.

  Could I kill them?

  Do I dare to try?

  Ran gripped the hilt of the Worldcracker, mustering his courage.

  Water splattered his face. Rain bucketed down, soaking them. Thunder rumbled, as if there were another pack of hounds hunting them through the sky.

  “Oh no,” Alyx muttered. “Rain means the Hunter is coming. He’s my mother’s worst enemy. I don’t want to meet him. I really don’t.”

  “Then fucking do something!” Conn shouted.

  Lightning cracked in the sky. Visible for the first time, the hounds of Hell were the size of cows. Their huge haunches coiled under chiseled flanks. Snaggleteeth crammed their muzzles. They surrounded the group on three sides, so close that Ran could smell their stink.

  “Mum!” Alyx screamed. “Mother! Mum! I need you!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Mum! Help, help, help!”

  Thunder grumbled. The lightning lit the dim silhouette of a rise in the ground, and over it came flying a bird. The bird seemed to take a long time to reach them; the next bolt of lightning showed it scarcely bigger. Ran’s perspective shifted. He realized that the rise in the ground was a mountain peak, poking through the fog in the distance, and the bird was the size of a dragon.

  The hounds of Hell yelped and cringed when the giant bird flapped over their heads. It landed on the road and became a woman. She snapped her fingers a
t the hounds. They fled, at first on four legs, then picked themselves up and ran away on two.

  “Yes, run!” the woman shouted after them. “This is my land! Tell your master to fuck off out of it!”

  “Maybe he wouldn’t trespass on your territory if you were actually here, instead of playing the fine lady at Castle Galway,” Alyx said, recovering fast.

  The woman smiled and straightened her skirt. She was wearing a bogus army uniform with a very low cleavage. “More fun than hiding in the mountains like you, darling.”

  Ran edged behind Ragherty.

  “As a matter of fact, I was in the middle of something, so …” The woman scanned Alyx, eyebrows hiked up like question marks. “You do look a fright.” Her gaze snagged on the bits of Ran that stuck out from behind Ragherty. “Who’s that?”

  Reluctantly, Ran shuffled forwards. “C-C-Cousin Dierdre.” It really was her. Dierdre with the lovely voice that said horrid things. Dierdre, whom Ran’s mother had once, when she thought Ran wasn’t listening, called a shameless gold-digger.

  What’s she doing here?

  “Ran! By all that’s unholy. Do you know your brother’s about to go to war for you? I’m actually helping him to plan it. What a disappointment it would be if it got called off at the last moment.” Dierdre turned back to Alyx. “Darling, perhaps you could hold onto Ran for a while? And don’t let anyone know you’ve got him.”

  “He’s coming with me to Belfast, anyway.”

  “What of these others? You I know, you, and you … who are you?”

  “I don’t think we’ve met before, m’lady,” Val said evenly. “Honored.”

  Dierdre raised her eyebrows. “Honestly, the company you keep, darling. I didn’t give you the gift of the River of Sticks so that you could waste it on every Jed and Jimmy in Belfast.”

  “Then why did you give it to me, Mum? Do you even know yourself?”

  “Because I love you,” Dierdre said, and Ran thought of his own mother, who always said it in that same way, carelessly, without looking straight at you, so as not to have to see your face.

  “Fuck off, Mum,” Alyx said, clenching her fists.

  Ran sidled towards Alyx. “Please don’t let’s talk to her anymore,” he whispered. “Please let’s just go!” He knew what he had to do now. He had to get out of here and warn Guy and Mother that Cousin Dierdre was not what they thought she was. She was not human.

  “Wait. Ran.”

  Unwillingly, he turned to face Dierdre.

  “What’s that?”

  She was looking at the Worldcracker.

  “Let me see it.”

  He wanted to draw the Worldcracker and hit her with it. Kill her dead like the Shackler. The strength of the impulse terrified him. He pulled the sword out of his belt and showed it at her, hilt first.

  “Ta,” she said, and grabbed it. She thrust it through her high-fashion arms belt.

  They all stared at her, stricken.

  “Give that back to him!” The voice came from the fog beyond the road. “It’s not yours for the taking, my lady.”

  “Piers!” Ran screamed.

  He dashed past Dierdre and threw his arms around his brother. Piers felt bony, and he looked crumpled, like the suit of armor their great-great-grandfather had been killed in, which was still displayed in the Old Keep, rents and all. But he held himself erect, and he said to Dierdre, “Give that back to my brother.”

  Dierdre laughed. “Make me.”

  “Ran,” Alyx called. “Ran, come here. That’s a ghost. We don’t mix with them.”

  Piers glanced at her with icy condescension. “What are you doing with these people, Ran? You’re the Lord Protector of Ireland, the heir of House Sauvage. They have grossly insulted your person and your House. Don’t make friends with them, hmm?”

  “I’m not—I mean, they—Piers, don’t let her take the Worldcracker!”

  “Well?” Piers said to Dierdre. “It’ll do you no good, you know. It’s his. No one else can wield it.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Dierdre said. “These things aren’t as black and white as you English like to believe.”

  Piers’s lips twitched. “Philosophy, from you?”

  “I was worshipped as a goddess once,” Dierdre said. Her lovely voice changed. Now it sounded high and buzzy, like flies whining around a piece of meat left out in the sun. “Men laid their spoils before me. They slaughtered thousands in my name. I led armies and won undying victories. For my greater glory, the flower of Ireland went down, down, down to the cold land. My land.” She gestured around the barren landscape with a slow elegant sweep of her hand. “Here too thou’lt linger at my pleasure, who wert once a lord.”

  “Bollocks,” Piers said. “I was baptized. I shall stay here as long as I like, but not at your pleasure. The days are past when you could command men to your will. Now the only man you can command is Cyril Argent. Rather a comedown, I must say.” He laughed in Dierdre’s face. Ran had never loved or admired him more. “Now give back the Worldcracker—demon!”

  “I will not,” Dierdre said. “Begone!”

  She leapt at Piers, knocking Ran over. Everyone shouted. Something melon-shaped, with a long tail, bounced past. Dierdre ran after it and kicked it again. Piers chased it, half-leaping and half-falling, reaching blindly ahead of him with both hands. He was headless. His neck stuck up a couple of inches from his shoulders, still adorned with that jaunty green scarf.

  Ran dragged air into his lungs and screamed.

  “See you in London!” Dierdre shrieked. She laughed—a harsh, mirthless caw—and jumped into the air, spreading ragged black wings.

  38

  Leonie

  Two Days Later. November 27th, 1979. Oughterard, County Galway

  Leonie climbed the path as high as it went, and then climbed further. She circled above a concrete picnic pavilion where a few locals were eating chips out of newspapers, despite the cold. Pushing between gorse bushes and the crooked elbows of blackthorn, stepping around sumps of toilet paper and empty lager cans, she reached the top of the little hill.

  Everywhere was a hill in Ireland, and every hill had greater ones overtopping it, up to the dark cloud slicing off the snow-capped head of Ben Corr.

  In the valley between Leonie and Ben Corr, the town of Oughterard lay like a crushed snail.

  She picked gorse needles out of her jeans, her face set against the wind. She did not want to drive into Oughterard.

  It had taken them almost two days to get here. Their trip on the car ferry had been terrifying, but as it turned out that had been the easy part. The Mini had broken down not twenty miles from Cork, defeating Leonie’s hopes that the engine would hold out at least a week. She’d managed to nurse it as far as the nearest village, but she’d had to pay seventy quid to get it bodged back into running condition, and that had eaten up a whole day. Luckily the bloke at the garage had been a boss-eyed old fart, approximately a thousand years old.

  It wasn’t him she was worried about. It was Lady Elspeth. Who had heard Madelaine talking about Oughterard.

  Leonie looked down at the wayside shrine where she’d parked. The shrine sat in a cutting atop the last hill before the town. From here, the road swept down through a roundabout and past a shopping center.

  Turn around, she thought. Get back on the minor roads. Box around the town and approach from the north, they won’t be expecting us to come that way.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was better than nothing. She climbed back down towards the shrine, a half-barrel chapel built out from a concave rock face overhung by brambles. Pilgrims queued outside the chapel, and no wonder: it looked like no one was charging. Free saints that actually had virtue in them were few and far between these days. She heard the ting, ting of prayer timers, and shouts of thanksgiving. People were getting healed in there.

  She caught herself wondering if it would be worthwhile hauling Sam across the water to see this saint. Then she put the thought back in the locked
box where it belonged.

  On this side of the shrine there were public loos and a rest house, where successful pilgrims could sleep off their cures if they hadn’t got anyone to drive them home. On the other side, a row of stalls trailed around the parking lot, selling fish and chips, bread-filled sausages, deep-fried chocolate bars, and souvenirs. The Mini was parked in the middle of the lot.

  A black car came up the hill from Oughterard and turned into the parking lot. Leonie watched two men get out. Swollen upper bodies in black leather bomber jackets, sun-gigs, heads cropped nearly bald. They started across the parking-lot towards the shrine, bodybuilder thighs rubbing together.

  Here we are, then. It’s the Invisible Men.

  Folk in Ireland called MI5 the Invisible Men because they were always as obvious as a bulldog’s bollocks.

  They’ve caught up with us.

  She veered behind the rest house. Her trainers squelched into the muck, sodden by runoff from a gutter pipe.

  The first Invisible Man went into the loos.

  She squeezed between the rest house and the cliff. There was just enough of a crack for her to get around the other end.

  The second Invisible Man stood smoking a cigarette, idly observing the queue of pilgrims.

  His mate came out of the loos, hitching his jeans.

  Leonie walked fast, casually, towards the parking-lot. They had not seen her face, only her back. She put a clump of people between them. A tour bus had just rolled up. When she got around that, she started jogging.

  Madelaine and Fiona were not in the car.

  Leonie wheeled. The princess sauntered towards her, carrying the baby. A red balloon bobbled from a string around Fiona’s wrist. A Present from St. Aoife of the Blessed Virgin, it said in sparkly lettering.

  “I just thought I’d take Fifi to see the goldfish,” Madelaine said. “There’s a little man selling them over there: catch your own, to keep in a bowl or add to a fry-up, I suppose. And then I bought her a balloon. I don’t see how even you can object to that.”