My phone rang in my pocket, nearly giving me a heart attack. I checked the screen; Rina was calling. She was a born texter, and never called unless it was something truly important. My mind still reeling from the vision, I accepted the call.
“Yeah?”
“Chris! Nicnevin’s been murdered!”
<<
Anya and Chris’s story continues in Elphame’s Queen, available here. Keep reading for a preview!
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Glossary
Angus – the eldest of Beira and the Bodach’s sons.
Anya Darach – Queen of Winter. Daughter of Cailleach Bheur/Beira and Maelgwyn, the Unseelie King.
Beinn na Caillich – a hill west of Broadford on the Isle of Skye. Its name is translated into English as Hill of the Old Woman.
Bodach [pɔt̪əx] – a trickster or bogeyman figure in Gaelic folklore and mythology. Husband of Beira.
Cailleach Bheur/Beira [kall-EE burr/BEE-ruh] – Celtic weather deity. Personification of winter. Mother of Anya.
Carson University – an institution of higher learning in Manhattan that studies sciences, liberal arts, and theoretical magic. Both Christopher and Karina Stewart have attended and taught there.
Christopher Stewart – an Elizabethan scholar and bestselling author, and older brother of Karina.
Colleen Worley – administrative assistant for the earth sciences division at Carson University. Karina Stewart’s best friend.
Cornucopia ]kôrn(y)əˈkōpēə] – a symbol of plenty consisting of a goat's horn overflowing with flowers, fruit, and corn.
Crom Cruach – a pagan god of pre-Christian Ireland.
Demeter [dɪ-MEE-tər] — in Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest and agriculture, who presided over grains and the fertility of the earth.
Dob’s Linn – a site near Moffat, Scotland. It is the location of the Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point which marks the boundary between the Ordovician and Silurian periods.
Doon Hill – a hill near Aberfoyle, Scotland that some believe to be a gateway to Elphame. Some believe that Robert Kirk is still imprisoned in the Minister’s Pine at the crest of the hill.
Elphame [el-faym] – Fairlyand; abode of the fairies.
Fairy ointment – an ointment applied to a mortal’s eyes that allows them to see fairies in their true form.
Faith Elizabeth Stewart Kirk – daughter of Karina Stwart and Robert Kirk.
Fionnlagh [fin-lay] – the Seelie King.
Fuath [fuə] – malevolent water spirits. Their name literally means “hate” in Gaelic.
Gallowglass [gal-oh-glas, -glahs] – a heavily armed mercenary soldier. In Elphame, the gallowglass is the Seelie Queen’s personal assassin.
Geas [ɡeSH] – (in Irish folklore) an obligation or prohibition magically imposed on a person.
Glamour [glam-er] – an illusion that conceals flaws or distractions.
Good People – a euphemism for fairies.
Hades [hay-DEEZ] — the ancient Greek chthonic god of the underworld, which eventually took his name.
Karina Stewart – an American geology studying at Carson University. Younger sister of Chris, mother of Faith. The only living walker in the mortal realm.
Ken [ken] – knowledge, understanding, or cognizance.
Kirk [kurk] – a church.
Long Meg and her Daughters - a Bronze Age stone circle near Penrith in Cumbria, North West England.
Maelgwyn – the Unseelie King. Formerly Udane, the Summer King.
Magh Slécht – a historic plain in Ireland.
Nemeton [neh-meh-ton] – places sacred to the old Celtic religion, primarily trees but also including temples and shrines.
Nicnevin [nik-neh-van] – the Seelie Queen.
Ninth Legion - a legion of the Imperial Roman army that existed from the 1st century BC until at least AD 120.
Norns - creatures in Norse mythology responsible for tending Yggsdrasil and the fate of humans.
Persephone [per-SEH-fə-nee] — goddess of the underworld, springtime, flowers, and vegetation.
Picts - a group of Celtic-speaking peoples who lived in Scotland until about the tenth century AD.
Robert Kirk – currently the gallowglass. Before that, he was a minister, Gaelic scholar, and folklorist, best known for writing The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies. Father of Faith.
Sarmi – caretaker of the Winter Palace.
Seelie Court – the home of the light or good fairies.
Tantallon Castle – a semi-ruined mid-14th-century fortress in East Lothian, Scotland. It sits atop a promontory opposite the Bass Rock, looking out onto the Firth of Forth.
Teind [tend] – a tribute due to be paid by the fairies to the devil every seven years.
Transmutation Regulations – regulation passed during the Industrial Revolution limiting the practice of alchemy in the US.
Udane – the Summer King. He was dethroned by the Bodach.
Urdarbrunnr [urd-AR-brunner] - the well lies beneath the world tree, Yggdrasil.
Volva/volv – an individual said to have the ability to foretell future occurrences.
Wight [wahyt] – a small, winged fairy commonly found in gardens.
Yggsdrasil - an immense ash tree that is center to the cosmos.
<<<>>>
Chapter One
Anya
“I need to show you something.”
I looked up from my globe and saw Karina standing in my solarium. Karina, my lover’s sister. Karina, the only living walker. Karina, the only one I knew of who’d bested the Seelie, a host of Greek gods, and, most impressively, my mother. I wondered if someday she’d best me.
“All right.” I stood, and took her hand. Then we blinked to a murder scene.
“Gods below, what happened here?” We were standing in a human bedroom, and the occupant of the bed had gone to their final slumber. The bed, once hung with pale silk curtains, was soaked in the same red that splashed the walls and stained the carpet. Whoever was in that bed had not gone quietly.
“Where are we? Who is that?” I stepped back from the bed and saw Robert Kirk, the gallowglass himself, leaning on the doorframe. “Did you kill this person?”
“No,” he replied. “As for where we are, we’re in Crail. This is my home.”
Memories of the last time I’d been in Crail flooded my mind. Christopher and I had been searching for clues about a weather anomaly, and we’d found—
“Nicnevin,” I gasped, clapping my hand over my mouth. Nicnevin had been in hiding in Robert and Karina’s home, and had been the source of the weather anomaly. Had been.
This was Robert and Karina’s bedroom. This was the last place I’d seen Nicnevin alive.
“What happened?” I reached toward the body, toward Nicnevin’s rosy gold hair that I’d always admired, but had never admitted to anyone. No longer was her hair the rich hue of sunsets and ripe peaches. Now it was the red of an abattoir.
“We don’t know,” Karina replied. “Robert and I came here to tell Nicnevin to get out of hiding and go back to the Seelie Court, and we found her.” Karina paused, her throat working. “I called Chris, and he said you needed to know as soon as possible. And here we are.”
“Yes. Here we are.” I paced around the perimeter of the bed and back again. She was dead from all angles. “Christopher and I saw her—spoke to her—only three days ago.”
“And that was the last time ye set eyes on her?” Robert asked.
“Are you accusing me of murder?” I demanded.
“Do not put words in me mouth,” he snapped. “I’ve a dead woman in me bed. It’s my right to be askin’ questions.”
I glared at Robert, insolent man that he was, but he was correct. “I won’t insult your intelligence by asking who wanted Nicnevin dead,” I began; that list was long, indeed. “Who could have accomplished this?
”
“Any number of beings,” Robert replied. “Accordin’ to Christopher, he told one o’ the fuath that Nicnevin was holed up here. Those beasts whisper amongst themselves, and anyone willin’ to take the time can learn to listen.”
Da heard the old ones whispering from beneath. “Do we think it was Crom? He is the most likely suspect.”
“Is he?” Robert countered. “From what I was told o’ the battle, he may already think he won.”
An image of my Da being consumed whole by Crom’s massive head flitted behind my eyes. “Well and so, Crom is my main focus now, as is finding my Da.”
Karina touched my hand. “Have you learned anything?”
“No,” I whispered, ignoring the pressure behind my eyes, the pain like glass in my throat. “Neither I nor Mum can find a single trace of him.”
Karina’s gentle touch became her fingers grasping mine. “We’ll find him. I promise.”
And what if there’s nothing to find but a body? I’d asked Mum the very same question. Her response was that if nothing more remained of the Bodach than his corpse, she would drag it to the center of Elphame and light the biggest funeral pyre anyone in any world has ever seen.
I didn’t want a pyre. I wanted my Da.
“We will,” I said. Based on Karina’s frown, I didn’t sound all that convincing. “We will,” I repeated. “As for Nicnevin, there’s nothing more we can do for her, except find out who did this.”
“Aye,” Robert said. “Can ye freeze her for a time?”
“You want to preserve the body?”
“Only for a day or so. We do need to get the workmen paid and let go, and I do no’ want them askin’ questions I’d rather no’ answer. There is also the matter o’ relocatin’ the wights.”
“I will bring them to the Unseelie Court,” I said. Before Maelgwyn ruled the Unseelie he was the Summer King, and the wights had tended his gardens. I imagine them returning to him would be a homecoming for all involved.
Maelgwyn was also my true father, a fact that until recently had been hidden from all but my mother and my da.
I shook my head, then I spied a cradle in the corner of the room. “Where is Faith?”
“In Glasgow,” Karina replied. “Chris is watching her.”
“We should go to them.” I raised my hand, and a layer of ice grew around Nicnevin’s corpse. “Whoever did this to Nicnevin is not one to be trifled with. I don’t want to leave our vulnerable unprotected.” The body dealt with, I glanced around the room. “Is there anything from here I can help you bring to the flat?”
“I’ll no’ have items tainted by death near me bairn, no’ if I can help it,” Robert said, then he wrapped his arm around Karina’s shoulders. “As far as I’m concerned it can all burn.”
I tightened my grip on Karina’s hand and made ready to blink to Glasgow. “Then burn it shall.”
<<<>>>
Continue the story here.
Is this your first time meeting Chris and Anya? Turn the page for a preview of Gallowglass, the book that started it all.
Chapter One
Karina
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE dragging me to another old rock.”
I glared at Chris. Why had I brought him along, again? “It’s not an old rock. It’s a church. And since we’re in Scotland, it’s called a kirk.” I would have said more, but I needed to concentrate. This driving on the wrong side of the road business was for the birds.
“Kirk,” Chris repeated, rolling the word around in his mouth. “And, what are ‘kirks’ made of?”
I scowled at him, almost veered into a ditch, and jerked the car back onto the road. I’d grown up in northern New Jersey just over the water from New York, the Mecca of public transportation. I’d done more driving during these last two weeks in the United Kingdom than I’d done in my entire life. “Chris, do you have to be such a jerk all the time?”
“Rina, do you have to be such a bad driver?”
“Stop drinking all that complimentary Scotch, and you can do the driving.”
“When in Rome.”
He had a point. Nearly every place we’d visited in Scotland had either presented us with a few samples of the local whisky, or boasted a friendly proprietor with a flask at the ready. Add these samples to all the pubs we’d visited, and the many pints we’d downed, and my liver was starting to ache.
“Besides,” Chris continued, “if I was driving, you wouldn’t get to drag me to every known fairy sighting in the UK.”
“You liked Stirling,” I reminded him. During our tour of Stirling Castle’s grounds Chris had made full use of that Shakespeare degree by randomly quoting the Scottish play, despite the guide’s many reminders that MacBeth was a work of fiction. After the third time he shouted “Out, out, damn spot!” I was worried she’d deck him.
As for me, I was working toward a Ph D in geology at Carson, just a few buildings over from where Chris lectured about dead Elizabethans. Since I was technically in the UK to research my thesis I was mostly interested in Stirling Castle’s location on the Stirling Sill, a quartz-rich expanse of bedrock that ranged throughout the countryside. Though the ghost stories were cool, too.
I’d always been interested in supernatural occurrences, which was the main reason I’d applied to Carson. It was one of the few North American schools that studied mystical subjects as well as the mundane. I’d ended up majoring in geology and minoring in alchemy; both subjects concerned the earth and how its elements worked together, though it was hard to do any real alchemical work in the states since the transmutation regulations had gone into effect over one hundred years ago. Back when railroad barons had still been a thing, some politician had gotten the idea that alchemists would go around transmuting all the base metals into gold, thus using up all the iron and subsequently bankrupt the industry. My advisor speculated that the politician had tried transmuting metals into gold himself and failed, and had a case of sour grapes. All I knew was that if it really was that easy to create gold from things like iron filings and aluminum foil, instant noodles wouldn’t be my go-to dinner.
When the packet about the research grant had arrived in my mail slot, I knew it was the perfect opportunity learn more about my minor, and fine-tune my thesis. That, and putting an ocean between mine and Chris’s problems was about the only thing keeping us sane.
My brother didn’t believe in anything that he couldn’t see and touch and smell, never mind that his department chair was a scholar so old he’d studied under Aristotle. That was the rumor, anyway. I’d always found it ironic that the least magical guy in the world taught at the most renowned magical university on the east coast. Chris was of the opinion that all magic had died out centuries ago, and magical creatures along with it. Most shared that viewpoint, even those enrolled in alchemy and other metaphysical courses, which is why I kept most of my ideas to myself. I didn’t need some nonbeliever casting a critical eye on my work. My work just needed to get done.
“At least real people lived at Stirling,” Chris said as we pulled into the car park. “What sort of imaginary creatures inhabit this kirk?”
“No imaginary creatures.” Not letting yourself be baited is a crucial survival tool for younger sisters. I pulled up the emergency brake, pocketed the keys, and jammed my water bottle into my daypack. “There was a reverend here in the seventeenth century called Robert Kirk, and he had dealings with the local fairies and elves. I guess this place is something of a nemeton,” I said as we got out of the rental.
“Nemeton?”
“You know, a magical place alongside a church,” I explained. Chris gave me a look over the roof of the car, raising a single eyebrow. That had always irritated me, since my own eyebrows refused to act independently. Chris must have some mutant extra muscle on one side of his head. My brother is a freak. “Anyway, the reverend wrote a book telling everyone their secrets, and it angered the fairies so they imprisoned him in the tree at the top of Doon Hill, just past the kirk. They s
till call the tree the Minister’s Pine.”
“Anyone can write a book,” Chris grumbled. “I’ve written several.”
I bit my lip; Chris had just enough midgrade liquor in him to be itching for a fight, and anything I said about his crumbling literary career, good or bad, would add fuel to the fire. After a few moments of silence, I said, “The walk starts with that bridge.”
Chris and I started walking toward the stone bridge that spanned the River Forth. “Did you get a pamphlet about this place?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I rooted around in my daypack, and pulled out the wad of information supplied by Spiritual Sights of the UK, the tour group my research grant had booked on my behalf. I was glad that I’d opted for the cheaper, self-guided package, and hadn’t saddled a hapless tour guide with my brother’s foul attitude for the duration of the tour. That sort of torment was reserved for family.
I pulled out the slightly rumpled pamphlet and handed it over. Chris opened it, scanning the paragraphs with an English professor’s ease. “The reverend wasn’t taken by fairies,” Chris said. “He had a stroke while he was walking around the hill.”
“You know where the term stroke comes from?” Without waiting for his smart-ass reply, I continued, “It was thought that a fairy stroked your cheek. That’s why only one side was paralyzed.”
“Thank God for modern medicine,” Chris muttered. We reached the remains of the kirk, and headed toward the cemetery. Chris might think I was a loon, but he readily agreed that gravestones were cool. After we poked around for a few minutes, he announced, “Look, your man’s buried right here. Case closed.”
I walked over to where Chris was standing, and gazed at the minister’s grave. It was a headstone coupled with a long rectangular slab that was set flush to the earth. The slab was engraved with a shield, and the inscription, Hic Pultis Ill Evangeli Promulgator Accuratus et Linguae Hiberniae Lumen M. Robertus Kirk Aberfoile Pastor Obiit 14 Maii 1692 Aetat 48.
“Can’t these people write in English,” I muttered. “What is that, French?”
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