Shadowmagic - Sons of Macha

by John Lenahan

  Dad stepped into the room. ‘What do you want, Maeve?’

  The ghost queen smiled but not in anything resembling a heartwarming way. ‘I want from you what I wanted from your father – Duir.’

  ‘Duir is not mine to give. Tenure of the Oak Throne is chosen by the Chamber of Runes.’

  Maeve threw her head back and laughed one of those laughs that only bad guys and bad actors can do. ‘The clan of Duir builds a magic room that always magically seems to give the clan of Duir their magic Rune. Magically convenient, do you not think?’

  ‘And you think you deserve the Oak Throne? Why?’

  Maeve walked right up to Dad. His guard went to step in between them but Dad stopped him. When they were nose to nose Maeve flickered into her ghost form. It only took a second but in that time she reached into the chest of Dad’s bodyguard. He gasped as she solidified and he screamed as her hand came out holding his beating heart.

  ‘Power,’ she said. ‘Duir is mine because this time, you cannot stop me.’

  She dropped the heart to the ground and then looked at her hand. It was covered with blood but then she flickered translucent, and the blood fell to the floor – her hand was clean. No one tried to attack or stop her. It was an impressive display of power and ruthlessness.

  ‘You cannot stop us. I have an army with this power. And your son cannot stop me by corrupting the Brownie prince. We don’t need the Brownies.’ I was now on my feet. She looked at me and said, ‘We will deal with Prince Codna in time.’

  She reached into a pouch that hung from her waist and took out a piece of marble. ‘And I will not be stopped by pieces of the Real World.’ She threw the rock to Dad’s other guard. I started to shout, ‘Don’t touch that!’ but didn’t have time. He instinctively caught the piece of Connemara marble and instantly was reduced to dust.

  ‘What has happened to you?’ Dad hissed. ‘You are not even Hawathiee.’

  ‘You are right, son of Finn. I am better than Hawathiee and I shall rule you all. But I am not without a heart.’

  I found that statement hard to believe after what she had just done to our guard’s heart.

  ‘I shall give you until sunrise tomorrow to leave. After that …’

  She didn’t say anything else but she didn’t have to. They went see-through and turned to leave. Maeve walked through the door but the bodyguards went through the wall. One of them bumped into my yew banta stick and was surprised that it blocked his way just as if he had been solid. The stick then fell to the ground and he stepped over it.

  Dad shouted to the guards outside in the hall, ‘Let them pass unmolested.’

  After they left I tried to speak but I couldn’t breathe. I ran out of the room and vomited in the hallway. Dad came out and held my shoulders. After everything in my stomach had come up I still retched. When I finally finished I stood shaking like I was standing outside in the snow. A guard held out his canteen and I rinsed out my mouth. The hallway was crowded by then. I looked to Dad and said, ‘What are we going to do?’

  An Imp-healer came running down the corridor calling my name. ‘Prince Conor, come quick.’

  I looked up confused, tired.

  The woman slid to a stop in front of me and said, ‘It’s Matron Graysea.’

  There was a circle of people in the infirmary around Graysea’s lifeless form. Blood had pooled on one side of her kelp robe. A nurse was applying a pressure bandage to her injured side. I knelt down and asked if I could see the wound. It was not as bad as the ones I had seen in my room but it was the same thing. I could spot bits of broken ribs oozing out with the blood before the bandage was replaced.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘That woman and those men walked through the walls into the infirmary then started pushing over tables. Graysea went to yell at them – you know like she does – and the woman slid her hand right through her side.’

  ‘Get her in water,’ I said.

  Araf was already in the infirmary and he lifted her up as the nurse kept pressure on the wound. Araf went into the pool holding her in his arms. When he dipped her head under the water gills appeared on her neck and her feet melded into one fin.

  ‘This is a good sign,’ one of the Imp-healers said.

  Still she didn’t wake up.

  ‘Conor, is she OK?’ came a voice behind me. It was Essa.

  I remembered all of the names Essa had called Graysea and I almost shouted, ‘What do you care?’ but before I lost it, I recognised that my anger was not with Essa. ‘I don’t know.’

  She nodded. ‘I hate to pull you and Araf away but the king wants you both at the war council.’

  The Imp-healer said, ‘Go. We will look after her. I will notify you of any change.’

  ‘I’ll be there presently,’ Araf said as he stepped dripping out of the pool.

  The war council was waiting for my report but when I sat I was too choked up to start. Dad broke the silence as someone brought me a cup of tea that soothed my stomach and steadied my nerves.

  ‘Maeve was here,’ Dad said. ‘She has a power over her corporeal being. She is impervious to a sword, can walk through solid walls and can reach inside and … she can kill with a touch. Her soldiers can too.’

  Everyone looked to me and I nodded in agreement.

  ‘Are you saying,’ Dahy asked, ‘that she and her army are invincible?’

  Dad looked to everyone in the room. They all wanted him to say it wasn’t so but he couldn’t. ‘I am,’ he said, ‘I see no way to stop her.’

  ‘My lord?’ Lorcan said.

  Dad’s eyes stared at the table. His shoulders were hunched over like that statue of Atlas, except the world that was pressing down on Dad was invisible. Finally he looked up and pushed his shoulders back. ‘We must evacuate Castle Duir.’

  ‘Where will we all go?’ Mom said with uncharacteristic panic in her voice.

  ‘Faerie and Leprechaun are always welcome in the Heatherlands,’ Araf said as he entered the room wearing a robe from the infirmary.

  ‘And Cull,’ Gerard said.

  ‘And the Pinelands,’ Tuan echoed.

  Dad nodded, acknowledging his allies. ‘Lorcan, we cannot give Maeve unfettered access to the gold. We can’t leave her with that much power. Can you seal the mines?

  Lorcan looked like he had been slapped. ‘You mean destroy them?’

  Dad nodded yes.

  Lorcan looked around like he wanted someone to slap him on the back and say, ‘Just kidding.’ Finally he said, ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘No,’ said a soft voice at the end of the table. Fand was looking straight at Dad. Her usual delicate expression was gone and in its place was the countenance of a determined queen. ‘No. I will not run. I will not allow my mother to simply take Duir. I will not allow my mother to ruin more lives. After her last atrocity the Fili nation was almost destroyed. Most were killed and the rest banished with only a handful of us left to bear her shame. I have lived most of my life in shame. I will not watch her do it again. Tomorrow I will face her. Tomorrow I will stop her – or die.’

  ‘And I will stand with you.’ It was Nora.

  ‘Mother, no,’ Brendan said.

  ‘Son, my father and his father and his father before that told of the folly of Queen Maeve. We were told that the reason we were banished from Paradise was because none of the Druids had the guts to stand up to her. I will not be banished again. Take Ruby and get far from here, but Maeve is entering Duir over my dead body.’

  Ever since I had heard Dad say that there was no way to stop Maeve, something was tugging at the corner of my mind. Even while Fand and Nora were proposing to fight to the death, my concentration was being pulled by something. The recent events had been so traumatic I couldn’t put my finger on it but some little part of my brain was telling me that I must remember. Then … pop … it came to me.

  ‘We can fight them,’ I said. Everyone looked. ‘When one of Maeve’s thugs left my room he knocked over my yew banta stick
– while he was in ghost form. If we can convince the yews to give us enough wood – I think yew arrows will stop them. At least we can go down swinging.’

  ‘Yew arrows will work?’ Dad asked.

  ‘I’m pretty sure. The soldier was surprised when he couldn’t walk through it.’

  ‘Son, I know you are tired but can you convince the yews to help us?’

  ‘I can try – but with those trees it’s anybody’s guess.’

  ‘Tuan,’ Dad said, ‘I realise I have been treating you like a glorified flying carpet, but will you help us?’

  ‘Of course, Lord Oisin. But tell me – do you have a flying carpet?’

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘Are we staying and fighting?’

  I looked around the room. Fand was defiantly determined to stand up to her mother. Everyone else was looking to everyone else. Dad stood. ‘Get the wood, son.’

  ‘Bet you didn’t expect to see me so soon,’ I said to the yew. If the tree found my salutation amusing he/she hid it well. ‘Maeve is back,’ I said. ‘She is about to attack Duir. I … we need yew wood to stop her. Will you help?’

  ‘We do not concern ourselves with the landly doings of the Hawathiee.’

  ‘Then concern yourself with the safety of your own. Maeve is a tree killer. She decimated the rowans when she was queen and I am certain she is responsible for the recent killings of the yew.’

  ‘What proof do you have of that?’ said an actual voice, not an inside-my-head tree voice. I turned and saw an elf leaning against the adjacent tree.

  Elves in The Land dress like you would think an Elf would dress – dark green tights and a leather tunic tied tightly around the waist. They are always thin – not Brownie thin but I’ve never seen a fat one. And do they have pointy ears? I hear you ask. Don’t be silly. Saying that, I hadn’t met many Elves during my time in The Land, except for the one I talked to at Gerard’s party; all the other sightings were fleeting glimpses in distant trees. Elves keep to themselves.

  Just the other day I asked Dad what side the Elves would take in the upcoming war and he said exactly what Cialtie had said. ‘At the first sign of trouble Elves climb their trees and hide.’

  ‘Hi,’ I said to the Elf. ‘Were you eavesdropping?’

  ‘What proof do you have that Maeve killed yews?’

  ‘Maeve was brought back to life with yew sap. Whether she got it herself or got someone else to get it for her – she is responsible.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘I was there when she was … reborn.’

  Another real voice, this time from the tree behind me said, ‘Show us.’

  I turned in time to see another Elf with his hand on a yew trunk before the painful yew brain scan began.

  I fell to my knees as the scene of Maeve’s rebirth played in my head. The vision was dark, just like it had been when I watched it through the gauze mask I was wearing. It was not only painful to watch because of what the yews were doing to my head, it was also hard to see Ruby again being treated so badly.

  When the mind-video of Maeve solidifying had finished, a different voice asked, ‘Why do you need yew wood?’

  I didn’t know who had spoken but when I looked up every yew within my vision had an Elf at its trunk.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, but – have a look at what happened to me first thing this morning.’ I squeezed my eyes in anticipation of the pain. I watched again the horror movie that was my morning. It was just as bad the second time around.

  ‘We must confer,’ the yew said. I started to listen to the conversations that seemed to be happening all over the yew forest – male/female yews and also Elves – but soon the noise and information got too much. I remembered what happened to me when a pine tree gave me information overload and backed my hand off the tree. I rolled onto the grass and placed my head down just for a second. I was asleep in a minute.

  I was in that barn in Connemara, Ireland. The Druids – The Grove – were around me wearing robes. ‘Awake,’ they were chanting, ‘awake.’

  When I opened my eyes I was being shaken by an Elf saying the same thing. I sat up quickly, not knowing how long I had slept. ‘Will you help us?’

  The Elf turned his back on me and placed his palms skyward.

  All trees make a sound when they are donating wood. It’s an eerie sound as the tree sucks the moisture out of the wood before cracking off a branch. I had heard it many times when I had begged for firewood but I … in fact, no one … has ever heard an entire forest donating wood at the same time. The sound of cracks began to domino around the entire forest as every yew dropped branches to the ground. It sent chills down my back.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said to the Elf.

  He shook his head, grabbed my wrist and pushed my palm onto the yew. ‘Thank Ioho.’

  I felt the contact not only with the tree I was touching but it almost felt like I was in contact with the entire forest, which I suppose I was. ‘Duir thanks you.’

  ‘Your request was just and your adversary is ours,’ the trees spoke. ‘May you succeed in your undertaking, Hawathiee.’

  ‘Prince Conor,’ the Elf said, ‘I am Bran. It is the way of the Elf to stay out of conflicts. When other Hawathiee ask us, “Whose side are you on?” it has been our custom to say, “We side with the trees.” This time it seems that Duir and the trees are on the same side. We will help you.’

  ‘Do you speak for all the Elves, Bran?’

  The Elf thought about that for a bit. ‘I speak with all the Elves.’

  ‘Good enough for me. Let’s get to work and get some ghost-proof arrows to Castle Duir.’

  We bundled up the branches and Elves packed them on their backs and legged it to Castle Duir. I warned them about the marble mines and told them to go around to the west side where there was a small entrance. I was going to be back to the castle before them and promised to warn the guards of their approach.

  Eth had given me some gold wire and a half a dozen rothlú charms. We bundled some of the bigger branches with that and then shouted, ‘Rothlú.’ The bundles vanished – presumably to reappear at home. I asked Bran if he could coordinate from here and he said he could. For a pacifist Elf type he got military pretty quick. We hung bunches of yew wood off dragon Tuan until he gave me a look that I interpreted as, ‘Put one more stick on my back and I’m making charcoal.’ And we headed back to Duir.

  I wasn’t going to be there long, though. The Chamber of Runes had given me a gift and I had just figured it out.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The Grove

  ‘Does it always rain like this here?’ Ruby asked me with a jiggly voice as we galloped down the road from the Fairy Fingers.

  ‘This is Ireland,’ I said as the horizontal rain dripped off my nose and onto her head, ‘so to answer your question – yes.’

  ‘That must be why it’s so green here.’

  I laughed. ‘I never thought about it but I guess you’re right. And how do you know it’s green? Can you, like, smell it?’

  ‘It’s called the Emerald Island, bozo. I can read braille, you know?’

  ‘Do you think if I got into one of those automobile contraptions without touching the ground, that I would still end up looking like your grandmother?’ Essa shouted over her shoulder.

  ‘What do you suggest, we steal one?’ I shouted back.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Last time we were here you stole a horse and cart, and ended up in jail. Remember?’

  ‘This time,’ she said, ‘I’ll add a snoring cure to the spell.’

  ‘The town’s not far. If you’re nice I’ll see about getting you a towel.’

  I kicked my horse and got a sense that she didn’t like it. I hadn’t brought Acorn in case things got hairy and I had to leave my mount behind. I didn’t even know this horse’s name so Ruby dubbed it Connie. Short for where we were going.

  I looked behind to make sure that the young woman we had brought with
us, Anula, was keeping up. She looked scared and unhappy but she kept the pace.

  Tuan and I had made it back to Castle Duir from the Yewlands – just. Towards the end of the flight every wing stroke bobbed us up and down in a way that gave me the impression that if Tuan stopped flapping, we would drop like a stone. I asked him if he wanted me to dump the load of yew wood but I only got a dirty look in reply. When we finally arrived, Tuan near collapsed. I wanted to throw up but didn’t have time.

  I got Mom, Dad, Nora, and Brendan together and told them about the vision I had in the Chamber of Runes. Then I told them what I thought it meant.

  ‘I won’t take Ruby unless you want me to,’ I said to Brendan and Nora, ‘but if she comes it will make my mission a whole lot easier, and she can stay there until this war is over. They are good people – they’re Druids – they will take care of her.’

  I had never seen two people more torn. They wanted to have their girl by their side but they also wanted her safe. They wanted to go with her to the Real World but they knew if they didn’t defend their newly adopted home that there would be no place for them to go back to. In the end they agreed. That’s why Ruby, her babysitter Anula, Essa and I were hammering down an Irish back road in the pouring rain.

  It was getting late in the day. I didn’t dare go to the police station to see Mícheál in case one of his fellow officers recognised me. Now that the pony show was over, three galloping horses were conspicuous enough. I pulled my hood down over my eyes and prayed that Agent Murano wasn’t still around.

  I walked dripping into the tea shop just as Maeve was closing up. She didn’t look all that surprised to see me. She just smiled and said, ‘I have been thinking about you all day.’ She hugged me and as she did she saw Ruby come through the door. I felt her stiffen and say, ‘Oh my …’ She pulled away from me. Her whole front was wet from my rain. She dropped to one knee. I’m not sure if it was to get onto Ruby’s level or if she went weak at the knees.

  ‘Is she … blind?’ Maeve asked with a hushed reverence.