Published by
Strident Publishing Ltd
22 Strathwhillan Drive
The Orchard, Hairmyres
East Kilbride G75 8GT
Tel: +44 (0)1355 220588
[email protected]
www.stridentpublishing.co.uk
© Gillian Philip 2011
The author has asserted her moral right under the Design, Patents and Copyright Act, 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
978-1-905537-23-5
eISBN 978-1-905537-77-8
The publisher acknowledges subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council towards the publication of this volume.
Typeset in Bembo by Lawrence Mann
Cover image © Lawrence Mann.co.uk 2011
Printed by CPI Antony Rowe
GILLIAN PHILIP was born in Glasgow and has been writing all her life, though she has tried getting proper jobs as a barmaid, theare usherette, record store assistant, radio presenter, typesetter, and political assistant to a parliamentary candidate. While living in Barbados, where her steadiest job was as a singer in an Irish bar, she took up writing professionally. Her debut novel Bad Faith – a murderously sinister dystopian satire – met with critical acclaim and is a favourite with book groups. She was Carnegie Medal-nominated and Royal Mail Award-shortlisted for her young adult novel Crossing The Line. Her most recent young adult novel is The Opposite of Amber.
In 2001 she moved back to Scotland, and now lives in Morayshire with husband Ian, twins Lucy and Jamie, Cluny the Labrador, Milo the Papillon, Buffy the Slayer Hamster, psycho cats The Ghost and The Darkness, and several nervous fish.
Praise for Firebrand
“A fantastically violent, utterly thrilling tale... The contemporary use of enchantment in children’s literature is extensive – but Firebrand is one of the very best. Like Alan Garner, Philip reforges our most popular myths. Seth exudes a surly sexiness that girls will swoon over, but his rudeness, gutsiness and sense of humour will appeal to boys as much as the wild Scottish landscape in which he fights, hunts and rides for his life. Philip’s clear prose is as fiery as whisky... this has to be the best children’s fantasy novel of 2010”
Amanda Craig, The Times
“A completely fresh and exciting fantasy for teenagers... Philip has created an utterly believable other world, where male and female are equals in arms. It is often stark and brutal but with moments of heartbreaking beauty. I haven’t enjoyed a book in this genre so much since Susan Price’s The Sterkarm Handshake.”
Mary Hoffman, The Guardian
“Philip’s imagination is enviable and the settings and characters are solid, chunky, 3D creations. Seth is feral, loyal, vulnerable and real. This is adventure writing of immense and energetic skill.”
Keith Gray, The Scotsman
This one’s for my Lost Boy
Oh Queen of Fays – If I had known of this day’s deed – I would have let your knight, Tam Lin, ride down to Hell on his milk-white steed.
Katherine Langrish
Janet Speaks
THE SITHE
(with True Names where known)
Kate NicNiven
Queen of the Sithe, by consent. Aims to destroy the protecting Veil between the Sithe and full-mortal worlds
Lilith
Kate’s counsellor and friend; mother to Seth
Leonora Shiach
Witch. Mother of Conal and bound lover of Griogair
Griogair MacLorcan (Fitheach)
Assassinated clann Captain
Conal MacGregor (Cù Chaorach)
Rebel clann Captain; son of Griogair
Seth MacGregor (Murlainn)
Son of Griogair and Lilith; half brother to Conal
Stella Shiach (Reultan)
Sister to Conal; daughter of Griogair and Leonora, and former courtier to Kate NicNiven
Aonghas MacSorley
Rebel fighter; bound lover of Stella (Reultan)
Finn MacAngus
Daughter to Stella and Aonghas
Eili MacNeil
Daughter of Neil Mor MacIain; lover to Conal
Sionnach MacNeil
Eili’s twin brother; Seth’s best friend since childhood
Torc Marksson
Fighter; formerly of Kate’s clann, now of Conal’s
Cluaran MacSeumas
A Captain of Kate’s clann
Gocaman
Watcher at the Fairy Loch-Dubh Loch watergate
Cuthag, Feorag, Gealach, Iolaire, Easag & Lus-nan-Leac
Fighters of Kate’s clann
Grian
Healer; fighter of Conal’s clann
Fearna – Carraig
Fighters of Conal’s clann
Orach
Fighter of Conal’s clann; occasional lover of Seth
Skinshanks, Slinkbone & Slakespittle
Lammyr: corrupt cousins to the Sithe
Contents
PART ONE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
PART TWO
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
PART THREE
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
PART FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
PART FIVE
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
PART ONE
‘We shouldn’t be here,’ said Aonghas.
There were so many replies to that one, I didn’t know where to start.
I kept my mouth shut, and my opinions to myself. My brother wouldn’t thank me for starting a squabble. Conal wasn’t looking at either me or Aonghas as he pressed his hand to the wet salt-crusted rockface, but I’d seen his shoulders tense with irritation and I wasn’t in a mood to push it.
The cliff face had unnerved him, too: he never was good with heights. I’d found the way down and he’d climbed after me, but he hadn’t liked it and his edgy temper lingered. I’d thought that being with Eili MacNeil last night would have softened his rough edges, but leaving her yet again had only made things worse.
So what? I missed Orach, as much as I was capable of missing anyone. It didn’t mean I couldn’t soak up the light and the landscape of home, storing it away in my cells for the next long exile. In my head I knew the silver sheen on the water was no different on this side of the Veil, or the shatter of waves on rock, or the clamour of gulls. My heart knew it was a different world: a whisper’s breadth and a whole universe away. I’d never stopped missing it and I never would. I’d make the most of it on the chances I got.
Find me the Stone, Kate had said. Don’t come back till you have it.
We shouldn’t be here. But it had never been any other way. We’d stopped short of swearing that we’d never cross the Veil, would never come home till we found the Stone. We’d told Kate we’d stay away, but we’d given no oath.
So we lied. So what? As if we could live without breathing our own air once a decade.
Kate NicNiven must know that as well as we did. And she must suspect that we s
neaked through the watergate like thieves now and again, as if we were skulking Lammyr and not the sons of Griogair Dubh. But if our queen wanted to kill us, she’d have to find us first.
It was a game, that was all. It had become our life’s game. We risked death every time we played, but if we didn’t play, we’d go mad. Anyway, what’s life without an adrenalin kick?
I think I liked it better than Conal, though. And Aonghas liked it least of all, especially now.
‘I’m serious,’ he went on. ‘We’ve been here too long this time.’
‘I know that,’ snapped Conal.
I gave Aonghas an I-told-you-so look, and he rolled his eyes. They looked even greener than usual because of the khaki green of his t-shirt. He also wore ripped jeans, and his sword in a scabbard on his back, and despite his claims to seriousness, a broad irrepressible grin.
He had that wistful look, too, gods help us. I knew what was coming.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘we could just stay over there. With the full-mortals. Settle in.’
‘Gods’ sake. You sound like Reultan.’ And who’d have ever thought that proud bitch would become such a convert to the otherworld?
‘She likes it over there. And know what? Maybe she’s right. Maybe we should just – you know – adapt. It’s all right. When’s a full-mortal ever tried to harm us?’
I laughed in disbelief. ‘Since May last year, you mean?’
‘That was your own fault. I’d have got my mates to beat the shit out of you too, if she’d been my girlfriend.’
‘So what are you saying? We should leave the Veil to Kate’s mercies? Let it die?’
‘Course not. But maybe... we could let things lie. Keep our heads down. Just for a bit.’ He glanced out to sea, embarrassed. ‘Till Finn’s grown up?’
‘Oh, right. It’s your baby brain again. Wars don’t wait for you to stop breeding, you know.’
‘Shut it, you two.’ Conal laid his head against the rock, as if he was listening to its voice. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘But we’ve come this far. We might as well – ah!’
Four hundred years on and his sudden smile could still catch me by surprise, could still turn my surliness to a matching grin.
‘You found it,’ I said, and laughed.
‘I found it.’
‘Knowledge is power, so it is,’ I said as we rode eastwards. ‘And Leonora wouldn’t want me having that.’
‘Ah, get over it. You know now.’ Conal looked distracted, but I was angry. The tunnel in the rock could have saved me a lot of hassle, a long time ago. It would have saved me a desperate run across the machair under a too-bright moon, and a climb that nearly killed me, and all to get Conal and me back into our own dun.
‘She could have made it easier. It’s not like anyone else knows about it.’ The Veil had been woven tight, dense, thick as rope around the tunnel entrance, and that was a witch’s work. No wonder it had been hard to find.
‘And nobody ever should. You can both start working on a block right now. Put it to the back of your minds.’
‘Why did you show us now?’ Aonghas looked happier, now we were on our way home, but that was understandable.
‘She’s only just told me about it,’ said Conal. ‘Believe it or not.’
‘And,’ I interrupted. ‘He’s worried about the old bat. Ow.’ I should have learned by now that if I was going to insult Conal’s mother, I should make sure I was more than an arm’s length away.
But, ‘Seth’s right.’ My brother’s voice was all gloom. ‘Kate only keeps her hands off the dun because she’s scared of Leonora. If anything happens to her—’
‘And there’s no reason anything should,’ pointed out Aonghas.
‘Want to bet? She’s got that look in her eye.’
Yeah. I’d seen it myself, and I had mixed feelings. Leonora’s death was to be dreaded, and she’d already stayed in life three and a half centuries longer than anyone else I’d ever heard of, after the death of a bound lover. It was a hell of an achievement, what with her soul being dragged in Griogair’s wake every minute of every day. Didn’t make me like her any better, but it was an achievement.
All the same, if she gave in and went to her death our exile would be over, and I wanted it to be over. How long since I’d stopped believing in the Stone? I’d lost count of the decades, if I’d ever believed in it at all. Prophecy? Fate? Talismans? Horseshit. Leonora and Kate might be the most powerful witches the Sithe had ever known, but they were both in thrall to some mad old soothsayer, and I expect the ancient loon was squawking even crazier nonsense by the time Kate’s Lammyr finally killed her. I’d heard what she said about me – try forgetting it, when you live with a superstitious old Sithe-witch – and I shoved it to the back of my mind with the bad grief and the worse jokes and the old guilt, all the other detritus of life. No demented half-dead lunatic was dictating my life choices. Not any more. She’d sent me into a four-hundred-year exile in search of a nonexistent Stone, and that was more than enough.
No bit of rock was going to save the Veil, defeat the queen and return Conal and me to our dun and our people. I knew what was going to do that: fighters and good blades, and the sooner we abandoned the hocus-pocus and pitched into a proper fight, the better it would be.
I was glad to see Conal in a better mood as we rode back towards the watergate. Maybe he was thinking the same as me, at last. Or maybe he was just baby-headed, like his brother-by-binding. When Aonghas actually started to whistle, I couldn’t take the surfeit of happiness any more.
‘Do shut up,’ I said. ‘That’s bad luck. And wipe that stupid smile off your face.’
‘Ah, leave him alone, Seth. He’s soft in the head. It’s his hormones.’
‘Wasn’t him that was pregnant.’
‘You’d have thought it was. I swear to the gods he threw up every morning.’
‘And he put on a belly. Still got it, actually.’
‘The pair of you can hide up your own arses,’ said Aonghas cheerfully, patting his stomach, which to be honest was as thin and hard as mine. Well, maybe I was a little jealous. But he had a right to be happy. They’d waited long enough, him and Reultan.
It was one of those days of intense slanting sunshine and black rain. When the sudden spattering showers lifted, the light would come under the clouds like a torch-beam, bronzing the fields and making the sodden trees glitter. It was pretty. We were home, for now. None of us minded getting wet. We rode with the sun’s rays, and I suppose that their dazzle was harsh looking the other way.
Which must have been why the child didn’t see us.
It was under Conal’s hooves before it realised its danger, but its impetus carried it stumbling beneath the black horse and safely to the other side, where it tripped and crashed into the bracken. It was already scrambling to its feet, sobbing with terror, and I had to haul on the blue roan’s bit to keep it from lunging for the boy. It was a boy, though in that state, to the blue roan, it was nothing but prey. Conal’s black was showing a hungry interest now, and I could see a food fight coming.
‘Don’t run!’ I shouted, furious. ‘Don’t run, you stupid little—’
I might as well have yelled at the rain not to fall. The boy – seven or eight, I’d guess – had bolted again; luckily for him he ran straight towards Aonghas, who simply leaned down and scooped him off his feet and onto his rather more biddable horse, holding him tight in front of him.
‘You’re fine. Jaysus, child, you’re fine, this is a horse, not a—’
Aonghas’s words had no more effect than mine; already the boy was hammering him with his fists, biting at his bare arms, struggling and kicking. Aonghas swore and slapped him; the boy slapped him back and gave as good a mouthful of abuse, and Aonghas finally lost his temper and seized the child’s forehead with one strong hand. ‘Sleep, brat.’
The boy fought him for maybe two seconds, but he was too young to block well, and his body slumped, limp. Well, at least an unconscious child wasn’t
such a provocation to the black and the blue roan. As the two horses snorted and stamped and calmed a little, Conal stared at Aonghas, and the child, and me.
‘What in the name of the gods? Doesn’t he know a frigging kelpie when he sees one? Don’t his parents—’
I looked beyond him, and nodded. ‘Wasn’t us he was scared of.’
We fell silent as we watched the smoke curl beyond the brow of the hill. Now we could hear screams, the thwack and chunk of blades hitting flesh, the hungry crackle of building flame.
Conal lifted his thumb and forefinger, maybe an inch between them.
‘This close,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘We are this close to the dun lands.’
‘But not within them.’ Aonghas eyed him.
‘Chancers,’ hissed Conal. ‘How feckin’ dare they.’
Aonghas said, ‘We can take the child. Get him away. More sensible.’
I stayed out of it. It was Aonghas’s place to counsel him, not mine. But hell, I was hoping he’d lose the argument.
Actually, I think he was too. A bit.
‘Aonghas, listen to it.’
Aonghas cocked his head. ‘Three of them. Four, maximum.’
‘And they’re not expecting us.’ Conal was seething.
The roan was behaving, now. It had forgotten the boy, and was yearning and tossing its head towards the sounds and smells of a fight. I patted its pearly neck.
‘And famously,’ I said, ‘I’m a one-man army, me.’
Aonghas rolled his eyes. ‘I had to try.’
Conal grinned, a baring of his teeth with no humour. ‘Yes, you did. But you stay here with the child. Me and the one-man army’ll do this.’
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