by Phil Parker
‘Which gateway do I need then?’ I felt liked grabbing hold of his filthy clothes and shaking the idiot.
‘Promise not to tell anyone what I’ve done. Lady Mab especially?’
His fear was obvious, he swallowed hard before even saying her name.
‘Yes, yes,’ I replied impatiently. ‘Just tell me which route to take.’
He nodded, clearly relieved.
‘The gateway is where you’ve been told to find it. Inside the gateway there are three portals. Yes?’
I nodded.
‘Which one did they tell you to take?’ he asked.
Now I was the one looking around suspiciously.
‘The one on the left.’
He sighed. ‘I told them a lie. I sent the little dragon through the middle one.’
He swallowed hard again and looked at me, his face pale.
‘How do I know you’re not misleading me now?’
He frowned as though my question was ridiculous.
‘Because you’re rescuing the High Lord. Why would I mislead you? It could cause all kinds of problems and you’d tell them I was responsible. I dread to think what Lady Mab would do to me.’ He paused and blinked repeatedly. ‘You’ve heard the stories?’
‘So, the middle archway?’
Irvyn nodded and as I turned to go, he held my arm. I turned, expecting trouble.
‘You’re very brave, what you’re doing. I couldn’t do it.’ He took a breath. ‘I’m sorry for, you know, what I did. OK?’
I shook his arm loose and turned away and marched off. How our fortunes had changed, now he was apologising to me. Despite my nervousness, I smiled to myself.
The gateway was on the other side of the wood where I’d found the wyvern originally. A stone archway, partly covered in ivy, some of which was badly scorched, stood in the corner where the wood gave way to a meadow. It looked rather out of place and certainly not a device which catapulted you from one world and into another.
The two crystals, large enough for me to stagger under their weight, were where I’d been told to find them, in a recess at the feet of the archway, hidden by long grass. I positioned them next to the inside surface of the archway, on a copper plate that needed to be cleaned of mud and leaves and grass. The instant I placed the second crystal in position the air began to vibrate and the stone archway hummed, scraps of loose stone and mortar fell away. I stood back and waited.
Less than a minute later energy descended from the keystone like a bright yellow waterfall. I gasped at its beauty. It fizzed like the sparkling wine served in the palace at Belthane. I marvelled at it, I had never seen anything so wonderful. Time was against me though, I couldn’t stand around admiring such things.
I stepped through the waterfall, felt my skin tingle and my hair drift around me like it was being blown by a summer breeze. Two steps took me to a point where I could see the other side, the dark space I’d been told to expect. After five steps I was on the other side of the waterfall of energy in a small space no bigger than Mistress Cera’s pantry. It was a circular room made of a highly-polished wood, carved into the wall were three archways, in the keystones were crystals that provided the only illumination. The one on the left, which had been my original destination was green, the one in the middle yellow, the one on the right a delicate pink.
I stepped in front of the middle gateway and, as if it recognised my presence, more cascading energy fell from the keystone of the arch, a subtle shade of yellow that was more primrose than lemon. I took a deep breath and summoned a mental image of Cochrann, of how she’d react when I found her and I shut out the other thoughts trying to crowd in to stop me from going any further.
I walked into the light.
Chapter 13
‘We’d better let the animals get a drink, beyond here the water will be too salty for them.’
I led my horse to a small stream by the side of a tarmac road that nature was busy reclaiming. Oisin dismounted and did the same; inevitably, the wyvern followed suit. I let them munch grass, they needed to maintain their energy for the journey ahead. In the distance, I could just make out a dark pimple on the horizon. Our destination would only be reached by a slightly higher finger of land which bisected the grey flood waters of the Bristol Channel and merged with a leaden sky.
‘None of this is your fault Robin.’
It was the first words we’d spoken since leaving the village.
A sudden gust of wind robbed me of my breath, cold and unforgiving, buffeting waves across the roadway. Small flecks of sleet appeared, with only jacket and trousers I shivered. Winter appeared to be gearing up to destroy whatever humanity had hoped might survive for a little longer.
I said nothing and mounted my horse, hurried it across the roadway before seawater covered it completely and we were trapped. This was a land of flood, a drowned world where houses and farms were half-submerged, their roofs pitted and holed by the relentless barrage of waves. Washed up on the edges of the road were bleached skeletons of animals, their flesh removed by the winged scavengers that still flew above our heads in the hope of a meal. The predominant tones were grey, they were in the water and in the sky, as though colour had disappeared forever. It was a landscape that matched my bleak mood.
Hours later, when dark clouds had blotted out light and bullets of hail burned skin, we arrived at the earthworks that rose up out of the water. I pointed up at wooden sentry posts towering over the narrow gulley in front of us.
‘Something’s wrong. We shouldn’t have reached this point without getting stopped.’
We dismounted and walked up to large wooden gate, the only access through a continuous high wooden fence that stretched around the island. The place looked impregnable, as it had over a thousand years ago when it served as a defensive position. From its raised location you could see for miles.
We strode along a track made from red clay, rain water was already turning it slick as it hurried to join the flood water around the island. As we drew nearer the fence we could see it was made of dozens of wooden stakes, twice the size of a man and sharpened to dangerous points. We approached partially open gates, another sign something was wrong. As we entered the compound I realised the colour of the draining water wasn’t caused by the clay.
The first bodies lay at the top of the gulley, slaughtered as they tried to escape, women and children mostly, wounds in their backs as they ran from whatever had attacked. The horses nickered at the sight and we left them at the entrance to the fort.
In front of us lay carnage.
I’d only visited this place once before, on a sunny day with Alec, his wife Sarah and his sister Moya. We’d come for a day out, a chance for Finn and Brea to have fun, we’d even brought a picnic, like so many others. The twins ran up and down the small hillocks, hiding and jumping out at each other, soon they’d made friends with other kids and created miniature battles with two fingered guns, sniping and attacking with raucous disregard for the numbers of times anyone got killed. Before the environment went into meltdown and the Fae attacked, the ancient fortification had been a place of leisure and enjoyment. Now it had returned to its original purpose.
Except the dozens of bodies hadn’t died fighting an enemy from beyond its wooden walls. They were trying to escape an enemy from within the compound. Oisin stood, face ashen, hair plastered to his skull by the rain, shaking his head repeatedly.
I’d seen enough battlefields to allow me to examine this one as a detective.
Most of the men had died fighting, slash wounds across stomachs and faces told me they’d confronted large swords, occasionally some had heads caved in. Women invariably were hacked down as they ran, legs cut from under them and then run through as they grovelled on the ground. The Taunton Gang had been criminals, murderers and rapists but they’d also been a community, I guessed around fifty. A secure location for the strong and powerful to live with their families and yet there wasn’t a single child to be found. Boys and girls nearing adul
thood certainly, but no youngster below the age of ten.
I realised Oisin stood next to me.
‘No children,’ he said quietly.
‘Yeah. The attack came from within the compound.’
‘But how did they got in?’
An idea struck me. I strode between burned shacks extinguished by the rain where people had struggled to make a living; overturned pots spilled out meagre rations of food, lines of washing lay trampled in the mud. I vaguely remembered one end of the fortification from before, a feature that Alec and I had discussed at some length.
Sure enough, at the end of the little township I found a lot more than I’d bargained for. Oisin and I ran towards it, recognising what we saw at the same time.
‘The twins were here!’ I shouted.
Two spriggan bodies, blackened holes the size of footballs in their backs, lay sprawled in the mud. A little further we found another, head little more than a black mass of pulp.
‘She didn’t mess about.’ For the first time, I allowed myself to hope.
A short distance away my search proved successful. Admittedly it was a ruin now, some of the blocks of stones were splintered and covered in carbon. Brea had been busy.
‘The fools.’
Oisin looked puzzled, I explained my theory.
‘I suppose they must have rebuilt it as an altar.’
I clambered over some of the blocks and found another spriggan cut cleanly in half as though by careful surgery.
‘Bree blasted it as the last of them escaped.’
The penny dropped for Oisin.
‘It was a portal?’
I sat on a large angular block, the keystone of the whole archway I suspected.
‘Why have our people always built portals on high places?’
Oisin shrugged. ‘For strategic reasons, you can defend large areas easily.’
I nodded, it was something you learned as a child.
‘When we abandoned this realm, mankind adopted these places for the same reason. They didn’t understand their purpose, how could they? Later, when their new religion arrived, they built their places of worship in the same locations, perhaps as a sign of compromise for those who opposed the changes and didn’t want to worship the new god.’
Oisin was nodding now. ‘These people were like the ones in the other village. They see religion as a form of rescue and hope. They rebuilt the archway so they had somewhere to pray, to express their faith in a higher power saving them from death.’
‘It allowed Llyr to send a handful of spriggans here to see if they could find the twins. And they did, but there weren’t enough to capture them.’
‘They must have arrived as the spriggan attack was ending. A shame the Knights didn’t arrive a little sooner for these people.’
I looked around at the destruction. Night was arriving quickly and the pellets of hail were thickening into flakes of snow. I stood up, we needed to find cover for the night. One question remained to be asked.
‘Oisin? The children. Has the situation at home changed?’
He looked at me, sadness written indelibly on his face.
‘Worse. No children have been born for many years now. Not one. Only hybrids.’ I suppose he must have seen my expression and tried to provide me with some reassurance. ‘The children taken from here will live good lives Robin. They’ll be valued.’
They wouldn’t be with their parents though. They’d be alone and I knew what that was like.
While I stabled the horses and gathered things to feed us, Oisin found dry kindling and soon had a fire roaring in front of one of the few shacks that remained upright. Despite my attempts to dissuade it, the wyvern insisted on curling up in front of the fire, like a huge cat. The two of us stared into the flames as we waited for our food to cook. Silence hung over us like the smoke from the fire until Oisin shifted position so he sat directly in front of me.
‘You have to speak to me now. Or do you want more protracted silences?’
I’d have preferred a bunch of spriggans to launch a surprise attack at that moment but only the snow fell on us.
‘Don’t know what you mean.’
A pathetic reply, it opened me up to ridicule and I waited. Silence. I filled it with something that had preoccupied me since we’d last spoken.
‘The invasion. It’s connected to the Fae’s sterility, isn’t it?’
His face, painted orange by the flames, gave away little for a few seconds.
‘Even the Light Court are worried. Nimue talked of our problems arising out of the disappearance of a sacred object, a crime linked to the Knights’ Protocol I think. I don’t know how true that is but, with no pure blood, our long lives will come to an end and the race will die. Only hybrids will survive. There was a time when such offspring were treated with disdain but now they are the norm.’
I could see what he wasn’t telling me.
‘A successful invasion will provide a gene pool of beautiful, athletic adults and, in the interim, a rich selection of children to coddle and spoil. The rest will face the same fate as the other species the Fae encounters, slavery.’
Those beautiful blue eyes returned to watch the flames.
‘So the Light Court have a vested interest in Llyr’s successful acquisition of this realm. If they enter this war then mankind’s future will be sealed.’
It was a statement that put a dampener on any further conversation.
We ate. The wyvern woke from its slumber and stared hungrily until Oisin began feeding it his own meal.
‘You treat the bloody thing like a pet.’
Despite everything, he grinned. ‘I’m going to call her Scáthach.’
I choked on my food as I chuckled loud enough to cause the wyvern look at me and nod its head from side to side as usual. I looked into Oisin’s face, mischief sat there and I couldn’t help but smile.
‘I’d love to be the one tell the Dark Court how you’ve compared one of their female warriors to a bloody dragon.’
Oisin shrugged. ‘Why not? They’re both fierce in battle. She has red hair and the wyvern red scales.’
‘And they both think the sun shines out of your arse.’
Another shrug but now it came with genuine laughter. ‘They have similar teeth too.’
He managed to make me laugh as I remembered how the large, muscular woman, saw me as her love rival and used every chance she got to humiliate me. It quickly led us to recounting all the times I’d got my own back, making her the laughing stock of the palace. Each story made us laugh even harder as it triggered more memories.
‘Do you remember when you gave her that basket of fruit as a gesture of reconciliation?’
I burst out laughing even harder as I described what happened next.
‘She bit into that apple, do you remember? With those enormous teeth of hers? The apple was wax and it stuck to her teeth and turned them green.’
‘Wasn’t that when she persuaded that arrogant idiot, Eagan, to fight you?’ Oisin furrowed his forehead suddenly. ‘What happened about that?’
‘Eagan’s dick.’
‘Oh you didn’t?’
‘Only in my mouth. He only lasted a couple of minutes.’
We burst out laughing even harder until exhaustion found us. The wyvern had curled up and fallen asleep. There were some smelly blankets in the shack and we wrapped ourselves in them after building up the fire and settled down to sleep. Outside huge pillows of feathery snow drifted downwards, we’d have a lousy journey in the morning and we’d need to get started early. There was a good chance we could catch them now.
We’d built the fire in the entrance to the shack, keeping warm meant getting as close as possible but the wyvern had taken up most of the space. I wasn’t going to argue with it. I think that was why Oisin and I found ourselves lying side by side. I’m sure it was.
‘Do you remember the last time we lay like this?’
I smiled at the memory. ‘You’d asked me to join you in M
ag Mell.’
Darkness crowded in at the sudden recollection. Oisin didn’t reply.
I felt a need to unburden myself. ‘It was my greatest mistake, saying no.’
I heard him change position.’
‘Really?’
Weight left my shoulders, the weight I’d carried on them for most of my lifetime.
‘Instead I chose a life of privilege as Oberon’s confidant, with the prestige and influence and money it brought with it. Things I thought mattered more than living on a quiet little farm in the middle of nowhere.’
‘It is quiet there. You’d soon have got bored.’ He sounded like he was apologising and didn’t see the irony, the remainder of my life had become quiet and boring. Anger festered inside me.
‘Look where it got me. Exiled. Alone. Wishing death could find me.’
I felt a hand on my shoulder, it pulled me over to face him. I could just make out his features in the light from the fire.
‘You don’t mean that?’
I held his stare. ‘I do. I’m going to kill Llyr somehow. You’ll get your sister out of prison and the Knights will be free from danger.’
‘But Rob…’
He hadn’t called me that for the longest time.
‘Think about it Oisin.’ I wasn’t on any sort of pity crusade, I’d thought all this through and he needed to know. ‘Killing the crowned High Lord of the Dark Court is treason. They’ll hunt me down, regardless of the impact on this realm. I should have killed him when I had the chance but I thought there might be another way. I realise there isn’t now.’
‘But Rob, you’re wrong…’
I didn’t give him chance to say another word.
‘I should have killed Llyr when I had the chance Oisin. But, because I didn’t, I put the twins’ lives in danger, I might even be responsible for their deaths if I can’t rescue them now. I vowed to protect them and look what’s happened. I’m desperate to find somewhere to keep them safe from the Fae, that means constantly uprooting them to find another location and every time I do that, I risk the same fate as we faced earlier. I can’t keep risking their lives like that. The only way to keep the twins safe, is to kill Llyr.’
