The Bastard from Fairyland

by Phil Parker

  Then, when it was over, he looked at the bodies and his face started to change slowly, like it was made of ice and had started to thaw. He stood there, not moving for at least a minute, while everyone stared at him like he was a monster. We all looked at him as though there was someone, or something, inhabiting his body and it had left him.

  He was different to the man I’d known in the palace so long ago. He had been a clown, a mischief-maker, the sort of person everyone liked to be around. I hardly recognised him. Not because he’d changed physically, there were a few more lines on his face and he still had the body of an athlete, the kind women like, though I know he isn’t interested in women. He’d changed because all that mischief and humour had gone. He looked so serious and angry and… scary.

  When he came to sit next to me I was so frightened I’d have runaway if Cochrann hadn’t been there, I knew she’d protect me. But I was excited at the same time. He was Robin Goodfellow. I’d once dreamed of being as popular as him. It’s the thing about being a slave, you’re no one; then someone like him wants to talk to you like you’re their equal, well, it makes you feel special.

  I got worried when he started to look at me strangely, he stared for a few seconds and then gave me this weird smile. That was when he started asking lots of questions; about why I’d come to the human realm. I told him about being a dragon trainer but he kind of saw through that, he knew I couldn’t have got here without powerful help. I didn’t want to tell him about Lady Mab but he got it out of me. Like I said, I was afraid.

  He got excited then. His eyes sparkled, just like they did when he played a prank on someone. I always liked it when the prank was on Prince Llyr. He used to make him look really foolish.

  Then everything turned serious. He explained what I had to do. He said it with so much speed I didn’t understand all of it and he had to explain a second time, he slowed down that time. I didn’t understand why he was so excited.

  I was to go home and give Lady Mab a message and I had to hurry.

  When I asked him why I was doing these things he wouldn’t say, just that the lives of a huge number of people depended on it. Then he said something that scared me even more. He said that if I could bring Lady Mab here it would start a chain of events that would change my life forever. He must have realised how much that scared me because he patted my shoulder and told me I was braver than I realised.

  He looked at me, straight into my eyes, then asked me if I was happy in the palace. Obviously I told him I wasn’t. I was a hybrid and didn’t have any choice about my life so I didn’t understand how I could ever be happy.

  He laughed then. Actually laughed. The others turned to look at him. Master Oisin, looked astonished when he heard the sound.

  The next words Master Goodfellow spoke took my breath away.

  ‘If you return with Mab quickly enough, you will become more important than you can imagine.’

  I wasn’t certain if that made me feel scared or excited. I pointed out that I couldn’t make Lady Mab do anything she didn’t want to do, she might not even listen to me. He grinned, he had this strange expression on his face by now. He sighed, very deeply, it was such a sad sound and proved how much he’d changed.

  ‘Tell her that you’ve spoken with Robin Goodfellow; he knows about her plan and he won’t cooperate unless she’s there to watch it.’

  He said she’d understand what he meant.

  We waited until dark before I showed everyone where the portal was located so the local people weren’t worried by our return with Cochrann. Apparently Master Oisin had called her Scathach but admitted Red Girl was better. I didn’t mention that he’d used a name of a very frightening woman in the palace who’d be angry at him for calling a wyvern after her.

  We returned to the cave. Its entrance was a squeeze for Cochrann but she followed me inside readily enough, I think she thought we were going home. I wanted to take her but Master Goodfellow said he needed her. When I asked him why, he didn’t hear. It was terrible, leaving her again after such a short time together. I massaged the spot by her ear and kept repeating that I’d come back for her. I was glad it was dark, so the others didn’t see me cry.

  The front of the cave was partly hidden by a heavy curtain of ivy and long grass, beneath it a little stream tumbled down the hill, which was why it smelled so damp.

  In the centre of the cave was the archway. I could tell no one looked after it because the stone blocks were crumbling and the mortar holding them together had all but disappeared, it was covered by mould and lichens now. Master Goodfellow said the humans didn’t understand how to use the portals, it didn’t surprise me, my injuries proved what savages they were. I wanted to leave this realm as quickly as possible.

  The Knight children were unwilling to travel though the portal. The girl thought it was a trap and argued with Master Goodfellow that either Master Oisin or I was a spy and we’d betray everyone. Neither of them had spoken until that point and it surprised me, I thought they’d be glad he’d rescued them, even risked his life.

  The girl was so angry. We’d all suffered at the hands of the men who’d locked us in the cages, the girl perhaps most of all, but that was because she had fought like an animal. I tried to explain what life was like as a slave, if you behaved like an animal you got treated like one, that it was better to do as you were told. She called me names and said I wasn’t a proper man if I thought that.

  The boy was different, I think he understood that I was trying to help them. Once or twice he’d smiled at me, though only when the girl wasn’t looking. In the end Master Goodfellow said we were travelling through the portal and that was the end of it. The girl didn’t look happy at all.

  I put the crystal onto its plates at the base of the archway to activate the portal. It made Cochrann uneasy when the energy formed but I stroked her nose, that calmed her.

  Master Goodfellow watched the curtain for a few seconds and when he didn’t move I thought something was wrong. He smiled at me and said he hadn’t used a portal for a very long time and had forgotten how beautiful they were. I hadn’t seen many, and even though this one was old and poorly maintained, I knew what he meant. It lacked the quantity of energy that makes the big ones fizz like sparkling wine, this one looked like a waterfall of lemonade. It poured out of the keystone and tumbled to the cave floor where it grounded itself.

  Cochrann remained uneasy so Master Goodfellow went through first, followed by the others to reassure her everything was all right. Except it wasn’t. Even as I led Cochrann though the yellow cascade of light that made our skin tingle, on the other side something was wrong. We stepped out of the curtain into the ante-chamber with its three archways, it had been dimly lit when I’d used it before, now there was only darkness. It was impossible to see anything. The other two portals weren’t activated but on the walls large crystals should have illuminated the room.

  ‘It’s an ambush,’ the male Knight called out.

  Then everything was chaos.

  Clashing swords echoed off the wooden walls, Master Goodfellow yelled at us to stand behind him but it was too dark to see where he was. Suddenly there was a loud cracking sound and white light stabbed the darkness, blinding us briefly. In that split second I saw things moving, dark shapes but what they were, I couldn’t tell.

  A few seconds later an arc of light flashed across the room, like sheet lightning, branching in all directions. It hung there long enough to see a small group of boggarts shield their eyes and someone in their midst wearing a dark cloak and hood. I watched Master Goodfellow run his sword through the round belly of one of the creatures as it tried to recover from the light. It snorted and fell, its enormous tusks smashed the floor. The other boggarts reacted, raising swords quickly but blindly staggering into each other in the process. Boggarts are not very clever, the tusks that jut upwards from the lower jaws can be lethal but on the slippery wooden floor their hooves had little purchase and it made them snort their frustration through their n
arrow snouts.

  The girl’s energies flickered out and I heard her gasp with exhaustion but it had given me enough time to notice one of the light crystals was askew. Our attackers must have moved them so we were forced to fight in darkness. Boggarts’ eyes are small and beady so they don’t like light, they prefer darkness for that reason.

  I shuffled towards the light, fumbled around trying to find the crystal and became aware of a boggart nearby, purely because of its horrible smell. I froze, expecting to feel its blade cut me down. Instead there was a high-pitched squeal, a loud thump and Cochrann’s distinctive snort of satisfaction, she must have been next to me, providing protection.

  I shifted the crystal in its cradle and pale yellow light pooled around me. All eyes turned in my direction but the boggarts’ focus was not on me but on the hulking shape of the wyvern at my side. The ante-chamber wasn’t built for creatures her size, she had little room for manoeuvre but it was enough to snap at the nearest boggart. She bit its legs with one snap of her powerful jaws and the pig-like creature fell forward to writhe and scream until she stomped it into silence.

  It was enough to make the rest retreat to the far corner of the chamber where a couple frantically fought each other to activate the portal.

  In the confusion and semi-darkness it took us a moment to notice Master Goodfellow fighting with the man in the black cloak. It was a fight like none I’d seen before. The cloaked figure was as skilful with his blade as Master Goodfellow, if not better. We all watched anxiously and ignored the escaping boggarts who’d opened one of the portals. It filled the room with a pale green light and created long shadows as the two warriors fought.

  The thing worrying me most was the expression on Master Goodfellow’s face. When he’d killed the men in the camp he wore no expression, his face was a mask. Now there was intense concentration, I could see his shock at realising no matter what he did with his sword, the cloaked man had prepared for it. What was worse, some attacks came with such force or from an unexpected angle it left Master Goodfellow reeling, fending off a blade so close it had us gasping and holding our breath. The attack was so relentless it caused Master Goodfellow to make mistakes and lose ground or his balance, when that happened the assault by the cloaked figure intensified.

  No one spoke. We daren’t in case it distracted him.

  Master Oisin turned to me, he looked very pale as he nodded at the wyvern; I knew what he was thinking, she could attack the cloaked figure. Trouble was, she had so little room to move around that she would be more of a distraction than an asset, I knew the skilled swordsman needed less than a second to land the fatal blow. I shook my head while Master Oisin looked like he was about to cry.

  The man in the cloak, though he looked to be more of a skeleton than a man, lunged forward and Master Goodfellow staggered backwards towards the open portal. I realised what was happening, what strategy the cloaked figure had in mind. He was going to take the fight through the portal, that was why the boggarts had left it open, the whole thing was a trap.

  Master Goodfellow must have realised it too because his face started to change, his expressions drained away, to be replaced by a fierceness in his eyes and in his swordplay. Even then, their battle didn’t ease, it just got quicker so that blades were lost in a blur, where heavy breathing was the only sound as they got nearer and nearer to the pale green light.

  The girl, who’d been getting more and impatient, broke loose from her brother’s grip, he’d been holding her arm I realised. She stepped forward and with a loud grunt fired a bolt of energy into the back of the cloaked attacker. The girl staggered, her brother caught her and lowered her to the ground. The cloaked man staggered as a thin wisp of smoke rose out of his back, Master Goodfellow lunged forward, ran the man though and almost collapsed with exhaustion.

  Master Oisin rushed forward to help his friend who leaned against the wall and slowly slid down it. Distracted for that second the skeletal attacker staggered through the portal, leaving a trail of blood, and disappeared as the portal closed.

  It plunged us into near darkness again so I hurried to straighten the rest of crooked crystals so we could see clearly.

  Master Goodfellow sat on the floor, his face white and covered in sweat. The girl lay on the floor, I think she had passed out when she’d blasted the cloaked man. Her brother looked concerned and scared in equal amounts. There was little I could do but stroke Cochrann and keep her calm.

  It took several minutes for everyone to recover, the boy urged everyone to leave the room in case their attacker returned with more boggarts, I reassured him Cochrann would deal with them. The girl woke up and screamed at Master Goodfellow.

  ‘I told you! I told you it wasn’t safe to use the portal! One of them set us up!’

  She waved a hand at Master Oisin and me then glared at Master Goodfellow with such vehemence it shocked me. He’d just risked his life to protect us and this was how she thanked him! The boy tried to calm her but she brushed his hand away impatiently.

  No one replied, which was probably best and we waited in tense silence for Master Goodfellow to say something.

  He stood up, a little unsteadily, looked at me.

  ‘You know what to do Keir. And be quick.’

  The two Knights and Master Oisin looked at me suspiciously. I felt my face turn red.

  The others asked what he meant but all they received was an exhausted shake of the head.

  ‘You know where to return with her, don’t you?’

  I nodded. That wasn’t the difficult part. Persuading one of the most powerful people in the Dark Court to follow the instructions of a servant was a different matter. I knew better than to say anything though.

  Cochrann watched me closely, she knew I was leaving her again and she whined softly. I stroked her nose and told her I’d come back for her. Everyone else looked impatient, they didn’t understand how badly I felt about leaving her. I knew they’d use her as a weapon and it made me worry for her.

  Mister Goodfellow jerked his head towards the portal that had just closed, my signal to leave obviously. I hoped the boggarts and the cloaked figure weren’t waiting on the other side. I re-activated the portal so that its green energy cascaded to the floor once more. On the other side I could see the vague outlines of a field and a couple of trees but no boggarts and cloaked figures. I looked at the downcast head of my wyvern for the last time and stepped into the light, wiping tears from my eyes.

  Chapter 20

  Exhaustion does strange things to you. It turns certainty into doubt, affection to distrust and belief into blame. All those things registered on the exhaustion meter for me. I sat quietly in Amelie’s kitchen with a hot cup of lavender tea, inhaling its sweet scent as I tried to reassure myself. Everyone had left me alone. I wasn’t handling my present situation well. Amelie had packed the twins off to bed and told Oisin to feed and stable the wyvern, she had gone to help; her diplomatic way of avoiding my irritable behaviour.

  Ankou had almost beaten me. Brea’s intervention had made the difference. I was a soldier, pain was a familiar friend but now that pain was in a part of me that had never felt its hurt before. In my pride. I was the one to bring an end to a fight normally, not a traumatised and exhausted teenage girl.

  Brea didn’t care about that, as far as she was concerned I’d led them into trouble, despite the warnings I’d chosen to ignore. Then the most hurtful thing of all; she’d learned that the only person to keep her and her brother safe, was her.

  She was right and it led to me blame myself, to doubt my ability to protect not only the twins but anyone I loved. A conclusion that pitched me deeper into that dark pit than I’d ever fallen before. It was so deep I was still falling.

  When you have one doubt, it summons others and they swarm. You distrust everything you think you know, reality unravels like a cheap sweater. You distrust people and it slowly turns into paranoia. I no longer knew who to believe any longer.

  I doubted Oisin most of all. I
’d started to think the impossible; he and Ankou were connected in some way. I’d been sent on a wild goose chase so Ankou could hold him hostage at Hamdon Hill. His suggestion to use the portal had allowed Ankou to lay in wait with his band of boggarts? Apart from Brea, we’d been saved by the wyvern, I couldn’t escape that irony. I’d been the one who’d constantly wanted to leave her behind. Now I trusted her because she couldn’t be manipulated.

  One thing eluded me. Who might be pulling Oisin’s strings. He wouldn’t be the one initiating the treachery, I knew him better than that. But he might be the means.

  The same thing was true for Keir. He’d led us to the portal but my doubts went beyond that simple coincidence. The lad was following Mab’s orders. It made no sense for her to use a kitchen slave to do her dirty work, unless she knew his secret, though placing him in such danger didn’t make sense either. She was a strategic thinker, ambitious, a woman in a man’s world forced to abandon her sexuality to achieve respect whilst also being one of the fiercest warriors I’d ever known. I’d respected Mab when she’d been my commanding officer but I couldn’t work out how her ambitions connected with someone as honest as Keir unless he was oblivious of her motives. Something about his hesitation, whenever I’d mentioned Mab, hinted at this but I couldn’t see him being complicit. Perhaps I was wrong.

  Questions buzzed around my head like insistent flies and failed to produce answers. As I plummeted to the bottom of the pit I thought back on everything that had happened.

  I’d left my cottage to protect the Knights and fulfil my obligation to Alec, yet I’d put their lives in danger. I’d pledged to kill Llyr, when I had the opportunity Oisin persuaded me otherwise which led to me being hunted. Now, the political machinations in Tir na nÓg threatened everything.

  I’d been ready to sacrifice my life to fulfil my obligations, my final attempt to carry out a noble act, having been guilty of so many ignoble ones. Yet Brea and the wyvern had prevented my body from littering an ante-chamber in an obscure portal between the two realms. It would have been a fitting irony, as someone who didn’t fit in to either.