Aoife forgot her rage in horror. ‘Stop!’
Dorocha cast aside the spear, leaped down to the floor and came striding across the room towards her with his hands held out. Behind him the spear remained suspended in the air, darting back and forward like a shark, twisting and turning, still parrying the blows of Ultan’s sword with ease. Half delighted, half panicking, Ultan cried, ‘Help, they won’t stop fighting each other! They just keep going!’
Dorocha clicked his fingers in the air, without even looking back; both weapons clattered to the floor. He barked over his shoulder, ‘The game is over, Ultan McNeal. Leave us.’
‘Oh, is it? Right . . . Us? Oh, it’s Aoife. Hey, Aoife, what’s the matter? Is everything all right?’
Dorocha had come to a halt before her, his hands still extended. She looked into his pale, fine-boned face; his midnight-blue eyes.
‘Aoife, is everything—?’
She said hoarsely, ‘Ultan, go.’
As the boy left the room, closing the door behind him, Dorocha raised his eyebrows and said, ‘It seems you can command the changelings of this world. Now, command me. Ask me anything you wish.’
But Aoife found herself unable to speak. It felt suddenly absurd to ask if she was the daughter of a queen. Dorocha’s gaze slipped over her from head to foot – from the rough, sweet lavender tie in her red-gold hair to the sunrise dress, to the soft red slippers. Clearly disappointed, he murmured, ‘You have chosen very plainly. Did my girls not come to you? You need a dress more suitable for this moment.’
She found her voice. ‘The girls did come, and they said something strange.’
‘And you want to know if it is true?’
She sighed. ‘Yes.’
‘It is.’
‘That I am—’
‘The queen’s daughter.’
‘Oh God. This is such crap.’ She needed to sit down again, but there was nowhere except the floor. She turned and walked to the sunlit, glowing wall; leaned her hands against it; bowed her head and closed her eyes. Dorocha touched her shoulder. Without looking at him, Aoife said in a trembling voice, ‘If it’s true, why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I couldn’t believe you’d forgotten, after such a short time.’
‘A short—?’ She slapped the wall with both hands, hurting them. ‘My whole life!’
‘Still the same impatient Aoibheal—’
‘Aoife! I’m Aoife! This isn’t me being impatient, this is about everything being crazy!’
‘Aoibheal—’
‘Aoife. Aoife. I can’t change names overnight, not after being called that name all my life.’
‘All your life?’
‘I’ve been away since I was four – that’s eleven years!’
‘Only forty days.’
‘Forty days?’ She jammed the heels of her palms against her temples, strode away from him across the room, and leaned her elbows on a chest of scented cedar, gazing down into a sea of misshapen golden coins.
Dorocha came to stand beside her. ‘Aoibheal.’
‘Aoife.’
‘Aoife. There, see, I am following your wishes. Aoife, listen to me. You are not what you think you are. You were away in the human world for only a short time – only enough for you to grow older and come back to me.’
‘Come back to you?’ She straightened up to face him. ‘Are you my father?’ Her ribs were uncomfortably tight around her heart. She was certain he would say Yes.
Instead, he looked amazed. ‘Why would you think I was your father?’
‘But you said, to come back to you—’
‘I am the Beloved, Aoibheal.’
Aoife’s heart, released, gave a single heavy thump. ‘Then who is my father?’
‘Was.’
‘Ah . . . Is he dead as well?’
Dorocha took the small ring from his pocket, and spun it into the air, watching it. ‘Of course he is dead. He was a man.’
‘But who . . .?’
‘Who can tell?’ The ring glimmered above their heads, rainbow coloured. Then fell into his hand. ‘Even after the Tuatha Dé Danann were driven from the surface of reality, your mother retained a passion for its heroes. The blue-painted Firbolgs. The dark Milesians. The tall, broad-shouldered Fianna . . . There was a young warrior of their company once, whom she met by a pool beneath the hawthorns. Then there were the golden kings of Tara. Which of them was your father? Even the greatest of heroes is at the mercy of death. Every one of them slipped through her fingers like dry sand, until she had outlived them all.’
Aoife sighed. ‘And that was when you became her Beloved?’
Dorocha pulled a cynical face – amused, self-deprecating – and tossed up the ring again, higher, his eyes fixed on it. An unbidden thought came to her – how beautiful this man was, with his dark red hair and blue-black eyes, and high, tilted cheekbones. Agelessly beautiful, like the banshee. ‘I was always your mother’s Beloved, Aoibheal. When she found me in paradise, I was a wild dangerous beast, but she tamed me. She pampered me and trained me to bring her any human man of her desire, fetching him down beneath the earth to be reborn in her arms. I watched and waited for her to forget these passing fancies, and turn to me. She was the queen of rebirth, as I was the king of death. Together, we could be all-powerful. But she did not want to ally herself with me. I was too forcible for her liking. Your mother had a love of weak and fragile creatures.’ He shot Aoife a slight smile from under his lashes. ‘Maybe that’s why she kept her fondness for you, when so many fairy mothers neglect their children. She brought you everywhere with her, even when she went to walk in the surface world to wash her hair in the soft water of the bog pools – and there you would age a little every time. In the end she stopped bringing you to the surface. She was right. She was immortal. Why would paradise need a second queen? It would only make trouble. But all children need to grow up, even the daughters of queens. So I brought you to the surface myself, after your mother’s death.’
Another memory: a breath of night air – so damp and grassy. The elderflowers of the lane. ‘It was you in the carriage at my parents’ gate.’
‘It was. I found it hard to part with you. I had kept you by me for a while, watching you play, dressing you in flower dresses. I missed your mother. I can still see her heart beating, spraying its silver fountain across the bed.’
Aoife shuddered, remembering and understanding the glittering patterns splashed across the black drapes of the bed in the room below. Her mother’s blood. ‘She was still alive when you found her?’
Dorocha said pleasantly, ‘And I took that iron arrowhead and I slit that priest screaming from throat to groin, and before he died I dragged him up to the very summit of this city and threw him tumbling down its walls until he was lost in the river below. And now the queen’s pool overflows for ever through the hawthorns, and washes away his blood. The rose in the white quartz is human blood. The river that circles Falias is red.’
‘Ah God . . .’ Aoife took a step back, staring at him in horror.
He laughed, as if her reaction amused him. ‘And when he was gone, I came back to find her. And I was all alone with her, but she was dead. And then her people took her away, and I was left again with banshees and lenanshees and all the strange beasts of this world. It was hard to be without your mother in the beginning. I had played the tame beast to my queen for so long. But then I realized I was no longer a servant. I was free at last. The travelling magicians of Danu had left for the islands, moving west as they always do. The tables were turned. I began to call their children home, and give the little conjurers my orders. But some returned too soon, without their powers. I sent all the little darlings out to catch the beasts, knowing only the strongest would survive.’
Aoife’s heart sickened. ‘But that’s murder . . .’
‘How? I touched none of them with my own hand.’
‘I saw a little boy get killed.’
‘Not killed – transformed. Aren’t you a believer in r
ebirth, like your mother? She had no fear of death – except by iron.’
‘He was a little boy!’
Dorocha laughed. ‘And too young for power, just like yourself.’
‘I’m not too—’
‘You’re not yet sixteen! And you will never grow any older!’ His eyes were bright with humorous excitement. ‘When your sheóg came back without you, I could have strangled the silly little thing! Life burns up so fast on the surface – I thought you would be sixteen before I had my hands on you again . . . Too late to keep the tables turned on the magicians! But in less than an hour I knew you were here, making your way through the wilderness towards me. The sheóg drew you to me. She was my hook of flesh and blood. You could not stop yourself, whatever the danger of the journey. You were helpless.’
‘Not helpless—’
‘You were helpless. And afraid.’ Dorocha said it like it truly delighted him. ‘You were and will remain powerless, my queen.’
‘I’m not your queen.’
‘But I have all the power we need. The children of the people of Danu will serve you, because you are their queen. And you will serve me, because I will be—’
‘Serve you?’
Still laughing, he flicked up the ring again, caught it and tossed it to her. A terrible heat seared through her skin of her palm. The ring was made not of rainbows but of fire. Aoife threw it from her with a cry of agony. He snatched it out of the air and held it poised before her between thumb and forefinger, grinning and twisting it like he could tempt her with it, like a sweet to a child.
‘Take it, my queen. It is your wedding ring.’
With a cry of revulsion, she turned and fled for the door.
‘I said, take it.’ Dorocha’s hand was on her shoulder, and his fingers dug deep. Weakness spread down her arm, as if his nails were the teeth of a spider piercing her skin, sucking the energy from her.
Aoife struggled wildly. ‘Let go of me.’
‘You’ll not run away?’
‘No.’
‘Promise?’
‘Yes.’
He let her go. Instantly she ran for the door, but he was easily there before her, smilingly indignant. ‘Now, Aoibheal, that wasn’t very honourable.’
She swerved and stumbled away between the chests of treasure. He came after her, grinning, dancing to cut her off; she doubled back and broke for the door again, and again he was right before it, his arms open to catch her. The bronze sword was in her path, lying where it had fallen. She stooped to lift it – it was shockingly heavy.
His face bright with amusement, Dorocha held his arms wide, boastfully exposing his heart to her.
Straining every muscle, sweat stinging her face, she tried to swing the mighty sword at him, but couldn’t hold it up – the point fell forward and rang loudly off the floor.
He sprang from foot to foot, a mocking dance. ‘Ah, Aoibheal, don’t imagine you can use a weapon of death against me. Only I can make Nuada’s sword sing. I am the Fear Dorocha. I am the Fear Dubh. I am the Beloved. I am the king. I am the last act.’
Aoife struggled again to lift the sword. The power in her blood was rising now – she could hear the steady pulse of it in her ears; feel the tingle of it in her skin.
‘Put it down, Aoibheal. Only I can wake it. You are a child. A powerless child.’
It was still too heavy to lift above the horizontal, but the hilt was stirring in her hands; she would sweep it at his waist, then spring past him.
Shaking his head, he said sadly, ‘Now behave or I will murder you here and now, as I murdered your mother in her bed before I cast her human lover down the walls.’
The sword flung itself at Dorocha’s heart.
He lurched back several paces until he was half sitting on the edge of one of the open caskets; he gazed down in astonishment at the centre of his chest, where the tip of the blade had sunk deep between his ribs. For a moment Aoife could not move either – as if the blood in her veins were liquid stone. As they both watched, the heavy hilt of the sword sank very gradually towards the floor, causing the point of the blade to turn upwards, deepening and widening the cut. A river of ink poured through the rent in his shirt. Dorocha raised his head and stared at her with eyes the same blue-black colour as his blood. Hurt. Surprised.
Then, with one smooth circular motion of his arms, he wrenched the sword free with both hands and hurled it at her. It streaked past her ear like a blast of freezing wind, and clattered away harmlessly between the treasure chests.
He leaped for the spear where it lay against the wall.
Aoife ran for the door, slamming it behind her and slapping her hand over the lock – it clicked into place, just as the bronze point of the spear came plunging through the gold surface, missing her cheek by centimetres. She raced down the stairs, but Eva was running up them towards her, crying tearfully, ‘You said you were going to take me home!’
‘Here . . .’ But Eva dodged past her open arms and ran on upwards. ‘No, come back!’ She turned and ran after the child. As she passed the door of the treasure chamber, the thick slab of gold was shuddering and creaking in its frame, bending outwards, splitting . . .
After the next sweeping turn in the staircase, the walls changed from crystal into living wood, first pale twisting roots and then branches of blossom, the powerful scent dizzying her almost as much as the constant turning of the stairs. She burst into the open, and she was in another space, brilliant with sunlight. Crimson water lay across the floor, covered in floating blossoms. Aoife ran splashing through the water to the far side of the circle. They were caught in a living cage of thorns, at the very summit of the city. On the stairs behind her, the footfall of leather boots. So Dorocha had heard her, knew that she had run up, not down . . . She picked up the child. She could squeeze through the thorns and jump. But there was no Shay from whom to steal the slightest kiss, and she might fall like a stone and die, with Eva in her arms. The lenanshees had scaled the walls using the carvings of vines for handholds . . .
‘Eva, we have to climb down.’
The child struggled in her arms. ‘No!’
‘I’ll hold you tight.’
‘I want to go home!’
‘Soon, honey . . .’
‘Now! You said the empty place where I saw the bus was home!’ The child slipped from her arms, ran across the blood-red floor – and disappeared. The shallow surface of the water did not even ripple.
‘Eva? Eva!’ Aoife scrabbled to and fro on her hands and knees. It was like searching for the child in the pool above, only this time the water was a centimetre deep and the floor not mud but red stone tiles. ‘Where have you gone?’
‘Back to the bog where every sheóg belongs.’ Dorocha was leaning with one hand against a hawthorn bough; he had laced his shirt over his wound, though the material was stained as if with ink. ‘Stand up, Aoibheal. I have locked this gate. Only the lenanshees and banshees can freely take this road. You haven’t the power to open it without me.’
‘You have to let me go after her! I have to help her! She’s only a little kid – she’ll die out there by herself!’ Aoife made a desperate effort to claw up one of the stone tiles; she tore a nail, and a silver thread leaked out into the crimson water. ‘Please let me go after her!’
‘Marry me first.’
‘You murdered my mother!’
‘Marry me and I will bring you to the surface world myself. We will travel together, in my coach.’
‘That’s crazy. There’s no time. Let me go now. I’ll come back to you, I promise.’
‘Like you promised me you would not run? I’m not a fool. I’m not your tame beast. Marry me.’
‘No!’
‘Very well. Then let us sit here, hour on hour. And for every hour in paradise, a hundred hours will pass out on the cold bog above. It is autumn there now. And your precious little sheóg will wander the bog, and the sun will rise and the sun go down, and the night will be cold and the day hungry; at last she will
tire and lie down for ever in the heather, and the ants will eat her down to the bone.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
He was angrily insulted when she refused to waste time by changing into a more beautiful dress, or cover herself in her mother’s jewels. But if he wanted her to go along with this farce, then this was the way it was going to have to be – good enough for him that she had already changed out of her hoodie and trackies. All she wanted was to get this ridiculous wedding over and done with. Why should she care what she was wearing?
It wasn’t like she was the only one underdressed. Most of the changelings who had been called into the temple for this hasty coronation and fake wedding were in their everyday clothes – faded trouser suits and beads from the sixties; tartan flares from the seventies; punk Mohicans that had gone limp without hair gel. There in the bedraggled crowd before the altar, gazing up at Aoife where she stood exposed to everyone’s view, was Ultan in his fluorescent shell suit. Caitlin, moulting feathers, was waving enthusiastically and giving her the thumbs-up – then nudging her neighbours, flashing her selkie pearl and ruby chains, clearly boasting that the new queen was her best friend for ever.
Along the walls of the temple stood ranks of dullahans, black-cloaked, the rotting stench from their heads tainting the air, the hum of the insects beneath their hoods filling the air with the sound of a summer’s day. Lenanshees clustered together, a sea of lace dresses, singing songs that Aoife had never heard yet which seemed familiar. She couldn’t see Shay among them, nor the one who had spirited him away. Banshees in red cloaks moved through the crowd, cooing over the human babies in their arms. Women in caps of dappled sealskin left wet footprints as they walked. Just within the high doors, wide open to the bright sun, Seán Burke stood clutching the reins of a tabby kitten-beast. Beside Aoife, at the altar, another very small old man stood burning a pile of oak leaves. Caitlin’s book lay open at the druid’s elbow; he paused to consult it, slowly turning the pages.
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