The Hounds of the Morrigan

by Pat O'Shea

  ‘This room is a little dote,’ Brigit said admiringly.

  ‘It’s very hot though.’

  He took off his jacket and parting the hangings on one of the beds, he laid it inside on the quilt, prudently removing the scrying-glass and the bag of nuts, before letting the hangings drop back into place.

  ‘Should we go to bed, Pidge? I’m dying to snuggle in behind those curtains.’

  ‘No. When we are sure that everyone is asleep, we’ll creep downstairs and go. We don’t really owe anything unless they charge for just sitting down; so that’ll be all right. I’ll just open the door a crack so we can listen and when it’s all quiet, we’ll clear off.’

  But when he examined the door there was no way of opening it; there wasn’t a knob or a latch; there was only a keyhole. He tried to prize it open, grasping with the tips of his fingers for a purchase between the door and the doorframe; but it was hopeless.

  Horrified, he remembered the signpost at the crossroads and the silent way it had spun, and the great door downstairs that had opened without even the faintest sound, and now this door that had closed so very quietly.

  ‘We are locked in,’ he said miserably.

  Chapter 18

  ‘WHAT?’ shouted Brigit. ‘They’ve locked us in?’

  ‘It’s true! We’ve been tricked and it’s all my fault,’ Pidge answered bitterly.

  ‘Try the window!’

  They ran to the curtains and pulled them back. There was a window. Pidge had begun to fear that behind the curtains they would find only a stone wall.

  It was shut fast. No matter how hard he struggled with it, it wouldn’t budge. Outside, it was still dark, without even one friendly star to wink at them from lonely space. From far away came a sound like a woman crying or laughing in the wind. Bad as it was outside, it now looked a far, far better place to be.

  He rushed to the fireplace and grabbed the tongs and ran to batter at the glass with his whole strength. The tongs bounced back from every stroke with the glass not even marked.

  They went to the fireplace and looked up the chimney, thinking that if the fire died down, there might be a way to climb out. The sides were smooth and unbroken; there was no way out.

  He shook the scrying-glass.

  When the flurrying snow had cleared, all that could be seen was some kind of old ruin, and though they waited for a while, nothing else happened. He tossed the glass ball on to a chair and feverishly took a hazel nut from the bag and held it on his outstretched palm.

  They waited, almost eating it with their eyes.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘We’re done for,’ Pidge said, throwing himself down in one of the chairs with his head in his hands: ‘Where is The Dagda?’

  In the silence that followed there was only the sound of the fire; a half-burned log falling in on itself, quietly hissing and settling softly; and then, incredibly, from inside one of the canopied beds came a small snore.

  Shocked, he cried out:

  ‘Who’s there?’

  Another snore.

  Again silence.

  Anger flooded into Pidge, for now to crown everything, it seemed that they were being mocked.

  Shouting: ‘We’ll soon see!’ he bounded to the bed, with Brigit as his defiant shadow, and he snatched back the curtains.

  The bed was unoccupied but for his jacket lying where he had left it.

  ‘Who was snoring?’ Brigit demanded belligerently.

  ‘What’s all the fuss?’ a sleepy voice asked and to their joy, Cluas crawled out from under the collar of the jacket. He reared himself up and rubbed at his eyes sleepily.

  ‘Hallo, where are we; are we at me Ma’s yet?’ he inquired. And when he had properly woken up and looked around, asked: ‘What’s this place? How did we get here? I must have dozed off; why didn’t you wake me?’

  ‘A most terrible thing has happened,’ Pidge began, while picking up his jacket, and putting it back on, and holding the hazel nut in his clenched fist all of the time. Rushing his words together, he told of the terrible darkness and the lightning and how they had been led into this trap. As he unfolded his story, he concentrated on giving the exact details of how they had been tricked; and tried hard not to burst out with how he had been feeling while they had stumbled along so helplessly. He thought it best that Brigit should not know; but it was very hard to keep still about it. He grew distracted as well, when he thought of how easily he had been sniggled, for if ever there was a sniggle, surely this was it. And, absorbed as he was in the telling, when he opened his fist and glanced at the nut, he put it back into its bag and into his pocket, with only a small part of his mind taking care of this.

  As soon as Cluas had understood everything, he said:

  ‘Take me over to the door: I can get out underneath without any trouble and I’ll have a scout around to find out what’s what. Just be patient until I get back and don’t worry.’

  They sat on the floor while they waited. It seemed to take ages and ages. As the time passed, Pidge continued to blame himself and he went back over everything again and again in his mind. He had even half-known that things weren’t right with this castle and he had pushed his suspicions to the back of his mind. He thought himself a fool for doing it.

  At last there was a slight scratching from outside and Cluas came back in under the door. He got on to Pidge’s sleeve and walked up his arm.

  ‘You’re trapped, all right; and that’s not the worst of it,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Brigit whispered, coming in close to Pidge.

  ‘I heard things and I didn’t hear things; and the things I didn’t hear were the worst of all. Firstly, that woman—The Wardress, for that’s what she once was—is giggling to herself inside her head, because she’s got you for someone she calls her Royal Boss. She is demented with joy and is cocksure that her Royal Boss will reward her for nabbing you, by letting her off the hook, whatever that may mean. Then, the fella with the nice legs—something like mine but not as good—is sniggering inside his head; and is over the moon with glee, because you’ve been sweetly had and later on he’s going to get the chance to practise his old skills. He plans to sneak in here when you are asleep and rob you of your thorn leaves, Brigit. He says they are a charm against lightning. They dare not touch your other belongings; but they are plotting to accuse you of being pedestrians and then drag you down to the dungeons for a bit of leg-pulling. He used to be a qualified torturer, you see. Oh, many’s the foul deed that’s been done here in the past! They mean to let you go in the end, although they wish they could keep you for pets. The Royal Boss is relying on you, it seems, to find that “honoured” pebble, because you’ve got innocent eyes and she hasn’t. By the way, the food was drugged, so it’s a good thing you didn’t eat any of it.’

  Brigit’s eyes were like saucers. Pidge looked very pale.

  ‘What else?’ he managed to ask after some moments when all was eerily quiet.

  ‘That was all; and this is what I find so strange—I tried every other head and there was nothing in them. But for the sound of faraway laughter like the noise of the sea in a sea-shell, they were as the dead. I climbed right inside one or two ….. excuse me—,’ he broke off in embarrassment.

  ‘It’s all right, don’t stop,’ Pidge said encouragingly.

  ‘The brains were just like the kernels of walnuts, brown and shrunken and almost gone. And not even the echo of a soul; empty as husks. They were like dried flowers.’

  ‘What are we going to do? What can we possibly do?’ Pidge asked in despair.

  ‘Goodness!’ Cluas said, sounding very surprised. ‘I should have told you that first of all. I can tumble the lock. It’s easy.’

  ‘What? Can you?’

  ‘Whatever would me Ma think of me if I couldn’t do a simple thing like that!’

  ‘Oh good,’ Brigit muttered. ‘Let them try and stop us after that!’

  ‘No trouble at all; put me to the keyhole.’

/>   Pidge pressed his knuckles against the keyhole and Cluas disappeared inside. Another minute and the door swung open as silently as it had closed and Cluas emerged from the lock on the outside of the door.

  ‘Now say as loudly as ever you can that it’s all a fraud and a sham and that you can see through it,’ Cluas said casually, as he walked back onto Pidge’s sleeve.

  They shouted at the tops of their voices.

  Immediately, there was the stench of decay.

  ‘Run!’ Cluas shouted, and they ran down the stairs.

  Up above, the walls began to crumble; and even as they passed, the stones of the walls beside them were being covered in fungus and they became damp and discoloured and smelled rotten.

  Pidge felt exultant and Brigit had a smile of pure triumph plastered right across her face.

  ‘We’ve won! We’ve won!’ she kept shouting.

  Running through the Great Hall they saw that everything had gone to rags and tatters, that the furniture was worm-eaten and moisture-stained, and that the whole place was laced with dirty old webs and threads and covered in ancient dust that was as thick and clinging as grated cheese. Stinking pools of rusty, oily water had settled at the feet of the rotting suits of armour in a filthy, stagnant clotting.

  They went through what was left of the Great Hall and out into the passage; and the four wide steps were crumbling beneath their feet. Shocked, they saw ahead of them the rigid figures of the lady and the queerly-shaped man, standing before the huge door as if to bar the way. But even as they saw them, there was a fearful groaning sort of sound that might have come from the two people or from wooden beams on the point of collapsing—in his fever to escape, Pidge couldn’t know which.

  He snatched at Brigit’s hand and they ran straight at the terrible pair without altering speed.

  ‘Get out of the way!’ he shouted.

  Sighing, the huge door fell to sawdust and the solid walls fell apart into a gap and they were able to run round the figures that gleamed hideously into a kind of squalid, golden crust.

  And then they were standing on green grass in clear day-light.

  There was a muffled falling sound and for an instant they were surrounded by strange whispering.

  On the ground a small object flashed briefly before vanishing away.

  They stared at the spot where it had been, and daisies and dandelions were growing there. All of the strain left them; it went like a splinter of ice in the sun, as the castle in going took its terror with it.

  In a vague way Pidge wondered if the people were trapped forever somewhere, still inside that dreadful ruin.

  ‘I wonder why they were so evil?’ he said.

  ‘They must have been bad to begin with, and “Fire burns dry wood” is a true saying,’ Cluas answered.

  ‘We won, anyway,’ Brigit said.

  Before they walked away, Pidge looked for the hounds; but they were nowhere to be seen. We could run if we liked but I’m too tired—and if I’m too tired, Brigit must be as well, he thought.

  In a while they found a track in the grass and followed it. Every step helped to make the memory of Castle Durance retreat in his mind to the safe distance between sleep and wakefulness, where a bad dream is first made reasonable and then quietly lost.

  ‘It wasn’t so bad, was it, Brigit?’ he asked.

  ‘The stingers were the worst of all.’

  ‘What about all the rest?’

  ‘A bit like a ghost train in a carnival,’ she answered; and he knew that she was feeling all right, too.

  The track brought them to a road that seemed to run ahead of them in a straight line to the mountains. Looking back every so often, they followed the road.

  Presently they were able to run quite easily.

  Chapter 19

  BREDA Fairfoul was still sitting at her workbench; still pretending to be a Scientist.

  What she was really doing was something very different. She was doing simple enchantments; partly to amuse herself and partly to pass the time. By now, she had decided that when it came to rats, she preferred the good old-fashioned kind, and in a blink, she was confronting several real-looking, greasy rats that stared back up at her, with yellow teeth bared and clever, watchful, distrusting eyes. The glasshouse had suddenly benefited not only from the smell of the rats themselves, but other scents that called up visions of dustbins and old, mouldy cellars and other places not to be mentioned.

  The cat that had been so disgracefully used as a duster, started up in surprise. She growled, flickering her tail from side to side, and she glared passionately up at the workbench. Breda slanted a look at her and the cat slumped down and lay on the ground, where she went into a sort of trance that made all of her nature assert itself in the fixed stare of her eyes. Occasionally her jaws would open in a silent growl and she lashed her tail languidly at intervals.

  Breda smiled at her rats and she gave them each a bit of tallow to eat. The tallow was nervously snatched out of her hands and swallowed in gulps. When it was all gone, she taught them how to chew tobacco and spit. After they got used to the way the tobacco burned the insides of their mouths, the rats began to enjoy it; but they still watched Breda with suspicion.

  She discarded her cap, gown and the horn-rimmed glasses, and she made her scientific equipment disappear.

  ‘I’ve done with all that jiggery-pokery,’ she declared, and the rats looked remarkably relieved—although they still kept an eye on the suppressed cat.

  Breda put on herself a green eyeshade and on the rats she put striped shirts with floppy bow ties, under wide-sleeved jackets with many pockets. A small, baize-covered table, with chairs on the same scale, appeared on the top of the workbench and all of the rats sat down. In front of her, Breda laid several decks of new, unopened playing-cards—she split one open, shuffled and dealt. She then gave lessons to the rats on how to play and cheat at poker.

  As soon as they received them, the rats’ cards shrank in size and they were able to grip them well in their strange hands. Whenever Breda touched a card, it grew back to its normal state; and all through the lessons, the cards never failed to expand or go small as they passed between her new friends and herself. The rats were really enjoying themselves now and they spat tobacco juice at the cat from time to time.

  Melodie Moonlight had been pacing aimlessly around the glasshouse.

  She drifted over to have a look.

  ‘Little beauties—truly ratty,’ she said admiringly. ‘Let’s hope they don’t all get a nasty disease from some fleas jumping off humans, or they could all be wiped out, poor dears!’

  She studied the cards held by one of the rats.

  ‘Never draw to an inside straight, my love,’ she advised, and moved away again, tirelessly going round and around.

  She had reattached her shadow to her heels and it drooped after her as she prowled. It was utterly beaten down with exhaustion, and was no longer able to do its proper job of being a dark copy of her body, that shortened or grew, varying in shape or size as the light came in on her from outside, and with the way she moved about in its shafts. It dragged after her like old rags tied to her feet.

  So Breda played and Melodie prowled; but The Mórrígan watched the table.

  She watched it with the same enlarged stare and the same single-minded concentration of the cat that crouched on the ground; but the mind behind The Mórrígan’s eyes was calm and very cold.

  ‘Where did that hedgehog get to—I wanted to scrub the floor,’ Melodie said eventually, and she dropped to her knees to search for him under the table. The lucky little hedgehog was long gone and she found instead a large piece of broken looking-glass. Being a Goddess, she understood everything about it at once; but after snatching a handful of her shadow and cleaning the glass until it shone, and then seeing how well it reflected, she couldn’t help giving a loud shout of pleasure.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Breda, from under her eyeshade.

  ‘A strange shining,’ Melodie answer
ed with genuine admiration. ‘A shining flatness that shows a picture of how a thing looks, myself, for example … more so than a still pool, more so than a sheet of polished bronze; the likes of it we have never seen before. It is known as a mirror or a looking-glass.’

  She brooded on her reflection for some moments and then broke into a loud, derisory cackle. She stood up and took the mirror over to Breda, and when Breda saw herself in the glass, she got a fit of the giggles.

  The Mórrígan withdrew her attention from the table.

  Breda passed her the glass and The Mórrígan looked at herself.

  With a cool interest she inspected her pretty face and she changed it from being remarkable pretty into being flawlessly beautiful. The other two women sniggered at first and then laughed heartily.

  The Mórrígan gazed at her new eyes, so wonderfully amethyst, and she made the pupils into small perfect pansies.

  Melodie snorted and went into stitches with the giggles.

  A little object appeared on the table. For a second, it shone brilliantly and the glasshouse was filled with ghostly, whispering voices.

  Without taking her attention from the looking-glass, The Mórrígan reached for the shining object, put it to her lips and said: ‘Hush!’—so gently and dreadfully, that the little whispering voices inside the ruined Castle Durance, instantly fell silent. Completely absorbed in her reflection, The Mórrígan clipped the charm back on to her bracelet, where it swung once again with all the other golden objects against her wrist.

  She made the irises of her eyes into real blue iris flowers with lovely black markings, and Melodie was gasping and saying that if she laughed any more, she would fall to bits. Breda made sounds of being revolted.

  Absent-mindedly, The Mórrígan scratched her wrist.

  Still entranced by the mirror, she turned the pupils of her eyes into little Catherine-wheels that spun and spun and threw out tiny sparks and were fiery and swift and full of splendid colours.