by Che Golden
‘Dogs!’ gasped Roisin, her eyes round with fear. ‘They’ve got dogs looking for us!’
‘Granda wouldn’t let them do that,’ said Danny. ‘Would he?’
‘Maybe it’s not Granda who’s looking for us,’ said Maddy.
‘We need to get into that mound right now!’ said Danny.
‘I know!’ said Maddy.
‘Ro, how do you get into a mound again?’ asked Danny, as the sound of the dogs grew louder.
Roisin rubbed at her forehead with her fingertips. ‘Um, let me think. You can fall asleep and enter through your dreams—’
‘Not going to happen,’ said Maddy.
“The only other way I can think of is spilling the blood of an innocent so you can summon a faerie guide.’
‘How long is it going to take a guide to get here?’ asked Danny.
‘No idea, but unless we fancy outrunning those dogs, it’s the only chance we’ve got,’ said Maddy. She put her hand in her pocket and pulled open the Velcro to get at the iron knife she had hidden in the lining of her jacket. ‘Right, who’s volunteering?’
They all looked at each other, calculating who was the most innocent. Maddy thought of Bang Bang, blood drying on his cracked lips as he died. A blush flooded her cheeks. It wasn’t going to be her.
‘Ro, it has to be you,’ said Danny.
‘Why? What have you done that disqualifies you?’ she asked, her voice squeaky with fear.
Gently, Maddy took her cousin’s wrist and turned her hand until the palm faced up. ‘I only need a couple of drops, Ro,’ she said. ‘It won’t hurt much.’ She put the sharp edge of the blade to Roisin’s skin and Roisin screwed her eyes shut in anticipation, just as a white stag came bounding up to the mound, gravel spraying from his hoofs as he ran, twin moons floating in his eyes. Maddy and Roisin had just enough time to spring apart as the huge animal leaped between them toward the mound, his snow-white coat burning with an alien intensity in the moonlight, his full spread of antlers curving in front of him as he lowered his head and dived straight into the opening that appeared as the mound shuddered open. Seconds later a quick, silver streak of grey ran in the stag’s path and leaped for the same opening, as the beams of powerful torches stabbed at the sky and the baying of the hunting dogs echoed loud through the gardens.
‘Nero!’ screamed Roisin as she recognized the lean wolf and ran after him. Maddy and Danny raced after her, making it into the mound just before it shivered itself closed again. Once inside, torches flared to life against walls of smooth packed earth. She could hear the hoof beats of the stag as it ran on, but Nero was flattened against one wall, panting with exhaustion. His eyes gleamed turquoise in the dim light and his coat was matted with mud and tangled with twigs. His normally glossy silver-grey pelt was dull, and his ribs were showing. Between long yellow teeth, his red tongue flopped out and his eyes stared at them without any sign of recognition.
‘Oh, you poor boy,’ said Roisin, stepping toward the wolf with her hand outstretched. Nero peeled back his black lips and growled at her, although the growl was half a whine of fear. Startled, Roisin jumped back and snatched her fingers out of reach.
‘They’re more wolfy our side, remember?’ said Maddy softly. ‘Let him go on ahead. He’ll remember who we are once he gets to Tír na nÓg.’
The wolf stared back at them, terrified, and took a tentative step forward with one of his massive paws. When he saw they were making no move toward him, he bolted through the tunnel and disappeared into the gloom, his plumed tail tucked between his legs.
‘Right,’ said Danny. ‘Let’s get moving. I don’t fancy getting stuck in here. I didn’t pack enough Mars bars.’
Maddy squared her shoulders as they walked through the mound, across its domed main chamber and down another small tunnel that would lead them out into Tír na nÓg.
It won’t be so bad this time, she thought. I’m the Hound of Ireland with the whole might of the Autumn Court behind me, and I’ve got Danny and Roisin. And I know what to expect this time when I get to the other side.
But as they emerged from the mound, she heard Danny and Roisin gasp with shock and horror. As she stared at the scene that greeted her, she realized that she really didn’t know what to expect at all.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘What the hell happened here?’ asked Danny. They had expected to step out of the mound into a meadow strewn with wild flowers rolling down a hill before giving way to a forest beneath a crystal-clear sky. Instead, the ground they stood on was scorched to bare earth and the forest had been devastated by fire. The oldest, strongest trees stood charred and blackened, while the younger ones were burned down to the trunks or gone altogether, judging by the clearings that pocked the forest. The sun was rising in the sky but its golden rays struggled to pierce the layer of woodsmoke and no birds sang to welcome it. The cousins were looking at a funeral pyre, the dryads silenced, the animals and birds of the forest fled.
The stag was standing a few feet away, nostrils flaring and collapsing as he breathed deeply. As Maddy watched, he reared up on to his hind legs and transformed into an antlered man, with a cloak made of a patchwork of animal skins falling away from his shoulders to skim the charcoaled ground. He radiated a dark light that pulsed and shifted like an imploding star, his face wreathed in shadows that even the dawn sun could not penetrate. The moons had disappeared from his eyes – now, when he looked at them, his pupils were full of the white light of wheeling stars.
‘Cernunnos,’ said Maddy, ‘who did this?’
One of the oldest of the Tuatha de Dannan and the Lord of the Forest, Cernunnos cocked his massive head at them, a head that should not have been able to support the weight of that huge spread of antlers. ‘War has finally come to Tír na nÓg,’ he said. ‘The Winter Queen has struck the first blow.’
‘Liadan,’ said Danny. He wrinkled his face in disgust and spat on the ground. ‘I knew it!’
‘Weren’t you able to stop this?’ asked Roisin. ‘I thought that was the whole point of tying the Winter Queen to you in marriage – so she would not be able to harm the forest. Can’t you do anything when your wife goes on the rampage?’
‘War changes the pieces on the board,’ said Cernunnos. ‘Changes their positions, changes their values. Yes, I should have stopped her. But I didn’t get here quick enough. Now the deed is done and events have moved on without me. I have another role to fulfil.’
‘We can still stop this,’ said Maddy. ‘You’ve left the mortal world, and now you can help us. Now the courts are moving against each other, there is no point in your staying neutral. You’re the oldest of the Tuatha; the only other that compares to you is the Morrighan, the High Queen, and she never wakes up! Stop Liadan in her tracks and this will all go away.’
‘Things have gone too far for that, little Hound,’ said Cernunnos. ‘I’m another pawn on the board whose role has changed, and you and I are no longer on the same side. For now I will let you go in peace, but be warned – if we meet again it will not go the same way for you. You’ve caused a lot of trouble, for just one small girl.’ With that, he gathered his cloak around himself and strode off into the devastated forest, heading for the Winter Queen’s white tower, hidden from view by the pall of grey smoke.
‘No longer on the same side?’ Maddy yelled at his back. ‘What does that even mean?’
A wet nose nuzzled at her hand and Maddy looked down to find herself gazing into Nero’s yellow eyes. ‘What is going on around here?’ she asked. ‘Are the pack safe?’
‘They went to ground when Liadan got Fenris,’ said Nero. ‘I came looking for you. The mound was open – I think Liadan must have made sure of it. She wanted to lure you in.’
‘What do you mean, she got Fenris?’ asked Danny.
‘She summoned him to the tower,’ said Nero. ‘Didn’t say why. But Fenris knew it couldn’t be good – it never is when faeries notice wolves. So he told the pack to hide deep in the forest and to keep the pups safe.
But he didn’t come out again. Raiding parties of elves came out instead and started to slash and burn at the forest. They killed any dryads that tried to stop them, and none of the Tuatha courts arrived to stand in their way either.’
‘Is Fenris still alive?’ asked Roisin. Maddy could hear the tears in her voice. When they had first entered Tír na nÓg, they had stumbled about helpless and lost. It had been the wolf pack and a little dryad called Fionn who had helped them. Now it seemed the wolves were paying for their kindness.
‘I hope so,’ said Nero. ‘I hid close to a raiding party and I heard them laughing about him. Liadan has him chained in the great hall of the tower and they say she has pinned his jaws together with a sword so he cannot bite.’
‘That’s disgusting!’ said Roisin. ‘That’s … that’s animal cruelty!’
‘They said you would come running when you heard Fenris was in danger,’ said Nero.
‘Is that why you risked coming into Blarney?’ Maddy asked. ‘To make sure I came?’
Nero shook his shaggy head. ‘No, I wanted you to stay in the mortal world, where you would be safe. Liadan intends to fight to the death this time. Fenris would not have wanted you to die because of him.’
Her heart melted and Maddy touched Nero’s head gently with the tips of her fingers. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered anyhow, Nero,’ she said. ‘Liadan sent the dullahan after me, wanted to make sure that I and the whole of Tír na nÓg knew she is trying to kill me. Now that I am a subject of the Autumn Court, it’s an act of war. I was going to end up here whatever you tried to do to stop it.’
‘Come here to me, Nero,’ said Roisin. ‘Let me get some of that rubbish out of your fur.’
The wolf padded over to Roisin and the pair of them sank down to the ground together. He put his head in her lap and closed his eyes with a sigh of contentment as Roisin’s deft fingers worked clumps of mud and twigs out of his fur.
‘I don’t like this,’ said Danny.
‘Do I look like I’m turning cartwheels?’ asked Maddy.
‘But it’s like you said – you were going to end up in here no matter what,’ said Danny. ‘Being tied to a Tuatha monarch just seems to make you more vulnerable, not less. And I don’t like feeling shoved into a corner.’
‘Ah, but you know what they say about cornered animals,’ said Maddy. ‘They always fight hardest.’
‘That’s because they’re desperate, Maddy,’ said Danny. ‘I don’t think that’s a good thing.’
‘Well, it sounds like the two of you are on track for one of your usual mature, reasonable discussions,’ said Roisin cheerfully. ‘Or as I like to call them, arguments.’ She stood up and Nero climbed to his feet, shaking himself briskly. ‘Why don’t we just keep moving and see what happens?’
‘Why?’ asked Danny.
‘Because that’s what we’ve always done before and it’s never failed to get us into a fight,’ said Roisin. ‘So I say we head for where all the problems start – Liadan’s White Tower.’
Roisin walked away down the hill with Nero trotting by her side. Maddy and Danny looked at each other and Maddy shrugged. ‘She’s right. Might as well go and spy on Liadan and see what she’s up to.’
‘It would be nice if, just once, we could have something like a plan,’ said Danny.
‘Never gonna happen,’ said Maddy cheerfully, as she followed Roisin down the hill.
Any cheerfulness Maddy might have felt, no matter how fleeting, was soon crushed by walking in the stricken forest. She had never been anywhere so quiet. Every living thing had fled or died – not even the buzz of insect wings disturbed the silence. She was almost terrified to walk, cringing at the sounds charred wood made as it collapsed beneath the soles of her trainers, and she hated the puffs of ash that floated up as they walked. She could tell by the way Danny and Roisin were wincing that they felt the same way. They could not even see the sky. Everything was covered by a cloud of acrid smoke that hung low enough to drift around her head in tendrils. Spots of soot danced in the air and quickly coated her skin and clothes, while the smoke slipped insidiously into her nostrils and her mouth, drying her eyeballs and making every flickering movement of her eyes feel scratchy. It was not long before all three of them were coughing, their eyes red and streaming. Nero kept pausing to wipe at his face with his foreleg, trying to clear his eyes.
Everything was fragile to the touch. At one point Maddy stumbled and put her hand against a huge oak tree to brace herself. That simple touch caused a chunk of its bark to slough off beneath her fingers and crumble to ash. She looked up at it in horror. Was its dryad, the little faerie that lived in the heart of the tree, still alive, curled up somewhere inside, suffering agonizing burns? Could it speak? Could it still feel anything, even the wound Maddy had just inflicted, or had pain sent its mind to another place? The tree loomed over her, twisted and tortured, and gave no sign it even knew she was there. She dashed tears from her red eyes and kept moving.
After a while they all stopped walking and simply stood and stared at each other.
Roisin took a juddering breath. ‘I’ve never been anywhere so … so …’
‘Dead,’ said Danny. Nero flopped on to his belly, put his head on his paws and whimpered.
‘I did this,’ said Maddy, real tears coursing through the grime on her face. She wiped her cheeks with a filthy hand and simply spread more soot around.
Roisin looked at her, her eyes softening with pity. ‘No, you didn’t.’
‘Liadan wanted me to come back,’ said Maddy. ‘She’s torturing Fenris and she burned the forest to make sure that happened. So yes, I did this, it’s my fault. How many dryads are dead because of me?’
‘She’s done this before, Maddy, when she first came to Tír na nÓg, remember?’ said Danny. ‘This is what she revels in, the death and the destruction. You are just an excuse for something she would do sooner or later.’
‘Danny’s right,’ said Roisin. ‘What she really wants is a war with the Tuatha, a way to break out from Tír na nÓg and have no restraint on her powers. Having a go at you is just a way to make that happen.’
‘She burnt the forest because it’s too close to the tower,’ said Nero.
‘What?’ asked Maddy.
Nero shrugged. ‘She’s always been frightened of the dryads, though I don’t think they ever understood that. So many of them, some working with such powerful trees, all of them solitary faeries owing allegiance to no court. They could have thrown their lot in with any Tuatha and come against her. She didn’t want that to happen so she burned them. They will be too weak to do anything to her now.’
‘So this was just Liadan housekeeping before she started her war,’ said Roisin.
‘But Fachtna spoke about the dryads like they were dirt,’ said Maddy. ‘To listen to her, you would have thought she was talking about something she scraped off the bottom of her boots.’
‘People often show hatred of something they are frightened of, rather than admit they are scared,’ said Nero.
‘The dryads could have fought back, they could have done her some damage,’ said Danny. ‘Why didn’t they?’
“They’ve never understood war,’ said Nero. ‘They are peaceful creatures who only strike if they are attacked. And they have no idea what it means to work together. They have no concept of being in a pack.’
‘Poor things,’ said Maddy, looking at the blackened forest around her.
‘They’ll survive,’ said Nero. ‘The younger ones might have perished, but the older trees will grow new shoots and renew themselves and their dryads will heal along with them.’
Maddy thought of Fionn, the beautiful little silver-birch dryad. She and her tree had already survived one burning – had they both survived this?
‘What are we supposed to do?’ said Roisin. ‘How are we supposed to fight this?’
‘We can’t,’ said Danny. ‘Not on our own. Liadan has a whole army behind her and, no offence, Maddy, but being the Hound doesn’t se
em worth much and nor does being part of Meabh’s court.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Maddy, feeling her temper rise as it so often did with Danny.
Danny made a big show of pretending to think, frowning deeply and tapping at his forehead. ‘Well, being the Hound hasn’t given you any superpowers, unless you count being a faerie magnet, which I don’t, by the way, seeing as it utterly ruined my life. And as for being the subject of the Autumn Court and under their protection, I don’t see any Autumn Tuatha turning up to welcome you home, armed to the teeth with something useful like big pointy swords!’
‘Why do you do this every time?’ asked Maddy while Roisin sighed.
‘Do what?’ asked Danny.
‘Every time we get into trouble, instead of doing or saying anything helpful, you just get really, really sarky and start a row,’ said Maddy. ‘It does my head in.’
‘I’m not starting a row. I’m just pointing out the obvious,’ said Danny.
‘Yeah? Well, give it a rest,’ said Maddy. ‘Or at least say something useful.’
They all jumped in fright as Nero sprang to his feet and started barking. Horrified, they watched as three riders on white mounts slipped between the trees to stand in front of them. Their long ears and small, slight build showed they were elves and not Tuatha and therefore they were subjects of the Winter Court. They looked down on Maddy with beautiful, cruel faces.
‘We couldn’t help but hear your argument,’ said a dark-haired elf. He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes, and his teeth looked too big and hungry for his red mouth. ‘Will we do as a welcoming committee?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Nero began to snarl at the elves and puffed his fur up to make his body look twice as big. Maddy watched in horror as the elven mounts snarled back, revealing fangs almost twice as long as Nero’s, which looked strange in their horse-like faces. Their red eyes glowed with rage as their taloned paws took a step forward through the charred debris on the forest floor. Instinctively Maddy, Danny, Roisin and Nero took a step back and huddled together. Maddy gagged as the smell of rotting meat rolled over her face from the closest mount.
