by Che Golden
In her fear, Maddy dropped the bundle at her feet and Fachtna yelped and fell back against the shell wall as the iron heads rolled toward her feet. This probably saved her life as the next collision hit the boat so hard it lifted out of the water. If Fachtna had been standing, she would have been thrown over the side. Another collision came just seconds later and Fachtna screamed with them as the boat spun in a giddy circle.
‘You,’ said Fachtna, pointing at Roisin. ‘Do something!’
‘What am I supposed to do?’ asked Roisin, sobbing with terror.
‘You can manipulate the magic of this place. I know you can,’ said Fachtna. ‘Do it now, before we all die!’
It was as if a light bulb went off in Maddy’s head. ‘Ro, remember the nightmares, the horses you just imagined into being and the way you made them from shadows? Do it again!’
‘What, make horses?’ asked Roisin as another thud made them all scream.
‘No, an engine, Ro. Make an engine!’ screamed Danny.
‘OK, let me think,’ said Roisin as she gripped the edge of the shell and peeped over the side. ‘Fachtna, there’s lots of things in the water – big things!’
Another impact sent the shell spinning again and Danny had to lunge forward and grab Roisin’s legs before she went overboard. Nero lay flat and covered his eyes with his paws.
‘We already know that!’ screamed Maddy. ‘Do something, Ro, please!’
She heard Roisin muttering away to herself and then the shell tipped, ever so slightly, and began to rush through the water like a speedboat. Maddy peered cautiously over the side and could see white plumes of water spraying around from the shell as it cut through the waves.
‘It’s working!’ she yelled.
‘Can you see anything?’ called Fachtna over the hiss of the water.
Dark shapes were breaking the surface to gleam like pearls in the moonlight before sinking back down. Lots of shapes, lots of pearls.
Maddy swallowed. ‘Whatever they are, they’re still with us!’
Fachtna snarled and scrabbled for one of the arrows that were rolling around the floor of the shell. She lit and fired and still it fell short of Hy Breasail. They couldn’t be far from it. Maddy could feel the power of the place clamping down on her head, squeezing her skull until it hurt. If only they could see it through the fog!
Fachtna screamed with frustration, spun in the shell with a flaming arrow notched to her bow and let loose without taking aim. Maddy waited to see the green fire drop and to hear the splash and hiss as the arrow burnt out in the sea. But this flame caught and held, flaring like a beacon in the mist on the right-hand side of the shell.
‘Turn us about,’ yelled Fachtna to Roisin. She pointed at the flame. ‘Bring us to that light!’
Rosin turned her brown eyes to the flame and stared at it without blinking. The shell turned with her head and began to speed up, so much so that the breeze its passage created whipped Maddy’s hair back from her face. Something dark was beginning to take shape in the fog, something that reared up high above her head. As the fog gave way in ragged tendrils Maddy could see an island rising up from the water.
It balanced on foundations that narrowed to a dagger point, the island spreading as it grew further out of the sea. It should have been physically impossible, but not only was this island still upright, a jet-black castle grew with it, rock and building twined together seamlessly, not an inch of land left around the castle even to provide a path. It was as if the castle had been carved from the island. Its obsidian walls were set with arched windows whose panes glittered in the moonlight and a single tower grew from the roof of the castle, pointing like a finger into the night sky.
‘There’s no way in!’ yelled Danny. ‘There is no way on to that island unless we climb.’
‘Or fly,’ said Fachtna calmly. She looked at Maddy. ‘I could carry you.’
Maddy scrambled back from the edge of the shell and entwined her arms with Danny’s and Roisin’s. ‘I’m not leaving them behind,’ she said, as another thud pushed the shell forward. ‘Find a proper way in or we are getting out of here.’
‘Fine!’ spat Fachtna. ‘Bring us around the island. There has to be a way in.’
The boat moved off to the left, and as they began to edge around the island Maddy spotted something.
‘Stairs!’ she cried. Black steps rose from a small jetty to an opening cut into the rock. Roisin aimed for the jetty – a little too enthusiastically. The shell crashed into the side and splintered, ice-cold seawater pouring in through the breach.
‘Abandon ship!’ cried Nero, leaping from the boat, his claws scrabbling for purchase on the rock as he landed awkwardly on the jetty.
Fachtna held up the lantern of witch-fire as Maddy, Danny and Roisin clambered over the side of the wildly rocking shell and on to solid rock. Another crash saw a hole torn open in the shell, and as it began to sink, Fachtna lost her balance and tipped over the side.
Maddy yelled as the war faerie’s head went under, and when she bobbed back into view, coughing and spluttering, she grabbed at the faerie’s wrist, which was still holding the burning lantern, and towed her toward the jetty. Fachtna looked up into her face, her white hair plastered to her skull, and then she screamed in pain. Maddy started to drag her from the water and as the faerie got a better grip, she hauled herself on to the pier. There was a massive bite mark on her calf and it was bleeding freely. Maddy peered over the side to see what had caused it and a sleek, elegant head rose out of the water and gazed at her with huge brown eyes.
Seals? she thought, as the animal bared its huge fangs at her. Then two large webbed hands slipped out of the water and gripped the edge of the jetty, and a man’s face, framed by dark, dripping hair began to emerge. He hissed at Maddy, showing her fangs at least as big as the seal’s.
‘Selkies!’ yelled Danny.
Fachtna pushed Maddy away from her and toward the stairs. ‘Run!’
They raced for the slippery stone stairs, Fachtna limping along behind them. Maddy forced herself not to look down to the surf that crashed against the rock beneath her, or to think about how the steps had no handrail as she climbed. They all raced through the small, dark opening cut into the rock, and Danny found a stone door open in the wall. He began to force it shut as Maddy and Fachtna ran through, its hinges squealing in protest. Maddy turned to see the selkie running up the stairs behind them, webbed feet slapping awkwardly on the stone steps, eyes burning with anger. She and Fachtna threw their weight behind the door and helped Danny slam it closed just as the selkie reached the top of the steps. Fachtna rammed the bolt home as his body slammed into it, making the tunnel boom. They could hear the creature raging outside as he threw his weight against the door and the slap, slap, slap of other webbed feet as they rushed to join him.
Fachtna gripped Maddy’s shoulder and squeezed.
‘Good girl,’ she said, her voice soft. ‘That was bravely done.’
Maddy’s head flew up in shock as she looked into Fachtna’s red eyes and the tunnel echoed to the sound of the selkies’ rage.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘Why are the selkies trying to attack us?’ asked Danny as they made their way up the narrow staircase to the castle above. ‘I thought they didn’t care what the Tuatha got up to.’
The selkies were solitary faeries, owing allegiance to no court. They kept themselves aloof from the power games in Tír na nÓg. Maddy was as shocked as Danny that they had tried so hard to kill them.
‘They really, really don’t want us to wake the Morrighan, do they?’ asked Roisin.
‘I don’t really care what a bunch of primitive faeries think,’ snarled Fachtna, all softness gone. ‘Keep moving.’
‘Charming,’ muttered Roisin as they climbed on, the green witch-fire making the walls dance as its flame flickered. The booming sound of the selkies trying to break through the door began to grow quieter. Maddy had to admire their stubbornness.
As they climbed furthe
r from the sea, the air became staler. The top of the stairs was sealed by a black stone door carved all over with writhing dragons, their sinuous bodies creating a lattice of serpents as their jaws gaped. Maddy’s flesh crawled to look at it. All it needed was a sign nailed above it saying ‘Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter’.
There was no lock or handle. Roisin pressed her palms to the stone and found the door swung open easily at her touch. It opened on to an inky, echoing darkness. Nero cautiously stretched his neck just past the frame and sniffed the air.
‘Ugh,’ he sneezed. ‘It smells like a tomb in there.’
‘You know, considering she is the centre of power in Tír na nÓg, the Morrighan is surprisingly vulnerable,’ said Roisin nervously. ‘No locks, no guards – there’s no sign that anyone is even alive in here.’
‘She’s not guarded because no one dares come near her, do they?’ Danny said to Fachtna. ‘It’s too dangerous to come here, isn’t it?’
‘Keep moving,’ said Fachtna, her rough voice low and full of menace.
Danny shook his head. ‘We need to think about this.’ He turned to Maddy. ‘I know you think waking the Morrighan is going to be the answer to all our problems, but maybe there is another way we haven’t thought of. With three courts against one, I don’t see how we could lose against Liadan anyway, even without the Morrighan.’
‘It’s not about beating her with sheer numbers, Danny, it’s about stopping another war starting over the Winter crown,’ said Maddy. ‘A war like that could go on for years and we’ll still be in the firing line if courts keep coming after to me to tip the balance. They don’t care about hurting everyone around me. The Morrighan can award the crown to whoever she chooses and the Tuatha will not argue with her decision. I only pledged allegiance for a thousand days, remember? In just over two years I’ll be free of the Autumn Court and we can have a normal life. I need to buy time.’
‘Yeah, but do you really want to risk dying so Fachtna can be the next Winter Queen?’
Fachtna grabbed Danny by the arm and flung him into the shadows. Roisin and Maddy screamed as the darkness swallowed him whole and then they heard him shouting, ‘What I am lying on? WHAT AM I LYING ON?’
Fachtna stepped over the threshold and held the lantern high. The green flame flared and illuminated a great hall, its vaulted ceiling stretching far above their heads. High above them, weak moonlight crept in through the arched cathedral windows. The walls were covered in banners and tapestries, their imagery vague and ghostly behind a thick layer of dust. Huge wooden chandeliers hung from the beams suspended by chains black with age and dirt. Their round rims were studded with massive candles as long and as thick as Maddy’s arm, but long grey webs hung from them like rags, floating in the draught from the open door. Fachtna aimed the lantern at Danny and it was only then that Maddy realized what he was thrashing about in.
Bones.
The floor was white with them, a jumble of skeletons. Maddy looked around and saw the long thin skull of a Tuatha, a huge broad skull with curving tusks that could only be a troll, small ones with fangs, others with rounded bones and short blunt teeth. She even thought she saw skulls that looked uncomfortably human. As she walked toward Danny her feet crunched over splinters and fragments of bone, stirred up dust from bones long ground down to powder and kicked aside legs and arms, shoulder blades, stepped around ribcages, almost lost her footing altogether as tiny finger bones and knuckles rolled beneath the rubber soles of her trainers.
She closed her lips tightly against the dust that rose up around her plodding feet and concentrated on Danny as he got up, spitting and pawing at his tongue to get the dust out of his mouth. He beat frantically at his clothes, raising a white cloud of ground bone.
‘What happened here?’ he asked.
Fachtna raised the lantern higher. ‘Perhaps they were waiting for her to wake up.’
Toward the back of the room there was a dais. But instead of a throne, a carved wooden four-poster bed was placed in the middle of it. It was shrouded in black gauze, yards and yards of the stuff, looped and folded until the fabric became opaque with all the dense layering, hiding the bed within. Fachtna’s red orbs began to glow with excitement as she strode across the hall, kicking bones out of her way as she went. Maddy, Danny, Roisin and Nero hurried after her on the path she created and crowded behind her as she slashed at the gauze with her silver sword, tearing it down from the posts and sending up a cloud of dust that had them all coughing and spluttering.
‘At last,’ whispered Fachtna as they looked down on the figure lying on the bed.
It was a Tuatha, Maddy could tell from the height of the figure and the length of her bones. But it was unlike any Tuatha Maddy had ever met. Its strangely lumpen face was covered with a fine black veil. Long, wavy black hair poured like a river over the dusty pillow and overflowed the mattress to puddle on the floor. The long, triple-jointed toes were tipped with hard black nails that had grown so long they had curved in on themselves many times, spooling round and round and round into little spirals. But what was really unusual were the huge black wings that enfolded the figure from neck to ankle, crossing neatly at the ends so their tips pointed in opposite directions. The smooth feathers shone with a deep gloss, radiating life and health in the light of the lantern.
‘The Morrighan?’ asked Maddy.
Fachtna nodded, her eyes never leaving the figure on the bed.
‘What’s that?’ asked Roisin, pointing to a tarnished silver shape suspended over the Morrighan’s face from the wooden frame of her bed.
Danny reached over and pulled it toward him on its chain. ‘It’s a funnel,’ he said. ‘Who has a funnel dangling over their face?’
‘It’s to wake her up,’ said Fachtna, looking at Maddy in a way she really didn’t like.
‘OK,’ said Danny. ‘And how does it do that? Are we supposed to poke her with it?’
‘NO!’ snapped Fachtna, her eyes flying to his face.
Danny let go of the silver funnel as if it had burnt him, and it swung wildly from side to side on its chain. He held his hands up in the air. ‘I’m joking!’
‘Well, don’t,’ said Fachtna. Her eyes returned to Maddy’s face. ‘She needs a sacrifice to wake her up, an offering.’
‘Let me guess,’ said Maddy, her stomach clenching. ‘Blood?’
Fachtna nodded. ‘It’s why I need you. She has been asleep so long I don’t even know if she will wake. But the blood of a Hound is potent…’
‘If I do this for you, Fachtna, you have to promise me something,’ said Maddy.
‘Anything,’ breathed Fachtna, her eyes glowing. ‘Name it.’
‘Once you are Winter Queen, and assuming we all get out of this alive, your court has to leave us alone. Your court has to leave all mortals alone.’
‘Done,’ said Fachtna.
‘And you have to protect us and our family against any comeback from the Spring and Summer Courts. I’ll handle Autumn myself. The wolf pack will also remain under the protection of the Winter Court.’
‘I swear it,’ said Fachtna. ‘On my life, you, the wolves and all you love will be protected by my court.’
‘And your court leaves all mortals alone, even on Halloween?’
‘I swear it,’ said Fachtna.
‘Good,’ said Maddy. She shrugged her jacket off, rolled up her sleeve and held out her arm, the soft white underside up. ‘Let’s get on with it then.’
‘Maddy …’ said Danny, a warning in his voice.
‘It’s a good deal,’ said Maddy, her eyes never leaving Fachtna’s. ‘I’m taking it.’
The faerie sheathed her sword and put the lantern on the ground. She pulled a small dagger from the strap around her chest and put the tip against Maddy’s flesh. Maddy uttered a hiss of pain through clenched teeth as Fachtna drew the blade along her arm. Nero whimpered as Maddy’s blood welled up in the wound. Fachtna grabbed the silver funnel and pulled it toward her, resting its lip against Maddy’s arm
so it could catch the blood as it rolled in thick crimson drops down her skin. As it dripped into the funnel, Fachtna swung it away and held it over the Morrighan’s veiled face. Maddy rolled her sleeve back down and pressed it against her arm as they waited. Slowly a bulbous red drop appeared at the end of the funnel and swelled, before its own weight caused it to tumble down on to the black gauze that covered the Morrighan’s mouth. Another appeared and then another, until seven drops had pattered on to the veil and sunk beneath its fragile fibres.
They all leaned over, holding their breath. Seconds ticked past. Still the Morrighan lay as still and lifeless as a statue.
Nero looked up into their faces. ‘What’s supposed to happen now?’ he asked.
Fachtna screamed with rage and struck at the funnel, slamming it off one of the bedposts. ‘WHY ISN’T IT WORKING?!’ she roared.
‘Maybe she needs a different type of blood,’ suggested Danny. ‘Maybe waking the Morrighan is the same as unlocking the mound.’
Fachtna turned to look at Roisin.
‘Oh no,’ said Roisin, backing away and turning to run. She screamed as Fachtna lunged at her and grabbed her wrist, dragging her back toward the bed.
‘Let go of her!’ yelled Danny, but Maddy stepped in front of him before he could do anything. Nero crouched and snarled, looking from Fachtna to Maddy, uncertain what he should do.
‘It’s still a good deal, Danny,’ she said.
‘What are you saying?’ said Danny. ‘You want me to stand and watch while Fachtna cuts her? You can’t force her, Maddy!’
‘You’re right,’ said Maddy. She looked over her shoulder at Roisin. ‘Ro, you need to do this,’ she said gently. ‘You know you do.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Roisin, tears spilling down her cheeks. ‘I’m such a coward.’
‘No, you’re not,’ said Maddy. ‘You can do this.’
Roisin squeezed her eyes shut, holding out her arm. Fachtna let go of her and began to roll her sleeve up while Roisin sobbed, snot bubbling from her nose. ‘I’ll be quick, little chick,’ she said gently. ‘You’ll hardly feel a thing.’ Roisin squealed as Fachtna’s blade flashed down and she wept while the funnel was held against her arm and then over the Morrighan’s face.
