The Black Pool (Valhalla Book 3)

by Jennifer Willis

  The Black Pool

  Valhalla volume 3

  Jennifer Willis

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Wait!

  PREVIEW:

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Jennifer Willis

  Copyright © 2013, 2016 by Jennifer Willis.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover artwork by Steven Novak.

  Author photo by Rachel Hadiashar.

  Published by Jennifer Willis

  Portland, Oregon

  Jennifer-Willis.com

  Revised October 2016:

  - New cover art

  - New interior format

  - Added “Raven Quest” preview

  - Added “Call to Action”

  Print edition:

  ISBN-13: 978-1493681877

  ISBN-10: 1493681877

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or deceased), business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away. If you did not purchase this ebook, or it was not purchased for you, please visit your online retailer to purchase your own copy. If you would like to share this ebook with others, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting and supporting the hard work of the author.

  For Ruth and Rose—

  Never fear the bend in the road; your next adventure awaits beyond.

  Prologue

  Everything was darkness.

  The endless night had been punctuated by vague murmurings of distant voices, but those threads of hope were too few and much too far between. Now and then came the thrill of a low, whispered vibration deep in the ground.

  But, mostly, shadow. Silence.

  This was simply how it was, deep in the ground.

  And then a spark. Not a sudden flare of warmth, nor even the brilliance of dawn after centuries in the abyss. It came instead as a slight tingling and a thin glimmering of light.

  It wasn’t enough to truly awaken the slumbering one, to loosen her clawed fingers and unfurl her black wings. Her obsidian eyes remained closed. But the spark intruded upon her long, empty sleep and lifted her slowly into a smoky dream of shapeshifting creatures that roamed emerald green hills, of shimmering rains and mythic kings.

  Her breath quickened. She felt the beating of her own, ancient heart.

  She tried to question the vision, but couldn’t form the words. The answer came anyway, from both within and without. This is how this land once was. Can you restore it into being?

  She became aware of her own body, withered but strong in her familiar robes of legend. She stepped onto green grass where dark water should have been gathered in her sacred pool. Tall specters of stone buildings hove into view. The iron enclosure was cold and bitter. It felt like ice in her heart.

  And the voices! Hundreds—no, thousands. Millions? So many souls speaking at once, unintelligible in their many languages and accents.

  She looked down at her bare feet, sharpened dark gray toenails against green grass. Then she gazed up at the complex of buildings that had risen up around her pool while she’d slept away the centuries. Horseless carts made of metal sped by at astonishing speed, spewing noxious smoke behind them.

  Too many! She pressed her hands against her ears to drown out the voices that swirled and assaulted her from every direction. Too much!

  She pulled her dark purple cloak tight around her. The spark came again, flitting past like a bold butterfly. She reached out, tried to catch it, and missed. She tried again, and again. It continued to elude her, always just out of reach.

  She did not curse the little light. Instead, she crouched low and hugged her bony knees to her chest. The spark danced across the grass. It rose on an air current toward the gray ceiling of clouds, then drifted down again.

  Quite the little explorer, she smiled. Her teeth felt jagged against her inky lips. They needed a good sharpening. Her dream-dark eyes followed the spark’s progress. It is you that has inspired this dream.

  The spark circled once above her head, and its frosty stench filled her senses.

  Æsir. Her jaw snapped shut like a raven’s beak. The magick of her enemy had dared to draw so close to her sacred well?

  Black eyes flared as the spark continued its dance across the damp grass.

  Badbh, the name echoed from her stone cauldron below. The Morrigan wakes.

  1

  Sally followed her flatmate, Clare, up the stone steps of the Henry Doyle Hotel and past the double glass doors into the lobby.

  Clare was in a hurry to get to Dublin’s weekly Magickal Marketplace.

  “. . . So then really it’s just a matter of holding that intention in your mind while you touch the flame to the candle wick and to the stick of incense, all in the same breath.”

  Sally had always thought of Southerners as speaking slowly, drawing out each syllable in a languid drawl, but Clare’s Texas twang came in a rapid-fire stream. “I just feel so stupid that I didn’t think of that on my own,” Clare sighed. “You know?”

  “Mmm,” Sally replied, without conviction. She glanced around the entryway of the Henry Doyle.

  The building had seen better days but was still functional. Stained marble floors had been covered with thin Oriental carpets, and a brightly lit crystal chandelier tinkled overhead as pedestrian traffic flowed through the lobby.

  “It’s this way.” Clare grabbed Sally by the elbow of her jacket and pulled her deeper into the hotel. They dodged the rolling suitcases and wandering toddlers of international tourists and weekend travelers who were just arriving and waiting to check in.

  They descended a half-flight of stairs at the back of the long lobby and then crossed the worn carpet of a narrow hallway into a low-ceilinged ballroom thronging with buyers and vendors. Brightly colored booths festooned with banners and broomsticks were organized into long rows along the walls and down the center of the room. Sally wrinkled her nose at the mind-numbing mingling of different incenses and essential oils by the dozens, and she grimaced at the discordant sound of so many New Age tracks playing at once. Stepping down into the close space, she looked around for vents and wondered if the air circulation had shut down.

  Clare pushed past several booths offering jewel-toned silks decorated with gold and silver stars, ankhs, and cats, and a table where a vendor displayed soapstone incense burners carved to resemble various Greek, Egyptian, and Hindu deities.

  Sally had no interest in rubbing elbows with more of Dublin’s Pagan population, many of whom—like Clare—seemed more interested in the outward appearance of witchy-wittedness than actual practice, but Freya had been on Sally’s case about picking up a piece of Connemara marble to appease the local Tuatha de Danann.

&n
bsp; “It will help ingratiate you to the Gentle Folk,” Freya had written in her last email. Before Sally had left Portland, Freya had whispered to her in hushed tones a blurry history of the Tuatha de Danann—the Irish faeries, pixies, and other classes of supernaturals driven underground long ago by invaders and their gods.

  Sally meant to ask Freya for more information, but she kept putting it off. She wondered if the bit about the marble was just an ancient superstition—after all she’d been in the country six weeks already, and nothing truly terrible had happened.

  Yet.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” Sally asked as Clare stopped to examine a ceramic burning bowl with a deep red glaze and then perused boxes of scented tea lights.

  “You’ll see,” Clare replied with a mischievous smile.

  Sally was unimpressed. She fervently hoped Clare wasn’t planning to bring any more fragrances—magickal or otherwise—into their shared apartment. Sally had already spent enough time in the library to escape the heady combinations of Clare’s herbal and incense experiments, though there hadn’t yet been a single complaint from the neighbors.

  Probably because they’ll all getting high off the stuff, Sally thought as she watched Clare sniff at a box of Nag Champa.

  “Do you have anything more authentic?” Clare asked the woman in the overdone gypsy costume behind the table. The vendor adjusted her beaded headscarf and frowned in response.

  “You know. Something more Celtic? More Irish?” Clare added.

  “Would you be after something that smells like Guinness, perhaps?” The woman flashed a gold-toothed smile.

  Clare shook her head. “No, not really that so much. I want something that smells more like, well, more like it comes from the land, you know?”

  The woman thought for a moment, then nodded. “Ah, you’d be wanting a bit of turf, then.” The ersatz gypsy bent down behind her table of candles and incense sticks and rummaged through several plastic bins.

  Clare frowned at Sally. “Turf?”

  Sally shrugged. “I’m just along for the ride, remember?”

  The woman stood up and handed Clare a cardboard box shaped like an old Irish cottage. “Peat turf incense,” she said. “For a more, how did you put it, authentic aromatic experience?” The woman’s face broke into a blinding smile as she laughed.

  Sally squinted at the overhead lights glinting off the woman’s teeth. She couldn’t tell if the costumed vendor was sharing a joke with Clare or mocking her.

  Clare turned the box over in her hands and read the text on the back. Finally, she nodded and reached into her purse. “Yeah, I think this should work. How much is it?”

  Sally put a hand on Clare’s wrist. “Are you sure you want to burn peat in the apartment?” Sally glanced at the vendor. The woman winked at her.

  “I told you, Sally, I need to really connect with Ireland’s roots,” Clare replied. “This will help.”

  While Clare made her purchase, Sally wandered down the lane of sales tables, gazing with passing interest at the displays of crystal skulls, ravens, and bears, framed sketches of wispy faeries in pastel colors, shamrock-studded charm bracelets, and Guinness-scented or -flavored everything.

  She rounded a corner bounded by vendors selling quartz wands, hand-knitted witch hats, and statuary from every pantheon Sally could imagine. She thought about approaching the used book vendor to see what older volumes of Irish lore and legend he might have available. The older man behind the table started shuffling through his collection when he caught Sally’s eye, as if to suggest he might have just the book she was looking for. But then she remembered the fiasco of the missing pages in her rare, special-order rune book two years earlier, and she moved on.

  In the far corner of the ballroom, Sally found a display that looked more promising. A petite, older woman sat quietly behind a small table draped in a handmade bedspread and covered with bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and figurines all made of Connemara marble in its varying shades of green, brown, gray, and white. The woman didn’t look up from her knitting as Sally approached.

  “Everything is authentic.” The woman concentrated on the Aran sweater taking shape on her needles. “None of that imitation garbage that you’ll find in the tourist shops.”

  Sally clasped her hands behind her back and peered down at the jewelry. “A friend said I should carry a piece of marble while I’m in Ireland.”

  The woman looked up sharply. “For protection?”

  Sally was startled by the intensity of the woman’s gray eyes. She looked back down at the wares on display. “Not exactly. But to, well, I guess to ensure no one messes with me while I’m here.”

  “Ah,” the woman replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “To curry favor with the faeries.”

  Sally’s laugh escaped her throat before she could stop it. “I’m sorry.” Sally offered an embarrassed smile. “It’s just that I, I mean I’m not really—“

  “You’re not sure if you believe in the Gentle Folk,” the woman completed Sally’s thought. “Don’t worry, miss. It’s common enough.” She rested her knitting in her lap and leaned toward Sally with a conspiratorial glint in her eye. “You know what they say around here? I don’t believe in the faeiries, not at all. Aye, but they’re there anyway.”

  She lifted her thin, white eyebrows in a mirthful grin, then rested back in her chair and giggled. “Any of these should aid you, miss.” She waved a hand toward her collection of marble jewelry. “I’d recommend something you can wear. Indulge in a bit of decoration, rather than just a rounded stone in your pocket or a carved dolphin on your bookshelf. A nice souvenir to take home with you.”

  Sally spotted a fist-sized, carved skull at the back of the table. Made of the same moss-green marble, it faced away at an angle. “What’s this?” Sally reached for it.

  Her knitting slipped to the floor as the old woman snatched up the skull before Sally could touch it. “No, you don’t want that one, miss.” Her hand brushed Sally’s in passing, and Sally felt a ripple of tiny sparks of static across her skin. The woman’s pale eyes widened.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, then reached down to stash her yarn and needles beneath the table. “I only have that piece out in deference to . . . Well, it’s not for sale, and it’s certainly not something a lovely young lady would want to concern herself with.”

  You might be surprised, Sally thought before concluding that the woman was probably right. There was so much she didn’t know about the magick of this place, and she intended to keep it that way. She just needed to keep a closer watch on her own compulsions and curiosity or she’d get herself into trouble again.

  “You have some power in you, yes.” The woman eyed Sally. It wasn’t a question.

  Sally met her gaze. “Something like that.”

  “Not from any tradition I recognize.” The woman studied her for a long moment. Instead of fidgeting under her hard gaze, Sally looked away and started perusing the jewelry again.

  “I think I’ll take your advice. If I can find something pretty to wear, then maybe I can satisfy my friend while treating myself to something nice, too,” Sally said, more to fill the silence than to make actual conversation.

  She picked up a silver and marble ring for closer inspection. The imperfect circle of tawny green marble was as big as her knuckle, and it reflected green and black light back to her as she rotated the silver band of woven Celtic knots.

  “Ah, now that’s a particularly special ring, that one is.” The woman rose from her chair. “That stone has been cut to represent the sacred pool, the holy cauldron to which all souls return when they die, and from which they are then reborn anew.”

  Sally studied the ring. “I don’t see how this particular piece of marble is any different from the rest.”

  “The Black Pool is no myth, dearie. It’s said that the witch who wears such a ring will soon find herself in the good graces of Ireland’s indigenous spirits.”

  Sally moved to put the ring back
on the table.

  “Or, maybe I’m just telling faerie stories to sell you that ring!” The woman chuckled as she settled down into her chair.

  The exchange was beginning to crawl beneath Sally’s skin, and it made her itch. She wasn’t sure she wanted to reward the woman’s strange behavior by making a purchase, but she was more interested in putting her Connemara marble errand to rest.

  The vendor wanted thirty Euros. Sally thought this pricey for something she imagined she might find in nearly any tourist shop on Fleet Street, but she handed over the cash without attempting to haggle. Careful not to reveal the still visible brand of the rune Uruz on her right thumb—she didn’t want her conversation with this old woman to get any stranger—she slipped the ring onto her left index finger.

  Sally took another look at the carved skull sitting at the back corner.

  “You just forget that now, dear,” the woman said. “You don’t want to be messing with that.”

  Sally couldn’t help from pressing. “You said you had that out in deference to someone?” She watched the woman’s eyes. Though the vendor was silent, Sally caught the woman’s quick glance to a table on the next row over. Sally turned and saw Clare engaged in animated conversation with a short, dark-haired young man dressed all in black save for a red scarf draped around his neck.

  Sally turned back to the woman. “Him? You’re worried about that guy?”

  The woman closed her eyes and crossed herself quickly, then took a deep breath. “If you know that young lady, you’d best go and fetch her now. Don’t let her linger or make any transaction with that one.”

  Sally didn’t need any further excuse to walk away from the old woman and her wares. She turned the heavy ring on her finger, trying to get used to the feel of it against her skin. She reached the next row of tables just as Clare stepped away from the young man in black.