Conn snatched a sword from the nearest warrior and threw it high; it spun for his master in a mesmerizing arc. Without turning, without even glancing at it, the Dark Lord snatched it from the air, turning it expertly in his hand. The gleaming bronze blade danced threateningly in front of Bansi’s face.
Bansi stepped back, the clumsy, unbalanced weight of her own weapon heavy and uncooperative in her hand. The distant roar grew slowly, menacingly louder.
‘With less ceremony than I’d have liked, perhaps,’ the Lord of the Dark Sidhe remarked, ‘but your blood will be spilt.’
Mockingly he bowed and raised his sword. Suddenly the bright blade flashed out. Bansi parried clumsily; the sword twisted, catching the jack handle easily, tearing it from her hands. Immediately the heavy enchantment pressed down on her, drugging her senses, weighing her down.
The Lord of the Dark Sidhe smiled cruelly. The sword flicked up, its point grazing Bansi’s throat. She tried to step back and found herself held as if from behind. The roaring swelled, filling her head; an oddly familiar sound, more mechanical than magical, out of place in some way.
‘This,’ the Dark Lord said coolly, ‘is a moment to savour. The moment of my victory. The moment when I return the Blood of the Morning Stars to the sacred earth of Tir na n’Óg.’ The vicious blade coldly caressed Bansi’s throat. ‘The question is, child, how long can I make that moment last? You have defied me most audaciously, after all. But in vain; for I have won; and now the inheritance of Derga will be mine!’ He raised his voice as the roaring rose towards a triumphant crescendo. It filled Balor’s Hollow, echoing loudly from the cliff-like walls, growing like a living thing.
The Dark Lord’s eyes flicked sideways, a fragment of doubt entering them for the first time. He looked up at his courtiers.
‘Who,’ he demanded loudly, ‘is responsible for that noise?’
The courtiers of the Dark Sidhe, high on their stone balcony, looked at each other in puzzlement. They shrugged; one or two called something to their master, but the roaring was now so loud that nothing else could be heard.
And then, gleaming like an armoured monster, its headlights blazing like the eyes of an awakened dragon, the dark green Morris Minor Traveller burst from the tunnel mouth behind them. The courtiers panicked; were scattered; most leaped or were pushed off the gallery. The huge drums toppled and smashed on the rocky floor below.
The car accelerated, soaring high over Bansi’s head to land with a bounce in the centre of the circle, and executed a perfect handbrake turn to aim itself directly at the Lord of the Dark Sidhe.
Behind its wheel, no driver could be seen.
The Dark Lord, astonished, leaped aside. The car twisted in hungry pursuit. Its gleaming mouth-like grille bore down on him again, scattering his warriors as they tried to defend him. He threw himself into the air, somersaulting over the car with incredible agility. Even as he leaped, its wheels locked; it skidded round once more, its front wing catching him a glancing blow as he landed. He flinched as he tumbled against the nearest standing stone; leaped high as the car turned on him yet again.
Perhaps it was because the Dark Lord’s hold on her was weakened by the distraction that Bansi suddenly discovered she could move. Without wasting a second she grabbed the steel jack handle and felt the drowsiness of enchantment fall away.
Her companions were beginning to stir, the agonies that had pinned them down slowly receding at last. Quickly she moved among them, using the touch of steel once more to free first her granny, then Mrs Mullarkey and Pogo. Finally, reluctantly, she laid the jack handle across Tam’s chest, not at all moved by the cries of distress he let out as she did so.
Mrs Mullarkey stood with her mouth agape. ‘Well,’ she exclaimed, as the machine turned on the Dark Lord once more, harrying him away from them, ‘I always said that car had a mind of its own.’
‘Mind of its own, nothing!’ spluttered Granny. ‘It’s possessed by a demon, that’s what it is! Which,’ she added, absently picking up Conn’s wolfskin and folding it like a freshly laundered cardigan, ‘explains an awful lot about the way you drive, Nora.’
Bansi stepped forward and swung as Conn, spying his precious cloak in Granny’s hands, leaped as if from nowhere. The jack handle connected with a satisfying thud, knocking the wolf-boy halfway across the circle, where he slammed into an unbroken portion of the barrier and lay momentarily stunned.
The car turned again, screeching loudly in a way that made Mrs Mullarkey wince, and aimed for a line of courtiers who were shakily picking themselves up off the cracked stone floor after their long steel-induced fall from the balcony. They turned and ran, fleeing for their lives, and like some great mechanical predator the car swerved after them.
‘The barrier!’ someone cried, and several courtiers hastily fled back through the newly-made opening to the safety of its magical protection.
The car made straight for them.
With a great swirling and sparking of magical energy across its steel bonnet, it plunged through the enchanted boundary, scattering the courtiers in utter panic. The weakened barrier flared and ignited, bursting into flames which spread around the circle and, as suddenly, were gone.
The car lurched across the circle and came to a sudden stop inches from a standing stone. Gears ground as someone tried to find reverse; and then the rear doors of the Traveller burst open. A tide of brownies poured out, armed to the teeth from Granny’s boxes of scrap iron.
The Dark Sidhe stopped and stared. One or two laughed disbelievingly; then another, and another. The laughter grew louder and more unpleasant as they gathered together around their master. The Dark Lord stepped forward, his expression a blend of anger and scorn.
‘You?’ he scoffed. ‘The smallest, weakest tribe in the whole realm of Tir na n’Óg, and you dare challenge me? On your knees, little ones! Beg my forgiveness, swear yourselves to my service, and perhaps I may let you live!’ Stepping forward, he lashed out with his foot, aiming a vicious kick at the nearest brownie.
He yelled in pain as an iron candlestick, swung with equal and opposite force, connected smartly with his shin.
Outraged at this offence, the Dark Sidhe drew their swords. They spread out, surrounding the tiny brownies like cats circling mice, their arrogant postures betraying an unspoken assumption of strength, power and the right to rule.
The Dark Lord muttered an angry incantation and thrust out his hand. A sudden wind whipped around him, ruffling his hair, filling out his cloak. Without warning, it rose up and blasted itself hard at the brownie tribe. It was a simple magic, but it should have been enough to sweep the little people off their feet and toss them into the air, making them easy sport for the poised weapons of his courtiers.
The brownies raised their own weapons, their motley arsenal of iron odds and ends.
The magical wind simply died around them.
In an instant the brownies fell upon the Dark Sidhe, ducking under their swords and scurrying up their bodies, swarming all over them, swiping and hammering at them with unrelenting iron. At such close range, the blades of the Dark Sidhe were worse than useless, endangering one another far more than they did their tiny foes.
The Lord of the Dark Sidhe howled once more, this time with rage, and threw himself into the battle. He kicked and fought furiously, but for every brownie he knocked aside two more sprang forward, swinging their makeshift weapons. They clung to his legs, clambered up his cloak, pounded and beat at him with cold hard iron until he fell to his knees like a great lion brought down by hyenas. With a tremendous roar he forced himself to his feet once more, unclasped his cloak and let it fall, the brownies falling with it. Before they had a chance to renew the attack, he had vanished into the dark shadows of Balor’s Hollow.
Seeing him flee, his followers lost all courage. With anguished cries of pain and despair they turned and took flight, each one pursued by a horde of exhilarated brownies. Their cries rang around the walls of Balor’s Hollow; their footsteps clat
tered and faded along the tunnels.
And suddenly they were gone, and at last Bansi and her friends were safe.
With a sigh of relief, Bansi sat down on the hard, rocky ground. She looked at Pogo, who – for the first time since she’d met him – was very nearly smiling.
‘How did that happen?’ he asked in amazement. ‘Brownies standing up for themselves? Wielding iron in anger? I was nearly thrown out of the tribe just for suggesting such a thing! What changed their minds?’
‘Bansi did,’ a voice said. The driver’s door of the Morris Minor Traveller swung open and Moina hopped out, a huge grin on her tiny brown face. She rushed to Pogo and hugged him, laughing at his puzzlement. ‘In part, at least.’ She turned to Bansi. ‘The tribe were curious because you had escaped the Brúid creature, even for a while,’ she explained. ‘So they followed in secret as I led you to the forest’s edge; and we all watched as you faced it even though you had no hope of defeating it. But you won! Some argued that it was not an honourable victory; but others held that your courage was honour enough. I told them, too, what you had said about letting others make the laws that work against us, and after some discussion many agreed with you.’
‘And then I pointed out how much fun it would be to belt the Dark Sidhe with lumps of iron, and that settled it,’ cawed the raven, hopping out behind her. ‘And before you go off complaining about how long it took us to get here, it’s not my fault, OK? The brownies insisted on tidying the car first.’
It was true: the Traveller was a different car from the battered wreck they had left at the edge of the forest. The dents had been hammered out, the puncture repaired, the inside swept clean; only the occasional scratch and the empty frame where the broken window had been gave any hint of what the car had been through.
‘And then, of course,’ Moina added, ‘we had to work out how to make it move. Not easy when you need three people to steer and another for each of the pedals.’
‘Not to menshun the hand brake!’ slurred yet another familiar voice; and Flooter toppled out of the car, landing flat on his face. He picked himself up and grinned blurrily at Pogo. ‘Now,’ he said shiftily, ‘about that key . . .’
Bansi smiled, and shook her head. Then her gaze fell upon Tam, and her smile died.
He was sitting against one of the standing stones, clearly in pain. The magical assaults had taken their toll on him, and the touch of steel had been almost as bad as the enchantment it had lifted.
‘It’s not over yet,’ he murmured.
‘It is for you,’ Pogo told him sharply. ‘You’ll not get the chance to betray Bansi again, that’s for sure.’
Tam shook his head. ‘You really won’t see it, will you, Pogo? The Dark Sidhe will find her yet. Or if not the Dark Sidhe, someone else – the Unseelie Court, maybe, or some solitary Hag. One of them will find her, and she’ll die, and we’ll all be enslaved.’ He coughed, and wiped his mouth. ‘My money’s still on the Dark Sidhe.’
‘Very wise,’ said a voice. Every head snapped round in horror; for although none of them could tell where it had come from, it was a voice they all recognized. The voice of the Lord of the Dark Sidhe.
And then one of the standing stones reached out, grabbed Bansi O’Hara’s grandmother and swallowed her whole.
There was a frozen moment of horror during which the assembled company tried to make sense of what they had seen. Then, without any of them understanding how, and without anything changing, it became clear that this particular stone was not a stone; had never been a stone. All this time, the Lord of the Dark Sidhe and his faithful wolf-boy Conn had been standing among them, hidden by a magic that deceived the eye, that told lies about the shape of things.
Now Conn stood cruelly gripping Eileen O’Hara. One of his arms pinned both of hers to her body; the other hand was twisted into her grey hair, forcing her head back to expose her throat. His mouth was open in a savage smile; the threat was clear.
‘Stay very still,’ the Dark Lord said, ‘and the old woman may live. For now. Defy me, and she will certainly die.’ He stepped forward and inclined his head in an ironic bow. ‘By rights, child, I should kill you slowly. Very slowly. But I grow weary of this, and eager to claim my destiny. So here is what I propose: surrender, and your death will be quick. As soon as the sacrifice is made, your companions will be free to go. Resist me, or try to flee, and Conn will hunt you down, and bring you to me; and you will die screaming for mercy. But not before the old woman meets a sudden and painful end. Which she will do in any case, within the minute, if you do not come to me now.’
Put like that, it seemed there was no decision to be made.
As Bansi began the slow walk to her death, everything came into focus in a new way, as if her mind was determined to savour her last few moments of life. It was strange how it almost felt as if she was someone else, watching and hearing and sensing from a hidden place inside her. Everything impressed itself at once on her consciousness; the dusty smell of the air, the beating of her heart.
And the throbbing in her left thumb. Surprised, she stopped and looked down at the thin, straight wound, remembering the hot pain as she’d wrestled with Tam’s knife-hand. The thick redness of her blood welled from the shallow cut.
The Lord of the Dark Sidhe strode casually towards her, knife ready for the sacrifice. Pogo’s words echoed in her head:
‘When the Blood of the Morning Stars, joined and flowing together at last, is returned to the sacred earth as the light dies, then shall the power of Tir na n’Óg awaken. Then shall the ways between the worlds reopen. And the one who returns the blood to the land shall come into the inheritance of Derga.’
And suddenly, with tremendous clarity, it came to her that there was one chance left.
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘When the Blood of the Morning Stars, joined and flowing together, is returned at last to the sacred earth . . .’
Bansi dropped to the ground. Her bleeding thumb throbbed hotly as she thrust it into a wide crack in the stone and pressed it hard against the dry soil.
Then the Dark Lord was upon her, grabbing a fistful of hair and yanking her head back hard, exposing her throat to the pitiless blade of the white knife.
And . . .
. . . time . . .
. . . stopped.
Or perhaps it was that Bansi’s mind accelerated. Her limbs, even her eyes, suddenly felt as if they were trapped in thick jelly – not heavy, not paralysed, but working against such huge resistance that the slightest movement could take for ever. The Dark Lord, too, and all those around them – Conn, Granny, Mrs Mullarkey, Pogo, Tam, Moina, Flooter, the raven – appeared to have frozen in time. Even the flaming torch she could see ahead of her had paused in mid-flicker, its flame caught and held in petrified motion.
The pulse in her wounded thumb came again; but immensely, intensely slowly and with an incredible heat which seemed to flow from her body and down, down into the earth. Suddenly it was as if her whole self was surging out through the narrow cut, forcing itself out of her body, joining with the world beneath her. She felt dizzy, light-headed, and yet somehow strangely aware; although she had no words for it she could almost have sworn that she was touching an existence she had never dreamed of.
The flow reversed. Sensation and consciousness flooded her, awakening and refreshing her like a cool stream on a hot day, as if her mind, her very being, was filling up with knowledge and wisdom and perception beyond measure or understanding. For an instant, it was as if the whole world was hers to command; as if she could see and hear and touch and understand all of it, every last blade of grass and grain of sand, the smallest insect, the vastest ocean and all the life and light and darkness therein.
As that instant faded and her mind returned to her, she realized all this had taken place within a single breath. She felt her lungs slowly, slowly begin to exhale; and as they did, a glow appeared in front of her – a pinprick of light at first, right before her eyes, which grew and blossomed a
nd expanded into a dazzling white glare that filled the whole of Balor’s Hollow. It should, she felt later, have been so bright as to be painful; and yet somehow it caused her no hurt at all. And within it were two forms: a woman and a man, tall and beautiful and regal; and Bansi knew that these were her ancestors Caer and Avalloc, the Morning Stars of Tir na n’Óg. They turned to her, smiled warmly, and began to fade.
Just before they disappeared, Bansi saw Caer’s lips move and heard just two words.
‘Be quick.’
And then the light died.
Her chest suddenly contracted, expanded, contracted. It took her a moment to recognize that she was breathing again. Her thumb throbbed with a regular pulse; she could feel her heart beating. She blinked. Across the circle the flame of the torch was still held motionless, like an oil painting, but in an instant her body had quickened.
She raised her arm – how easy that suddenly felt! – and shoved the Dark Lord’s knife-hand out of the way; then she reached up, untwisted her hair from his grip, and stood. It was a strange feeling, being free to move around the circle when, for the others, time had stopped, leaving them as motionless as the great standing stones.
No . . . not quite as motionless. As she looked at Conn, it seemed that something was subtly different about the wolf-boy. She looked closer, more carefully. His eyes were wider, as if in disbelief – and so were his jaws. With imperceptible slowness, he was edging closer to her grandmother’s throat, ready to tear it out.
Angrily, Bansi wrenched her granny free from his grip and pushed him, hard, knocking him to the ground. It was surprisingly easy. As an afterthought she scooped a handful of dry earth from the cracked ground, packed it into his mouth, and clapped his jaw shut. Then she looked round at the Lord of the Dark Sidhe. His knife-hand was flung further back now, she was sure, and the weapon itself was beginning to slip from his grasp. As she watched, it began to move visibly, his fingers releasing it in slow-motion until it hung suspended, slipping at a snail’s pace through the air.
Bansi O'Hara and the Bloodline Prophecy Page 15
