Shadowmagic - Sons of Macha (13 page)

Vivid memories filled my thoughts. I was a child. I was sick. My mother sang to me in a language so old I couldn't understand it but I felt it healing me. My mother placed a cool compress on my brow. I could feel her smile but not see it. Then it came to me that this couldn't be a memory. My mother was never there when I was a child. These memories were false and I was losing it. I was slipping into a world made only of my own making. Madness – that's what my mind had chosen – an eternity of madness. I wanted to shout and wondered if I could. I almost felt my lungs expand, I …

I shot up in bed and screamed, ‘NO!' The cold compress fell onto my lap. Mom had her arms around me in a second.

‘It's all right, Conor,' my mother said, patting my hair. ‘You're safe, you're with me, it's Deirdre.'

I reached up and felt her hand – the first sensation I had actually felt in … I don't know how long. I looked and she was there. I touched her face and she felt real.

‘Mother?' I asked and was surprised at the sound of my own voice. It was deep. I felt my chin and the stubble there brought me forward in time – I was not a boy – I was a man. ‘Where am I?'

‘You're safe, my son, you're with me in your own room.'

I looked around and saw the knife-marked wood panelling and said, ‘In Duir?'

‘Yes.'

I pushed myself higher in the bed. The world around me solidified as the dream world I had been lost in receded. ‘How long have I been gone?'

‘You have been asleep for two days. We could not wake you.'

‘Two days?'

‘Yes I have been worried about you. How do you feel?'

‘Only two days? I feel like I have been gone for … ever.' I smiled then as that blessed relief hit me. The relief that comes with the realisation that the nightmare was only a dream and its burdens were only an illusion. But as the problems of the dream realm faded into smoke, the waking world crashed down on me. ‘Ruby!' I swung my legs out of the bed. ‘Where is she?'

‘Easy, Conor,' Mom said placing her hand on my shoulders, ‘She's missing. We have scoured the castle and the grounds but she is gone.'

‘They have her.'

‘Who?'

‘Macha and Lugh.'

I dropped back into bed and for the first time looked in to my mother's eyes. She had that haggard look that moms get when their children are sick. I never saw it when I was young but it was instantly recognisable now. I reached up and touched the side of her face. ‘I'm OK, Mom. I think. Macha forced some sort of essence of horse down my throat and I was like a zombie.' When she looked confused I said, ‘It was like she had control over me and I had to do what she told me to do. The last thing she commanded me to do was, “Sleep and never awaken.” I thought she had killed me.'

Mom thought for a bit. ‘That would make sense. Her power over you only lasted for as long as the horse essence was in your system.'

‘You're saying the reason I woke up was that … I, like, sobered up from the spell?'

‘Basically.'

So I filled Mom in on how I caught Macha searching her room and finding Ona's book of prophecies and then how they said they wanted the book, the girl and the bows.

‘The bows on the wall of the armoury – the ones left by the dead Fili – are they the bows they were talking about?'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘they are gone.'

‘All of them?'

She nodded.

The door opened and when Brendan stuck his face in the room and saw me awake, he ran up to the bed.

‘Where is she?'

He had the same look on his face that I had seen on my mother's just moments before, except he looked a lot worse. Brendan wore the frantic face of a parent who had lost a child and I could tell just by looking at him that he had been playing worst-case scenarios over and over in his head for the last two days. ‘I don't know where she is. Macha and Lugh took her.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘I do know that it was not a whim. From the way they were talking, it seemed that kidnapping Ruby and stealing the yew bows was part of a plan.'

Brendan sat on the bed and hung his head. ‘But it doesn't make sense.'

‘I know,' I said, placing my hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off. This was Detective Fallon and he wasn't looking for sympathy.

‘Taking my Ruby makes no sense, but taking the bows makes no sense either. I once asked Master Spideog if I could use his bow and he said I could not. I thought he meant I wasn't allowed but he said I couldn't because I wouldn't be strong enough to pull the string back. I scoffed, so he handed over his bow with that all knowing look on his face and – he was right. I couldn't even bend the bow an inch. Spideog explained to me that a yew bow changes its tension in tune with the archer that owns it. The wood is flexible when the string is drawn back and then stiffens when the arrow is being released. Only the person who has been judged by a yew, and given that piece of wood, can operate that bow. Those bows should be useless to all except their owners.'

‘Lugh has proved himself to be a master of yew wood so who knows what his plans for the bows are,' Mom said. ‘One thing is clear: it seems that we have all been unwitting players in Macha and Lugh's puppet play. And we have lost an important clue – the book of Ona's writings that Macha found in my office.'

A memory flashed in my mind. A memory of something that seemed like years ago but as I smiled, I knew it was just from a couple of days earlier. I reached for my pocket and then realised I was in bedclothes. ‘Where are my clothes?'

Mom pointed to a chair in the corner of the room. I ran to them and found in a pocket what I was looking for.

‘When I was under Macha's control I had a moment when I almost broke free. I slapped Ona's book from her hand, but then she regained control and made me pick it up for her.' I held out a small ripped piece of paper. ‘But as I was giving it back, I ripped a corner from a page.'

Mom removed an amber stone that was clipped onto the collar of her robe. It was one of her Shadowmagic book clips. She attached it to the sliver of paper I had given her and almost instantly a ghost of a book appeared in her hand. It was a shimmering translucent replica of the one I had seen Macha remove from under Mom's desk.

‘Is that a book full of predictions from that prophet Ona you guys keep talking about?' Brendan asked.

‘Yes,' Mom said, ‘I believe it is.'

‘So with this maybe we can learn why they took my little girl?'

‘Perhaps,' Mom said, holding the Shadowbook like it was about to explode, ‘but are you sure you wish to learn whatever else this contains?'

‘I don't care. I want my daughter back.'

‘As do I, Brendan,' Mom said, but learning one's future is not a soothing thing. It has sent many over the brink of madness. In others, like Cialtie, foreknowledge is the fruit that eventually distils into evil.

‘I will read it,' said a woman as she entered through the door. She was beautiful, tall with a huge mane of dark brown hair tied back into a ponytail; her cheekbones were high and rosy with youth. She stormed in like she owned the place but I had never seen her before.

‘I had thought my future was already written and almost ended,' she said in a voice so pure that I almost wanted to hear her sing. ‘I now have a new lease of life and I shall use it for the sole purpose of saving Ruby. The only fear I have of that book is that it will not tell me where the child is.'

Brendan stood up and faced the woman, then crouched down a bit to look directly in her eyes and said, ‘Mom?'

L
ater in the council room it was decided that Fand should read Macha's manuscript. Everyone agreed that knowledge of the future was a dangerous thing. Fand would tell us if she found anything relevant that could help us find Ruby and then, using her Fili mind juju, she would forget the rest.

‘You can do that?' I asked

‘No problem-o,' she replied using the phrase I had taught her.

‘Wow, can you teach me? I've done a couple of stupid things in my day that I'd like to forget.' Fand smiled but never took her eyes from the book.

‘Only a couple?' Essa piped in.

Dad held his hands up and shot both Essa and me a look that said,
not now kids.
‘Let's keep focused people. If Fand can find out why my mother took the girl then maybe we can figure out where she is. Deirdre, could you perform a Shadowcasting?'

‘I will try,' Mom said, ‘but Shadowcasting is not a reliable locator. It is good at predicting events but as a tracking spell it is often lacking.'

‘Surely she is either on Mount Cas or in the Reedlands,' Nora said. It still unnerved me a bit when Brendan's mother spoke. Her voice was completely different and she was so young looking.

When Nora heard that her granddaughter had been kidnapped she immediately went to Tuan and took him up on his offer of dragon's blood to make her young again. She said she needed to be strong if she was going to fight to get her Ruby back. It was going to take me a while before I got used to equating the wise deliberate old lady, whom I had originally met, with this jumpy, young and, I'm a bit embarrassed to say, fanciable woman before me.

‘The Reedlands is not a place to enter blindly,' Dahy said.

‘I can vouch for that,' I said. ‘I almost died the two times I went there and you know what they say: the third time's the charm.'

‘And I believe,' Dahy continued, ‘that our assault on Mount Cas was easy because it was part of Lugh's plan. If he were to oppose us he could defend his Yew House easily – with disastrous results for us.'

‘We can't just sit here!' Nora banged the table then closed her eyes to compose herself. ‘I apologise, with this body comes the hormones of the young.'

‘No apologies are necessary,' Dad said. ‘Deirdre, how long will it take to set up a Shadowcasting?'

‘Two days,' she said, reaching across and taking Nora's hand. ‘That is the very soonest I could be ready.'

‘Then I'm going to the Yewlands,' Brendan said.

‘What?' was pretty much the reply from everyone there.

‘If we are going to war, I want a bow. A yew bow. Spideog said I could have his if the yews allowed it. I'm going to ask the yews for his bow.'

‘Brendan, love,' Nieve said, ‘it takes decades of study to prepare for a judgement by a yew.'

Brendan stood. ‘I have studied with the greatest archer in The Land. He has deemed me worthy and my quest is to save my daughter. I dare them to find me unworthy.'

I expected someone to object but that statement shut everyone up.

‘I'll take you,' I said.

‘Conor,' Mom said, ‘you cannot enter Ioho. The yews will kill you.'

‘Oh, don't worry, Mom. I ain't going in there again. I'll just take him to the edge and wait. I know the way.'

‘I will accompany them,' Araf said, and as usual everybody jumped a bit.

‘Great,' I said, ‘I'll have somebody to talk to while I wait.'

‘I'm going too,' Nora said. Before anybody could say that that was a bad idea she explained: ‘This new body has too much energy for me to be sitting at home and waiting. I'll travel with my son.'

Later that night I stuck my nose into Dad's study. He was busy doing kingy stuff: allotting the stipends to all of the different kingdoms. He looked up and said, ‘Do you want me to give more gold to the Vinelands and maybe Essa will start talking to you again?'

‘I don't think you have that kind of money, Dad.'

‘You looking for advice on your love life?'

‘You got any?'

‘Sure,' he said. ‘Go ask your mother.'

He dropped his pen and got serious. ‘Do you think Brendan's mother will be OK with you outside of the castle walls?'