The Unicorn Hunter (19 page)

Eventually the whole ride came to a stuttering halt as Danny kept a hard grip on the reins, refusing to let his horse go forward. The animal stamped and circled, trying to sidle away, but Danny refused to relax his hands and let the animal have its head. Maddy and Roisin's horses turned and trotted back to their mate, blowing gently through their noses with a question in their eyes.

‘Why are you stopping?' said Maddy.

‘I want to do a quick detour,' said Danny, his face set and angry.

‘You want to do WHAT?!' said Roisin.

‘We haven't got time for this,' said Maddy. ‘What's so important that you want to slow us up from saving the world?'

‘Have the two of you forgotten?' demanded Danny, his neck flushing with anger.

‘Forgotten what?' asked Maddy, while Roisin looked on with a puzzled expression.

‘I bet
she
hasn't,' said Danny, nodding to Fachtna, who had turned and half flown, half run back to them, her skin glowing pearly with a fine sheen of sweat. She tipped her head to one side and regarded Danny with an unreadable expression in her red eyes.

Danny looked over his shoulder. ‘We're out of sight of the Tuatha camp, and the forest is just the other side of the river. I reckon we can swim across.'

‘The trees won't welcome you, boy,' growled Fachtna in her hoarse voice. ‘You won't last any time at all.'

‘Oh!' cried Roisin, as she and Maddy remembered at the same time what they should never have forgotten. Maddy swayed in her saddle and closed her eyes against the memory of Fachtna's knife slicing through long silver-green fingers.

‘Fionn,' she said weakly.

‘Fionn,' said Danny. He glared at Fachtna. ‘Did you kill her in the end, for helping us?'

Fachtna smiled lazily at him and slipped a dagger into her hand, tapping its blade against her chin. It looked like a casual enough gesture but the threat was there. ‘The dryad was lucky. Queen Liadan commanded
me to burn her tree rather than cut it down, and it seems that it is struggling back into life. Green shoots are said to be growing from its blackened stump while its dryad sleeps between its roots.'

Maddy swallowed and thought of the pretty little birch dryad, with her black eyes and masses of long silver hair, lying charred and injured beneath the earth, waiting for herself and her tree to grow strong. All because she dared to show them the way to Liadan's tower. Would her fingers ever grow back?

‘I need to see her,' said Danny, his voice thick with tears. ‘It was our fault she was hurt.'

‘She's beyond you, boy,' said Fachtna. ‘She will sleep until she is strong enough to tend her tree again. Don't draw attention to her – be grateful my queen allows the tree to go on living.'

‘I have to see her,' insisted Danny. ‘I need to make things right.'

‘I don't know that we can,' said Roisin.

But Danny was sliding down from the huge horse anyway, to collapse on the ground in an undignified heap. He dropped the reins and began to walk toward the river.

‘Go ahead, I'll catch you up,' he called over his shoulder.

Fenris looked at Maddy. ‘Is he serious?' he asked.

‘Um …'

‘Go ahead, boy,' called Fachtna. ‘You're about to find out how little the trees like you.'

As soon as Fachtna said those words the world was silenced. Birds stopped singing, insects stopped buzzing and a wave of tension seemed to roll over them, a wave that came from the direction of the trees.

Nero sat down and pricked up his ears. ‘This is going to get messy,' he said in a positively cheerful tone of voice.

‘Danny, don't do it!' said Roisin.

Danny hesitated and then stepped down into the water. Fenris growled as every tree on the opposite bank leaned toward him, creaking and groaning as they strained against their roots. Then eyes lit up in the trunks of the trees and peered down from their leaves, bright, glistening orbs that shone with hate. Maddy's breath caught in her throat and Danny stood transfixed in the gaze of hundreds of dryads.

‘What are you waiting for?' asked Fachtna. ‘Swim across to them. I'm sure once you tell them it was all my fault they will welcome you with open arms.'

Danny turned to glare at her, but he didn't make a move to go forward or back. Maddy's heart ached for him. She knew he cared for the little silver dryad, but he couldn't make things better. Even if he survived
a walk through the trees, there was nothing he could do.

It was Fenris who broke the deadlock. He padded down to the water's edge and nudged Danny with his black nose.

‘There is no shame in backing away,' he said with a soft growl. ‘An alpha male needs to know when to make a stand and when to retreat. Now is a time to retreat. Her kin won't be appeased by your guilt – spilt blood never dries.'

Maddy breathed a sigh of relief as Danny turned, shame-faced, and went back to his horse. Fachtna waited until he had clambered back into the saddle before she launched herself into the air again, forcing them to kick their horses into a gallop to keep up with her.

After a while, Maddy's legs began to tremble with the effort of standing in the stirrups. The horse must have felt the tremors from her thigh muscles and slowed to a steady canter, allowing her to sit deep and look around her.

The lush, thick turf beneath their horses' hoofs was beginning to fade to a poorer soil, full of rocks and stones. The forest on the other side of the river began to peter out as well, until only a few stunted saplings struggled to grow on their own. The river grew broader and its voice changed from a babble to a roar with the
force of its current, white foam coating the stiller waters at the edges of the riverbank.

The barren land and the angry river stretched ahead for about a mile and then disappeared abruptly into a roiling bank of dirty yellow cloud. Maddy leaned back to steady herself as her horse came to a sudden halt, the other mounts pulling up alongside her. Fachtna's wings buzzed as she landed lightly in front of Maddy, while Fenris and Nero flopped down and stretched their long limbs on the thin soil, their tongues flopping from their mouths as they panted.

‘What is
that
?' asked Roisin, her eyes fixed on the wall of mist dead ahead.

‘
That
is what a mist of dreams looks like,' said Fachtna.

‘Come again?' said Danny.

‘All your dreams, all your hopes, your fears, your darkest desires, your most frightening nightmares … it is all in this mist,' said Fachtna. ‘It leaks into the land or it comes through the Seeing Stones in the mortal world. The Coranied gather it and live within it here in the Shadowlands, distilling it down in their cauldrons so they can feed it to us.'

‘Wow,' said Danny.

‘Is it safe to walk through the mist?' asked Roisin nervously.

‘No faerie ever tries – well, none but Meabh,' said Fachtna. ‘She walks freely through the Shadowlands. So, is it safe?' Fachtna shrugged. ‘Some say the mist shifts and can have you lost in the wilderness for years. Some that it is a place where ghosts lurk. We will find out soon enough.' She looked at the sinking sun. ‘But not tonight. Tonight we rest.'

Even though it meant more delay, Maddy was relieved she didn't have to brave that mist tonight. The three of them half jumped, half slid down from their mounts. Fachtna began to unbuckle the girth straps that held the saddles in place on the horses' backs.

‘We'll untack them and make them comfortable,' she said. ‘The three of you can use the saddles as pillows. I'm not risking a fire this close to the Coranied – who knows what will be attracted to it this close to the mist. So curl up together and keep each other warm. You'll need all your strength in the morning.'

Maddy must have been exhausted because she didn't even remember falling asleep. But some time in the night the sound of splashing woke her up and she sat bolt upright, terrified something was sneaking up on them from the river. Fenris and Nero lay curled up with their backs touching, their plumed tails draped elegantly over
their noses. Danny and Roisin were huddled as tight as they could underneath their jackets, cradling their cheeks with their hands to protect their faces against the stiff leather of the saddles. George lay alongside Roisin's thigh, flat on his back, legs in the air, his rough pink tongue pushing against his teeth as he snored.

Maddy looked toward the river and saw a tall, pale faerie step from the water, her skin glowing. Her white hair hung down to the small of her back and her ice-white face was soft in the moonlight, her lips full and ripe. She walked with a supple grace and it was only when she uncurled her wet wings, swept her hair back over her shoulders and wrung the water from it with her long hands that Maddy recognized her.

Carefully she climbed to her feet, tied the sword belt around her waist and walked over to the faerie, who had just finished wrapping her linen clothes around her body.

‘What happened to you, Fachtna?' she asked softly.

Startled, Fachtna turned to face her, her expression hardening and her lips lifting in a sneer. Free of the stiffening lime that held it in its customary Mohican, her thick, straight mane of hair swirled around her body in a soft white curtain.

‘What do you care, Feral Child?' she asked as she bent for her sword belt.

‘I don't,' said Maddy. ‘But for a second there you didn't … well, you didn't look like yourself.'

Fachtna snorted. ‘What a stupid thing to say! How can I look like anyone but myself?' she said. ‘More fuzzy mortal thinking.'

‘Fine,' said Maddy. ‘You looked, for a second, like someone pleasant – you know, attractive? Like someone you could talk to without being disembowelled.'

‘Ah, was I beautiful?' asked Fachtna, her sneer still firmly in place.

‘I wouldn't go overboard,' said Maddy. ‘You looked
normal
, with all that rubbish out of your hair and your mouth closed so I couldn't see your teeth. Even with the freaky red eyes. Why do you do that to yourself anyway? Didn't it hurt, filing your teeth down?'

‘It did,' said Fachtna. ‘But no one fears beauty on the battlefield. It had to be done.'

‘Why?'

‘Because, Feral Child, someone put steel in my soul and now I can be no other way,' said Fachtna. ‘Just like you.'

‘I'm not like you,' said Maddy.

‘So you say. But you are living in interesting times and now that you are the Hound … well, let's just say life is going to get even more interesting. Pain will forge your soul and bend it in so many ways that one day you
won't recognize yourself or the things you've done. I was soft once. I never thought I would be so good at killing or that I would enjoy it so much.'

‘Is that what Meabh meant when she said we had a lot in common?'

The shutters came down over Fachtna's face. ‘Perhaps.' She drew her sword. ‘Defend yourself.'

‘You what?' said Maddy. ‘You can't touch me, remember?'

‘Grow up, girl,' hissed Fachtna. ‘You're safe enough. But it's time you learned to be a proper Hound.'

‘Meaning?'

‘Twice now you've got away from me using silly tricks,' said Fachtna. ‘Do you think you will be as lucky a third time? The Hound is meant to be brave, strong, fierce in battle. You don't even know how to use your sword.'

‘I do!' said Maddy.

‘Prove it,' said Fachtna.

Maddy drew her sword and lunged at the faerie, the pointed end aimed straight at her stomach. Fachtna twirled her wrist, the silver blades kissed, and then Maddy's sword flew out of her grasp.

‘Again,' said Fachtna. ‘Hold your sword up, not dangling down from your fingers. Block me with the flat of your blade. And move your feet! War is a dance.'

For the next half-hour, Maddy struggled to lift the sword while Fachtna showed her how to attack, block and parry. The faerie did make fighting look beautiful, moving as gracefully over the ground as a snake. Maddy lumbered and sweated after her, not once making contact with the tattooed skin.

‘Enough,' said Fachtna, lowering her sword as Maddy massaged her aching wrist. ‘Practise, girl, if you want to have a hope of survival.' She bent down to stare into Maddy's eyes. ‘Because the next time we meet I want to kill a foe worth the fight, not slit the throat of some bawling babe.' She straightened and looked at the sky. ‘The sun is rising. Wake your friends.'

Maddy made her way back to the saddles, but when she went to shake Roisin she found she was already awake and staring at her with her big brown eyes. ‘Bonding, are we?'

‘I have no idea what I'm doing,' said Maddy.

Roisin put her hand out and twirled her fingers through the mist as if she was checking the temperature of a bath.

‘There's no moisture in it at all,' she said. ‘It's just like smoke.'