The Black North (27 page)

‘There she is! Get her!'

Oona slipped the Loam Stone into her satchel, instinct hiding it. She watched: Invaders in hundreds were entering the valley, their cries loud and vicious –

‘Don't let her go! Do whatever you have to do to get that Stone!'

Oona stood surrounded, Giants silent and not wanting to be seen. She didn't know what to do, not till she heard another voice calling –

‘Oona! Hurry now – follow me!'

Familiar voice? Oona looked for it, and first saw only a face. But it was one she recognised as well as she'd know her own: she saw her own self there, and shades too of her father and grandparents. And mother, in smaller ways. Oona spoke what she saw, and the word nearly snagged in her throat: ‘Morris?'

‘Oona!' the face of her brother called back. He was standing not far, almost hidden behind stone. ‘Quick! They'll be here soon – follow!'

And Oona had to obey.

She moved and Morris moved and they were soon running among Giants fully Changed.

‘Quick!' she heard Morris calling. ‘Follow or they'll catch you!'

The cries of the Invaders were still heard, but Oona couldn't hear words. She kept running, following. She rounded a final stack of stone and saw the river running so clear, bright mirror for moonlight. And crouching beside, hidden behind a final stack of stone – her brother.

‘Come closer!' he told her. ‘Quick!'

Oona ran to him, falling beside and pulling her legs close, asking again, ‘Is it really you?'

‘It is,' he told her.

‘Morris,' said Oona, and then again, ‘Morris – I've seen so much. I've seen things. I –'

‘I know,' he said. ‘I know. Quiet now.'

Oona wanted to embrace him – not something she'd ever done, but felt she needed to. But –

‘We've no time for that, dear sister,' he said.

‘But,' said Oona, and was ashamed at the sob that rose to her lips. She swallowed, and could only repeat, saying again, ‘I've seen things. Mammy – I think that …' And there stopped.

‘What have you been shown?' asked Morris

Oona looked at him: his eyes were wide, dark despite the moon. She whispered: ‘I've seen what them Invaders are doing to the North, what they've done already. The South could be in as bad a state by now. Everyone who wants to fight is going on North to some place called the Burren, so that's where we should go too. Us two together, just like back in Drumbroken.'

‘Yes,' said Morris, sighing. The thinnest smile appeared on his face, the neatest tear. ‘You have been a good girl, Oona. But tell me this: I'd say you have something that could be used as a weapon against the Invaders. It is something they are seeking for their noble King and it was bequeathed to you, was it not? An object of immense power. Please tell me – do you still have it with you?'

Oona nodded. The river made a racket. She could hardly think her own thoughts let alone hear if any Invaders were near so she said, ‘We should move on, Morris. Shouldn't wait here.'

Again – Morris was all sighs and small smiles.

‘I am so very glad to hear you still have the Stone,' he said. ‘Now – give it to me, will you dear sister?'

Oona half-stood, slowly, asking, ‘How did you even know about it anyway? And since when did you start talking all fancy?'

Morris's face still just smiled that bland smile.

‘Don't be difficult now,' he told her. ‘Has that meddlesome creature – that filthy jackdaw – polluted your mind?'

‘How do you –?'

‘I know more than you can imagine. And I swear to you now – you will give me the Nightmare Stone.'

Oona swallowed, stepping back and back until her feet met mortal cold in the river. Then she said, ‘And I'd swear something too – on the Sorrowful Lady's head, you're not one bit my brother!'

Only then did Morris's smile slip: one side of his face began to collapse, all features avalanching, and in their wake was left white, only a cold blank. A face that was no face at all. And the being that Oona had taken for her brother, had wanted so much to be Morris, returned, was rising – limbs stretching and clothes falling away to show a uniform underneath. A small bird with crimson eyes alighted on the Faceless Invader's shoulder and in a small voice that burned with malice it said, ‘Take her!'

Oona turned, ran. But hopeless –

Hands appeared, reaching out of nothing and grabbing and holding her: Invaders, unseen and patient among the dark, cloaked by Changeling skin. But Oona bit and kicked and screamed at them, ‘Let me go, you pack of animals!' And in the scuffle they tore her mother's cloak from her body, ripped the satchel from her grasp to search it. ‘That's mine! Give it back you fools! Give it back or else I'll –'

‘Else nothing,' said the bird on the Faceless Invader's shoulder. ‘Quiet now. No need for all this fuss – this is a solemn place, after all.'

‘Here, I found it!' called one of the Invaders, suddenly. He held the Loam Stone in one hand and Oona's satchel in the other. He couldn't have looked happier.

‘Give it to me!' said the bird, lifting its wings and shaking them, a sharp crackle, peevish impatience. The Faceless extended one arm – its reach snaked all the way to the Invader and snatched the Stone from him.

‘We have it now,' said the Changeling, shifting on the Invader's shoulder. ‘The most powerful object in this world, and now it belongs to the most powerful being – the great King of the North!'

‘And this too,' said the Invader who still held Oona's satchel. On the barrel of his rifle he'd hooked a half-closed claw, bruised, bloodied – what Oona had stolen from the Mother of the Briar-Witches.

‘And that too could be useful,' said the Faceless.

The Invader – not so happy at so gruesome a sight – returned the claw to Oona's satchel.

‘You don't know what to do with that Stone!' Oona told the Faceless. ‘It's mine by right – been in the Kavanagh family for years! I'm the only one that can –'

‘I said quiet!' cried the bird, breathless, eyes still on the Stone. ‘You are to be afforded a great honour, child: we shall escort you North, and first you shall be of great use in gaining some information of us from the remaining Giants. You shall witness the fall of the last members of the Cause as we destroy their haven at the Burren. And finally – to the edge of everything, to the City of Echoes, to meet your King. You will show him what power this Stone possesses, and you shall show him how to make his nightmares a reality.'

Oona loosed a final call: ‘Like hell I will!'

And in answer – in support, Oona was sure – the Loam Stone blazed brightest white.

Then a flood of grey-white-silver mud: the clearing where Oona and the Invaders stood was engulfed by Whereabouts Wolves. They charged, knocking Invaders aside as Oona kicked and slapped and bit on the hands that held her.

She was dropped so ran –

But Oona wasn't far before gunshots sounded –

Grey-white-silver-mud, then red: the Wolves falling, broken.

‘Get her!' cried an Invader.

‘She's escaping!' shouted another.

‘No she isn't,' Oona heard the Faceless say. ‘She will not leave – she will not be allowed to.' And Oona knew this truth: the Loam Stone wouldn't let her leave. It wouldn't be abandoned.

She wasn't far into her fleeing before she was stopped – her heart or someplace near it was seized.

She felt as though she might retch. Then Oona only wilted, falling against stone.

Next thing felt – a cold hand enclosing her waist, lifting her. Through tear-soaked eyes she saw the bird on the Faceless Invader's shoulder spread its wings and throw its head back and cry an appalling cry. An answer came in no more than heartbeat – descending hush, a quiet that laid itself with the softness of snow as one of the carriages of the Coach-A-Bower swept into their midst and stopped. Its insides were empty, dark, and awaiting a new passenger.

‘No,' murmured Oona, but barely a protest. ‘No.'

Ropes were knotted around her wrists, a sack slung over her head and tightened and another dragged up to enclose her squirming body. And Oona's only feeling then was of slipping – into cold, desperation as she was added, a lost soul, to the carriage of the Coach-A-Bower.

The Faceless Invader stepped into the carriage beside, perhaps impervious to any feeling. And Oona heard the order of the Carrion Changeling: ‘Coachman – we have the Nightmare Stone! Take us now to the blazing heart of the new Kingdom – to the Hollow Mountain!'

A kind of movement that mortals rarely know: the travel of dreams, miles conquered in moments and acres overcome in the space of a shallow breath, seasons crossed like narrow streams. This was the travel of the Coach-A-Bower. It made a mockery of time and distance, and death. And Oona was imprisoned inside, unmoving, felt encased in the blackest of black ice. Only one thought kept Oona's mind from slipping whole into the dark, one dreamed-of thing: Merrigutt. And a hope: that somehow the jackdaw would find her.

And suddenly they were no longer moving. The carriage stopped, door eased open, and Oona felt herself being lifted, carried with such care. She felt she should struggle, give some protest somehow, but she didn't. Instead Oona put all her concentration on listening … a few moments more and she heard a
whisper-hiss-hush
: sound of rushing water. Then she struggled.

The Faceless, carrying her, soothed, ‘Settle now, child. No need at all for protest. Have I not said how very important you are? No harm will come whilst I am with you. I will keep you to the ends of the earth. Further than that – to my King's city at the edge of everything.'

And then Oona was laid down with such delicacy.

A hollow knock – elbows and knees against wood. Oona writhed and found what was beneath her willing to shift, almost drift, but she had little room for moving – a small boat, she guessed. It shifted under the arrival of another, the Faceless Invader joining. More sound to be interpreted – she guessed at the soft touch of a paddle on water, and then they were moving on once more, fast.

‘Oh, just wait until you see it,' she heard the Changeling say. The voice of the bird was low, a sound barely above the scurry and splash of water. ‘You will marvel at it! It is just the beginning of the new Kingdom. It will be the King's greatest outpost, where I shall oversee things as his Captain!'

Oona said nothing, too busy thinking: What about escape? Throw myself from the boat into water, but how deep?

‘No one can save you now, child,' the bird assured her in the same soft whisper. ‘Do not contemplate anything foolish. And why miss the chance to see things that you have never seen before? Such marvels! Just wait … just wait …'

Minutes more of dark and her own fruitless thoughts, and then the sack was suddenly torn from Oona's head. She was content to breathe as a beginning, welcoming air like that moment of blessed emergence from the nest of the Briar-Witches. Cold bit – no cloak of her mother's to protect her. Then she looked, and saw first a former-forest on either side of the river. Another miserable sight of destruction – only sawed stumps where trees had once been. But among them moved things. Figures? People, Oona decided. But all silent.

‘We had to put the men and women of the North to some good use,' said the Changeling. ‘And they are hard workers, no doubt. Very keen in their wanting to serve their King.'

Men and women, of course no children. But whether male or female – mother or father or grandparent – Oona couldn't have told. There was too much Black on the people, their movements so slow and selfsame that there was no telling anyone apart. Made blank and anonymous by the dark, they were attacking any remaining tree with hatchets, snapping and stacking boughs.

Then the bird on the Faceless Invader's shoulder cried out with a reverence Oona thought ridiculous: ‘Behold!'

Oona had to twist herself to see …

Not so far off that it could be called beyond – a singular dark, final peak of the Melancholy Mountains soaring sharp against night-sky. It was scattered with enough white light to make Oona's eyes cringe and weep, scattered too with enough crawling dark to make her wonder. But for all that was striking about the sight, the most disquieting thing was this: the slopes had been eaten-in and torn out, most of the remaining mountain bulging above and below. Hour-glassshaped, impossible-seeming. No, thought Oona. Possible, but only with some powerful magic to bolster it.

‘The Hollow Mountain,' said the bird on the Faceless Invader's shoulder. ‘Palace of the Ponderous Giants. Or I should say – formerly the Palace of the Ponderous Giants.'

Closer then, Oona could watch what darkness wandered, working on the surface – many Muddgloggs were helping to dismantle the Hollow Mountain, earth remaking earth. And again closer – nearer and almost there – Oona saw Muddgloggs embedding narrow towers on the mountainside, great cylinders of granite that were already lit from within. The acrid taste of smoke settled on Oona's tongue, darkness streaming from the mountain to collect in the sky.

River narrowing, the mountain admitting them into an echoing dark, a sudden roar sounded that Oona's imagination took for the Hollow Mountain itself – furious protest at its own transformation.

‘Ah,' said the Changeling. ‘It sounds as though the Ponderous Giants are ready to speak.'

Oona had only a dim sense of activity ahead … and then suddenly such glare and din and industry from all sides. An enormous cavern opened around her, a space bounding with so many echoes of echoes of echoes that she couldn't know where they began, where the first stroke fell or first mouth hollered or first spark spawned a flame. And so much fire: in the hands of Invaders heating metal and hammering, in furnaces overfed with felled trees, and in the hold too of countless soldiers hanging from ropes, working at openings that awaited the arrival of more lit Towers. The heat and stench was colossal, stung – so much smoke hopelessly seeking places to escape through. And some stranger activity – a tearing out, ripping of many helpless things.
Books
, Oona realised. Huge volumes as high as a man, their many pages being given a cursory glance then torn loose and added to the nearest fire.