The Firehills (13 page)

Without moving or otherwise betraying his powers, the
Malifex began to assault Sam’s mind. Time seemed to stand still, the faces of
Haesta and his guards frozen in expressions of amazement. Waves of malice beat
against Sam, forcing him backward, stiff-legged, step-by-step. His lips were
pulled back from his teeth and the long, low growl seemed loud in the unnatural
silence. He tried to throw up some sort of shield, a barrier in his mind
against the evil radiance coming from the still form of the Malifex. But as he
concentrated, his shape slipped, and he was Sam once more. As he slumped to the
floor, a wave of angry noise washed over him as time began to flow once more.
Men shouted and cursed, scrambling backward in fear. King Haesta called for his
guards, and the Malifex, standing quietly behind the throne, merely smiled.
Not good enough, boy,
came the voice in Sam’s
head.

Still, perhaps one day—

And then rough arms grabbed him from behind. A voice
cried, “Take him outside!” and he felt himself dragged backward, heels
bouncing on the rough earth floor, toward the door.

News of the excitement had spread around the town. A crowd
began to gather. From houses and taverns, running figures converged on the
central square. Sam was lifted up onto the shoulders of several of the king’s
guards and found himself bouncing across the heads of the crowd, sky above him,
noise and the stink of unwashed bodies beneath his back.

Then the crowd parted, and Sam was thrown to the ground.
He rolled, the air knocked from his lungs, and sprawled to a halt in the dust.
Gasping for breath, he pushed himself up and looked around. Dusk was falling,
and in the soft twilight, he saw that he was in the wide square of trampled
earth at the heart of the town. Not far away, he could see the low circular
building that served as the king’s feasting hall, the plume of smoke rising
from its thatch tinged pink by the light of the setting sun. The crowd had
pulled back, whispering and muttering, forming a rough circle around him.
Children clung to their parents’ legs, excited and scared by the rumors of
magic. As Sam peered at them, they gasped and hid in their mothers’ skirts.
Slowly, with great effort, Sam got to his feet and stood swaying in the middle
of the circle of faces. The efforts of the day were beginning to catch up with
him, and he felt weak and dizzy. To one side, the crowd parted and Haesta
strode into the square, with the Malifex, as always, at his shoulder. The muttering of the crowd ceased. With his
hands on his hips, the king said, “It is clear that you are some sort of
wizard or evil spirit. Counselor Morfax, however, seems to believe that you can
be killed, and so we will attempt it. Now, what, I wonder, is the best way to
destroy you?” He turned to the Malifex, and the two of them began a whispered
conversation.

Sam became aware of a commotion in the crowd, where the
main street of the town entered the square. Gradually the stirring spread, and
the crowd began to part. Through the gap rode Wayland on what appeared to be a
cart horse. He reined the horse to a standstill. The crowd fell silent. King
Haesta broke off his conversation and looked up.

“Smith, what is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

“I’ve come for the boy,” replied Wayland, steadily.

Amergin swam back up to consciousness like a man surfacing
from deep water. Suddenly, he found himself gasping in the cool air of the
cave, the blood roaring in his ears. For a moment, he thought he was on the
shore of Ireland, thrown onto the sands of a new land by the stormy sea, but
the darkness and the
drip, drip
of water said
otherwise. Then he remembered. He had been hanging in the center of a cave in a
world of agony, his mind fleeing through visions of the past, with the voices
in his head, tormenting, questioning, demanding. Finally, he recalled with
horror, his defenses had fallen, and the probing mind had picked from his
exhausted brain one choice thought: an image of Sam, his eyes the color of amber, soft
tendrils of foliage spilling from the corners of his mouth. Slowly, the
realization dawned on him that he was not alone. Without moving, he cast out
his mind to Finnvarr and Una, their thoughts almost audible.

At the festival?
he picked up
from Una, and from Finnvarr,
. . . await the coming of the
May King.
So that was it. They would attack the festival at the castle,
break the power of the Green Man at the moment when he manifested as the May
King. With the spirit of the Green Man broken, dispersed, his power—and that
of the Malifex—would be taken by the Sidhe. Control of the cycles of nature,
birth and death, the turning seasons, would fall to the Hosts of the Air, whose
hatred of humankind spanned millennia.

Amergin sensed that the faeries were leaving and risked
opening one eye. As they left the chamber, the Lady Una turned and made a
gesture with one hand. A webwork of pale lavender energy sprang into being
across the doorway, sealing Amergin inside. The wizard sighed and pressed his
cheek against the cold rock of the floor.

Megan and Mrs. P. sat in the old lady’s attic room, the
light of the moon slanting in through the high window in the end wall. The room
was crammed with old furniture, richly polished desks and bookcases. There was
nothing of the tackiness of the downstairs rooms here. Everything had an air of
age and quality. Like Megan’s study back in Dorset, every available surface
was laden with books and artifacts—scientific instruments in gleaming brass,
lumps of rock encrusted with fossils, incense burners, candles in elaborate
holders. At one end of the room, in the one area relatively free from clutter,
was a small altar, with a silver chalice, a wand of rowan wood, a small,
exquisite athame—a black-handled knife—and a pentagram. Megan sat with her
legs tucked up beneath her, seeming calm and still. But Mrs. P. could sense
otherwise. She could read an aura better than Megan, having had many more years
in which to practice. And Megan’s aura was thick with worry, violent colors
swirling in constant agitation.

“My dear,” she said, looking up from her work, “do
try to calm down. You’re playing absolute havoc with the vibrations.”

“Sorry,” replied Megan distractedly. But try as she
might she could not drag her thoughts from their downward spiral. It seemed as
if her life were falling apart. First, Amergin taken from her, who knew where.
Then Sam . . . what on earth was she going to tell his parents? And now her
baby, her Charly, newly initiated into the Craft and out in the dark hills,
alone. She had gone to Charly’s room to make peace and found her gone, the
drapes flapping in the open window. She chewed absently at a fingernail and
stared blindly into the moonlit dark.

Mrs. P. bent once more to the sphere of clear crystal on
the desk before her, trying to shut out the background hiss of Megan’s
thoughts. Her heart ached for her friend. Over the years, she had initiated
many young girls into the Craft of the Wise, all of them as dear to her as
daughters, all of them—when the time came—making that painful break.

The heartache brought wisdom, in time, but all the wisdom
in the world could not comfort a mother newly separated from her daughter.
Still, in a way, she was glad that her friend was distracted. Her own aura, at
that precise moment, did not bear close scrutiny.

Time passed, and the silver minute hand of moonlight swept
slowly across the carpet. Eventually, Megan could stand it no more. “Well?”
she demanded, her voice loud in the silence. “Does it tell you anything? Is
she all right?”

“She is well,” replied Mrs. P. “Far from here—I do
not know where—but well.”

“And Amergin?”

“He . . . is lost.”

Megan gasped, a look of sudden horror on her face.

“No, my dear, not dead, but . . . lost to us. He wanders
in his mind, I think, in places I cannot follow. But he lives. Sam, I cannot
see, but I feel it in my bones that he is well. Some higher power, I sense,
protects him.”

Megan slumped back in her chair, eyes shut against tears
of relief.

“There is more,” continued the old lady. “The Sidhe
are plotting, planning some evil. It involves the festival tomorrow. I think we
should send out word among the Wise. I feel we will be needed.”

“Right!” Megan unfolded from the chair in one fluid
motion. “I’ll get on the phone, start letting people know.”

Relieved to find an outlet for her tension, she bustled
out of the room.

Mrs. P. watched her go with a mixture of affection and
pride. Megan had always been one of her favorites. She sat quietly, gazing out of the window at the dance of
moonlight on the sea, remembering Megan’s initiation. But slowly, inevitably,
her thoughts returned to what she had seen in the crystal ball. So many rituals
down through the years, not only initiation and the marriage rite—the
Handfasting—but also that other, more somber ritual, the Rite for the Dead.
You would think that, as one who had presided for so long over the turning of
the Wheel of Life, her own death would come as no surprise.
Oh, well,
she sighed,
so much for
wisdom.
But one thing age had taught her was the futility of brooding.
She took a deep breath and got to her feet. If she was to have one last
adventure, then there were preparations to make.

Charly strode along the hallway, the soft padding of her
boots loud in the silence. The twin rows of burning torches in their niches
stretched away into the distance, almost converging at the vanishing point.
They seemed to burn without smoke and with no sign that anyone attended to
them. Their steady light barely illuminated the arches of the ceiling, far
above. The air of the chamber, shielded from whatever season or weather
prevailed in the world outside, was mild, and Charly began to feel
uncomfortable in her leather jacket and boots. She had been walking for some
time, and still the long hallway showed no signs of coming to an end. She
wondered if she was in fact moving at all. The twin rows of torches and
towering pillars marched by without any feature to mark her progress. She
glanced behind, half expecting to see the exit from the treasure chamber. Instead, there were only
the torches stretching away behind, but they seemed to stop a few hundred
meters back. As she watched, the farthest pair of torches went out. And then
the next. A wave of darkness was moving toward her along the hall, snuffing out
the flames two by two.

Charly turned back and began to walk more quickly.
Perhaps it’s the wind,
she thought, knowing as she did
so that the air was completely still. Now she could hear a strange sound, a
kind of hissing and murmuring, as though an unseen host of people was
conversing in soft voices. She glanced back once more and saw that the darkness
was drawing closer, faster than she could walk. She broke into a jog, wondering
how long she could keep it up. Then, to her horror, she saw that up ahead the
torches came to an end as they had behind, in a pool of darkness. She looked
back over her shoulder and screamed. Like a black tidal wave, a sweeping shadow
was bearing down upon her. And within it were creatures from her worst
nightmares. Forgotten beasts from the elder days—driven underground along
with the Sidhe, their masters—poured down the hall. The
cu sith,
huge black dogs with eyes of flame, loped
toward Charly. Behind them came bugganes, shape-shifting from goblin to ram to
giant bull. Swooping and flapping through the air, carrying the darkness to the
high vaulted ceiling, were banshees, beautiful faery women with flowing black
hair and fangs, who drank human blood. Farther back, lost in the black tide,
were shapes Charly could not make out, terrible shapes. She screamed once more
and broke into a run. Although there was darkness before her, she fled in terror from the
horror behind her, from night into night.

But as she ran, she made out a faint rectangle in the wall
ahead, picked out in a flicker of firelight. The end of the torches ahead
marked only the end of the long hallway, and Charly was within reach of a
doorway. In blind panic, she ran down the last stretch, expecting with every
pulse of her laboring heart to feel the breath of the black dogs on her neck.
The boots she had created for herself rubbed against her heels and sweat was
pouring down her spine within the leather jacket, but still she pushed herself
onward. The noise—the immense, whispering wall of sound—was so close now it
seemed to swirl around her as the rectangle of firelight grew, slowly, so
painfully slowly. A red haze began to grow around the edges of Charly’s
vision, and each breath burned in her chest like flame.

And then the doorway was before her, the comforting
flicker of firelight playing on its stone frame. She lunged toward the opening,
boots skidding on the dusty floor, and flailed to a halt on the threshold. The
room before her fell silent as the Host of the Sidhe paused from their feasting
and looked up at her.

“Smith,” said King Haesta, “this is not your boy. In
fact, it is not even a boy. It is a dwarf wizard of some sort. In your place, I
would not wish to claim allegiance with a wizard sentenced to death.”

“As yer like,” replied Wayland. “Still, I’ve come
for the boy, an’ I ain’t leavin’ without ’im.”

“In that case—” Haesta sighed. “You will die with
him. Guards.”

Soldiers with iron spears and swords stepped forward.
Wayland slid from the back of his horse and dropped to the ground. It seemed to
Sam as though the ground shook as his feet hit the earth of the square. From a
sling on his back, the smith drew a hammer, a lump of blue gray iron the size
of his two fists, mounted on the end of a long wooden handle. He dropped the
hammerhead to the ground between his feet and rested his hands on the
handle’s upper end.