The Raven Queen Read online

  She let out a sigh of relief when she heard her horse’s hoofs crunch on the shale of the beach. The horse pulled up to a standing stop as the foot soldiers rushed past them and on to the road, disappearing out of sight around the first bend. When the last of the infantry were on the road the cavalry followed, with the monarchs, Roisin, Danny, Nero and the precious casket at their heart.

  Roisin found herself on the outside edge. She tried not to look down and see just how close her horse’s hoofs were to the edge of the road and the long plunge to the rocks below. Her heart leaped into her throat when one of his hoofs slipped and part of the crust of the road tumbled into the lake below. She swallowed her scream and hid her face in his mane, trusting him to get her to the White Tower safely.

  As they rounded the last corner and the road climbed in a fairly straight line to the ornate bronze gates of the tower, Roisin was horrified to hear shouts and screams. It seemed Cernunnos was more willing to join in battle then they had thought and the gates had been opened to let loose the Winter Court’s cavalry.

  Liadan’s elven mounts tore through the Tuatha foot soldiers like a blade through paper, raising their front legs to strike out with their talons, ripping the Tuatha who rushed to meet them. The mounts lashed out with their snake-like necks, sinking their fangs into the soldiers and flinging them off the road to their death. The elves on their backs stabbed with their long spears and the Tuatha found themselves being driven back. The mounts were packed close together and heavily armoured, and with the long reach of their riders’ weapons it was proving hard for the Tuatha to get close enough to inflict a mortal wound on mount or rider. The foot soldiers were slowly being driven back into the cavalry, falling off the side of the road as they collided with the mounted Tuatha behind them and found themselves with nowhere to put their feet.

  Roisin screamed as her horse reared, lashing out with his front feet at the soldiers who pressed into him, infected by their panic.

  ‘Great queen, do something!’ cried Nuada. ‘We cannot go back – there are too many behind us!’

  The Morrighan reached up and pulled the veil from her face. Roisin gasped in horror as three faces fought and blurred across her skull – the young girl, the mother, the old woman, their mouths opening and closing like fishes’ and their eyes rolling as they sought to be the dominant one. The Raven Queen stood up in her stirrups, launched herself into the air and flew over the carnage, her shadow plunging the fighters below into darkness. Then she opened her mouth and the most horrible scream rolled out of her, a sonic boom that flattened Roisin’s hair. It was filled with the sound of despair, so much so that Roisin began to weep and look at the cool blue waters of the lake below, actually tempted to throw herself into them. But the line held by the Winter Court’s cavalry began to waver and then disintegrate as the Morrighan’s shriek blasted at their ears and they turned and started to retreat up the road.

  The Tuatha troops cheered and surged forward, and Roisin’s horse shook his head to clear it of the Morrighan’s scream and charged after them. They finally had a clear road to the gates, which were now hanging half off their hinges as the Tuatha soldiers pulled at them, their comrades flooding into the courtyard and up the wide stone steps that led to Liadan’s hall. The carved wooden door with its intricate locks that guarded her inner hall had been smashed open.

  Roisin dismounted with rubbery legs and wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. Danny rode up beside her, looking as if he was going to vomit. He got down and grabbed Roisin in a hug. ‘That was too close,’ he mumbled into her hair. She nodded and clutched at him, breathing in his warm smell and sending up a prayer of thanks that they were both still alive to whoever might be listening.

  A heavy hand landed on their shoulders. The Morrighan pulled them up the stone steps with her, as soldiers hauled the casket from its cart and dragged it along behind them.

  ‘No time to celebrate, little ones,’ said the Morrighan, her face veiled once again. ‘The battle is not yet won.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The great hall of the White Tower was empty of its glittering court of elves and dark faeries. Liadan sat on her throne of white-blue crystal at the end of the chamber, her only attendant Cernunnos. The throne sparkled in the light of the reflected summer sun, filtering through arched windows to be caught and thrown about the room by giant silver mirrors, so even in the depths of the White Tower, the great hall shone with light. Liadan had decided to face them wearing her tall crown of ice, a cloak of heavy white fur around her shoulders, more white fur and a sword at her feet. She glittered with diamonds and looked every inch the queen. Her long black hair fell to her feet in shiny, glossy wings.

  The Morrighan let go of Danny and Roisin and strode over to Cernunnos.

  ‘A sad day, brother,’ she said. ‘We must fix this wrong.’

  Cernunnos inclined his antlered head. ‘I was wrong to want peace all those years ago,’ he said. ‘The price was too high.’

  ‘Coward, that you desert me now,’ hissed Liadan as the sounds of looting and killing in the rest of the tower filtered through to them. Roisin closed her eyes at the noise of breaking glass, splintering wood and screams cut short. ‘I am your queen, your wife. We swore loyalty to each other.’

  ‘Look at what that loyalty has cost me,’ said Cernunnos. ‘It was a mistake to ally with one who was not of my own kind. You have disappointed me. You have been faithless as a wife and are not fit to be a queen. You have destroyed the forest when I was not there to defend it. It was to protect the forest and the faeries who inhabited it that I married you in the first place. You were welcomed here when you needed sanctuary and bound with bonds of kinship to Tír na nÓg. You have broken them all – you are wife to me no longer.’

  ‘You married me only to please her!’ Liadan spat, pointing at the Morrighan. ‘To keep her precious balance. The two of you are as blind as each other! Power is what matters – who wields it, how much they have. Not balance’

  ‘Where is Fenris?’ said a voice by Roisin’s hip. She looked down and realized that Nero had wound his way through the monarchs and their attendants to come and stand by her side. ‘I can’t see him.’

  Liadan smiled her cruel smile just as Danny took a closer look at the white fur at her feet. ‘NO!’ he yelled. Nero howled and raced over, snuffling and nudging at it, whimpering when it wouldn’t move. Roisin forced herself forward on numb legs and looked at it closely.

  It was Fenris. His eyes were closed and a sword pierced his mouth. The black wolf had been blasted with such an intense cold it had iced his fur to white. She knelt down and ran a hand over his pelt, the petrified fur crackling and snapping off at her touch. His body still held a faint trace of warmth. A trail of blood led from his pierced mouth to a pillar a few feet away. Liadan’s elves must have dragged him over to her while he was still breathing, as the Morrighan’s army had stormed her gates. Dragged him, half conscious and in agony so the Winter Queen would not have to trouble herself to walk a few steps to kill him. She must have leaned down from her throne and placed her hands on his ribs and let the cold flow through her into him, stopping his heart and stilling his breath.

  Roisin looked up at Cernunnos, his shadowed face unreadable beneath his antlers, his eyes two white points of light. Nero began to howl his grief into the vaulted ceiling.

  ‘Why did you let her do this?’ she asked, tears streaming down her face. ‘Fenris was a creature of the forest, you were his lord. He should have been able to look to you for protection.’

  ‘I was not here. I was at the gates,’ said Cernunnos.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here at all!’ said Roisin. ‘You should have been protecting the forest and the dryads.’ She pointed at Fenris. ‘You should have been protecting him.’

  ‘Brother, this marriage has made you powerless,’ said the Morrighan. ‘But this child has found a way to help you save face. You can still honour your sacred oaths of kinship and marriage. The crown can
stay on Liadan’s head and out of the grasp of the greedy Tuatha monarchs. If we do not keep balance then we will be standing here again in a few centuries, with more blood spilt. I can free you from your wife and give you honour again.’

  Liadan cackled, a high, insane sound that looped around the room and competed with Nero’s heartbroken howls. ‘You cannot kill me!’ she said. ‘I am winter made flesh – how do you kill a season?’

  The Morrighan turned her veiled face toward her. ‘I will not have to.’ She raised her voice. ‘Bring it forward.’

  The Tuatha soldiers dragged the casket to the foot of the dais and whipped the cloth from it. It gleamed in the light and all the Tuatha instinctively took a step back from its iron bindings.

  The Morrighan bent her head toward Cernunnos. ‘Let the child tell you a story and then you will see your way out of this.’

  Roisin kept her eyes fixed on Liadan, proud and scornful on her throne. Roisin’s hands still rested on Fenris’s cold body as she started to speak.

  ‘Once upon a time in midwinter, when snowflakes were falling like feathers from the sky, a queen sat sewing at her window and her embroidering frame was made of fine black ebony. As she was sewing and looking out at the snow, she pricked her finger with the needle and three drops of blood fell. The red looked so lovely against the white of the snow that she thought to herself, I wish I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood and as black as the ebony of my embroidering frame.’

  Liadan’s eyes widened in horror and she half rose from her throne, bracing herself against its armrests as she shrieked, ‘NO! YOU CANNOT TOUCH ME! YOU CANNOT LAY HANDS ON ME!’

  ‘I don’t have to,’ said Roisin. ‘The story will do it all for me.’

  ‘I am a queen,’ hissed Liadan, stepping down from the throne, frost crackling out from her feet. ‘Who are you to challenge me, a grubby little mortal child who still cries when it thunders? You cannot imagine me away with your childish mortal tales. You cannot touch me; you cannot lay hands on a queen with all the cold of winter in her body.’

  ‘But I can,’ said the Morrighan. She pulled the veil from her face to reveal the wrinkly visage of the old woman and reached within her cloak to pull out the shiny, juicy red apple.

  ‘Then a queen came, disguised as a hag, with a juicy red apple,’ continued Roisin, as the Morrighan grabbed Liadan’s arm. ‘How Snow White, with her long black hair, her white skin, her red lips, longed to taste that apple.’

  Liadan screamed and raised her arms to fend the Morrighan off, her cold flaring and covering both their bodies in waves of ice. But the Morrighan ignored the bitter cold and shoved the apple into Liadan’s open mouth, closing her long, black-tipped fingers over Liadan’s lips. Liadan’s teeth clamped down instinctively and her white eyes bulged, but it was too late – the flesh of the apple had already passed her lips and Liadan fell down in a faint at the Morrighan’s feet, a chunk of apple lodged in her throat.

  Roisin looked down at her body and her lip curled with contempt. ‘White as snow, red as blood, black as ebony. Give me your heart, dear Snow White.’

  She stood aside and watched as Tuatha, with their arms and hands armoured against Liadan’s cold, lifted her inert body and placed her inside the crystal casket, sealing the lid down tight.

  ‘There she will stay, brother,’ said the Morrighan. ‘Let her hall crumble around her, let her name be forgotten. She will live and the crown will stay on her head. You have honoured your vows as a husband – your wife is alive and safe, and none can call you an oath-breaker’

  No one thought to offer a word of comfort to poor Nero, who had ceased his howling and had curled up against his fallen pack leader. Roisin wept fresh tears as she watched him settle against Fenris’s cold flank, swishing his tail over his nose and closing his eyes with a sigh. The Tuatha might have settled their affairs tidily, but there was to be no justice for the wolves of Tír na nÓg.

  ‘Is that it?’ demanded Sorcha. ‘Are we expected to just go home now?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Morrighan. ‘You can divide up Liadan’s possessions among yourselves as the spoils of war, but there will be no other advantage gained here.’

  The sound of wailing drifted faintly through the open doors at the end of the hall. Meabh’s head shot up and she sniffed the air like a bloodhound. She and Niamh darted forward and seized Danny and Roisin. Nero leaped to his feet and snarled at them, his hackles rising. The Morrighan bent and put a warning hand on his neck.

  ‘Perhaps not here, sweet sister,’ Meabh purred, ‘but there might be some advantage to be had in the mortal world. It seems our hopes of luring the Hound have been realized because, unless my ears deceive me, the mist of dreams is on the move. And if it’s on the move, it means it’s following the Hound. Let’s give her what she came for, shall we?’ Niamh giggled as they began to drag Danny and Roisin backwards through the hall.

  ‘What are you doing?’ hissed Aengus Óg as Niamh went past.

  ‘Thinking of myself, husband,’ she said. ‘As you did.’

  Some Tuatha moved forward as if they would stop Meabh and Niamh. Roisin felt her feet tripping over each other and she clawed at Meabh’s arm, trying to get the Tuatha to loosen her grip and give her more room to breathe.

  ‘Stop,’ said the Morrighan. ‘Let them go.’ She looked at Meabh, her hag’s face sour. ‘Very well, Meabh. Let’s see where this takes us.’

  ‘Oh, I know where it will be taking me,’ said Meabh as they reached the doors to the hall. ‘Straight into the mortal world and fresh territories.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Roisin and Danny didn’t fight this time as Niamh and Meabh dragged them down the steps of the great hall, calling for their troops still milling about in the courtyard to mount up and come with them. As Meabh threw her back into the saddle, all Roisin could think was, Maddy is coming – Maddy is coming to bring us home! Now, with Liadan imprisoned for the rest of her life, they could be free! They could go home and live normal lives, where the most important thing she had to worry about was maths homework.

  So she didn’t sit there, inert, when Meabh and Niamh galloped from the courtyard, their soldiers flowing through the gates after them. She turned her horse’s head, kicked her legs against his sides and yelled, ‘Giddy up!’

  She raced out of the courtyard with Danny, their horses neck and neck, grinning wildly at each other through their horses’ manes as the wind whipped them back into their faces. They thundered down the road toward the beach, whooping and cheering as their horses ran for the joy of it. It didn’t matter what Meabh had planned – Maddy was coming! They were going home!

  Maddy rode at the head of the mist of dreams, trying not to listen to the lunatic babble behind her as the split souls jabbered and screeched. She was sitting astride a fine black horse that Finn mac Cumhaill had loaned to her, but the animal was skittish at the noise. She leaned down and put a hand on his neck to soothe him as he pranced and snorted. She could see the mound now, looming on her left, its shadow defying all laws of nature to lie around it. The curve of the river bent away from it to flow past her, and on her right was the wounded forest of Tír na nÓg. She hoped that the mist was alerting every faerie creature that it was on the move. She had no way of knowing that Meabh knew what she was doing. But Maddy knew that if she did, she would come running. She only hoped that she brought Danny, Roisin and Nero with her. Behind her, hidden in the depths of the mist, were two hundred Fianna, armed with long shields and pikes. Please let this work, she thought. Please, please, let this work.

  The twin walls of water were still up as they headed for the beach. Meabh spurred her horse on with kicks and wild yells, and even though Roisin knew the poor animal must be exhausted, it still found a burst of speed from somewhere. She leaned away from her mount to help it keep its balance as it took the corner, crashed down from the beach on to the lake bed and ran after Meabh. Roisin eyed the walls of water nervously, terrified that at any moment the spell Meabh had pu
t on them would fail and they would come crashing down on their heads, drowning them all in a roar of waves. But they held, and she breathed a sigh of relief as her horse began to scramble up the far side and into the forest. She coughed as clouds of ash blew up from the impact of his hoofs and her eyes streamed red, but still her horse ran on and her heart sang.

  Almost the moment they left the forest, Meabh and Niamh yanked back hard on their horses’ reins, the animals’ mouths gaping wide as the bits yanked their jaws down. They shuddered to an immediate halt, their hindquarters bunching underneath them, throwing up a shower of dirt as their hoofs ploughed through the ground to bring them to a standstill.

  Danny stood up in his stirrups and peered over Meabh’s head. ‘There she is! Roisin, I can see her!’ The closest Tuatha soldier turned and slapped him hard across his face, splitting his lip. Roisin sidled her horse closer, leaned over and gripped his hand hard. ‘We’re going home!’ she whispered. Danny nodded at her, still smiling as he blotted the blood on his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘So, Hound,’ cried Meabh, ‘you came after all. Are you ready to give me what I want in return for your family?’

  ‘You must be as mad as Liadan, Meabh,’ Maddy called back. ‘I told you before. I’m never going to give you what you want. I’m never going to be the kind of Hound you want.’

  Danny and Roisin looked at each other, confused. ‘What’s she doing?’ whispered Danny. Roisin shrugged, but her excitement was rapidly souring, turning into fear. She hoped Maddy had a plan and wasn’t just mouthing off. Though she really couldn’t trust Maddy not to be mouthing off.