The Changeling (33 page)

Aoife shuddered, remembering and understanding the glittering patterns splashed across the black drapes of the bed in the room below. Her mother’s blood. ‘She was still alive when you found her?’

Dorocha said pleasantly, ‘And I took that iron arrowhead and I slit that priest screaming from throat to groin, and before he died I dragged him up to the very summit of this city and threw him tumbling down its walls until he was lost in the river below. And now the queen’s pool overflows for ever through the hawthorns, and washes away his blood. The rose in the white quartz is human blood. The river that circles Falias is red.’

‘Ah God . . .’ Aoife took a step back, staring at him in horror.

He laughed, as if her reaction amused him. ‘And when he was gone, I came back to find her. And I was all alone with her, but she was dead. And then her people took her away, and I was left again with banshees and lenanshees and all the strange beasts of this world. It was hard to be without your mother in the beginning. I had played the tame beast to my queen for so long. But then I realized I was no longer a servant. I was free at last. The travelling magicians of Danu had left for the islands, moving west as they always do. The tables were turned. I began to call their children home, and give the little conjurers
my
orders. But some returned too soon, without their powers. I sent all the little darlings out to catch the beasts, knowing only the strongest would survive.’

Aoife’s heart sickened. ‘But that’s murder . . .’

‘How? I touched none of them with my own hand.’

‘I saw a little boy get killed.’

‘Not killed –
transformed
. Aren’t you a believer in rebirth, like your mother? She had no fear of death – except by iron.’

‘
He was a little boy!
’

Dorocha laughed. ‘And too young for power, just like yourself.’

‘I’m not too—’

‘You’re not yet sixteen! And you will never grow any older!’ His eyes were bright with humorous excitement. ‘When your sheóg came back without you, I could have strangled the silly little thing! Life burns up so fast on the surface – I thought you would be sixteen before I had my hands on you again . . . Too late to keep the tables turned on the magicians! But in less than an hour I knew you were here, making your way through the wilderness towards me. The sheóg drew you to me. She was my hook of flesh and blood. You could not stop yourself, whatever the danger of the journey. You were helpless.’

‘Not helpless—’

‘You were helpless. And
afraid.
’ Dorocha said it like it truly delighted him. ‘You were and will remain powerless, my queen.’

‘
I’m not your queen.
’

‘But I have all the power we need. The children of the people of Danu will serve you, because you are their queen. And you will serve
me
, because I will be—’

‘Serve
you
?’

Still laughing, he flicked up the ring again, caught it and tossed it to her. A terrible heat seared through her skin of her palm. The ring was made not of rainbows but of fire. Aoife threw it from her with a cry of agony. He snatched it out of the air and held it poised before her between thumb and forefinger, grinning and twisting it like he could tempt her with it, like a sweet to a child.

‘Take it, my queen. It is your wedding ring.’

With a cry of revulsion, she turned and fled for the door.

‘I
said
, take it.’ Dorocha’s hand was on her shoulder, and his fingers dug deep. Weakness spread down her arm, as if his nails were the teeth of a spider piercing her skin, sucking the energy from her.

Aoife struggled wildly. ‘
Let go of me.
’

‘You’ll not run away?’

‘No.’

‘Promise?’

‘Yes.’

He let her go. Instantly she ran for the door, but he was easily there before her, smilingly indignant. ‘Now, Aoibheal, that wasn’t very honourable.’

She swerved and stumbled away between the chests of treasure. He came after her, grinning, dancing to cut her off; she doubled back and broke for the door again, and again he was right before it, his arms open to catch her. The bronze sword was in her path, lying where it had fallen. She stooped to lift it – it was shockingly heavy.

His face bright with amusement, Dorocha held his arms wide, boastfully exposing his heart to her.

Straining every muscle, sweat stinging her face, she tried to swing the mighty sword at him, but couldn’t hold it up – the point fell forward and rang loudly off the floor.

He sprang from foot to foot, a mocking dance. ‘Ah, Aoibheal, don’t imagine you can use a weapon of death against me. Only I can make Nuada’s sword sing. I am the Fear Dorocha. I am the Fear Dubh. I am the Beloved. I am the king. I am the last act.’

Aoife struggled again to lift the sword. The power in her blood was rising now – she could hear the steady pulse of it in her ears; feel the tingle of it in her skin.

‘Put it down, Aoibheal. Only I can wake it. You are a child. A powerless child.’

It was still too heavy to lift above the horizontal, but the hilt was stirring in her hands; she would sweep it at his waist, then spring past him.

Shaking his head, he said sadly, ‘Now behave or I will murder you here and now, as I murdered your mother in her bed before I cast her human lover down the walls.’

The sword flung itself at Dorocha’s heart.

He lurched back several paces until he was half sitting on the edge of one of the open caskets; he gazed down in astonishment at the centre of his chest, where the tip of the blade had sunk deep between his ribs. For a moment Aoife could not move either – as if the blood in her veins were liquid stone. As they both watched, the heavy hilt of the sword sank very gradually towards the floor, causing the point of the blade to turn upwards, deepening and widening the cut. A river of ink poured through the rent in his shirt. Dorocha raised his head and stared at her with eyes the same blue-black colour as his blood. Hurt. Surprised.

Then, with one smooth circular motion of his arms, he wrenched the sword free with both hands and hurled it at her. It streaked past her ear like a blast of freezing wind, and clattered away harmlessly between the treasure chests.

He leaped for the spear where it lay against the wall.

Aoife ran for the door, slamming it behind her and slapping her hand over the lock – it clicked into place, just as the bronze point of the spear came plunging through the gold surface, missing her cheek by centimetres. She raced down the stairs, but Eva was running up them towards her, crying tearfully, ‘You said you were going to take me home!’

‘Here . . .’ But Eva dodged past her open arms and ran on upwards. ‘
No, come back!
’ She turned and ran after the child. As she passed the door of the treasure chamber, the thick slab of gold was shuddering and creaking in its frame, bending outwards, splitting . . .

After the next sweeping turn in the staircase, the walls changed from crystal into living wood, first pale twisting roots and then branches of blossom, the powerful scent dizzying her almost as much as the constant turning of the stairs. She burst into the open, and she was in another space, brilliant with sunlight. Crimson water lay across the floor, covered in floating blossoms. Aoife ran splashing through the water to the far side of the circle. They were caught in a living cage of thorns, at the very summit of the city. On the stairs behind her, the footfall of leather boots. So Dorocha had heard her, knew that she had run up, not down . . . She picked up the child. She could squeeze through the thorns and jump. But there was no Shay from whom to steal the slightest kiss, and she might fall like a stone and die, with Eva in her arms. The lenanshees had scaled the walls using the carvings of vines for handholds . . .

‘Eva, we have to climb down.’

The child struggled in her arms. ‘No!’

‘I’ll hold you tight.’

‘I want to go home!’

‘Soon, honey . . .’

‘Now! You said the empty place where I saw the bus was home!’ The child slipped from her arms, ran across the blood-red floor – and disappeared. The shallow surface of the water did not even ripple.

‘Eva?
Eva!
’ Aoife scrabbled to and fro on her hands and knees. It was like searching for the child in the pool above, only this time the water was a centimetre deep and the floor not mud but red stone tiles. ‘Where have you gone?’

‘Back to the bog where every sheóg belongs.’ Dorocha was leaning with one hand against a hawthorn bough; he had laced his shirt over his wound, though the material was stained as if with ink. ‘Stand up, Aoibheal. I have locked this gate. Only the lenanshees and banshees can freely take this road. You haven’t the power to open it without me.’

‘You have to let me go after her! I have to help her! She’s only a little kid – she’ll die out there by herself!’ Aoife made a desperate effort to claw up one of the stone tiles; she tore a nail, and a silver thread leaked out into the crimson water. ‘Please let me go after her!’

‘Marry me first.’

‘
You murdered my mother!
’

‘Marry me and I will bring you to the surface world myself. We will travel together, in my coach.’

‘That’s crazy. There’s no time. Let me go now. I’ll come back to you, I promise.’

‘Like you promised me you would not run? I’m not a fool. I’m not your tame beast. Marry me.’

‘
No!
’

‘Very well. Then let us sit here, hour on hour. And for every hour in paradise, a hundred hours will pass out on the cold bog above. It is autumn there now. And your precious little sheóg will wander the bog, and the sun will rise and the sun go down, and the night will be cold and the day hungry; at last she will tire and lie down for ever in the heather, and the ants will eat her down to the bone.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

He was angrily insulted when she refused to waste time by changing into a more beautiful dress, or cover herself in her mother’s jewels. But if he wanted her to go along with this farce, then this was the way it was going to have to be – good enough for him that she had already changed out of her hoodie and trackies. All she wanted was to get this ridiculous wedding over and done with. Why should she care what she was wearing?

It wasn’t like she was the only one underdressed. Most of the changelings who had been called into the temple for this hasty coronation and fake wedding were in their everyday clothes – faded trouser suits and beads from the sixties; tartan flares from the seventies; punk Mohicans that had gone limp without hair gel. There in the bedraggled crowd before the altar, gazing up at Aoife where she stood exposed to everyone’s view, was Ultan in his fluorescent shell suit. Caitlin, moulting feathers, was waving enthusiastically and giving her the thumbs-up – then nudging her neighbours, flashing her selkie pearl and ruby chains, clearly boasting that the new queen was her best friend for ever.

Along the walls of the temple stood ranks of dullahans, black-cloaked, the rotting stench from their heads tainting the air, the hum of the insects beneath their hoods filling the air with the sound of a summer’s day. Lenanshees clustered together, a sea of lace dresses, singing songs that Aoife had never heard yet which seemed familiar. She couldn’t see Shay among them, nor the one who had spirited him away. Banshees in red cloaks moved through the crowd, cooing over the human babies in their arms. Women in caps of dappled sealskin left wet footprints as they walked. Just within the high doors, wide open to the bright sun, Seán Burke stood clutching the reins of a tabby kitten-beast. Beside Aoife, at the altar, another very small old man stood burning a pile of oak leaves. Caitlin’s book lay open at the druid’s elbow; he paused to consult it, slowly turning the pages.

Aoife was sick with impatience. A little girl was lost on the empty bog above. Every minute here, a hundred minutes there.
Please God let her not fall in a bog hole and drown . . .
Surely she would make her way to the road. A passing car would stop. And then . . . The guards would be called. The real Eva O’Connor had literally disappeared from the face of the earth eleven years ago, and yet she was still only four years old. The little girl would tell everyone that her parents lived in Dublin, and then social services would take her away, just as the banshee had before. She would spend her childhood in care, never to be found.

Seven druids were circling, chanting. Children, also in white robes, squatted with their backs to the rough-cut block of marble that served as the altar. The smallest of them was yawning. A tall female druid touched Aoife’s cheek with a twig of mistletoe. She flinched, turning her face away . . . And he was there. He had come after all. Striding long-legged through the open doors, with his beautiful lenanshee by the hand. He stopped at the back of the crowd, scanning the hundreds of faces around him. The young woman rested her cheek against his upper arm, gazing up at him with turquoise eyes; her delicate dress drifted around her like sun-struck mist and her hair tumbled in black ringlets. Aoife stared at the two of them – such a picture – then tried to turn her gaze away. Too late – Shay had caught her looking and stood gazing directly at her across the heads of the crowd.

Aoife took a deep, slow breath – then smiled. Important to show him that she was all right, in case he tried to stop what was going on, and slowed the ceremony down even more. He nodded back. Hot tears inched up her throat. She kept smiling even wider – now it felt like an inane clownish grin, making her cheeks ache. His hazel eyes left her face, and swept down over her clothes. She was covered in the wet blossom from the pool above. Without thinking, she brushed her hands down the front of the dress. Stupid reaction – what was she doing? Trying to prettify herself for him again? The elegant beauty at his side reached up to touch his face, calling his attention back to her again. While not taking his eyes off Aoife, he took the girl’s hand and lowered it gently to his side, lacing his fingers firmly through hers. She raised his hand to her lips, and kissed it. The tears reached Aoife’s eyes; she blinked and looked away.