Fachtna’s gauzy wings settled like a cloud
about her shoulders as she plunged her knife into the earth to clean the mount’s blood from its silver blade. She rose and strode toward Maddy, the various knives strapped around her body chinking sweetly.
Maddy braced herself, but Fachtna swept past to stand in front of Roisin and Fionn, raising her wings so a dark shadow fell upon them. Fionn trembled and wrapped her arms around Roisin’s waist, hiding her face against her shoulder. Roisin tried to edge around Fachtna and back to Maddy, her arms tight around Fionn, but Fachtna grabbed a handful of Roisin’s jacket and rooted her to the spot.
“Look at me,” she commanded, but Fionn just shook her head and cried louder. Fachtna snarled, baring her
shark’s teeth, and she reached down to grab Fionn by the hair.
To Maddy’s horror, Roisin threw her arm up and grabbed Fachtna’s wrist. “Leave her alone,” she said.
Fachtna hissed and twisted her arm, breaking Roisin’s grip. She moved so fast Maddy didn’t have time to see or hear the knife being drawn from its sheath. The next thing she knew, Roisin was being forced to tilt her head back as the tip of a silver blade dimpled the skin at her throat, drawing a trickle of dark red blood.
“Did you think this was a game, little girl?” asked Fachtna, her voice soft in the silence. “Did you think you could come here and play the hero, that you would dance with me around the toadstools before going home?”
With her free hand she grabbed Fionn by the hair. The dryad had wrapped her twiggy arms around Roisin’s waist and tried to hang on, crying piteously, but Fachtna ripped her away and lifted her up to swing her in the air before her face.
Fionn clapped her hands over her eyes, but Fachtna shook her until the dryad’s limbs jerked and flailed and she was forced to meet the faerie’s baleful red glare.
“Treacherous little creature,” roared Fachtna. “Did you think Queen Liadan would not know you had helped these mortals break a contract? What life for you, dryad, now that you have angered my queen?”
“Mercy,” sobbed Fionn, as she dangled from Fachtna’s talons. “Mercy! My tree . . . it is dying!”
“Let her go!”
Danny stood behind Fachtna, the poker back in his hand. The pack were gathering behind him silently, their rangy bodies hesitant and wary.
“I said, ‘Let her go,’” said Danny through clenched teeth. “You’re not touching her or any of my family.”
Fachtna’s lip curled with contempt, and she flung Fionn to the ground. She glanced at Danny, reversed the knife in her hand and then hit him between the eyes with its hilt, sending him sprawling backward, where he lay dazed. Then she bent over the weeping dryad, the knife gleaming in her hand.
“A taste of what is to come,” Fachtna said, as she grabbed Fionn’s wrist. The little dryad screamed as Fachtna brought her knife down on Fionn’s outstretched fingers, severing two of them. Fionn’s green blood splattered on to the snow. She dangled the howling dryad by her wrist and smiled at Maddy.
“Come save your friend,” taunted Fachtna.
Maddy’s legs shook with fear. Roisin began to cry softly.
“No?” said Fachtna, arching a pale eyebrow in mock surprise. “You would have her risk all for you and yet you will not take a step to save her? Perhaps I can persuade you to move.” She moved her knife toward Fionn’s twiggy digits, as Fionn began to shriek in terror and twist in Fachtna’s grip.
“NO!” yelled Maddy.
“Ah, you speak,” sneered Fachtna. “Come then, fight me for your friend. Be as brave as that weakling boy.”
But Maddy couldn’t. Her mind was blank with fear, and it could not tell her legs to move.
Fachtna stared at her and gave a bark of laughter, before dropping Fionn and wiping her knife on her thigh. The dryad sobbed and shook with pain and terror, her maimed hand curled against her chest.
“You have condemned your tree to death,” said Fachtna. “Go from this place and await your punishment.”
With a wail, Fionn scrambled to her feet and ran from the clearing without a backward glance. The trees soon swallowed her up, but her sobs could still be heard. Fachtna turned to face the Amaguks, who cowered behind Fenris and Nitaina. The two leader wolves faced Fachtna with their heads held high and proud, but their eyes were tight with anxiety.
“Queen Liadan is most disappointed with you,” said Fachtna. “She gave you sanctuary, and in return she thought she commanded your love, unswerving loyalty, and unstinting devotion. You have proved her wrong. The Winter Queen does not like being told she is wrong.”
Nitaina opened her mouth to say something, but Fachtna cut her off. “Silence!” she said. “I do not wish to hear feeble excuses. Be grateful Queen Liadan does not feel you have outlived your usefulness, or else I would happily turn you and your unborn pups into rugs. Go now, and let her finish her game undisturbed.”
Nitaina looked at Maddy with sad eyes, and then the wolves turned and slunk away. Danny climbed
awkwardly to his feet and joined Maddy and Roisin, his palm pressed to his forehead. A trickle of blood seeped through his fingers. Fachtna’s head turned to follow his every movement, her eyes unblinking. Maddy shuddered as her red gaze settled on her. George slunk behind Maddy’s legs and bared his teeth at the faerie.
“If the choice were mine, I would gut you and leave you for the crows,” said Fachtna. “But luckily for you, Queen Liadan is merciful and is minded to give you another chance to finish the game. But if you try to get another faerie to help you, I will slice them open from belly to throat in front of you. Now, start walking.”
Numb with shock and the throbbing pain in her back, Maddy stumbled along, barely aware of how she managed to put one foot in front of the other. Danny’s face was white and drawn, while Roisin tried to hush a growling, furious George, who bounced about at the end of his leash, trying to whip his stubby body about so he could face Fachtna.
Silent and grim, she herded them back the way they had come, past the mounts’ paddocks, where the creatures cowered away from the smell of their mate’s death, back through the hushed forest, its evergreen boughs shutting off the silvery light of the moon. Fachtna stalked through the gloaming like an angel of death, her body gleaming wherever slivers of moonlight could penetrate the canopy.
Maddy could have wept with despair and exhaustion as the trees began to thin out, and she could hear
the half-frozen lake throwing itself repeatedly on the rocky shore.
Fachtna pushed and harried them on to the beach. The icy wind that whipped off the waves froze Maddy’s eyeballs dry, and she shivered as it forced its way through her clothes to chill her skin.
“Your deception means that the queen can impose further conditions on your bargain,” said Fachtna. Roisin opened her mouth to protest, but Fachtna cut her off. “Be grateful. You broke the terms of the contract, and my queen is now free of her oath. I could kill you where you stand, and the child is hers to do with as she wishes. Yet the game plays on.
“Queen Liadan has decreed that there is no way for you to reach the White Tower except by water,” she continued. “You may not go back into the forest and seek help from others. And this time she is making sure you keep to the conditions.”
Fachtna turned to face the clashing, churning lake, raised her arms and called out in a strange language. Far out in the depths of the lake something disturbed the ice. Chunks shot into the air before plummeting back into the frigid waters. A wave rose and gathered strength as it pushed toward the shore, shoving ice floes aside as it came. It grew and grew until, a few yards from the shallows, it erupted in a volcanic spray and from its shattering green heart leaped two blue horses.
They galloped to the shore on stilt-like legs, sparks flying where their hoofs struck the wet stones. They
circled Maddy, Danny, and Roisin and paced with pent-up excitement. Their manes and tails were matted weeds, water streamed from their coats, and they sniggered with human voices, their lips twisted into sneers that showed sharp canines. One pranced close to Maddy, its dark blue hide almost brushing her face. She gagged at the foul smell of water rot.
“These water horses will guard the shore,” said Fachtna. “You must play the game alone and come to the Winter Court by no other route.”
“We can’t cross that lake,” said Maddy. “Look at it!”
“I’ve always heard such good things about mortal ingenuity,” said Fachtna, with just a touch of sarcasm in her voice. “I’m sure you will find a way. Can’t you swim?”
“We can swim,” said Danny, his voice almost as harsh as Fachtna’s. “But I don’t think I’m going to make it through crashing sheets of ice and water that’s below freezing.”
Fachtna cocked her head at him. “Well, think of something, boy, and think of it quick. It would be an inglorious end to your quest were you to starve to death on this beach.”
With that, she spread her wings wide and took off into the moonlight, heading toward the tower.
As soon as Fachtna disappeared from sight,
the water horses stopped their prancing and began to sidle closer to the children. Maddy felt her sneakers slither and slide on the ice-covered rocks as she backed toward the water’s edge, George at her feet with his hackles raised. Roisin squealed with fear and ran down to the icy waves, but Danny bent and picked up a flat wide stone and hefted it in his palm.
“Another step,” he said, “and one of you is going to get it right between the eyes.”
The horses paused for a moment, looked at each other and grinned.
“Such an unfriendly boy,” crooned one as it sidled ever closer. “That’s no way to treat a friend.”
“You’re no friend of mine,” said Danny.
“Ah, but we could be, we could be,” said the other. “If you treat us nicely, we could help you.”
“How?” asked Maddy.
“Sit on our backs,” said the first. “We can take you to the tower. The cold won’t gnaw at you, not on our backs.”
“Why would you want to help us?” said Danny. “Everyone who has helped us so far is going to die.”
“Liadan likes us,” said the first horse, running a black tongue over its lips. “She wouldn’t stay angry at us for long. And we like to be ridden. It’s been a long, long time since anyone went with us into the waves.”
Something about the way the horse said that made Maddy shiver. The second one came closer to her and looked into her face. Its eyes were an utter, light-swallowing black. They radiated emptiness—a cold, deep dark vaster than space.
To fall into them,
said a voice in her mind,
would mean peace and untroubled, eternal sleep . . .
“Will it hurt?” Maddy heard herself asking, her voice low and muffled in a suddenly silent world.
“No, child,” said the horse. “It will be as easy as falling asleep.”
“I’m ready,” she whispered, reaching out a hand. The water horse sidled closer, rubbing its slimy mane against her open palm. Part of her brain registered how cold, how wet, how
dead
the flesh of the water horse felt, as it got to its knees and allowed her to slide a leg over its back until she was sitting astride. But she felt no
revulsion, no desire to cringe away from its touch. She felt calm, as if she were floating.
It all feels so right,
she thought, as the weeds of the horse’s mane waved in the air and wrapped themselves tight around her fingers and wrists.
This is the only way.
Dimly she was aware of Danny and Roisin running alongside her as the horse began to trot to the water’s edge, George barking furiously somewhere.
“Maddy, what are you saying? Get down!” cried Roisin, as she desperately pulled at Maddy’s clothes.
“I said, ‘It can’t hurt,’” said Maddy as the horse began to canter.
“No!” screamed Roisin. “That’s not what you said! Please, Maddy . . .” Her voice broke into a sob as the horse began to leave her and Danny behind and canter into the icy waters, his mate following close behind. “Get down from his back! GET DOWN FROM HIS BACK!”
“It will be fine, Ro,” murmured Maddy, clinging tighter to the water horse’s back with her thighs and knees as Danny and Roisin tried to grab her. Spray splashed her face as the animal galloped through the shallows, out into the heart of the lake. The water rose higher and soaked her jeans, then her jacket. Part of her noticed that the water was bitterly cold, but she felt disconnected from her body. The horse turned to look at her, an evil glint in its eye, and smiled, showing the cool curve of its fangs. She smiled back as Danny’s and Roisin’s shouts were left behind her and the water horse
plunged beneath the waves, the water snapping close over her head, cutting off all sounds from the shore.
It was peaceful in the lake.
I can rest,
thought Maddy.
I just need to rest. It’s all too hard.
The water horse curved its neck and took her deeper, its mate swimming alongside them, its back legs transformed into a long fish-scaled tail.
Much better,
thought Maddy.
Can’t go swimming about with four legs.
She looked up at the surface, so far above her head. The horse’s muscles rippled beneath her, its mane streaming back into her face as the world got darker. Her chest was hurting now, real pain that was eclipsing the talon marks on her back.
I’ll have to breathe out,
she thought dreamily.
She pondered the problem for a moment as the pain built and stars bloomed in the corner of her eyes. And then something bit her leg.
Maddy panicked and cried out, as she watched the last of her breath escape to the surface in mercury bubbles. The lake poured into her mouth, and her hair floated around her face, blinding her. She thrashed about as the water horse bucked beneath her, her hands caught fast in its weedy mane.
The water boiled around her as dark shapes scudded through the gloom. For the first time since getting on the horse’s back, Maddy felt real terror, and it woke her up in a way the icy water had not. She could not see the surface anymore, and however much she pulled and pulled, she couldn’t free her hands. She opened her mouth to scream,
and more water poured into her lungs. Her vision turned dark as huge black shapes writhed through a mass of bubbles, tormenting the horse, who snapped and lunged in every direction. Just as she thought she was going to black out, Maddy felt a tugging at her wrists and then strong arms about her as she shot to the surface.
Her head broke through, and she drew in a ragged breath, crystal clear air flooding her chest painfully. The night sky spun around her head as she coughed and spluttered, throwing up lake water as her rescuer sliced easily toward the shore with one arm.
Her feet scraped shingle, and she staggered on rubbery legs, stumbling through the waves and ice to collapse on the rocks. She gasped as a huge shape loomed over, blotting out the sky.
“Stupid child!” it hissed. “Next time you want to die, don’t do it in our waters.”
Maddy sat up and stared as the shape turned away and called a wordless cry across the lake. It was a man, tall and broad-shouldered. He had long hair that hung in tangles around his face and shoulders, a fur cloak was wrapped tight around him, and lake water ran off him in rivulets. He stared out across the water, and Maddy followed his gaze. There, on an ice floe, were Roisin and Danny, George tucked away in Roisin’s jacket, just his little head sticking out under her chin. George’s eyes stood out on stalks as he stared at what was pushing them. Seals, dozens of them, were nudging the floe forward with their blunt heads, pushing it toward the shore.
As soon they reached the shore, the man turned to look at her again, and Maddy cringed, even as her body shook with cold. The face was hard and wild—there seemed to be no human emotion in it. His eyes were huge and velvety brown, and his teeth were sharp and hard against his lips. He turned away from her and ran to the water, falling to his knees and wrapping the fur cloak tight around himself. Then he seemed to roll into the water and disappear beneath it. She stared and stared, waiting to see his head break the surface, but when it did, it was a seal’s sleek, whiskered face that appeared among the bobbing ice. It dived, and its broad tail slapped the water as it dropped from sight. She held her breath to see the strange seal man again, but the surface of the lake was as empty as the moon.
“Who was that?” she croaked, as Danny and Roisin scrambled up the beach toward her. They fell to their knees and hugged her, Roisin crying on her shoulder. “What’s going on?”
“Selkies, seal people,” said Danny. “Almost as soon as you went under, they appeared in the water and asked us what happened. When we told them what you said, and that we were trying to get to the White Tower, they offered to help.”
“I thought no one could help us,” said Maddy through chattering teeth.
“That’s the thing,” said Danny, grinning. “Letting Fionn help us means the contract’s broken so anyone
can offer to help us, and I don’t think the selkies like Liadan much. We didn’t swear another oath.” His face darkened. “Of course, that can work against us as well, I think. It’s a bit confusing.”
“Never mind that, what did you think you were
doing
?” snapped Roisin at Maddy.
“What?” asked Maddy, puzzled.
“Those water horses, they are dark faeries,” said Roisin. “They tempt people on to their backs to drown them. The selkies said that only people who want to die get on the back of a water horse,” said Roisin. “You were trying to kill yourself. Why would you do that?” Her eyes filled with tears again.
“I didn’t!” said Maddy. “I was just looking for a way to get across.”
“We heard you,” said Danny, his face set and angry. “You asked that thing if it would hurt.”
“Did I?” said Maddy, searching her memories. “I . . . I . . . don’t remember.” She looked back at Danny’s and Roisin’s frightened faces. “I really don’t!” George wriggled his front legs free of Roisin’s grip and leaned forward to lick Maddy’s icy skin. His warm, rough tongue practically burned her, she was so cold.
“Is that what you want?” asked Danny, his voice harsh. “Is that what you’re thinking about all the time at home? Is that why you act like you want everyone to hate you?”
Stunned, Maddy could only stare back at him. “I don’t think that way,” she said as her body started
to judder with the cold, and her teeth chattered so hard she had to force each word out. “I don’t act like that.”
“Whatever. We’ve got to keep you moving,” said Roisin, as they pulled Maddy to her feet. Her body juddered and shuddered, and her clothes clung to her.
“Where are we?” asked Maddy.
“Turn around,” said Danny.
The lumpen caves were dark as midnight beneath the frilly fantasy of the upper reaches of the tower. There were no steps or doors carved anywhere into the white rock. They had reached Liadan’s den.
“How are we supposed to get in?” asked Danny.
“Do you think we can go through the caves?” suggested Roisin, but her eyes were fearful.
“I don’t fancy just walking in there,” said Maddy. “Let’s take a look around before we do anything.”
“We need to get you warm somehow,” said Roisin.
“Let’s just walk for a few minutes—that will warm me up, and we can see what we can find out,” said Maddy.