Isle of Winds (The Changeling Series Book 1) Read online

  Isle of Winds

  Book One of The Changeling Series

  James Fahy

  © James Fahy 2015

  James Fahy has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd in 2015.

  For Becca

  Table of Contents

  Prologue – Trouble and Strife

  Chapter One –

  Nails and Horseshoes

  Chapter Two –

  Mr Moros and Malcolm Drover

  Chapter Three –

  The Locked Room At Erlking Hall

  Chapter Four –

  Woad at the Fountain

  Chapter Five –

  Phorbas’ First Lesson

  Chapter Six –

  Magics and Mana-stones

  Chapter Seven –

  Newly Nonhuman

  Chapter Eight –

  Faeology

  Chapter Nine –

  Air and Silver

  Chapter Ten –

  The Faun’s Warning

  Chapter Eleven –

  Galestrikes at Dawn

  Chapter Twelve –

  A Most Unwelcome Caller

  Chapter Thirteen –

  The Lady of Dannae

  Chapter Fourteen –

  The Broken Horn

  Chapter Fifteen –

  Advoco Cantus

  Chapter Sixteen –

  Through the Barrow Wood

  Chapter Seventeen –

  The Ghost Stone

  Chapter Eighteen –

  The Oracle

  Chapter Nineteen –

  Hawthorn’s Way

  Chapter Twenty –

  Holly and Oak

  Chapter Twenty One –

  The Pass of the Gorgons

  Chapter Twenty Two –

  Dawn Sailing

  Chapter Twenty Three –

  The Isle of Winds

  Chapter Twenty Four –

  Unleashed

  Chapter Twenty Five –

  The Beginnings

  Prologue – Trouble and Strife

  The girl raced through the forest, tumbling through deep drifts of autumn leaves. Moonlight washed down from the starry sky, illuminating her darting figure.

  In appearance she was eleven years old. A hunted creature. To judge from her odd clothing of ragged pants, a dirty t-shirt, and a large overcoat patched together from various animal skins, she seemed a homeless orphan. A helpless, young waif.

  This, she was not.

  Her breath came in gasps as she ran. Her tumbling mass of knotted brown hair snagged on branches, but her eyes were filled not with fear, only fierce determination.

  They were also a rather unlikely shade of gold.

  Crashes and growls in the surrounding trees told her all she needed to know about her pursuers. They were getting closer. They were much faster than her – they had more legs for a start.

  Somewhere in the darkness, a hulking shadow smashed its way through bushes, throwing off clouds of leaves. Four more followed.

  The running girl hardly made a sound.

  She threw herself down a deep slope, skittering through scree and leaves, her keen eyes scanning the midnight shadows.

  If she could make it up the other side, she would be out of the trees. Beyond the rise there was a village. They wouldn’t follow her there. They didn’t like bright lights.

  She stumbled against a tree in the darkness, slapping her hands against it for support. She still had time.

  There was a noise behind her.

  She whirled, a flurry of animal skins and panic.

  Behind her, at the top of the rise, several dark shapes stood beneath the trees. Their outlines indistinct, as though formed of shadow and smoke. She could smell the sweat in their fur, but they were not panting.

  She didn’t have time after all.

  A figure walked calmly from between the beasts. An old man, tall and slender. He was dressed in a rather old-fashioned suit and a long black tailcoat. His face was thin, lined and white as chalk, seeming to float in the darkness like a will o’ the wisp. His slick and oiled hair, as immaculately groomed as his clothing, was an unlikely shade of funhouse green. He showed not the slightest sign of having rushed, despite the fact that he had been pursuing her for much of the night.

  “Well,” he said, his voice as crisp as the cut of his suit. He looked down the slope with cool, calm appraisal.

  “Well,” the girl said in return, still leaning on the tree, trying not to pant from exhaustion.

  The man laid a pale spidery hand on the head of one of the beasts. It made a long guttural growl of pleasure.

  “You have led us a merry chase, haven’t you?” he called down to her.

  “Wouldn’t call it merry,” the girl replied.

  “You know the game is up of course, don’t you?” the man said. “I think it is probably a very brave thing you were trying to do, trying to be the first to find him.”

  “You haven’t got a clue what I was trying to do,” the girl said. Her voice, strident in her mind, sounded small and annoyingly quavering. She stopped talking and settled for sticking her chin out defiantly instead.

  The man on the hill was unmoved. He stared at her with cold eyes. “Oh, I think I have,” he said crisply. “I think I have many clues. And I think we both know that you would never have gotten as far as Macclesfield, the way you’ve torn through. Honestly.” He shook his head disapprovingly. “If you had the foresight to come through Janus, the proper way, you could have been much closer. You could have been on the moors by now had you come through at Todmorden. There’s a Janus Station there.”

  The girl snorted. “As if you haven’t been watching the stations,” she said. “You and your skrikers would have been waiting for me.”

  The shadowy creatures raised their massive heads at the sound of their name. The ghoulish man on the hill made a soothing gesture toward them.

  “Down, Spitak – down, Siaw,” he said quietly.

  “Enough talk, little one,” the man said. “Where is it?”

  The girl smirked a little, despite the danger. He mustn’t know. If he was asking, he hadn’t guessed.

  “Where is the key?” he said sharply. “Where is the Scion? Tell me now and I may spare your life.”

  “It’s not yours to spare,” the girl replied. “We both know Lady Eris is keeping you on strict orders, Mr Strife. Do you really think she’ll be happy if you bring me back in pieces?”

  “My Lady Eris has not specified the conditions of your return,” Mr Strife replied, without the barest hint of a smile on his thin white lips. The cool breeze toyed with his green hair.

  “Well…” said the girl. That certainly changed things. “I don’t have the key, and neither does the Scion. He doesn’t even know it exists yet, so if you kill me he’ll never know, and he’ll never find it. And you can never take it from him.”

  Mr Strife’s lip curled. His teeth were very straight and white.

  She tried to calculate her chances of getting up the hill behind her in one piece. If she could find a quiet spot, a place to tear through, she would be fine. She didn’t need a Janus Station. Everyone else did, but she wasn’t everyone else. The skrikers were on edge though, waiting for an excuse to pounce. She would have to try and tear through right here. Her fingers gripped the bark of the tree against which she leaned, testing it.

  “He will find the key, as has been foretold. He will learn how to wield it and the Lady Eris shall have the use of it.”

  “No offen
ce,” the girl called up. “But if you were him, would you trust you?”

  “Appearances are deceptive, child,” Mr Strife said quietly. “He may be relieved to find us guiding him rather than you.”

  “Let’s let him decide, eh? How about that?”

  Mr Strife then did something he rarely did. He smiled, like a shark in dark water.

  “Oh, I think not,” he said.

  With a gesture, he turned away and walked back into the trees, leaving her alone with the beasts. On cue, the skrikers descended, charging down the wooded slope. They were nothing more than muscular shadows, almost impossible to pick out in the darkness.

  She stared wide-eyed for a second, and screamed a little for good effect. Or, at least, this is what she convinced herself of later. Then she tensed, and, seconds before the skrikers fell upon her, tore through.

  There was a wobble in the world.

  Had anyone been there to witness the moment, they would have seen something quite impossible. The girl simply sank into the tree. She fell into it as though it were murky water. The bark rippled a little, and then became solid once more, innocently challenging anyone to suggest it had ever been otherwise.

  The skrikers collided with the trunk, their teeth clashing off the bole, but it was no use. The child had gone, far beyond their reach … for now.

  Eventually they gave up and returned to their master, who was sitting some way off on a damp fallen log. He was looking intently at a large old-fashioned pocket watch. The dial had a large red gemstone which glittered like a droplet of blood.

  They slunk up to him, as meekly as possible for a pack of large vicious beasts. One of them made a hesitant rumbling growl.

  “It is done?” Mr Strife asked, his voice efficient and clean.

  Another low growl.

  “I see,” said Mr Strife, narrowing his eyes.

  He sat quite still for a time. Then, abruptly, he snapped his pocket watch closed and stood, brushing dry leaves smartly from his coat tails.

  “My Lady Eris will not be happy to hear about this,” he said calmly. He glanced at the assembled creatures. “Follow her scent,” he told them. “She cannot have gone far. Tearing is a trick indeed, but you can’t stay gone for long. She’ll turn up.”

  He began to walk away, into the deeper shadows of the forest. “When she does, follow her. Let her find him. Once we know where he is, who he is, we can dispose of her and take matters into our own hands.”

  Another growl, the lowest yet, issued from one of the skrikers.

  “Well, try looking like ‘dogs’ then,” Mr Strife said, impatiently. “Must I think of everything? Of course it would not do to let yourselves be seen. What a question!”

  There was a shiver in the forest clearing and where there had been five hellish abominations were now five large black dogs. They ran off into the trees, each in a different direction. After a few moments, when he could no longer hear them, Mr Strife sighed. One simply could not get the help these days. After all, she was just a poor girl, alone in a forest, seven miles from Macclesfield. Any number of terrible things could happen to her.

  Mr Strife made a mental note to ensure that they did.

  A moment later, he too was just another shadow in the dark wood.

  Chapter One –

  Nails and Horseshoes

  It had been a very strange month for Robin. But then on reflection, he’d had a very strange life altogether.

  Living with Gran had never been what could be called normal. She had some very strange habits and traditions. She liked line dancing for one, which Robin secretly felt was not a suitable pastime for a lady with a blue rinse.

  She also insisted on going, every evening, around their bungalow and checking that every window and door was securely locked. Robin would be the first to admit that this in itself was not particularly unusual in little old ladies, but Gran did this three times in succession, without fail. She took care to go on her security rounds clockwise, or ‘deosil’ as she called it. Robin had looked this habit up on the internet, mildly worried that Gran may be short of a few marbles. Apparently it was called an ‘obsessive compulsive disorder’ and was reassuringly common. Quite a lot of celebrities had it.

  Gran also has an astonishing array of the most inventive curses. “By the breath of the Fates!” … “Snakes and ashes!” … “Neptune’s beard!” Robin had gotten used to it over the years.

  The bungalow where Robin had lived all his life with his odd Gran was normal. A nice normal bungalow in Manchester. Normal that is, except for two things. Firstly, Gran had hammered nineteen nails into the front step so that you either had to step over it altogether or suffer every morning while forgetfully fetching the milk in. Secondly, she had ensured that every doorway in the house had a horseshoe hanging over it. Every window too.

  Most people simply thought that Gran collected horseshoes, in the way that old ladies collect porcelain cats, fluffy toilet roll covers, or holiday-themed tea towels. But Robin knew better. It wasn’t just above every door and every window. There were horseshoes on all the cupboard doors in the kitchen as well, on the tiny hatch for the loft in the slanted roof, above the cat flap in the back door. Pretty much everywhere in the house that led from one place to another. Some of them were large and heavy, some were small and delicate. Many of them were merely horseshoe shapes in careful silver paint. But they were everywhere.

  She was perfectly normal in every other way. She liked soap operas and strange biscuits like everyone else’s Gran. She went to bingo on a Wednesday evening, and Robin went shopping with her every other week. She kept packets of crisps in the fridge, and occasionally bought cat food, though she hadn’t owned a cat since Robin was three years old. Everyone has their funny little ways, Robin thought. In comparison, he himself felt boringly normal. There was nothing remotely odd about him.

  His strange but familiar little life had gotten stranger in the last month. It had all started, if he wanted to put his finger on a moment in time, the night when Gran had died.

  Robin had known she was dead. He had known the exact moment, even though he hadn’t been with her at the time. It had been 7:15 on a Monday evening. He had been sitting at home alone, eating spaghetti hoops on toast for tea balanced on a cushion on his lap while he watched TV. A skinny, rather pale boy with unruly blonde hair and dark blue eyes. Gran had been at a line dancing lesson at the Over Sixties Social Club two streets over, same as every Monday. He didn’t mind being left alone in the bungalow. He was twelve now after all, not a little kid anymore and their neighbour, Mr Burrows, was only next door.

  Robin had known the exact second Gran had died, because at 7:15pm every horseshoe in the entire house tumbled from its mooring. They clattered down from the walls, clanking on the carpets and the linoleum in the kitchen. Spinning on the windowsills and banging against the radiators. The one which hung from the bathroom window landed in the bath, where it spun like a large coin for several seconds, making a terrible din. They fell from loose nails and bounced along the hall. Even the magnetic ones on the fridge had tumbled with a clatter to the floor, pinging off the empty cat dish.

  The silver-painted, plaster-cast one Gran had brought back from a week in Cyprus, which hung above the fire in pride of place, had cracked into three and fallen down in pieces, scattering on the carpet.

  Robin had sat motionless and wide-eyed, a trembling forkful of spaghetti hoops halfway to his mouth, as the brief but deafening cacophony subsided.

  The bungalow had fallen utterly silent. Even the TV had muted itself, though Robin hadn’t touched the remote. It was so quiet he could hear the soft hum of the fridge. Then he had heard a faint musical jingle, like breaking icicles, at the front door.

  His heart pounding, he had put aside his dinner and picked his way along the hall, stepping over the many scattered horseshoes that lay everywhere, and nervously had opened the front door.

  There had been no one there. The dark street was deserted. In the distance a dog barke
d. He had looked down and found the source of the tinkling noise. The nails that had been driven into the front step years ago had been pulled out and each one broken in half.

  Robin had stared at them for a while, unsure what to think. Then he had gone back inside and sat down, looking at the phone.

  It rang after about ten minutes. He thought about not answering it, but whoever was calling was not giving up. He had eventually picked up, knowing what the police on the other end were going to tell him.

  Gran had died. A sudden heart attack at the line dancing class, right in the middle of a Dolly Parton classic two-step.

  * * *

  In the week that followed, with so many different people rushing in and out of the bungalow, he hadn’t had much time to think about the whole business. Little old ladies, friends of Gran, cooed over him and several of them assured him and each other that ‘it was how she would have wanted to go.’

  Robin had no other family. He had never known his parents. They had died when he was very young, on a safari in Africa. A glider plane had crashed and that had been that. Most of the people coming and going seemed not to know what to do with him. Their neighbour, the rangy old man called Mr Burrows, stayed at the house in the evenings, as everyone agreed a twelve year old boy, no matter how sensible and responsible, could not be alone by himself. Social Services had been to speak with him, a very kind-faced and patient woman whose name he couldn’t remember. She had reassured him that they were making investigations as to what would happen to him. No, he had told her, Gran had never mentioned any other family as far as he knew.

  He wondered in a dazed kind of way if he was going to go to an orphanage. He had never been alone before. There were lots of people around him all the time while this was happening, but he realised slowly, none of them were his people. He was alone in the world now.

  On the day of the funeral it had rained so hard the cemetery had been waterlogged and Robin, who had fully expected to cry, instead spent most of the graveside ceremony worrying about getting mud on his trousers. He thought that would make Gran very angry if she’d seen. She’d never gone to church but had always dressed well on Sunday.