Icefall

 

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About the Author

Copyright Page

 

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For Elizabeth Garrett, who gave the clann a home in exile.

And always for Lucy and Jamie Philip.

 

THE SITHE AND THE FULL-MORTALS

(
THE STILL-HERE AND THE LONG-GONE
)

Kate NicNiven:
Queen of the Sithe, by consent

Seth MacGregor
(Murlainn):
Son of Griogair and Lilith; half brother to Conal

Jed Cameron (Cuilean):
Full-mortal; half-brother to Rory

Rory MacSeth
(Laochan):
Seth's son and Jed's half-brother

Hannah Falconer MacConnell (Currac-sagairt):
Conal MacGregor's daughter

Iolaire MacEarchar:
Once Kate's fighter, now Seth's; lover of Jed

Leonora Shiach:
Witch, mother of Conal and bound lover of Griogair

Griogair MacLorcan
(Fitheach):
Father of Conal and Seth

Conal MacGregor
(Cù Chaorach):
Son of Griogair and Leonora

Lilith:
Kate's right-hand woman; Seth's mother

Stella Shiach
(Reultan):
Half-sister to Conal; daughter of Leonora

Aonghas MacSorley:
Bound lover of Stella/Reultan

Finn MacAngus
(Caorann):
Daughter to Stella and Aonghas

Eili MacNeil:
Lover of Conal

Sionnach MacNeil:
Eili's twin brother; Seth's best friend since childhood

Liath & Branndair:
Wolf-familiars of Conal and Seth

Faramach:
Raven-familiar of Finn

Gelert:
Grian's hunting dog

Gocaman & Suil:
Watchers at the otherworld watergates

Orach, Braon, Carraig, Sorcha, Fearna, Oscarach, Diorras, Sgarrag, Fraoch, Sulaire (cook), Grian (healer):
Fighters of Seth's clann

Cluaran MacSeumas:
Kate's Captain; Iolaire's foster father

Gealach, Alainn MacAleister:
Two junior captains of Kate's clan

Glanadair:
Clann Captain of Faragaig

Leoghar:
Glanadair's lieutenant

Nils Laszlo:
Full-mortal Captain of Kate's clann

Cuthag, Gealach, Darach, Raib MacRothe:
Fighters of Kate's clann

Langfank:
A Lammyr

Lauren Rooney:
Hannah's Other Cousin

Sheena & Martin Rooney, Aileen Falconer, Shania & Darryl:
Hannah's Other Family

Miss Emmeline Snow:
A kindly stranger

The Wolf of Kilrevin:
Not a very nice man

 

You who are given to me to time were given

Before through time I stretched my hand to catch

Yours in the flying race.

—Edwin Muir, “Love in Time's Despite”

On desperate ground, fight.

—Sun Tzu,
The Art of War

A plague on both your houses.

—Shakespeare,
Romeo and Juliet

 

Prologue

He'd never slept well in the city. It was not the noise that kept him wakeful, the distant wail of a car alarm or the clatter and shriek of drunken students below the window. It was the light, the humming glow of streetlamps or the sudden fleeting glare of headlights across the thin curtains. Carraig flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the ashtray and flung his arm across his eyes, but the low-level orange glare leaked in no matter what he did.

I'll go back north,
he thought.
Tomorrow.

North is darker.

Streetlights and the city had to be better than the alternative, didn't they? Sometimes he wondered. Sometimes he wondered if no life might be better than half a life. Three years out of his hundreds, he'd spent this side of the Veil, and he knew he hadn't been missing a damn thing. The cigarettes he could live without; it was just that they passed the time.

Carraig lit another.

Tomorrow he had work to do, a minor rewiring job in that nursing home just out of the city. And that was another positive, wasn't it? He liked electricity; it had always felt to him like a kind of odd telepathy. He liked to sense it, feel the thrum of it as he worked with it. He'd taken to it straight away and learned it fast, fascinated by its invisible beauty and strength and the danger that lay in it. Predictable danger, if you knew it, but never to be toyed with, because treated with disrespect it became capricious. On the Veil's other side he'd always thought Murlainn's turbines and generators a frivolity. Now, if they ever returned—and yearning churned inside him at the thought—now, he'd happily take over the maintenance.

He needed to spend less time pining for home. Swinging his legs off the narrow hired bed, he walked to the window and pulled aside the thin curtain, then yanked on the sash frame. It stuck fast when the gap was no more than an inch wide.

Swearing under his breath, Carraig retrieved his dagger from his overnight bag, and prised out the rusty nail that restricted the window. He tossed it out onto the street and hoisted the window wide, letting icy air flood the room.

The smell of the October frost was tainted with beer and vomit. Leaning out, he gazed down at the kid throwing up in the hotel doorway. A shout, and the hotel owner was barging out to shove the youth away into the road, where a passing car braked and swerved and shrilled its horn. It narrowly missed Carraig's own car, parked below, feathers of thick frost settling on its roof.

North,
he thought. North wasn't his true home but it felt closer to it. He missed his clann. He missed his Captain and he missed the boy he no longer referred to, even in his head, as
Bloodstone.
Because those days and hopes were gone and there was no point. Rory MacSeth was all the boy was; that and
Laochan,
though young champion he would never now have a chance to be.

Carraig's spine tensed instinctively and he lifted his gaze and frowned at the overground railway. A late train clattered across the arches, its grimy windows a long illuminated patchwork that faded, echoing, towards the central station. Shadows in this world were unreliable, but he could swear something had moved in the underpass, in the blackness of the central arch.

Carraig blew out a lungful of smoke and tossed his fag end to the street below. Its glowing tip shrivelled and died against the cold pavement. Going very still, Carraig leaned forward and reached out with his mind towards the darkness.

Nothing moved in the emptiness now, no hostile block scratched against his searching mind. How could he trust instincts that regularly lied to him in this alien place? It might have been rat, cat or homicidal enemy, but it was gone now. Spitting, he backed away from the window and shoved down the sash with an echoing clunk.

His Captain too was forced to skulk in this otherworld, and Carraig had no right to think himself worse off than Murlainn. He had no right to think he knew better than his Captain, or felt it more. Unless a wounded and bleeding soul took the edge off it, he thought sourly. More than three years Murlainn's soul had been slowly haemorrhaging, and Carraig could not help but wonder when it would be too late. Perhaps, for Murlainn, it already was, and that was why he had resigned himself to lifelong exile. Perhaps the man no longer cared. Perhaps his life was already reduced to nothing but the blood that throbbed in his veins.

Carraig shivered with pity. Sometimes he was glad he had no child, that there was no connection for a witch-queen to sever. Even though Murlainn was bound to another witch himself, there was nothing she could do about it, any more than the rest of them.

Still, Caorann's witchcraft might be negligible, but she had plenty of influence with Murlainn in other ways. Carraig grinned to himself. He liked Caorann. She knew how it felt to be on the sharp end of Murlainn's lousy moods. She wanted her lover safe, but she knew as well as the rest of them did that however safe the otherworld was for the clann, there was no safety for Murlainn, not with his soul bleeding and draining away.

If he spoke with the others, if they went together to Caorann, maybe she'd intercede. Maybe she'd talk sense into their Captain. The mere thought of it lightened Carraig's heart. Better to die fast in battle with the queen than rot slowly in exile, and surely Murlainn knew it in the depths of what was left of his soul.

Carraig stuffed his spare shirt and his iPod into his overnight bag, leaving only his wash kit and his car keys to grab in the morning. He found he was smiling. A half-decent night's sleep suddenly seemed a real possibility, and then one last job. And after that, a long drive north, to a sky with visible stars and to the sympathetic ear of his Captain's witch lover.

Caorann. We've had enough. Take us home
.

*   *   *

She lifted her head, creasing her eyes against the silver glare off the sea. For long moments she held her breath, her heart slowing and thudding. But the voice was no more than a scratch against her consciousness; something overheard or half-imagined. There was no-one close enough to call out to her; if there was, she'd be dead by now.

With one more furtive glance over her shoulder, Finn relaxed. The broad white beach was deserted, but for the gulls and the skittering crabs and a single eagle, high up above the crags. She'd very much have liked to plunge right into the summer sea, but it would have felt unfair, like stealing an entire world for herself. She wasn't supposed to be in this one anyway. She'd go back soon.

Soon.

Kicking off her shoes, she walked into the sun-spangled waves. She wriggled her toes into the yielding sand. Sometimes the time-slip cheered her; summer was long dead on the other side of the Veil, yet here it lingered. Why would she be in a hurry to return to winter? Especially with the bone-deep chill still lingering in her marrow. The chill, and the tugging summons that had called her here.