The Firehills (6 page)

“Anyway, go on,” continued Megan. “What happened?”

“We got chased by weirdos! We had to jump off the
cliff!”

Megan looked shocked.

“It’s OK. Sam turned us into gulls.”

Megan looked only slightly less horrified. “Who was
chasing you?” she demanded.

“Weirdos! Dressed in black, you know—Goths. There was
this girl, and she made the wind start blowing. Nearly blew us off the cliff—
”

“The wind?” snapped Amergin, suddenly alert. “You
say she made the wind blow?”

“That’s right,” agreed Sam. “She lifted her hand
up and the wind started blowing.”

“Describe these . . . these Goths.”

“Dressed all in black, pale faces, long hair, tall, and
thin—Goths. You know.” Charly shrugged.

“Ah,” sighed Amergin. “This is grievous.”

“Oh, dear,” whispered Charly to Sam, “He’s off
again.”

“What is it, Amergin?” asked Sam.

“There is one race, my friend,” began Amergin, “who
has the power to command the wind. The Hosts of the Air. They are known by some
as the Faery Folk, by others—”

“Fairies!” spluttered Sam, almost choking on a chip.

“These weren’t fairies. No wings, for a start.”

Amergin chose to ignore him. “They are an ancient race,
cold and cruel. The Sidhe they were once, in ancient Ireland, and before that,
the Tuatha de Danaan.”

“I know that name,” said Charly thoughtfully.
“You’ve mentioned them before.”

“Aye, child, for my path and theirs have crossed.”

Amergin fell silent, lost in thought.

“There’s a story coming,” Sam whispered to Charly.

“Get comfortable.” She kicked him under the table.

“Long ago,” began Amergin, “as I have told, I came
to the land you know as Ireland with my people, the Sons of Mil. And we saw
that the land was fair and desired it. But a race dwelled there before us—the
Children of the Goddess Dana, the Tuatha de Danaan.”

“So what did you do?” asked Charly.

“We took their land from them,” Amergin replied
simply. “We slew them and took their land from them. And those we did not
slay, we drove underground. Into the Hollow Hills.”

“Where’s that?” asked Sam.

“The Hollow Hills are . . .” Amergin trailed off.

“Here . . . and not here.”

“Right. That’s cleared that up.”

“Sam!” hissed Charly.

“The Hollow Hills,” continued the wizard, glaring at
Sam, “are a realm separate from ours, touching upon it in some places but in
others far removed. There are gates, doorways into the hills, but once a man
enters, he can never know where—or when—he will emerge.”

“So,” began Sam, “these fairies—the Sidhe—you
and your tribe took their land from them, right?”

Amergin nodded.

“And you killed most of them and drove the rest
underground somewhere?”

Amergin nodded again, looking unhappy.

“And you’re the last survivor of the Milesians, the
sons of Mil, yes?”

Another nod.

“So why are they chasing Charly and me? If they’ve got
an axe to grind with anyone, shouldn’t it be with you?”

“It may be,” replied the wizard thoughtfully, “that
they are trying to get to me through you.”

“Well,” said Charly, “could you arrange to have them
chase you next time?”

“I think,” replied Amergin, ‘”that we should all
stay very close together for a while.”

Their meal finished, they made their way back through the
crowded streets toward the town center. Charly felt insecure, even in the
presence of her mother and Amergin. The pavements seemed crammed with hostile
faces.

Meandering through the streets of the Old Town, peering
into the windows of old bookshops, they eventually spilled out onto the
seafront once more, with its amusement arcades and souvenir shops. Caught up in
the crowds, they walked on, under the foot of West Hill.

Above them loomed the ruins of the castle, where the
festival would be held. It seemed to cling precariously to the rock, jagged and
broken. Finally, they came to the newer part of town.

“I know,” said Megan, pointing across the road,
“let’s go to the pier.”

“I thought,” replied Amergin rather huffily, “that
you didn’t approve of such things.”

“It’s industrial archaeology,” said Megan, grinning,
“a triumph of Victorian architecture.”

They found a pedestrian crossing and shuffled with the
crowd across the busy seafront. The pier launched itself out to sea from a wide
plaza, ringed by stalls selling ice cream and seafood and dotted here and there
with jugglers. Passing through a narrow gate, they found themselves out over
the sea. The restless motion of the waves was visible through cracks in the old
planks beneath their feet. They strolled on, with the sea breeze in their
faces, past fortune-tellers and hot dog stands, past the old ballroom, to the
farthest end of the pier. Here they stopped and leaned against the railings in
a comfortable silence, gazing out to sea.

“I was thinking,” said Charly after a while.

“Blimey!” said Sam, and there was a brief struggle as
Charly attempted to throw him over the railing. Eventually, she continued. “I
was thinking, this is probably a bad place to be.”

“In what way?” asked her mother.

“Well, we’re right out here, in a kind of dead end. If
the . . . What were they called?”

“The Sidhe,” said a cold voice from behind her.
Simultaneously, Charly, Amergin, Sam, and Megan spun around. They found
themselves face-to-face with the Host of the Sidhe, with Lord Finnvarr at their
head. Strangely, though, it was Finnvarr who looked most surprised.

“You!” he cried, pointing at Amergin.

“My Lord Finnvarr,” replied the wizard, inclining his
head.

“But you should be dead!”

“It’s a long story,” replied Amergin.

The Lord of the Sidhe fell silent, but a mental argument
raged between his mind and those of his lieutenants.
You
said it was the boy!
he raged.

That is what we believed, my lord. He
has the power.
But the Bard, the destroyer of our
people. . . . You fools!

You pursue a child, while Amergin of
Mil yet walks the earth?

Take him!

But, my lord—

Take him!

Heavy boots thudded on the planking of the pier as two of
the Sidhe strode forward. Amergin raised his hands and began to make a gesture
of warding, but the air began to swirl around him. From his feet upward, he
began to fray, his shape losing definition and shredding away into the vortex
of air. Just before he vanished, he cried out,

“Sam! The Hollow Hills!” And then he was gone.

Back in the Aphrodite Guest House, Megan sat in one of the
old armchairs in the residents’ lounge, lost in her thoughts, her face pale.
Sam paced back and forth, unable to sit still, while Charly looked helplessly
from one to the other. Somewhere, she could hear a clatter as Mrs. P. bustled
around making tea. After a few minutes, she returned with a tray laden with
cups and a steaming teapot. Settling into one of the remaining chairs, she
looked at Megan and said, “So, my dear, what happened?”

Megan was silent for a moment. Then, “It was horrible.
He just . . . sort of came apart. And then the rest of them, the Sidhe, they
disappeared too. A little whirlwind, starting at their feet, and then they were
gone. And last of all, that girl—”

“I told you about her, Mum. I hate her!”

“Now, now, dear,” said Mrs. P. “Hate is a strong
word. You say”—she returned to Megan—“that he spoke before he
vanished?’

“The Hollow Hills,” said Sam, looking up from the
floor.

“The Hollow Hills?” Mrs. P. jumped to her feet.
“Come on, darlings, follow me. And bring your tea.”

With surprising speed, she led them up the stairs, past
the guest rooms, to the highest landing of the house. Here she selected a key
from the bunch that hung at her waist and opened the final door.

“Wow!” said Sam, following her into the room. Mrs.
P.’s private quarters were in the attic of the old house, and the room they
had entered—a kind of combined study and living room—had windows on three
sides. The farthest, in the gable end, overlooked the sea. Light slanted in
dusty columns and pooled on the floor—or what was visible of it.

“Sit yourselves down, dears!” called Mrs. P., bustling
over to the bookshelves. She returned with an armful of books and plonked
herself in a chair at one of the desks. Humming tunelessly, she leafed through
several of the volumes, then cried, “Aha! Here we go!” She began to
summarize the text in front of her. “The Sidhe—or Tuatha de
Danaan—described in
The Book of Leinster
as
‘gods and not gods’ . . . blah, blah . . .
sidhe
is apparently also the Gaelic word for the wind . . . blah . . . here
we go—

“‘The Host of the Air’ or ‘The Host of the Hollow
Hills,’

the inhabitants of the ‘Otherworld,’ who roam the
country four times a year, around the four great festivals: Samhain, Imbolc,
Beltane, and Lammas. Well, there you have it.” She looked at them over the
top of the book. “Beltane is—or was—May Day. That’s why they’re
around now.”

“So,” asked Charly, “what about these Hollow
Hills?”

“Well,” replied Mrs. P., “the Hollow Hills were once
thought to be barrows—you know, burial chambers?”

Sam and Charly nodded. They were very familiar with
barrows from their adventure the previous year in Dorset.

“But that word comes from the Old English word
beorh,
which makes no distinction between artificial
mounds and natural hills. So there seems to be some confusion. It was once
thought that tales of fairies taking people into the Hollow Hills referred to
barrows, which are obviously hollow, because they’re tombs, but this”—she
tapped the page—“suggests that the ancient accounts might have been
referring to actual hills—a kind of mystical Otherworld inside the hills of
Britain. There’s even a suggestion here that they might be bigger on the
inside than they are on the outside, if you see what I mean.”

“And what about the Sidhe?” asked Megan. “Is there
any more information about them? We know where they came from, but who are
they?”

“There are mentions of various kings of the Faery Folk,
or the Gentry, as they are sometimes known. Where are we? Yes, here—the most
powerful of the kings appears to be Finnbheara, or Finnvarr, of Cnoc Meadha in
County Galway. His bride is the Lady Una—”

“That’s her!” exclaimed Charly. “The girl in the
leather jacket. That’s her. I know it is!”

Mrs. P. looked over her book. “What makes you say that,
dear?”

Charly frowned. “I don’t know. I just . . . suddenly
knew, when you said her name.”

“Mmmmm . . . Anyway,” continued Mrs. P., “the Tuatha
de Danaan were defeated by the Milesians—that’s Amergin’s mob—and
largely disappeared. But then they begin to crop up in legend; the Faery Folk,
dwelling within hills from which music and feasting can be heard; traveling the land on horseback or in the form of whirlwinds.
Apparently, when country folk see leaves whirling in the road, they still bless
themselves, thinking that the Sidhe are passing by.”

“So,” sighed Megan, “it’s clear what they
want—revenge.”

“If, as you tell me, Amergin is the last survivor of the
Milesians, then yes,” agreed the old woman. “It seems likely.”

“I’m going to rescue him,” said Sam, suddenly.

“No, you’re not,” replied Megan, just as quickly.

“Why not?”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“But I defeated the Malifex! How dangerous can it be?”

“Oooh!” exclaimed Charly. “Hark at Action Man!”

“We’re talking about an entire race or what’s left
of them,” agreed Megan.

“So what do we do?” demanded Sam. “Sit here and hope
he gets out on his own?”

“But we don’t even know where they’ve taken him,”

said Megan. “He could be anywhere.” She looked close
to tears.

“The Hollow Hills!” exclaimed Sam. “Where else are
they going to take him? Mrs. P.?” He turned to the old woman. “Does it say
how to get in?”

“Sorry, dear?” Mrs. P. looked up from her book.

“How to get into the Hollow Hills? Does it tell you in
the book?”

Mrs. P. looked thoughtful. “There was something,” she
began and jumped up, returning to her bookshelves.

“Where was it? Ah, yes . . . here. William Lambarde.”
She held up an ancient, leather-bound book. “
A Perambulation
of Sussex,
published in 1578. I’ve always been intrigued by this. Where is it? Here we
go.” She cleared her throat and began to read aloud in strange, old-fashioned
English:

“He who woulde be a Walker Betweene Worlds, and consorte
with Fayries, must take hym to those hilles which men term Barowes, being
hollowe, and knocke thrice, and the hill shall open unto hym. To the Wyse,
these gaytes be signified by the elementes, being the Gates of Air, Fyre,
Yerth, and Water.”

There was silence.

Eventually, Sam said, “And that helps, does it?”

“It’s a start,” Mrs. P. replied with a sniff.

“What’s
yerth?
” asked
Charly.

“Earth, sweety,” explained Mrs. P.

“So we just find a likely spot and knock three times,
and they’ll let us in?” demanded Sam.

“Not just any spot,” said Megan patiently. “At one
of the Gates, which seem to be associated with the four elements—earth, fire,
water, and air. Anyway, you’re not going, and that’s that. I told your
parents I’d look after you this weekend. And I will.” She stood up. “Come
on. There’s no use moping around here. I’m sure Amergin will be fine.
He’s a powerful wizard.”

“I’ll go and start dinner,” said Mrs. P. Sam groaned
inwardly. “You’ll feel more positive with something tasty inside you.”