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<title>Spellbinder - Chapter 33</title>
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<h1>33</h1><p>It was snowing when they woke, huddled between Finn and Fennel. The temperature had plummeted. Icy crystals tinkled like bells in the thin branches of trees and hard frost carpeted the couch-grass.</p>
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<p>Out in the open, but for the constant wind, it was strangely silent. All the streams had frozen solid. Icicles spiked down where waterfalls had rushed. The ground was hard as rock under the horse's hooves.</p>
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<p>They followed the road south, with Rune riding behind Corriwen on a big sturdy warhorse.</p>
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<p>"Finest looking girl I've seen ever since I left Skiboreen," he'd said, making her blush.</p>
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<p>"Best looking girl in three worlds," Kerry whispered to Jack. "But don't tell her I said that."</p>
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<p>"I think she knows you think that," Jack said, nudging him in the ribs. "You can't hide it."</p>
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<p>Kerry went bright red. "You're kidding me!"</p>
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<p>"Of course I am," Jack grinned. "Got you good though, didn't I."</p>
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<p>Rune peered from under Corriwen's cape, his white whiskers gathering hoar frost as they travelled. Finn and Fennel took up the rear-guard on foot, and Jack was confident nothing would get past them. He was less confident about what lay ahead.</p>
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<p>The horses plodded on, chipping the ice with their great hooves, their breath freezing in the air.</p>
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<p>They rode twenty miles or more, and every now and again, Jack would notice a movement on the far flanks. Men on horses were paralleling their journey, but approaching no closer than a mile.</p>
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<p>Jack knew the clash would come. He began to scan the land ahead, working out where Dermott's massed men would hide for an ambush.</p>
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<p>Finally they came down off the high land, saddle-sore and cold, and entered the rolling foothills of Mid-Eirinn.</p>
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<p>The road drove straight for some distance then it forked right and left.</p>
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<p>"Which way to Tara?" Kerry asked. "Shouldn't there be a signpost?"</p>
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<p>Jack was grateful to get out of the saddle. His legs and hands were frozen and numb. Corriwen took them in hers and rubbed heat back into them. Connor looked like a frosted snowman, but his eyes were bright and clear.</p>
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<p>Jack took the harp from Brand's bag. It gleamed in the frost-light as Corriwen plucked the strings.</p>
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<p>It whispered its song to Jack.</p>
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<p class="centered"><em>Choices three, but take the low</em></p>
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<p class="centered"><em>Travellers have far to go</em></p>
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<p class="centered"><em>Find the way that goes between</em></p>
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<p class="centered"><em>Travel on a road unseen.</em></p>
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<p class="centered"><em>Now's the time for wand'ring band.</em></p>
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<p class="centered"><em>To Voyage on in Shadowland.</em></p>
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<p class="centered"><em>Travel where the white road wends</em></p>
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<p class="centered"><em>Travail too at journey's end.</em></p>
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<p class="centered"><em>Brave of heart and steel of will</em></p>
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<p class="centered"><em>Ever on to Tara Hill.</em></p>
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<p>"It's mentioned Shadowland twice."</p>
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<p>"What's it mean?" Connor asked.</p>
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<p>"It's the way we went with the troupe."</p>
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<p> "It comes out at Wolfen Castle," Kerry said. "We'd be walking right into a trap."</p>
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<p>"What about the white road?" Corriwen asked. She gestured the land all around them, snow-drifted and frosted. "It's all white."</p>
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<p>"I could toss a coin," Rune said.</p>
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<p>Jack laughed. "You disappeared the last time."</p>
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<p>"I'll try it anyway," Rune said, taking no offence. He held up the gold coin. On one face, the five stars of the Corona twinkled in the frosty light. On the other, a golden harp, exactly like the one safe in Brand's bag.</p>
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<p>"Stars we go left," Rune said. "Harp we go right."</p>
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<p>Jack shrugged. Rune tossed the coin. It sang as it whirred up.</p>
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<p>A voice boomed out from behind them, so unexpectedly that Jack almost fell off the horse.</p>
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<p>"Rune, you whiskery old son of a toad!"</p>
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<p>Brand stood on the wagon buckboard, beside big Score Four-arm who held the reins. Behind them, the small caravan of wagons creaked along the road. Fennel and Finn exchanged glances, as if trying to work out how the newcomers could have sneaked up on them. Jack remembered how Brand's wandering <em>Vaga</em>band could appear from nowhere.</p>
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<p>"Cousin Brand," Rune cried. He slid off the saddle and lowered himself to the ground. Brand nimbly jumped from the wagon and they came together in a bear-hug in the middle of the road then linked arms and did a quirky little jig.</p>
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<p>"You're a long way out of Skiboreen," Brand said.</p>
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<p>"And an even longer way back, to be sure."</p>
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<p>Brand looked about him, taking in the giants and the tall woman on the horse.</p>
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<p>"A motley crew," he observed. "As motley as my bunch of foundlings. Now is that the Lady Hedda I see?"</p>
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<p>"The very same. And here on a matter of serious business."</p>
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<p>"Well then, if it's serious, then I suppose we might join you. We're a bit jaded with fun and frolic."</p>
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<p>Score Four-arm sauntered up, Tig and Tag somersaulting together behind, and used all his digits to shake hands. "Good to see you hale and hearty," he told Jack. He turned to Connor. "And who's this fine upstanding young chief? Surely not the raggedy scoundrel we saved from Wolfen Castle? Man, you could dance a jig and an eightsome reel all night now."</p>
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<p>"Yeah," Kerry said. "But can he jive?"</p>
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<p>"We should get moving," Jack said. He turned to the crossroads and something glittered as it dropped past his eyes.</p>
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<p>Rune's coin tinkled as it hit the ground, rolled towards the edge of the road….and kept rolling between the two forks.</p>
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<p>And as it rolled, the air around it rippled like water, then it turned almost opaque, and a new road appeared where before had only been frosted tussock grass. White mist swirled on either side.</p>
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<p>"A choice of three," Jack said. "The way that goes <em>between.</em>"</p>
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<p>Corriwen touched him on the shoulder, a gesture he found strangely warming.</p>
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<p>"Well, come on, lagabouts," Brand piped up. "The way won't be open forever, you know."</p>
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<p>Together, the giants walking behind and Hedda silent on her horse, they followed the wagons into the misty way.</p>
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<p>They stayed close as the gauzy tendrils wove around them.</p>
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<p>"Don't go off the road," Kerry told Corriwen and Connor. "There's weird things in here."</p>
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<p>"It's been nothing but weird since I first met Corriwen," Connor said, grinning. "How much weirder can it get?"</p>
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<p>He turned and a face swam out of the mist to fix him with wide golden eyes, and he almost fell off his horse.</p>
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<p class='break'>* * *</p>
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<p>Jack heard their voices that had the frail texture of the mist itself. Shapes swirled, white on white, and swam close, as ethereal and weightless as fog, but strangely powerful in the way their pleas tugged at them.</p>
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<p>Once or twice he had to take Connor's reins to prevent him from veering off.</p>
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<p>"If you go off the road, you'll never find your way back again," he said. Kerry had hitched his reins to Corriwen's pommel horn and trailed behind her. He had his eyes tightly shut and his fingers in his ears.</p>
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<p>Jack looked behind him and saw Hedda sitting straight in the saddle. If she saw or heard anything, she gave no sign.</p>
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<p>Behind her Finn and Fennel strode together, holding hands. They only had eyes for each other.</p>
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<p>And behind them the mist closed, offering no way back. They kept moving, hour upon hour, with only those strange whispering voices and the horses' slow hooves breaking the silence.</p>
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<p class='break'>* * *</p>
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<p>Fainn was still as a spider, hunched over the long table, staring at its glazed surface.</p>
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<p>Ice covered most of the map of Eirinn, a thin frosting he had conjured despite the heat in the smoky room. His hands wove intricate designs in the air and he muttered continuously in his strange tongue.</p>
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<p>Some time later, he watched as a thin vapour began to pool in the hollow of the mountains close to where two roads forked. It thickened, crawling into depressions and dells, spreading out until it hid a wide margin from the road to mid-Eirinn.</p>
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<p>He stared a long time, wondering what it was he had conjured here. His spells and incantations had cast a net that would hopefully sniff the fugitives out. But under the thick vapour all was hidden.</p>
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<p><em>Yet</em>….something tugged at his memory.</p>
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<p>The old people, from a time before Fainn himself, had spoken of the <em>ley</em>-ways. The hidden roads between places. Old tales maybe, but, he remembered how people could vanish into the mist where time and distance held no sway, and emerge far away.</p>
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<p>He held his hands over the vapour pools muttering again.</p>
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<p>An image came to him. A golden harp, shrouded in gossamer. It sang faintly, so faint it was like a whisper of grass on a summer day.</p>
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<p>And Fainn knew the harp was coming back.</p>
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<p>With it, would be the boy with the strange stone, whose power pulled at Fainn like a hook in his dark heart.</p>
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<p>He broke his spell and the ice vanished. The misty vapour evaporated and once again, the map of Eirinn was clearly carved on the expanse of old oak.</p>
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<p>He turned and hurried up the spiral stairway to the chamber.</p>
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<p>Dermott was brooding, fingers tapping the hilt of his sword.</p>
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<p>"We have them, Lord Dermott," Fainn said.</p>
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<p>"They are coming to us. And they bring the harp."</p>
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<p class='break'>* * *</p>
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<p>It was almost dark when they emerged into clear air. Jack shivered, but Kerry seemed happier to be out of the misty way.</p>
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<p>Jack looked about them. Ahead some tree-covered hills rose, rolling away into the distance.</p>
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<p>"This isn't where we came out last time," Jack said.</p>
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<p>Low hills formed the edges of a wide basin through which a frozen river cut like a winding road. None of them looked high enough, or impressive enough to be Tara Hill.</p>
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<p>Brand pulled the wagons into a circle and soon they had a fire blazing in the centre. They gathered round and Brand introduced Hedda and the two giants to Thin Doolan and Natterjack.</p>
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<p>"Do you know where we are?" Jack asked.</p>
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<p>"Where the road takes us," Brand said, "is always the right place."</p>
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<p>The heartstone pulsed very gently and Jack pressed it against his chest.</p>
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<p>Hedda caught the motion and raised her eyebrows in question.</p>
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<p>"Something," Jack said. "Something knows we're here."</p>
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<p>"Fainn," she said. "Dermott will ride tonight."</p>
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<p>She cupped a hand on Jack's cheek. Despite her ferocity, it was a gentle, motherly touch.</p>
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<p>"Rest a while, Cullian's son. We have enough time to prepare. Tonight, eat well, sleep sound. Tomorrow will decide for Eirinn."</p>
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<p> </p>
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