Sons of Macha. John Lenahan

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      Dad came into my room as I was practising my knife throwing. He gingerly pulled the dagger from the wall and inspected the woodwork. ‘Don’t do that.’

      ‘Mom and Aein told me that you used to do it.’

      ‘Yes and I got in trouble with my father for it too. I’ll get you a dart board or something. Just go easy on the walls. It probably took an elf fifty years to carve this little section.’

      ‘OK,’ I said, ‘sorry.’

      Dad laid the knife across his palm, feeling its balance. ‘You’re not using one of Dahy’s gold-tipped specials?’

      ‘No, it’s too easy. Also I don’t like seeing the way the knife swerves in the air. It … it reminds me of how Spideog died.’

      ‘Oh, of course,’ he said, handing me back the knife, ‘I was sorry to hear about that. You really liked him, didn’t you?’

      ‘Yeah, I did. You didn’t though, did you?’

      ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say I didn’t like Spideog, it was just … well, now that I think about it, I really didn’t know him very well. You have to realise that I was Dahy’s student from a young age so I just took my master’s side. I never really knew what those two guys were feuding over until you told me. It makes sense now. Dad never talked about my mother much. Most of the things I know about her are from what Dahy told me.’

      ‘Don’t you remember Macha at all?’

      ‘Oh, I have a memory of smiling eyes, but maybe it’s just a false memory that my child mind conjured up while looking at her portrait.’

      ‘Is there a picture of her in the castle?’

      ‘Sure – in the north wing.’

      ‘Can we go see it?’

      ‘Now?’

      ‘Why not?’

      We walked through the castle together. Jeez, I thought the bowing and scraping was bad with me but for Dad it was just short of grovelling. He didn’t try to discourage it. It was the way I was dealing with it too. You just can’t spend all day saying ‘Stop that.’

      Even though Dad looked like my fraternal twin he was starting to regain the grown-up manner that I remembered. When he first regained his youth by drinking Tuan’s dragon blood he acted exactly as he looked – like a teenager. He still drags Mom giggling into private corners of the castle but he doesn’t do it all the time and he has stopped challenging me to wrestling matches.

      ‘So how’s the kinging going?’ I asked as we walked.

      ‘To be honest, it’s a lot of paperwork,’ he said. ‘All of the kingdoms are kicking up a fuss about the volatility in Duir and especially how unreliable the gold stipends have been. Mom’s been a huge help. She has been holding them off while I was … resting – but now everybody is looking for stability. I’d like a little stability myself but I think pretty soon my brother is going to do some serious destabilising.’

      ‘He told me he wants the throne.’

      ‘Not surprising. Once a guy like Cialtie gets a taste of power – it’s hard to let it go.’

      ‘I don’t think it’s that,’ I said. ‘I mean it’s not just that. He told me that if he became king he would be safe.’

      ‘I wonder where he got that idea.’

      ‘Ona’s book.’

      That stopped Dad in his tracks. ‘What book?’

      ‘Cialtie showed me a book that he found in Ona’s bedroom the day he killed her.’

      ‘He told you that?’

      ‘Yeah, but he wasn’t bragging. He really believes that he can do nothing except what she wrote in that book.’

      Dad started walking again. ‘And she wrote that he would be safe if he was king?’ When he spoke it was more like it was to himself than me. ‘If he had just told me that, maybe I would have renounced the throne … but I did renounce the throne. He had the throne. Why did he insist on trying to blow things up?’

      ‘He told me that he wanted to free The Land of Ona’s prophetic chains.’

      Dad snorted with derision. ‘Freeing The Land by destroying it – typical Cialtie.’

      We rounded a corner and entered the north wing’s portrait gallery. Pictures lined the walls stretching into what seemed like infinity. That’s the funky thing about living in a huge castle. You think you have explored every nook and cranny and then you come across an amazing place you have never seen before.

      ‘Wow,’ I said, ‘Who are all these people?’

      ‘These are portraits of all of the major and minor rune holders in The Land, and all holders of a yew wand.’ Dad pointed far into the distance. ‘Your grandmother is over here with СКАЧАТЬ