Shadowmagic - Sons of Macha by John Lenahan Read Free Book Online Page A

learn this stuff. Without all of her flipping and twirling she would have been very unhappy. And when Essa is unhappy – everyone is unhappy.
    Gerard, Essa’s father, forbade her to go into the Oracle’s house. She wasn’t about to let her father boss her around like that but when Gerard threatened to withdraw all of Castle Duir’s wine shipments – Oisin took Essa off active duty. She was furious and Dad had to remind her that he was, like, a king. She stormed off kicking anything, and anyone, in her path. In short, Essa was to be avoided, but I was doing that already.
    Even though our practice was deadly serious it was also fun. Dad joined us and so did Mom and Aunt Nieve. The ladies had a hard time casting spells without all of that dramatic wicked-witch arm waving. Dad, who already had, like, a hundred years’ worth of Dahy tutelage, just seemed to do whatever the master told him to do without any effort at all. One time I pushed Dad over, just to see if Dahy would shoot the king with his crossbow. He didn’t, he shot me.
    Brendan trained with us but he wasn’t going either. He wanted to come, just like he wanted to ask the yew trees if he could use Spideog’s bow, but he had a responsibility to his daughter Ruby not to put himself in harm’s way.
    â€˜And actually,’ he confided to me one day at lunch, ‘I’m in no hurry to see that Oracle guy again. If I recall he kicked our butts good with just a flick of the wrist.’
    I pointed that out to Dahy but he said he had a plan. So by day we continued to practise our non-feather-disturbing fighting techniques and by night I rubbed healing salve into the black and blue bruises on my legs that Dahy gave me with his crossbow.

    The banging on my bedroom door would have busted any Real World door off its hinges but Duir doors are made of hardy stuff.
    â€˜Conor,’ the voice on the other side bellowed, ‘I want to talk to you.’ I knew who it was right away – everyone in the castle was talking about it. New wine is news around here but when it’s delivered by the master winemaker himself – that’s big news.
    I opened the door and there stood the largest of all of the larger-than-life characters in Tir na Nog. Gerard stepped into the doorway, blocking out all of the light beyond. In his hand he held a metal bucket with a piece of cloth over the top – it didn’t look like a weapon but I kept my eye on it.
    He strode further into the room, forcing me to back up, and said, ‘If I didn’t know better I would think that you have been hiding from me.’
    â€˜I … maybe I have been,’ I confessed.
    â€˜Why would you do that?’
    â€˜I guess you haven’t spoken to Essa yet?’
    Gerard frowned and placed his bucket on the floor. ‘Oh, I have spoken to my daughter all right. She is mighty mad at you and this – what did she call her – “fishy floozy” of yours.’
    â€˜That’s why I’ve been avoiding you,’ I said.
    â€˜Let me get this straight, you think that because my daughter is angry with you, that I will be too.’
    â€˜Aren’t you?’
    He came at me with his arms outstretched. I had a brief flashback of the bear attack in the Pookalands. He wrapped his arms around me and gave me one of his laughing hugs that lifted me off the ground. ‘Oh my boy,’ he said, and I relaxed even though my ribs were threatening to crack. ‘If Essa is mad at you, then you already have more enemies than any one man can stand.’ He let go of me and I tested my diaphragm to see if I could still breathe. ‘Good gods and monsters, if I had to be angry at everyone that my
little darling
was irritated with – I would not have any friends or customers at all.’
    â€˜So you’re not here to give me the “don’t you dare hurt my daughter” speech?’
    Gerard laughed, picked up his