The Firehills by Steve Alten Read Free Book Online Page A

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.

chapter 3

    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