The Snowmelt River Read online

  First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

  Jo Fletcher Books

  an imprint of Quercus

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2012 Frank P. Ryan

  The moral right of Frank P. Ryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  eBook ISBN 978 1 78087 739 6

  Print ISBN 978 1 78087 738 9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Frank P. Ryan is a multiple-bestselling author, in the UK and US. His other fiction includes the thrillers Goodbye Baby Blue and Tiger Tiger. His books have been translated into more than ten different languages. Born in Ireland, he now lives in England.

  Visit him at www.frankpryan.com

  For William

  It is rumoured from sources older than history that once these were happy lands, fruitful and bounteous as any heart might desire. The Arinn were the masters then, a race of magicians of unparalleled knowledge – but that very knowledge rather than wisdom was their undoing. In their arrogance, they wrought a malengin wondrous beyond understanding, yet so perilous that even today few other than the very wise or the very foolish dare utter its name. In such folly lay the seeds of our tormented world …

  Ussha De Danaan: last High Architect of Ossierel

  Contents

  PART I:

  The Enchantment

  The Kiss

  The Swans

  The Blooming

  The Sigil

  Friends

  Old Power

  On the Roof of the World

  Fear of Loss

  The Grave of Feimhin

  The Spear of Lug

  The Three Sisters

  Through Feimhin’s Gate

  PART II:

  The First Power

  The Stone Circle

  Granny Dew

  Strange Comforting

  A Village, Ice-Bound

  Mage Lord

  A Council of Life and Death

  A Sense of Grief

  The First Power

  The Song of the River

  The Dragon’s Teeth

  Captured

  The Shee

  Mo’s Secret

  The Sister Child

  Shikarr’s Hunger

  A Baited Trap

  Isscan

  The Mage of Dreams

  Saving Mo

  The Flight from Isscan

  PART III:

  Ossierel

  Mysteries and Silences

  The Ark of the Arinn

  The Vale of Tazan

  Brooding Heads

  Under Attack

  A Lament for the Fir Bolg

  Ossierel

  A Heart of Iron

  The Dark Queen

  The Fall of Ossierel

  The Legun Incarnate

  The Blood Rage of a Kyra

  The Third Power

  Resurrection

  The Cost of Battle

  Communion

  On the Wings of Angels

  PART I

  The Enchantment

  The Kiss

  It was a beautiful Sunday morning, early and quiet, before most people were awake. A special day, so special the fifteen-year-old boy astride his stationary bicycle felt overwhelmed by it. Lately he had often dreamed about this day and his dreams always led him here, to the tree-shadowed lane outside the twin gates that led into the Doctor’s House. Alan Duval’s excitement centred on a mountain now out of sight but looming ominously in his imagination. Slievenamon was the name of the mountain. Beyond the small Irish town of Clonmel, over its streets and the decaying ramparts of its medieval walls, the mountain soared, shrouded in legend, two thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight feet above the horizon. And now on this special morning the mountain beckoned, casting an enchantment on the air like a thickening scent, intoxicating and heavy, so he couldn’t help but be drawn to it even though it chilled the blood in his veins.

  The left half of the gates was opening in the high ivy-covered wall. He listened attentively but heard none of the usual creaking. They had oiled the hinges last night, in readiness. He saw the front wheel of her bike roll through, then the flash of her auburn hair, like a warm red flame, and even as his heart began to leap, he saw the excitement in her eyes, the soft green of evening light on the meadow that sloped down onto the far side of the river.

  Kathleen Shaunessy lived in the Doctor’s House with her uncle, Fergal, and his housekeeper, Bridey. Nobody called her Kathleen except her uncle. Everybody else called her Kate.

  Alan held her bike while she closed the half gate. Fourteen years old – she wouldn’t be fifteen until 6 November – Kate wore blue jeans, tight-fitting over worn trainers, and her upper body was hidden under a thick white sweater. This early in the morning, even at the close of a particularly hot summer, it would be cold. Over one shoulder she carried a denim backpack, just as he carried one on his back: a change of underwear, toothbrush and toothpaste, sandwiches and fruit. All they needed for a brief adventure.

  ‘What did you tell Bridey?’

  ‘I left her a note. Sure, she won’t believe the half of it anyway!’

  She spoke with the soft singsong accent that had so bemused the American youth when he had first arrived in Clonmel, an accent that in Kate he had come to love. Kate was so excited by the mission she didn’t appear to notice his own shakiness. He knew she had crept out through the first-floor bathroom window and climbed down the fall pipe with its convenient bends, as she had many a time before, because if she had left by the door her dog, Darkie, would have barked Bridey awake. He had no need to make furtive arrangements back at the sawmill since his grandad, Padraig, knew all about it. Padraig had helped them plan it. But Alan had worried about it all the same, tossing and turning through the night, with his bedroom window open to the cool night air, fitfully sleepless, as his puffy face now testified, and struggling to come to terms with his own fears.

  He said, ‘Let’s check out the others. See if they’re ready!’

  Kate switched on her mobile, sending the text message:

  RedyRNot

  The answer flashed to her screen within moments, and with a shaking hand she held it out for Alan to see:

  WotDyuTnkRevoltinGrl

  Only Mark could have thought it through so quickly. Revolting had more than one meaning. It was typical of Mark’s sarcastic sense of humour.

  So it was really happening. The excitement no longer bearable, Alan did something he had never done before, something at once shocking and wonderful: he hugged Kate across the bikes. Then he kissed her on the lips, feeling lost and weightless with the ecstasy of the contact, the quickness of her surprise. He could not have moved a muscle again until Kate, with the same blossoming of friendship into love, kissed him back there in the shadowed lane, the bicycles interlocking like a promise between them.

  Now, his heart racing with the thrill of her resp
onse, he saw the flush invade her face, an expanding tide about the roots of her auburn curls and down into her throat above her sweater, with its monogram opening letter from the Book of Kells.

  Wordlessly, they wheeled the bikes around so they faced the town. The road was empty and they cycled side by side, Alan’s jittery legs moving around in their own automatic motion, to the crossroads, with the slaughterhouse on the corner and the memory of animals bellowing in the trucks as they trundled in through the gates and the river tributary soon turning red with their blood. They wheeled right around the corner, picking up speed as they crossed over the first of the old stone bridges and then slowing momentarily at the second bridge, with the steps leading down to the river. With every turn of the pedals, the Comeragh Mountains loomed closer, their patchwork of green and yellow fields studded with whitewashed farm cottages, and, below them, extending southwards and westwards, the forests that fed Padraig’s sawmill. They rode on into the sunrise in silence. All of a sudden, time was running away with them. And there was the scary feeling that it might never slow back to normal again.

  The Swans

  It had begun only a few months earlier, although now it seemed more like years. Alan had been fishing the River Suir upstream of some small islands opposite the big fork in the river. The morning was misty and cool, and the water meadow, which the locals called the Green, was overgrown, with grasses and rushes way higher than his knees. People said it was unusual. The plants were running wild that summer. The drier parts, up close to the riverbank, were dense with meadowsweet, floating over the ground in thick clouds, and filling his nostrils with its sweet scent. In his hands was the old bamboo three-piece he had borrowed from his grandfather, Padraig. He wasn’t expecting to get a bite. Just looking for some space away from the bustle of the sawmill – and away from Padraig’s intrusive fussing.

  He hadn’t got any closer to finding answers since arriving in Clonmel two months earlier. If anything the despair had relentlessly increased. It was there right now, as it was during every waking moment. Like the fire had gone out at the heart of him.

  He had done his best to get it together. But he had nothing in common with the other kids here. He’d enrolled at the local high school thinking maybe he could connect with them through sport. He had always been pretty good at games. But even the games they played here were very different from back home. There was no American football, no baseball, no basketball, nothing. Football here was Irish football, where, as far as he could make out, they just slugged the daylights out of each other. That or the hurling, which was even worse. He must have looked half crazy to the other kids at times, his thoughts going blank on him, just standing there in the playground or sitting at his desk, his eyes staring, his limbs suddenly weighted down, like he was suited with lead. He just couldn’t get his mind around the fact that Mom and Dad were gone, really gone, gone for good – period. How did you make sense out of something that couldn’t possibly make any sense? With their loss came a great anger. He wanted to know why they had died. There had to be a reason – somebody who was responsible. He must have drifted into another of his blank spells, his eyes wide open but seeing nothing, when, abruptly, he came to with a sense of danger. There was a homp-homp noise from somewhere nearby, something strange cutting through the dreamy morning. And whatever it was, it was heading his way.

  Then he saw the swans.

  He had noticed their nest, with three huge eggs in it, on one of the small reedy islands that dotted the shallows. Something, maybe the toss of his line, had made the birds panic. The homp-homp was the beating of their wings as they took off, still only half out of the water and rising into the air like two white avenging angels. He saw every detail highlighted as if in slow motion: the pounding wings, the prideful black knobs on the upraised orange bills, the eyes all-black. He could hear the power in those webbed feet as they battered the surface. For several moments, as they cleared the water just thirty feet from where he was standing, he was overwhelmed by a sense of paralysis. He did nothing at all to save himself. He just stood still, returning, stare for stare, the rage in those alien eyes.

  He felt a sudden blow, but from an altogether different direction to what he expected. He offered no resistance to being dragged to the ground in a confusion of bodies, arms and legs, hearing the splintering into pieces of the fishing rod, only distantly aware that he had ended up on his back with somebody else on top of him.

  ‘Holy blessed mother – are you out of your mind?’

  A voice, hot in his ear. A girl’s voice!

  He glimpsed a face, pallid as goat’s cheese in striking contrast to the furnace of auburn hair. Immediately above them the swans clattered over their ground-hugging figures. His ears were full of a low throaty hissing. And then they were gone.

  Alan just lay there for a while, the stuffing knocked out of him.

  She spoke again. ‘Did you hear the sound of them hissing?’

  He swallowed.

  She added, ‘They’re supposed to be mute!’

  His neck felt stiff. He had to turn his head through a painful ninety degrees to look at his saviour, who was now sitting up beside him. He sat up himself, seeing they were both covered by the creamy petals of meadowsweet.

  All of a sudden she laughed, staring after the swans, which were sweeping low over the gentle rise of the Green, clearing by inches the hedge at the top, and continuing the slow ascent until they dwindled to specks against the mountains.

  ‘I … I guess it was my fault. My fishing must have spooked them.’

  But she wasn’t even listening to him. He heard her whisper, as if to herself, ‘Sure, it’s a sign.’

  ‘A sign of what?’

  ‘Like maybe they sensed something different about you.’

  He didn’t know what to say to that.

  Climbing to his shaky feet, he must have looked even more awkward and gangly than usual. Alan had topped six feet on his fifteenth birthday, two weeks earlier. He kind of hoped he would stop growing soon so he wouldn’t end up having to bend his neck to get through doors like his beanpole grandfather. He thought about helping her up but he wasn’t sure she’d like it. Instead he extended his hand to shake hers.

  ‘Hi! I’m Alan.’

  She slapped his hand away instead of shaking it. She hopped to her feet with a grin and said, ‘Kate Shaunessy!’

  What had he done that was funny? There was an awkward silence. He could see in her eyes that she was weighing him up.

  Man! He was useless at dealing with girls. And that made him feel even more awkward than ever. And now he was looking at her, very likely staring, and it was making her blush a bright scarlet. She whistled to a small black and white sheepdog, which came bounding up. She plucked at its coat, brushing it free of grass stalks and petals, like she was getting ready to leave.

  He said, ‘Thanks!’

  He saw her eyes flash, like she had made up her mind about something. ‘I’ve seen you out here before. Pretending to be fishing.’

  ‘I never noticed you.’

  ‘Why would you notice me? I’ve been watching you, moping around, feeling sorry for yourself.’

  ‘I – I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself.’

  ‘I already knew who you are. I know you’re an orphan.’

  He shook his head, slowly, not knowing what to say.

  Then he saw how she was trembling. She had been freaked out too. She blurted out, ‘Oh, you needn’t get embarrassed. I’m an orphan too.’

  He stared at her for a long moment, wordless. Then he began to pick up the broken pieces of his grandad’s rod, making the best he could of the tangle of line, so he could hold the bundle together in his right hand.

  She walked about a dozen paces but then she stopped and patted the dog. He had the feeling she was waiting for him.

  Alan caught up with Kate and her dog. He was thinking about what she had just told him: I’m an orphan too. The way she had said it, kind of defiantly. It made him hope t
hat somehow you really did come to terms with the bad things, even if they never made any sense.

  She said, ‘I’m taking Darkie home. You can come with me, if you want. I’d like to show you something.’

  ‘Show me what?’

  ‘Are you interested in herbs?’

  ‘I’ve never thought much about them.’

  ‘Hmph!’

  The mist had melted away from the morning and he hadn’t even noticed it going. It felt like maybe a little of it had invaded his senses. His mind was groggy and his limbs felt numb, so he hardly registered the grassy bank under his feet as they passed by the island with the swans’ eggs.

  ‘Well I’m very interested. I’ve been learning about them. Teaching myself, really. With some help from Fergal.’

  They abandoned the Green to enter the beaten dirt track that ran southwards along the riverbank.

  ‘Fergal?’

  ‘Fergal’s my uncle. But he’s a zoologist and not a botanist.’

  They continued to chat and to stroll, following the dirt track, limited on their left by the slow-flowing River Suir and to their right by the hoary limestone wall that separated the river from the Presentation Convent School.

  ‘Here, Darkie!’

  Kate cracked open the right half of the gates, ushering the dog through, and then she waited for Alan to follow after it into a big, overgrown garden. They were within sight of a very strange-looking house.

  A woman paused in emerging from a stonewall outbuilding, to take stock of them. Alan guessed that she must be the housekeeper for Kate’s uncle, Fergal. She was about mid-sixties, stocky and aproned, with thick grey hair held back in a bun. Under one brawny arm she carried an enamel basin filled with newly washed bedding.

  Kate said, ‘Oh, Bridey – this is Alan.’

  ‘Gor! I know who he is! Don’t I see for meself Geraldine O’Brien looking back at me!’

  Alan caught Kate’s whispered, ‘Sorry!’ Geraldine O’Brien was his mother’s maiden name. Dad had called her Gee.

  ‘You knew Mom?’

  He didn’t know if his question embarrassed Bridey, or if she heard it at all. She was suddenly caught up with shaking her fist into the sky. ‘Them blessed yokes, with their perpetual thundering!’