Spoils of Vanity

Spoils of Vanity

* * Chapter 1 * *

The sea swept the shore, low breakers sparkling in the sun. A brisk wind drove sharp sand through the air and carried the grinding rumble of rocks being tugged up and down the beach beneath the waves. White streaks of clouds seamed the sky, and long shadows marched swiftly across the land below. Four figures hiked along a path through the dunes, three people and a dog, walking towards a cliff rising from the sea ahead and the sea stacks beyond it.

Eddie Carmichael squinted at the rocks ahead, seeing nothing unusual beyond the wheeling gulls. Though the summer sun shone brightly, the wind off the Atlantic was cool. The stinging sand made him glad of his jacket, but he felt as though his legs were going to crumple beneath him. Ahead of him Deirdre Fitzsimon, her uncle and his gigantic wolfhound trekked easily up and down the dune paths, and Eddie wished he had found a little more time somewhere to get some exercise.

Nothing he had seen at Hogwarts had suggested Deirdre had been anything but a studious Ravenclaw with an appetite for the past, similar to himself. He had known she had grown up with her uncle after she lost her parents, but she had never mentioned her uncle had a love of wild things and the land on a par with Hagrid's. When Eddie had agreed to come spend the holidays at her home in the west of Ireland he had certainly not envisioned a whistle stop tour of everywhere the Sidhe had killed in anger for the past five thousand years. He had to admit it was fascinating, to see the ancient sites of what later people had called the fae folk, and he did not regret a moment spent with Deirdre, but every night he had to treat the cramps in his legs before he could sleep. Then the next morning they would rise and trip out to whatever site next struck Martin Macgowan as 'the place they had to see.'

Martins cottage stood in the midst of fields criss-crossed with low dry stone walls and filled with rocks. He had heard Deirdre asking her uncle about the stone harvest and he was not quiet sure whether or not she was joking. In fact he could sometimes barely understand what she or her uncle was saying, his accent was so thick and she had started to revert to it as soon as she had come home.

The great wolfhound came bounding down the trail towards him and started butting its head against him. Startled out of his reverie Eddie looked up to see Deirdre standing on the next dune crest waving. He hurried up the shifting slope toward her. She grinned at him and he saw new freckles splashed across her nose.

"Tired?"

"Who me? Why would you think that?"

"Because I am, and I've been doing this since I was tiny."

"Oh alright, yes a bit, but nothing I can't manage."

"Grand, we'll stop for lunch at the top. Now, look there." She pointed out to sea towards the end of the badly worn headland as it arced out into the sea.

"Can you see that beyond the last pillar? See the surf?"

"Yes."

"You can see it better from up on the cliff. That's where we're going."

"We're going swimming?"

"No. What's making the waves break?"

"I don't know, I don't see any rocks."

"Exactly."

"Oh, I see."

* * Chapter 2 * *

Lunch was a picnic of soup from a flask, sandwiches, apples and tea from another flask eaten sitting on flat black boulders. The drop to the sea was easily a hundred feet, which Eddie didn't like to look at without a broomstick on hand, especially since he knew that a levitation charm would be next to useless this close to a fae-fort. He satisfied himself with counting the layers of dark rock that made up the jagged cliffs and estimating the height from those.

Martin and Deirdre both sipped their tea and stared out to sea then abruptly stood up and put the flasks and cups away. Martin scratched the wolfhound's head as he spoke.

"We should get on, we want to be out before the sun sets."

"Why? What happens when the sun sets?"

Deirdre grinned at Eddie's wary expression.

"It gets dark."

Martin smiled at him.

"I wouldn't want to be mucking around on a cliff-top after nightfall with candles, would you?"

Eddie nodded sheepishly.

"Of course. Sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about lad, you've had light at your command all your life, why would you think of it?" Scratching the dog behind the ears Martin set off along the headland. "Let's get on now."

The wind was stronger at the end of the headland, filling the air with the smell of salt and crashing of the waves on the rocks below. Below them, ahead of the cliff they could see the seas break and eddy around an unseen obstacle. There was no sign of a bridge, or that anything other than nature and time had passed this way before. Low grasses and lichens clung to the rocks but there was no sign of a trail or any animals.

"There's the true tell you're near a fae fort." Martin said looking around. "No creature will come within a half mile if they can help it. Only plants you'll find are wind carried as neither bee nor bird will come near."

"How come we can't feel anything?"

"You can't, you've no connection to the land here. We can, but it's a rare few who have that connection these days. Fewer still who have that gift and would make the journey." Pulling a small tin out of his pocket, Martin opened it and ran his finger inside. With deft movements he drew a broad concentric spiral across one side of Deirdres face, arcing around her eye, then he did the same to Eddie. Deirdre took the tin and marked her uncles face slightly differently to her own then closed the tin.

"Its ashes and other things, it marks you as ours so the fort doesn't kill you."

"It could kill me?"

"Not now you're marked, lad."

Deirdre took Eddies hand and led him to the edge of the cliff.

"Close your eyes. I need to take you across, but... its complicated. I can explain it later. Just be sure not to look?"

Eddie looked down at the surging waves below and a vivid image of himself being smeared against the unforgiving rocks below sprang unbidden into his mind.

"Sure."

"Open your eyes and you'll die."

"Okay. I think I'm properly motivated now."

"Good. Put your hand over your eyes."

Eddie did and then let Deirdre pull him sideways down the cliff, chanting something softly in what he thought was Irish.

"Okay, theres a bit of a step down here, then just follow me across."

Eddie stepped forward gingerly, feeling for a solid surface, until Deirdre tugged his hand and he tipped forward to stumble onto something about a foot below the cliff edge. Deirdre pulled ahead and he had to walk quickly to keep up, following her voice as he crossed what felt like a stone bridge. Eventually her felt her fingers slacken and she stopped speaking.

"Open your eyes."

Eddie did, finding himself standing on the top of a sea stack, and rising before him, walls of worn stone. Carved lintels framed a narrow doorway, carved with swirls and curlicues that made his eyes sting and he had to look away.

"This is the Fort of the Black Stack, once home to Rolaig Mac Firoig and his druid, who was a potent and devious man. Be careful of anything you touch here for that druid was merciless and quick with deadly magics."

Eddie nodded and followed Deirdre through the doorway while Martin walked around the outside of the walls. The ground was overgrown with grasses and the interior walls of the fort had collapsed. The foundation stones of the buildings within marked out what had once been a large and busy holding. Doorways, cooking pits and fire pits marked out the buildings that had once made up the activities of the fort but the walls and the furnishings had long decayed.

At the far side of the fort stood a trio stones, each three times the height of a man, deeply carved with spirals and as Eddie neared he felt the hair raise along his arms and the back of his neck. A deep hum he felt more than heard filled his head and he could feel streams of power flowing through the ground beneath his feet towards the stones. He felt a strong urge to step up to the standing stones, to taste the overwhelming power they channelled, but he resisted. The rational part of his mind told him he would be destroyed like a snowflake falling onto a bonfire.

Deirdre glanced at him.

"Don't stand to close."

"I won't."

"Here, watch this."

She rooted through her bag before pulling out paper packet and emptying it into her hand. She blew the grey dust on her palm towards the stones and it clung to the air, forming spirals to match the patterns in the rocks and glowing first red, then yellow then white as they swirled swiftly up into the air, rising beyond sight faster than Eddie could tilt his head to follow.

"Wow."

"This is why we cannot fly in. We can't use any magic near here. Only a Sidhe can use magic without these stones lashing out at them."

"How old are these?"

"Thousands and thousands of years. I know that this fort has been abandoned for about three thousand years, but when it was built I could not tell you."

"And it still functions, after all this time. That is incredible. I don't think there has ever been a human with the might and skill to enchant something this powerful that would last for so long. The Sidhe must have been one of the greatest magical races who ever lived."

Deirdre frowned staring up at the looming stones.

"They also rendered this entire coastline uninhabitable for anyone else, even thousands of years after they died. Nothing matters to them but themselves. We mean no more to them than flies matter to us. I couldn't tell you how many Muggles and wizards have died because of stones like these they left standing in the open."

Eddie could imagine unsuspecting Muggles being drawn to the powerful lure of the stones, and being incinerated like the handful of dust.

"What would have happened if I had not been marked with the ashes?"

"You would have been drawn to the stones as soon as you set foot off the cliff."

Eddie gulped while Deirdre continued.

"They are not actively evil, like the Dark creatures, just cruelly indifferent to such a low order of life as us. That's almost worse. At least an evil creature means to kill you. These? This is just careless."

She shivered.

"Lets get out of here. I don't like these places."