Spoils of Vanity

* *Chapter 5 * *

The main staircase of the keep was not a gracefully swept ornament like those in Hogwarts, but a tight winding stair built by someone who had put a great deal of thought into defending that same stair from intruders bent on violence. Trick steps made Eddie stumble twice on the way up. The light spilling in through the deeply sunk arrow slits showed more scrubbed granite, and two floors up they emerged onto a wide corridor with a heavy woollen carpet down the centre.

The walls were hung with more tapestries, iridescent metallic threads woven in strangely hypnotic patterns, which flowed and shimmered in the shafts of sunlight that diffused through the hall. Iron-studded oak doors alternated down the hall, and as they walked along, Eddie felt something, like an itch at the back of his mind.

"Dee, can you feel that?"

"What?"

"I don't know, sort of... like a buzz you can't hear?"

"Oh, that. Don't worry about it," she stopped at a door and turned the black metal doorknob "We're going in here."

Eddie felt his question had been flatly avoided. Following her through the door, and meaning to call her on the non-answer he'd gotten, he saw the room beyond and forgot his train of thought.

I can't say 'wow', he thought, I've been saying that far too much today. The room was wide and high ceilinged and filled with shelves, which were filled with bottles and jars, pots and bundles. Books, candles, pots, tongs, long spoons and knives were stacked on more shelves and on long wooden tables around a fireplace wide enough to roast two cattle end to end. A complicated iron spit arrangement held three cauldrons of different sizes over the stacked wood in the grate. The centre section of the roof, directly over the fireplace, was wooden where the rest was stone. At one side the chimney rose, at the other another tight spiral stair wound up above them. It was one of the largest magical laboratories Eddie had ever seen, and certainly the best appointed.

"Sweet Merlins Grace... Dee.... Is this all yours?"

"Yes." She was looking around with the critical expression of a cook coming back to their kitchen after a holiday, the expression of someone who can't see what needs fixing and tidying just yet, but knows there had to be something that needs their attention. "This is the library."

"Dry fusty books my eye, Dee!" Eddie tilted his head to read the titles on the books on the nearest shelves. Most he couldn't read, others he didn't recognise but the two he did were Taming the Storm by Maelfeas Tyranis and Principles of Etheric Energy by Tesla. He had heard of these as references in other texts, both in the context of harnessing and binding vast amounts of magic. He supposed texts like this would be the starting point for any attempt to create magical defences like the Standing Stones at the Fort of the Black Stack. Or, it suddenly occurred to him, if one were to try and dismantle them. "These... oh my god, these are the kind of things they keep in the restricted section at Hogwarts!"

He grinned and turned to Deirdre.

"We can just look through these?"

Deirdre nodded "Of course, this is my personal library for all intents and purposes."

He couldn't help himself, Eddie grabbed Deirdre in a bear hug, then dashed off to work around the shelves. These shelves dealt with tapping and binding magical energy. Those held books on summoning and banishment, over there; enchantment and the crafting of artefacts, here were descriptions of magical creatures and ways to combat them, methods of brewing, astronomy, transdimensionalism, oneiromancy, necromancy, and beyond that into specialist fields he had never heard of. He recognised only a small portion of the books, all new editions from the past century, or modern versions of old books. The rest were hand written or printed in what he guessed must be irish, or something even stranger again. This last type of book was almost universally large square tomes with elaborately sculpted covers, locked with intricate locks he would have said far beyond the skills of the people of the time, and filled with metal pages. It wasn't until he finally pulled down one with a face on the cover that he realised what he was looking at.

Coldly alien, and beautiful in its sleep, he looked at the face of a Sidhe, whether man or woman he could not tell. Setting the book down on one of the empty lecterns that stood beside each set of shelves he waved Dee over. Putting up her book she crossed to him.

"Is this a Sidhe?"

"Yes, that's what they look like."

"They are beautiful."

"Do not be fooled, this face in the metal is truer than the flesh. They are cold, and dangerous, and care nothing for humans."

"Tell me about them."

Deirdre chewed the inside of her cheek, her eyes closed as she thought.

"Right, I suppose the basics for the moment are that the Tuatha De Danann came to these fair shores long, long ago, and found two races dwelling here at the time, the monstrous Fomorians and the Fir Bolg, both races of giants. The Tuatha De Danann were, and are, mighty sorcerors, and artisans of incredible skill, and their first battles against the Fir Bolg, they won through their superior skills, but were defeated and subjugated by the Fomorians. After a long time in bondage to the Fomorians, a champion called Lugh Lamh Fada came of age, and he forged a mighty army to free the Tuatha De Danann. There was a battle at Moy Tura where the Tuatha De Danann destroyed the Fomorian's might and won unquestioned rule of Ireland.

"They reigned as kings for generations, but eventually another group, the Milesians came. Originally explorers, the first Milesians were killed by the suspicious kings of the Tuatha De Danann, and so an invasion fleet came to avenge them. Incredible magics were unleashed on both sides, but the Milesian wizards were equal to the De Danann and landed the fleet. They met in battle and the Tuatha De Danann were defeated. Unable to face another era under the dominion of outsiders, the Tuatha De Danann turned their mighty arts on themselves.

"They hid their homes and fortresses from any outsider, rendering themselves immortal and invisible to humans, even wizards, except where they will it otherwise. The price of this security has been their transformation from a haughty race close to men, to a cold and alien breed. Now they are the Sidhe, so divorced from human passions that they steal our children, leaving changelings in the cradle, so that they have someone to love them as they are no longer capable of it themselves."

"They are bitterly jealous of humans and how we take our affections for granted. This is why they have left the weapons they constructed to defend their homes active and dangerous centuries after anyone who may have borne a grudge against them has died. The standing stones draw innocents to them and incinerate them. Split stones crush those that stray inside. Siren stones call people out to sea, forcing them to swim until they drown from exhaustion. All these ancient wards still function because the Sidhe drove their roots deep into the earth, into the ley-lines that channel the energy of the land itself."

Deirdre's lip curled into a snarl as she continued.

"That spiteful, petty races forgotten weapons draw in fools and innocents and murder them, every year. And all these relics sit here because the Tuatha De Danann were too prideful to let an explorer go on his way in peace. There is a long standing blood debt to be settled with them."

She frowned and took a deep breath before continuing. Eddie reached out and took her hand and she squeezed it.

"We have served Eriu, the Queen of the Sidhe, forever, and now she will never be called to task for this, because there is no one left who knows, but you and me and my Uncle."

She looked around.

"This castle was built for their purposes, human servants to do the work they were too proud and mighty to do themselves. This is why I don't come here. My ancestors were heroes, and did mighty deeds in their day, but the ultimate benefactor of their blood and sweat was the cruel queen of the fae."

Eddie blinked and took a breath. He hadn't realised he had been holding it. Deirdre smiled weakly at him.

"Come on, lets to up onto the roof. I can show you the outlying stones. And I can get some air. After that story I need some."

"That's an incredible story."

"It looses a lot when I think that all the people who 'died in glorious battle for the queen' were relatives, and that the stones are costing peoples lives, innocent lives, to this day."

"It does make things more grim."

"I can't wait to get back to Hogwarts and away from her realms."

* * Chapter 6

The breeze across the battlements refreshed them after the still dry air inside. At each corner of the tower a polished stone was set with each of the surrounding Sidhe defenses marked. Deadly, implacable stones set along line radiating out from the coast. Walking around the walls, Eddie could just about spot the nearest one, standing on a hill in the distance. The deep grey seemed sinister even in the sunlight now that he knew of their history.

He saw Deirdre had stopped at the south wall and was staring towards some low mountains. He could see the tension in her stance from twenty feet away; her knuckles were white where they gripped her arms.

"Dee? Whats wrong?"

At the sound of his voice she started, and he saw her hands relax, but she did not look around as she spoke.

"Nothing. Nothings wrong. Let's go back inside."

Eddie stopped beside her. Cloud shadows drifted slowly across the fields that were spread out between the keep and the mountains, he thought she had been looking at a small gap in the distant hills but she caught his hand and led him back inside before he could be sure.

In the library afterwards Eddie thought he should feel more solemn about the heavy price paid to accumulate the treasures he saw before him, but all he could think of were the incredible opportunities. Half of the pursuit of knowledge was acquiring the sources, and with the material here there was little but time standing between either of them and being Archmages. A thought struck him and he grinned.

"Deirdre, what do you see here?"

"What? The library. Books not worth the price we paid for them."

"What if I told you I saw the secrets of the Sidhe? Surely we could use what's in these books to beat them at their own game?"

Deirdre looked thoughtful.

"I... I don't think anyone ever tried before."

"There must be schools of magic we've never even seen before hidden in these. We could learn the Sidhe arts and disenchant their slaying stones. There's a challenge worthy of any Ravenclaw - out-magic the fae themselves."

Deirdre pulled his hand to her. The look in her eyes startled him, and her voice when she spoke did nothing to calm him.

"Eddie, you said it in the hall downstairs' and you've said it again now. Before I agree I need to know you know what you're saying. Eddie, you agree to this, this is forever. This will probably be our lives work and there is every chance we would die young doing it. This is no second year duel in the corridors of Hogwarts, this is real, this is harsh reality, these are genuine soulless monsters you're talking about confronting. Eddie, you're sixteen, are you seriously offering to spend the rest of your life at my side fighting that stone-cold bitch? I swear to you, this may come down to knives and bloody murder at the end of it."

She took a deep breath and continued more quietly.

"You can back away from this Eddie, I won't think less of you. It's just that I couldn't.... I couldn't start this if you won't finish it with me."

The rest of Eddie's life reared up ahead of him. What had he wanted? What had he ever planned to do with it? Here was the chance to fight a good fight, with the girl that he loved by his side and all he had to do was defeat a race of inhuman sorcerers who's work stood millennia hence. He knew this should terrify him, but glancing around the room, all he saw was power beyond his wildest imaginings, and he knew that he would be equal to them. With the secrets held in the tomes here he would learn magics that would shatter the Sidhe fortresses, uproot their stones like so many rotten teeth, and drive those who made his love cry into the sea from whence they came. He blinked, then took both of her hands in his.

"Deirdre, I'll always be here. I'd put it more formally but I need to go back to Carmichael Keep first."

She nodded silently. Then sighed.

"I wish 'Love me' didn't come with the qualifier 'it may cost you your life'"

"Oh hush." He grinned at her. "Come on, we have exploring to do."

As the day faded into afternoon they worked their way through the rest of the keep, searching room after room to catalogue what was there. The pictures he saw, photographs and paintings, showed members of every generation of her family bearing a startling resemblance to his Deirdre. He remembered the sense of peace and belonging he had felt sitting before the stove in Martin's cottage, and he realised that what he had felt must be a poor shadow of the deep certainty of her roots and past that Deirdre had. He wondered if she found such certainty assuring or smothering but decided the asking could wait for another time.

Eventually their task was completed and they began to plan for the end of the summer. They need to find books they could use to build on what they would learn within the year at Hogwarts or what knew already. The entirely new fields could wait until they had more time, next summer maybe. A chest that opened to four different interiors from each of four locks was found in a storeroom and while Eddie cleared it out, Deirdre disappeared off into her mother's rooms to pick out some clothes and jewellery.

As Eddie pulled furs and quilts and tapestries from the chest and struggled to fold and store them, Deirdre came back laden with armfuls of dresses.

"I have to take these."

"Good Lord, Dee, that's a ton of clothes. We do just wear our robes most of the time."

"Yeah, but I'm fed up of those snooty pureblood cows looking at me like I was born in a ditch. Just because I don't parade my wealth and heritage they assume I have none. Anyway, these are so beautiful. You wouldn't understand."

"Yeah, okay."

"Oh, and look what else I found, in my Aunts room."

A large book dropped onto the elk-skin Eddie was struggling with.

"Hogwarts: A History? Don't you have one of these?"

"Yeah, but look inside it."

The thick book was thickened further by the cuttings and scraps of paper sandwiched between many of the pages. Eddie opened it randomly to find a black and white picture of a girl who looked much like Deirdre blinking up at him.

"Who's this?"

"My great-aunt, look at this." She flipped the book to inside the back covers, which were covered with spidery handwriting and sketch-maps. Eddie blinked as he read the notes.

"Oh my."

"Yeah!"

The notes talked about a little 'unfolding' that her Aunt, Caoimhe Fitzsimon, had performed on a storeroom in the dungeons of Hogwarts. Now there was a long narrow room hidden behind a broom closet, and here were directions to it. Deirdre folded the gowns and dropped a jewellery box into the chest while he pored over her great-aunts notes. After what only seemed like a moment, the book was pulled from his grasp.

"Hey!"

"It's getting dark, we'd better get back."

Eddie looked around startled. He'd gotten so absorbed in the Caoimhe's tales of mischief and derring do, postcards from friends in countries that did not exist anymore and worries about the long shadow of Grindlewald that he had lost all track of time. Deirdre had packed... things. He hadn't seen what, and organised the room while he'd been miles and years away. Now she stood, smudged and tousled and looking highly amused in front of him.

"Come on, before Uncle Martin starts to worry."

Low sunlight shone through the window, glinting off the bronze rims of her glasses and her long red ringlets and he realised it much be near twilight.

"Right. Sorry. Why didn't you... I don't know... get me to help?

"You just get so lost in books, I think its funny. Anyway, we need to decide what to tell my uncle."

"About what.... Oh, right. Yeah, we should."

"Look, how about we don't say anything until you've had your chance to go home?"

"But won't I need to ask him for your hand."

"He's always said it's my choice."

"It would be polite though."

"True. Okay, do what you need to do."

Eddie gulped and Deirdre smiled.

"Easier said than done?"

"Yeah."

"Hey, don't worry. If he didn't like you, you wouldn't have come back from the Black Stack."

"Oh. Well that's... good to know, I suppose."

"Hey, you're a smart fellow, he's my uncle, and I love you. If you can't overcome these odds, our only chance against the Queen will be if she dies laughing."

"Right, well I'll have to do it now then, won't I?"

"Come on, fearless hero, we have to get back before nightfall."

"Let's do this."

"Let's."