The Shadow Ruins Read online

  th e shadow ruins

  book two of

  The last druid triLogy

  glen l. hall

  Published in 2018 by G22 Publishing

  Copyright © Glen L. Hall 2018

  Glen L. Hall has asserted his right to be identified as the

  author of this Work in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  ISBN Paperback: 978-0-9957985-4-0

  Ebook: 978-0-9957985-5-7

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue copy of this book can be found in the British Library.

  Published with the help of Indie Authors World

  For William – my light

  by the same author

  The Last Druid Trilogy

  The Fall

  Acknowledgements

  Many people have played a part in helping me write The Last Druid and I am grateful for and humbled by each and every one of them.

  I must begin by thanking Lizzie Henry, my editor, who has worked with me to make the book the very best it can be. Without Lizzie’s guidance and patience, the book would have fallen short in so many ways. Thank you so very much.

  To Jill Davidson from Purdy Lodge (they do the best breakfast in the whole of Northumberland), thank you for putting up with my writing schedule. I couldn’t have done it without your love and understanding. The view of Bamburgh Castle is simply amazing.

  I approached Philip Gray (http://philipgray.com/) with an idea for the front cover. He brought my imagination and words to life in the most powerful way: he produced a painting that now hangs proudly in my living room.

  The book would not have seen the light of day without David Hamilton, author of The Five Side-Effects of Kindness. When the path to publishing got a little tricky, he threw light into the darkness.

  A big thank you to Kim and Sinclair Macleod from Indie Authors World, who made everything seem so easy.

  My love affair with books started with my primary school teacher, Mrs Flather, who gave me a copy of Prince Caspian when I was seven years old and sparked a lifelong love affair with fantasy. I wrote to her in 1997 and received a reply which I will keep forever. There have been others along the way: David Bullock, Patricia Curran, Pat Carvis and the remarkable Richard Wilkinson. They must have known the phrase carpe diem, for they each taught me to ‘seize the day’.

  Thank you to Charlotte Ryder for all the little things that made the big things work.

  To James Fowler for all his support, in particular his photography skills in making me look respectable.

  And last but certainly not least, to Paddy Symons, my iconic head of English. Thank you for letting me have your stunning pictures of Northumberland and for your wonderful review of the book. Diane Arbus must have been talking about you when she said, ‘A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.’

  ‘You will be drawn into this war whether you like it or not. When the Fall dies, nowhere will be safe for those who locked the Ruin beyond time. The only option left to us is to defend the Druids with our last breath. The time for hiding has come to an end. The time to stand together has only just begun.’

  Prologue

  The raging storm was falling away from him, whilst all around the burning bridge hissed and whistled as it plunged into the blackness. He felt the flow leave him as he sank beneath the cold black waters of Crag Lough, barely conscious and unable to move. But still he felt the Shadow searching for him. It knew it had been cheated. He was not the last Druid. Even as the last of the burning bridge fizzled and went out, he could feel its ire, could feel its unbearable malevolence probing the waters. But soon he would be beyond its reach.

  Drifting deeper into the silence, his thoughts leaving his body along with the last mouthful of air, he waited for what seemed an eternity, but still the final darkness did not come. A faint light was flickering through the mirk.

  Flowing through the darkness, the light was calling him back. Then a hand reached out for his. A pale and beautiful woman was there, her fiery locks flowing behind her as flaming strands. The glimmer seemed to be coming from her and in the faint light he could see others moving through the darkness. Who they were he couldn’t tell, for the Faerie was taking him upwards and the pain he had felt was spreading once again across his body. A feeling of suffocation was thick around his throat, and water was rushing into his mouth, stinging his lungs. Then the horror on the bridge flooded his mind and he felt its power engulf him, shattering his body and mind. The Shadow had broken him.

  They erupted through water to air. Arms were wrapped around him and he was being carried, for his body and mind were slipping away.

  The light of the flow was all but extinguished.

  The Mouth of the Aln

  The faint autumn dawn began to break across the Northumberland hills. But it could neither lift their spirits nor dull their exhaustion. Behind them the orchard was lost in the seemingly impenetrable sweep of Birling Wood, whilst ahead they could now see the river Aln curving down from the hills before being lost to the sea.

  Sam walked with his head down whilst the events of the last six days spiralled through his thoughts. He wanted to put as much distance as possible between himself and the horde that had come streaming out of the wood into the trap set by the Forest Reivers.

  To his right Eagan walked in silence, his dark eyes fathomless and empty against his pale skin. Sam shot a quick look at him. What tale did he have to tell? He’d only just been brought back from the edge of death by Oscar’s shadowy protector Culluhin. Now he was striding on grimly, lost in his own thoughts.

  ‘Sam! Can’t we stop for a moment?’

  Sam turned to his left and looked into Emily’s face. Her dark hair was matted, her eyes puffy. How beautiful she was, even now. And how exhausted.

  ‘No – we have to go on.’

  ‘I’m so tired…’

  ‘I know. So am I.’

  Emily took his arm and leaned into him as they walked on. Ahead of them, framed by the breaking dawn, Eagan was walking with his head bent almost to his chest.

  ‘I’m sorry, Emily,’ Sam whispered, ‘but we have to get away from the wood.’

  As she pressed his arm, too tired to reply, guilt washed over him. She’d been spending a peaceful summer in her uncle’s bookshop until he’d arrived with his Oxford professors in tow and a mysterious Shadow at his heels. And now he knew it had never been coming for him at all. It had been coming for her, and he’d led it straight to her. The thought sent a ripple of pain through him. He didn’t know why anyone should be seeking her, but obviously they were. The shapeshifting Grim-were and its crow horde had pursued her from the bookshop to Birling Wood. ‘I seek the girl.’ He shuddered as he remembered.

  Now the crow-men were battling the Forest Reivers in the wood, but where was the Shadow? Memories of the night before burned through his mind – Oscar and Culluhin on the bridge in the Garden of Druids, fiery arms outstretched, holding back the towering blackness… What had Culluhin meant by saying ‘Our trap is sprung?’ Had they trapped the Shadow in Oxford or was it free? The thought of it being close behind him made his blood run cold. What if it caught them here, out
in the open, without Oscar and Culluhin to protect them?

  There were so many unanswered questions that Sam’s mind felt heavy with the weight of them all. No wonder the Keepers had been troubled by the paradox that had been created. He reached into his back pocket and felt the reassuring creases of the tattered envelope containing their letter to him. He had almost got used to the way it kept changing – at least someone was helping him, even if they were writing from the past, and events in the present were out of control to say the least.

  Time itself seemed to have come adrift. If Oscar had really died several years earlier, then how had he met him in Oxford? And when he had met him again in the Garden of Druids, why had he acted as if they had never met at all? Was the garden part of the Way that Professor Stuckley had talked of, the in-between places where time could not reach? But now Sam’s legs were becoming heavier, as if his swirling thoughts were sucking the last of the energy out of them, and he knew he just had to focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

  And yet, looking at the pale and silent Eagan just ahead, still he couldn’t prevent his thoughts from running on. The Grim-were had taken the form of Eagan’s father, Jarl. Did that mean Jarl was the traitor that Oscar had spoken of? He shuddered, remembering Eagan’s wild temper. Who knew how he might cope with that possibility?

  Then he realised Eagan was waiting for him.

  They had come to the brow of a hill. A mile to the northwest they could clearly see the quaint houses of Alnmouth nestling on the edge of the picture postcard estuary, all bathed in the early morning glow. Though Sam’s bones ached and the darkness of the last few hours hung like shackles around his body, the view seemed to anchor his whirling thoughts.

  As they began descending the hill, though, he couldn’t help but take one last look over his shoulder. Back the way they had come, Birling Wood was dark and foreboding, and for a moment in Sam’s tired mind, a twisting shadow seemed to emerge from it and reach out long fingers for him, making him stumble.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Emily croaked, her throat dry and parched.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  Bretta’s face flashed through his mind and he remembered the chill voices of the horde.

  ‘Are we doing the right thing? Should we have left the Forest Reivers? What if the crow-men overrun them?’

  Eagan stopped and lifted his head. His eyes were full of dark musings.

  Emily turned to him. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘that we did leave your friends, Eagan. But we had to – I mean, they literally got us away from the battle before it started. Well, almost before it started…’

  She tailed off, remembering the awkward gait and hideous calls of the crow-men. How could you stand and fight such creatures? Where would such courage come from? She had been frozen with fear, almost unable to move. Then there had been the thing that had looked like her uncle and had turned into a feathered monster. How could Sam have spoken to it, fought with it? What had happened? There had been a light in his hands that had danced with each unknown word, each sound that she could still feel vibrating through her.

  ‘I’m just wondering,’ Sam was saying now, ‘whether Alnmouth is going to be any safer than Warkworth.’

  ‘Probably not, but where else is there to go?’ Eagan’s voice was full of weariness. ‘We can’t go back, and we can’t just stumble around the Northumberland hills not knowing what we’re doing. At least let’s wait in Alnmouth until my father or Brennus and Drust catch up, and then we can hear their news and decide what our next move should be.’

  They stood still for a moment, gazing at one another, then Sam nodded. It seemed a logical plan, he thought, and he wasn’t about to upset Eagan, not after what he’d seen of him at the old school house.

  But now Eagan was showing his engaging side. ‘Once we’re out of this morning chill,’ he said, with a flicker of a smile, ‘you can tell me what happened whilst I was busy being poisoned.’

  Sam felt guilty as he remembered Eagan’s wounds. But Emily was thinking ahead.

  ‘We hardly know anyone in Alnmouth,’ she said.

  Eagan turned on his heel. ‘Yes, we do. Now come on, I don’t think we should stay in view of the wood. We should get across the bridge and out of sight.’

  * * * * * *

  They came down from the hill and crossed a muddy field before climbing over a short fence and finding themselves on a road bridge that spanned the meandering estuary. On either side of the road were hedges that had already felt the long arms of autumn, whilst to the west the river came snaking through the flat land in several rivulets and to the east it opened out into a gaping estuary.

  They entered the village quietly, as the pale autumn light washed over its rooftops and chimneys. The sky was a deep blue streaked with wispy clouds. It was as if the night had never been, as if the battle in the wood had never taken place.

  The village was still asleep and the roads empty. Eagan led them to the main street, cutting a path through houses and cottages of all shapes and sizes. The village had once been a sea port; its fortunes had waxed and waned over the years, and it was now the gateway to the Northumberland coastal route and full of small hotels and B&Bs brimming with holiday-makers. Its beaches stretched both south and north as far as the eye could see, and as he stumbled along after Eagan, Sam remembered the first time he had ventured here on holiday with his mum. They had stayed at the Dandelion, overlooking sloping sand dunes. The village had become a favourite holiday destination and Sam had once walked for two days, following the Aln from its mouth to its source high in the Cheviots.

  Now he was passing the Red Lion, an eighteenth-century coaching inn that was at the very heart of the village. It reminded him of the Eagle and Child in Oxford. He still found it difficult to accept the last seven days. But what had happened at the Eagle and Child had been spellbinding, if not altogether fantastical. If he was right, then he had spoken to three of the best-known and most influential Inklings, the group of Oxford scholars who would read their work to each other there and talk into the early hours of the morning. They were said to have created Cherwell College, the mysterious college he had attended in Oxford. How wished he was back there. The syllabus had been bizarre – quantum metaphysics, quantum uncertainty and Professor Stuckley’s now infamous lecture where light existed at both the end and the beginning of the universe, as light, according the professor, did not need time to exist. Sam had been fascinated by it all. If only he was wrestling with those problems now! Life at Cherwell College had brought a lot to ponder, but life now was a scattered jigsaw whose pieces kept changing.

  He could feel Emily holding on to him again, almost a deadweight he was dragging along. Every now and again she would trip and he would have to use the last vestiges of his strength to keep her from falling. Stumbling along in a stupor, he was brought up sharply when he found himself bumping into Eagan, who had come to a sudden stop. Without fully realising it, they had walked the length of the village high street and had come to a place that looked down onto the mouth of the Aln, with its twisting estuary flowing from the west.

  The noise of Eagan knocking on a large blue door snapped Sam out of his daze. They were in front of an elegant Georgian house. As Eagan rattled the door knocker again, the noise seemed to ring out across the quiet village. When they finally heard bolts being slid back one by one, for a split-second Sam was back at his own front door in Gosforth, but this time the door swung open to reveal not his anxious mother, but an old lady with glasses and white hair. She was leaning on a walking stick, but a warm and welcoming smile was spreading across her face.

  ‘Eagan, my dear child – a most unexpected pleasure!’

  She glanced at Sam and he felt her calm gaze sweep through him.

  ‘Your friends look tired. Bring them inside.’

  She turned slowly and led them into a grand hallway with doors leading off to the right and left.
/>   Sam was glad of the warmth that wrapped itself around him. How cold the night had been.

  Emily smiled up at him, her face beginning to flush with the heat.

  At the end of the hallway was a large kitchen with an open fire. The old lady led them through the cosy room and up several steps into an orangery overlooking the estuary.

  Sam couldn’t take his eyes from the breathtaking vista. His gaze was drawn to the far horizon, where Birling Wood was a black rim on the edge of the world, almost like the rim of a black hole ready to swallow the autumn light. And here they were in full view of it, with only a river and a short harbour wall between them and the murderous horde.

  ‘Eagan, put the kettle on,’ said the old lady, as she seated herself in a high-backed chair.

  Eagan disappeared back into the kitchen and she turned to Emily.

  ‘My poor child – you look as though you’ve spent the night in the open.’

  ‘In a way I have,’ answered Emily.

  ‘Blankets, Eagan,’ called the old woman firmly, with a kind smile in Emily’s direction.

  Eagan soon reappeared, carrying two thick woollen blankets. He handed one to Sam and the second to Emily. The old lady pushed herself up from her chair and wrapped Emily up.

  It wasn’t long before they were sipping tea from delicate cups and eating breakfast. The old woman busied herself making sure the toast and jam kept flowing, and Sam realised how hungry he was. The last meal he and Emily had eaten had been the light supper they’d had at the old school house.

  Eagan, however, remained pale and ate little. His face was drawn and his eyes seemed not to reflect the sunlight pouring through the large windows. He no longer looked like the flamboyant young man they had met rowing down the river Coquet only the morning before.

  The village was beginning to stir as Sam and Emily finally finished eating. The old woman sat down on the edge of her chair, resting both hands on her walking stick, her white hair shimmering in the morning sun, and smiled at them.