Queen Among the Dead

  QUEEN AMONG

  the

  DEAD

  LESLEY LIVINGSTON

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2023 by Lesley Livingston

  Zando supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, uploading, or distributing this book or any part of it without permission. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for brief quotations embodied in reviews), please contact connect@zandoprojects.com.

  Zando

  zandoprojects.com

  First Edition: January 2023

  Text design by Pauline Neuwirth, Neuwirth & Associates

  Cover design by Evan Gaffney

  Cover illustration by Tal Goretsky

  The publisher does not have control over and is not responsible for author or other third-party websites (or their content).

  LCCN: 2022939791

  ISBN 978-1-63893-018-1

  eISBN 978-1-63893-019-8

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  For my mother,

  Margo Elizabeth Rose Livingston

  THE FOLK OF EIRE

  FIR BOLG – the Folk of the Land

  Inhabitants since before the first days of the coming of the Tuatha Dé to Eire.

  FIR DOMNANN – the Folk of the Sea

  A splinter tribe of raiders descended from Fir Bolg driven across the Eirish Sea in the first days.

  FOMORI – a near-mythical race of shapeshifters

  Defeated and driven from Eire by the Scathach Queen in the first days of the coming of the Tuatha Dé to Eire.

  FAOLADH – a sisterhood of elite Fomori warriors

  Their powerful shapeshifting abilities, the riastrad, were taken from them after their defeat by the Scathach Queen in the first days, at the battle of An Bhearú.

  FÉ FÍADA – Mist Lords of the Fomori

  Fomori royalty, driven to extinction by the Scathach Queen in the first days.

  TUATHA DÉ – the Tribe of Gods, descendants of the Scathach Queen and her folk

  Ruled by the Dagda, the “Good God,” a leader chosen by the Lia Fail, the so-called Stone of Destiny.

  HORSE LORDS – descendants of the Scathach Queen’s Scythian cavalry

  Lords of the Golden Vale in the south, keepers of the Dagda’s herds.

  I

  NEVE ANANN ERIU …”

  The Dagda’s voice rolled like low thunder through the great stone gathering hall of his palace. The sound swept over Neve and she winced. Ruad Rofhessa, Dagda of the Tuatha Dé, only ever used his youngest daughter’s full name when he was furious with her. Although such occasions weren’t exactly uncommon.

  “Give Lorcan back his tooth.”

  Neve lifted her chin and gazed up at her father on his granite throne, flanked by a pair of tall, bronze carnyx, the wolf-headed war horns blown in times of strife to call the tuaths—tribes—to the field of battle. There was mud on Neve’s tunic and blood on her knuckles, but at least her cheeks were dry. The boy standing beside her had tear tracks staining his. And a blossoming purple bruise on his jaw.

  The Dagda leaned forward, one massive hand clenched on the war club that was the emblem of his kingship, stained dark with ancient blood. “I thought we’d been over this.”

  Neve opened her mouth to defend herself, but the Dagda heaved a sigh and waved her silent, slouching back in his throne as if he simply couldn’t summon the energy to sustain his anger. As if his mind was already turning to other matters. As if he was already somewhere else …

  “There is to be no fighting, Neve,” he said.

  “I wasn’t fighting. I was defending the honor of the Dagda’s mighty throne.”

  “I have warriors and priests to perform that duty.” Ruad Rofhessa looked down at his daughter where she stood before the great hearth, a defiant gleam in her dark golden eyes. “You’ve seen ten whole circles of the seasons come and go. Next Samhain it will be eleven. You are almost a young woman now, Neve, and I expect you to start acting like the daughter of the Dagda and not like some brawling Faoladh she-devil.”

  Neve bit her lip to keep from grinning at the comparison. The Faoladh were legendary women warriors devoted to the fearsome goddess Macha the Warbringer, and in ancient times they had been revered—and feared—throughout all of Eire for the mystical battle madness that was said to magically transform them into raging beasts.

  “I’m sorry, Father,” Neve said, dipping her head in an effort to look sincere. “Lorcan, I’m sorry I knocked you down.”

  “Twice,” Lorcan said.

  “Three times,” she muttered under her breath. Then she lifted her head and smiled her best, most brilliant smile at him, extending a hand to clasp.

  Lorcan warily reached out and the two gripped each other’s wrists. With that, Neve spun on the heel of her beaded sandal.

  “Neve.”

  She stopped midstep and turned back around. “Yes, Father?”

  “Give Lorcan back his tooth.”

  “What tooth?” she asked innocently.

  “Neve …”

  “All right.”

  Lorcan held out his hand and she reluctantly dropped the bloody molar into his palm. Neve grinned.

  “He told me it was loose yesterday. I was only helping.” She shrugged, her grin turning just a bit predatory.

  The boy’s face flushed a deep shade of red as Neve spun back toward the massive gilded oak doors. This time no one stopped her from leaving. She headed to the wing of the palace where she shared a many-roomed apartment with her older sister, the crown princess Úna.

  The sky overhead was an ominous shade of violet, the threatening promise of an approaching thunderstorm. The corridors were deserted by the time Neve shouldered open the carved ash-wood doors to her quarters.

  “Where is your sandal? And why are you such a mess?” Úna’s perfectly shaped brows knit together beneath her silver circlet. “What happened?”

  “I lost my sandal when I threw it at Lorcan’s head,” Neve told her. “I’m a mess because fighting is messy business. And I was fighting because the gods demanded it.”

  “Did they?”

  Neve nodded and stripped off her one remaining leather sandal and her torn and dirt-stained tunic. “We were playing ‘invasion’ and stupid Lorcan told me I couldn’t win the battle because I was a girl and girls can’t fight,” she explained as she stalked toward an alabaster washbasin. “I proved him wrong and now he is my sworn enemy. I wanted to offer his tooth to Khenti-Amentiu the wolf god of the Tuatha Dé in tribute because I am his favorite. But Father made me give it back …” Neve frowned, realizing her father had seemed more preoccupied than usual. “He’s going away again, isn’t he?” she asked Úna as she scrubbed Lorcan’s blood from her fingers and the courtyard dirt from her face.

  “Not far.” Úna smiled at her gently. “And not for long. He’s going to the Great Barrow.”

  “Pff. I don’t like that stupid pile of rocks.” Neve shrugged into a linen shift and combed her fingers through her damp hair. “I don’t like that architect. And every time Father comes back from there, I don’t like him.”

  “Neve.” Úna sat up straight on the couch and her expression became serious. Her glance darted around the room, empty save for the two of them. Not even Úna’s bondswoman, Emer, was around to hear, but she lowered her voice anyway. “L
isten to me and listen well. You cannot say things like that. Not ever. Not even to me. Gofannon isn’t just an architect. He’s a Druid and a very powerful man. There are things you don’t understand yet.”

  Úna sighed and reached for a blue glass goblet full of mead set on a low table. Although just three years older than Neve, the Dagda’s firstborn already seemed as if she’d passed well beyond girlhood into womanhood. She took a delicate sip.

  “Politics is one of those things,” she continued. “Power is another. Here in the halls of Temair, the two are inseparable, and one day your life may depend on how well you are able to navigate those twin rivers.”

  Neve bit her tongue. She knew there was truth in what her sister said. The Druids were neither of the Fir Bolg peasant tribes nor from Neve’s own people, the Tuatha Dé, who ruled over them. But the Druids held sway over both, because the order of wandering priests had in recent years begun hoarding the ancient magic of the land. Magic that her father—at Gofannon’s urging—had decreed forbidden to any but the Order, and the decree was enforced harshly, even violently at times. Especially among the Fir Bolg, where even the smallest of magics made a harsh life just a bit more bearable.

  Before Neve was even born, Gofannon came to court to become the Dagda’s chief architect and monument builder. As the story went, he’d once been a high Druid from the land of the Cymru, just across the Eirish Sea. Neve had heard whispers of deeds that had led to his banishment from that land, but she didn’t know whether to believe them or not. All she knew was that even in her father’s Great Hall with a fire blazing in the hearth, the presence of the tall man with the red beard and the piercing blue eyes cast a tomb-like chill she could feel in her bones.

  Still. Neve wasn’t afraid of him. Not really …

  “Come on, my little wolf cub.” Úna rose and held out a hand to her sister. “Time for sleep. There’s a thunderstorm brewing on the horizon and I should think that after the day you’ve had, you’d need a bit of rest.”

  “It’s still light out,” Neve muttered, then brightened. “When you’re Dagda, we can stay up all night. We’ll watch the moon sail across the sky until morning.”

  Úna tilted her head and regarded her sister. “I can’t be the Dagda, Neve,” she said. “And neither can you. You know that.”

  “You take the western half and I’ll take the eastern,” Neve continued, ignoring Úna. “Or the other way around. I don’t mind. I’ll command the óglach and protect us from invasions of hordes of beastly Fomori.” She propped herself up on her elbow and grinned at her sister. “The Horse Lords will breed magic horses for us swifter than the winds—just like in the old stories—and we’ll race our chariots from one shore to the other. It’ll be glorious.”

  Úna rolled her eyes. “The Fomori were driven from the land by our ancestors,” she said. “If they ever truly did exist. They’re just a story now, told to frighten little children. And the Dagda’s horses are already the swiftest in the land. Without any magic at all.”

  “You’re starting to sound like that horrid old Gofan—” Neve’s mouth snapped shut at the stern look Úna gave her. “Never mind …”

  “Go to sleep, Neve.” Úna padded over to her own couch. “Then you can dream all you want about donning armor and driving dreadful beast people all the way back across the water.”

  That was a dream Neve would welcome, she thought as she flopped on her side. But Neve was flush with her resounding victory over Lorcan and sleep eluded her like a wily fox.

  “Girls can’t fight,” he’d taunted her. She’d shown him. The most famous fighters in all the old stories were girls. Warriors like the Scathach Queen herself. And her greatest adversaries, the Faoladh, a secret sisterhood of Fomori warriors, the last of their kind, who long ago wielded their shape-shifting powers on the field of battle to devastating effect.

  Outside the wind began to moan and the sound of it made her restless. She climbed silently out of bed. Carrying a pair of plain sandals, she slipped out, padding silently through the winding breezeways to a disused stable yard overgrown with ivy. A forgotten place and Neve’s secret refuge within the palace walls.

  Lorcan was standing just inside the gate as if he’d been expecting her.

  “You were going to keep my tooth,” he snapped, round face flushed.

  Neve snorted at his attempt to look menacing.

  “What if I died? What if the Druids’d had to stick me in a barrow without it? What if they’d buried me without all my parts?”

  “Then I suppose your soul-wraith would have wandered the afterlife looking as ridiculous as you do now,” she said.

  “At least I’m not so ugly that my own mother tried to drown me!” Lorcan spat.

  Neve felt the blood drain from her cheeks and she rocked back a step.

  “You take that back, Lorcan,” she gasped. “Take it back! Or I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” The boy’s face was blotched crimson. “Look at you! No wonder the queen left Temair in shame. She wanted to give the mighty Dagda a son. You’ll never be a warrior. It’s hard to believe you’re even Tuatha Dé!”

  Neve felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach. And this time, she couldn’t make herself punch back. She spun on her heels and pelted across the deserted yard toward the gate leading to the royal stables, Lorcan’s mockery ringing in her ears. Neve grabbed the halter of her favorite mare and threw a leg over the pony’s bare back, setting her heels to its flanks and urging it to run, out into the wide fields beyond the walls of Temair.

  The storm was nearly upon them before Neve had even reached the farthest edge of the necropolis to the north. Barrow graves rose up like blisters from the green land all around her, lifeless and foreboding. Grass and dirt, driven by the wind, clung to the tear tracks on Neve’s cheeks as the last dim light of the sun faded and the shadowed hills turned the color of old, dark blood. She cast a blurred glance skyward at the dark clouds filled with the bull-headed sky god Taranis’s wrath. Storms like this could sometimes last for hours or even days, and if she was caught outside in it, the hailstones could flay the skin from her bones.

  She didn’t care.

  It isn’t true! Lorcan’s a liar …

  Neve knew the story like she knew her own name. The bards sang of it! On the night of her birth, a ban sidhe demon had crept over the palace walls and spirited her away, hurling her out into the dark waters of An Bhóinn, where she would have drowned, were it not for the divine will of the gods. Of course she’d heard snatches of hideous court gossip. The whispers that it was Queen Anann herself who’d thrown her child into the river. But no one had ever dared utter those filthy lies in Neve’s presence.

  Neve buried her tear-streaked face in her pony’s shaggy mane as it ran.

  A monster tried to kill me that night. Not my mother …

  “No!” The pony, already skittish with the storm, reared to a stop in the lee of a barrow and tossed its head, snorting and stamping. Neve slid from its back, sobbing, and fell to her knees. “It wasn’t her! It was a ban sidhe …”

  The tears spilling down her cheeks splashed the front of her tunic and vanished into the earth. The sound of her weeping echoed off stones and turf. Neve should have known better than to weep on Dead Ground. Known better than to utter those words, like a summoning.

  She fell silent as the storm winds shrieked and the long grasses in front of her began to spin, funneling up from the ground, coalescing into the grotesque, ghoulish shape of a ban sidhe demon. Its eyes burned with pale green fire and its gaping mouth was a cavernous maw, hungry to devour her soul.

  “Neeeve Anaaannn Eriiuuu …”

  Neve screamed and clapped her hands over her ears as the wraith’s voice tore at her mind like teeth and claws, ravaging the sound of her name. The sky turned black as pitch. She would die there, she knew, alone among the dead, and no one would ever know what happened to her.

  As fate would have it, she wasn’t alone.

  THE BARROW GROU
NDS hadn’t seen another living soul that day, except for one.

  At thirteen years old, Ronan was still lean and wiry enough to be able to cut away a square of turf, shift a stone or two, and navigate the passageways of most of the tombs without leaving behind obvious signs of desecration.

  This evening, the boy’s leather satchel bulged with a cache of stone fragments carved with spells and prayers that he’d liberated from the tomb of the recently interred chief óglach—leader of the Dagda’s own personal guard. The boy felt no twinge of remorse over the pillaging. The man was dead—and, by all accounts, had been of an odious disposition—so what need had he of incantations? At least, that’s what the lad told himself.

  The óglach’s tomb had been rich and stoutly constructed, the stones cunningly laid, and it had taken some doing to get in and out again, even for a practiced tomb robber. Now, with a storm coming on fast over the hills, Ronan decided against a trek back to Blackwater Town, where he shared a hut with a handful of river rats and outcasts. Instead, he stashed his pickaxe and spoils in a half-finished cairn he found, then curled up, sheltered by stone and earth, to wait out the deluge.

  As the sun sank below the horizon and the winds began to howl, he heard a noise.

  A thin, high shriek that raised his hackles.

  Ronan poked his head out of the depression where he hid and, shielding his eyes from the biting gale, peered into the purple-tinged gloom. About thirty paces off to his left, there was a small shape cowering before a whirlwind rising up from the ground.

  A wash of poison-green light spilled out over the barrows, and a terrifying wail erupted. The boy saw the hunched shape throw an arm up in defense and realized it was a young girl crouching in front of what looked like … a ban sidhe demon.

  Ronan swore under his breath.

  One scrawny urchin missing from the muddy streets of Blackwater wasn’t his problem. But a ban sidhe on the loose with a taste for fresh blood is, he thought. Or, at least, it will be if I don’t do something.