Shadowmagic - Sons of Macha by John Lenahan Page B

were only an illusion. But as the problems of the dream realm faded into smoke, the waking world crashed down on me. ‘Ruby!’ I swung my legs out of the bed. ‘Where is she?’
    â€˜Easy, Conor,’ Mom said placing her hand on my shoulders, ‘She’s missing. We have scoured the castle and the grounds but she is gone.’
    â€˜They have her.’
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜Macha and Lugh.’
    I dropped back into bed and for the first time looked in to my mother’s eyes. She had that haggard look that moms get when their children are sick. I never saw it when I was young but it was instantly recognisable now. I reached up and touched the side of her face. ‘I’m OK, Mom. I think. Macha forced some sort of essence of horse down my throat and I was like a zombie.’ When she looked confused I said, ‘It was like she had control over me and I had to do what she told me to do. The last thing she commanded me to do was, “Sleep and never awaken.” I thought she had killed me.’
    Mom thought for a bit. ‘That would make sense. Her power over you only lasted for as long as the horse essence was in your system.’
    â€˜You’re saying the reason I woke up was that … I, like, sobered up from the spell?’
    â€˜Basically.’
    So I filled Mom in on how I caught Macha searching her room and finding Ona’s book of prophecies and then how they said they wanted the book, the girl and the bows.
    â€˜The bows on the wall of the armoury – the ones left by the dead Fili – are they the bows they were talking about?’
    â€˜Yes,’ she said, ‘they are gone.’
    â€˜All of them?’
    She nodded.
    The door opened and when Brendan stuck his face in the room and saw me awake, he ran up to the bed.
    â€˜Where is she?’
    He had the same look on his face that I had seen on my mother’s just moments before, except he looked a lot worse. Brendan wore the frantic face of a parent who had lost a child and I could tell just by looking at him that he had been playing worst-case scenarios over and over in his head for the last two days. ‘I don’t know where she is. Macha and Lugh took her.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I do know that it was not a whim. From the way they were talking, it seemed that kidnapping Ruby and stealing the yew bows was part of a plan.’
    Brendan sat on the bed and hung his head. ‘But it doesn’t make sense.’
    â€˜I know,’ I said, placing my hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off. This was Detective Fallon and he wasn’t looking for sympathy.
    â€˜Taking my Ruby makes no sense, but taking the bows makes no sense either. I once asked Master Spideog if I could use his bow and he said I could not. I thought he meant I wasn’t allowed but he said I couldn’t because I wouldn’t be strong enough to pull the string back. I scoffed, so he handed over his bow with that all knowing look on his face and – he was right. I couldn’t even bend the bow an inch. Spideog explained to me that a yew bow changes its tension in tune with the archer that owns it. The wood is flexible when the string is drawn back and then stiffens when the arrow is being released. Only the person who has been judged by a yew, and given that piece of wood, can operate that bow. Those bows should be useless to all except their owners.’
    â€˜Lugh has proved himself to be a master of yew wood so who knows what his plans for the bows are,’ Mom said. ‘One thing is clear: it seems that we have all been unwitting players in Macha and Lugh’s puppet play. And we have lost an important clue – the book of Ona’s writings that Macha found in my office.’
    A memory flashed in my mind. A memory of something that seemed like years ago but as I smiled, I knew it was just from a couple of days earlier. I reached for my