Bansi O'Hara and the Bloodline Prophecy
Pogo stood, scanning the horizon all around.
‘There!’ He pointed with a twig-like finger towards the long road into the valley.
Tam’s sharp eyes made out a pair of red tail-lights, miles off and moving rapidly further away.
‘That, Tam, is a car.’ Pogo paused, as if listening. ‘The car. The one that will fetch the mortal child who has the Blood of the Morning Stars, both streams reunited at last, flowing through her veins. By nightfall, she’ll be within reach of the gate. And it’s up to us to make sure nothing from beyond the gate reaches out and takes her,’ he added darkly . . .
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John Dougherty
Bansi O’Hara
and the
Bloodline Prophecy
Illustrated by James de la Rue
Table of Contents
Cover
Also by John Dougherty
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Bansi O’Hara and the Bloodline Prophecy
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
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BANSI O’HARA AND THE BLOODLINE PROPHECY
A CORGI YEARLING BOOK 978 0 440 86787 6
Published in Great Britain by Corgi Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
A Random House Group Company
This edition published 2008
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © John Dougherty, 2008
Cover illustration copyright © Chris Mould, 2008
Inside illustrations copyright © James de la Rue, 2008
The right of John Dougherty to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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 publishers.
Corgi Yearling Books are published by Random House Children’s Books, 61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
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Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
To Noah & Cara, with all my love.
And to Ravi & Niamh, who first inspired the idea that became Bansi,
with much love from your uncle John.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks go first and foremost to my beautiful Kate, for supporting and encouraging me in my writing even when the dishes are piling up in the sink waiting for me to wash them; and to my fantastic children, Noah and Cara, for lending Daddy to the computer keyboard long enough for me to get this finished, for the interest you take in my work, and for just being you. I love you.
Thanks to my wonderful agent, Sarah Molloy at A.M. Heath & Co, for all the support, advice, guidance and encouragement.
And, of course, thanks to everyone at Random House Children’s Books, especially: to Annie Eaton for her calmness in the face of an author’s self-induced crisis and for not holding it against me(!); to Lucy Walker for her assiduous and at times challenging attention to detail (publishing’s loss is very much the law’s gain; I shall miss working with you); Laura Harris (in advance) for all the hard work that, as I write, is yet to come; and above all to Sue Cook, who first spotted the potential in both Bansi and in me, and without whom neither of us might ever have made it into print.
Thank you all!
Bansi O’Hara
and the
Bloodline Prophecy
Chapter One
High on a hillside, in the grey half-darkness that comes before dawn, a raven was listening.
It was listening to the sound of the wind stirring the branches of the ancient tree in which it sat; for the wind, as it sighed and breathed and sorrowed through the boughs, was singing.
The raven was a very old bird, and it recognized the song, having heard it many times across the centuries. It cawed harshly and shook its black-feathered wings, making itself a ragged silhouette against the cold, eerie gloom. Then it folded itself small, as if hiding from something that was to come.
If you had been there that morning, as on the far side of the hill the first light of Midsummer’s Eve began its slow creeping march over the distant horizon, you would have felt a magical stillness settle all around. The whispering song of the wind became a murmuring, then a humming which would have filled your head as if it came from inside you. The ancient standing stones that encircled the tree took on a strange glow, one which could not entirely be explained by the coming sunrise; the grass between them seemed suddenly to grow a little, becoming greener and brighter even in the half-light of dawn.
And a shape – which you would have sworn hadn’t been there a moment before – unfolded, like a flower opening up, into the form of a young boy dressed in clothes the colours of shimmering flame. A small, dark, almost human figure, difficult to make out clearly in the dim half-light, perched on his shoulder.
The boy stepped out of the stone ci
rcle. He looked down at the awakening village in the valley, and a broad grin split his handsome face. With a sudden whoop of joy he leaped up high, higher than you have ever seen anyone leap, twisting and turning and tumbling like an acrobat in the air.
The boy’s small companion cursed angrily. He clung desperately with his long wiry fingers, his legs flailing and scrabbling in vain for a foothold. Then, with a yell, he fell off.
‘Urggh!’ he spluttered, picking himself up and spitting out a mouthful of dry earth. ‘I suppose you think that was funny!’
The boy, alighting, squatted down and looked into the little brown man’s eyes. ‘Let me think, now,’ he said, his own eyes glinting roguishly. ‘Hmmm . . . yep, I’d say that was definitely funny. All the elements of a good gag. It’s well you have me here to keep you right about these things, Pogo.’
Pogo scowled angrily. Wrinkle upon wrinkle creased and crammed into the thousands already covering his small, leathery face.
‘This is no time for games and foolishness, Tam!’ he growled. ‘We’re not the only ones after the Blood of the Morning Stars! You can bet your life there’ll be someone following us any moment – and it’s not just your own life you’ll be betting, either,’ he added, his face almost disappearing into the wrinkles as his frown grew deeper. ‘It’s all our lives you’re wagering with your foolery. Yours, mine, Caithne’s – the lives of everyone who’s risked the anger of the Dark Lord. And worse still – the life we’re here to protect.’
Tam laughed softly. ‘Listen to yourself, Pogo,’ he teased. ‘It’s all worry and the end of the world with you, isn’t it? We’ll be fine!’
‘Do you not realize how important this is?’ the little man hissed furiously. ‘How many lives depend upon it? How the whole future of—’
‘Ah, come on, Pogo,’ Tam grinned. ‘It’s me who’s done all the work so far. I got us here safely, and ahead of anyone else, didn’t I? It’s up to you for the next bit. You’re the expert on mortals and their ways, after all.’
Pogo glared at him. ‘Hold your whisht, then!’ he snapped. ‘And hold still!’ With one wiry hand, he laid hold of Tam’s hair and, with no attempt at all to be gentle, climbed up on the boy’s shoulders. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘get to the high ground!’
The rise of the hillside almost levelled out under the stone circle, but above it the ground rose sharply and quickly to the top. Tam, his good humour undented by Pogo’s temper, leaped to his feet and sprinted swiftly up the steep grassy slope with no more effort than if he were running downhill. Nearing the summit, he sprang into the air. Pogo gripped tightly, but this time there were no acrobatics. The leap brought them down perfectly on the hilltop.
‘Hey!’ Tam exclaimed in surprise, staring at his feet. ‘What’s this?’
Pogo looked down at the hard, coarse black surface and then at the wooden railings that almost surrounded them. ‘It’s called a . . . car park,’ he said, concentrating. ‘The mortals come up here in their cars to admire the view.’
‘What’s a car then?’ Tam asked.
Pogo ignored him. ‘Quiet!’ He stood, scanning the horizon all around – to the west, and the retreating shadows of night; to the north, towards the distant mountains that blocked the sea from view; to the east, and the warm glow of the rising sun; to the south . . . and then back to the south-east, where far in the distance something was moving.
‘There!’ He pointed with a twig-like finger towards the long road into the valley.
Tam’s sharp eyes made out a pair of red tail-lights, miles off and moving rapidly further away.
‘That, Tam, is a car.’ Pogo paused, as if listening. ‘The car. The one that will fetch the mortal child who has the Blood of the Morning Stars, both streams reunited at last, flowing through her veins. By nightfall, she’ll be within reach of the gate. And it’s up to us to make sure nothing from beyond the gate reaches out and takes her,’ he added darkly. ‘If we’re up to the task.’
Tam clearly shared none of his small companion’s forebodings. Letting out a triumphant yell, he bent his knees and hurled himself at the sky. High into the air he leaped, and this time he did not come down.
His arms stretched out wide as he rose, broadening and feathering. His neck elongated; a soft whiteness bloomed and blossomed over his head and body until – without it being possible to tell exactly how – he was no longer a wild and handsome boy, but a magnificent swan. Pogo, legs and arms wrapped tightly round the swan’s neck, crouched low between its wings as they took to the skies. They wheeled, sweeping in a wide arc over the hillside, and followed the distant tail-lights.
If you had been there, watching on the hill as the swan-that-was-not-a-swan passed high over the stone circle, you would have seen another shape unfold in the fading shadows under the tree – a second boy, older and crueller in appearance than Tam and dressed in dark clothes made of animal-skin. Over his shoulders was draped a rough, hairy cloak made of a single untrimmed pelt. Its macabre hood was an empty scalp, with pricked ears and canine muzzle, which hung gruesomely upside-down behind him and stared sightlessly at an inverted sky.
Unseen, the newcomer raised his eyes and hungrily observed the departing swan. Reaching behind him, he grasped his hood and pulled it sharply over his head, entirely covering his face. With one flowing movement he drew the cloak firmly around him; it clung and enveloped him, changing and moulding and stretching, its dangling legs tightly wrapping around his limbs. The grisly hood hardened as if within it a skull was somehow forming, ossifying over the boy’s own face; its dead, glassy eyes suddenly gleamed with life and swivelled chillingly as if in search of something.
A moment later you would have seen no boy at all, but a great grey wolf which raised its huge head menacingly. For a moment longer it gazed after the swan, and then bounded from the circle in faster pursuit than you would have thought possible.
The raven ruffled its feathers and tipped its head to one side as it watched them go.
‘Bloomin’ ’eck,’ it muttered to itself. ‘Here we go again!’
Chapter Two
It was a beautiful morning. The sun shone with a gentle promise of warmth, drawing out the strong colours of the Irish summer.
Anyone walking along the narrow country road towards the sleepy village of Ballyfey that morning could, if they were sharp-eyed and quiet, have caught a glimpse of a solitary badger returning late to its sett. They might, had the mood taken them, have lingered to watch the glossy chestnut mare cantering across her wide green field, or to listen to the lone thrush singing in the sycamore tree. They would probably, if they were in no hurry, have stopped to gaze up in awe and wonder at the sight of a majestic white swan beating its solitary way across the sky.
They would definitely, if they valued their lives, have leaped headlong into the prickly hawthorn hedge as the dark green Morris Minor Traveller roared round the bend on the wrong side of the narrow road at a speed something in excess of eighty miles per hour.
And as they emerged again, scratched and bleeding, they might have heard the sound of two elderly ladies screaming their heads off at each other, before the car carried them out of earshot.
‘Nora Maura Margaret Mullarkey, will you slow down?’
‘Ah, be quiet, you silly old trout!’
‘Be quiet yourself, you lunatic, and slow down before you kill us both!’
‘Don’t be daft, Eileen. Kill us? Sure, we’re as safe as houses with me at the wheel, and you know it.’
‘Safe as houses, is it? What houses are there that’re safe with you driving around? You nearly knocked the front room out of Michael Brennan’s in the last village!’
‘Well, it shouldn’t have been there! What kind of a silly place is that to build a house, I ask you!’
‘Nora, it’s been there for over four hundred years! You can’t just decide it’s in the wrong place because you want to drive on the footpath all of a sudden!’
‘Weren’t you the one who wanted us to get there in g
ood time?’
‘I’d rather get there alive, if it’s all the same to—LOOK OUT!!!’
The car screeched to a halt, its bumper inches from the side of a large black-and-white cow.
The cow turned slowly to look at them, rather like a teacher who has just caught you running in the corridors for the five hundredth time this year and really doesn’t know if he can be bothered to tell you off again.
‘Moooo,’ it observed.
It stood idly in the middle of the road, surrounded on its other three sides by what looked like all its friends and extended family plus a good-sized helping of distant relatives.
‘Mmmoooo,’ agreed a few of the others, staring at the car for a moment and then shaking their heads sorrowfully.
The car window squeaked with disgust as Nora Mullarkey wound it down and stuck her head out.
‘Sean! Sean McKnight! Where are you, you daft great lump?’ she yelled.
There was a wriggling movement from somewhere in the hedge and a thin, pale young man emerged, pulling thorns from his skin and examining the fresh tears in his clothing.
‘Sean!’ Mrs Mullarkey snapped. ‘What do you think you’re doing, messing about in that hedge when you should be getting these cows off the road? Come on, now!’
Sean blinked, brushed a few leaves and an abandoned bird’s nest from his head, and ambled over to the car.
‘Morning,’ he said.
‘Don’t you “morning”me, you young hooligan. Leaving these cows all over the road where anyone could run into them while you go off fooling around in hedges!’
Sean grinned ruefully at Mrs Mullarkey’s passenger. ‘Morning, Mrs O’Hara! Where might you be off to? Anywhere nice?’
‘We’re just off to collect my son, Fintan, and his family from the boat. If Nora’s driving doesn’t kill us all first, of course.’ Mrs O’Hara cast a look at her friend. ‘A fine thing that would be, bringing them over here from London for all our funerals!’