Lord of Horses Read online

  Contents

  Copyright Information

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  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

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Epilogue

  Links

  Acknowledgements

  Origin of Poems

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 Hayley Louise Macfarlane

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Macfarlane Lantern Publishing, 2019

  Glasgow, Scotland

  No parts 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 written permission of the copyright owner.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.

  Cover Art Copyright © 2019 Hayley Louise Macfarlane

  For dark mirrors and darker lochs.

  Author's Note

  PLEASE NOTE: Lord of Horses is written in British (UK) English.

  Folk alone in lonely lanes

  Gladly take the horse's reins,

  Innocence the creature feigns

  Then takes the rider down

  To the loch-side so remote;

  The rider who the Kelpie caught

  Is murdered now without a thought;

  In icy loch they drown.

  The Kelpie (N. Baker; 2010)

  Chapter One

  Murdoch

  Murdoch loved the water more than anything, and he adored the loch he lived in most of all.

  Spending two years banished to the bottom of it by the golden faerie king and his ice-blue queen changed his perspective on things.

  In truth Murdoch wasn’t even Murdoch. He’d taken the unfortunate Mister Buchanan’s name, as well as his face and memories, when he’d dragged the man down into the loch and consumed his body and soul. But Murdoch didn’t have the guise of the human anymore; without his bridle he could not change his form at all.

  He liked the man’s name, though, so even now he kept it.

  For months Murdoch glowered and mulled and rued his fate at the very bottom of Loch Lomond. There was nothing else he could do, after all. If he dared show up at the surface and was spied by a damned faerie then his bridle would be destroyed, and Murdoch would have no chance of ever recovering his full powers again.

  He’d had no intention of risking his very existence by leaving the depths of the loch. He truly hadn’t. That was, until Murdoch heard something that changed his priorities entirely.

  For there were plans to fill in the shallow, southern shores of his home, funded by the very company Murdoch Buchanan himself had worked for, before the kelpie had devoured him. He had to do something to stop the plan. If he didn’t then he would not be the only one who suffered.

  He desperately needed to talk to Sorcha Darrow.

  It hadn’t been easy, finding a way through which he could reach her. Murdoch could not come galloping out of the loch in his true form to find her; he would be far too conspicuous, and if a wary local attacked him with silver then he would die.

  Murdoch had hoped Sorcha would come into the loch to swim. That way, without raising any suspicion, he could talk to her. But the first summer after his banishment she did not so much as dip her toes in the water, and the second she seemed to avoid even coming down to the shore.

  I have ruined things with her, Murdoch despaired on more than one occasion. I should have told her that I would love to speak to her again. She must be so afraid.

  And so, with no easy way to tell Sorcha about what was going on, Murdoch had to find another way to allow him to walk upon land unnoticed. Luckily for him, the very creatures infesting the loch that had caused Murdoch to try and destroy the faerie realms and, in turn, landed him in his current, powerless state, were the answer to his problems.

  The Unseelie.

  Murdoch hunted, ensnared and consumed every dark, sly, creeping faerie that had sought to make Loch Lomond their new home. With every drop of blood spilled he learned more and more of how their magic worked until, when autumn was truly turning into winter, Murdoch discovered where an Unseelie creature strong enough to help him resided – in his own home.

  “Why should I help a kelpie?” the ill-begotten ghoul asked when Murdoch found it. Its murky, midnight-coloured hair swirled around its face like dead weeds, and its silvered skin shone akin to fish scales in the water. When it grinned Murdoch saw a set of sharp, broken teeth that had clearly been used to rend through flesh and bone.

  “You like my home,” Murdoch countered. “You revel in lost souls, just as I do. If you help me then I will not kill you where you stand, and you will be free to live out your days here with no further danger from me.”

  The creature laughed an ugly, garbled laugh. “You water folk can lie. I know you can. So how can I trust this deal you are suggesting?”

  Murdoch solidified his ghostly, insubstantial form until he could tear open his flesh upon his own teeth, which were even sharper than the Unseelie’s. His blood darkened the water; the faerie’s odd, metallic eyes gleamed at the sight of it.

  “A blood pact will ensure we both keep our sides of the bargain,” Murdoch said. “Is that enough to gain your trust?”

  “Then what is it that you want?” the Unseelie asked, lapping up Murdoch’s water with a forked tongue as it spoke.

  “I wish to take on the form of a human. There is someone I need to see.”

  “That is some tough magic. Where is your bridle?”

  Murdoch pawed at the loch floor in frustration. “Currently indisposed. Will you help me or not?”

  The creature stared at him, unblinking, for a long time. Eventually it said, “Twelve hours. That is all I can give you, so that is all you will have.”

  “Deal,” Murdoch replied, heart quickening in earnest. With this he would finally be able to talk to Sorcha – to convince her to take back his bridle from her Seelie prince.

  Twelve hours would have to be enough.

  The creature grinned. With a sharp nail it cut open the palm of its hand, smearing the silver-blue blood that spilled from its wound across Murdoch’s forehead. “The moment you surface you will be transformed,” it warned, “so do not break through the loch unti
l you are where you need to be.”

  Wordlessly, Murdoch dissolved into the loch and used underwater currents to help speed his journey to its southern shores, where the hamlet of Darach – and Sorcha Darrow’s house – was. I will have to appear as Murdoch Buchanan, he realised as he neared the shore. She will not recognise anyone else, and her parents would not let anyone they do not know into their house.

  The thought of Sorcha’s parents gave Murdoch pause. He hadn’t considered how to handle them upon reaching the Darrow household. Ultimately deciding that he would cross that bridge when he came to it, Murdoch closed his eyes as he reached the upper layer of the loch, broke through the surface and –

  Inhaled the ice-cold night air deeply into a pair of unfamiliar, human lungs. He swam the last fifty feet to the shore, wobbling unsteadily on feet that had not been used to walk for a long, long time. A gigantic shiver wracked Murdoch’s body.

  “It is f-freezing,” he muttered, running his hands up and down his arms as he got his bearings. A strong gust of wind blew a load of wet, bitter snow into his face; Murdoch sneezed and cowered from the next lot before it could sting his eyes again.

  I need clothes, Murdoch realised as he staggered across the sand. I cannot show up to the Darrow house completely naked.

  But it quickly became apparent that Murdoch had no other choice. The weather was so brutal not a single clothes line was hanging up outside, and the MacPherson farm’s barn and outbuildings were firmly locked and bolted against the wind.

  “How do I explain all this to Sorcha?” Murdoch screamed into the wind, beyond frustrated that such a simple, stupid problem as needing clothes was wasting so much of his precious time. He stomped and slid through mud and slush until he spied her house, mind drawing a complete blank for the words to tell her what exactly was going on.

  Just go up to the front door and knock, Murdoch thought. There is no other way around it. Be thankful you have this opportunity at all. Do not waste it.

  When Murdoch finally crept along the gravelled pathway to the Darrow house he noticed that their carriage was missing, and that Sorcha’s parents’ room – as well as her father’s study – was dark. Not daring to believe that he had managed to stumble across Sorcha when she was completely alone, Murdoch ran a hand through his dark, sodden hair and breathed deeply through his nose.

  This is it, he told himself as he held up a fist against the front door. She hasn’t seen you in two years. She probably thinks she’d never seen you again – probably doesn’t want to see you again.

  For the sake of both their homes, Murdoch had to ignore the stinging in his heart at the thought of Sorcha trying to push him away.

  He knocked on the door, just as it was flung open.

  And there was Sorcha, bucket of water in her hands. It came crashing and clattering to the floor as soon as she saw Murdoch, dripping wet and naked, standing a mere foot away from her.

  He risked a smile, though his frozen muscles protested strongly against it.

  “Miss Darrow,” he said. “It has been too long.”

  Chapter Two

  Lachlan

  “…Lachlan. Lachlan? Lachlan!”

  “…what is it?”

  Lachlan’s gaze slid lazily over to Ailith. He had been dozing on the throne, he knew, but he did not care. The day had been long and dark and dreary, and all he wanted was a jug of wine and his bed.

  And a song.

  Ailith tutted, delicately crossing her legs on the ornate throne that had been built for her when she had become Lachlan’s queen. “If you do not wish to discuss this now it can wait until the morrow,” she said, “but it cannot be delayed any longer than that. Things are tense enough with the Unseelie as it is without you ignoring Eirian’s emissaries.”

  “Then let said emissaries wait until tomorrow,” Lachan drawled. “Given what the Unseelie King’s brethren tried to do to me they can bloody wait another day.”

  His ice-blonde queen sighed patiently. “If he was going to wage war to avenge his brother and nephew he’d have made that clear already.”

  “Would he? The Unseelie are known for their deceptiveness, even to us. He might be waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “…I do not know,” Lachlan admitted, turning from Ailith in the process.

  Life had been hard-going for Lachlan during the past two years. As if being cursed to live as a fox by his stepfather and stepbrother hadn’t been enough for him to deal with, the fallout from a kelpie having posed as the Golden Prince of Faeries to assassinate both traitorous Unseelies had left Lachlan with utter pandemonium within his realm to calm and control. The creature had drowned fifteen members of the Seelie Court in its rampage, all to incite a war between the two faerie factions.

  And steal Sorcha Darrow in the process.

  It was Lachlan’s turn to sigh. He hadn’t seen Sorcha for two months, his work as king having taken up too much of his time to visit her. And Sorcha was working hard herself – her father’s health had deteriorated so much that both he and her mother had moved to Glasgow to be closer to a respectable doctor. That left Sorcha to take up her father’s business: looking after the land that surrounded Loch Lomond and the people that lived upon it.

  For the hundredth time, Lachlan wished Sorcha had accepted his offer to live with him in the Seelie Court. He missed her dearly, and felt uneasy about how close she was to the loch. Lachlan may have cast the kelpie back from whence it came – and promised to destroy its bridle should it dare to resurface again – but that didn’t mean Lachlan trusted his threat would be enough to keep the creature away from Sorcha.

  It loved her, after all.

  “You are thinking of Miss Sorcha, aren’t you?” Ailith asked, a knowing smile on her face.

  Lachlan rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me that look.”

  “I never thought I would see the day that you were so interested in a human, Lachlan,” she laughed. “And for two years, no less! I must admit, I thought you would have lost interest in her by now. I am glad that you have proved me wrong.”

  “Why, because it means you get to watch me suffer?”

  She slapped his arm gently. “You are so over-dramatic.”

  “I know. You love it.”

  “Is there really no way Sorcha can be convinced to live as one of us?” Ailith wondered aloud for both herself and Lachlan. “Surely things are different for her now. A lot can change for a human in two years.”

  “She has more responsibilities now, certainly,” he complained. “Though that only seems to make her want to remain exactly the way she is even more. Damn mortal sensibilities.”

  Neither of them said anything for a minute or two, their silence punctuated only by the arrival of a servant proffering them a bronze tray with two goblets of wine upon it. Both Lachlan and Ailith happily took one each.

  After a long draught of the heady, crimson liquid, Lachlan slumped even deeper into his throne. “Winter is boring,” he moaned. “Hardly anyone comes into the forest. No humans lurking about wishing to make a deal with a faerie, or seeking a revel, or searching for a whisper of a soul already lost to us.”

  Ailith squeezed his hand. “It has always been this way in the weeks leading to the winter solstice.”

  “Yes, but before I was king I could come and go as I please, seeking out mischief wherever I went. Now I must stay here…ruling. How did my mother ever manage it? It is suffocating.”

  “Maybe so, but you are good at it,” Ailith reassured. “You are proving those wrong who believed that you were not ready.”

  “Too bad the lead perpetrators are too dead to see that they were wrong,” Lachlan muttered darkly.

  Ailith said nothing. She did not like to talk about Queen Evanna’s second husband, the half-Unseelie Innis, nor of the faerie’s son, Fergus. She had been engaged to marry Fergus, after all, though she had not agreed to the union out of love. But she clearly had some feelings that remained for her tempestuous husband-to-be, even after disc
overing he had been the one who cursed Lachlan.

  Just as Sorcha still has feelings for the kelpie, though she would never admit to it.

  For it did not matter that Sorcha delighted in seeing Lachlan whenever they managed to snatch a few hours of time together, nor that all they thought of was each other during those hours. Sorcha was alone with the loch right outside her door, and Lachlan had seen the way she looked out across it when she thought nobody was watching.

  It tore Lachlan apart with jealousy.

  “Speaking of the solstice,” Ailith said, magicking a thick, silvery card out of thin air to spin it between her hands, “you still haven’t responded to Eirian’s invitation to the winter revel. You know you must go.”

  Lachlan made a face. “What is wrong with us having our own one? Why must he hold dominion over all things dark and freezing?”

  “Because you get to hold the revel during the summer solstice, and it is only fair.” Ailith threw the invitation at Lachlan, who caught it without looking at it. Sighing heavily, he pressed his thumbprint against the card and closed his eyes. When he opened them again the invitation was gone.

  He made a face at Ailith. “There. It is done. Are you happy n–”

  “King Lachlan,” a frantic-looking, red-faced Seelie with the ears and antlers of a young buck announced as it skittered across the throne room, startling Lachlan out of his bad mood. Both he and Ailith perked up at the intrusion.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  The creature shifted on the spot uncomfortably. Lachlan’s heart rate sped up; something told him he would not like what he was about to hear.

  “You said you wished to be informed the moment the – the moment the kelpie emerged from the loch,” they stammered. “I saw a man swimming out of it down on the southern shore, and it looked –”

  “A man?”

  The buck nodded.

  “Then it could not be the kelpie,” Ailith said, smiling warmly for the trembling Seelie. “But thank you for your information –”