“We shall see who pays for what, Brighid Dhianna. After all, it is you who helped to bring the demons back into Partholon. Perhaps the people you chose over your own herd will not open their arms to you with such enthusiasm when they realize what you have done.”
“The New Fomorians are not demons, you fool! They are a kind people who nurture life, not death. And that is what all of Partholon will know.”
Gorman’s eyes turned sly. “You seem to be forgetting one very special Fomorian.” He enunciated the word carefully.
Brighid narrowed her eyes at him. “Fallon is jailed at Guardian Castle awaiting the birth of her child and her execution. She will pay for her madness, even though what she did was only a result of the depth of her love for her people. She is an aberration. The rest of the New Fomorians are not like her.”
“So what you’re saying is that they wouldn’t help her escape and then join her in small but deadly strikes against Partholon?”
“Of course not.”
“But what if they did? What if a winged creature who came from the southwest—the exact area of MacCallan Castle—managed to break into Guardian Castle and free the insane Fomorian, leaving blood and death in their wake? What would the Guardian Warriors do?”
“This is a ridiculous guessing game. It could not happen. The New Fomorians want nothing more than to live peacefully in Partholon. They wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that.”
Gorman’s laughter filled the tent, almost drowning out the next roll of thunder. Bowyn and Mannis smiled, and their teeth flashed white in the flickering lightning.
“She knows as little as Bregon said she would about it,” Mannis said.
Brighid’s eyes snapped to his. “You have a tongue? I thought you and your brother were only mouthpieces for Bregon. If he’s not present feeding you your words I didn’t think either of you—” she let her disgusted gaze include Bowyn “—could actually speak for yourself.”
“You always thought you were so much better than us,” Bowyn said angrily.
“Not better, just more humane,” Brighid said.
“Don’t you want to know what the ‘it’ is?” Gorman interrupted, calling her attention back to him.
“I don’t care about anything you have to say, Gorman.”
“Really? Perhaps you will. ‘It’ is shape-shifting. Bregon told us the people of Partholon know as little about shape-shifting as his own newly made High Shaman sister. And that he would use their ignorance to his benefit.”
“What are you…” With a shudder of horror she knew. The “Fomorian” who helped Fallon to escape would be Bregon. “Oh, Goddess! No!”
“Oh, Goddess! Yes!” Gorman mocked. “But don’t think it was Bregon who thought of the plan.”
“Mairearad.” She breathed her mother’s name, remembering the raven’s obscene shriek for vengeance.
“Of course it was Mairearad. Even dying she was brilliant. She orchestrated the revenge for her own death. She told Bregon to enter Guardian Castle at night and alone, and find the Fomorian. Then he was to kill everyone who had seen him enter in his true form, shape-shift into a Fomorian, and allow the creature to escape—only then would he let any of the warriors who saw him live.”
“Because they wouldn’t see him. They would see a Fomorian,” she said, shaking her head back and forth in horror, remembering the kindness the Guardian Warriors had shown the children. But that wouldn’t matter, not if they believed Partholon was being attacked by the race they had been commissioned to defend her against.
“Yes.” Gorman chuckled. “And they’ll follow a Fomorian’s trail that will lead back to MacCallan Castle. What do you think Clan MacCallan will do when the Guardian Warriors surround their castle?”
“They won’t give up the children,” she whispered, more to herself than to Gorman. “They’ll fight to protect them.”
“We’re counting on that,” Gorman snarled.
“Why? Those people have done nothing to you. Why would you want to destroy Clan MacCallan?”
“For the same reason you should. They killed your mother.”
“That’s crazy. Clan MacCallan could not possibly have harmed my mother.”
“She died in a pit dug by humans.” Gorman moved quickly to a dark corner of the large tent and picked up a wad of material from the floor. He returned to stand in front of Brighid and shoved the bloody cloth into her face. “This is what the humans were wearing. Do you recognize it?”
It was the MacCallan plaid. Brighid’s stomach pitched as she remembered Elphame telling her of the Clan members who had chosen to break their oaths and leave the castle, making themselves unacceptable to any other Clan. They must have made their way to the vast Centaur Plains, probably thinking to begin anew, maybe even found their own Clan.
Instead they’d founded a war.
“These people were not a part of Clan MacCallan. Several Clan members broke oath and left—these had to be those people. Where are they? I’ll recognize them if I see them.”
“You wouldn’t recognize them now, not even with your excellent Huntress vision,” Bowyn said sarcastically.
“You killed them!” she said.
“We did. It was the beginning of your mother’s vengeance.”
“This has to be stopped before the world is awash in blood,” Brighid said.
“Let it be awash!” Gorman shouted. “While you were chatting with your uncaring Goddess, Bregon was going about your mother’s business. He’s already been to Guardian Castle, and should return to the plains any day with news of his bloody success. The wheels are spinning past the point of no return, and it is impossible for you to stop them.”
Brighid’s eyes went cold. “Don’t ever tell me what’s impossible, you pathetic sycophant. What would you know of the impossible? All you’ve done your whole life is follow a centaur who is little more than a petulant colt and lust after a female who knew more of hatred and manipulation than love. I pity you, Gorman.”
“You pity me!” he screamed, blowing spittle in her face. “We’ll see very shortly who’s to be pitied.”
Thunder roared ominously and lightning flared outside, brightening the tent with a surreal, fitful light. Breathing hard Gorman sidled closer to her and fisted his hand in her hair, jerking her head back painfully.
“Bregon had more to report from the Otherworld than the news that you’d finally managed to taste of the Chalice.” With a single, violent movement, he ripped the vest from her chest, exposing her breasts. “He also said something we found very shocking. He told us that you had mated with a man. Could that really be truth?” With his other hand he lifted her breast so that he could easily bend his head over it. When his tongue flicked out to lick her nipple, she surged so violently away from him that her world began to blacken as the rope cut off her air supply.
Then two other sets of hands pressed against the other side of her body as Bowyn and Mannis held her upright so that the rope loosened and her breath returned in panting gasps. In a gray haze it seemed that the eyes of the three centaurs burned with an unnatural light. Their faces were flushed and their breathing had deepened. Where their hot hands touched her she could feel their lust burning into her.
“Answer him,” Bowyn said, his voice gruff and breathy. “Did you mate with a man?”
“I did,” she ground between her teeth, fighting off panic. “Cuchulainn MacCallan is my husband and lifemate, and when I lead the Dhianna Herd I will do so with him at my side.”
“That will never happen!” Gorman shrieked.
“Perhaps she has been too long without a centaur lover, and she has forgotten true passion,” Bowyn rasped between ever-thickening breaths. His hand closed over her other breast and as he squeezed and prodded the nipple he bit into her shoulder so hard that his teeth drew blood.
Gorman’s low chuckle sounded near her ear as his tongue flicked up and down her neck. “Perhaps you are right, Bowyn.”
She could feel Mannis moving behind her
, his hands and teeth taking painful turns at kneading and then biting her haunches. Frantically her eyes searched the tent for Hagan, but the centaur had disappeared into the storm-filled night.
“If you do this thing I swear by the Goddess Epona that I will not rest until each of you are dead,” Brighid hissed. She struggled against the blackness that kept narrowing her vision by concentrating on the warmth that had begun to spread from the turquoise stone that hung between her naked breasts.
“And how will you fulfill that oath?” Gorman whispered, his hot breath coming fast and heavy against her skin as he nipped and licked the mound of her breast. “Will your puny man mate track us down and scare us to our deaths with his overwhelming strength?”
“He won’t have to. He’s going to kill you tonight where you stand,” Cuchulainn said from the opening of the tent.
50
THE DEADLY SOUND of Cuchulainn’s sword being drawn free of its sheath was echoed by a wolf’s low, menacing growl. When the warrior moved, Fand struck. Bowyn was the first to go down, screaming as the wolf lunged under Brighid’s body to get to his rear legs. With one powerful tear of Fand’s teeth, Bowyn was hamstringed and floundering in his own blood on the grassy ground.
Cuchulainn didn’t move like a man. He moved like a malevolent spirit—silent, all-knowing, deadly. With speed that caused his sword to become a silver-white blur he whirled and lunged past the fallen Bowyn, slicing his throat in a neat, scarlet arch. The centaur’s last breath escaped his open mouth in a gurgling gasp.
The warrior closed on Mannis without making a sound. The centaur was scrambling back from Brighid’s haunches, his body still engorged with his obscene lust, when Cuchulainn struck. He skewered him in the chest, pulled his sword free and whirled past him, dragging the blade along his equine belly and disemboweling him.
“I won’t be so easy to kill,” Gorman said, hefting the long sword he’d retrieved while the man had been kept busy with Gorman’s comrades.
Cuchulainn’s only response was to move relentlessly toward the centaur. He didn’t speak and he didn’t break his stride. With speed that had been honed like the edge of a blade, he made the centaur look old and clumsy in comparison. Cuchulainn ducked smoothly under Gorman’s sword, but instead of going for a killing blow, he sliced at the centaur’s front hock.
Gorman hissed in pain and stumbled back—and right into the wolf’s path. Fand wasn’t as silent a warrior, but she was just as deadly. Thunder blanketed Gorman’s scream and, in turn, lightning illuminated the torn flesh that dangled from his rear hamstring. He collapsed and Cuchulainn closed on him.
“No!” Brighid yelled.
Cuchulainn’s body jerked to a halt. The face he turned to his wife was one she had only seen once before, when they had fought side by side against Fallon and the misguided Fomorians who tried to protect her. But his blood-spattered warrior’s mask did not frighten or repulse her. She knew her own visage was a reflection of the same cold intensity.
“Cut me free,” she said.
“Fand! Watch him,” Cuchulainn ordered. The wolf slunk over to stand near the centaur’s bleeding hindquarters, fangs bared.
Cuchulainn sheathed his sword and pulled free the dagger from his belt. With swift, sure movements he cut the ropes from his wife’s body.
Without asking, Brighid pulled his sword free, and then, bare-chested and holding the bloody blade before her she approached Gorman.
He looked up at her, eyes glazed with pain and fear.
“Don’t kill me! I’ll do anything!” he pleaded.
“Don’t speak to me,” she ground between her teeth. Without looking at the warrior who was standing beside her, she said. “Cuchulainn, Epona gave you the gift of seeing the soul. What do you see within this centaur’s soul?”
She heard his sharp intake of breath and knew that this was the first moment he had used the gift newly given to him by the Goddess.
“I see rot and darkness.”
With no hesitation, Brighid plunged her husband’s sword into the centaur’s heart. In almost the same motion, she jerked it free and handed it back to Cuchulainn.
“I have to get out of here,” she said.
Cuchulainn nodded tightly. Before he followed her through the open tent flap he stopped to pick up her torn vest, and the Huntress’s bow and quiver of arrows that had been thrown into one of the tent’s corners.
“Fand! Come,” he said.
The warrior and wolf walked out into the night to find that Brighid had stumbled several steps from the tent. She had dropped to her knees and was being violently sick. Fand lay close by, whining worriedly. Cuchulainn stroked her back, held her hair, and murmured wordless sounds of comfort, all of which were drowned out by a deafening crack of thunder, followed by a blinding blaze of lightning. Brighid’s head jerked up.
“There’s no rain,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“No, love,” he said gently. “There is no rain.”
The Huntress drew in several deep breaths. “I can smell no rain in the air, either. It’s a dry storm. By the Goddess, I’ve always hated the damned things! Dangerous—they bring deadly lightning and the chance of…” With a look of horror, she stood. Orienting herself quickly, she turned so that the wind was blowing directly into her face while she looked southward out across the length of the Centaur Plains. “Oh, Goddess, no!” she cried.
Cuchulainn followed her wide-eyed gaze. The horizon was on fire. As they stood staring with horrified awe, a shaft of lightning snaked to the ground, igniting another, closer, section of the grasslands.
“We have to get off the plains. Now,” she said, slipping on her vest and strapping the bow and quiver in their proper place over her back. “A grassfire is deceptive. In no time it can engulf you.”
“The gelding isn’t far from here.”
“Wait,” Brighid said before Cuchulainn sprinted off. “Help me cut two pieces out of the tent.”
He didn’t question her, but went to the tent and began to slice through the thick hide.
“Big enough to cover us,” she said, grasping the torn edge and pulling it so that it would tear more quickly.
“Cover us?” His cutting faltered.
“If we can’t outrun the fire we have to find a gully, or better, crosstimbers with a stream. We get in the streambed and cover ourselves with the hides. If we’re lucky the fire will pass over us.”
“If we’re not lucky?” he said.
“We suffocate or burn to death.”
He grunted and began cutting the sections from the side of the tent with renewed energy. When the two pieces of the tent fell free, neither Brighid nor Cuchulainn spared a glance at the silent, bloody remains within.
The gelding was hobbled not far from the tent. Cuchulainn flipped open his saddle pack and tossed a skin of water to Brighid. She drank greedily while he rolled up and then tied one of the pieces of the tent to Brighid’s equine back, and the other behind his saddle. When he was finished he turned to the Huntress. She was standing with her head down, petting Fand and murmuring endearments to the whimpering wolf cub.
Cuchulainn didn’t let himself dwell on what he had found in the tent and what had almost happened to his wife. He couldn’t. If he did, he would be lost. His stomach was tight and hot, and he still felt the preternatural clearness that always came over him during battle. He’d need a warrior’s strength to get them through what lay ahead. But he couldn’t stop himself from going to her and lifting her face. Holding it between his hands, he felt the shudder that passed through her body when she met his eyes.
“You came in time,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
He couldn’t speak. He could only kiss her with an intensity that edged on violence. She met his passion with her own, wrapping her arms around him and drinking him in.
Lightning streaked across the sky, breaking their kiss.
“We have to ride hard. The wind is with the fire,” Brighid said.
“Back to the tors?”
“No. There’s not enough water there to stop the fire, and we couldn’t climb fast enough to get away from it.”
“East, then. The tributaries of the Calman River finger into the plains between the tors and Woulff Castle. My father and I fished there often in my youth.”
Brighid nodded. “Let’s hope the drought hasn’t dried them up.”
“If it has then we’ll just have to make it to the river itself,” Cuchulainn said, swinging aboard the gelding.
He might be able to make it. The gelding is fresh and well-rested. I won’t.
“Brighid,” Cuchulainn turned in the saddle and their eyes met in the next flash of lightning. “I will never leave you. We either live or die—together.”
She knew he was speaking the truth. This man would never leave her, not even to save himself. Then Goddess help me not to get us both killed.
“You lead. I’ll be right behind you,” she said.
The warrior dug his heels into the gelding’s sides and they raced into the northeast with the wolf cub streaking behind them.
Their flight from the Centaur Plains seemed to be a descent into an Underworld that had been abandoned by the Goddess. The thunder and the lightning served to illuminate vignettes of a nightmarish reality. Animals of the plain rushed past them—deer, fox and other small mammals like rabbits leaped hysterically into their path before bounding away. And with the animals came the smoke. At first it was just a brief, bitter taste on the southern breeze, but as the night lengthened the air became thicker until Cuchulainn pulled up his gelding, and tore his shirt into long swatches of linen that he soaked with water from one of the skins.
“When it gets really bad tie it around your nose and mouth. It might help.”
Gasping for air Brighid nodded, and they both drank thirstily from the skin. “I wish it was wine,” she said between coughing fits.
Cuchulainn smiled at her. “It will be soon. My mother’s temple isn’t far from the Calman tributaries.”