by P. C. Cast
“So you see, Alex, we need someone on this mission who can speak to the dead,” General Ashton finished for her.
“Oh, no!” Alex was shaking her head. “Look, I haven’t even been away from the tallgrass prairie for a full day and already I’m sick and tired of seeing ghost after ghost swarming everywhere.” It gave her a twisted sense of pleasure that the professor and the general both glanced nervously around in response to her words. “Don’t worry about it—you can’t see them. Anyway, they don’t seem to like this building. There aren’t any in here. But here’s the deal—I know Tessa told you about my thing, and I understand why she did. Tessa’s all about being a team player. I’m not. I’m out of the air force. The whole thing…” she paused and gestured vaguely around her “…this whole thing is just too much for me. Yeah, I’m curious about the man in my dreams, but you guys are telling me he lived a zillion years ago, so that really doesn’t have anything to do with me today. I just want to go back home—to my quiet job—to a world where I can actually get some damn rest and not be driven out of my mind. Besides all that—in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not particularly into the military mind-set of do-what-you’re-told-and-shut-up anymore. Sorry I’ve wasted your time and mine.” Alex started to stand up.
“Sit down, Sergeant.” General Ashton didn’t raise her voice, but the tone of command in it had Alex sitting back down before she even registered the fact that she’d complied.
“You’re a blunt woman, so I’m going to be equally as blunt with you. This isn’t about some dream man. This isn’t about you getting your rest. This is about finding the twelve pieces of the medallion, which once reassembled, will stop a race of creatures who have been subjugating women for thousands of years. We are their only challengers, and they will unmake us in order to keep their power. This is about saving your daughters’ daughters and all those women who come after them. Suck it up, Sergeant. Stop whining. You can sleep when you’re dead.”
Alex met the general’s sharp gaze. The officer was obviously pissed at her, but that didn’t bother Alex at all. Actually, it was like a sweet walk down memory lane—she’d kinda liked pissing off officers. The truth was Alex respected that the general had finally given her the bottom line and stopped dancing around the damn bush. “These creatures, they’re really as bad as all that?”
“The Centauri will wipe out human females before they allow us to join the free galactic community.”
“I’m not a hero, General. I’m just a woman who hears the dead. And if I’m not buffered by the tallgrass prairie, that usually stresses me out so badly I can barely think.”
“How much thinking do you have to be able to do to ask some ancient ghosts to lead you to this?” General Ashton pulled out a drawing of what looked like a piece of a bronze medallion. It was oblong in shape and about the size of two quarters welded together. There was an interesting raised pattern on the piece that looked as if it might be sparkly, and vaguely reminded Alex of constellations.
She shrugged. “Depends on how long I have to go without sleep.”
“Alex,” Professor Carswell interjected quickly. “Do you know why you find the tallgrass prairie so peaceful?”
“No, except when I’m there the dead don’t bother me as much. It’s like they’re more tied to the earth or something. I’ve never really questioned it. I’ve just been glad Tessa and I decided to stop there on a road trip several years ago.”
The professor nodded. “Tied to the earth…that’s an interesting premise. Did you know the ancient Celts were very closely tied to the earth, too? I can’t know for sure, but my guess is you could be a lot less troubled by ghosts in the ancient world than you are in our modern one.”
“But whether the professor’s guess is correct or not, we need you to go on this mission,” said General Ashton.
Alex turned to face her. “I want to talk to Tessa.”
Ashton glanced at the professor, who cleared her throat, then said, “Tessa isn’t on earth right now, Alex.”
“Huh?”
Carswell gave a slight nod. “It’s true. She was only here briefly, when she made the call to you. Actually, she was here for a prenatal examination.”
“Prenatal!”
The general’s smile was self-satisfied. “Had you not hung up on your friend she would have told you herself.”
Carswell frowned at the general. “Tessa wouldn’t have explained that she’s pregnant with an alien’s child and is going to raise it to be a star navigator in the father’s home world. She would only have said that she was pregnant.”
“An alien kid?” Alex felt a little dizzy.
“Half alien, half human,” Carswell corrected.
“So her mission was successful,” Alex murmured.
“On many levels,” agreed the general.
Alex met General Ashton’s gaze. “I’m not like Tessa. She’s always been one of the good guys. She’s always known the right thing to do, and done it. I got sick of doing the right thing when I was six and my parents started to treat me like they were scared of me because I helped lead the cops to a neighbor kid’s body. For a long time I’ve preferred staying on the sidelines.”
This time the general’s smile looked genuine and softened her face, so that Alex suddenly thought how pretty she was. “So, aren’t you tired of getting splinters in your butt from staying on the bench? How about getting into the game for a change?”
“I think you’re backing the wrong player,” Alex replied.
“I don’t think so,” Professor Carswell said quickly. “You’re linked with the druid who bears that woad design.”
“What do you mean by linked?”
Instead of answering, the professor cocked her head to the side, as if she was listening to a whisper in the wind. “You’ve never been in love.”
It wasn’t a question, but Alex felt awkwardly compelled to answer. “No. I haven’t.”
“It’s never been right with any man, has it?”
“It’s a little hard to concentrate on romance after a guy finds out I can talk to dead people. It’s not like on TV. Guys don’t so much like it,” Alex said sardonically.
“The man who wears that woad design will change that. He is woven into your soul,” said the professor.
“And just what the hell does that mean?” Alex blurted.
“Accept this mission, go back to ancient Briton and find out,” General Ashton said.
“Ah, hell,” Alex groaned.
The professor and the general shared a brief, victorious smile.
Chapter 5
“A re you sure this bunny’s going to act right?” Alex peered into what looked like a cat carrier, at a very ordinary white rabbit.
“The rabbit will do what she’s supposed to do. Just unwrap her from the cloak you’ll be wearing, speak the lines you’ve memorized, and then drop her at your feet.” Professor Carswell smiled at Alex. “Keep in mind you’re the powerful priestess of a mighty goddess, as well as what the Celts recognized as a Soul Speaker—so you need to deliver the lines with some aplomb.”
“Aplomb? Seriously?”
“Seriously. You need to be in character.”
“I’ll do my best. Hope the rabbit does hers.”
“Leave that to me. I’m going to be sure you’re facing southeast. The rabbit will bolt away from you and directly toward Londinium.”
“And that will make Boudica attack London?” Alex said doubtfully.
“History is clear. Boudica was a devout follower of the goddess Andraste. Rabbits were sacred to the goddess, pure white rabbits especially so. Before making the final decision to march her army against Londinium…” Carswell paused to be sure Alex caught the correction in calling the city by its ancient name “…she released a rabbit, saying that she would march her army in the direction the goddess commanded. You’re posing as a priestess of Andraste, so that moment is the perfect one for you to materialize in the queen’s camp.”
“Assuming they
don’t all freak and attack me because I’ve just beamed down. They have to be superstitious as hell.”
“Their specific belief in their goddess, and their more general belief in the magic of the earth, is what is going to ensure our plan works. What we consider science, they considered magic. Also, you don’t have to hide your ability to speak to the dead there. You’ll be venerated for it.”
“I certainly hope so.” Alex also hoped Carswell had been right about the ghosts of the past behaving like ghosts did on the tallgrass prairie. Even though the lab, which she hadn’t left for days, was insulated against psychic phenomena, Alex could feel the presence of spirits in the city surrounding her, and just that was enough to mess with her sleep and her nerves.
“Use some of that famous attitude of yours that has kept you butting heads with General Ashton these past several days, and no one will have any trouble believing you’re the priestess of a war goddess,” Carswell was saying.
“Ashton thinks I’m insubordinate.”
“War goddesses often are,” the professor stated, which made Alex laugh. “Just rely on your instincts. The knowledge that I place within your brain during the transport will be like a very strong gut feeling. Sometimes you’ll receive whole strings of information in your subconscious, so be sure you follow your hunches.”
Just then Alex’s nervous gut felt the urge to empty itself. “I really won’t have any trouble communicating?”
“None. The chip implanted in your brain’s language center will act as your own internal computer. It’ll translate what you say and what you hear. Remember, you aren’t Alex anymore. You are Blonwen, priestess of the goddess Andraste. You’ve escaped the Roman governor Gaius Seutonius Paulinus’s slaughter of druids and priestesses on the Island of Mona.”
“Who you believe could be a Centaurian.”
The professor nodded. “With his historic record of cruelty it’s a definite possibility. Plus, we know the medallion is there. No doubt there will also be a Centaurian tracking it and trying to keep it from us.”
Carswell handed over a cuff bracelet of beaten gold embedded with a quartz crystal, which Alex slide onto her right wrist. “My get-out-of-jail-free card,” she said.
“Don’t lose it,” General Aston called as she took her seat behind a computer monitor near the glass booth that stood in the middle of the lab. “The Emergency Signal Cuff is the only way we can get you out of there if you’re really in trouble.”
Really in trouble? Alex mused silently. Does she mean versus the unreal trouble I’ll be in the instant I step into the past?
“Don’t forget that we can correct historical events you accidently impact, but you have to activate the ESC before you’re mortally wounded. You aren’t a part of history, so you can actually be killed,” said General Ashton.
“That is impossible for me to forget,” Alex muttered wryly.
“Ready, Blonwen?” Carswell asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” she said.
“All right. Here’s Thumper.” Carswell pulled the rabbit out of the carrier and handed it to her.
“Thumper?”
The professor smiled. “Bambi was a favorite of mine.”
Too nervous to smile back, Alex concentrated on not holding the rabbit too tightly.
As the professor put on the crown-shaped headpiece that would allow her to harness sine waves and send Alex back in time, she whispered, “Your druid will be there for you. I know he will. Allow yourself to find him.”
Her mouth had dried to a desert, so all Alex could do was nod in response.
Much too soon Professor Carswell was seated comfortably in the plush recliner directly in front of the curved, glass-walled booth Alex had secretly christened the Glass Coffin. Alex stood inside the booth, holding the rabbit and trying to keep her breathing even. She was marveling at how utterly relaxed the professor looked, when the small hairs on her forearms began to tingle and then lift. She’d just tightened her grip on the rabbit when the pain hit. A terrible agony sizzled through her body. Waves of power made the air around her ripple as if she were in a whirlwind. Don’t fight this! Alex reminded herself. It’s like a wave you’re supposed to ride. But she had never done any surfing. She tried to concentrate on the professor—to focus on the fact that the woman looked calm. Everything must be fine. Carswell knew what she was doing. Everything was going to be okay.
A cloud of light built around Alex, and as she closed her eyes against the incredible brightness and clutched the rabbit to her, she began to feel weightless. She was telling herself not to think about the fact that that lightness meant her molecules were beginning to temporarily disconnect from each other when she felt as if she was being sucked up into the ceiling. As everything went black, Thumper’s panicked scream joined her own.
The vertigo was worse than Alex had thought it would be, and she stayed on her knees, bent over and trembling while she sucked in air. Just as Carswell had said, she was wearing a cloak, though how the professor managed to twine sine waves to create clothing was as mind-boggling as time travel itself. Alex still had the rabbit in her arms, and it was definitely alive, because she could feel it shaking.
Then the voices penetrated through the ringing in her ears.
“What is it?”
“A vision!”
“Aye! An apparition!”
“Is she a spirit?”
“Protect Boudica! Shield the queen from the apparition!”
Then a woman’s voice lifted above the others. It was filled with confidence and command. “Rise and explain who you are, be you spirit or flesh.”
Alex drew a deep breath and prayed silently to whatever god or goddess existed in this time that she could stay on her feet and make her voice work.
She stood up slowly, giving herself a chance to adapt to the dizziness, and kept her arms wrapped around the rabbit, hidden within her cloak. Alex didn’t open her eyes until she was fairly sure she wasn’t going to fall over.
The first thing she saw was a woman who blazed with power. Boudica—it had to be the queen—stood not twenty feet in front of her. She had more thick red hair than Alex had ever seen on anyone. Her clothes were of supple leather, intricately embroidered with brightly colored thread in complex knots and designs. They wrapped snuggly around her tall, athletic body. The tunic left most of her thighs bare. Flat-heeled leather boots that came to her knees were trimmed in fox fur, as was the cloak she was wearing. She had jeweled bracelets on her wrists and biceps, and around her neck was a thick ring of twisted gold that had stones inlayed on both ends. The words Torque—ancient symbol of royalty, whispered through Alex’s mind.
Yes! This had to be the queen. Alex lifted her chin and met the woman’s cold green eyes.
“Queen Boudica, I am Blonwen, priestess of Andraste. The goddess has sent me here, saving me from the carnage at Mona, so that I might show you her favor.” Alex had to pause as the people surrounding them broke into excited shouts.
Boudica raised one hand and easily silenced everyone.
“This is, indeed, a sign from Andraste, as I just evoked the blessing of the goddess on the battle to come.”
“I bring news for that battle,” Alex said quickly, picking up the thread of the lines she’d memorized back in the lab. “Andraste would have you follow the path she leads, and she has sent her sacred hare to show you the way!” With a flourish that would have made Professor Carswell proud, Alex threw back her cloak, exposing the white rabbit. The people gasped and Alex tossed the bunny to her feet, then held her breath. But as usual, Carswell was spot on. The rabbit leaped forward and ran straight for Boudica. The queen didn’t move, but her eyes widened as the hare raced for her. Then, at the last moment, it dodged to the right, coming so close to the queen that it brushed the folds of her cloak, before it darted off into the darkening forest behind them.
No one made a sound for a moment, and then Boudica’s face broke into a fierce grin. “The hare makes for Londinium, and so shall we!�
�� She raised her fist in the air as the people shouted in joyful agreement.
Alex was almost positive she was going to be sick.
“Sit, Priestess! You look barely able to stay on your feet.” Boudica strode to Alex and put a firm hand under her elbow. “Aedan! Why do you stand and stare like a waterless carp? Aid me with Andraste’s servant.”
A man who looked as if he could scare croup out of babies just by glancing at them hurried over. He practically lifted Alex off her feet in his haste to get her to an odd looking chair set to the right of an intricately carved piece that was obviously a throne.
“Bring the priestess food and mead!” Boudica barked, and other men scrambled to do her bidding.
Soon a bronze goblet was handed to Alex. Gratefully, she sipped it and then, delighted with the sweet strong taste of mead, gulped thirstily. The cup was quickly refilled and a bronze platter of hot meat and hunks of bread put in front of her, and Alex, feeling as if she hadn’t eaten in days, went to work shoving food into her mouth.
Even though she had just materialized from thin air, had let loose a sacred rabbit and was now seated to the right of the queen, talk went on around her without anyone quizzing her about where, when, how or why. So as she ate, Alex surreptitiously studied the ancient Celts.
The professor had told her they were a tall people, but her flat textbook description didn’t begin to do them justice. They were savagely beautiful. Tall, yes, but also sleek and athletic. The women were bold looking, with thick ropes of braided hair in all the shades from the blondest of blond to Boudica’s striking fire red. The men were muscular giants, dangerous and sharp-eyed. Everyone wore brightly colored clothing—tunics, trousers and cloaks. Many items were as intricately embroidered as Boudica’s leathers.
At the sight of a man whose face was decorated with the sapphire woad design, Alex felt a snap of recognition, and her heart thudded almost painfully in her chest. But the design wasn’t of graceful S swirls. Instead it was in the shape of a dragon, the tattooed tail wrapping the warrior’s neck. But even though it wasn’t the image from her dreams, Alex’s appetite was gone.
