The Dark Divide

by Jennifer Fallon

  But Sorcha was no longer in a reality with any magic to sustain her. The magic was gone here, and with it her youth.

  Sorcha realised then that she had an even more pressing reason to return to her own realm. It had nothing to do with protecting the Undivided. Nothing to do with the approaching Lughnasadh.

  Nothing to do with saving anybody other than herself.

  Because if Sorcha didn’t find a way back through the rift to her own realm soon, she was going to die in this realm of old age.

  CHAPTER 30

  Fortunately for Brydie, once Torcán had officially gifted his future bride with her wedding gift, Anwen seemed disinclined to take it off. That meant Brydie had a bird’s eye view of the goings on in Álmhath’s court in a way she had never done before, even when she waited on the queen as one of her court maidens. She wasn’t sure if Anwen wore the jewelled collar because she knew Brydie was trapped in it and didn’t want to smother her, because she didn’t want to let the valuable necklace out of her sight, or if she simply liked wearing something so ostentatious. Whatever the reason, Brydie was no longer bored. She was intrigued, and not just by the goings on in Álmhath’s inner circle. For the first time since hearing about them when Álmhath sent her to Sí an Bhrú to be impregnated by Darragh of the Undivided, she was starting to appreciate the full power and reach of the Matrarchaí.

  Álmhath had hinted that Brydie’s mother, the legendary beauty Mogue Ni’Farrell, was a member of the Matrarchaí, and that her bloodline was precious enough to warrant sending Brydie to Sí an Bhrú for Darragh to ensure its continuation. She hadn’t realised how pervasive the Matrarchaí’s influence was. Nor had she realised how closely they were allied with the Druids.

  To the casual observer, the queen of the Celts tolerated the Druids, resented their influence over her people and undermined their authority at every opportunity. The truth was quite different. The Matrarchaí had taken it upon themselves to preserve the unbroken line of the Undivided, she realised now, keeping the biggest secret of all — that the Undivided were part-sídhe — well hidden. More than that, they were actively working with the Druids toward breeding a line that would not need the help or intervention of the Tuatha to access the magic their entire realm was so dependent on.

  Brydie had heard of the Partitionists. Her father had been accused of being one. She’d always thought their political agenda was the separation of the Celts from the interference of the Druids. She had believed the separation they agitated for was a political one, but the separation Álmhath was talking about was much more radical and profound. They were talking about separating the Druids and the Faerie — making it possible to keep the Tuatha magic without being held to the Treaty of Tír Na nÓg.

  Sídhe magic to wield at will, without the sídhe to inhibit its use.

  Exactly why that was necessary puzzled Brydie. The arrangement they had now was working perfectly fine, as far as she could tell. It had changed little for a couple of thousand years or so. Why the need to dispense with the reliance on the sídhe?

  One generation away from achieving our goal. That’s what Álmhath had claimed. Brydie rubbed her belly, wondering if she’d conceived a child when Darragh made love to her. Was this the generation they spoke of? Had Álmhath sent her to Darragh because nesting in her womb was the chance for humans to wield magic in their own right, with no interference from the likes of Marcroy Tarth?

  Fat lot of good it does anybody now, she thought. I’m trapped in a jewel. She hadn’t eaten in days but wasn’t hungry. She’d not needed to relieve herself and not once had she felt thirsty. Brydie was sure that if they ever released her from this jewelled prison, she would emerge exactly the same as she had been the moment Jamaspa trapped her here. Not so much as a hair would be arranged differently.

  If she was with child, it meant nothing. No foetus was going to grow into a baby in this static place.

  Anwen’s position as the future daughter-in-law of the queen meant she slept alone. At least that’s what Brydie had always assumed was the reason she had her own room. Having seen and heard the court maiden and her queen in private, Brydie wasn’t so sure about that anymore. She had the feeling it was because Anwen demanded it and Álmhath was afraid to refuse her.

  Torcán often crept into her alcove at night. Although Brydie had never been close to the prince — she thought him a bore — one couldn’t deny he was a handsome brute. He was aware of it, too, which was the main reason he was such a bore. Darragh had laughingly suggested the rest of it came from his unbearable sense of entitlement because his mother was queen.

  Anwen, Brydie quickly concluded, was not in love with Torcán, but she seemed happy enough to use him for pleasure. Brydie couldn’t think of any other way to describe it. The ‘do this to me, do that to me’ way Anwen ordered Torcán about during coitus was all about Anwen having a good time. If Torcán happened to take some pleasure from it too, it was incidental to the business at hand.

  Most times Anwen untied the necklace and placed it on the table by the bed, which meant Brydie didn’t have to watch Torcán’s grunting pleasure-taking, although there was no way to avoid hearing him. Once, the night Anwen had officially been gifted with her wedding present, she’d left it on while they made love, because Torcán wanted to look at her wearing it. Anwen seemed in the mood to indulge him and for once she had let him enter her without demanding he work for the privilege by taking care of her needs first. That had been an unfortunate time for Brydie, being rocked back and forth while Torcán’s face loomed above her — his expression more constipated than passionate — while he moaned and grunted and groaned and called out Anwen’s name as if it was a plea for mercy as he reached his climax. It hadn’t taken long, but she was feeling quite seasick by the time he’d collapsed on top of Anwen, smothering Brydie’s view of him, thank Danú, leaving her with nothing to look at but his sweaty, hairy chest, magnified most unfortunately by the faceted walls of her jewelled prison.

  What intrigued Brydie about that night, however, was that after she pushed him aside, promised she loved him and sent him on his way, Anwen had lifted her nightgown, reached down between her thighs, and taken care of her own pleasure once Torcán was gone. That made Brydie smile. Anwen might be marrying a handsome prince, but when it counted, he wasn’t that much of a prize at all.

  As Lughnasadh loomed Brydie worried Anwen would forget all about her being trapped in the jewel. The queen was no help, either. Álmhath seemed to be more and more distracted. Between plans for Torcán and Anwen’s wedding, and everything that had to be organised for the ceremony transferring the power between the missing Undivided and their heirs, it seemed the inconvenience of one of her court maidens being entombed in an enchanted amethyst was the last thing the queen was inclined to worry about.

  Brydie had never aspired to great office. The best she had ever really hoped for was a halfway decent marriage arranged by the queen, somewhere not too unpleasant, to a husband with enough wealth and good manners to make life tolerable. Although Anwen’s attitude annoyed her, Brydie had never felt any jealousy toward her. The more closely she witnessed the life Anwen was about to embrace, Brydie began to pity her. But maybe she didn’t need to.

  Politics was not Brydie’s game, but it was Anwen’s favourite pastime. The more time Brydie spent sitting at Anwen’s throat, witnessing her day-to-day life, the more she came to understand why, of all the court maidens at her disposal, Álmhath had chosen this girl to marry her spoiled, easily manipulated son, but why she so often deferred to Anwen remained a mystery.

  It was easy to lose track of the days. Brydie really couldn’t say how long she’d been trapped now. Lughnasadh was getting closer, because of the feverish preparations. The wedding of Anwen and Torcán would take place at dawn, then the entire party was due to set out for the seventeen-mile journey to Sí an Bhrú. There, at sunset, the new Undivided heirs would be brought forth, and the queen of the Faerie would imprint the new twins with the magical tattoo on
their palm that would ensure the magic kept flowing to all the other Druids.

  What was to become of Darragh and his missing brother after that was never discussed. Brydie had a feeling it wasn’t going to be pleasant. The Undivided did not retire. There had never been a case where they simply stepped aside and allowed someone younger or more talented to take over.

  One set of twins died and the new set took over. That was how it had always been.

  There was some concern that Darragh was still missing. Álmhath had people scouring the countryside for him. Brydie could have told them they would never find him in this realm, because he’d gone rift running to another realm, but she had no way of sharing the information.

  She learned something a couple of days before Lughnasadh that made her rethink everything she had believed about the relationship between the Celts and the Druids.

  Colmán came to visit.

  The Vate of all Eire was an irritating man, full of bad poetry and an implacable hatred for the Tuatha Dé Danann race, on whom his entire cult was reliant for their power. With his old-fashioned pointy forked beard, greased and threaded with gold beads, his humourless bearing and his complete devotion to preserving the oral history of the Undivided, he was the butt of more jokes than most Vates. Darragh had despaired of the man, and made fun of him every chance he got.

  When he came to visit Álmhath, however, on the pretext of discussing the catering arrangements for the Lughnasadh feast, she was startled by the change in the man. He looked the same as he entered the hall, glanced around, and began to intone something ridiculous and very badly rhymed; but as soon as he was alone with Álmhath and her future daughter-in-law, he dropped all pretence of bardic self-importance and began to speak like a conspirator.

  ‘Have you any news of Darragh?’ the queen asked as soon as the three of them were alone. Colmán glanced around the room as he spoke, perhaps looking for Tuatha spies disguised as creatures lurking in the corners, but there were none. Brydie thought his belief he could tell when he was being observed optimistic, given he had not discovered her trapped in Anwen’s necklace, or realised there was a Djinn in Sí an Bhrú.

  He seemed disinclined to answer with Anwen present.

  ‘She can be trusted,’ the queen assured Colmán when she saw him looking at Anwen doubtfully. ‘I will vouch for her myself.’

  ‘If you’re sure, an Bhantiarna.’

  ‘I am,’ Álmhath said. ‘What news of the Undivided?’

  ‘If you mean Darragh, then none at all,’ Colmán said. ‘And Ciarán is still missing, along with a few other Druids whose absence bothers me.’

  ‘What are the chances he’ll be back in time for the ceremony?’ Anwen asked.

  Colmán shrugged. ‘I have no idea, and unless he arrives with Rónán at his side, I’m not sure it would make a difference.’

  ‘Is there no way we can delay the transfer?’ Álmhath asked. The queen looked more worried than Brydie thought she ought to be, for someone who professed irritation at the control the Druids — and the Undivided who ruled them — had over her kingdom.

  Colmán shook his head. ‘Not without revealing much more than we’d like about the Matrarchaí and the nature of the Undivided.’

  Brydie was surprised to hear Colmán talking about the Matrarchaí as if he was one of them. Surely the Matrarchaí was a society to which only women belonged? Until Brydie arrived in Temair and the queen had broached the subject, she’d assumed the Matrarchaí were simply glorified midwives. She’d learned on the way to Sí an Bhrú that they were much more than that, but she hadn’t expected them to have members in the ranks of the Druids.

  The queen began to pace, wringing her hands with annoyance. ‘I still can’t believe we’re even facing this nightmare,’ she said. ‘Those Undivided heirs should never have been discovered. We should have sent them out of this realm to be raised in secret.’ She stopped pacing and stared straight at Colmán. ‘Are we sure there are no more traitors in the Druid ranks?’

  Colmán bristled at the accusation. ‘Why are you so certain the traitor who betrayed their existence — assuming there is one — comes from our ranks and not yours? Plenty of your people know the truth, and far too many knew there were Undivided heirs to be had, any time we chose to reveal them.’

  ‘I have one word for you, Colmán,’ the queen retorted. ‘Amergin.’

  The old man tugged at his beard, something Brydie noticed he did when irritated. ‘Amergin was a gifted bard, but he was seduced by a Leanan Sídhe whore. And he was never one of the Matrarchaí. It was obvious, even when he was a younger man, that his fascination with the Tuatha Dé Danann made him an unlikely prospect.’

  ‘That insight was fortunate,’ Anwen remarked. Colmán turned to her, looking mightily displeased, Brydie thought, and because Brydie was hanging around Anwen’s neck, it seemed as if he were looking straight at her. ‘You cannot deny it, Vate,’ Anwen added.

  ‘He’s not denying it, Anwen,’ Álmhath said with a short, bitter laugh. ‘He’s annoyed because you’re right. How far will this set us back, do you think?’

  Anwen shrugged. ‘Hard to say. The circumstances that aligned themselves the night RónánDarragh were conceived were rare. We had the right bloodline in Sybille, and a member of the Tuatha royalty taken enough with her beauty to put his own prejudices against humans aside to lay with her during the Lá an Dreoilín festivities, and that from the coupling came not just a child, but a set of psychically linked twins. When will this realm have that opportunity again? I hesitate to use the word never, but certainly not in our lifetime.’

  The queen muttered something under her breath but Brydie was too far away to hear. The conversation fascinated her. Who knew Darragh and his brother were conceived so callously? It sounded as though the Matrarchaí were breeding cattle, not princes.

  And who was the member of the Tuatha royalty sufficiently besotted by Darragh and Rónán’s mother to lay with her during the winter solstice celebrations? They were drunken, wild affairs, admittedly, and plenty of the Tuatha Dé Danann came out to play, but it was almost unheard of for sídhe royalty to take part. Queen Orlagh — so Brydie had heard — frowned on her immediate family fraternising too closely with humans.

  That’s why she appointed Marcroy Tarth as her ambassador. She trusted him not to get too carried away at times like that. Brydie remembered seeing him from a distance at the Summer Solstice party earlier this year, moving among the revellers as if their antics amused him — the same way one might enjoy the frantic shenanigans of a disturbed nest of ants. But he hadn’t lain with a human woman, as far as she knew. Apparently, he was above that sort of thing.

  Which one of his brothers had braved Orlagh’s wrath by laying with a Druid woman and impregnating her all that time ago? And what would Marcroy do to him, if he ever discovered the truth?

  Brydie sat back on her heels and pondered the matter, while the conversation between Álmhath, Colmán and Anwen moved on to how many yearling calves were to be slaughtered to feed the ravening hordes of party-goers.

  Darragh and his brother are more than just half-Faerie, she realised. They’re Tuatha royalty.

  What puzzled Brydie more than anything was why, if the Undivided could claim such a degree of Faerie heritage, the Matrarchaí were going to such pains to hide it.

  And why had Álmhath thought it so important to mix the Undivided’s mongrel-Faerie line with the pure Celtic blood of Mogue Ni’Farrell’s only daughter?

  CHAPTER 31

  Having sworn to kill herself if Ren tried to leave the Ikushima compound, Aoi seemed to think it gave her leave to become his constant companion. She rarely left his side after her brother, Namito, made his startling announcement about her promise. When he woke in the morning she was waiting outside his hut. She escorted him to meals, tried to engage him in conversation, offered him endless cups of foul-tasting tea to show off her tea-ceremony skills, and generally wouldn’t leave him alone.

  In another rea
lity, he would have said she was stalking him.

  He couldn’t imagine why, but he missed having Trása around to complain about it to, more than he believed possible.

  Ren’s attitude toward his half-Faerie nemesis had softened considerably since acquiring his brother’s memories. Darragh and Trása were childhood friends. She had been banished from Sí an Bhrú around the age of fourteen, for some reason Ren couldn’t quite access in Darragh’s memories, but his feelings for her were warm and affectionate for the most part, spiced with a distrust and resentment that Ren thought may have been flavoured by his own feelings.

  In the end, he supposed, it didn’t really matter. The only person in this reality who didn’t think he was Faerie and want something from him because of it, was Trása. That made her his best friend in the entire world. Literally.

  Aoi was older than Ren by a couple of years, and a virgin, he guessed, by the way she blushed crimson at him whenever she tried to flirt. And she was flirting with him. Big time. Strangely, her brother didn’t seem to mind.

  Things came to a head a few days after Trása flew off in search of a Leipreachán. As had become her habit, Aoi walked Ren back to his hut after dinner, making small talk — or trying to make it. They had nothing in common, so there wasn’t much they could talk about once they’d exhausted the weather, the manufacture of traditional Japanese fireworks and his impending doom at the hands of either the Tanabe or the Empresses, as topics of conversation.

  It was raining when they reached the hut. Ren turned to say goodnight, and to suggest that Aoi get back to the main house before it pelted down, when she suddenly rose up on her toes and kissed him. Her lips were sweet and moist with raindrops, utterly enticing and the most dangerous thing he’d ever tasted.

  Ren pushed her away in alarm. He was in enough trouble with the Ikushima already without being accused of taking advantage of the eldest daughter of the House.