‘It must be frustrating, Jotei,’ Chishihero said in a voice that to Trása’s ear seemed laden with barely disguised contempt, ‘having all that amazing knowledge and not being able to use it.’
‘It is frustrating, Chishihero. So you’d better find a way to fix Lady Delphine’s envoy,’ Teagan warned. ‘We can’t do everything expected of us, if the person sent to unlock our power is dead, can we?’
Trása tried not to give the impression that she was listening intently, but the little girl’s words intrigued her. Toyoda had warned Trása that Delphine had shared the Comhroinn with these children, but he said nothing about blocking their power afterwards. Did the mysterious Delphine understand how dangerous such power would be in the hands of spoiled children, or did she have her own nefarious reasons for her actions?
‘Should we contact her, Issy?’ Teagan asked. ‘Maybe she knows the way to fix him?’
‘I don’t know,’ her sister replied. ‘What do you think, Wakiko?’
Interesting that they don’t call her ‘mother’, Trása thought, as she waited for the normally silent Wakiko to respond. And that they still ask her for advice.
‘If this young man is important to the Matrarchaí and he is in danger, then I would be contacting Lady Delphine, Jotei. She should know there is a problem. And that it is not of our making.’
‘It’s not of our making, is it?’ Isleen asked worriedly. ‘I mean … you heard the Youkai. He has been felled by something that happened in another realm. She wouldn’t blame us for it, would she?’
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Trása wondered what the rest of the guests were thinking about this odd conversation. It was sensitive information to be blabbing in front of relative strangers. Would the Empresses do something to the Ikushima to make them forget afterwards?
Or was their plan simply to eradicate them before they left Shin Bungo?
That would please Chishihero. Particularly if any plan to destroy the Ikushima involved the Empresses levelling the fireworks factory located squarely in the middle of her valuable forest.
She risked another glance at Rónán. He hadn’t moved. He was still rigid, only the whites of his eyes showing, although he was visibly breathing now with an unnaturally even rhythm that made Trása wonder if back in the other realm Darragh was breathing with mechanical assistance.
‘I think we’d better let her know,’ Teagan decided. ‘In the meantime, you can try whatever folding spells you think might help. As for you …’ she added, looking down at Trása.
‘I would be happy to stay here and watch over Renkavana, Jotei,’ she offered. ‘You know my true name, so I cannot wane myself away from here without your permission. I could alert you to any change in his condition.’ Trása was lying about the waning, but then, she was lying about pretty much everything.
‘We could have a futon brought in,’ Wakiko suggested softly. ‘It would make him more comfortable while you await instructions from Lady Delphine.’
The twins shared a look that hinted at an unspoken communication between them, making Trása wonder if they were telepathic — at least with each other — and they nodded and ordered Wakiko to make it happen.
Trása kept her head lowered, and tried not to smile as she realised that Lady Delphine — whoever and wherever she was — might well pitch a fit when she got a message telling her the envoy she didn’t send was injured.
And that meant she might have to come to this realm to fix the problem.
To do that, she had to open a rift.
If Rónán could just stay alive, if he would just beat the odds and achieve the impossible by not letting the power transfer kill him, they may have, quite inadvertently, found their way home.
CHAPTER 52
Ren opened his eyes, blinking in the bright, coloured light. It took him a moment or two to figure out where he was, and then he recognised the striped silk akunoya belonging to the Empresses, and realised he must be inside one of them, and that it was daylight outside.
More importantly, it appeared he wasn’t dead.
He had survived Lughnasadh.
Now what?
Stretching luxuriously, Ren was amazed to discover he felt quite well. He was lying on a futon covered by a warm comforter, and there was a large black and white cat curled up at his feet. The cat looked up in annoyance as he moved his feet and disturbed her. She glared at him for a moment and then she stood up …
… and morphed into Trása — stark naked and tearfully joyful to see him alive.
She threw herself at him, suffocating him with her hugs, her kisses and her tears, all the while repeating, ‘You’re alive! You’re alive! I can’t believe you’re still alive!’
Ren pushed her off him, smiling but bemused. ‘I won’t be for much longer if you smother me.’
She sat back on her heels, sitting astride him, grinning from ear to ear. ‘You’re alive. You know what that means, don’t you?’
‘That … I’m alive?’ he ventured, forcing himself to focus on her face. There really ought to be some law against morphing from animal to human form without some sort of warning. Or clothing.
‘It means Darragh is still alive, too.’
‘Are you sure?’ Ren asked, not certain Trása was quite as keen on his survival as he’d first imagined, just that it portended well for his twin.
‘If he died, you’d be dead,’ she told him confidently.
He was relieved beyond words. Ren was still growing accustomed to having a twin, and had still not quite come to grips with the understanding of how closely they were linked — so close in fact, that if one died, the other would die soon after. That he felt so healthy augured well for Darragh’s fate, at least.
‘How do you feel, now you’ve lost your magic?’
Ren hadn’t really had time to take stock. ‘I feel fine.’
‘Do you feel any different?’
‘No,’ he told her.
‘Maybe the Leipreachán are right about you being sídhe. That would explain it.’
Ren wasn’t quite ready to accept that, so he decided to change the subject. ‘Where is everyone?’
‘The Empresses have gone with Chishihero to inspect the plantation, so they won’t be back for a while. Everyone from the Ikushima compound, from the Daimyo down, is making themselves scarce in case you die and they get blamed for it. They’re in a lot of trouble, I think, for not reporting your arrival and Chishihero is doing her best to make more trouble for them. Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘I’m fine. Would you get off me please? And put some clothes on?’
She smiled at his embarrassment, but did as he asked. ‘Oh, for Danu’s sake, Rónán, you are such a prude.’
‘So how is it I’m still alive?’ he asked, throwing the covers back. He hastily replaced them when he realised he was naked. ‘Or did we get the date wrong?’
Trása smiled at his discomfit. She seemed to be in an extraordinarily good mood. ‘No, we got the date right. And it was touch and go there for a while. About dawn you seemed to fall into a deep sleep. Chishihero tried to take the credit for saving you, but I don’t think she did, because her folding spells weren’t working until the sun rose.’ Trása pointed to the scores of discarded origami shapes scattered on the floor around his bed. ‘Not that she didn’t give it a good try once she realised the Empresses believed you were their much-anticipated envoy and not some Tuatha Dé Danann spy come to challenge her.’
‘Last few times I saw Chishihero, she tried to kill me,’ he pointed out with a frown, wondering what had caused her change of heart.
‘Last few times she saw you, you weren’t being feted as the envoy of the Matrarchaí sent to guard and guide the Empresses into adulthood,’ Trása told him, pulling on the yukata he’d been wearing last night, which someone — Chishihero perhaps — had removed while he was unconscious.
‘What the hell have the Matrarchaí got to do with this reality?’ he asked. Darragh’s memories had knowledge
of them, but it wasn’t detailed and his brother certainly didn’t consider them a threat. Or even associate them with rift running.
Trása sat herself down on the edge of the futon and crossed her legs. Ren made no attempt to get out of bed, now she was wearing the only clothes available. He stayed safely under the covers.
‘I don’t know why they’re here,’ she said. ‘In our realm they’re an informal sort of sisterhood … just a loose collection of midwives, I thought. They’re always around when there are babies being delivered. Marcroy thought they worked for the Druids, either indirectly or were allied with them, because it was the Matrarchaí who always seemed to be about when they found another set of the psychic twins needed to become the Undivided.’ She smiled. ‘He was pretty suspicious when he found Broc and Cairbre in that village and the queen acted as if she knew nothing about them. Marcroy didn’t believe her. The queen of the Celts is the patron of the Matrarchaí. There’s no chance those boys lived for seven years without her knowing something about it.’ She stared at him for a moment, as if she was expecting him to get out of bed, which was never going to happen while he was naked and she was standing there looking at him like that. ‘Are you ready to leave, your highness, or have you something else planned? Some other event on your busy social calendar that means you have to stay here?’
‘Can you open a rift to home yet?’ he asked, thinking it didn’t matter where he was in this reality. If there was no rift to cross nobody was going anywhere.
She shrugged. ‘I’m working on it.’
‘Yeah … well so am I,’ he said, thinking back to last night, just before he collapsed. From the moment he’d first met them and they’d mistaken him for their expected envoy from the Matrarchaí, the little Empresses often spoke of Lady Delphine and her many trips through the rift to this realm to instruct them on how they should rule their empire, now they had achieved Partition, whatever that was. Perhaps, Ren had been thinking, before he was rudely interrupted by his brush with death, if they couldn’t find someone to open a rift for them here — or figure out how to do it for themselves — the trick was to wait until someone opened a rift from the other side. ‘And I’ve figured it out. We just need to do the Comhroinn with someone who knows how —’
‘Not that easy, I’m afraid,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It has to be voluntary and you have to be given the information. Even so, according to the Leipreachán, there is no equivalent to the Comhroinn in this realm. They learn things here the hard way.’
‘That can’t be right,’ Ren said, recalling several awkward conversations he’d had with Isleen and Teagan since they arrived in Shin Bungo. ‘The Empresses told me Lady Delphine had performed the Comhroinn on them, and they were expecting someone to come through the rift to help them sort out the information. That’s who they think I am. She locked the information up so they can only access bits of it, apparently.’
‘Makes sense, I suppose,’ Trása said. ‘I’m mean, they’re only children. Their brains would probably explode if you dumped all the knowledge of a master sorceress like Delphine into them.’
‘How do you know she’s a master sorceress?’
‘Well, she’s certainly not your friendly neighbourhood Avon lady, is she?’
Ren smiled. ‘Do you even know what an Avon lady is?’
Trása avoided answering the question. ‘It really doesn’t matter. I have a feeling if we stay near the Empresses, sooner or later the mysterious Lady Delphine is going to appear, and we’ll have a chance to get out of here.’
‘That’s a stupid plan.’
‘I don’t see you coming up with a better one.’
‘We’d have no idea of the world we’d be stepping into,’ he told her, sounding like an exasperated mother explaining something to a small child. Ren might be inexperienced when it came to rift running, but he had Darragh’s memories. Arguably, he knew as much about it as Trása did. ‘We jumped into this world without a clue about how to get out of it, and look how well that’s turned out.’
‘But …’
‘And you’ve no guarantee this Lady Delphine comes from any reality connected to ours. What if her world is like the one I come from, where the magic is all but depleted? Then we’d be stuck there.’
‘As opposed to what?’ she asked pointedly, her good mood fading. ‘I’ve been sitting here all night, thinking about this.’
‘Then you know the only safe way out of here, Trása, is to figure a way to open our own rift, so we can control where it goes. Otherwise, we might as well stay put and let those little psychos murder us the way they have all the other Faerie in this realm. Which brings up an interesting point,’ he said, studying her closely. ‘What are you doing here, anyway? How come the Empresses didn’t kill you on sight?’
‘They know my real name,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘I have no choice but to obey them.’
Ren couldn’t hide his shock. ‘Bullshit! Your true name really is Tinkerbell?’
She rolled her eyes at him. ‘Of course it isn’t, idiot. But they don’t know that.’
‘Then how …’
‘When you collapsed, I lost concentration and accidentally morphed back into my true form.’
‘You were at the banquet?’
‘I was a cat,’ she told him, a little impatiently.
‘I didn’t see you.’
‘That’s because you weren’t paying attention.’
He shook his head in wonder. ‘I’m surprised the Empresses didn’t disintegrate you on sight, if you suddenly appeared in front of them.’
‘One of them wanted to,’ she said. ‘And Chishihero was pretty keen on the idea, but then — thanks to your ridiculous claim to owning my true name — the other one reminded her sister that because they knew it, they could control me. I decided to play along.’
‘How long is that going to last?’
‘Until they ask me to do something I’m not prepared to do,’ she said with a shrug.
That would work, he supposed, for a time. But he was still trying to get his head around the fact that he was alive. Lughnasadh had been looming as the date of his death for weeks now. Strangely, it was something of a let-down to find himself still breathing.
‘Do you suppose Darragh found his way back to our realm and stopped the transfer?’
Trása shook her head. ‘He may have found his way back home, Rónán, but he didn’t stop anything. The magic is gone, I’m afraid.’
‘How can you tell?’ he asked. ‘I don’t feel any different. I can still sense the magic.’
‘You only think you can sense it,’ she said, with a sad little smile. ‘Look at your hands.’
Ren did as she asked. When he saw the pale, clean skin where his triskalion tattoo had always been on the palm of his left hand, for a moment it didn’t register what it might mean. His eyes suddenly welled with tears. He could not describe what he felt at the loss of the tattoo that had taunted and comforted him all his life, not sure if he felt pain, or gratitude or longing or fear.
‘Jesus Christ. It’s gone.’
‘Why do you invoke the name of a Christian deity?’ she asked. ‘Are you a follower of his?’
‘It’s just a saying in our world,’ Ren said absently, still staring at his hand.
‘You should be careful invoking gods in realms with this much magic,’ she warned. ‘Sometimes they answer back.’
‘The tattoo is gone.’
‘Yes, I noticed that.’
‘But I don’t feel any different. I can still feel the magic.’
‘Maybe you can feel it a little because you’re part-sídhe,’ Trása suggested. ‘But the Undivided magic is gone, Rónán.’
He shook his head. ‘No … really, Trása. I can feel it.’ He looked up, suddenly filled with hope. ‘This realm is dripping in magic. We should be able to contact Darragh on the puddle phone, shouldn’t we? Maybe even Hayley, to see if she’s okay?’
‘If Darragh made it home, we could,’ she a
greed. ‘But if he got stuck in your old realm, there’s no way of contacting him … although if he could find a talisman with sufficient magic, he could contact you. Or me. Any number of people for that matter. As for Hayley … it’s hard to say. It would depend where she is, who she’s with …’
Although he was anxious to ensure Hayley was alive and well, another thought occurred to Ren at that moment, which made him a little angry. ‘You mean, any old time in the last couple of weeks we could have called Ciarán or someone else in your realm for help, and got someone to open the rift for us from the other side?’
She refused to meet his eye. ‘Theoretically.’
‘But?’ he prompted, guessing there was a reason he wouldn’t like as to why she hadn’t done just that and had Ciarán or Brogan come for them days ago.
‘Marcroy wants you dead, Rónán. He separated you and Darragh when you were children. He arranged for the power transfer to take place, knowing it would kill you. What do you suppose he’d do if he learned you were still alive?’
‘Gee … I don’t know … open a rift maybe? Come get us?’
She shook her head. ‘He’d keep working on a way to kill you. And your brother. It’s not safe to call our realm.’
It sounded plausible, but there must be scores of other people not related to the Tuatha Dé Danann that Trása could call for help. There had to be another reason.
‘You don’t want to go home,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to be stuck here, but you’re in no hurry to go anywhere else, are you?’
‘I followed you through the rift without permission, Rónán. Marcroy is going to be very angry with me, too. He already cursed me once.’
‘So we’re stuck here until your crazy uncle loses interest in us?’
‘It’s not the only reason, Rónán. As you so rightly pointed out, we don’t know where we are. Yes, I could phone home, but what would be the point? If we tell someone to come get us, the next question will be “where are you?”. There are an infinite number of realities out there. Do you know where we are?’
The Dark Divide Page 39
