by P. C. Cast
It was a soul-catcher, gifted to her through her spirit guide. The thought made her feel light-headed.
Later! She repeated the word sternly to herself. The Huntress shook herself and glanced up at the gray wall, trying to see Liam as he moved in and out of the deepening shadows. For now she should just forget about the wild goats and return Liam to the rest of the group. It was getting late; they would be worried about her and the boy’s absence had more than likely been discovered. Brighid grimaced, imagining the scene with Cuchulainn when she returned with Liam chirping about being her apprentice and helping her hunt.
She squinted up at movement along the ledge. Liam was suddenly visible, his winged shape silhouetted clearly against the deep blue-gray of the sky as he scrambled toward her.
Brighid opened her mouth to call a reminder to him to be careful, even though it was obvious that the child was as comfortable scaling the heights as were the damned elusive goats. But she did not have a chance to speak the words.
The day exploded in violence.
She heard the familiar twang of an arrow being loosed. Instinctively she launched herself forward.
“Liam! Get down!”
The boy stood frozen, wings spread as he balanced on the edge. He was a panicked statue. An easy target. The black arrow tore through his right wing.
“No!” Brighid shouted, but the word was drowned out by the child’s scream of pain. The boy crumpled. The wounded wing lay brokenly over the edge of the chasm, along with most of Liam’s upper body. Oh, Goddess! He’s going to fall! The Huntress’s hooves bit into the gray shale shooting sparks as she cut through the maze of boulders, feeling more than seeing the way because she couldn’t take her eyes from Liam. Fervently and silently she prayed to Epona that there would be no more arrows—that the boy wouldn’t tumble to his death.
“Hold on! I’m coming! Don’t move!” she called to him.
A hawk’s shriek sounded from atop the opposite wall of the pass. Brighid wrenched her gaze from Liam to see the hawk diving like a golden arrow at a dark-clothed warrior. The man dropped his bow and used both arms to cover his head, trying to dodge the bird’s talons.
“He’s just a child, you fool!” Brighid screamed. She saw the warrior’s head turn in her direction and his body jerk in obvious surprise, but she had no more time for him—she’d have to trust the hawk to keep him from firing another arrow. Liam needed her.
She slid to a stop beneath the boy.
“It’s going to be fine,” she called up to him as she frantically searched the rock wall for the narrow goat path. Liam’s sobs echoed around her. There! Half an equine length up the wall was a roughly hewn trail. She bit off a curse as she approached it. The damned thing was two hand lengths wide! The centaur followed it up with her eyes. Yes, it got wider—by maybe another hand width. She’d never be able to climb the trail. Despite all of her strength and agility, it was physically impossible. She needed a human’s body to scale the wall.
Brighid looked at the boy and her stomach rolled. He had managed to drag himself away from the edge, but his wounded wing still hung limply down the side of the rock wall, smearing scarlet stains against the gray stone.
Call the warrior. The voice was inside her head again. Use your connection and call for him.
Brighid didn’t need to look up. She heard the angry cries of the bowman and the predatory shrieks of the hawk. She knew the voice came from the bird—her spirit ally.
“Brighid!” Her name was a sob.
“I’m here, Liam.” The Huntress pressed her palms against the side of the pass, staring up at the wounded boy. “You’re going to be fine. Just be brave a little while longer. You can be brave for me, can’t you?”
Liam started to nod his head, but broke off with a moan. “It hurts,” he said, biting his lip to keep from sobbing.
“I know, brave one, I know. I’m going to get help, though.”
“Don’t leave me!”
“I won’t,” she assured him. “I don’t have to.”
Liam’s eyes met the centaur’s steady gaze. “Magic?”
“Magic,” she said. Oh, Goddess, she hoped so. She closed her eyes and did the only thing she could—Brighid followed her gut instinct. He’d come to her in her dreams…dreams were only another part of consciousness…always there, just more elusive when one was awake…
She thought of her friend, the happy warrior with the ready laugh and the ability to draw people as bees to wildf lowers.
Damn it, Cuchulainn! I need your help! Come to me!
Was it her imagination, or did she hear the whisper of Cuchulainn’s laughter?
Ciara jogged alongside Cuchulainn’s gelding. With her dark wings spread she used the gliding Fomorian gait to easily keep pace with the big horse. “Liam is not with the animals, and none of the adults have seen him since the last rest break,” she said. “He seems to have vanished.”
Cuchulainn grunted in annoyance and frowned down the stretch of pass that yawned ahead of them. “I have an idea where the boy might have gone.”
Ciara’s relief was obvious. “I didn’t even think about that! Yes, he must have followed the Huntress.”
“I wouldn’t sound too pleased. Brighid is very unpleasant when she’s angry.” She’s even prickly when she’s not, Cuchulainn added to himself. “The boy is bound to learn a lesson in what it’s really like to be apprenticed to a surly old Huntress.”
“Old?” Ciara laughed. “Brighid is young and attractive.”
Cu grunted. “She’s old inside—old and prickly.”
It was in the middle of Ciara’s laughing response that he Felt it. He jerked his gelding to a rough halt. A sense of joy, of youthful unbound happiness flashed through him, making him gasp with surprise.
“Cuchulainn, what…”
The warrior heard no more of what the winged woman said. With the heady happiness came something else, something Cuchulainn hadn’t experienced in many phases of the moon. The knowledge of what was happening settled within his mind like a nightmare as the vision slammed into him. Against suddenly blind eyes he saw Brighid. Her hands were pressed against the side of the pass and blood streamed down the stone walls all around her. Damn it, Cuchulainn! I need your help! Come to me! The words rang in his head.
“Brighid!” he cried. The vision disappeared. With it the fleeting sense of happiness evaporated and the world around him returned in a rush.
Ciara was grasping his arm and peering up into his face.
“What did you see? What’s wrong with Brighid?”
“She’s calling me.” He shook loose from her. “Tell the adults to keep the children close and to be wary.”
“Don’t worry about us. Go to her.”
Instead of answering, Cuchulainn dug his heals into the gelding’s sides and gave the horse his head.
18
THE MOANING WIND had stilled. Liam’s small gasps of pain and Brighid’s murmurs of encouragement seemed suddenly unnaturally loud in the echoing pass, so she easily heard Cuchulainn before she saw him.
“Thank the Goddess.” Brighid’s breath came out in a rush. “You’re doing so well, brave one.” She smiled up at Liam.
“I want to be brave. Huntresses are brave,” the boy said.
“You are being an excellent Huntress, Liam.” What else could she say? If pretending to be a centaur helped him bear the pain of his wound and kept him from falling over the edge, then he could damned well pretend away.
Before Brighid turned to meet Cu, she spared a glance at the opposite side of the pass. It was empty. There was no dark-clothed warrior holding a black bow. No golden hawk diving in attack. Where had they gone? They couldn’t be a hallucination, or even ghostly apparitions, Liam’s wound was evidence that she had not imagined them.
Cuchulainn’s gelding sprinted into the widened area of the pass. When he caught sight of Brighid standing so close to the wall—so disturbingly like the blood-drenched vision he had seen—the deadly sound of hi
s claymore being unsheathed rang with metallic intensity against the rock.
“It’s Liam!” she shouted, pointing up at the small, crumpled shape hanging precariously over the edge.
The warrior’s hard, battle-ready face shifted and visibly softened. Quickly Cu reined the gelding around the boulders that separated them and galloped to Brighid’s side.
“By the Goddess! What happened here?”
“Don’t be mad at me, Cuchulainn,” Liam said pitifully.
“Tell him you’re not mad at him,” Brighid whispered under her breath.
Cu frowned at her, but called up to the boy, “I am not angry, Liam.”
“Cu’s here to help, brave one,” Brighid said. “Just rest quietly and he’ll get you down.” She turned to Cuchulainn, speaking fast and keeping her voice low. “An archer shot him.” She gestured up at the place so recently vacated by the dark warrior. “From there. He’s gone now. I don’t know where.”
“Did he see that you were with the boy?”
Brighid shook her head. “No, not until after he’d already shot him. He looked shocked when he saw me.” The Huntress carefully avoided all mention of golden hawks and voices in her head.
Cuchulainn’s gaze narrowed. “How was the archer dressed?”
“Dark,” she said. “That’s all I could see from here.”
“Did you see the arrow?”
She nodded. “Black. It was dark like the—” Her breath caught with sudden realization. “He was a Guardian Warrior.”
“Yes.”
“What was he thinking! He could have killed Liam.”
“He was probably thinking that he was protecting Partholon from a winged demon.”
“But they know that we’re bringing the children into Partholon!” Brighid said.
“They have no way of knowing that we are coming through Guardian Pass.” Cu dismounted and walked over to the sheer wall, studying the narrow path that angled sharply up the side of it. “The last anyone knew we were leading the children through a hidden pass well west of here.” He returned to his saddlebag for leather gloves. “The warrior was only fulfilling his duty.”
Brighid snorted, but Liam’s voice interrupted her retort.
“It’s fire,” he called down to the centaur and the warrior.
“I know, brave one. It must feel like fire.” She automatically soothed the boy.
“No.” He lifted his head and gestured weakly to the opposite wall. “There—it’s fire.”
Their eyes followed the boy’s finger. Farther down the pass, on the same side from which the archer had shot Liam, yellow flames danced against the darkening sky.
“What is it?” Cuchulainn asked the boy. “Can you see?”
Biting his lip Liam pulled himself up straighter. Brighid opened her mouth to tell the boy to stay still, but Cuchulainn’s firm hand on her arm stopped her words. Liam struggled a moment more, and then with a small moan he sat up, his wing fluttering brokenly across his lap.
“It’s like a campfire, only it’s the biggest campfire I’ve ever seen. And there’s nothing around it.”
“Good job, Liam. Hold tight. I’ll be right up.” Cuchulainn strode to the wall, pulling on his gloves. Then to Brighid he said, “It’s the Guardian Warrior’s signal. The pyres are lit to call the warriors. It means the pass has been breached.”
“But we’re not fighting the warriors of Partholon!”
“Not yet we’re not. Boost me up. I need to get him down. It won’t take them long to get here.”
“I don’t like this,” Brighid muttered, bending to make a cradle of her linked hands for the warrior’s foot. He stepped into it and she lifted him up to the path. “Be careful,” she said to his back. “It’s narrow.”
He grumbled something unintelligible.
While Cuchulainn scaled the sheer wall, Brighid’s attention moved nervously from the warrior to the wounded boy who waited so patiently to the open end of the wide pass. The archer had been one of the famed Guardian Warriors. She should have known—she would have realized who he was if her thoughts hadn’t been filled with broken children and talking birds. She’d never been to Guardian Castle, but she knew the warriors stationed there were ever-vigilant, and that they wore black to show their eternal mourning for mistakes of the past.
More than one hundred years ago the Guardian Warriors had become lax. Partholon was at peace, and had been for centuries. The demonic Fomorian race was no more than ancient history, faded into the bad dreams of children. No one guessed that the demons had been readying themselves for generations to return to Partholon as conquerors and masters. The Guardian Warriors were not prepared for the demonic onslaught, and were easily overrun, allowing death and evil to break into Partholon.
The black uniforms they now wore were their visible oath to Partholon that the warriors’ vigilance would never again fail. They were formidable, and Brighid did not relish the idea of fighting them. Especially since her only allies were a depressed warrior and a wounded child.
Her brother would say they were damned stupid odds. She rarely agreed with her brother, but this time was a definite exception.
A cry from behind her had her spinning around. Ciara was at the head of the New Fomorians as they poured into the pass. Her lovely face was twisted into an expression of shock and horror as she stared up at Liam. Her cry was soon echoed by the distraught group surrounding her.
Brighid moved forward quickly to meet Ciara.
“Liam is fine.” The Huntress pitched her voice so that it would carry above the children’s cries. “He has been injured, but Cuchulainn is going to bring him down. Right now why don’t we all take a little break while Ciara lights a campfire to warm everyone up?”
Ciara stood mute, staring over Brighid’s shoulder at Liam.
“Ciara!” Brighid hissed. “Build the damned fire and get yourself together.”
The winged woman snapped out of her daze, and with a nod to Brighid, called for fodder to be brought for the fire.
The Huntress’s eyes searched the milling crowd of upset children until she found a familiar face. “Kyna, I don’t think I remember the name of your Healer. Perhaps you could help me?”
The little girl blinked tears from her eyes and wiped at her wet cheeks. “Nara.” The child looked around on tiptoes, until she spotted an adult figure who was working her way toward Brighid from the rear of the group. “There she is.”
“Thank you, Kyna.” Keep them busy, Brighid reminded herself. “And Kyna, I need your help. Could you and some of the children take charge of Cuchulainn’s horse? Maybe you could rub him down so that he’ll be ready to travel again soon?” Pitiful doggy whines reminded the Huntress of something else that needed tending to. “And take special care of Fand. You know how she gets when Cu’s too busy to reassure her,” Brighid added.
“Of course, Brighid!” Kyna nodded vigorously, and instantly began giving orders to several other children.
“I am Nara, the Healer.” The New Fomorian was tall, thin, with pale blond hair and eyes that were an unusual shade of moss-green.
Brighid’s attention still roved restlessly. She kept imagining hordes of black-garbed warriors descending upon them with drawn bows. She spoke quickly to the Healer, careful to keep her voice low so the children wouldn’t overhear.
“Liam’s wing has been pierced by an arrow. It didn’t happen long ago, but even from down here I can tell he’s lost more blood than is good for him. I couldn’t get up there to stop the bleeding, and he was too weak to make it down by himself.” She looked into the Healer’s eyes. “He’s in a lot of pain.”
The Healer touched the centaur’s arm. “I can help him.”
Brighid glanced up at the top of the rock wall. Cuchulainn was there, crouching beside the boy. The warrior had his shirt off and was tearing it into strips to bind Liam’s wing to his side.
“I will help the warrior bring the boy down,” Nevin said, calling Brighid’s attention back to the ground.
“As will I,” Curran said.
“No, I need the two of you here,” the Huntress said sharply. “Nara, help Cuchulainn with Liam, and hurry.”
The Healer nodded and, with wings spread, she navigated the steep trail easily. Brighid turned to the twins.
“Liam was shot by one of the Guardian Warriors,” she said bluntly. “The signal fire has been lit. The warriors are on their way here.” Brighid’s first response was to order the twins to arm the adults and bring them to the front of the group where they could best protect the children, but the thought of the winged people greeting Partholonians with weapons made her stomach tighten. That’s not the way—it couldn’t be their way. If they chose to greet the Guardian Warriors armed, how would they appear any different than their demonic forefathers? The Huntress drew a deep breath. Epona, please let me be doing the right thing.
“Spread word to the other adults. Have them stay scattered among the children. Tell them to sit, to blend in with the young ones.” The twins nodded slowly at her.
“We understand. We are not our fathers.”
“No, you’re not. And this will not begin another war,” she said firmly.
19
THE CHILDREN HAD fallen back into the unnaturally quiet state that Brighid was beginning to understand was their reaction to fear. They didn’t whine and cry like most children. They became very still and attentive. The Huntress respected that about them, and thanked Epona for their maturity. They were composed and silent, sitting patiently in a semicircle around Ciara’s hastily lit campfire, watching as Nara held Liam’s wing carefully immobile while Cuchulainn carried the boy down from the ledge.
Brighid had to force herself not to shout at Cu to hurry, and she paced restlessly, keeping her keen eyes trained down the pass. She and Cuchulainn needed to go ahead to Guardian Castle and confront the warriors, explaining why they had decided to use this pass, and making it clear that the New Fomorians were not an invading force from the Wastelands—they were a group of children and hopeful adults who had been promised a home by the Chieftain of Clan MacCallan.
