Brighid's Quest. P.C. Cast

jerked in surprise. “Guardian Pass!”

      “Exactly.” The Huntress looked pleased with herself.

      “I hadn’t even considered it, but you’re right. It does make the most sense. It’s wider, well-marked and well-maintained. Probably even passable today.”

      “It’s guarded by warriors from Guardian Castle.” Ciara’s soft voice shook only slightly. “Their sole charge is to keep Fomorians from entering Partholon.”

      “You aren’t our enemies. My sister’s sacrifice promises that,” Cu said gruffly.

      “But that is where she was taken to be imprisoned.”

      Cuchulainn’s body jerked as if someone had struck him. The she Ciara spoke of was Fallon, the mad hybrid who had murdered Brenna. After Fallon had been captured, Elphame had sentenced her to death as retribution for the taking of Brenna’s life, but the hybrid had been pregnant, and not even Cuchulainn had been willing to sacrifice an unborn child to pay the debt its mother owed. So Fallon had been taken to Guardian Castle to be imprisoned until the birth of her child. It was there that she would eventually be executed.

      “Yes,” Cuchulainn clipped the word. “Fallon is jailed there.”

      “So won’t the people assume we are as she is?” Ciara asked, eyes luminous with feeling. “Won’t they already hate us?”

      “You aren’t responsible for Fallon’s actions,” Brighid said. “She chose madness and violence. None of the rest of you did.”

      “The warriors are honorable men and women. They will treat you justly,” Cuchulainn said.

      Brighid slanted a look at him, considering the irony of the situation. Here was Cu, reassuring Ciara about something that he had struggled with himself. He had been ready to treat the New Fomorians unjustly—he had already admitted that to her. But their goodness had been obvious, even to a grieving warrior. If Cuchulainn could look past their wings and their fathers’ blood, wouldn’t the Guardian Warriors be able to do the same, too? Brighid desperately hoped so.

      “If they were my children, taking them through Guardian Pass is the only way I would lead them into Partholon,” the Huntress said.

      Ciara looked from the Huntress to the warrior. “If you believe it is for the best, then it is through Guardian Pass that we will enter Partholon.”

      Cuchulainn grunted and looked eastward.

      “What do you think? Is it about a two-day trip?” Brighid asked, following his gaze.

      “With children? I’d say you better double that.”

      “I thought you knew the children better than that, Cuchulainn.”

      Before Cu could answer the winged woman, Brighid snorted. “You’ll have ample opportunity to show us how special your young ones are. How soon can all of you be ready to travel?”

      “Whenever you say. We have been ready since the snow began melting. And we have been awaiting this journey for more than one hundred years.”

      “We leave at first light,” Cu said.

      “First light it is then,” Ciara said firmly. “We should hurry back so I can tell the others.”

      With those words, Ciara spread her dark wings and moved quickly over the rocky ground in the distinctive gliding run her people had inherited from their fathers. She heard the pounding of hooves as the centaur and Cuchulainn’s gelding galloped behind her. She had Felt the tightness within her loosen when they decided not to take the hidden path and instead chose the way through Guardian Pass, but the suffocating sense of wrongness did not dissipate until they were well out of the shadow of the mountains and back on the rough flat terrain of the Wastelands.

      The Shaman’s mind whirred as her legs pumped rhythmically. Why had she been sent the warning? The obvious answer was that the spirit realm agreed with the Huntress—the hidden path was too dangerous for the children to navigate. But the answer seemed too simplistic for such an intense reaction. The Huntress had easily recognized the danger, and Ciara already believed the centaur’s judgment was honest and accurate. She would have listened to her, as did Cuchulainn, without any prompting from the spirit realm. It seemed a waste of time for the spirits to compound the warning needlessly. One thing she understood very well from her experience with the world of the spirits was that they never wasted their powers and their warnings should never be discounted as needless.

      She must find time to take the Sacred Journey and discover what the other realm was trying to tell her. It was always wise to heed the warnings of the spirits.

      Chapter 8

      “I didn’t think they could do it,” Brighid said under her breath as she and Cuchulainn approached the heart of the settlement where every member of the New Fomorians had gathered. From the smallest winged child to the beautiful Ciara, they were all waiting expectantly for the centaur and the warrior who would lead them into the land they only knew from paintings and stories and the dreams of women who were long dead.

      “It is first light, and we are ready,” Ciara said. “We were just waiting for the two of you.”

      Brighid noted the very obvious glint of pride in the winged woman’s eyes, but she found it hard to blame her. The children were lined up like little warriors, each with a pack strapped to his or her back. The adults were more heavily burdened, and the Huntress counted five of them who carried leather slings across the front of their bodies in which rested the smallest of the children. The majority of the provisions for the trip were neatly piled onto litters which, Brighid snorted with surprise, were strapped to shaggyhaired goats. They were definitely ready to travel.

      Cuchulainn found his voice first. “Well done.” He nodded at the grinning children but didn’t return their smiles. “Our way lies first to the east before we turn south and enter Partholon.” He swung astride his gelding and, clucking, trotted off toward the rising sun.

      Brighid moved to his side and jumped only a little when the group behind them started out with a deafening cheer. Then one small voice began an ancient song sung for generations by the children of Partholon as greeting to Epona’s sun.

      Greetings to you, sun of Epona

      as you travel the skies on high,

      with your strong steps on the

      wing of the heights

      you are the happy mother of the stars.

      Soon another child joined the song and then another and another, until the morning echoed with the happy sound of children’s voices raised in praise to their Goddess.

      You sink down in the perilous ocean

      without harm and without hurt.

      You rise up on the quiet wave

      like a young chieftain in flower…

      “It’s going to be a damned long journey,” Brighid said with a sigh.

      “That it is,” Cuchulainn said. “But it could be worse.”

      “How?”

      “They could be riding you.”

      Brighid couldn’t tell for sure over the blaring noise of seventy singing children, but she thought the warrior might have been chuckling softly.

      As midday moved toward afternoon and then evening, Brighid decided that without a doubt the Wastelands was the gloomiest place she’d ever had the misfortune to visit. It had only taken them a few hours to reach the mountains. Once within the shadow of the stark red giants, Cuchulainn had turned their group east, and for the remainder of the morning they’d been paralleling the mountain range.

      Brighid’s gaze slid over the land. Ugly, she thought as she took in the jutting shale and the low, spindly plants that masqueraded as foliage. Besides being damned ugly, the place set