Return of the Danu

by Kelly Lucille

  Thinking of it, Ansgar nudged his horse faster when they hit the dunes, he immediately dropped low over the horse when they crested the rise and saw a ship still moored in the distance. He was forced to close his eyes just for a moment at the sheer relief that washed over him. They would not be too late. He would get Elena back and her Green would heal her. There was no other outcome that he would accept.

  He saw the patrols and motioned to his brother as he dropped from his horse and sent the beast away from him. The Frendi seemed to know exactly what he needed because it went back down the dunes and seemed to be waiting.

  “That horse, and the other came to our camp and led us straight back to you.” Khalon said with a brow raised as if in question.

  “Elena says that we are bonded,” he answered absently. There were only a few men on lookout and they were watching the boat not the beach. It was clear the ship was in a flurry of motion as the seas seemed to buck and writhe around it.

  Khalon raised a brow at his brother. “My wife said it was not your only bond.”

  Ansgar ignored that. Now was their best and only chance to get across the beach without anyone calling the alarm. They were preparing to weigh anchor and the storm coming in from the sea was making it difficult for the sailors. They would not get a better distraction, or another chance. “We need to get on that ship. Now.”

  Khalon narrowed his eyes at the few guards that were stupid enough to stand with their back to the dunes. Then he looked at his brother and smiled. “Lead the way big brother. I will, as always, follow your lead.”

  Ansgar would have snorted his derision of that statement but he was already moving. And he did trust that while he brother always went his own way, in battle there was no one he would trust more at his back.

  That at least had not changed when he married the enemy, Ansgar mused self depreciatingly, and he could hardly hold that against him any longer, when he himself had every intention of doing the same at the earliest moment he could manage it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ansgar and Khalon took out the three idiots on the beach easily enough. They would just have to hope that the army on the boat continued to have too much to deal with to bother checking on the men on patrol. Since neither man much believed in that type of luck, Ansgar knew his brother was getting as suspicious of a trap as he himself was. It was too easy. Some alarm should have sounded as they crossed the beach. Though he could not imagine what they hoped to gain by letting them slip past their guard.

  Knowing it was probably a trap, they still swam for the ship in the fading light. The last light of the day barely peeking through the edges of angry storm clouds as the sea along the coast continued to buckle and froth in angry earnest.

  It was both a help and a hindrance, that storm. It made swimming nearly suicidal, but it allowed them to make the boat and climb the anchor chain without being seen. Of course, it also made carrying a sick Danu while swimming back to shore a near impossibility. One they both realized and acknowledged as soon as they dropped silently onto the wooden deck and ducked behind one of the dinghies strapped down at the side.

  Khalon looked at him and then the small boat. Ansgar nodded. “Get it untied and ready and I’ll find Elena.”

  Khalon nodded grimly. He did not want to send Ansgar into what could be a trap on his own, but they needed that boat freed if they were to have any chance of getting Elena to shore through the storm. He did not ask Ansgar how he would locate one female on a ship as large as this one, so Ansgar did not bother to tell him he need not have worried. As soon as he hit the deck, he knew he could have found her blindfolded.

  He left his brother, trusting Khalon could take care of any trouble that came at him and still get the boat ready to go. Ansgar went after his witch. The closer he got to where he knew they were holding her, the more he could feel her pain. The three sailors he killed getting to her took him no time at all and offered him nothing but fleeting satisfaction.

  It was almost anti-climactic to bust through the locked door holding her and find…nothing but an empty room, and Elena, writhing in pain atop the solitary cot. Someone had tied her down and while he could see no obvious marks, he could feel how close to death she was, how much pain she had suffered and still suffered. If he’d had the time, he would have hunted down every man on the ship and killed them painfully and with relish. As it was all he could do was untie his witch and lift her gently to try to spare her what pain he could.

  She opened her eyes when the wind and icy rain hit them as they came up on the deck. Besides a flutter of eyes that opened and showed faded sickly Green where there was usually a sparkling emerald gaze, she did not respond in any way.

  There were two bodies stuffed behind the dinghy when he found his brother again. He placed his witch inside the boat and nodded at the unconscious Elena. They both joined her in the boat and together tried to control the winch and the boat. Between the two of them barely keeping it from hitting the side of the ship as they lowered it to the crashing waves. The water nearly capsized the boat several times, but through sheer brute force and will they were finally away.

  The storm had started in earnest by the time they were close to the shore. Ansgar was forced to grab Elena and jump for it with his brother right behind when they saw the rocks coming at them. The boat did not make it to shore but by some miracle Ansgar held on to Elena and the three of them washed up onto the shore coughing and sputtering but alive.

  Elena did not wake, and as soon as they had ejected the water they had swallowed Ansgar picked her up, held her close to his chest and moved as fast as he could for the waiting Danu and the Green beyond the dunes. It was not an easy climb, but no one came at them from the ship and they made it over, and tumbled ran down the other side, until the Green was within sight.

  Elena, he could feel slipping away. By the time he was just past the rocks and nearly to the Green he was running, Khalon protecting his back.

  Just as they reached the end of the rocks a wall of Green shot up before them and they were forced to stop or be impaled on the vines.

  Katrine stepped out of the Green and around her feet Green shoots sprang up and the rocky shore was pushed back. But when they would have gone toward her, she held up a hand. “Stop.” Her eyes were shooting Green sparks while she studied the limp Elena looking worried.

  When he would have raged at her she shook her head hard, meeting his eyes, her own showing a fear he did not expect. She held her hand toward Elena as is she was feeling something he could not sense. “She cannot pass into the Green with that filth rolling through her blood. But we cannot let it out of her to spawn more dark magic in this place.” She looked from the girl in his arms clinging so tenaciously to life. Then she turned to her husband and said something he never thought to hear from a Danu’s lips.

  “Start a fire. We must burn this magic as soon as I pull it out of her. Only then will she be allowed into the Green for healing. Hurry. There is no time.”

  Ansgar could feel Elena slipping away from him, even as she clung to life by sheer will alone. He held her tighter and willed her to be strong, at the same time he fought the need to shove the Queen of the Danu aside. Elena did not have time to waste.

  Katrine met his eyes and knew what he was thinking as her husband set about making fire, and Quain ran around collecting all the wood and debris he could find to feed it. “The Green will not let her pass as she is. She carries the death of the wilds inside her. Which is no doubt why they injected it into her when they realized she would not survive the trip they wanted her to make.”

  “And why,” Khalon muttered, meeting his brothers’ eyes over the fire he had started and was feeding steadily. “Retrieving her was so easy in the first place.”

  Ansgar ground his teeth and held his tongue, nearly shaking with rage and impatience to find and kill everyone on that ship. But especially the man who had done this to Elena. But Elena came first, just as she had on the ship when he was tempted to destroy
everything in his path and then go looking for more.

  Katrine waited, her seeming serenity marred by the clenching of her fist as she watched impatiently for the fire to burn hot enough, her eyes blazing with Danu power. Then she lifted her head and caught sight of a small hawk that flew from the wild to flutter above the dunes for a moment and then circled over them. She spoke without looking away from the bird. “The shore has rejected the foreigners now that our Danu has been removed from the ship. The tides are beating them back, and rather than be pounded against the rocks until they are nothing but kindling, they have cut the anchor and fled. If they return this way the land will know them for the enemy that they are.” She looked at her husband who had the flame finally hot enough that they could all feel the heat it produced. “We will need to find a way to mark your fathers’ ships as friends before they come back this way.”

  Before any could answer that statement, she motioned to Ansgar. I need you to put her down by the fire and step away.”

  Ansgar stepped closer to the fire but shook his head. “I will hold her.”

  “This will not be a pleasant,” Katrine warned. “I must pull the darkness out of her like a weed from the soil. If you are touching her you will feel all of it.”

  Ansgar gave her hard eyes and she blew out a breath and nodded, clearly seeing he would not be talked out of it. Katrine closed her eyes, held out her hand and while he could not see the magic she sent into Elena, he could feel it, and the blackness that fought against it.

  He clenched his teeth and held Elena closer while she screamed in agony. He knew even as the pain threatened to buckle his knees that he was only getting a taste of what Elena was feeling.

  Finally, when he thought none of them could take any more a black void of putrid smelling fog lifted from Elena as if from every pore. With a quick twist of her wrist and a disgusted look Katrine thrust it into the fire. Where it raged and burned twisting black in the red gold depths until finally it dwindled to nothing and died to ash within the blazing fire. The beating rain did nothing to put out the soft blaze as Katrine collapsed, exhausted.

  Khalon caught her before she could hit the floor and with one shared look with his brother, they both lifted their Danu witches and walked into the wild. Ansgar did not look back to see that Quain was staying with the fire to see that it did not spread farther than they intended. At that moment he could have cared less about the boy or the fire.

  As soon as they were past the Green barrier, vines shot out and wrapped around Katrine and Elena, pulling them both out of the arms of their mates and sucking them deep into the Earth before either man could put up a fight. When Ansgar would have dropped to his knees with a roar of rage and began digging out his witch, his brother caught his arm and shook his head.

  “They are safe in the earth. When they are healed they will return to us.”

  Ansgar had to be content with that, but he still sat at the edge of where his woman had been taken and waited. He might trust his brother knew what the Danu needed, and that they were safe, but until Elena opened her eyes and was once again the sparkly eyed witch, alive and unharmed, he was not going anywhere. His brother did not even argue. Just sat across from him beside the earth that had swallowed his wife and waited with him.

  After a little while of this, long enough that they were both soaked to the skin and true dark had fallen, Quain joined them, though he did it as an eagle and sat high in the trees beneath a canopy to keep dry.

  Khalon looked from the bird to the man across from him. Then shrugged, when Ansgar did the same, meeting his eyes with a brow raised in question. “You get used to it.” He finally said, and if Ansgar had not been so completely focused on Elena, whose magic he could feel almost pulsing beneath him in her healing sleep, he might have laughed at that.

  Get used to magic users who could not only talk to the animals but become the animals? He doubted it. But as he already knew Elena was never going to leave his side again, and with that knowledge he was aware it meant he would be spending more than a little time among these people and the wilds. He was willing to accept what he had no choice but to accept. Because he would not, could not lose her again.

  Finally, the wilds gave up their treasures. First Katrine, and then Elena, who woke up only briefly to study him with clear shiny glowing Danu Green eyes, before she smiled and fell back to sleep. This time it was a sleep of exhaustion, not eminent death.

  Ansgar allowed himself to finally take a clean breath of air, not clogged with anger and fear. She had made it. Against all the odds, Elena would live.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Elena woke high in the trees in her own home and wondered if she had dreamed all of it. The loud raised voices she could hear outside her four walls assured her as nothing else could have. She knew even as she sat up and looked at the familiar space that though she was high up in a Danu tree house she was not in the same one she had slept in before with Ansgar. Somehow her barbarian had rescued her and gotten her to one of the other places the Danu made their homes seasonally. This one was one they spent most of their time in for it allowed them to train the young in the dangers of the Green.

  The raised voiced caught her wandering attention and she forced herself to stand. It seems some things had changed, but her brother and Ansgar at odds with each other was not one of them. Though since Quain was shouting that he would take her place as ambassador with the queen’s permission, so that Elena could stay behind and recuperate that did not make her smile.

  “Your sister can make her own choices,” she heard Ansgar respond coldly.

  She wobbled only a little on her feet. Then gave herself a moment to feel the magic inside her the relief of finding it so effortlessly here among the Green was such a relief after what it had felt like at Sea, she nearly wept from it.

  Her connection to the weave was strong, but the one between her and Ansgar was stronger than before she had nearly died. His emotions were so jumble now however, it was next to no help.

  “Is that why you hover at her doorstep, waiting for her to wake up?” Quain asked snidely. “Afraid she will make her decisions before you can talk her into something that will succeed in killing her next time?”

  There was a long silence before Ansgar spoke low and threateningly. “You have no idea of what you speak whelp. I suggest you leave before I am forced to make you eat your words.”

  Elena shot for the door, knowing she would need to intervene before things escalated to the war they could not afford to fight.

  “Quain,” she was already speaking in warning when she yanked open her door.

  The wilds of the Green spread out below and around them. One of the many seasonal homes they had in the wild places, other than the valley where she had bonded with the warrior standing just outside her door, this had always been her favorite. She met Ansgar’s eyes as she came out onto the porch and she sucked in a breath as his anger and will hit her like a blow. She turned to escape that look, at least momentarily by meeting her brothers’ eyes and ignoring the prince that stood between them.

  “I will talk with you later.”

  Her brother did not like it, but she gave him no room to argue, giving him the hard look to match the steel in her words.

  He ground his teeth, but finally glared one last time at Ansgar before he turned to leave. His last words as annoying as her brother could make them, she was sure.

  “Do not do anything stupid sister. The bloody bastard is not worth your time.” Then he was gone, and she was left wanting to roll her eyes. She forgot her brother and his words as soon as Ansgar spoke from his place, haunting her high deck.

  “Your brother would see us parted.”

  "I heard him say he would take my place.” She said mildly enough. Then added with some irony. “It seems now that we have a mutual enemy no one is so worried you or Quain will attack each other and ruin everything." Since they had been on the verge of battle over her, she did not have to snort her disbelief to get her po
int across.

  "And will you stay?" he ignored the rest and asked so low she was not sure what the emotion she was feeling from him was. It made her wary, and she answered cautiously.

  “Even if I decided to go, I would have to return regularly. I cannot live outside the weave for long. The connection I have with the animals, and to some extent you, means I can last longer and go farther than most, but I could not live in your palace with you. I have felt what it is to be too far from the weave.” She shuddered at the memory of her short ocean voyage, “It is not something I will repeat willingly. And you are the future King,” she reminded him. “You have an obligation…”

  “To protect and lead my people.” He snapped, interrupting her and clearly angry not to get the answer he wanted. His anger actually reassured her. It cut through the confusion and assured her she was not the only one invested in this thing between them. “Something I can do just as easily from the new city we are building as the old one in the South. Better probably since it is clear we can expect trouble from the Eastern Shores. That is not what I need from you.” He stepped closer to her, his eyes blazing with heat and frustration. “What I want to know is if you will stay with me. Not because you have been ordered to by your queen or need to assure peace for your people. Will you stay with me?”

  She turned to look at him, her eye luminescent in the moon light. She had never looked more wild or out of reach than she did at that moment.

  Ansgar growled like an angry dog and rushed her. Pulling her high in his arms and crushing her lips with his. Elena whimpered under the onslaught, but her arms wrapped around his neck and she kissed him back with just as much desperation. When the kiss ended and all that was left was the hard bands of his arms wrapped around her and his lips on her hair she gasped for breath and hoped he meant what she was feeling from him, because she loved him beyond all reason.