The Undivided

by Jennifer Fallon; Jennifer Fallon

  ‘Not good?’ Ren asked, looking about in a mild panic as the rain began to fall a little harder. A moment ago, he had thought he’d give anything for the howling to stop, but the silence seemed infinitely worse. ‘What do you mean, not good?’

  If Brógán answered him, Ren never heard it, because at that moment, a dark growling blur launched itself at Ren, slamming him hard into the ground in a snarling swirl of hair, teeth, red eyes, slobber and breath that smelled like rotting meat.

  CHAPTER 33

  Killing things always evoked mixed feelings in Sorcha. If she hesitated, it wasn’t because she feared the kill or lacked the ability to deliver a decisive killing stroke. It was the faint suspicion that, no matter how good at it she was, she didn’t have the right to take another life, even though the goddess Danú had clearly gifted her with an exceptional talent in that area.

  Sorcha held her breath, the taut string of her bow tickling her cheek as she waited for the right moment to loose her arrow. The hind in her sights still had no inkling of her presence. The dappled twilight in the clearing and Sorcha’s almost supernatural ability to move silently through the forest meant the creature had no notion its death was a mere heartbeat away.

  And still Sorcha hesitated, silently thanking the goddess for her bounty, wondering if she should let the creature go …

  A loud snapping behind her startled the hind and it dashed off, crashing through the undergrowth and out of sight.

  Sorcha lowered her bow and released the string, neither angry nor disappointed.

  Danú had spoken. The hind, this time, was meant to live.

  ‘There’s no point in you sneaking about out there,’ she called, returning her black-fletched arrow to the quiver at her belt. ‘You’re making enough noise to wake the dead.’

  There was more clumsy crashing through the undergrowth. A few moments later a familiar figure emerged from the trees, his beard threaded with golden trinkets, his muscular forearms encircled by gold bracers engraved with the triskalion insignia.

  ‘I should have known it was you,’ Sorcha said, shouldering her bow. ‘You thunder through the forest like an elephant.’

  Ciarán smiled at her, but wisely stayed out of her reach. ‘I’ve never seen an elephant.’

  ‘Well, you’ll know it when you meet one,’ Sorcha assured him. ‘You have the same boot size. What’s the matter?’

  The big warrior stared at her, all full of wounded innocence. ‘Why do you assume something is wrong, my lady?’

  ‘Because you’re here, Ciarán,’ she replied, putting her hands on her hips, which placed them — conveniently — nearer the knives she carried at her belt. ‘You know better than to seek me out for mere social intercourse.’

  He smiled tentatively. ‘I bring wonderful news, my lady.’

  ‘I was sixteen the last time anybody shared their wonderful news with me, boy,’ she reminded him. ‘That cost me everything and everybody I knew and loved.’

  The pain of that discovery was long behind her now, but Ciarán didn’t know that, and it suited Sorcha to let people think she still bore the emotional scars. It made them wary of her and meant, as a rule, they gave her a wide berth, which was exactly how she liked it. She turned to pick up her waterskin, not caring much for whatever wonderful news the Druid warrior brought. There was little, these days, that inspired Sorcha. Even less that she considered ‘wonderful’.

  ‘We have found the missing twin,’ Ciarán announced with barely contained excitement.

  Sorcha hesitated. That was not something she’d expected.

  ‘Good for you,’ she said, straightening as she shouldered the waterskin on the opposite side to her bow and began to walk back down the faint game trail along which she’d followed the hind. ‘Come see me when you have him.’

  ‘We do have him, Sorcha.’

  This time she stopped, turning to look at the warrior. She’d taught him when he was a mere lad, and could tell at a glance if he was lying. Even in the fading light of the forest, she could see him nodding, barely able to control his joy.

  ‘You have him?’

  ‘Rónán is alive and well and back where he belongs.’

  ‘He’s at Sí an Bhrú?’ she asked, a little incredulous. Sorcha chose to remain aloof from human society as a rule, but she couldn’t imagine news that the missing twin of the Undivided had returned to Sí an Bhrú was about and she’d not heard it from someone.

  Ciarán shook his head. ‘No, of course he’s not there. We have him stashed in a hut just outside Breaga. You are only the fourth person, including Darragh himself, who knows of his return.’

  Sorcha didn’t answer immediately, not sure how the magical reappearance of the long-lost Undivided twin affected her. She had lost any desire for life at any ruling court, Druid or otherwise. Were it not for the oath she’d once sworn to the Druids, she’d have had nothing to do with them at all.

  ‘Why bring me this news?’

  ‘I bring a request on behalf of Darragh, my lady,’ he said with a formal and not inelegant bow. ‘He wishes to engage your services as his brother’s protector.’

  ‘Does his brother need protecting?’ she asked, her curiosity piqued. Although she had little interest in the goings-on at Sí an Bhrú, she knew how much the Tuatha, and Marcroy Tarth in particular, would like to rid themselves of the Undivided. To be there when he learned his most recent efforts had been in vain … well, for that, it was almost worth heading back to Sí an Bhrú.

  ‘The traitor, Amergin, threw Rónán through the rift to a realm with no magic,’ Ciarán explained. ‘He seems as intelligent as his brother and, naturally, has the same physical abilities, but he has been raised in complete ignorance of his heritage. He is untrained and unprepared for the life ahead of him. He needs someone who can protect him while he learns. Someone who can teach him.’

  ‘There are Druids for that. Have Darragh perform the Comhroinn on his brother. He has no need of my help.’

  ‘The Comhroinn will give Rónán knowledge, not experience, Sorcha. Even with all his brother’s knowledge, he’ll need training. And protection.’

  ‘I’m no sorcerer,’ she reminded him. ‘What can I teach a Druid — one of the Undivided, no less — of magic?’

  ‘Darragh is not asking you to teach him magic. He needs you to keep his brother alive while others teach him,’ Ciarán said. He glanced up at the sky. Night was closing in on them and he was clearly in a hurry. ‘Will you come?’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ she said, turning back to the path. Undivided or no, Darragh couldn’t just arbitrarily send for her and expect her to drop everything for him.

  ‘It’s a full moon tonight, Sorcha.’

  ‘Then you’ll have a few weremen to contend with on your way back to the stones,’ she said over her shoulder, unsympathetically. ‘Do keep your eyes open, lad. They’re particularly hungry at this time of year.’

  ‘Rónán is alone in Breaga under the protection of a single Liaig. If we don’t get back to him before moonrise, there may be no Leath tiarna left to protect.’

  Sorcha frowned. ‘And whose stupid idea was it to leave the unprepared and untrained lost twin of the Undivided alone with a herb-peddler on a night like this?’

  ‘Darragh suggested —’

  ‘Darragh is a fool,’ she snapped, annoyed the decision had been taken from her, although she realised Darragh wasn’t a fool at all. He just knew her far better than she thought. He must know the danger his brother would be in and that she would feel honour-bound to protect one of the Undivided.

  Curse his wretched Druid soul. He must have been supremely confident I would come to his aid.

  That boy really is too clever for his own good.

  ‘Where is Darragh now?’

  ‘He had to return to Sí an Bhrú. Marcroy Tarth and Queen Álmhath are currently visiting. He couldn’t tip them off about Rónán’s return by going missing for any length of time.’

  Sorcha let out an exasperated
sigh. ‘I will meet with Rónán,’ she announced, to save face, if nothing else. She’d make Darragh pay for playing on her sense of duty like this. She wasn’t sure how, just yet, but she would see he did not get away with this manipulation unscathed. ‘But I’ll make no promises about staying. Rónán may have been spoiled beyond redemption by this other realm. I’ll not agree to anything until I’ve had a chance to take his measure myself.’

  ‘That seems fair.’

  ‘And you can tell Darragh I don’t appreciate being played like this.’

  ‘You can tell him yourself, a Mháistreás.’ Ciarán looked mightily relieved.

  Sorcha wasn’t surprised. Already she could hear the first faint calls of weremen in the distance.

  ‘Then we’d best hurry,’ she said. ‘Breaga is east of here. The moon will rise there sooner than here. If I am to have a Leath tiarna to protect, we don’t have much time.’

  It was full dark by the time they emerged from the stones in Breaga. Ciarán took his arms from around Sorcha — who could not travel through the stones without the help of a Druid — pocketed his jewel, and took off at a run. There was a fine rain beginning to fall, the moon misty behind the clouds, and the howling they could hear in the distance was the frenzied howling of a were-pack closing in on a kill. It seemed colder in Breaga than in Sorcha’s forest. The tiny village was little more than a few round dark shadows pierced here and there by the blur of yellow light from a tallow candle in a window.

  Sorcha easily out-distanced Ciarán, running with the ease of a seasoned warrior, her lighter, more supple frame — and the fact that she carried less in the way of armour and weapons — making her much faster.

  The howling stopped abruptly as they caught sight of an orange glow in the distance. The cook-fire would keep a wereman at bay only if one was actually standing in the middle of it.

  Sorcha withdrew two long knives as she ran, certain, now, that Danú had scared away the hind earlier today because she had other lives in mind for her warrior daughter to collect on her behalf.

  It was time to kill some weremen.

  She leapt into the fray with a terrifying ululating cry. She aimed for the nearest one who appeared to have a human pinned to the ground beneath him. Sorcha didn’t know if the human was Rónán, the Druid healer they’d left him with, or some random shepherd who happened to be caught outdoors on a full moon. She didn’t even know if she had arrived in time to save him.

  Sorcha slashed at the beast, jumping on its back as she sliced her blades sideways. A hot rush of blood gushed over her arms and the beast’s terrified victim as she laid open its throat. The beast collapsed onto the human and she left it there as she leapt up, looking for her next kill. Whoever it was pinned beneath the hairy wolven corpse was safer trapped under the bulk of the dead wereman while she took care of the rest of the pack, than stumbling around panicked, frightened and getting underfoot.

  Ciarán joined the fight. He killed another beast with a single blow of his Roman sword, while Sorcha turned her knives on a creature that seemed torn between attacking the man brandishing a burning branch on the other side of the fire, and the roast lamb.

  She dispatched the creature with a sharp thrust to the spine. Its blood-curdling scream distracted some of the other weremen. They knew what that scream meant. Only airgead sídhe weapons could cause that sort of pain in a dying Faerie creature.

  Sorcha and Ciarán disposed of another two each before the beasts fled howling into the darkness, looking for less troublesome prey. Prey that wasn’t armed with blades forged from airgead sídhe.

  Breathing heavily, Sorcha turned to survey her handiwork. Now they were dead the weremen had returned to their true form. No longer frightening, drooling beasts, they were pale, slender, long-limbed creatures, dirty and bloody, but unmistakeably Faerie.

  Sorcha bowed her head, offered their souls to Danú, and then turned to the first corpse she’d killed, under which was trapped — and hopefully still alive — the long-lost twin of the Undivided.

  CHAPTER 34

  Hayley’s fog lifted slowly to be replaced by light-headedness and a bewildering darkness. Her bizarre dreams faded as she clawed her way back to consciousness. She realised she was in hospital, had a pounding headache, and for some reason, couldn’t see.

  Her father and stepmother were with her. She felt her father’s hand gripping hers. Her stepmother was whispering her name, drawing her back from her cottonwool cocoon, coaxing her gently back to consciousness as the drugs relinquished their grip on her mind, and allowed the pain of her headache to come rushing back.

  ‘Hayley, love … can you hear me?’

  ‘Mum …’ she tried to say, but it came out as an unintelligible grunt.

  ‘She’s back,’ Kerry said to someone else in the room, her voice filled with relief.

  ‘Take it slowly,’ she heard her father say. Hayley smiled. Or, at least she tried to. It wasn’t easy smiling around the tube in her mouth.

  A moment later, she felt someone fiddling with the hardware filling her mouth and she coughed reflexively as the tube was withdrawn and she started breathing on her own.

  ‘Did you want some water, pet?’ Patrick asked.

  Hayley nodded, her throat dry and painful now the tube was gone. She raised her head a little and took a sip from the drinking straw her father guided into her mouth, and then lay back down, letting the cool water trickle down her raw throat, while she tried to make some sense out of her surroundings. It was still dark in the room, and she could feel the bandages over her eyes, which didn’t make much sense because they seemed to be the only part of her that wasn’t aching.

  ‘What happened, Dad?’ she asked after a moment. Her memories of the past few hours or days were too jumbled and unreliable to count on them to provide a reason for her being in this state.

  ‘There was an accident,’ Kerry said. ‘You were hit by a car.’

  ‘Ren was there …’ Hayley said, trying to piece together the last thing she remembered.

  ‘Aye,’ Patrick agreed, in a rather odd tone. ‘He was there.’

  ‘Is he okay?’

  There was a moment of silence as a look she could sense but not see passed between Kerry and Patrick. ‘He’s fine, sweetie,’ Kerry said finally. ‘You need to concentrate on getting better, and stop worrying about your cousin.’

  ‘Can I see him?’ she asked. ‘When they take the bandages off, of course.’

  ‘Let’s just wait and see how you’re doing, lass,’ Patrick said, gripping her hand even more tightly. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Like I was run over by a bus.’

  ‘Well, actually, it was a BMW, but I’ll not quibble with you over the details,’ Patrick chuckled. ‘Are you in pain, love? The doctors can give you something.’

  She shook her head. Or at least, she tried to. That’s when she discovered how stiff it was. And how thick the bandages around her eyes were. ‘I’m feeling woozy and I’ve got a headache, but it’s not that bad. Did I crack my skull?’

  ‘You surely did,’ her father replied with only the slightest hesitation. ‘Tried to dig a hole in the road with it, according to the doctors.’ Only the faintest tremor in Patrick’s voice betrayed how worried he was.

  ‘Am I going to be okay?’

  ‘Of course you are,’ Kerry said. ‘Few weeks and you’ll be as good as new. They’re saying you’ll be out of hospital by the end of the week.’

  Funny how easy it was to tell when Kerry was lying. Probably because she didn’t do it much. She really wasn’t very good at it.

  Hayley turned her head in the direction of her father’s voice. ‘But I’m not as good as new, am I, Dad?’

  There was a thick silence for a time before he answered. ‘It’s too early to tell, pet.’

  ‘Why is it too early?’

  ‘You hit your head pretty hard, love,’ he explained. ‘Hard enough to make your brain swell. The doctors put you in a coma until the swelling went down.’ />
  ‘But …’ she prompted when her father paused, quite certain there was more to that statement.

  ‘You have a mild traumatic brain injury,’ Neil announced proudly, as if he’d been rehearsing the phrase to make sure he got it right.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Out,’ Kerry ordered in a firm voice.

  ‘But Mum …’

  ‘Now,’ her father added. A moment later she heard Neil muttering and a door slamming shut.

  ‘Was he serious?’ Hayley asked.

  ‘They did an MRI while you were unconscious,’ her father said, his voice choked.

  ‘They’re worried the blow to your head may have damaged your occipital lobe,’ Kerry added, when Patrick seemed unable to go on.

  Hayley was grateful for her practical, unemotional tone. ‘What’s that mean in English?’

  ‘Nothing to worry yourself about, pet,’ her father assured her. ‘The doctors are saying the effects are probably temporary.’

  ‘What’s “probably temporary”?’ Hayley asked, directing her question at her stepmother. Patrick Boyle was a loving father, but he’d never been good at delivering bad news. It was always up to the ever-practical Kerry to tell Hayley what she needed to know.

  ‘We’ll talk about it when you’re feeling a little better,’ Patrick said.

  ‘No. I want to know now.’ You can’t wake a person up from a coma and drop something like that on them without an explanation.

  There was a strained silence for a moment before Kerry, as always, answered her difficult question. ‘The occipital lobe is the part of the brain that takes in what you see and makes sense out of it,’ she explained.

  Hayley took a moment to digest that information and then frowned when she realised what it meant. ‘You mean there’s something wrong with my eyes?’

  ‘No, no …’ her father hastened to assure her. ‘Your eyes are fine. It’s just the part of the brain that helps it all make sense, that’s all. Until the swelling goes down, the doctors won’t know the full extent of the damage.’