‘And I would do it, Ciarán,’ Darragh said. ‘In a heartbeat … if I didn’t know there were already power hungry Druids lining up to take on the Regency of the new Undivided. There are too many people out there who would benefit from these new heirs being invested as children. Look what happened with me and Rónán. Look what they did to Sybille.’
‘You don’t know for certain they killed her, Darragh.’
‘Yes,’ Darragh replied. ‘I do.’
Ciarán sighed unhappily.
‘Rónán is unprepared for this life as yet,’ Darragh added. ‘He knows nothing about us. We’ve already had to bring Sorcha in on this to protect him, and we haven’t even brought him here yet. We don’t even know for certain that he wants to stay.’
‘I wasn’t aware we were giving him a choice.’
Darragh smiled thinly. ‘I’m hoping once we’ve shared the Comhroinn, he’ll decide to stay. But what if he doesn’t want to? Do we know anything about the life he had in the other realm? Are we so certain he wants to give up everything he had there for what he will have here?’
‘Actually, that brings me to the reason I’m here,’ Ciarán said. ‘We have a problem.’
‘Only one?’ Darragh sighed. ‘That’s an improvement.’
‘We’re going to have to move him.’
‘To where?’
‘Somewhere safe,’ Ciarán said cagily. He, too, lived in fear of Marcroy’s spies. ‘I have a few ideas.’
‘I thought he was somewhere safe,’ Darragh said.
‘He might have been,’ Ciarán said, wincing. He took a seat on the bed where Darragh had been sitting a few moments before. Darragh wondered if the warrior had been in a fight recently. If he had, it wasn’t a good sign. He’d thought an out-of-the-way village like Breaga would have been perfectly safe. ‘If your little friend hadn’t found him first.’
‘What are you talking about? My little friend?’
‘Seems Rónán made a new friend in the other realm, just before he joined us here. A young lady, to be precise. Said her name was Trása. She even had a Leipreachán with her.’
Darragh’s heart skipped a beat. He hadn’t seen Trása for almost three years. He still missed her. Still wished they hadn’t sent her away. He knew why they had, of course, and they were right, but all the same …
‘Trása crossed a rift to find Rónán?’ he asked, trying to sound more interested in the mechanics of the problem rather than the subject. ‘But she’s Beansídhe. Surely she would perish in a world without magic.’
‘She’s only half-Beansídhe,’ Ciarán reminded him. ‘She’s human enough to survive there, apparently. And to survive long enough to find your brother. Thank Danú that Brógán and Niamh found him when they did, or who knows what might have happened.’
Darragh put aside his confused feelings for his childhood friend in order to consider the ramifications of that piece of news. Trása had crossed the rift into Rónán’s world and somehow managed to find him first. Had she spoken to him?
Of course she had … that’s how Rónán knew her name.
But what did she want with him? She hadn’t harmed him. She hadn’t even revealed who she was or where she came from. If she had, Darragh’s existence would not have registered as such a shock with his brother.
‘Did he say what she was after?’ Darragh asked.
‘He says she asked nothing of him. She just appeared a few days before we found him, claiming to be the granddaughter of a neighbour. They were just getting to know each other when there was some sort of accident. He did try to explain what happened but it made no sense to me, although Brógán seemed to understand it. Perhaps that’s because he told most of it in the language of the other realm. Anyway, a friend or cousin was badly injured. In an effort to bring the person responsible to account, Rónán ran afoul of the authorities and finished up in gaol, which is where Brógán and Niamh found him.’ Ciarán shook his head with a sigh. ‘At least, that’s how Brógán explained it.’
For a moment Darragh was envious of Rónán and the life he led in the other realm. It was a world where one could speak to a half-Beansídhe without earning the wrath of two entire species. He wondered what else Rónán had seen and heard and done. He tried to imagine the liberty his brother would have enjoyed there. To be free, to have none of the burden of being the Undivided, a burden Darragh had carried alone all his life. The idea was so enticing, it was hard not to feel envy.
But he didn’t have time to dwell on it. Right now, they had to deal with their enemies in this world.
‘Rónán is still safe, is he not?’
‘For now.’
‘There is a “but” in that comment I can hear clearly, Ciarán, even if you’re not saying it aloud.’
The big man leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘Rónán thinks he saw Plunkett O’Bannon in Breaga, this morning.’
Plunkett O’Bannon? What is that irritating little troublemaker up to?
‘Is he sure?’
‘No,’ Ciarán said. ‘Given your brother’s limited experience with the little folk, it’s possible he mistook one Leipreachán for another. The problem is, he saw a Leipreachán. If the little folk know Rónán is back, you can bet they’re telling Marcroy Tarth about it, even as we speak.’
Darragh frowned. He’d seen the look on Marcroy’s face at the Council. The Daoine sídhe lord had been itching for the power transfer to take place. He had stood at Álmhath’s side in a show of unprecedented solidarity with the human queen. So anxious was he that the power be transferred, that he was prepared to risk the life of these young twins — not to mention take the life of Darragh and Rónán — in order to see it happen. Why?
‘You said we had a problem with Rónán,’ Darragh reminded Ciarán.
‘He wants to do a deal with you.’
‘What sort of deal?’
‘He wants to return to the other realm, and bring a friend back to this one.’
Darragh smiled. ‘Is it a girl?’
‘How did you know that?’
‘He’s my other half, Ciarán. How could I not know?’
CHAPTER 44
It was uncomfortable, being a mouse. One was always being distracted by food. Mice, being scavengers, were frequently sidetracked from their purpose by the whiff of a fragrant midden, the aromatic temptation of a discarded crust or the mellow bouquet of a mouldy piece of fruit. Out here in the countryside, away from such distractions, it was a little easier, but Marcroy still had to concentrate.
Good thing, too. Otherwise he would have missed everything.
He’d followed Plunkett to this out-of-the-way shepherd’s hut, mostly because he was certain the Leipreachán was leading him on a merry chase. He thought he was giving Plunkett enough rope with which to hang himself and was looking forward to the moment when the little man realised he’d run out of slack.
Instead, Marcroy ran straight into the very thing he feared most.
Rónán of the Undivided. Alive and well and here in the realm Marcroy had taken such pains to remove him from.
Once the Brethren found out about this, there would be hell to pay. Thank Danú that Jamaspa was still locked inside Brydie Ni’Seanan’s brooch back at Sí an Bhrú.
Rónán hadn’t stayed in Breaga long. Plunkett had been careless — naturally — and Rónán had caught sight of him. By the time Marcroy and the Leipreachán returned, Sorcha and Brógán were getting ready to move him to a more secure location. Somewhere the Tuatha would have difficulty finding him. There were not many places where he couldn’t be found by the Tuatha, but there were enough of them for Marcroy to be worried he’d lose Rónán if he let him out of his sight.
Marcroy was angry. Trása had promised she’d taken care of the boy. Rónán was supposed to be trapped somewhere in another realm. Certainly not returned to be reunited with his brother.
No wonder Darragh had seemed so smug at the Council of Druids. Darragh had stood there and not said a word. He had not gi
ven the slightest hint that at Lughnasadh, when they intended to transfer the power of the Undivided to the new heirs, he intended to march into the circle of Druids with his Undivided twin by his side.
Marcroy wasn’t used to underestimating humans so badly.
The serendipity of the Leipreachán’s discovery was not lost on Marcroy. He was so thankful for it, in fact, that he had sent Plunkett to fetch his niece, rather than turn him into a worm for having the temerity to turn up at a Council, tugging on the edge of his master’s cloak.
In his guise of a fieldmouse, Marcroy was now able to get close enough to the hut to hear Rónán and the others talking. Close enough to see Sorcha, Ciarán and a young Druid Marcroy recognised from Sí an Bhrú but couldn’t name.
The younger man Marcroy dismissed as insignificant. He wasn’t surprised to find Ciarán here, though. Darragh trusted nobody more. If Darragh of the Undivided had cooked up a plan to find and retrieve his brother from another realm, it could not have been executed without the Druid warrior’s help.
Sorcha’s presence worried the sídhe lord more. He’d not seen her in some time, and knew her to be unsympathetic to the Tuatha Dé Danann, whom she blamed — along with Marcroy Tarth — for being trapped in Tír Na nÓg for so many years.
It was Sorcha’s quest to become a Druid magician that had sent her to Tír Na nÓg. She had no magic to speak of, so she would never achieve the status of a man like Ciarán, who was both magically gifted and a mighty warrior. She’d thought travelling to Tír Na nÓg would change that.
Marcroy, when he was feeling generous, could admit to being in some way responsible for her misapprehension. She was a beauty, and he’d been quite enchanted with her at the time. As a Druid novice, however, she would never entertain the idea of a casual affair with a sídhe. She was much too focussed on her desire to be the greatest Druid warrior that ever lived.
So Marcroy had let her believe that if she came to Tír Na nÓg her wish would be granted. He hinted that he could arrange for her to be branded with the magical tattoo that would allow her to channel sídhe magic, if she came to his land, where magic sweated out of the skin of every sídhe.
Sorcha, who had been sixteen, foolish and blinded by an impossible ambition, had swallowed his hollow promises. Several attempts in the human world to tattoo her left breast over the heart had failed. Like others who wished to wield magic but couldn’t, she’d been tattooed twice, but within days the magical ink faded, leaving her a simple warrior, and a slip of a girl warrior at that.
So she entered the magical lands of the Tuatha believing Marcroy would grant her the ability to wield magic. Once under the spell of his world, he’d wooed her and loved her, indulging her desire to be a great warrior by allowing her to be taught by the greatest warriors of the Tuatha Dé Danann.
She learned everything she could from them, mastered every technique they showed her. But the magical tattoo remained nothing more than a hopeful dream.
One of Marcroy’s sisters had let slip the news that Sorcha could never be marked for magic. It may have even been Elimyer who gave the game away. By then, Marcroy had already lost interest in Sorcha and moved on to other, less challenging, conquests.
Sorcha, by now a formidable fighter, finally left Tír Na nÓg to discover a horrid truth. The Druids had warned her about travelling to the land of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Warned her that sídhe magic distorted time and that the world she left behind travelled at a different pace. She’d known of the danger, of course, and believed she’d kept track of the time. In fact, in her mind, she’d been in Tír Na nÓg no more than six months. In the real world, however, as Sorcha discovered when she returned home, sixty years had passed. Sorcha came back to a world she didn’t know; a family long dead, a home lost, a world destroyed. She’d come home to nothing.
Marcroy felt a little sorry for her. But mostly he felt sorry for the fact that he had created an enemy in the heart of a woman who had once been a lover.
That she was here now, helping protect Rónán of the Undivided, was proof enough of that.
‘… take him to …’ Ciarán was ordering Sorcha as Brógán kicked over the fire and began to remove traces of their makeshift camp. Marcroy cursed. He wasn’t close enough to hear the details. Perhaps it was his rodent hearing. But to change into anything larger — like the wolf shape he favoured when taking animal form — would alert the humans to his presence.
‘Where’s that?’ Rónán asked. Marcroy crept a little closer, in the hopes of discovering what village ‘that’ might be. He studied Rónán from beneath a small tussock of grass growing by the hut wall. It was cold hiding here, shaded as it was by the hut’s western wall, but it gave him an excellent vantage point and he was now close enough to hear what they were saying.
Marcroy marvelled at how much like his brother Rónán was. He really was identical to Darragh, except he had shorter hair, a more slender frame, and the triskalion tattoo marked his left hand, rather than his right. Marcroy had sent him through the rift to a world of no magic, which meant technology and a lifestyle that didn’t require proficiency with weapons. He studied the young man with his rodent senses, battling the temptation to scuttle under the uneven boards of the hut’s walls and rummage for crumbs. Whiskers twitching, he watched and waited as they made their plans, but he still had no idea where they were planning to take the lad.
Rónán was complaining: ‘… but you promised.’ His shoulders were set in the same, intransigent pose Darragh adopted when he was being stubborn.
‘Ciarán promised nothing of the kind, Leath tiarna,’ Sorcha said, as she buckled on her sword. ‘He said your brother might agree to it. He certainly never offered to champion your insane bargain.’
‘But you can help Hayley! If we’ve got to make ourselves scarce for a while, why don’t we just go back to my reality and get her? It would be better than holing up in some fortress in the middle of nowhere, constantly looking over our shoulders for fear the cockroaches are listening in.’
Marcroy would have frowned, had his mousy features permitted it. What was Rónán talking about? Fortress in the middle of nowhere? Going back to his reality? To get whom?
‘We can kill two birds with one stone,’ Rónán said, imploring the others for help.
Marcroy wished he knew what the lad was trying to convince them to do. The key to managing humans was knowing what they wanted, and this boy clearly wanted something very badly.
‘It’s so simple, it’s perfect!’ Rónán insisted. ‘We vanish through the rift until the Autumn thingy, we find my friend, and then we come back and kick butt.’
Sorcha smiled. ‘I appreciate your fervour, Leath tiarna. It’s truly a pity the course of action you want to apply your fervour to is so preposterous.’
‘Did you ask Darragh if it’s preposterous?’
Ciarán shrugged. ‘He said he would consider your request.’
‘It wasn’t a request, dude,’ Rónán replied in the same tone with which Marcroy had heard Darragh issue a thousand orders. Until that moment, Marcroy had always thought Darragh merely good at parroting the instructions given to him by Amergin and, lately, the fool Colmán. Seeing Rónán using the same tone of voice, the same stance, the same mannerisms, forced him to reassess his opinion of both boys.
‘Darragh knows of your desire, and will discuss your offer as soon as he can get away from Sí an Bhrú,’ Ciarán said, placing a fatherly hand on the young man’s shoulder. ‘There are other things afoot in the land, Leath tiarna, that he must deal with, before he can consider it.’
Rónán didn’t look happy, but he seemed to accept Ciarán’s assurance. Within a few minutes, they’d packed up the camp and turned for Breaga and the stone circle. They would spirit Rónán away until it was time for him to make his triumphant return at the Lughnasadh festivities, throwing all of Marcroy’s plans into disarray.
Marcroy watched them leave, waiting until their voices faded. He forced himself to be still, fighting both his
rodent and his sídhe instincts to move before he was sure he was completely alone. His nose twitched with the overwhelming smells of the earth, while his stomach rumbled, demanding he do something about the remains of the roast, not to mention the bonfire still smouldering a little further down the hill.
It was only once he was satisfied that it was safe to return to his true form that Marcroy changed from a mouse back into the tall sídhe lord. Naked, but no longer bothered by the chill air now he was back in his own form, Marcroy entered the hut and fetched a small, three-legged stool. He placed it near the door in the sunlight and sat down to wait for Plunkett O’Bannon and his niece to make an appearance. He intended to give them both a piece of his mind.
CHAPTER 45
Trása circled the shepherd’s hut near Breaga once to be sure she had the right place. When she spotted Marcroy sunning himself on a stool, she dropped the cloak she was carrying and came in to land.
Marcroy saw the cloak floating down to earth and stood up, snatched it from the air and wrapped it around himself before Trása reached the ground. There was no sign of Plunkett.
As soon as she landed, Trása resumed her true form, smiling in anticipation of her welcome. The air was cool, but it didn’t bother her much, and although she was naked, she was less self-conscious this time. Besides, Marcroy was also naked, which meant he’d recently taken on an animal form, too, and had been caught out here in the human world without human clothes in which to disguise his spectacular sídhe physique.
‘If I’d known the cloak was meant for you, Uncail, I’d have brought one of yours.’
‘Did you think to ask?’ Marcroy said, fastening the cloak under his chin before brushing an imaginary fleck of dust from his shoulder.
Trása was a little worried by his tone. She had not been expecting icy disdain. ‘No … I just assumed …’
The Undivided Page 31