Reunion

by Jennifer Fallon

  He should have gone back for her, he supposed. It would not be the first time he'd sneaked into the reality where he was born, despite banning Trása from making contact with anybody there. He'd done it, the first time, the morning after his first visit to the Pool of Tranquillity when he'd finally dared delve into Delphine's memories and stumbled across a scene that still haunted him.

  In Delphine's memory she'd been standing in the sacred grove near Sí an Bhrú. Ren recognized it from Darragh's memories.

  Anwen, the daughter-in-law of Álmhath, the queen of the Celts, was explaining how she had convinced the queen to steal a child from Darragh before the transfer of power to the Undivided heirs killed him and his brother.

  "We need the bloodline preserved, my lady, you said so yourself," Anwen had explained to Delphine. "It wasn't hard to convince Álmhath to send a suitable vessel to Darragh's bed so his seed might be collected. Any children spawned from such a union would be raised by herself, ensuring their loyalty to her rather than the Treaty of Tír Na nÓg."

  Far from being pleased by this news, Delphine had been annoyed by it. "If only it were that simple."

  "I didn't feel explaining the flaw in her logic would achieve anything, my lady, given her ambition coincided enough with our needs to achieve the same outcome."

  She'd smiled sourly at that. "Well, you have to give her kudos for trying, I suppose. It's a grand idea, but not one likely to succeed if the union results in offspring tied to the Tuatha by blood."

  "I didn't have the heart to tell her how little chance her plan has of succeeding," Anwen said.

  "It's not an impossible ambition though," Delphine conceded. "There are realms where nobody has heard of the Undivided. Preserving the bloodlines in realms devoid of magic is much less problematic there. Believe me, I know. Who did you assign the task?"

  "Brydie Ni'Seanan," Anwen had said. "Mogue Ni'Farrell's daughter."

  The mention of her name had caused a flood of Darragh's memories to overtake Delphine, which felt a little like having two people screaming at him at the same time, one in each ear and both with something different to stay. He'd fought down Darragh's lustful reminiscences and dragged Delphine's memory back. From the discussion that followed the announcement of her name, Ren gathered the Matrarchaí suffered from defections more often than they'd like. Brydie's mother, like Wakiko, had rebelled at being nothing more than a human incubator in the Matrarchaí's grand plan.

  "The girl in question was the right bloodline and had few other prospects at court," Anwen had explained to Delphine in her memories. "She was destined to be someone's mistress, not a wife. The men who come to Álmhath's court looking for a woman to bear their children and housekeep their estates, don't want a wife they know every other man in their kingdom will be lusting after. I did her a favor, my lady, not a disservice. Darragh of the Undivided was healthy, virile and not unattractive. One day, she'll thank me for the opportunity."

  That statement had made Ren smile. Darragh would like to hear about that one.

  But then came the real kicker and the reason Ren had risked visiting a realm where his safety was best assured if everyone kept believing he was dead.

  "Perhaps," Delphine had agreed, with some reluctance. "Where is she now?"

  Anwen untied the ostentatious, gem-encrusted necklace she was wearing and handed it to Delphine. "She's in here."

  Delphine had accepted the necklace on the palm of her hand and stared at it for a long moment. "Did you ...?"

  Anwen shook her head. "I've not the power to do anything of the kind, Lady Delphine. That's why I was chosen to come to this court, if you recall. Had I any magical ability to speak of, the Druids or the Undivided may have recognized it in me, and I would have been discovered as soon as I arrived."

  "Then who did this?"

  "I'm guessing it was one of the Djinn," Anwen said.

  Delphine looked up from the gems. "What interest would they have in this girl? More to the point, what are the Djinn doing, sneaking around Sí an Bhrú?"

  "I don't know, Lady Delphine. I just know that, in this realm, the only species of sídhe who use inanimate objects to trap unwary humans are the Djinn. And as you no doubt can tell, she is trapped in the jewel."

  Delphine wasn't in any great hurry to release the stone and studied the necklace with interest. "Do they know you have her?"

  "I don't know, my lady. I suspect not."

  "Then for the time being, she is safe. It is almost impossible to release someone trapped by a djinni without the help of the Djinn. If this girl succeeded in her task and managed to conceive, then we will have need of her. Until we can find a safe way to release her and the precious burden she may well be carrying, she is better off where she is."

  "And in the meantime?"

  "In the meantime, the transfer will take place on Lughnasadh as scheduled, Darragh and Rónán will die and we will be rid of one more potential threat to our plans." Delphine handed the necklace back to Anwen. "If Brydie conceived a child - or better yet, twins - then you did well to preserve the line. I wish we were having as much success in other realms."

  That was the reason, he'd known immediately, why the nightmares had stopped. Trása was right. It wasn't taking Delphine's memories that had stopped the dreams of him murdering Darragh's children. It was some nameless djinni who, for no reason Ren could fathom, decided to trap Brydie in suspended animation.

  She was pregnant and the jewel prevented the pregnancy from progressing.

  If she ever got out, then Ren's worst fears would come true.

  He felt bad for Brydie. The innocent young woman the Matrarchaí had thrown at Darragh in the hope of getting a child from him was trapped in this jewel through no fault of her own. The Matrarchaí wanted her kept safe because she might well be the mother of Darragh's children.

  And it was that frightening possibility that had caused Ren to risk visiting Darragh's realm and steal the gem from Anwen.

  He didn't do it to save Brydie, however. He intended to ensure she stayed trapped in the jewel forever.

  And to be certain she never brought the babies he was destined to kill to term, he never let the jewel out of his sight. If Brydie was carrying Darragh's children and she remained in the jewel, Ren would never have to live out that terrible scene burned so indelibly into his brain.

  Ren had informed Brydie of this unfortunate truth as soon as he'd returned to this realm, feeling he owed her some explanation for her continued imprisonment. He hadn't told her about the dreams, of course, but had warned her not to expect to be released anytime soon. It was one of the reasons he spoke to her as often as he did. It assuaged his guilt a little to acknowledge her presence, even if he did nothing to restore her.

  He could not tell her the reason. There was no way he could think of to explain that he still remembered a dream which had haunted him most of his life, and he had become more and more certain as he got older that it was not his own children, in the dream, he was killing, but his brother's children.

  And had he realized Hayley was still there when he stole Brydie's jewel, he could have sought her out on the same trip and maybe brought her here to this world seven years ago. Or would he have done so?

  There other were things he'd taken from Delphine's mind that made a public return to his own realm to find Hayley somewhat problematic, even if he didn't factor in the simple fact that everybody thought he was dead and he had a lot more to do before he was ready to reveal that that was not the case.

  With the exception of Ciarán, there was nobody in the other reality he could completely trust not to reveal that he and Darragh still lived. But he'd not been able to contact the old warrior since arriving in this realm.

  If the puddle phone was working, Ciarán wasn't picking up.

  Damn you, Hayley.

  Ren tried to recall the burning need he'd had to be the one who saved Hayley when he was younger. He wasn't nearly so foolish, passionate, or absurdly heroic these days. That reckless d
esire had caused a catastrophic chain if events that had led him here to this place, and this moment, with the blood of a dozen or more people on his hands.

  Perhaps she was okay. Abbán had sent her back to her own realm. She'd been gone a long time and it was unlikely anybody would believe her when she tried to explain where she'd been, but Kerry and Patrick would be thrilled to have their daughter home. Even Neil would probably be glad to see his sister again.

  There's nothing I can do about it, anyway, he reminded himself. She's home now. Back in my world ...

  Strange how I haven't stepped foot in that reality in ten years and I still think of it as mine.

  Ren reached into his pocket and retrieved the other jewel he carried today - the ruby Trása's cousin Abbán had used to open the rift from their reality to this one. That was not what made it special, though. Ren had the ability to come and go as he pleased to this realm. This jewel had opened a rift to the reality where Darragh was stranded and could do it again.

  For the first time in a decade, Ren had the means to bring his brother home, quite literally, in the palm of his hand.

  But if he did that, as soon as he found him Darragh would expect to share the Comhroinn with his brother. That meant giving away the presence of Brydie and the amethyst and the certainty that Darragh would insist on asking a djinni to release her, and then they'd know if she was pregnant, and Ren's nightmare would come true ...

  "I'd like to help," he said after a time, studying the multifaceted gem. "I'd like to get Darragh. But I can't. Not now. Not with this crisis with Isleen. Trása can't understand why I'm not moving heaven and earth to find my brother and bring him home. God knows, Logan and Pete want to go back and get some answers from the Matrarchaí, even though I've shared a lot of Delphine's memories that I've been able to make sense of." Ren hadn't shared all of her memories, partly because he couldn't access them either. Knowing what Delphine knew was only useful if something triggered the memory. He'd had the same problem with Darragh's memories when he tried to figure out how Darragh had managed to teleport himself out of danger when he first arrived in this realm and the Tanabe tried to kill him. He'd searched Darragh's memories to no avail, until Trása told him the skill was called waning and he had to have something to search for. That, more than anything, drove his need to share the Comhroinn with other Empress twins as they died - not for information, so much as context for the memories already filling his head.

  "The more I learn, the more it seems our reality is the key. It's where the Matrarchaí are headquartered. And now Trása's gone and messed everything up trying to be helpful. Marcroy is going to miss Abbán soon and wonder where his ruby is, so I guess I'm not going to be able to put off dealing with him for much longer, either."

  He sighed heavily at that thought. There were consequences attached to confronting Marcroy Tarth.

  "There're things I know that Marcroy doesn't ... or rather, things Delphine knew."

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment.

  "How to you think Darragh's going to take the news that -" Ren doubled over, his thought cut short by a searing pain slicing across his abdomen.

  He fell to his knees on the wet stony ground. The pain shot through him in white bolts of agony. It felt as if he were being stabbed and his hand came away bloody when he tried to feel his abdomen for the source of the pain.

  Darragh. It was the only explanation.

  Darragh was trying to contact him and he was doing it with the equivalent of airgead sídhe in the other realm. Titanium. Darragh had done this years ago, when they were first separated and naive enough to believe they would be reunited any day now.

  Ren had communicated with Darragh the same way, reminding him of the accident Ren had had as a child by carving the word "bike" into his forearm. He knew Darragh would see it and then dredge it from Ren's memories - shared during the Comhroinn - and make the connection between the titanium bike spoke that had injured Ren, and the matching wound he'd manifested in another reality years before, the only time the psychic link between them had worked the other way.

  For a time, after that, they'd kept in touch, but then Darragh had asked Ren to stop. He'd sent him one last message: no more. Since then, they'd stayed in touch with nothing more than the tiny nick behind the ear that Ren reopened every few days, just to let his brother know he hadn't been forgotten.

  Things must have changed dramatically for Darragh for him to reach out like this. When Ren peeled away the bloodied fabric of his gi pants and read what Darragh had hacked into his own flesh, he knew his previous rationalizations were moot.

  It didn't matter any longer whether this was the right time. It didn't matter about Hayley. It didn't matter about Isleen and Teagan. It didn't matter that the nightmares might return. It didn't matter that they might one day come true.

  None of it mattered.

  It was time to bring his brother home.

  Chapter 20

  The Tuatha Dé Danann, although long-lived, were not particularly forward thinking. It was hard sometimes, Marcroy reflected, to remember how they owed the Druids a debt of honor and wondered - as he often did - if the treaty they had sworn almost two thousand years ago had been worth the long-term cost.

  As this evening's ceremony drew to a close in the sacred grove outside Temair, Marcroy wished more of his ilk possessed the ability to see into the future. The gift of Sight sadly seemed to belong almost exclusively to human practitioners of magic and a few of the Brethren he would likely never meet. Tuatha Dé Danann seers were almost unheard of.

  Had there been one around at the time the treaty was worked out between human and sídhe, Marcroy was convinced it would never have been agreed upon. But, then again, perhaps it still would have. The Tuatha Dé Danann possessed the ability to cross into other realities where similar treaties had been forged and there had been no warning, in those realities, of the trouble to come. In fact, Marcroy had got the very idea for the treaty after hearing how successfully it had worked in other realms. Pity he didn't get to see any of those other realms a millennia or so after the fact. He may not have been so quick to embrace the notion of sharing sídhe magic with humans to fight off a common foe.

  "The reason humans think the Tuatha Dé Danann are so arrogant," a small voice whispered in his ear, "is because you always look so bored when presiding over their ceremonies."

  Jamaspa. Marcroy hadn't seen or heard from the djinni in years. His sudden appearance - if that's what the faint wisp of blue smoke hovering beside his ear could be called - could only mean trouble.

  Marcroy couldn't answer him, either. Queen Álmhath was staring at him, waiting for his response to her spring offering. He was here to accept this gift on behalf of Orlagh, the queen of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Fortunately, the ceremony was almost done. Soon he could leave this mundane world and return to the peace and serenity of Tír Na nÓg.

  "I thank thee on behalf of Orlagh and all the Tuatha Dé Danann," he said, annoyed he was required to appear grateful. Back before the Treaty of Tír Na nÓg, although the gifts were the same, there had never been a need to say thank you. Supplicants didn't expect thanks from their betters. Thanks were something reserved for equals and Marcroy considered humans to be woefully short of being his equal.

  The queen bowed and turned to face her people, gathered among the trees, throwing her arms wide to welcome them to the celebrations. As they let out a cheer, Marcroy took the wicker basket laden with food none of his kind would ever eat and turned away, at the same time catching sight of Álmhath's son, Torcán and his wife, Anwen. Torcán seemed to be itching for the party to begin. Anwen, however, was watching Marcroy with eyes that were both cold and suspicious.

  "She is not what she seems, that one," the djinni whispered in his ear. "You should be careful of the queen's daughter-in-law."

  "Is that why you came?" Marcroy asked as he turned his back on the humans. "To warn me about some chit of a girl."

  "Not at all," Jamasp
a said, his voice tickling Marcroy's ear and sending ominous shivers down his spine. "I came to fetch you."

  "For what?"

  "For the Brethren," Jamaspa said. "They want to see you."

  * * *

  Marcroy Tarth was a prince among the Tuatha Dé Danann. He had the ear of Orlagh, queen of the Tuatha Dé Danann. He was her envoy to the mundane world. Lesser sídhe quivered with terror at his approach. Humans spoke his name in whispers for fear of invoking his wrath.

  And yet, when confronted with the Brethren, he felt as puny as a small child.

  Even though they had sent the irritating and smug Jamaspa to fetch him, Marcroy couldn't imagine refusing the invitation, even if it meant his doom.

  When he met with the Brethren, however, he was not taken to some fabulous palace hidden among the clouds, or a shining temple atop a high mountain. Jamaspa brought him to a jungle so humid and teeming with every imaginable creature, both magical and mundane, that for the first time in his long existence, Marcroy felt a little lost.

  The Hag was waiting for him, seated on a decaying log, her wrinkled skin so weathered and brown that he wondered if she counted her age in years or millennia, assuming she bothered to keep count at all. A thick, silent mist began to close in around them as he approached. Lit from some indefinable source, the fog tendrils gave the Hag an air of mystery and power that was not undeserved.

  "My lady," Marcroy said with the deepest respect, bowing as he approached her in the clearing across a thick layer of warm rotting detritus that smelled earthy and rank.

  The ragged old woman looked up at him with ancient, watery eyes, almost as if she was surprised to see him, even though he was answering her summons. "You came."

  "I live to do thine bidding, my lady," he said formally. "How may I aid thee?"

  The Hag closed her eyes and said nothing for such a long time that Marcroy feared she had fallen asleep.

  He waited in silence for her to move, to say something. He did not dare so much as twitch in case it displeased her. The mist grew steadily thicker until it blocked out every sound from the jungle, enveloping them in a white cone of silence and fear.