The Dark Divide

by Jennifer Fallon

  Someone was moving about in Darragh’s chamber.

  Brydie scrambled to her feet and began to bang on the walls of her tiny jewelled prison, even though she knew it was useless. She could hear what was happening outside the jewel, but people outside couldn’t hear her. She was certain it was impossible to see that there was someone trapped inside the brooch. When she’d owned the brooch, she had studied its faceted surface, admiring the colour and the precision of its cut. She hadn’t seen anybody moving about inside it, and if she had, she would have assumed it a trick of the light.

  Who could even imagine there might be somebody trapped in here?

  And even if they did discover her there, how were they supposed to get her out?

  If Brydie could catch the attention of someone … if a Druid came into the room looking for something … if he or she sensed the spell … maybe they could help?

  Perhaps it was Darragh, come home at last. If the Undivided couldn’t undo a spell wrought by an evil djinni, who else could?

  But that sparked off another set of unsettling questions. Would Darragh notice she was gone? And if he did, would he care? Wouldn’t he simply assume she’d left Sí an Bhrú and gone back to Temair without saying goodbye? Why would he think something evil might have befallen her? They’d known each other for only a few days.

  Surely he would sense the magic worked in his own bedchamber, she thought, more from wishful thinking than any real knowledge of the subject. And if he did sense it, wouldn’t he want to know the source? Was he powerful enough to focus on the enchanted jewel lying amid Brydie’s discarded clothes?

  The shadow moved again and darkness enveloped her as a hand scooped the brooch off the cloak. Whoever had picked up the brooch peered at it closely for a moment, turning it this way and that — knocking Brydie off her feet in the process — to study it.

  ‘Hey!’ she shouted uselessly. ‘In here! Look closely, you fool! Can’t you see me?’

  Her shouts meant nothing, of course, but she continued to do whatever she could to attract the attention of whoever had picked up the brooch. Was it a maid? A thief? That was unlikely here in the very heart of Sí an Bhrú.

  Brydie tried to make out the person, drawing back with a yelp when a giant eye loomed toward her, as the curious person holding the jewel examined it more closely.

  ‘Colmán!’ she shouted when she recognised the shiny trinkets woven into his pointed, forked beard. It made sense. Who else but the Vate would be snooping around Darragh’s chamber if he wasn’t there?

  ‘Colmán! In here! Can’t you see me?’

  He couldn’t hear her cries for help. He just studied the brooch a few moments longer before clasping his hand around it and slipping the brooch — and Brydie along with it — into his pocket, knocking her off her feet again and plunging her into darkness, and removing all hope she may have had of being rescued.

  It was some time again before Brydie saw the light of day. Buried in the depths of Colmán’s pocket, jostled along by his uneven gait, she had no way of knowing what her future held. She called out for Jamaspa, but he did not come. The djinni had other places to be.

  Other trapped innocents to tend to, perhaps?

  Maybe Brydie had nothing to worry about. She might be on her way to being rescued. The queen may have discovered her fate and sent Colmán to fetch the jewel so her trapped court maiden could be released. Even now, Colmán might be taking her to someone who could reverse the djinni’s spell and release her from her amethyst prison.

  Brydie’s heart began to race. Suppose the opposite were true? Suppose the Vate had taken the jewel in which she was trapped and nobody knew about it? Suppose he’d coveted the valuable stone and had decided to sell it now Brydie was gone and there was nobody about to claim it?

  Suppose Jamaspa couldn’t find her again?

  What would happen to her then?

  She began to panic a little. Am I stuck here forever?

  A glimmer of light and a rough jolt threw Brydie off her feet as Colmán lifted her out of his pocket and placed the jewel on a table. A moment later a large eye loomed over her and then receded a little and Brydie realised she was looking at Torcán’s betrothed.

  ‘Is there no sign of her at all?’ Anwen asked, in a voice that seemed filtered through treacle.

  ‘None, my lady,’ Colmán informed her. Brydie turned to look at him through the faceted walls. He looked like a giant — as did Álmhath’s future daughter-in-law — and he was tugging on his forked beard as if he were trying to pull it out by the roots. ‘There is no sign of the court maiden or of Darragh. She left her cloak and this brooch behind.’

  ‘So where is Darragh?’ the young woman asked, her suspicion obvious even to Brydie.

  ‘He has gone into seclusion to await the power transfer, my lady,’ Colmán informed her, which was an outright lie, Brydie figured, because he didn’t even try to make the sentence rhyme. In one of their many late night talks, as they lay in the dark pretending — and sometimes not pretending — to make love, Darragh had told her that was the easiest way to tell if the old man was lying. When he was telling the truth, Colmán was painfully conscious of his role as the chief bard charged with memorising the history of the Undivided, and being a traditionalist, he went to great pains to speak in rhyme. When he was lying, Darragh had told her with a laugh, the Vate was so busy concentrating on the lie, he forgot all about rhyme.

  Anwen, however, seemed to think the reason for Darragh’s absence was quite plausible. ‘Do you suppose he took Brydie with him?’

  ‘It’s possible, my lady,’ Colmán conceded. ‘He was much taken with her.’

  Anwen nodded. ‘Very well, then. On behalf of Queen Álmhath I thank you for returning Brydie’s cloak and the brooch. I will see to it the items are kept safe until her return.’

  ‘They seemed too valuable to leave lying about,’ Colmán agreed. His head bobbed out of sight for a moment — perhaps he was bowing to someone — and then he turned and walked out of Brydie’s line of sight.

  A few moments later, she was thrown off her feet as the brooch was picked up again. Another huge eye stared into her crystal prison and then pulled back far enough for her to realise it was the queen’s son, Torcán. ‘Since when did Brydie own something as valuable as this?’ she heard him ask his betrothed.

  ‘Your mother says Marcroy Tarth gave it to her on a whim on the journey to Sí an Bhrú,’ she heard Anwen reply, although the court maiden was no longer in view with Torcán holding the brooch.

  ‘Do you really think she’s gone into seclusion with Darragh?’

  ‘She could be dead, for all I know,’ Anwen replied, ‘and the Druids wouldn’t tell your mother about it. Particularly if Darragh killed her.’

  Torcán sounded sceptical. ‘From what I saw of the two of them together, Darragh seemed rather more inclined to bed her than kill her.’

  ‘Maybe he did both,’ Anwen snapped back. She sounded angry. And rather less concerned about her fellow court maiden than Brydie would have liked. ‘Either way, if something has happened to her, we have to be certain the queen is not connected to it.’

  ‘Mother took her to Sí an Bhrú, Anwen. And the whole world saw her all but throwing Brydie at Darragh.’

  ‘But she never returned with us, Torcán,’ Anwen reminded him. ‘As far as the world — and more importantly, Brydie’s family — is concerned, Brydie is still here at Sí an Bhrú and the last anybody saw of her, my sister court maiden was in the bed of Darragh of the Undivided. The responsibility for her fate, therefore, rests with him.’

  ‘What do we do with the rest of her things?’

  ‘Burn the cloak,’ Anwen ordered without hesitation. ‘As for the brooch … if Marcroy sees it, he’ll recognise it at once as the jewel he gifted to Brydie.’ She was silent for a moment and then appeared next to Torcán. ‘Melt down the gold and have the jewel reset into something for me. But not a brooch. Something else.’

  Brydie’s eyes brimmed wi
th angry tears.

  Torcán nodded in understanding, smiling. ‘Some things are better hidden in the open, yes?’

  ‘And some things are better if they never see the light of day,’ his future bride replied, somewhat ominously.

  But that wasn’t what upset Brydie.

  She was coming to terms with her enchanted prison. She was even a little intrigued by the possibility of listening in on the goings on in Álmhath’s court — something she would never have been able to do as a mere court maiden.

  What upset Brydie more than words could say was the idea that her amethyst prison — the jewel in which the djinni Jamaspa had magically entrapped her — was going to be set into a gift for that self-serving bitch Anwen.

  CHAPTER 8

  Ren landed heavily against a tree, as if he’d been shot into it by some giant, invisible catapult. He grunted with the pain, gasping to drag air into his lungs as the rough landing winded him. After a few moments, the spearing pain in his chest began to subside and he had time to take note of his surroundings. He could hear voices in the distance, but he seemed — for the moment — to be safe among the kozo trees.

  How he got here was a different question entirely.

  The voices were growing louder, more panicked. Ren pushed himself to his hands and knees and crawled through the undergrowth toward the sound. Dropping flat onto the damp, leafy ground, he realised he was still perilously near the samurai compound. In fact, he was barely fifty feet from where he’d been standing a few seconds ago, about to have his throat slit. Ren reached up, feeling his neck gingerly with his fingertips. His hand came away smeared with blood, but it was a small flesh wound. In the compound, he could hear the chaos as the samurai searched for their quarry.

  Somehow, Ren realised, he’d teleported himself out of the compound to safety.

  Ren closed his eyes, wondering how he’d accomplished this remarkable feat. The memories he shared with his brother weren’t sorted in any easily accessible manner. There was no instruction manual on how to use his magical powers. Darragh had learned his skills over a lifetime of instruction, controlled training and experimentation. Important things Ren needed to know were so second nature to his brother and Darragh’s memories of learning them had faded into nothingness. Others, like struggling to master some obscure Siberian folk dance to honour a visiting Russian diplomat, were fresh in his brother’s mind.

  There must be something about teleporting, but it was unlikely Darragh had the same name for this unexpected skill as the one Ren had assigned it. Until he worked out what Darragh’s name for it was, Ren wouldn’t be able to examine his brother’s memories and work out how to do it again.

  In the meantime, he was safe enough, although not for long. Ren could hear Hayato ordering his men to start searching the forest, yelling at them to hurry, while Chishihero screamed at him, ranting about the Empresses, and her washi quota, and the general incompetence of Hayato and his samurai.

  Ren glanced around, wondering where he was. The forest seemed unremarkable in every direction, just row after row of plantation trees. The orderly lines were a sure sign this was no uncultivated wilderness. It also meant there wasn’t a lot of undergrowth. Other than a bit of brush near the edge of the forest, it was disturbingly well-kept. That meant little or no cover when they came looking for him, which was going to be any minute now.

  He closed his eyes, trying to recapture the feeling he’d had when he zapped himself clear of his executioners, but Ren had no idea of how he’d magically teleported himself out of the compound. Only that he’d done it.

  Frustrating as that was, it also meant getting away the old-fashioned way, on foot.

  Unfortunately, the stone circle where they’d landed in this reality — and arguably their best chance of getting home — lay on the other side of the compound. That was assuming he ever found Trása again. Or if she found him. Actually that was much more likely, because she could fly while he was stuck on the ground.

  Over in the compound, men were mounting up, milling about as they shouted to one another. Ren wondered if he could risk doubling back around the compound to the other side and following the road back to the stone circle. They might not come into the forest to search for him — if they assumed that any prisoner who could blink himself away at will would go further than the trees nearby.

  Ren glanced up at the sky. The moon was long set. It was the darkest part of the night. He was tired, cold, still damp from the rain in his own reality, and fed up with magic and the trouble that came with it.

  He took a deep breath and with a final glance over his shoulder at the compound through the trees, crouching low to the ground, took off at a run between the trees, staying parallel to the compound. If he followed the fence line, it would eventually lead him back to the road, and from there he could track beside it to reach the stone circle. Once he was there …

  Well, who knew what would happen. Maybe Trása would find him. Maybe, if he had the power to teleport himself around at will, somewhere, buried in his mind, was the secret to opening a dimensional rift.

  One way or another, Ren figured, he was going to find a way home.

  Ren fell asleep just before dawn. By then he was profoundly lost, with no idea where he was, where the compound was, or where he might find the stone circle that could send him home. He remembered stopping to rest a while ago, exhausted beyond hope, determined to close his eyes for no more than five minutes.

  When he woke, it was bright daylight and there was a little girl standing over him, poking him with a sword.

  ‘Okinasai! Okinasai!’

  ‘Whoa! I am awake!’ Ren cried, pushing the sword point away.

  The girl standing over him was about twelve or thirteen. She had long, wavy dark brown hair, black eyes and was dressed in a faded woollen shirt that crossed over the front and tied up at the sides, and a pair of patched woollen trousers that had known better days. She didn’t seem to be entirely Japanese, although that was the language she spoke. Ren climbed cautiously to his feet, keeping a wary eye on the katana the girl carried. ‘Be careful with that thing, will you? Somebody might get hurt.’

  ‘Are you the Youkai they’re searching for?’ she asked, studying him with a frown.

  ‘You gonna run me through with that thing if I say yes?’ he asked in English. When she responded with little more than a blank look, he repeated the question in Japanese.

  To his surprise, she shook her head and hefted the sword until the flat of the blade rested on her shoulder and then smiled at him. ‘Of course not. I’m to take you back to the Ikushima compound.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Ren said, looking around to see if the child had companions nearby who might be a little more keen to spill his blood than she was. ‘But I just left the compound, mostly because they were trying to slit my throat. Not too keen on going back to that, I have to confess.’

  ‘Not the Tanabe compound,’ she said, a little impatiently. ‘The Tanabe are kusobaka.’ Ren smiled. He thought the people who tried to kill him and Trása were stupid shits, too. He was warming rapidly to this young lady.

  ‘I’m going to take you back to Shin Bungo.’ She turned and pointed to her right. ‘Over there.’

  ‘You’re not friends with the Tanabe … people, then?’

  She spat on the ground in disgust. ‘I would fall on my sword before I called any Tanabe dog a friend.’

  ‘Fair enough. What’s your name?’

  ‘Kazusa.’

  ‘Tell me, Kazusa,’ Ren asked, climbing to his feet. ‘Are you familiar with the theory of my enemy’s enemy is my friend, by any chance?’

  Kazusa pursed her lips for a moment and then shook her head. ‘I am not. But it seems a reasonable assumption. Will you come with me of your own free will, or must I make you?’

  Ren bit back a smile. Now he was on his feet, he was pretty sure he could take down a twelve-year-old girl, even one armed with a katana, but she seemed fairly certain of herself. Maybe she was some sort of
kiddie ninja and could slice him into sushi in the blink of an eye. It wasn’t likely, but Ren was quickly learning that what seemed likely was no longer a safe way to anticipate danger.

  ‘I’ll come voluntarily. For now.’ This girl was offering him somewhere else to go that wasn’t the compound of Chishihero and her henchmen. That had to count for something.

  ‘Empty your pockets.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I must check that you are not carrying any washi,’ she explained. ‘Namito was very firm on that. “If you find the Youkai, be certain he cannot bewitch us with ori mahou”, he said. He was quite adamant about it.’

  Ren shook his head, a little confused, but did as she asked, turning his pockets out to prove he had no paper in them. Ori and maho, in the Japanese Ren spoke, roughly translated as folding and magic. Chishihero’s truth spell with the little origami heart almost made sense, if that’s what Kazusa was worried about. He decided not to tell her he had no idea how to make anything out of folding magic, or that he didn’t need it. He needed to discover what was going on here first. He needed to find out if Kazusa was offering him help or just a different type of trouble.

  ‘Good enough?’ he asked, as she inspected his pockets closely, disinterested in the other contents. Apparently, all she cared about was paper.

  ‘Good enough,’ she agreed. ‘Walk ahead of me.’

  Suspicious little thing, aren’t you? he said to himself, as he returned his pockets to their previous state. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I will show you the way.’

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘Not especially.’

  ‘Is there food there?’

  She poked him in the back to get him moving. ‘There is,’ Kazusa informed him, as she shouldered the katana again. ‘It remains to be seen, however, Youkai, whether or not my brother wishes to waste it on you.’