The Dark Divide

by Jennifer Fallon

  If he couldn’t find her, how could he release her from this purple-tinted prison? She was stranded. The jewel’s magic meant she wouldn’t age or need sleep or food or anything like it, suspended in her own private bubble of the present, as she was. And that meant she might be here for eternity.

  Brydie was plunged back into darkness as the goldsmith and Torcán settled on the price for the necklace. Soon she was lifted up again and placed, much more gently, into a dark, beautifully embroidered bag. It was soft and thick and even through her purple-tinted lens, seemed a rich shade of emerald green. Bracing herself for an uncomfortable trip to the palace — on horseback — Brydie didn’t waste a single moment wishing she were Anwen. Torcán’s wife would have to put up with Torcán for one thing, but with succession among the Celts often through the distaff line, even the prospect of one day becoming queen was by no means certain.

  Trapped in the darkness of the soft green velvet bag, Brydie could only wait until Torcán decided to give his betrothed her gift. That could be days. Anwen and Torcán were not due to be married until Lughnasadh. If Torcán was planning to surprise Anwen on their wedding day, Brydie could be stuck in this smothering darkness for weeks.

  Brydie had forgotten, however, that Torcán did little his mother didn’t either directly order, or approve. He took the necklace straight from the goldsmith’s shop to his mother’s private chamber in Temair and showed off his prize.

  ‘It’s rather … ostentatious, don’t you think?’ Álmhath remarked when Torcán unveiled the necklace for his mother’s approval.

  ‘Do you think so?’ Torcán asked. ‘The goldsmith tells me they’re all the rage among brides in the Gupta Empire.’

  Álmhath frowned at her son. ‘This is not the Gupta Empire, Torcán. Next you’ll be suggesting I pay Anwen’s family a ridiculous dowry like the maharajahs do.’

  ‘Lucky she doesn’t have a family, then,’ her son pointed out.

  Although she was out of Brydie’s line of sight, the queen sounded concerned. ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’

  ‘Anwen said we must disguise the jewel in another setting,’ Torcán reminded her a little testily. ‘The thing is the size of a pigeon egg. The only way it won’t stick out like a beacon is if it’s buried among enough other gems for it not to draw attention to itself.’

  The queen snorted at that. ‘I can hear a greedy jeweller talking there. Master Goldsmith must have seen you coming.’

  Torcán did not appreciate his mother’s derision. He turned to her impatiently, tossing the necklace onto the table, again knocking Brydie off her feet. ‘If you thought this was such a ridiculous idea, why go along with it? Why not just toss the jewel away, Mother, and be rid of it? That seems to me a far safer thing to do than risk Marcroy recognising the gem from the brooch he gave Brydie and demanding to know what happened to its former owner.’

  For once, Brydie found herself agreeing with Torcán. He was absolutely right. She climbed to her feet, thinking it was stupid of Anwen to insist on keeping the gem if the queen was going to pretend she had no knowledge of Brydie’s whereabouts. She’d have been better ordering Torcán to toss it into the sea to be certain it could never be found again.

  Brydie was extremely grateful Anwen hadn’t doomed her to an eternity trapped inside the jewel, lost and with no hope of rescue. But the queen of the Celts was nobody’s fool. Nor was she so strapped for material wealth that one amethyst — no matter how large or well-polished — would make the slightest difference to her one way or another …

  Unless Anwen knows I’m here, Brydie thought, sinking to the floor, letting that awful thought fester as Torcán and his mother argued on about the tasteless ostentation of Torcán’s wedding gift to his bride.

  Does she know? How could she?

  Álmhath was not a greedy woman. She obviously didn’t covet the gem for herself, and it had been Anwen’s suggestion to set the stone into something she could wear. But why not hide it somewhere safe and out of sight?

  There were a thousand things Álmhath could have done with the amethyst rather than allow Anwen to flaunt it.

  Maybe that’s what she’s doing, Brydie wondered. She’s not trying to hide the jewel because she’s sending Marcroy a message.

  It was all too confusing. There seemed no rhyme or reason to the world these days. Not since Álmhath had tapped her on the shoulder in the sacred grove and told her Danú had a task for her.

  Her job had been to seduce Darragh of the Undivided. She’d been sent to steal his seed. His bloodline was so precious that Álmhath and the Matrarchaí were afraid they would lose it when the power of the Undivided was stripped from RónánDarragh at Lughnasadh and passed on to the new twins Marcroy had found. Both Darragh and his missing brother would die that day and their line would be lost forever.

  Brydie glanced down at her belly, wondering if she’d achieved her aim. Was there a child there, waiting to be born? There was no way to tell. While she was trapped in this jewel, nothing would change, nothing would grow, no child — even if one had been conceived — would come of her union with Darragh of the Undivided.

  How long until Lughnasadh? It was hard to keep track of time, but Brydie thought it might be ten days or so until then. Even if she hadn’t escaped her jewelled prison by the autumn equinox, she hoped that when Darragh returned, he would find a way to stop the transfer happening. She’d liked the Druid prince — she liked him much more than she was expecting to like a young man she’d been ordered to sleep with for the express purpose of falling pregnant. He was smart and funny and — once he got over his first impulse to strangle her for being Álmhath’s spy — had a healthy lack of respect for his own importance. That had surprised Brydie most of all, because the Undivided were unique and raised to know it. She’d expected him to be much more full of himself.

  ‘Nobody will be paying attention to Anwen anyway,’ Torcán complained. The argument with his mother about the wedding necklace still raged in the background. ‘Not with the investiture of the Undivided heirs happening on the same day. I’m quite peeved about that, by the way. It should be our day.’

  Álmhath rolled her eyes. ‘You are a fool, Torcán,’ she snapped.

  ‘Well, maybe we’ll get lucky,’ her son replied. ‘I hear reports from Sí an Bhrú that nobody has seen Darragh for days. Perhaps the ceremony is keeping him away? Perhaps running away is his way of preventing the transfer from taking place? I mean, it’s a cowardly course of action, to be sure, but I suppose if he’s not prepared to die for his people —’

  ‘It won’t matter,’ Álmhath cut in. ‘Marcroy assures me the transfer will take place whether Darragh is there or not.’

  ‘Can he do that?’ Torcán asked in surprise.

  ‘The Daoine sídhe can do anything, it seems,’ the queen informed her son with a scowl. ‘I have asked that the ceremony be delayed until Darragh is here, so we can witness the transfer ourselves and be satisfied that it happens as planned. But I have been denied.’

  ‘Why?’ Torcán asked, looking confused. ‘There are Undivided heirs now. Surely it makes sense to give them time to settle into their new roles before burdening them with all that power. And they’re children, aren’t they? Small children, at that. Aren’t we sick of letting children sit on the Undivided throne?’

  Álmhath nodded. ‘There are many Druids chafing under the ministrations of a divided Undivided. There are others who see a chance to grab power with two more Undivided twins requiring a regency, rather than Darragh who appears to be developing opinions of his own. There are Partitionists aplenty out there, too, who hope the whole system will fall apart if the power transfer fails, and a large number of Tuatha Dé Danann hoping for the same thing, I suspect, although allegiance to their oath to protect the Treaty of Tír Na nÓg doesn’t allow them to admit it.’

  Torcán perked up as he realised what his mother was saying. ‘But if the transfer fails, then the Druids would lose their magic, yes?’

  ‘Not w
hile RónánDarragh live,’ the queen said. ‘But if anything happened to them before new heirs were found, then yes … that would be the end of the Druids and their magic.’

  ‘But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? I mean … it would devastate them. The Druids would lose their power over us if they didn’t control the magic.’

  ‘And we will be destroyed along with them,’ Álmhath reminded him. ‘Once the Tuatha are no longer compelled to share their power with us, we will no longer be their allies. Worse, there will be an imbalance of power that will only be resolved when one of our races is destroyed. Think of that, my son, before you get too excited about losing the unbroken line of the Undivided.’

  Torcán pulled a face. ‘Pity there’s not a way to have Tuatha Dé Danann magic without having to grovel to the Tuatha Dé Danann.’

  ‘Maybe there is,’ the queen said cryptically.

  Brydie wasn’t sure if Torcán appreciated what his mother was telling him, but she did. This power transfer taking place on Lughnasadh with one and perhaps both of the Undivided missing might fail, and if it did, then the Treaty of Tír Na nÓg would be void and that could mean more than the end of the Druids.

  Could there be a way to circumvent the treaty, and the obligations that went with it, yet still retain the magic?

  Is that what the Matrarchaí was working toward?

  Is that why you sent me to Darragh’s bed, Álmhath?

  It was all very intriguing, Brydie decided, although the irony of having such a bird’s-eye view of the inner circle of Álmhath’s court only because she had been cursed while carrying out the orders of her queen was not lost on Brydie.

  She sat down and crossed her legs. If she was going to witness the schemes and manoeuvrings of Álmhath’s court she might as well get comfortable.

  There was, after all, nothing else for her to do.

  CHAPTER 24

  As she lay in wait for Warren to appear in the backyard of his home bordering the Castle Golf Club, Sorcha pondered the matter of whether or not to thank the goddess for her bounty. Had she been hiding in this tree, waiting for a hind or hare to happen along, she would not have questioned the need to thank the goddess. But she wasn’t going to kill Warren for food so there was no point in thanking Danú for her bounty. She was not going to kill him in battle, so there would be nothing noble or heroic about his death. She would kill him for one reason only — to fulfil her oath to Ciarán to protect Rónán of the Undivided — difficult now that Rónán was no longer even in this realm, but still needed her protection.

  Rónán was gone, but Darragh remained. The people of this realm would not understand that Darragh was not his brother and Rónán’s crimes would be blamed on him. If he were caught in this realm, he would be punished for them.

  Sorcha did not share Darragh’s blind faith in his twin. The Rónán she had observed was a conflicted, confused and spoiled young man. Having been in the realm where he was raised for almost a week now, Sorcha was beginning to understand how he got that way, but she wasn’t convinced he was as reliable or as honourable as Darragh believed. If he was, they would be gone from here by now. If Rónán was even half the man his brother believed him to be, why hadn’t he opened a rift for them immediately after the other rift had closed so unexpectedly? Or ordered Ciarán to do it for him, if he didn’t know how?

  For that matter, if Ciarán was able to open a rift, why hadn’t he done it himself? He didn’t need Rónán’s permission. He was strong enough, and had the required jewel to open it. There was no reason for him not to do it.

  Rónán was alive, obviously. Darragh still lived, which meant somewhere in their own realm, Rónán was still drawing breath. Was he incapacitated in some way? A prisoner, perhaps? Was Ciarán also a prisoner?

  Had Rónán taken the opportunity to seize the power of the Undivided for himself?

  Eighty-five years had taught Sorcha to believe the worst of men, rather than be disappointed by expecting them to do the right thing. She had no way of knowing if she and Darragh had been stranded here because of fair deeds or foul, so she had to do the only thing she could. Protect Rónán and his brother, Darragh, until she knew for certain — one way or another — that Rónán had betrayed her.

  To do that, she needed to act. She needed to eliminate all threats to the young men she had sworn to protect.

  Right now, that meant killing the man whose car they had stolen from the Castle Golf Club when they arrived in this realm. The man in whose house they had sheltered. The man who could identify Jack O’Righin as the one who had aided them in their quest to find Hayley Boyle, and through him, lead the authorities to Darragh.

  And if it turned out that in their own reality, Rónán had betrayed her and his brother? Well, she would take care of that problem when she got home.

  If he had betrayed them, Rónán would regret it some day soon. Sorcha would see to that.

  Sorcha shifted a little in her perch. The bark of the tree pressed into her face, making it itch a little. It annoyed her that she was itching. There was a time she could have lain along a branch waiting for her quarry like this for days without being bothered in the slightest, but since coming to this world, she seemed to be losing her battle fitness. Her joints ached. Her muscles felt as if they were wasting. In the chilly darkness, as she watched Warren and his family through the window having dinner in the kitchen of their home, she wondered whether it was the polluted air in this reality or the lack of magic making her feel so … old.

  Warren and his family were seated at the counter eating food out of cardboard containers with chopsticks, laughing at something on the wall-mounted television that was out of Sorcha’s line of sight. She knew they were watching the television. Their attention was locked on that corner of the room and the reflected flickering light from the screen painted interesting shadows on the windows. His wife was a tall, thin woman, his daughter in the first blush of womanhood and his son — a sullen young man with unnaturally black hair — was more interested in some device he was holding in his hands than in the rest of the family.

  Further along the street, the lights were coming on in the neighbouring houses, where other families were settling down for their evening meal. Behind Sorcha lay the vast dark expanse of the golf course, silent and pristine here at this end away from the carnage Rónán and his companions had wreaked a couple of nights ago. Even the lights from the clubhouse were not visible from here. In the houses either side of Warren’s house, there were no lights on upstairs yet, which meant it was likely there was nobody in those rooms overlooking this house, and therefore nobody looking down into Warren’s backyard.

  Sorcha turned back to study the family. She hoped she wouldn’t have to kill them all. Warren was the only one she needed to silence, perhaps the wife if he’d said anything to her. Sorcha was guessing he hadn’t. There seemed to be little or no tension between the couple. She would have expected them to be behaving in a rather more strained and uneasy manner if he’d just confessed he’d allowed a naked Beansídhe to take his car and sleep in his home, harboured a wanted man and spent an afternoon in a massage parlour with an infamous terrorist.

  She needed Warren to come out into the yard, although she was not sure how she was going to coax him out of the house. If he didn’t come out soon, she would have to go in after him. Every time the telephone rang, it might be somebody asking about his car. Without her even knowing about it, someone might be arriving any moment at the front door, to ask Warren what he knew about the people who had stolen his car. Time was Sorcha’s enemy and she knew she had to act soon, or not at all.

  If it came to ‘not at all’ then everything would be lost.

  But just as she was ready to despair that Warren was never going to leave the house, he climbed to his feet and tossed his cardboard food containers into a drawstring plastic bag that his wife had retrieved from a container in the corner with a lid that cleverly opened when she pressed on a pedal at the base. His wife tied the bag off and
handed it to her husband. With a grimace, Warren pushed himself off his seat and headed for the back door.

  Finally! Sorcha swung forward and lowered herself silently to the ground. She landed and dropped into a crouch, stunned by how much her knees jarred on impact. She bit back a cry of surprised pain, hoping her stillness and the shadows under the tree would render her invisible. Warren opened the door, closed it and walked to a tall plastic bin on wheels lined up against the back wall of the house.

  Sorcha shadowed him, easing the long-bladed kitchen carving knife from the side of her boot. She’d found the weapon in Jack’s kitchen drawer, and was impressed by the strength of the metal and the keenness of the blade. One slice would be all it needed to slit Warren’s throat.

  Warren disposed of the plastic bag then glanced over his shoulder toward the kitchen, checking he was unobserved. Curious, Sorcha waited for a moment as he moved out of the light of the kitchen windows and leaned against the wall. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He took a cigarette from the pack and a match flared, lighting his face momentarily.

  His wife doesn’t know he does this, Sorcha realised, smiling to herself. Warren had more than his fair share of guilty secrets.

  He drew on the cigarette until the tip glowed red, and sighed contentedly, leaned back and closed his eyes as he inhaled the smoke.

  That was the chance Sorcha was waiting for. Silent as the smoke curling from the tip of his cigarette, she ran the short distance from the shadow of the tree to the shadow of the house where Warren was enjoying his guilty pleasure. She was on him before he opened his eyes, not giving him a chance to cry out before she slashed the blade across his prominent Adam’s apple. A spray of warm blood drenched Sorcha as she caught the body and quietly eased it to the ground so he made no noise when he fell. The cigarette hissed, and was extinguished in his blood. Warren’s eyes were wide with shock and recognition as he realised who it was who had attacked him and a moment later, the life in his eyes was extinguished.