Dornalai slamming the hatch seemed so final. The torches sputtered with the down draught, and Bee rubbed her face as if imitating Dorn’s actions from only moments before. There were three packs at the bottom of the ladder, which seemed to indicate the ring fighter had planned to come this way.

  He was expecting to run. What does he know? Bee asked herself. “This was always going to be the way out?” she asked Bren.

  “Dorn thought it better we left in secret. Horses up the King’s Highway would have been too easy to track. Same with horses in the tundra. Three packs, because we’d no notion the rebel was with you.”

  “We could’ve used the Void,” Bee mused. “Instead of a fireside chat, we could’ve been safe in the Realm, or anywhere.”

  “The Void was always a last resort,” Bren explained. “Dorn thought the gates would all be guarded.”

  “He said the trackers are human. Humans can’t enter the Void.”

  “The Silversmith has other allies.”

  “How many gates are there?” Ruirech asked.

  “Not many. Sliabh Culinn and in the Arena under Bull’s Head here in the south—although the Arena one is a legend. One at Tayvir in the north. That’s the one I usually use, so it is.”

  “Anyway,” Bren continued, “Dorn always meant to walk to Ceathru Rua and take ship. “Horse riders are easily seen in the grass, where walkers are hidden.”

  “But how did he know we’re being hunted?”

  “Knows his brother and knew what Credne would do. We stayed close and he sent you a message in a dream. He sent the same message to Whitehead.”

  And making it gruesome was his idea of a jest, she thought.

  “We came here when he knew you’d meet his messenger in Dun Ailinne.”

  Nodding, Bee discarded her own pack, which was nigh empty, and hefted one of the others. Bren and Ruirech also hefted one, with grunts and grimaces.

  “The ring fighter thinks we can use stones, does he?” Ruirech asked, with an oomph as he settled the straps.

  Bee shook her head. It was going to be a long walk listening to his feeble jests and patronising comments. Add that to Bren’s whining, and it might almost be worth getting caught by their mother.

  She’s not me mother. A bunch of reprobates saying she is, doesn’t make it so.

  She’d always thought Upthog—the witch who reared her—was her mother. It would take more than dreams and unreliable Gods to change her mind. In the limited time they spent together, Bren never asked about their mother and Bee just assumed he resented her being raised by Upthog when he was not. It was only when happenstance threw them together as adolescents because of a blossoming relationship between Danu and Dagda, that anyone thought to mention they were brother and sister. Looking back, she realised it was because they feared a relationship might grow. Bee could have put them right on that score. She’d always found her brother to be nothing but a pain in her hole. Millennia had done little to change her mind.

  “If it’s true, we’re demigods,” she suddenly realised, and frowned because Ruirech’s look said she’d said it aloud. Bren didn’t seem to have heard because he was busy adjusting the straps of his pack.

  We’ve a lot to talk through.

  Shaking her head, she recognised that now was not the right time. There was a great deal more she needed to understand before her childhood came to the top of the pile.

  “Come. We must be quick,” she said, lifting a torch from a sconce and leading the way. She expected the rebel to object, but he just looked thoughtful, nodded, and followed her with another torch.

  “Ye walk with me, Bren,” she said over her shoulder. “I need help getting me head around some of it.”

  The tunnel was wide and seemed well-made, with room for them to walk abreast and upright. A dripping sound echoed through the darkness, a plaintive reminder that they were deep under the tundra. It didn’t matter how far they walked the dripping was always there. Plop. Plop. Plop. Despite the tunnel’s width and height, Bee felt a pressing sense of imprisonment and supposed it was more to do with what was happening than where they were.

  “So, where’s Luchta in all this?” she asked as they made their way through the wide tunnel.

  “Luchta was in the tower disguised as one of the dead,” Bren said. “He pretended to torture me each day. The skeletons didn’t know different, and Archu was too engrossed in his own world to see it. That, and Dorn says his skull is as thick as a blockhouse log. No room for anything but violence and tricks.”

  “Ye said ye were burned and then healed each day. Why d’ye lie?”

  “Luchta warned me about the demon’s trickery. I was to tell that to whoever asked.”

  Bee glanced at her brother and wondered how two beings from the same mother could be so different. When he told her of the torture, she’d already made herself known, and he’d accepted it. It was not so long ago he could have forgotten the sequence. Surely not. It was as if he’d so much on his mind, the mundane things were not given any room.

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  Ye were whining about how hard done by ye were, fool, trying to get me sympathy. I should have kicked ye in the magairlí. Either ye’re up to no good

  Now, it was in the past, and she didn’t think it worth mentioning, so she asked, “Why didn’t Luchta come with us?”

  “Dorn told him to stay there to misdirect the demon.”

  “That explains something, so it does,” Bee said, scratching her scar. Bren raised his eyebrows in question. “The dead horde charged the Maiden’s palisade. It was… well, I was going to say suicide… but that can’t be right, seeing as they were already dead. Anyway, someone sent them into the gorge to be destroyed. As we rode away, there was a scream of such rage, it made me arm hairs tingle. I guess Luchta did something to herd them out, and the scream was Archu discovering what had happened.”

  “You think he’s still there? The demon, I mean,” Ruirech said. “With his army gone, Whitehead would have forced him out, surely.”

  Bee nodded, remembering Whithead heading towards the gorge with her axe on her shoulder. It would take power to exorcise the druid, forcing the demon out. That said, Luchta had the power, and she suspected, despite lacking a quick mind, Archu would recognise the futility in staying. He would flee, and Myrddin would awaken, wondering how he came to be in Breshlech.

  Or maybe he won’t wonder. Maybe blackouts are part of his madness.

  “What did Finn say to ye in the Boiled Cock?”

  “Who?”

  “Finn, the tracker. Ye met him in the Boiled Cock in Bacca.”

  “I never stopped in Bacca. I got a horse and rode for the Gap.”

  “Is that meant as a jest?” Bee hissed.

  Bren shook his head, confusion shining from his face in the torchlight. She felt the anger beginning to bubble again. Instead of raging, she slumped and turned away, deciding that losing her temper at a God who spent their time lying for whatever reason was nothing more than a waste of energy. If not for Dorn, she did not doubt her mission would have failed. He must have had his reasons for not telling her the truth. And they were probably not much more than an instruction from Danu to keep the truth from her.

  “Never mind,” Bee said as she strode towards a glimmer at the end of the tunnel.

  The greying light of a winter’s evening lit the small clearing where the tunnel ended abruptly. The clouds were flashing reds and yellows, greys and pinks, which were stretched across the light indigo sky.

  “It’ll soon be dark, so it will,” Bee said.

  “Should we make camp in the tunnel?” Ruirech asked. “We can light a fire inside.”

  Bee shook her head. Fearing that staying near Caisel would lead to their capture, or worse. Dorn’s warning words about Rhiannon’s other children were on her mind. Human trackers were good at their trade, but they could not compare to wolves if Rhiannon set her other children to finding them.

  “Do you really think we’re demigods?” Bren asked.

  “So, you were listening. Aye, if only by definition.”

  “And who’s our father?”

  “How do I know?” Bee snapped, before apologising at the sight of his crestfallen look. “Now’s not the time.”

  She could hear Credne’s trackers calling to each other. There seemed to be gaps, so they’d fanned out. They appeared to be heading north, and Bee suspected that Credne thought they were already in the tundra when his troop arrived in Caisel. The trackers would know they hadn’t ridden out of the settlement, so they had fanned out into the grass sea.

  “We’ll head west.”

  “Why west?” Ruirech asked.

  “They know we didn’t use the Void. With the Gap closed, they’ll expect us to head north or east. They’ve come a little to the west, or we wouldn’t hear them. Not far enough, though. He’s clever this God, but not that clever.”

  “Makes sense,” Ruirech said, once again surprising her.

  “Keep noise to a minimum,” she said as she led the way into the grass, which was tall enough to cover their movements.

  Gradually, the sounds of pursuit died away, and Bee found herself hopeful they’d made a clean escape. She kept them walking until the sky behind them started to lighten. Stopping, she put clenched fists in the small of her back and stretched before ordering a rest.

  “We need some sleep,” she said as much to herself as the others. “I’ll keep watch. I’ve stuff to work through.”

  Ruirech and Bren gratefully fell into sleep, and both were snoring within moments. Bee was envious of them, sure that if another took the watch, she wouldn’t be able to close her eyes and fall into slumber as easily as they had. Her mind was a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts, but foremost was the sense of longing she’d felt when confronted by the apparition on the plains. It didn’t make any sense to her how she could feel any emotion for a woman she hadn’t even known was their mother, but not as much as her feeling emotion for the demon. It wasn’t just the longing. Now she thought about it, there’d also been a feeling of connection.

  Rhiannon’s me alleged mother, she reminded herself yet again. “And who’s our father?” she whispered into the night.

  When she woke them, the sun was halfway to its zenith. She’d heard nothing of any trackers; nor had she resolved any of her inner maelstrom. As the morning wore on, she realised there was no solution, not unless she could ask the moon Goddess who she’d lain with, and she doubted that chance would ever come. The men were slow to awaken and then slow to prepare, and Bee was about to lose her temper when something caused her to stop and look around the small clearing.

  Once again, she got the sense someone or something was watching them. Ruirech had taken a step towards the grass, his head tilted in question. There was no sound, nor other signs of pursuit. Ruirech glanced at her and shrugged. She scanned the edge of the glade again, looking for a clue, anything.

  A low growl gave the beast away. Time slowed as Bee turned to see a direwolf leap towards Brenos with its maw agape, showing elongated canines and a lolling tongue. The animal was the largest wolf she had seen, easily ten hands tall with a bunched, muscular chest and a golden coat. It was… well, magnificent. Bren raised an arm to shield himself from its teeth, and Bee reflexively grabbed her brother’s other wrist, almost as though she were trying to protect him. Whatever the reason, the contact sent a surge of energy down her arm, which made her muscles jump and her fingers grip harder. Bren yelped as a blood-red pulse of energy leaped from the hand he held out towards the creature, throwing it backward. The magnificent animal rolled and came to rest on the edge of the small clearing, and she knew it would never move again. Its chest had stopped heaving even before it landed.

  My brother.

  Tilting her head back, Bee howled her pain and anguish, her sense of loss. It was a howl from the pit of her gut, which took her completely by surprise. When she stopped, she saw Ruirech and Bren staring at her. Their faces were two pictures of horror.

  What was that? she asked herself, shaking her head,

  As she looked away sheepishly, an answering howl split the early evening air.