After Rhiannon told Bee about the connection between Bren and her, she’d tried to connect. Closing her eyes, she’d cleared her mind of everything except her sibling. What she felt was hazy at best, like she was peering at the seabed through layers of silt raised by a storm.

  Now, with her eyes open, there was no escaping the feeling someone was watching; gauging; listening; preparing to attack. Riding over the bridge and staring up the road towards the gatehouse atop the Hill of Tayvir, she recognised her mother’s words as a warning. Bren was watching, and she should be too. Otherwise, he might come at her unawares. She wasn’t sure her interpretation was accurate, but without a better understanding of what their mother might mean, it was the best she could do. The Goddess told her to delve into Bren’s mind to help resolve where he might be. After delving, Bee thought Bren was inside her head, which was far from pleasant. And maybe, just maybe, she was jumping at shadows that weren’t there.

  Is he trying to scare me? Trying to put me off his scent?

  Looking around constantly, Bee couldn’t see anything that she would call suspicious. Tradespeople were climbing the steep road up the hill, while guards leaned against the wooden walls on either side of the gate, and warriors rode in and out of the city. Everything was as it should be. And yet, the hairs on the back of her neck were tingling. As they climbed the hill behind the people going into the capital—mostly marketeers bringing their wares to sell in the central square—doing as her mother advised, Bee again closed her eyes and cleared her mind of everything except her sibling.

  Fear struck her so hard that it caused her to wince. Fear and darkness. No. Not darkness. Near darkness. Within it, something was lurking that caused her heart to beat erratically. It was close even though she couldn’t see it. It was almost as if she could smell it, but not quite. The air was frigid, and she could feel her breath misting in front of her, rather than see it. In the gloom, the menace kept growing, the strange smell kept nearing, and she could feel her butt clenching so stringently that it hurt.

  What have ye got yerself into, Brother?

  Bee opened her eyes and wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of a hand. Where are ye, Big Brother, that has ye so afraid?

  Bren was far from a courageous man, but this was something much more profound than mere fear. Her brother was fearful of losing something more than just his life. But what else did he have to lose? Bee felt sure there was something close to her brother; something horrific filling him with a sense of panic but, strangely, Bee wasn’t feeling the same emotion. If anything, hers were feelings of empathy; the same empathy she remembered feeling on the rise at the end of the last Scourge. It was as if she was on the side of the evil hidden in the semi-darkness.

  “I get the sense someone’s watching us,” Ruirech said, breaking into her thoughts.

  “Aye. Me too,” Bee replied, nodding at the orb floating above the hill like an omen of what was coming. “Rhiannon is there, watching. She’s always watching, so she is.” And listening, it seems, she didn’t add. She wasn’t sure the rebel was ready to hear how thoroughly the Goddess had them wrapped in her fist.

  “I thought that was just the moon,” he said, grinning.

  “Does anything ever dampen yer spirits, Rebel?” she asked with a sigh.

  “Not much.”

  “She’s Rhiannon. She is the moon.”

  Riding through the gate a group of spear-wielding warriors surrounded them, and Bee realised that the sense they were being watched hadn’t been Rhiannon but the city guards. A tall man with a barrel chest, a full and unkempt beard of black, greasy hair appeared to be the leader. He’d plaited tails on either side of the mass of hair, making his eyes and nose the only visible features. The guards who’d been lounging beside the gates were behind them, blocking any escape.

  “Get down,” bushy beard growled, hands on hips.

  The hardness in his eyes staring out from all the hair brooked no argument. Bee thought even without the power her connection with her brother provided, she could subdue the guards and their massive leader without too much problem. That said, they needed to find Bren and fighting the guards at the gate wouldn’t be a good start.

  “Do as he says,” she told Ruirech, suspecting he would reach for his sword and try to fight his way through.

  Swinging out of her saddle, Bee asked, “What’s the meaning of this, Captain?”

  “You was seen by the watch talking to a wolfpack with a shape changer. King doesn’t want no shape changing spies in the settlement, specially not those as talk wolf. We’ve to stick you in the cells until he decides what to do with you. Hanging’s my guess, but that’s his call. Disarm them.” The gleam in the warrior’s eyes when he mentioned hanging caused a shiver to run up Bee’s spine. There was no question it was the man’s duty to see the sentence carried out and he enjoyed doing it.

  Ruirech made a grab for his sword, but Bee took his wrist and shook her head. They were in no danger because she could free them from any human imprisonment with ease. She suspected that an audience with the King would help them in their quest and thought this might be the quickest way to achieve it.

  As soon as they had been relieved of their weapons, the guards led them past the stables to a rank-smelling cell. It was nothing more than an iron cage with a slop bucket in the corner. A scruffy man was sitting at the rear with his back to the bars and his head bowed. Long knotted hair covered his face; he wore a dirty cloak with vomit stains down the front, and Bee dismissed him as no threat to them. He was probably a drunk who caused some mischief the night before. The stink from the bucket hinted that he’d used it recently, and his diet was not as healthy as it should be.

  “What do we do now?” Ruirech asked as the gates clanged shut.

  “Ye can do what ye want. Me, I’m going to sit here and wait for an audience with the King.”

  “You will be waiting a long time,” the scruff with his back to the bars said. “Well, actually, not that long. Just until the brute has prepared the gallows.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “What does that mean?” Ruirech asked.

  “The big hairy one loves a hanging. He will just string you up and not bother the King.”

  “How d’ye know this?” Bee asked and then realised he’d no reason to invent the story or lie.

  “It is not something I would consider to be a secret. Hairy face has been judge and executioner for some time now.”

  Something about the scruff’s cultured accent caused suspicion to rise in Bee. It was an accent she’d heard before. Judging by the confusion clouding Ruirech’s face, he was also beginning to see through the disguise. He might be a master at hiding his features, but his accent broke through like the honk of a flying goose.

  “How long have ye been here, Dorn?” she asked.

  “Long enough. I have been waiting for you. I saw Bren and knew—”

  “When,” Bee interrupted.

  “All in good time, Bechuille. Each story has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. I always thought—”

  “Oh, Tuatha, not this again. It’s just like the Boiled Cock, so it is. As in a male fowl,” she elaborated when Ruirech raised an eyebrow.

  Dorn ignored the interruption and continued his tale, “Anyway, as I was saying, hairy face has been doing it for several moons now. King Aonghus is weak and knows nothing. He is far too old to be a king, and without male heirs—”

  “Are ye telling me Ruirech is to be king?”

  “If you do not stop interrupting me, Bechuille, he is likely to be crowned before I have finished my tale.” Bee nodded and turned to scowl through the bars. “Some while ago, King Aonghus became suspicious of the Fae. He is not well and has become paranoid. Unfortunately, he left his senior man, Tegid, to deal with the issue. He was the hairy fellow waiting for you by the gate. Anyway, the man is a brute and a sadist…”

  “Why are ye waiting here in this hole? We could’ve just ridden through Tayvir and never seen the inside of this lockup.”

  Dorn sighed and shook his head. “I knew Tegid would let you come through the gates and then arrest you. You were to be his next entertainment, probably later today.”

  Bee nodded and said, “Tell me about Bren. When did ye see him?”

  “I was waiting by Tayvir’s portal when he rode into the sacred glade like the Four were on his tail.”

  Bee wanted to shake the God and get him to elaborate more quickly. His tale was taking too long, and if Dorn’s suspicion about this Tegid was accurate, they needed to be faster. Not that he would be able to stop them escaping, not unless he had a coven in Tayvir, which Bee knew he didn’t. Not before the last scourge, anyway, she realised. In the three hundred summers since, anything might have happened. No, it was because she thought a confrontation with Tayvir’s guards would draw attention best avoided.

  There was nothing she could do about it now, so Bee shrugged and asked, “What then?”

  Dorn shook his head as if he’d just been woken, and said, “Where was I? Oh, yes. When I asked him where he was going, he withdrew into himself.”

  “What are ye saying? Speak plainly. I’ve had it with the horseshit, like I told the rebel.”

  “He went through the portal without setting the glyph, which would mean he went—”

  “Into the Void,” Bee whispered.

  “Yes. Without a compass, he would be unable to find his way. So, unless he is the fool you think, someone was waiting there for him. Someone who has a compass.”

  “Credne.”

  “Or, whoever stole Luchta’s set.”

  “Come, it’s time we were gone,” Bee said, frowning at the news. The implications made her task that much harder. Bren could now be anywhere. Not only anywhere in the Kingdoms, but on any plane with a portal. It would be somewhere gloomy that instilled a considerable amount of fear. However, that knowledge didn’t make life any easier for her.

  “Ye can use yer dagger and cut a hole,” she said. This Tegid would never know what happened.

  “Unfortunately not. Danu took it from me when I told her what was happening here. She said the risk of losing another set was just too great.”

  “So, we’re to fight an enemy on unequal terms?” Bee asked. Dorn shrugged, as if to suggest nothing had changed. “What do ye suggest, then?”

  The Smith stood and threw off his dirty cloak. The action transformed him into Goibniu, the barrel-chested God with a fearsome hammer. It was a welcome return to a known entity. His familiar appearance didn’t change what she had to do, but she still felt some release from it.

  “Step aside,” he said as he strode to the gates and gave them a mighty swipe with the hammer. The clang of metal on metal made her teeth vibrate. Iron bars were no more defence against the power of the weapon than Finn’s skull had been, as the door buckled from the blow, resulting in a gap wide enough for them to climb through.

  In front of the cage, Bee looked at their surroundings, judging where it would be best to go. She thought the portal gave them an easy escape. Humans couldn’t use the portal, so they would be unable to hunt them.

  The guard house was beside the stables, twenty paces from the cage. Two guards came running through the door, alerted by the clang of Dorn’s hammer. Laughing, The Smith danced towards them and gave them both a light tap that knocked them senseless without killing them.

  “Your weapons will be in there,” he said, nodding at the still swinging door.

  They went into the guard house. Bee and Ruirech found their weapons on a rickety wooden table. They didn’t take long recovering them, and it was only moments before they walked out to find Tegid standing with his clenched fists on his hips, head tilted, and a grin that was visible even through the abundance of black hair coating his face.

  He has no notion what he faces.

  “So, where do you think you’re going?” the hairy brute asked.

  “Move aside, Tegid. I mean ye no harm, but I’m in a hurry, so I am.”

  “And what’s a pretty little thing like you gonna do?” he scoffed.

  Dorn didn’t give her time to answer, leaping forwards and swinging his hammer in an arc that, unlike for the guards, was intended to kill. Tegid stood no chance, and Bee shuddered at the sound like an enormous egg cracking, a sound she remembered from when the non-tracker had suffered the same fate. The greasy-haired would-be killer was dead before he hit the ground, with blood and grey matter seeping from his ears and nose.

  “I hated him, I have to say,” Dorn answered Bee’s questioning look. “He has been hanging indiscriminately, and not just the Fae.”

  “Where to?” Ruirech asked.

  “The portal,” Bee said.

  “I can’t enter,” Ruirech said, a look of horror on his face. A look saying she was betraying him, after all they had been through together.

  Bee took hold of his wrist and tilted her head. “Speed is urgent. We must go through the portal. I’m sorry ye can’t come, Rebel. We’ll make a lot of noise, and they’ll come after us. Ye get to the stables and get out of here. Go to Camas and ask Eogan for passage. We’ll be at Sliabh Cuilinn.”

  She expected an argument and was surprised and impressed when the rebel nodded and ran towards the stables without a backwards glance.

  “Come on,” she shouted at Dorn. “And make as much noise as ye can with that hammer.”

  They ran through the streets, Dorn swinging at each roundhouse he was close enough to reach. Before long, a crowd had gathered behind them. They couldn’t see them, but there was enough noise for sight to be unnecessary. After a few moments, they were in the sacred glade, and Bee knelt beside the door to set the glyph to bring them to Sliabh Culinn.

  “Ye first,” she said.

  Grinning, the God moved towards the gate. As soon as he had passed her, Bee raised both hands, curving them as if holding a ball. Just as he turned, sensing her use of draíocht, she shot a bolt at him. Dorn froze almost facing her and she frowned. A grin was frozen on his face, as if he knew what she had intended and found it amusing.

  Of course he knew; he can sense draíocht, which raised the question of why he’d done nothing to prevent her.