He could still see Upthog’s intermittent glances at him across the clearing. However, it would soon be too dark, and she wouldn’t allow him to light a fire, which he didn’t mind because he wouldn’t have to see her guilt. It wasn’t only guilt. She was trying to mask it with her usual anger, which made him angry, too.

  They were hiding in a depression about half a league from the dyke; the horses were hobbled behind a mulberry bush, also out of sight of the road. Staying cold meant they would stay out of sight of any warriors or folk searching for food. Upthog was also wary of Ailill returning with his Leathdhosaen to report Nechtan’s demise, although she didn’t admit it. He could tell by how she kept looking over her shoulder as they rode from Caisel. There was nothing back there besides what remained of Nechtan’s Fianna, and they should be halfway to Muirbheach. When not gazing back up the dyke, she had been glancing at him guiltily—and angrily—as she was at this moment.

  Summoners call demons, he said to himself. Witches control them. Witches.

  The thought had been repeating since Bábdíbir cloaked itself in Caisel at her command. It was starting to hurt as much as when the demon nearly frightened him off his horse.

  Witches control them.

  And, to make it a day worth remembering, Upthog was revealing a side he hadn’t seen before or thought she was capable of. Timidity. She was acting like a shy maiden at her first Imbolc festival, eyeing the boys and wondering if one of them would ask her to dance. Since she ordered the demon to leave, they’d spoken only a few necessary words. She had neither admitted nor denied what he had suspected for a long time and now knew to be true.

  Summoners call them. Witches control them. Upthog’s a witch.

  Scamp didn’t understand why he failed to recognise it earlier. He’d had enough clues to see through her lies—because she had lied to him, which he was sure she would deny. He knew she would say she just hadn’t told him everything. For Scamp, there was no difference between telling only half a story and lying. Besides, it wouldn’t even be true. She told him she couldn’t swim when she could. If she could lie about little things that didn’t matter, what would she do when the issues were dear to her?

  Lie through her ears is what.

  “What are ye thinking?” she asked, surprising him. “Yer tongue’s stuck out again.”

  Scamp shrugged and turned to the darkening sky, wary of her anger and strength. “Let me guess. Ye think I betrayed ye, let ye down.”

  He still said nothing, just continued to stare into the deepening gloom for signs of the demon—a red dot somewhere above—but there was nothing. It seemed she had absolute control over Bábdíbir, and it would not return. For a moment, however fleeting, he’d felt like he could face anything with Bábdíbir beside him. When the demon appeared in Caisel, already three times the size it had been when it first uncloaked, his feeling of power swelled his chest briefly—he’d felt invincible. And then she sent his only ally away.

  Are you there, Bábdíbir?

  Nothing.

  “You lied to me,” he finally said.

  “I did whatever was necessary to protect you, boy. You needed to leave North Kingdom, and the only way out of the north is a boat south.”

  He read her return to a higher voice as a message: It’s for your own benefit, so be a good lad and shut yer eineach, she was saying. Scamp recognised the words as a variation of a theme he’d been listening to ever since he was old enough to understand them.

  “So you say. It doesn’t change the fact you lied to me.”

  Taking him for a fool, Upthog wasn’t revealing anything, not really; instead, implying she didn’t want anything to happen to him, protecting him from his own ignorance and immaturity. Basically, treating him like a bitch would treat a newborn pup.

  Understandable, now I know what she wants of me.

  After finally accepting what she was, Scamp didn’t think it would take much imagination to work out what she was up to. She had accused Kathvar of destroying The Coven so he could claim Dhuosnos’s rewards when the time came. She could only have the same intention of leading him to The Point of Death and spanning the Void to free the giant and reap the power and riches on offer. As a witch, nothing else made any sense. Her reason to exist was to enable a new scourge.

  No wonder she told me there’s nothing inherently evil about being a summoner.

  “You’re a witch, and you kept it from me.”

  “Would ye have come if I told ye?”

  Her not denying it came as a surprise, but it didn’t change the fact he had no idea what he might have done. However, he would have liked the chance to decide for himself. All his life, he’d been made to do things the way other people wanted them done, Kathvar and his Dah especially; never given a choice.

  And then another thought struck him. “I came to you. How did you know I would arrive in your glade?”

  “I didn’t know. Soon as Kathvar made his move, I was going to rescue you. Coming to the clearing made it all easier, no?”

  “Rescue or abduct me?’

  “What’s the difference, boy? I would have taken you either way. If you want it all tied together with a nice ribbon, the word’s rescue.”

  The word’s rescue, is it?

  “Cac on you, Upthog. If you’re a witch, why bring me to this éigeas, Myrddin?”

  Frowning, Upthog hesitated and turned away from him. He could feel acid start to bubble in the base of his gut. Anything to protect you, she’d said, near enough as made no never mind, which seemed to mean even lying about Scéine’s Cove and the sage, Myrddin.

  “Does this man even exist?”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Aye. The druid exists,” she said. There was something in the way she wouldn’t look at him, though. “He’s a famous éigeaslike I told you.”

  “But—”

  “I needed ye to come south and couldn’t think of any other way to convince ye. I couldn’t keep ye tied to Rosie’s back the whole way.’

  The acid began to froth and bubble; lies upon lies, and there was only one possible reason.

  “Why did you send the demon away?” he asked, knowing it was fear but wanting her to try and deny it.

  “Did you see it, boy? It trebled in size in hours. Imagine what it will become.”

  “You’re scared of it,” Scamp said before he could stop himself.

  “Course. Any with the sense of their first squalling day would be scared. The only reason you don’t fear it is because yer as thick as a longhouse log.”

  “You claim to think only of me, but I don’t believe you.”

  Darkness had fallen, so he couldn’t see what effect his words had. He wasn’t sure he cared. However she might try to dress things, everything Upthog had done was for her benefit, not his.

  “I had to send it away because you refused to release it—”

  “I don’t know how,” he interrupted.

  “Just reverse the words you used to call it.”

  Simple.

  He should have been able to work that out for himself. Still, the simple truth was he didn’t want to release the demon. It was his power. His strength. His means to change a life that needed changing. He didn’t want to believe its goal was to bring him to the Four. He did believe it, but he didn’t care. In his short life, he had never felt as good as when that power stood beside him and called him master.

  “By the time we reach Bull’s Head Rock, that monster will be massive,” Upthog said, grimacing.

  Instead of putting me off, she’s making me want it more.

  “Bábdíbir said it’s a small demon.”

  “Small for a demon, aye. Still massive. When it gets there, it will do what the Four tell it and I will have no control.”

  “You’re a witch. You can command it.”

  “And who do you think it will listen to, me or Marbh?”

  “It might be a demon, but it’s on our side.”

  “It won’t be when we get there.”

  “So you say. I still don’t believe you.”

  “Do you know what, boy, I don’t give a shite what ye believe. Ye’re free to go yer own way. Just remember me warning when ye last broke me hole.”

  She thinks I’m too afraid to leave. At what point do I say enough?

  Staring into the darkness where he imagined she was still sitting, Scamp felt she’d already breached the point where he’d had enough. He didn’t need to stand for this treatment from her. There might be bears in Middle Kingdom, but he had a demon. If he left her, he was sure Bábdíbir would return. After all, it was her command for him to leave and not return, not Scamp’s.

  “You know what, I think I will.”

  ***

  Volt sat contemplating Maga in the fire’s flickering light. They had ridden through the day without talking much. He caught her glancing at him occasionally with a contemplative expression as if she were weighing him in some way, not unlike how he considered the Leathdhosaen when they were at sea. Whatever had been on her mind, she’d left it there, either satisfied or unwilling to voice it.

  However, Volt had his own worries, which he could not leave unsaid; mainly a feeling festering in the back of his mind since they started travelling together. A feeling Maga was hiding something from him. His misgivings sprang forward the previous night when she’d stared into his dream as if party to the visit of Concaire. Well, more the way she continued to stare at him when he awoke. He could have left it as part of his dream except for that, coupled with Fachta’s behaviour, he suspected. She said he’d been thrashing in his sleep, but the explanation was at best contrived. Volt considered himself a good reader of characters and situations, and he suspected the thickest of gaimbín would read her unwillingness to meet his eyes as a problem.

  She’s afraid of giving something away.

  “Can I ask you something?” he asked.

  Maga shrugged and made eye contact with him for the first time since they’d stopped. He couldn’t be sure in the shadows, but she seemed to be unblinking as if, unlike him, the smoke did not affect her eyes. There also appeared to be a golden hue shining from them. He had always thought her eyes were blue, but they seemed a different colour in the firelight—almost like wolf eyes.

  Hazel eyes change colour with the light. Even as the thought came to him, he dismissed it. Hazel eyes changed colour slightly. Maga’s eyes had assumed a completely different hue.

  “When I was dreaming, you seemed to be staring into my dream. That wasn’t real, was it? Just my imagination?”

  Maga continued staring intently to the point where Volt began to feel uncomfortable.

  Now, she will bare all, he thought and then chuckled to himself at the idea of her naked in the firelight.

  “Cast your mind back, Volt, to Caer Usk. During the battle, didn’t you get the feeling I knew what you would do before you did it?”

  Volt recalled the shield wall, where each time he’d thought of a new tactic to get supremacy, Maga countered it. At the time, he’d considered her an uncannily clever captain. So good, in fact, that none of the clans could stand against her—bringing about the unification of North Kingdom. Now, it seemed she was telling him something different. Her implication made him shiver.

  “You can see inside my head?”

  “Aye, me and the boy both have the gift, if you can call it a gift rather than a curse.”

  What does she mean by that?

  “Surely not? Being able to read a person’s thoughts is a gift.”

  “Aye, you’d think. Sometimes, though, I’d prefer not to know what someone’s thinking.”

  Like someone imagining her naked beside the fire. Volt felt himself blush, thankful it was too dark for her to see.

  “I’m sure some things might prove indelicate,” he said while thinking the benefits of knowing a person’s mind in times of need more than compensated for the embarrassing thoughts she might read.

  Like during a battle.

  “If you can see inside a mind, how is it you didn’t know the shape changer was an impostor?”

  Maga didn’t answer him immediately but glanced at Fachta as though she had expected the question and didn’t welcome it. He found the delay, at best, suspicious, and, at worst, threatening.

  Eventually, she said, “Some, like Connavar, can shield themselves. After a time, we stopped trying to see inside his head. The switch must have happened after we stopped.”

  That seems like a lame excuse for missing it, Maga if you did miss it. What aren’t you telling me?

  They sat in silence for a few moments. Finally, Volt asked, “So, you witnessed my crazy dream about Concaire?”

  “Why do you say crazy?”

  “He was talking nonsense about the Tuatha, giving me messages from Marbh. It had to be just a crazy dream.”

  “Do you think me unhinged?”

  “What? No. Why do you say that?”

  “I told you I saw Connavar turn into someone else. You think I was making it up, then?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So, if you believe in shape-changing, why do you find it hard to believe in the Four or the Tuatha?”

  “I…” Volt trailed off, unsure what to say. “You heard what Concaire said?”

  “Aye.”

  “And what do you make of it all?”

  “The Tuatha want you in the south. The Four consider you enough of a threat they sent Concaire to tempt you over to their side of the Void.”

  Volt felt his jaw drop at the words. He hadn’t considered the visit from the same slant Maga was putting on it. However, following her words, he could see her side of the coin. But why? Why would demons like the Four consider him a threat, or the Tuatha want him to follow a particular path? He was just a captain of Horse Warriors, and if recent events were any gauge, not a very good one.

  “I’m no threat to anyone.”

  “There you go again, Volt, downing yourself. Bit of self-confidence is what you need, so it is.”

  “Aye,” Fachta agreed.