She decided on “The Wild Rover,” as it was bright enough, and had a number of verses to give Cabhan time to be drawn in, if it was to happen.
She laughed when Connor joined her on the chorus, and any other day would have prized the walk with him, with the hawk, with the song in the pretty woods where the snowmelt left the ground so soft and pools of white still clung to the shady shadows.
When he squeezed her hand, she knew the ploy had worked. And it was time for their part of the scheme.
Her voice didn’t falter as she saw the first wisps of fog slithering over the ground, nor when Roibeard landed on a branch nearby—a golden-winged warrior poised to defend.
“I could still your voice with a thought.”
Cabhan rose from the fog, and smiled his silky smile when Meara stopped singing to draw her sword. “And so I have. You risk your lady, witch, strolling through the woods without your sister to fight for you.”
“I’ve enough to protect my lady, should she need it. But I think you know she does well protecting herself. Still . . .” Connor ran a finger down Meara’s blade, set it alight. “A little something more for my lady.”
“What manner of man has his woman stand in front of him?”
“Beside him,” Connor corrected, and drew a sword of his own, enflamed it.
“And leaves her unshielded,” Cabhan said and hurled black lightning at Meara.
Connor sent it crashing to the ground with a hard twist of wind. “Never unshielded.”
• • •
ACROSS THE WATER, THE PULSE OF BRANNA’S WAND QUICKENED. “Close now.”
“There.” Fin pointed to a wild tangle of thickets edged with thick black thorns, snaking vines dotted with berries like hard drops of blood. “In there is Midor’s cave. I can feel the pull, just as I felt the burn when Cabhan crossed the river. The way’s clear.”
“It doesn’t look clear,” Iona said. “It looks lethal.” Testing, she tapped the flat of her sword on one of the thorns, listened to the metallic clink of steel to steel. “Sounds lethal.”
“I won’t be going through them, but through time. Though when this is done we’ll come back here, all of us, and burn those thorny vines, salt and sanctify the ground.”
“Not yet.” Branna took his arm. “Connor hasn’t told me Cabhan’s taken the bait.”
“He has. He’s nearly there, and the sooner I’m in and out, the less time Connor and Meara have to stand against him. It’s now, Branna, and quick.”
Though it filled her with dread, they cast the circle, and she released Fin’s hand, accepted it would be done.
“In this place,” she chanted with the others, “of death and dark, we send the one who bears the mark through space, through time. Powers of light send him through, let our wills entwine. Send him through, and send him back by the light of the three.”
“Come back to me,” Branna added, though it hadn’t been part of the spell.
“As you will,” Fin said, his eyes on hers, “so mote it be.”
His fog swirled, and he was gone.
“It won’t take long.” To comfort, Iona put her arm around Branna’s shoulders.
“It’s so dark. It’s so cold. And he’s alone.”
“He’s not.” Boyle took her hand, held it firmly. “We’re right here. We’re with him.”
But he was alone in the cold and the dark. The power here hung so thick and dank he felt nothing beyond it. Black blood stained the ground where Cabhan had shackled and killed his mother.
He scanned the horror of jars, filled with the pieces of the woman who’d birthed him, which Cabhan had preserved for his dark magicks.
The world Fin knew, his world, seemed not just centuries away, but as if it didn’t exist. Freeing the demon, giving it form and movement had drawn the cave into its own kind of hell where all the damned burned cold.
He smelled brimstone and blood—old blood and new. It took all his will to resist the sudden, fierce need to go to the altar, take up the cup that stood below a cross of yellowing bones, and drink.