Every prettily aproned table holding food for feasting or goods for judging would have weapons stacked beneath the colorful cloths. Everyone competing in contests of skill and strength would prepare to use the bow or ax or club, the power and might to fight what came, whenever it came.
Any who danced to the pipes under sunlight, under moonslight across the whole of Talamh would launch into battle at the first sound of the horn.
The layers blinded Odran to those plots and plans, but those layers meant Breen couldn’t see Odran’s world from the cottage, not even in dreams.
But she felt him pushing, doing what he could to burn those layers away.
“Aye, he pushes,” Keegan agreed as they walked back through the woods after a marathon training session that left her feeling battered. “That’s what you’d call his ego, isn’t it? Ah, they’ll hide nothing from me.”
“But isn’t he bound to wonder why? Why he’s blocked from here?”
Since Bollocks brought him a stick, Keegan obliged and threw it for him. “And as I’ve said before, it’s why we had Marg do the covering spell. Your nan who frets for you, all the more since Shana made her way through, and all but to your doorstep. And if he wonders of you, you still come to Talamh every day for all the festival planning.”
He paused, took the stick Bollocks brought back, tossed it farther—but this time into the stream to distract the dog.
“All the fuss about what colors for the banners and the buntings, is there to be a horse race here or there, how many lollies are needed for the littles. If there’s a golden arrow as prize for the archery, should there be a gold spear for the spear chucking, and on and on. And I have to hear all this and more, not just in the valley but everywhere I go.”
“These things matter, and in their way, almost as much as the armsyou’ll have stockpiled, and the way you’ve stationed your warriors, the trap you laid between the worlds Shana passed through.”
“Ah, sure that was Sedric’s thinking. A fine, sly mind he has.”
“And a broad worldview. Or worldsview,” she corrected. “What damage would Odran have done to this side with even a handful or two of his faithful attacking here while the others attack Talamh?”
“Now they’ll live out their days, and considerably shortened at that, with the vines and the bogs and drenching heat.”
“They’ll turn on each other,” she added. “That’s the nature of the dark.”
When they came out of the woods, he turned to her. “I find this a reversal of things.”
“What reversal?”
“That your thoughts should lean to the dark. That’s the usual place for mine. But you’ve shifted our places.”
“What are your thoughts?”
He strolled down toward the bay as Bollocks arrowed to it, so she walked with him.
“That the time’s come to end it, and we’ve a plan to do just that. Weapons, and the keenest in you, to end it. My father died, as did yours, in the trying, as did countless others since the first song or story of Odran came to Talamh. Never have we ended it, and not for lack of courage or power or unity. With that, all that, we beat him back.
“We had times of quiet and peace, but we never stuck a blade in his black heart and ended him. So he grew strong and turned the ruins of his black castle into its shine again. Stealing our children and murdering them on his altar. Dragging us to his world as slaves.”
“Those are very dark thoughts.”
Keegan shook his head as Bollocks swam and splashed.
“That’s what’s been. We keep our world in peace with our laws, our ways.” He glanced over. “The ways of magicks, Breen Siobhan Kelly.”
“I know.”
“He wants to destroy that because he sees only the power here.”
“He sees power like a pie, like some people see love.”
Curious, he turned to her. “A pie, is it?”
“Yeah, a pie, where there are only so many pieces of it, and if oneperson has a piece, there’s less for you. Since he doesn’t believe or understand that power—like love—is infinite, that it only grows when shared, he covets.”
“A pie,” Keegan repeated. “Ha, that’s a fine way to say it all. It’s now we’ll end it, and him, so he won’t have what he sees as any piece of it. Not in this world or any. We end him,mo bandia, this time, for all time. I feel that in a way I’ve never felt before. So my thoughts aren’t so dark. There’s light coming.”