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It never came again.
The forest folded round him in a tangle of green so that every step was a stumbling lurch, mist threading the wood, a ringing in his ears growing louder and more insistent. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t focus. The bells were all he heard. He began to hallucinate. A face within the trees. The flash of a leg. He blinked: Was he losing his mind or was that Killer’s black-and-white fuzzy body keeping pace off to their right? Impossible, but at least it offered him comfort to think the little dog kept him company even if it was a mirage conjured by delirium.
They emerged into a clearing, the mist here clinging thick and gray and wet over the ground. A slab of toppled granite lay upon its side, smaller stones scattered amid the bracken. And something else: a power ancient when the earth was young. A well of magic so deep and immense, it seemed to push to the center of the world. It wrapped itself around him, burrowing beneath his skin until he saw the flux and flow of mage energy in the air, on each trembling leaf, each scratching limb, every glistening drop of water.
He stood dazed, letting this river of Fey power surge around him.
It was as he’d hoped.
Arthur’s tomb had been built upon a thin place, a spot where the deeper Fey magics surfaced and the two worlds touched. A source of enormous power if one were skillful—and desperate—enough to tap the melded energies.
He was both.
Máelodor stepped forward, the Sh’vad Tual raised high before him.
For Brendan, it was now or never.
Rogan’s honey tongue had been almost as helpful as his tracking abilities. As Elisabeth waited in the shelter of the cottage’s doorway, he persuaded the two guards left behind not only to saddle two horses but, in a display of Irish impudence, to sing every verse of “John Barleycorn” backwards. They willingly complied and Rogan and Elisabeth had trotted out of the yard with the awkward, off-key caterwauling “wan and pale both looked he till” wafting behind them.
An hour and a half later, at Rogan’s insistence, they left the horses behind and entered a deep, overgrown copse. Clouds flattened gray black across the sky as they pushed into a strange biting wind, as if January’s chill had touched down within this isolated corner of the county.
“I’m not certain how you managed to palaver me into doing this, Miss Elisabeth. Perhaps you’ve a bit of the leveryas in you,” Rogan joked as he pushed aside a heavy branch for her.
She ducked beneath it, yanking her skirts away from the snagging twigs. “You wanted to go after him as much as I did. It just took the right spark for you to see the light.”
He dropped back into his slow, loping stride. “And what do you plan on doing if we do find them in time? I’m thinking these barking irons of ours won’t be more than a fly bite to that great hulk of an attendant.”
“I haven’t the vaguest notion, but something’s bound to occur to me. It’s gotten me this far, hasn’t it?”
This far, being the middle of nowhere following a vague hazy trail of mage energy. For a moment, doubt assailed her. Could she trust Rogan? Could he be leading her away from Brendan? She pushed aside the thought. She’d not go down that road. The vision had shown her she would find Brendan. And find him she would.
The path forked. A narrow winding branch to the left heading down to a stream cut. A wider avenue uphill into deeper wood.
Rogan paused, head up. Eyes trained on a point invisible to Elisabeth as he scanned first one direction, then the other, in a slow, measuring manner. He really did resemble a bloodhound, with his eyes sunk into the folds of his long, angular face, and gangly limbs ending in oversize hands and feet.
She dropped onto a broken log as she waited, torn between relief at the rest for her weary feet and irritation at any delay. After a few moments, she began chafing her hands. Tapping her foot. Trying not to seem impatient when every inch of her jangled with nerves.
Rogan’s power couldn’t fail them now.
Impatience finally won over her aching feet. “Which way?”
Rogan remained unmoving in the middle of the trail, hands clamped to his side, eyes fixed and staring.
“Rogan?”
No answer. Instead, his eyes rolled up in his head as he began to convulse.
“Rogan!” She ran to him, grabbing him as he fell to the ground, his body curled into a ball, seizures raking him, his jaw clamped shut, low animal moans coming from deep in his throat. Was it poison? Had his heart given out?
She grabbed him to her just as the shuddering stopped. As he went limp, his final rattling breath collapsed his chest. Black oozy liquid dripped from the corner of his mouth.
Tears stung her eyes as she looked up into the canopy of sycamore and maples, oaks and ash. Whispered a prayer for the harper’s passing.
“This is dark magic. Máelodor’s handiwork.”
A man’s voice behind her shot her heart into her throat. She spun around to see him standing half within the trees. Where had he come from? She fumbled the pistol up to aim it at the stranger. “Who are you? Show yourself.”
He stepped into the open, and she nearly dropped the gun in shock. He was completely naked. Not a stitch of clothing. Not even a strategically placed fig leaf.
