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“Did shades really take up residence here?” Angus followed her into a long, low tunnel with water running down its sides. Moss grew in places, and the gleam of eyes reflected off Arianrhod’s light. Rats, lots of them. With a cacophony of high-pitched squeals, they fled in the opposite direction.
“Does it matter?” She glanced over one shoulder.
He didn’t answer, but reached outward with magic. No one had lived in this cave system but mice, rats, and bats for long years. People had lived here, though. He could still smell residue from fires. The corridor ended abruptly, and he found himself in an oblong space perhaps twenty paces across. At least the ceiling extended above his head, and he straightened to get the kinks out of his back.
This cavern was drier with different rock. Gray-green limestone walls arched around him. He called his own light into being and walked through the small space, locating a hearth at one end. Soot trailing up the wall indicated a natural draft mechanism. All he needed was something to burn. Everything was wet, but he could dry it with magic.
“Will this do?” Arianrhod gazed at him.
“Perfectly.” He moved past her, intent on retrieving tinder from outside.
“Where are you going?”
He stopped and turned toward her. “I need fire. I told you that.”
“Let’s see if there’s not something left in here. Give me a moment.” She sprinted away from him down one of three corridors branching off the room they stood in.
“I’ll look too,” he called after her and picked a different passageway. This one opened into a much larger grotto that held stronger remnants of human scents. He cast his light around the space and frowned. Bones, presumably human from the look of them, lay scattered in one corner, but so did several piles of wood.
He picked his way around the bones, clearly the work of marauding animals, and gathered an armload of tinder—as much as he could carry. All he needed was to get a blaze going. His power would keep it burning until he was done, but it would be nice to warm the cave enough to dry their clothes. The smaller space where he intended to work should heat up nicely.
He met Arianrhod in the short tunnel leading back to the space they’d decided to use. She glanced at the wood in his arms. “Is there more back there?” At his nod, she worked her way around him and disappeared from sight.
By the time she returned, he had a blaze going in the hearth in the small grotto. She dumped an armload of wood over what he’d carried in. “Will this be enough?”
“Aye. You won’t need to feed it once my magic takes over.”
She nodded solemnly. “What will I have to do?”
“Keep watch.” He stripped off his coat and hung it from a rock protruding from the wall above his fire.
“Is there a particular way to rouse you if it becomes necessary?” She hunkered in front of the fire and extended her hands.
“The Gaelic chant to raise the dead.”
She laughed, and the clear, crystalline tones warmed him as much as the fire. “Ye’re joking.”
“Nay, I’m not.”
He considered turning back his shirtsleeves, but decided to take the soaked woolen garment all the way off. He needed his blood to flow into the fire. Having a sodden shirtsleeve drop over his incisions would create problems he didn’t need.
Arianrhod whistled appreciatively. “And are ye planning to remove aught else? Is sex part of the incantation?”
He wished it were. “Nay to both, lass.”
“Lass is it? Ye’re scarcely Scottish.” Another warm chuckle.
“I don’t know what I am.” He drew the dirk from his waist sheath and went to her side, squatting next to her. “Once I begin, you mustn’t disturb me unless we have to leave this place.”
“I ken that well enough.”
He brushed his lips across hers, lingering just long enough to bring all his senses to aching life. He wanted her, but he needed all his energies to call a specific trance state. When they came to him, they brought power. When he forced them, they drained him.
Angus straightened and walked to the fire, chanting low. When he was above the blaze, he made horizontal cuts in his forearms and held them over the fire until his blood dripped into the flames, making them shoot higher. He chanted more firmly, anchoring his blood to the fire, exhorting it to work for him. Earth and water bent to his command without his blood to bind them—though blood intensified his efforts. Fire required his blood, and air ignored him completely.
He slowed his breathing until it matched his blood. One breath, one drop. The edges of his vision hazed, and he dropped into the world of dreams holding an image of Eletea firmly in his mind.
The copper dragon came into view, cloudy at first, then clearer. She was in a familiar place, and then he recognized Loch Linnhe near Fort William. Another dragon shouted at her and spouted flame. She shouted back at the red dragon, clearly distressed. Tears gathered in her eyes, and gemstones flooded to the grassy vale beneath her feet.
