With the growling sound of a mob chasing her, Bee used a lifting hex to elevate the God and pushed him through the portal. Following, she felt the usual dizzying pull and a sense that she was leaving her guts behind, before emerging into a downpour of icy rain.

  “Just what I need,” she said to the trees. “I suppose rain’s better than a lynching, so.”

  Running a finger along her scar, she relaxed a little because the mob couldn’t follow. Not unless they were Tuatha, and there was little chance of that because the King of North Kingdom had taken against them, at least if the recently deceased Tegid had told the truth.

  Bee shook her head at her differing standards. She felt nothing watching a human’s brains leaking into the turf, but when a green bull demon had its throat cut, she’d practically sobbed.

  With Whitehead watching.

  Bee was beginning to think that she understood why Aonghus might have taken against the Tuatha. Since the end of the last Scourge, they weren’t her favourite race, either. At least as far as the upper tiers were concerned.

  Ye’re half and half, Bee, she admonished. It was a state that would take some adjustment, she realised. With a sigh, she turned Dorn around so she could see his face and sat cross-legged with her back to a tree. His grin seemed to have taken on an accusatory aspect, as if he resented being left in the rain.

  “I can’t carry ye all the way,” she said to his form, floating two fingers above the loam. “Ye’re far too fat for that. We’ll wait here for Whitehead, so we will, even though I hate the sight of the arrogant cow.”

  She thought she saw an eye twitch, Dorn’s only response. Using a hex to move him to the fort would exhaust Bee, and she needed to be clear-headed for what was to come. With the alarm bell jingling in her map room, Whitehead would arrive soon enough, or at least she would send a cohort of Maidens.

  Sure that Dorn couldn’t move unless she freed him, Bee closed her eyes and opened her mind, searching for Bren. The connection was once again immediate. Nothing had changed from her previous try: the same gloom, the same fear, the strange smell and sense of an evil presence lurking just out of sight, as well as an empathy she didn’t understand.

  Give me something, Bren. Let me help you, she thought, hoping it would breach the horror. It proved a vain hope. If her brother sensed her or heard her, he gave no sign. She suspected that his fear was consuming his capacity to feel anything, like he was crippling himself with terror. Bee didn’t stop probing, trying to get a clue about where he was. Something. Anything. Her mother—their mother—had stressed the importance of them both coming to her in Breshlech.

  Why Breshlech? she wondered. It seemed a strange place for them to meet. After the dead Fomorii had been turned to dust, she thought Donn’s Needle would have returned to the same desolate place of shadows and poor memories.

  “What is wrong with The Smith?” pulled Bee back into her own head.

  Opening her eyes, she was not surprised to see the leader of Neit’s Maidens standing before her with crossed arms. The blacking around Whitehead’s eyes was running, making it look like she’d been sobbing uncontrollably. The impression couldn’t be further from reality, because the warrior did nothing without control, and Bee doubted she’d ever shed a tear, uncontrollably or otherwise.

  Not even when she was a baby.

  Despite the discomfort of stinging rain, the warrior wore a leather vest above a pleated leather skirt, with her arms and legs exposed to the elements. The shaft of her double-headed axe was resting in her elbow’s crook, the blades above her shoulders were shining even in the gloom.

  “I hexed him,” Bee finally said. Whitehead raised an eyebrow in question. “Rhiannon told me not to trust him.”

  “And you trust Rhiannon?”

  Bee hesitated, wondering how much Whitehead knew. She had no way of knowing, so decided to be discreet. If the warrior knew something, it wouldn’t matter, but if she knew nothing, it might prove catastrophic. Besides, Bee wasn’t sure she wanted the world to know she was a demigod. Being Dagda’s High Priestess brought enough stigma with it; adding that she was also Rhiannon’s daughter would only make it worse.

  The best secrets are hidden in partial truths, she told herself. “I trust her more than I trust him. Each time he opens his mouth, he contradicts something he said before, so he does. Rhiannon has proved more reliable.”

  “Aye, that about Dorn I can believe. What do you want me to do with him?”

  Bee shrugged. She hadn’t given it much thought. She supposed she needed him out of the way until the crisis was over, one way or another. When she said it to Whitehead, the warrior nodded and gestured for her Maidens to move Dorn as they walked to Sliabh Cuilinn.

  “How are things progressing?” Whitehead asked as they walked towards the horse dung citadel. Where it would typically be steaming, confirming Bee’s image of Whitehead’s home, the fortress was invisible through the sheeting rain.

  “Not sure I know what ye mean?”

  “You rode off with Ruirech, going in search of Bren and him,” the warrior said, nodding at the God being pushed along the road by a pair of Maidens. “You come back with no Bren and no Ruirech and The Smith in a hex. So, I’m wondering what’s happening.”

  Just so you can report back to Dagda, Bee suspected. “We found them, and then Bren ran off.”

  Whitehead cocked an eyebrow at the vagueness of the statement, but Bee would be damned by Dhuosnos before she gave the warrior anything other than what was absolutely necessary. She wasn’t sure of much that was happening, but she was sure that Dagda and Danu were treating her like a fool, and she didn’t like it. At best, they didn’t trust her with the knowledge; at worst, they were part of whatever conspiracy was taking place.

  “Is that all you have to say?” Bee nodded and, rather than reply, strode ahead, creating distance.

  Before long, they were being winched up in the lift. Like the one at Camas Clochai, a donkey harnessed to a capstan drove the mechanism, and it was deadly slow. So slow, in fact, that Bee took the time to reconnect with Bren, but learned nothing new. Same fear. Same gloom. Whitehead led the way across a bridge slung between two of the horse dung lumps. It was held aloft by strong ropes and had a slatted wooden path that rattled as Bee walked on it, which did not inspire much confidence in its construction. Turning towards the God, she could see the benefit at that moment to be floating above the rickety affair. On the other side, they entered a tunnel that dove down into the rock. Although she’d never been here, Bee knew the fort’s dungeons were at the end.

  “Ye’ve a dungeon warded against draíocht?” she asked.

  “Yes, Bechuille. Do you take me for a fool?” She wanted to say aye and that the feeling was merely a reciprocation of what the warrior took her for but managed to keep it inside. Just.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “No, Whitehead. He’s a tricky one, so he is. I just don’t think ye can be careful enough. And by ye, I mean anyone.”

  “This one’s warded,” the warrior said, pushing the God in and barring the gates. “You can lift your hex, if you trust me.”

  “Of course I trust ye,” Bee lied, before muttering under her breath to lift the freeze.

  Free from her hex, Dorn shook his head and rubbed his cheeks with both hands before looking directly at her. She expected him to object to being imprisoned and to rail at her for misunderstanding him and his actions, but he didn’t. He just tilted his head and grinned at her.

  What are ye planning, Ring Fighter? Bee wondered.

  “I’m going to the bath house to warm up,” Whitehead said, adding in a tone that belied her words, “You’re welcome to join me.”

  Bee agreed, more to spite the warrior than because she felt the need for a bath. It had only been a few days since she was in the healing waters with Ruirech. She could use a fire to dry herself and her clothes more than she needed a bath.

  With a frown, Whitehead led her back over the bridge and into a large cave that was like a tall mountain shrouded in clouds of steam and smoke. Bee could see several massive barrels only just visible in the clouds. Several Maidens were running in and out of the cave with buckets. Other Maidens occupied barrels, but Whitehead led her to a secluded alcove, where two were free. Gesturing at a server, the warrior ordered two flagons of mead and stripped off, dropping her clothes where she stood. Propping her axe against the back wall, the warrior climbed the steps beside one of the barrels and plonked herself in the water, which cascaded over the sides, sloshing over Bee’s boots.

  Bee stripped off more slowly, not because of timidity, but because she took care to hang her clothes on racks that were located around the cave, each with a blazing fire below a flue, which dragged most of the steam and smoke away. Finally, Bee submerged herself in the barrel next to the warrior, feeling the heat and steam ease her stress. And with it, she realised that Whitehead’s suggestion had been a good one.

  When the server returned with flagons of warmed mead, the final vestiges of her stress took wing, and, closing her eyes, she sighed in relief.

  Ruirech would enjoy this, she thought, and then shook her head, wondering where thoughts of the rebel came from.

  They relaxed for several moments, each happy with their own thoughts, before the warrior felt the need to break the peace. “Why are you here?” Whitehead slurred, which surprised Bee. In all the summers they’d known each other, this was their first drink together. She’d thought the warrior would be able to handle strong drink. A flagon of mead and she was slurring.

  “Ye invited me.”

  “I mean, why aren’t you asleep in your mound? What made Dagda wake you, when we can do what needs doing without a Druidic High Priestess guiding us?”

  “We’ve already been through this,” Bee hissed.

  “But you didn’t answer me, High Priestess.”

  Despite realising the warrior was trying to be offensive, Bee cast her mind back to where it all began. It started with a pain between her eyes…

  “Bechuille, come I say.”

  She remembered the words being followed by a knocking, like the butt of a staff on a stone floor. Bee hadn’t needed to open her eyes to know it was a blinding, unwelcome light causing the throbbing pain above the bridge of her nose. It shouldn’t have been happening. There shouldn’t have been any light or pain. She should have been deep within her induced recovery sleep, cocooned in hides and warmth, safe within her mound. In some ways, she’d welcomed it, because Dagda’s waking her interrupted the nightmare recollection of the last Scourge.

  She remembered feeling a heaviness and an exhaustion so intense it had been hard to open her eyes. But Dagda had been persistent, cajoling her in a voice she’d not expected to hear until five hundred summers after waking from her recovery. At least five hundred, because the Scourges happened not less than every millennium, and sometimes two.

  “A silver for your thoughts,” Whitehead slurred.

  Bee shook her head and said, “I’m just enjoying the steam, so I am.”

  Her words weren’t even close to the truth. Rather, she was remembering begging Dagda to leave her in peace, but he’d ignored her and dragged her out of the comfort of recovery.

  “Come, I say. Your Master needs you,” his voice had boomed, which did nothing to ease the pain between her eyes; it did nothing except stress their relationship. He the Master, and she the vassal, a relationship she was starting to resent. And then he’d added honey to her oatcake by telling her Brenos stole through the portal, a claim she now knew to have been a lie.

  “What’s yer part in all this?” she asked Whitehead.

  The warrior took a long pull of mead before answering. When she finally said that she had no part, Bee knew immediately the warrior was also lying. It seemed neither of them was in the mood to trust. The strangest thing was Whitehead seemed to think Bee’s memory was faulty, because she’d sat beside Credne in her map room with obvious knowledge of what was happening. She’d also given Bee advice outside Donn’s Needle they day the dead army was crushed into bone dust. It seemed the longer her task went on, the fewer were those she could trust. Rhiannon said Dagda had been less than truthful because circumstances dictated it, which Bee accepted. However, it didn’t make it any easier.

  I wish Ruirech were here, she said to herself, despite being ashamed to admit she missed him.

  The rebel had been her only friend since she opened her eyes, blinking against the harsh glow radiating from her Master’s staff, illuminating a room that should have been shrouded in darkness.

  What have ye done, brother? And where are ye now? Bee remembered thinking. Thoughts that were not born of concern, but of anger. What had he done that would drive Dagda, the Chieftain of Danu’s People, to lie to her. When she had asked him what Bren might have done to cause interest, her Master’s reply confused her. She hadn’t even known her brother was aware that the portal existed. She’d remembered that he’d been toying with divination, using bird entrails and guano to seek insights, sacrificing small animals. That might have explained it. He might have discovered a clue. Some lump of cac with a certain tilt or shade; a particular purple tint to a pile of animal offal; some pointer to the portal’s presence and location. But no, it now transpired that he’d been nothing but the lackey of some other God. Perhaps even the God who was now holding him captive in some gloom ridden hole. Whatever the truth, her brother had driven her to lose faith in her role as Dagda’s High Priestess, casting doubt on things she’d believed for thousands of summers.

  Not entirely true, Bee admitted.

  She remembered at the end of the last Scourge, standing in front of the coven facing the Bull’s Head, channelling thedraíocht and wondering at the cruelty of the Neit’s Maidens with their burning whips and malice as they drove the demon horde back into their hole.

  She shook her head to drive the thoughts away. Now was not the time to think about her wavering faith in a cycle that had endured for millennia.

  Turning to the warrior beside her, Bee asked, “And what have ye done to help, Warrior? Answer me that.”

  Rather than responding, Whitehead said, “What happened in North Kingdom?”

  “How d’ye know I was in North Kingdom?”

  “I knew The Smith intended returning to the Realm and that he would use Tayvir’s portal to come back, so, where else would you have been?”

  That’s not true. Dorn hadn’t seen Goibniu since he ran from her map room. “Ye’re not telling me the truth. Dorn hasn’t been here since—”

  “How do you know, Witch. I have a portal. Dorn might have been back and forth meeting and planning. I could have played host to the whole Realm, and you wouldn’t know.”

  Oh, Darkness, she’s right. I’ve no idea. “Ye’re betraying me, same as the others.” And I’ve left The Smith in her care.

  “No. Like you, I’ve been doing what I was told.”

  “By whom?”

  “For one, Dagda told me to send a couple of Maidens to protect you. Cliodhna and—”

  “Eblui,” Bee whispered.

  “How could you possibly…” Whitehead’s words trailed off as she realised what was to come.

  “They attacked me outside the Cave of Cats. I was defending meself.”

  “You killed my Maidens,” Whitehead hissed, the slurring gone. The warrior was glaring at her so hard Bee started to draw draíocht.

  “It was an accident,” she whispered.

  “Get out of my sight before I do something I regret.”

  Bee let go of the Earth Power, before climbing from the steaming water, and saying, “The archer loosed an arrow at me. No warning. Not a word of question. What was I supposed to do, die?”

  The warrior didn’t look at Bee, who stood with her arms by her sides, vulnerable before the woman in the water. Even when the cold of evaporating moisture hardened her nipples, she left herself exposed, open to the warrior’s scrutiny, sensing any attempt to cover up would be misconstrued.

  Eventually, still not looking at her, Whitehead spoke. Rather than accepting that her Maidens should take some responsibility for their tragic death, she said, “I’ll allow you a day to get out of my domain, Witch. After that, I will kill you on sight.”