Bee leaned out over the palisade and stared at the piles of rusting armour. There were no ancient mouldering corpses that she could see, but then, she remembered the way the old skeleton in the guardhouse had exploded into a cloud of grey dust when Dorn used his hammer on it. Looking at the grey dunes between the piles of ancient body protection, she could only imagine what it would be like to wade through a sea of disintegrated bones.

  “I’ll get the others,” she said.

  Shaking her head, Rhiannon whistled, a sound that seemed incongruous to Bee. Despite what Rhiannon was, or maybe because of it, she thought the whistle to be out of place. However, whatever Bee thought, it worked because shortly after the echoes dies away, Ruirech and Dorn climbed the palisade ladder. No one said anything, and they all climbed down from the wooden barrier on the tower side, aware of what they needed to do.

  My wager is, Archu’s already gone. Myrddin will be mouldering in his throne.

  She decided not to voice what she felt because nobody had time for those who were constantly looking at the downside. Occasionally, a person needs to find the gold seam in the endless grey. The thought brought out a grin. If anything, she would never find the gold. It wasn’t in her nature. It wasn’t even in her nature to admit the gold seams existed.

  Edging around the piles of ancient armour, puffs of fine, grey dust rose wherever her feet fell. Bee swatted at the clouds and wrinkled her face in disgust. The rebel coughed and covered his mouth and nose with a forearm, his eyes showing the distaste he felt. Dorn and Rhiannon walked on, unaffected by the bone dust.

  When they reached the tower after the stiff climb, they found the portcullis already up. If it was Luchta who sent the bones into the gorge, then he hadn’t considered resealing the tower afterwards.

  He probably expected Whitehead to force the demon out and left it open for her.

  But then Bee realised that the only way for Whitehead to exorcise Myrddin would have been to kill him. The druid was a mad fool, but the reality was, if they decided to execute all the fools in the Kingdoms, there wouldn’t be many left.

  Watching Dorn walking through the gates, Bee still had little notion of why he was with them. He said he’d come to help, but she was a little confused about what he might achieve. There weren’t any skeletons left, and she doubted he could do anything against one of the Four. Bee had just decided to ask him again, when a stench washed over her, driving everything else from her mind.

  “Ugh, I thought that would be gone now the Fomorii are dust,” she said, pinching her nose together.

  “I told you before,” Dorn said. “That is the stench of evil. It was not the Fomorii who made it.”

  She thought about asking him if the Void was evil. However, as she opened her mouth to spit sarcasm in his face, she remembered that the stench from the Void, although overpowering itself, was different from what she was now smelling.

  “So ye did,” she said, following him to the foot of a wide set of stairs.

  The last time Bee had seen these stairs, it had been through the small holes in a sack her guards were using as a blindfold. She remembered shadows and not much more, except they seemed to go on forever. Now, they appeared as she would expect from stairs someone constructed millennia before. Countless iron shod feet had worn grooves in them. Dust covered the areas away from the eroded parts, and the flight was far less lengthy than she had thought it to be. No more than ten paces from the landing, a set of wide doors barred the entrance to what she guessed was the throne room.

  “Are ye ready for this?” she asked Ruirech, before she climbed the stairs. The rebel nodded but kept his lips pressed tightly together.

  It’s all right to be afraid, so it is.

  The oppressiveness of the atmosphere was like a physical force holding them at the bottom of the steps. Taking the rebel’s hand, Bee pulled him up the stairs. Rhiannon and Dorn followed in their wake. She didn’t understand why, but something had convinced her that when they arrived at the doors, they would find them barred. However, pushing the nearest with an index finger, it swung open on what must have been recently oiled hinges. There was no screaming alarm, as there had been with the portcullis when the skeletal warriors had first bundled her in to face the Demon of War.

  Walking up the central aisle, Bee was glad she hadn’t made a wager. Archu was there, almost precisely as he had been when she left him on her way to the dungeons. True, it could have been the mad druid with his leg swung over an arm of the throne, only she didn’t think it was. There was something in the arrogance of his face that told her Archu still possessed the hapless Myrddin.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Ah, Bechuille, so nice of you to return and in such exulted company. Rhiannon, Goibniu,” the demon said, nodding at each in turn. “You, I do not recognise.”

  Bee felt rather than saw, Ruirech flinch away from Archu’s gaze. Again, she didn’t blame him for showing fear. The evil that was glaring out of those hooded eyes would cause the most stalwart to blanch.

  “I am King Ruirech,” he said in a firm voice, despite his fear. Bee had to admit that she felt proud of her lover at that moment.

  “Oh, I have never heard of any kings called Ruirech. What are you king of, a midden?”

  “I am king of—”

  Bee put her hand on his arm, stopping him. She didn’t want to explain to the rebel that there was no profit in arguing with a demon and so tried to convey the message with her eyes. She was thankful when he nodded and closed his mouth.

  “So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

  “You are not supposed to be here, Archu,” Rhiannon said. “We are here to return you to Tech Duinn.”

  “I see two Gods and a witch. Even if she is a High Priestess, I do not see enough with the three of you to force me out of this fool,” Archu hissed.

  “Actually, we are three Gods. Bechuille is my daughter—”

  “That would make her a demigod. There is a distinction, She Dog.”

  “Is that meant to be an insult, Demon?” Rhiannon asked with a smile. “Besides, her father is Dhuosnos, so my daughter is also a God.”

  “I do not believe—”

  “Do it, Bechuille, before he can draw Earth Power,” Rhiannon ordered.

  “Do not be foolish, witch,” Archu said, and then started cackling, as if he was in fact the mad druid he was possessing.

  Bee didn’t need to be warned twice. She didn’t think she would have the power to do it, but there would be no sense in not trying. She could feel Archu starting to draw draíocht and formed her hands to shape the ball of power she, too, was drawing. The surge she felt through her body was only matched by those she had felt when holding Bren. She thought the power would be enough to kill any other witch, and that she wouldn’t have dared to try if her mother hadn’t told her what she had only a short time before. As a lower Tuatha, witch or not, this amount of power would have killed her; left her as a pile of ash on the throne room floor.

  Screaming, she hurled the power at the demon. The ball entered Myrddin, who wasn’t Myrddin, and vanished. Archu continued to cackle for several moments before starting to choke and gasp the foetid air in the throne room, scrabbling at its throat as if trying to prevent a strangler from murdering him. With the scrabbling, the demon drew in ragged breaths after each choked cough, until the final heave when an ethereal, gossamer apparition exploded from the druid’s body and screamed towards her. Bee covered her face as the essence flashed through her, freezing her core and making her shudder. The dread she felt washing out of Archu as it passed through her body brought her into the space her brother was occupying. They were just impressions of the senses she’d felt when connecting with Bren, or trying to connect, at least. The gloom. The grooves in the floor. But this time they were Archu’s memories, not Bren’s and something became clear as the demon howled through the throne room’s window, a gossamer apparition of horror. She no longer had any doubt. The fear Bren was feeling, the stench that was a distant notion rather than a viable stink, all pointed to where Archu and the other three demon vassals made their home.

  Under Bull’s Head rock. “He’s in the Arena, so he is,” she said, before falling to her knees, exhausted by the effort needed for the exorcism.

  “Who is?” Ruirech asked.

  “Brenos,” Rhiannon answered for her. “I already suspected as much.”

  “Why is he there?” Bee asked.

  “Is it not obvious? He has chosen to side with his father,” the Goddess lamented. Her tone spoke of the betrayal she felt. Bee wasn’t sure she felt the same. She wasn’t sure what she felt. Everything was a massive contradiction. Her mother had spoken of a balance, but Bee didn’t feel any sense of equilibrium.

  “We need to know what the bundún knows,” she said, climbing slowly to her feet and walking to the throne. She stood for many moments with her hands on her hips, frowning at Myrddin. Still in the same pose as when the demon fled—leg over an arm—the druid was staring at the room with unseeing eyes. Bee clicked her fingers in front of his nose. When he didn’t react, she smacked him hard across the face. The only thing the slap achieved was to change the angle at which his head tilted.

  “He’s on a different plane, so he is.”

  “We need to know what he knows,” Rhiannon repeated.

  “What about you, Dorn, can you do something?” Bee asked.

  “No. I can project into a mind. I cannot draw from it.”

  Ruirech cleared his throat, and Bee turned to him. She heard a foretelling in the polite way he had made himself heard. Whatever he was about to say, she had a feeling she wouldn’t like it.

  “I might be able to do something,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

  “What could you—” Dorn started, but Bee interrupted him, holding up a hand.

  “When I touch someone in a certain way, I can see into their mind. Read it, if you like.”

  Bee’s first reaction was anger beginning to well in the base of her gut. Her second was a frantic hunt for all the things she had been thinking while they were entwined in each other’s arms. One thing seemed evident; he was party to her most secret thoughts, her core, and it made her want to turn him to ash where he stood.

  “Are ye telling me when ye touch people ye can see their thoughts?” she asked, trying to remain expressionless but doubted she succeeded.

  Ruirech grinned at her, and Bee wanted to smack him. “Only when I delve,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ve to be touching their temples like so,” Ruirech said, kneeling by the comatose druid and placing a thumb on each of his temples. Watching him put Bee in mind of when he told her of his ability to read a person’s aura. He’d been convincing then, too, but it later turned out that he’d been lying.