“All of them.”
“Not Odran.”
“A fallen god is a god in name only.” He offered her a skin of water. “He wants you because you’re so much more.”
Am I? she wondered, and tipped her head back to drink. “There’s a goat! A—a ram. Right up there.”
He glanced up. “They like the high countries. We’re nearly there, and they’re expecting us now.”
“They are?”
“They’ve been watching us for some time. Visitors don’t climb Sliabh Sióg unnoticed. And if we were unwelcome, they’d have made that clear enough by now.”
“Isn’t the taoiseach welcome everywhere?”
Keegan took back the skin. “Trolls can be prickly.”
He turned away and continued the climb.
She saw more goats, more long-horned sheep, more breathless views.
Then a man with shoulders as wide as a truck, a warrior’s braid dangling to his waist, and a face nearly as nut brown as his hair dropped onto the track from above.
He wore a helmet of dull bronze and a breastplate that looked as if it had taken more than a few hits over the years. His eyes, a shockingly bright blue, stayed narrowed as he planted his feet, legs wide, and fisted big, gnarled hands on his hips.
“Greetings to you, Loga, and all your kin. We ask your permission to pass. We bring you trade.”
“Do ya?” He sniffed. “And is this the child of Eian O’Ceallaigh?”
“I’m Breen,” she said before Keegan could speak again. “And my father’s daughter. Blessings on you, Loga, on your wife, Sul, and all your kin.”
Loga’s eyebrows shot up. “Pretty thing, aren’t ya? Got the look of your da, and of Mairghread. I see Odran passed his eyes on to ya.”
Turning his head, Loga spat.
“I think of them as from my father, and they don’t look kindly on Odran or those who follow him.”
“Got some sass. I like sass. Rolled with this one a time or two I hear.”
When he jerked a thumb at Keegan, Breen struggled not to blush from embarrassment or insult. “That would be a private matter.”
He barked out a laugh. “Sass! You may pass and bring your trade. One pint of ale each you’ll have for hospitality.”
“She’s one for wine,” Keegan told him.
“Ah well, a cup of wine for her then.”
And like a goat—at least in Breen’s imagination—he leaped onto the rocks above. He took a curved horn out of his belt, blew three long notes.
Then seemed to vanish.
“We’re welcomed,” Keegan told her.
He turned Merlin around the last switchback.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Stone huts huddled together on the rocky plateau. Others stacked their way up the mountain like deliberately if precariously placed building blocks. The steps and ledges leading up looked as if they’d been hacked out of the rocky rise by axes.
Beyond the huddle, she saw some sort of stable or barn and the mules and husky horses sharing a paddock beside it. A couple of pigs grunted and rooted in a sty beside a narrow track while a handful of fat chickens squawked and pecked away outside a coop.
Small campfires burned inside circles of stones outside each hut. The thin, cool air carried the tang of peat smoke and roasting meat.
Breen was pretty sure she identified an unlucky rabbit rotating on a spit over one of the fires.
Young children played a game involving curved sticks and a small wooden ball that looked somewhat like field hockey. Some women had infants strapped on their backs or in snug slings across their chests. Another took a cup to an old one as he sat on a rough-hewn stone bench in the sunlight.
She saw every shade of skin: black, brown, copper, ruddy, creamy. Most activity stopped when she rode into the camp alongside Keegan.
Loga and two others—one male, one female—leaped down from the rocky point above.
“They have come to trade,” Loga announced, “and have permission. Welcome, Taoiseach. Welcome, Daughter of the O’Ceallaigh.”
Keegan dismounted. “Greetings to you and your community.”
Following his lead, Breen dismounted. “And thank you.”
“You’ll sit by the fire. Ale,” Loga called out, “and wine for the daughter. You, boy, take the horses to water.”
Loga led the way to the fire in front of a hut with a high, arched door, then sat on the ground.
“This much is hospitality,” he said when Keegan and Breen joined him. “The rest is trade.”
“Understood.” Keegan gestured up to where Cróga circled. “He carries containers of what the daughter wishes to trade. May he land?”
“He may. And my people will bring the containers.”
When Cróga settled on the rocky point above, several scrambled up to untie the boxes hitched to his saddle. A boy stroked a hand over Cróga’s scales, his face alive with longing.
“Your grandson. I would gift him a short flight.”
The boy looked down, and longing became wild hope.
“Try to soften me up for the trade, will ya?”
“I know the futility of such attempts. And the trade isn’t mine.”
Loga pointed at the boy. “Short. Once. So,” Loga continued as the boy let out a whoop and scrambled up Cróga’s side. “First we drink, then we trade.”
Breen took the cup a woman handed her, and hoped for the best. “It’s very good.” And very, very strong, she thought.
Like apple brandy filtered through battery acid.
The door of the hut opened; the woman all but filled it.
Tall, with arms like tree trunks, she stood in rough trousers, rougher boots, and a belted tunic. She had the tawny eyes of a lioness and hair of oak brown braided to her waist. A warrior’s braid ran down the side of her wide face.
“Welcome, Taoiseach,” she said as Keegan rose. “Welcome, Daughter of the Fey.”
As she got to her feet, Breen didn’t think about the words; she felt them. Spoke them. “Greetings, Mother of the Trolls.”
Sul inclined her head. “Bring wares to trade, do ya?”
“Yes. And also offer in trade my small skills as a healer to any who have the need.”
Breen picked up one of the boxes now stacked beside her. “Would you try a sample, to judge?”
Sul stepped forward, peered into the box. “Sweets?”
When Sul took out a cookie, Breen saw the blistered burn on her arm. She started to reach out, froze at Sul’s sibilant hiss.
“No one from the world of man touches a troll without consent.”
“I’m sorry.”
“The fault’s mine.” Keegan spoke easily as he drank his ale. “She doesn’t know the traditions, and I failed to teach her. She is also of Talamh, daughter of a taoiseach, granddaughter of a taoiseach.”
“And granddaughter of one who seeks to destroy us.”
“Yet she leaves the safety of the world she knew to defend you.”
“I apologize for the offense.” Breen struggled not to rush the words out through a throat that wanted to snap shut. “I’ve come to trade for the stones and crystals you mine, so I can use them in magicks to fight Odran.”
Sul’s eyes narrowed, glittered. “Fear him, don’t ya?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Yet you wear the word for courage, don’t ya? You branded it on your wrist.” Sul pointed to Breen’s tattoo. “Do you wear it only, or do you have it?”
“I have more than I did, less than I hope to find.”
Pursing her lips, Sul nodded slowly. “This is a good answer.” She looked down at Loga. “A good answer.”
She studied the cookie in her hand, sniffed it. Took a testing bite. Smiled. “You make them?”
“I don’t have that talent. A friend. I help a little—and clean up the mess after. But he makes the sweets. There are pastries and tarts, frosted cakes.”