Sul took another bite, passed the rest to Loga. Then held out her injured arm. “You have consent.”
Breen skimmed her fingertips lightly over the burn. As Aisling had patiently taught her, she opened. Slowly, slowly.
She felt the pain, the heat. Infection.
And something else.
“Your light and your heart are strong.”
She could ease the pain. Slowly. Slowly. Diminish the heat. Softly, softly.
It burned, just for an instant, in her own arm. But the blisters soothed away, and the raw redness eased to pink.
“There’s a balm,” Breen began.
“We have some at the post. I haven’t had time to worry with it.”
“If you would send for it? And if I could have a moment with you, in private?”
“We’ll fetch it when we go to trade.” Sul turned, walked to the door. She gestured for Breen to follow.
Inside, Breen saw a rough sort of comfort. Stools by a low fire, a pot simmering on it. A table and chairs, oil lamps and candles. A ladder climbed up to a loft.
“I have an ill?” Sul demanded, her face set, her eyes hard.
“I don’t think—”
“I tire too fast and too often. I feel off my feed. Heal me if you can, tell me if you can’t. I’m no coward.”
“It wasn’t an illness I felt. But a … a condition.”
“What’s the difference? You want to speak only to me. Speak.”
“I wasn’t sure you knew, or would want to let others know yet. I think you’re pregnant. I think you’re with child.”
Sula took a full step back. “Why would you say this?”
“I felt two heartbeats inside you. If I could look again to be sure? With your consent.”
Sul nodded, kept her tawny eyes on Breen as Breen laid a hand low on her belly, another on her chest. Breen thought of the lesson with Marg, how to open, feel life.
Closing her eyes, she let it come.
“I feel a heartbeat here.” She opened her eyes, pressed lightly on Sula’s chest. “And another here.” And against her womb. “The second is quiet yet, but strong. I’m not good enough to tell you how far along you are.”
Holding up a hand, Sula moved away to the back of the hut. She leaned on a long stone counter, and put her head out the window there to breathe.
“I thought it was the change when my courses stopped. Two courses haven’t come, and I’m near enough to the end of the fertile time, so this is what I believed. Then when I felt not good, tired, so often tired, the little pains I should have remembered were from making room for the new life.”
She turned back, those lion eyes glistening. “I have grown children, and they have children. Our youngest is fully twelve.”
“I’m sorry if this isn’t welcome.”
“Not welcome? This is a gift.” She pressed both hands to her belly. “You’ve given me the gift of knowing I make life again, and I weep in thanks.”
She came back, taking off the triangles dangling from her ears.
“Gold from our mines, hammered by our craftsmen. A gift for a gift.”
“They’re beautiful, and thank you. But I didn’t really have anything to do with it.”
On a whoop of laughter, Sul slapped Breen on the shoulder with such cheerful force Breen calculated she’d be sore for a week. “You have sass, don’t ya?”
“So Loga told me. I’m honored to wear them,” Breen said, and despite her stinging shoulder, put them on.
“Now we trade.”
The trading post turned out to be a large, deep cave lit by torch-light and guarded by trolls with thick clubs.
Aladdin’s cave, Breen thought, delighted and dazzled by the stones and crystals—some no bigger than a pebble, others bigger than her dog.
Another chamber held gold and silver and copper. Others weapons and armor forged from the metals, and still another held wares. Jewelry, pots, bowls, cups, chalices.
“Think of what you need,” Keegan said when she wandered and wandered. “Not of what you want.”
“Well, I want and need my own cauldron, so there’s that.” But she resisted the jewelry and trinkets—this time—and backtracked to select what she’d come for.
“Tell me when I hit the limits of the trade.”
Keegan let out a short laugh. “No worries there. Loga will certainly do just that.”
She filled a sack with stones, tumbled and rough, copper wire, silver dust. When she started on a second sack, she spared Keegan a look.
“I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back.”
“You’ve already enough for two life spans.”
“I’m almost done, so …”
Then she saw the globe, and everything else faded. Labradorite, a perfect circle, large enough she had to cup it in both hands.
When she did, she felt the vibration, in the stone, in her.
It swirled, blues and green, touches of golden brown. Storms and seas, she thought, grass and earth. And she felt she held the worlds in her hands.
In the stone, she saw herself, and then …
“Do you see?”
Because he’d already felt the power shimmering, Keegan set a hand on her shoulder. “What do you see?”
“The waterfall, and the river that runs on both sides, the forest, windswept. Two moons, one new, one full, riding the sky.
“Odran.”
When she spoke the name, some of the trolls who’d come into the post murmured against the dark and made the sign against evil.
“Do you see? The other side, his side. Yseult. White streaks through her hair. Leaching her power because she pushes and pushes, trembling as she shouts the words against the wind. I can’t hear them, not clear. I don’t know them. It’s a strange tongue to me. As she shouts, as the wind rises, he strikes with his sword. A black goat, a demon dog, a young girl crying for her mother. So the river runs red with their blood, and the red mists rise from it and stain the water from the fall.”
Her head spun; her power swelled.
“Rising, rising until the moons are stained with blood. Animal, demon, human in sacrifice. It bubbles and boils, the river, the falls. She drops to her knees, her hair more white than red now. And Odran glides over the boiling river, and with a clap like thunder, with a flash like lightning, his hand passes through the falls and into Talamh.”
Shaking now, Breen fought for breath. “Do you see?”
“Not clearly, no, and only through you, not the globe. The globe is yours.” With his hand sliding around Breen’s waist to keep her upright, Keegan turned to Loga. “I’ll trade whatever you need for it, bring it to you this night. My word on it.”
“No need. It’s hers. We aren’t fools here. Is this the now, the before, or the yet to come?”
“Not now. Not before.” Breen leaned against Keegan as she clutched the globe. “I don’t know when to come. I don’t know when, but he can’t see me. He still can’t see.”
“Get the daughter some wine,” Sul ordered.
“Water, please. Just water.”
“Summer,” Keegan said. “Leaves were full, and in Talamh, the foxglove and dog rose stood tall and blooming. The one coming, another after, I can’t say, but summer. We’ll start back when you feel able.”
“I can ride.”
“Then we ride.”
She tried not to think just how much trickier it could be riding down a mountain than it had been going up. And the fact she could actually see the trickier, the skinny trails or tight turns.
The long, long way down.
“You’ve learned how to cleanse and charge the crystals?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll need a proper place to keep them.”
“I have one. The table on the second-floor hallway that Seamus made.”
“That’ll do well enough. It was my fault,” he continued. “Not explaining to you about touching a troll. I didn’t think of it. And in truth, I didn’t expect it from Sul, who’s a clever woman, a cagey one, but sensible. Then, as I said, trolls can be prickly.”