are you talking about?” Cu asked.
“What am I talking about? Better ask yourselves that question.”
“Explain yourself, Huntress,” Cu growled.
Brighid curled her lip at him. “By the Goddess, it’s simple! You cannot take seventy children through that pass. Not in a couple days, nor in a couple turns of the moon.”
Cuchulainn opened his mouth to bluster, but Ciara’s calm voice interrupted his rant. “What do you mean, Brighid?”
“I mean it’s clearly too dangerous. Maybe it was different when Cu came through it two moons ago, but today it would be a difficult journey for a party of adults. For children it is impossible.”
“Our children are special,” Ciara said softly. “They are not normal children.”
“Regardless, they are still children. No matter how strong, their legs are only so long. I’ve watched them. Some of them are barely gliding, which means adults, or the older children, would have to carry the littlest ones. That would double the danger and difficulty.” Brighid spoke matter-of-factly, in the logical emotionless voice of a Huntress discussing the tracking of game.
“You’re certain? Even if we took them through in small groups?” Cu asked.
“Small groups would be better, but still dangerous. Travel would be slow, so they would be forced to spend the night in the pass. And that would be a night without fire.” Brighid glanced at the Shaman who had so easily wielded the power of flame. “Fire would weaken the snow that is already thawing on the walls of the pass.”
“Avalanche,” Cu said. The warrior shook his head in selfdisgust. He hadn’t thought of that, and he should have. “But small groups could work?”
Brighid lifted one shoulder. “I suppose.”
The Shaman’s dark eyes caught hers. “If they were your children, would you chance taking them through the pass, even in small groups?”
“No.”
“If you would not lead your own children through, I will not lead ours,” Ciara said.
Cuchulainn raised his brows at the quickness of the winged woman’s decision, but they were her people and it was her choice to make. “Then we’ll have to wait until late summer to lead the children through, when there is no more snow on the walls of the pass,” he said slowly. He could already feel the weight of the children’s disappointment when they found out that they would not be traveling to the land of their dreams for several more turns of the moon.
“Not necessarily,” Brighid said.
“But you just said—” Cu said gruffly.
“I said this pass was too dangerous for the children. But this is not the only pass into Partholon.”
Cuchulainn jerked in surprise. “Guardian Pass!”
“Exactly.” The Huntress looked pleased with herself.
“I hadn’t even considered it, but you’re right. It does make the most sense. It’s wider, well-marked and well-maintained. Probably even passable today.”
“It’s guarded by warriors from Guardian Castle.” Ciara’s soft voice shook only slightly. “Their sole charge is to keep Fomorians from entering Partholon.”
“You aren’t our enemies. My sister’s sacrifice promises that,” Cu said gruffly.
“But that is where she was taken to be imprisoned.”
Cuchulainn’s body jerked as if someone had struck him. The she Ciara spoke of was Fallon, the mad hybrid who had murdered Brenna. After Fallon had been captured, Elphame had sentenced her to death as retribution for the taking of Brenna’s life, but the hybrid had been pregnant, and not even Cuchulainn had been willing to sacrifice an unborn child to pay the debt its mother owed. So Fallon had been taken to Guardian Castle to be imprisoned until the birth of her child. It was there that she would eventually be executed.
“Yes,” Cuchulainn clipped the word. “Fallon is jailed there.”
“So won’t the people assume we are as she is?” Ciara asked, eyes luminous with feeling. “Won’t they already hate us?”
“You aren’t responsible for Fallon’s actions,” Brighid said. “She chose madness and violence. None of the rest of you did.”
“The warriors are honorable men and women. They will treat you justly,” Cuchulainn said.
Brighid slanted a look at him, considering the irony of the situation. Here was Cu, reassuring Ciara about something that he had struggled with himself. He had been ready to treat the New Fomorians unjustly—he had already admitted that to her. But their goodness had been obvious, even to a grieving warrior. If Cuchulainn could look past their wings and their fathers’ blood, wouldn’t the Guardian Warriors be able to do the same, too? Brighid desperately hoped so.
“If they were my children, taking them through Guardian Pass is the only way I would lead them into Partholon,” the Huntress said.
Ciara looked from the Huntress to the warrior. “If you believe it is for the best, then it is through Guardian Pass that we will enter Partholon.”
Cuchulainn grunted and looked eastward.
“What do you think? Is it about a two-day trip?” Brighid asked, following his gaze.
“With children? I’d say you better double that.”
“I thought you knew the children better than that, Cuchulainn.”
Before Cu could answer the winged woman, Brighid snorted. “You’ll have ample opportunity to show us how special your young ones are. How soon can all of you be ready to travel?”
“Whenever you say. We have been ready since the snow began melting. And we have been awaiting this journey for more than one hundred years.”
“We leave at first light,” Cu said.
“First light it is then,” Ciara said firmly. “We should hurry back so I can tell the others.”
With those words, Ciara spread her dark wings and moved quickly over the rocky ground in the distinctive gliding run her people had inherited from their fathers. She heard the pounding of hooves as the centaur and Cuchulainn’s gelding galloped behind her. She had Felt the tightness within her loosen when they decided not to take the hidden path and instead chose the way through Guardian Pass, but the suffocating sense of wrongness did not dissipate until they were well out of the shadow of the mountains and back on the rough flat terrain of the Wastelands.
The Shaman’s mind whirred as her legs pumped rhythmically. Why had she been sent the warning? The obvious answer was that the spirit realm agreed with the Huntress—the hidden path was too dangerous for the children to navigate. But the answer seemed too simplistic for such an intense reaction. The Huntress had easily recognized the danger, and Ciara already believed the centaur’s judgment was honest and accurate. She would have listened to her, as did Cuchulainn, without any prompting from
