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 the spirit realm. It seemed a waste of time for the spirits to compound the warning needlessly. One thing she understood very well from her experience with the world of the spirits was that they never wasted their powers and their warnings should never be discounted as needless.
She must find time to take the Sacred Journey and discover what the other realm was trying to tell her. It was always wise to heed the warnings of the spirits.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I didn’t think they could do it,” Brighid said under her breath as she and Cuchulainn approached the heart of the settlement where every member of the New Fomorians had gathered. From the smallest winged child to the beautiful Ciara, they were all waiting expectantly for the centaur and the warrior who would lead them into the land they only knew from paintings and stories and the dreams of women who were long dead.
“It is first light, and we are ready,” Ciara said. “We were just waiting for the two of you.”
Brighid noted the very obvious glint of pride in the winged woman’s eyes, but she found it hard to blame her. The children were lined up like little warriors, each with a pack strapped to his or her back. The adults were more heavily burdened, and the Huntress counted five of them who carried leather slings across the front of their bodies in which rested the smallest of the children. The majority of the provisions for the trip were neatly piled onto litters which, Brighid snorted with surprise, were strapped to shaggy-haired goats. They were definitely ready to travel.
Cuchulainn found his voice first. “Well done.” He nodded at the grinning children but didn’t return their smiles. “Our way lies first to the east before we turn south and enter Partholon.” He swung astride his gelding and, clucking, trotted off toward the rising sun.
Brighid moved to his side and jumped only a little when the group behind them started out with a deafening cheer. Then one small voice began an ancient song sung for generations by the children of Partholon as greeting to Epona’s sun.
Greetings to you, sun of Epona
as you travel the skies on high,
with your strong steps on the
wing of the heights
you are the happy mother of the stars.
Soon another child joined the song and then another and another, until the morning echoed with the happy sound of children’s voices raised in praise to their Goddess.
You sink down in the perilous ocean
without harm and without hurt.
You rise up on the quiet wave
like a young chieftain in flower…
“It’s going to be a damned long journey,” Brighid said with a sigh.
“That it is,” Cuchulainn said. “But it could be worse.”
“How?”
“They could be riding you.”
Brighid couldn’t tell for sure over the blaring noise of seventy singing children, but she thought the warrior might have been chuckling softly.
As midday moved toward afternoon and then evening, Brighid decided that without a doubt the Wastelands was the gloomiest place she’d ever had the misfortune to visit. It had only taken them a few hours to reach the mountains. Once within the shadow of the stark red giants Cuchulainn had turned their group east, and for the remainder of the morning they’d been paralleling the mountain range.
Brighid’s gaze slid over the land. Ugly, she thought as she took in the jutting shale and the low, spindly plants that masqueraded as foliage. Besides being damned ugly, the place set her nerves on edge. It appeared flat and easy to navigate, but in truth the land held sudden gorges like wounds slashed into the ground. Shale littered the cold, hard landscape. It would be too easy for a hoof to misstep. One mistake, even at this sedate pace, and it would be a simple thing to snap her leg.
The mountains were no better than the land they bordered. Red and intimidating they looked like silent sentinels, which, oddly enough, wasn’t a positive connotation. But maybe mountains were supposed to be intimidating and awe-inspiring. Brighid had little experience with such terrain. The only landmark she could use for comparison was the Blue Tors, the soft, rolling hills that separated the northwestern edge of the Centaur Plains from the rest of Partholon. The Tors didn’t qualify as actual mountains, even though they appeared impressive when compared to the flatness and open freedom of the Centaur Plains. They definitely weren’t anything like the looming red barrier of the Trier range. The Blue Tors were round and so covered with thick, flourishing trees that from a distance they appeared to be a hazy sapphire color. Where the Tors were welcoming and filled with greenery and wildlife, the Trier Mountains were the exact opposite. Brighid eyed the hulking Triers uneasily, once again glad Cu and Ciara had heeded her advice and not tried to take the children through the dangerous hidden pass.
From behind her the shared laughter of two young girls drifted on the endlessly restless wind. The Huntress didn’t need to look back to know what she’d see. Little wings unfurled to almost skim the ground, the girls would have their heads together, giggling with delight over… over… Brighid snorted. Over the Goddess only knew what! How those children could find such joy and blatant happiness when all that surrounded them-all that they’d ever known-was the dismal Wastelands and a struggle for life that would have been daunting for an adult centaur was beyond Brighid. And they were mere children! It amazed her as much as it confused her.
“You’re looking almost as pensive as the warrior,” Ciara said.
Brighid glanced over at the winged woman who had matched her gliding pace with the Huntress’s steady gait.
“That can’t be a compliment.” Brighid jerked her head sardonically at the pole-straight back of Cuchulainn. “I can’t imagine a gloomier traveling partner.”
The warrior had consistently kept ahead of the group so that, even though he led almost one hundred gregarious travelers, he had spent most of the day alone. He spoke as little as possible, and rarely interacted with them. By midday Brighid had given up trying to engage him in conversation and she had decided-reluctantly-that she preferred to travel on the outskirts of the children’s jubilation rather than in the dark cloud that shrouded Cuchulainn.