“What if I don’t want to recover?” he said slowly. “Maybe I should have died with her, Brighid.”
Everything within the centaur became still. How she answered Cuchulainn might change whether the warrior lived or died. Epona, help me to say the right thing, she beseeched silently. And, like a candle flaring to light in an unused room, she suddenly understood what to say.
“Maybe you should be dead-maybe you shouldn’t. I don’t know, but I do think I know how you can decide for sure.” Brighid was careful to sound calm and matter-of-fact, like she was discussing whether they should hunt deer or boar.
“How?” His voice was ragged.
“Well, it’s really simple. You’re not yourself. So, as you already admitted, you don’t trust your own judgment. But if you fix your shattered soul, you’ll be able to rely on your own instincts again. Then if you choose death, you’ll know your choice is valid.”
“You make it sound simple, but I have no idea how to go about fixing something I didn’t even realize was broken.”
“Neither do I. All I know is what I’ve observed from my mother, and that was too many years ago to count.” She didn’t need her Shaman-inherited instinct to know that it was best not to mention that she and Ciara had been discussing the state of his spirit that very day. “But I do remember that she helped those whose souls had been shattered to become whole again.”
“I don’t want any Shaman meddling with my spirit, shattered or not.”
“Then how about me?”
“You?”
Brighid shrugged. “As you said, I do have ‘that Shaman affinity nonsense,’ which I inherited from my mother. But I’m decidedly not a Shaman. So how much meddling could I actually do?”
A bark of real laughter escaped from him, and for an instant he sounded like the young, rakish warrior she had once known. “Shouldn’t the question be how much fixing could you actually do?”
“I think the question should be how much do you trust me?” Brighid retorted.
“You’ve proven yourself trustworthy many times, Huntress. If I have made you believe otherwise, it is due to my failing, not your own.”
“Then will you trust me to try to fix your soul?”
The warrior hesitated. His face was no longer devoid of expression, and Brighid could clearly see the emotions that warred within him. Finally he met her gaze. “Yes.”
Brighid didn’t think that hearing any one word had ever made her feel quite so much like she wanted to run in the opposite direction. Instead she jerked her head in a quick, acknowledging nod.
“Now what do I do?” Cu asked leerily.
“You give me your oath that you won’t do anything to harm yourself until your spirit is whole again.”
“What if you can’t fix it?”
Brighid drew a tight breath. “If I can’t fix it, then your oath would not be binding. You’d be free to do as you will.”
“Then you have my oath.”
Cuchulainn held out his arm and Brighid grasped his forearm in the warrior’s way of binding an oath. His grip was strong and he felt so alive. She hoped desperately that her instincts hadn’t just blundered her into a suicide pact with the brother of her best friend.
“Where do we go from here?” Cuchulainn asked.
“Back to camp. I’ll take the first watch over the fire. You get some sleep. I’ll wake you when the moon is at half point.”
“What does that have to do with fixing my shattered soul?”
“Not a damn thing,” she muttered. “But it’ll give me time to think about the mess I’ve gotten us into.”
As they walked side by side back to the camp, Brighid heard Cu chuckling. She might very well be helping his suicide, but at least she was amusing him.
Her family had been right about one thing. Humans certainly were odd creatures.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Brighid fed the fire another compacted log of moss and goat dung, and grunted in wordless approval at the heat that radiated from the flame. The night was cold and the wind was brutal, but within the tight circle of tents there was warmth and light and a more than adequate measure of comfort. The Huntress wondered silently whether the strength of the fire was because of Ciara’s affinity for the spirit of flame or the right mixture of goat dung.
“A little of both,” Ciara said, joining the Huntress.
“Are you practicing Shaman mind reading on me?”
The winged woman smiled. “No, of course not, but I have always been good at reading expressions. Your face did not hide the question on your mind.” She gestured at the neat pile of fuel. “It burns well, and it lasts long. But the truth is that my presence intensifies its natural attributes. Were I not with the camp, it would still be good fuel.” Her dark eyes sparkled. “But because I am with the camp it is excellent fuel.”
“You’d be good to have along on a cold winter’s hunt,” Brighid said.
Ciara’s laughter made the flames leap and crackle. “Bringing fire is the only way I would be helpful on a hunt. I’m hopelessly inept at tracking, and I cannot bear killing of any kind. I even dislike harvesting grain or pulling wild onions from the earth. You would find me a poor hunting companion.”
Brighid snorted. “That’s how I feel about attempting to be a Shaman. Inept is an excellent way to describe me. When I spoke to Cuchulainn I felt like a fish attempting to nest in a tree.”
Ciara’s expression saddened and she sighed heavily. “If he would not listen to you then he is more lost than I believed.”
Brighid glanced sharply at the tent Cu had so recently disappeared into. “Walk with me,” she said, moving away from the warrior’s tent. Still, she lowered her voice. “He listened.”
Ciara’s eyes widened with her returning smile. Brighid held up a hand.
“Don’t go all happy on me. Yes, he agreed to let me help him. But he only agreed to it so that he could be whole again and decide with a clear mind to kill himself.”
“When his soul is no longer shattered the warrior will not choose death.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I feel it here.” Ciara placed one slender hand over her heart. “When Cuchulainn is whole, he will love again.”
Brighid didn’t want to destroy the Shaman’s optimistic delusion, so she stayed silent. She knew Cu better than Ciara knew him. She could imagine him healed and returning to his life as one of Partholon’s most respected warriors, but loving again? She thought about how he had looked at Brenna and the joy that had blazed from him. Cu’s soul might heal. His heart was a different matter.
“But one step should be taken at a time. You must not rush the process and get ahead of yourself,” Ciara said.
“And just exactly what is our next step?”
“You mean your next step.”
“No, I mean our. I’m totally out of my element here. It’s like hunting for you, remember? I’ll do it because I have to, but you have to guide me through the steps.”
Children called to the centaur and the Shaman as the two traced their way slowly around the circular camp. Soon they found it impossible to converse without constant cheerful interruptions.
“Shouldn’t you check on the outer perimeter?” Ciara asked, smiling wryly as yet another child’s sleepy voice drifted through the night.
“This time you did read my mind,” Brighid said, thinking that the wind and the darkness would be less annoying than the exuberance of seventy children.
The wind slapped cold and hard against Brighid’s face the moment they left the tight shelter of the tents. The moon’s light was still weak and far away, only illuminating the Wastelands’ bleak emptiness.
“By the Goddess, this is a wretched place!” The Huntress shivered and rubbed her arms.
“It is true that it is harsh, but there is some warmth and beauty here.” Ciara searched the ground around them until she found a thin, oddly light-colored twig that was barely the length of a centaur’s hock. Ciara crouched and gently screwed it into the hard, rocky soil so that it stood on its own, like an anemic sprout. Then she whispered something Brighid couldn’t hear and blew on the twig. It responded by bursting into a white-hot flame that flickered crazily in the wind but showed no sign of sputtering or dimming. Ciara sat, spreading her wings so that she blocked the worst of the wind and trapped some of the flame’s heat. She motioned for Brighid to sit beside her, and the Huntress folded gracefully to her knees, shaking her head in awe at the purity of the flame that was so white it was almost silver.