The Undivided (30 page)

It was weeks before Darragh saw Rónán again. It was weeks before he managed to achieve something he’d never thought possible.

Darragh finally managed to be alone with his twin brother.

Rónán was much more comfortable with the language now. His Druid gift for mastering tongues held true — even in the other reality — and he’d been taught a version of Gaelige at school. Weeks of speaking little else and it was already hard to detect any hint of an accent.

They climbed to the battlements of the small
Ráith
where they could talk in private. The moon was full and the skies were clear, so clear that the chilly night was lit brighter than the main hall of
Sí an Bhrú
. The sigh of waves breaking against the cliffs a few miles away provided a soothing background to their first real and meaningful conversation.

‘Does it seem any less strange to you, brother,’ Darragh asked, as he glanced over the edge of the weathered, mossy stones of the tower to the ground eighty feet below, ‘now you’ve been here a while?’

‘Not as strange as having someone who looks just like me calling me brother.’ Rónán turned his gaze to the sea where the moonlight turned the occasional breaking wave into a
luminescent foam that lasted a few fleeting moments, before being swallowed by the black waters of the straits between the coast and a small island just offshore.

It was impossible for Darragh to tell what Rónán was thinking — yet.

‘You’ll have to forgive me.’ Darragh smiled. ‘I don’t seem to be able to help myself.’

Rónán shrugged. ‘Not a lot of this makes any sense to me.’

The comment puzzled Darragh. With Rónán returned, the world had never made better sense in his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

Rónán leaned against the stonework, his expression grave. ‘Okay. Let’s start with the magical power thing. If I have this awesome ability to channel magic, how come this is the first I’ve heard of it? How come I haven’t been turning people into toads all my life?’

‘Didn’t Ciarán explain that to you?’

Rónán shook his head. ‘Ciarán’s been mostly concerned with finding ever new and creative ways of running me through with his sword. So has Sorcha. She has an interesting interpretation of
protection
, I have to say.’

Darragh smiled. ‘They are under orders to teach you how to protect yourself.’

Rónán raised a brow at Darragh. ‘So how come nobody’s been instructing me how to zap my foes into oblivion with magic instead of risking life and limb trying to teach me how to use a sword?’

‘Well, for one, it’s not possible to turn a human into an animal. Only the
Tuatha
can do that, because they are shapeshifters by nature. And not all threats in this world are magical. Besides, the Treaty of
Tír Na nÓg
forbids us from using
Daoine sídhe
magic to kill.’

Rónán threw his hands up. ‘Oh, well that helps.’

Darragh smiled even wider. He couldn’t help it. Rónán was so like him. ‘It must be very hard for you, brother,’ he said, ‘to come to terms with all this. You’ve spent most of your life in a reality where there is barely enough magic to sustain a lesser
sídhe
.’

‘What about the dreams?’ Rónán asked, his eyes narrowing.

‘Did you have a particular dream in mind?’

‘Ciarán says you … we … have the gift of Sight. That we can dream the future.’

Darragh nodded slowly. ‘That’s true.’

‘Do you ever dream about me? About us? In the future?’

There was something in Rónán’s tone that warned Darragh to tread carefully. ‘Sometimes,’ he said.

Rónán was silent for a time and then shook his head. ‘
There’s
a reason for me to go back to my reality and stay put, right there.’

So he’s had the same dream
, Darragh thought. He’d suspected as much.

‘The future is a fluid thing, Rónán. The dreams don’t always come true.’

‘I don’t know that I can stay, Darragh,’ Rónán said.

‘I know,’ Darragh said, holding up his hand to forestall the conversation. ‘And we’ll discuss your return to the other realm in a moment. I just want you to know what you might be giving up, if you decide to go back.’

‘So far, all I think I’ll be giving up is body lice, crappy food, and people who want to kill me,’ Rónán said, frowning.

Darragh sighed. He understood his twin’s frustration but knew that once Rónán had shared the
Comhroinn
, he would understand. ‘You have so much more than that awaiting you here, Rónán. You just don’t know how to access the power yet.’

‘And how long is it going to take me to
learn
how to access it?’

‘Not long at all,’ Darragh assured him. ‘I’ll share the information with you and you can share what you know with me.’

‘That could take forever.’

Darragh realised Rónán had no idea what he was talking about. ‘We’re more than twins, brother. We are psychically linked, which is why we manifest each other’s injuries.’

‘Yeah …’ Rónán said. ‘About that. I get the cuts. I’ve had enough lessons with Ciarán to learn he’s not very forgiving, so I get how they happened. But dude, back home, they had to pump my stomach a couple of times. What was that about?’

Darragh’s smile faded. ‘There are those who resent the power of the Undivided and who would give much to see us destroyed.’

Rónán rolled his eyes. ‘You mean somebody tried to
assassinate
you? You know, you might want to think about coming back to my reality and staying there with me. This place is frigging dangerous.’

‘Being in a different realm doesn’t alter the nature of the link between us, Rónán. If one of us dies, the other will suffer the same fate, usually within a day.’

Rónán was silent for a time, and then he asked, ‘I thought it was only Faerie silver that could harm us both? What did they poison you with?’

‘We are the Undivided, Rónán,’ Darragh reminded him. ‘Normal poison doesn’t affect us.’

Rónán nodded in understanding. ‘Because Druids can do that magic healing thing?’

‘Exactly.’

‘So these guys who tried to poison you … us … they used what? A magic potion?’

‘In a manner of speaking. They were somewhat put out, by all accounts, when it didn’t work.’

‘And it didn’t work,’ Rónán said, as he began to grasp their
situation, ‘because in my reality, there wasn’t any magic, it was just a poison they were able to counteract with twenty-first-century medicine.’

Darragh looked at him oddly. ‘They only have
twenty-one
centuries in the other realm?’

‘We count the years from the birth of Christ. What year is it here?’

‘It is the year four-thousand-thirty-five. We count our calendar from the construction of
Choir Gaure
.’

Rónán looked at him in surprise. ‘Stonehenge? Really? We were always taught at school that it predated the rise of the Druids by a good fifteen hundred years.’

‘I didn’t say we
built
it, brother. Just that we count our calendar from its completion.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘By
Danú
, there is so much you and I have to tell each other. I cannot begin to comprehend the world where you were raised — although once we’ve performed the
Comhroinn
things will be much clearer for both of us.’

‘
Comhroinn?
’

‘It is how Druids share what we know. It is what preserves our oral history. It allows us to teach, to impart vast amounts of information, to know each other completely.’

Rónán pushed off the battlements, looking worried. ‘You mean you do the
Comhroinn
and you get to see everything going on in my head?’

Darragh nodded. ‘I will know what you know, Rónán. More importantly, you will know what I know.’ He smiled and offered his outstretched hand. ‘At the very least, it means you’ll be able to give Ciarán a run for his money in your next training bout.’

Rónán took a step backward in alarm. ‘Whoa! You wanna do it
now
?’

‘It’s imperative we share the
Comhroinn
as soon as possible,’ Darragh said, uncertain as to why Rónán was resisting. ‘You are
one half of the Undivided, Rónán. Without the knowledge to access your latent power, we are both at perilous risk.’ Darragh realised this was going to take something more than a hollow reassurance to convince Rónán to participate, and without his co-operation, there was no point in trying. The
Comhroinn
only worked if both parties wanted it to. The slightest resistance and it would fail.

‘Without it,’ Darragh added carefully, watching for his brother’s reaction, ‘we cannot risk returning to the other realm to help your friend. If you want to strike a deal to heal your friend, that is the cost of my co-operation.’

Rónán fixed his gaze on his brother, his eyes narrowing. ‘Are you telling me that if I let you do this … sharing thing … you’ll open a rift back to my reality —’

‘
This
is your realm, Rónán.’

‘Yeah … whatever. But you’ll do it? You’ll take me back so we can help Hayley?’

‘Does she need your help?’

Rónán seemed a little confused by the question. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve been gone from the other reality for weeks, Rónán. In your world, she may have recovered already and may need no help from you at all. Or she may be dead, in which case she definitely doesn’t need your help. Are you prepared to risk everything here to find that out?’

Rónán was silent for a moment and then looked straight at Darragh. ‘If you were me, what would you do?’

Darragh didn’t hesitate. ‘Whatever I felt was my duty.’

‘Yeah … well that’s fine for you, brother. You have a lifetime of duty indoctrinated into you. The people I care about the most are back in another reality, and when I left, one of them was on life-support. My sense of duty isn’t telling me I ought to be here, it’s telling me I need to help Hayley.’

Darragh understood exactly what Rónán was feeling. But he was concerned his brother still didn’t appreciate the magnitude of what he was asking. ‘You do realise, don’t you, that it’s not as simple as stepping through the rift, finding your friend and healing her, Rónán? You do understand that we’d have to bring her back here?’

‘Why … oh, because magic doesn’t work in my reality.’

Darragh nodded. ‘And there is a strong possibility the cure will only
last
while she’s in this realm,’ he warned. ‘If we heal her magically and then send her back before her own body has accepted the imposition of a magical cure, the healing will not hold without
sídhe
magic to sustain it.’

Rónán pondered that possibility for a moment, and leaned again on the cold granite blocks that made up the
Ráith
’s single tower. In the sky, silhouetted against the moon, a lone white owl swooped and dived, probably spotting a fieldmouse for its dinner. ‘So, what you’re saying,’ Rónán said after a moment, ‘is if we bring Hayley to this reality, she might be stuck here for a while?’

‘She may well be stuck here forever, brother. Of course,’ Darragh added reassuringly, ‘given that in our world she will be whole again, it may not be a difficult choice for her to make.’

Rónán pulled a face. ‘Funny how
she
gets a choice, but I don’t.’

Darragh felt sorry for his brother, but found himself growing a little impatient. If Rónán would only allow the
Comhroinn
there would be no need for such a discussion. All of this, he would instinctively understand. ‘You were not given a choice when you were thrown through the rift, Rónán. Bringing you home is redressing an injustice, not perpetrating one.’

‘From where you stand, maybe.’

‘Was the world you left behind so wonderful?’ Darragh asked. ‘Do you have such a bright life awaiting you there? What
did
your immediate future hold?’

Rónán suddenly grinned and turned to look at Darragh. ‘Not much more than mung beans and dog shite, actually, when you get down to it.’

‘Then what are you afraid of?’

Rónán shrugged. ‘I don’t know. You’d have to see my reality to understand, I suppose. Do we have a deal?’

Darragh nodded. He didn’t want to risk losing Rónán again, but realised that without some sort of reassurance, Rónán would never allow the
Comhroinn
, which needed his full co-operation to work. Once they had shared everything about each other, Darragh figured Rónán would be much more amenable to reason. Hayley’s fate might not seem so important when Rónán truly understood what was at stake.

‘This sharing thing,’ Rónán asked. ‘You’re not going to tell anybody else what goes on in my head, are you? I mean … at times … it’s a pretty messed up place.’

Darragh shook his head. ‘You will know me as well as I know you, Rónán. I will trust you with the same sort of secrets with which you trust me.’

‘So we’ll be what? Telepaths?’

‘Unfortunately, no. But we will have an understanding, a sympathy.’

‘Will it hurt?’

‘No.’

‘Will I be a Druid after it’s done?’

‘You are a Druid now. But you’ll have the knowledge of how to tap into your power,’ Darragh told him. ‘Competence comes with time and practice, I’m afraid.’

In the distance, an owl hooted, a plaintive cry that sent an unaccustomed shiver down Darragh’s spine.

‘Let’s do it, then,’ Rónán said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them, as if he still needed to convince himself. ‘How do we do it?’

‘Give me your hand,’ Darragh told him.

Rónán didn’t have to ask which one. He held up his tattooed palm. Darragh took a step closer and then placed his own tattooed palm against his brother’s hand.

There was a moment of intense pain, like a bolt of lightning shooting between them, and then a whirlpool opened before them and the brothers plunged into darkness.

The only sound Darragh registered as he fell was the strange, plaintive hooting of a lone white owl that had come to perch on the battlements.