The Undivided (31 page)

When Ren recovered consciousness, it was to find Sorcha leaning over him. His head was pounding, filled with a chaotic collage of images and thoughts, many of which he was certain weren’t his. He turned his head slightly and saw Ciarán helping Darragh into a sitting position. Brógán was standing behind Darragh, his back to them, as if searching the moonlit sky for something.

‘I can’t see it,’ he was saying. ‘It might be flying in the shadows.’

‘Which almost guarantees it was
sídhe
,’ Sorcha said. She stared intently at Ren. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Jeezus …’ Ren groaned, turning his head to look at Darragh. ‘I thought you said it wouldn’t hurt?’

‘You performed the
Comhroinn
, didn’t you?’ Ciarán asked Darragh. He didn’t look happy about it.

‘It had to be done, Ciarán,’ his brother said, shaking his head as if to clear it. ‘And the sooner the better. How long were we out?’

‘Not long, as far as we can tell,’ Sorcha said, taking Ren’s hand and pulling him to his feet.

He staggered a little before gaining his balance. The tattoo on his palm still burned, but aside from that — and a head full of thoughts that weren’t there before the
Comhroinn
— he felt okay.

‘But long enough for the
Tuatha
to find you, that’s for certain,’ Brógán said.

‘Find us? What is she talking about?’ Ren asked his brother.

‘There was an owl sitting on the battlements when we got up here,’ Ciarán explained, as he helped Darragh to stand.

‘And the
Tuatha
are shapeshifters,’ Ren said, a little surprised he knew instantly what Ciarán meant. ‘You fear it was one of them.’

‘It took off as soon as it saw us,’ Brógán added, scanning the horizon for any sign of it. ‘It’s still out there somewhere. We don’t have much time.’

‘Aye, it’ll be reporting to Marcroy Tarth as soon as it is able,’ Sorcha agreed. ‘Can you stand on your own?’

Ren nodded. ‘I think so. What do we do now?’

Darragh was silent for a moment, and then he looked at Ren. ‘I keep my end of the deal.’

Ren nodded, needing no further explanation. ‘We go back to my reality.’

Sorcha shook her head in disgust. ‘You can’t be serious,
Leath tiarna
.’

‘That was our deal, Sorcha. Are you coming with us?’

‘Whoa! That’s a very bad idea, Darragh,’ Ren said, trying to imagine Sorcha negotiating the intricacies of his world without running someone through. ‘She doesn’t speak the language for one thing. And neither do you, come to think of it.’

‘I do now,’ Darragh said, and Ren realised it was true. What he knew, Darragh knew. ‘I can imprint Sorcha with your English language before we go. What about you, Ciarán, are you coming with us?’

‘You’re not suggesting you go with him, are you, Darragh?’ the warrior asked in alarm.

Ren realised the
Comhroinn
had backfired on Darragh. His brother had been certain that once they knew the same things,
Ren would abandon the idea of going home. But Darragh now had Ren’s memories, too, and suddenly the idea of Ren’s realm entranced Darragh. But as the other half of the Undivided, although he could open rifts at will, Darragh was forbidden to travel to another realm, for fear of being trapped there. This was likely to be his only chance to see another realm. Once he made his appearance at the
Lughnasadh
festival with Rónán by his side, there would be no hope of either of them ever being free. Darragh had only one chance, and Ren didn’t intend to let it go to waste.

‘He’ll be fine,’ Ren said. ‘For the next couple of weeks, if he’s gone from
Sí an Bhrú
, nobody will question it. They’ll put his absence down to his desire to ready himself for the Council of Druids and the power transfer.’

‘It would take both of them out of Marcroy’s reach until
Lughnasadh
,’ Sorcha said, surprising Ren with her support. Was she anxious to see another realm, or just anxious to do anything that might foil the plans of the
Daoine sídhe
envoy? ‘And I will see they come to no harm.’

Darragh suddenly grinned. ‘Come with us, Ciarán. You open rifts for others all the time. Take the chance to be a rift runner, just this once.’

The big warrior shook his head, not so much disagreeing with Ren’s assessment of the danger, or with Sorcha’s offer to protect them, but more expressing his objection to the entire enterprise. Ren realised he knew Ciarán much better now, with the benefit of knowing his brother’s mind.

‘If you insist on this insanity,’ Ciarán said, ‘I’ll need to stay here to open the rift so you can return,
Leath tiarna
. Believe me, I would be of no use to you in the realm Brógán and Niamh described.’

‘You’ll need Amergin’s jewel,’ Ren said. He had a feeling he was stating the blindingly obvious to the Druids but the
information was all so new to him, he felt the need to give it voice, just to be certain he understood the knowledge he’d suddenly acquired.

He glanced at Darragh, wondering how he was coping. Ren suddenly knew much more about the world Darragh lived in. He wondered how Darragh was dealing with the knowledge that filled Ren’s head, such as the PIN to the security gates at home or the easiest way to defeat an orc in
World of Warcraft
.

Darragh gave him a wan smile. It told Ren a great deal. Ren, at least, had the advantage of a rudimentary grasp of history. Darragh’s world was foreign to him, but not completely unfamiliar. The reverse could not be said for his brother. The unfamiliar images crowding Darragh’s mind were probably, for the most part, incomprehensible. It didn’t surprise him that Darragh suddenly felt the need to see Ren’s realm. Without some sort of context for the memories he now owned, he might go mad.

‘You do need his jewel to open the rift, right?’

Ciarán nodded. ‘You understand that now?’

Ren closed his eyes for a moment, as if to sort the chaos in his head. Then he opened them and nodded. ‘The jewels are engraved with symbols the Druids and the
Tuatha
can use to open rifts to other realities. Is that right?’

‘Near enough,’ the older man agreed, and then glanced up at the moon with a frown. ‘Do you have the jewel?’

Darragh nodded. ‘We need to get moving.’

‘You want to do this
now
?’ Ren asked. He had expected they’d try to stall him some more, but Darragh seemed anxious to act on his decision before he changed his mind.

‘If that was a
sídhe
spying for Marcroy, then Marcroy may be on his way here already,’ Sorcha said. ‘I agree. I think this idea is insane, but if we’re going to do it, we need to do it tonight.’

‘So … how come you don’t do it all the time?’ Ren asked as Ciarán started to herd them down the worn stone steps to the
Ráith
’s courtyard.

Darragh was just ahead of him. He glanced back over his shoulder. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Look,’ he said and waved at the yard, which smelled of dung, wood smoke and cooked cabbage. Sorcha grabbed his arm, and indicated he should pull up the hood of his cloak before they went any further. They’d been here for some time, but nobody had been allowed to see his face, even though Sorcha and Brógán assured him the people of Drombeg were completely trustworthy. He lowered his voice. ‘You can jump across realities for fun. Why are you sitting here, living in stone huts and eating gruel? You could be out there jumping around the universe.’

Nobody answered him, which was to be expected, Ren supposed.

They waited for a moment in the shadows of the moonlit yard, while Ciarán went ahead to arrange for them to have the gate opened. This was something the occupants of the
Ráith
would not normally do after moonrise on the night of a full moon. It had been a full moon the night he arrived, Ren realised.

God … I’ve been here nearly a month already …

‘We don’t jump across realms for fun, Rónán,’ Darragh explained softly, while they waited. ‘We do it to find scarce resources, not the least of which are the jewels that make rift running possible.’

‘What about the
sídhe
? Do they do it for fun?’

Sorcha answered him before Darragh could. ‘The
Daoine sídhe
need magic to survive. They can open rifts but can only jump to realms where there is magic, otherwise they perish. Quickest way to kill one, actually, is to shove him through a rift into a realm with no magic.’

‘But Trása was walking around my reality like she owned the
place,’ Ren said. ‘And she had that wretched
Leipreachán
with her.’ Ren looked sharply at Darragh. At the mention of Trása’s name, he felt something from his brother and it felt suspiciously like anguish. He wasn’t sure why his brother would have that reaction. He thought it was odd, given he was now supposed to know everything his brother knew. When Ren quickly scanned Darragh’s memories for thoughts of lovers, it wasn’t Trása who appeared, but a drop-dead gorgeous brunette named Brydie. Maybe Darragh had locked some memories away so they couldn’t be accessed, or put them out of mind to protect himself from pain.

For the first time, Ren really noticed the vague but constant link between himself and Darragh. He could sense his brother’s presence and was aware of his emotions. It was a bizarre feeling and Ren wasn’t sure he liked it. He wished he could spend a bit more time searching his brother’s memories.

‘Trása’s a halfblood,’ Sorcha explained in a low voice, unaware of Ren and Darragh’s inner turmoil. ‘She’s human enough to survive in a magicless world.’

‘And we don’t have time to stand around here discussing it, either,’ Darragh pointed out, in a fairly unsubtle attempt to change the subject. ‘We have a few hours of darkness left. I’d like to make the jump before sunrise. Look, they’re opening the gate. Keep your face in the shadows,’ he added to Ren. ‘It’s bad enough they know I’m here. We don’t want to give the good people of Drombeg anything else to talk about.’

Ciarán signalled them and they ran toward the gate, Ren with his face shadowed by the deep cowl he wore. Once they were through, Ciarán thanked the gatekeeper and they turned for the open road. Drombeg’s stone circle was about half a mile from the
ráith.
It would only take a few minutes to get there, but they would be in the open and under the scrutiny of Marcroy’s shape-shifting spies the whole time.

Sorcha led them down the road at a run. Ren hoisted the rough cloak up to allow himself a longer stride, and drew level with his twin, who was running like he trained for this, three or four times a week.

‘I was thinking,’ Ren said, panting a little as he ran, ‘when we get to my reality … it would be useful … if we open the rift in a circle that’ll bring us as close as possible to home.’

‘And where is home?’ Sorcha asked, as she ran with an easy, ground-eating pace that seemed to take no effort at all.

‘Dublin,’ Ren told them, not so much for Darragh’s benefit — he already knew it — but for Sorcha’s.

‘Where is that?’ the warrior asked.

‘
Eblana
,’ Brógán told her, panting even more heavily than Ren. Perhaps all those months in Ren’s reality had softened him. ‘And Rónán … has a good point. You’ll need to get … as close as possible … to the city.’

‘Aren’t you coming with us?’

Brógán shook his head. ‘You don’t need me to show you the way around your own realm, Rónán.’

‘The owl’s back!’ Ciarán warned from behind them.

They picked up speed, although Ren thought five humans on foot had little chance of escaping a bird in flight. And there was no proof this owl was a
Daoine sídhe
spy, just a suspicion. It wasn’t as if owls didn’t fly at night.

Ren heard the bird hooting. He began to think the others might be right. He didn’t think owls hooted so insistently on the wing. They hunted without making a sound. No hunting bird was going to betray its approach with a shriek.

The creature screeched at them again. Ren was certain it was hooting
at
them. The white owl flew in low over their heads as they ran and then circled and came back for another run, like a fighter plane making a strafing pass.

The circle was only a few hundred yards away. Ren’s thighs
burned as they scrambled up the slope. Darragh was already reaching inside his shirt for the engraved jewel that would allow them to open a rift to another world.

‘If it’s a
sídhe
, why isn’t it going back to report to Marcroy?’ Sorcha shouted. She beat at the swooping creature with her sword just as they entered the stone circle. Darragh tossed the ruby to Ciarán who ran to the stone platform in the centre, jumped onto it and closed his eyes, the jewel grasped firmly in his fist.

The Druid warrior held his fist toward the sky. Ren felt the magic surging around them, felt the rift opening even though he couldn’t see it yet, and then the circle filled with red lightning, arcing between the symbols carved into the standing stones. The owl came around for another swoop as the rift opened. The hair on Ren’s body stood upright. Ren found himself staring at a vast expanse of greenery on the other side of the rift, through an opening bordered in red lightning.

‘Go!’ Ciarán yelled at him.

Ren was about to jump, when he remembered that Sorcha couldn’t speak modern English. In his reality she’d be lost and probably dangerous, as well. Once they were through the rift, the magic would be gone.

He turned to Darragh who was right on his heels. ‘Sorcha!’

With the link they now shared, no further explanation was necessary. Darragh grabbed the warrior by the arm, swung her around to face him and slapped her forehead with his tattooed palm, holding it there for a few seconds, until she collapsed in his arms.

‘She’ll be fine,’ he shouted at Ren. ‘Go!’

Ren did as his brother ordered and jumped through the rift, and right behind him came Darragh with the unconscious Sorcha in his arms — who hopefully now spoke English. Darragh shouted the all clear to Ciarán who gave them a short wave and
lowered his hand. The lightning-touched edges of the rift began to shrink. In the distance, the owl screeched as if in fury at being left behind.