The bear roared and reeled backward, deep gouges slashed across its snout. The crow dove again, raking and clawing. David snatched up the fallen sword, and before he could breathe or think or regret one more ghost to haunt his dreams, he drove the blade through the enforcer’s chest. Pulled it free with a sucking yank and slashed downward, slicing deep into the bear’s shoulder and neck.

Blood gushed from the bear’s throat and it slumped to the ground, its eyes glazing as death approached, its great hairy body fading in a rush of shimmering air back into the naked pallor of a man. Beskin stared up into the hard sky and the girl in her cloak of crow feathers. Blood spilled from his mouth and his chest as his life ebbed. “It’s true. Lucan lives.”

Badb returned his black stare. “He never died.”

Crumpling to his knees, David retched his stomach empty. His body shook with tremors, his head crawling with voices, dry and crackling, smooth and silky sweet, hard as a smithy’s anvil. Fey magic sizzled the air, and he gripped his skull as if his brain might leak out his ears.

“The enforcer is dead. They will see you the rest of the way to Dunsgathaic,” Badb said, her voice coming from far away and yet echoing through his shattered skull.

David looked up to see a group of gray-robed women surrounding them. Old, seamed faces and gnarled fingers; plump, young cheeks and curious stares. One stepped forward. Small as a child, she walked with the grace of a dancer. Her golden eyes shone like the sun. Her potent Fey-blood magic nearly doubled him over. “The stones will see us home,” she said.

“I can’t,” he tried to explain. “I mustn’t.”

“It is for us to maintain the path between. You must bear her body.”

“The dream . . . you don’t understand. I’ll kill her. Badb, tell her . . .” But the Fey had flown, the crow no more than a black speck in the sky.

“Child of the clans, bring her or leave her, but you will come with us to Dunsgathaic. You, the Ard-siur wishes to see.”

Weak from illness and blood loss, he couldn’t fight. Besides, there was no point. He knew a superior force when he saw one. And these, for all their soft words and slender figures, were as single-minded as any of Napoleon’s officers. Marshaling his last ounce of strength, he scooped Callista up in his arms as they tied a rope threaded with golden and pearlescent strands to his wrist, the other end knotted around the wrist of the young priestess.

“The connection will carry us together through the void of between. Do not fear the dark. Do not heed the cries. Do not speak to those who would lure you from the path. And whatever happens, do not loosen the knot binding us together.”

“What lies within the between?”

“The abyss where the Unseelie dwell, the soulless and the damned and the forgotten.”

He limped with his precious burden behind them up the hill to the ridge and the stone circle. Stepped into the waves and wash of Fey magic captured there. The midnight black took them where none of his Imnada senses worked. He was blind and deaf to the emptiness around him. He felt only the weight of Callista’s body in his arms. Only the heat of the rope taut against his wrist. The force of magic tore his words away, then his breath, drove his stomach into his throat, clawed at his mind with a thousand screaming voices.

But at least in the emptiness of the abyss, none could hear his painful screams and he might weep without being seen.

19

Warmth woke her. Blankets tucked to her chin, a hot brick wrapped in flannel against her feet, and a cheerful fire dancing in the hearth combined to ease the throb of thawing tired limbs. Then memory flooded her sluggish brain and she sat up with a cry. A hand, spotted and knobbed with age, but deceptively strong, pressed her back against the pillows. A face swam into view above her, but it was not the one she yearned for. Instead wrinkles lined a pleasant countenance and crouched in the corners of two pale blue eyes. “Easy, lass. ’Tis all right. You’re out of the wicked snow and warm as toast within the walls of Dunsgathaic. None will harm you.”

She’d arrived on Skye? But how? Callista remembered nothing after falling beneath the horse’s flailing hooves. Her memories were all of snow and ice and blood and death. And a red-hot slash of pain in her head before the black swallowed her.

“Where’s David? Is he here? Did he . . .” She couldn’t bring herself to ask the question.

“The shapechanger lives,” the woman answered, though her gaze grew serious, and the smile fled from her face. “Rest now. I’ll return when you’re summoned before the head of our order, the Ard-siur.”

She wanted to argue. Wanted to wrestle the sister aside and search for David, but her body refused to cooperate. Her brain was as muddled as her memories, and her legs and arms seemed weighted to the soft mattress.

She slept and woke again. The shadows had moved, and the sky beyond the window was a crisp blue. She gazed around at the room for the first time noticing the scattered rugs upon the floor and the comfortable chairs drawn up to a tiled hearth. A cabinet contained a pitcher and washstand. Another table was scattered with curios and curiosities. A bird’s nest. A bowl of sea-washed pebbles. A vase of celadon holding skeletal winter branches.

And, set upon a far cabinet by the door, a familiar mahogany box, the carved lid worn smooth with generations of hands running over it, the round brass lock and hinges as shiny as if new forged.

She rose from bed to take up the box. Set it back on the coverlet beside her, positioning the tumblers and springing the lock. Key, Summoner, and Blade; all as she’d left them. Her mother’s letters still nestled in the corner. Callista pulled them from their resting place. Felt the crinkle of the thin paper under her fingers, the faded ink, the frayed ribbon.

“I’m finally here, Mother,” she whispered to no one. “I’m in Dunsgathaic.”

Wind rattled the casement and moaned round the door, a lonely sound that sent worry curdling unbidden up through her. She swallowed back a hard knot of fear. The sisters wouldn’t harm David. But what of the Amhas-draoi? They lived within these walls as well. The battle-queen Scathach’s army of warriors and mages were sworn to protect and defend. Would they see David as a threat? Would they recall the story of Lucan Kingkiller and take their revenge?

Bypassing the robe hanging over a chair, she scrambled into her own discarded gown drying upon a rack before the fire and wound her hair up into a knot. The mirror over the mantel showed her a peaked face of drawn skin and dark hollows. It also revealed the tremble in her fingers as she buttoned the last button and the nervous pulling at her lip with her bottom teeth.

In a moment of childish longing, she slid the packet of old letters into her pocket as a reassuring talisman against nervous uncertainty. These were all she had left of her mother, a last link to the heartbroken woman, forever torn between love for the family into which she’d been born and the family she’d built together with the man of her dreams. A last link to the last true home Callista had ever known. These, even more than the bells, were the true treasure kept safe in that box.

The door opened, a draft chilling the back of her neck and guttering the sconces. The priestess didn’t even lift an eyebrow when she saw her charge up and dressed. She merely motioned for Callista to follow. “Ard-siur is ready for you now.”

“What of Mr. St. Leger? I refuse to budge a step until you tell me where he is.”

“All your questions will be answered when you see the Ard-siur.”

“I want them answered now.” Callista folded her arms over her chest.

The priestess’s pose of serenity cracked and an irritated frown passed over her face. “The shifter is safe and in one piece, which is more than you’ll be if you keep the head of our order waiting.”

Without another word, she led the way through a long stone passage and down a steep winding flight of steps. Callista had no choice but to follow. She stared with wide eyes as they crossed a broad, muddy courtyard. A group of sisters stood in conversation. A heavy-set priestess in a dirty apron carried a basket on her shoulder. Another trailed a tail of four young girls like ducklings. Two bandraoi mounted on mules waited among a knot of laborers with shouldered picks and shovels and a man leading a bullock.

This would be her home from now on. These women would replace the family she had lost.