Authors: Jennifer Fallon
There was no safe answer to that. Ren shrugged. ‘I mean you no harm, Chishihero-
sama
,’ he said, figuring if her men addressed her as that, it might be safe for him to do so. ‘I only wish to find my way home.’
‘And where is your home?’
‘
Eburana
,’ Ren said, guessing the alternate-reality Japanese name for the Dublin his brother was familiar with was near enough for this realm. He’d decided one thing already — this was a reality steeped in magic. There would be no advanced technology here, and certainly no history that might have given rise to the Republic of Ireland as he knew it. Dublin was an ancient city, so it was possible, even in this realm, that they had heard of it. Besides, the answer would tell him if the exploding rift that had separated him from Hayley had jumped him and Trása into a reality in roughly the same geographical location as the one they’d stepped through on the Castle Golf Club course, or if they’d been thrown across the world and landed in this reality’s equivalent of Japan.
The woman struck him, backhanding Ren across his face. Her large silver ring sliced his cheek. ‘You mock me at your peril,
Youkai.
’
Ren fell backwards with the force of the blow. His cheek was stinging and he could feel warm blood welling along the cut. The warriors stepped back and did nothing to aid him.
‘Shall I arrange to send him to Tsubasa-sensei, Chishihero-
sama
?’ Hayato asked with great deference, avoiding Ren’s eye and acting as if nothing had happened. Ren didn’t know who this woman was in the grand scheme of things in this reality, but she commanded the loyalty of these samurai. He struggled to his feet, determined not to be struck again by Chishihero or anybody else.
Chishihero studied Ren thoughtfully for a few moments and then she shook her head. The mastiff eyed him like he was dinner. ‘No, Hayato … I cannot risk it. Letting the
Youkai
escape was bad enough. A
yabangin Youkai
with a magical brand and no master is far too dangerous.’
‘If we confined it …’ Hayato began rather tentatively.
The woman let out a short, sceptical laugh. ‘Confine it, Hayato? You and your incompetent minions have already proven once this evening that you can’t contain a magical beast. I don’t have the time to be responsible for its imprisonment and ensure it doesn’t escape like the other one. If I leave the plantation now, we’ll never meet this season’s
washi
quota and I will risk nothing that will incur the wrath of the Empresses.’ She cast her gaze over Ren again and shrugged, turning on her heel, saying, ‘I’ll send the
Sensei
its hand for study and a report on the incident after you’ve killed it. Come, Kiba.’ The mastiff dutifully turned, following her back to the house.
‘Whoa!’ Ren cried, when he realised the ‘it’ she was planning to murder and dismember was
him
. ‘Kill me? Send bits of me for study? Are you serious?’ He looked around at the samurai.
Perhaps they were smiling because this was their boss’s idea of a sick joke, but he knew it wasn’t. The woman would have slit Trása’s throat without blinking. He shouldn’t be surprised she was ready to dish out the same fate to him.
‘Don’t let it speak,’ Chishihero warned Hayato. ‘It has magic. Give it a voice and it will enchant you and your men and before you know it, you’ll be letting this one escape, too.’
‘Fuck you, lady,’ Ren said in English.
Chishihero glared at Ren, but didn’t respond. Instead, she turned on her heel with Kiba at her side and began to walk back toward the main house with the small mincing steps her kimono and wooden sandals forced her to take, leaving odd tracks in the raked sand of the yard.
Hayato gave his men a hand signal, which must have meant something along the lines of ‘kill the prisoner now’ because as soon as he made it, the samurai closed in on Ren with bared
katanas
.
Ren’s heart began to gallop as he realised he had only seconds to live.
He refused to accept his life could end like this. Ren had just discovered he had a twin brother. He’d just found out he was a Druid prince capable of wielding unthinkable magic. He’d just pushed his best friend through a dimensional rift to an alternate reality to cure her blindness. He’d just discovered his true home.
He’d just seen Trása morph into a bird and fly away …
It wasn’t going to end like this.
Not here. Not now.
The samurai were closing in, their blades reflecting the torchfire in the courtyard. They were seconds away from slitting his throat.
Ren’s head filled with the sound of blood rushing through his ears. His eyesight began to blur as the overwhelming desire to
be somewhere else overtook him. As the first touch of cold steel kissed the flesh of his throat, the world disappeared and the pain in Ren’s head exploded into a darkness so intense he was sure he must be dead.
Brydie’s imprisonment in the amethyst jewel where she had been trapped by the
djinni
, Jamaspa, had robbed her of all sense of time. There was no day, no night, no mealtimes, no desire to sleep. She dozed off at times, but that was more from boredom than from a need to rest.
She knew her captor now, although his intentions remained vague. The
djinni
who had trapped her in this jewel claimed he meant her no harm, but neither was he inclined to release her, even when she couldn’t offer him a satisfactory answer to his questions.
Jamaspa asked many questions — some didn’t make sense but others were specific. She answered all of them honestly, because she couldn’t see any reason not to. The
djinni
wanted to know where Darragh went at night. More importantly, he wanted to know how Darragh had managed to sneak out of his chamber undetected. Brydie knew the answer to neither question, but her repeated denials made no impact on the
djinni
. Jamaspa was convinced she simply couldn’t recall and that keeping her trapped inside the jewelled brooch Marcroy Tarth had given her on the way to
Sí an Bhrú
would somehow jog her memory.
Brydie had no idea how long she’d been trapped. Time was meaningless here. She could pace restlessly when she grew
bored with waiting. But when she tried to count her steps in order to calculate how small she now was, or how large her prison might be, there seemed to be a different number of steps each time.
Was anybody on the outside missing her? Queen Álmhath had left for Temair days, perhaps weeks, ago. She might be wondering why she hadn’t heard from her court maiden. More likely, the queen believed Brydie was so besotted with Darragh of the Undivided that she’d had neither the time nor the inclination to send a message to her mistress to let her know if her mission to conceive Darragh’s child had been successful.
And here in
Sí an Bhrú
? Would anybody miss her?
Probably not.
She was a stranger in the Druid stronghold and she had spent little time in the common areas of the fortress before she’d moved into Darragh’s chamber. Brydie’s foolish decision to play along with Darragh’s deception by covering for him when he sneaked out to search for his lost rift runner was costing her dearly, and not just because it made Jamaspa believe she knew more than she did. It was likely that most people here barely remembered her brief visit to
Sí an Bhrú
.
How would they know she was missing if they didn’t remember she’d been here at all?
Brydie thought it odd that she wasn’t more lonely or frightened. She figured the spell Jamaspa had used to trap her in Marcroy’s amethyst brooch had suspended all her bodily functions as well. Brydie felt as if she was breathing, but surely there was no air inside this tiny space. She doubted she was
actually
breathing, just going through the motions, protected by the enchantment that had trapped her here. She was never hungry, never thirsty and not once had she felt the urge to evacuate her bladder or bowels — something of a relief given the tiny space she occupied.
She could tell when he was coming, too. Jamaspa, from what she had seen of the
djinni
, could move about like a wisp of smoke. He seemed to have the ability to travel in and out of the jewel at will. When he was back, she could feel him, and see him, too, in a manner of speaking. Although he often refused to appear in a form on which she could focus, she knew when he was here, even if she couldn’t look him in the eye. The amethyst would darken to a purple so deep it made the night seem bright. When Jamaspa spoke, his voice was so resonant and commanding it sent shivers down her spine.
Brydie could feel him coming now, her skin prickling with gooseflesh.
What does he want this time?
she wondered.
Will he ask the same questions, over and over? Or has he thought of something new to ask me?
‘Are you well, little human?’ his voice boomed, reverberating through her bones. She found him both fearsome and yet oddly compassionate. He didn’t seem to care that he had trapped Brydie in this jewel to extract information from her, but he did seem concerned that she might not be enjoying herself. The
djinni
loomed over her like a nightmare and then worried he might have frightened her with his looming.
‘Can I even
get
sick in here?’ she asked, looking around the polished faceted walls of her gemstone prison. It was time she asked a few questions of her own, Brydie decided. She wasn’t going to get out of here by answering ‘I don’t know’ to everything.
‘What do you mean?’ the
djinni
boomed, his voice rich and loud. Brydie had to stop herself covering her ears.
‘I mean … am I dead? Shrunk down to the size of a flea? Is my spirit trapped in here with you, while my body lies rotting on the floor out there? Or am I stuck in here, whole and entire, and when you get sick of asking me the same questions and getting
the same answers, over and over, you’ll finally set me free and I’ll be back to normal?’
The
djinni
was silent for a time, before remarking with a frown in his voice, ‘In Persia, a human captive would never dare question one of the
Djinn
in such an impertinent fashion.’
‘Oh?’ she said, trying to find a place to look so she knew she was addressing the
djinni
and not the wall. ‘How do you know that? You make a habit of trapping innocent women with your family jewels, do you?’
There was a moment of heavy silence before Jamaspa said, ‘No human captive would dare make fun of the
Djinn
, either.’
‘Well, they ought to come see me then,’ Brydie retorted cheerfully, rather pleased she’d been able to rattle the
djinni
a little. ‘I could give them a few pointers.’
‘Tell me how Darragh of the Undivided leaves this chamber undetected,’ the
djinni
asked, apparently deciding not to engage in any further idle chatter with his prisoner.
‘I don’t know,’ Brydie sighed. She leaned against the cool, smooth interior of the gem and sank slowly to the floor. She might as well get comfortable. Experience had taught her these questions could go on for quite a while.
Brydie woke a few hours later. Or it might have been minutes. Perhaps days. Jamaspa’s questions had gone on for hours, it seemed, leaving her wrung out and Jamaspa no closer to the truth he sought. She sat up as a shadow passed over the jewel, wondering if the
djinni
was back, but there was no sign of him. This shadow was outside the gem.
Someone was moving about in Darragh’s chamber.
Brydie scrambled to her feet and began to bang on the walls of her tiny jewelled prison, even though she knew it was useless. She could hear what was happening outside the jewel, but people outside couldn’t hear her. She was certain it was impossible to
see that there was someone trapped inside the brooch. When she’d owned the brooch, she had studied its faceted surface, admiring the colour and the precision of its cut. She hadn’t seen anybody moving about inside it, and if she had, she would have assumed it a trick of the light.
Who could even imagine there might be somebody trapped in here?
And even if they did discover her there, how were they supposed to get her out?
If Brydie could catch the attention of someone … if a Druid came into the room looking for something … if he or she sensed the spell … maybe they could help?
Perhaps it was Darragh, come home at last. If the Undivided couldn’t undo a spell wrought by an evil
djinni
, who else could?
But that sparked off another set of unsettling questions. Would Darragh notice she was gone? And if he did, would he care? Wouldn’t he simply assume she’d left
Sí an Bhrú
and gone back to Temair without saying goodbye? Why would he think something evil might have befallen her? They’d known each other for only a few days.
Surely he would sense the magic worked in his own bedchamber, she thought, more from wishful thinking than any real knowledge of the subject. And if he did sense it, wouldn’t he want to know the source? Was he powerful enough to focus on the enchanted jewel lying amid Brydie’s discarded clothes?
The shadow moved again and darkness enveloped her as a hand scooped the brooch off the cloak. Whoever had picked up the brooch peered at it closely for a moment, turning it this way and that — knocking Brydie off her feet in the process — to study it.
‘Hey!’ she shouted uselessly. ‘In here! Look closely, you fool! Can’t you see me?’
Her shouts meant nothing, of course, but she continued to do whatever she could to attract the attention of whoever had picked up the brooch. Was it a maid? A thief? That was unlikely here in the very heart of
Sí an Bhrú.
Brydie tried to make out the person, drawing back with a yelp when a giant eye loomed toward her, as the curious person holding the jewel examined it more closely.
‘Colmán!’ she shouted when she recognised the shiny trinkets woven into his pointed, forked beard. It made sense. Who else but the Vate would be snooping around Darragh’s chamber if he wasn’t there?