Consciousness came back in a painful rush. Hard hands were holding her on her feet. She felt battered and bruised and her head ached with a hot, piercing pain that beat in time with her pounding heart.
"Stand up by yourself!" a rough voice said. "Dragging you here was hard enough. I'll be damned if we're going to hold you upright, too."
Dragged? I've been dragged?
Hands tied behind her back she struggled suddenly and violently. Half blind with pain she tried to strike out with her powerful equine hind legs - and her throat closed. The harder she struggled the tighter the rope that cut off her breath.
"Be still or choke yourself to death!" the voice boomed.
Trembling, Brighid forced herself still and the rope around her neck loosened enough for her to suck in a breath and cough spasmodically.
"Don't fight it and you'll be fine. Fight and you won't breathe."
Trembling, Brighid blinked her vision clear and time seemed to slow. She felt as if she was moving under deep water as she tried to comprehend the contradictions in what she saw. She was standing in the middle of a centaur tent - that much was easy for her to understand. It was one of the large, five-sided tents made of beautifully dyed and elaborately decorated bison skins that her mother used to insist be erected and readied for her with every luxury in place well before she arrived at wherever she was visiting. The opening was directly across from Brighid and through the half-pulled-back flap she could see that it was dark. How long had she been unconscious? Her mind struggled to clear. Everything was wrong and she was unable to understand what had happened to her.
The tent was familiar, but the interior wasn't richly appointed with the thick pallets and low-standing tables centaurs preferred. The only decoration was several free-standing iron candelabrums that cast shadowy light around the tent. The rest of the tent was empty - except for the four male centaurs who surrounded her. She tried to pull her hands free again, but they were securely tied behind her back. She could feel ropes on her neck and body. In a haze of disbelief, she saw that she was standing, with her torso cross-tied, between the two center poles of the tent. Her front legs were hobbled. Two ropes were tied around her neck. Each of them was attached to a noose around each of her rear legs - she could feel them chafing painfully just above her hooves. The hobble and the cross-tie made certain she could not move. The neck-leg restraint rendered her hind legs impotent. She was very effectively trapped. Brighid raised her eyes to the centaur who stood closest to her and his sneer of superiority had time and noise and sensation flooding back to a normal tempo.
"Fully awake now, my beauty?" he sneered. "Good. No sense in damaging your pretty neck - that is any more than it has already been damaged." He chuckled and the other three centaur males laughed, too.
Thunder rolled in the distance and lightning flashed in the opening of the tent, helping her to identify the other centaurs. They were Bregon's pack. She'd thought of them as that since the day they'd killed the young girl. They went everywhere with her brother, following him in everything he did.Like the pathetic sheep they are, she thought.
"Gorman." Brighid pitched her voice to perfectly mimic her mother's most angry tone. "Release me at once, you coward!"
Lightning flashed again, and from the edge of her vision she saw one of the other centaurs, Hagan, flinch at the familiar sound of her voice. The other two males were brothers, Bowyn and Mannis, and their eyes went large and round as she spoke. But she kept her attention focused on Gorman, Bregon's best friend, and partner in all he did.
"You sound like her. You even look like her. But you are not her." Gorman spat into the grass in front of her. "You were never as strong as Mairearad. You never will be."
"Define strength, Gorman," she shot back, forcing the exhaustion from her voice and mind. "Is it the ability to manipulate and use others? Or would your definition of strength be dependent upon ropes? No, wait. I seem to remember that you enjoy terrifying small girls. Pity you had to sneak up on me and tie me up. Was there no wagon available to conveniently roll over me?"
"Strength," he said darkly, stepping forward so that he sprayed spittle in her face as he spoke, "is defined by the victor!"
"Where is my brother?" she said, refusing to react to his blustering.
"You brother is making certain that Partholon knows that once again Fomorians have been loosed upon their world."
"Have you gone mad?" she said. "There are no more Fomorians."
"Really? Then what do you call those winged creatures you and Midhir's son guided into Partholon?"
"I call them the same thing Midhir and Epona's Chosen call them - New Fomorians. You know Elphame lifted the curse from them. They are no longer a demonic race." As she spoke she tested the bindings around her wrists, vying for a way to get her hands free. "This is ludicrous. I demand to see my brother."
"Patience, my beauty. Bregon has been very busy and wasn't able to greet you properly upon your arrival." Gorman laughed and the three watching centaurs chuckled nervously along with him. "He asked us to keep you...occupied...until he could join us."
Brighid felt her face go cold. "Bregon could not know what you have done to me."
Gorman shrugged. "He commanded that you be kept from reaching the herd until it is too late. He left the means up to us. This - " he gestured to the cross-tie poles and the ropes that would strangle her if she attempted to fight " - was my idea."
"It's already too late. I have tasted of Epona's Chalice. I am the Dhianna High Shaman."
"Yes, we're aware of that. Bregon told us. Fortunately none of us thought to tell our mates. Such a shame that the females of the herd won't find out until it's too late."
"You are mad," she told Gorman, and then carefully turned her head so that the next time the tent glowed with lightning she met the eyes of the dark bay centaur who had remained farthest in the shadows. "Get my brother, Hagan. No matter what has happened between us he will not look kindly on this treatment of his sister." Then she narrowed her eyes and filled her voice with all the power she could siphon from her exhausted spirit. "And even if Bregon would be willing to allow it, he knows, as do I, the anger that would fill Epona at such treatment of her High Shaman!"
Hagan flinched and opened his mouth to speak, but Gorman cut him off.
"And what did your precious Epona do when your own mother was spitted through the gut and lay dying in agony?" Gorman's face was florid with the passion of his emotions. "Nothing! Your Goddess let Mairearad suffer and die. Apparently Epona no longer cares about what happens to her centaur High Shamans."
Brighid turned her gaze slowly and deliberately back to his. "You blaspheme and have turned from the Great Goddess. I give you my oath that you will pay for it."
Thunder growled through the night and lightning spiked as if Epona had heard and acknowledged her Shaman's oath. Heedless, Gorman sneered.
"We shall see who pays for what, Brighid Dhianna. After all, it is you who helped to bring the demons back into Partholon. Perhaps the people you chose over your own herd will not open their arms to you with such enthusiasm when they realize what you have done."
"The New Fomorians are not demons, you fool! They are a kind people who nurture life, not death.
And that is what all of Partholon will know."
Gorman's eyes turned sly. "You seem to be forgetting one very specialFomorian. " He enunciated the word carefully.
Brighid narrowed her eyes at him. "Fallon is jailed at Guardian Castle awaiting the birth of her child and her execution. She will pay for her madness, even though what she did was only a result of the depth of her love for her people. She is an aberration. The rest of the New Fomorians are not like her."
"So what you're saying is that they wouldn't help her escape and then join her in small but deadly strikes against Partholon?"
"Of course not."
"But what if they did? What if a winged creature who came from the southwest - the exact area of MacCallan Castle - managed to break into Guardian Castle and free the insane Fomorian, leaving blood and death in their wake? What would the Guardian Warriors do?"
"This is a ridiculous guessing game. It could not happen. The New Fomorians want nothing more than to live peacefully in Partholon. They wouldn't do anything to jeopardize that."
Gorman's laughter filled the tent, almost drowning out the next roll of thunder. Bowyn and Mannis smiled, and their teeth flashed white in the flickering lightning.
"She knows as little as Bregon said she would about it," Mannis said.
Brighid's eyes snapped to his. "You have a tongue? I thought you and your brother were only mouthpieces for Bregon. If he's not present feeding you your words I didn't think either of you - " she let her disgusted gaze include Bowyn " - could actually speak for yourself."
"You always thought you were so much better than us," Bowyn said angrily.
"Not better, just more humane," Brighid said.
"Don't you want to know what the 'it' is?" Gorman interrupted, calling her attention back to him.
"I don't care about anything you have to say, Gorman."
"Really? Perhaps you will. 'It' is shapeshifting. Bregon told us the people of Partholon know as little about shapeshifting as his own newly made High Shaman sister. And that he would use their ignorance to his benefit."
"What are you..." With a shudder of horror she knew. The "Fomorian" who helped Fallon to escape would be Bregon. "Oh, Goddess! No!"
"Oh, Goddess! Yes!" Gorman mocked. "But don't think it was Bregon who thought of the plan."
"Mairearad." She breathed her mother's name, remembering the raven's obscene shriek for vengeance.
"Of course it was Mairearad. Even dying she was brilliant. She orchestrated the revenge for her own death. She told Bregon to enter Guardian Castle at night and alone, and find the Fomorian. Then he was to kill everyone who had seen him enter in his true form, shapeshift into a Fomorian, and allow the creature to escape - only then would he let any of the warriors who saw him live."
"Because they wouldn't see him. They would see a Fomorian," she said, shaking her head back and forth in horror, remembering the kindness the Guardian Warriors had shown the children. But that wouldn't matter, not if they believed Partholon was being attacked by the race they had been commissioned to defend her against.
"Yes." Gorman chuckled. "And they'll follow a Fomorian's trail that will lead back to MacCallan Castle.
What do you think Clan MacCallan will do when the Guardian Warriors surround their castle?"
"They won't give up the children," she whispered, more to herself than to Gorman. "They'll fight to protect them."
"We're counting on that," Gorman snarled.
"Why? Those people have done nothing to you. Why would you want to destroy Clan MacCallan?"
"For the same reason you should. They killed your mother."
"That's crazy. Clan MacCallan could not possibly have harmed my mother."
"She died in a pit dug by humans." Gorman moved quickly to a dark corner of the large tent and picked up a wad of material from the floor. He returned to stand in front of Brighid and shoved the bloody cloth into her face. "This is what the humans were wearing. Do you recognize it?"
It was the MacCallan plaid. Brighid's stomach pitched as she remembered Elphame telling her of the clan members who had chosen to break their oaths and leave the castle, making themselves unacceptable to any other clan. They must have made their way to the vast Centaur Plains, probably thinking to begin anew, maybe even found their own clan.
Instead they'd founded a war.
"These people were not a part of Clan MacCallan. Several clan members broke oath and left - these had to be those people. Where are they? I'll recognize them if I see them."
"You wouldn't recognize them now, not even with your excellent Huntress vision," Bowyn said sarcastically.
"You killed them!" she said.
"We did. It was the beginning of your mother's vengeance."
"This has to be stopped before the world is awash in blood," Brighid said.
"Let it be awash!" Gorman shouted. "While you were chatting with your uncaring Goddess, Bregon was going about your mother's business. He's already been to Guardian Castle, and should return to the plains any day with news of his bloody success. The wheels are spinning past the point of no return, and it is impossible for you to stop them."
Brighid's eyes went cold. "Don't ever tell me what's impossible, you pathetic sycophant. What would you know of the impossible? All you've done your whole life is follow a centaur who is little more than a petulant colt and lust after a female who knew more of hatred and manipulation than love. I pity you, Gorman."
"Youpity me!" he screamed, blowing spittle in her face. "We'll see very shortly who's to bepitied. "
Thunder roared ominously and lightning flared outside, brightening the tent with a surreal, fitful light.
Breathing hard Gorman sidled closer to her and fisted his hand in her hair, jerking her head back painfully.
"Bregon had more to report from the Otherworld than the news that you'd finally managed to taste of the Chalice." With a single, violent movement, he ripped the vest from her chest, exposing her breasts.
"He also said something we found very shocking. He told us that you had mated with a man. Could that really be truth?" With his other hand he lifted her breast so that he could easily bend his head over it.
When his tongue flicked out to lick her nipple, she surged so violently away from him that her world began to blacken as the rope cut off her air supply.
Then two other sets of hands pressed against the other side of her body as Bowyn and Mannis held her upright so that the rope loosened and her breath returned in panting gasps. In a gray haze it seemed that the eyes of the three centaurs burned with an unnatural light. Their faces were flushed and their breathing had deepened. Where their hot hands touched her she could feel their lust burning into her.
"Answer him," Bowyn said, his voice gruff and breathy. "Did you mate with a man?"
"I did," she ground between her teeth, fighting off panic. "Cuchulainn MacCallan is my husband and lifemate, and when I lead the Dhianna Herd I will do so with him at my side."
"That will never happen!" Gorman shrieked.
"Perhaps she has been too long without a centaur lover, and she has forgotten true passion," Bowyn rasped between ever-thickening breaths. His hand closed over her other breast and as he squeezed and prodded the nipple he bit into her shoulder so hard that his teeth drew blood.
Gorman's low chuckle sounded near her ear as his tongue flicked up and down her neck. "Perhaps you are right, Bowyn."
She could feel Mannis moving behind her, his hands and teeth taking painful turns at kneading and then biting her haunches. Frantically her eyes searched the tent for Hagan, but the centaur had disappeared into the storm-filled night.
"If you do this thing I swear by the Goddess Epona that I will not rest until each of you are dead,"
Brighid hissed. She struggled against the blackness that kept narrowing her vision by concentrating on the warmth that had begun to spread from the turquoise stone that hung between her naked breasts.
"And how will you fulfill that oath?" Gorman whispered, his hot breath coming fast and heavy against her skin as he nipped and licked the mound of her breast. "Will your puny man mate track us down and scare us to our deaths with his overwhelming strength?"
"He won't have to. He's going to kill you tonight where you stand," Cuchulainn said from the opening of the tent.