The Undivided (45 page)

‘
Onushirano shogunho namaewo mouse
?’ he demanded.

‘What did he say?’ Trása asked, as they dragged her over to stand beside Ren.

‘I think he wants to know the name of our lord.’ Ren looked up at the samurai and bowed as well as he could manage given the way he was being held.

‘
Warewareniha shogunha imasen
,’ he said politely. ‘
Warewareha mayoteiru tabinomonodesu
.’ In the schoolboy Japanese Ren spoke, he’d told the samurai they had no lord, but were lost travellers. He fervently hoped it meant roughly the same thing in this realm.

The man glared at Ren, but it was hard to tell if he believed him or not. For that matter, it was hard to tell if the man even understood him. Like the Gaelige Ren had learned in his reality, it was possible the Japanese he’d been awarded a certificate for only a few months earlier was only a poor relation to the language spoken in this realm.

‘
Sonomonotachiwo tsuretekoi
,’ the man ordered, after debating the matter silently for a moment. ‘
Sonomonotachino unmeiha hemeni kimete itadaku
.’

‘What did he say?’ Trása asked.

‘Something about letting the princess … their
lady
? … decide our fate. I think we’re being taken to their leader.’

‘You
think
? Don’t you
know
?’

Ren never got a chance to answer. The soldiers shoved him forward toward a riderless horse. One of them bound his hands and then tied the rope to the saddle, and swung up onto his mount with an ease that belied the heavy armour he was wearing. Ren glanced across to see Trása similarly bound.

Bet she’s wishing she’d changed into a bird and flown away now
, he thought.

‘The Autumn equinox is twelve days away, Ren!’ Trása called after him as the soldiers jerked them forward, forcing them to trot along behind the horses. ‘If we haven’t found a way home by then, the Druids will dethrone you and Darragh, and invest the Undivided heirs as the new Undivided.’

‘I know.’ He had Darragh’s memories now. The date was burned into his brother’s brain.

‘If that happens, you and Darragh won’t just lose your power,’ she warned as she stumbled beside him along the leaf-strewn forest floor. They were heading back through the trees, toward a row of faint lights at the foot of the hill. They weren’t being dragged along behind the horses exactly, but Ren wasn’t sure the samurai would stop if one of them fell. ‘You’ll die.’

‘I know. I’ll think of something.’

‘You’d better,’ Trása warned. ‘I want to go home.’

Ren wanted that, too, but right now, stuck in a realm he didn’t know anything about — a realm where he wasn’t sure he spoke the language and with no notion of how he was going to get home — it seemed too much to deal with.

It was too early to decide what he had to do. Too early to make plans to escape. He had a few things going for him, though: things his captors knew nothing about.

He had a lifetime of his brother’s memories in his head. He had a shape-changing half-
Beansídhe
on his side to aid his escape.

And Ren could feel the magic.

Brydie woke to a world that was tinted purple. For a while she lay on the hard, cold floor, trying to recall what had happened to her.

The last thing Brydie remembered was standing in Darragh’s room, looking at herself in the tall polished bronze mirror. She was examining herself, wondering if she was pregnant yet. After their faltering start — once she’d been able to get him to spend the whole night in his chamber — Darragh had proved an excellent lover, and in the weeks since she began sharing his bed, they’d made love plenty of times, in between him sneaking out and disappearing to who-knows-where. Brydie had learned not to ask. Darragh wasn’t going to tell her anyway, and her mission was to make a baby with Darragh of the Undivided, not keep track of his movements.

Had they done enough, she was wondering, to conceive?

Álmhath was anxious for a report. She’d sent a message, asking if Brydie’s
mìosach
had come, or if she was with child yet. Brydie wasn’t sure. She thought she might be a little late, but it was too early to tell.

Brydie turned sideways, thrusting her belly out, trying to picture herself heavy with child. She was almost eighteen, so she knew she was ready. Now was the safest time to have a child.
Women who left it longer often had trouble, and many of them died, if there was no Druid healer to help them through the perils of childbirth. She smiled as she realised that fate would not befall her. If she was carrying a child of the Undivided, no risk would be allowed to endanger this child or prevent the child’s mother bringing it to term.

She remembered having that thought … but then the memory faded. There had been a noise, she thought … had she turned to see if she was alone.

Perhaps she’d been attacked in Darragh’s room, although it seemed unlikely. Deep within
Sí an Bhrú
was perhaps among the safest places on Earth for a woman.

But her memories stopped as she turned to investigate the noise …

And she woke here, in this hazy purple world.

Brydie climbed to her feet and looked around. She seemed to be caught in a glassy bubble: the walls were faceted and as she looked out of each small window, she could see odd shapes outside the bubble that she couldn’t quite identify.

Raising her hands to the glassy walls, Brydie realised she was imprisoned. Swallowing back a sudden surge of panic, she felt out the limits of her confinement. She could touch the walls on both sides. They were cold, smooth, translucent and tinged with mauve.

She pushed her face against the faceted window and tried to see out. After a moment she made sense of the shapes, and realised she could see Darragh’s bed, but it was huge … much larger than she remembered. As she identified the bed, other familiar shapes took form. There was the side table. The lantern burning softly, filling the chamber with yellow light. And off to her left stood the big bronze mirror she’d been looking into.

Brydie glanced down then, and discovered that beneath her, she could make out the fine filigree knot-work of the brooch Marcroy Tarth had given her in the wagon on the way to
Sí an Bhrú
.

‘Oh, by sweet
Danú
! I’m inside the brooch.’

She said it aloud, caught somewhere between wonder and terror. Her words echoed back at her, bouncing off the faceted walls.

She looked around and realised the odd shapes were the everyday items scattered about Darragh’s chamber, made strange and terrifying by her reduced stature. She pounded on the walls, and shouted, knowing as she did that it was useless. If she was trapped here, then the brooch had been enchanted. Nobody would expect it. When they discovered she was missing nobody would think to look for her here.

She slumped down to the bottom of the jewel and tucked her knees under her chin. Was she trapped forever? Had Marcroy given her the brooch intending to trap her, or was it enchanted for some other purpose?

Will I starve to death, or will the magic that sucked me into the amethyst preserve my life?

Was it an accident? And if it isn’t an accident … why am I here?

‘You are here,’ a voice boomed from every direction at once, so loudly she had to cover her ears, ‘because I want to talk to you, young Brydie Ni’Seanan.’

Brydie pushed herself to her feet and looked around, but the jewelled cell was empty.

‘Who are you?’ she called out, afraid she sounded like a frightened child. ‘What do you want with me?’

‘I want to talk to you,’ the voice boomed.

‘About what?’ she asked, her hands still over her ears to protect them from the pain of the jewel’s voice.

‘About the only thing I have any interest in, little human,’ the voice told her, as the stone’s walls darkened to a deeper shade of purple, a shade so deep they turned almost black.

Brydie forced her fear away, reasoning if the jewel had wanted
to kill her, she’d be dead already. It wanted to talk. She knew something it wanted to know. That meant she had leverage. She wasn’t an expert on enchantments and curses, but she knew
sídhe
law required every enchantment to have a loophole. The victim had to be allowed a way to escape, however obscure or unlikely.

‘What do you want to know?’ she asked warily, as she realised something else. The jewel hadn’t trapped her, something else was possessing it. A
sídhe
of some kind, although probably not one she was familiar with.

‘I want to know,’ the voice informed her, fading to a more tolerable level, as a blue figure began to materialise, filling the space in front of her, ‘what you know about Darragh of the Undivided.’

Brydie stared at the
sídhe
in horror. It was one of the Djinn. She’d never seen a djinni before, but she’d heard about them. And knew enough to fear him.

‘What do you want to know, exactly?’ she asked, pressing herself against the faceted wall, although there was no escaping the creature in the confines of her amethyst prison.

‘Everything,’ the djinni said. ‘I want to know everything.’

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