Blood Magick (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy 3)

IN THE MORNING MISTS, SHE CLIMBED ONTO THE WAGON, her little girl bundled at her side. She looked at her boy, so flushed with delight in the saddle in front of his father. She looked at her sister, fair and quiet astride Alastar; her brother, their grandfather’s sword at his side, tall and straight on the horse he called Mithra. And Gealbhan steady and waiting on the pretty mare Alastar had sired three summers before.

She clucked to Gealbhan’s old plow horse, and with Brin letting out a whoop, began. She looked back once, just once at the house she’d come to love, asked herself if she would ever see it again.

Then, she looked ahead.

A healer found welcome wherever she went—as did a harpist. Though the baby heavy in her belly was often restless, she and her family found shelter and hospitality along the wild way.

Eoghan made music, she or Teagan or Eamon offered salves or potions to the ailing or the injured. Gealbhan offered his strong back and calloused hands.

One fine night they slept under the stars as Brin so wished, and there was comfort in knowing the hound, the hawk, the horse guarded what was hers.

They met no trouble along the way, but then she knew the word had gone about. The Dark Witches, all three, journeyed through Clare and on to Galway.

“The word would reach Cabhan as well,” Eamon said as they paused in their travels to rest the horses, to let the children run free for a time.

She sat between him and Teagan while Gealbhan and Eoghan watered the horses and Eamon dropped a line into the water.

“We’re stronger than we were,” Teagan reminded him. “We journeyed south as children. We go north children no more.”

“He worries.” Brannaugh stroked her belly. “As you and I carry more than we did.”

“I don’t doubt your power or your will.”

“And still you worry.”

“I wonder if it must be now,” Eamon admitted, “even knowing it must be now. I feel it as both of you, and yet would be easier if there was time for both of you to have proper lyings-in before we face what we must face.”

“What’s meant is meant, but in truth I’m glad we’ll break our journey for a day or so with our cousins. And by all the gods I’ll be happy to have a day off that bloody wagon.”

“I’m dreaming of Ailish’s honey cakes, for no one has a finer hand with them.”

“Dreaming with his belly,” Teagan said.

“A man needs to eat. Hah!” He pulled up the line, and the wriggling fish who’d taken the hook. “And so we will.”

“You’ll need more than one,” Brannaugh said, and reminded them all of those same words their mother spoke on a fine and happy day on the river at home.

They left the rugged wilds of Clare, pushed by fierce winds, sudden driving rains. They rode through the green hills of Galway, by fields of bleating sheep, by cottages where smoke puffed from chimneys. Roibeard winged ahead, under and through layers of clouds that turned the sky into a soft gray sea.

The children napped in the wagon, tucked in among the bundles, so Kathel sat beside Brannaugh, ever alert.

“There are more cottages than I remember.” Teagan rode beside her on the tireless Alastar.

“The years pass.”

“It’s good land here—I can all but hear Gealbhan thinking it.”

“Would you plant yourself here then? Does it speak to you?”

“It does. But so does our cabin in the woods in Clare. And still, the closer we come to home, the more I ache for it. We had to put that aside for so long, all of us, but now . . . Do you feel it, Brannaugh? That call to home?”

“Aye.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Aye. Of what’s to come, but more of failing.”

“We won’t.” At Brannaugh’s sharp look, Teagan shook her head. “No, I’ve had no vision, but only a certainty. One that grows stronger as we come closer to home. We won’t fail, for light will always beat the dark, though it take a thousand years.”