She looked.
She found an egg. It had been fertilized. The helix strands of DNA said Dougal was the father. Maureen's stomach twisted like a writhing snake.
Abortion? Adoption? Tough it out? She could kill the fragile life with the slightest touch of Power . . . .
She had started to turn her thoughts down those tangled alleys before she noticed another minute blob of protoplasm. Twins. Different eggs, released at different times. Brian had wound the chromosomes in that one.
Twins, by different fathers. One she ached for, one she had hated enough to kill. God was such a joker. There hadn't ever been twins in her family, as far back as she knew the tree and all the monkeys swinging in it.
The Pierce women, she thought, the O'Brian women, both sides, we're small. We're skinny, we're flat-chested. None of those big-hipped big-boobed earth mothers who can birth twins and then go out to finish plowing the back forty with one baby hanging on each tit.
The irony of it all sickened her. Thanks a hell of a lot, God. I've just swept eighteen years of ghosts out of the fucking madhouse and You go and dump a new load of trauma in my lap. Some people can't stand the sight of happiness.
And then she let her inner eye wander, through the rest of her belly, the rest of her body, and realized neither baby ever could be born. Her body would reject them. Her body simply didn't have the strength for pregnancy--didn't have the fats and sugars and whatevers floating through her bloodstream to build placenta and nourish one baby, let alone two.
She'd lost too much weight, between the dungeon and the magic. She'd barely been able to ovulate. Dougal had killed his own son. Brian could try again, next month or the next. "Feed up good and you can still be a mommy," her body said.
God's own abortion, she thought. Even He takes steps to protect the mother's life. God aborts embryos and fetuses all the time. She remembered an obscure statistic from Dendro. 202: something like 90 percent of the fruit set on an apple tree got aborted, every year. No matter when it starts, life isn't nearly as sacred as some people like to think. There's always more of it than the world can hold.
Never count your chickens before they hatch.
Relief jangled with pain and loss. She wondered what they would have looked like, what they would have grown up to be. She thought she probably always would. I'll cry for them, she thought, sometime when I can find the strength for tears.
The worm stirred again in her brain. It asked, What would you have done? To hell with chickens. Would you have flushed a baby away with a used Kotex?
Don't know, she thought. Damned glad I won't have to choose.
She opened her eyes and stared up at Brian. She smiled, weakly, through tears.
"Sorry."
He shook his head. "I told you to save your strength. Wait here. I'll get some people and horses down from the castle. They'll carry all of you up the hill."
Maureen blinked her eyes, puzzled. "Why should they help us?"
"They need you. This land is still feudal. People band together around power, for protection. You're their protector."
She swallowed bitterness. "I don't want slaves."
"Then don't treat them like slaves. They'll stay."
"Brian, will you stay?" She held her breath.
He bent down and gently kissed her forehead. "Yes. I think it's time I retired from the hero business. The Pendragons have gotten fifty years out of me. Whatever's left is yours."
She could breathe again.
* * *
Maureen watched Brian's back disappearing through the woods. "Castle," he'd said. Her home. She lay in the dirt and leaves of her own bonded land. She could feel it in her bones.
The stench of the dragon hung over them like a cloud. As far as the forest was concerned, the rotting meat was just so much food and fertilizer. The way she felt now, though, the stinking hulk revolted her. She was too damn tired to take the larger view.
David stirred in Jo's lap. "Is that guy really dead?"
"Which one?" Maureen's voice came out as a whisper, nearly as hoarse as the croaks of the ravens in the trees.
"The one we grabbed. The one over there."
Jo answered. "He's dead. He isn't held in limbo, like we were. I felt him die."
David looked like he wanted to vomit. "We ate him."
"He deserved to die," Maureen whispered. "Treacherous, murderous, conniving bastard, he deserved to die. He would have killed all of us. Don't lose sleep over Sean."
Treacherous, murderous, conniving--those adjectives all fit the land, as well. She could feel it. She had some work to do, some attitudes to change. She'd leave enough dangers in, though, to serve as guards against Fiona.
But her blood belonged here. Brian had talked to her about Power, about Blood, about Old Ones, but the words hadn't really stuck. After all that had happened, all that she'd done, that sense of belonging finally said it all.
She and Jo weren't even human.
"You're staying?" David aimed his face at Maureen, but he looked like he was afraid of Jo's choice.
Maureen answered, anyway. "I'm staying. I'm not crazy here." She shot a glance at Jo. "I can talk to trees, and nobody calls the shrink. And if I think 'They' are out to get me, it's probably true."
Jo stroked David's forehead. "You're a hero in this land, darling. You've killed a dragon. Bards were always powers in Celtic legend. You have a place here."
David suddenly looked even paler. "I'm not a hero, Jo. I ran away. I only came back and fought because there wasn't any place to run to."
Jo laughed and stroked his forehead again. "I'd prefer to live with a smart hero, any day. I've got no use
