Something bit her hand, a sliver of bark digging into the dragon-scale cuts. Jo snatched the hand back, instinctively sucking it in the monkey-fear of venom, tottered, and fell again. Her feet shot out from under her. Her wet jeans skidded across the slick rock, faster and faster.
Where the hell had all that slope come from?
She slid and slid and balled up with her arms around her head, fighting to keep her feet below her to catch the rocks before anything more delicate smashed into them. The water piled across her, cold as fire, and she fell into it and out of it and into it again.
Wet darkness closed over her head.
Chapter Sixteen
Brian's glance flicked from treetops to dry-stone wall to emerald fields, searching for the enemies he knew were out there. He saw too much cover, too much dead ground, for comfort. You could hide an army in the folds of Fiona's rolling pastures, and he wasn't even ready to take on a squad.
The problem with coming out between Fiona and Dougal was that it landed him squarely in the crossfire of their war. Whichever way he went, he was on the outside trying to get past their sentries.
He scanned the neat stone walls, waist high and so perfect for hiding archers, then searched the sky for stooping griffins with their talons ready for a killing strike. Or maybe Fiona had set strangling ivy to lurk in the branches of the pasture oak overhead, ready to slither around his throat?
Nothing. He relaxed an inch, but he was still sure he walked headfirst into a trap.
The Summer Country always looked too damned innocent. In spite of all its dangers, this land felt like home. Whenever he came here, something fused with his blood and told him the land was his, that he could mold it to his will.
The feeling was seductive, as if even the air of the place conspired to draw him away from the humans he protected and over to the Old Ones. Everything here reminded him of the blood he shared with Fiona and Sean. Joining them would be so much easier than fighting them. He ignored that offer, knowing that it lied.
The land might welcome him, but the people didn't. Dougal had a spike beside his castle gate, waiting for another skull, and Fiona . . . Fiona had Sean lurking behind her shoulder for whatever might be left of Brother Brian when she was through with him.
And David wouldn't enjoy what any of the Old Ones would do to him.
The pasture oak stood as a reliable landmark for travel between the worlds. It was the image he'd aimed for in Fiona's land, a marker on the edge nearest Dougal where things tended to stay the same from moon to moon. In that respect, edges were safer, sort of neutral territory between the minefields.
Fiona found passive defense to fit her moods: her poison plants and the misdirection of a landscape that changed while your back was turned or even right before your eyes. Dougal liked his guards more active, active enough to threaten even their own master. Dougal lived for the adrenaline rush of danger.
Brian didn't. Apparently David didn't, either.
The young bard held an arrow nocked and ready, but his fingers were trembling, his face pale and beaded with the sweat of the green recruit. His mind was on Brian, not the battlefield.
Time for some fatherly advice from the veteran. "It's normal to be scared," he said. "The day I lose my fear of dying will probably be the day I die from acting reckless. I've been too many places where life or death was a shade of angle or a gram of force. Just don't let it paralyze you."
Fortune was chance and chance was fortune. Luck, not skill, often determined who survived a battle. So much for glory.
David forced a weak smile.
The bloody fool trusted Brian. That's what was new, the different fear. Brian remembered too many mistakes. He'd misjudged Fiona's devious plots, and the lengths Dougal would go to, looking for a mate.
Sean had taken Maureen. That meant an alliance between Fiona and Dougal. It had seemed about as likely as Joe Stalin pairing up with Hitler's Reich. Brian shook his head. Those who fail to learn the lessons of history . . . He'd left the idea out of all his strategy for this living chess game.
That boy shouldn't be in harm's way, untrained and untested. Maureen shouldn't be here, Jo shouldn't be here. If Brian had deserved their trust, they'd all be home in bed. Which was where he still belonged, no matter what face he put on for David.
Brian still felt like a wrung-out dishrag. He was trying to fight on the enemy's ground, weak and unprepared. He was reacting, not acting. It was one of the quickest ways to die.
He shook off the thoughts, limped across to the nearest wall, and peered over it. Nobody home. Normally he would have vaulted over it with knife in hand, but his leg and arm and shoulder weren't up to those heroics. He was getting too old and lame for this.
He climbed stiffly over the wall and waved for David to follow. "Sean took Maureen. That much we know for sure. Dougal wanted her. Odds are, we'll find Maureen at Dougal's keep. I'm just hoping we'll find Jo by looking for Maureen."
Brian studied the forest ahead. He saw a killing zone, perfect for ambushes. Snipers in the trees or in spider-holes under bushes, trip-wires, pit traps, you name it. It was as bad as the Malayan jungle, except for the leeches and the bugs.
Dougal didn't work that way.
David wiped his hands nervously on his pants, scanned the horizon, and turned
