Home.
She'd never had a home, not in the sense of a safe center to her life. Damn sure the castle didn't make the grade. Father Oak came closest, but sleeping in a snowbank really sucked. That was another thing Daddy had stolen from her. Stolen from both her and Jo. Safety was anywhere but "home."
Maureen shivered with a sudden fierce joy, and she drank the warm musk of the cave deep into her lungs. This was home. It felt right. It even smelled right, just like Brian.
A thousand years. Maureen squinted, suddenly suspicious. "Who lived here?"
{Some legends called her Nimue. Even the forest never knew her true name.}
"Great. Just fucking great. Am I going to find Merlin sleeping off a drunk in some back pantry?" She remembered things Brian had said about Merlin, and shuddered.
{The Tree says that Merlin never came here. The cave lies empty and waiting for you. It is safe.}
Brian and safety. She remembered the reason why he'd been searching the cellars. "Are there other exits?"
The vixen grinned up at her. {I am a fox, woman. My definition of "safe" includes at least three ways out of my den. These caves have four.}
Brian.
Would the definition of "home" ever include him? The warmth faded from Maureen's stomach. She kept forgetting that he'd left her. Her brain knew it, but her heart didn't want to.
If she ever saw that man again, she'd better get some serious pair-bond work going. Damn fast. Persuade him that staying could be a good idea. Fun, even.
{The dark witch comes. We must meet her.}
The fox turned and trotted toward another passage.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Illusions and traps.
David shook his head. A witch's cottage? That was Jo's territory, or Maureen's. They carried the Old Blood. They could use magic. Maureen had been inside Fiona's lair once already and got out alive. Rescued Brian in the process. Why the hell were they sending him?
Whitewashed stone, thatched roof, deep-set casement windows, it looked like a tourist-bureau postcard of an Irish country cottage. But Maureen had told him that Fiona lived in a labyrinth of smoke and mirrors, deadly truth hidden under layers of innocent appearance. The fields were fake, an alarm system and defenses, not real pasture. He'd seen what the hedge was like, and he was happy as hell that the swarming bees buzzed their frustration around the dragon's head, unable to sting through all that armor.
However, apparently Fiona had left some gaps in her programming. He smelled the bitter poison mingled with the sweet sap from torn roses and hawthorns, but that poison hadn't bothered Khe'sha. Wrong species. And she hadn't designed the hedge to stand forever against an animated bulldozer, either. An angry bulldozer, smart and persistent.
David shivered, remembering that thrashing rage and the deep booming growls of hatred. The sheer noise of it had driven him to his knees, and some of those ragged chunks of brush had flown a hundred feet and more. Fears of that rage had haunted his nightmares, ever since he'd faced and killed the dragon's mate. And now Khe'sha was his friend?
Anyway, the rage and awesome strength explained why the fox had sent Khe'sha. But what did the forest want David to do, want a human to do? Compose a song? That was his only talent in this land.
The forest had sent him. The forest had learned chess from Maureen, and David felt like one of its pawns in a surreal game of masters. The forest knew him, knew too damn much about him from that eternity when he was the forest, his soul spreading through every leaf and rootlet and sinking into the living soil and flowing in its waters. It knew his fears.
Fear. I've lived in terror of the dragon, only to find strength and honor and friendship where I least expected them. Shouldn't that give me courage?
It didn't. He stared at the worn green paint around the door lever, wondering if it concealed death. He stepped into the shadow of the covered porch and felt it as a chill. Sweat beaded on his brow, and his muscles tightened.
This is Brian's job, not mine. He's the designated Hero in this Adventure. I'm the Poet, in charge of singing for our evening's beer at the Wayside Inn. I don't even own a sword.
He touched the lever, and twisted it, and the latch clicked. He lived. His fingers didn't catch fire, or turn putrid and fall off in rotting chunks. He didn't even stick to the metal, bound forever at the whim of the Wicked Witch. The door swung in an inch and waited for him, brooding. He nudged it further with his toe, ready to dodge the pounce of a miniature dinosaur witch-bound as a guard dog.
It's normal to be afraid. Brian told me so. He said he was afraid, every time he went into battle. Fear is healthy. It keeps you alive. But I've been a hero once already. Isn't that enough?
He stepped into a small chamber with benches on each side, a place to sit and pull off mucky boots when you came in from the fields. Stone flooring, looked like slate worn smooth by centuries of feet. The granite threshold had cracked clear through, more of Maureen's magic. He felt the chill of her curse in the air around him.
Fiona hadn't broken it. Perhaps she hadn't cared, or hadn't even noticed.
He studied the kitchen beyond, wall and base cabinets painted yellow and marble countertop and a slate sink with a hand pump. Electric refrigerator and microwave, but a wood cook stove and hanging kerosene lamp. Herbs dried overhead, hanging in bundles from dark roof-beams, perfuming the air. She'd cooked a batch of onion soup recently, and toasted whole-wheat bread -- both aromas lingered, teasing him, and his mouth watered. He'd skipped lunch, worrying about Jo. Could he trust the food here? He doubted that.
But he couldn't see any teeth in the room, either literal or figurative. No sign of
