She was lost. This was not possible. She'd never been lost, in all the long decades and strange lands she'd walked -- always knew just where she was, where she'd been, where she was going. But the trees were wrong, the slope was wrong, the angle of the sun lied to her, even the air and the loam under her feet and the leaves she touched smelled strange.
She heard that waterfall again, off to her right. That wasn't possible. She hadn't crossed back over the stream, and there had been only one. Only one in Dougal's forest, that was. Maureen could have witched another, or even twisted these trees into a different world. Maureen had done something to this forest, anyway. She certainly hadn't just set it free. And Fiona couldn't believe that a novice to Power could have hidden her traps and manipulations this well. No matter how strong the Blood she bore. She had to have had help.
And it seemed like it had been hours since Fiona had last heard news of that dragon. Either the beast was dead, or it had betrayed her. Likewise with her other allies.
She faced a dense wall of thornbush and hooked briar, opaque and interwoven like her own hedge. Dead leaves rattled against limbs in the depths of it, and she felt her own trademark turned into a blade against her. She'd killed that hawthorn once already. Killed it and the blackthorn tangled with it and forced a path to lead past it -- how could it have moved ahead of her and joined a thicket and have fresh green-golden buds bursting out of dead wood and wilting leaves?
Her head spun, and she squeezed her eyes shut until the vertigo passed. Downhill lay on her right hand, not her left. She needed to climb, climb the stony knob and reach the old keep that had crowned it for time out of mind. But the damned redhead's enchantment had kept forcing her to the left, left, left, across the slope and down. Now it shone a fun-house mirror in her face and forced her to her right.
It drank Power. Each step dragged at her, cold hands clutching her feet and ankles and calves as if she waded hip-deep through the rotting mucky bottom of the dragon's marsh. She reached into the child within her belly, drawing on it to help her battle forward another step and another.
Forward, not back, a conquistador with his ships burning on the beach behind him. Fiona shivered. She'd heard feet walking her fields, across the distance and the forest, feet the grass had never known before, and the hedge had screamed terror and pain before the touch of it twanged like a broken harp-string and went silent. That had stolen her last sense of reference and direction, cast her loose from the one firm anchor in her worlds.
She was lost. She was scared. She'd never been lost or scared before, in over a century of spells and wanderings and bitter enemies. That redheaded bitch would pay for this.
The baby kicked at her again, and she hated it. Her back ached from the swell and awkwardness hanging low in front of her, her ankles and feet hurt from the unaccustomed weight, her stomach and bladder and bowels complained of its crowding presence. It was a parasite, gnawing away inside her belly.
And it hadn't given her the strength that the legends had promised. Oh, her Power had swelled with her belly, but not enough. Not doubled. Not if this forest was any gauge.
She stared at her hand, flexing each muscle, each joint, spreading her fingers, feeling the throb of her racing heartbeat in them, a beginner's exercise in control and concentration that she hadn't needed since Brian was in diapers. She closed her eyes and followed the threads of Power flowing from those fingers, flowing to those fingers, the threads tying her to Cáitlin and Fergus and the dragon hatchlings, the threads pulling Power from the air and soil and stone around her. Cáitlin and the stupid little horrors in the swamp hung as blind lumps at the ends of her puppet strings, unconscious, while Fergus had vanished into death. She wondered why Cáitlin hadn't died yet.
The forest walled her off from Sight, squeezed the flow of Power to a trickle. It had always brimmed with magic and deception, the Enchanted Forest of a thousand legends, home to dragons and unicorns. It couldn't bar her totally from Power, but she felt its hostile guard like a dam across a river. It hated her.
She considered killing the small dragons. She could do it, simply close her fingers on the pulses of their threads and send the pressure down those lines of Power. Their hearts and lungs would stop. But that would take more Power than simply holding them. She didn't have that Power to waste.
And she was beginning to think she might need them as barter. Barter for her own life.
Does Maureen save Cáitlin for a slave? Will she try the same with me? Stronger or not, that will never happen. She'll have to kill me. She didn't have the guts for that, the last time we met.
And when we're face to face this time, the brat in my belly could provide a final surprise.
Fiona smiled quietly, her eyes narrowing as she surveyed the forest around her. This game still played on. Some things Maureen wouldn't know. Some things she wouldn't consider even if she knew. The redheaded bitch might be stronger than Fiona had believed possible, but humans and Christians always turned weak when it counted. They believed in foolish things like setting rules for war.
Survival doesn't have rules.
The baby kicked again, a strange feeling that began high in Fiona's belly and rippled down to her hips like a wave. Hot liquid gushed between her thighs. She bent around
