Brighid’s Quest

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Consciousness came back in a painful rush. Hard hands were holding her on her feet. She felt battered and bruised and her head ached with a hot, piercing pain that beat in time with her pounding heart.

“Stand up by yourself!” a rough voice said. “Dragging you here was hard enough. I’ll be damned if we’re going to hold you upright, too.”

Dragged? I’ve been dragged?

Hands tied behind her back she struggled suddenly and violently. Half blind with pain she tried to strike out with her powerful equine hind legs-and her throat closed. The harder she struggled the tighter the rope that cut off her breath.

“Be still or choke yourself to death!” the voice boomed.

Trembling, Brighid forced herself still and the rope around her neck loosened enough for her to suck in a breath and cough spasmodically.

“Don’t fight it and you’ll be fine. Fight and you won’t breathe.”

Trembling, Brighid blinked her vision clear and time seemed to slow. She felt as if she was moving under deep water as she tried to comprehend the contradictions in what she saw. She was standing in the middle of a centaur tent-that much was easy for her to understand. It was one of the large, five-sided tents made of beautifully dyed and elaborately decorated bison skins that her mother used to insist be erected and readied for her with every luxury in place well before she arrived at wherever she was visiting. The opening was directly across from Brighid and through the half-pulled-back flap she could see that it was dark. How long had she been unconscious? Her mind struggled to clear. Everything was wrong and she was unable to understand what had happened to her.

The tent was familiar, but the interior wasn’t richly appointed with the thick pallets and low-standing tables centaurs preferred. The only decoration was several free-standing iron candelabrums that cast shadowy light around the tent. The rest of the tent was empty-except for the four male centaurs who surrounded her. She tried to pull her hands free again, but they were securely tied behind her back. She could feel ropes on her neck and body. In a haze of disbelief, she saw that she was standing, with her torso cross-tied, between the two center poles of the tent. Her front legs were hobbled. Two ropes were tied around her neck. Each of them was attached to a noose around each of her rear legs-she could feel them chafing painfully just above her hooves. The hobble and the cross-tie made certain she could not move. The neck-leg restraint rendered her hind legs impotent. She was very effectively trapped. Brighid raised her eyes to the centaur who stood closest to her and his sneer of superiority had time and noise and sensation flooding back to a normal tempo.

“Fully awake now, my beauty?” he sneered. “Good. No sense in damaging your pretty neck-that is any more than it has already been damaged.” He chuckled and the other three centaur males laughed, too.

Thunder rolled in the distance and lightning flashed in the opening of the tent, helping her to identify the other centaurs. They were Bregon’s pack. She’d thought of them as that since the day they’d killed the young girl. They went everywhere with her brother, following him in everything he did. Like the pathetic sheep they are, she thought.

“Gorman.” Brighid pitched her voice to perfectly mimic her mother’s most angry tone. “Release me at once, you coward!”

Lightning flashed again, and from the edge of her vision she saw one of the other centaurs, Hagan, flinch at the familiar sound of her voice. The other two males were brothers, Bowyn and Ma

“You sound like her. You even look like her. But you are not her.” Gorman spat into the grass in front of her. “You were never as strong as Mairearad. You never will be.”

“Define strength, Gorman,” she shot back, forcing the exhaustion from her voice and mind. “Is it the ability to manipulate and use others? Or would your definition of strength be dependent upon ropes? No, wait. I seem to remember that you enjoy terrifying small girls. Pity you had to sneak up on me and tie me up. Was there no wagon available to conveniently roll over me?”

“Strength,” he said darkly, stepping forward so that he sprayed spittle in her face as he spoke, “is defined by the victor!”

“Where is my brother?” she said, refusing to react to his blustering.

“You brother is making certain that Partholon knows that once again Fomorians have been loosed upon their world.”

“Have you gone mad?” she said. “There are no more Fomorians.”

“Really? Then what do you call those winged creatures you and Midhir’s son guided into Partholon?”

“I call them the same thing Midhir and Epona’s Chosen call them-New Fomorians. You know Elphame lifted the curse from them. They are no longer a demonic race.” As she spoke she tested the bindings around her wrists, vying for a way to get her hands free. “This is ludicrous. I demand to see my brother.”

“Patience, my beauty. Bregon has been very busy and wasn’t able to greet you properly upon your arrival.” Gorman laughed and the three watching centaurs chuckled nervously along with him. “He asked us to keep you…occupied…until he could join us.”

Brighid felt her face go cold. “Bregon could not know what you have done to me.”

Gorman shrugged. “He commanded that you be kept from reaching the herd until it is too late. He left the means up to us. This-” he gestured to the cross-tie poles and the ropes that would strangle her if she attempted to fight “-was my idea.”

“It’s already too late. I have tasted of Epona’s Chalice. I am the Dhia

“Yes, we’re aware of that. Bregon told us. Fortunately none of us thought to tell our mates. Such a shame that the females of the herd won’t find out until it’s too late.”

“You are mad,” she told Gorman, and then carefully turned her head so that the next time the tent glowed with lightning she met the eyes of the dark bay centaur who had remained farthest in the shadows. “Get my brother, Hagan. No matter what has happened between us he will not look kindly on this treatment of his sister.” Then she narrowed her eyes and filled her voice with all the power she could siphon from her exhausted spirit. “And even if Bregon would be willing to allow it, he knows, as do I, the anger that would fill Epona at such treatment of her High Shaman!”

Hagan flinched and opened his mouth to speak, but Gorman cut him off.

“And what did your precious Epona do when your own mother was spitted through the gut and lay dying in agony?” Gorman’s face was florid with the passion of his emotions. “Nothing! Your Goddess let Mairearad suffer and die. Apparently Epona no longer cares about what happens to her centaur High Shamans.”

Brighid turned her gaze slowly and deliberately back to his. “You blaspheme and have turned from the Great Goddess. I give you my oath that you will pay for it.”

Thunder growled through the night and lightning spiked as if Epona had heard and acknowledged her Shaman’s oath. Heedless, Gorman sneered.

“We shall see who pays for what, Brighid Dhia

“The New Fomorians are not demons, you fool! They are a kind people who nurture life, not death. And that is what all of Partholon will know.”

Gorman’s eyes turned sly. “You seem to be forgetting one very special Fomorian.” He enunciated the word carefully.

Brighid narrowed her eyes at him. “Fallon is jailed at Guardian Castle awaiting the birth of her child and her execution. She will pay for her madness, even though what she did was only a result of the depth of her love for her people. She is an aberration. The rest of the New Fomorians are not like her.”