“For the love of the gods, woman, you don’t fly across the world because of a hard dream, and when I told you to stay behind.”
“It wasn’t just a hard dream.” She jerked back. “There was blood on my hands when I woke up, and that wasn’t the worst part of it. He got through. I was too late, we were too late, and he got through. And … do you remember the vision before, the dream I pulled you into when you tried to pull me out?”
“Aye.”
“Like that. The castle burning, death everywhere. And Odran, holding your sword, your staff.”
“My sword’s at my side.” But he brushed a hand over her hair. “My staff’s where I left it.”
“For now. He’ll come through if we don’t stop him. If I don’t do anything. He said this world was his because I did nothing. There was blood on my hands, Keegan.”
“All right.” He kissed her absently on the brow as he thought it through. “All right now. I was coming to bring you anyway.”
“You found it?”
“No, and there’s the problem.”
“It’s not, because I know where it is. I saw it. I saw the tree in the dream, and I know where it is.”
“Show me.”
“It’s not far.”
“We’ve covered all the not far.”
“I can’t help it.” She grabbed his hand, started down the path she’d seen soaked with blood.
Keegan gave a whistle, and seconds later an elf raced up. “Fetch all the others and find us.”
Dread filled her, threatened to block out everything else. “I ran this path after the tree started to move.”
“Move?”
“Snakes, forming its branches, its trunk. I ran because I heard the screaming, and the battle. That way.” She veered left. “We—you and I—were in the sunlight first. A field, flowers, so beautiful. But you said things you wouldn’t have said, wanted me to say things I wouldn’t. Then you were covered in blood.”
“What things?”
“Later. It’s this way.”
His mother came first, guided by another elf who whisked off again. Tarryn said nothing as Breen continued on.
When the path narrowed to a gutted track and forked, Breen pointed.
“There.”
“I see a tree right enough, and a good-sized one, but nothing resembling snakes. And we’ve covered this ground.”
“There,” she said again. “It hides and waits and holds its breath. No bird will nest in it, no creature burrow. Its leaves are false when summer comes, another mask, for nothing grows on it or from it. It eats light and life when it can, in secret, as it guards the door to hell.”
She let out a breath. “It didn’t look like this in the dream, but it’s an illusion. Dark magicks are cloaking it, and blocking the light from seeing or sensing. But I can feel.”
She started to hold out a hand, but Tarryn stopped her. “Wait for the others. If it’s this strong, we’ll want the others.”
“He made this, conjured this, created this, so he could come and go as he pleased, take what he wanted. But it took more, powers dimming, and more, powers draining. So he needed a child. He made them, but they weren’t enough. Until my father.”
She turned to Keegan. “I know it. I don’t know how, but I know it. And I know he hasn’t been able to open it again. Not since he killed my father. It takes so much, more and more, so he’s tried other ways.”
An elf raced back, a silver cat on her shoulders. The cat leaped off, and Sedric stood studying the tree. “This?” At Breen’s nod, he rubbed her shoulder. “I don’t feel it. I’m sorry. Let me move closer.”
“Not yet,” Tarryn said. “And I think it must be Breen to break the illusion.”
Marg came in the arms of a faerie, then Loren, then the others who’d spread out through the forest.
“I think the portal’s in it—or it is the portal. Like the Welcoming Tree, but its antithesis.”
“Aye,” Keegan agreed. “I think you’ve the right of that. Illusion or no, we seal it. Destroying it, while satisfying, may rip it open, so we seal it.”
“Without seeing or feeling, how will we know?” Marg asked.
“We cast the circle and begin. We close it off from Talamh.”
Beside Breen, Bollocks growled low, and she felt herself drift.
“Don’t you see it?” She saw it go black, saw the branches coil and begin to slither. “It’s swallowing the light.”