The beggar looked up, eyes watery, but the rider ordered his men on.
The druid had bit a hole in his cheek, and stepped off the back as his carrach lurched forwards.
“Are ye possessed?” hissed the rider, but the druid had already bent down in the dirt. “Get back into your cart ’fore I have ’em drag ye by the neck!”
“This man is hungry,” the druid said tersely. “Will you let him starve?”
“If the weak cannae help themselves, then death is preferable.”
The druid scoffed, reaching into his satchel and pulling out some salted pork. “It isn’t much,” he told the man. “But it will help regain your strength. Take this”—he offered him herbs in a small woven bag—“and boil them.”
“Thank ye! Thank ye!” The man grasped eagerly for the pork, but his gaze slid to the druid’s staff. He froze, glancing at the old rider and drew back and bowed till his head touched the earth. “This one is a humble servant of the Sun! We’ll take no heathen’s offerings!”
The druid’s chest tightened, as if it would fold in upon itself.
“You need not fear me,” he whispered, but the beggar did not move. Knowing he would not be heard, the druid laid the pork and herbs on the ground and rose, looking over the company. They watched him with a mixture of resent and rage, until one man came down and dragged him back to his carrach.
As the horses started off, the druid’s calm twisted. For he knew he had crossed into the heart of the Sun, where all truth went to die.
It had been years since the druid spent nights like that one—surrounded by a sprawl of sleeping bodies. He lay amongst the dirt and grass, gazing into the thick canopy. The trees were shadowy sentries bent over in watch. But unlike the ones he had grown up between, these trees were quiet.
The same could not be said for his company.
If he closed his eyes, he might have imagined their grotesque snoring as some busy animal on a nightly scavenge. That had its advantages; the noise kept him from drifting off—a task which grew more necessary by the night. His eyes stung with the effort of staying open, and his mind strained to find morsels of thought with which to occupy itself. They had been traveling for many days now. And for many days he had not slept.
He would not.
So, when the fog crept in that night, he was certain he had conjured it in his mind. It spilled across the underbrush like an overflowing kettle. The watch assigned to his guard was fast asleep, as was the old rider and the sun priestess. The druid sat up. There was an oddness about the way its white tendrils stretched. A sentience in its manner. No one woke, their snores carrying on. But something stirred in the wood. Something too soft to be man.
Soundless steps carried him deeper into the forest, drawing aside protruding branches as he went. He could see no more than one palm’s width before him, but a druid never need see in a forest to find their way.
The path led him down a short sloping hillside where the fog thinned but the wood thickened, and between the boughs, he glimpsed a lake. There came a hum, low and haunting, and upon the glassy surface was a faint gathering of pale blue mist. A shadow waded in the shallows. He could parse only the paleness of her skin and the white of her hair, and though he could see none of her features, he was certain… she was watching him.
Memories pooled in his mind. He had seen this before. The fog, that woman… it was all familiar.
Was she the one he had dreamt of? The priestess of the moon? The one the men calledHirí.
She bathed undisturbed, as if knowing of his presence made her bolder. Her hands ghosted over her body, drenched in ivory moonlight. An amused laugh echoed in his ears. She began to dance—slow as the necks of pond lilies swayed by the current. She was captivating and utterly wrong. Like ravens over the birth bed.
Mist clotted in his throat.
Fear was not familiar to druids. Yet he had felt it once, long ago, and fled, and had since committed his life to repentance. Now, no matter how much he bade them, his feet refused the command to flee again.
But a hand gripped his wrist, jerking him backwards.
“Unruly wee wretch!”
The druid dug his heels in, keeping himself upright, and looked defiantly up into the old rider’s burning eyes.
“Trying to run?” the rider growled.
“I was doing no such thing.”
“Hogshit!”
“I was only—” But the druid’s eyes led the rider to nothing. The woman in the lake was gone. His gaze darted across the water, but neither in the darkness nor the mist did he find her.
“Wily as the rest of your folk,” said the rider, ignorant of the scene that had just unraveled. At least, the druid thought it had. Now he was made to look a fool.
