The first message from the Chieftain was not good. The Romans were already burning through the northern villages. He would wait until he heard from Lachlan before making a move, but there was little time.
"What will you do?" Maeve asked Lachlan the next morning before the discussion was put to a vote.
"We need to talk to the Chieftain. We will take him our decision, but I do not believe flight is in our best interest."
"You do not?"
Lachlan shook his head. "The Romans have always just taken.
Flight will only enable them to take without cost. If they are to take anything from us, there must be a high price."
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Maeve sighed. "Shall we go, or do we send a messenger?"
"I think that we must go. We must bless the warriors, of course, and the Chieftain will want to see us before it begins. It is crucial the warriors know we stand beside them."
"Agreed. I sensed their unease at the start of the march. It is never easy leaving one"s home."
"What of Cate?"
Maeve shook her head. "She needs to be near the portal. I do not believe it best if she goes with us."
Lachlan turned and studied Maeve. "Are you trying to keep her from harm?"
Maeve nodded, surprised she was so easy to read. "Yes. Would you expect any less of me?"
Lachlan shrugged. "I wonder that you could leave her at all when she is so close."
"Lachlan, I have spent the last nine years training her, tutoring, mentoring and loving her. It is time for her to show her teacher what she has learned. I cannot protect Cate from the inevitable sadness that will befall our kind, but I can certainly give her the chance to show us the true extent of her powers. She is a powerful priestess, and I believe she may save many lives. To do so, I must cut her loose from me."
Lachlan reached out and touched Maeve"s cheek. It was the most intimate touch they had ever shared. "That is difficult for you, is it not?"
Maeve looked up at Lachlan, her eyes filling with tears. "You have no idea."
"Your faith in her is boundless."
"As it ought."
"Faith misplaced can cause ruin, Maeve."
Maeve reached out and took his hand away from her cheek. "Your mother was a very wise woman, Lachlan, with skills few could match and even fewer could replicate, but Catie has her own attributes, not the least of which is her courage. It is easy to believe in one who is so brave."
Lachlan nodded. "Indeed, she is brave, as are you. I know it is not *
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an easy thing to leave her during this time, and I admire you doing so."
"We must all make sacrifices, Lachlan, for the greater good. Now, I will take my leave to see Cate. She has been making the rounds discussing our options with everyone."
"Is that Birch she is speaking with now?"
Maeve glanced over, shielded her eyes from the sun, and nodded.
"Indeed. Birch has been asking a great many questions about Quinn"s disappearance."
Lachlan cast his eyes down and shook his head. Lachlan, more than anyone else, knew what happened after the third day of absence into the portal. Quinn could be anywhere in time, as anybody. He could be lost in the s.p.a.ces between times, in the dark, black void his mother had referred to as the Great Nothingness. His absence was felt strongly by each and every one of them. "He was too young. I should not have let him go."
"He has the sight, Lachlan. You had to."
"His gift should not have become a curse."
"Stop berating yourself. I would have done the same thing in your place."
Lachlan raised an eyebrow at Maeve. "Truly?"
"Truly." Maeve turned back toward Cate, who was in an animated discussion with Birch, a curmudgeon of an old man who was adored by all. For a moment, Maeve paused to watch Cate as she tried vainly to prove her point to the old man. Maeve"s heart swelled with pride.
She had grown so very much. How had time slipped by so quickly?
Just yesterday Cate was a young woman questioning everything Maeve taught her; pushing to make a place in a world that wasn"t sure it knew what to do with the likes of her. She had been eager to please, quick to learn, and even faster at challenging Maeve and Lachlan. It had taken them less than a year to discover that she had the sight, and it had happened quite by accident.
Maeve and Cate had been taking a walk when a man on a horse pa.s.sed them. Cate called out to him to check the riggings of his saddle, but the man paid her no mind. Two hours later, when they came across *
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the man, he was sitting on the ground with his ankle twisted from having slid off his horse. The rigging was broken, and his saddle had fallen right off the horse. He gazed at Cate with awe and respect as she helped him to his feet.
When Maeve fixed his ankle and sent him on his way, she turned to Cate and gazed deeply into her eyes. "You have it, don"t you?"
"Have what?"
"The sight. You knew that man was going to get hurt."
"I knew his saddle was off, but-I am unsure how I knew."
Time and time again Cate had shown them instances of her powers, and each time, Maeve begged Lachlan to take her into the grove to teach her what it meant to have such powerful magic. When he finally acquiesced, Cate"s abilities proved to be far more than just sight. Cate had seen something of the future, and although she had been unsure of what it was she saw, she knew one thing: she had been there, somehow, someway, to a time she could not comprehend.
Thus began her two years of training to prepare her for the journey that might ultimately save those she loved most. Cate had proven to be an excellent student and paid very close attention to the lessons Maeve and Lachlan delivered on a daily basis. Every week for two years, Cate had visited the portal and been transported across time, only to discover there was no viable recipient prepared to receive her.
Until Jessie.
Cate had actually seen Jessie a year and a half earlier, but there had been something wrong, something that fogged up her mind so much, she could barely remember what she had thought a second ago, let alone remember what her soul had been doing nearly twenty centuries ago. Jessie had not been receptive then, and even if she had been, that fog kept Cate from probing into her mind. It appeared, at that time, to be a wasted trip.
But then something happened, and not only did the fog lift, but Jessie had been brought to a portal herself; she now had the means to transport herself across time, and she had done so with remarkable skill and ease. She was so good at it, Maeve did not doubt that Jessie had somehow accessed Cate"s soul memory and had managed to use *
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that information to do what no others from the future had ever been capable of; she had left her time and returned with her sanity intact.
And now, as Maeve watched her in animated conversation, she wondered how Cate had managed the feat as well. Was there a bond between past and present that allowed those two young women to connect to each other almost without effort? Or was there some other driving force that tied them to each other, as if two separate beings were connected by a common thread? Maeve wondered if she would live to find out.
She did not doubt, of course, that it was Cate"s love of her that pushed her beyond her limits, but did that love extend to Jessie as well?
After all, Jessie was not a Druid, but did she not have the soul of one?
Just like Cate had the mind of a Druid, but her heart-her heart was pure warrior, and it beat with a courage Maeve was sure came from another time and another place. For that, she was glad, because it was going to take more than Druid magic to prevent bloodshed; It was going to take the kind of bravery both Cate and Jessie possessed.
Now, if only Jessie came through in time.
Jessie stared up at the ceiling listening to her parents" voices droning on from Daniel"s room. They had been discussing what to do about her for the last two hours. Little did they know that Daniel"s room acted like a conduit and that she could hear them as easily as if they were standing in the room.
They were discussing whether or not they ought to send her back to California.
California.
A week ago, she would have leapt at the chance. Now, the very thought panicked her. How could she ever face herself if she let Maeve down? Didn"t Maeve deserve a true heroine, and could Jessie actually be that for her?
Rolling over, Jessie covered her ears with the pillow. Why now, of all times, was she feeling these feelings toward Maeve? Was Fate that cruel? Had she been delivered a gift and not allowed to open it? It was *
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clear how Cate felt about Maeve, how connected they were, but how was it possible that Jessie could also feel so strongly about a woman dead nearly twenty centuries? Was the soul"s memory that powerful? Could two people actually be so bound to each other, so cosmically connected that even the residue from their thousands-of-years-old emotion could be felt as strongly as Jessie felt it? All of the love and devotion Cate held in her heart for Maeve was now within Jessie as well, and she was determined to be as strong, as brave, and as successful as Cate.
If not for Maeve, then for herself.
She was done being a loser; done wandering about aimlessly with that ugly black teenage chip on her shoulder. She was almost embarra.s.sed to have become such a cliche, a caricature of the brooding teenage girl. There was so much of life to live, and she was done squandering it as if she could always get that time back.
She couldn"t.
Time wasn"t something you could just put in a bank and retrieve when you needed it. It wasn"t replaceable at all, and she had certainly wasted her fair share of it, but not anymore. No, she was through traipsing aimlessly through life not being accountable to anyone or anything. She was responsible. She was accountable to two people in her past life she was beginning to truly love. She had failed at a lot of things in her life, but not this time. This time, she would succeed, no matter what the cost.
As sleep finally, mercifully tickled the edges of Jessie"s consciousness, she slowly fell into fragmented dreams that came fast and disjointedly, most of them about Maeve and of a time when there was little fear of Roman attack. In this dream, Maeve sat on a stone, her long, auburn hair reflecting the sun"s rays as she pulled a brush through it.
"You can do this," Maeve said. To whom she was speaking, Jessie could not see. "You have never let me down. Not now, and not in the past. I doubt you ever will."
Jessie peered into the dream, wondering to whom Maeve was talking. Was it Cate? It had to be, but Jessie did not see her.
"She thinks I do not know . . . thinks I have not seen the vision Lachlan and she have seen of my fate at the hands of the Roman *
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soldiers. She does not know it was that very sight over a dozen years ago that made me step foot onto that boat and out of Gaul. That b.l.o.o.d.y vision did not just show me a possible end to my existence, it also showed me a brave, wonderful soul mate who would stop at nothing to save me from that very fate. I knew I needed to find her, not just for myself, but for a part of our Celtic culture that would be utterly destroyed if we cannot stop them. This is not about me, although Catie would make it her life mission to save me from that horrid fate. This is about a beautiful people few understand and even fewer will get the chance to know. You are our only hope now. Be strong. No matter what you face, no matter how afraid you become, remember that there is a people who rely on you to act wisely and bravely."
The dream (was it a dream?) dissolved like a film fade out, and this time, Jessie saw tens of thousands of Roman troops lined up and moving across green woodland valleys. Their sheer numbers were astounding, the sound of their death march deafening. How could Maeve ask her to be brave and then show her what they were up against?
The scene shifted to burning buildings, fiery huts and villages aflame. Wooden houses burned high, their flames licking the bottom branches of the huge oaks standing guard against the wind. Babies cried, women speared in the back as they ran, and the dead bodies strewn about were crushed beneath the horses" hooves. The village and everyone in it were destroyed as Roman soldiers crushed bodies, life and memories beneath their sandals.
Was this a dream, a memory, or neither? Jessie had no idea. What she did know was that it was vivid and very, very real. There was even the dream about Ceara, who had walked up to the Pit to inquire about Jessie. Even that dream felt within her reach. In this dream that wasn"t a dream, Daniel was standing behind her folks.
Daniel!
Jessie tried calling to him at first, but this was a dream where you could scream your head off and no one could hear you. Jessie wondered if everyone had those kinds of dreams. She"d had too many to remember, and she hated them. Screaming but not screaming. She wanted to yell and wave her arms to get Daniel"s attention.
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But then . . . Daniel did the most amazing thing. As Jessie"s parents told Ceara about possibly sending Jessie back to California, Daniel stood right behind them, his eyes locked onto Ceara"s, and he was vehemently shaking his head. He knew the truth, didn"t he? Somehow, some way, Daniel was telling her that it was going to be all right-that she wasn"t going back to California.
But how could he know?
Waving to her, Daniel smiled and then pointed to the ceiling. Jessie looked up at it and saw his X-Men poster. Cyclops was blasting a bad guy and Wolverine was slashing some big guy in red. When she looked back, Daniel was gone. Jessie sighed. Cyclops and Wolverine were Daniel"s heroes. He was telling her that she was one as well.
Thank you, sport. It"s easier to believe in yourself when others do as well.
And, for the first time in her life, she truly did.
Lachlan and Maeve were picking their way through the woods when Maeve stopped to rest. It had been a long night of travel, and she was weary from the pace of the journey.
When they had drunk their share of water from the skin, Lachlan sat next to Maeve and said, "I am sorry we had to leave Cate behind."
"You need not apologize any more, Lachlan. We were right to. The grove"s decision to fight instead of flee means that now, more than ever, we must know the information she can retrieve from Jessie."
"Had you hoped for fleeing to be their response?"
Maeve shook her head. "Not at all. We are a proud people, Lachlan, and fight is something we do quite well. I am only surprised at how lopsided the vote was."
"We have much to hate about the Romans."
"Hate is such a dark word."
"So is death."
Maeve looked at him and saw the same sorrow she felt. "Lachlan, are you ever afraid?"
Lachlan opened the skin once more and drew a deep draught. "I *
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stopped feeling fear when my mother died. I made a promise that I would never allow fear to control any part of my world. Fear did not stop her and it will not stop me."
"But she died in the pursuit of truth. Where truth is, there is no room for fear."
Lachlan nodded. "I like to believe she found what she was looking for. Can I do less than that?"