Cuchulainn swung aboard his gelding, who was restlessly skittering to the side, ears cocked at the rumbling darkness, and made to go after him.

“Let him go,” Brighid said heavily. “He’s not worth your life.” With a mighty effort, Brighid scooped Fand up and tossed her over the saddle in front of Cu. “Keep her with you or she’ll be trampled!” She had to shout over the growing noise. “Keep a firm hold on the gelding. He’ll want to panic, but you’ll be safe as long as you’re mounted on him.”

An enormous dark shape thundered past them.

Brighid met her husband’s turquoise eyes and smiled. She was near the end. The shapeshifting, and then her abduction and fleeing from the grassfire had depleted even her deep reserves of Huntress strength. She would not be able to keep up with the stampeding bison, but she would not have his last living memory of her be of tears and regrets. “I love you, Cuchulainn,” she said, and saw his face soften in response.

“And I you, my beautiful Huntress.”

Another beast rushed past them and Brighid drew a deep breath before slapping the gelding on the rear and shouting, “Now ride!”

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Gelding and centaur leaped forward together and then they were consumed in the mass of stampeding creatures. Their scent hit Cuchulainn-musk mixed with smoke and panic. He could hear nothing except the pounding of their hooves. Frantically he tried to guide his gelding so that they remained beside Brighid, but it was impossible. The ocean of bison separated them until all he could see was her silver-blond hair as it streamed behind her. And then he was pulling too far ahead of her and he lost her completely.

Fear exploded within him. He couldn’t lose her! Slowly he managed to angle his gelding so that they were very gradually cutting through the running creatures. The horse was more agile than the lumbering bison and they finally made it to the edge of the herd. He slowed the horse to a steady trot and scanned the dark beasts for any sign of Brighid’s silver coat.

The herd thinned and as stragglers staggered past him a new sound reached his ears. It was a distinctive crackle and popping that was followed by an ominous whoosh of air. He turned his head as a sudden updraft cleared the smoke and the gelding squealed and fought to lunge away as the wall of flames materialized. From within the orange fire, Cuchulainn could see a young bison calf and its mother being consumed.

He spun the gelding around and began crisscrossing the flattened grass path left by the herd.

“Brighid!” he yelled, eyes searching for a spot of silver in the empty plain.

He would have passed her if Fand hadn’t begun to whine and wriggle frantically to be free. Brighid had fallen to her knees and was bent forward at the waist, resting her hands against the ground and gasping for air.

He raced to her and dropped from the gelding to her side.

She raised her head and looked up at him, her eyes large and glassy.

“No,” she whispered. “You were supposed to be safe.”

“I told you I wouldn’t leave you,” he said. Turning quickly to the gelding he grabbed the water and held the skin to her lips. She gulped and then turned away to cough.

The whoosh and crackle of the fire had her head snapping around. “Get out of here!” she yelled at him.

“Only if you come with me,” he said.

“There’s no point.” She gestured to her right foreleg, which was bent at the wrong angle along the ground. “It’s broken. Quickly, Cuchulainn. Leave me!”

“I will not! Where you go I go-if you die I die! I will not lose you, Brighid. I could not survive it.”

“Please don’t do this,” she said brokenly.

Then his eyes widened. “Shapeshift!”

“Cu, I-”

“You can! You must. Shapeshift and the gelding can carry us out of here. If you don’t, we die here.”

Live, child…

The gentle, familiar voice of Epona drifted through her mind, calming and soothing her. Brighid bowed her head and began whispering the words as she steeled herself for the pain of the Change.

Her skin had barely stopped glowing from the transformation when Cuchulainn lifted her to the gelding’s back. The fire was so close that the heat seared their skin and sparks rained around them.

“It’s going to catch us,” Brighid panted against his ear.

Cuchulainn leaned forward and dug his heels into the gelding, who lengthened his stride, but they couldn’t pull away from the flaming monster that pursued them. Brighid closed her eyes and clutched the turquoise stone that dangled from around her neck.

I need you again, my winged friend.

The hawk’s cry sounded above the spitting flames and her mighty wings beat against the smoke that surrounded them as she circled over them once and then dove like a plummeting star to their right.

Come…

Cuchulainn reined the gelding to the right, and followed the soaring bird to the riverbed.

The water was shallow-only reaching just above the gelding’s hocks. And they weren’t alone. They had joined an odd assortment of deer and coyotes, all of whom were cringing into the water and staring with hypnotic fascination at the approaching wall of flames. When Fand leaped the bank and splashed to them, not even the timid deer spared him a glance.

“Get the skin off the gelding!” Brighid yelled over the thunder of the flames. “Let him go. He can outrun it without us.”

She gritted her teeth against the pain in her broken leg as he helped her from the horse’s back. She balanced on one leg in the muddy water while he tugged off the saddle, packs, and bison pelt, and shooed the gelding away. Then Cuchulainn lowered her with him as he sank into the water and called Fand to them. Wrapped in each other’s arms with the wolf pressed closely, Cuchulainn covered them with the bison pelt and their world went black.

They lost all sense of time, and knew only the heat and the terrible, deafening sound of the feeding fire. The water around them hissed and steamed. Brighid held tight to Cuchulainn and tried to control the instinctive panic that made her want to fling off the oppressive bison skin. Her pulse beat painfully in her broken leg and her body felt horribly weak, and amidst the heat she began to shiver and she knew that shock was setting in. That could kill me as surely as the fire. The thought was detached from her, and she knew she should force herself to care-to struggle to stay conscious and aware…but it was so much easier to sleep…and it was so very cold…

Then she heard the singing. Her lips tilted up as she recognized the voices of the winged children and remembered that it was the song they sang the day they began their journey from the Wastelands.

Greetings to you, sun of Epona

as you travel the skies on high,

with your strong steps on the

wing of the heights

you are the happy mother of the stars.

“Do you hear them,” she whispered to Cuchulainn.

“I do,” he said, his voice hushed. “I hear them even though they can’t be here.”

“They aren’t-” Brighid’s voice was choked with tears “-but their love is. Gorman was wrong, Epona still cares about what happens to her High Shamans.” As she listened to their disembodied song of praise she felt the strength of love fill her body and expand around her as she tapped into and focused it, blanketing them in a mother’s protective touch.

You sink down in the perilous ocean

without harm and without hurt.

You rise up on the quiet wave

like a young chieftain in flower,

And we will love you all the days

of our lives!

“It’s over,” Brighid said quietly when the singing stopped. “The fire has burned itself out. I can Feel it-its anger is gone.”

Slowly Cuchulainn raised the thick pelt from them and gazed into the alien dawn of a much-changed land. He stood and lifted Brighid, with Fand following closely, and carried her from the riverbed that had dried to little more than a puddle and was littered with the scorched bodies of animals. He climbed the eastern bank to stand on the rise amidst the blackened corpses of trees. The series of tributaries that fingered into the Centaur Plains from the main river had finally broken the line of the fire, and the green that still covered the ridge behind the last of the waterways looked bizarrely out of place in a world of black and gray. Before he could turn to face the south and what was left of the Centaur Plains, Brighid spoke.