Though her gut felt tight and sick, Brighid kept watching as her brother turned away from the basin and disappeared into the forest. Then her breath caught in her throat. When she looked back at the basin the faint outline of her brother’s spirit still stood there. In the middle of the grove another silhouette of a centaur formed, then near the tree line the glistening outline of another and another appeared. Goddess! They’re all Bregon! In each of the apparitions his body was almost completely transparent and she could only vaguely make out his form by focusing on the faint glimmer of silver that outlined his body. All of her brother’s spirits were silently staring at the most substantial of all of them, the centaur who stood beside the basin. His head was bowed and while the others looked on he retrieved the discarded Chalice and set it reverently back in its place. He looked up from the reflection and directly into his sister’s eyes. His ghostly face was awash in tears.
Then he and the others disappeared.
Brighid knew what she had just witnessed had been her brother drinking of Epona’s Chalice. He was a High Shaman now-she was sure of it. As sure as she was that what else she had seen in the basin’s reflection of the past had been the shattering of Bregon’s soul. A sudden rush of sadness overshadowed the worry she felt for her herd. Bregon had left so much of his soul behind! Cu had only experienced a single loss of spirit, and it had caused him to be a sad shell of himself, so bereft and hopeless that he thought of ending his life. She couldn’t imagine what must be happening to her brother. How could he survive so fragmented?
Brighid sighed and let her fingers trail through the living water again. It was all so wrong. How could the poison of one woman be allowed to live on after her death to destroy the next generation?
“You’re late, sister.”
With a gasp, Brighid spun around. Her brother stood before her. Not the sad, broken fragments of himself she had just been lamenting. The centaur who faced her radiated power-a power she had not yet tasted.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Brighid drew around her the mantle of cool aloofness she had worn for most of her life. Her smile was polite and disinterested.
“Hello, Bregon.”
His eyes narrowed to slits. “Drop your pretenses and leave, sister. There is no reason for you to drink of Epona’s Chalice. You chose another path for your life. Our mother was satisfied with your choice. I am satisfied with your choice. Go back to the forests of the people you love so well. Our herd does not need you.”
“Our mother was a sad, twisted centaur whose lust for power caused her to never be satisfied with anything, Bregon. The day you accept that is the day you will be free of her ghost.”
“So you know she’s dead.”
“Yes, I know. Niam told me.”
Bregon’s lips twisted in a sneer at the mention of their sister.
“She died bringing me the news,” Brighid continued.
The haughty expression slid from Bregon’s face. “Niam? She’s dead?”
“Our sister ran herself to her death. Ending the hatred that our mother bred meant more to her than her own life.”
Bregon wiped his hands over his face and when he looked up at her Brighid got her first true glimpse of the iron-souled stranger her brother had become.
“Niam was always foolish and weak. She lived that way. She died that way.”
“It is not foolish or weak to give your life for another,” Brighid said.
“It is if your oh-so-valiant effort is for naught,” he sneered.
“Look around you, Bregon. It is because of Niam that I am here.” Her voice intensified as she hurled the words at him. “It is because of Niam that I will drink of Epona’s Chalice. And it is because of Niam that I will return to the Centaur Plains and take the position my birthright assures me-High Shaman of the Dhianna Herd.”
“No, sister. I don’t think you will.” As Bregon spoke his eyes turned sly, and he moved forward toward Epona’s Chalice.
With the grace of a Master Warrior, Cuchulainn stepped smoothly between Brighid’s brother and the Chalice.
“I would think again, Bregon,” Cuchulainn said, his voice deceptively nonchalant.
Bregon pulled up in surprise. Then his expression changed to amusement. “A man?”
“See there, Brighid, just when I was beginning to doubt your brother’s intelligence he manages to dazzle me with his sharp powers of observation,” Cuchulainn said amiably.
A roll of laughter escaped from Brighid before she could stop it, and its sound seemed to ignite Bregon.
“How dare you speak to me in such a way you impudent little man!”
Cuchulainn raised his brows as if Bregon had just amused instead of insulted him. “It is true that I am just a man, but this-” he brandished the gleaming white sword between them “-tends to make up for my lack of hooves.”
“You’re in the Otherworld now, you fool. Swords are a weapon of the physical realm. Here you need power gifted from the spirits. Power such as this.” Bregon swept his hands through the air around him, as if he was catching invisible insects. Then he muttered a few unintelligible words and threw the invisible nothing at Cuchulainn. Instinctively, the warrior raised his sword and a ball of light crackled and burst against the white blade.
“But that’s not possible!” Bregon sputtered. “It shouldn’t have protected you. It’s a sword,” Bregon said.
Cuchulainn pulled back his lips in a snarl. “It is the spirit of a sword. Now who is being foolish, Bregon? For what reason would a sword become tangible in the Realm of Spirits?” When the centaur just stared at him without speaking, Cuchulainn answered his own question. “My sword has power here because it is aiding me to fulfill an oath that is binding in all realms.”
“An oath? What-”
“Bregon, meet Cuchulainn MacCallan, son of Midhir and Etain. He is my lifemate,” Brighid said.
Bregon’s face went slack with shock. “You handfasted with this man?”
“She did,” Cuchulainn said. Then he began striding toward Bregon. “And even in the Otherworld my sword will protect her life because I have sworn that it is more dear to me than my own.” He stopped when the tip of his sword pressed against the centaur’s chest. “Now you should leave before I do something that would suggest that I am not honoring her name even as I do my own.”
Bregon backed slowly away from Cuchulainn, who followed him, careful to keep his sword held ready. Just before the centaur reached the forest edge he looked back to where his sister stood beside the basin.
“I will not give up what I have fought to win,” he said.
“I hear you, Bregon. Now you hear me. I will bring an end to the hatred and dissension our mother sowed during her unhappy life. I give you my oath on that. You can choose to be for me or against me. But if you go against me I will cull you from the herd as I would any other traitor.”
“I have already made my choice. When you enter the Centaur Plains you had better come with more than this little man.” Bregon spat at her, and then he disappeared into the forest.
Cuchulainn stayed near the forest’s edge, keeping his keen eyes trained on the shapes and shadows that flitted within.
“Brighid, it would make me breathe much easier if you drank from the Chalice now and we returned to the cave.”
“Just a moment more,” she called to him. “I have to be sure that…” Her words trailed off as her fingers touched the side of the Chalice. She had to be sure of what? She didn’t know-she only knew that she was not her brother and she would not take the cup and callously use it and cast it aside.
It is your turn now, beloved child.
Brighid looked up from the Chalice. A woman, clothed in a gown of rich white samite, was walking across the glade toward her. She seemed to move in a pool of silver moonbeams. As she approached Brighid the woman shifted shape, changing from a beautiful blond-haired maiden, to a middle-aged matron whose body was strong and useful, to an ancient crone with hair the color of snow. But her form did not stop there-one instant she was a woman, the next she was an elegant silver mare, then a powerful centaur who carried the bow of a Huntress clutched in her right hand, and then she grew wings and took the shape of a New Fomorian girl child.