Brigid pulled a stone from the windowsill. “Ana, why is this yoke glowing?”

  “Someone wishes to have a word with me,” Ana said. “He’s in luck; we’re already heading somewhere to have a chat.”

  “Is that how you communicated with Mam?” Maura asked.

  Ana nodded and cinched the sack on the table before her.

  “Hang on,” Brendan said. “You have a unique stone for every person you keep in contact with? That sounds daunting. How do you manage it all?”

  “For the longest time I had them on several strands hung against the wall,” Ana said, gesturing to the wall above the dining table. “As I fell out of contact with someone, I moved their stone upstairs and packed it away.

  “How many stones do you have left down here?” Donal asked.

  Ana spun from the table toward Donal, her lips pursed and a finger extended. She closed her eyes and inhaled. As her breath drew inward, her face relaxed and her finger shifted from Donal to the ceiling. She opened her eyes after exhalation and clasped her hands as she scanned the room. “Are we ready to stretch our legs?”

  “Indeed, we are,” Siobhan said.

  “Off we go,” Ana said as she stepped to the door. She rested a hand on the threshold and looked back at the group. “Don’t forget your weapons. Just in case.”

  The group filed out into the yard after Ana, who now lingered near the outdoor table. Donal shouted after the hound. Maura ran behind the house when it didn’t return. “After all, he likes me better!” she said as she disappeared out of sight.

  Brendan grinned and looked at Ciara. “I think she’s been around us too long.”

  Ciara shrugged. “That’s not always a bad thing,” she said, leaning in to bump his shoulder.

  Brigid pinched her face and scanned the clearing’s edge. “I don’t see another path out. Are we going back up the road?”

  Ana approached and rested a hand on Brigid’s shoulder. “Child, you don’t need a path to walk between trees. Come.”

  “It helps, though, don’t it?” Brigid muttered to Donal.

  “Never known it to hurt,” Donal said with a grin.

  They followed the rest of the group, save for Maura and the traitorous hound, north into the woods. True to Ana’s word, their path followed no rule or pattern, nor did the forest floor offer any traces of wear to guide them. They passed between singular trunks of oak and under sweeping boughs of alder and ash.

  He heard the hound approaching long before he saw it. It bounded at him from the south, Maura huffing after it ten yards behind.

  “Save your apples,” Maura said. “This one found a fox.” She rested her hands on her knees once she reached the group. “And a rabbit.”

  Donal did his best to track the passage of time through the leaves of the forest canopy. He’d walked a quarter-hour, in his best estimate, when he noticed that the hawthorn had muscled out all other trees from this section of forest. Red light tinged the trunks and branches to the northeast, but the time was too late in the day for it to be a sign of a shepherd’s warning. The manner in which the light bounced off the hawthorn reminded Donal of—

  “A portal?” he said, blurting his thoughts.

  “It is,” Ana said from the front. “We’re nearly there.”

  “Ready yourselves for battle,” Siobhan said.

  “Don’t be so hasty,” Ana said. “Tír fo Thuinn is still a wide place. If I send you through the wrong draft, it could mean days until you reach your friends.” She stopped and turned to Siobhan. “And isn’t the plan to bring them here?”

  “You were the one who told us to bring the weapons,” Siobhan said.

  “As a last resort,” Ana said, her tone sharp. “Not first.”

  Crimson light filled the spaces of the thinning hawthorn, bathing the forest floor in a glow that matched the red onyx attached to Donal’s spearhead. When at last they reached a clearing, the light forced Donal to shield his eyes as they adjusted from the darker woods through which they had journeyed to their new environment.

  ‘Pillars’ was too simple a word to describe the structure in the center of the circular open space. Two large pieces carved from stone stood vertically. A third pedestal sat empty, the rough, asymmetrical shape on its base hinting that its empty state wasn’t by design. The symbols chiseled down the middle of opposing sides glowed with amber light.

  Between the three stones a six-foot-wide sphere swirled with ruby light. Unlike its sister near Derglocha, a face peered out from its center. The black eyes of a dark-complected man peered through curtains of heavy, flowing white hair and over its matching beard. He stood at the side of a wide room packed with tables dressed with runners made from fine fabrics. Not a window was visible, yet the room was alight with torches hung four feet apart across the entire room.

  The group surrounded the sphere, and as Donal rounded the far side of the portal he saw a large but simple throne tucked in the middle of the longest table in the room. The other chairs sat so close to each other that Donal doubted this room could ever host a feast.

  “That was fast,” he said. His voice rumbled in such a manner that it made Donal’s chest vibrate.

  “We were already on our way,” Ana said.

  “‘We?’”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “I had more visitors. They need my help.”

  “More ‘help?’” the man asked. His eyes drifted to the ceiling as he scratched the nape of his neck. “You know better. You’re stepping over the line as it is.”

  Ana’s eyes slid to the ground in front of her. “I’m not the only one, you know,” she said, her tone airy and her eyes dark.

  “They’ve always been meddlesome, even in their earliest days,” he said. “And they’re not you.”

  “Ah here, this why you summoned me? Another lecture about Caragh?”

  Maura shifted in place as she looked at Siobhan and Donal.

  “I’d be right in doing so,” he said, “given that another mortal arrived from our world not long ago.”

  Ana’s face blanched. Her eyes lifted to the portal. “Who?”

  “Come in,” he bellowed. The sound of a metal latch emerged from the other side of the portal, followed by the creak of hinges. “You can step through, lad.”

  “It won’t drop me in a lake?” said a familiar voice.

  Brigid rushed to the sphere’s edge in response.

  The white-haired man chuckled. “Not this one.”

  “Brig!” Fergal said before a single part of his body emerged from the portal. He stepped through and enveloped Brigid in an embrace.

  Fergal stood taller than Donal remembered. Gone were his armor and poleaxe. He wore a set of clothes different from any Donal had seen. His demeanor was lighter on the whole, yet his eyes carried a fragile and somber look.

  Brigid rested her hands on his cheeks after a lengthy kiss. “You came back to me! I knew you would.”

  Siobhan craned her neck and then circled the sphere. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Where are the others? Where’s Finn?”

  Fergal rested his hands on Brigid’s shoulders and eased her away by a few inches. “I was—” His voice cracked. “I was separated from them.”

  Brigid wrinkled her nose and raised her brows. Her eyes scanned every part of his face. “‘Separated?’”

  Siobhan approached Ana, speaking as slowly as she stepped. “Ana, who is this man you’re talking to?”

  Ana’s expression dropped. “He is Donn.”

  Donal didn’t need any clarification. As the realization swept over Brigid, her knees buckled. Fergal stopped her from collapsing.

  “How?” Brigid asked Fergal.

  “That’s a simple question for a complicated moment,” he said. “Could ya be more specific?”

  “How are you here if you’re—” Her lip quivered. “If you’re—”

  “I am in the right place for it, you know.”

  She swatted the outside of his left arm. “Dya’think this is the time to be joking?”

  “Dya’see me laughing, lass?”

  Siobhan walked to the space behind Brigid. “You’re walking with someone who’s taken a similar journey,” she said. “Or did you forget Maura died as well?”

  Brigid fell to her knees and hid her face in her hands.

  Ciara grabbed Brendan’s hand and jerked him close. She wrapped an arm around his back and pressed her ear into his chest. Her eyes didn’t well and her face remained locked with no expression, but she watched Brigid through the side of her left eye.

  Fergal squatted at her side. “There will be plenty of time for tears later, lass,” he said. “Right now, I’m simply glad to be next to you again.”

  Brigid leaned into Fergal’s chest. He caught her and held her as her head bounced in silent sobbing.

  “MacDavett, I’m sorry,” Brendan said. “It’s not right.”

  “We all knew it could happen,” Fergal said. “It was worth the risk. Still is.”

  “Was it, though?” Siobhan asked. “What happened? What of the others?”

  “All alive, last I saw,” he said.

  Siobhan raised a hand to her chest and sighed, her shoulders dropping slightly. “What else do you remember?”

  Fergal recalled passing through a portal at the bottom of a lake, their polite capture by the Fianna, the state of Tír fo Thuinn, and their trek to the Red Tower.

  “Why on earth would you go there?” Brigid asked. “Why not find us first?”

  “There’s a man charged with keeping that sword we’re seeking. It’s one of the few weapons that could best The ávertach—the real one. So the monster caged him in its cellar to prevent anybody from getting it.”

  “So he thought,” Brendan said, his mouth upturned in a faint smile. “The four of you proved him wrong.”

  “Only in part,” Fergal said. “The man opened one of those doors and ran back to his town, leaving us to fend for ourselves.”

  “So you escaped the tower,” Brendan said.

  “Hai, we did,” Fergal said. “We didn’t want to get trapped there by The ávertach’s minions seeking revenge.”

  “‘Revenge?’” Brigid said, her face rising to Fergal. “You killed that monster anyway?”

  A laugh slipped out of Donal before he could catch himself. “Of course they did,” he said. “We’re talking about Maeve, Finn, and Niall.” He nodded in Fergal’s direction. “With you keeping them in line the whole long way, I’d imagine.”

  Fergal grinned. “They do like their bickering. My best guess is that it keeps them from truly acknowledging the absurdity and the danger.”

  Donal’s stomach interrupted his chuckle. And now he’s gone from them. It twisted at the thought of what Fergal had left behind. “How did you manage it?”

  “—Sorry, Donal,” Siobhan said. “Sword’s gone, monster’s dead. We need to know what happened next. Hard as it may be to recall.” She squatted behind Brigid. “Or hear.”

  “We’d all but emptied the tower of beasties,” Fergal said. “We worried that we’d see more dearg due before Rory’s company returned. It wasn’t them who set upon us, however. Fomori had landed on the docks behind the tower while we fought the big fella, best that I can tell,” Fergal said. “A small band of scouts had pushed forward and ambushed us from the front. One of them scolded the others to go after Maeve, so I pushed her out of the way.”

  He rubbed the right side of his chest. “Finn tried his best, but there wasn’t much he could do while Goll and the others were leading us—”

  “—Did you say, ‘Goll?’” Ana said. She joined Siobhan behind Brigid. “Goll mac Morna is still alive?”

  “Him, his brother, some really fast man and one of Maeve’s granddads. The big fella took him as slaves. We freed them when we defeated Himself. After I took the arrow, they helped our people get me moving to Uargal so that Finn might save me. Too far to travel, as it turned out.”

  Ana waved an upright palm at Fergal and turned to Donn. “And you wonder why I get involved? The White Circle let its steward rot in a cage, and that same man abandoned the mortals who rescued him. Indech’s ruin blankets Tír na Marbh. As we speak, he plots his foul deeds both in our world and in íriu. ”

  “It’s not that I disagree,” Donn said. “My concern is with upsetting the balance of things.”

  “The balance is already upset,” Ana said, her voice louder. “You see it as the mortals flow through your house. Darkness dumped all we love onto the floor, and your concern is whether the scale's empty sides are still equal? If you won’t help me fix the mess, at least give me the space to do it alone.”

  Donn flopped his right arm forward. “I didn’t have to rush yer man here, you know.”

  Ana sighed and bobbed her head. “I thank you for it. Truly. If you’ll excuse me, another conversation is required, and it won’t be pleasant.”

  “You don’t mean—”

  “—I look forward to our next talk, Donn.” She spread her right hand wide and pulled it downward, clenching it into a fist. The red sphere reduced to nothing before Donn could speak another word.

  “I hate to be a rude host,” Ana said to Siobhan, “but could you find your way back to the house? I imagine Brigid and her man want to find a place to settle in and… deal with matters.”

  “That’s fine, Shiv,” Donal said. “We’ll catch you up on things when we return.”

  “Perhaps I was too polite,” Ana said to him. “She’s leading all seven of you back. My next chat must be in private unless you want your brother’s journey to follow the same route your friend took.”