Maeve stood in her old bedchamber and felt like an interloper. There were things she remembered that hadn’t changed, but the connected room—bathroom the other witches had called it—was new.
Her head throbbed with all the new she’d heard today, and she knew there was so much more to come. Outside her casement, the sea looked the same, but the village was easily three times larger than in her time.
There were noises that broke the peace, and they made no sense to her. Growls and purrs of big silver things that flashed through the sky and sped along the roadways. She couldn’t remember the words they’d given her to put names to those noises.
The other witches, the new ones, had all gone about their business and even though she was tired, Maeve avoided the large bed in the center of her chamber.
Even knowing it was silly, she didn’t want to close her eyes because she was afraid she wouldn’t wake again. Or worse, wake four hundred years later in a world that made no sense.
Through the bond, she could sense Roderick prowling Baile. Even the castle felt different, as if it were covered in woolen batting that stifled it.
Roderick’s presence came closer and then a soft knock sounded on her door.
“Come in.” She leaned against the casement and stared at the sea.
Roderick stood behind her and studied the view with her. “At least that much is the same.”
“Yes.” It was comforting having him near. “They thought Alexander a friend and knew almost nothing about Rhiannon.”
“It worries me.” Roderick leaned his shoulder on the window embrasure. Mellow sunlight played across his coimhdeacht markings on his arm, the patterns and swirls etched on his skin telling the story of his service. She was now marked on his skin beside the other witches he had served before her. “It also makes no sense Alexander woke us and helped us into the tunnels.”
That didn’t make sense to her either. “He doesn’t smell anymore.”
“Smell?” Roderick frowned down at her.
“The blood-magic stink,” she said. “He used to have it, and he doesn’t anymore.”
Roderick sighed. “I know not what him not reeking of blood magic means. Along with a number of other things that make no sense to me.”
“You are not alone in that.” Maeve dared reach behind her for his hand. Their bond had been so new that she had not yet accustomed herself to having a coimhdeacht, let alone being comfortable with him before that hideous day, the one her mind veered away from.
He took her hand. “You did not want to sleep?”
“No. I’m afraid.” His markings flared brighter umber at her touch.
He nodded, and he knew because of the bond, but also because he had been frozen with her all these years. “Want to go for a walk?”
“Where to?”
He shrugged. “Let us explore our new now together.”
Still holding her hand, Roderick led her back into the hallway outside her chamber. “Baile is…there.” He grimaced. “But not as she used to be. I can sense her, but she does not thrum in my blood.”
“Why?” The carpets beneath their feet hadn’t aged. Drawings, paintings and samplers made by witches who had made Baile home decorated the walls. She stopped at a beautiful charcoal sketch of a horse in motion. Sadness gripped her like a fist in her chest.
Roderick tightened his clasp on her hand as he reassured her through the bond. There were often times when having another human feel every emotion you had, able to peer inside your mind and heart and see what you kept concealed, was intrusive and uncomfortable. In moments like this, however, Roderick’s bond to her was a blessing. She would never feel lonely again. She would never have to explain how she felt or what she thought.
Pressing her head to his shoulder, she stared at the sketch. She remembered the day they had hung it. To her, that day seemed three weeks ago. Even though it was unnecessary, she said, “Colleen, she drew that.”
“She had a keen eye.” Roderick’s light blue eyes filled with shared emotion. “I have been thinking perhaps Baile is so quiet because all the coimhdeacht are gone.”
His sadness throbbed between them, grief for the men who had fought by his side and were now dead. “All of them?”
“Aye.” His sadness coiled around her heart, and she wanted to shed the tears he never would.
She wrapped both her arms around him and kept her head pressed to his shoulder. “Not all the coimhdeacht are gone.”
“No, not all. But I am the only one left.”
“For the new ones, this picture is painted by a witch dead for hundreds of years.” Maeve touched the corner of the picture frame, seeking that tangible connection to Colleen. “We only saw her yesterday.”
“We should do something,” he said. “We could go to Birgit’s mound and release their spirits to the Far Isle.”
Tears threatened, and Maeve blinked them back. “I would like that.”
“Let us to the caverns.” He tucked her arm in the crook of his elbow and gently tugged her away. “I cannot feel Goddess either.”
As the marks on Roderick’s arms, which had been worn by all the coimhdeacht, told the story of his life and his bonds, so the thousands of sigils in the caverns below Baile marked the lives of witches past.
Maeve was spirit walker, the only one a coven could have, and it was her job not only to place the sigils on the cavern walls, using shells, fossils and crystals, the sigils that held the key to a witch’s spirit, but she could walk amongst them after their death.
Roderick was right. She couldn’t sense Goddess, either. Even the vague notion that Goddess might be no more was too much to contemplate, so she kept it tucked in a tight mind box even Roderick couldn’t penetrate.
The sun slid behind a cloud, but the air was warm enough not to require a cloak. Not that Maeve would know where to start searching for one.
Sand crunched beneath their feet as they crossed the bailey. Images flashed through her mind. Hester being dragged by her hair. Blood covering the stones they walked across.
“Don’t.” Roderick glanced at her, his jaw taut. “It does no good. Remember them as they were before that day.”
Before he had become coimhdeacht, Roderick had been a knight and a good one. He had seen battle and death countless times before being granted this land. “Is that what you do?”
“When I can.” His chuckle lacked humor. “It does not always stop the specters from haunting me though.”
“It will help if I can meet their spirits.” Maeve waited for Roderick to open the door in the bailey wall that guarded the stairs to the caverns. “If I can see them whole again and in a better place, perhaps I can forget how they got there.”
He nodded. “That would be good for both of us.”
Maeve thrust her sadness aside. When she walked with the dead, she would see her sisters again soon.
As they descended stone stairs to the cavern entrance, wind tugged at her skirts and hair. Women of this time wore very different clothing. Breeches even, and she planned to adopt their way of dressing as soon as she could.
As she stepped into the caverns, the entrance felt different, dark and still.
Nothing.
The sigils did not wake to her presence as they should. For her, as they were for everyone else, they were patterns on the wall made of fossils, shells and crystals. It was like missing a limb. “No.”
“Do not despair,” Roderick murmured. Through their bond she could sense him questing for Goddess and she knew not if he sought to comfort her or himself.
They walked deeper into the first cavern. It was so dark she stumbled over a rock.
The sigils had always cast a soft ambient light for her, enough for her to see her way.
Baile was muted, Roderick couldn’t sense Goddess, and now the sigils remained dormant. She couldn’t reach the witches who had passed. Maeve refused to even consider the possibility the sigils might be forever dead.
Maeve called fire to her and clicked her fingers. Fire rose, as did her magic, scenting the air with lily and orange, but the upswell of power fell short. Fire’s response was a trace of the power she should be able to wield. “My element is…” She couldn’t quite put it in words. “Like a candle barely burning.”
“It must be tied to Goddess being so hushed.” Roderick took the lead, seeming to see better in the dark than she. He led her through an arched doorway into another chamber and then another beyond that. Even Maeve had never explored how many chambers ran beneath Baile. She had only worked in the caverns with sigils on the walls. “If you can sense fire it means it is still there but weak. Like Baile.”
Not wanting to ask her next question, Maeve’s nerves tightened around her lungs. “And Goddess?”
“Same.” Roderick frowned in concentration. “She is there but not there.”
“Then not dead.” And Maeve drew enormous comfort from that. If Goddess was still amongst them, there was hope. Goddess was life, and from life flowed all blessings and good. Cré-witches had been created in her image, made conduits of her magic, to serve life and the life within humanity.
Their footsteps were loud in the silent caverns. In the past, when Maeve had visited, the sigils had always hummed or chimed when she was near. She stopped and pressed her hand to the wall.
Silence greeted her. Where the sacred grove should have been was now a vast emptiness. Her presence rippled through the dead space, growing wider as it spread in circles from the point of contact.
A breath of breeze stirred the dark.
Sister.
Spirit Walker.
Her dead sisters’ voices came from down a long, dark tunnel, so soft she could barely hear them. But at least they were still there, so she indulged in the victory. If they were there, then she could still walk amongst them. “I need to reach them,” she said. “They need me.”
“Aye.” Roderick led her through the caverns into the central cavern. “I think we are needed for much in this time.”
In the center of the central cavern lay Goddess Pool, absolutely still in the dark cavern. Maeve could barely make out the water as darker matter within the gloom.
Roderick stopped at the edge of Goddess Pool and plunged his hand into the water.
Light, the same icy blue as Roderick’s eyes, burst through the pool.
Maeve reeled against the sudden brightness.
Light blazed and then dimmed to creamy phosphorescence. Goddess’s voice, old and brittle as cracked parchment, said, “Roderick?”
“My lady?” Roderick crouched beside the pool with his head bowed. “I serve.”
“Roderick.” The voice strengthened. “You are come at last.”
“I have come, and I serve.” He glanced at Maeve. “I stand with my Blessed.”
Light flickered in the water and then brightened. “Good.” The light dimmed and Goddess’s voice weakened. “It is almost too late. Magic is almost gone.”
“You need magic.” Truth crashed into Maeve. Magic came from Goddess, but it also fed Goddess, like the cord between a mother and her unborn child.
Water flared brighter.
And Maeve knew the why of all of it. Why her sisters had given their lives to send her and Roderick into a frozen state. Why Baile had exhausted her magic to keep them sheltered, and why they were alive at this time. Her coimhdeacht stood near, so tall and strong, and here to work by her side. When Roderick had bonded to her, she had been confused and disbelieving. Why would a spirit walker need a warrior guardian to protect her when she never left Baile? “It’s the magic.”
Goddess had known all along. Maeve would need Roderick to protect her in this new time when nothing was as it had been, and they needed to forge everything from new. Goddess had gifted her the strongest of all the coimhdeacht, the one who could succor Baile. She was the spirit walker, and her dead sisters held the key to all the magic of cré-witches who had come before, and Maeve sensed they would need it all. “It’s our magic.” It bore repeating because it was all they lived for now. “We need to bring it back.”