"For King and Country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asprin Robert, Evans Linda)

Chapter Three

Brenna McEgan left the boisterous warmth of the Falkland Arms pub to enter to a cold and wet night. The rain and wind and scudding clouds were as full of foreboding as she herself was#8212;not a pleasant feeling for a woman in her position. Her cover story would not stand up to the kind of scrutiny Captain Trevor Stirling would shortly bring to bear. The SAS, for God's own sake... As Brenna unlocked the driver's side door of her car, she was as close to blind terror as she'd been since leaving Londonderry, all those years ago. The phone call which had come, tracing her to her Dublin flat and her new life, had not frightened her precisely, only filled her with a nameless dread which had all too quickly found its familiar shape and hue.

Orange terror tactics. Again.

Indeed, what else?

It was the reason she'd left Londonderry, the reason she'd never married, unwilling to bring a child into the madness, to inherit the hate and the killing. She still woke up some nights, drenched in cold sweat, watching her older sister and niece dissolve into blasted bits of human flesh not a dozen paces in front of her, coming out of a little shop where she'd agreed to meet them, planning to lunch together after their shopping was done. She'd joined, right afterwards; and had left for almost exactly the same reason, five years later: a Protestant woman and her child caught by an IRA car bomb, with a young girl on her knees beside them, tearing at her hair and screaming.

"I left a long time ago," she'd told them over the phone lines. "I'm not active and you bloody well know it. And the reasons."

"There isn't anyone else."

"Don't give me that#8212;"

"Brenna. At least hear us out. Arlyne is coming to Dublin to see you."

God and thunder, her own grandmother...

Worse and worse.

And it was, the worst news ever given a member of Cumann Na Mbann. The whole future of humanity at stake, if they were right, and she the only operative#8212;former operative, she insisted forcefully#8212;with the credentials to get inside, to trace the Orange mole, identify and stop him.

"Brenna," her grandmother had leaned close, holding her and rocking her slightly, "I know, child, why you left us and I respected that, you know I did. But we need you, child, and it isn't just Cumann Na Mbann or the Provos trying to stop it. The leadership of the Orangemen came to us, to the Provos, I mean, to say one of their own had gone off the deep end and disappeared, vowing to destroy Britain."

She stared at her grandmother, eyes wide.

"Aye, love, it's that serious. He doesn't want the elections to go forward, knows the Catholics have a majority this time around, and he's vowed to unleash genocide, not only against the Irish Catholics, but the British, as well, for betrayal. The Orangemen are frightened, love, and they can't find him."

"But you did?" Her voice came out whispery, little-girl frightened.

"We did. And, child, if there's truth in the rumors about the laboratory he's joined, he can destroy all of us, and I mean everybody on this bloody planet, billions of innocent lives."

She'd sat in her grandmother's arms for a long time, shaking, listening as her grandmother explained everything they'd learned, why they couldn't just hit the bastard with a standard IRA hit team. No publicity, not even the breath of publicity, nothing that would look even remotely like anything but pure accident#8212;and before they could do even that much, they had to know. Was the threat real? Was the research viable? And if so, how far away was the team from success? And literally the only person in all of Ireland who could infiltrate that team as the Orangeman had done was Brenna McEgan.

"They'll pull strings, child, our own people and the Orangemen, both. They're afraid of him, Brenna, terrified of the man they've created and now must stop. They can't do it on their own. They've no one with the credentials to get close to him. And even if they did, he'd recognize them in a flash, drop them off a cliff somewhere. Together we'll get you inside that lab, Brenna. From there, it's you and no one else must discover the truth and stop him."

It was, ironically, the first time in the Catholic-Protestant history of the island that the Orangemen had voluntarily worked with the IRA Provisionals. All it had taken was the realization that they'd unleashed a creature so deadly, he would risk destroying the entire world#8212;including the Orangemen who'd turned him into a weapon#8212;to take his vengeance against Catholics and the British who'd "betrayed" him.

Cedric Banning#8212;not his real name, but the name of his carefully constructed cover persona#8212;was ruthless, brilliant, and utterly mad. To refuse the mission was unthinkable. He had to be stopped. So she'd come to Scotland, with no idea how many strings had been plucked to get her there, and she'd identified Banning, and she'd assessed the threat level#8212;utterly deadly#8212;and now she had an SAS captain on the job, who knew none of this, whose every glance tonight had shouted plain as daylight that she topped his suspect list.

How could she not? She was Irish, wasn't she? Reason enough for any self-respecting Brit to hate and distrust her, given the circumstances. By the end of Mylonas' hideous little lecture, every colleague at the table had been shooting her furtive, unhappy little glances. The IRA, those looks said, the IRA's threatening us and ours, and you're by-God Irish. It would have done no good to stand up and say, "You're absolutely right, mates, I'm IRA to my bones, and I'm the only thing standing between you and a disaster so enormous, you can't even comprehend it."

Admission would only earn her a one-way ticket to prison#8212;and leave the man she'd come here to stop with a free and easy road to success. A very powerful intuition was screaming at Brenna that her enemy#8212;all humanity's enemy#8212;would waste no time, now that the SAS was on the job. It wasn't logical, not even remotely. Logic said he'd simply sit back on his own forged and impeccable credentials and smile while the SAS locked her up. But intuition said otherwise. Intuition whispered, He'll move now and throw blame on you, Brenna, so what are you going to do to stop it, eh?

She turned the key in the ignition and put the car into a smooth reverse in the crowded carpark, then set out for the lab. Whatever he planned, he would do it tonight. Sitting at the pub all evening with a crowd of eyewitnesses would get her an alibi, but what good was that if he blew the entire future to hell while she earned it? She thought of Terrance Beckett, alone in a silent lab office, working like a fiend to prepare them all for the next trip into time, and shivered.

There was a gun in her cottage, the most illegal thing she owned, urged on her by her own grandmother, for safety's sake on a mission like this. Not for assassination, no. Her job was to identify the Orange mole, so that others could take him out#8212;under circumstances that would not throw suspicion on the IRA. This was a covert ops job of the most delicate kind ever undertaken by the Irish Republican Army Provisionals and one of the very few where publicity was the very last thing they wanted. Enough to get the job done.

But the bloody SAS had thrown everyone's timetables into disarray.

Brenna was torn between the desire to drive back to the cottage to slip the gun into her pocket and the equally powerful desire to drive to the Firth of Forth and throw it into the bay. An impossible situation. It had been from the outset. And dithering about it would do no one any good. Get on with it, she told herself fiercely, hating the tremors in her hands.

She drove carefully, swinging off the main highway onto the access road, windscreen wipers slapping with futile energy at the downpour hammering the glass, and finally pulled to a halt beside her temporary home, the drab and repulsively ugly cottage assigned to her by Terrance Beckett. None of the others had returned from the pub, yet. Only Beckett's car was visible, in front of his own cottage, the one closest to the main lab building. No way to tell if he were in bed or still working, since the lights in his cottage were off and there were no windows in the lab to reveal a telltale glow.

She shut off her car and dashed across to unlock the cottage door, wiping water from her face despite the overhang protecting the door from the elements. She switched on a single light and stood irresolute for a moment, gazing bleakly at her belongings scattered through the room. There was less of her personality in this cottage than there had been in her dorm room at University. Old habits, consciously set aside for the move to Dublin and the declaration of independence from the organization she'd finally found the courage to repudiate, had returned to haunt her, as familiar as her own skin and far more disturbing. Brenna's face twisted, half bitter recrimination, half grief. Once Cumann Na Mbann... They had you for life, whether you willed it or no. Insanity, to stand here wishing like hell she'd walked a different road as a girl.

Pride and hatred. They solved nothing. Unfortunately, neither did walking away from the trouble. God knew exactly how hard she'd tried that. What, then, was the answer, when the other side refused to put down its weapons and be reasonable? When, backed into a political corner and snarling like a wounded dog, the other side viewed your very existence as a threat to their survival? Who could win a war like that? She'd told that SAS captain no more than God's honest truth. Nobody won in Northern Ireland. Brenna slid open the drawer, hands trembling as she gazed down at the gun hidden there.

A Russian-made 9mm Makarov, sleek and semiautomatic, sixteen centimeters long. Small enough to conceal in a sturdy coat pocket, large enough to pack a lethal punch. Smuggled in from God alone knew where and brought south across the border into Dublin by her own grandmother. And carried in her luggage from Dublin to Scotland, reminder of why she was here and of the ugliness that had erupted once again, threatening her life and her world. 'Tis no answer! Brenna's very soul screamed the protest. Yet what choice did she have? He must be stopped.

Headlamps flashed past outside the window, sending her eight centimeters off the floor. Her heart thundered into the hollow of her throat. The SAS captain, come to search her rooms? Brenna caught her breath on a ragged gasp and switched off the lamp before slipping over to her window to peer out through the murk and the rain. She knew the car which rolled to a stop at the cottage next to hers, knew the man who climbed out into the raw night, who glanced toward her abruptly darkened window before turning and heading toward the lab, crossing the road at an easy jog. Damn, damn, damn! He was making his move and she was out of position, wasn't ready... And there was no time to call in the Provos team that was supposed to make this hit...

She stuck the gun into her coat pocket, hands shaking, made sure of her own ID card to get through the security door, headed into the wind and the downpour at a run, slithering through puddles and mud and filth. She had a longer way to run than he'd had, her cottage being farther than his. She fumbled the card at the reader, had to grope through muck to find it, wiped it against her skirt and got it, shaking, through the reader. The door clicked and released and she yanked it open, jerking the gun from her pocket and slipping inside. She slid the Makarov's safety downward with her thumb, ready to fire with a simple double-action, first pull of the trigger. He had a good five-minute lead on her...

She caught the sharp, coppery smell of death instants before his fist caught the side of her head. Brenna crumpled into blackness, knowing only the terror of defeat.

The telephone shrilled somewhere close to Stirling's ear, shattering sleep and jangling his nerves. He groped in the unfamiliar darkness, fumbling the receiver onto the floor with his wrist cast. He tried to read the time on the bedside clock as he searched along the cord to find the handset again. Bloody murder! Two-thirty a.m.?

"H'lo?"

"Captain Stirling!" He didn't recognize the voice.

"Who is this?" he demanded, coming slightly more awake as the panic in that voice hit home.

"It's Marc Blundell. Dear God, you have to come at once! We're sending a car for you, there's been a disaster at the lab."

That woke him up. "What kind of disaster?"

Blundell gulped, voice shaking. "It's... it's Dr. Beckett. Someone's killed him."

Oh, sweet Jesus... "Get that bloody car here yesterday!" Stirling was already out of bed and moving. "And for God's sake, no one leaves the building! No one in or out, except me."

"But#8212;"

"But what?" He already had his uniform buttoned and was slinging on his gunbelt with the ease of long familiarity.

"The constables..." Blundell quavered. "We'll have to contact the police#8212;"

"Like bloody hell you will! Nobody! Got that? Not even the local bobby, not until I've seen everything firsthand!"

The project liaison gulped audibly over the line. "Yes, sir. Oh, God, please get here quickly! There's more#8212;I daren't say what over an unsecured phone line."

Stirling snarled under his breath. Worse he did not need. "The car's just pulled up," he muttered as headlamps stabbed past the curtains in his cottage window, sending shadows swinging wildly. "I'll be there in five minutes."

He grabbed up his field kit, carefully prepared before leaving London, and ran, lurching on his bad knee. He snatched open the driver's side door. "Move. I'll drive."

Bad knee or not, he could outdrive any graduate student on the planet, and Miss Dearborne was shaking violently behind the wheel. She slid frantically into the other seat. Stirling gunned the engine and squealed out onto asphalt. He didn't even take time to fasten his safety belt. The road roared past in the wake of their passage, tearing great holes in the drizzle and mist. Water sheeted down across the roadbed. Ghostly trees skittered and jumped as he skidded the Land Rover through the turns.

He tried to recall who'd left the pub and in what order#8212;and when. Significantly, Brenna McEgan had left first, pleading weariness. Cedric Banning had followed shortly thereafter, leading Stirling to wonder who might be sleeping with whom. A couple of computer techs had left early, as well, and Zenon Mylonas had called it quits a quarter of an hour after that. A whole laundry list of potential suspects.

He took the turning onto the access road on two wheels, drawing a sharp gasp from Miss Dearborne. They thumped back down and sent gravel flying. Lights blazed in most of the on-site cottages. Beckett's windows were a notable exception, dark as the night itself. Poor bastard won't be needing them ever again, will he?

He skidded to a halt in front of the door, having made the drive in three minutes flat. The main lab door stood open, held by an ashen Blundell. The man gestured frantically. A sharp babble of voices greeted Stirling. The senior scientists were clumped together, faces shocky and pale, voices shrill. Several of the grad students were crying. So was Indrani Bhaskar. Brenna McEgan was missing. So was Cedric Banning.

"Where?" Stirling asked tersely.

Blundell pointed, hand shaking violently, toward Beckett's office.

The death inside that room was nearly too terrible for such a small space to contain. Terrance Beckett had died hard. His equipment lay in smashed profusion, his files scattered across the floor where violent struggles had swept them off his desk. Blood had pooled beneath the body, with splashes across the files, the front of the desk, the broken document trays. Given the placement of the wreckage, Beckett had been tempted out from behind his desk before the attack was launched, taking him by surprise in the middle of a conversation. He'd been knifed repeatedly and his skull crushed for good measure. Stirling didn't have to use guesswork on the type of knife. It lay on the floor beside its victim, all twenty-two wicked centimeters of it. Commando fighting knife, he catalogued the weapon automatically. American-made, high quality, and even easier to smuggle than firearms.

Not a woman's choice of weapon.

Or was it? It wouldn't take much strength to inflict fatal damage with a knife like that, and a woman attacker might explain the prolonged struggle. Beckett could easily have fought his way from one side of his office to the other, if his attacker were female. Less upper-body strength, weaker grip, and the women members of the research group were decidedly petite, compared with Beckett. Might explain the crushed skull, afterwards, as well. Hell hath no fury...

"You said there was worse," he turned abruptly, nearly running Blundell over in the process.

"Yes." The project liaison had to swallow twice before his voice would hold steady. "There's#8212;that is#8212;"

Fairfax Dempsey, Beckett's grad student, snarled, "It's Brenna bloody McEgan, that's what! She's set up the equipment and transferred through time!"

Oh, dear God...

"Show me."

They led him into the transfer room, as they'd dubbed it. A row of padded tables, looking much like ordinary medical examination benches, lined one wall. Two of the five were occupied. Two? Brenna McEgan was closest to the far corner, a psychological choice indicating, possibly, subconscious fear of being caught. A bruise discolored her cheek, evidence of the struggle with poor Beckett. The other traveler was Cedric Banning. His table was the one closest to the door#8212;the position of pursuer, or perhaps just plain haste. Both of them were soaking wet, from the storm or from attempts to remove blood from clothing or both. McEgan's clothing was badly bloodstained; so was Banning's. He must've come in and discovered Beckett, tried to reach the poor bugger, slipped and fallen in the gore...

"Banning left a note," Dempsey said, eyes reddened from the attempt to hold back tears. "She'd killed Beckett before he got here, set up the equipment to transfer herself. Banning plugged his headset into her coordinates and went in pursuit, to stop her..." Dempsey was clutching a crumpled sheet of graph paper, torn from a notebook.

Stirling smoothed it out, frowning over the hasty scrawl.

McEgan's done it, the bloody bitch, the note read, Banning's handwriting nearly illegible. Must have known I was on to her, and the SAS showing up spooked her into jumping. Found out last week she's Cumann Na Mbann, although I couldn't prove it. Came in here to warn poor Beckett, slipped and fell in the blood, trying to get to him, but it was far too late. Have to stop her before she wrecks British history and kills off the whole bloody world. For God's sake, send through a backup to help me with this!

Stirling lifted his gaze to find himself at the still-point center of an invisible, all-too-real sphere of terror. It radiated like a living heat source in the confines of the lab, pushing him up against invisible walls. With creditable calm, he asked, "Why don't we just pull the ruddy plug?"

"You can't!" Mylonas cried, pupils dilating in naked shock.

"Why not?"

"You'd kill them both instantly! Systemic shock, disrupted energy transfer lines, and God knows what the resulting flux in power would do to the fractural planes involved; the system's set on a timer, you see, to taper the power levels off gradually, so there's no possibility of an energy embolism! She's set the bloody timer for a year, and if we try to override it, I can't answer for the consequences! We can plug someone else into the system, send another traveler at the power level she's set, which is what poor Dr. Banning's done, but we can't possibly disengage the system in an emergency shutdown! If we could do so safely, Cedric Banning would have shut it down at once!"

"All right, I get the bleeding picture," Stirling muttered, mopping his face with one hand. Christ, he'd needed more sleep before facing this. Cumann Na Mbann, that was the last thing he'd wanted to hear. The women's arm of the IRA, the most secret part of the whole terrorist organization and the most efficient as well, damned near impossible to infiltrate. Cumann Na Mbann members had done everything from courier jobs, running guns and messages in their babies' prams, to blowing up Protestant social clubs and gunning down British dignitaries. A more ruthless, clever opponent, Stirling could not imagine.

Just his stinking luck...

"Right, then. I'll have to go after them."

"You?" Indrani Bhaskar gasped. "But you're not trained! You don't know the first thing about the time period#8212;"

"And those two do?" Stirling shot back. The too-still bodies of McEgan and Banning lay shrouded beneath the wires of their time-transference headsets. "They're not exactly historians, Dr. Bhaskar. Although I suppose it wouldn't take a great deal of historical training to assassinate Henry II before he has the chance to invade Ireland."

The uneasy silence puzzled him. Then Dr. Bhaskar gave him the rest of the bad news. "They didn't go to the same time Dr. Beckett did. They're not at Henry II's court, not anywhere close to it, in fact."

"All right," Stirling grated out, "where have they gone?"

Her eyes, still wet from her shocked weeping, reflected a fear of not being taken seriously. "Well, Captain, you see... They've set the equipment for this region, right here in Scotland."

"This region?" Stirling echoed. Uneasiness stirred, worse than before, in the pit of his stomach. "Granted, Scotland's been the site of a number of historic battles, but major enough to upset all history? What could McEgan possibly be after, here, that would benefit Northern Ireland?"

Indrani's lips worked. The answer came out as a ragged whisper. "King Arthur."

The unreality of it tried to crash down across him. Sleep-deprived, off balance, badly shaken by the possibilities for mass murder, that was the last answer he'd expected to hear. "King Arthur?" It came out flat, disbelieving. "Dux Bellorum Artorius? Sixth-century Briton war chieftain, fighting Saxons?"

"And Picts," Indrani whispered. "And Irish invaders. A very large number of Irish invaders, in fact. She's gone to the year 500 A.D. The height of Artorius' power. If the Irish were to kill him before his resounding victory over the Saxons at Mount Badon, the Irish clans could drive the Britons and the Saxons straight into the sea."

The whisper of air conditioning from the laboratory's vents raised a chill along Stirling's neck. Go back to the very beginning of the Irish invasions of western England and Scotland, rewrite history so the Irish took possession of the entire island, instead of the Saxons, so that later Anglo-Saxon kings would never exist, so that William of Normandy wouldn't be strong enough to wrest England from the weak Saxon monarchy, which meant Henry II would never exist to invade Ireland and murder its culture or set in motion Elizabeth I's centuries-long nightmare of colonizing Northern Ireland as a Protestant colony. And Brenna McEgan would destroy billions of lives in her own future, trying to give the Irish a victory over Artorius and his Saxon enemies.

It was exactly what he would expect of a Cumann Na Mbann agent. Subtle. Cunning. Utterly ruthless.

Cedric Banning, Aussie playboy scientist, had about as much chance of stopping a fanatical terrorist like McEgan as the alley cats in Belfast's scarred neighborhoods had of stopping the bombings.

"I see." It came out ragged. "Very clearly, in fact. Which makes it absolutely imperative that I be the one to transfer after them."

"But#8212;"

"I speak Welsh and Gaelic, Dr. Bhaskar."

"But do you speak Latin and Brythonic?"

"Latin, no. Brythonic, that's early Welsh, isn't it?"

"Yes. And as much like modern Welsh as the Old English of Beowulf is like the language you and I are speaking now!"

"Nevertheless, I'm still the best-qualified agent you have. I majored in military history at Edinburgh University. Cut my milk teeth on both my grandfathers' stories about the glorious King Arthur, and I'm familiar with all the legendary sites, in Scotland, England, and Wales. And I'm a trained counterterrorist officer. Frankly, you haven't got a better agent to send after them, not anywhere in Britain." He resolutely refused to think about the consequences to any mistakes he might make, that far back in history. He could easily destroy the future he was trying to protect, with one ill-timed blunder. He refused to consider it, because he'd spoken the simple, stark truth. There wasn't anyone better qualified to go. God help them all...

And a whole year to screw it up.

"I want an outside phone line," he said through clenched teeth.

"To phone the police?"

"No. To phone my commanding officer." Colonel Ogilvie was going to spit nails, when he heard, which certainly wouldn't do Stirling's own career much good. What the Home Office would do, once Ogilvie finished notifying the Minister, he genuinely did not want to contemplate. Pity was the overriding emotion he felt for the scientists left to face the authorities.

His conversation with Ogilvie was brutally short. "Stirling here. Beg leave to report full infiltration, sir, with casualties. Initiating pursuit, within the quarter hour."

"Geographical?" Ogilvie asked carefully, his voice a rasp through the telephone wires.

"No, sir."

"I see."

"Better run a complete security check on Brenna McEgan, Colonel, and Cedric Banning, as well. I'd like to know how Banning found out McEgan's Cumann Na Mbann."

"Bloody hell. Home Office won't like that."

"No, sir. They'll like what Dr. Mylonas has to say even less. Better get a full team up here, sir. I daren't say more over the telephone. I'll leave a complete situation report for you, before I go after them. Time is far more critical than you think."

An understatement, if ever he'd made one.

"Do what you must, Stirling."

"Yes, sir."

He was on his own. With all of history waiting.

Brenna woke slowly, through a dim and dreamlike confusion of images, sounds, and stenches. How long she'd been out, she had no way of measuring. She was quite sure she'd returned at least partway to consciousness at some point, for she retained memory of a throbbing pain in her jaw and cheekbone, of clothing plastered wetly to her body and the stink of blood from somewhere close by. She remembered terror at finding her coat and gun missing. She remembered, too, lying paralyzed on a padded surface, stretched out as though for sleep or a doctor's examination. And she remembered hearing him breathing, somewhere very close by, above the background of lab noises#8212;computers and their cooling fans and the almost subliminal hum of expensive equipment brought to life.

Her final, fragmented memory was awareness of the electrical leads taped to her skin and a wavery image of his face, smiling merrily into her foggy eyes, the paisley scarf looking jaunty at his throat#8212;a sick in-joke the other scientists had dismally failed to comprehend.

"Hello, love," he'd said with a laugh that froze her blood. "You've my undying gratitude for providing the perfect scapegoat. And don't worry, I'll be joining you shortly. Catch me if you can."

He'd thrown a switch#8212;and her reality had shattered.

Leaving her... where? Or#8212;more chilling#8212;when? She was lying down, or at least her borrowed body was. When she struggled to focus her awareness, she felt a fluttering at the back of her mind, the frantic beating of a terrified bird trapped on the wrong side of a window glass. Thoughts not quite her own flickered like heat lightning, as though she had become someone else with a very different set of memories. The presence howling through her awareness was thinking in a language Brenna could not at first make out. It sounded a little like Gaelic. A very little. More like... Welsh? Not any Welsh she'd ever heard spoken. This had a very ancient sound to it. Why would Cedric Banning have chosen a time and place where archaic Welsh was spoken?

At first, she thought Banning might have marooned her in a time different from the one where he planned to attack, but a moment's further thought convinced her otherwise. Once the computers had locked onto a destination and activated the transfer, the system could not be reset. It was a simple matter of the computer's data storage capacity, processor speed, and power drain. Not even the grandson of the Cray supercomputer, an immensely fast and powerful machine used for the time-spanning jump, could have handled two temporal destinations at once.

She was unsure whether to feel relief or deeper alarm.

Gradually, meaning began to seep through the confused blur of unfamiliar words in her mind, giving her clues to the language, at least. The owner of her borrowed body was terrified nearly witless#8212;but not completely so. She sensed a keen intelligence filtering through to her own mind, with overtones of religious#8212;or perhaps superstitious#8212;awe, triggered by the incomprehensible event which had befallen them. Brenna tried to relax into the flow of thoughts and churning emotions and finally succeeded in getting across her own fear and disorientation. The other mind, or rather, the mind they now shared, reflected startlement, followed by a guarded relaxation from the worst of its own frantic panic.

She gradually realized that the flow of memory images and thoughts ran both ways. Even as Brenna was inundated by a flood of images#8212;a high cliff with a fortress of dark, rough stone at the summit, glinting in the slanted light of late afternoon above her horse's weary, forward-pricked ears; the smell of venison stew rising thick with savory herbs from a vast iron cauldron suspended over a hearth in a stone hall; a lingering, unpleasant impression of some deeply disturbing nightmare filled with blood and the screams of dying men#8212;even as these images and impressions sank into Brenna's awareness, her host's mind was getting the gist of what had happened to Brenna in a twenty-first-century research laboratory at the base of a Scottish mountain.

And images of Northern Ireland's violence were seeping through, as well, memories Brenna would have given half her soul to forget: her sister and niece lying on the pavement at broken, blasted angles; her father, dead and cold in his grave at the end of a prison hunger strike; the bloodied victims of IRA bombings and shootings; the whole, hideous patchwork of terror that was her homeland...

To Brenna's vast surprise, the mind she now shared space with did not recoil in horror and disgust. A moment later, she understood why, as memory images flooded into her awareness: villages burning in the snow, women and children butchered alongside the menfolk; the clash of steel and the scream of men and horses as battle raged while she struggled to lead a whimpering line of children to safety; her father lying cold and still, pierced in a dozen fatal places, her mother shrieking and tearing at her hair in a wild excess of grief...

They understood one another, even before they were aware of one another's names.

Brenna, she thought slowly and carefully, Brenna McEgan is my name.

Abrupt, flaring suspicion arrowed into her awareness. Irish! The word came as a snarl. Brenna was accustomed to such hatred, having grown up in Londonderry, but it jolted her badly all the same. Then she caught another undercurrent of memory, which showed her warships of a very ancient design against a backdrop of grey ocean and what looked suspiciously like the western coast of the Isle of Man, jutting like a sharp knife blade at the not-so-distant shore of Northern Ireland. Invasion, she realized, an invasion fleet, threatening the homeland of her host#8212;or, rather, hostess.

Brenna tried to get across the idea that she was from the future, far in the future, and braced herself, but met with much less incredulity than she'd expected. After a moment's puzzlement, she understood why. As strange as the ancient sailing ships had looked to her, Brenna's memories of cars and lorries, electric lights, telephones, and the explosive detonations of car bombs were utterly alien to her hostess, alien and powerful arguments that Brenna was, in fact, telling the truth. She also began to get a sense that her hostess' religious beliefs somehow supported Brenna's claim. The soul, being immortal and moving between this world and the Otherworld, dying here to be born there, dying there to be born here, was capable of crossing great barriers, and was not time itself merely another form of barrier which the soul transcended?

Brenna had to blink several times before that sank in fully.

She had landed in the mind of a philosopher... .

I'm no threat to you or yours, Brenna tried to get across, but the one who attacked me and sent me here is a very great threat. He's quite mad, utterly ruthless. I don't know what he plans, but it will be a very great disaster, whatever it is. I must stop him, whatever the cost to myself.

After a long moment of silence, a reply came arrowing back. Then we must find and kill this enemy we share, Brenna McEgan of the Irish. After a moment's pause, the voice inside her head added, very formally, I am called Morgana, Queen of Galwyddel and Ynys Manaw, Queen of Gododdin and the Northgales, stepsister to Artorius, the Dux Bellorum, and a healer born to an ancient family of Druidic caste, trained by the Nine Ladies of Ynys Manaw. You Irish call it by the name Ablach, for it is a land rich in apples, symbol of the soul and potent for use in healing medicines. You will not find me an inconsiderable ally. Are you and your enemy the only soul-travelers from your world?

Brenna hardly took the question in, for the room had begun to spin as more and more clues fell sickeningly into place. Morgana of the Apple Isle, Artorius the Dux Bellorum of Britain, who was Morgana's stepbrother, war with invading Irish clans...

Cedric Banning, the devious, mad bastard! He'd brought her to the time of Arthur's cataclysmic war against Saxon, Pict, and Irish invasions. Banning had laughed at the notion of King Arthur, last night in the pub, with Indrani Bhaskar and the SAS captain comparing notes on the real Artorius. Banning had put everyone at ease with that laughter, pulling a monstrously successful cloak of misdirection across everyone's eyes. Her own included. She was furious with herself, for being so utterly, stupidly blind. Within two hours of publicly and carefully making fun of the notion, Banning had sent himself straight to Artorius' Britain#8212;and Brenna with him, the perfect scapegoat, unable to testify on her own behalf with her mind trapped in the sixth century a.d. Banning was intent on destroying only God knew how much history. A vengeful blow at the most famous British commander in history, in retaliation for what the Orangeman saw as British betrayal of his entire culture...

And a chance to destroy the Irish utterly, by helping his own Anglo-Saxon ancestors smash and grab far more than they should have been able to, years too early and with who knew how many lives lost that should have been spared? The destruction of those lives would smash British and Irish cultures to flinders and fracture history to shards. How long had Banning been planning this moment? Long before the elections, certainly. She'd been activated by Cumann Na Mbann and put onto his trail months previously, which meant the Orangeman had realized well in advance that a Catholic majority population#8212;the first such majority in centuries#8212;would sweep Sinn Fein candidates into office across the breadth of Northern Ireland. Had known it, had laid his plans for retaliation, and set out to take the ultimate revenge, willing to sacrifice everything rather than see a Catholic state take away his power and his culture of hatred.

It was exactly what she had come to expect of the Orange terror machine.

And Brenna had not the faintest idea how to stop him.

Speaking very gently indeed, Morgana repeated her question, helping Brenna gather her scattered wits. Are you and your enemy the only soul-travelers from your world, Brenna McEgan?

Brenna struggled to answer that calm question. I think not. One other will come, at the very least. A soldier who believes I am his enemy. Worse, he will believe that Cedric Banning, a murdering madman, is his ally.

Morgana, calm and practical, said, Tell me more of this soldier, Brenna McEgan.

How to explain the British SAS? She took a deep, metaphorical breath. He and many like him were sent to my homeland to keep the peace. It didn't work, she added bitterly, for the Irish have memories that stretch back centuries and we never forgive or forget a wrong. From what little I've seen of this man, he is honorable, intelligent, dedicated to his mission. He's an officer, used to command, a formidable ally and dangerous enemy.

Morgana gave a slight nod, startling Brenna with the sensation of having someone else move her body without her conscious volition. How is he called, this man we must ensure becomes our ally?

Brenna's lips twitched into a fleeting smile, encouraged by the cool competence of that response. Trevor Stirling, Captain in the SAS. Ah, Special Air Service is what that means. When Morgana evinced an understandable confusion over the meaning of that name, she added, They are an elite group of men with advanced training in the art of warfare.

Ah. That is precisely what we shall need.

Brenna found herself grinning, despite the seriousness of her predicament. Then, curious about her surroundings#8212;for the room was as black as the inside of a Paisleyite's heart#8212;she tried to sit up, which took her three shaken attempts. A mass of long, unbound hair cascaded down her back, heavy and luxuriant, puddling like rainwater around her hips. She wore what felt like linen robes. A heavy band of cold metal circled her neck, the ends meeting in the hollow of her throat. She could see neither the outlines of windows nor the thin thread of light from a doorway. Brenna gulped hard. Was her hostess blind? A chuckle from Morgana rumbled through their shared mind, then a powerful urge to grope with both hands took control and sent her fingertips seeking across what must have been a low table. She found two small, hard objects, which her hands#8212;clearly under Morgana's direction#8212;picked up on their own.

She struck them together rapidly, with a scraping motion. Sparks danced in the blackness and momentary giddiness swept through her. She was not, at least, blind. She struck more sparks and, this time, some landed in a dry substance which crackled and briefly flared into brilliance. She blew gently and the flames took hold, revealing a small mound of dried moss in a pottery bowl, a sort of archaic tinderbox arrangement. She spotted an oil lamp of very ancient design, made of rough-fired ceramics and looking like it had recently been dug from the nearest archaeological treasure hunt. Brenna carefully lifted the burning moss and used the flame to catch the lamp's wick alight.

She then blew out the blazing moss to conserve it for another night and sat for long moments, just gazing at that disturbingly antiquated clay lamp, which cast a soft light into the room. Other disturbing details impinged upon her awareness. The room was small, with plastered walls which had been decorated with distinctive frescoes. The style was utterly and convincingly Roman#8212;birds and gardens and architectural forms, mysterious female figures performing some religious ritual which involved wine and birds and dancing. She could almost hear the music from the painted pipes and lyres, while wisps of smoke rose from painted braziers decorated with garlands of flowers. The floor was a beautifully worked mosaic with a mythological theme, Ceres and Proserpine, it looked like. An incongruous and jarring note was struck when she glimpsed a small crucifix mounted on the wall amidst the riot of pagan celebration.

"Where am I?" she whispered aloud.

The whisper of an answer floated up from Morgana's portion of their shared mind. Caer-Iudeu, of course...

She was still puzzling it out when the door flew open and a young man flung himself into the room. "Aunt Morgana! Please, you must come at once!" The boy's voice was ragged with distress. "It's Artorius and Uncle Ancelotis#8212;they've come with dreadful tidings. Lot Luwddoc is dead from fighting Picts just across the border and Ancelotis has collapsed, riding into Caer-Iudeu!"

Blood drained from Morgana's face in a disastrous, icy flood. "No..." The sound came out strangled, a cry of protest and fear as Morgana swayed, dizzy and nearly collapsing from shock. Brenna realized with a flood of pity and sudden shared grief that Lot Luwddoc was Morgana's husband. To give the boy credit, Morgana's nephew splashed wine into a cup from an earthenware jug beside the oil lamp, and held it gently to her lips. Morgana leaned against the boy, fingers clenched around his arm, breath coming in shallow gasps that were not quite sobs, while she fought for control. She sipped at the wine, eyes streaming and hands trembling. Her next words astonished Brenna.

"The Saxons will take advantage of our disarray; dear God, Medraut, there could be no worse time to lose your uncle. We can afford to show no weakness to the Saxons, or they will strike like jackals in the night, grinding us between the hammer of their swords and the anvil of invading Picts."

To think first of her people, at a time like this...

Yet the pain of her loss burned in their shared heart, brought into even sharper focus by the helpless clench of her fingers around her nephew's arm. And somewhere farther down the worn stones of the road she and Medraut had been traveling#8212;a Roman road, Brenna realized, cutting across the Scottish hills#8212;Morgana had a son who would be king. Her fear for the young boy's safety, his and his younger brother's, burned nearly as brightly as the grief and twice as hot. Brenna's heart went out to her, along with a large dollop of respect for the grieving queen.

"Aunt," Medraut said quietly, but with a note of urgency, "Ancelotis is ill. He collapsed on the road into Caer-Iudeu, trying to bring the king's body home for burial. By luck, Covianna Nim is in the fortress#8212;"

"Covianna Nim?" Morgana echoed, so shocked, she momentarily forgot the rest of the dire news. "What in Brigantia's name is Covianna Nim doing in Gododdin? Her home is Glastenning Tor, closer to Caer-Lundein than we are to the Firth of Forth! It must be well above four hundred miles from Caer-Iudeu to Glastenning Tor!"

Medraut nodded, still ash-pale in the light from the oil lamp. "Prince Creoda of Wessex asked the abbot of Glastenning Abbey to send a message to Artorius, bidding him meet Creoda and Prince Cutha of Sussex at Caerleul, to discuss matters critical to Britain's future. That's why Artorius rode for Gododdin a day ahead of us, trying to reach Lot and Ancelotis before Cutha and Creoda can arrive in Rheged. He's calling for a council of the kings of the north. Covianna Nim rode north to give Artorius the message. And she insisted on coming to Gododdin, as well. So," he added with a flush rising to his cheeks, "did Queen Ganhumara. They're both here."

And like to be scratching one another blind, I wouldn't wonder, Morgana snorted silently, apparently not wanting to share that opinion with her young nephew. "So, it's Covianna Nim's thought to treat Ancelotis' wounds?"

Medraut nodded. "She has studied, Aunt, at Glastenning Tor, even if she hasn't the training you had from the Nine Ladies of Ynys Manaw."

Morgana had swung her feet out of bed, was hunting for soft leather shoes. "A rat may train with the Nine Ladies of Ynys Manaw, dear nephew, but if it speaks not a human tongue in its little rat's mouth nor hears a human's sense with its little rat's ears, then its training consists of nine years of gibberish spouted in its presence and at the end of those nine long years, all you've to show for it is a very greatly talked-at, white-bearded, old and useless rat."

Medraut widened his eyes, gulped, and wisely, Brenna thought, considering her hostess' current mood, held his opinions to himself. Morgana drew on her outer robes against the frosty chill of the air. "Do not mistake me, lad. And fetch my satchel, please, Medraut, from the baggage there." She nodded toward a pile of cloth satchels and leather cases Brenna hadn't noticed before. "I do not hate the girl, nor even seriously dislike her, for all that she's copied the serpents themselves for the skill of weaving words with their tongues. It is only that the hour is late and the shock very dreadful, and the work that must be done this night may be worse, yet. I'll not sleep the night, as it is, and Covianna Nim simply hasn't the skills I do. She may pull the occasional splinter from some monk's holy backside#8212;"

Medraut sputtered with barely repressed laughter.

Morgana smiled faintly. "And she is doubtless quite the expert on treating burns, those being the mainstay of a healer's work when she ministers to smithies who work gold and silver and forge the best weapons ever hammered against anvil. And she treats as well those who blow the glass as the Romans did, giving the Saxons' spies some innocent reason for that many forges to be running at one time on the Tor."

"Covianna Nim said the Saxons have taken to calling it Glastonbury Tor, the Isle of Glass."

Morgana said tartly, "Mark you, nephew, 'tis far better they mock our prettily colored glass than mark our finest steelmakers and ride across the marshes to the Tor, hacking down everything that moves to deprive us of the smithies. That threat alone," Morgana muttered as they hurried down a dark corridor toward a sound of men's voices not too far from Morgana's room, "would be enough to justify Covianna Nim scampering toward greater safety in the northern kingdoms. Doubtless, she will ingratiate herself with Artorius as much as she did with Emrys Myrddin during her last and seriously eventful visit to the northern kings."

Satchel of healing herbs in hand, Morgana and her nephew thrust themselves through a group of deeply agitated men at the end of the corridor and there was no more time for Morgana's intense personal grief, for the wounded man was in sight, needing Morgana more than the grieving queen needed her solitude and tears. Brenna, an unhappy passenger, had absolutely no idea what to say or do that could possibly help.