THE SCENT OF honeysuckle and lavender assured Bhaltair that he had not, in fact, disincarnated. The darkness that cradled him thinned enough for him to sense other wonders as well. His cracked skull had been healed, and the pain in his face had vanished, although a spot on his scalp throbbed with tenderness. He could not feel his troublesome knee, although that swelling and stiffness would return as soon as he took a few steps. His hands had been bound behind his back.

He'd been taken through a portal, he concluded, and delivered to a familiar place that should have given him ease but, of course, did not: Gwyn Embry’s cottage.

“I ken you’re awake, Flen,” a deep, amused voice said. “Open your eyes, and look upon your fate.”

He did as Barra Omey commanded and found that he was bound in the chair by Gwyn’s bookcase. She had brought him to his old friend’s work room, where all his treasured possessions had been kept. As for the bone conjurer, she now wore one of Gwyn’s robes, which on his granddaughter’s much smaller form puddled around her feet.

“I thought this the ideal place for our final moments together. To remind you of what you stole from me.” She lifted a sleeve to her nose and breathed in deeply. “Do you ken, his robes still smell of him, even now.”

Peering down at the brazier and herbs she had assembled inside a spell circle drawn on the floor, Bhaltair noted the absence of bone and blood. The large dark crystal she’d placed beside the brazier, however, had a hollow core in which she had placed a single spiny root wrapped in silver thread.

No’ thread, he corrected himself. No wonder his scalp hurt. She’d torn out his hair to bind the root.

“You should release me now,” Bhaltair told her evenly. “The conclave’s justice shall be swift. I’ll see to it that you’re given a swift end.”

Oriana’s eyes danced as she uttered Barra’s long, throaty laugh. “Swift, aye. You’d skin me alive with your teeth if you could. No, old fool, ’twill be no more escapes for you. ’Tis time I remove you from this existence and all future incarnations.”

He felt almost amused as well. “You truly believe that a root, a rock and some hair shall obliterate my soul? Barra, I’m ashamed for you. What simpleton attended to your training?”

“These shall divest the soul from your decrepit body,” she advised him, and went to fetch a strange-looking urn from one of Gwyn’s shelves. The body of the urn was made from a smooth, milky white stone but the top had been carved to resemble a canine with a long, thin nose. “But this, this comes from across the world, from the land of stone temples and endless sands. To acquire it I was obliged to murder a very powerful dark mage in Hispania. ’Tis called a soul-eater.”

Now Bhaltair knew what she had done with all the poor souls she had resurrected since fleeing Scotland: she’d fed them to the urn.

“You shall be damned for all eternity for this.”

“You took Gwyn from me,” Barra reminded him. “I had to avenge him. The Gods now smile upon me as I seek justice for my beloved. When Murdina Stroud cast me unconscious into a portal, they directed it to deliver me to Dun Mor.”

Or to me.

Bhaltair took heart from the knowledge.

“Now we must begin.” She set down the urn and removed the top. As soon as she did dark tendrils of magic began to slither over its rim. “The mage said the urn takes some time to digest its meal. None return to relate this, but I reckon ’tis most unpleasant to feel it gnawing apart your very spirit, and suckling from the bones of your being.”

Bhaltair shifted back, and felt something sharp poke his hand. He moved his cramped fingers along the object and realized it was one of Gwyn’s quill blades poking out from a shelf. He shifted forward and grasped it by the blade so he could work it against the rope binding his wrists. But then he paused as he realized he had a distraction.

“Before you feed me to that jar, you should have Gwyn’s final letter,” he told her. “’Tis in the scroll box in my traveling satchel there. He spoke at length of you.”

Barra seized his satchel, tearing it open and dragging the box from its depths. When she found that she could not open it she made a contemptuous sound.

“Another pathetic trick.”

“’Tis a puzzle lid. You recall how clever he was.” He nodded toward the work table beside her. “Place it there, and I shall tell you how to open it.”

The bone conjurer put down the box. “I dinnae trust you,” she said, and cast a protective body ward spell over herself. “Now, tell me.”

Bhaltair worked his bonds against the blade as he instructed her on how to turn the leaves into the shape of a triquetra. He stabbed himself several times in the fingers and wrists, but kept his expression blank.

Barra reverently removed the scroll from the box and unwound it, her eyes dreamy as she began to read.

Clearing his throat to cover the sound, Bhaltair strained at the rope and felt the last shreds snap. He kept an eye on Barra’s fading smile as he carefully pushed the quill blade back onto the shelf, stripped the cut cords from his wrists, and pressed his bloodied hands against the bookcase.

The old wood felt rough against all the tiny wounds of his hands, but it also contained traces of the magic his old friend had used throughout his life. Drawing on them to connect him to the earth, and through it the power of the natural world, Bhaltair began to channel all he could into his body.

“No,” Oriana whined. Her hair flew wildly as Barra shook her head. “’Tis no’ true. Gwyn could never accept that we’re soul-mates, but in time I should have convinced him.” She ripped the scroll in half. “’Tis all lies. A forgery you created to deceive me. I ken my beloved’s heart. He cannae remain in the well for eternity. He shall return to me–”

“He shall never incarnate again,” Bhaltair told her. “’Tis the one place he’s safe from you and your evil.”

Barra threw the scroll box at his face, but Bhaltair caught it. Setting it aside, he rose to his feet.

“I may appear decrepit to you,” he told her as he summoned his power. “But the portal healed my body, and my magic draws on the knowledge gained from dozens of incarnations.” He smiled a little. “I’m far from the most powerful druid to walk the mortal realm, but fortunately, he did train me.”

“You bastard,” she hissed as she drew a ritual dagger from her pocket. “I shall enjoy cutting your heart from your chest and shoving it down your screaming throat.”

As she launched herself at him, Bhaltair released a bolt of power that smashed into her chest and drove her back across the room. Furnishings smashed and crystals shattered, and Bhaltair gathered their remnant energy as he advanced on her.

“You shall beg me end you,” she promised, panting as she drew a bottle of potion from her bodice and smashed it on the floor. A noxious cloud of green smoke rose between them, out of which came another blade.

Bhaltair batted it away from his chest, and directed his power at the hearth, which flared out and incinerated the poisonous fumes.

“If you end me, you end Oriana Embry,” Barra taunted him as she inched toward the white urn. “Gwyn so loved her.”

“He never met the lass, thanks to you.”

Another vile smashed to the ground in the spell circle, but Bhaltair ducked to avoid a stream of green smoke, just as a second blade impaled itself in his shoulder. He grunted as he scooped up the crystal from the spell circle. Removing the plant root inside it, he tossed it into the hearth to burn.

Barra pounced on him, trying to force him to the floor beneath her. Yet Oriana’s body proved light enough for him to fling her away with one arm. She struck the wall and slid down it.

“You should stay there,” he said calmly.

As she pushed herself to her feet, he thrust his hands forward, channeling the gathered energy. With a quick turn of his wrist, Barra spun around and smashed into the wall, face first.

She struggled, shoving at the wall as she whipped her head back and forth, trying to see him.

“Coward. Show yourself.”

Bhaltair picked up the ritual blade she had dropped. He collected the two halves of the torn letter scroll, and brought them back to the box Gwyn had made. Behind him he heard Barra utter a spell to pit her own power against his magic. He tugged the blade from his shoulder, and blood from the deep wound soaked through his robe

“Gods above, hear me,” he said, placing the ritual blades and the scroll pieces into the box. “I seek justice for my old friend. I wish to free an innocent from unwilling possession. I call on you, and every soul tainted or captured or destroyed by Barra Omey. I beseech you, aid me now.”

The bone conjurer shrieked with triumph as she freed herself. But Bhaltair merely stepped out of the spell circle, and waited until she rushed inside it. He spread his hands before him, stretching out his fingers, and summoned magic from every object in the room. Some rattled in place, while others floated, but all glowed with a pure white light.

Barra went still, her mouth still hanging open on a cry she would never finish.

Bhaltair placed the open scroll box inside the spell circle, and stepped back. “Oriana Embry, I ken you hear me. This bone conjurer stole your life from you. She cannae return to you your grandfather. All that she has told you, ’tis a lie. Take back your body, and cast out her soul.”

Oriana’s body writhed as the two souls inside it struggled, and then a brackish light streamed from the lass’s nose and ears and mouth. A soft, gentle radiance came from the scroll box, into which it poured. When the last of the darkness had left the lass’s body, the box’s lid closed with a snap, and the leaves on the lid turned, locking it.

Bhaltair used his boot to smudge the spell circle before he reached inside to take the box. Oriana watched him, her eyes huge as he replaced the top on the urn, and carried it and Barra’s trapped soul out of the cottage.

Snow fell on him as he made his way to the sacred grove outside Gwyn’s abandoned village. He heard the footsteps crunching in the drifts behind him, but did not slow his pace. The weight of the box and the urn grew heavier with every step he took, but at last he reached the ring of stones. He had to tuck the box under his arm as he bent to touch the ground, and felt the wood shudder as Barra’s soul struggled to free itself.

“’Tis impossible for druid kind to pass judgment on one such as Barra Omey,” he said as Oriana came to stand beside him. “I believe the Gods must do so.”

The lass looked almost disappointed. “I reckoned that you’d feed her soul to the urn, as she meant to do with yours.”

“I never use dark magic, lass. I follow the path of the light.” He tossed the urn into the portal before handing Oriana the scroll box. “Shall you?”

“All I ken came from Barra.” She looked down at the shaking box. “But I should like to enter the light, for my grandfather.” With a sudden heave she threw the box into the portal.

Bhaltair took hold of her hand as they watched the portal close. “I deeply regret my part in causing Gwyn’s death. I loved your grandfather, and I wish I had done more to protect him from Barra and the famhairean.”

Oriana looked at him for a long moment. “I forgive you, Master Flen.”

“There now,” he said, smiling at her despite the pain in his shoulder. “That ’twas your first step on my path.”