The frail man took a deep breath, weighing his decision.
“Donato?” Cormac pressed.
“Yeh will be coming with me this time, I warrant?”
“I will. I have to.”
“Let us find Bran Ardall then,” Donato said wearily. “Before yer distaste for using the mirror or my part to play in it ruins our convictions.”
They approached the mirror together, Ennio watching from the bed. Donato was slow, but his milky eyes were wide open and ready for what must be done. Cormac had few close people in his life, but the relationship he had with Donato gave him an insight into the Cardinal Seer others might miss. Donato was tired. If he began to falter, Cormac would be there for the Seer, certain reprimand or not, to try the next day instead.
“Stand next to me, Cormac,” the Seer ordered as he pulled the black cloth free of the mirror and dropped it to the rug-littered floor. “I will guide us. Keep your thoughts firmly fixed on me to start. If you do, there should not be a problem.”
“I remember.”
The Seer took a deep breath. Cormac did the same.
Flames from the hearth swirled in the depths of the Fionúir Mirror as if it contained an inner fire of its own. In the reflection Cormac watched the milky eyes of his friend drain and become darkest brown. Light from the glass then washed over him, enveloping him, first gray and then lightening like a sun breaking through fog. The room vanished; the mirror disappeared. The Cardinal Vicar remained focused on his mentor, embracing the tingling sensation, and never deviating from Donato’s command.
Suddenly free from his body, Cormac chased the soul of Donato into Annwn.
The light softened, and a mixture of earth colors infiltrated the swirling gray, darkening. Lines solidified. Shapes formed. Soon Cormac stared at a lush forest beneath crystal blue sky. No sounds came to him, no smells intruded. His other senses were gone.
—Dryvyd Wood—
The voice of Donato echoed in his head.
—Where was the Ardall boy captured?—
The view spun dizzyingly, sickening Cormac. As if they were birds on the wing, they flew between the branches of gnarled, malformed trees, into the heart of the forest, where the luminescence of the sky gave way beneath a thick canopy of blackened leaves.
Donato brought them to a halt amidst nightmare. Rotting and bloated carcasses of twisted creatures littered the torn up mulch of the forest floor, their faces frozen in angry death. The things were halfbreeds as the Cardinal Seer had said, a cross between something human and something animal. Fire had reduced them to charred flesh in places, their bones exposed to the air and blackened. Cormac knew how the creatures had met their deaths; the power of McAllister could not be ignored.
—The capture occurred here, Cormac—
The grisly scene suffocated the Cardinal Vicar. The ill-bred beasts presented a large problem for the Church. In the past, halfbreeds were very rare, the incompatibility of the fey and humanity making it difficult. Most died after conception or were stillborn. The few survivors, like the Kreche in Seattle, were usually hunted and destroyed. If Philip had found a way to breed these evil monstrosities and use them in his war, how many of them existed? Were they being bred in Caer Llion? What other abominations could the despot of Annwn be creating?
In a small way, Cormac admired Philip for destroying the pagan influence that took so much away from God. But he also knew Philip would never be content. Spying on Annwn in this manner gave the Church the knowledge it needed to decide how to protect itself.
The world spiraled again and Donato sped them through the forest to the outskirts of a vast plain. Dead men, horses, and more halfbreeds littered the ground, rotted and exposed.
—The Morrigan ambushed the Templar Knights here. With the boy and the knight, she fled northward across the plains and into the foothills of the mountains—
—Can you find the boy now?—
The view in his mind spun wildly as the mirror zoomed into the heights of the sky and flew northward. Cormac saw Snowdon breaking out of the ancient Carn Cavall like pikes out of lumpy shields. The remaining fey who rebelled against Philip roamed free in those environs, the Carn Cavall the last bastion of freedom in Annwn. He saw drained rivers entering lakes mostly dried, thick forests of pine, ash, and oak slowly dying, boulders and rocky cliffs.