forward until only inches separated his hands from the Stone. “O Stone of Abundance, I ask to touch thee and receive the counsel of Belornos!”
The blue light radiated even more brightly before him.
Mórganthu closed his eyes and carefully placed a hand on each side of the Stone, where they immediately stuck as if frozen. He chanted again, but the words slurred as his mind faded into the flames.
The blue glow pulsed, and Mórganthu jerked his head up, eyes wide and pupils dilated.
“That is not the agreement I made with him,” he yelled.
Instantly a few flames burst from the top of the Stone.
Mórganthu cried out until they faded.
“I will perform part of thy command. They will all be killed, but not her. That was the bargain!”
Flames burst forth again, and Mórganthu shrieked. When they subsided and he could breathe again, he asked, “You, you would make me break my potent oath to such a man of consequence?”
The flames leaped even higher, and Mórganthu screamed. “Mercy! Mercy, please, I relent. As you command, O Voice, they will all die!”
Flashing blue fire exploded from the Stone, scalding Mórganthu’s hands and nearly igniting his hair before flinging him onto his back.
Garth dashed from the woods, knelt beside Mórganthu, and cradled his head. The boy flicked away blue cinders that burned in Mórganthu’s hair.
“Ard Dre, are you all right?”
Mórganthu groaned and tried to sit up. He would have failed if Garth’s hands hadn’t been there for support. “My son. My only son, you are here …”
“Sorry to disturb you, but as I get no midmeal, which is right cruel in my ‘pinion, I was sent to say he wants to see you.”
Mórganthu blew on his bleeding hands. “Who?”
“The warrior wearin’ black an’ such —”
“What? What is his name?”
Garth rubbed his stomach. “He’d have come himself, but he’s stuffin’ his cheeks with loaves an’ chicken. I asked him for a bite, but he —”
Mórganthu struck Garth across the face, leaving a red welt. “What is his name, you fool!”
Garth yelped and jumped away. “An Eirish warrior. McGoss.”
“Help me … Help me to stand.”
Garth drew near to support the arch druid as he found his balance but flinched when Mórganthu’s hands reached out to him.
“Belornos told me I would need him for this task, and he already comes?”
“What did you say, Ard Dre?”
“Nothing. Nothing! Ignore an old man’s wandering tongue. Now fetch him. Tell McGoss I am ready.”
As Garth ran off, Mórganthu called after him. “And when you have told him, be a kind son and bring the long rope from my tent.”
That sea rat McGoss! I don’t even get a bite o’ food for runnin’ his message, and the brute twists my ear purple until I promise not to tell anyone about his secret meetin’ with Mórganthu. Garth’s left ear felt twice the size of the other.
And he still had to get the rope for Mórganthu. Then he could hide from those evil eyeballs of the druid wives.
His stomach growled as he unstrung the flap to Mórganthu’s tent, a place forbidden to him ever since he’d joined the druidow. But Garth knew special delicacies lay inside. After the previous evening’s meal, Mórganthu had brought out a small barrel of dried strawberries and passed them around to his inner circle. Did poor starving Garth have a sweet strawberry plopped into his mouth? Not even one sliver.
As he stepped into the warm tent, he peeked out at all the druidow sitting beyond the campfires laughing and talking. Garth grinned as he tied the flap closed again, his stomach near to rolling in anticipation.
As he turned around, his gaze was drawn to the drooping tent’s ceiling. There hung hundreds of bones, each etched with the same kinds of lines Garth had seen on a few of the standing stones around the circle. One of the druidow had told him the writing was called ogham, but he didn’t understand a lick of it. Some of the bones were old and gray, while others were yellow with pink ends where flesh had been cleaned off.
A wind blew over the tent, causing its cloth roof to wave and sending the bones clinking into each other. Garth stuffed his thumbs in his ears and ducked toward the center of the tent, only to run into the head of a white bull and its rolled-up hide. The dark eye sockets glared at him, and the sharpened horns pointed at his throat like daggers.
Recoiling from the bull, he found the pile of rope on the