Нора Робертс - The Becoming

“You have no archery skills, and aye, as often as I can, I’ll knock you down. That’s not being careless with you, as I see it. It’s the opposite.”

“I don’t have many relationship skills either, but I’m pretty sure of this. The fact that we have one, a personal sort of relationship, makes us both stronger.”

“And how are you figuring that one?”

“Because it matters more when you care. I’m going down to let the dog out and make coffee.”

Odd, she thought, as Bollocks bolted down the steps ahead of her, she’d never had a more romantic conversation in her life. She wasn’t sure what it said about either of them, but she was fine with it.

In a cold, steady rain, Keegan flew to the Capital. He found his mother in the council room, as he’d asked her. Only the two of them for now.

She rose as he came in, her look somber.

“A wet journey,” she said, and poured him tea.

“Thanks.”

“Uwin and Gwen left an hour ago. I found a cottage in the midlands where they can live. It’s simple, it’s quiet. They have their horses and possessions, and I had the cottage stocked with food and other necessities.

“You were right to send them away.” She laid a hand on his arm. “It was hard for you to do that duty, but you were right. As I’m right to help them make this start in this new life.”

He just nodded, sat. “Sedric?”

“He and Marg are already back in the forest. It’s much ground to cover, Keegan, but they won’t stop. I would have gone to help them, but I knew you were coming and wanted to speak to me. Loren asked to help.”

Now Keegan lifted his gaze.

“He wants to find this portal,” Tarryn continued. “There’s no question of it. And part of him believes he can somehow save Shana. There’s no question of that either. But he wants to find it, and he’s skilled.”

“All right. There’s no one’s judgment I trust more than yours. You look tired.”

“Ah well, that’s what a woman likes to hear.”

“Ma.” He reached for her hand.

“I didn’t get much sleep. I’ll rest better now that I’ve seen Uwin and Gwen on their way. And I’ve three elfin replacements for you to consider for the council.”

“None from the Capital.”

Tarryn raised her eyebrows. “I thought you’d want someone quickly, and with a sense of the protocols.”

“I think we lean too heavy on from here, and those who see too little of the rest. I know someone in the south. She’s young, but a little youth may be a good addition. I need to fly south in any case to see the progress, and I’ll ask her.”

“Nila. The one who took the child the Pious stole back to her family. I know my boy. It’s a fine choice, Keegan, and I hope she agrees.”

“That saves me the time I thought I might need to convince you.”

“I’m your hand, and your ma. You’re taoiseach. And I thought you might bring Breen with you this time, as she could be useful in the forest. And with the spell Marg and I’ve started to plan out.”

“I considered it, but we need to take care not to put all the eggs in the basket, right? There may be a portal, and it may be Odran’s plan to use it. But there are others. The waterfall they’ve used before—and with her close, she may sense or have a vision. The Far West, that gateway Sedric spoke of.

“As it is, I’m thinking you might be more useful there as well.”

“In the valley?” She just smiled at him. “Save your breath for the convincing. As I said, I know my boy. You think to take me from the thick of it, as all logic says this is where he’ll strike. So while you won’t ask me to shirk my duty, you’ll try to make it seem I can do more away than here. No.”

Because he’d known that for a lost cause before he’d begun, he drank more tea. “I have some fine reasoning to wrap around it.”

“Well then, save it for another time. Do you want to call the council?”

“No, bloody hell, I don’t. I’m for the forest and the wet.”

“Then I’m with you.”

“You think I should’ve brought Breen here?”

“I think you’ll have to before it’s done.”

He found Marg first, working with Loren and an elf. He could wish for speed, but Keegan knew being thorough and efficient overruled his impatience.

They’d divided the vast acres of forest into grids, and covering each, he’d learned the previous day, took an hour or more.

“It would take less,” Marg told him, “but there’s so much here. So much energy, so many heartbeats, so many echoes of power.”

They stood in the rain, the air smelling of drenched pine and earth, and gloom thick as a plank. Like his mother, Marg wore a hooded cloak over sturdy trousers, sweater, boots.

Lifting her hands, she spread them, circled them. The grid map formed in the air.

“You see we’ve marked over grids we’ve completed.”

“And made some progress.”

“Some.” Knowing him, Marg smiled a little. “Slow progress. Sedric continues in the north of the forest while we work the south. The others you chose—the empath Glenn with the young Were, ah, Naill, take the east, and Phelin McGill takes the west with another empath. The elves, as our Yoric here, serve as runners.”

“We’ve seen nothing like a tree of snakes,” Yoric said.

“Sure you’re lucky to see your hand in front of your face in this gloom. My mother and I will take a central grid before I fly south. If we manage no more than one or two, it’s still less to be done.”

And it all could be for nothing, Keegan thought as he and Tarryn walked through the wet. A story told by an old wizard to a young were-cat, long ago.

But he gave it three hours, then had a meal, as grown man or no, he found it difficult to refuse his mother.

On Cróga he flew north first, where the frigid air turned the wet into icy stones, and then to swirling snow. In the high peaks that speared up along the thrashing sea, he dismounted in snow that reached the tops of his boots.

The portal here opened to a world he’d visited once, and briefly, as he found its reliance on machines, its lack of interaction among its residents, inhospitable.

As no other portals had been found or recorded in that world, he thought it unlikely to impossible Odran could come through this way.

Still, he had six guards on duty.

A fire blazed on a wide, flat rock, and the wave of heat from it almost thawed his frozen bones. Snow fell in thick, fat flakes, and the wind tossed them where it willed.

If the rain had been a misery, he thought, this was brutality.

And yet Hugh, whom Keegan put in charge of the day duties, greeted him with a rosy-cheeked smile.

“A fine day in the high country.”

“Every arse within five miles is frozen solid,” Keegan tossed back.

“Ah, sure and a northman’s blood runs too thick and hot for that. All’s well here. One of us slips in and out every hour as you ordered. They’re no more interested in us on the other side than we are in them.”

“Stand on then, Hugh.”

“So we will. I’m grateful for the service here, as my home is just … well, you can’t see through the snow, but it’s just down in the foothills. So I’ll see my lady and our babe when we rotate.”

“May your lady keep you warm through the night,” Keegan said as he mounted Cróga.

“That she will.”

He crisscrossed Talamh on his way south, stopping at every portal. He flew out of the snow and brittle cold—thank the gods—into more rain, an all-too-brief moment of sun, and the smoky fog that followed it.

He stopped in fields, in forests, by the banks of a lake called Lough Beag for its small size.

When he soared over the valley, he took Cróga down at the farm, where the rain had slowed to a drizzle and the sun pulsed weakly against the stacked gray clouds.