After sitting some time in contemplation, Brigid realized that the music she'd begun to hear on the edge of her awareness was not in her head.
It was a humming sound, sweet and ringing, somewhere in the woods. Strangely, she thought she recognized the tune-a song her daughters liked to sing, perhaps? But that wasn't quite right.
Brigid wasn't one to sit still and wonder. She came to her feet and walked into the darkness, searching for the music's source.
About twenty yards to the right of base camp, she spied a light. The night was starless-if this place even had stars-and the light was a harsh beacon in the darkness. Its source lay on the ground near a clump of small trees, light spangling branches that leaned over it.
Brigid approached with caution. The light didn't move or change; it simply waited for her.
She brushed back a tendril from a fernlike tree and found herself staring down at a long-bladed sword with a thick silver hilt. The sword itself didn't contain the light; the runes etched into it did, and Brigid knew the music came from them.
Deep magic had forged this weapon. Fae magic.
Brigid studied it before she reached for it. That she could touch the sword, she didn't doubt. She was as Fae as the magic inside it. She hesitated only because of what Ryan had said, that a Shifter sword smith had forged it. Shifters could use iron, and iron was poison to her.
Another assessment told her that the entire thing was made of silver, no iron or steel involved. Brigid could smell the silver, taste it in the air.
She leaned down and closed her hand around the hilt.
The music crescendoed into a wild symphony. The sound grew so loud Brigid wanted to drop the sword and clap her hands over her ears, but she made herself stand fast.
"I will wield you, Fae weapon," she told it. "I will use you to find the Shifters and slay their enemy. And my enemy," she added. "In this instance, they are one and the same."
The symphonic roar softened a little, becoming gentler, but also a little bit smug, as though the sword approved. Odd, but Brigid was not going to argue with her good fortune. A weapon was a weapon.
Thinking over Ryan's story of how the sword had behaved in the mists, Brigid walked back to her camp. Had the sword been seeking Kenzie? Or Brigid, sensing a Fae? Or something else in this world?
No matter the cause, the weapon could penetrate the mists. What had Kenzie called it? One big magical talisman.
What had she to lose? If it didn't work, Brigid would simply find herself back at her camp.
She concentrated on the nearest patch of mist, shimmering white in the darkness. She held the sword in front of her, point forward, and walked.
Damp air closed around her, and the fog thickened. Brigid took another step, and another. She expected to bump against the large trees she'd seen on the other side of the mists when she started, but she did not.
The air grew colder. Bone-cold, making her regret the loss of her cloak. But the darkness receded, showing her light.
It was the crisp light of natural sunrise. Brigid looked up through tall trees to a patch of sky flushed with pink, gold, and darker red, beautiful blue beginning to ease past all other colors. The trees surrounding her were massive, the air smelling of pine, the floor of the woods covered with a carpet of long brown needles and fallen pinecones.
She was out. Brigid lifted the sword and gave a shout of triumph.
In the next instant, a pair of strong arms wrapped her from behind, an equally strong hand closing on her wrist below the sword's hilt. Brigid was pulled against a very tall man, who smelled of pine, musk, and a hint of wolf.
She looked up into a pair of deep golden eyes in a tanned face as the man said in thickly accented English, "And what are you, Fae, doing with the Sword of the Guardian?"
* * *
Bowman decided he couldn't be surprised anymore by anything Cristian did when the man walked out of the woods into the clearing at Turner's house, not only holding the Sword of the Guardian but towing a Fae woman by her bound hands.
Pierce came running. "What the hell?"
"I found her," Cristian said. "Carrying the sword, if you please."
The woman gave Cristian a cold look, betraying no fear. "I told you what happened, Shifter. What you believe is up to you."
"Oh, I believe you," Cristian said. "I am simply angry at you for not saving my niece."
"I tried." The haughty light in her gray eyes faded a little. The woman had long, white blond braids that hung past her waist, clothes of tattered brocade and fur, and thick boots for a cold climate. "He took them away."
Bowman brushed past Cristian to put himself in front of her. "You know where Kenzie is?"
The woman looked up at him fearlessly. "Your mate, as you call each other? And your wee one?"
Bowman's chest felt as though someone crushed it. "My son? You saw him?"
"I did. I-"
"Where?" Bowman leaned to her. Dimly he realized Cristian was trying to hold him back from her, a fact that might surprise him at any other time. "Where are they?"
"The man called Turner has them." The Fae woman sounded sad. "He took them, I know not where."
"How did you get the sword?" Pierce asked. He reached for it, and Cristian relinquished it to him.
"I found it. Or it called to me. The runes-"
Bowman straightened, and Cristian stepped in front of the woman as though protecting her. "Her name is Brigid. She is of a Fae clan called the Hunting Warriors, translated from her language."
"I don't care if it's called the Dancing Clowns," Bowman growled. "Why were you able to find the sword, and why were you able to get here, when Kenzie couldn't?"
"I don't know," Brigid said. "I started to explain that the runes called to me." She gestured to the sword, her hands tied with a thin piece of clean leather-Bowman didn't want to know why Cristian had been carrying tethers around with him.
The sword in Pierce's hands was quiet now, simply the Sword of the Guardian as it always was.
"She might be telling the truth," Pierce said, sheathing the sword and slinging it on his back. "I've carried this thing around for thirty years, and I still don't understand all it can do."
"She speaks the truth," Cristian said. "I can scent lies, and she has not made any so far."
"Then where is Kenzie?" Bowman demanded.
"I do not know," Brigid answered, unhappy. "Why not use the sword and try to part the mists again to find her?"
"That might not work," a new voice said.
Bowman swung around to see two men striding toward them. He recognized both, but Cristian and Pierce came alert, and Jamie and Cade stepped behind the newcomers, blocking their way out of the clearing.
The speaker was a tall man with a wiry runner's build, black hair, and eyes like pits of night. Brigid stiffened as she saw him, her nostrils flaring. She took a step closer to Cristian.
The other man was a Shifter. He was big, almost as big as Cade, but he was all Lupine. He had flame tatts down his muscular arms, buzzed black hair, and hard gray eyes that looked upon the world and dared anyone in it to mess with him.
"She is right that the sword called to a Fae," the dark-eyed man continued. "It knew danger, and it sought one who could wield it against a powerful, magical enemy. It might not be able to go beyond the mists again now that she is here, not there."
The Lupine, Graham McNeil, growled. "He's been spouting shit like that all the way across the country. Just my luck I get holed up with a crazy Fae in the cargo hold of a tiny plane. I hate airplanes."
"I am dokk alfar," the dark-eyed man corrected him. "Not Fae."
"Yeah, whatever," Graham said, making a dismissive shrug.
"I'm Stuart Reid," the dark-eyed man said to the others. "Eric told us you had a problem with the worlds in the mists."
"Whatever the hell that means," Graham rumbled.
Bowman was as impatient as Graham. "My problem is that some asshole has taken my mate and cub and hidden them behind these mists. What I want you for is to help me get them out."
"And kick some evil human ass," Graham said. He grinned, his harsh face softening. "That's where I come in. I get the fun part."
The Fae woman said, "If you let me loose, I can help in the, as you say, ass kicking. Find me a weapon to wield, and I am as good a warrior as any of you. This Turner has stolen my life and my work, has taken me from my children and my sisters. He must die."
Graham gave her a look of grudging respect. "I like her. Huh. Never thought I'd say that about a Fae."