Now and for Never (19 page)

Clare sighed.

Together they heaved a long length of heavy rope over the side for him to grab on to, and then ran to hide behind a stack of crates. Al's grey eyes were sparkle-bright with feverish excitement. Or maybe it was just panic and adrenaline. Either way, she seemed to be having the time of her life. No temporal pun intended.

“What?” Al's breath came in little gasps.

“Dude …” Clare grinned evilly. “You do realize you
totally
could have looked up when you were on that gangplank and answered, once and for all, the age-old question?”

“What age-old question?”

“What do Roman legionnaires wear under their skirts?”

“Gah!” Al's cheeks flushed bright red. She took a swipe at punching Clare in the shoulder and missed, almost toppling over. “Perv!”

“I guess you
were
a little busy,” Clare laughed, struggling to keep her balance as the ship lurched.

“Busy?”
Al gasped again as Clare pulled her further behind the crates. “I thought … I was gonna
die
!”

They huddled there while bloody chaos reigned. Clare was content to let it run its course—she'd done the whole Celts versus Romans battle scene with Comorra deep in a forest one night, and that close encounter had been more than enough. Al, new to the game and chock full of danger-rush endorphins, had a slightly different idea. She peeked over the crates.

“I feel like we should be helping!”

“Helping
what
?” Clare crawled up beside her to catch an eyeful of the action. “Bloody up the deck with our own precious vein juice?”

Al snorted. “If we were serious action heroes, we'd be fighting right now—”

“Duck!” Clare pushed Al's head down as a scathach's pike-blade whistled in an arc above them. “We're
not
action heroes, we're time travellers. I can't believe I'm using that as a point of logic in an argument. Also? We're a couple of high school students.”

“Spider-Man is a high school student.”

“He's radioactive,” Clare said. “You radioactive?”

Al shook her head. “I don't think so. I still feel like a slacker.”

“You
are
a slacker. So am I. We both dropped gym class the second we could.”

Al waved that away, still breathless with excitement. “Running is pointless. But I did take a stage-fighting class that time I was a spear carrier in
Macbeth,
remember?”

“Yeah. I remember. You were awesome at standing and holding a spear.”

“But we're on a rescue mission!”

Inaction had never really sat well with Al. In truth, it didn't sit well with Clare, either. Then again, neither did potential decapitation. Cooler (attached) heads were the order of the day as far as she was concerned. She gestured first to Marcus, then to Al. “Rescue. Mission. Let
him
rescue us, then
we'll
get on with the mission of hauling his shapely thews back home.
That's
our objective. Stay on target, okay?”

“I … Oh, all right.”

“See? Patience, young Jedi.” Clare dropped in the
Star Wars
reference just to humour Al. “It's all good—”

A hand slammed down on Clare's shoulder and suddenly she and Al found themselves thrown flat on their backs, staring up the blades of long, very sharp spears and into the painted faces of two scathach warrior women.

“I dunno, Clare,” Al said in a strangled gurgle. “This … is not my definition of good. But these two chicks are
definitely
from the Dark Side.”

14

“O
w!” Allie yelped as the point of the spear prodded her forward, toward the striped canvas tent that sat in the middle of the ship's deck, close to the stern and away from most of the heavy fighting. Away from Marcus, too, although there wasn't a whole heck of a lot Allie could do about that.

She and Clare ducked under the tent flaps, and then Clare stopped so abruptly that Allie bumped into her. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she saw why Clare had balked. In the close confines of the tent, the only thing separating them from Mallora—Druid high priestess, sister to Boudicca, Force of Malevolent Darkness, Hurler of Flaming Projectiles—was a small wooden desk upon which rested the remains of a meagre repast, mostly fish bones and something in a shallow bowl that looked like watery gruel.

And lying beside that was an emergency-kit tin box—the one Clare had used to seal Morholt's diary in back in the Roman camp after writing the coded message to herself.

Mallora herself sat in a low-backed chair, seemingly unconcerned by the fighting that raged on outside the tent. Her face was illuminated by only a small, glass-shaded oil lamp hanging from a chain above the desk and swaying with the motion of the ship. With her raven-feather cloak hung up on a peg in the corner, the Druiddyn high priestess looked a lot less
intimidating, Allie thought. Okay … a
little
less intimidating. She was still tall and wild-haired, with the same strong-boned features as her sister Boudicca and with a similarly fierce— and fiercely intelligent—glittering gaze.

But her features were pinched with pain, or maybe exhaustion, and she moved slowly and stiffly as she rose from her chair. Allie was scared witless—not that she'd let the priestess know that, of course. If she'd learned one thing as a prisoner in a Roman army camp, it was this: never let them see you sweat. She swallowed the knot of fear in her throat, lifted her chin, and crossed her arms in front of her.

At her side, Clare had adopted a similar pose.

The Druidess came around the table and stood before them, her keen gaze flicking back and forth between Clare and Allie. She was silent for so long they were beginning to think she wouldn't say anything at all. Then Mallora tilted her head and addressed Clare. She spoke in the same dialect as Llassar the smith, which meant they could understand her without having touched her first. And since she'd had all sorts of physical contact with Morholt (
ew
), she no doubt knew modern English.

Mallora's voice was husky, as her sister's had been—Allie remembered that voice coming from the mouth of Dr. Jenkins when Boudicca's spirit had possessed her—but it was nowhere near as harsh. That surprised Allie.

“You,” she addressed Clare. “You are the one the Morholt spoke of. The traveller.”

Clare made a strange little sound in the back of her throat. Allie turned and gaped at her: Clare was choking back an incredulous laugh.

“The Morholt?”
Clare said. “No way. That makes him sound way too cool.” She shook her head. “Now, if you mean am I the one
Stu
spoke of? Then … yes. I guess I am.”

Mallora didn't rise to the bait. Her gaze just narrowed a
bit as if she was contemplating Stu's lack of coolness. Then she turned to Allie. “And you, little raven. You damaged his chariot.”

Taking a page from Clare's show-no-fear approach, Allie lifted her chin even higher. “You bet I did.”

“Hm.” Mallora nodded appreciatively. “You struck at him where you knew it would hurt the most. It is a mark of a warrior.”

“Hey—I left him stranded here, you know,” Clare pointed out.

“That did not hurt him,” the priestess said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “That merely broke his mind, which was already showing rather large cracks, I think. What it also did was make him more dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Clare raised an eyebrow. “You're kidding. Mister Not-So-Cunning-Plan? He's annoying, sure. An actual threat? I have my doubts.”

“Desperation and danger are often indistinguishable.” Mallora shrugged one shoulder. “Just ask my sister.”

The flinty glint that flashed in her eyes at the mention of Boudicca—who, of course, was dead and therefore not available for questioning—reminded the girls that they needed to tread carefully. Allie exchanged a glance with Clare, who tried a different tack.

“Right,” she said. “Hey, no need for hostilities here. We're friends. Well, I'm a friend of your niece, at least. Comorra.”

Mallora was silent for a moment. Then she sighed heavily. “I know. Her mother—my sister—was not always as you knew her.”

“You mean perpetually simmering with rage?” Clare said. “Not that I really blame her.”

“The blood magic works a darkness in the one who calls it forth. After a time, that darkness becomes permanent. As it did with Boudicca.”

“Um … didn't you … I mean …” Allie struggled for a polite way to ask the Druid priestess if she was likewise tainted. “Aren't you a caller-forther too?”

“I am …” Mallora shrugged. “I was.”

“Was?”

“I am … drained,” she said. “I called upon the magic to bring this ship to this place so that the legacy of my people would not fall into Roman hands. But now I am far from my land. The source of my strength. And I must conserve what is left of my magic to protect the new soul I carry.” Mallora's long-fingered hand drifted across her belly, which was still flat, her waist trim and athletic. “So that one day, my descendant—and you two girls—will work together to bring all of this to pass.”

“Oh. Right,” Clare said. “Um. I mean … congratulations to the mother-to-be.”

As she circled back around the table and lowered herself into her chair, Mallora's expression was wry. “I can only hope my daughter will have the same kind of spirit I have seen in both you girls.”

“Wait. What?” Allie did a double take. “How on earth do you know it's a girl?” It wasn't like they had ultrasound machines in the first century.

Mallora shrugged again. “She speaks to me.”

“Okay.” Clare scrunched up her face. “That's … creepy.”

Mallora's expression turned inward. “She has my Sight and sees all that passes through my eyes.” Her gaze snapped back into focus and she grinned a bit. “I suspect she, like you, already thinks her father is a bit of an idiot.”

Clare and Allie positively gaped at her.

The Druid priestess, it seemed, had a sense of humour. Boudicca hadn't exactly been a barrel of laughs, and so to hear her scary Druid sister cracking wise—about Morholt, no
less—was refreshing. And made Allie think there might be a chance for them after all.

As Mallora fell silent, the girls' attention was once more drawn to the clashing swords still ringing like brutal chimes outside the tent. The clamour seemed to make Mallora restless and she rose to her feet again, shooting a dark gaze out the tent flap at where the fighting raged.

“The Romans and their wars,” she muttered. “Despoilers.”

“Yeah,” Clare nodded. “They're kind of ass-hats.”

Whether or not the vernacular translated, Mallora seemed to get the gist. “They think it will make them rich,” she continued. “But material wealth is not the only value of our treasure. It is, in fact, the least. Our artists are the soul of our people, and none more so than Llassar. His creations are objects of beauty and power, as you well know. That is why I have done everything I can to keep my people's gold out of the grasping hands of the Roman governor, who will only hand it over to his slavering dog of an emperor. But I fear my Sight may have misled me. I fear that, in bringing the treasure of the Druiddyn across the water, I will have visited a plague upon others who do not deserve it.” Her gaze clouded with memory and regret. “The path I carved for us across the waves stayed open too long and the Romans' ship managed to sail too close. It was pulled along in the wake of our passage and has followed us here, to this land.”

The drums,
Allie thought. The beating of the drums they'd heard rumbling across the water. In leading the Romans to … wherever they'd led them, Mallora may have unwittingly visited war upon others.

“Things must be put to rights,” Mallora said. “
All
things. In both your world … and mine. This world.”

“You mean this
time,
” Clare said.

Mallora nodded. “I know
that
is what you have come to
do, and you will find the help you need on that island. But they will need help, too. Help that—had I still the strength—I could have given.” She turned her disconcerting gaze on Allie. “
You
can, little raven.”

Allie frowned and shifted uncomfortably. “You keep calling me that.”

“Told you.” Clare shrugged. “Every time you've ever shown up to call me home, you were a bird. It's weird, but I got used to it.”

“Even so,” Mallora said. “You are both touched by Andrasta, the Raven Goddess.
You
will lead the charge against the despoilers,” she nodded at Clare. “But
you
also have a gift, little raven. And you will take my place in what is to come.”

“What?” Allie felt the blood rush out of her head.

“No way!” Clare took a half-step in front of Allie. “You want to mystically pick on somebody, you can pick on me. Leave Al out of this.”