Prince of the Hollow Hills by Margaret L. Carter

I knew all along that a union between mortal and immortal could lead only to loss and grief.

May the Powers of Light guide me to kindle a spark of hope from this tragedy.

The portal contracted to a circle of light and vanished like a bubble popping. Cloying heat replaced the wine-crisp air of home. Kieran emerged into a cleft between walls of rock, so close together his shoulders almost brushed them on each side. Behind him, the walls narrowed still farther until they met, while ahead the space widened until the stony niche gave way to forest. He blinked in the glare of this world's sun, dazzling even filtered through leaves. The moist, green scent of a summer day filled his nose. Four strides took him into the open, on a mountainside covered with trees and undergrowth. Not an ancient forest, he perceived. If he could rely on his slight knowledge of time's flow on this plane, most of these trees had stood no more than seventy years. He drew a deep breath. Artificial odors, some kind of acrid fuel burning, tainted the air not far away.

Even a distant whiff of that pollution made him queasy. He ought to welcome that taint, though. It pointed the way to human cities, and he would need human help to reach his destination. Adair's foolish passion created this catastrophe. Now I have to repair the damage he left. Kieran reined in his first impulse to charge headlong to the rescue. The sooner he found the child, the sooner he could leave this death-shadowed place.

Given the erratic connection between the time-streams of the two realms, Halwyn might already be far ahead. Also, the portal could be opened from this side only for the next few days and would then lock itself for two moon cycles, so Kieran had no time to waste. Still, he knew better than to rush forward in blind panic. He leaned against a tree, sensing the flow of its life under the bark. A red bird with a crest on its head fluttered down to alight on his shoulder. He willed it to fly away, for he needed to concentrate on more distant objects. With his eyes closed, he extended his inner senses in search of the child. Faintly, at the farthest edge of his perception, stirred a hint of the infant's half-formed awareness. Perhaps Halwyn would find that trace impossible to pick up and would blunder around long enough for Kieran to make contact first.

He counted on having two advantages over his enemy. First, he had visited the human realm several times before, although only briefly. He had some sketchy knowledge of this region and its customs. Halwyn probably had little more than a spell of tongues to enable him to speak the language. Secondly, Kieran had pledged brotherhood with his cousin Adair. And now I must pay the price for my blood brother's folly. He suppressed the pang that pierced him at the memory of his kinsman and forced himself to focus on the urgency of the present task. The mingling of their blood would surely forge a bond with Adair's child, a link that would allow him to track the babe more reliably than the enemy could. Kieran would have to follow that trail if the mother had left her previous home. Once he found her, could he persuade her to yield the child to his protection?

Leaves rustled under his feet as he walked away from the portal. A sigh escaped him. Already he longed for home. Although cast out from his family, at least on the other side of the gate he had his own domain with its gardens and orchards and with lesser creatures who depended on him as their lord and protector. Here he could look forward to nothing but discomfort and danger, along with the ordeal of wrenching an infant away from its mother.

No need to agonize in advance over that prospect. The next hour presented enough problems. Following the fuel odor would lead him to a road used by hordes of metal carriages. A simple mind-control spell would induce one of their drivers to transport him. His stomach churned at the thought of that ride, boxed in by a framework of iron, but he had no time to indulge such weakness. My cousin got used to it. So can I. Bracing himself, he cast a glamour to veil his true appearance and started hiking downhill. He had failed Adair. He would not fail Adair's child.

The bell over the shop door jingled. Behind the counter, Fern glanced up and suppressed a sigh when she saw her sister Ivy walk into Danforth's Den of Mystery, wearing denim shorts, a halter top, and a cloth baby sling. Her flame-red hair, cascading down her back, curled slightly from the June humidity. A visit to the bookstore in the middle of a weekday afternoon probably meant she had a problem. The tense set of Ivy's mouth confirmed the impression that she wasn't casually dropping in to show off the baby. In the pouch on her chest, Baird blinked at the change of light from outside to inside.

Fern came out from behind the counter, wondering what her sister wanted this time. Beverly Danforth, her boss and best friend, straightened up from the corner where she'd been shelving paperbacks. "Hi, there, how's the little guy?" Brushing book dust off her peasant blouse and calf-length skirt, she bustled over to the counter and tickled the baby's chin. His mouth opened like a baby bird's. "Aren't you getting big for only two months? How're you feeling, Ivy?"

"Okay," Ivy said with a faint smile. "Can I talk to Fern for a minute?"

Bev ran her fingers through her short, brown hair, pushed her wire-rimmed glasses up on her nose, and made an elaborate pretense of scanning the deserted shop for customers. Even on a Friday afternoon, the tourists didn't flock here in droves. Located in West Annapolis away from the downtown historic district, the store got most of its business on weekends. "Sure, you can borrow her for two minutes or even three."

Fern took a seat at one of the tables in the coffee bar area by the front window. Ivy crouched to pet a plump tortoiseshell Maine Coon lying in a basket on the floor, then sat down across the table from Fern. "I need a favor."

"If you're here about your tires, like I already said, you'll have to wait until I get paid next week." She didn't like to borrow from her savings account except in a true emergency.

"No, it's not that."

"Oh, no, what else broke, and how much is it going to cost me?"

"Why do you think I'm going to ask for money every time you see me?"

"Because you usually do. Not that I mind helping out when you really need it, like with the tires, but when are you going back to work? You should be in pretty good shape by now, right? Not that I'm pushing or anything."

"I'm planning to get back on the Ren Faire circuit at the end of the summer, and meanwhile I have a couple of gigs lined up downtown."

"So you can drop off Baird at my place while you're singing, I guess? Which is okay," Fern hastily added. After all, she didn't exactly have a whirlwind social calendar. "Haven't you given any more thought to getting a real job? After all, you've got a baby to think of now."

"Yeah, I noticed. When are you going to accept that my music is my real job?"

"I never said there was anything wrong with that, did I? Just that you can't depend on it to support you and Baird, especially with Adair--gone. Not to mention the hassle of dragging a baby around to one Renaissance Faire after another."

"Lots of couples bring their kids along."

"Couples. A single mom is a whole 'nother thing. And you aren't still expecting Adair to come back, are you?"

Ivy's eyes widened with a flash of anger. "You know I don't expect that. If he could have, he'd have done it already. Something terrible's happened to him, I know it."

"Yeah, right, another premonition." Ivy would grasp at any fantasy rather than entertain for a moment the idea that her lover might have bailed the same way their father had.

"Never mind, I didn't come here to rehash the same old arguments. I need you to take Baird to your place for tonight, maybe longer."

"Why?"

"He isn't safe at home. Somebody's after him."

"Who? What's going on?" Fern's throat tightened in fear. She stared at the baby, snuggled against Ivy's chest with a lock of her hair clutched in one tiny fist. "Did you get a threatening phone call or something?"

"Promise you won't blow me off? I really do have a premonition." The tension in her voice kept Fern listening, despite her scorn for the whole clairvoyance notion that Ivy put such faith in. "They're going to try to take him from me."

"How do you know that? Anything besides your second sight?" Otherwise known as imagination working overtime, in Fern's opinion. The mere mention of the subject made her stomach knot with anxiety. All that New Age mumbo-jumbo sparked nothing but negative memories in her.

Ivy shook her head, clearly annoyed by Fern's skepticism. "I just know. Take him to your house where he'll be protected, at least a little bit."

"What makes my place any safer than yours?" Torn between relief that no concrete danger existed and worry over her sister's paranoia, she strove to keep the exasperation out of her voice.

"I can't explain it," Ivy said with a sigh. "You wouldn't believe me, so why waste my breath?"

Reaching across to stroke Baird's downy hair, damp from the warm weather, Fern said, "So don't tell me. Look, you know I don't mind watching him, but I don't get off until five. You can bring him over for the night then. Come to think of it, if your house isn't safe, why don't you stay over, too?" One of them would have to sleep on the couch, but if that arrangement would make Ivy quit worrying about imaginary bogeymen, Fern could live with it.

"I'm afraid they'll find me. I can't risk having Baird with me when that happens."

"Who the heck is this 'they'?" The shop's bell rang at the entry of two middle-aged women, causing Fern to drop her voice to a whisper. "If you have any definite idea of who might want to hurt you, why don't you call the police?"

"Because I don't have a name or a description," Ivy whispered back, "and if you think I'm crazy, the police sure would. Can't you just do what I ask without arguing, for once?" She spread one hand over the baby's back in a protective gesture. Tears shimmered in her eyes. "I've lost Adair. I won't let anything happen to Baird."

"Hey, stop that." Fern leaned over to put an arm around her sister's shoulders. The familiar guilt coiled like a snake in the pit of her stomach. Somehow, Ivy could always make her feel like a negligent parent, even though the age gap between them was only six years. Fern could never quite ignore the ghost of their mother's voice in her head, ordering her to keep an eye on her little sister. "I already said I'd take care of him. Drop him off about five-fifteen."

Shaking her head, Ivy rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. "Like I said, he isn't safe with me. I'll leave him at the day care center until you can pick him up. That should be okay for a couple of hours."

"Sure, if it'll make you feel better." The baby had never spent a night away from Ivy before. Fern hoped feeding from bottles instead of nursing for that many hours wouldn't upset his digestion. "Are you planning to collect him tomorrow morning or what?"

"I'll call you later, and we can figure out what to do next. I might have to leave home for a while. I don't know. Oh, and I have to give you this." From under the baby sling she pulled a chain she wore around her neck. Fashioned of lacy wrought iron, it supported a Celtic cross of the same metal. In the center of the cross, a crystal sphere held a four-leafed clover. Ivy had ordered the necklace custom-made at a downtown Irish-themed shop, along with a matching filigree bracelet also adorned with a clover inside a marble-sized glass ball. Now that Fern thought of it, she realized Ivy had worn the set of jewelry constantly for the past few months, an odd habit considering neither of them had ever paid much attention to religion aside from Christmas and Easter services.

When Ivy handed her the necklace, Fern stared at it in bewilderment. "You want me to borrow this? Why? You never take it off."

"I wear it for protection, which you might need soon. Better safe than sorry." The urgency in her voice, still thick with unshed tears, underlined her sincerity. This plea meant more than a lighthearted "can't hurt" ritual of knocking on wood or circling around to avoid a black cat.

Rather than start another argument, Fern hung the chain around her neck, with the cross tucked into her blouse. "You know what I think about that stuff, but if you insist, I'll wear it. What about you, though? Sounds like you're the one who needs protection."

Ivy touched her left wrist. "I still have the bracelet." She stood up. "Now I've got to go. I've been out with Baird too long already. I have to get him to the day care. Almost forgot, I put something else in the baby bag you might need. The instructions are on the bottle." She cut off the next question with, "No time to explain, and it's another thing you wouldn't believe. Maybe we can talk about it later." She bent over to give Fern a hug, with the baby snuggled between them. "Thanks, sis. I know you think I'm nuts. So, well, thanks for humoring me."

Fern kissed the top of Baird's head, patted Ivy on the back, and watched her sister carry the baby out to the car parked at the curb.

When she resumed her spot behind the counter, Bev said, "Do you think there's really anything wrong, or just postpartum nerves?"

"That's got to be it. Who'd want to hurt Ivy or Baird?" Fern busied her hands with rearranging a stack of promotional fliers left by a local author. "You know she's always thought it's cool that second sight is supposed to run in our family. Sometimes she lets the idea trample on her common sense." She broke off when the two women shoppers finished their browsing and walked over with a couple of books each, which she rang up.