Why, in the name of all that was sacred, could he See naught but blood?
Pain exploded behind Owein’s eyes, so vivid it sent him to his knees. By the might of the Horned God! The seasons had circled twice since last a vision had descended with such agony. Head bowed, he braced one rigid arm in the snow, waiting for the worst of the torture to pass. It was far better, he’d learned, to accept his gift than to fight it.
His breath formed a white shroud in the air before him. It lingered but a heartbeat before thinning into nothingness. He might have expected the Horned God’s touch this day. Dawn winds had hurled sleet and snow into the mountains, unusual in Cambria, where the dark of the year passed more often in rain and fog. ’Twas a maelstrom born of magic.
A Druid’s will drove the storm. Owein was certain of it. An intimate sense of the hidden one’s power crackled in the air. Hope—as sweet as it was unfamiliar—constricted his chest. For years he’d thought himself the last of the Druids in the western mountains.
It seemed he was not.
Was the unknown Druid bound to Kernunnos, the great Horned God, as Owein was? Owein had little time to wonder as his vision came full upon him. He struggled upright, one knee buried in the snow, the heel of his hand pressed to his forehead.
After what seemed a bleak eternity, the solid hammering in his skull eased. With an effort he lifted his head, though its weight felt equal to a sack filled with stones. A vision wavered, vivid against the winter forest, yet at the same time distant, as if it belonged to a realm long vanished.
Blood.
A river of it. Thick and red, it streamed past his feet, a pulsing defilement of the virgin snow. Owein lurched upright and staggered along the crimson path, instinct driving him to its source.
The blood flowed from a woman.
A young woman, at that. The lass lay crumpled and pale, her long dark braids unpinned and tousled over the crystalline surface of the snow. Drifts claimed the lower portion of her body, wrapping her limbs and torso like a mantle of death. Blood—more than could possibly be contained in a score of human bodies—flowed from a jagged wound in her breast.
Owein’s vision split. The image of the woman doubled and wavered. The ground seemed to fall from beneath him as a blinding spike of pain skewered his right eye. He gasped with the force of it, his knees crumpling. He went down hard, his hand scrabbling on a patch of ice.
He bowed his head and squeezed his eyelids shut, waiting. Waiting. The attack receded slowly, much as winter bowed to spring in the northern hills Owein had once called home.
His bunched muscles relaxed a bit. Though brutal, the vision had been brief. The pain was bearable now—no more than a dull throb inside his skull. Fatigue dragged his limbs, as it always did when his Sight faded. That was the price he paid for his magic.
He murmured thanks to the Horned God for the favor of a vision. Then he muttered a second prayer—one of gratitude for a blessing so short-lived.
He eased back into a crouch, feeling normal save for a slight tingling on his scalp and the heavier weakness in his arms and legs. Both would be gone by dawn. For now, he was thankful enough that when he opened his eyes, the world would once again appear as it should. Gray sky overhead, white snow underfoot. There would be no woman. No blood.
He blinked, letting the dull light of the twilit sky filter into his vision. As he’d expected, the pristine snow on the path was marred only by his own footprints. The river of blood had vanished.
The woman had not.
Owein dragged a hand across his eyes, unwilling to lend full credence to his senses. But when he looked a second time, the figure lay as it had a moment before—pale and still as a corpse. This woman was no vision; she was real.
No mortal wound pierced her breast, but the snow falling on her pale face was itself a kiss of death. Ice had rendered her sable-lined cloak as stiff as an untanned hide. White frost dusted her braids and the ringlets framing her heart-shaped face. Blue tinged her lips. By contrast, her cheekbones and the tip of her straight nose were colored a raw, angry red.