The tip of her knife pierced my skin like a sharp bite. My arms were shaking with the effort to keep her off me. I screamed, "Bleed for me!" I spat her blood out of my mouth, and still her knife wormed another fraction into my throat. Barely, barely below the skin - I wasn't hurt yet, but I would be soon.
Then her hand hesitated, pulled backward. I blinked up at her through a mask of her own blood. Her eyes were wide and startled. There was a white spear sticking out through her throat.
Sholto stood above her, bandages gone, his wound bare to the air, both hands gripping the spear. He pulled the spear out with a wrenching motion. A fountain of blood spilled out of her neck. I whispered, "Bleed." She collapsed in a pool of crimson, the knife still clasped in her hand.
Sholto stood over her and drove the white spear into her back. She spasmed underneath him, her mouth opening and closing, hands and feet scrabbling at the bare rock.
Only when she stopped moving completely did he take the spear out. He stood swaying, but used the tip to send her dagger spinning into the lake. Then he collapsed to his knees beside her, leaning on the spear like a crutch.
By the time I staggered to him, I wasn't glowing. I was tired, and hurt, and covered in my enemy's blood. I fell to my knees beside him on the bloody rock, and I touched his shoulder, as if I wasn't sure he was real. "I saw you drown," I said.
He seemed to have trouble focusing on me, but said, "I am sidhe and sluagh. We cannot die by drowning." He coughed hard enough that he doubled over, throwing up water onto the rock, as he clung to the white shaft of the spear. "But it hurts as if it were death."
I embraced him, and he winced, covered in wounds new and old. I held him more carefully, clinging to him, covering his upper body in Segna's blood.
His voice came rough with coughing. "I'm holding the spear of bone. It was one of the signs of kingship once for my people."
"Where did it come from?" I asked.
"It was in the bottom of the lake, waiting for me."
"Where are we?" I asked.
"It's the Island of Bones. It used to be in the middle of our garden, but it has become the stuff of legend."
I touched what I'd thought was rock, and found he was right. It was rock, but the rock had once been bone. The island was made up of fossils. "It feels awfully solid for a legend," I said.
He managed a smile. "What in the name of Danu is going on, Meredith? What is happening?"
I smelled roses, thick and sweet.
He raised his head, looked around him. "I smell herbs."
"I smell roses," I said, softly.
He looked at me. "What is happening, Meredith? How did we get here?"
"I prayed."
He frowned at me. "I don't understand."
The smell of roses grew thicker, as if I were standing in a summer meadow. A chalice appeared in my hand, where it lay against Sholto's na**d back.
He startled away from the touch of it as if it had burned him. He tried to turn too quickly, and it must have pained the open wound on his stomach, for he winced, sucking in his breath sharply. He fell back onto his side, the spear still gripped in one hand.
I held up the gold-and-silver cup so that it caught the light. It was really only then that it sank in that there was light here. It was sunlight, glinting on the cup, and warm on my skin.
For my life, I couldn't remember if there had been sun a moment ago. I might have asked Sholto, but he was focused on what was in my hand, and whispered, "It can't be what I think it is."
"It is the chalice."
He gave a small shake of his head. "How?"
"I dreamt of it, as I dreamt of Abeloec's horn cup, and when I woke it was beside me."
He leaned heavily on the spear, and reached toward the shining cup. I held it out toward him, but his fingers stopped just short of it, as if he feared to touch it.
His reluctance reminded me that things could happen if I touched one of the men with the chalice. But weren't we in vision? And if so, would that hold true? I looked at Segna's body, felt her blood drying on my skin. Was this vision, or was it real?
"And is not vision real?" came a woman's voice.
"Who said that?" Sholto asked.
A figure appeared. She was hidden completely behind the grey of a hooded cloak. She stood in the clear sunlight, but it was like looking at a shadow - a shadow with nothing to give it form.
"Do not fear the touch of the Goddess," the figure said.
"Who are you?" Sholto whispered.
"Who do you think I am?" came the voice. In the past, she had always either appeared more solid or been only a voice, a scent on the wind.
Sholto licked his lips and whispered, "Goddess."
My hand rose of its own accord. I held the chalice out to him, but it was as if someone else were moving my hand. "Touch the chalice," I whispered.
He kept his grip on the spear, leaning on it, as he stretched out his other hand. "What will happen when I touch it?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Then why do you want me to do it?"
"She wants you to," I said.
He hesitated again with his fingers just above the shining surface. The Goddess's voice breathed around us with the scent of summer roses: "Choose."
Sholto took in a sharp breath and blew it out, like a sprinter, then touched the gold of the cup. I smelled herbs, as if I had brushed against a border of thyme and lavender around my roses. A black-cloaked figure appeared beside the grey. Taller, broader of shoulders, and somehow - even shrouded by the cloak - male. As the cloak could not hide the Goddess's femininity, so the cloak could not hide the God's masculinity.