PROLOGUE
She wasn’t dead.
She wasn’t alive, either.
In truth, she might have passed countless years simply dwelling in the outlands of existence. Not dying—not living. Just being. If it hadn’t been for the life that stirred within her womb, and the anger that stirred within her breast. Before she remembered who she was, she remembered that she had been betrayed.
Yes, anger is good…
The voice in her mind was not her own, but it felt familiar, and she grasped it as she sought to find herself again. Who was she? Where was she? How had this happened to her?
She opened her eyes. Blackness surrounded her. Blackness and weight, as if she had been submerged in a warm pool. For a moment panic overwhelmed her. If she was underwater how could she breathe? Surley she must be dead. Dead and entombed an eternity for crimes she couldn’t remember committing.
Then the child within her fluttered again.
The dead did not bring forth life.
She commanded her panic to recede, and it obeyed. Panic never helped. Cold, logical thought. Meticulous planning and precise execution of those plans. That was the way to triumph. That was the way she had always triumphed.
Until now.
But she had been betrayed. By whom? Her anger built and she fed it, channeling her frustration and fear.
Yes…allow anger to purify you…
Her self-awareness increased. Her mind was less sluggish. Her body tingled. Her anger continued to build until she could actually feel its warmth surrounding her. It energized her.
She had been betrayed…she had been betrayed…she had been betrayed…
The words circled through her mind, causing memories to leak from the dark barriers behind which they had been hidden.
A castle at the edge of the sea.
Dreams that were glimpses of reality.
A marble-walled temple of exquisite beauty and strength.
The call of a goddess.
That was it! She was divine! She was the Chosen of a Great Goddess!
Rhiannon…
The name burst through her mind, and with that knowledge the dams that blocked her memory broke, and the past shattered through her.
She had been betrayed by her goddess!
Rhiannon remembered everything. The willful choices she’d made during her life that constantly had her at odds with the Great Goddess Epona. The rape that had been her ascension ritual. The fact that Epona had never been content with her. The realization that no one in Partholon truly loved her—that they only worshipped her as an extension of the Goddess. The Magic Sleep vision wherein she had glimpsed the Fomorian demons infiltrating Guardian Castle and plotting the destruction of Partholon. The whisperings from the darkness that told her there was another way…another world…another choice. The vision of that other world she had been given through the power of that dark voice. And her decision to exchange herself for Shannon Parker, the mundane woman from that world whose physical appearance was so like hers that they could have been born from the same womb.
Rhiannon’s body trembled as she remembered the rest of it. How Clint, the Shaman she had found in this world, the mirror image of Partholon’s High Shaman ClanFintan, had refused to help her harness the power in this odd world where technology was magic and magic was an almost entirely untapped resource. So she had been forced to use dark powers to call forth a servant to aid her.
But something had gone terribly wrong. Clint had summoned Shannon from Partholon, and the two of them had joined to use their powers to defeat her.
The trees had named Shannon, not Rhiannon, as Epona’s Chosen, Beloved of the Goddess.
Epona no longer spoke Rhiannon’s name. The Goddess did not acknowledge her as Chosen. When Rhiannon had realized this, something within her had broken. Rhiannon felt sick remembering how lost and afraid she had felt. But the wound was not so fresh now.
Epona had betrayed her and allowed her to be entombed, while the usurper, Shannon, returned triumphant to Partholon and the life that should have been hers. And her child’s. You haven’t been betrayed by everyone… She now knew to whom the voice in her head belonged. The Triple-Faced God, Pryderi.
Pryderi…
The name moved through her mind, not as the explosion her own naming had been. Instead it was an alluring whisper.
I