Aine liked the irony of using a funeral urn to draw water for the herbs in her healer’s garden. It was a beautiful urn, large and graceful, with a ridged lip and a curved handle balanced off one side. The scene painted around it was framed in black, as was typical for Epona’s funeral urns, but it seemed to Aine that there was something especially lovely about this one. The Goddess’s Chosen reclined with her outstretched arm motioning regally to the line of supplicants that stretched around the urn before her. A riot of auburn hair cascaded like water down the priestess’s back.

It was ridiculous that something so beautiful be relegated to the dreary job of pouring libations on graves, or worse, holding the ashes of the dead. So Aine had “rescued” it.

Too bad there would be no one to rescue her from the dreary job she’d taken.

“No,” Aine muttered. “It’s not the job that’s dreary. It’s the place.” She sat at the edge of the herb bed and looked around her. She’d been at Guardian Castle for a little over five full turns of the moon, but she still wasn’t used to the overwhelming grayness of everything. The castle was gray. The pass through the mountains the castle had been built within was gray. The autumn sky was gray. Aine sighed. “Epona’s shield! Even the people are gray.”

She understood that the castle had been built for one specific purpose: to keep the pass between the Wastelands and Partholon guarded so that the demonic Fomorians who had been banished to those Wastelands would never enter Partholon again. Even though there hadn’t been a Fomorian sighted in generations, still they needed to be on guard. So beauty and color and the things that made Partholon such a lovely goddess-blessed land weren’t exactly priorities here at the edge of the civilized world. Protection and defense was the focus.

It was just so hard to get used to this stark place after four full seasons of studying the art of healing at the exquisite Temple of the Muse, where Aine had been surrounded by all the most talented, beautiful and brightest women of Partholon.

Camenae, her mentor, had warned her against accepting the austere post, but Aine had known that Guardian Castle was where she belonged. Just as she had known that it was her destiny to be a Healer.

But since Aine had arrived at Guardian Castle she’d felt so uneasy that she’d begun questioning that intuition, that knowing which had served her so well all her life. Restless, Aine picked at a few sprigs of mint, breathing deeply of the distinctive scent of the plant. She had to stop second guessing herself. It wasn’t her intuition that was the problem. The problem was the people here. They felt wrong. They were as colorless, inside and out, as the landscape surrounding them.

Well, the human people that is. Aine had only made one friend since she’d taken up her position as Healer of Guardian Castle. She and the centaur Maev, who had only recently been posted as Huntress for the castle, had instantly clicked.

“Probably because we’re the only bit of color hereabouts. Maybe that’s why I believed so strongly that I needed to come here-to spread some color around.”

Aine picked up a raven-colored curl that had fallen over her shoulder. She smiled as the wan sunlight made her hair shine with flashes of mahogany and a black so dark it almost appeared blue. With her dark hair and startlingly sapphire eyes, and Maev’s blazing copper hair and shining roan equine coat, the two of them definitely stood out amongst the dish soap, milk toast complexions of the stone-faced warriors and their equally boring women.

It was just so odd. She’d had no idea before she’d arrived how washed out everything-everyone would be. But then, why would the rest of Partholon know? Besides families of the warriors and a few traders, people rarely visited Guardian Castle.

Aine couldn’t help but compare the people of Guardian Castle to sleepwalkers. Or worse-they were like the stories told to frighten children about people who had been led astray by darkness and who ended up wandering the earth as soulless husks eternally searching for but unable to ever find the light within them that had been bled away by…

“Aine! There has been an accident. You’re needed!”

Aine startled at the appearance of the stern warrior she thought was called Edan, but she had been well trained and recovered quickly. She was on her feet and running for her Healer’s basket in an instant. Then instead of heading to the infirmary wing of the castle, the warrior called, “This way!” and began jogging towards the massive rear gate that opened to the Wastelands side of the pass.

She stifled her questions, concentrating instead on keeping up with the silent warrior as they ran out the raised, iron-toothed gate.

The instant Aine passed beyond the walls of the castle she felt the change. It was as if the air had solidified. It pressed down upon her, thick…heavy…cloying…Aine stumbled.

Edan grabbed her arm to steady her. “We only have a short way to go.” He jogged down the narrow, slate-colored pass. Aine rushed after him. The path took a sharp turn. Not far ahead of them Aine could see a warrior standing in front of a pile of something that was lying in the middle of the pass. She caught the scent of fresh blood and centered herself so that she would be calm and able to think clearly in the whirlwind of emotion and activity that accompanied injuries as surely as blood and death accompanied them.

The warrior turned to her and Aine looked beyond him to see-

“Maev!” She gasped and dropped to her knees beside the centaur Huntress, instantly assessing the gaping slash wounds that appeared to cover her body. Her friend was unconscious. Her breath was shallow and her skin, that which was not covered with blood, was so pale it appeared colorless.

“We found her like this. She was hunting wild boar today. One of the beasts must have attacked her,” said the Warrior, pointing at the centaur’s terrible wounds.

Aine glanced up at him. “She’s been unconscious the whole time?”

“Yes.”

“She needs to be moved to the infirmary.” Aine snapped the order, the steadiness of her voice completely belying the tumult within her. “Get a stretcher and more men.” Aine was vaguely aware that Edan nodded and rushed off. All of her attention was focused on her fallen friend as she pulled linen strips from her basket. She had to stop the bleeding. But there were so many wounds…so much blood lost.

Aine was leaning over the centaur’s torso, pressing a linen cloth to the ripped flesh of her neck and trying to staunch the flood of her friend’s lifeblood when Maev, eyes still closed, lips barely moving, whispered “Send him away.”

Aine drew in a shocked breath, but before she could respond further, Maev’s strained whisper continued. “Do not betray me.”

Used to relying on her instincts, especially during emergencies, Aine made her decision quickly. She turned to the warrior. She didn’t know his name, but she recognized his heavily lined face as one of the senior guards. “I’m going to have to close some of her wounds before we move her. I’ll need everything in my large black surgical box in the infirmary.” When the warrior didn’t move, Aine lifted her chin and said, “Now.”

Expressionless, the warrior hesitated for only a moment more before he turned and sprinted down the path towards the castle.

Maev’s eyes opened instantly. “Must listen to me.” The Huntress was growing weaker by the moment. She struggled to speak as the breath gurgled wetly in her throat.

Aine wanted to soothe her friend-to tell her to save her strength, but she’d already seen the end written in the color of Maev’s skin and the copious amount of blood she’d lost. Even a centaur Huntress couldn’t survive such terrible wounds.