Free Caledonia Fae 04- Druid Lords by India Drummond

talking while Rory concentrated on searching for Flùranach’s presence.
    Depressed and dejected after long hours of no luck, Rory wanted to scream in frustration. “I’m certain I felt her the other day. I would swear to it,” he said as they descended from the Hall into the courtyard.
    “I know,” Huck said. Rory appreciated the support, even though the other druid had no way to really be sure if Rory was telling the truth or losing his mind. “She might have mixed in with the crowd and left right afterwards. A lot of them did.”
    Rory nodded, staring at the immense blue orb and considering each of the kingdoms it led to. “If only the portal could tell us where it sends people. I mean, how does it choose which kingdom someone goes to?”
    “I dunno,” Huck said. “I guess I never thought about it. I step through, and I always end up where I want to go.”
    “What if you don’t know where you want to go?” Rory asked, more thinking aloud than expecting an answer. He approached the blue glow and gazed into it.
    Without warning, Huck moved into the portal and disappeared. Rory stood and stared for a moment, uncertain what the other druid was up to. But Huck was like that, always jumping in without questioning or thinking his actions through.
    A few minutes later, Huck reappeared. “Ashkyne,” he said.
    “Interesting.” Rory scratched the thick, short red hairs of his beard. “I wonder if it would do the same for me. It makes sense you would go to Ashkyne. That’s how you’d get to your druid-girl. But me, I don’t have an attachment to any kingdom. I suppose if any, it would send me to Caledonia.”
    Huck nodded. “Only one way to find out for sure. What harm can it do to try?”
    Rory chuckled. “Well, if I don’t have a clear destination in mind, the Stone might trap me in there forever or send me someplace that didn’t exist up until I stepped through. For all we know, it could chuck me anywhere in the human realm with no way back without walking five hundred miles.”
    “You sound like Munro,” Huck said.
    “All it takes is one serious magical accident to make you cautious. Flùranach was eight years old when she encountered the time stream by linking with Tràth. She came out looking twenty-five, by human standards, and thinking like she was a thousand. When I touched the Source Stone, I have never faced anything before or since that made me feel like more of an insignificant speck.”
    Huck shifted uncomfortably. “We could ask the keepers.”
    “I’m not sure they know any more about the Source Stone than we do, and the Stone controls this portal.” Bracing himself, he thought about Flùranach and passed into the blue glow. He expected to detect the difference in the air as he moved into one of the kingdoms, but nothing changed. Before long, he realised he’d simply moved straight through the glow of the portal to the other side. He looked at Huck through the dazzling light and moved into the orb once more. Again, nothing happened.
    “So if you don’t want to go anywhere, you don’t?” Huck asked, furrowing his dark eyebrows together.
    “But I do want to go somewhere. I want find Flùranach.”
    “That’s who , though, not where . Maybe the portal isn’t smart enough to find a person.”
    “It alters entire kingdoms and controls the gates, for god’s sake.”
    They both stared as two faeries came through the portal. Rory didn’t know either of them, but they nodded to him as they passed and went about their business.
    “Maybe it’s leading you here because she’s still around and we missed her,” Huck said.
    “We went to every Hall. They aren’t that big. I would have known if she’d been close.”
    “Maybe she’s not in a Hall. We didn’t check the library.”
    Rory looked towards the library entrance. Beyond the runed pillars, a stairway wound deep below their feet. Housed within was the Source Stone itself, directly under the portal. He hadn’t been inside the