Chapter 19
For most of the day, Moira worked with Glenna forming, forging and charming the fireballs. Every hour or so two or three people would come into the tower and haul away what was done to store them in their stockpile outside.
“I never thought I’d say it,” Moira began after the fourth straight hour, “but magic can be tedious.”
“Hoyt would say what we’re doing here is nearly as much science as magic.” Glenna swiped at her damp face with her arm. “And yes, both can be boring as ever-living hell. Still, you’re doing this with me cuts back on the time and increases the payload. Hoyt’s bound to be closeted with Cian over maps and strategy all day.”
“Which is probably just as tedious.”
“Betcha more.”
Once again Glenna walked the line of the hardened balls they’d made, hands stretched out, eyes focused as she chanted. From where she stood at the worktable Moira could see the constant use of power was taking its toll.
The shadows under Glenna’s green eyes seemed to deepen every hour. And each time the flush the miserable heat brought to her cheeks faded, her skin looked more pale, more drawn.
“You should stop for a bit,” Moira told her when Glenna completed the line. “Get some air, have a bite.”
“I want to finish this batch, but I will take a minute first. It reeks of sulphur in here.” She walked to the window, leaned out to draw in cool, fresh air. “Oh. This is a sight, Moira, come look. Dragons circling over tent city.”
Moira wandered over to watch dragons, most of them mounted by riders training them to dive or turn on command. They were quick studies, she mused, and made a bold, bright show against a hazy sky.
“You’re wishing you could take a picture of it, or sketch it at least.”
“I’ll spend the next ten years doing sketches and artwork of what I’ve seen these past months.”
“I’ll miss you so much when this is done and you’re not here anymore.”
Understanding, Glenna draped an arm over Moira’s shoulders, then pressed a kiss to her hair. “You know if there’s a way to come, we will. We’ll visit you. We have the key, we have the portal, and if what we’ve done here doesn’t earn the gods’ blessing, nothing could.”
“I know. As horrible as these past months have been in so many ways, they’ve given me so much. You and Hoyt and Blair. And... ”
“Cian.”
Moira kept her eyes on the dragons. “He won’t come back to visit, with or without the blessing of the gods.”
“I don’t know.”
“He won’t, even if it were possible for him, he won’t come back to me.” Little deaths, Moira thought, every hour, every day. “I knew it all along. Wanting it different doesn’t change what is, or can’t be. It’s one of the things Morrigan was telling me, about the time of knowing. Using my head and my heart together. Both my head and my heart know we can’t be together. If we tried it would tear at us until neither of us could survive it. I tried to deny that, disgracing myself, hurting him.”
“How?”
Before Moira could answer, Blair strode in. “What’s up? A little girl time? What’s the topic? Fashion, food or men? Oh-oh,” she added when they turned and she saw their faces, “must be men, and me with no chocolate to pass around. Listen, I’ll get out of your way, I just wanted to let you know the last incoming troops have been sighted. They’ll be here within the hour.”
“That’s good news. No, stay a moment, would you?” Moira asked. “You should know what I was about to confess. Both of you have put your heart and blood into all of this. You’ve been the best friends to me I’ve ever had, or will have.”
“You’ve got a serious voice on there, Moira. What did you do? Decide to turn to the dark side and hang out with Lilith?”
“It’s not so far from that. I asked Cian to change me.”
Blair nodded as she walked closer. “I don’t see any bites on your neck.”
“Why aren’t you angry, or even surprised? Either one of you.”
“I think,” Glenna said slowly, “I might have done the same in your place. I know I’d have wanted to. If we walk away from this, Blair and I walk away with our men. You can’t. Do you want us to judge you for trying to find some way to change that?”
“I don’t know. It might be easier if you did. I used his feelings for me as weapons. I asked—all but begged him to make me like him when we were at our most intimate.”
“Below the belt,” Blair stated. “If I were going to do it, that’s the method I’d have picked. He turned you down, which tells me there can’t be any doubt what you are to him. Back to me again, I’d feel better knowing he was going to be just as miserable and alone as I was when he had to take a walk.”
Moira let out a surprised and muffled laugh. “You don’t mean that.”
“I said it to lighten things up, but down in the gut? I don’t know. I might. I’m sorry you’re getting the shaft in this. Sincerely.”
“Ah well, maybe I’ll have a bit of luck and die in battle tomorrow night. That way I won’t be miserable and alone after all.”
“Positive thinking. That’s the ticket.” In lieu of chocolate, Blair gave her a hug. And met Glenna’s eyes over Moira’s shoulder.
I t was important, Moira knew, for the last of the troops to be welcomed by their queen, and to show herself to as many as she could in the final hours before the last march. She walked among the tents as twilight came, as did the other members of the royal family. She spoke to all she could. She dressed as a warrior, with her cloak pinned with a simple claddaugh brooch and the sword of Geall at her side.
It was well after dark when she returned to the house, and to what she knew would be the final strategy meeting with her circle.
They were already gathered around the long table with only Larkin standing apart, scowling down at the fire. Something new, she thought with a little quiver in her belly. Something more.
She unpinned her cloak as she studied the faces of those she’d come to know so well.
“What plans are you making that has Larkin so worried?”
“Sit down,” Glenna told her. “Hoyt and I have something. If it works,” she continued as Moira walked to the table, “it would win this.”
As Moira listened, the little quiver became a frozen knot. So many risks, she thought, so many contingencies, and so many ways to fail. For Cian most of all.
But when she looked into his eyes, she understood he’d already made his decision.
“It lays most on you,” she said to him. “The timing... if it’s off by a moment—”
“It lays on all of us. We all knew what we were taking on when we started this.”
“No one of us should be risked more than the others,” Larkin interrupted. “We may sacrifice one of us without need, without—”
“Do you think I bring this lightly?” Hoyt spoke quietly. “I lost my brother once, then found him again. Found more, I think, than either of us had before. Now doing this, doing what I was charged to do, I may lose him again.”
“I’m not getting a sense of confidence in my abilities.” There was a tankard on the table, and Cian lifted it to pour ale. “Apparently surviving over nine hundred years isn’t considered a strong point on my résumé.”
“I’d hire you,” Blair said, and held out her cup. “Yeah, it’s risky, a lot of steps, a lot of variables, but if it works, it’d be one hell of a thing. I’m figuring you’ll make it through.” She tapped her cup to Cian’s. “So this has my vote.”
“I’m not a strategist,” Moira began. “And my magic is limited. You can do this?” she asked Hoyt.
“I believe it can be done.” He reached for Glenna’s hand.
“We got the idea, actually, from something you said back at Castle Geall,” Glenna told her. “And we’re using Geall’s symbols. All of them. It would be strong magic, and—I think—though it takes blood to bind it, pure.”
“I believe separately we have more true power than Midir.” Hoyt scanned the faces around him. “Together, we’ll crush him, and the rest.”
Moira turned to Cian. “If you stayed back? A signal to you, to all of us once all the steps have been taken—”
“Lilith’s blood on the battleground is essential. She has to be wounded, at least, by one of the six of us. And Lilith’s mine,” Cian said flatly. “If I get through or don’t, she’s mine. For King.”
For King, Moira thought, and for himself as well. Once he’d been innocent, too. Once he’d been a victim and his life taken from him. She’d shed his blood, fed him hers. Now, what they’d shared might be vital to the survival of mankind.
She rose, carrying the weight of it, and walked to Larkin. “You’ve already decided.” She looked back at the four who sat at the table. “Four of the six, so it would be done as you’ve planned however Larkin and I vote on this. But it’s best if we’re together. If the circle agrees, with no breaks, no doubts.” She took Larkin’s hand now. “It’s best.”
“All right. All right.” Larkin nodded. “We’re together then.”
“If we could go over it oncemore.” Moira came back to the table. “The details and the movements of it, then we’ll pass this on to the squadron leaders.”
It would be like a brutal and bloody dance, Moira thought. Sword, sacrifice and magic playing the tune. And the blood, of course. There must always be blood.
“The first preparations in the morning then.” She’d risen to pour and pass short cups of whiskey for each. “Then we’ll each do our part, and the gods willing, we’ll end this. And end it, fittingly I think, with the symbols of Geall. Well, to us then and the hell with them.”
When they’d drunk, she walked over to the vielle. “Would you play?” she asked Cian. “There should be music. We’ll have music, and send it out to the night. I hope she hears it, and trembles.”
“You don’t play,” Hoyt began.
“I didn’t speak Cantonese once upon a time. Things change.” Still Cian felt a little odd, sitting down with the vielle, testing the strings for tune.
“What is that thing?” Blair wondered. “Like a violin with gout?”
“Well, it would be a predecessor.” He began to play, slowly, feeling his way back from war to music. The oddness faded away with the quiet, haunting notes.
“It’s lovely,” Glenna said. “A little heartbreaking.” Because she couldn’t resist, she went for paper and charcoal to sketch him as he played.
From outside, pipes and harps began to play, blending in with Cian’s music.
Each note, Moira thought, like a tear.
“You’ve a hand with that,” Larkin told Cian when the notes faded away. “And a heart for music, that’s the truth. But would you be after playing something a bit livelier? You know, with a little jump to it?”
Larkin lifted his pipe and blew out quick, cheerful notes, so those echoes of melancholy were swept away in joy. More music poured in from outside, drums and fifes, as Cian matched melody and rhythm. With a quick hoot of approval, Larkin stomped his feet, his knees like loose hinges while Moira clapped the time.
“Come on then.” Tossing his pipe to Blair, Larkin grabbed Moira’s hands. “Let’s show this lot how Geallians dance.”
Laughing, Moira swung into step with him in what Cian saw was cousin to an Irish step-dance. Quick feet, still shoulders, all energy. He bent over the vielle, smiling a little at the persistence of the human heart as shadows and firelight played over his face.
“We won’t let them get the better of us.” Hoyt yanked Glenna to her feet.
“I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can. It’s in the blood.”
The floorboards rang with booted feet, and it flowed out into the night, the dance, the tune, the laughter. It was, Cian thought, so human of them, to take the joy, to not only use it, but to squeeze every drop of it.
There, his brother, the sorcerer who prized his dignity as much as his power, whirling around with his sexy red-headed witch who giggled like a girl as she tried to do the steps.
The kick-your-face-and-your-ass demon hunter mixing a little twenty-first-century hip-hop into the folk dance to make her shape-shifting cowboy grin.
And the queen of Geall, loyal, devoted and carrying the weight of her world, flushed and glowing with the simple pleasure of music.
They might die tomorrow, every one, but by the gods, they danced tonight. Lilith, for all her eons, all her power and ambition would never understand them. And the magic of them, the light of them, might just carry the day.
For the first time, he believed—whether he survived or not—humankind would triumph. It couldn’t be snuffed out, not even by itself. Though he’d seen, too often, it try.
There were too many others like these five, who would fight and sweat and bleed. And dance.
He continued to play when Hoyt paused long enough to drink some ale. “Send it to her,” Cian murmured.
“Look at my Glenna, dancing as if she’d been born to it.” Hoyt blinked, frowned. “What’s that you said?”
Cian glanced up, no longer smiling though the music he played was as cheerful as a red balloon. “Send Lilith the music, send it out, just as Moira said. You can do that. Let’s rub her fucking face in it.”
“Then we will.” Hoyt laid a hand on Cian’s shoulder. “Damn right we will.”
Power rippled, warming Cian’s shoulder as he played, and played.
I n the dark, Lilith stood watching her troops fight yet another training battle. As far as she could see—and her eyes were keen—vampires, half-vampires, human servants were spread in an army she’d spent hundreds of years building.
Tomorrow, she thought, they would swarm over the humans like a plague until the valley was a lake of blood.
And in it, she would drown that whore who called herself queen for what had been done to Davey.
When Lora joined her, they slid arms around each other’s waists. “The scouts are back,” Lora told her. “We outnumber the enemy by three to one. Midir is on his way, as you commanded.”
“It’s a good view from here. Davey would have enjoyed standing here, seeing this.”
“By this time tomorrow, or soon after, he’ll be avenged.”
“Oh, yes. But it won’t end there.” She felt Midir as he climbed to the rooftop where she and Lora stood. “It begins soon,” she said without turning to him. “If you fail me, I’ll slit your throat myself.”
“I will not fail.”
“Tomorrow, when it begins, you’ll be in place. I want you standing on the high ridge to the west, where all can see.”
“Majesty—”
She turned now, her eyes cold and blue. “Did you think I’d let you stay here, locked and closeted within this shield? You’ll do and be where I say, Midir. And you’ll stand on that ridge so our troops, and theirs, can see your power. An incentive for them, and for you,” she added. “Make your magic strong, or you’ll pay the price of it during the battle, or after.”
“I’ve served you for centuries, and still there is no trust.”
“No trust between us, Midir. Only ambition. I prefer that you live, of course.” She smiled now, thinly. “I have uses for you even after my victory. There are children inside Castle Geall, protected. I want them, all of them, when I’ve taken the night. From among them I’ll choose the next prince. The others will make a fine feast. You’ll stand on the ridge,” she said as she turned back again. “And you’ll cast your dark shadow. There’s no cause for concern. After all, you’ve seen the outcome of this in your smoke. And so you’ve told me countless times.”
“I would be more use to you here, with my—”
“Silence!” She snapped it out, tossed up a hand. “What’s that sound? Do you hear it?”
“It sounds like... ” Lora frowned out into the dark. “Music?”
“Their sorcerer sends it.” Midir lifted face and hands into the air. “I feel him reaching out, pale and petty power in the night.”
“Make it stop! I won’t be mocked on the eve of this. I won’t have it. Music.” She spat it out. “Human trash.”
Midir lowered his arms, folded his hands. “I can do what you will, my queen, but they make a small and foolish attempt to anger you. See your own troops, training, wielding weapons, preparing for battle. And what does your enemy do with these final hours?” He dismissed them with a flick of his fingers that sizzled out fire. “They play like careless children. Wasting the short time they have left before the slaughter on music and dance. But if you will it—”
“Wait.” She held up a hand again. “Let them have their music. Let them dance their way to death. Go back to your cauldron and smoke. And be prepared to take your place tomorrow, and hold it. Or I’ll toast my victory with your blood.”
“As you wish, Majesty.”
“I wonder if he spoke the truth,” Lora said when they were alone again. “Of if he hesitated to strike his power against theirs.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Lilith couldn’t let it matter, not this close to the fulfillment of all she coveted. “When everything is as I want it, when I crush these humans, drink their children, he’ll have outlived his uses.”
“Certainement. And his power could be turned against you once he has what he wants. What do you propose to do about him?”
“I’m going to make a meal of him.”
“Share?”
“Only with you.”
She continued to stand, watching the training. But the music, the damned music soured her mood.
I t was late when Cian lay beside Moira. In these last hours, their circle was in three parts. He’d seen the fire flare and the candle flames flash, and knew Hoyt and Glenna were wrapped in each other.
As he’d been with Moira. As he imagined Larkin was with Blair.
“It was always meant to be this way,” Moira said quietly. “The six of us making the circle, with each of us forming a stronger link with another. To gather together, to learn of and from one another. To know love. And this house is bright with love tonight. It’s another kind of magic, and as powerful as any other. We have that, whatever comes.”
She lifted her head to look down at him. “What I asked you to do was a betrayal.”
“There’s no need for that.”
“No, I want to tell you what I know, as much as I know anything. It was a betrayal of you, of myself, of the others and all we’ve done. You were stronger, and now so am I. I love you with everything I am. That’s a gift for both of us. Nothing can take it or change it.”
She lifted the locket he wore. It held more than a lock of her hair, she thought. It held her love. “Don’t leave this behind when you go. I want to know you have it, always.”
“It goes where I go. My word on that. I love you with everything I am, and all I can’t be.”
She laid the locket back over his heart, then a hand over the stillness. Tears filled her, but she fought to hold them. “No regrets?”
“None.”
“For either of us. Love me again,” she murmured. “Love me again, one last time before dawn.”
It was tender and slow, a savoring of every touch, every taste. Long, soft kisses were a kind of drug against any pain, silky caresses a balm over wounds that must be endured. She told herself her heart beat hard and strong enough for both of them now, this last time.
Her eyes stayed open and on his, drinking in his face so that at the peak of pleasure she saw him slide away with her.
“Tell me again,” she murmured. “Once more.”
“I love you. Eternally.”
Then they lay together in the quiet. All the words had been said.
In the last hour before dawn they rose, the six, to prepare for the final march to battle.
They went on horse, on dragon, on foot, in wagons and carts. Above, clouds shifted over the sky, but didn’t block out the sun. It beamed through them in shimmering fingers and sudden flashes to light the way to Silence.
The first arrived to lay traps in the shadows and in the caves while guards flew or rode over and around the valley with their eyes trained for any attack.
And there found traps laid for them. Under a man’s feet, a pool of blood would spread, sucking him down. Ooze, black as pitch, bubbled up to burn through boots and into flesh.
“Midir’s work,” Hoyt spat as others ran to save who they could.
“Block it,” Cian ordered. “We’ll have a panic on our hands before we start.”
“Half-vamps.” Blair shouted the warning from dragon-back. “About fifty. First line, let’s go.” She dived down to lead the charge.
Arrows flew, and swords slashed. In the first hour, the Geallian forces were down fifteen men. But they held ground.
“They just wanted us to have a taste of it.” With her face splattered with blood, Blair dismounted. “We gave them a bigger one.”
“The dead and wounded have to be tended to.” Steeling herself, Moira looked at the fallen, then away. “Hoyt’s pushing back Midir’s spell. How much is it costing him?”
“He’ll have whatever he needs to have. I’m going up again, do a couple of circles. See if she’s got any more surprises for us.” Blair vaulted back on her dragon. “Hold the line.”
“We weren’t as prepared as we might have been for the traps, for a daylight attack.” Sheathing his stained sword, Larkin stepped to Moira. “But we did well. We’ll do better yet.”
He laid a hand on her arm, drawing her away so only she would hear. “Glenna says some are already here, under the ground. Hoyt can’t work with her now, but she thinks between herself and Cian they can find at least some, and deal with it.”
“Good. Even a handful will be a victory. I need to steady the archers.”
The sun moved to midday, then beyond it. Twice she saw the ground open up where Glenna held a willow rod. Then the flash of fire as the thing burrowed in the earth caught the sun and flamed in it.
How many more, she wondered. A hundred? Five hundred?
“He’s broken off.” Hoyt swiped a hand over his sweaty face when he joined her. “Midir’s traps are closed.”
“You beat him back.”
“I can’t say. He may have gone to other work. But for now, he’s blocked. This ground, it shakes the soul of a man. It pours up this evil it holds, all but chokes the breath. I’ll help Cian and Glenna.”
“No, you need to rest a few moments, save your energies. I’ll help them.”
Knowing he needed to gather himself, Hoyt nodded. But his eyes were grim as he scanned the valley, passed over where Glenna and Cian worked. “They won’t be able to find them all. Not in this ground.”
“No. But every one is one less.”
Still when she reached Glenna, Moira could see the work was taking its toll. Glenna was pale, her skin clammy as Hoyt’s had been. “It’s time to rest,” Moira told her. “Restore yourself. I’ll work it awhile.”
“It’s beyond your power. It’s on the edge of mine.” Grateful, Glenna took the water bag Moira offered. “We’ve only unearthed a dozen. A couple more hours—”
“She needs to stop. You need to stop.” Cian took Glenna’s arm. “You’re nearly tapped out, you know it. If you don’t have anything left come sundown, what good will you be?”
“I know there are more. A lot more.”
“Then we’ll be ready when this ground spits them out. Go. Hoyt needs you. He’s worn himself thin.”
“Good strategy,” Cian told Moira when Glenna walked away. “Using Hoyt.”
“It is, but it’s also true enough. We’re draining them both. And you,” she added. “I can hear in your voice how tired you are. So I’ll say what you said to her. What good are you if you’re worn out by sundown?”
“The bloody cloak smothers me. Then again, the alternative’s not pleasant. I need to feed,” he admitted.
“Then go, up to the high ground and see to it. We’ve done nearly all we can, all we set out to do by this time.”
She saw Blair and Larkin with Hoyt and Glenna now. The six of them, together as the sun sank lower might push their strengths up again. They went across the broken ground, climbed over an island of pocked rock, and began up the hard slope.
Everything in her wanted to shudder when they reached the ridge. Even without Midir’s spell, the ground seemed to pull at her feet.
Cian took out a water bag she knew held blood.
“Waiting on you,” Blair began. “A lot of your troops have the jitters.”
“If you’re meaning they won’t stand and fight—”
“Don’t get all Geallian pride on me.” Blair held up a hand for peace. “What they need is to hear from you, to get revved. They need their St. Crispin’s Day speech.”
“What’s this?”
Blair arched her brows at Cian. “Guess you missed Henry V when you mowed through Cian’s library.”
“There were a lot of books, after all.”
“It’s about stirring them up,” Glenna explained. “About getting them ready to fight, even die. Reminding them why they’re here, inspiring them.”
“I’m to do all of that?”
“No one else would have the same impact.” Cian closed the water bag. “You’re the queen, and while the rest of us might be generals, in a manner of speaking, you’re the one they look to.”
“I wouldn’t know what to say.”
“You’ll think of something. While you are, Larkin and I will get your troops together. Add a little Braveheart to Henry,” he said to Blair. “Get her on horseback.”
“Excellent.” Blair headed off to get Cian’s horse.
“What did this Henry say?” Moira wondered.
“What they needed to hear.” Glenna gave Moira’s hand a squeeze. “So will you.”