Toward the Other World beyond the invisible barrier that guarded Aelynn.
People stared at her as if she were a stranger, as much in shock as she was, waiting for her to tell them what to do, to explain what had just happened.
Lissandra crumpled to her knees, scarcely hearing the crowd’s shocked cries over her own confusion. The gods had rejected her.
Everything she’d been, everything she’d believed, had vanished in a puff of blue flame.
The spirit of the gods had deserted Aelynn—for a man who had turned his back on all they represented!
Days later, with the volcano rumbling ominously and spewing black fumes into the once-clear air, Lissandra remained stunned and in shock.
Could Murdoch save Aelynn?
She’d had the time between her mother’s death and interment to accept what the gods had shown her. And if she had dreaded becoming Oracle, she dreaded even more the duty that had been bestowed upon her now.
No amount of meditation had changed what Lissandra’s spirit guide was insisting she do—she must leave Aelynn and find the new Oracle . . . find the one person she wished never to see again. Then she must bring him home, to see him and work with him every agonizing day.
She couldn’t do it, but she had to do it.
Even though her actions went counter to everything she believed, Lissandra squeezed the last piece of clothing into her medicinal case.
Waiting for her outside her cottage, Ian frowned when she emerged carrying the bag.
Lissandra faced her older brother with equanimity. “I will need to exchange my pearls for your foreign coin.”
Always divert attention from oneself, her mother said inside her head. Give them tasks they understand. They will believe in your omniscience and that the gods speak through you.
But the gods had deemed her unworthy to speak for them. That she was almost relieved by their rejection only added to Lissandra’s abject misery and bewilderment.
She pulled her cloak closer against the recent summer chill. In the distance, the volcano glowed a dull, angry red beneath the heavy clouds, as it had been since the spirits had departed. Lissandra and Ian passed a group of muttering men, who, instead of greeting the last of the Olympus family with pleasantries, as they once would have done, now turned aside in bitterness.
“Where are you going?” Ian demanded, following her down the path to the harbor.
“I’m leaving Aelynn, of course,” she replied.
She said it simply, as if she were announcing her intent to breakfast rather than dashing centuries of tradition to the ground and stomping on it. Worse, she was doing it to seek a rogue who could destroy them all.
Fighting her fear, she kept her back rigid, knowing that if she hesitated, all was lost.
“I can’t leave the island if you do,” Ian pointed out reasonably enough, since the two of them were the last of a long, proud line of Aelynn’s spiritual leaders.
She could sense he was playing along with her, thinking her actions were a riddle to be solved, since she had never before left the island or expressed a desire to do so. “I am sorry,” she said in all sincerity, “but you have had these past two years in the Other World with Chantal, returning only now for Mother’s funeral, while I have dealt with Mother and the Council and healed the ill of mind and spirit in your absence. It is your turn to stay.”
If she died in the pursuit of her insane quest, Ian’s “turn” would last a lifetime. Sorrow welled up in her at the thought that she might never see her home again, or that she might cause harm because of her decision. But beneath her grief and sorrow, a shred of relief remained. If she wasn’t to be Oracle, she was no longer bound by duty. It was as if the weight of an island had been removed from her shoulders.
“Don’t be foolish.” Ian spoke sharply. “You are the only one who can step into our mother’s shoes. I will stay and direct the Council if that is your desire, but you cannot leave.”
“Try and stop me,” she said, placing one foot firmly in front of the other despite her fear.
She was aware of resentful glares as she strode through the maidens’ village, looking to neither side, hiding her heartache beneath practiced dignity. She veered past stunted crops toward the sandy path that would take her to the harbor. Every grain of wheat, every family behind every door, every flower along the path, were engraved upon her heart. She knew them as intimately as another woman would know her lover, had blessed them, healed them, watched them grow. She belonged here.
But not now that she had been charged with locating the real Oracle. At least, that was how she read the signs. Aelynn help them all if even her ability to See glimpses of the future was wrong. Then she truly would be purposeless.
That thought made her stumble. Tears seared her eyes, but she refused to acknowledge them. For the sake of her soul and pride, she must believe the gods meant for her to carry out this one last duty.
She’d learned the hard way that honorable people paid the highest price in this cruel world. They lost what they most wanted to men who were greedy for power and eager to take what wasn’t offered. Men like Murdoch LeDroit.
There, she’d thought his name.
The knifing pain was as intense as it had been when she’d first banished him from her mind four years ago. In fact, it was worse. Already bruised and bleeding from grief, her heart nearly broke in two under the additional burden of knowing she must once more face the angry man who had brought about the death of her father.
“You are not well,” Ian argued. “You should rest.”
“No one thinks you ill when you wish to leave the island,” she retorted. As she’d been taught, she hid her inner turmoil with a raised chin and haughty tone.
“I always ask the Council’s permission before leaving,” Ian reminded her. “I do not have a hysterical fit and pack my bags.”
“I am not hysterical.” She wasn’t having a fit, much as she would love to do so—a display of emotion was unbecoming to an Oracle’s daughter. “I am following the path I’ve Seen. I will sail with whatever ship is anchored in the harbor.”
Ian caught Lissandra’s elbow and directed her into an orange grove, out of sight of passersby. Like many of the crops on the island, the blossoms had been blasted by an unusual frost and had produced no fruit.
“It’s unwise to make decisions so soon after a loss,” he told her.
Although Ian kept his voice neutral, Lissandra heard in it a gentle request that she be realistic, which undermined her determination. Fighting for strength, she remained stubbornly silent.
Still grasping her arm, Ian grimaced and ran his free hand through his dark hair. “Where will you go?”
“To wherever the gods lead me . . . to Find the new Oracle,” she replied, speaking from deep in that place where her spirit resided. She withheld the name of the man in her vision. Ian and no doubt every other man on the island would tie her up and confine her to the house if they knew she meant to bring Murdoch LeDroit back to Aelynn.
“I thought you didn’t know who the Oracle is,” Ian said, releasing her in surprise.
Now that she didn’t have to physically fight him, Lissandra hastened to return to the path. “I will know him when I Find him.”
“Him?” Ian stopped in his tracks.
Lissandra glanced impatiently over her shoulder. “Oracles need only be wise, possess foresight, and speak for the gods. They do not need to be female.”
Ian was no fool. He fell in beside her. “You think it’s Murdoch! Believe me when I tell you that you’re wrong.”
“I have been wrong before.” Very, very perilously wrong. And about the same man of whom they spoke now.
“He’s a dangerous rogue,” Ian protested. “I have seen him since his banishment, as you have not. He lives the life of a warrior, pursuing greed and ambition without thought to others. His powers have become even more violent and unpredictable than they were before his banishment. Even he admits as much. He spurned my trust and
returned to France when the Chalice of Plenty vanished in England. The gods cannot have chosen a man who has rejected everything we stand for.”
Every word stung like a barb in Lissandra’s heart. She’d heard all this before, but that did not ease her sense of injustice. “He did not reject Aelynn. He was banished and dispossessed. He is the only one of us, besides you and me, who has an Oracle’s ability to See the future, and he is the only one with that ability who is not on the island. Unless you wish to believe the spirits have deserted us entirely, I must see if they have gone to him.”
“I will Find him,” Ian said. “You stay here. You need not do this yourself.”
Lissandra halted on the edge of the cliff overlooking the harbor. Below, a circle of jagged dark rocks formed a natural cove for Aelynn’s ships. Beyond the rocks shimmered a barrier of rainbow mist that shielded the island from human sight.
She fought to prevent her voice from breaking. “It is you who does not understand,” she said. “I have been a hostage here all my life, chained to these rocks by duty and responsibility and my love for my family and the people of Aelynn. I did it because I thought I belonged here, because I thought I was needed, and because I believed the gods had chosen me to be their next Oracle. And I was wrong!”
This last came out as an anguished cry and spurred her to flee down the rocky path to the black sand beach below.
Ian rushed after her, grabbing her elbow. In his eyes was compassion. “I will take you wherever you like, I promise. Just do not ask me to take you to Murdoch.”
Her own eyes bright with unshed tears, she glared at him. Her voice blazed with a lifetime of suppressed emotions. “Don’t you see? I no longer know who I am! There is no me! I do not know what I want or where I’m needed or why I even exist.” Her voice cracked with her despair. “I only know what my spirit guide shows me I must do. If Murdoch is not the man I believe he can be, then this island is doomed.”
She tore away from Ian’s grasp and fled to the ship bobbing in the harbor.
Three
Coastal Brittany, June 1793
Stealing through the gloomy twilight of the small Breton town of Pouchay, Lissandra stumbled on a loose cobblestone and nearly fell into a malodorous puddle of—Ewww. She grimaced as she recognized the smell. Did these people not know such filth caused disease? It was bad enough that this barren bluff lacked palm trees and jasmine-scented breezes, but now the stench of offal and coal smoke choked her lungs.
She contemptuously dragged the billowing bulk of her clumsy Other World clothing from the gutter. All the studying she had done about the Other World—its arts and its sciences—had not prepared her for the reality. Reading books in a library was not the same as walking the streets of a foreign land. After spending her life in sandals and a sarong, she had had to learn to walk all over again, weighed down by heavy petticoats, stiff corsets, and heeled shoes—dodging the filth.
To make it this far, she’d had to prevail over the vociferous arguments of Waylan the Weathermaker and Trystan the Guardian against entering a country torn by civil war. If Ian hadn’t changed her mind, did they really think their masculine illogic could persuade her?
Honestly, one would think they’d know her better by now. Murdoch would have.
Murdoch. Once, he had nearly torched this primitive town because of his inability to control the Greek fire he’d set loose upon the water. Trystan had clearly described how the renegade had nearly killed Mariel, Trystan’s wife, in that disaster. The Guardian would not easily forgive Murdoch, even though he was convinced the havoc had been unintended. Murdoch had set the fire on purpose, and that was enough to condemn him.
Murdoch had even dared fight Ian, nearly killing him with a pistol. Aelynn men did not use such weapons in an honorable fight. But there had been nothing honorable about Murdoch’s attempt to command the fate of France, nearly killing her brother in the process.
Lissandra had no idea what Murdoch had been doing in the two years since he’d spurned Ian’s forgiveness and trust and given up on their desperate search for the missing Chalice of Plenty. Had the miserable scoundrel actually applied himself to tracking the holy relic, he might have returned it to Aelynn and restored the island to its former prosperity and health. But no, he had set off on his own path, abandoning all he’d ever been taught. Abandoning her along with all he’d once known and loved.
She shuddered at the memory, and at the mental blasts coming from the arguments in a smoke-tainted tavern ahead. The men of Aelynn could be loud and boisterous, not to mention dangerous when riled, but they concealed their emotions behind walls of silence. Other Worlders did not. Turbulent waves of anger, greed, and jealousy spilled from the tavern along with a ferocious din and the stench of ale and pipe smoke. Even with her mental shields in place, the emotional havoc pierced Lissandra like the sting of a thousand jellyfish. How did Ian bear it when he came here?
How did Murdoch bear it? Gritting her teeth, she marched on. Anything he could do, she could do better.
She had hoped Trystan and Mariel would invite her into their home and take a few days to help her acclimate to this strange new world. Instead, they’d been forced to load their young family and friends on Waylan’s ship and flee the danger posed by the newly arrived Surveillance Committee from Paris, which was charged with checking travel documents of foreigners within France’s borders. Fearing spies on every sand spit, France had closed its shores to strangers—and executed anyone who did not carry the appropriate papers.
Lissandra doubted the committee would find anyone stranger than Aelynners. If a man as experienced in Other World affairs as Trystan feared this committee, she would have to be doubly wary. She couldn’t, after all, prove she was a citizen of a country that didn’t exist on any maps.
She hesitated outside the tall, forbidding stone structure of an inn, her extra senses picking up an odd vibration. Had she just sensed another Aelynner in the vicinity? Surely Trystan had made sure that all their countrymen had left the dangers of war-torn France.
The fleeting impression of grief and rage vanished as if a wall of silence had descended when she reached out with her senses. She didn’t think an Other Worlder could create a mental wall of silence, but what did she know? She’d never been here before.
She shivered, hating the damp chill, hating being intimidated by the loud and violent inhabitants of this place. She debated whether to seek this person out and decided against it. It challenged her best abilities to accomplish her one task—locate Murdoch, verify that the gods had chosen him, and if so, drag him home. She would allow no distraction.
She picked up her pace and marched on. First, she would find transportation. At least her Empathy should lead her to choose a decent guide. Unless that, too, was as skewed as everything else here.
The cart Lissandra rode in rattled over a barren hill, crossed a ridge, and descended into a forested valley. A smudge of smoke hovered over the treetops below, blocking the scenic view.
Her heart skipped a beat. For the first time in four years, she could feel Murdoch’s presence. He’d been part of her life since childhood. No matter how much her memories hurt, no matter what people told her, she couldn’t stifle this unwarranted longing to see him again. The man Ian had described had lost the laughter in his eyes and become a fountain of hostility. Had he grown worse since Ian had left him nearly two years ago?
She was about to find out. He was down there somewhere, although the dynamic life force that had driven him since childhood was oddly banked.
Considering the lightning and explosive fireworks he’d set off to cause her father’s death, the smoke shrouding the forest did not bode well. The horrific memory shredded her thin confidence.
“The village is through the forest, near a lake,” the driver told her as he clicked his mule past a tumble of boulders that looked as if the gods had heaved them there in a Herculean tantrum. “It is usually a pretty picture this time of year.”
At the bottom of
the hill, the driver rolled the cart off the main road and took a meandering dirt lane through scorched fields, skirting the still-smoldering forest.
“It is a miracle anyone survived the fire,” the driver said. “Lightning struck the woods that terrible day. We’ve had a dry spring, and the sparks set fire to the weeds and spread to the wheat straw that our young men hadn’t been home to plow. It carried across the fields, then leaped to the roofs. They lost only one bed-ridden old woman. They would have lost more had it not been for the stranger.”
Lissandra sensed the presence that ought to be Murdoch. But his essence seemed to be a mere cinder of the white-hot heat she remembered. Or perhaps, she thought acidly, he’d burned out his rage on a village. That would be typical of the dangerous man he’d become. She had no illusion that the lightning had natural origins, not with Murdoch in the vicinity. Not after the vision she’d had at her mother’s deathbed. Her vague hopes slipped into despair.
“What stranger?” she asked, if only to prove her theory.
“He gives us no name, so the priest calls him Abel. Old women call him a saint, but they are romantic fools. I call a man who is strong and skilled enough to drive off a half dozen thieves a warrior, not a saint. He was only passing through, but those he saved claim he single- handedly fought a troop of deserting thieves before the storm struck. They went on, but he stayed to fight the fire, and now he is helping the village rebuild.”
Murdoch. It had to be Murdoch, although she could make little sense of his actions. With his gifts, he could have ruled all France. Was she wrong and the spirits had not descended on him? If so, what must she do?
As the old mule ambled around a bend, Lissandra calmed her growing panic by admiring a row of sunflowers emerging along the edge of a field sprouting new green wheat where smoke still smoldered. How could life return so quickly to the scorched earth?
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