The House of Gaian ta-3

by Anne Bishop

  The woman dismounted, rested a hand on her horse's neck, then walked to the circle. The Ladies of the Moon stepped aside to make room for her, but she walked past them into the clearing until she stopped a few lengths from the center, her face lifted as if she were looking at something hovering above the ground.

  The glow on the woman's dress, on her skin . . . It was as if the moon itself had walked into the clearing.

  Jagged fear slashed through Dianna again. No. There was nothing special about this woman who had intruded into one of the Fae's private gatherings. There wasn't. It was just a trick of the starlight. The woman was just an intruder, while she, Dianna, was the Lady of the Moon. How dare this stranger ignore her? This time, when she asked the question, her voice rose in a scream. "Who challenges me?"

  Selena heard the words, but they had no meaning. Nothing in the clearing had meaning . . . except that glory in its center. She felt the pull of it, the hunger of it, and she felt the jagged need within it.

  It should have been glorious. And it was. But it was also dangerous. Why had these women raised power like this and then never used it? Why hadn't they released it back into the world, or grounded it to merge with the rest of the magic that lived in the Great Mother? It had the flavor of something that had been done over and over again. They'd taken what they'd needed and had ignored the rest. Now that power was no longer willing to be taken . . . or ignored. It was going to release tonight. Whether it became something wonderful or something devastating would depend on how it was shaped by those who could channel it.

  She glanced at the women around the circle. Why weren't they coming forward to start the dance? Couldn't they feel the urgency? What were they waiting for?

  Her eyes rested briefly on the woman standing opposite her, inside the circle. Was this the current Lady of the Moon? She could see the glow of their magic, could see the waxing and waning of the gift within each woman, just as they could surely see it in her while they stood together in this place. There was strength in the woman standing on the other side of that globe of power, strength that was anchored to earth. But. . . She looked at the woman directly to her right. That woman also was anchored to earth, and while she wasn't quite as strong as the woman inside the circle, her power was richer.

  Puzzled, Selena turned slowly to look at the other women. More of them had power anchored to air or fire than earth or water. Neither air nor fire could channel the power that had been raised—at least, not without careful, extensive training—but they could have supported earth and water. Why hadn't they?

  And what were they waiting for?

  She looked at the woman inside the circle, looked at the clenched hands and a face now hardened by hatred.

  The test. Wasn't there supposed to be some kind of test to see who would ascend to be the Lady of the Moon, the Huntress? When would it start? How was she to indicate she wanted to be part of that test? How . . .

  The test, the Fae . . . everything had to wait. Because the point had been reached when the dance wouldn't wait.

  She walked forward, felt the air grow thick and heavy as she moved to the very center of the clearing, the very center of the power.

  She didn't know the dance for the moon. She knew the spiral dance and other ritual dances, but she'd always danced for the moon in her own way, for her own pleasure.

  She looked at the other women. No one moved.

  They don't know how to do this. They don't know how to dance to draw power into themselves and send it back out into the world. All right. A spiral dance, but not one that draws power to the center before being released. The power has already gathered, so the spiral has to go outward, giving the power a clear path to follow. So, a dance for the moon. Never changing, ever changing. Dancing around her older sister while the Great Mother moves through the seasons. Waxing moon. Waning moon. Full moon to dark of the moon. Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again . . . little sister.

  Smiling, Selena raised her arms and tilted her head back. The strength of the earth rose up through the soles of her feet, filling her slowly as it anchored her to the land. Within that strength was a hint of fire, the warmth of the summer sun. Above her was air. . . and water in the clouds that had slowly covered the night sky, turning it a pearly white.

  As she lowered her arms, she brought her hands together, forming a cup out of them. Within her cupped hands, the power in the clearing began to glow—a ball of delicate, glittering moonlight. She shifted the ball of moonlight into her right hand, leaving the left open and free.

  Holding her right hand close to her body, she turned in a slow circle. As she turned, a streamer of moonlight from the ball followed the movement. With each circle, she extended her hand a little farther. By the time her arm was fully extended, the air around her glowed. The power in the clearing, having been given a gentle channel of magic, constantly refilled the glowing ball in her hand.

  Then she began to dance, her steps circling, spiraling out from the center. She let her movements represent the tides and the phases of the moon, while streamers of moonlight followed in her wake. She extended her left hand out in invitation, letting the other women know they were welcome to join her in the dance.

  Blank faces. Wary faces. And the sullen anger from the woman standing inside the circle.

  For a moment, her temper flashed, and she felt the power she was drawing from the branches of the Great Mother as well as the power in the clearing hesitate for just that moment, trembling on the edge of following this new channel.

  Then, as she circled again, she saw the face of the woman she'd noticed before, the one with the richer strength. Her face was filled with wonder and delight—and a yearning.

  Selena extended her left hand.

  The woman took a step forward, but her companions held her back and whispered urgently. Regret shadowed the delight in the woman's face, and she stayed with her companions instead of joining the dance.

  So Selena danced alone, ignoring most of the Fae present, focused on keeping the raw power in the clearing benevolent. But she continued to notice the woman and her four companions— and she realized the other four had stopped the woman because they were afraid to disrupt the dance, afraid it would end if they stepped forward now.

  So she danced alone, spiraling out until she reached the edge of that globe of power. When she finally stopped, she stood almost where she'd stood when she'd first walked toward that power. The whole center of the clearing was now streamers of moonlight in motion, following the spiral of the dance.

  There was still too much power here. If the other women had joined her in the dance, they would have absorbed some of it, renewing their own strength in the process. They still needed to do that. There were enough of them that, once they'd taken in the power they could, the rest could be shaped into something harmless or gently grounded through the branches of the Great Mother. But how to tell them that?

  She couldn't. She doubted they would listen to her. So how to do what needed to be done?

  She looked at the glowing ball of moonlight in her hand, then tossed it skyward as high as she could, sending a small breath of the branch of air with it. The ball burst over their heads, arcing in all directions, coming down on the women who made the circle.

  She watched the glow of their power brighten. When their gift had been renewed, the power flowed harmlessly into the earth, filling the whole clearing with gentle light.

  Tired now, she took a careful step back, breaking her connection to the spiral. Her limbs trembled with the need to ground the power she'd raised from the branches of the Great Mother, but she would need a few minutes of quiet and focus to do that safely, so it would have to wait a little longer. But not too much longer. Her emotions were raw. The joy she'd felt in the dance had constantly been pricked at the edges by the Fae's resistance to what she had done here, forming little jagged slices of anger inside her that she needed to smooth out.

  That, too, had to be done soon because as conflicting
emotions washed through her, she saw the power in all of those women flicker. It didn't matter how the Fae usually decided who ascended to control a gift. The power itself had issued the challenge—and she had met it. She controlled the gift now. Their lives were in her hands.

  Mother's mercy, if I lose control now. . . Please, Mother, please let me get out of this circle and find someplace quiet for a few minutes.

  She looked at the woman on the edge of the circle, who was now smiling at her shyly, hesitantly, as if waiting for some signal. But she didn't know the signal, didn't know—

  "Who are you?" a harsh voice, bordering on hysteria, demanded.

  The woman who had been inside the circle with her strode forward a few steps.

  "Who are you?" the woman demanded again.

  "I am Selena. And now I am the Lady of the Moon."

  The woman stared at her, wide-eyed, as if she had just been slapped. Then her eyes narrowed, and an ugly anger filled her face. "What are you?"

  The sneering anger in the woman's voice made those jagged slices of anger inside her rip a little more.

  "I am Fae," Selena answered coldly. "But I am first, and always, a Daughter of the House of Gaian."

  "A witch?" The woman's voice rose to a shriek. "A half-breed wiccanfae has dared intrude on one of our ceremonies, has dared try to pretend she could be one of us, has dared think she can control the power that belongs to us?"

  "I pretend nothing. I do command the gift now." Power was spiking inside her, painful little flashes of lightning along her nerves.

  "You command nothing, you bitch!"

  Her body reacted to the word before she realized what she was doing. One moment she was facing the former Lady of the Moon; the next, she was a shadow hound racing across the distance between them, a snarl of fury filling her throat. The woman didn't have time to scream before she leaped, her forelegs hitting the woman in the chest hard enough to knock her rival to the ground. Then she pinned her enemy, her fangs a mere handspan away from the vulnerable throat as the woman screamed and flailed and screamed again.

  She realized her enemy's flailing had a purpose when she heard flesh slap boot leather, saw the flash of moonlight on metal. She whipped her head around, her fangs slashing the woman's right forearm before the knife found its mark. Blood— and the taste of flesh, of prey—filled her mouth. She fought against the shadow hound instinct to rip and tear. This was prey. This was—

  Blood sprayed over both of them as the woman flailed again—and the knife flashed again.

  Her jaws closed unforgivingly over the torn forearm until teeth met bone. One fast, hard twist of her head—and bone snapped.

  The knife fell to the ground. The woman screamed. Screamed and screamed.

  She released the arm, turned her head so that she and the woman stared at each other. Blood dripped from her fangs onto the woman's face. She snarled.

  "I yield!" the woman screamed. "I yield I yield I yield!"

  The throat. So vulnerable. So rich with hot blood. So . . .

  Selena carefully backed away from the woman, her paws leaving bloody prints in the grass. With the scent of blood in the air and the taste of it in her mouth, it took fierce effort to change back to her human form.

  She could still taste the blood.

  The woman stared up at her, her face pale with shock. "W-what are you?"

  Selena looked down at her rival. "What you should have been and never were. The Queen of the Witches."

  She walked away, striding toward the center of the clearing. Too much power churned inside her. Too much. She couldn't ground it, not until she'd dealt with these Fae, but if she didn't release some of it and it got away from her. . .

  When she reached the center of the clearing, she raised her voice. "To make sure you understand who you now must deal with. . ."

  She gave her anger to fire, forming it into a circle behind the circle of women. She held on to it long enough so that flames a finger-length high shot up from the ground, giving the women enough warning to step forward before the fire roared straight up as high as a man, forming a burning wall.

  She formed another circle an arm's length from the fire and summoned air and water. Wind whipped around that circle with enough force to knock several women off their feet. It rose into the sky, twisting through the clouds overhead, gathering them until they turned dark and heavy with rain.

  Thunder rumbled, loud enough to make the ground shake. Lightning flashed.

  She gave her power to the storm, letting her temper and raw feelings be its channel.

  The clouds released their burden, and torrents of rain pounded the clearing and the women inside the circle. In the pauses between thunderclaps, she heard horses neighing in fear, she heard the Fae men shouting, she heard women wailing—and she heard the angry, distressed bugling of one other horse.

  Then she heard nothing. She fed the storm. The storm fed her. The Fae didn't want to accept her because she wasn't exactly what they were? So be it. Let them see exactly what she could be. Let them—

  She saw the woman and her four companions. The woman, whose face had been filled with joy and delight while watching the dance, now looked at her with terror-filled eyes.

  Do no harm.

  For a moment, her mind went blank, her feelings went numb, in that moment, she felt something flowing from the land, something that had been striving to reach her through the fury of the storm.

  Joy. Celebration. Love.

  Rhyann.

  Do no harm.

  She heard the horse's angry bugling and turned to see Mistrunner rearing on the other side of the wall of fire. He wheeled, galloped away from the fire, wheeled again, and charged toward the flames. He stopped short of the flames, then wheeled again to make another charge.

  "No," she whispered. The breeding or training that instilled in him a need to protect his rider would soon override his instinctive fear of fire. He would try to leap that wall of flames in order to reach her and—

  Fire burns.

  Do no harm.

  Moonlight swirled with the rain and wind. She whipped her hand in a circle, drawing that moonlight to her until it formed a large ball around her hand. She flung it toward the fire. It hit the ground a man's-length from the flames, burst upward, and arched over the fire, forming a glittering bridge. She summoned the strength of earth to anchor it. She channeled some of the power from all four branches of the Great Mother to give the bridge strength. It still looked as insubstantial as moonlight, but it was as solid as the land.

  She barely had time to make it strong enough to hold him before Mistrunner charged over the bridge and into the storm, trotting toward her.

  Tears stung her eyes as he came up to her, whickering softly, snuffling her chest for the reassurance of her scent.

  "Silly boy," she said as she rested a hand against his cheek. "Silly, silly boy. You know better than to try to leap over a wall of fire."

  His presence helped her regain emotional control. Her anger at the Fae turned to ash. They would never be her people, but she wasn't planning to stay among them forever. Just long enough to drive the Inquisitors out of Sylvalan once and for all. Then she could go home.

  Men rushed over the bridge she'd created. They hesitated when they realized she was watching, but when she did nothing to stop them, they hurried toward the Ladies they had escorted to this place—the five women who were somehow different from the others.

  Her legs trembled with fatigue. It felt good to lean against Mistrunner. But she had to deal with the storm. Wind still whipped the rain with blinding fury. Since she had contained the storm's release to the circle within the clearing, she suddenly realized she was standing in ankle-deep water that was swiftly rising.

  She tried to get a sense of the size of the storm… and almost whimpered.

  If she released it, it would devastate this Old Place, drown the crops for miles around, flood the creeks and cause even more damage.

  Start with the simplest th
ing first.

  Stepping away from Mistrunner, she banked the wall of fire until it was nothing more than a smoldering circle. Then she pushed the circle holding the storm outward just beyond the fire circle. The ground sizzled and steam rose as the rain and standing water rushed to fill the larger space.

  As soon as the fire was out, other Fae men rushed into the storm to reach the Ladies of the Moon.

  She ignored them as she gathered the wind in the clearing, shaped it into a wide wedge, and sent it flying toward the farthest edge of the storm. It sheared the cloud bank, driving the clouds before it, heading east.

  Broken off from the rest of the storm—and the magic that had prevented it from releasing anywhere but in the clearing—the rain poured down.

  Selena flinched when she saw the flash of lightning, but she shaped another wedge of wind and used it to slice off another piece of the storm and send it eastward.

  The third time she sliced off a piece of the storm, she felt another power brush against hers, another wind grab the storm, pulling it further apart, draining some of its energy and sending it back in a way that would keep some of the storm restrained as it was sent on so that not all of it would fall here.

  Rhyann, playing with air and water in a way that would spread the storm farther and farther, diluting it in the process.

  Selena's heart lifted. She worked to slice the storm into pieces, trusting that Rhyann would catch those pieces and send them on, driven by fast winds.

  The storm would keep spreading out, driven east by the winds. Other witches who could command the branches of air or water would catch the storm when it came to them and continue to send it on. It would fly over the Mother's Hills, softened by the many witches who commanded those branches of the Great Mother. Perhaps it would go even further east, but it would diminish to a soft rain, a farmer's rain that would nourish the crops instead of destroying them.

  She worked the storm. She didn't know how long it took. It might have been hours. If felt like days before she sent the last clouds toward Rhyann and the rain in the clearing finally stopped. Overhead, the clear night sky was filled with stars.