by Nora Roberts
“Where are we going?” Glenna demanded.
“He’s got a place here.” King shrugged. “So that’s where we’re going.”
They had a van, and even then it was a tight squeeze. And, Glenna discovered, another sort of adventure altogether to sweep along through the pouring rain on wet roads, many of which seemed as narrow as a willow stem.
She saw hedgerows ripe with fuchsia, and those hills of wet emerald rolling up and back into the dull gray sky. She saw houses with flowers blooming in dooryards. Not the one of her quick image, but close enough to make her smile.
Something here had belonged to her once. Now maybe it would again.
“I know this place,” Hoyt murmured. “I know this land.”
“See.” Glenna patted his hand. “I knew some of it would be the same for you.”
“No, this place, this land.” He pushed up to grab Cian by the shoulder. “Cian.”
“Mind the driver,” Cian ordered and shook off his brother’s hand before turning between the hedgerows and onto a narrow spit of a land that wound back through a dense forest.
“God,” Hoyt breathed. “Sweet God.”
The house was stone, alone among the trees, and quiet as a tomb. Old and wide, with the jut of a tower and the stone aprons of terraces. In the gloom, it looked deserted and out of its time.
And still there was a garden outside the door, of roses and lilies and the wide plates of dahlia. Foxglove sprang tall and purple among the trees.
“It’s still here.” Hoyt spoke in a voice thick with emotion. “It survived. It still stands.”
Understanding now, Glenna gave his hand another squeeze. “It’s your home.”
“The one I left only days ago. The one I left nearly a thousand years ago. I’ve come home.”
Chapter 7
It wasn’t the same. The furnishings, the colors, the light, even the sound his footsteps made crossing the floor had changed, turning the familiar into the foreign. He recognized a few pieces—some candlestands and a chest. But they were in the wrong places.
Logs had been set in the hearth, but were yet unlit. And there were no dogs curled up on the floor or thumping their tails in greeting.
Hoyt moved through the rooms like a ghost. Perhaps that’s what he was. His life had begun in this house, and so much of it had been woven together under its roof or on its grounds. He had played here and worked here, eaten and slept here.
But that was hundreds of years in the past. So perhaps, in a very true sense, his life had ended here as well.
His initial joy in seeing the house dropped away with a weight of sadness for all that he’d lost.
Then he saw, encased in glass on the wall, one of his mother’s tapestries. He moved to it, touched his fingers to the glass as she came winging back to him. Her face, her voice, her scent were as real as the air around him.
“It was the last she’d finished before…”
“I died,” Cian finished. “I remember. I came across it in an auction. That, and a few other things over time. I was able to acquire the house oh, about four hundred years ago now, I suppose. Most of the land as well.”
“But you don’t live here any longer.”
“It’s a bit out of the way for me, and not convenient to my work or pleasures. I have a caretaker whom I’ve sent off until I order him back. And I generally come over once a year or so.”
Hoyt dropped his hand, turned. “It’s changed.”
“Change is inevitable. The kitchen’s been modernized. There’s plumbing and electricity. Still it’s drafty for all that. The bedrooms upstairs are furnished, so take your choices. I’m going up to get some sleep.”
He started out, glanced back. “Oh, and you can stop the rain if you’ve a mind to. King, give me a hand will you, hauling some of this business up?”
“Sure. Very cool digs, if you don’t mind a little spooky.” King hauled up a chest the way another man might have picked up a briefcase, and headed up the main stairs.
“Are you all right?” Glenna asked Hoyt.
“I don’t know what I am.” He went to the window, drew back heavy drapes to look out on the rain-drenched forest. “It’s here, this place, the stones set by my ancestors. I’m grateful for that.”
“But they’re not here. The family you left behind. It’s hard what you’re doing. Harder for you than the rest of us.”
“We all share it.”
“I left my loft. You left your life.” She stepped to him, brushed a kiss over his cheek. She had thought to offer to fix a hot meal, but saw that what he needed most just then was solitude.
“I’m going up, grab a room, a shower and a bed.”
He nodded, continued to stare out the window. The rain suited his mood, but it was best to close the spell. Even when he had, it continued to rain, but in a fine, misty drizzle. The fog crawled across the ground, twined around the feet of the rose bushes.
Could they be his mother’s still? Unlikely, but they were roses, after all. That would have pleased her. He wondered if in some way having her sons here again, together, would please her as well.
How could he know? How would he ever know?
He flashed fire into the hearth. It seemed more like home with the fire snapping. He didn’t choose to go up, not yet. Later, he thought, he’d take his case up to the tower. He’d make it his own again. Instead he dug out his cloak, swirled it on and stepped out into the thin summer rain.
He walked toward the stream first where the drenched foxgloves swayed their heavy bells and the wild orange lilies Nola had particularly loved spread like spears of flame. There should be flowers in the house, he thought. He’d have to gather some before dusk. There had always been flowers in the house.
He circled around, drawing in the scent of damp air, wet leaves, roses. His brother kept the place tended; Hoyt couldn’t fault him for that. He saw the stables were still there—not the same, but in the same spot. They were larger than they’d been, with a jut to one side that boasted a wide door.
He found it locked, so opened it with a focused thought. It opened upward to reveal a stone floor and some sort of car. Not like the one in New York, he noted. Not like the cab, or the van they had traveled in from the airport. This was black and lower to the ground. On its hood was a shining silver panther. He ran his hands over it.
It puzzled him that there were so many different types of cars in this world. Different sizes and shapes and colors. If one was efficient and comfortable, why did they need so many other kinds?
There was a long bench in the area as well, and all manner of fascinating-looking tools hanging on the wall or layered in the drawers of a large red chest. He spent some time studying them, and the stack of timber that had been planed smooth and cut into long lengths.
Tools, he thought, wood, machines, but no life. No grooms, no horses, no cats slinking about hunting mice. No litter of wriggling pups for Nola to play with. He closed and locked the door behind him again, moved down the outside length of the stable.
He wandered into the tack room, comforted somewhat by the scents of leather and oil. It was well organized, he saw, just as the stall for the car had been. He ran his hands over a saddle, crouched to examine it, and found it not so different from the one he’d used.
He toyed with reins and bridles, and for a moment missed his mare as he might have missed a lover.
He passed through a door. The stone floor had a slight slope, with two stalls on one side, one on the other. Fewer than there had been, but larger, he noted. The wood was smooth and dark. He could smell hay and grain, and…
He moved, quickly now, down the stone floor.
A coal-black stallion stood in the last of three stalls. It gave Hoyt’s heart a hard and happy leap to see it. There were still horses after all—and this one, he noted, was magnificent.
It pawed the ground, laid back its ears when Hoyt opened the stall door. But he held up both hands, began to croon softly in Irish.
In
response, the horse kicked the rear of the stall and blew out a warning.
“That’s all right then, that’s fine. Who could blame you for being careful with a stranger? But I’m just here to admire you, to take in your great handsome self, is all I’m about. Here, have a sniff why don’t you? See what you think. Ah, it’s a sniff I said, not a nip.” With a chuckle, Hoyt drew back his hand a fraction as the horse bared his teeth.
He continued to speak softly and stand very still with his hand out while the horse made a show of snorting and pawing. Deciding bribery was the best tack, Hoyt conjured an apple.
When he saw the interest in the horse’s eye, he lifted it, took a healthy bite himself. “Delicious. Would you be wanting some?”
Now the horse stepped forward, sniffed, snorted, then nipped the apple from Hoyt’s palm. As he chomped it, he graciously allowed himself to be stroked.
“I left a horse behind. A fine horse I’d had for eight years. I called her Aster, for she had a star shape right here.” He stroked two fingers down the stallion’s head. “I miss her. I miss it all. For all the wonders of this world, it’s hard to be away from what you know.”
At length he stepped out of the stall, closed the door behind him. The rain had stopped so he could hear the murmur of the stream, and the plop of rain falling from leaf to ground.
Were there still faeries in the woods? he wondered. Playing and plotting and watching the foibles of man? He was too tired in his mind to search for them. Too tired in his heart to take the lonely walk to where he knew his family must be buried.
He went back to the house, retrieved his case and walked up all the winding steps to the topmost tower.
There was a heavy door barring his way, one that was deeply scribed with symbols and words of magic. Hoyt ran his fingers over the carving, felt the hum and the heat. Whoever had done this had some power.
Well, he wouldn’t be shut out of his own workroom. He set to work to break the locking spell, and used his own sense of insult and anger to heat it.
This was his home. And never in his life had a door here been locked to him.
“Open locks,” he commanded. “It is my right to enter this place. It is my will that breaks this spell.”
The door flew open on a blast of wind. Hoyt took himself and his resentment inside, letting the door slam shut behind him.
The room was empty but for dust and spiderwebs. Cold, too, he thought. Cold and stale and unused. Once it had carried the scent of his herbs and candlewax, the burn of his own power.
He would have this back at least, as it had been it would be again. There was work to do, and this was where he intended to do it.
So he cleaned the hearth and lit the fire. He dragged up from below whatever suited him—a chair, tables. There was no electricity here, and that pleased him. He’d make his own light.
He set out candles, touched their wicks to set them to burn. By their light he arranged his tools and supplies.
Settled in his heart, in his mind, for the first time in days, he stretched out on the floor in front of the fire, rolled up his cloak to pillow his head and slept.
And dreamed.
He stood with Morrigan on a high hill. The ground sheered down in steep drops, slicing rolls with shadowy chasms all haunted by the distant blur of dark mountains. The grass was coarse and pocked with rock. Some rose up like spears, others jutted out in gray layers, flat as giant tables. The ground dipped up and down, up again to the mountains where the mists fell into pockets.
He could hear hisses in the mists, the panting breath of something older than time. There was an anger to this place. A wild violence waiting to happen.
But now, nothing stirred on the land as far as his eye could see.
“This is your battleground,” she told him. “Your last stand. There will be others before you come here. But this is where you will draw her, and face her with all the worlds in the balance on that day.”
“What is this place?”
“This is the Valley of Silence, in the Mountains of Mist, in the World of Geall. Blood will spill here, demon and human. What grows after will be determined by what you, and those with you do. But you must not stand upon this land until the battle.”
“How will I come here again?”
“You will be shown.”
“We are only four.”
“More are coming. Sleep now, for when you wake, you must act.”
While he slept the mists parted. He saw there was a maiden standing on that same high ground. She was slim and young with brown hair in a tumble down her back, loose as suited a maiden. She wore a gown of deep mourning, and her eyes showed the ravages of weeping.
But they were dry now, and fixed upon that desolate land, as his had been. The goddess spoke to her, but the words were not for him.
Her name was Moira, and her land was Geall. Her land and her heart and her duty. That land had been at peace since the gods had made it, and those of her blood had guarded that peace. Now, she knew, peace would be broken, just as her heart was broken.
She had buried her mother that morning.
“They slaughtered her like a spring lamb.”
“I know your grief, child.”
Her bruised eyes stared hard through the rain. “Do the gods grieve, my lady?”
“I know your anger.”
“She harmed no one in her life. What manner of death is that for one who was so good, so kind?” Moira’s hands bunched at her sides. “You cannot know my grief or my anger.”
“Others will die even a worse death. Will you stand and do nothing?”
“What can I do? How do we defend against such creatures? Will you give me more power?” Moira held out her hands, hands that had never felt so small and empty. “More wisdom and cunning? What I have isn’t enough.”
“You’ve been given all you need. Use it, hone it. There are others, and they wait for you. You must leave now, today.”
“Leave?” Stunned, Moira turned to face the goddess. “My people have lost their queen. How can I leave them, and how could you ask it of me? The test must be taken; the gods themselves deemed this so. If I’m not to be the one to stand in my mother’s stead, take sword and crown, I still must bide here, to help the one who does.”
“You help by going, and this the gods deem so. This is your charge, Moira of Geall. To travel from this world so you might save it.”
“You would have me leave my home, my people, and on such a day? The flowers have not yet faded on my mother’s grave.”
“Would your mother wish you to stand and weep for her and watch your people die?”
“No.”
“You must go, you and the one you trust most. Travel to the Dance of the Gods. There I will give you a key, and it will take you where you need to go. Find the others, form your army. And when you come here, to this land, on Samhain, you’ll fight.”
Fight, she thought. She had never been called to fight, had only known peace. “My lady, am I not needed here?”
“You will be. I tell you to go now where you’re needed now. If you stay, you’re lost. And your land is lost, as the worlds are. This was destined for you since before your birth. It is why you are.
“Go immediately. Make haste. They only wait for sunset.”
Her mother’s grave was here, Moira thought in despair. Her life was here, and all she knew. “I’m in mourning. A few days more, Mother, I beg you.”
“Stay even one day longer, and this is what befalls your people, your land.”
Morrigan waved an arm, parting the mists. Beyond them it was black night with only the silver ripple of light from the cold moon. Screams ripped through the air. Then there was smoke, and the shimmering orange glow of fires.
Moira saw the village overlooked by her own home. The shops and cottages were burning, and those screams were the screams of her friends, her neighbors. Men and women ripped to pieces, children being fed on by those horrible things that had taken her mother.
&nbs
p; She watched her own uncle fight, slashing with his sword while blood stained his face and hands. But they leaped on him from above, from below, those creatures with fangs and eyes of feral red. They fell on him with howls that froze her bones. And while the blood washed the ground, a woman of great beauty glided over it. She wore red, a silk gown tightly laced at the bodice and bedecked with jewels. Her hair was uncovered and spilled gold as sunlight over her white shoulders.
In her arms was a babe still swaddled.
While the slaughter raged around her, the thing of great beauty bared fangs, and sank them into the babe’s throat.
“No!”
“Hold your grief and your anger here, and this will come.” The cold anger in Morrigan’s voice pierced through Moira’s terror. “All you know destroyed, ravaged, devoured.”
“What are these demons? What hell loosed them on us?”
“Learn. Take what you have, what you are, and seek your destiny. The battle will come. Arm yourself.”
She woke beside her mother’s grave, shaking from the horrors she’d seen. Her heart was as heavy as the stones used to make her mother’s cairn.
“I couldn’t save you. How can I save anyone? How can I stop this thing from coming here?”
To leave all she’d ever known, all she’d ever loved. Easy for gods to speak of destiny, she thought as she forced herself to her feet. She looked over the graves to the quiet green hills, the blue ribbon of the river. The sun was high and bright, sparkling over her world. She heard the song of a lark, and the distant lowing of cattle.
The gods had smiled on this land for hundreds of years. Now there was a price to be paid, of war and death and blood. And her duty to pay it.
“I’ll miss you, every day,” she said aloud, then looked over to her father’s grave. “But now you’re together. I’ll do what needs to be done, to protect Geall. Because I’m all that’s left of you. I swear it here, on this holy ground before those who made me. I’ll go to strangers in a strange world, and give my life if my life is asked. It’s all I can give you now.”