Nora Roberts's Circle Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  He missed his car, his bed, the damn microwave. He missed the life and sounds of city life and all it offered. Fate would have given him a solid kick in the ass if it ended him here, in the era, if not the world, of his beginnings.

  Dressed, he left his room to make his way to the stables, and his horse.

  There were people about—servants, guards, courtiers—those who lived and worked within the Castle Geall. Most avoided him, averting their eyes, quickening their pace. Some made the sign against evil behind their backs. It didn’t trouble him.

  They knew what he was—and had seen what creatures like him were capable of since Moira, the scholarly gladiator, had battled one in the playing field.

  It had been good strategy, he thought now, for Moira to ask him along with Blair and Larkin to hunt down the two vampires who’d killed her mother, the queen. Moira had understood the importance, the value of having vampires brought back alive so the people could see them for what they were. And see Moira herself fight and end one, proving herself a warrior.

  She would, in a matter of weeks, lead her people to war. When a land had been at peace as long as Geall was reputed to have been, it would take a strong leader, a forceful one, to whip farmers and merchants, ladies-in-waiting and creaky advisors into soldiers.

  He wasn’t sure she was up to the task. Brave enough, he mused as he slipped out of the castle, crossed a courtyard toward the stables. More than bright enough. And it was true she’d honed considerable fighting skills over the past two months. No doubt she’d been trained since birth in matters of state and protocol, and her mind was clever and open.

  In peace, he imagined she’d rule her pretty little world quite well. But in wartime, a ruler was general as well as figurehead.

  If it had been up to him, he would have left Riddock, her uncle, in charge. But little of this business was up to him.

  He heard her before he saw her, and scented her before that. Cian very nearly turned around to go back the way he’d come. It was just another annoyance to come across the woman when he’d been thinking of her.

  The problem was, he thought of her entirely too often.

  Avoiding her wasn’t an option as they were inexorably bound together in this war. Slipping away now unseen was easily done. And cowardly. Pride, as always, refused to let him take the easy way.

  They’d housed his stallion at the far end of the stables, two stalls away from any of the other horses. He understood and tolerated the fact that the grooms and farriers were wary of tending to the horse of a demon. Just as he was aware either Larkin or Hoyt groomed and fed his temperamental Vlad in the mornings.

  Now it seemed Moira had taken it upon herself to spoil the animal. She had carrots, Cian saw, and was balancing one on her shoulder, cajoling Vlad to nip it off.

  “You know you want it,” she murmured. “It’s so tasty. All you have to do is take it.”

  He’d thought the same about the woman, Cian mused.

  She was gowned, her dress draped over a plain linen kirtle, so he assumed whatever training she’d done that day was complete. Still, she dressed simply for a princess, in quiet blue with only a hint of lace at the bodice. She wore the silver cross, one of nine Hoyt and Glenna had conjured. Her hair was loose, all that glossy brown falling down her back to her waist, and crowned with the thin circlet of her office.

  She wasn’t beautiful. He reminded himself of that often, nearly as often as he thought of her. She was, at best, a pretty thing. Slender and small-framed, small of feature as well. But for the eyes. They were long and dominant in that face of hers. Dove gray when she was quiet, pensive, listening. Hell smoke when she was roused.

  He’d had his choice of great beauties in his time—as a man with any sense and skill would given a few centuries. She wasn’t beautiful, but he couldn’t, for all the effort, lock her out of his mind.

  He knew he could have her if he put any of that effort into a seduction. She was young and innocent and curious, and therefore, very susceptible. Which was why, above all else, he knew he’d be better off seducing one of her ladies if he wanted the entertainment, the companionship, the release.

  He’d had his fill of innocence long ago, just as he’d had his fill of human blood.

  His horse, however, appeared to have less willpower. It took only moments before Vlad dipped his head and nipped the carrot from Moira’s shoulder.

  She laughed, stroked the stallion’s ears as he chomped. “There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it? We’re friends, you and I. And I know you get lonely from time to time. Don’t we all?”

  She was lifting another carrot when Cian stepped out of the shadows. “You’ll make a puppy out of him, then what sort of war horse will he be come Samhain?”

  Her body jerked, then stiffened. But when she turned toward Cian, her face was composed. “Sure you don’t really mind, do you? He so enjoys a bit of a treat now and then.”

  “Don’t we all,” he murmured.

  Only the faintest flush of heat along her cheekbones betrayed any embarrassment at being overheard. “The training went well today. People are coming in from all over Geall. So many willing to fight we’ve decided we’ll be setting up a second training area on my uncle’s land. We’ll have Tynan and Niall working there.”

  “Lodging?”

  “Aye, that’s becoming a bit of a thing. We’ll house as many here as we can manage, and at my uncle’s as well. There’s the inn, and many of the farmers and crofters nearby are sheltering family and friends already. No one will be turned off. We’ll find a way.”

  She fiddled with her cross as she spoke. Not, Cian thought, out of fear of him, but out of nervous habit. “There’s food as well to think of. So many had to leave their crops and cattle behind to come here. But we’ll manage. Have you eaten?”

  She flushed a little deeper as soon as the words were out. “What I meant is there’d be supper in the parlor if—”

  “I know what you meant. No. I thought to see to the horse first, but he appears well groomed and fed.” On the heels of the words, Vlad bumped his head against Moira’s shoulder. “And spoiled,” Cian added.

  Her brows drew together as they did, he knew, when she was annoyed or thoughtful. “It’s only carrots, and they’re good for him.”

  “Speaking of food, I’ll need blood in another week. You might make certain the next pigs that are slaughtered, their blood isn’t wasted.”

  “Of course.”

  “Aren’t you the cool one.”

  Now the faintest sign of irritation crossed her face. “You take what you need from the pig. I’m not after turning my nose up at a slab of bacon, am I?” She shoved the last carrot into Cian’s hand and started to sweep out.

  She stopped herself, “I don’t know why you fire me up so easily. If you mean to or not. And no.” She held up a hand. “I don’t think I want to know the answer to that. But I would like to speak to you for a moment or two about another matter.”

  No, avoiding her wasn’t possible, he reminded himself. “I have a moment or two.”

  She glanced around the stables. It wasn’t only horses that had ears in such places. “I wonder if you could take that moment or two to walk with me. I’d be private on this.”

  He shrugged, and giving Vlad the last carrot joined Moira to walk out of the stables. “State secrets, Your Highness?”

  “Why must you mock me?”

  “Actually, I wasn’t. Irritable tonight, are you?”

  “It might be I am.” She shoved back the hair that spilled over her shoulder. “What with war and end of days, and the practical matters of washing linens and providing food for an army meanwhile, it might be I am a bit irritable.”

  “Delegate.”

  “I am. I do. But it still takes time and thought to push chores into other hands—finding the right ones, explaining how it must be done. And this isn’t what I wanted to speak to you about.”

  “Sit.”

  “What?”

  “Sit.”
He took her arm, ignoring the way the muscles tensed against his hand, and pulled her down onto a bench. “Sit, give your feet a rest if you won’t turn off that busy brain of yours for five minutes.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I had an hour, all to myself and a book. Well, I can, actually. Back in Ireland, in your house. I miss it—the books, the quiet of them.”

  “You need to take it, that hour now and again. You’ll burn out otherwise, and won’t be any good to yourself or anyone else.”

  “My hands feel so full, they make my arms ache.” She looked down at them where they lay in her lap, and sighed. “And there, I’m off again. What is it Blair says? Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

  She surprised a laugh out of him, and turned her head to smile into his face.

  “I suspect Geall has never had a queen such as you.”

  And her smile faded away. “No, you’ve the right of that. And we’ll soon see. We go tomorrow, at first light, to the stone.”

  “I see.”

  “If I lift the sword from it, as my mother did in her time, and her father in his, and back to the first, Geall will have a queen such as me.” She looked off, over the shrubberies toward the gates. “Geall will have no choice in it. Nor will I.”

  “Do you wish it otherwise?”

  “I don’t know what I wish, so I don’t wish at all—except that it was done and over. Then I could do, well, whatever needs to be done next. I wanted to tell you.” She shifted her gaze from whatever she saw in her mind, and met his eyes again. “I’d hoped we’d find a way to do this thing at night.”

  Soft eyes, he thought, and so serious. “It’s too dangerous to have any sort of ceremony outside after sunset beyond the castle walls.”

  “I know it. All who wish to witness this rite may attend. You can’t, I know. I’m sorry for it. It feels wrong. I feel the six of us, our circle, should be together at such a time.”

  Her hand reached up for her cross again. “Geall isn’t yours, I know that as well, but the moment of this, it’s important for what comes after. More than I knew before. More than I could have known.”

  She took a shaky breath. “They killed my father.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I have to walk again. I can’t sit.” She got up quickly, rubbing her arms to warm them from the sudden chill in the air, and in her blood. She moved through the courtyard into one of the gardens.

  “I haven’t told anyone—I didn’t mean to tell you. What purpose does it serve? And I’ve no proof, just a knowing.”

  “What do you know?”

  Easier than she’d believed it would be to talk to him, to tell him, she realized, because he was also so to the point. “One of the two that killed my mother, that you brought here. The one I fought.” She held a hand up, and he watched her draw in her composure again. “Before I killed it, he said something of my father, and how he died.”

  “Likely trying to get a rise out of you, break your concentration.”

  “It did that well enough, but was more, you see. I know it, inside me.” Looking at him, she pressed a hand to her heart. “I knew it when I looked at the one I killed. Not just my mother, but my father as well. I think Lilith sent them here this time because she’d had success with it before. When I was a child.”

  She continued to walk, her head bowed with the weight of her thoughts, her circlet glinting in the light of the torches. “They thought it was a bear gone mad. He was in the mountains, hunting. He was killed, he and my mother’s young brother. My uncle Riddock didn’t go as my aunt was close to her time with child. I…”

  She broke off again as footsteps echoed, keeping her silence until the sound of them drifted away. “They thought, those who found them and brought them home, they thought it was animals. And so it was,” she continued with steel in her tone now. “But these walk like a man. She sent them to kill him, so there would be no child but me.”

  She turned to him then, the torchlight washing red over her pale face. “Perhaps, at that time, she knew only the ruler of Geall would be one of the circle. Or perhaps it was easier to kill him than me at that time, as I was hardly more than a baby and kept close watch on. Plenty of time for her to send assassins back for me. But instead they killed my mother.”

  “Those that did are dead.”

  “Is that comfort?” she wondered, and thought—from him—it likely was an offer of it. “I don’t know what to feel. But I know she took my parents from me. She took them to stop what can’t be stopped. We’ll meet her on the battlefield come Samhain, because it’s meant. Whether I fight as queen or not, I fight. She killed them for nothing.”

  “And nothing you could have done would have stopped it.”

  Yes, comfort, she thought again. Oddly, his pithy statement gave her just that. “I pray that’s true. But I know because of what was done, what was not done, what had to be, what comes tomorrow is more important than rite and ritual. Whoever holds that sword tomorrow leads this war, and wields it with the blood of my murdered parents. She couldn’t stop it. She cannot stop it.”

  She stepped back, gestured up. “Do you see the flags? The dragon and the claddaugh. The symbols of Geall since its beginning. Before this is done, I will ask that one more be hoisted.”

  He thought of all she might choose—a sword, a stake, an arrow. Then he knew. Not a weapon, not an instrument of war and death, but a symbol of hope and endurance. “A sun. To shed its light on the world.”

  Surprise, with pleasure running just behind it, lit her face. “Aye. You understand my thinking, and the need. A gold sun on the white flag to stand for the light, the tomorrows we fight for. This sun, gold as glory, will be the third symbol of Geall, one I bring to it. And damned to her. Damned to her and what she brought here.”

  Flushed now, Moira drew a deep breath. “You listen well—and I talk too much. You must come inside. The others will be gathering for supper.”

  He touched a hand to her arm to stop her. “Earlier I thought you’d make a poor wartime queen. I believe it might have been one of the rare times I was wrong.”

  “If the sword is mine,” she said, “you will be wrong.”

  It occurred to him as they started inside, that they’d just shared their longest conversation in the two months they had known each other.

  “You need to tell the others. You need to tell them what you believe about your father. If this is a circle, there should be no secrets to weaken in.”

  “You’re right. Aye, you’ve the right of it.”

  Her head was lifted now, her eyes clear as she led the way.

  Chapter 2

  She didn’t sleep. How could a woman sleep on what was, in Moira’s mind, essentially the last night of her life? If in the morning it was her destiny to free the sword from its stone scabbard, she would be queen of Geall. As queen she would rule and govern and reign, and those were duties she’d been trained for since birth. But as queen on this coming dawn and the ones to follow, she would lead her people to war. If it wasn’t her destiny to raise the sword, she would follow another, willingly, into battle.

  Could weeks of training prepare anyone for such an action, such a weight of responsibility? So this night was the last she could be the woman she’d believed she would be, even the queen she’d hoped she might be.

  Whatever dawn brought her, she knew nothing would ever be quite the same again.

  Before her mother’s death, she’d believed this coming dawn was years away. She’d assumed she would have years of her mother’s company and comfort and counsel, years of peace and study so that when her time came she’d be not only ready for the crown, but worthy of it.

  A part of her had assumed her mother would reign for decades longer, and she herself would marry. In the dim and distant future, one of the children she bore would take the crown in her stead.

  All of that had changed on the night of her mother’s death. No, Moira corrected, it had changed before, years before when her father had been murdered.


  Perhaps it had not changed at all, but was simply unfolding as the pages of the book of fate were written.

  Now she could only wish for her mother’s wisdom, and look inside herself for the courage to bear both crown and sword.

  She stood now on the high reaches of the castle under a thumbnail moon. When it waxed full again, she would be far from here, on the cold ground of a battlefield.

  She’d come to the battlement because she could see the torches lighting the playing field. Here the sights and sounds of night training could reach her. Cian, she thought, used hours of his night to teach men and women how to fight something stronger and faster than humans. He would push them, she knew, until they were ready to drop. As he had pushed her, and the others of the circle, night after night during their weeks in Ireland.

  Not all of them trusted him, she knew that as well. Some actively feared him, but that might be to the good. She understood he wasn’t after making friends here, but warriors.

  In truth, he’d had a strong part of making one of her.

  She thought she understood why he fought with them—or at least had a glimmer of understanding why he would risk so much for humankind. Part of it was pride of which she knew he had abundance. He would not bow to Lilith. Part, whether he admitted it or not, was loyalty to his brother. And the rest, well, it dealt with courage and his own conflicted emotions.

  For he had emotions, she knew. She couldn’t imagine how they struggled and whirled inside him after a thousand years of existence. Her own were so conflicted and torn after only two months of blood and death she hardly recognized herself.

  What must it be like for him, after all he’d seen and done, all he’d gained and lost? He knew more than any of them of the world, of its pleasures, its pains, its potentials. No, she couldn’t imagine what it was like to know all he knew and still risk his own survival.

  That he did risk it, that he was even now lending his time and skill to train troops, earned her respect. While the mystery of him, the hows and whys of him, continued to fascinate.