Nora Roberts's Circle Trilogy

by Nora Roberts

  Would Geall, if it survived, produce its own Shakespeare, Yeats, Austen? Would its art go through revivals and renaissance and offer its version of Monet or Degas?

  A fascinating thought.

  For now, he was too restless, too edgy to settle himself down with a book, and instead moved on. There were rooms he’d yet to explore, and by night he could go wherever he wanted.

  As he walked through shadows, the rain drummed steadily.

  He moved through what he supposed had been a kind of formal drawing room and was now serving as an armory. He lifted a sword, testing its weight, its balance, its edge. Geall’s craftsmen might have devoted their time, previously, to arts, but they knew how to forge a sword.

  Time would tell if it would be enough.

  Without aim, he turned and stepped into what he saw was a music room.

  A gilded harp stood elegantly in one corner. A smaller cousin, shaped just as a traditional Irish harp, graced a stand nearby. There was a monochord—an early forefather of the piano—enhanced with lovely carving on its soundbox.

  He plucked its string idly, pleased its sound was true and clear.

  There was a hurdy-gurdy, and when he turned its shaft, slid the bow over its strings, it sang with the mournful music of bagpipes.

  There were lutes and pipes, all beautifully crafted. There was comfortable seating, and a pretty hearth from the local marble. A fine room, he mused, for musicians and those who appreciated the art.

  Then he saw the vielle. He lifted it. It’s body was longer than the violin that would come from it, and it held five strings. When the instruments had been popular, he’d had no interest in such matters. No, he’d been for killing whores in alleyways.

  But when a man has eternity, he needs hobbies and pursuits, and years to study them.

  He sat with the vielle over his lap, and began to play.

  It came back to him, the notes, the sounds, and calmed him as it was said music could do. With the rain as his accompaniment, he let himself fall into the music, drifted away on the tears of it.

  She would never have come upon him without him being aware otherwise.

  She’d heard it, the quiet sobbing of music as she’d made her own wanderings. She’d followed it like a child follows a piper, then stood just inside the doorway, stunned and enchanted.

  So, Moira thought, this is how he looks when he’s peaceful, and not just pretending to be. This is how he might have looked before Lilith had taken him, a little dreamy, a little sad, a little lost.

  All that had stirred and risen inside her for him seemed to come together inside her heart as she saw him unmasked. Sitting alone, she thought, seeking the comfort of music. She wished she had Glenna’s skill with paints or chalk, for she would have drawn him like this. As few, she was sure, had ever seen him.

  His eyes were closed, his expression, she would have said, caught somewhere in the misty place between melancholy and contentment. Whatever his thoughts, his fingers were skilled on the strings, long and lean, seducing the instrument into wistful music.

  Then it stopped so abruptly she let out a little cry of protest as she stepped forward with her candle. “Oh please, continue, won’t you? Sure it was lovely.”

  He had preferred she come at him with a knife than that innocent, eager smile. She wore only nightrobes, white and pure, with her hair unbound to fall like the rain over her shoulders. The candlelight shifted over her face, full of mystery and romance.

  “The floors are cold for bare feet,” was all he said, and rose to set the instrument down.

  The dreamy look was gone from his eyes, so they were cool again. Frustrated, she set the candle down. “They’re my feet, after all. You never said you played.”

  “There are a lot of things I never said.”

  “I have no skill at all, to the despair of my mother and every teacher she hired to school me in music. Any instrument I picked up would end by making a sound like a cat being trod on.”

  She reached over, ran her hand over the strings. “It seemed like magic in your hands.”

  “I’ve had more years to learn what interests me than you’ve been alive. Many times more years.”

  She looked up now, met his eyes. “True enough, but the time doesn’t diminish the art, does it? You have a gift, so why not accept a compliment on it with some grace?”

  “Your Majesty.” He bowed deeply from the waist. “You honor my poor efforts.”

  “Oh bugger that,” she snapped and surprised a choked laugh out of him. “I don’t know why you look for ways to insult me.”

  “A man must have a hobby. I’ll say good night.”

  “Why? This is your time, isn’t it, and you won’t seek your bed. I can’t sleep. Something cold.” She hugged her elbows, shivered once. “Something cold in the air woke me.” Because she was watching him, she caught the slight change in his eyes. “What? What do you know? Has something happened. Larkin—”

  “It’s nothing to do with that. He and the others are well enough as far as I know.”

  “What then?”

  He debated for a moment. His personal desire to be away from her couldn’t outweigh what she should know. “It’s too cold in here for nighttime confessions.”

  “Then I’ll light the fire.” She walked to the hearth, picked up the tinderbox that rested there. “There was always whiskey in that painted cabinet there. I’d have some.”

  She didn’t have to see to know he’d lifted a brow, a gesture of sarcasm, before he crossed to the cabinet.

  “Did your mother always fail to teach you that it would be considered improper for you to be sharing a fire and whiskey alone with a man, much less one who is not a man, in the middle of the night?”

  “Propriety isn’t an immediate concern of mine.” She sat back on her haunches, watching for a moment to be sure the turf caught. Then she rose to go to a chair, and held out her hand for the whiskey. “Thanks for that.” She took the first swallow. “Something happened tonight. If it concerns Geall, I need to know.”

  “It concerns me.”

  “It was something to do with Lilith. I thought it was just my own fears, creeping in while I slept, but it was more than that. I dreamed of her once, more than a dream. You woke me from it.”

  And had been kind to her after, she remembered. Reluctant, but kind.

  “It was something like that,” she continued, “but I didn’t dream. I only felt…”

  She broke off, her eyes widening. “No, not just felt. I heard you. I heard you speaking. I heard your voice in my head, and it was cold. It will be I who does for you. I heard you say that, so clearly. As I was waking, I thought I would freeze to death if you spoke so cold to me.”

  And had felt compelled to get out of bed, she thought. Had followed his music to him. “Who was it?”

  Later, he decided, he might try to puzzle out how she could hear, or feel, him speak in her dreams. “Lilith.”

  “Aye.” Her eyes on the fire, Moira rubbed a hand up and down her arms. “I knew. There was something dark with the cold. It wasn’t you.”

  “You could be sure?”

  “You have a different…hue,” she decided. “Lilith is black. Thick as pitch. You, well, you’re not bright. It’s gray and blue. It’s twilight in you.”

  “What is this, an aura thing?”

  The chilly amusement in his tone had a flush creeping up her neck. “It’s how I see sometimes. Glenna told me to pursue it. She’s red and gold, like her hair—if you have an interest in it. Was it a dream? Lilith?”

  “No. Though she sent me one that may have been a memory. A whore I fucked and killed in the filth of a London alley.” The way he lifted his glass and drank was a callous punctuation to the words. “If it wasn’t that particular one, I fucked and killed others, so it hardly matters.”

  Her gaze never wavered from his. “You think that shocks me. You say it, and in that way, to put something cruel between us.”

  “There’s a great deal of c
ruelty between us.”

  “What you did before that night in the clearing in Ireland when you first saved my life isn’t between us. It’s behind you. Do you think I’m so green I don’t know you’ve had all manner of women, and killed all manner of them as well? You only insult me, and your own choices since by pushing them into the now.”

  “I don’t understand you.” What he didn’t understand he usually pursued. Understanding was another kind of survival.

  “Sure it’s not my fault, is it? I make myself plain in most matters. If she sent you the dream, true or not, it was to disturb you.”

  “Disturb,” he repeated and moved away toward the fire. “You are the strangest creature. It excited me. And it unnerved me, for lack of a better term. That was her purpose, and she succeeded very well.”

  “And having served her purpose, dug into some vulnerability in you, she came to you. The apparition of her. As Lora did with Blair.”

  He turned back, holding the whiskey loosely in one hand. “I got an apology, centuries overdue, for her abandonment of me when I was only days into the change, and near dead from Hoyt tossing me off a cliff.”

  “Perhaps tardiness is relative, given the length of your existence.”

  Now he did laugh, couldn’t stop himself. It was quick and rich and full of appreciation. “Aye, the strangest creature, with a sharp wit buried in there. She offered me a deal. Are you interested to hear it?”

  “I am, very interested.”

  “I have only to walk away from this. You and the others, and what comes on Samhain. I do that, and she’ll call it quits between her and me. Better, if I walk away from you, and into her camp, I’ll be rewarded handsomely. All and anything I can want, and a place at her side. Her bed as well. And any others I can to take to mine.”

  Moira pursed her lips, then sipped more whiskey. “If you believe that, you’re greener than you think me.”

  “I was never so green as you.”

  “No? Well, which of the two of us was green enough to sport with a vampire and let her sink fangs into him?”

  “Hah. You’ve got a point. But then you’ve never been a randy young man.”

  “And women, of course, have no interest in carnal matters. We much prefer to sit and do our needlework with prayers running through our heads.”

  His lips twitched before he shook his head. “Another point. In any case, no longer being a randy young man or with any sprig of green left in me, I’m fully aware Lilith would imprison and torture me. She could keep me alive, as it were, for…well, ever. And in unspeakable pain.”

  He considered it now, his thoughts sparked by the brief debate with Moira. “Or, more likely, she’d keep her word—on sex and other rewards—for as long as it suited her. She would know I’d be useful to her, at least until Samhain.”

  In agreement, Moira nodded. “She would bed you, lavish gifts on you. Give you position and rank. Then, when it was done, she’d imprison and torture you.”

  “Exactly. But I have no intention of being tortured for eternity, or being of use to her. She killed a good man I had affection for. If for nothing else, I owe her for King.”

  “She would have been displeased by your refusal.”

  He sent Moira a bland look. “You’re the queen of understatement tonight.”

  “Then let me also be the mistress of intuition and say you told her you would make it your mission to destroy her.”

  “I swore it, in my own blood. Dramatic,” he said, glancing at the nearly healed wound on his hand. “But I was feeling theatrical.”

  “You make light of it. I find it telling. You need her death by your own hands more than you’ll say. She doesn’t understand that, or you. You need it not just for retribution, but to close a door.” When he said nothing, she cocked her head. “Do you think it odd I understand you better than she? Know you, better than she could.”

  “I think your mind is always working,” he replied. “I can all but hear the wheels. It’s hardly a surprise you’re not sleeping well these past days with all the bloody noise that must go on inside that head of yours.”

  “I’m frightened.” His eyes narrowed on her face, but she wouldn’t meet them now. “Frightened to die before I’ve really lived. Frightened to fail my people, my family, you and the others. When I feel that cold and dark as I did tonight, I know what would become of Geall if she wins this. Like a void, burned out, hulled, empty and black. And the thought of it frightens me beyond sleep.”

  “Then the answer must be she can’t win.”

  “Aye. That must be the answer.” She set the whiskey aside. “You’ll need to tell Glenna what you told me. I think it would be harder to get the answer if there are secrets among us.”

  “If I don’t tell her, you will.”

  “Of course. But it should come from you. You’re welcome to play any of the instruments you like whenever you’re moved to. Or if you’d rather be private, you could take any you like to your room.”

  “Thank you.”

  She smiled a little as she got to her feet. “I think I could sleep for a bit now. Good night.”

  He stayed as he was as she retrieved her candle and left him. And stayed hours longer in the fire-lit dark.

  In the raw, rainy dawn Moira stood with Tynan as he and the handpicked troops prepared to set out.

  “It’ll be a wet march.”

  Tynan smiled at her. “Rain’s good for the soul.”

  “Then our souls must be very healthy after these last days. They can move about in the rain, Tynan.” She touched her fingers lightly to the cross painted on his breastplate. “I wonder if we should wait until this clears before you start this journey.”

  With a shake of his head, he looked beyond her to the others. “My lady, the men are ready. Ready to the point that delay would cut into morale and scrape at the nerves. They need action, even if it’s only a long day’s march in the rain. We’ve trained to fight,” he continued before she could speak again. “If any come to meet us, we’ll be ready.”

  “I trust you will.” Had to trust. If not with Tynan, whom she’d known all of her life, where would she begin? “Larkin and the others will be waiting for you. I’ll expect their return shortly after sunset, with word that you arrived safe and have taken up the post.”

  “You can depend on it, and on me. My lady.” He took both her hands.

  Because they were friends, because he was the first she would send out, she leaned up to kiss him. “I do depend.” She squeezed his fingers. “Keep my cousins out of trouble.”

  “That, my lady, may be beyond my skills.” His gaze shifted from her face. “My lord. Lady.”

  With her hands still caught in Tynan’s, Moira turned to Cian and Glenna.

  “A wet day for traveling,” Cian commented. “They’ll likely have a few troops posted along the way to give you some exercise.”

  “So the men hope.” Tynan glanced over to where nearly a hundred men were saying goodbye to their families and sweethearts, then turned back so his eyes met Cian’s. “Are we ready?”

  “You’re adequate.”

  Before Moira could snap at the insult, Tynan roared out a laugh. “High praise from you,” he said and clasped hands with Cian. “Thank you for the hours, and the bruises.”

  “Make good use of them. Slán leat.”

  “Slán agat.” He shot Glenna a cocky grin as he mounted. “I’ll send your man back to you, my lady.”

  “See that you do. Blessed be, Tynan.”

  “In your name, Majesty,” he said to Moira, then wheeled his mount. “Fall in!”

  Moira watched as the scattered men formed lines. And watched in the rain as her cousin Oran and two other officers rode out, leading her foot soldiers to the first league toward war.

  “It begins,” she murmured. “May the gods watch over them.”

  “Better,” Cian said, “if they watch over themselves.”

  Still he stood as she did until the first battalion of Geall’s ar
my was out of sight.

  Chapter 8

  Glenna frowned over her tea as, with Moira’s prodding, Cian related his interlude with Lilith. The three of them took the morning meal together, in private.

  “Similar to what happened with Blair then, and with me back in New York. I’d hoped Hoyt and I had blocked that sort of thing.”

  “Possibly you have, on humans,” he added. “Vampire to vampire is likely a different matter. Particularly—”

  “When the one intruding is the sire,” Glenna finished. “Yes, I see. Still, there should be a way to shut her out.”

  “It’s hardly worth your time and energies. It’s not a problem for me.”

  “You say that now, but it upset you.”

  He glanced at Moira. “Upset is a strong word. In any case, she left in what we’ll call a huff.”

  “Something good came out of it,” Glenna continued. “For her to come to you, try to deal, she can’t be as confident as she’d like to be.”

  “On the contrary, she believes, absolutely, that she’ll win. Her wizard’s shown her.”

  “Midir? You said nothing of this last night.”

  “It didn’t come up,” Cian said easily. In truth, he’d thought long and hard before deciding it should be told. “She claims he’s shown her victory, and in my opinion, she believes. Any losses we’ve dealt her thus far are of little importance to her. Momentary annoyances, slaps to the pride. Nothing more.”

  “We make destiny with every turn, every choice.” Moira kept her eyes level with Cian’s. “This war isn’t won until it’s won, by her, by us. Her wizard tells her, shows her, what she wants to hear, wants to see.”

  “I agree,” Glenna said. “How else would he keep his skin intact?”

  “I won’t say you’re wrong, either of you.” With a careless shrug, Cian picked up a pear. “But that kind of absolute belief can be a dangerous weapon. Weapons can be turned against the one who holds them. The deeper we prick under her skin, the more reckless she might be.”