by Nora Roberts
It crashed, sizzled, spewed bloody flames when it struck against Hoyt’s blinding white. The force blew them both back, searing the air between them. On the ground, Glenna rolled away from a streaking line of flame, then clawed to her hands and knees.
Whatever she had left, she gathered to send to Hoyt. Closing a trembling hand around the cross at her neck she focused her power into it, and to its twin Hoyt wore.
While she chanted, the sorcerers—black and white—battled on the smoke-hazed ridge, and in the filthy air above it.
The fire that sliced at Hoyt carried the burn of ice. It sought his blood—what was shed, what it aimed to shed, to draw away his power.
It clawed and slashed at him while the air flashed and boomed with magicks, sending smoke billowing high to drown the swimming moon. The ground beneath his feet cracked, splitting fissures under the enormity of pressure.
While his lungs labored and his heart pounded, he ignored those earthy demands on his body, ignored the pains from his wounds and the sweat that ran salt into them.
He was power now. Beyond that moment at the beginning of this journey when he’d wavered for an instant over the black. Now, on this ridge over blood and death, over the courage of man, the sacrifice and the fury, he was the white-hot flame of power.
The cross he wore flashed silver and brilliant as Glenna joined her magic to his. With one hand he reached for hers, gripping it firmly when she linked fingers with him and pulled herself to her feet. With the other he raised a sword, and the fire on it went pure white.
“It is we who take you,” Hoyt began and slashed away a thunderbolt with his sword. “We who stand for the purity of magic, for the heart of mankind. It is we who defeat you, who destroy you, who send you forever into the flames.”
“Be damned to you!” Midir shouted, and lifting both arms hurled twin thunderbolts. Fear rushed over his face when Glenna waved a hand over the air and turned them to ash.
“No. Be damned to you.” Hoyt swung down the sword. The white fire leaped from the blade to strike Midir’s heart like steel.
Where he dropped and died, the ground turned black.
High ground, Moira thought. She had to get back to higher ground, regroup the archers. She’d heard the shouts warning that their line had broken again to the north. Flaming arrows would drive that invading force back, give the troops in its path time to forge their lines again. She searched through the melee for a horse or dragon that would take her where she knew she was most needed.
And looking up saw Hoyt and Glenna bathed in brilliant white, facing Midir. A spurt of fresh hope had her racing forward. Even as the ground seemed to catch at her feet, she swung her sword at an advancing enemy. The gash she served it slowed it down, and as she poised to strike again, Riddock took it from behind.
With a fierce grin, he charged with a handful of men toward the broken line. He lived, she thought. Her uncle lived. As she raced to join him, the ground bucked under her feet, sent her sprawling.
As she pushed up she looked down into Isleen’s dead and staring eyes.
“No. No. No.”
Isleen’s throat was torn open, the leather strap where Moira knew she’d worn a wooden cross was snapped and soaked with blood. Grief struck so strong, so deep, she gathered the body up against her.
Still warm, she thought as she rocked. Still warm. If she’d been faster, she might have saved Isleen.
“Isleen. Isleen.”
“Isleen. Isleen.” The words were a mocking mimic as Lilith flowed out of the smoke.
She’d dressed for battle in red and silver, a mitre like Moira’s banding her head. Her sword was bloody to its jeweled hilt. Seeing her crashed waves of fear and fury through Moira that had her surging to her feet.
“Look at you.” The grace and deftness with which Lilith spun the sword as she circled warned Moira this vampire queen knew the art of the blade. “Small and insignificant, covered with mud and tears. I’m amazed I wasted so much time planning your death when it’s all so simple.”
“You won’t win here.” Queen to queen, Moira thought, and blocked Lilith’s first testing thrust. Life against death. “We’re beating you back. We’ll never stop.”
“Oh please.” Lilith waved the words away. “Your lines are crumbling like clay, and I’ve two hundred yet in reserve. But that’s neither here nor there. This is you and me.”
With barely a blink, Lilith shot out a hand, grabbing the soldier who charged her by the throat. And snapping his neck. She tossed him carelessly to the ground, while slicing down at Moira’s swinging fire sword.
“Midir has his uses,” Lilith said when the fire died.
“I want to take my time with you, you human bitch. You killed my Davey.”
“No, you did. And with what you made of him destroyed, I hope what he was, the innocent he was, is cursing you.”
Lilith’s hand streaked out, flashing like the fangs of a snake. She raked her nails down Moira’s cheek.
“A thousand cuts.” She licked the blood from her fingers. “That’s what I’ll give you. A thousand cuts while my army feeds its belly full on yours.”
“You won’t touch her again.” On his stallion’s back, Cian rode slowly forward, as if time had stopped. “You’ll never touch her again.”
“Come to save your whore?” From her belt, Lilith drew a gold stake. “Gilded oak. I had this made for you, for when I end you as I made you. Tell me, doesn’t all this blood stir you? Warm pools of it, bodies not yet cooled waiting to be drained. I know what’s in you wants that taste. I put it in you, and I know it as I know myself.”
“You never knew me. Go,” he said to Moira.
“Yes, run along. I’ll find you later.”
She flew at Cian, then sprang up a sword’s length away to spin over his head. As she sliced down, her sword met air while he threw his body up and back, with the heels of his boots barely missing her face.
They moved so fast, that eerie speed, that Moira saw little more than a blur, heard the clash of swords like silver thunder. This would be his battle, she knew, the one only he could fight. But she wouldn’t leave him.
Leaping onto the horse, she drove Vlad up blood-slicked rock until she was positioned over their heads. There she shot fire from her sword to hold off Lilith’s men who tried to reach their queen. She vowed that she and the sword of Geall would stand for her lover to the last.
Lilith was skilled, Cian knew. After all, she had centuries to learn the arts of war just as he had. Her strength and speed were as great as his. Perhaps greater. She blocked him, drove him back, slithered away from the force of his attack.
This ground was still hers, he knew. This pocket of black. She fed off it, as he didn’t dare. She fed off the screams that echoed through the air and the blood that seemed to spew through it like rain.
He fought her, and the war inside him, the thing that struggled to claw free and revel in what it was. What she’d made him. Taking her advantage, she beat his sword aside, and in that flash of an instant he was open, plunged the stake at his heart.
It struck with a force that sent him staggering back. But as her cry of triumph echoed away, he continued to stand whole and unharmed.
“How?” was all she said as she stared at him.
He felt the imprint of Moira’s locket against his heart, and the pain was sweet. “A magic you’ll never know.” He sliced out, scoring across the scar of the pentagram. The blood that welled from the wound was black and thick as tar.
Pain and fury brought the demon to her eyes, the killing red. Now her screams rang as she came at him with a new and wild strength. He slashed back, spilled more blood, drove as he was driven as the locket seemed to pulse like a heart on his chest.
Her sword ripped down his arm, sending his clattering against the rocks. “Now you! Then your whore!”
When she charged, he gripped the wrist of her sword arm in his bloody hand. She smiled at him. “This way then. It’s more poetic.”
She bared her fangs to strike at his throat. And he plunged the stake she had made for him into her heart.
“I’d say go to hell, but even hell won’t have you.”
Her eyes went wide, faded to blue. He felt the wrist he held dissolve in his hand, and still those eyes stared into his another moment.
Then there was nothing but the ash at his feet.
“I’ve ended you,” he declared, “as you ended me so long ago. That’s poetic.”
The ground under his feet began to quake. So, he thought, it comes.
The black stallion leaped from the rocks, scattering ash. “You’ve done it.” Moira vaulted from the saddle into his arms. “You’ve beaten her. You’ve won.”
“This saved me.” He dragged her locket out, showed her the deep dent in the silver from the force of the stake. “You saved me.”
“Cian.” As the rock behind her split like an egg, she jumped down, and her face went pale again. “Hurry. Go, hurry. It’s begun. Her blood, her end, was the last of it. They’ve started the spell.”
“It’s you who beat her, you who won. Remember that.” He pulled her into his arms, crushed his mouth to hers. Then he was flying onto the horse, and was gone.
Everything around her was chaos. Screams and shouts through the haze, the moans of wounded, the rush of the enemy in mad retreat.
A gold dragon speared through it, Blair on its back. With the ground rippling in waves under her, Moira lifted her arms so Larkin could cradle her in his claws. She flew over the quivering land toward the high ridge.
On it, Hoyt gripped Moira’s hand. “It must be now.”
“Cian. We can’t be sure—”
“I gave my word to him. It must be now.” He raised their joined hands, and together they lifted their faces, their voices to the black sky.
“In this place once damned we hold the power, and we wield it in this final hour. On this ground blood was shed in blackest night, theirs for dark and ours for light. Black magic and demon here are felled by our hand, and now we claim this bloody land. Now call forth all we have done. Now through dark we raise the sun. Its light will strike our enemy. As we will, so mote it be.”
The ground trembled, and the wind blew like a fury.
“We call the sun!” Hoyt shouted. “We call the light!”
“We call the dawn!” Glenna’s voice rose with his, and the power grew as Moira clasped her free hand. “Burn off the night.”
“Rise in the east,” Moira chanted, staring through the smoke that swirled up around them while Larkin and Blair completed the circle. “Spread to the west.”
“It’s coming,” Blair cried. “Look. Look east.”
Over the shadow of mountains the sky lightened, and the light spread and speared and grew until it was bright as noon.
Below, fleeing vampires burned to nothing.
On the rocky, broken ground, flowers began to bloom.
“Do you see that?” Larkin’s hand tightened on Moira’s, and his voice was thick, reverent. “The grass, it’s greening.”
She saw it, and the sweet charm of the white and yellow flowers that spread over its carpet. She saw the bodies of the fallen on the meadow of a lush and sun-lit valley.
But nowhere did she see Cian.
Chapter 21
Though the battle was won, there was still work. Moira labored with Glenna in what Glenna called triage for the wounded. Blair and Larkin had taken a party out to hunt down any vampires that might have found shelter from the sun while Hoyt helped transport those whose wounds were less severe back to one of the bases.
After rinsing blood from her hands again, Moira stretched her back. And spotting Ceara wandering as if in a daze, rushed to her.
“Here, here, you’re hurt.” Moira pressed a hand to the wound on Ceara’s shoulder. “Come, let me dress this.”
“My husband.” Her gaze roamed from pallet to pallet even as she leaned heavily against Moira. “Eogan. I can’t find my husband. He’s—”
“Here. He’s here. I’ll take you. He’s been asking for you.”
“Wounded?” Ceara swayed. “He’s—”
“Not mortally, I promise you. And seeing you, he’ll heal all the quicker. There, over there, you see? He’s—”
Moira got no further as Ceara cried out and in a stumbling run rushed to fall to her knees beside where her husband lay.
“It’s good to see, good for the heart to see.”
She turned, smiled at her uncle. Riddock, his arm and leg bandaged, sat on a supply crate.
“I wish all lovers would be reunited as they are. But…we lost so many. More than three hundred dead, and the count still coming.”
“And how many live, Moira?” He could see the wounds she bore on her body, and in her eyes the wounds she bore on her heart. “Honor the dead, but rejoice in the living.”
“I will. I will.” Still she scanned the wounded, those who tended them, and feared for only one. “Are you strong enough to travel home?”
“I’ll go with the last. I’ll bring our dead home, Moira. Leave that for me.”
She nodded, and after embracing him went back to her duties. She was helping a soldier sip water when Ceara found her again.
“His leg, Eogan’s leg…Glenna said he won’t lose it, but—”
“Then he won’t. She wouldn’t lie to you, or to him.”
On a steadying breath, Ceara nodded. “I can help. I want to help.” Ceara touched her bandaged shoulder. “Glenna looked after me, and said I’m well enough. I’ve seen Dervil. She came through very well. Cuts and bruises for the most of it.”
“I know.”
“I saw your cousin Oran, and he said Sinann’s Phelan’s already on his way back to Castle Geall. But I haven’t found Isleen as yet. Have you seen her?”
Moira lowered the soldier’s head, then rose. “She did not come through.”
“No, my lady, she must have. You just haven’t seen her.” Again, Ceara searched the pallets that stretched over the wide field. “There are so many.”
“I did see her. She fell in the battle.”
“No. Oh no.” Ceara covered her face with her hands. “I’ll tell Dervil.” Tears flowed down her cheeks when she lowered her hands. “She’s trying to find Isleen now. I’ll tell her, and we’ll…I can’t fathom it, my lady. I can’t fathom it.”
“Moira!” Glenna called from across the field. “I need you here.”
“I’ll tell Dervil,” Ceara repeated and hurried away.
Moira worked until the sun began to dim again, then exhausted and sick with worry, flew on Larkin to the farm where she would spend one last night.
He would be here, she told herself. Here is where he would be. Safe out of the sunlight, and helping organize the supplies, the wounded, the transportation. Of course, he would be here.
“Near dark,” Larkin said when he stood beside her. “And there’ll be nothing in Geall that will hunt in it tonight but that which nature has made.”
“You found none at all, no enemy survivors.”
“Ash, only ash. Even in caves and deep shade there was ash. As if the sun we brought burned through it all, and there was none of them could survive it no matter where they hid.”
Her already pale face went gray, and he gripped her arm.
“It’s different for him, you know it. He’d have had the cloak. He’d have gotten it in time. You can’t believe any magic we’d bring would harm one of our own.”
“No, of course. Of course, you’re right. I’m just tired, that’s all.”
“You’ll put something in your belly, then lay your head down.” He led her into the house.
Hoyt stood with Blair and Glenna. Something on their faces turned Moira’s knees to water.
“He’s dead.”
“No.” Hoyt hurried forward to take her hands. “No, he survived it.”
Tears she’d held for hours spilled out of her eyes and flooded her cheeks. “You swear it? He’s not dead. You’ve seen h
im, spoken to him?”
“I swear it.”
“Sit, Moira, you’re exhausted.”
But she shook her head at Glenna’s words and kept her eyes on Hoyt’s face. “Upstairs? Is he upstairs?” A shudder passed through her as she understood what she read in Hoyt’s eyes. “No,” she said slowly. “He’s not upstairs. Or in the house, or in Geall at all. He’s gone. He’s gone back.”
“He felt…Damnation, I’m sorry for this, Moira. He was determined to go, straight away. I gave him my key, and he was going by dragon-back to the Dance. He said…”
Hoyt took a sealed paper from a table. “He asked if I’d give you this.”
She stared at it, and finally nodded. “Thank you.”
They said nothing as she took the paper and went upstairs alone.
She closed herself in the room she’d shared with him, lit the candles. Then sitting, simply held the letter to her heart until she had the strength to break the seal.
And read.
Moira,
This is best. The sensible part of you understands that. Staying longer would only prolong pain, and there’s been enough of it for a dozen lifetimes. Leaving you is an act of love. I hope you understand that, too.
I have so many pictures of you in my head. Of you sitting on the floor in my library surrounded by books, poring through them. Of you laughing with King or Larkin as you so rarely laughed with me in those first weeks. Courageous in battle or lost in thought. You never knew how often I watched you, and wanted you.
I’ll see you in the morning mists, drawing a shining sword from a stone, and flying a dragon with arrows singing from your bow.
I’ll see you in candlelight, holding out your arms to me, taking me into a light I’ve never known before or will know again.
You’ve saved your world and mine, and however many others there might be. I think you were right that we were meant to find each other, to be together to forge the strength, the power needed to save those worlds.
Now it’s time to step away.
I’m asking you to be happy, to rebuild your world, your life, and to embrace both. To do less would be a dishonor to what we had. To what you gave me.