by A. B. Bloom
He snapped his attention back onto me. “But you are correct, Druid. We do have an irrigation system, but the long drought we are surviving has been hard. Our crops are failing, the people are growing restless.”
The penny dropped.
“And that’s why you are seeking out the power you believe exists. You want the problem to go away, for the people to be happy while you expand and convert the rest of the world.”
“See!” he cried. “You are far cleverer than the others.” He leant closer, his fingers letting go of my hand and lifting to my face. “That’s why you shall be my wife.”
“Blah blah blaaah.” My tongue almost lolled out of my mouth.
“Messalina has betrayed me one time too many. Soon she shall have the option to end her own life.”
“Your wife now? How has she betrayed you?”
We’d reached a wide curved fountain. The stone was a warm terracotta, and he gestured for me to sit on it which I did, the warmth of the residual heat from the sun spreading through the cotton of my dress.
“She has cheated on me, taken other lovers.” His gaze remained settled on my face, and he didn’t exactly look cut up by the state of his marriage. “I’d expect her to take other lovers, but when she plots against my throne it means a different thing.”
“Aren’t you hurt that she cheats on you?”
His face crinkled as he thought of my question. “No, why would I be? The human will is weak, and I always knew that my destiny was not with her. She gave me a son, for which I am grateful, but in my soul I know I await another.”
This conversation could only go one way. Badly.
“But tell me, you and your woodsman; you didn’t expect him to be your only lover?” His voice dropped, and it locked tiny flames of desire along my insides. I flushed and cleared my throat.
I would never tell him that the woodsman and I had never consummated our feelings, but that I knew he would be the only one I’d ever love.
“Well, I heard Druid Priestesses were fearless leaders and that they chose their men and mated with whom they wanted.”
I held his gaze. “And I told you I was not yet a fully trained Priestess. And I certainly don’t have the power you desire.”
Wrong word choice. His gaze fell to my lips and he moved in closer, his breath with the slightest tang of mint brushing over my skin. His lips when they touched mine were warm, dry almost, like the plants around us. His thumb caressed my cheek as his tongue probed my closed mouth.
“Claudius!” He broke the kiss at the shrill sound of his name and we both turned—me gasping a breath—to face a woman in a long white dress. Her hair was elaborate and plaited around her head, her cheekbones could cut bread. Under the cotton of her dress, pulled in with a woven leather belt at the waist, her body was slender and angular.
“Messalina,” he growled. “Always the perfect timing.”
The tall woman had a number of female servants around her and they all tittered behind their hands until she raised her hands to silence them.
“I see you replace me already.”
“You replace yourself with your own actions.” He turned away from her, his face a callous mask.
She stared at me long and hard. “Watch your back, little witch, he will use you and then discard you.”
The gold energy I’d hidden in my safe place behind my heart flickered at her words. I knew what he would do. That’s why I’d never let him.
The gold thudded against my ribcage wanting to be set free, but I penned it in place.
I dropped my gaze and studied the stones at my feet.
“Back to your quarters. You no longer have freedom in my palace.” His instruction left no room for discussion. I didn’t watch as she turned and spun away. Her fate was sealed by her own actions, and I had the girls downstairs to worry about.
When she was gone, he flashed me a smile as though the whole scene hadn’t just played out. “Now, where were we?”
I stared at him, my gaze shrewd. “You were trying to release my magic by awakening my desire.”
He ran a hand through his hair and then resettled the golden laurel leaves in their proper place. “And did it?”
“I have no magic to awaken.”
“I can feel it in you, Druid, even with you hiding it deep inside. I told you, I’ve known this my entire life. I’ve waited for you; known you would come.”
“How? How did you know?”
He paused as though he were making a final debate with himself.
“Because I’m the same as you, Druid. We are the Gods of old, and I need you to make my own power come alive.”
I stared at him, utterly blank. “Pardon?”
“You really don’t know who you are?” His tone was one of disbelief. I realised then he truly thought I feigned ignorance.
“I’m Mae, a half-trained Druid priestess.”
“No. You are Maia; the goddess of growth and fertility and you are my wife; both earthly and heavenly.”
Emperor Claudius of the Roman Empire was off his head. Did they use opiates in Ancient Rome, because he was obviously as high as a kite?
“No.”
“Yes. I sense it in you. You are the one who can make my needs happen. If I am the god of war, then you are the one who can heal all the land that I take. You can bring bounty and regeneration. You are the fertility of the earth. Where I destroy, you grow. I cannot exist without you.”
“And the other girls?” I almost laughed.
His face was serious. “They are your children. Your power is your desire,” he added but I was barely listening. “It’s your godly gift to give the earth what it needs. And I need you.”
I couldn’t hear any more. My mind shut off with a simple snap and with it my eyesight and my grip on reality went to black.
Chapter Thirteen
I blinked my eyes open, the fresh air on my skin telling me I wasn’t back in the jail. Above me a ceiling billowed with curtains of tied chiffon that puffed like the sails on a boat. The air was cool, filled with relative silence.
I sat up, finding myself on a wide and extravagant bed. The room was white and gilt, elaborate and rich.
A room for an Empress.
Claudius was off his head. The words ran around and around my mind. There was no way I was a goddess. If I was, why the hell was I here on earth? Why didn’t I know who I was? And most importantly, how did I have one hundred and ten children, all of whom had elements of my power?
Utter madness.
Insanity.
So why was the gold, locked in its secret hiding place, begging me to let it out? What the hell was the gold?
Were the men of red seeking me because they were the gods of war? Holy crap. Was that my destiny?
I shook my head resolutely. No. Tristram, he hadn’t been of the red, and yet I loved him more than anything, more than I’d thought possible. We’d been happy in our little settlement until I’d turned eighteen and the march of the red army ruined everything.
At Fire Stone, we’d hated one another because we were cursed. Then we’d loved without question…
There had been no red army there.
No god of war… had there?
No, just the Mage and my father, who wanted my power for his own.
The power of a goddess.
What could a person do with the power of a goddess?
What could I do?
“You are thinking very deeply there.” I jumped as the voice interrupted my thoughts. Glancing to the side, I found a servant woman bent over a bowl of steaming water. “The Emperor wants you fit for dinner at the palace tonight.”
“No. No, I can’t do that.” I shook my head. I could not sit there as the godly or earthly wife to the god of war. No. It was an insanity I couldn’t comprehend. And then what if after dinner he planned to find a way to get the power he needed? His right as my husband.
I needed to get to the girls. They’d help me. I didn’t know how I knew, but I kne
w it. I’d felt no fear with them, only settled familiarity and comfort.
“Because they are your children, of a kind.” The servant woman said, answering my thought even though I hadn’t said it out loud.
She lifted her face and as she did, the steam from the water drifted across her face. I stared harder at her. She looked like I’d expect any older Roman Mediterranean woman to look: dark olive skin, streaked white hair. Her dress was a dark material, her hair plaited down one shoulder. But if I looked through the steam…
I let out a gasp. “Heather?”
“I had a feeling you would come here, so I took a head start.”
I stared at the kneeling woman who had spoken so many riddles to me. I stared at Mrs Cox who had guided me to Fire Stone, back to the land of the stones, back to Tristan and my memories.
“You look different, again.”
She tilted her head slightly again but then held her hand up. “I’m not the only one who is different.” Her shrewd gaze swept over me. “Tell me nothing of the future. I don’t want to know.”
“Is it true what he said, that I’m a goddess? I can’t be. What about Tristram? Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” I cut myself off from asking why she didn’t tell me any of this when she revealed herself in the sick bay at Fire Stone. She could have helped me beyond measure.
“It’s true. Mae, my sweet child, you are Maia, the goddess of nature and fertility. But your life is a curse, a burden you must always bear.”
“No.” I folded my arms over my chest. “No. I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true.”
“So why am I on earth? Why aren’t I up there?” I pointed at the ceiling. “Doing goddess things.”
“The ancient gods don’t sit up in a fictional heaven. They live down on the earth here, with the mortals. It’s what they are for.”
“For what?”
“To guide the mortal plane, to shape the destiny of existence.”
“Fuck.”
Heather scowled at my curse. “And to be seemly in everything they do.”
“So, I’m a goddess. And I’m to be married to that brute who wants to conquer the whole world?”
“No, although I guessed he would try that on you.”
I waited for her to elaborate. With a sigh she leant closer.
“The god of war always wants you. In every cycle of life, he searches for you. He needs you. Sometimes you help; sometimes you can heal and soothe the scars of the land.”
“Other times?”
“Other times you flee from him.”
“He told me the other girls were my children. How can that be? I’m eighteen.”
Heather laughed. “They are the bloodline of your children. Your skill gets passed on, but it dilutes over time.”
“How could you leave them down there like that? Why haven’t you helped them?”
“Mae, I’m a conduit. I told you that far back in the forest when you were just awakening to who you are. I sense you.”
“Why me? What about the other gods? Couldn’t you sense the god of war instead and stop him?”
“You don’t understand, child. You are the most important one. Without you there would be no trees, no forests, no plants, no insect or birds to live in them. No men to walk in them.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that instead of talking in riddles and giving me this?” I pointed to the necklace still hanging at my throat. It had been idle for weeks, ever since Tristram had died. “You told me it was to connect me. At first, I thought with Tristram, but then…” I stopped. She said she didn’t want to know about the future. Would she want to know I’d stepped back through the stones? Or maybe she knew? Right now, my understanding of everything around me was at a gloriously fat zero.
“It was a choice you made in a different time.”
“Are you going to tell me what the choice was?”
“No. I can’t.”
“What do you do apart from pop up and give me random advice in the guise of riddles?”
She had the cheek to smile. Curse her.
“I’m your conduit. I help, where I can.”
“So, tell me, my father.” Again, I kept quiet that the bastard turns up in two thousand years’ time still wanting my power. “Does he know who I am? Did he call me?”
“He wishes.” Her snort was wry and short. “No. But he’s like the others. He wants you. Needs what you can do.”
“For his ways? To maintain the Druid ways?”
She shrugged. “He just wants you, Mae. Most men want the power you hold; it gives them what they need.”
“Which is what?”
“The ability to change the fortunes of the earth. Imagine if you were man and you could make your land the most fertile in the world? On the planet? Imagine if you never had drought, never had famine. If the riches the earth had to offer were all yours at the taking. If every child was born into sunshine, a loyal dependent, to be bent at will.”
I thought of this. The modern world I’d left behind had nothing like this. It was broken, the planet slowly dying from the greed of mankind.
Oh. My. Shit.
I dropped my gaze, my eyes filling with tears. “Heather, I need to tell you something.”
“Don’t!”
“No. I need to. Where I come from,” I skipped the details. “Where I come from there is no abundance. Well, there is for some, but there are hard times for many. Hard times, death, the beauty of the world it hardly exists.”
Her face folded into a frown, her hands reaching for my face. “Then, Mae, wherever you have come from, is a place you haven’t existed in.”
“But Tristram.” I go to tell her about the stones, about us dying wrapped in one another’s arms.
“He’s your man.”
My eyes narrowed. “My man? Could you sound more seventies?”
She shook her head in confusion. “No, Mae. He’s your protector. He’s the man, the earthly being you chose over everything. He keeps you safe from the others that will take you.”
“He’s dead, Heather.”
She didn’t pause to take in the words I muttered. “He’s the father of your children. You chose him and marked him with the fate of the gods. A mortal for a god.”
“What? Those girls down there come from the two of us?”
I didn’t know whether to be relieved that in some other time Tristram and I had managed to get down and dirty—At least one version of me got to know who he really was—or be upset it hadn’t been me.
“Yes.”
“I need to think.”
“You have to get ready for the dinner. The god of war won’t be refused.”
“Well, he wants me, needs me. They all need me, don’t they?”
“Yes, Maia.”
“Mae,” I snapped. “I’m just Mae.”
She nodded, her lips crimped together.
“He can goddamn wait.” I scurried from the bed. I’d need to walk and think.
Somehow Heather managed to weave us through the endless corridors of the palace without finding a guard. Whatever her role as conduit involved, stealth moves were right up there.
The whole time we walked in silence. I needed to think. To process. I hadn’t believed Claudius when he told me, but I believed Heather. I’d believe Mrs Cox, too, and I knew now we were linked, much the way Tristram and I were. Maybe one day she’d tell me about it, but I guessed in the way that I had chosen Tristram as my protector and earthly being, I must have chosen her, too.
She was there to find me and guide me. To keep me safe if she could; but she couldn’t prevent what fate greeted me with.
Only I could do that.
As we tiptoed along, I thought of the fate of my world in my own time. The rivers and seas polluted, the greed of men who didn’t care. The angry ruptures from the earth and the violence and hatred that scaled from all-out war and mass destruction, to muggings and assaults on street corners and back alleys.
With fundamental c
ertainty, I knew it was because of me.
Just me.
Mrs Cox had been waiting for me for two thousand years. Maia, the goddess of abundance and fertility, had been missing for two thousand years.
Since Tristram and I had died on the stones.
And because I hadn’t cycled back, because Tristram sacrificed for me, with me, our blood merging, the earth had suffered.
Holy fuck.
I’d said only myself that after the fall of the Roman Empire the earth had plunged back into the dark ages.
Was that because Tristram and I died together?
I hadn’t been able to heal the wounds men had wreaked on the earth.
So if I went back through the stones now what would happen? What would the world be like now Tristram had died his own death and I left Mae alive?
The passageways became gloomier, warmer, and I knew we were nearly at the jail. I had one vague plan. Half-cocked and insane as it was.
If all these girls had some element of me within them, I needed them to get more. Somehow there had to be a way to make them stronger, more powerful.
They might never be me, but they were descendants of my blood and now they were imprisoned because of me. I’d thought when I’d met them that they’d been captured because of their own skill. That was only partly true.
Vaguely surprised not to find a guard on the door, I held my hand against the wood. Free of my own restraints, I let the golden power locked in my chest roam free. As it spread through every vein into every cell, I sensed my own ability growing. I knew who I was. I’d journeyed a very long way to discover it, and now I’d found others like me, part me.
It was time to bring the family home.
Chapter Fourteen
The wood gave way under my touch. It didn’t break or splinter. It just did what I wanted. The locks lifted up smoothly, unlocking the thick wooden door.
The passageways inside were dim, but when I briefly closed my eyes, I could sense the girls were all in the room I’d left only hours before. Hours before when I’d thought I was a human girl with magic. Before the Emperor kissed me and told me he was the god of war and he was going to have me regardless.