The Realm of Dust and Bone (The Curse of Fire and Stone Book 2)

by A. B. Bloom

  Nature wasn’t happy.

  Closing my eyes, I soothed every root my energy met. I couldn’t give them water, not literally.

  The irrigation system!

  That must be plumbed into some outside source.

  Take me to the water, I thought. The trees quivered and then root upon root connected until they spread fast and sure away from the palace walls. Tristram shifted beside me.

  I had moments to save us, to give us a chance of survival.

  Further and further I reached, pushing and extending my energy through the network of roots, until at last the distinct tang of saltwater landed on the tip of my tongue.

  Swiftly, I pulled it back, dragging it through the roots, sensing the rippling pleasure of the trees, who shook their branches and sent me their thanks.

  “Tristram,” I whispered. He glanced down in my direction. His face was pensive, but my heart skipped a beat at the sight of him. He was here. My broken heart could sing again. With him, I had more power than I could contain because with him I was a simple alchemy of love and growth. Bountiful abundance pushed from me. “It’s going to get very wet.”

  I flashed him a grin which he returned with a stretch of his tanned cheeks.

  The earth rumbled beneath me. The smell of damp soil filled the air, the leaves of the nearest flowers darkened, pulling down slightly towards the ground.

  Yep. It was going to get very, very wet.

  “Tristram.”

  “Mae!” The call of the Mage cut off my words. “I know you are here. I can sense you. I can feel what you are doing.”

  I shook my head at Tristram’s wide-eyed look. “She can’t,” I whispered to him. “I’m stronger than her. I’m stronger than all of them.”

  He nodded. Just once.

  “In the jail at the basement of the palace are a whole lot of girls we need to set free. Can you help while I distract everyone?”

  “Your wish is my command.” He dropped me a low bow, but his lips curved into a flashing smile. Suddenly he reached forward and caught my chin in his fingertips, his mouth crushing mine, his tongue teasing between my lips.

  “You taste of the sea.” He lifted an eyebrow.

  “Everything is going to taste like the sea when I’m done.”

  The ground rumbled its agreement beneath me and Tristram’s eyes lit with admiration. “Go and set the girls free.” He turned; he would do what I asked. “Which way is home?”

  “North.”

  “Tell them to head north if they can’t find us. To follow the gold and the plants and the trees.”

  He paused for a moment, his eyes lighting on my face one last time. Then he was gone, and it was just me and the trees and the Emperor of Rome. Only one of us was going to survive this.

  I nodded to the weighted plants, now dark green almost bordering on black. At my command the nearest one rolled a droplet of water down the wide surface of its leaf, and then another and then another. So did the next plant, and then the next.

  “Mae!” Her voice sliced through the air again. “Don’t do this. You can’t resist your rightful role. You’ll kill yourself, again. You have to fulfil your role.”

  I’d kill myself again? Did she know I was from a different time? That this Mae was supposed to die on the stones? Or was she talking about something else?

  Or possibly she was trying to distract me and succeeding. I slammed my hands into the ground and the earth beneath me gave a resonating crack. Arcs of water flew from the crevice in the earth and reached high into the sky before falling back down, crashing with thunderous droplets.

  “Mae!” It was him. The god of war.

  He couldn’t bring war against rain though, only man and the earth.

  I was the one who could bring war on him. The trees, now replenished and full of vitality and strength jumped to attention at my thought. With loud creaks and groans they moved into a battle formation, moving from their beds and borders and slowly edging down the ornate paths. I watched mesmerised as they stomped towards me.

  My guardians. They waved their leaves at me and I waited for them to get closer.

  “Cut them down!” The Mage shouted.

  I flicked my fingers and the tree nearest to her knocked her clean into the air with a strong sweep of its branch. Motioning my other hand, lifting the flat of my palm towards the sky, I guided a jet of water straight out the earth which landed in the small of her back bringing her back down to the earth with a bang that left her motionless. I turned for the Emperor. He paced towards me, his soldiers swinging axes.

  My trees stood up straighter, their bark groaning with the movements. Olives and cypresses stood side by side.

  “I won’t let you use me for your ill,” I shouted.

  He laughed, throwing his head back. “Don’t you understand, Mae? This, you and me, it’s a dance we always play, and you always give me what I need. Always. I take what I want, and you heal the wounds. That’s our role. It always has been.”

  “But if you didn’t exist there would be no need to heal the wound,” I shouted above the noise of the trees moving.

  His laughed echoed at me, although I sensed the trees were trying to mute the noise. “No god of war?” He stepped closer, his soldiers swiping at my guardians, their bark crying out with every parry that hit target. “There will never be a time when the god of war doesn’t exist.”

  Finally, I understood my role. I understood everything that had happened. Both before and now.

  I understood with a gut punching stab why my own world was so full of hate and destruction. Heather had been right. The world Mae Adams had been born into hadn’t had a Maia, goddess of fertility and abundance.

  It hadn’t had me for over two thousand years. Just destruction and disaster after disaster.

  It had just had a god of war.

  I glanced over at the Mage. And she still worked for him. That was why she’d sacrificed Phil. She was guiding the god of war to Fire Stone.

  I needed to get home.

  I needed to get back to Fire Stone.

  I reached my hands to my side, placing them on the rough bark of my nearest guardians. With my touch on their skin our thoughts instantly fused into one. I could feel every molecule within them. As they could feel me.

  My golden energy, free and wild spread across them. One after the other the trees connected their branches until my energy hummed between us all.

  “Oh, Maia, you never learn that I always get what I want. Your protector always dies, and you end up doing exactly as I say.”

  Not this time, I told the trees.

  I didn’t know if Tristram and the girls were free of the palace. I could only hope that my trees and plants, and the water I’d summoned would help them if they weren’t.

  I’d thought it—they would. My connection to nature was the very centre of my being. If I wanted them free, then it would happen.

  Tristram wouldn’t die this time. I wouldn’t allow it.

  Protect them.

  I sent my call out and then stamped my feet on the earth. The trees copied me, stamping their trunks with such intensity the whole earth shook, so hard it felt as though the planet were bouncing in the solar system.

  Again and again, I stamped and so did they. A fighting rhythm, boom boom, boom. Today Maia would bring destruction, but only so tomorrow she could heal.

  The earth fissured. The water I’d called gushed higher and higher. Loud cracks filled the air as the palace began to bow under the weight of water and damaged foundations.

  Higher and higher the water rose. When it hit my chest, I remembered falling into the swimming pool when I was five.

  I’d been sucked under, my arms and legs not working.

  Then I’d been on the side, my lungs gasping for breath.

  Now I knew how. The water lifted me, cresting me on its bubbling wave. A bow of a tree reached for me, wrapping its branches tight around my waist and hoisting me higher, out of danger.

  Up there, looki
ng down at the water and the trees swing at the men with axes, I could see it all. Feel it all. Power coursed through my veins, singing in my ears. The sun shone down, bathing me in a heavenly golden glow.

  “You can’t end me.” Claudius’ face was a bright and bitter mask of fury. “I will just find you again.”

  “I know.” I nodded, the golden light within me brighter than I ever thought I’d be able to hold. “And next time I’ll be ready.”

  The water climbed higher and higher, until his face was red, his stormy gaze furious. “I will find you, and I will make you pay.”

  I nodded, splaying my arms out wide to the side. From my hand golden arcs lit the darkening sky. “Look at this as payment for what you’ve done to my descendants.” I grinned, devilish and cocksure. “Now think of this. Now they are free to learn and train. When we meet again, I’ll have an army on my side, too.”

  The water boomed then, the building exploding as the pressure became too much. My guardian strode through the water, holding me above its murky depths. The gates to the palace washed down and the water ran free into the land below, where it was needed the most.

  Rome would survive, but I’d just done my little bit to bring down the Empire. Never would they come knocking on the shores of my country again.

  When my guardian placed me down on my feet, I landed in a steady stream of water. The tree’s leaves bristled at me and I smiled, placing my hand on its bark. “You want to go and join the others?”

  Another shake of its leaves.

  “Go on then, the water will run south, move the trees in that direction if you can once it’s over.”

  For all I knew Italy was about to gain a new forest. Better than no forest at all. Better than no trees. Better than a famine that would kill all of its people.

  “Tristram!” My heart pounded. There was little left of the palace. Where once had been tile and marble, dust and bone there was now an enormous lake.

  “Heather!”

  I waded through the water a little. Local townspeople were looking at the mess, scratching their heads. Children splashed in the water like they’d never seen such a sight—which to be fair, they probably hadn’t.

  Of Claudius and his army there was no sign.

  “Tristram!” My heart raced, a tingle crawling along the back of my neck. “Tristram!”

  The trees wouldn’t let me down, I had to believe that.

  I called, more and more, the golden glow within me diminishing with every shout of his name.

  “Tristram!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Hard hands caught my stomach, squeezing me tight. A yelp escaped me before I could pull myself together.

  The rough grasp pulled me around and I stared straight into the pale-blue eyes of Augustus. “What are you doing here?” My heart hammered.

  “What a mess, little one.”

  “Leave me, please.” A small sob escaped my mouth. I couldn’t take much more. My power had depleted all the time that I’d looked for Tristram. The golden wave I’d ridden to bring down the palace on Palatine Hill had ebbed with the waning water. And I still needed to get back to the stones and try to get back to whatever I’d left of my precious world. My heart told me I’d find things greatly changed.

  And Tristram was nowhere to be seen.

  “Come with me, little witch.” I bristled at him calling me a witch, but he chuckled. “Are you affronted by that nickname now, Mae?”

  “Please let me go. I’ve got to get back. I need to face him again.”

  Augustus’ fingers wound through mine. “Come.” He led me down the washed-out street and we wove amongst the people standing looking at the devastation I’d brought down. Seeing it now, like that, made me wonder if I was the goddess of abundance at all. Crockery and broken artefacts were strewn everywhere. Helmets and armour littered the path of the huge river. I couldn’t think about where the soldiers were.

  He led me to a small cottage and opened a door small enough he needed to duck to enter. “I don’t have time for this. If you’re going to kill me, just do it now, out here in the open.” I pulled on his hand, but it was too late. I was through the door. It clicked softly, almost with a will of its own.

  He laughed. “Little one, I’m not going to kill you. I’m here to help.” I peered into the gloom of the room, a stab of guilt twisting my stomach when the debris and water damage became clear.

  Tristram was at a rough wooden table and I launched myself into his arms. Zafina sat next to him nursing a wound on her head. “You’re here.” I whispered into his neck.

  “Augustus here, led us out of a back passage just before it caved in.” Tristram’s arms held me tight and I breathed into him. With his firm hold, my waning energy rekindled just a little.

  “I was already releasing the girls, for the record.” Augustus added, pushing a plate with a bread roll in front of me. “Eat. You need to rebuild your strength. You have a long march ahead and I won’t be there to carry you this time.”

  Tristram stiffened at this, but I pushed my lips into the warm skin of his neck, and he relented a little.

  “Why are you helping me? Us?”

  “I have friends, they talk to me.” Augustus shrugged. “Tell me when I’m needed.”

  “To fight the Emperor or Rome?” I asked.

  His eyes darkened a little. “No. To fight the god of war.”

  I gasped, my eyes wide. “You’re a god, too?”

  His eyes held mine.

  “And you are born like me? You don’t know who you are?”

  He shook his head. “No. That was your choice.” His gaze flitted between Tristram and I, and I found dark jet eyes watching me from under long lashes. “No. That was a choice you made, but the god of war has been searching for you.”

  “Why did you hand me over to him? You came all the way to Scotland to find me, you could have left me there.” My cheeks flamed when I remembered our brief kiss. “You were horrible to me.”

  He frowned at my unusual name for Caledonia and I flushed a little. “I wanted to try to remind you of who you were, but you were grieving so hard, just like you always do.”

  “Who are you?”

  Augustus swept me a low bow. “Healing is my thing.”

  I sighed a dramatic breath, everything suddenly making so much more sense. “Oh, God, you made me heal. That’s why my grief seemed better when you were near. It wasn’t that I was forgetting, or callous.”

  “No.”

  “But you still handed me over to him.”

  “That was a debt I owed. Now that debt has been paid.”

  “So whose side are you on now?”

  I couldn’t help but notice the way his eyes lingered on my face.

  “Yours. I’ve always been on your side. Growth and healing go hand in hand.”

  “I feel you know a lot more than you are telling me.”

  Augustus’ gaze switched to Tristram and he shrugged, a kind of helpless lift of his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter now; you made a choice and we all live by it for better or worse.”

  My tongue dried. I sensed a deep history between us, but now wasn’t the time to deal with it.

  “Can you heal the girls? I need them strong. I’ve got to teach them what I know.”

  His lips quirked. “I’m sure you do. But now isn’t the time. Leave them with me, I shall heal them, strengthen them, and then I shall guide them to you.”

  “But I won’t be there.” A snatched cry strangled in my throat and Zafina held my gaze.

  “But I will. I’ll tell them about you, and who you are.” Tristram grasped my hand tight, our fingers tangling together. “I’ll tell them everything.”

  I nodded, but I was overwhelmed by a tide of sadness. These people, they were a family I’d never known, but I knew I had to leave them.

  I squeezed his hand tighter.

  I had to leave him.

  “We have to go.”

  He nodded. “Aye, I know.”

 
It was a couple of hours before we were ready to go. My exhaustion from the events of the palace garden had taken their toll and I’d been fighting off a nasty headache. Both Augustus—Vejovis, as was his real name—and Tristram were casting anxious glances at my pitiful state while they conferred in hushed tones about the quickest and safest route for us to take. I heard Augustus explaining that we should stick to the forest as much as we could; the opposite to the way he’d had to take me when under the watchful gaze of the Mage. Unwilling to reveal his identity, he’d gone along with her plans, even to the moments in the healing house. Although he’d been swift enough to assure me his words there had been nonsense. My power had nothing to do with my desire. It was just innate within me. Always there, ready to be awoken when I remembered who I was or when my heart felt the urge to bloom or grow. He’d merely healed me. Apparently, the kiss had been unnecessary. His eyes told me something else, but I couldn’t go there, didn’t want to go there.

  My path now was home with Tristram, but I knew my path went further than that…

  “I think they’d fight to the death over you given half a chance.” Zafina stepped close and fell onto the stool at my side. She swept a hand across my head and it instantly soothed my head.

  “You have the healing touch of Vejovis.” I smiled at her and clasped her hand in mine.

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “And I’m worried about all of you. It’s imperative you set out for Caledonia. Your skills and power; we won’t know what they are like if we don’t train and teach you all.”

  Zafina’s world weary eyes softened. “Don’t worry. We have survived this long. Now we know who we are, who you are, and now we are all together. Before we were scattered remnants of you, with no understanding of the skills and power we had. Now we have identity.”

  She clutched my hand close to her chest and my eyes prickled with unwanted tears. “You know, I never thought I’d not want to go home, but now I just wish I had a bit longer.”

  We were interrupted by Tristram standing at the doorway. “It’s time to head out, the streets are quiet now.”