“I’ve created a wrap to go over my shoulders. I don’t think it’s any more revealing than Chantal’s gowns.”
He wanted to tell her that Ian’s wife wore gowns from Paris, a completely different world from the villages through which they traveled, but he didn’t wish to dilute her pleasure in her accomplishment.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” He changed the subject rather than argue. He would cover her with a cloak when men were about and enjoy the view when they weren’t.
He was waiting to hear her say they were returning to Aelynn, as she’d said earlier. His sudden impossible longing for home caught him by surprise.
“England, I think, to join Trystan in Ian’s home.”
Disappointment swamped him, even though he had known he would have to argue over any other answer. If there were gods, they laughed at him. England was where he had lost track of the sacred Chalice of Plenty—the chalice that was both his punishment and a lure of power.
Ian and Lis believed that returning the holy relic to Aelynn would restore the island to its rightful order. Murdoch had spent years chasing the chalice, alienating his friends, nearly destroying an entire village, hoping the relic would save the larger world, or at least France, but in the end, he’d lost all awareness of its existence, as if the gods had decided he was unworthy to possess it.
Did Lis know that? Ian would surely have told her.
“Trystan isn’t likely to welcome me,” he warned. He had no friends left. Not since he’d killed her father, at least.
He’d killed her father. The memory stabbed him with the agony of a knife. His overexertion yesterday must have breached a wall he’d shut between himself and Aelynn. Or opened one between him and Lis. His grief and loss were almost palpable, even after all these years. Luther had been arrogant and obstinate, but a good man, in his own way. He’d been the only father Murdoch had ever known.
His sadness and guilt had been tempered by anger for so long that with the shield of resentment gone he was left stripped and more vulnerable than he liked. But hiding his pain from the world was second nature to him now. He stared blandly back at her.
“Trystan was once your friend,” she said, watching his reaction with caution. “He will take us in if I ask him to. I know you almost destroyed Mariel’s home and Trystan’s ship with Greek fire when you thought they’d misappropriated the chalice, but I don’t think Ian or his wife have any reason to turn you away, and it’s their home.”
“You believe in the bluebird of happiness, don’t you? The valiant Trystan would never stoop to misappropriating the chalice. I believed it had come for me, and I wanted it back.”
Leaving her to mull that over, Murdoch gathered up the shirt he’d left on her bed last night, and walked out of the shed and down the hill to where he sensed there was a stream. The unsettling emotions pouring through the newly opened barrier in his mind needed to be walled off again before they crippled him.
He washed, but the shirt he carried was too bloody to bear. The sun was hot enough that the linen should dry rapidly, so he wet the cloth in the spring and beat it against some rocks.
When he returned to the cowshed, stripped to the waist, Lissandra was waiting there with a clean muslin shirt that wasn’t his own. She handed it to him, then gathered up the horse’s harness, preparing to leave.
Startled by the offering, he didn’t know how to react. “Sit down,” he ordered, glowering at her. “You haven’t had a bite to eat. I’m capable of catching rabbits and even cooking them.”
Only after reestablishing his authority did he examine the shirt she’d given him. She’d obviously created it from the acres of fabric in the muslin petticoat she’d cut apart. Her generosity was overwhelming in the face of his surliness. “How did you make these garments so swiftly?”
“You use swords. I use needles. I’ve found mending more useful.” Unmoved by his snappish manner, Lis waited for him to try on the shirt.
He slipped the soft fabric over his head and admired the way it fit the breadth of his shoulders and gave his sword arm ease of movement. The intimacy of her gift disturbed him in a manner he didn’t know how to handle.
“Very useful,” he agreed, smoothing the muslin over his chest, not ready to meet her eyes. “I can’t remember the last time someone made something just for me.” That wasn’t a lie. Even the villagers had given him hand-me-downs.
“I made a shirt for you once before, but you left before I could give it to you.” She abruptly broke off the dead branch of a shrub, apparently for firewood, since she threw it on a bare spot of earth.
Left—which time? When he’d sailed off to make his fortune, or when Dylys had mentally stripped him of his powers and banished him? He suspected the first. Lis had been too furious with him on the second occasion.
He couldn’t hide what he was from her any longer. He’d killed her father, and still she’d come after him. Even after he’d revealed his weakness last night, she believed in him. If the only way he could have her was to be the Oracle she thought she needed, he had nothing to lose in trying.
Taking a deep breath, he offered up his soul. “Can you Heal me?”
Twelve
Lissandra knew she’d planted the notion that she could cure him. She should be ashamed of herself, but Murdoch, the all-powerful warrior, looked so amazingly earnest and concerned. . . . Her pulse raced faster at his courage in asking. She simply stood there and admired the vulnerable man waiting for her answer.
A hank of his long mink brown hair hung damply across his sun-bronzed forehead, emphasizing his razor-sharp cheekbones and unshaven jaw. He’d pulled the rest of his hair into a knot at his nape so it fell down the back of the shirt she’d sewn for him. The flimsy fabric revealed his muscular strength.
She’d always seen Murdoch LeDroit as invincible, the hero of all her dreams, the powerful man who would rescue her from herself. By admitting that he was flawed, he became more . . . real . . . somehow. And more self-assured than any man she knew.
But no matter how brave he was, Murdoch was still wounded in so many ways she didn’t dare count them. She could tend his visible injuries, but she feared she didn’t possess the knowledge to heal his mind or his spirit.
“I am not my mother,” she replied softly. “I cannot act as judge in place of the gods or wish you dead for what you have done. My duty is to Heal.”
Murdoch’s long lashes swept briefly downward as if he gave prayers of thanks, then lifted to reveal the startling indigo of his eyes. Against his dark coloring, the luminous effect was astonishing. She’d never before seen his eyes reflect the color of Aelynn’s clear blue harbor. Usually, they resembled the sky on a stormy midnight.
“It seems the gods have tried to kill me and thus far, I have defeated them,” he said. “Perhaps you will be more successful in Healing than killing me.” A familiar insou ciant grin crossed his face, returning him to the youth he’d once been.
“I’m thinking your arrogance would prevent you from realizing you were dead if you didn’t wish to be,” she countered. “But if there is some means of helping you control your unpredictable energies and their after-effects, then I must try. Still, you must know my Healing is often Empathic. If I’m to help, I must feel what you’re feeling. You cannot block me out.”
“You don’t really want to know what I’m feeling right now,” he boasted with a lustful leer that she knew was sheer mischief. When Murdoch really wanted her, he didn’t waste time with leers.
“Then you’d better work on feeling things that I do want to know about,” she retorted. She returned to gathering wood. “If you are going to hunt rabbits, you might wish to remove your clean shirt.”
He chuckled. Sardonic Murdoch actually chuckled. She must be hearing things.
When he returned later with his catch, he was back to the brisk, efficient warrior who revealed nothing of his inner turmoil. That she knew he was in turmoil spoke only of their long-standing familiarity and little
of his willingness to share his thoughts.
They ate silently and quickly in the early-morning fog. When it came time to harness the horse, Murdoch took over the duty, leaving her to remove all evidence of their campsite.
“How is your head?” she asked, standing beside the cart.
“I’ll live. We need to be on the road. I don’t know if our mysterious Aelynner will bring others in pursuit, and I’d rather not find out.” Holding the reins, he waited impatiently.
She climbed up on the seat beside him. “You used strengths last night that I didn’t know you possessed. I can’t tell if that was the cause of your headache or not.”
“Define strengths,” he demanded curtly, guiding the horse down the overgrown path.
“You have always been an expert swordsman and capable of defeating anyone in all physical exercises, but you have never been focused enough to direct lightning or wind against a specific target. Last night, you matched a Weathermaker’s ability.”
He snorted in dismissal. “Calling down lightning on Aelynn is a worthless skill, and in this world, it would have me burned for witchcraft. I see no point in crippling myself by practicing it.”
She raised her eyes to the heavens for patience. “The gods gave you gifts for a good reason. Unfortunately, your idea of a good reason seems to be saving the Other World instead of Aelynn.”
“Which is why I cannot go home.”
“Precisely.” She ignored his taciturnity. “You seem to believe everyone ought to think like you, and they don’t. It has always annoyed you, and I cannot see that that has changed.”
“Because they are wrong, and I am right,” he said with his usual confidence.
She mentally swatted him.
He ducked as if the blow were physical, then shot her an aggrieved glare. “Why did you do that?”
“I’m thinking I ought to let my spirit guide out more often,” she grumbled. “All my life I have listened to others tell me what is right and how to think. I’m tired of it.”
He shook the reins. “Keep the damnable creature under control while you practice independence. I don’t need another headache. Explain why you are really here if I’m so unsuitable for your precious island.”
There was the crux of the problem she’d been avoiding. “I’d hoped for a miracle,” she grumbled. “But I see that I was asking for too much.”
He shot her a dark look. “What kind of miracle?”
How could she phrase it? It wasn’t as if the island’s problems were within her ability to comprehend, much less correct. “Ian must have told you that we have been effectively leaderless for years. When the chalice departed after Luther’s death, people decided that we’d been abandoned by the gods. Lacking the benediction of the Chalice of Plenty, our weather has deteriorated. We go from scorching droughts to floods to freezing frosts. Ian and Chantal ended the drought, but the heat still bakes the fields. And then our Oracle died, and the spirits flew away. Now rebellion simmers in Aelynn much as it does in France.”
“And you thought I could fix it?” he asked in derision.
She shrugged. “It does seem far-fetched, I admit.”
He snorted at her bluntness. “You just wanted someone else to deal with it.”
“The moment my mother died, the blue spirit ball circled Ian and me, rejected us both, and departed. We saw the gods leave,” she retorted, “and now they’re there, in your ring. What else am I to think?”
“That the only path to finding a suitable Oracle is to kill me so the gods are free to look elsewhere?”
She gave him a scorching look. “That is one way of looking at it, but killing a chosen Oracle to see if we receive a better one in your place is probably not the wis est alternative. My spirit guide insists you are the Oracle the gods want.”
“Spirit guide?” he scoffed. “They are good for naught but mischief.”
“Perhaps you have not tried to animate your Sight.” There was a topic that she could confidently discuss without conflict or anger. “I’ve animated my mental picture of my spirit, given her a character and image that reflect my desires. That may be why I’m limited to Seeing only the paths individuals are destined to take. Your vision has always been broader, not directly affecting Aelynn, possibly because you sailed beyond our borders.”
“In your less-than-direct way, you are saying that even though my vision may run true, it’s not useful, and my gifts were never reliable.”
She gave that some thought. “You must admit, it would be difficult to accept that killing my father was the right thing to do.”
He scowled. “Because killing Luther wasn’t my intent.”
“Had you honed your Healing skills instead of your violent tendencies, you might have saved him,” she countered, wondering how they’d returned so quickly to an even more volatile subject than Aelynn’s lack of leadership.
“Would you have let me near him after I blew him off the rocks?” He snorted without waiting for her reply. “You told me to get out of your sight. So I did.”
Lissandra rubbed her eyes to hold back the tears. “And so you offered no argument in your own defense before my mother blasted you with her energy, nearly killed you, and sent you away.”
She understood, or she’d tried. She’d spent years trying to hate him, and had succeeded only in shutting herself behind an icy shield of righteousness. Had he just once attempted to send word, offer an apology . . . but he’d left her without a farewell, forgotten her, forgotten Aelynn, forgotten all that she’d hoped they shared, and he hadn’t looked back.
“Even if killing Luther was not your intent, the result was the same,” she continued. “Your unpredictable gifts and temper cannot be allowed on Aelynn.” And she could not let them destroy her.
He sank into a black study. She was accustomed to caring for the weak, not the stubborn. Murdoch must accept his flaws before she could even try to improve upon them.
Lissandra turned her attention to their current predicament and the oddity of an Aelynner turning against them. It bothered her that the man had been in the room with the bound priest last night. She would like to believe that he’d been caught in something he could not avoid, but although she couldn’t sense the Aelynner’s emotions, somehow, it had not felt as if he were innocent.
It did not bode at all well if Aelynners lost sight of their mission and struck out on their own—as Murdoch had done. Had Murdoch’s disturbing presence in the Other World disrupted some invisible barrier that had held Aelynners back all these years?
Such questions were well beyond her scope.
She knew only that after last night she was even more frightened of the future than she’d been before.
Murdoch’s wounded arm and shoulder ached from guiding the horse over rough terrain, but they didn’t hurt nearly as much as what felt like cannonballs of revelation exploding against his skull. Directing his energy last night had crippled him with more than pain; it had sent his emotions spiraling crazily out of control.
He wished he could empty his brainpan of all but simple needs—food, rest, desire for the woman beside him.
The desire burned hotter now, fed by the memories her presence unleashed. He’d had women before, many of them. None of them stood out in his mind as Lissy did. He might recall a woman’s laugh, the flash of passionate eyes, or the roundness of a breast, but nowhere in his mind did an entire woman come to life like Lis, and not just because she sat next to him—but because of who she was.
The proud woman sitting stiff and cold was Lissandra , the Oracle’s obedient daughter, who would always do what duty required, the woman who could not take him as a lover because her loyalties lay with a country that had rejected him.
Lis was the tenderhearted girl who once danced on hillsides, the nurturing Healer who loved to learn and wanted a home and family and the freedom to care for all who hurt, without thought to politics, class, or authority—the woman who wanted him as he wanted her.
Unfortunately, no m
atter what she might or might not want, Lis was too intelligent to have anything to do with a man who would tear her from her home and her people. He might be an undisciplined half-wit, but even in his rash youth, he’d known that Lis lived for the people of Aelynn. And he didn’t.
No wonder he fought any belief in gods that would create such injustice.
The light of his damnable ring began to glow brighter, and he stifled his anger before he alarmed his all-too-observant companion. He turned his thoughts to more practical matters. “The English have blockaded the Channel. Sailing there will not be so easy.”
“I know very little of the Other World,” she acknowledged, “but I assume you can think of a way around that. If it helps, I’m fairly certain that somewhere beyond the blockade our ships are waiting for us.”
Of course. Every man on Aelynn would be trying to find Lissandra and haul her home. And willing to kill him in the process. That wasn’t an outcome he was prepared to risk. He wanted time with Lis, and an opportunity to learn how to maintain the cool concentration he’d applied last night. He would avoid Aelynn ships, by all means.
Allowing himself to feel meant recognizing with awe that Lis had actually left Aelynn for him. He couldn’t see his way around the breadth of such a cataclysmal occurrence. It felt like a miracle. Of course, if he believed in miracles, he’d have to believe in her cursed gods.
Worse yet, feeling meant recognizing the trauma Lis must have suffered to force her to do something so out of character as to defy all Aelynn precepts—
Dylys was really dead.
For days, he’d deliberately avoided thinking about the woman who had banished him. But sorrow welled up in him now, and anguish for Lis, who had been her mother’s shadow all her life. He knew Lis had to be here in defiance of her late mother’s wishes—to prove, even in her grief, that her mother was wrong about him.
The Oracle of Aelynn was dead.
He and Dylys had ever been at odds, but she had done her best to teach him. The loss of her brilliance left a hollow place inside him. He had so many memories of her, if he allowed them in—of her patiently teaching his dirty childhood self to find the center from whence came his gifts, of her holding him as a frustrated lad when he’d overexerted his abilities, of her scolding him when he’d nearly killed himself trying to fly.
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