“But there are many in Lucania,” Adrea countered
“Pretenders. They have no gifts of blood, but they struggle to keep their ancient faith alive. They initiate chosen girls into the cult. Your mother almost did not let you go, but she understood that to deny your blood would be to sin against the mothering star. Yet she never told you how strong is the blood that flows through your veins. She knows; she sees it in you, but she fears for you, as well. She did what she did to protect you.”
“The Daath, I understand, have chosen only the kindred of the lake as their queens? For centuries. Only the Water Bearers,” Adrea added.
“Yes. I have been told the reason is that the light of the mothering star leaves our own light less harsh, less cruel, and that each queen chosen purifies the blood of Uriel. Otherwise, we would become slayers, cruel and uncaring. The blood of your people has softened our mettle.”
He stopped and presented her the ring.
“What?” she gasped.
“Take it.”
“I … I.” cannot.”
“Have you not been listening, Adrea? This ring belongs to you. Somewhere, inscribed in its shank, is your name, foretold ages ago.”
She looked into his eyes. Loch was attempting to appear stern and hard, but Adrea saw something else, something that drew her—the part of the warrior-poet left broken by the death of his mother.
“One count of the moon ago,” he continued, “something, someone made a failed attempt to create an opening in the fabric of time. You must have felt it, as well. I suspect it was one of the angels, one of their weakest. He must have lost the light and panicked, attempting a time rift that would allow him to escape this future to find another. But this fallen creature’s failed incantation changed the course of all the Earth, moving everyone, everything closer to Aeon’s End. The signs you have seen in the heavens mark the theft of years that otherwise were our last innocence, years meant to be ours—time we would have shared, grown to know each other, love each other naturally as we should have.” He paused. “Take it.”
“What?”
“Take the ring in your hand until it is warmed by your flesh. It will find you quickly, as if you were its child. And when that happens, look into the stone, and tell me what you see.”
“Why should what I see matter in all this?”
His temper again flashed. “Not much matters, Adrea, only an entire living world—everything that exists in Assiah, the world of being. Forgive me, I should be kinder to you but this ring—it is no longer mine. It belongs to you now.”
He touched her wrist, turned her hand, and placed the ring in her palm. He closed her fingers about it and continued to hold her hand while he studied her eyes.
“My mother’s last request of me is fulfilled. Her dying words. Find her, find the eleventh Water Bearer.”
Instantly, Adrea felt the ring coming alive in her hand, warming to her skin—a careful touch, a woman’s touch. It was the knowing that had whispered all these years inside her wakening, coming fully alive. It was the touch of Asteria; it was as if the light of the mothering star, Dannu, had touched Adrea’s palm.
It came too quickly for her. Frightened, she pulled her hand away and opened her fingers. For a moment it looked so ordinary. The purple stone was turned to the side where, thankfully, she could not see into its center. But even the shank filled with light. She began to see visions.
“It is ancient,” said Loch. “It is from the days of Dawnshroud. It has not connected with the light of the mothering star. It has been dark these many years.”
“Loch, this frightens me.”
“I know. It frightened me, as well, and when first the dreams spoke to me, I was but a boy nine years old. You are the one it has searched out, Adrea. Your touch alone has lit the script of the Pleiades.”
She noticed the writing now, tiny, etched with perfection. She could not guess what visions threatened, but the touch of the shank whispered to her that in aeons past she had held this ring, and with that sudden knowledge, swift memories spilt through her, and she could not turn them back. They were memories of him—of Loch.
She had known him not only in this world but also in so many others. They had traveled together for Aaeons unspoken. In this life, the veil had cloaked the memories, but the power of the ring, locked inside for so long, melted the veil and memories fell like rain.
They had been lovers, voyagers; together they had sailed many stars. She remembered those ships, the star ships, how they were dark and swift, how they moved, soundless.
She drew in a sharp breath. It was madness. She wanted to throw the ring into the ocean.
“This … these things I feel,” she said. “They cannot possibly be my memories; they must belong to someone else, other queens.”
“Yours,” he answered. “And you know it. No use in trying to run from it.”
She looked up and remembered his face as if she hadn’t seen it for years. She remembered him kind and gentle, but also fierce in battle, and she remembered that these same eyes had blackened and turned on her in fury—a temper as strong as her father’s. He was like a fiery wind, unpredictable, and as much as she had loved him, she had also feared him.
They had always lived life amid fires, within tempests. Yet, despite her almost desperate fear, she knew he was all she had, and she knew as well that in her heart, throughout the aeons, she had cherished him despite the demons that raged within him.
Now she understood. She knew why he had been forced to find her and what it meant—the time that had been stolen by this rogue angel. For her and Loch, it was a lifetime stolen.
“Loch.” She whispered, his name no longer strange to her, neither his name, nor his touch, nor his skin, nor his smell. “I … I cannot go on,” she said. “It is all too much, too fast.”
As she stared at him, tears flooded, tears for so many lives gone. How many times had she watched him die, clutched in her arms?
She closed her eyes, tight, as if to block the visions. “Take it back,” she said. “Take it back now! I cannot bear these memories!”
“For me,” he answered sadly, “they came always as dreams. There were many dreams, but dreams of you were the ones of comfort. When I was younger, you were often just this … this feminine presence, but your presence, it kept me strong—alive. Without your presence, so many times I would have failed had it not given me courage, a reason to hold on when reason held no sanity.”
“And now?” she asked.
“What are you asking?”
“Now, Loch, what is it now? Are you weak or strong?” “Neither. I am angry. Fear is meaningless; it does not change my path or my purpose.”
“Lochlain, I know in times past I have been … I have been your salvation. Your safety—even your sole comfort. But it cannot be this time. I cannot save you, Loch.”
“You think this is about protecting me? No, Adrea. You have gifts, but I see the future clearer than you. You could not possibly change what comes against me. It is not about that—we are both insignificant.”
He didn’t say more, but what he implied struck her, chilled her. She almost couldn’t breathe. It could not be happening. This was all impossible!
“Adrea …”
She looked up. His eyes had softened somewhat, but they were intense, serious. “We must be sealed. It cannot wait.” He motioned over his shoulder. Startled, she looked in the direction indicated and saw a horseman. The sight of him shivered through her like ice. He was a giant, an Etlantian, the scion of an angel. He waited at the far end of the Dove Cara, near the cliff, and he did not move or flinch; he simply watched them from a shining black steed.
“He is here to bear witness,” Loch said. “He is an Etlantian, but from ancient time. The light is still with him. This one is a priest, a holy scion. His name is Sandalaphon. He carries a sunblade, the terrible weapon of an angel, and since the days of Uriel, since the Daath were sent of Elyon to this Earth, his sword has been the protector of our s
eed. He knows the reason I have brought you here.”
“Sealed … you mean …”
“Adrea, I am so sorry. If I could, if heaven allowed, I would put this sword through my heart. Forgive me, but you must turn the ring now. You must look into the stone.”
“No, I cannot do that.”
“Search your heart.”
She stared at him through her own tears. With the back of one hand she angrily wiped them away. “It cannot be me! None of this. It cannot be!”
He waited a moment before speaking further. “There is something else you must know.”
“Something else! What else could there be?”
“When you look in the stone, you will open a passage to heaven that is known as the eye of Daath. The second it opens, others will see it—the angels, their minions. And when they do, in that instant they will send out ships. They will send out their winged ones, their fliers with their thousand eyes searching like screamers through the sky. They will hunt us. And if they find us, everything your people and my people have struggled for all these years, everything for which the Earth was intended, will be lost.”
“Angels? Angels will hunt us? And how do we flee from angels?”
“Faith’s Light.”
Her breath came in short gasps now. “No, no, none of this can be happening.”
She struggled to control the panic, and did, forcing it from her by simply screaming at the sky. She looked up to him and narrowed her brow, angry.
“You are wrong,” she said. “He is wrong—that horseman. All of this is wrong, and if I must, I will prove it to you. I will look into your stone, and when I do you will see that someone, something, even heaven, if that is what speaks here—is wrong. I am not the one! So you can watch and when I do look in this stone of yours, you will know: I am not the chosen!”
She turned the shank and looked directly into the dark purple stone, dead into its center.
With a pulse, like an implosion, there was sudden silence, and everything was bathed in sheer light, light that should have been blinding, burning; light that should have been so intense that it should have melted skin and turned the sand to glass, but there was no pain, no heat. It was pure light, soft light.
And then the images rushed her; they flashed, blurred in lightning strokes that came so fast, so swiftly and furiously that she did not breathe at all, but she did see everything, every movement, every minute detail, a million, million images all in seconds.
And then, finally, the images stopped and the Dove Cara melted to a field of battle, but it was a battle that encircled the entire globe. It was like nothing she had ever witnessed or could even have imagined: the sword and axe flaying, arms cloven, men falling, screams, the thick smell of blood. A bull roared as its flesh was pierced, and a horse shrieked as it was sliced from one side to the other. Women wailed. Children cried out. Men’s faces everywhere were twisted and ugly. Nothing here was beautiful or brave or glorious.
Then everything stilled—frozen. Nothing moved. Slowly, Adrea looked up. She saw the Seraphon, standing not far from her, and when he met his mother’s eyes, in the flicker of an instant, a thousand, thousand souls screamed, and the angels wept as their sons died in their arms, and the light of Uriel’s sword blinded everything, pierced all time as the Earth passed into the great and endless abyss of Ain, spilling into it like falling over a great waterfall of endless pillars streaming downward into nothingness.
When the vision finally ended, Adrea could not believe she was still standing, yet she was. The blue sky folded in above them, and they were once more standing in the calm white sand of the Dove Cara. Inside her, from her soul, her heart, a voice whispered. It was a soft voice and she knew whose voice it was. It was Dannu: the Light Whose Name Is Splendor.
Go now, child, walk in Elyon’s blessing, Water Bearer, and be quick, child, cling with all you have to the thin, silver tendril that is Faith’sLight.
It was over. It had been more terrifying than anything she could ever have imagined. Tears streamed down her cheeks until there were no tears left. She fell into Loch’s arms, hugging him. Her fingers dug into his back.
“It pierces like a knife,” she whispered.
He held her tight, and she felt his own tears, wet and cold, as they touched her neck.
“It is true,” she said, “all of it—everything. It is truth.”
“Yes. Truth. I am but the willow. The final queen shall bear the oak.”
She swallowed past the tight knot in her throat. “Do it,” she said, not a request. “Do it now.”
He shut his eyes tightly. He lifted his face to the heavens. “By the Boundless and Limitless Light I speak, by the Son of Women I speak, by the mirrored shadow of the Creator Star I take you, Adrea, forever, and for all of time.”
She wept quietly through it all, as he took her, as he laid her in the sand. She wept as never she had wept before.
Chapter Eleven
Actors
In the courtyard beyond the castle, Aeson waited anxiously. He was surrounded by the same four warriors that had taken him that morning, but his day had been extraordinary. There were simply no words that could describe that particular day, but that was fine because it would be a day Aeson planned to never speak of to anyone. He felt such relief seeing Adrea coming toward him. Of course he was a bit embarrassed; surely she was going to have a good laugh, but at least it was Adrea. She could be trusted to keep a secret.
As they rode up to Aeson and the Daathan guards, Adrea at first did not realize who he was, even though Bobo and Runt were sitting at the heels of his horse. She was still filled with terrifying afterimages of the ring she had tucked in her belt pouch. She dared not keep it on her finger, not yet—even though Loch had told her to. It frightened her and so it remained in her belt pouch where its warmth was like a living thing against her skin.
After such visions it was good to know the world was still intact. It was dusk, cool, and riding through the streets of the Daathan city with its white spires was nothing short of ethereal. Then she realized the figure on the horse amid the guards they were approaching was actually Aeson. He was unharmed, but they had dressed him as royalty—the finest of royalty—as if he were about to attend a royal banquet or ball. The only problem—his clothes were of the wrong gender. They had dressed him as a girl.
“It looks as if they took him to the maiden’s chamber,” Loch said as they approached.
“What?”
“I must apologize for my companions; they have an odd sense of humor. I am sure they led him to believe the maiden’s chamber contained something other than maidens—torture devices and such. But it actually is the residence of the, ah, the women of the palace.”
“Your women?”
“Yes, once, but that has ended now. Be assured I have a single companion, here and ever after. Still, it looks as if the girls had a bit of fun with your little brother.”
They drew up beside him and Loch nodded with respect. “You must be Aeson.”
Aeson swallowed nervously, but attempted to answer unshaken. “Yes, and you are?”
“My name is Lochlain. I am the son of Argolis.”
Aeson’s face paled. He glanced to Adrea, even to the other guards, before looking back to Loch. “You are the prince?”
“Yes. Your sister will explain everything. You both need to be leaving, I’m afraid. I have promised your sister you would reach home before sundown.”
Aeson nodded. “Yes, yes, a good idea. Our father, he has a short … what I mean is, he would be expecting us and he might be worried if we were … late.”
Loch smiled at Adrea; she half-smiled back.
“Well, we cannot have that,” said Loch.
It was strange, but part of Adrea didn’t want to leave. She wanted to see the cottage, her mother, even Lamachus, but what she felt for Loch was something new for her, something she had never felt for anyone. She loved him. How odd. The morning before she hadn’t known anything about him an
d now he was this someone she loved, this someone she couldn’t live without. Her husband—this was her husband and a large part of her did not want to leave his side, even for one night. The ring’s memories had so changed everything. She felt confused, lost between worlds.
Earlier, before they left the Dove Cara, Loch had explained why it was important to return home. He had told her that for now it was the only way to keep her safe—to hide her by letting it appear she was what she had been that morning before setting out to meet him—a maiden of Lucania, the daughter of a herdsman about to marry a horse breeder. Apparently, they would soon be hunted, now that she had opened the eye of Daath.
“We will hide you by pretending. The ring will help. It is not strong enough to hide you if any were close, but they are far from here and none were expecting what has happened this day. For now they can search using only their blind sight, the eyes they can send across the sky to find things hidden in far places. So what you do is pretend the day never happened.”
“Pretend? You can explain to me how I pretend all this away?”
“I know it will not be easy. Myself, I have been trained to block my thoughts. Eryian, my master, he can hide himself standing right in front of you. I have learned a similar skill of mind, though my skill is that of a child’s compared to his. Still, I know how to hide in thought. Think of it as it must have been when you played with dolls. Assuming you did such things. And do not forget, you must use the ring, you must let it teach you hiding.”
“How?”
“Ask it—just will it to hide your thoughts. That is all I know to explain it. I never really understood how it works, how it does what it does. It belongs to a queen—it was never really mine. Mostly it teaches you. It has no secret powers, other than the power to teach. But I believe it can help you hide your thoughts, at least for one night.”
“One night?”
Angelslayer: The Winnowing War Page 12
