by P. C. Cast
Caradoc’s reaction was instantaneous. Speaking a curse that translated in Alex’s head as doing something vile to a goat, he pulled easily out of her arms and started rummaging around by the big rock beside the fire. She tried to sit up and ask him what was going on, but as soon as she started to become vertical, the earth really did begin to spin beneath her.
“Here, love, drink this.”
Caradoc’s strong arms supported her as she drank thirstily from the goblet he handed her.
“And now eat this.”
The goblet in her hands was replaced by a hunk of bread and a fragrant piece of cheese. She gave him a questioning look, not liking how worried he appeared, even as he poured a goblet of mead for himself and drained it in one long drink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and reached for some of the bread and cheese.
“We should have grounded ourselves as soon as we returned from the Otherworld. Our spirits and our bodies needed us to.”
Alex chewed the bread slowly and raised her brows. Caradoc’s smile was sheepish. “Aye, we were preoccupied. But it is late, as time passes differently in the Otherworld than it does here. I should have grounded us when we first returned, but I…” His words trailed off and he leaned into her, kissing the slope of her neck and sending shivers down her body. Then he leaned back and his smile turned wolfish. “I could not think of anything but getting you naked beside me.”
“I’m not complaining,” she stated, through a big bite of bread.
“Neither am I, love,” he said softly. He got up again and poured them more mead. Then he lifted her, mead, bread and cheese and all, and carried her into the little shelter under the canopy of the oak tree. Snuggled against one anther, they ate and drank in silence, savoring the feeling of being reconnected to the mortal world, almost as much as the new closeness they’d found together.
Finally, after Alex’s dizziness had completely passed and she was warmed by the mead, she asked Caradoc the question that had been waiting inside her head since they’d returned to their bodies.
“You know, don’t you? I mean, all about where I’m really from and who I really am.”
He nodded. “I do.”
“Because you read my mind?”
Caradoc’s lips tilted up and he touched her cheek in a gentle caress. “No, love. I know the truth because your soul mingled with mine as the shattered parts of it came together and I brought it safely back to your body.”
Alex took his hand, threading her fingers with his. “That’s absolutely incredible. Almost as incredible as knowing that you came to the Otherworld after me.”
“I had to.” He stared at their joined hands as he spoke. “I did not want to lose you.” He looked up and into her eyes. “I still do not want to lose you.”
Alex wanted to tell him that it was okay—that she didn’t want to leave him, but the words caught in her throat. He knew the truth. She didn’t belong to his world; she didn’t belong to him.
“I do not understand everything I learned when our souls merged,” he began slowly, as if searching carefully for the right words. “I could tell you are not from this time, but from one far removed and in the future.”
“Yes, that’s right,” she said.
He nodded, considering before he continued. “You are here on a mission. You have come because you must take something back with you to your time.”
Alex made her next decision quickly. She was done evading the truth. With him she couldn’t pretend to be something she wasn’t. Professor Carswell and General Ashton had emphasized not messing with history any more than was utterly necessary. Alex was to slip in, get the medallion and get out. Period. But no one had run a scenario where her spirit had been shattered and an incredible man had traveled to the Otherworld to rescue the pieces of her soul and bring them back. Their souls had merged, and anything less than the truth between them now would be an insult to Caradoc and what they had shared.
“I’m here for the medallion pieces in Boudica’s torque, because they’re part of a group of medallions that have to be collected, and if all the segments aren’t found, the world as we know it will come to an end.” She blurted it all in one quick sentence.
Caradoc’s eyes widened. “You need the queen’s torque?”
“Not actually the torque itself. What I need are the two medallion pieces that were set in the ends. One is there now.”
“And the other was stolen by the Roman tax collector,” Caradoc finished for her.
She nodded. “I was trying to find Catus when my soul shattered.”
“You tried to call his spirit to you.” Caradoc took her by the shoulders and gave her a little shake. “But you know nothing about summoning spirits. Blonwen, what you did was incredibly dangerous.”
She slid into his arms. “Well, I know that now. I did find out Catus isn’t dead. He ran away like the coward he is. I was hoping I could call a ghost to me who might know what he’d done with the medallion piece, but things got out of hand.” She shivered and pressed herself more firmly against Caradoc.
He kissed her forehead and held her tightly. “It is over now. You’re here, with me, safe.”
Alex sighed and reluctantly pulled out of his arms so she could meet his gaze. “But it’s not over, Caradoc. I have to get that other medallion piece and transport both of them to my time.”
“And if you do somehow find this other illusive medallion, how do you plan on obtaining Boudica’s royal torque?” His words were harsh, but his expression was resigned, almost sad, and Alex suddenly understood that he expected her to ask him to help her steal from his queen.
“I’m not going to steal it, Caradoc. I don’t have to. I’ll take it on the pretext of needing to get Andraste’s blessing for it, but I’m not going to keep it forever. I’ll transport it to the future, have the medallion pieces copied, fit them into the torque and bring it back to the queen, all in one piece.”
“So you will return here?”
“To give the torque back to Boudica, yes.”
“How does this time travel happen? What magic do you use?”
Alex hesitated, not having a clue how to explain a future technology to a man from the past, when she didn’t actually understand it herself. Finally she told him, “Well, it’s a mixture of science and mind magic. I can’t use it. Except for this.” She held up her wrist, bearing the ESC cuff. “If I press the crystal, I’ll be taken to the future.”
He was silent for a little while, touching her cuff almost reverently. “When you have returned Boudica’s torque to her, you will leave again? Go back to your future world?”
“Yes. When my mission is over I’m supposed to do that,” she whispered, staring into the depths of his eyes.
The worry suddenly cleared from his gaze and his grin lit his whiskey-colored eyes so that they sparkled. “Aye, Alexandra, and I felt in your soul just how very much you like to do what others tell you you are supposed to do.”
Alex blinked in surprise at him. Well, hell! Caradoc was right! She’d be returning to the future because that was what she was expected to do after she completed her mission. But she didn’t have to! She wasn’t in the damn air force anymore. They couldn’t tell her what she could or couldn’t do with her life. “After I take the medallion pieces to the future, I’m going to do what I want.” As she spoke the words aloud, Alex knew beyond any doubt what it was she wanted to do. She wanted to stay in this time, with this man, more than she’d ever wanted anything.
Caradoc cupped her face in his hands. “Then perhaps I should try to persuade you to consider remaining here, with me, in this time.” As his lips met hers he whispered against her mouth, “Though I would never presume to tell you what to do.”
She laughed as he kissed her. And then, before he made her dizzy again, this time not because she hadn’t been grounded, Alex asked him, “Will you help me, Caradoc? Will you teach me what I need to know so that I can find the missing medallion?”
“Always, love
. I will always help you.” He paused and then continued, “Will you answer one question for me?”
“I’m through evading the truth with you. I’ll answer any question you have,” she said.
“Is Boudica victorious? Do we drive the Romans from our land?”
Alex froze. Why hadn’t she anticipated this question? What could she say to him? How could she tell him, and yet how could she not?
But as she lay in his arms, unable to speak a lie and unwilling to tell him the harsh truth, Alex saw that she wasn’t going to have to answer him.
“Ah,” he said, his expression immeasurably sad. “I see. Is there anything you can do to change what happens?” he asked quietly.
Alex shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to change history. We’re not even completely sure it can be done.”
“I see,” he repeated.
“I can tell you that the Celts survive. Your people will live on,” Alex said miserably. She wished desperately that she could offer Caradoc more than a vague platitude.
“Then that will have to be enough,” he murmured.
“You don’t blame me?”
Caradoc pulled her into his arms. “How can I blame you for something fate has decreed? No, love. We will do the best with what fate has allotted us. That is all any of us can do.” He slid his hands down her back, pressing her body more firmly against his. “And we will live each moment we are given together to its fullest.”
“Yes,” Alex murmured as she pulled his lips down to hers. “Yes, we will.”
Chapter 19
A lex had never really liked sleeping with a man. She usually stayed awake and worried about whether a ghost was going to show up, and if so, whether she’d slip and somehow let him know a dead person was there—and then the guy would, of course, freak.
Sleeping with Caradoc was nothing like that. It just felt so right to have him next to her. Sleeping in his arms, curled against the side of him, was peaceful. If a ghost had shown up it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Caradoc understood her ability to speak to the dead even better than she did herself.
But the dead had left them alone all night, and even this morning no spirit showed up to chatter at her like they would have done back in the modern world. As Alex lay there beside her druid lover, looking up at the pastel colors of the morning sky that peeked between the leaves of the trees surrounding them, she pondered the fact that she really hadn’t been deluged by spirits since she’d gone back in time. Yes, sure, she’d seen and spoken with the dead, and she’d helped assuage their fears as they were dying, but they hadn’t mobbed her as they had when she’d visited Flagstaff or really anywhere else in the modern world except the tallgrass prairie. Then she remembered how it seemed she had actually pushed the ghosts away from her earlier.
She had to stifle a gasp of surprise and force herself to lie still, versus jumping up and pacing while she thought. I used the power of the trees to keep the ghosts from overwhelming me, just like I used that same power to see Catus, and finally, to call to me the spirits that frightened me so badly my soul shattered and fled to the Otherworld.
“What is it, love?”
She shifted in Caradac’s arms so that she could look up at him. He was watching her with a sleepy smile. Her first response was to shrug off his question and tell him that “it” was nothing, that she was just woolgathering, as her mother would have said. But then she realized with a little thrill of happiness that she didn’t have to shrug off questions; she could actually share this part of her life with him.
“I was just thinking how strange it is that the dead don’t overwhelm me here. Well, except for what happened yesterday.”
“What happened with the spirits yesterday was because you called the dead to you while you were exhausted, ungrounded and without training.” Caradoc’s words were stern, but he gently brushed her hair back from her face and then caressed the slope of her neck. His touch soothed as well as reassured her.
“Okay, I understand that. But what I was thinking about was, except for that, the dead have pretty much left me alone. I mean, they do show up once in a while, like your mother, but in my old world I couldn’t leave the Tallgrass Prairie without being deluged by them.”
“Tallgrass Prairie—what is that?”
She smiled, thinking about the beauty of it. “It’s where I work. I’m a botanist and a docent.”
He gazed at her questioningly.
“A botanist is someone who knows a lot about plants, and a docent is a guide.”
He nodded and looked pleased. “It sounds like a good job for a druid. And you say the spirits of the dead do not overwhelm you there? What is different about this place than the rest of your world?”
“Well, there aren’t really many people living there. It’s a huge area dedicated to preserving the past and keeping the land as it was naturally meant to be, rather than having a city built on it.”
“So it is, in essence, an ancient place among a world of modern marvels.”
She nodded in turn. “I suppose you could describe it that way.”
“The souls there respect the ancient ways. Blonwen, in this world a Soul Speaker is not at the mercy of the dead. Here you can tap into the power of the spirits of the land to keep the dead at bay, or to call forth those with whom you wish to speak. The dead on your ancient land know that and are following the old ways of the Soul Speaker.”
Alex thought about that for a while, soothed by Caradoc’s touch and the warmth of his body. She remembered how effortless it had been to push back the spirits with the power of the tree. She could have done that again yesterday, but had been too exhausted to think clearly, and then panic had mingled with her lack of grounding and she’d completely lost control. The more Alex thought about it, the more she knew what she had to do.
“I have to call the spirits of the dead to me again,” she told Caradoc. “Or rather a spirit of one dead. See, that was part of my problem before—I put out this general call for ghosts who knew Catus, and got many who were filled with hate and bitterness. Not that that’s a big surprise, since Catus is a really awful guy. But I don’t need a bunch of spirits. I just need one who knew him well. Caradoc…” She sat up, reaching for her chemise and tunic. “I need to call Catus’s assistant to me.”
“Are you sure he is dead?”
“I had a vision of Catus leaving him behind, and of him going into Jupiter’s temple right before our army got there.”
“Then he is dead,” Caradoc said grimly as he, too, got dressed.
“Will you still help me?”
“I pledged last night to help you,” he said solemnly. “And I will never betray that pledge.” His expression lightened and he kissed her. “First, let us break our fast and ground ourselves, and then we must go to Boudica and get her permission to lag behind the army so that you can call the soul of this man who knew Catus to you.”
“She’s marching the army out of here already?” Alex asked in surprise.
“She is. She is following Suetonius.”
“That’s right! That runner she sent into the city before attacking it said Suetonius had been here.”
“He escaped the death that should have been his yesterday, and Boudica is determined he will not continue to escape it.” Caradoc’s voice was filled with a terrible sadness as he went on. “She is going to take her army after him, and after the legions toward which he races.”
“His legions? You mean the ones that—” Alex broke off. The pain in Caradoc’s eyes didn’t allow her to continue.
But he finished for her. “Yes, his legions fresh from the slaughter on Mona.”
“Caradoc, there’s something you should know about Suetonius. The team that sent me here believes he is a Centaurian—one of the people who are trying to stop us from finding all the pieces of the medallion. If they’re right, that means he’ll stop at nothing to keep me from succeeding.”
Caradoc’s jaw clenched and unclenched. “Does he know you
are here?”
“I’m not certain. I don’t think so but…” She hesitated, suddenly remembering the other presence in those long-ago dreams of Caradoc—the presence that kept her from the druid and was definitely malevolent.
“But?” he prompted.
“But I just don’t know for sure. The Centaurians have many powers, some we know about, some we can only imagine.”
Caradoc pulled her into his arms, surrounding her with his strength and his warmth. “He will have to kill me to get to you.”
Alex’s stomach tightened in fear. She pulled back and stared into his face. “No! Stay away from him. He’s not even human, Caradoc.”
Instead of taking her words as a warning, Caradoc seemed to find them amusing. “Well, then he and I are well matched. There are those who do not believe druids are completely human—and many who harbor those beliefs, and fears, are Romans.”
“Promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I am a warrior as well as a druid, love. So I shall promise you that I will be strong.”
Alex sighed and thought that men were men, no matter what century it was.
“Let us eat, then find our queen,” Caradoc said.
“And what are we going to tell her when we find her?”
“As much of the truth as we are able.”
Alex shot him a sharp glance. “Will you tell her that she’s not going to win this battle?”
Caradoc looked shocked and shook his head, saying vehemently, “I will not! Boudica’s quest is not simply about vengeance for wrongs committed against her. It is a fight for freedom, and it has fired the Iceni and the rest of the Celts with hope. I would not take that hope away from them.”
“Some of them live,” Alex said, even though the words sounded lame to her own ears.
“And my people will eventually be free?”
Alex nodded, thinking of modern day England and Scotland and Wales, which were definitely not colonies of Italy. “Yes, they will be free.”
“Then I choose to let them hold on to hope. I will not lie, but I will not speak of the outcome of Boudica’s war. Remember, Blonwen, lies here have a dark power all their own.”
