Resurrection

by Nancy Holder

  And then Anne-Louise spotted something that seemed wrong. Among all the neat rows of books there was a book shoved on top of some others and sticking out at an angle. It was wrapped in an embroidered silk cloth, and she instantly recognized the symbol for the House of Cahors.

  A page was marked and she opened to it. She read about the destruction of the Cahors Castle in France and how many things of great monetary and magical value had been stolen, including a book of prophecies written by the dark wizard Merlin.

  As Anne-Louise continued to read, she gasped out loud. There was a sudden popping sound, and she lifted her head to see the space in front of her literally rent in two as though it were a curtain.

  Sasha tumbled through the hole and leaped to her feet as it sealed before her.

  She staggered and looked fearfully around. Then her gaze fastened on Anne-Louise.

  “Goddess,” she breathed, “I’m alive.” She raced into Anne-Louise’s arms. “Thank you.”

  Anne-Louise held her covenate closely as relief surged through her. Sasha was here, and apparently unharmed. But how?

  “Sasha,” she said, “I didn’t bring you here.”

  The mother of Jer and Eli Deveraux lifted her head from Anne-Louise’s shoulder. “Then who did? I was about to die. Then the ground shook and a portal opened. Going anywhere was preferable to dying by the hand of Merlin.”

  A cold terror seized Anne-Louise. “What?”

  “Where is Nicole?” Sasha asked, grabbing Anne-Louise’s shoulders and giving her a shake. “We have to stop her before it’s too late!”

  “I don’t know where she is.” Anne-Louise frowned. “Stop her from what?”

  “Owen. She’s sacrificing Owen,” Sasha said. “Anne-Louise, please believe me. We may already be too late.”

  “Goddess…” Anne-Louise breathed in horror. There was only one place a deed that terrible could be performed. She turned and raced toward the entrance to the secret tunnel, Sasha close on her heels.

  As soon as they entered the tunnel, Anne-Louise began shouting. “Nicole, stop! Don’t do it! It’s a trap!”

  Heart in her throat, she burst into the main chamber and saw Nicole swinging an athame down toward Owen. She threw a ward across the room to encase Owen, and the knife glanced off it.

  “Nicole! It’s a lie. Merlin’s prophecies, every thirteenth one is a lie. It’s backward to try to manipulate time, change history.”

  Nicole looked at her with glassy eyes, and for a moment Anne-Louise thought she might be possessed. Slowly Nicole lowered the athame and blinked at her.

  “What did you say?”

  But Anne-Louise couldn’t answer her as she stared at Owen, who sat quietly for once, a halo of light around his head.

  Mumbai: Jer, Eve, Eli, Philippe, Pablo, Armand, Amanda, and Tommy

  Jer spun around, looking for Holly. One moment she had been there, and the next gone. A dagger whistled through the air past his cheek, and he heard a thud as it landed in flesh. He turned just in time to see Eve crumple to the snow.

  The Black Fire flickered once and then went out. It requires three to create it and three to keep it burning, he realized. “Incoming!” he shouted, erecting a hasty barrier where the fire had burned a moment before.

  Alex crashed through the barrier and slammed into Jer. Jer was flung onto his back while Alex slammed his fists into his face, preferring, it seemed, to beat him to death with his own hands. Jer tried to push back, but two spectral knights in luminous armor pushed his wrists into the snow.

  “Monster!” Alex bellowed at him. “How could you, a Deveraux, betray your own kind?”

  He brought both his fists down onto Jer’s nose. Pain shot straight into his brain; inside his skull he heard a crunch and knew his nose was broken. More blows shattered more bones, and then it felt as if his skin were being ripped away. He fought to keep his eyes open and saw the changing face of Alex Carruthers: in one moment the handsome man who had deceived Holly and her family; in the next the moldering corpse of the man who had bound Jean Deveraux’s soul to that of Isabeau Cahors. Purple-blue skin hung off Alex’s face, and worms crawled from his eye sockets.

  “You should have agreed to thrall with Holly Cathers, and then handed her over to your family, the Deveraux. But we got her anyway. She’s in thrall to me. The lady to my lord. Think about that as I kill you.”

  “She…,” Jer managed. “She is not in thrall. She saved me.”

  “Menteur!” Laurent shouted. “Liar!” He pummeled Jer’s face like a savage. His rage was stunning; through the haze of pain, Jer tried to comprehend it. Anger was the son of fear. What was Laurent afraid of?

  “Always in my way, always!” Laurent broke into medieval French, and Jer understood it. He went back in time again, back…

  Jean paused at the top of the stairs in his wedding finery and listened to his father speaking to Paul-Henri, Jean’s younger brother.

  “If he fails to get a boy on her, you can try next,” Laurent said.

  “But, mon père, to do that I must either rape her or murder him, or both,” Paul-Henri protested. Mildly.

  “Pfft. Have you learned nothing? You are French. Seduce her.”

  “But—”

  “By the horns of the God, Paul-Henri, it’s a political match. She doesn’t love him. My spies tell me she weeps at her window. Her bitch of a mother is sacrificing serfs with abandon, forcing Isabeau to bathe in their blood, and for what? Courage! The ability to lie with Jean without screaming.”

  Jean smiled evilly. He would enjoy making Isabeau scream. And enjoy even more the prospect of killing Paul-Henri. Both, as soon as possible. He would be his father’s only son.

  “But you loved her,” Alex/Laurent screamed at him. Spittle flew everywhere. “The spirit of Jean, inside you still, loved Isabeau. Love? You destroyed our family with your love! And even now you fight for the Cahors! Against your own blood kin!”

  I am not Jean. I am…

  Something sharp sliced his neck. Blood gushed, steamed, froze.

  I am…

  He was dying.

  I would die for her. For Isabeau…

  mais non, no, not Isabeau…

  Isabeau was born so that Holly would be…

  Wait for me, wherever it is the God sends me, he thought, as the world thinned into a red line. Then, No, don’t. Don’t come there, ever. It will be hell.

  Scarborough: Nicole, Anne-Louise, Richard, Sasha, and Owen

  Anne-Louise, Sasha, and Richard talked in hushed tones as Nicole laid Owen down for the night. She drank a cup of herbal tea laced with soothing herbs that Sasha had made her and sat beside his cradle, rocking him, seeing again the nimbus of light that glowed around his head like a halo. She set the red cup decorated with green ivy on his changing table and rubbed his cheek with her warm fingers. Marveling at the softness, she wondered who he was, really. Kari had said he would die if he left the house. Was that true, or just another of Merlin’s lies? Kari seemed to see things differently now that she was dead, and Nicole wanted to ask her what she saw when she looked at Owen.

  But Kari was gone. They’d searched for her, but no finder’s spell or scrying stone had located her. Also missing was nearly all the money Anne-Louise had brought with her, which meant, at least, that Kari had run away—that she had not been abducted.

  Nicole had thought she’d feel safer without Kari near the baby, but not knowing where she was, or why she’d gone, made Nicole more nervous. Now that she was a mother, it was so much harder to deal with her fear. She couldn’t run away; she had to stand her ground and protect her baby. Fear could be a very selfish emotion; before Owen had come into her life, she had been self-centered in the extreme. Back then she’d run and left Holly and Amanda behind, breaking the power of the three…for magic was strongest when three witches conjured.

  Three witches, three warlocks, three mages, three wizards. The triangle was the most stable of all conjuring images. After all, what was a pentagram but trian
gles within triangles within triangles? Trinities within trinities.

  Nicole thought of how demanding she’d been with her mother, insisting on preferential treatment, and how contemptuous of Richard, her father, who had known his wife was having an affair—with Eli’s father!—and had done nothing about it except look sad and depressed. But Richard Anderson hadn’t left. He’d stayed…for his wife, and his children. Love endured all things.

  She thought back to Cologne again, unsure why her mind kept going there. Musing, she reached for her cup…

  …reached for her cup…

  …reached for her cup…

  It was no longer there.

  And neither was she.

  The Temple of the Blind Justices: Nicole

  Nicole staggered in a little circle. She was surrounded by a white mist, and as it cleared, she saw that she was standing in the middle of a ring of Grecian columns that rose so high into the boiling clouds overhead that she couldn’t see their tops. Between the columns men and women sat on white marble chairs wearing Grecian-style togas. Their eyes were milky white, and their faces were youthful and unlined. Some were as white as bone; others, golden-hued, mocha-brown, purple-black.

  “Where’s Owen?” she cried. “Where am I?”

  “Nicole Anderson-Moore, you face the Blind Justices.”

  Her attention darted from face to face. She didn’t know who had spoken. No one’s mouth had moved.

  “Where’s my baby?” she yelled. She ran toward the closest man, smacking into an invisible barrier about five feet from him. She slammed her fists against it. “Owen!”

  “The baby brought you here,” the voice said again. Again, none of them seemed to have moved a muscle.

  “What do you mean?” She rammed the barrier again.

  “If you will calm yourself, we will tell you.”

  “Are you Deveraux?” she asked them. And something happened. Something shifted. She looked at each face in turn. Milky-white eyes stared back at her.

  “We are not Deveraux, or Cahors, or any other name belonging to a man,” said the voice. “We have moved beyond all that.”

  “Owen—”

  “The name you gave him.”

  She caught her breath. “Does he have another name? Do you know who his father is?”

  “That is for you to tell us. That is why we have brought you here. For confirmation.”

  “You…You think you know who it is,” she said slowly, as her heart pounded. She felt dizzy, a little sweaty. “Tell me.”

  There was silence. “You have been brought here because this child was not meant to be.”

  She was speechless. Terror ripped through her. They were going to hurt Owen.

  “Yes, yes, he was,” she blurted. “Of course he was.”

  “Then you have aided and abetted in altering the balance,” the voice said. “And for that crime you must pay.”

  Ise, Japan, 1281: Nicolette, Elijah, Louis, and Marie

  Kameyama, the great cloistered emperor of Japan, prostrated himself in the black robes of a Shinto priest, forehead to tatami mat. A table held the sacred shining Mirror of the Goddess Ameratsu, his patron and heavenly consort. He prayed to Her without words, for She knew his heart, and he would never be so disrespectful as to address Her directly, even though, once a year, they communed sensually and brought blessings on Japan.

  Outside the simple wooden shrine thousands of Kameyama’s subjects prayed as well. It was the most massive vigil ever held, and belief that Japan was divinely favored surged through the petitioners like a living being; for had not Ameratsu driven back their enemies seven years before, with bad weather?

  But this time there were one hundred forty thousand rampaging Mongols of the fearsome Kublai Khan, using new weapons and new battle tactics. With their four thousand four hundred ships, the barbarians fought not in the traditional Japanese way, one warrior targeting another, for honor and focus—but in enormous formations working together, like some strange superior being. The Japanese army fielded only forty thousand men, trained to respect the enemy in hand-to-hand combat—and they were dying for it. The sea surged red, with Japanese blood.

  Japan had been saved seven years before by violent sea storms that had sunk half the Mongol fleet. Surely such weather had been created by the great Goddess Ameratsu. Surely, if She heard the pleas of her devoted followers, she would create such a miracle once more. Thus, the days and nights and days became one long prayer, sent up to heaven with incense, bells, and chants.

  But the weather that day was fine, and the enemy was slaughtering Kameyama’s men up and down the coast. Mongol arrows and Mongol blades mowed down loyal samurai like rice seedlings. Kameyama feared that soon the Japanese enemies of the imperial family would also rise against the Chrysanthemum Throne, when it was weakest.

  And so, Kameyama prayed to his Goddess. And hidden in the shadows, the most powerful witch and warlock in the world worked to aid Ameratsu, in their own way. They were Nicolette of House Cahors, and her Deveraux husband, Elijah.

  Kameyama didn’t know everything about their magic powers, but he knew that Nicolette prayed to the Goddess, and Elijah worshipped the Horned God. Wind began to ripple like a river as the arcane words of the oldest language intermingled with Latin, Greek, and old French. He didn’t know their spells and incantations; they spoke to him in Japanese.

  The magical ones both wore formal black kimonos—they and their children, Marie and Louis—intertwined with crests of Pandion, the lady hawk, and Fantasme, the cruel hunter. There were also moons, for the Goddess, encircling the head of the Green Man like a halo of holiness. The blood of sacrifices sizzled onto white-hot charcoal simmering in black braziers, which Kameyama pretended not to know were there.

  Elijah and Nicolette conjured the elements. Both parents were quite aware that despite the love they bore for the children—and love was the force of light—their spells were curses, dark and deep. They willed evil weather into the world—fierce lightning, wild and divine wind; they wished for the deaths of thousands. Perhaps later Cahors or Deveraux would walk in the light. The times in which they lived brooked no mercy. Kameyama was their ally, if not their friend—witches and warlocks had no friends among the non-magical. In most fiefdoms and demesnes, those discovered practicing the air were torn to pieces with pincers, their eyes burned out of their sockets, their babes ripped living from the wombs of their mothers.

  Mercy was a dream promised by the Christian God, whose priests were the most merciless of all men. A dream promised, but forever denied—or so it seemed to those who did not worship Him.

  And so, Elijah and Nicolette poured all their energy into defeat of their enemies, into death and destruction. While Marie sucked her thumb and watched the dead animals on the braziers turn to charcoal and Louis tossed a rat’s skull from palm to palm like a juggler’s ball, their parents brought evil into the world.

  The sky began to howl, the wind to shriek. Nicolette heard the murmurs of the Japanese faithful outside the sacred shrine and wondered if they would begin to panic. Elijah was speaking words so evil that she wanted to cover their children’s ears. But in those days there was more power in evil than in good. Let those who had ears to hear…hear. It was their legacy. Their children would be even more powerful than Nicolette and Elijah were.

  A thunderclap split the sky, and lightning illuminated the room. Rain shot down like Mongol arrows, hard and cruel. Nicolette smiled and put her hand over her husband’s. It was done. She closed her eyes and saw the clouds and the currents switching places; Elijah lured chaos to come into the world, and to the Sea of Japan that licked the shore like a lover.

  The wife of Elijah Deveraux promised delight and joy to Pan if He would blow His essence into the typhoon. Before arriving in Japan, the family had gone to India, and Elijah had promised the same to the Goddess in Her incarnation as Kali, the Goddess of time and change. The Magnificent One promised a world that bowed to Cahors and Deveraux. There was no pairing more
deadly, no conjoined family more powerful. They were in thrall, lady to lord. Japan was nothing to them; they would travel back and forth in time and space, bending it to their will.

  “Maman, j’ai peur,” Marie whispered, tugging on the long sleeve of Nicolette’s kimono.

  “Fear is not for you. It is for them,” Nicolette said.

  Then the typhoon hit—a gale, a tsunami tidal wave of unimaginable fury. The elemental forces had been driven mad with magic, with demonic omnipotence. In a whiplash fury the shrine was gone, blasted into kindling; Kameyama’s shout was lost as Nicolette was whirled in a circle, crazily, tumbling heels over head. She screamed for her children, and Elijah, screamed over and over, and saw images—

  She saw a Cahors witch burned at the stake.

  She saw a woman drowning as a dam broke and flood waters tore apart a town.

  She saw a Deveraux man and a Cahors woman buried in a building as an earthquake shook it.

  And then time froze inside the whirlwind and everything halted. Nicolette was surrounded by cool, white ether as she sank slowly to a cold white marble floor. Then, as the mist thinned, she saw Elijah across the floor, but the children were nowhere to be seen.

  “Marie! Louis! Where are you? Elijah!”

  Nicolette tried to run to him, and found she could not. She was rooted to the spot. She screamed…but no sound came out of her mouth. Elijah’s dark eyes burned as his mouth worked. She could tell he was trying to free them both from whatever magic held them fast.

  The last of the roiling fog vanished. White columns rose high above her, disappearing into mist. Men and women with milky eyes sat on white marble thrones. They were draped in white robes, and she was afraid to look at them.

  “We summon thee, Cahors and Deveraux,” a voice said, although none of their mouths moved. “You destroy the balance. You affect time and space. This cannot be allowed.”

  What? Nicolette thought, still unable to speak aloud.

  “We are the Blind Justices. We preserve the balance between good and evil. And you are growing too strong. Cahors and Deveraux may not exist in harmony, or the world will cease to exist. Henceforth, let your Houses war against each other. Let them battle and plot. Where there was love, now there is murderous vendetta.”