Morrigan's Cross
Page 30

She had buried her mother that morning.
“They slaughtered her like a spring lamb.”
“I know your grief, child.”
Her bruised eyes stared hard through the rain. “Do the gods grieve, my lady?”
“I know your anger.”
“She harmed no one in her life. What manner of death is that for one who was so good, so kind?” Moira’s hands bunched at her sides. “You cannot know my grief or my anger.”
“Others will die even a worse death. Will you stand and do nothing?”
“What can I do? How do we defend against such creatures? Will you give me more power?” Moira held out her hands, hands that had never felt so small and empty. “More wisdom and cunning? What I have isn’t enough.”
“You’ve been given all you need. Use it, hone it. There are others, and they wait for you. You must leave now, today.”
“Leave?” Stunned, Moira turned to face the goddess. “My people have lost their queen. How can I leave them, and how could you ask it of me? The test must be taken; the gods themselves deemed this so. If I’m not to be the one to stand in my mother’s stead, take sword and crown, I still must bide here, to help the one who does.”
“You help by going, and this the gods deem so. This is your charge, Moira of Geall. To travel from this world so you might save it.”
“You would have me leave my home, my people, and on such a day? The flowers have not yet faded on my mother’s grave.”
“Would your mother wish you to stand and weep for her and watch your people die?”
“No.”
“You must go, you and the one you trust most. Travel to the Dance of the Gods. There I will give you a key, and it will take you where you need to go. Find the others, form your army. And when you come here, to this land, on Samhain, you’ll fight.”
Fight, she thought. She had never been called to fight, had only known peace. “My lady, am I not needed here?”
“You will be. I tell you to go now where you’re needed now. If you stay, you’re lost. And your land is lost, as the worlds are. This was destined for you since before your birth. It is why you are.
“Go immediately. Make haste. They only wait for sunset.”
Her mother’s grave was here, Moira thought in despair. Her life was here, and all she knew. “I’m in mourning. A few days more, Mother, I beg you.”
“Stay even one day longer, and this is what befalls your people, your land.”
Morrigan waved an arm, parting the mists. Beyond them it was black night with only the silver ripple of light from the cold moon. Screams ripped through the air. Then there was smoke, and the shimmering orange glow of fires.
Moira saw the village overlooked by her own home. The shops and cottages were burning, and those screams were the screams of her friends, her neighbors. Men and women ripped to pieces, children being fed on by those horrible things that had taken her mother.
She watched her own uncle fight, slashing with his sword while blood stained his face and hands. But they leaped on him from above, from below, those creatures with fangs and eyes of feral red. They fell on him with howls that froze her bones. And while the blood washed the ground, a woman of great beauty glided over it. She wore red, a silk gown tightly laced at the bodice and bedecked with jewels. Her hair was uncovered and spilled gold as sunlight over her white shoulders.
In her arms was a babe still swaddled.
While the slaughter raged around her, the thing of great beauty bared fangs, and sank them into the babe’s throat.
“No!”
“Hold your grief and your anger here, and this will come.” The cold anger in Morrigan’s voice pierced through Moira’s terror. “All you know destroyed, ravaged, devoured.”
“What are these demons? What hell loosed them on us?”
“Learn. Take what you have, what you are, and seek your destiny. The battle will come. Arm yourself.”
She woke beside her mother’s grave, shaking from the horrors she’d seen. Her heart was as heavy as the stones used to make her mother’s cairn.
“I couldn’t save you. How can I save anyone? How can I stop this thing from coming here?”
To leave all she’d ever known, all she’d ever loved. Easy for gods to speak of destiny, she thought as she forced herself to her feet. She looked over the graves to the quiet green hills, the blue ribbon of the river. The sun was high and bright, sparkling over her world. She heard the song of a lark, and the distant lowing of cattle.
The gods had smiled on this land for hundreds of years. Now there was a price to be paid, of war and death and blood. And her duty to pay it.
“I’ll miss you, every day,” she said aloud, then looked over to her father’s grave. “But now you’re together. I’ll do what needs to be done, to protect Geall. Because I’m all that’s left of you. I swear it here, on this holy ground before those who made me. I’ll go to strangers in a strange world, and give my life if my life is asked. It’s all I can give you now.”
She picked up the flowers she’d brought with her, and laid some on each grave. “Help me do this thing,” she pleaded, then walked away.
He was waiting for her on the stone wall. He had his own grief, she knew, but had given her the time she’d needed alone. He was the one she trusted most. The son of her mother’s brother—the uncle she’d seen cut down in the vision.
He jumped lightly to his feet when she approached, and simply held open his arms. Going into them, she rested her head on his chest. “Larkin.”
“We’ll hunt them. We’ll find them and kill them. Whatever they are.”
“I know what they are, and we will find them, kill them. But not here. Not now.” She drew back. “Morrigan came to me, and told me what must be done.”
“Morrigan?”
At the suspicion on his face she was able to smile a little. “I’ll never understand how someone with your skills doubts the gods.” She lifted a hand to his cheek. “But will you trust me?”
He framed her face, kissed her forehead. “You know I will.”
As she told him what she’d been told, his face changed again. He sat on the ground, shoving a hand through his mane of tawny hair. She’d envied his hair as long as she’d lived, mourning the fact that she’d been given ordinary brown. His eyes were tawny as well, gilded she’d always thought, while hers were gray as rain.