Valley of Silence (12 page)

“You pledged yourself to me.”

“My body. And you've had good use of it.” He belted on his robes as he rose. “I would have kept you as mistress, happily. But I have no time or patience for ridiculous demands from a temple harlot.”

“Harlot.” The angry flush drained, leaving her face white as the marble columns on the hillside. “You took my innocence.”

“You gave it.”

“You can't mean these things.” She knelt, clasping her hands like a woman at prayer. “You're angry because I pushed you. We'll speak no more of it tonight. We'll swim, as you said and forget all these hard words.”

“It's too late for that. Do you think I can't read what's in your mind now? You'll nag me to death over what can never be. Just as well. We've challenged the gods long enough.”

“You can't mean to leave me. I love you. If you leave me, I'll go to your family. I'll tell—”

“Speak of this, and I'll swear you lie. You'll burn for it, Lilia.” He bent down, ran a finger over the curve of her shoulder. “And your skin is too soft, too sweet for the fire.”

“Don't, don't turn from me. It will all be as you say, as you like. I'll never speak of leaving again. Don't leave me.”

“Begging only spoils your beauty.”

She called out to him in shock, in terrible grief, but he strode away as if he couldn't hear her.

She threw herself down on the blanket, wildly weeping, pounding her fists. The pain of it was like the fire he'd spoken of, burning through her so that her bones seemed to turn to ash. How could she live with the pain?

Love had betrayed her, and used her and cast her aside. Love had made her a fool. And still her heart was full of it.

She would cast herself into the sea and drown. She would climb to the top of the temple and fling herself off. She would simply die here, from the shame and the pain.

“Kill him first,” she choked out as she raged. “I'll kill him first, then myself. Blood, his and mine together. That is the price of love and betrayal.”

She heard a movement, just a whisper on the sand, and flung herself up with the joy. He'd come back to her! “My love.”

“Yes. I will be.”

His hair was black, flowing past his shoulders. He wore long robes the color of the night. His eyes were the same, so black they seemed to shine.

She grabbed up her toga, held it to her breasts. “I am a priestess of this temple. You have no leave to walk here.”

“I walk where I will. So young,” he murmured as those black eyes traveled over her. “So fresh.”

“You will leave here.”

“In my time. I've watched you these past three nights, Lilia, you and the boy you waste yourself on.”

“How dare you.”

“You gave him love, he gave you lies. Both are precious. Tell me, how would you like to repay him for his gift to you?”

She felt something stir in her, the first juices of vengeance. “He deserves nothing from me, neither he nor any man.”

“How true. So you'll give to me what no man deserves.”

Fear rushed in, and she ran with it. But somehow he was standing in front of her, smiling that cold smile.

“What are you?”

“Ah, insight. I knew I'd chosen well. I am what was before your weak and rutting gods were belched out of the heavens.”

She ran again, a scream locked in her throat. But he was there, blocking her way. Her fear had jumped to terror. “It's death to touch a temple priestess.”

“And death is such a fascinating beginning. I seek a companion, a lover, a woman, a student. You are she. I have a gift for you, Lilia.”

This time when she ran, he laughed. Laughed still when he plucked her off her feet, tossed her sobbing to the ground.

She fought, scratching, biting, begging, but he was too strong. Now it was his mouth on her breast, and she wept with the shame of it even as she raked her nails down his cheek.

“Yes. Yes. It's better when they fight. You'll learn. Their fear is perfume; their screams music.” He caught her face in his hand, forced her to look at him.

“Now, into my eyes. Into them.”

He drove himself into her. Her body shuddered, quaked, bucked, from the shock. And the unspeakable thrill.

“Did he take you so high?”

“No. No.” The tears began to dry on her cheeks. Instead of clawing, beating, her hands dug into the sand searching for purchase. Trapped in his eyes, her body began to move with his.

“Take more. You want more,” he said. “Pain is so…arousing.”

He plunged harder, so deep she feared she might rend in two. But still her body matched his pace, still her eyes were trapped by his.

When his went red, her heart leaped with fresh fear, and yet that fear was squeezed in a fist of terrible excitement. He was so beautiful. Her human lover pale beside this dark, damning beauty.

“I give you the instrument of your revenge. I give you your beginning. You have only to ask me for it. Ask me for my gift.”

“Yes. Give me your gift. Give me revenge. Give me—”

Her body convulsed when his fangs struck. And every pleasure she had known or imagined diminished beside what rushed into her. Here, here was the glory she'd never found in the temple, the burgeoning black power she'd always known stretched just beyond her fingertips.

Here was the forbidden she'd longed for.

It was she, writhing in that pleasure and power, that brought him to climax. And she, without being told, reared up to drink the blood she'd scored from his cheek.

Smiling through bloody lips, she died.

And woke in her bed two thousand years after the dream.

Her body felt bruised, tender, her mind muddled. Where was the sea? Where was the temple?

“Cirio?”

“A romantic? Who would have guessed.” Cian stepped out of the shadows. “To call out for the lover who spurned and betrayed you.”

“Jarl?” It was the name she'd called her maker. But as dream separated from reality, she saw it was Cian. “So, you've come after all. My offer…” But it wasn't quite clear.

“What became of the boy?” As if settling in for a cozy chat, Cian sat on the side of the bed.

“What boy? Davey?”

“No, no, not the whelp you made. Your lover, the one you had in life.”

Her lips trembled as she understood. “So you toy with my dreams? What does that matter to me?” But she was shaken, down to the pit of her. “He was called Cirio. What do you think became of him?”

“I think your master arranged for him to be your first kill.”

She smiled with one of her sweetest memories. “He pissed himself as Jarl held him out to me, and he sniveled like a child as he begged for his life. I was new, and still had the control to keep him alive for hours—long after he begged for his death. I'll do better with you. I'll give you years of pain.”

She swiped out, cursed when her raking nails passed through him.

“Entertaining, isn't it? And Jarl? How long before you did for him.”

She sat back, sulking a little. Then shrugged. “Nearly three hundred years. I had a lot to learn from him. He began to fear me because my power grew and grew. I could smell his fear of me. He would have ended me, if I hadn't ended him first.”

“You were called Lilia—Lily.”

“The pitiful human I was, yes. He named me Lilith when I woke.” She twirled a lock of her hair around her finger as she studied Cian. “Do you have some foolish hope that by learning my beginning you'll find my end?”

She tossed the covers aside, rose to walk naked to a silver pitcher.

When she poured the blood into a cup, her hands trembled again.

“Let's speak frankly here,” Cian suggested. “It's only you and I—which is odd. You don't sleep with Lora or the boy, or some other choice today?”

“Even I, occasionally, seek solitude.”

“All right. So, to be frank. It's strange, isn't it, disorienting, to go back even in dreams to human? To see your own end, own beginning as if it just happened. To feel human again, or as best we can remember it feels to be human.”

Almost as an afterthought, she shrugged into a robe. “I would go back to being human.”

His brows lifted. “You? Now you surprise me.”

“To have that moment of death and rebirth. The wonderful, staggering thrill of it. I'd go back to being weak and blind, just to experience the gift again.”

“Of course. You remain predictable.” He got to his feet. “Know this. If you and your wizard steer my dreams again, I'll return the favor, threefold. You'll have no rest from me, or from yourself.”

He faded away, but he didn't go back. Though he could feel the tugs from Moira's mind, from Glenna's will, he lingered.

He wanted to see what Lilith would do next.

She heaved the cup and what was left of the blood in it against the wall. She smashed a trinket box, pounded holes into the wall with her fists until they bled.

Then she screamed for a guard.

“Bring that worthless wizard to me. Bring him in chains. Bring him—No, wait. Wait.” She turned away in an obvious fight for control. “I'll kill him if he crosses paths with me now, then what good will he be to me? Bring me someone to eat.”

She whirled back. “A male. Young. Twenty or so. Blond if we have one. Go!”

Alone, she rubbed her temple. “I'll kill him again,” she murmured. “I'll feel better then. I'll call him Cirio, and kill him again.”

She snatched her precious mirror from the bureau. And seeing her own face reminded her why she would keep Midir alive. He'd given her this gift.

“There I am,” she said softly. “So beautiful. The moon pales, yes, yes, it does. I'm right here. I'll always be here. The rest is ghosts. And here I am.”

Picking up a brush, she began to groom her hair, and to sing. With tears in her eyes.

 

“D
rink this.” Glenna pushed a cup to Cian's lips,
and immediately had it pushed aside.

“I'm fine. I'm not after drinking whiskey, or swooning on you without it.”

“You're pale.”

His lips quirked. “Part of the whole undead package. Well. That was quite a ride.”

Since he refused it, Glenna took a sip of the whiskey herself, then passed it off to Moira. “E-ticket. She didn't sense us,” she said to Moira. “I'd like to think my blocks and binding were enough, but I think, in large part, she was just too caught up to feel us.”

“She was so young.” Moira sat now. “So young, and in love with that worthless prick of a man. I don't know what language they were speaking. I could understand her, strangely enough, but I didn't know the tongue.”

“Greek. She started out a priestess for some goddess. Virginity's part of the job description.” Cian wished for blood, settled for water. “And save your pity. She was ripe for what happened.”

“As you were?” Moira shot back. “And don't pretend you felt nothing for her. We were linked. I felt your pity. Her heart was broken, and moments later, she's raped and taken by a demon. I can despise what Lilith is and feel pity for Lilia.”

“Lilia was already half mad,” he said flatly. “Maybe the change is what kept her relatively sane all this time.”

“I agree. I'm sorry,” Glenna said to Moira. “And I got no pleasure out of seeing what happened to her. But there was something in her eyes, in her tone—and God, in the way she ultimately responded to Jarl. She wasn't quite right, Moira, even then.”

“Then she might have died by her own hand, or been executed for killing the man who used her. But she'd have died clean.” She sighed. “And we might not be here, discussing the matter. It all gives you a headache if you think about it hard enough. I have a delicate question, which is more for my own curiosity than anything else.”

She cleared her throat before asking Cian. “How she responded, as Glenna said. Is that not usual?”

“Most fight, or freeze with fear. She, on the other hand, participated after the…delicacy escapes me,” Cian admitted. “After she began to feel pleasure from the rape. It was rape, no mistake, and no sane woman gains pleasure from being brutalized and forced.”

“She was already his before the bite,” Moira murmured. “He knew she would be, recognized that in her. She knew what to do to change—to drink from him. Everything I've read has claimed the victim must be forced or told. It must be offered. She took. She understood, and she wanted.”

“We know more than we did, which is always useful,” Cian commented. “And the episode unnerved her, an added benefit. I'll sleep better having accomplished that. Now it's past my bedtime. Ladies.”

Moira watched him go. “He feels. Why do you think he goes to such lengths to pretend he doesn't?”

“Feelings cause pain, a great deal of the time. I think when you've seen and done so much, feelings could be like a constant ache.” Glenna laid a hand on Moira's shoulder. “Denial is just another form of survival.”

“Feelings loosed can be either balm or weapon.”

What would his be, she wondered, if fully freed?

T
he rain slid into a soggy twilight that curled a
smoky fog low over the ground. As night crept in, no moon, no stars could break through the gloom.

Moira waded through the river of fog over the courtyard to stand beside Glenna.

“They're nearly home,” Glenna murmured. “Later than we'd hoped, but nearly home.”

“I've had the fires lit in your room and Larkin's, and baths are being prepared. They'll be cold and wet.”

“Thanks. I didn't think of it.”

“When we were in Ireland, you thought of all the comfort details. Now it's for me.” Like Glenna, Moira watched the skies. “I've ordered food for the family parlor, unless you'd rather be private with Hoyt.”

“No. No. They'll want to report everything at once. Then we'll be private.” She lifted her hand to grip her cross and the amulet she wore with it. “I didn't know I'd be so worried. We've been in the middle of a fight, outnumbered, and I haven't obsessed like this.”

“Because you were with him. To love and to wait is worse than a wound.”

“One of the lessons I've learned. There have been so many of them. You'd be worried about Larkin, I know. And about Tynan now. He has feelings for you.”

Moira understood Glenna didn't mean Larkin. “I know. Our mothers hoped we might make a match of it.”

“But?”

“Whatever needs to be there isn't there for me. And he's too much a friend. Maybe having no lover to wait for, no lover to lose, makes it easier for me to bear all of this.”

Glenna waited a beat. “But.”

“But,” Moira said with a half laugh. “I envy you the torture of waiting for yours.”

From where she stood Moira saw Cian, the shape of him coming through the gloom. From the stables, she noted. Rather than the cloak the men of Geall would wear against the chill and rain, he wore a coat similar to Blair's. Long and black and leather.

It billowed in the mists as he crossed to them with barely a sound of his boots against the wet stones.

“They won't come any sooner for you standing in the damp,” he commented.

“They're nearly home.” Glenna stared up at the sky as if she could will it to open and send Hoyt down to her. “He'll know I'm waiting.”

“If you were waiting for me, Red, I wouldn't have left in the first place.”

With a smile, she tipped her head so it leaned against his shoulder. When he put his arm around Glenna, Moira saw in the gesture the same affection she herself had with Larkin, the kind that came from the heart, through family.

“There,” Cian said softly. “Dead east.”

“You see them?” Glenna strained forward. “You can see them?”

“Give it a minute, and so will you.”

The moment she did, her hand squeezed Moira's. “Thank God. Oh, thank God.”

The dragon soared through the thick air, a glimmer of gold with riders on its back. Even as it touched down, Glenna was sprinting over the stones. When he dismounted, Hoyt's arms opened to catch her.

“That's lovely to see.” Moira spoke quietly as Hoyt and Glenna embraced. “So many said goodbye today, and will tomorrow. It's lovely to see someone come home to waiting arms.”

“Before her, he'd most often prefer coming back to solitude. Women change things.”

She glanced up at him. “Only women?”

“People then. But women? They alter universes just by being women.”

“For better or worse?”

“Depends on the woman, doesn't it?”

“And the prize, or the man, she's set her sights on.” With this, she left his side to rush toward Larkin.

Despite the fact that he was dripping, she hugged him hard. “I have food, drink, hot water, all you could wish. I'm so glad to see you. All of you.” But when she would have turned from Larkin to welcome the others, he gripped her hard.

Moira felt her relief spin on its head to fear.

“What? What happened?”

“We should go in.” Hoyt's voice was quiet, and tight. “We should go in out of the wet.”

“Tell me what happened.” Moira drew away from Larkin.

“Tynan's troop was set upon, at the near halfway point.”

She felt everything inside her freeze. “Oran. Tynan.”

“Alive. Tynan was injured, but not seriously. Six others…”

She took Larkin's arm, digging her fingers in. “Dead or captured?”

“Five dead, one taken. Several others wounded, two badly. We did what we could for them.”

The cold remained, like ice over her heart. “You have the names? The dead, the wounded, and the other?”

“We have them, yes. Moira, it was young Sean taken. The smithy's son.”

Her belly twisted with the knowledge that what the boy faced would be worse than death. “I'll speak to their families. Say nothing to anyone until I've spoken to their families.”

“I'll go with you.”

“No. No, this is for me. You need to get dry and warm, and fed. It's for me to do, Larkin. It's my place.”

“We wrote down the names.” Blair took a scrap of paper out of her pocket. “I'm sorry, Moira.”

“We knew this would come.” She slipped the paper inside her cloak, out of the wet. “I'll come to the parlor as soon as I'm able, so you can tell me the details of it. For now, the families need to hear this from me.”

“Lot of weight,” Blair declared when Moira walked away.

“She'll bear it.” Cian looked after her. “It's what queens do.”

 

S
he thought it would crush her, but she did bear it
. While mothers and wives wept in her arms, she took the weight. She knew nothing of the attack, but told each and every one their son or husband or brother had died bravely, died a hero.

It was what needed to be said.

It was worse with Sean's parents, worse to see the hope in the blacksmith's eyes, the tears of that hope blurring his wife's. She couldn't bring herself to snuff it out, so left them with it, with the prayers that their son would somehow escape and return home.

When it was done, she went to her rooms to put the names into a painted box she would keep now beside her bed. There would be other lists, she knew. This was only the first. And every name of every one who gave his or her life would be written down, and kept in that box.

With it, she put a sprig of rosemary for remembrance, and a coin for tribute.

After closing the box, she buried her need for solitude, for grieving, and went to the parlor to hear how it had been done.

Conversation stopped when she entered, and Larkin rose quickly.

“My father has just left us. I'll go bring him back if you like.”

“No, no. Let him be with your mother, your sister.” Moira knew her pregnant cousin's husband was to lead tomorrow's troop.

“I'll warm you some food. No, you will eat,” Glenna said even as Moira opened her mouth. “Consider it medicine, but you'll eat.”

While Glenna put food on a plate, Cian poured a stiff dose of apple brandy into a cup. He took it to her. “Drink this first. You're white as wax.”

“With this I'll have color, and a swimming head.” But she shrugged, tossed it back like water.

“Have to admire a woman who can take a slug like that.” Impressed, he took the empty glass, then went back to sit.

“It was horrible. At least I can admit that here, to all of you. It was horrible.” Moira sat down at the table, then pressed her hands to her temples. “To look into their faces and see the change, and know they'll forever be changed because of what you've brought to them. To what's been taken from them.”

“You didn't bring it.” Anger lashed in Glenna's voice as she slapped a plate down in front of Moira. “You didn't take it.”

“I didn't mean the war, or the death. But the news of it. The hardest was the one who was taken prisoner. The smithy's boy, Sean. His parents still have hope. How could I tell them he's worse than dead? I couldn't cut that last thread of hope, and wonder if it would be kinder if I had.”

She let out a breath, then straightened. Glenna was right, she would eat. “Tell me what you know.”

“They were in the ground,” Hoyt began, “as they were when they set upon Blair. Tynan said no more than fifty, but the men were taken by surprise. He told us it seemed they didn't care if they were cut down, but charged and fought like mad animals. Two of our men fell in the first instant, and they gained three horses from us in the confusion of the battle.”

“Nearly a third of the horses that went with them.”

“Four, maybe five of them took the smithy's son, alive from what those who tried to save him said. They took him off, heading east, while the rest held their line and battled back. They killed more than twenty, and the others scattered and ran as the tide turned.”

“It was a victory. You have to look at it that way,” Blair insisted. “You have to. Your men took out over twenty vamps on their first engagement. Your casualties were light in comparison. Don't say every death is one too many,” she added quickly. “I know that. But this is the reality of it. Their training held up.”

“I know you're right, and I've already told myself the same. But it was their victory, too. They wanted a prisoner. No reason else to take one. Their mission must have been to take one alive, whatever the cost of it.”

“You're right, no argument. But I don't see that as a victory in their column. It was stupid, and it was a waste. Say five for the prisoner. Those vamps had stayed and fought, they'd have taken more of ours—alive or dead. My take is that Lilith ordered this because she was feeling pissy, or it was impulse. But it was also bad strategy.”

Moira ate food she couldn't taste while she considered it. “The way she sent King back to us. It was petty, and vicious. But playful in her way. She thinks these things will undermine us, crush our spirits. How can she know us so little? You've lived half her time,” she said to Cian. “You know better.”

“I find humans interesting. She finds them…tasty at best. You don't have to know the mind of a cow to herd them up for steaks.”

“Especially if you've got a whole gang to handle the roping and riding,” Blair put in. “Just following your metaphor,” she said to Cian. “I hurt her girl, so she needs some payback for that. We took three of her bases—should add we cleared out the second two locations this morning.”

“They were empty,” Larkin stated. “She hadn't bothered to set traps there, or base any of her troops. Added to that, Glenna told us how you played with her while we were gone.”

“Sum of it is, this was tit for tat. But she loses more than we do. Doesn't make it any easier on the families of the dead,” Blair added.

“And tomorrow, I send more out. Phelan.” Moira reached out for Larkin. “I can't hold him back. I'll speak to Sinann, but—”

“No, that's for me. I expect our father has already talked to her, but I'll see her myself.”

She nodded. “And Tynan? His wounds?”

“A gash along the hip. Hoyt treated the wounded. He was doing well when we left them. They're secured for the night.”

“Well then. We'll pray for sun in the morning.”

 

S
he had another duty to see to
.

Her women had a sitting room near her own chambers where they could sit and read, or do needlework, or gossip. Moira's mother had made it a cheerful, intensely female space with soft fabrics, many cushions, pots filled with flowering plants.

The fire here was habitually of apple wood for the scent, and there were wall sconces of pretty winged faeries.

When she was crowned, Moira had given her own women leave to make any changes they liked. But the room remained as it had in all her memory.

Her women were there now, waiting for her to retire for the night, or simply dismiss them.

They rose when she entered, and curtseyed.

“We're all women here now. For now, in this place, we're all only women.” She opened her arms to Ceara.

“Oh, my lady.” Ceara's eyes, already red and swollen from weeping overflowed as she rushed into Moira's embrace. “Dwyn is dead. My brother is dead.”

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Here now, here.” She led Ceara to a seat, holding her close. And she wept with her as she'd wept with Ceara's mother, and all the others.

“They buried him there, in a field by the road. They couldn't even bring him home. He had no wake.”

“We'll have a holy man consecrate the ground. And we'll build a monument to those who fell today.”

“He was eager to go, to fight. He turned and waved at me before he marched off.”

“You'll have some tea now.” Her own eyes red from weeping, Isleen set the pot down. “You'll have some tea, Ceara, and you, my lady.”

“Thank you.” Ceara mopped at her damp face. “I don't know what I'd have done these past hours without Isleen and Dervil.”

“It's good that you have your friends. But you'll have your tea, then you'll go to your family. You'll need your family now. You have my leave for as long as you want it.”

“There's something more I want, Your Majesty. Something I ask you to give me, in my brother's name.”

Moira waited, but Ceara said nothing more. “Would you ask me to give you my word on something without knowing what I promise?”

“My husband marches tomorrow.”

Moira felt her stomach sink. “Ceara.” She reached over, smoothed a hand on Ceara's hair. “Sinann's husband marches with the sunrise as well. She carries her third child, and still I can't spare her from his leaving.”

“I don't ask you to spare me. I ask you allow me to march with him.”

“To—” Stunned, Moira sat back. “Ceara, your children.”