Belladonna (29 page)

Michael denied the words with all his will, but the truth of it clanged through him like alarm bells shattering a peaceful morning.

No,
he thought, struggling to breathe.
Glorianna is the key to finding the Warrior of Light, but she isn't the Warrior.

"I remember now," Caitlin said loudly. "The Warrior of Light must drink from the Dark Cup."

Michael flinched, remembering the day he'd gone searching for Caitlin and found her sitting in the attic with the book open in her lap, crying for the woman in the story. Had she been old enough to understand the full tragedy of the tale?

My heart's hope lies with Belladonna. She can't be the Warrior of Light. Can't be. Lady of Light, please let it be someone else.

"What did you say?" Glorianna asked sharply, hurrying those last steps to reach them. She stared at Caitlin. "The Warrior of Light must drink from the Dark Cup. Isn't that what you said?"

Michael felt a wind blow through him. Felt Caitlin shudder in response to the force of it. Saw Lee tense and lean as if to bend with it. And saw Glorianna Belladonna standing before him — face cold, green eyes wild, a flame in the Dark. A flame that would destroy everything in its path. Then the moment passed, and he wondered if he'd just imagined that wind blowing through him —

until he looked at Caitlin and saw the same conflict in her face.

He had imagined nothing. Something
had
happened. The world had changed, and nothing would be the same for any of them because he was standing in a garden in a part of the world he hadn't known existed, looking at a woman who was the living version of an ancient tale that was part of his family's legacy. On his ninth birthday, his father, Devyn, had taken him up to the attic and showed him the box of books that held the old stories.

"I've little enough to give you, Michael," Devyn said, resting t hand on the box he'd taken out of a specially made cupboard

"There's this cottage, but it's usually passed on through the female side of our family line. Since it came to me, I guess there are no
others anymore who can lay claim to it. But this is just a place, boy. Just wood and stone. And if you have to leave it, let it ff without
regrets. But this..." He stroked the wood. "What's in here is your real heritage."

Devyn opened the box and took out a book. He set it on Michael's lap, then opened it.

After turning a few pages to try to understand why this book was so important, Michael looked up at his father, puzzled.

"They're just stories."

"Aye. To most of the world, they're just stories, and you've heard them told here and there, since they've been spread across
the land over the years. But the stories in that book you're holding and the ones still in the box ... Our family's history is hidden in
those stories. The heart of it, anyway, if not the ordinary truth of it. Do you know the story about the Door of Locks? Well, it's like
that, you see." Devyn tapped a finger on the book. "We've got all the locks, but someone along the way we lost the key that would
show us how they work."

Michael took a long swallow of koffee to ease the sudden dryness in his throat. He had found a key of sorts, because he had the feeling that Glorianna would understand his family stories better than he did. But he wasn't sure he wanted her to know those stories. Ht wasn't sure he wanted her to be anything other than the woman he'd seen in the Den last night — vibrant, alive, and smoldering with sexual energy.

If he didn't give her the stories, he might be able to keep the woman who was Glorianna.

In order to survive, the world would need the warrior called Belladonna.

Michael looked at Glorianna and knew she would never forgive him if he withheld the answers that would help her fight the Destroyer of Light. Even so, he would hide one story for as long as he could. But the other ...

He cleared his throat to catch the attention of the people around him. "Before we get on with this journey, I'd like to tell you a story that's been in my family for a good many years."

*

"I'm sorry it upset you," Michael said as he caught up to her, "and I won't pretend to know why it did. It was just a story, Glorianna."

She stopped and faced him. Conflicts smashed inside her, like a stormy battle between sea and shore, revealing things she hadn't known she was feeling until Michael had told them that story.

"You don't know!" she shouted.

"Women have been saying that to men since the beginning of time, so is there something in particular that I should be knowing?"

She heard amusement in his voice, but it was the sadness in his eyes that made her bite her tongue to hold the words back, to hold the feelings back just long enough to shape a command.
Ephemera, hear me. These words, these feelings, are just storms
passing through the hearts that are present. They change nothing.

Having done that much to protect her island, she flung at Michael all the turmoil inside her. "You tell me a story that's been handed down in your family, but you have no sense of what it means."

"That's right. I don't know what it means. I don't have the answer."

"You
are
the answer! Luck-bringer. Ill-wisher. Magician. You dress it up as a story with spirits and magic hills — which, considering the lineage of the Guardians and Guides, isn't dressing things up so much. But you're the spirit in the story, Michael."

She saw the shock in his eyes and knew she'd hit him with a big enough bit of truth, but she couldn't stop. "You're the one who helps people use the key inside themselves to open the Door of Locks — to take the next step in their life journey. To cross over to another landscape."

"How?" he demanded. "How can I help them cross over to something I didn't know existed?"

"I don't know! Your landscapes aren't broken!" She rammed her fingers into her hair, pushing and pushing as if she intended to shove her fingers through her skull and pull out the thoughts that plagued her now. Especially the one that made her hurt inside so much.

"Your landscapes aren't broken," she said again, feeling something squeezing her heart at the same time it was pushing at her ribs so hard she wouldn't be surprised to feel bone break. "When the Eater of the World attacked the Landscapers' school arid killed all the Landscapers who were there, Mother and I were afraid we were the only ones left. And we could only tend the landscapes that resonated with us, so that left so much of the world unprotected. But we hoped there would be others like us in parts of the world that had been less shattered — and there are. You. Caitlin. There must be others as well, not just in Elandar but in other pieces of the world. But you don't remember what you are. You don't remember why you're needed. And — " A sob broke through her punishing effort to hold it back.

Michael moved closer. "Say it," he said quietly. "Get the rest of it out."

"Your world isn't broken." The tears fell now, hot and fierce. "The Guides of the Heart shattered the world — broke it and broke it and broke it again until they were able to isolate the Eater of the World in one of those broken pieces and build a cage that would contain It. But they couldn't leave that place unprotected, not with the Dark Guides hiding somewhere, and the power within them changed, got divided between the men and women somehow. They couldn't leave that place. They couldn't go home."

Her voice changed to a harsh whisper. "I have lived on that battleground my whole life. Lee, my mother, all of us here have lived on the s-scars of a war, and we're reminded every day of what it cost to stop the Eater of the World."

"And the rest of us only know it as a story," Michael said.

She fisted her hands in his shirt, desperate to make him understand. "They broke the world, and they broke something in themselves by doing it. But your part of the world is whole and your gift is whole, and I don't know how your part of Ephemera works. The Eater of the World is out there, Michael. It's out there with no boundaries to stop It and no one who will recognize the signs of Its presence and It can go where I can't follow because
my
world is bound by my landscapes and if I can't stop It the Eater will change the world into a dark and terrible place and It can go
anywhere
now and I'm tired of living on a battleground and I'm tired of being alone and I —"

A storm of feelings broke inside her, and all the words were swept away.

There were some kinds of tears a man could accept easily enough, even be amused by in an affectionate way, but when a strong woman broke enough to reveal her pain, those tears were a fearsome thing to behold And seeing the shock and confusion on Lee's face was enough confirmation that the woman weeping in his arms rarely broke enough to cry, even in private.

A look at Caitlin was all it took to have the girl linking arms with Lee to draw him away.

"Cry it out, darling," Michael said as he shifted slightly to settle Glorianna more firmly against him. "Just cry it out. You'll feel better for it."

I
have lived on that battleground my whole life.

What must it be like to grow up in such a place, where you and everyone you loved was dependent on the caprice of the world? But it wasn't the world, was it? It was the heart that made things, changed things.

"I've got you, darling," he murmured as one hand moved over her back in comforting circles. "We'll learn from each other, Glorianna Belladonna, and we'll find a way to do right by the world."
And you don't have to be alone now.

He felt her body tighten, felt her pushing against his chest in order to step away, get away, escape from the knowledge that she had shown a man she barely knew emotions she had kept hidden from her family.

"I have to wash my face," she said, sniffling. "I can't go to a landscape looking like this."

He let her go, watched her run to the house. Even with her brother here, she wouldn't leave without them. He didn't think she would leave anyone, even kin, alone on this island. Not when that walled garden held the lives of so many.

"I've never heard her cry like that," Lee said, coming up beside him. "I don't think she
has
cried like that."

"She's cried like that before," Michael said quietly. "But I'm thinking it's the first time she's let anyone witness the tears."

"Maybe." Lee stared at Michael, and the bewilderment of dealing with Glorianna's tears gave way to a steely resolve. "She's not like the other Landscapers. She's more, and she was declared rogue because of it. Even now, with the world crashing down around us, the other Landscapers who survived won't acknowledge her."

"And you're saying that if Caitlin and I learn from Glorianna, we'll be tarred with the same brush?"

"That's what I'm saying."

Michael looked at Caitlin, who was hovering nearby, and thought about a young girl shunned by the other children, a young girl who had found something far more wondrous than she knew when she had discovered Darling's Garden. And he thought about himself and his desire to hear the music in one woman's heart rather than experience the bodies of many.

"Well, then," he said. "Since I've never enjoyed dealing with fools, it's lucky for me that I met up with you first," He hesitated, remembering what Nathan had told him just before that monster rose from the sea. "Lee, if it can be done, I'm thinking it would be better to go to Raven's Hill first. I'd like to check on my aunt, who was injured in a fire, and see the cottage to find out if anything remains."
Like a box of books that might provide some answers.

"Does your village have a beach?"

"Aye. Nothing grand, mind you, but enough of one for those who want to wade in the sea or look for shells."

Lee nodded and looked at Caitlin. "Then I think we have a way to get to your village."

F
or the second time in an hour, Glorianna stepped off Lee's island. But this time she stood on a beach that wasn't hers in a place that wasn't anywhere she knew. Not a comfortable place. Not a landscape that held a companionable resonance like she felt when she visited one of her mother's landscapes. She couldn't have reached this village by crossing a bridge. Her heart wouldn't have recognized this place.

Which made no sense since this was Caitlin's home landscape, and the girl's resonance fit in just fine with hers and Nadia's.

Caitlin doesn't belong here either,
Glorianna thought as the currents of power lapped around her like the waves lapped the beach.
She's a dissonance and ... someone else is the bedrock. Someone's heart anchors Raven's Hill
against
the influence of a
Landscaper.

She felt Caitlin come up beside her, heard Michael and Lee step off the island, but didn't turn her head to look at any of them.

How did one explain the delicate and courageous act of relinquishing a landscape to someone who hadn't known there
were
landscapes until a few days ago? And it would have to be done with care since the Eater of the World already had some hold on this village.