Mystic Warrior (3 page)

The thieves stumbled hastily backward, their gazes widening at the costly sword and rapier being brandished in their faces. Although the Revolutionary army was so poorly supported that they wore whatever uniform they could find, men saw what they wanted to see, and these men saw authority. To be fair, they lacked any knowledge of Murdoch's homeland, so they could not grasp his gift for illusion or his powers—despite his swift, nearly invisible leap.

Murdoch sensed four other scoundrels hiding behind the hedgerow, their murderous intent clear even to his less-than-perfect ability to read their puny minds. He casually tossed his weapons from hand to hand, letting his fury build while assessing his foes.

One of the renegades he faced had a few inches of height over him, but like many tall men, the soldier lacked muscle. The sergeant wasn't tall, and packed more strength. The third was a mere stripling. The boy's hot-tempered anger and fear were more dangerous than his aging musket. Disarming these three might terrify the hidden ones into running, if they were lucky. Boldly, Murdoch stepped forward, pushing the brigands backward with the points of his blades.

The heavyset soldier with a sergeant's stripes recovered sufficiently to scoff at Murdoch's presumption. “Do you think a lazy officer can take on three armed soldiers, all trained and experienced in fighting?”

“Experienced in theft, more like,” Murdoch replied. “Be gone with you before I carve out your livers and feed them to the ducks.”

Insulted, the heavyset sergeant ordered, “Shoot him, Jean.”

The stripling aimed his musket and fired. The cart's passengers screamed.

When the smoke cleared, Murdoch remained unharmed, leaning against the donkey's neck, some distance from his last position. He tipped his tricorne from his face with the edge of his rapier, knowing he revealed the controlled fires of his fury as he regarded the stunned soldiers. “Do you have any more ammunition to waste?”

The trio darted frightened gazes from the spot where Murdoch had been standing to where he stood now—twice the distance of a donkey's length. Again, they hadn't seen him move. “How did you do that?” the boy asked.

“Just kill the blackguards and be done with it,” one of Murdoch's passengers shouted.

The child continued to sob into her father's coat. The shoemaker and his daughter were guilty of nothing except trying to make an honest living in a cesspool of mob mentality. Wasting diseases ran rampant in the filthy prisons, and the innocent died without trial or verdict. Murdoch refused to let these two die, as they surely would at the hands of these murdering thieves.

He rotated the point of his rapier in a tight, furious circle. If he focused on the weapon, he might be able to control his anger and prevent himself from inadvertently killing everyone in the vicinity, including the cowards still lurking in the hedgerow. Keeping his temper was imperative.

Before the stripling could jump out of range, Murdoch cut off the buttons at the boy's waistband and split the string of his drawers. Both garments fell into the dust at his feet.

While the youth cursed and bent to gather his clothes and his wounded dignity, Murdoch swung sword and rapier in tandem, a feat few others could imitate. In a whirl and slash of silver blades, stripes disappeared from uniforms, buttons flew, and more drawstrings were severed. The soldiers were suddenly too busy covering their indecency to aim their muskets. With an assist from his boot applied to a fat derriere, Murdoch tumbled the sergeant headfirst into the parched weeds.

“Gentlemen, I suggest you stand back so we may be on our way,” Murdoch thundered, his greatcoat flaring around his boots as he swung up in the stallion's saddle without need of stirrup. Disarming his foes hadn't eased his ire. Violence too easily became a way of life when one faced it daily, and he'd been facing it for four years now. Four years in which he'd learned violence wouldn't win him what he wanted. Rather than risk venting his volatile temper, he would let the scoundrels live another day—provided the ones in the shrubbery didn't interfere.

Standing in the stirrups, he held his saber in one hand and urged his mount on with the other. Beside him, the wagon lurched forward. The defeated soldiers rolled and scattered from their path. The cape of Murdoch's coat fluttered in the dry wind.

Still standing so he could better flourish his weapon, Murdoch urged the wagon's animal into a close approximation of a gallop, aiming for the safety of the nearby village. The passengers gasped and grabbed the cart's sides. Dust flew in a cloud, separating them from the humiliated thieves.

As his stallion raced down the dirt road, Murdoch flashed a wicked grin of triumph through the stubble of his beard. “Praise Aelynn and may the road rise up to greet us!” he shouted to the heavens.

The heavens responded by releasing a ball of blue flame.

It arced toward Murdoch in a shower of sparks, igniting a host of memories—of legends he'd heard of the blue spirits of the gods wreaking their revenge or issuing their blessings. Legends of gods he no longer believed in. Only, instead of striking him down, the light bathed him in warmth before coalescing in the black pearl of his Aelynn ring, a ring that had been part of him since birth. Dazed and bewildered, he dropped back to his saddle.

A gunshot exploded, blasting him from his high perch and knocking him to the ground.

In a rage of agony and disbelief, Murdoch rolled across the grass, flipped over onto his uninjured shoulder, and with a power he could no longer control, conjured up lightning from the clouds that had been gathering since the encounter had begun. Thunder boomed as the first bolt struck. The wind hit the treetops in gusty gales.

The rotten wood of a hollowed-out tree trunk erupted in flames. Sparks spread to drought-stricken weeds. In seconds, fire raced with the wind of the rising storm—not in the direction of the villains, but directly toward the nearby village and its unsuspecting inhabitants.

Once again, Murdoch's good intentions had ended in disaster.

Standing over her mother's deathbed, swallowing a lump of grief, Lissandra Olympus looked out over what had once been Aelynn's lush jungle. Now brown palm fronds drooped onto wilting gardenias, baked by a relentless sun. Since the disappearance of the Chalice of Plenty four years ago, the volcano had rumbled and spilled ash as it never had before, and the island's temperate climate had become increasingly unpredictable.

The marriage of Lissandra's brother, Ian, to Chantal two years ago had pleased the gods enough to make them return the summer rains that fed the river and wells, but now the water was drying up in the excessive heat. Last spring a late frost had blackened fruit blossoms, and before that, winter storms had begun to wash away the sandy beaches that protected their shoreline. The people's anger and fear stirred unrest throughout the island. With their chosen Oracle incapacitated by a stroke, the island's solidarity had cracked. People fought over who would best lead them from disaster.

“Praise Aelynn,” the dying Oracle whispered from her bed on the sacred altar. An instant later, Dylys's life-affirming grip on Lissandra's hand fell loose.

Tears rolling down her cheeks, cries of protest choking her breath, Lissandra repeated the Oracle's final words, “Praise Aelynn.”

The temple swelled with glorious sound from a hymn written for the occasion, sung by the choir led by Chantal.

Lissandra's tears dampened her folded hands. She prayed for a cloak of authority to fall upon her, to give her the strength her mother had possessed to lead the island back to health and happiness. But Lissandra felt nothing except soul-deep grief.

Ian hugged her, but Lissandra fastened her gaze on the still figure of their mother, unable to grasp that the holy woman who had been central in her life was gone. Never again would she hear her mother's praise or ad monishments, see her bathe a newborn or lead a crowd in worship. Never again would her mother speak words of wisdom to remind her of her duties.

She didn't need any reminders of her duty now. She simply didn't wish to do it—to close her mother's eyes for the final time.

Lissandra blinked, disbelieving, as a shimmer of blue flame rose from the Oracle's lifeless figure. The crowd gasped, and the choir faded into silence as the illusion flickered and coalesced into a solid core over the late Oracle's heart.

Finally grasping the miracle, Lissandra gulped and stepped away from Ian. She straightened, standing ready. Perhaps this was the moment when she would be granted the confirmation from the gods that she needed to carry on. Neither she nor Ian had ever been present at the death of an Oracle, but they had been forewarned by the legends telling of the blue spirit flame.

Beside her, Ian tensed. Lissandra knew he didn't want the task. He'd rejected it by marrying Chantal and moving off the island. Yet, if the flame chose him, he could not deny the gods. He would have to return and take up their mother's role.

Selfishly, Lissandra almost prayed that would happen.

The blue flame gathered and formed a ball. Silence grew as the crowd focused on the translucent radiance, praying a true leader would be appointed to guide them to prosperity again.

The blue spirit flame rose steadily from the altar, then hovered, before shooting forward to circle Ian's head.

Lissandra gasped as the flame darted upward in rejection, and Ian's shoulders slumped in relief. She stood alone and accepting as the flame grazed her hair. She could actually feel a beneficent wave of energy as it descended. Even so, she felt resignation rather than anticipation as the mist of Seeing spilled across her sight, revealing other places, other times—

Abruptly, the illusion dissipated. Above her hair, the ball hovered. Lissandra felt it grow cold, leaving an emptiness inside her. She almost touched the top of her head, but the ball shot forward, dashing in front of her eyes before arcing upward and disappearing into the unre lentingly blue sky—toward
Murdoch
.

Toward the Other World beyond the invisible barrier that guarded Aelynn.

People stared at her as if she were a stranger, as much in shock as she was, waiting for her to tell them what to do, to explain what had just happened.

Lissandra crumpled to her knees, scarcely hearing the crowd's shocked cries over her own confusion.
The gods had rejected her.

Everything she'd been, everything she'd believed, had vanished in a puff of blue flame.

The spirit of the gods had deserted Aelynn—for a man who had turned his back on all they represented!

 

Days later, with the volcano rumbling ominously and spewing black fumes into the once-clear air, Lissandra remained stunned and in shock.

She'd had the time between her mother's death and interment to accept what the gods had shown her. And if she had dreaded becoming Oracle, she dreaded even more the duty that had been bestowed upon her now.

No amount of meditation had changed what Lissandra's spirit guide was insisting she do—she must leave Aelynn and find the new Oracle . . . find the one person she wished never to see again. Then she must bring him home, to see him and work with him every agonizing day.

She couldn't do it, but she had to do it.

Even though her actions went counter to everything she believed, Lissandra squeezed the last piece of clothing into her medicinal case.

Waiting for her outside her cottage, Ian frowned when she emerged carrying the bag.

Lissandra faced her older brother with equanimity. “I will need to exchange my pearls for your foreign coin.”

Always divert attention from oneself
, her mother said inside her head.
Give them tasks they understand. They will believe in your omniscience and that the gods speak through you.

But the gods had deemed her unworthy to speak for them. That she was almost relieved by their rejection only added to Lissandra's abject misery and bewilderment.

She pulled her cloak closer against the recent summer chill. In the distance, the volcano glowed a dull, angry red beneath the heavy clouds, as it had been since the spirits had departed. Lissandra and Ian passed a group of muttering men, who, instead of greeting the last of the Olympus family with pleasantries, as they once would have done, now turned aside in bitterness.

“Where are you going?” Ian demanded, following her down the path to the harbor.

“I'm leaving Aelynn, of course,” she replied.

She said it simply, as if she were announcing her intent to breakfast rather than dashing centuries of tradition to the ground and stomping on it. Worse, she was doing it to seek a rogue who could destroy them all.

Fighting her fear, she kept her back rigid, knowing that if she hesitated, all was lost.