Warrior's Curse (Imnada Brotherhood) (15 page)

Was that a future that included her? Did she want it to? No. She’d found passion with a man once. She’d also found heartbreak, sorrow, and loss. Best to stick to loneliness and be safe.

Safe worked.

Safe didn’t hurt.

“It’s taken me two long years, but freedom is finally within sight.”

She regarded the four scratched and dented disks spread between them. Were these really the fabled Fey-wrought disks that had imprisoned a kingslayer? They looked as if they’d been banging around in someone’s
pocket with their loose change and a decade’s worth of lint.

“You think the combined power of the Gylferion and Jai Idrish will break the curse?”

“It’s more than a thought,” he answered defensively before shrugging. “And less than a certainty.”

“Either way, where did you manage to find these? They’ve been lost for centuries—centuries upon centuries. Most assume they’re just a shaman’s stories to while away a cold winter’s evening.”

“I’m hoping it was destiny that brought them together again, though Mac believes it was dumb luck, and David is sure I’ve been conned out of a fortune for a blacksmith’s forgeries.”

“I might have to side with St. Leger on this one,” she said, touching the chipped disk of bronze with a tentative forefinger. She expected a tingle, a jolt, a whisper on the wind. She merely sneezed.

“I’ve studied the texts and spoken with every scholar of ancient magics I could find. The theory is sound. If the vicious collision of warring magics spawned the curse, the same such collision should reverse it.” His tone clearly indicated this was not the first time he’d argued his position and it wouldn’t be the last. “The Gylferion were created by the Fey but it was Imnada blood spilled to complete their final tempering. Only in that way were they able to entrap the warlord Lucan for his crimes.”

“But what has Jai Idrish to do with it?”

“We’ve got the fuse. Now we need the spark.”

“You were a soldier. You must know what happens when a spark hits a shell. It breeds destruction.”

“It will work.”

“Jai Idrish has been silent for generations. Why should it wake for you now?”

“It’s not going to wake for me. It’s going to wake for
you
. The crystal is the heart of Imnada power and you are the heart of the crystal.”

Was this her chance to make a difference? To be N’thuil in deed as well as word?

If Gray broke the Fey-blood’s curse, the cause of his exile would be lifted as well. There would be no impediment to his reclaiming his place as heir. He would be welcomed back into the clans. The in-fighting and backstabbing and factional warfare would cease and the Imnada could face this new uncertain future with hope and a single will.

Her name would be written in the annals alongside those of Idrin the Traveler and Aneavala of the Palings, Yolethe the Hammer, who built the Crystal Tower, and Eurimesis Nine Spoons, who kept his people fed during famine and plague.

She would be Meeryn the Peacemaker. Or maybe Meeryn of the Wise Words. Or perhaps . . . Her eyes fell once more upon the crystal orb, its surface reflecting her face back at her a million times, and her confidence faltered. Who was she fooling? Meeryn the Sapskull was more like it.

“I’m a charlatan and a failure. Jai Idrish hasn’t done anything but sit there and laugh at my pathetic attempts.”

“Not tonight. Tonight we rattle the goddess from her sleep and make her pay attention.”

She laughed. “You’re mad enough to almost make me believe.”

He leaned forward, eyes alight with excitement.
His breath soft on her cheek, his scent crisp and soapy and completely male. The night, the flickering candle, the soft confidences conspired against her. Safe was boring. Safe was her life to this point. Safe would not allow for a repeat of her exhilarating, stomach-turning, shout-it-to-the-skies, orgasmic pinnacle.

“That’s a start,” he murmured.

Her lashes fluttered across her cheeks, her lips parted, her arms braced against the seat, pulse racing.

“I timed our visit to fall between guard watches. If we’re to slip out as easily as we slipped in, we’d better get started.”

Hardly the declaration of yearning she’d been anticipating. She lifted her head to see him standing, eyes ablaze, body thrumming with nervous energy. “How do you know the watch’s schedule?” she asked.

But he was already placing one disk at each compass point; bronze to the maiden’s east and copper to the Mother’s south. To the west of Berenth’s crone he set the gold disk, and finally, he lay the silver disk of Morderoth beneath the north-facing window, where darkness hung thickest.

“The rest is up to you . . . and Jai Idrish,” he said, pulling her to her feet and toward the waiting crystal.

Dare she try? She glanced over at Gray, who stood legs braced, shoulders squared, and head up. As if he faced an enemy or his last chance at escape from certain death. The bigger question was, dare she refuse?

Meeryn tried to relax. She rolled her shoulders, flexed her fingers, and closed her eyes. Not because she needed to, but because it kept her focus on the sphere and not on the man hovering behind her left shoulder like a storm cloud.

Stretching her mind, she let the outer world fall away as she sought a connection to the crystal’s heart, the core of its being. She probed deep within the empty expanse of nothing beyond and between her physical senses; searching for a gleam, a whisper, a presence beyond her own turbulent thoughts. Some hint that Jai Idrish hovered at the edge of wakefulness, waiting only for someone to nudge it to life. But all was dark and cold and empty.

By now, her brain seemed shaved thin as paper, her mind fraying. A painful throbbing started at her temples, spasming down into her spine. She tried retreating, but shadows followed after her, the empty soulless infinity pouring through the holes she’d made in her mental search. She scrabbled to mend the rifts, but for each wound she repaired, ten more opened after her. Her ribs seemed to tighten, crushing her lungs, tightening around her heart. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She tried opening her eyes, screaming for help, but there were only the endless terrifying shadows rolling and curling toward her like a stormy ocean surf. She felt herself drowning, the crush of the shadows too much, snapping bones, sucking the last breath from her shredded lungs, she felt the last gasp of air leave her when . . .

A powerful slap to the side of her head knocked her to the floor, where she scraped her knees and slammed her left cheekbone into the edge of Jai Idrish’s altar. The shadows evaporated, driven away by the very tactile explosion of ear-ringing, jaw-bruising pain. At least all the shadows evaporated but one, which leaned concernedly over her, “Are you all right?”

She glanced up through a tangled fall of hair, her
combs lost in the far corners of the room from the force of Gray’s so-called rescue. “That remains to be seen.”

He stepped back and held out a hand, which she took, only because she didn’t think she could make it to her feet without assistance. Otherwise she would have ignored it, but she couldn’t trust herself at this moment. She had the insane urge to throw herself in his arms and never let go. Doubtless a side effect of the knock to the head and lack of oxygen. It certainly wasn’t the memory of his hands on less proper parts of her making her stomach roll ominously and the room go all dizzy.

“You don’t look all right,” he said, examining her.

“I felt it, Gray. I bonded with the crystal. Just for a moment and a tenuous link at best, but I did it . . . Jai Idrish’s power lives despite its silence.” The room steadied, his hand fell away, and she brushed her skirts in a fruitless attempt to brush away the dust. Noticed the blood speckling the fabric. Felt her mouth.

“You’ve cut yourself.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed her cheek. She winced and tried to step away but he followed. “Hold still. You’re smearing it all over your face.”

Through the throbbing in her cheek, the throbbing in her head, and the throbbing between her legs, a dim thought surfaced. “Did it work? Did we break the curse?”

His gaze slid past hers to rest for a moment on Jai Idrish. Then his shoulder dipped in a shrug of surrender, his face hard with despair. “No.”

*  *  *

He stood at his window, staring out across the courtyard to the lights of the main house. Counted three from the left and four up from the ground floor. There would be his grandfather’s apartments. The arched window to the left of the ivy creeping over the stone balcony would be his bedchamber. He would be sleeping now. They would all be sleeping now. All but Gray.

He slept little. A few hours here or there. Brandy helped, but his personality didn’t allow him to imbibe to unconsciousness. Not even tonight, when drinking himself senseless would have been more than justified. Instead he fingered the four disks, shuffling them and reshuffling them in infinite designs that meant nothing while his mind spun endlessly in pointless circles.

Bits of tin . . . a blacksmith’s forgeries . . .

Failure had always lurked in the back of his mind. He wasn’t so naive that he didn’t understand the odds against his success, nor so deaf that he didn’t hear the persistent whispers hinting at his demise by the end of the year. Why, then, did he feel powerless and broken, unable to settle on contingencies, incapable of planning for what came next?

His hand hovered above the silver disk of Krylesos Pryth.

Perhaps therein lay his answer.

He
had
planned. For a moment, he’d glimpsed a future beyond the curse; a life unchained from the Fey-blood’s black magic. A startled revelation lifting him high only to drop him to the ground as reality smashed him flat.

Meeryn’s kiss . . . Meeryn’s touch . . . the scent of her in his nose . . . the taste of her on his tongue . . . the memory of her urgent moans in his ears . . .

He had failed. The curse remained. There would be no chance for more than these few precious hours, this short gift of days, fraught as they were with danger.

Gray stripped down until the breeze puckered the skin across his bare back, though it did little to cool the simmering rage twisting his innards and reddening his vision. He felt the first stirrings of the shift, his body hungering to hurt someone as he was hurt, to experience the sweet release of a predator’s quick deadly strike, and feel life bleed out between his fingers. An ignoble sentiment, but the totality of all he’d lost tonight shredded his honor with a flogging’s agony.

The power of the Imnada took him over. Wind swept over his wings. His razored beak opened on a cry of fury and anguish both. He lifted off to circle the skies above Deepings, where an old man slept, a cunning man plotted, and an extraordinary woman dreamed.

He’d returned home prepared to face his ghosts.

He just hadn’t realized he might still be in love with one.

Meeryn spent the following morning searching for Gray. Not because she thought he might do something foolish, but . . . well, all right, maybe because she thought he might do something foolish. Her last sight of him before he disappeared from the tower had not inspired confidence. His pallor was bleached as bone, deep grooves cut into his face, eyes hard as stones and drained of every emotion but fury. She’d tried to console him, but he’d returned a brusque, twisted smile that sent fear slithering into the pit of her stomach. What would his fury drive him to do? How desperate had he become? And if he decided death was all that was left for him, would he decide to take his grandfather down with him as Sir Dromon speculated?

She refused to believe it. Gray might not be the boy of her childhood memories, but he was no murderer. Still, she couldn’t shake the idea that he was fast reaching some final point of no return; a crossed line from which there was no withdrawing.

She looked for Gray in the guest hall, wandering the
chilly, carpeted corridors and poking her head into the empty, disused rooms. It had been years since Deepings had needed to open this part of the house to support the train of functionaries and servants accompanying the Gather elders. It showed in the Holland-covered furniture, stacks of packing crates and straw-stuffed barrels, and the sour air of neglect hanging in the dusty air. In her search, she came across a pair of maidservants hoisting away an empty bath and a basket of dripping towels, a footman with a newly cleaned suit of clothes, and an Ossine enforcer, known by the red-tasseled cord hanging from his stitched leather scabbard. His gaze slid from her face to the floor as he rounded the corner outside Gray’s rooms and slipped out a side door to the yard beyond. It wasn’t until he was gone that she realized he was the young man from the attack on the road outside the holding.

Fear fluttering her insides, she hurried the rest of the way to Gray’s rooms, but there was no one within. The place was empty but for an enormous black crow resting on a windowsill, its eyes sharp, its long beak sharper. “Do you know where he’s gone?” she asked.

The crow preened its glossy feathers and took off with a squawk.

“Now I’ve really lost my head, if I’ve sunk to talking to myself,” Meeryn muttered.