Betraying Season (35 page)

“Thank you, Lady . . . Mother.” Pen felt herself blush, but she raised her goblet in turn to Lady Keating then drank it down.

“Charming. No goblet for me? Dear, dear. If we’re going to stand about all night toasting each other, let me run back to my room for my tooth glass.”

Doireann stood halfway down the stairs, hands on hips, wearing an indecipherable expression. She looked like a column of flame in a dress of red silk that clung provocatively to her torso, then flared into deep folds below her hips. She was uncorseted like the rest of them, and Pen thought she could detect the faintest swelling in her abdomen and an unusual fullness in her breasts. She looked away, blushing again.

“How lovely that you could join us.” Lady Keating matched
Doireann’s ever-so-slightly mocking tone. “As we are all here, then let us go.” She took Pen’s goblet and set it back on the tray with her own.

Doireann said nothing in reply but continued down the stairs and past them to the door. Lady Keating shrugged and took Pen’s arm, and they followed Doireann into the deep dusk.

The moon hung just over the eastern horizon, fat and yellow and already casting shadows. Fortunately, the night air was soft and mild on Pen’s bare arms and legs; it almost seemed to caress her skin as they crossed the gravel drive—which in contrast to the air did not caress her bare feet—then waded into the grass of the lawn.

Stars began to wink into view in the sky. Pen marveled at them, holding tight to Lady Keating’s arm. Only the brightest stars would be visible tonight as the moon rose; all others would be cast into invisibility by its silvery light. The dew had already begun to fall, and the grass was deliciously cool and wet underfoot, gently brushing her ankles as they walked. When was the last time she had gone barefoot out of doors? It must be years. From now on when she and Lady Keating went to the hill together, she would always leave her shoes behind . . . at least once they’d gotten past the drive. But even the bite of the gravel had its uses—it had made her appreciate the softness of the grass more. A rich scent of green growing things and damp earth drifted up, and she breathed it in, opening her mouth so that she could almost taste it.

“It’s so beautiful here,” she sighed. “I wish we could do this every night.”

Lady Keating chuckled and squeezed her arm.

“No, really I do. I feel like I could just . . . just float up the hill and into the Goddess’s arms and give her whatever she wants of me. . . .”
That sounded silly, she vaguely realized, but it was true. Where had this dreamy submissiveness come from? Had that mead been stronger than it tasted? Or was it something else? Somehow it felt right, though. Here she was, barefoot and clad only in the simplest of linen garb, on her way to a moonlit stone circle to summon a goddess. How else should she feel?

The moon was already higher as they ascended the hill to the circle, its yellow tinge fading to cool white. The great stones reflected its light, glittering like pillars of silver. As they stepped between two stones into the circle, Lady Keating released Pen’s arm and stepped to one side, where a square of linen lay on the grass. She folded it back, and Pen saw that it covered objects that lay on another cloth below it: a broad silver dish. A decanter of water. A knife with a black handle. A long, slender sword. A coil of silk cord. A low, flat drum.

“No candles? Is there no fire in this spell?” she asked, leaning over the cloth curiously.

Lady Keating took the silver dish and placed it in the center of the circle, then poured the decanter of water into it. “No fire tonight,” she said. “This spell uses only dark elements. Penelope, I want you to take the knife and gather up some dew from the grass where the moonlight touches it, then add it to the dish.”

Pen nodded solemnly and did as she was asked, scraping the blade along the grass till it was covered in droplets, then swishing it through the bowl. Then Doireann took the knife from her and repeated the action, and lastly Lady Keating did as well. As the last droplets slipped from the blade into the water, Pen gasped. Had the water begun to glow, or was it just reflecting the moon’s light?

“Full moon magic,” she breathed.

Doireann glanced up at her, a curious expression on her face. “No, it’s not. The full moon was last night. Tonight it has already begun to wane, of course.”

“Hush, you two,” Lady Keating commanded. She had replaced the knife on the cloth and taken up the silk cord and the sword. Doireann ambled over and picked up the drum.

Waning moon? Pen felt a brief surprise rise through her dreamy serenity, then sink back down into slumber. The ritual in the grimoire had specifically called for a full moon, but Lady Keating surely must know what she was doing. She waited by the silver moon-dish until Lady Keating and Doireann had joined her and placed the sword and the drum on the grass behind them.

Lady Keating lifted her hand. The coil of cord dangled from it. She stepped forward and looped it around Pen’s waist. “Here is the Maiden,” she murmured, then stooped and picked up the sword. “Penelope, give me your hand.”

Pen held her hand out. Lady Keating took it firmly in hers and, before Pen could react, ran the heel of it across the sword’s blade.

“Oh!” Pen gasped as a thread of pain ran up her arm. A thin line of blood welled up from the sword’s cut. Lady Keating set down the sword and pressed Pen’s hand to the cord until several inches of it were stained dark with her blood.

“Very good, my child.” Lady Keating lifted her hand and blew gently across the cut. It vanished, though the pain lingered a few seconds longer.

She turned to Doireann and repeated the procedure, wrapping the cord around her in the Mother’s name and marking it with her blood. When she had completed the same steps on herself, she brought the ends of the cord together and knotted them. “And here
the Crone. Now we are complete and triple-bound: bound by our womanhood, bound by your image, and bound by blood.” She smiled a small, private smile at Pen.

“Bound by blood?” Doireann’s startled reaction could even be felt through the cord that tied them together. “But how—I thought that Niall—”

Lady Keating’s lips tightened. She tugged gently on the bloodstained cord. “Bound by this,” she said. “Now please stop interrupting.”

Doireann stared at her for a moment, and even through her blanket of calm acceptance Pen felt how the air suddenly quivered with tension between them. Lady Keating returned her daughter’s stare, her face expressionless, until Doireann looked down.

“Very well,” Lady Keating said, exhaling. “May we proceed?”

Still looking at her bare feet, Doireann nodded.

Lady Keating held out her hands. “Tonight we will be raising a very large and very powerful circle, and adding to it the power we have already summoned and put in the stones. It will require your absolute concentration and your absolute obedience to my word if we want to avoid letting this power loose on the countryside. Do you understand me?”

Pen took her hand. “Yes.”

“Good.” Lady Keating smiled at her. “Tonight we will also begin a little differently.” She took Doireann’s hand—did Doireann seem to hesitate before letting her grasp it?—closed her eyes, and began a low, rhythmic chant.

“Hear me calling, O my Goddess, your handmaid calls unto you. Join us this night and bless our labors, smile on them and make them fruitful. Lend to us your limitless power so that we may succeed and know truly your gracious might. I, your handmaid, ask this of you.
Triple Goddess, threefold strong, as three we call out to you. Come to us, be in us, fill us with your glorious power.”

Pen closed her eyes and relaxed into the slow cadence of her words, letting them hold her up like an invisible scaffold. There must have been something else in that mead, or perhaps it was just that it came from the fairy world, because she felt as if she were slipping into oblivion . . . or at least parts of her were—the outside parts, the mundane parts, the layers of Pen that knew how to make small talk with dowagers in ballrooms and how to order a proper dinner for twenty and how to write polite notes to hostesses after a party. What was left was the Pen who gloried in the night air on her bare arms, the Pen who had levitated with rapture during her visit to the stone circle, the Pen who could now sense the power humming in the stones around them, slumbering but slowly waking at Lady Keating’s call—

“Penelope, my dearest child, will you begin the circle?” Lady Keating asked quietly.

Had her words been spoken aloud, or sounded only in Pen’s mind?

Did it matter?

Pen took a deep breath, reached inside her as Lady Keating . . . as Mother had taught her, and lifted forth a circle of power, like a golden, glowing, perfect flower. She held it with her mind, stroking it, whispering to it, encouraging it, then released it to Doireann. As she did, she felt Lady Keating’s hand tremble in hers and opened her eyes. Lady Keating was staring at her with an expression of fierce, burning joy, and Pen knew she was pleased.

After a while, she lost count of how many times they passed the circle among themselves, adding to it with each passage. More often
than they had before, that was all she knew for sure. But somehow the weight and magnitude of it was no longer a burden; she felt as if she could stand here until they’d raised a circle large enough to cover all of county Cork, spitting gold and blue sparks and glowing like an aurora. The stones around them had given up their stored power to it as if it were a magnet, but Pen had begun to feel as if they too were passing and augmenting it, as well as containing it. Was that why it was less burdensome tonight? Did the stones support the circle so that the three of them could dedicate all their energy to increasing it?

“Enough,” Lady Keating commanded. Pen felt her release the circle, felt it waver and then settle into the stones, waiting. She sighed and let her shoulders slump. No wonder Lady Keating had suggested she rest today; the stones might support the circle, but they didn’t support her.

“Here. We have a moment before the moon is in position.” Lady Keating was unstopping a silver flask. She held it out to Doireann, who refused it wordlessly, but Pen nodded and took it.

The flask contained more of the mead she had drunk before, honeyed and cool as she tipped it down her throat, and the tiredness she’d felt receded into calm. She blinked up at the sky as she drank; while she had been lost in the circle raising, the moon had risen until it was nearly overhead. It seemed to waver as she gazed at it, as if she were looking at it through water, and she realized that she was seeing it through the magic energy they had raised. “I can actually
see
our circle,” she marveled to Doireann. “It looks like a veil, fluttering on a breeze.”

Doireann didn’t answer or even look up. Instead she bent and
retrieved the drum that lay in the grass behind her and started to beat a rhythm on it with her fingers, two slow beats followed by three slightly more rapid ones:
thump, thump, thump-thump-thump; thump, thump, thump-thump-thump.
A shiver ran down Pen’s spine, not of cold but of anticipation. The time had come. They were going to begin the
draiocht
.

Lady Keating handed her the silver sword. Pen held it tightly, tip pointing toward the moon as Lady Keating had directed her earlier that day.

“Your strength is the newest and freshest,” she had said, holding Pen’s hands and gazing into her eyes. “I will need you to bear the sword and focus into it the circle magic we have raised as I say the words of the
draiocht.
You will
become
the sword, my tool to carry out the
draiocht.
It will require your complete surrender to my will . . . no, to our will. Do you understand? It will be hard work, harder by far than raising the circle. When it is done, you will be empty and weak. But you will also be ready to accept and be accepted by the Goddess, who will be pleased by the offering of your power in the
draiocht
and will return it to you threefold. Then you will be hers.”

Hers. Pen took a breath and relaxed into the beat of Doireann’s drum just as she had relaxed into Lady Keating’s chant.
Thump. Thump. Thump-thump-thump.
What a somber sound. It sounded more like a funeral march than a magical invocation. She felt a tugging on the cord that still bound them as Lady Keating shifted, spreading her feet slightly as if she prepared for some physical task. Then she raised her hands to the moon and spoke in a loud, commanding voice.

“Twice three years, and twice three years, and twice three years again, but no more will you have in the light of the sun. For now the gateway between the worlds is opening, and it opens for thee.”

Twice three years again . . . that added up to eighteen. Eighteen years only in the light of the sun. What did that mean? But now was not the time to stop Lady Keating to ask questions.

“Go you quiet into the dark, where a gray hand will close your eyes and muffle your ears, so that you no longer hear and see the world of the living.”

Pen stirred, even while carefully keeping the sword pointed properly at the moon. Lady Keating’s words sounded as funereal as the drum did. How was this going to bring Niall and the Duke of Cumberland together?

“Penelope.” It was quietly spoken, but Pen understood. She had given her word to obey Lady Keating. It was time to stop woolgathering and concentrate on bringing the power of their circle into the sword. She would pretend it was a sponge, thirsty for magic. The sword began to throb slightly in her hands, in time to Doireann’s drumming.

Lady Keating was swaying, her hands delineating odd patterns in the air before her.
“Now your steps falter, and your shoulders bow, and your face is turned toward the dark at the end of your journey. The Goddess awaits thee, and will take up your soul from your body so that you will sleep the dreamless sleep of death.”

Death? A chill ran over Pen, this time born of cold. It felt as if the temperature around them had dropped twenty degrees. Even the sword suddenly felt icy in her hands as their circle power flowed into it, was
sucked
into it at a pace so rapid that she could hardly hold it. Lady Keating was shaping the magic with her words, shaping
it into something cold and black and deadly. For the first time, Pen felt afraid. Something was happening here that she did not understand. Swords and darkness and death—