Mystic Warrior (33 page)

“The Chalice of Plenty could have
originated
here!” Lis kicked her mount over to a fallen stone that may have once marked the entrance to the spiritual labyrinth ringing the hill. “Perhaps it has come home.”

“That's one theory,” Murdoch replied noncommittally. “Legends of golden giants walking the earth, preaching of the stars, and teaching healing can be heard in many places. That does not mean that they were our ancestors any more than it means they are ghosts or fairies or saints, or that they actually carried sacred vessels.”

They both knew he lied. They were as bound to this earth as they were to each other. He understood entirely why Ian had chosen to settle here. Ian's astral power would be enhanced here, and he would feel closer to the gods he worshipped.

Murdoch's earth gifts were darker and more connected to Brittany, but they were not so different. He wished their ancestors had kept better records. Ancient Aelynners may have collected a voluminous library of scientific texts, but their skills had always been of a practical nature, aimed at survival and guarding their treasures. Storytelling accomplished neither.

“If the tales are true, then the chalice has wandered frequently,” Lis argued. “It's also a part of Other World religion, as my mother told us. I believe our gods are similar to the Christian saints and their God, just differently named. What if the chalice is meant to stay here?”

“I have no idea what that will mean to Aelynn,” he said curtly.

He had an excellent idea what that would mean to him. He couldn't even dream of going home without it.

 

Lissandra gazed up at the magnificent tor. The hill radiated a different energy from Aelynn's. Until recently, the volcano had always been peaceful and reassuringly solid, but the tor was not peaceful. It slumbered, perhaps, but even so, it breathed with mysterious vibrations that hummed beneath the soles of her feet as they circled the base of the hill. The tor was alive.

“These stones don't belong in this spot,” Murdoch concluded, examining what might have been a fallen dolmen similar to those of the island's temple. “Someone has deliberately carried them here.”

The lane they were wandering down was shaded and overgrown with shrubs and trees that Lissandra could not identify, but she knelt to examine a thriving bed of Saint-John's-wort. “We have these herbs on Aelynn. I have seen thyme and milkwort as well. Might the stones conceal a portal carved by our ancestors?”

“My thought exactly. Although there is nothing under this one. But perhaps we're close. Let me See.”

She watched in awe and fascination as Murdoch stood so still that he seemed to take root, like the oak she knelt beneath. In his plain brown frock coat, doeskin breeches, and tall boots, his dark hair neatly queued at his nape, he appeared like any other man in this country, yet unnatural energy poured from him, sinking deep into the earth as surely as the roots of the oak.

Abruptly, he pulled from his trance to sit down on one of the stones and tug at the boots he'd borrowed from Ian's wardrobe. “They interfere,” he said curtly at her questioning glance. “All this flummery keeps me from feeling the air and the earth as well as I should.”

She understood. They were never so close to the earth as when undressed and in each other's arms. The hampering clothing prevented their connection to nature as much as it prevented them from feeling the caress of each other's hands. They needed the mist touching their skin and the soft soil rubbing their toes.

She helped him tug off the boots and stockings. She caressed the bottom of his feet, and he shivered, tensing with the bond between them. The air throbbed with expectation.

“Keep touching me,” he muttered through clenched teeth, staring into the clouds. “I can feel more. I think I can feel the entire universe.”

As they would if they shared the temple bed together.

Remaining seated, Murdoch planted his soles firmly on the soil, and she ran her fingers over his long, shapely feet, circled one strong ankle with both hands, rode her palm up his calf and shin. He shuddered along with the earth.

“Close, we're close,” he whispered, his voice no more than the wind in the trees. “I feel water draining from the core, through the rock. The chalice is there, where the springs rise.”

Spellbound, Lissandra listened and memorized his words as his spirit guide took him deeper into the bowels of the earth. She'd never seen Murdoch go into a trance. He looked more omniscient Oracle than human as his harsh features settled into serenity. The sun glowed from within and without. His eyes were shuttered by long lashes, and the breeze blew around his head, swirling his hair in loose tendrils.

Like a warrior of old, he should be naked to the sun. She clung to his bare leg, willing him to find the focus that so eluded him, praying her energy could somehow guide his.

“The chalice resists me,” he said in sorrow, as if from a dream. “I am not strong enough for it. Danger! There is menace all around. No, I can't—”

He jerked abruptly back to the moment, rubbed the sweat from his brow, and stared blankly at the shaded grove.

Lissandra could sense his distance. She sat still, waiting, shivering with cold inside, though the day was mild. She knew it often took time to absorb everything Seen. Disturbing him now could cause him to lose valuable insights.

Finally, he rested his hand upon her head, and she felt safe to rise from her knees and sit beside him.

Murdoch wrapped her in his strong embrace and rested his chin on her hair. “You must go home now. Send Trystan here. Your life, and the one you carry, are too precious to risk.”

“You don't intend to wait for Trystan, do you?” she replied. “You think it's too dangerous for either of us, and you intend to go alone. That is very noble of you, but you forget one thing.” She leaned her head against his shoulder.

His eyes were dark with world-weariness when they looked down on her. “And what is that, my princess?” he asked in a voice tinged with irony.

“That we are joined as one. Even if we have not said the vows, I will feel your death as surely as my own. ‘Whither thou goest, I will go,' ” she quoted in the same sardonic tone. “For I refuse to suffer the torment of your absence for the rest of my life.”

Her declaration knocked the cynical expression from Murdoch's face. He stared at her in stunned astonishment.

Lissandra meant what she'd said. What they had shared was so profound, so earthshaking, that she knew she would be as uprooted as the oak if she could not be with him.

“Then take me back to Aelynn and let the Council stone me,” Murdoch said, collapsing on the fallen dolmen and staring at the stockings in his hand as if he didn't know what to do with them. Lis had knocked all the stuffing from his head.
She wouldn't go home without him?
One of them had to be mad—she for claiming such a thing, or he for believing it. “At least you'll be safely home where our spirits can live on.”

“Spirits live here. I can feel them.”

Lis set her chin stubbornly, and Murdoch knew he was in trouble. The last time he'd seen her do that, she'd been twelve and he'd refused to let her follow him to the rock cliffs where he and Ian wished to practice diving into a waterspout. The next thing he knew, she was flying off the cliff on her own—not because she was trying to imitate them, but because she'd seen a patch of some valuable herb growing where she couldn't get at it otherwise.

She'd only broken her wrist that time. This time could be much worse. Once Lis decided that an action affected Aelynn, she was beyond reason—witness her search for his worthless carcass.

“I am not an Oracle,” she told him, reading his mind clearly without actually Seeing into it. “I am of no great use to Aelynn. As much as it makes me weep to say it, the child I carry is not of Aelynn, and his destiny may not be there. I put my trust in the gods to protect him. But the gods have declared their intent for you, and it is my duty to guide you home. This much I know.”

“Can you be that blasted certain of what your damnable gods want?” he demanded. “Do you have any idea of what we risk if we go inside that hill and I see you endangered?”

“You will lose control, make the earth quake, and bring the whole hill down on our heads,” she retorted. “That threat wears old. We survived a sea battle without sinking. I'll take my chances.”

He was an idiot for loving her false bravado. Where Lis was concerned, he'd always been an idiot.

Jerking on his boots, he scowled and tried not to remember the heated power of her hand on his foot. Lissandra coursed through his blood. Denying her was akin to denying himself. She was his moral compass. And she was telling him what he didn't want to hear.

“I don't want it to be this way,” he said angrily. “It's much easier risking my neck than yours.”

She kicked his boot with her soft shoe. “You're not listening again.”

“Because I don't like what you're saying.” Boots on, he rose to tower over her. “Why don't we send Trystan down the tunnel and see if it falls on his arrogant head?”

“You know where the tunnel is?” Her face lit with excitement instead of the dread he felt.

“The water has carved several tunnels from the limestone formation beneath here. The entrance closest to us has been widened by human hands. There are no supports. It is wet, dark, and deadly. We have no right to disturb the spirits inside.”

“But you See the chalice there?”

Murdoch stared up at the magnificent bowl of the sky, the clouds scuttling across the surface, and knew he did not want to die now. He wanted to take Lissandra for his wife, have many rowdy children with her, and live life to its fullest.

For the first time in years, he felt a satisfying future within his grasp.

And his Sight said they might never come out of this hill. They could die for a damned chalice that he wasn't sure he completely believed in. For a country that had banished him.

For a woman he wanted more than life.

Selfishly, Murdoch dragged Lis into his embrace, crushed her against him, and took her mouth with all the force he possessed.

And she wrapped her arms around his neck and took everything he gave and returned it threefold. He wanted to weep at the beauty of her spirit.

They both jerked apart at the sound of boots tramping the hill toward them.

“Badeaux,” Murdoch said, without looking up. Reluctantly, he released Lis.

A moment later the stocky miner trudged around a bend and into view. Huffing from exertion, he leaned his hands against the knees of his leather breeches while he caught his breath, then straightened. “Good, I found you before you did anything foolish.”

Murdoch could feel Lis's questioning glance, but he had no answers. He'd sensed danger in his vision, but as usual, the danger could come in any form—human or otherwise. “I'm not much inclined to foolishness,” he responded coldly.

“Ah, but the lady is,” the old miner said, coming abreast of them. “Women are like that. My wife wasn't one of us, and she tried to protect me from the committee that wanted my neck.”

He stepped past them, into the nettles and briars, where he began scuffing his boots against the dirt and stone. “So even though she had her citizenship papers and swore oaths of loyalty and all that other humbuggery they place so much pride in, they killed her just the same.”

“She died in prison protecting you?” Murdoch asked, testing the man's mental shield. As Lis had warned, it had corroded with time and grief, but it was still sound enough to shut Murdoch out.

“Aye. I could not go near her for fear of arrest, so I had friends bribe the guards in hopes of saving her. All for naught. They wanted me, and they would not let her go. In the end, it would not have mattered. She was frail and sickness killed her. By the time my friend reached them, the children were dead, too. Bastard peasants, may their revolutionary souls rot in hell.” He casually rolled a large boulder to one side as if it were no more than a child's toy. “Here we are.”

Lis squeezed Murdoch's hand, and he understood she warned him that the miner's mind was not stable. But Badeaux had just uncovered the opening Murdoch had sought through his vision, and he hadn't paused once with doubt.

“The tunnel is not safe,” Murdoch warned, trying to think of some way of keeping the miner out. Or was Lis right, and the gods had sent Badeaux here for a purpose?

“That's why I'm here,” Badeaux said smugly. “It's men like me who built these tunnels. I know the stone and the earth and how to hold them together. I sense no gold here, but if this is where you wish to go, then I can help.”

Lis tugged Murdoch's arm, warning him again, but he had few options. Aelynn needed the sacred chalice. He didn't want to risk Lis or the child she carried, but his own gifts were more focused when connected with others, and a miner's energy should be an ideal protection against the tunnel's dangers.

Murdoch traced the aquiline bridge of Lis's nose with his fingertip and stared deep into her worried eyes, trying to reassure her. “This is best,” he murmured. “You can rest here while we explore. Trust me.”

“But the dream . . . ,” she protested. “It showed both of us.”

“Bring her along—it will be safe enough now that I'm here.” Badeaux stepped back from the opening he'd uncovered beneath the boulder, gesturing for them to enter first.

Murdoch resisted. If the miner could roll the boulder that easily, he could just as easily entrap them by rolling it back. Murdoch might have the strength to move it, but he had an equal chance of causing destruction if his fury got the better of him.