Rising Fire (18 page)

She'd been thinking about her mother when he'd attacked her. And she could almost hear him thinking about someone when he stared at the dark, flamelike birthmark at the base of her spine. Was that something she'd inherited from the woman who'd given birth to her?

“Who was she, my lord? Who was my mother?” she asked. If he killed her for this question or another, she wanted to know this first.

Minutes passed again with no reaction from him. Then he stood and turned his gaze on her.

“Begin.”

She shook her head at him.

Begin!

This time she pushed back, forcing at the word as it still echoed in her mind and thrusting it out. He startled then, and she knew he'd felt it. Nothing as strong or as painful as his had been, but her head did not hurt as much now.

“My mother,” she repeated. “Who was my mother?”

Brienne felt his command this time before it entered her, and she pushed against it. His will was stronger and his art more practiced, so she knew she would fail, but she tried anyway. She looked away, finding it easier to battle his invasion when not looking at him.

Begin.
Softer now. Not painful, more like someone tapping on her forehead.

My mother?
she tapped back.

“She is gone.”

She glanced at him then and found him studying her closely, as though awaiting her next move in some game of skill. No anger in his gaze now; she saw only curiosity and . . . searching.

“Was she your whore?”

He stood close enough that she could feel his breath against her face. When and how he had moved, she knew not. His anger was back now. And then, as though he pulled his control around it, his temper eased and he stepped back.

“She was no whore, so do not call her one.”

The next question pushed forward and out before Brienne could control herself or consider the danger in poking an angry creature like Lord Hugh.

“What was her name?”

Silence was the reply as he walked back to his chair and sat. Brienne waited, hoping he would tell her, but those hopes were dashed with just one word.

“Begin.”

She let out a sigh and cleared her thoughts of all her anger and hope. Thinking only on the power within her, she let it simmer in her blood until the heat pulsed through her as her blood did.

The sphere appeared between them.

The next hours passed with few words and less pain than the first lessons had, and when the sound of her empty stomach gurgling filled the silent chamber as she practiced creating and controlling the different forms of fire, he called an end to it.

“Return to your chamber. I will have your meal sent to you.”

She glanced down at the linen that she'd wrapped around her, knowing that many servants and even the lady and her daughter would still be making their way through the building on the floors below them.

“Here,” Lord Hugh said. He held out a silken robe to her, and she tugged it on. “Turn around.” Clutching the robe to her, she turned, exposing her back to his gaze. She knew he reached out once more, but his hand never touched her. “Go,” he said in a whisper.

Brienne tugged the too-long sleeves up and lifted the length of it from the floor. What the servants would think, she did not know. But she knew they would never question her or the lord about it. After curtsying to him and walking to the door, she lifted the latch and tugged, holding the edges of the soft, sliding fabric together in front of her legs.

“I remember not her name.”

S
he dared not look at him then, hearing the words and hearing the lie they were, too. The door closed behind her, and she stood in the hallway alone. She gathered her breath before she headed back to her chamber.

Brienne wondered why he would lie to her. He remembered her mother. She knew it. And yet he'd said he did not. Why? Who could her mother be that he would deny any memory of her?

The promised meal arrived and, thankfully, Emilie did not. The girl must be attending supper in the hall with the rest of them. Brienne ate every speck of food on the tray, even wiping up the sauce with the last bits of bread. With her hunger and thirst appeased and finally cleaned and clothed, she lay on her bed.

The sounds of the keep across the yard traveled through her windows, and she thought about what William had said about the choice she had to make. Lord Hugh's few clues about her mother only fed her confusion. She was the daughter of this nobleman who claimed blood back to the powerful families in
Brittany and Normandy. She was the daughter of an unknown woman who had somehow known her father. As an infant, she'd been given over to Gavin and Fia to raise.

No matter their words before Lord Hugh, they had never planned to give her back. Even when they knew he'd noticed her, they still had not wanted to lose her. All of their words, actions, and love claimed her as their daughter.

And to William that love seemed even more important than noble blood. For his sad words revealed the pain of his upbringing—born of some liaison and not wanted by either or any of those he could name as parent.

So, who was she then? What person was she at her core? What part of her could no one take away?

She searched for that Brienne as she drifted into an exhausted sleep, one filled with dreams of William's kisses and the loving embrace of two women—one was Fia but the other one she could never see. She could only hear her voice and the soft song she sang to Brienne before she died.

When morning came, Brienne still had no idea who she was, but the ripples of power coming from beneath the castle and from across the miles told her she would need to know very soon.

*   *   *

Hugh stood on the battlements of the main keep, surveying his lands as the sun rose into a turbulent sky. The storms of yesterday had passed and yet the sky warned of more. He'd passed the night here, climbing to the heights and sending the guards away for the solitude he craved.

Thinking on the way the girl had faced him last evening, he tried not to feel pride in her. Beaten, bruised, exhausted, and frightened, she stood there and defied him. Smiling in spite of himself, he could see her face as she lifted her chin at him and fought off his incursions into her thoughts.

And all to gain the name of the woman who'd given birth to her.

He tried to tell himself it was stupidity on her part, to challenge him when her powers were so feeble and could never hope to beat his, but he felt something profound when she pushed back at him. A need so deep that it gave her more power than she should have. Hugh would usually have just destroyed someone for such an insult, such a challenge.

Then she fell against the table and he saw it.

There on her back was the same birthmark that Jehanne—her mother—bore.

Brienne was not just his bastard daughter—she was all that was left from the only time he'd defied his fate and the plans laid down for generations before him. His only failure.

He tried to remember how Brienne had come to be here in Yester and could remember only a wizened, old midwife arriving at the gates with a squirming, squalling bundle she said was his. She'd said the nameless mother died giving birth and asked what he wanted done with this one, the latest in a long tally of bairns born to women he bedded.

He remembered looking at this one and ordering her to be given to the blacksmith whose wife had just lost a child. For some reason, he had chosen to save this one rather than exposing her in the forest as he had other
times. Even back then, in some way, he'd known that this one had meant something.

Now her power was a real thing, and he would mold her to serve the goddess in his plans to free her. She was either the prize who would push the balance to their side, or she was the seed of his destruction planted in the only woman he had ever loved. The woman for whom he had defied his father. The woman for whom he'd been willing to turn his back on his heritage.

In his father's attempts to breed a fireblood that would be more powerful than any before and lead the fight to free the goddess, he'd refused Hugh's request to marry Jehanne and forced him instead to marry Margaret. Jehanne, he'd said, was a mongrel, too much human and too little fireblood to allow her to taint their line.

His father had destroyed Jehanne to demonstrate that he could. And to show Hugh that anything less than complete commitment and compliance to his plans was futile. He'd torn Jehanne's mind in pieces and cast her body aside. Hugh had learned the lesson that night but did not know until now that she'd carried a child.

Now their daughter stood before him, and from the amount of power she carried in her, she stood as proof that his father had been wrong about her mother.

Would this girl be his downfall? When the moment came to sacrifice her in the service of his goddess, would he be able to do as his father had her mother? Or was she his last chance to save his own soul from eternal damnation?

The sun burst through the clouds then, shining
down on his lands and illuminating the fields and the hills around his castle. The followers were gathering, on his lands and near all four of the circles that needed to be destroyed to end the threat to Chaela forever.

Only days stood between now and his destiny.

He'd paid so much for the chance that was coming to him. Generations of his family had followed the goddess for centuries before him, believing in her and her right to rule the world, carrying out the plans that would reestablish her and place his family—and him—at her right hand.

A man rode through the yard below him then, leaving the castle as soon as the gates opened for the day. Peering through the shadows the walls cast, he opened his senses and felt the warblood moving away. De Brus went to visit those he'd left outside the village.

Did he know of his powers yet? Had the dampening effect of the stones and the bespelled chamber that opened into Chaela's prison beneath the ruins kept him completely controlled?

Unfortunately, Hugh needed William's powers unleashed to use them at the stone circle in Daviot. Fortunately, he had just the thing to draw the warblood into play. Hugh made his way back down from the battlements to break his fast.

There were many tasks he needed carried out to prepare to leave Yester. If the plans went as designed, he would never return here, to his lands or to these people.

So many things to do and now so little time in which to accomplish them. His blood raced with excitement, and he left his past and any regrets or doubts high above the castle.

*   *   *

William rode along the path away from the castle and was surprised to see the blacksmith waiting for him. He stopped and dismounted and greeted the man.

“Sir William,” the man began, “have you seen Brienne inside?”

William heard the pain and loss in the man's voice and nodded. “I have. She seems well, Gavin.”

“He will destroy her.” Gavin met his gaze and continued. “And you as well.” Did Gavin know of Lord Hugh's seditious plans, then?

“Why would he do that? What would that accomplish?” he asked, trying to draw the man out.

“He is gathering weapons here and men in his northern property.”

“I've been inside the castle, the keep, and the other buildings, Gavin. I saw no weapons cache there, and neither have my men.”

“They are here in the village. Every cottage. Every building. Ready to be moved soon, according to the command delivered yesterday.”

William glanced around at the cottages, estimating their number and how many weapons could be hidden there.

“A score and ten,” Gavin replied to the unanswered question. “Cottages and storage huts here. More in Gifford Village.”

Even if only a handful of weapons were kept in each place, that meant that hundreds were at Lord Hugh's command. And if there was a man for each weapon, or close to it, that would be a devastating army to put on the field.

“Why do you tell me this?” he asked the man who'd made a great many of those weapons.

“She told me to come to you if there was trouble. Said to trust you.” Gavin glanced over his shoulder and up the road. “Trouble is nearly here, and I thought you needed to know.”

His task of meeting with his men forgotten in the face of danger to Brienne, William needed to get back inside before Hugh suspected he knew. He mounted and turned his horse toward Yester. Gavin grabbed his leg.

“You must protect her,” he said. “I think you are the only one who can. In spite of . . . ”

“In spite of what?” he asked, watching the man struggle to choose his words.

“She is Lord Hugh's blood, you know?”

“He told me so.” Gavin still did not release him.

“She does not understand the power she holds, Sir William. She did not learn to control it.”

“What power, Gavin?”

“She commands the fire, just like her father does.” When William did not say anything, the blacksmith's astute gaze studied him. He could tell the moment Gavin knew. “You have seen it, then?” The man let out a breath. “I pray you can help her.”

“Why do you think I can? I am but one knight against your lord, these weapons, and his men. And against the power that he and they have.”

“I think you give yourself too little credit, sir,” Gavin said. “There is something in you that is like them. But you are honorable. I will hold on to my hope that you care for her and that you will be her savior.”

Stunned at this man's confidence, especially since he, more than most, knew the true resources his lord held, William could only nod. That the man who stood as father to her requested his help, knowing of his attraction to her, meant a great deal. He nodded then, accepting the task that his blood already had.

He could not do this alone, so he saw to his men, but all the while could not get the blacksmith's words out of his thoughts. Though he had little experience or knowledge in a world where unearthly powers battled with humans, he would never go into any battle unprepared. Knowing what he must do before returning to the castle, William made his way across the valley to the camp where the other watchers were. The man called Marcus walked out to meet him.

“Sir William, welcome,” he said. “You look troubled. How can I serve you?” Marcus motioned to a log where he could sit. With a nod of his head, the man warned off several others standing close by, giving them privacy for this.

“What you said before,” he began. “What happened . . . ? I need to know what happened.”

“We are descended from an ancient people who were faithful to the old gods. Seven bloodlines from the seven gods, and priests to serve and guide them, William.”

“What bloodlines?” William asked.

“You are of the warbloods; Brienne is of the firebloods,” Marcus explained. “There will be five others—waterblood, stormblood, earthblood, sunblood, and beastblood. We know not who they are.”

“You said you knew.”

“We know the legends and the prayers, William. The
gods will guide us to those who carry the blood as they brought us here to you and Brienne.”

“And Lord Hugh,” William finished. “Is he a traitor, as the king suspects?” Marcus shuddered at his question.

“Lord Hugh is the truest believer of the goddess who was conquered and exiled. His family has worked and prepared for this moment for more generations than you could count. He knows more than any of us, and he has terrible gifts from the goddess.”

“Tell me of this goddess.” Marcus glanced around at the request, clearly nervous about speaking of this goddess.

“There were seven ancients worshipped as gods and goddesses. Six of them—Belenus, Cernunnos, Taranis, Sucellus, Nantosuelta, and Epona—banded together against the seventh when she decided she would rule over all,” Marcus explained.

“And her name?” William asked.

“Chaela.” Marcus grew more nervous as he spoke the name. “The goddess of fire and destruction and chaos.”

Things were becoming clearer, but William needed more than a lesson in history. He needed to know about what had happened to him.

“What are the powers of a warblood, Marcus? How do I use them, if this is all true?”

“Your success at war is no accident, Sir William,” Marcus said.

“Certainly, it is not. It is through training and experience that I have been successful on the battlefield. Years of training and years more fighting in elite battle groups across Brittany and here in Scotland.”

“I meant no insult, sir,” Marcus said, holding up his hands. “I meant that your blood runs strong and heavy with the skills you need on the battlefield. And more recently, your body changes when you face danger. When she faces danger.”

William stood and walked away, considering this. He'd noticed it from the first sign of the changes. When he'd thought her threatened, his vision and sense of smell had sharpened, his blood had raced, and his body had grown in size and strength. Each time, the reaction was more pronounced.

“Is it linked to Brienne, then? Can I use this only when she is endangered?”

Running his hands through his hair, he wondered what kind of connection was growing between them. Oh, he was attracted to her, drawn by a desire the likes of which he'd not felt before. But there was more. Something deeper, something caring, already existed and grew stronger.

“I am sorry, Sir William,” Marcus said, approaching him and speaking lower. “It has been centuries—nay, longer—since any humans have had and used these powers. We priests have not witnessed such things in a very long time. Though we have heard and studied the legends, I have never practiced making it work with a descendant of the bloodline.”