Sorceress of Faith (47 page)

The
music rumbled, surrounding them, encasing them in a sparking sphere of
lightning! Marian lifted her foot to touch the arcing energy, and she and Tuck
rode the lightning that rippled with chimes.

Crack!
Bong!

Her
feet thudded against soft carpet and her knees bent, absorbing the shock.

28

C
hoking, Marian
opened her eyes to see a circle of sixty people still enveloped in an aurora
borealis undulating with Power. All had hands linked and raised over their
heads.

Gaze
locked on hers, Bossgond lowered his arms, softened his voice, drew the chant
to the end. The circle broke hands.

Tuck
wriggled and Marian opened her fingers. The hamster flew to Alexa’s shoulder,
where Sinafin sat. He started chittering as if telling all their adventures.

Propelled
by the need to feel another person, Marian flung herself into Bastien’s arms,
and he and Alexa cradled her close.

Marian
felt enveloped in life, in…in…
honor
. All the slimy horror of the Dark
nest and the master faded. The underlying evil intelligence that lurked there
had seeped through her pores and down to her core like malevolent oil. This,
too, diminished when surrounded by Alexa and Bastien. Good people, dedicated
people.

“Marian,”
Jaquar whispered.

She
didn’t take her face from Bastien’s shoulder.

“Don’t
touch her!” snapped Bastien in a cool and deadly tone that Marian hadn’t heard
from him before. “You may return to your island.” He spoke over Marian’s head.
“Venetria and Chalmon, you leave a list of those who perpetrated this
wickedness upon Marian, then return to your islands, also. You are not welcome
here. Consider how much your life is worth. That is how much each of you must
pay to Marian for this grievous wrong. Every Circlet and Scholar who took part
in the Sending will forward to the Marshalls a statement of what they owe
Marian—the value of their own life. They will pay—forever, if necessary. We
Marshalls will keep the accounts.”

“My
life is worth anything I have, everything I have,” Venetria whispered.

“I,
too, will pay anything she requests from me,” Chalmon said. “But I will point
out that the plan succeeded. The maw did not disgorge monsters. It was harmed
by her presence. It does not appear as if the nest will send out horrors for an
unknown amount of time in the future. All is quiet—”

“Watch!”
Tuck shrieked. He opened his mouth and held up his little pink paws tipped with
white claws.

Marian
stared as a hologram appeared, recalling that her PDA had video- and
sound-recording capabilities. Tuck could report everything to the Marshalls.
What an incredible show-and-tell!

“No!”
Marian whispered. Her face was pale and set, hair wild and looking as if it
glowed red. Her eyes were wide. She trembled
.

“Yesss.”
The mutant Sorcerer’s voice was sibilant, snakelike. His fingers curled, claws
sprang from the tips, swiped at Marian’s neck, severed a swath of her hair,
missed Tuck
.
The image bobbled.

“No!”
Marian cried. A green-brown stick sparking with Power shot from her fingers. It
struck the master’s eye and pierced it!

A
shudder rippled through everyone in the room.

Alexa
cleared her throat. “Nice shot. Excellent weapon. What did you use?”

With
one last squeeze for Bastien, Marian stepped away from him and Alexa.

Marian
flicked her robe, trying to remove dirt. “A brithenwood twig I found in the garden
here.”

“Interesting,”
one of the female Marshalls said. “I would say it had special qualities. We
must investigate this.”

“Yes,”
Chalmon said, a little too loudly. “The information Marian sent back about the
Dark’s nest will be invaluable in our fight against it.”

Jaquar’s
right fist slammed into Chalmon’s jaw, knocked him to the ground. Venetria
hurried to his side.

Jaquar
looked straight into Marian’s eyes. “I swear, Marian, by my most solemn word of
honor, by my parents’ lost lives, by the keystone of my Tower, I
did not
participate in this action.”

Anger
fired inside her. “You set me up.” Her voice was shrill—and accented with
French.

Apparently
he understood, because he lifted both hands, palms out. “I
swear
,
Marian, I did not betray you.”

Sinafin
clicked her beak.

She
steadied her nerves and spoke slowly and clearly. Marian met Jaquar’s dark
sapphire eyes and said, “You
knew
. They said it was your plan.” She shot
a glance at Chalmon and Venetria, who had withdrawn to one of the screens that
partitioned the Temple.

Marshalls
flowed between her and the Circlets, as if protecting her.

He
reached for her, stopped. “Long ago.”

“You
gave me this.” She held up her hand, fingers spread to show the dark bloodred
weapon-knot encircling her finger, wide enough to reach her first knuckle.

“For
defense. I arrived too late.” His mouth twisted.

Too
many feelings whirled inside her, like storm clouds shaking with thunder and
lightning.

Bossgond
stepped forward, gently embraced her, kissed her on the forehead—and all that
gesture did was remind her of Jaquar’s tender habit of talking to her with his
brow against hers.

When
Marian didn’t hug Bossgond back, he dropped his arms and took a step back. She
glanced at him. He looked older than when she’d last seen him.

“I
knew, too,” Bossgond said. “I heard rumors but did not act. Did not tell you
about them.”

She
had sensed he was avoiding her, hiding secrets from her. His dark brown eyes
filled with grief; his shoulders slumped.

Marian
drew in a deep breath. “Maybe tomorrow I can forgive you.” She didn’t look at
Jaquar when she spoke to
him
. “I don’t know if I can ever forgive
you
.”

From
the corner of her eye, she saw him flinch, incline his head in acceptance. He
walked into the shadows near the circular walls of the Temple, out of her range
of vision. Since she didn’t hear him open the large door, she knew he stayed.

Bastien
draped an arm around her shoulders. “Come have a late dinner.”

Another
surging fear swamped her, made her lean against Bastien. “How…how much time
passed?”

Alexa
took one of Marian’s limp hands, squeezed it. “You were gone for about six
hours.”

Marian
nodded, moved away from Bastien and withdrew her hand from Alexa’s. Much as
she’d like others to fight her battles, they were
her
problems and she
had to deal with them.

She
scanned everyone in the room. Many she didn’t know—Chevaliers and the Circlets
whom Bossgond had called. But she recognized all of Alexa’s and Bastien’s
household that she’d been introduced to. She saw the Chevalier’s
Representative, Lady Hallard, and her staff; the Singer’s Representative,
Luthan Vauxveau. The sexy noble Chevalier Faucon.

So
many people had helped her!

They’d
come when she Called, given her support when she needed it, even if they didn’t
know her.

They
were fighting a war against monsters and were finally coming to work together.

She
stared at every Circlet who’d come to retrieve her from the Dark. A greater
number than those who had Sent her, and of all ages, from a teenager who fiddled
with his circlet as she nodded to him, to a woman who had to be as old as
Bossgond but wore her white hair high and held her matronly body proudly.

She
was blessed.

Then
she swept her glance to Chalmon and Venetria. Venetria didn’t meet her gaze. Chalmon
watched her from under hooded eyes.

Marian
curled her lip. “You attached that—marble—to me and saw and heard everything
before the master found it and destroyed it.” She lowered her voice. “But you
don’t know what happened after that.” She gestured to Tuck. “Tuck can show
others, the Marshalls, the
good
Circlets, what happened. I can tell them
what happened.” She paused significantly. “I can tell them of what I know and
my deductions from my experiences.”

Venetria
bit her lip. Chalmon reddened. They hummed with suppressed desire to hear.
Served them right—perfectly right—that she would tell the Marshalls and not
them.

“I
know something of the master and what he serves.” She waited a beat. “And the
reason the Dark invades.”

J
aquar soaked in
the solitary splendor of the baths beneath the Noble Apartments, a building
across the courtyard from the Keep. No one joined him. He wasn’t sure whether
or not the other Circlets considered him an outcast, but the Chevaliers and
Marshalls viewed him with distaste.

Alexa
and Bastien had whisked Marian off somewhere. Reflexively he mentally reached
for her through their sex-and-affection bond. Nothing.

He
groaned and rubbed his chest over his heart. It hurt, the cutting of the bond,
the instinctive searching for her and finding nothing, the knowledge that he’d
ravaged her emotionally and lost whatever affection and respect she’d had for
him. The bond had been more than sex. How much more, he didn’t know, but
dangerously close to love on his part, a more-than-sex-and-affection bond.

Marian
had no affection for him now, and there sure wouldn’t be any sex with her in
his future.

He
wanted to close his eyes and let the bath water lap away his tension. But he
dared not.

He’d
tried sinking into himself, listening to the sound of the gently moving water
and letting it soothe his mind as the hot water eased his body, but when he
shut his eyes he saw Marian.

Marian
dazed and terrified within a red cage of Power…Marian white and trembling, with
a wide streak of newly silver hair at her left temple, clinging to Bastien,
hiding her face from Jaquar…Marian too hurt to look at him directly…

None
of those images were ones he wanted to see again, or remember.

He
didn’t want to recall Bossgond’s flinty and accusing gaze, either. The older
mage had not spoken, not looked at him except for one scorching stare that made
Jaquar feel four years old with a mess in his pants.

Bossgond
and the other Circlets had socialized briefly with the Marshalls, and accepted
lodgings in the Keep. No doubt they were surveying the suite Jaquar himself had
chosen that morning for a representative of the Tower to occupy.

Enough!
Time to regroup and plan. He must offer Marian all his support, mend the rift
with her. Then he would work with Bossgond and Bastien and the Marshalls to
neutralize the nest. He was the best plane-walker.

Soft
footsteps whispered over the stones. Jaquar sat up; the movement caused water
to slosh up to his chin. Luthan Vauxveau disrobed and slid into the six-person
tub with him.

“Salutations, Circlet Dumont,” Luthan said quietly.

“And
to you, Chevalier Vauxveau,” Jaquar said.

Luthan
slid down the bench so that his shoulders were underwater. He rested his head
on the padded neck roll surrounding the tub and closed his eyes.

Jaquar
was at a loss. He didn’t know Luthan well, and everyone else in the Castle was
avoiding him—why wasn’t Luthan? Deciding he didn’t want to know, Jaquar settled
back into the welcoming hot water. But a hum of tension lived in his muscles.

After
a moment, Luthan said, “The next couple of days are going to be very important.
I wanted you to know.”

As
if the past few had been commonplace! Jaquar recalled that Luthan Vauxveau had
a small gift of foresight. He was also the Representative of the Singer, the
prophetic oracle of Lladrana. Which had brought him to Jaquar?

“You
wanted me to know so I could do what?” asked Jaquar.

Luthan
didn’t open his eyes. “Be alert.”

When
the silence became too heavy for Jaquar to endure, he left.

M
arian choked
down some herbal tea that was supposed to be calming, and managed to eat half
of her small dinner in the Marshalls’ dining room. Tuck was sleeping in her
breast pocket, limp with exhaustion.

She
felt discombobulated—sometimes mind and body working together, sometimes
distanced from her body, uninvolved with her emotions. Time moved in jerky
increments. Slow moments of tolerating dinner conversation. Fast flashbacks to
the Dark evil’s nest, when her mind worked to remember every tiny nuance of the
experience, consider it, correlate it with every other small fact. She needed
to be sure of her conclusions.

“Marian?”
Alexa said.

Looking
up at her concerned friend, Marian understood that Alexa had spoken her name
more than once. “Do you want to bathe or go to bed?” Alexa asked.

A
bubble of hysterical laughter caught in Marian’s throat. Use the elegant,
colorful baths of the Keep where she and Jaquar had made love? Slip into the
sheets of the same bed they’d slept in, then later torn up during sex?