“Strong magic,” he repeated, for when she held it in her hands, he could see it pulse, like a heart beating.
“You’re right about that.” She looked at him over the orb with eyes that had gone suddenly dark. “And isn’t it time we used some? Isn’t it time we do what we do, Hoyt? She knows who I am, where I am, what I am. It’s likely she knows the same about you, about Cian. Let’s make a move.” She held the crystal aloft. “Lets find out where she’s hiding.”
“Here and now?”
“Can’t think of a better time or place.” She rose, jutted her chin toward the
richly patterned rug in the room’s center. “Roll that up, will you?”
“It’s a dangerous step you’re after taking here. We should take a moment to think.”
“We can think while you’re rolling up the rug. I have everything we need for a locator spell, everything we need for protection. We can blind her to us while we look.”
He did as she asked and found the painted pentagram under the rug. He could admit that taking a step, any step, felt right and good. But he’d have preferred, very much, to take it alone.
“We don’t know if she can be blinded. She’s fed on magic blood, and likely more than once. She’s very powerful, and very sly.”
“So are we. You’re talking about going into battle within three months. When do you intend to start?”
He looked at her, nodded. “Here and now then.”
She laid the crystal in the center of the pentagram, and retrieved two athames from her chest. She placed these in the circle, then gathered candles, a silver bowl, crystal wands.
“I won’t be needing all these tools.”
“Fine for you, but I prefer using them. Let’s work together, Merlin.”
He lifted an athame to study its carving as she ringed the pentagram with candles. “Will it bother you if I work skyclad?”
“Aye,” he said without looking up.
“All right, in the spirit of compromise and teamwork, I’ll keep my clothes on. But they’re restricting.”
She removed the band from her hair, filled the silver bowl with water from a vial and sprinkled herbs on it. “Generally I invoke the goddesses when casting the circle, and it seems most appropriate for this. Suit you?”
“Well enough.”
“You’re a real chatterbox, aren’t you? Well. Ready?” At his nod she walked to the opposite curve from him. “Goddesses of the East, of the West, of the North of the South,” she began, moving around the circle as she spoke. “We ask your blessing. We call to you to witness and to guard this circle, and all within it.”
“Powers of Air, and Water, of Fire and of Earth,” Hoyt chanted. “Travel with us now as we go between worlds.”
“Night and day, day and night, we call you to this sacred rite. We cast this circle, one times three. As we will, so mote it be.”
Witches, he thought. Always rhyming. But he felt the air stir, and the water in the bowl rippled as the candles leaped to flame.
“It should be Morrigan we call on,” Glenna said. “She was the messenger.”
He started to do so, then decided he wanted to see what the witch was made of. “This is your sacred place. Ask for guidance, and cast your spell.”
“All right.” She laid down the sacred knife, lifted her hands, palms up. “On this day and in this hour, I call upon the sacred power of Morrigan the goddess and pray she grant to us her grace and prowess. In your name, Mother, we seek the sight, ask you to guide us into the light.”
She bent, lifted the crystal into her hands. “Within this ball we seek to find the beast who hunts all mankind, while her eyes to us are blind. Make keen our vision, our minds, our hearts so the clouds within this ball will part. Shield us and show us what we seek to see. As we will, so mote it be.”
Mists and light swirled within the glass. For an instant he thought he could see worlds inside it. Colors, shapes, movement. He heard it beat, as his heart beat. As Glenna’s heart beat.
He knelt as she did. And saw, as she did.
A dark place, mazed with tunnels and washed by red light. He thought he heard the sea, but couldn’t be sure if it was within the glass or just the roaring of power in his own head.