Morrigan's Cross (Circle Trilogy 1)

When he saw the interest in the horse’s eye, he lifted it, took a healthy bite himself. “Delicious. Would you be wanting some?”

Now the horse stepped forward, sniffed, snorted, then nipped the apple from Hoyt’s palm. As he chomped it, he graciously allowed himself to be stroked.

“I left a horse behind. A fine horse I’d had for eight years. I called her Aster, for she had a star shape right here.” He stroked two fingers down the stallion’s head. “I miss her. I miss it all. For all the wonders of this world, it’s hard to be away from what you know.”

At length he stepped out of the stall, closed the door behind him. The rain had stopped so he could hear the murmur of the stream, and the plop of rain falling from leaf to ground.

Were there still faeries in the woods? he wondered. Playing and plotting and watching the foibles of man? He was too tired in his mind to search for them. Too tired in his heart to take the lonely walk to where he knew his family must be buried.

He went back to the house, retrieved his case and walked up all the winding steps to the topmost tower.

There was a heavy door barring his way, one that was deeply scribed with symbols and words of magic. Hoyt ran his fingers over the carving, felt the hum and the heat. Whoever had done this had some power.

Well, he wouldn’t be shut out of his own workroom. He set to work to break the locking spell, and used his own sense of insult and anger to heat it.

This was his home. And never in his life had a door here been locked to him.

“Open locks,” he commanded. “It is my right to enter this place. It is my will that breaks this spell.”

The door flew open on a blast of wind. Hoyt took himself and his resentment inside, letting the door slam shut behind him.

The room was empty but for dust and spiderwebs. Cold, too, he thought. Cold and stale and unused. Once it had carried the scent of his herbs and candlewax, the burn of his own power.

He would have this back at least, as it had been it would be again. There was work to do, and this was where he intended to do it.

So he cleaned the hearth and lit the fire. He dragged up from below whatever suited him—a chair, tables. There was no electricity here, and that pleased him. He’d make his own light.

He set out candles, touched their wicks to set them to burn. By their light he arranged his tools and supplies.

Settled in his heart, in his mind, for the first time in days, he stretched out on the floor in front of the fire, rolled up his cloak to pillow his head and slept.

And dreamed.

He stood with Morrigan on a high hill. The ground sheered down in steep drops, slicing rolls with shadowy chasms all haunted by the distant blur of dark mountains. The grass was coarse and pocked with rock. Some rose up like spears, others jutted out in gray layers, flat as giant tables. The ground dipped up and down, up again to the mountains where the mists fell into pockets.

He could hear hisses in the mists, the panting breath of something older than time. There was an anger to this place. A wild violence waiting to happen.

But now, nothing stirred on the land as far as his eye could see.

“This is your battleground,” she told him. “Your last stand. There will be others before you come here. But this is where you will draw her, and face her with all the worlds in the balance on that day.”

“What is this place?”

“This is the Valley of Silence, in the Mountains of Mist, in the World of Geall. Blood will spill here, demon and human. What grows after will be determined by what you, and those with you do. But you must not stand upon this land until the battle.”

“How will I come here again?”

“You will be shown.”

“We are only four.”

“More are coming. Sleep now, for when you wake, you must act.”

While he slept the mists parted. He saw there was a maiden standing on that same high ground. She was slim and young with brown hair in a tumble down her back, loose as suited a maiden. She wore a gown of deep mourning, and her eyes showed the ravages of weeping.

But they were dry now, and fixed upon that desolate land, as his had been. The goddess spoke to her, but the words were not for him.

Her name was Moira, and her land was Geall. Her land and her heart and her duty. That land had been at peace since the gods had made it, and those of her blood had guarded that peace. Now, she knew, peace would be broken, just as her heart was broken.