Gift of the Goddess (33 page)

She despised herself.

And she wasn’t at all sure she wasn’t going mad. Her head whirled with visions of Brin’s strong body twisting in agony, eaten alive by hungry flames. The tips of her fingers tingled, her palms were clammy. She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep. Sweet Mother, she couldn’t
think
!

Brin barely looked at her, the link a solid wall of self-loathing, laced with both guilt and resentment. Trey hardly opened his mouth, a worried crease between his brows.

By the second night, Anje knew she couldn’t bear to be with the shaman for another second. She’d passed through rage, to hurt, and out the other side to rage again. But then the fear began, and each time she looked at him, it grew blacker, deeper. She thought it was like watching a fine building disintegrate, one strong stone at a time. A fine trembling began in the long bones of her thighs and she couldn’t seem to control it.

Bitterly, she castigated herself as a coward. True enough, she didn’t want to die, but her greatest terror was reserved for witnessing Brin’s death. Which would be followed shortly thereafter by Trey’s, she had no doubt. Her soul hung in bloody strips. Flayed.

Holy Mother, she’d been cursed! Cursed with love.

They loved her. She knew that.

But they didn’t love her enough to save themselves from the anger of their bitch-goddess.

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She blinked. If she wasn’t there—if they didn’t have
Lufra’s Gift
… Her lip curled with scorn while her thoughts raced on. They couldn’t do it without her. Could they?

They wouldn’t die if she wasn’t there.

It was well after midnight by the time she’d brooded herself to the point where she was utterly drowned in the inner darkness. Driven to action by the sucking depths of her misery, Anje snatched up her pack and scrambled out of her shelter, extending her scout’s senses into the quiet of the night. She shook in earnest now, shudders running through all her limbs.

She heard nothing save the rustle of leaves tossing in the wind, a small creature scuttling in the undergrowth, the sound of even breathing from the other side of the banked fire. Her pulse thundered, sickeningly loud in her ears.

With one hand curled tight around the Bond torque, she gritted her teeth and slid into the forest.

Fifty paces. One hundred.

The tugging began in her head. She pressed her lips together. She couldn’t watch them die, she simply couldn’t.

Half a mile.

The warm liquid running down her chin must be blood from where she’d bitten her lip. Her vision clouded. She staggered, leaned against a tree for a moment and forced her feet forward.

The link burned, filling her skull with pain. Barely conscious, she stumbled on, a litany pounding in her brain.
She wouldn’t watch. She wouldn’t watch
.

A bellow of rage came from behind her, the noise of crashing in the brush. Her eyes nearly shut with pain, Anje moaned, lurching on through the forest.

Hard hands grasped her shoulders and spun her around. Brin lifted her clean off her feet and crushed her into his chest. “Anje—don’t—”

The agony in her head disappeared as though it had never been. It was replaced with the rough warmth of overwhelming concern, threaded through with terrible fear. “You fool! You’re not hurt?”

She ignored it all, driven by her litany of terror. “Won’t watch,” she mumbled. “Won’t watch you burn. Can’t—”

Brin let out a huge breath. “Then for Lufra’s sake,
help
me!” he said, low and hard.

Anje turned her back and his hands fell away. An instant’s throbbing silence and he faded into the darkness without a word.

“Anje love?” Trey.

With a sob, she hurled herself into his arms and hung on, shuddering, while he ran soothing hands up and down her spine.

In the safety of his embrace, Anje’s world truly began to tilt on its axis. All it took was a single question. Trey kissed the soft skin below her ear and murmured, “What if

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it was the Children of the Mother who’d offended the Goddess?” Then he led her back to her bower, dazed and wrung-out with emotion.

She fell into sleep as though it was a deep well, his words ringing in her ears.

Two days later, Brin turned off the trail and nudged Twink up a long, gentle slope. “There,” he said in a dark rumble, his breath stirring Anje’s hair as she sat stiffly before him, held close in his powerful arms. “Home.”

They were the first real words he’d spoken to her since the night she’d run.

Anje gazed in silence, leaning back against the shaman’s massive chest.

Feolin.

Flutters beat fiercely in her belly. Her destiny lay somewhere there, in that broad, shallow valley.

The destruction of everything she’d grown to hold dear.

And her death.

Though it was still afternoon, shadows pooled in the distance, a gentle blanket laid over a cultivated landscape. She glanced up. A few rays of light poured from the last sliver of the Sun, penetrating the dimness with shafts of luminescence. As if in answer, a solid cluster of lights twinkled at the far end of the valley. All those households, gathering together around the supper table, the lamps lit, the children—

She cut the thought off and fought the urge to lay her hand over Brin’s where it rested under her breasts. The effort required to shield herself from the Bond link sapped her energy. The shaman battered at her relentlessly, waves of love and near-irresistible tenderness alternating with a despair so dreadful, it threatened to suck away her sanity again. He was so strong.

Noble fool. Bastard.

Savior of his people
, said a small voice. She ignored it.

“Lufra’s tits, we made it,” said Trey. “Who’d have thought?” He gave a short laugh.

Twink’s great dark eyes were sunken in his head and he favored his injured leg. Anje bent to smooth his dusty turquoise plumage between her fingers. As for Brownie, the old vran looked more like an untidy pile of mud-colored feathers than ever. He blew hard, whistling softly with distress on each breath.

Anje twisted to look up at Brin. “How much further?” she asked, doling out the words like a miser.

“Two hours to Quaremel, where the temple is.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the lights. “Where we should be. Half an hour to my ranch. Where I want us to be.” She gritted her teeth as Brin stroked his palm the length of her braid before dismounting. He pulled her down into his arms, letting her slither down the front of his body, flush against all that warm muscle.

“Scout.” He bent his head to kiss her, but she clenched her fists and turned her head aside. Every muscle in Brin’s great frame went rigid, as though he held himself together with willpower alone.

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Trey shifted her braid aside and his lips pressed softly to the nape of her neck. “Chelisand will be fit to be tied. We’re days late.”

Brin straightened and his brows drew together. “Too bad,” he said brusquely. “We’re having one more night.” Still on foot, he turned onto a narrow downward track, leading the weary vranee.

“Who’s Chelisand?” asked Anje.

“High Priestess,” said Trey. “My cousin. Terrifying woman.”

After that, conversation lapsed again. Anje’s thoughts circled endlessly in a litany of desperate curiosity and paralyzing dread. Her fists clenched so hard, her nails dug into her palms. No matter how many times she thought of it, her mind couldn’t encompass the physical possibility of her own death, but she could imagine Brin’s in an infinite variety of hideous ways. And she could visualize Trey’s desperate grief only too clearly.

Because she’d seen it before.

It occurred to her for the first time that it took more courage to stay and wait than to ride forth to battle.

Brownie’s horns glinted in the fading light as he lifted his head and whickered. Abruptly, he and Twink surged forward and Brin sighed deeply as he held them back with a firm hand. “Home.” He boosted Anje onto the big vran and mounted behind her. With Trey and Brownie bringing up the rear, they trotted smartly down the track, across a landscape of softly waving rasa grass. “My lands start here,” he said, pointing at a copse of candlewoods and fell silent once more.

A group of low buildings came into sight, strategically placed for a view down the valley toward a wide river. They were painted a creamy buff shade, the thatch of the roofs glinting a golden-brown in the last rays of the sun.

As they thundered into a dusty courtyard, a door flew open and a small, round elderly woman came out, shading her eyes with her hand. From another direction, a tall stick of a man loped into sight, wiping his hands on an apron.

Brin leaped off Twink and caught the woman up in a hug, while the man thumped him on the shoulder, a broad grin lifting his long mustache. “You made it!” he said and strode over to Brownie. “Trey, good to see you.”

Trey smiled as he dismounted. “You too, Djalen,” he said as the man slapped his back.

Djalen turned toward Anje, still grinning. “I see you found…” The words trailed away and all the color ebbed from his face. “Lufra’s tits!” He grew even paler. “Uh, sorry, Lady.” He drew the old woman to his side. “Sasreela, come see.”

The woman continued forward slowly, her gaze never leaving Anje’s. When she drew level with Twink’s shoulder, she sank painfully to her knees in the dust. “Lady, you honor us,” she whispered.

Deeply uncomfortable, Anje slid hastily off the vran and bent to assist the woman to her feet. Brin came to stand behind her, laying his hands on her shoulders. His touch

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steadied her. “Anje, this is Sasreela, my housekeeper and healer for the neighborhood. And this old reprobate…” he gestured at the thin man, “is her husband Djalen, who does the cooking and rules us all with an iron fist.”

Shifting one hand to her throat, he rubbed her torque between his fingers and thumb. Sasreela’s gaze sharpened. He turned to the elderly couple. “Anje’s as human as you and I. And just as bloody-minded.” The grimness about his mouth relaxed a little. “My Bondmate.”

Sasreela’s hands flew to her mouth, stifling a squeak. Her faded blue eyes grew very round in her wrinkled face. “Oh,” she said. “
Oh
.” Then she recovered. “Come inside, do. Quick, before the hands see you or you’ll be up drinking all night.” Tears shone on her cheeks as she glanced up at the Sun and its hungry Shadow. “You’ve cut it awfully fine, Brin dear.”

They entered the house, the interior cool and sweet with the smell of polished timber. “I know,” said Brin heavily. He smiled, but no warmth reached his eyes. “Djalen, send someone with a message for Chelisand, will you?”

Djalen nodded and bustled away, while Anje looked around, frankly curious. Her first thought was that the house echoed the colors of the landscape, cream, buff, green and gray. It wasn’t especially tidy, or particularly grand. There were comfortable chairs scattered around and a pile of huge, squashy cushions in one corner. The floor was covered with a selection of rugs, woven with sinuous designs in varying shades of muted green on a cream background. A large fireplace, unlit, took up one wall and in the other was a niche containing a statue and a vase of wild flowers.

Intrigued, Anje went closer. The statue, no more than a foot tall, was of a draped female figure holding a child. Even to her untutored eye, the workmanship was exquisite. The craftsman had used the grain of the golden-brown timber to delineate the flowing lines of Lufra’s garments. For Anje had no doubt it was She, from the love shining in Her beautiful face to Her dainty toes.

“My father made that. Lufra as mother.”

Anje turned, startled. “I thought he was a blacksmith?” she said without thinking. She pressed her lips together in annoyance.

Brin ran a gentle finger over Lufra’s sandaled foot. “He was, but he loved wood. It was his hobby.” He shrugged. “He and my mother died before I was twenty. Since then, it’s been me and Sasreela and Djalen.”

“And Trey,” she added.

“Yes, thank Lufra.” Djalen’s voice called something from another room and Brin curled a hand around her upper arm. “Let’s get fed and bathed. I want you two in my bed.”

Anje snorted and pulled her arm away.

When he ushered them into his suite an hour later, she thought the bed was more like a lake than a place to sleep. The room was large and airy, with blinds of woven rasa-grass at the windows, and it needed to be, because Brin’s bed seemed to occupy

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acres, low to the floor, swathed in some flowing, blue fabric. A heavy dresser of that same golden-brown wood, sat under the window and on it was another statue, much smaller than the other, made entirely of some pale glinting stone. The subject was a woman, kneeling, completely nude, with her head thrown back and her back arched, frozen at the point of climax. Each breast, every voluptuous curve of flesh, was depicted with brilliant artistry.

Trey picked it up and placed it on Anje’s palm. “She’s lovely, isn’t She? Turn Her over.”