Belladonna by Anne Bishop
The one who, by helping that particular heart, would burn the budding promise of his own life to ash.
So he held on to everything that was her. The sound of her voice, both amused and puzzled, as she gave Maeve straightforward answers about home and family that made no sense unless a person had seen Glorianna’s part of the world. The scent of her beneath the milled soap the Missus only put out for special guests—a ripe scent that could get a man drunk before he’d gotten a good taste of her. The way her green eyes filled with a child’s glee when she’d gotten her first look at an Elandar drum—and the way she’d looked when she’d been taught a simple rhythm and had played a song with him, just him, while the other musicians sat quietly and smiled or winked at him.
He held on to the way it felt to dance with her, both of them laughing as she learned the steps, both breathless with desire as they circled, their eyes seeing nothing but each other. Then he kissed her, long and slow and sweet, lifted up by the laughter and applause of the people around them…
…until the tavern door crashed open.
“Lady’s mercy!” the man said, swaying in the doorway. “Almost had to give it up. I’d swear the road kept disappearing on me, or I would have been here hours ago.”
A chill ran down Michael’s spine as he watched the exhausted man stagger toward the bar. He recognized the badge on the man’s coat. Express rider.
He’d asked for a day—and Ephemera, the wild child who liked his music, had done its best to give him that day. So a road had turned elusive in order to delay a message.
“Have a seat, man,” Shaney said, hurrying behind the bar. “You’re done in.”
The man shook his head. “Horse could use some care. Poor beast is almost run off his legs.”
“I’ll see to the horse,” one of the men called.
“There now,” the Missus said. “Sit on that stool there and we’ll get you fixed up with a bit of food and drink.”
Michael slipped an arm around Glorianna’s waist and waited.
Then Shaney finally recognized the badge as he set a glass of ale in front of the rider. “Who would you be looking for?”
“Don’t rightly know. Anyone here know a woman named Doreen?”
A shudder went through him for no reason he could explain. He wasn’t going to hide what he was anymore, so Doreen couldn’t do him any harm no matter whom she chose to tell.
“She used to work here,” Shaney said warily.
The man drew the letter out of his pouch and handed it to Shaney. “Then this is for you.”
Shaney stepped aside as the Missus put a bowl of stew and a plate of cheese and buttered bread in front of the rider.
No one spoke as Shaney broke the seal and read the message.
A broken song of pain and grief—and a little guilt.
“She’s dead,” Shaney said. He looked at Maeve, not his wife, when he said it. “Murdered.”
“Lady of Light, have mercy,” Maeve murmured, sitting down heavily. “We’d had enough of her and wanted her gone, but no one wanted this.”
The Missus burst into tears. Shaney wrapped his arms around her and swayed.
“Where?” Glorianna asked, looking at the rider.
“Kendall,” he replied. “Started out from Kendall late last night with several express letters. Would’ve been here sooner, but I couldn’t find the damned road.”
Michael bent his head and whispered in Glorianna’s ear, “Wait for me by the stairs.”
It’s time.
Yes, he thought as he moved through the crowd to have a word with Shaney. It was time.
Had they been lovers? Glorianna wondered as she waited by the stairs and watched Michael talk to Shaney and Maeve. No, not lovers. Not even friends. But there had been something between them.
The party was breaking up. Families were gathering up their children and going home. No more music, no more laughter. Not tonight.
It’s time.
He came toward her, his face tight with grim sorrow—and resignation. She’d seen that look on her mother’s face. Had seen it in a mirror often enough over the years.
Landscaper, Guide, Guardian, Magician, Shaman, Heart-walker, Heart Seer, Spirit. What difference did the name make? The feeling was the same. Sometimes you opened a door, revealed a path, provided that moment of opportunity and choice—and that choice, despite all its promise, turned bitter, turned tragic. Turned to sorrow.
“Michael?”
He shook his head, cupped his hand under her elbow, and guided her up the stairs. When they reached the door of his room, he stopped. “We need to talk.”
“About Doreen.”
“Not so much.”
He opened the door, then stepped aside, letting her enter first. When he came in, he locked the door. The sound scraped her nerves.
“I think that monster is back in Kendall,” Michael said. “The letter…It was a hard death, Glorianna. Doreen wasn’t a kind person, but no one deserves that kind of death.”
She turned to face him. “What does that have to do with you?”
“Shaney emptied the till, bought her passage to Kendall.” He hesitated. “Being a Magician…It’s not talked about, you understand. It needs to be talked about. I’ve learned that much from you and your mother—and from seeing the people in Darling’s Harbor. Anyway, she tried to cause trouble for me after I left here because I wouldn’t…” He glanced at the bed. “She didn’t belong here. Didn’t fit the music of Foggy Downs anymore.”
“So she used a dark way of achieving her goal of leaving this landscape, and that attracted more darkness.” Glorianna sighed, then sat in the chair. “And her choices in that time and place put her in the path of the Eater of the World.”
“Kendall is a seaport. Ships come in from all over the world. It could slip aboard a ship and end up in some part of the world I’ve barely heard of and you never have. And if It does that, It will keep killing, keep tormenting.”
“Yes,” she replied, keeping her eyes on his. “That is Its nature.”
He swallowed hard. Seemed to brace for a blow.
She could feel his heart crying out in pain.
“I need your word, Glorianna Belladonna,” he said softly. “I need a promise that will not be broken.”
“I don’t give my word if I can’t keep it,” she said just as softly.
“I need your word that you won’t leave without me. I need your promise that when you go, you’ll tell me where you’re going. Exactly where you’re going.”
“And if I don’t promise?”
“Then I’ll bid you good night.”
“And what is left unsaid will remain unsaid?”
Another hard swallow. “Yes.”
He meant it.
She felt the currents of power flow through the room, flow through her. Felt them brush against her skin.
When she had performed Heart’s Justice to take the Dark Guides away from the Eater of the World, she had depended on Lynnea’s love and courage to hold Sebastian’s heart and keep him safe. She had come to that same moment, here and now, with the Magician.
Opportunities and choices. She could turn away, keep her own landscapes safe, and try to build a life with a man she suspected she could truly love—even though they would always wonder what their life together had cost another part of the world. Or she could have the courage to accept the key Michael held inside himself and open a door that would take her to the next stage of her journey.
“I give you my word,” she said.
He crossed the room, knelt in front of the chair, and took her hands in his.
“In that case, I need to tell you the story about the Warrior of Light.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Glorianna walked the paths inside her walled garden on the Island in the Mist, wandering without destination. Despite being out there in the cold hours of the night, the lantern she carried remained unlit, the matches in her coat pocket untouched. She didn’t need those thi
I want to go home. I need to go home.
After he’d told her the story about the Warrior of Light, Michael hadn’t questioned her need to return to her island, hadn’t argued about the lateness of the hour. She didn’t know what explanation he had given to Shaney and the others. And she didn’t know what any of them had thought when she and Michael walked out of the tavern and vanished as they took the step between here and there.
He hadn’t argued about being given a guest room instead of being invited to her bed. But she couldn’t have him there, not yet. Not quite yet.
The Warrior of Light must drink from the Dark Cup.
Listening to him tell the story had been like having a memory rise up through her skin. She’d heard the echo of his words in her blood and bone.
The Guardians of the Light had kept themselves apart from the everyday life of humans, devoting themselves to nurturing the Light so that it would always shine in the world. But the Guides of the Heart had walked in the world. Had fought for the world.
Had died for the world.
She had come from them. She was one of them. She would follow their path.
But this…This would be worse than dying.
She knew how to build the cage. Had known for sixteen years without realizing it. And because this would be her choice, she knew how to lock the door of that cage and seal it tight. So tight.
Maybe it was just as well she hadn’t met the Magician earlier in her life. That much less to remember. That much less to regret leaving behind.
Ephemera, hear me.
Questions asked. Answers given. It would be all right. She could give him this much. And he would be the Guide he was meant to be.
The Light called.
She smiled when she saw where her wandering had ended. Even as her eyes filled with tears, she smiled.
And took the step between here and there.
“Glorianna? Glorianna!”
Michael held the lantern up and looked around. A waste of breath to swear, but he swore anyway. Without heat, but with a great deal of creativity. The woman may have followed the literal meaning of her promise but she’d fallen short of the spirit of that promise. Which was something they were going to discuss when he found her.
If he could find her.
He would find her. Oh, he would. A note slipped under his door wasn’t what he’d had in mind when he said he wanted to know where she was going.
Magician, I’m taking a walk in the garden. If I cross over, it will be to a Place of Light. And I will be back.
Well, good. Fine. When?
The wild child circled round him, anxious and confused. Did he want something? Should it make something? What? What?
He paused long enough to grab hold of his own emotions and consider where he was—and what might happen if he got careless about how he expressed his feelings.
“Nothing,” he muttered. “It’s nothing. Well…” He paused. Considered. Surely that couldn’t hurt her landscapes, and it would certainly help him and the wild child calm down. “Maybe we could find a place to play a little music while we’re waiting for her to come back.”
Here here here. This way.
He followed the “tug” in the currents of power, not exactly sure where he was going, but since he was still within the walled garden, he wasn’t worried. He had acquired a heavy coat before he and Glorianna had crossed over to Dunberry—this one a loan from Jeb—so he was warm enough despite the chilly autumn night. If worse came to worst, he would simply wait for sunrise before looking for the gate that led back to the house.
But as he stepped off one path and onto another, the change in the feel of things was enough of a jolt to make him stop.
This part of the garden didn’t feel like Glorianna.
The buzz of the land flowed through him, making him want to scratch an itch he knew wasn’t physical.
Potential. Possibility. Change.
He set the lantern down, then spread his arms, raising his hands up shoulder-high. He closed his eyes and lifted his face to the night sky.
A month ago he would have felt foolish standing like this. Now he felt the power and duty and joy of what he was.
“Ephemera, hear me,” he said softly. “It is Michael. The Magician.”
He was a tone that flowed through the currents of the world, both Light and Dark. He was a clear, powerful song. He was a Magician, and he heard the music of the world.
The buzz of the land kept shifting until it fit the tone that was him, became part of the song that was him.
Most important, this odd place, while it didn’t have quite the same feel as the rest, now belonged in Glorianna’s garden.
Then he opened his eyes and looked at the ground in front of him.
“Lady’s mercy,” he whispered. “What have I done?”
“You’re up early,” Glorianna said as she stepped into the kitchen of Sanctuary’s guesthouse. She saw the woman stiffen, saw the wariness in the eyes before Brighid recognized her and relaxed.
“I’m thinking the sun has been up quite some time in Elandar, and my body still answers to that sunrise instead of when the sun awakes here,” Brighid replied as her hands worked a mound of dough.
“Yes, the sun is on the other side of dawn over there.”
“I missed the songs,” Brighid said quietly. “Lighthaven is a beautiful place, but the only thing I truly missed was the songs that marked the points of the day, the cycle of the moon, the turning of the seasons.”
“What kind of songs?” Glorianna asked, slipping into a chair by the table where Brighid worked.
“Chants, mostly. Not what most people would consider singing.”
“What kind of chants?”
Brighid hesitated, then sang very softly:
“We lift our voices to the Light.
We lift our faces to the Light.
We give our spirits to the Light,
To shine in us forever.”
“You don’t sing those songs anymore?” Glorianna asked.
Brighid shrugged. She set the dough in a bowl and covered it with a cloth to let it rise. “Tried for a while when I first went to live in Raven’s Hill. But it made me sad to sing them there, so I stopped. At Lighthaven, even if you were alone when it was time to call that part of the day, you knew other voices were rising with yours, saying the same words. Even if you couldn’t hear them, you knew. There was comfort in that, peace in that.”
“You can sing them here,” Glorianna said.
“They aren’t a tradition here.”
“If you don’t share them, how can another heart embrace them?”
Brighid looked at her for a long moment, then said, “A Guide of the Heart even for a Guardian of the Light?”
Glorianna smiled. “Why not?”
Brighid walked over to the counter. “Would you be wanting some of this koffee, or has Michael enlightened your palate with a good cup of tea?”
Tears stung her eyes. Emotions stormed through her. Just hearing his name rubbed her heart raw.
“Ah, now. You’ve not had a parting of the ways, have you?” Brighid pulled up another chair, sat down, and took Glorianna’s hands in hers.
Not yet, she thought. Not quite yet.
“He’s a good man, Glorianna,” Brighid said, her voice filled with earnest conviction. “I couldn’t see it when I lived in Raven’s Hill, and I’m sorry for that. I’m not saying there isn’t a bit of Dark in him, because there is. Has to be with him being a Magician. But he has a good heart.”
“I don’t want to love him,” Glorianna whispered. “I think I do, am almost sure I do. But I don’t want to.”
“Why ever not?”
“Because there has to be a parting of the ways.”
“You don’t think he could fit into your life?”
“He could, yes.” He already fit so well it was as if he’d always been there. And yet everything was new with him, and there was so muc
She didn’t want to talk about Michael—didn’t want to think about Michael. So she pulled her hands out of Brighid’s and wiped away the tear that had dared spill over. “I know why the Places of Light need currents of Dark. Why do dark landscapes need currents of Light?”
“For hope,” Brighid said with such certainty Glorianna just stared at her. “Even a dark heart hopes its plans will succeed, that it will be the victor in the struggle against its adversaries. More than any other reason, that is why the Places of Light exist. Love, laughter, kindness, compassion. These feelings will take root in a heart on their own. But it is hope that flows through the currents of Light. Because without hope, those other seeds will never find fertile ground.”
“There are people who have no hope but are still able to love, to offer kindness and compassion.”
“A heart that stands deep in the Light can give those. And when it does, what is the seed that is planted in other hearts called?”
“Hope,” Glorianna whispered. “The seed is called hope.”
“Glorianna…”
She shook her head. Pushed her chair back. “I have to go.” She pulled a folded, wax-sealed paper from her pocket. “Would you see that Yoshani gets that?” She waited for Brighid’s nod, then hurried to the kitchen door. As she reached for the knob, she paused and looked back. “Travel lightly, Brighid.”
She hurried away from the guesthouse. There was only one person she wanted to see. Then she wanted the rest of the day to herself. With Michael.
Surely one day wasn’t too much to ask. Not when she was about to sacrifice the rest of her life.