Page 200 of The Daughters of Avalon
I inhale the scent of herspellcasting. Power is, after all, an aphrodisiac. It weaves itself into your veins and then thrums into your heart, like a sweet but savage song.
I laugh to myself, endlessly amused.
Would that my daughter could know what I know…would that she could see the kingdom she has forsworn. Someday, before she closes her eyes in mortal slumber, I should show her all that she has forsaken.
The reliquary is near. I follow its scent—stronger and stronger nearer the floorboards, so I sink to my knees and crawl like a hound, sniffing along the old wood. Muscles taut with anticipation, I inhale deeply, exhilarated, because I sense that wherever my reliquary lies, there, too, I will find mygrimoire.
Knocking on the floor, I discover a hollow where the scent reeks strongest. Growling, I sink my nails into the grooves and pluck up the boards revealing a small compartment beneath, and here I discover the reliquary.
But notthegrimoire.
My stomach plummets. My face contorts.My Book isn’t here.There lies only a makeshiftgrimoiremy daughters created in their ignorance.Pah!
It is all I can do not to lift it up and rip it to shreds, worthless as it must be. Anger, deep and dark roils from the depths of me.
How dare you defy me, daughter!
How dare you keep me from my Book of Books.
Calm yourself,I demand.
Calm yourself.
Could it be that Rosalynde took thegrimoirewith her? Nay, I cannot believe she would. Why would she carry the tome so far north, only to keep it?
Unless Elspeth did not, in truth, embrace the Craft? And in that case, perhaps she sent her sister away with thegrimoirein hand? But nay…
My gaze travels across the room… to the hearth, where the cauldron sits, and I scowl as I pluck up the reliquary, grateful for its return. I pick up the book and steal it to the hearth.
Inside the cauldron, I find traces of herbs. Rose petals for love… white sage for purification… amaranth for protection… asafetida to drive away demons—I laugh—bryony to amplify the strength of her brew. And there, too, I smell bits of copper, agate, malachite and amber, each to summon a guardian angel.
But that will not work, Elspeth.
Wheremagikdwells, angels do not—leastways, not the sort you might think.I amthe angel you would call. TheSylphkindare all eternal beings, bowing only to the Mother. All other gods are gods unto themselves. Angels, devils… we are all one, if only distinguished by the shade of our souls. Mine, as we have already determined… is black.
Rage is the color of my wings.
A glance down at the wood kindles a fire as I flip through the pages of my daughters’grimoire, finding the most detestably ordinary spells and concoctions.
Boring.
Drivel.
Waste.
I hurl the book into the flames, watching it burn only a moment before abandoning the solar to seek my grandchildren. They aren’t difficult to find… Soft coos lead me to a room one flight up. The nursery is attached to the master’s chamber, with whitewashed stone walls and pale-blue billowing drapes surrounding a lovely, ornate cradle.
Here, I discover the children… one asleep beneath sprigs of betony bound with rowan vines… the other peers up at me with those luminous eyes—eyes the color of Emrys’.
Boys, I realize, and gasp in wonder.Twins.But not merely twins…
They are both painfully beautiful, but the fairest has a countenance the image of Taliesin’s. His eyes are the changeable shade of cats-eye stones—a druid prince. Skin like pearls; nose, aquiline, like a Roman’s; lips rosy as plums; brows tipped with hair so fair it could have been fine-spun gold silk.A druid prince.
The knowledge is both spine-chilling and glorious.
Born again… a prophet, a bard, a Merlin. He, who was promised… a shining torch to ward away darkness. Six hundred years Taliesin has been gone, his bright soul loosed about the world, like a butterfly without a perch.
The boy blinks, his beautiful lips curling into a smile, his fine-spun lashes brushing his soft, rose-petal cheeks, and he gives me a coo…
