The Druid Queen - Douglas Niles [89]
The queen stepped to a window and looked along the top of the castle wall. Several guards gathered around a motionless shape-a body, she sensed, as if she could feel the warmth of blood pooling around the form. A body that lay outside the door closest to the royal chambers… closest to Deirdre's room!
A sense of urgency infused Robyn Kendrick, and she returned to her daughter's door. The High Queen placed the palms of her hands flat against the door. She cast a simple enchantment, and the wooden panels flared warm to her touch.
Magic! Something arcane protected the door, or the room within, and this was enough for the High Queen.
"Arqueous telemite!" she cried, drawing upon the power of her goddess. Her hands pressed against the wood, seizing the essence of the trees that the Earthmother had grown, taking the firm grain and straight lines and warping those shapes in the name of Robyn's own magic.
The spell twisted the solid planks that formed the door, warping them so powerfully that they popped free from the iron bands confining them. With rending shrieks, the hinges tore from the walls of stone, leaving the doorway to the room blocked only by a tangle of twisted wreckage.
Pulling sharply against the planks, Robyn broke the pieces away with two quick tugs. In another moment, she stepped through the entrance, seeing immediately that Deirdre was not in her bed.
A glimmer of candlelight in the adjoining parlor caught her eye, and Robyn raced through the bedroom, noticing that her footsteps made no noise even as she kicked pieces of the door out of her path. She understood immediately that Deirdre had concealed the room beneath a magical spell of silence, a fact that only increased her sense of alarm.
She pushed through the hanging curtain dividing the parlor from the sleeping chamber, and for a moment, she saw Deirdre before her. The queen's younger daughter sat in a trancelike silence, her eyes closed, her hands clasped on her knees before her. Several pairs of candles flamed about the room, flickering from the wind of Robyn's entry. Four platters sat on the floor before her-shallow bowls of dark, thick liquid. The pungent smell of fresh blood assaulted the High Queen's nostrils.
Still, unnaturally, there was no sound. Robyn opened her mouth, demanding Deirdre's attention, but no words emerged-and the princess remained inert and entranced.
Then the candles flared brightly, the tiny flames surging upward to illuminate the room with a brightness like sunlight. Robyn felt as though she were mired in mud, watching her daughter's face, cold and icily aloof, etched in the detail of the clear white light.
"No!" screamed the queen, the spell of silence swallowing the sound but not the icy fear that gripped her heart.
In the next instant, Deirdre disappeared.
* * * * *
The princess flew, lending herself to the wings of magic and the power of unknown gods. Plunging through the space of ether, she traveled with dizzying speed through a whirl of colors and chaotic noise. She rode the void like the wild wind, feeling the blessings of a multitude of gods, growing steadily in might and power… and ambition.
The pulse of godhood thundered in her veins, carried through the artifact of Talos, the shards of mirror that had become part of her body and made of her so much more than she had been.
She felt the hand of a storming god clasping her own, and then those daggers of glass within her flared into light. Deirdre glowed like a sky speckled with stars, her flesh the cold night and the gleaming points of light coming from the immortal artifact that had torn into her flesh.
But not rending her-no, not at all. There had been no wound, no pain, when those fragments had pierced her. Now, for the first time, she understood that it had not been an assault against her.
In fact, it was the mirror of Talos that had made her whole.
11
Trollcleaver
Tristan's sword flashed in his hand the instant he saw the springing trolls. Even so, he barely raised the blade as the first of the beasts reached wicked talons toward his leg. Chopping