“It’s time I went home,” I said firmly.
“Say something. Anything. Please.” I’d just blurted my guts out to Sgiach and Seoras. Naturally, telling the story of Jack’s horrible death had made me bawl and snot. Again. And then I’d babbled about having to go home and be a proper High Priestess even though I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what that really meant, while both of them watched me silently with expressions that looked wise and unreadable at the same time.
“The death of a friend is always difficult to bear. It is doubly difficult if it comes too soon—too young,” Sgiach said. “I am sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It doesn’t seem real yet.”
“Aye, well, it will, lass,” Seoras said gently. “You should be rememberin’, though, that a queen puts aside grieving fur duty. You cannae have a clear head if ’tis filled with grief.”
“I don’t think I’m old enough for all of this,” I said.
“No one is, child,” Sgiach said. “I would have you consider something before you take your leave of us. When you asked if you could remain here on Skye I said that you should stay here until your conscience bade you leave. Is it your conscience talking to you now, telling you the time is right for you to leave, or is it the machination of others that is—”
“Okay, stop,” I said. “Neferet probably believes she’s manipulating me into coming back, but the truth is that I have to go back to Tulsa because it’s my home.” I met Sgiach’s eyes as I continued speaking, hoping that she would understand. “I love it here. On lots of levels it feels right to be here—so right that it’d be easy for me to stay. But, like you’ve said, the path of the Goddess isn’t easy—doing right isn’t easy. If I stayed here and ignored my home I wouldn’t just be ignoring my conscience, I’d be turning my back on it.”
Sgiach nodded, looking pleased. “So your return comes from a place of power, not one of manipulation, though Neferet will not know that. She will believe that it only took one simple death to make you do her bidding.”
“Jack’s death isn’t a simple thing,” I said angrily.
“No, ’tisnae simple for you, but a creature of Darkness kills quickly, easily, and with nae thought beside her own gain,” Seoras said.
“And because of that Neferet will not understand that you return to Tulsa because it was your choice to follow the path of Light and Nyx. She will underestimate you because of that,” Sgiach said.
“Thank you. I’ll remember that.” I met Sgiach’s clear, strong gaze. “You and Seoras and any of the rest of the Guardians who want to could come with me, you know. With you guys beside me there’s no way Neferet could win.”
Sgiach’s response was instantaneous. “If I left my isle the consequences of that would ripple through the High Council. We have coexisted with them peacefully for centuries because I chose to absent myself from the politics and restrictions of vampyre society. Were I to join the modern world they would not be able to continue to pretend I do not exist.”
“What if that’s a good thing? I mean, it seems to me it’s time the High Council was shaken up, and vamp society with it.
“ ’Tis not our battle, lassie,” Seoras said.
“Why not? Why isn’t fighting against evil your battle, too?” I rounded on Sgiach’s Guardian.
“What makes you think we’re not fighting evil here?” It was Sgiach who answered me. “You’ve been touched by the old magick since you’ve been here. Tell me honestly, before then had you ever felt anything like it out there in your world?”
“No, I hadn’t.” I shook my head slowly.
“It’s fighting to keep the old ways alive we’ve been doing,” Seoras said. “And that cannae been done in Tulsa.”
“How can you be so sure?” I asked.
“Because there is no old magick left there!” Sgiach said, almost shouting in frustration. She turned her back and paced over to the huge picture window that looked out on the sun setting into the gray-blue water that surrounded Skye. Her back was stiff with tension, her voice thick with sadness. “Out there in that world of yours, the mystical, wonderful magick of old, where the black bull was revered along with the Goddess, where the balance of male and female was respected, and where even the rocks and trees had souls, had names, has been destroyed by civilization and intolerance and forgetfulness. People today, vampyres and humans alike, believe the earth is just a dead thing that they live on—that it is somehow wrong or evil or barbaric to listen to the voices of the souls of the world, and so the heart and the nobility of an entire way of life dried up and withered away…”
“And found sanctuary here,” Seoras continued when Sgiach’s voice faded. He’d moved to her side. Her back was turned to me, but he faced me. Lightly, Seoras touched her shoulder and then let his fingers trail down her arm to take his queen’s hand. I could see her body react to his touch. It was like through him she’d found her center. Before she turned to me, I saw her squeeze and then release his hand, and when our eyes met again she was, once more, noble and strong and calm.
“We are the last bastion of the old ways. It has been my charge for centuries to protect the ancient magicks. The land here is still sacred. By revering the black bull, and respecting his counterpart, the white bull, the old balance is maintained and there is one small place left in this world that remembers.”
“Remembers?”
“Aye, remembers a time when honor meant more than self, and loyalty wasnae an option or an afterthought,” Seoras said solemnly.
“But I see some of that in Tulsa. There’s honor and loyalty there, too, and many of my grandma’s people, the Cherokee, still respect the land.”
“To some extent that might be true, but think of the grove—how you felt within it. Think of how this land speaks to you,” Sgiach said. “I know you hear it. I see it in you. Have you felt anything truly like that outside my isle?”
“Yes,” I said before actually thinking. “The grove in the Otherworld feels a lot like the grove across the street from the castle.” Then I realized what I was saying, and Sgiach all of a sudden made sense. “That’s it, isn’t it? You literally have a piece of Nyx’s magick here.”
“In a way. What I really have is even older than the Goddess. You see, Zoey, Nyx hasn’t been lost to the world. Yet. Her masculine balance has, and I’m afraid because of that the balance between good and evil, Light and Darkness, has been lost, too.”
“Aye, we
“Kalona. He’s part of this out-of-balance thing,” I said. “It’s true that he used to be Nyx’s Warrior. Somehow that got out of whack, along with a bunch of other stuff when he turned up in our world, ’cause that’s not where he belongs.” Knowing it didn’t make me feel sorry for him, or bad for him, but it did make me begin to understand the air of desperation I’d sensed so many times around him. And it was knowledge. With knowledge came power.
“So you see why it’s important that I not leave my isle,” Sgiach said.
“I do,” I said reluctantly. “But I still think you could be wrong about there being no old magick left in the outside world. The black bull did materialize in Tulsa, remember?”
“Aye, but not until after the white bull appeared first,” Seoras said.
“Zoey, I would very much like to believe that the outside world hasn’t entirely destroyed the magick of old, and because of that there’s something I want you to have.”
Sgiach reached up and untwined a long length of silver from the mass of twinkling necklaces that dangled from around her neck. She lifted the delicate chain over her head and held it up at my eye level. Hanging from the silver was a perfectly round milk-colored stone that was smooth and soft and reminded me of a coconut-flavor Life Saver. The torches that the Warriors had begun to light flickered against the stone’s surface, making it glisten, and I recognized the rock.
“It’s a piece of Skye marble,” I said.
“It is—a special piece of Skye marble called a seer stone. It was found more than five centuries ago by a Warrior on his Shamanic quest as he ran the Cuillin Ridge on this very island,” Sgiach said.
“A Warrior on a Shamanic quest? That doesn’t happen very often,” I said.
