The Bonds of Blood (37 page)

Without knowing how it happened,
however, Jovian was soon standing beside the open door, lamp
abandoned on the dining table, and a very flummoxed looking
Angelica stood beside him.

“It happened again. Jovian, I don’t
like this,” Angelica hissed.

“Shh,” he silenced her as he crept
closer to the opening to have a look.

Beyond was the most lovely garden he
had ever seen, surrounded by a high wall. Many paths meandered
through the clumps of blossomed flowers, much like the paths had
twisted through Rosalee’s own gardens. Unlike Rosalee’s gardens,
however, there were benches situated here and there before
fountains adorned with angels, elementals, and fata.

Jovian looked back at Angelica;
clasping her arm he pulled her forward to look with him.

In the center of the garden stood a
large ivory altar adorned with many flowers, candles, and a
container issuing forth red smoke. Two robed figures were kneeling
before the altar postulating themselves, and a large statue of the
fertile Mother Goddess stood behind it.

Angelica noticed that the
silver energy was issuing forth from the statue, but more than
that, it was coming down
into
the statue from somewhere above them. When they
looked, however, there was no ceiling, only open skies.

Jovian pushed open the door a little
further to see where the light was coming from. Shaking off
Angelica, who was grasping at him trying to hinder his movement,
Jovian stepped into the garden.

The silver energy issued from the
statue in waves, settling across the ground in blue ripples. The
blue on the ground was more physical, however, than the energy from
the Goddess. It swayed and moved like waves in a stiff
breeze.

Jovian broke his attention from the
statue to look up, and his mouth fell open.

High above the scene was the moon, full
and positively glowing brighter than he had ever thought possible.
What was more, a bright beam of silver light lanced down from the
moon, straight into the statue of the Mother Goddess behind the
altar.

Jovian gasped and felt something brush
his leg under the hem of his habit. Slowly, seductively the thing
tightened around his ankle, and his vision blurred …

Jovian was no longer in the garden, but
instead standing in the middle of a large field dotted with
hundreds of flowers in many different hues. He stopped for a moment
and looked around, wondering how he had gotten here, and then
wondering where here was.

He looked behind him, and rolling back,
receding from where he was, stood a silver fogbank, eddying and
swirling away.

He turned back, confused, and saw a
woman, naked, smiling, sitting in the midst of all those flowers.
Her hair was black as night, her skin as creamy and soft as the
light of the moon he had just recently glimpsed. She looked up at
him, a tangle of hair slipping down her back like waves. In the
midst of her locks of coal hair stood points of light, like tiny
stars in an inky sky hundreds of leagues above him.

Her hand rested on her pregnant
stomach, and she reached out a hand toward him as if beckoning him
to come closer.

Finally she opened her eyes and Jovian
nearly began to cry. If her hair had looked like the night sky, it
no longer did, for her eyes were filled with every beautiful sight
the universe had to behold. Large bright stars blazed in a midnight
field blue, silver and bright, wisps of color, swirling like a
tempest chased themselves across her black orbs, and things Jovian
had never seen before. In the inky depths of her eyes he saw a
burst of red like a magnificent explosion; he felt as though he was
watching worlds be born in her.

“Would you like to learn the secrets?”
she asked.

Fingers brushed the hair on his leg,
and Jovian looked down.

The flowers were gone, and he once more
stood in the center of the garden, the silver light of the Mother
Goddess sending shocking ripples of power through the space, so
intense it made Jovian’s body throb with something between pain and
desire.

He looked down and saw that indeed a
hand had grasped his ankle, and what was more, it was connected to
a body, clothed in azure, clinging to another form on the
ground.

In horror Jovian realized what was
happening. This was not just a Summoning; this was also a
celebration of the full moon. The Hierdule and Hetaira were
celebrating the power of the Goddess, indulging in the powers that
linked them to her.

If it had not been such a religious
experience Jovian would have called it scandalous, an orgy. But
there was something beautiful in it, the priests of the temple
coming together in such reverence.

Jovian realized that the touch he had
received had only been part of the power of the Hierdule had
bestowed upon him. He had only experienced part of a vision, not
the whole thing.

Jovian wanted more.

He looked behind him to see Angelica
being lowered to the ground by three robed figures.

He felt firm hands grip his leg, slowly
working their way up higher. He flushed for a moment in
embarrassment, but a voice, husky with power, said to
him:

“You must relax to receive your
vision.” A husky voice breathed into his ear.

He allowed the hands to lower him to
the ground, and felt the rough habit being drawn off his body
slowly, slipping up over his head. The movement of it caused Jovian
to shiver in pleasure, tightening his skin.

Jovian tried relaxing as more hands
joined the other, and he lost count of how many people must be
surrounding him.

He then felt sensations he had never
known before.

As he relaxed he felt the energy from
each touch, each body caressing him, ripple through his figure like
waves lapping at a shore. He was being filled up with power, and
the mere touch of one of the priests brought intense gasps to his
mouth, not from the sexual touch of mouths and tongues, but instead
gasps from the power that was lancing through him at their
advances.

Slowly his vision began to blur again,
and he turned his head to the right in time to see Maeven beside
him, eyes wide and staring up at the sky. The dark haired man lay
there completely naked, covered in sweat. He was no longer being
accompanied by the Hierdule or Hetaira, but instead he looked as
though he had reached the state they had taken him to, and he was
slowly coming back from it.

His breathing was returning to normal,
and Jovian watched his muscled torso shiver and jerk occasionally
as his breath regulated.

Suddenly Jovian let out a cry as he
felt a shiver of part pain, part pleasure lance through him, and he
was instantly back in the field with the dark haired
woman.

She reached out for him, and he knelt
before her, taking her hand.

“Would you like to learn the secrets?”
she offered.

“What secrets?” he asked. A slight
breeze blew, and Jovian could smell plumb blossoms and lilacs in
the air.

She smiled and looked around her. “The
secret of all this.”

“You mean herb lore?” He was confused
as to what she meant.

She smiled once more, motherly,
lovingly. “The power has been given to you already. Would you like
to learn the secrets of the Will to do that which must be
done?”

Those words conjured the image of Baba
Yaga back into Jovian’s mind, and he looked up at her with a gasp.
“Yes,” he confirmed with quivering lips.

The Two forces, the twin powers,
stirred in their inky confinement. They were a new force, a
powerful force. They were something that should never have been; an
accident. They were the creation of love, yet they were bent on the
extermination of a single force.

They writhed in their bonds, shrieking
to be free, wanting nothing more than to stand in the light and
drink it all in. They were something that should never have been
allowed to be, yet they were real.

Unplanned though their existence was,
they were, nonetheless, going to be a very useful tool …

CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

_J
ovian was not sure how
he
had come to be in his bed the next
morning, but in his bed he was. If it had not been for the energy
still pulsing through him, Jovian would have thought last night was
a magnificent dream.

It hadn’t been.

“You looked like you enjoyed yourself
last night,” Maeven teased from where he sat in a chair beside
Jovian’s bed. From the looks of the covers beside Jovian, Maeven
had slept right there last night.

“How did I get back up here?” Jovian
asked.

“I brought you,” Maeven said simply,
taking his feet off the bed and leaning forward.

Jovian groaned and moved the covers to
stand. He stopped short.

“Where is my robe?” He blushed
furiously, and Maeven chuckled.

“It is beside you on the
floor.”

Indeed it was, and Jovian reached over,
grabbed it, and discreetly dressed.

“We leave today,” Maeven said, standing
as well. “In fact, I think Grace wishes to be gone soon. She has
already gotten everything straightened out with Madalain, and the
horses are in the garden where the opening to the tunnel
is.”

Jovian nodded. The energy he had felt
last night was now gone.

“What about the Summoning? Is the
verax-acis gone?” Jovian asked. Despite his feeling refreshed and
rejuvenated, Jovian was still incredibly weak from the
poison.

“He is,” Maeven confirmed. “They drove
him away last night. Now hurry, you do not want to keep Grace
waiting.”

Jovian tried to pack as fast as he
could, but he was still weak and slower than usual. Finally Maeven
took pity on him and helped him pack.

“Are you going to need help dressing?”
Maeven asked, and Jovian looked up at him sharply, a curt retort on
his tongue, but stopped when he saw that Maeven was
sincere.

“No,” Jovian said shaking his head. “I
will be fine.”

Once Maeven left, Jovian dressed in his
brown soft leather trousers and a white tunic, buckled his mother’s
long sword behind his back over his traveling cloak, and he laced
up his boots. He fastened on his quiver, slung the bow over his
shoulder, grabbed his saddle bags, and was out the door.

Grace appeared to have finished
arranging everything with Bishop Madalain when they all arrived in
the garden, now empty of all people but the bishop and their
group.

Angelica and Jovian glanced at each
other before blushing furiously and looking in opposite directions.
They had lost their virginity, and they didn’t know to whom, or if
it was even a male or female that took it.

“So,” Grace said brusquely, bringing
his attention back to the now, “are we ready?” She picked up a new
bag filled with torches.

They all nodded and said their
good-byes to the bishop before taking the reins to their mounts and
nearing the huge cave that sat at the back of the garden as if it
were a part of the structure. Indeed the hole looked like it was
actually a door in the wall of the garden, and they would have
thought it led outside of the garden if they didn’t see that it
dropped off sharp just within the opening of the cave.

Thankfully there were steps formed of
stone which led down into the tunnel, but other than that Jovian
could not see. The opening of the cave had a torch on each side,
which stayed lit at all times, illuminating the strange elven words
that ringed the opening.

It took a moment for Maeven to light
his torch from those outside, but once the pitch caught, the light
flared, chasing back the shadows of the cave. He held his torch out
over the opening of the tunnel and peered down as the others lit
their torches in the same fashion.

Leading the group, Maeven started his
descent along the curving stairs that turned around the edge of the
tunnel then headed downward as if the tunnel were in truth a
gigantic well. With one final look back at Madalain’s loving,
careworn face, Jovian led Methos down into the tunnel, out of the
world of light, and into shadow.