Mercedes Lackey - Lamma's Night (anthology)

Open it, and we will be together. Or else set me free. For I am tired, Miranda. But I think you know the choice you want to make.

It was true, though, that Miranda felt a duty in any event. Poor, trapped spirit! To grant it rest, or to grant its wishes, and bring Stephen back—and there was something else, wasn't there?

We can see the new world together.

Her choice. And the day of casting loomed: Lammas Night, the night when Peter's chains were broken, the night when the new harvest is celebrated by the baking and offering of the season's first loaves of bread.

Tired, Miranda pressed her hands against the bookshelf and lay her forehead against the leather volumes. She was sick of reading yet still eager to learn, and she half wished that the knowledge would burst from the leather spines of the books and into her head.

"Are you still there?" she whispered.

Another whisper, not her own, and now a breeze touched her open robe and it fell a bit, the cloth sliding past her knees. Miranda closed her eyes and felt something touch her hands, fingers interlacing with her own, and she kept her eyes closed so that they stayed real.

Ghostly fingertips on the backs of her hands, brushing at her wrists. It was Stephen; he was behind her. Don't look. Don't break it. The hands that were and were not there caressed her arms, and then she felt them at her face, soothing, and Miranda opened her mouth as the hands brushed against her lips. The hands came to her neck, gliding along its length, and she gripped the shelf firmly and swayed with them. Yes....

Then she felt his fingers playing at the base of her spine and she heard a rustle as the robe lifted by some unknown power all its own, up and over her head and against the bookshelf. Miranda's breath echoed in the cloth that surrounded her head, and she did not open her eyes, but pressed her head against the spines as he explored her, pressing, relaxing. Warm. She tightened her grip on the shelf.

On Lammas we give the bread, the bread is the flesh, the flesh is the life....

Miranda felt him pressed against her, felt herself opening to him, arching her back, and the hands glided back to her breasts as he entered her.

The flesh is the life....

She found herself grinding against him, wanting him fully, still not opening her eyes, not even to stare at the dark books, and all she could hear was the echo of her own breath inside her lifted robe, don't look, don't break it . Miranda moaned and gasped, afraid for just a moment, his hands tightening at her throat and her closed-eye vision going white and speckled, but yes....

Miranda gasped again, no air, and the sensation grew in intensity. If she could breath she would only say yes....

But then, a thought, an image in her brain, of Stephen and Dervish and the well, the well empty, Stephen casting a spell there, and Dervish....

Hands gripping the small of her arched back, anger uncontrolled, strangling her, the robe high above and around her head, no air—

The bread is the flesh, and the flesh is the life....

Oh, god, oh, god....

Dervish—

Brilliant colors and flashes of white stars, swooning and exploding at once, flooding with warmth and pain and tortuous pleasure. Miranda shook, vibrating head to toe, the explosion rocking her to the core, no air and none needed, God, oh God, shaking violently as it reverberated through her until the shake was just a quiver at the base of her spine, and she felt herself as outside her own body, falling to the floor, crashing to earth.

You're not him! You're not him!

Alone, Miranda dug her fingernails into the floorboards and gasped, her eyeballs relaxing into her skull, lungs exploding with new air. Alone. Alone. Alone.

Oh, god, oh, god.

On Lammas we give the bread, the bread is the flesh.

The flesh is the life.

Jemuel was still in his nightcap when he came to the door, thrusting a candle before him. He looked out and sighed, as if in exasperation. "I heard you calling as you rode," he said.

"Please, can we talk?"

"Of course." Jemuel rubbed his eyes and turned, and she followed him into his study, where he set a fire burning and she took a seat. "Chocolate?"

"No. Thank you. Did you know Stephen?"

Jemuel was stoking the fire with a poker and raised an eyebrow. "A little before my time, but he was alive when I came to this village."

"Was he in trouble?"

Jemuel replaced the poker in its stand and wiped his hands on his gown, and took a seat in his chair. "Aren't we all, at some time or another?"

"I want to show you an image, and I want you to tell me if it is Stephen."

Jemuel nodded, slowly. "All right."

Miranda lay back and whispered something, and brought the image forward, of the wizard whose spirit she had been talking to so much, and of late had shown such ardor in the library. The wizard she saw fighting with another man at the well on Stephen's land. She saw the images and drew from them, one after the other, here a profile, there a badly lit front view. An image from a mirror. She extracted the details and set them in the image of a man, and cast it at Jemuel.

Jemuel sat, receiving the image, and studied it. After a while he turned the image away. "Hmm."

"Is it Stephen?"

"This is the spirit in Stephen's house?"

"Is it Stephen?"

"Of course not," Jemuel snapped. "You knew that, too, or you wouldn't have come all the way out here to ask me. Wrong question. Try again, Miranda."

"Who is it?"

Jemuel smiled and wagged his finger as he got up from his chair and went to his shelves. "You know, I spent some time on special assignment with the Circle as well, before I received placement. If you pay attention you can find out interesting things. Secrets are hard to keep among wizards." He pulled out a book and held it at an angle, and Miranda could read the title, in gold: Roster, under Fredren . "Fredren was the head of the Circle when I was young, this is a roster of the Inner Circle. I think we'll find what we're looking for here."

The older man flipped through the pages, and letting out a small exclamation, lay the book on his desk. He beckoned to Miranda. "Here's your Stephen."

Miranda looked. She had no surprise to gasp out, either. There, in a woodcut of the Inner Circle of Stephen's time, was the image she had carried here. Pointed chin and wide cheekbones, a good, hawklike nose. And under it, the name. "Dervish," she said.

"You know him?" Jemuel asked.

"The names of the Inner Circle are kept secret, aren't they?"

He nodded. "For the period in which they serve, yes. I got this much later."

Miranda thought for a second. After recounting what she could from the journal entries, she said, "Why would the Circle have sent one of their own to pose as a village idiot and get into Stephen's good graces?"

"More than that," said Jemuel, "Why would he then allow his wizard abilities to show?"

Miranda sat back on Jemuel's familiar rug. "To entrap Stephen. Maybe they thought he would preach the Gospel of the Opening, as it were, to Dervish."

Jemuel said, "And how do you feel? Do you feel entrapped?"

"In what way?"

"Have you been doing a little preaching, Miranda?"

Miranda leaned forward. "What we speak of must never be mentioned again."

"Of course, " Jemuel said. "I'm too old to go about burning witches. At any rate, I trust you to keep what must be kept to yourself."

"I understand. This spirit, Dervish apparently, wants me to cast a spell. I have two choices, come Lammas Night."

"And they are?"

"Banishment, or flesh."

"I don't see the problem."

"There is a spell attached to the flesh spell. I understand Dervish wanting to be flesh again, but the attached spell is not the kind of thing I think such a die-hard Circle man would approve."