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She had buried her mother that morning.
“They slaughtered her like a spring lamb.”
“I know your grief, child.”
Her bruised eyes stared hard through the rain. “Do the gods grieve, my lady?”
“I know your anger.”
“She harmed no one in her life. What manner of death is that for one who was so good, so kind?” Moira’s hands bunched at her sides. “You cannot know my grief or my anger.”
“Others will die even a worse death. Will you stand and do nothing?”
“What can I do? How do we defend against such creatures? Will you give me more power?” Moira held out her hands, hands that had never felt so small and empty. “More wisdom and cunning? What I have isn’t enough.”
“You’ve been given all you need. Use it, hone it. There are others, and they wait for you. You must leave now, today.”
“Leave?” Stunned, Moira turned to face the goddess. “My people have lost their queen. How can I leave them, and how could you ask it of me? The test must be taken; the gods themselves deemed this so. If I’m not to be the one to stand in my mother’s stead, take sword and crown, I still must bide here, to help the one who does.”
“You help by going, and this the gods deem so. This is your charge,
Moira of Geall. To travel from this world so you might save it.”
“You would have me leave my home, my people, and on such a day? The flowers have not yet faded on my mother’s grave.”
“Would your mother wish you to stand and weep for her and watch your people die?”
“No.”
“You must go, you and the one you trust most. Travel to the Dance of the Gods. There I will give you a key, and it will take you where you need to go. Find the others, form your army. And when you come here, to this land, on Samhain, you’ll fight.”
Fight, she thought. She had never been called to fight, had only known peace. “My lady, am I not needed here?”
“You will be. I tell you to go now where you’re needed now. If you stay, you’re lost. And your land is lost, as the worlds are. This was destined for you since before your birth. It is why you are.
“Go immediately. Make haste. They only wait for sunset.”
Her mother’s grave was here, Moira thought in despair. Her life was here, and all she knew. “I’m in mourning. A few days more, Mother, I beg you.”
“Stay even one day longer, and this is what befalls your people, your land.”
Morrigan waved an arm, parting the mists. Beyond them it was black night with only the silver ripple of light from the cold moon. Screams ripped through the air. Then there was smoke, and the shimmering orange glow of fires.
Moira saw the village overlooked by her own home. The shops and cottages were burning, and those screams were the screams of her friends, her neighbors. Men and women ripped to pieces, children being fed on by those horrible things that had taken her mother.
She watched her own uncle fight, slashing with his sword while blood stained his face and hands. But they leaped on him from above, from below, those creatures with fangs and eyes of feral red. They fell on him with howls that froze her bones. And while the blood washed the ground, a woman of great beauty glided over it. She wore red, a silk gown tightly laced at the bodice and bedecked with jewels. Her hair was uncovered and spilled gold as sunlight over her white shoulders.
In her arms was a babe still swaddled.
While the slaughter raged around her, the thing of great beauty bared fangs, and sank them into the babe’s throat.
“No!”
“Hold your grief and your anger here, and this will come.” The cold anger in Morrigan’s voice pierced through Moira’s terror. “All you know destroyed, ravaged, devoured.”
“What are these demons? What hell loosed them on us?”
“Learn. Take what you have, what you are, and seek your destiny. The battle will come. Arm yourself.”
