Blood of the Sorceress. Maggie Shayne

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СКАЧАТЬ beginning to show tiny buds as late March went out like a lamb, morphing into April. It was warm, and the sun was beaming down from a blue sky. And though there was little vegetation, you could smell spring in the air.

      Halfway along the path, they emerged onto a level spot with a waterfall out of a storybook splashing into a small rocky pond. Beyond the pond was a cliff, and far below, Cayuga Lake.

      “The cave is behind the falls,” Indy said. “That’s where the Portal was. Still is, I guess.”

      Magdalena stared at it but didn’t move any closer. Lilia saw the fear on her face. “You really want us to go in there?” she asked.

      “We have to close it, Lena,” Lilia said. “We can’t leave a portal to the Underworld just hanging open.” They’d all agreed earlier that closing the Portal should be their first order of business on this, Lilia’s first day there, but now that they were facing it, Lena appeared to be having second thoughts.

      “Come on, it’ll be fun.” Indy clapped her sister on the shoulder. “Our first spell together in three-thousand, five-hundred years. What’s not to like about that?”

      Lena didn’t even crack a smile.

      When they’d gotten home late the night before, it had been decided that Lilia would stay with Indy and Tomas at their cottage. Lena’s place, though larger, was already housing her and Ryan, along with Ellie and Lena’s mother, Selma. Bahru, the Hindu holy man Ryan had sort of inherited from his father, occupied the guest cottage but spent most of his time in the house. He’d become the world’s most unconventional nanny, Lena said. He was almost as attached to the baby as her parents were.

      Indy cleared her throat, drawing Lilia’s attention back to the matter at hand. The Portal. “You have to dash through the edge of the waterfall to get into the cave,” Indy said. “We’ll get wet.”

      “I remember.”

      Indy frowned. “But you’ve never been here before.”

      Lilia only smiled and cupped her cheek. “Big sister, I’ve been watching everything play out. You know that. You saw me.”

      “In mirrors. In visions. And then at the end—”

      “I was here with you. I saw it all, the struggle right here and that twisted old priest, Father Dom, falling from the cliff after trying to kill you. Attacked by a wolf.” She shook her head sadly for a moment, then smiled. “A wolf under the control of Demetrius, you’ll recall. A trace of the man he once was, shining through. He couldn’t let you die. Just as he couldn’t try to take your baby,” Lilia said, shooting her eyes to Magdalena’s and holding them by force. “Right at the end, he couldn’t go through with it. You know that.”

      “I don’t know any such thing.” But Lena averted her eyes.

      “And just before that wolf came,” Lilia said, turning to Indy again, picking up where she’d left off, “your brave, beloved Tomas threw himself in front of a bullet for you and was gravely wounded. It was I who healed him.”

      Indy’s look of surprise changed instantly. Her face went soft, and she wrapped her arms around Lilia so hard it almost hurt. “I knew it was you,” she whispered. “Thank you for that.”

      “You’re welcome.”

      When she could pull away from her sister’s fierce embrace, Lilia looked into her eyes. “It’s what this whole thing was about from the start.”

      “What is?” Indy asked.

      “Love. It’s all about love. Love destroyed, love denied, love betrayed, love that outlives death and defies all the rules of the Universe to fulfill itself. Your love for Tomas. Lena’s love for Ryan. My love for Demetrius. Demetrius’s love for the King he murdered to try to save us, because of his love for me. All of that is eating away at him, still, though I don’t think he remembers any of it. It’s still there in his fractured soul, the love. It’s all the same. All of it. If we can focus on the love, we’ll get through this.”

      Indy nodded very slowly, then glanced over at Lena as if to make sure she was listening. She was. Raptly.

      Coming closer, Lena asked, “Do you still have the ability to heal people, Lilia?”

      “No more than a garden variety witch has, which is plenty. Being in spirit form it was just a more direct current to Source, I think. But I did bring a little something extra with me.”

      “What?” Lena asked, her eyes eager.

      Lilia was glad to give her something to distract her from her fear. “I have the power of enchantment. I can get anyone to do anything I want—with the usual limitations, of course. It can’t go against their true will. I just sing my will to them.”

      “Nice,” Indy said as Lena grinned and nodded her agreement.

      A cold breeze whispered across Lilia’s neck, and she shrugged deeper into the shawl she’d borrowed from Indy. “What about the two of you?” she asked. “Once the magical tools were returned to Demetrius, did your powers go with them?”

      “No,” Indy said, speaking before Lena could. “I was going to ask you about that next. I still have the telekinesis.” Indy looked around, spotting a pomegranate-sized rock on the ground near the falls and pointing at it. “Watch.” She waved her arm with a flourish, and the rock shot into the air, arcing across the front of the waterfall and then splashing down into the pond.

      Lilia smiled broadly. “Very handy!”

      “I’m kick-ass at martial arts, too, without a day of formal training. But mostly I never have to land a blow. I can strike without touching, at least physically.”

      “It’s the energy that hits them.” Lilia nodded toward the pond. “Can you put the rock back?”

      Indy shrugged. “Never tried.” She pointed toward the ripples still radiating from the surface of the blue-green water, swung her arm again, and the rock burst out and sailed in the general direction it had come from, hitting the ground and rolling several more feet before bumping to a stop against a tree trunk.

      Lilia nodded. “You can slow it down, move things deliberately, precisely. It just takes practice.”

      “I can?” Indy looked at her forefinger. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

      “What about you, Magdalena? Did any of your powers remain after your mission was accomplished?”

      “Scrying.” She walked to the pond and looked at the water. “I’ve always been very good at that, ever since I was little, seeing visions of our past in ancient Babylon in my mother’s scrying mirror. But the ability seemed to get turbocharged when I had the chalice. And that didn’t fade away after the chalice vanished. Give me a cup of water or a candle flame or anything, really, to focus on, and I can see all sorts of information in it.”

      “And sometimes she gets visions without even looking for them. They just pop into her head,” Indy put in.

      “‘Where the rippling waters go, cast a stone and truth you’ll know,’” Lilia quoted softly. “Can you ask for and receive specific information?”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ