Jacqueline Carey - Naamahs Blessing

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Jacqueline Carey

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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First eBook Edition: June 2011

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ISBN: 978-0-446-57605-5

Naamahs Curse

Naamahs Kiss

Santa Olivia

Kushiels Mercy

Kushiels Justice

Kushiels Scion

Kushiels Avatar

Kushiels Chosen

Kushiels Dart

Godslayer

Banewreaker

As another DAngeline adventure draws to a close, Id like to thank my friends and family for cheering along the way. Thanks to my agent, Jane Dystel, and everyone at Dystel & Goderich for their support. Thanks to everyone at Grand Central, and especially to my editor, Jaime Levine.

And as always, thanks to my readers!

U nable to sleep, I stood in the stern of the ship, watching the past fall farther behind me. The moon was bright and full, turning the ships wake into a wide, silvery path on the dark water behind us. A handful of seagulls winged across the night sky, following us, their presence lending credence to the captains claim that we would make port in Marsilikos on the morrow.

A thousand thoughts and memories crowded my mind.

I tried to still them as Master Lo Feng had taught me, breathing the Five Styles and emptying my mind.

Tonight, it didnt work.

Four years. By my best guess, that was how long it had been since I stepped onto a Chin greatship in the harbor of Marsilikos, and sailed off in pursuit of my everlasting destiny.

Now that same destiny was leading me back to Terre dAnge, land of my fathers birth, where my patron-goddess Naamah held sway, worshipped as one of Blessed Eluas Companions.

Naamah, goddess of desire; the bright lady. And Anael the Good Steward, the man with the seedling cupped in his hand, who had given me a gift for coaxing plants to grow.

The thought prompted a memory of marigolds exploding from the earth in a field in Bhaktipur, a riot of orange, saffron, and yellow, blooming in glorious profusion, all out of season. That, and the look of wonder on the Rani Amritas lovely face.

It made me smile wistfully. Bhaktipur was far, far behind me now. So were Amrita and her clever son, Ravindra, and the tulku Laysa, one of the reborn Enlightened Ones, who had told me I had oceans yet to cross.

So much lay behind me.

Villains and heroes, the kindness of ordinary folkaye, and the pettiness and cruelty, too. Battles and intrigue, long, grueling journeys. Epic tales come to life, dire futures glimpsed and averted.

I leaned on the railing, remembering.

Beneath the moonlight, the ship sailed smoothly across the face of the sea. Its sounds had grown familiar; the creaking of timber and rope, the snap and flutter of the sail, the sleepy murmur of sailors on night-watch.

After a time, I sensed Baos approach, the divided half of my diadh-anam drawing nearer to me.

Bao, my husband.

Despite the long months that had passed since we were wed, I wasnt accustomed to the word.

He came to stand beside me, gazing out at the silvery wake, his forearms braced on the railing and his shoulder brushing mine in a companionable manner. Did you dream of her? he asked in a low voice. The White Queen?

I shook my head. Just restless.

Ah. With Terre dAnge so close, I thought maybe

I did, too. I took a deep breath. But no.

Bao nodded, and said nothing. In the silence, his diadh-anam entwined with mine, a sensation as intimate as a caress.

Until I was a woman grown, I had not fully understood that most folk do not carry their diadh-anams within them. Although I was half-DAngeline, Naamahs child on my fathers side, I was born in Alba to the folk of the Maghuin Dhonn, the Great Bear Herself, who planted a spark of Her soul in each of Her children, a flickering inner light to guide us through our lives.

Never, ever had I heard of a diadh-anam being dividedbut mine had been.

It had restored Bao to life.

The deed lay behind us in distant Chin, Baos homeland, farther in the receding past than Bhaktipur, where we had saved an empire and freed a dragon, where a sorcerer had slain Bao with a poisoned dart.

And Master Lo Feng, in his grief and sorrow, had used his arts and my magic to give his life and half my divine soul-spark to bring Bao back from the dead, inextricably linking our destinies.

Master Lo couldnt have known that it would send his stubborn magpie of an assistant, a reformed prince of thugs, into headlong flight from a destiny he hadnt chosen; nor that I would be compelled by my diadh-anam to follow him.

On the Tatar steppe at last we admitted to ourselves and each other that it was love, as well as Master Los art, that bound us together. But as soon as we began to truly explore our bond, we were betrayedme into the hands of a Yeshuite fanatic in northern Vralia, wrapped in chains that stifled my very soul-spark, while Bao was sent on a fruitless quest in the opposite direction to rescue me.

Still, in the end, we had found one another again. In the valley kingdom of Bhaktipur, we were wed.

Of course, our union was complicated by the fact that on the eve of our wedding, I was visited in my dreams by the ghost of Jehanne de la Courcel, the impossibly beautiful and highly mercurial DAngeline queen I had loved so very much; and that Jehanne had told me I had unfinished business with a man both of us had loved, and would need her aid before it was over.

I stole a glance at Bao. His face was calm in the moonlight. Shadowed eyes; high, wide cheekbones; full lips. Moonlight silvered his unruly shock of black hair, glinted on the gold hoops in his earlobes and the bands of iron reinforcing the bamboo staff he wore lashed across his back.

He caught me looking, and raised his brows. Like what you see, huh? he asked in a teasing tone.

I tugged on one ear-hoop hard enough to make him wince. Mayhap.

Bao grinned. You do.

I slid one hand around the back of his neck and kissed him. I do.

He kissed me back, then pulled away, his expression turning serious. Its going to be hard for you, Moirin. Coming home.

Home. The word escaped me in a sigh. Terre dAnge isnt home, not really.