Enchanted Warrior

by Sharon Ashwood

  “He was the greatest sorcerer that ever lived. Of course I’m curious. What was he like as a person?”

  “I never liked him,” Gawain said bluntly, and forked up some more pasta.

  Tamsin looked momentarily crestfallen. “Why not?”

  Gawain chewed and swallowed. He recognized hero worship when he saw it. He struggled between the truth and sparing her feelings. “Merlin was a mighty spell caster. Unfortunately, he always believed he knew what was best. There were those who warned him against a war with the demons, but he would not listen and so broke the world as we knew it.”

  “He was flawed,” Tamsin said.

  “Then why do the witches honor his memory so deeply?”

  Tamsin lowered her eyes until all he could see was the crescent of her lashes. Her voice grew quiet. “Because he reminds us to be humble. If even the best of us can fail, we must cherish obedience. The Elders govern how we live now.”

  Gawain barely resisted the impulse to reach across and raise her chin. She had beautiful dark eyes but also a way of hiding them.

  “I don’t think Merlin himself would have approved of your Elders. He never valued obedience.”

  She gave a lopsided smile. “I think that’s the point.”

  This time Gawain laughed. “Serves him right.”

  “But you trusted Merlin to put you to sleep for nearly a thousand years.”

  “I did that for Arthur. He is my friend. I would not let him wake alone in a strange land with no one to guard his back.”

  Now she did look up, turning the full force of her dark eyes on him. They were the deep brown of rich forest loam. The color made him think of new life and deep mysteries. Tamsin had immense power, even if she did not fully realize it; despite himself, he could feel it like the warmth of sun against his skin. Too much to be thrown away on a man she didn’t like or caged by Elders who thought they knew best. With sudden clarity Gawain understood how much she wanted her freedom—and how much he wanted her to have it.

  As he looked, her gaze grew clouded with emotion. “You are a very loyal friend to risk so much. Your king is a lucky man.”

  “He deserves no less.” Gawain cleared his throat, thrown off balance by her reaction.

  A brief silence fell. He realized he’d cleaned his plate, eating every delicious bite. “Thank you for dinner. It was very good.”

  “Would you like another helping?” Tamsin asked. She’d finished, too, but her portion had been much daintier.

  He did want more but wasn’t sure what was considered polite these days. It seemed better to exercise restraint. “No, thank you.”

  And yet Gawain wasn’t ready for the meal to end. He rose and walked to the balcony, looking out at the city lights. She’d left the curtains open again, instead of shutting them against prying eyes. He should scold her for being careless but had lost the heart to chide her. He’d walked into her home guarded against seduction and, instead, found simple hospitality. He hadn’t been prepared for that.

  “I’ll tell you a story about my king,” he said. “When I first came to Camelot, I knew no one. Arthur was my kinsman, but we had not met. My father, King Lot, was a great and wealthy lord and much was expected of me. I was eager to prove my worth and nobility as a knight, and as the Prince of Lothian.”

  He remembered Camelot with jewellike clarity—the fine clothes and rich food. It had seemed exotic to a lad from the north. “I entered every tourney, accepted every quest and fought every battle that came my way. Eventually, Arthur gave me the task of rescuing three maidens held for ransom by the Black Knight. Of course, I set off at once.”

  He turned from the window to see Tamsin leaning on one hand, her elbow on the table. Her attention was entirely fixed on him, and Gawain felt like himself again—a rare thing since awakening in this strange and disheartening century. “The Black Knight’s castle was in the Forest Sauvage, a place fraught with magic and treachery. I lost two of my companions along the way, but in the end we laid siege to the castle and brought the women home. When I knelt once more before Arthur, I bore many wounds.”

  “What did he say?” Tamsin asked.

  Gawain had to smile at that. “Arthur picked that moment to tell me that five other knights had tried to storm the castle before me. None had come back alive.”

  “And he still asked you to go?” She sounded horrified.

  “Of course. I rejoiced at the news. Proving that I could succeed where all others had failed was exactly what I’d desired. He knew that, and he knew I would prevail.”

  Tamsin knit her brows together. “How?”

  “Because I wanted it more. Arthur’s strength is that he sees passion in the hearts of others. He helps them use it to achieve greatness.”

  Tamsin folded her napkin, then clutched it, betraying her nerves. “What are you going to do about Mordred?”

  “That depends on what he does.” Gawain folded his arms. “Mordred and I despise each other, but we were both shaped by our kin and their dark legacy. I understand him better than most.”

  Tamsin nodded, her lashes lowered. They were a dark gold against her creamy skin. “You’d save him if you could?”

  She raised her eyes and did it again—breaking him open with a mere look. Her expression said more than her words, and Gawain’s throat grew tight. “He is my cousin, but no. He is consumed by darkness.”

  He might have said more, but he’d talked about himself far more than was natural. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was because she was far from home, alone with her books. Lost as he was, her solitude gave him an unexpected feeling of kinship.

  She looked away first, ending the moment. “Then we should get to work and find your fellow knights. I’ll set up the ritual.”

  Gawain’s mood darkened immediately. Once again he saw the two fae in the alley, sucking out the soul of an innocent man. Magic had the power to corrupt in horrific ways. He had known as much since he was a boy. So why was he participating in this?

  He knew the answer. For Arthur. For Angmar. For all the knights and fae and mortals who needed the Round Table. He had no choice but to trust Tamsin Greene.

  Still, Gawain’s skin crawled, filling him with the urge to leap from the balcony and bolt into the night—far, far away from whatever they were about to do.

  “Tell me about the ritual,” he said softly. “How bad is it going to be?”

  Chapter 7

  Rather than answer, Tamsin cleared the dishes from the table. Something had shifted during the meal, leaving her shaken. Gawain had dropped his guard for an instant, letting her glimpse the man behind his iron facade. Not that he had intentionally revealed much—they had talked mostly about other people—but she had been able to piece together the shape of his character. Something in his background had driven him to Arthur. She guessed Gawain didn’t bestow his loyalty lightly, but it was unshakable once he had. Tamsin found herself envying his king.

  She finished her task and turned back to him, a flutter of nerves in her stomach. “This is going to be dangerous. If I do a spell, others will notice. Witches, the fae, and who knows what else.”

  She’d said it briskly but still felt the prickle of nerves skitter over her skin.

  “No one gets past me,” he said. “Now, how do we do this?”

  “The setup is simple.” She spread a fresh white cloth on the table. Although she hadn’t said as much, the ritual had begun the moment he’d sat down to break bread with her. Eating together formed a bond that would strengthen their connection. “Sit where you were before.”

  But Gawain remained standing, drawing the curtains while she went to her backpack and retrieved her father’s spell book. Then she opened the chest at the foot of her bed and removed candles, incense, a knife and a bowl of deep blue glass. She looked up to see that Gawain had turned c
halky pale.

  Tamsin tensed. “What’s wrong?”

  “My mother had things just like that.” He swallowed hard. Whatever he was thinking, it didn’t look like happy memories.

  Tamsin folded her hands to hide their shaking. “She was a witch?”

  He nodded, retreating to a scowl. “She was Morgan LaFaye’s sister.”

  That explained a lot. Tamsin rose, closing the chest and picking up her supplies. If he was spooked, she wasn’t doing much better. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

  “Of course.” His gaze slid away. “I have seen magic performed before.”

  Not willingly, from the sound of it. Tamsin shivered, grateful when he stepped back as she deposited the materials on the table. But then he picked up the spell book and carefully examined its cover as if handling something poisonous. The way he was frowning made Tamsin angry. The book was precious to her, and she barely resisted the urge to snatch it from his hand.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t afford a show of temper. The Elders had ordered her to find Merlin’s grimoires and Gawain was the only link she had to make this seeking spell work. If it hadn’t been for that, she would have sent him on his way. They didn’t trust each other, and that would make the ritual difficult to pull off.

  Gawain was reading the yellowed pages of the grimoire, his brow furrowed. Even from a distance, Tamsin knew the book well enough to recognize the charm for removing rust. Maybe he was planning to clean his armor.

  “Does the spell Merlin cast give you the ability to read the old languages in that book?” she asked.

  “I had a tutor,” he said defensively, glancing up. “I learned Latin and some Greek. I can make out some of it.”

  He’d been lucky. A good education had been far from universal in his day, even among the nobility. He bent his head over the pages again, dark hair falling in his eyes. For an instant, Tamsin forgot to do anything but stare. Something about seeing him still for once made her notice more details. His nose wasn’t quite straight, as if he’d broken it and set it by hand. His long legs bent awkwardly as he sat down in the chair, reminding her of how tall he was. There was a common belief that people were smaller in past centuries, but that wasn’t altogether true. No average man had Gawain’s bearing, much less such heavily muscled shoulders.

  Swallowing hard, Tamsin arranged the candles, finding it nearly impossible to concentrate. Gawain radiated a wild, dark energy, as if his very presence sliced through rational thought. Maybe it did, but it also tasted to Tamsin like passionate emotion—all that anger and desperate loyalty straining at the leash in response to danger.

  Tamsin finally took the book from him. She turned from the rust removal charm, past the new page that had appeared last night and found the spell she wanted. A moment’s rereading reminded her of the words she needed to speak. Then she filled the bowl with water she’d infused with fresh herbs and set it in the middle of the table. Finally, she lit the candles with a word. Gawain did not flinch at the small display of power. Not like Richard had. Judging by his set jaw, Gawain was braced for something far more dramatic.

  He would get it. She dropped a small, red crystal in the center of the bowl. It fell with a splash, sending ripples outward. They shone silvery in the candlelight, ring upon ring. The circle of the spell closed around them, drawing the shadows inward like a cloak. The noise from the street faded, leaving behind a muted hush. Tamsin let her vision lose focus and rode the silvery tides as she set her power free. It prickled through her tattoo, amplified by the magic woven into the intricate lines. “Give me your hands,” she said.

  Gawain obeyed, his grip warm and strong. Immediately, she sensed his presence on the psychic plane. Like most of mixed human and witch parentage, his power was uneven and, in his case, only partly developed. She guessed he had buried that side of himself long ago. Still, his aura was stronger than an ordinary human’s and different from any she’d sensed before.

  Careful to keep her touch light, Tamsin searched for traces of Merlin’s spell for the stone sleep. When she found it, she opened her second sight and let her mind coast on the rippling water. “Where are you?” she whispered to Merlin’s magic. “Show me where you’ve been.”

  Images flickered past too quickly to grasp, like a video on fast-forward. She saw impressions of dank, cold stone and wild coastline. Scenes of an ancient past. And then her mind slipped down another path, this time with more coherence. There was a face, gone before she saw it clearly, though a name lingered behind: Angmar. Wasn’t that the name of Gawain’s friend?

  And then she was standing in a library, a solid being in a solid place—or so it seemed. It might have been real, or just a reflection out of time. It was hard to know when walking the web between worlds. Rarely was anything what it seemed there, and that made it all too dangerous.

  Nevertheless, Tamsin’s pulse quickened as her mind-self hurried to the shelves. There were many ancient books in a dozen languages—history, philosophy, books of music, and books of architecture. But then she saw what she was after—tomes of magic so old she could smell the sorcery like an exotic spice wafting from the pages. These were the books Merlin had left behind.

  Tamsin whirled around, seeking any clue about the library’s location. By the fancy carving and ornate plaster ceiling, it was a building from the last century. The stained glass window was dark, but she could still make out the design of a peacock with its tail spread out in panes of azure glass.

  “What are you doing here?” demanded a voice that was not a voice but a whisper from inside her own mind.

  Tamsin spun in the direction of where the sound ought to have been, but she was too slow. Every instinct shrieked trouble as the temperature around her mind-self plummeted. She’d barely finished turning her head—hair flying in slow motion—when she glimpsed the dark shape of a man, his features obscure. He seemed to move as if he was under water, the light bending so that he slid from one distortion to another, but he had locked his sights on her. She felt his gaze like the point of a knife.

  “Why are you in my house?” he asked.

  Instinct warned her to be careful, but it was impossible to lie in this place. “I came for answers, not as a thief.”

  “Try again.”

  Ice frosted over the peacock window, hiding the bird under a carpet of sparkling white. Tamsin’s breath ghosted before her, the air so cold it seemed to shimmer and burn as she filled her lungs. She clutched her chest, suffocating with the pain. “You don’t need to do this.”

  But the ice spilled down the walls to cover the shelves and the books. “But I do,” he said. “You’re my cousin’s spy. You came to find his fae snitch.”

  Tamsin wasn’t about to point out that wasn’t the whole truth. Even if she wanted to, there wasn’t time. Ice flowed like a sinister carpet toward Tamsin’s feet. She stepped away, trying to let go of the vision, to fly back to the safety of the real world, but her power had frozen along with the room. The figure spun, a strange dance of triumph before he braced himself to strike.

  Power such as she’d never felt before pounded into her. It wasn’t a blow. It was a detonation. With a shriek of unspeakable pain, Tamsin’s vision shattered into a thousand pinpoints of light.

  * * *

  Gawain sensed something had gone wrong, though he could not say how. Then, just at the edge of sensation, the magical energy of the spell grew cold against his skin. A moment later, Tamsin shuddered, her nails digging painfully into Gawain’s palms.

  Alarm shot through him. He knew enough about spells to understand Tamsin’s had turned on her. Sometimes witches could lose their way when traveling like this. Sometimes they could be lured away or ambushed. Fighting a crawling sense of panic, he grasped her hands tight, letting her feel his strength. “I am your anchor. Come back to me.”

  She didn’t respond. Instead, she sat
like a figure made of wax, her lips parted and her eyes closed. The only sign of life was the straining tendons in her wrists as she clutched at him. Gawain swallowed hard as an old, bad, angry fear clawed him from the inside.

  He caught his breath, forcing his mind clear. It had been too long since he’d used magic of any kind, and he wasn’t sure what to do. He loosed one hand to reach up and touch Tamsin’s cheek. Her skin was cool, and that meant she was losing ground to the spell. He cursed, a fierce rush of protectiveness pushing all other emotions aside. His gaze roved over her still, pale face, lingering on every delicate curve.

  “Listen to me, Tamsin Greene,” he said, his voice loud in the hushed candlelight. “You have a fierce will. It’s up to you to fight your way back.”

  There was no sign she heard. Not one. He cursed silently—she was growing colder by the second. He rose from the spindly chair, still holding one of her hands. He was afraid of breaking the connection between them, unsure what would happen if he did. Slowly, he moved around the small table and knelt beside her, hoping the closer contact would help. “Come back to the sound of my voice, Tamsin. I’m not going to let you go. As long as you can hear me, you’re not lost.”

  He was drawing on scraps of knowledge he’d tried to forget—stories of lost souls who had to be coaxed back to their bodies like wandering lambs, lured with the promise of safety, warmth and light. Only the strongest made it back. As for the rest...

  “This is not so simple as a dragon or a troll. I can’t ride to your rescue with sword and spear. This is your fight, but I will stay with you. I am at your side, Tamsin Greene, and I will not leave.”

  But then he stopped talking because it was doing no good. She was still growing colder. Gawain needed to do more. His buried power stirred like some serpent waking at the bottom of his soul, but neglect and denial had blunted its fangs. He could expect no help there.

  Operating on instinct, he gathered Tamsin in his arms and carried her to the bed on the other side of the tiny apartment. Her golden hair spilled over his arm in a cascade of silk, the brush of it firing his every nerve. She was very, very female, soft and slender, and rounded in all the right places. The scent of her called to his blood, a wild, primitive summons so ancient it had no words. Desire rose, clouding his head like strong drink. Keeping his focus was going to be the very devil.