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ISBN 0-373-77017-0
EMBERS
Copyright © 2004 by Helen Kirkman
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Embers
By
Helen Kirkman
* * *
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EPILOGUE
HISTORICAL NOTE ON THE YEAR 716
Dear Reader
Excerpt from A Fragile Trust
"The man you were betrothed to is dead. I killed him."
The rawness swamped everything. But through it ran the thread of another emotion: relief. It was wrong, a sin. But—Hun was dead. He would never touch her again.
"How…" Alina tried to soften the question, but could not find the words. There were none. No acceptable way to ask the man you loved how he had killed the foul creature you had been given to, sold to. But she had to know. "How…"
"You want to know how I killed him?" Brand questioned.
"Yes. I want to know how it was." How you set me. free.
Brand moved, her dream creature, and there was nothing left either in his eyes or his body but the warrior. "I will tell you, but not now. Not here. Come. We are wasting time. It is a long ride to Bamburgh."
Alina gasped. "You cannot mean to take me back. Hun is dead. It…it is all over—"'
"All over between us?" Brand leaned over, holding her captive just with his size. "No. It is not. Not yet."
Also by Helen Kirkman
A Moment's Madness Forbidden
And coming soon
A Fragile Trust
To "The Hussies," wonderful historical authors, for allowing me to share in the laughter, tears and joys of being a writer.
CHAPTER ONE
Wessex, southern England, 716 a.d.
He was a fire spirit and he had come for her.
Everyone else in the small chamber of the Wessex nunnery stepped back. Not Alina. She knew him.
"The woman is mine. I will take her and none shall stop me."
Alina's breath choked. He would do what he said, this creature made out of light and fire and unstoppable force. He had proved his words before.
Her gaze caught his face, fixed on its fierce, brilliant planes. She had loved this man with all she had, through the wild extremes of joy and sorrow.
She had destroyed him.
Love was no debt payment for that.
He had come for her, her wild-souled Northumbrian, and he would take: not love, but vengeance.
Her betrayal of him had been absolute. He had no reason for forgiveness. She would give him none. Not if it meant her life.
She stepped forward, out of the press of shivering strangers clustered round her.
"Brand," she said. It was the Saxon word for fire. Living fire.
He moved. Just the tread of one heavy warrior's foot, and the cold empty space round her gaped wide in the sudden rustling retreat of a dozen people. She stood her ground in front of them, just as she had come in from the orchard, her rough, plain tunic and kirtle stained with purple sloe juice, streaks of wild dark hair escaping from the uncomfortable restriction of her coarse veil.
A nun's wimple in front of the finest, the best, the highest-hearted man in all the lands of England, of Britain.
"You remembered."
It was a killer, that understated Northern English irony. She had forgotten. It would bite through steel, just like the snake blade sheathed at his hip. His hand rested on the hilt like something that belonged there. It did.
He strode forward. Sunlight from the open window glinted on his flame-bright hair, dazzled on the gold twisted round his wrists, on the sword hilt, on the buckle of his leather belt. Her aching eyes stared in disbelief.
But it was there: all she had robbed him of by reason of who she was. Wealth, position, riches, all the very foundation of his life had been restored.
"You seem surprised."
"Stunned."
She raised a dark-winged brow in exactly the ex-pression she had used on importunate vassals in her uncle's palace at Craig Phádraig. Never let any inappropriate emotion show. That was life's teaching.
She smiled. That was because she could not get another word out. If she did, he would read the fear in her voice.
The gold light of his gaze flicked at her.
"Nay, stunned is what I should be, looking on the living dead."
Her insides jumped. For one instant she thought she saw in the luminous golden depths of his eyes some reflection of what her forced deception might have done to him. It seemed greater, different, deeper a thousandfold than she had expected—
"The lost Princess of the Picts. Or am I addressing a phoenix risen from the ashes?"
There was nothing in his eyes but fire. He thought she had been killed and her body burned. She had made sure of that. He was not supposed to pursue her. He was a creature of impulse, not cold calculation. Everyone said so.
"Aye," she said in the voice that matched the haughty turn of her brows. "Restored, it seems. Just like you."
She forced her gaze to take in the deep blue dye of his tunic, the pure gold thread decorating its edges, the fine dark cloth of his trousers, the leather shoes. She kept coming back to the gold and the garnets. Just what he wore at waist and wrist would have bought more land than this small abbey owned.
She would not let herself look on his face, because if she did, he might read all that she would conceal. Bright metal clinked as he moved his hand.
He would see terror.
"So? Is the past wiped out?"
She raised her head.
"Yes."
His eyes glittered. All the gold about his person, the twisted thickness of the arm rings, the belt fittings, the plated scabbard chape, dulled into leaden grey beside that living brightness. His eyes were the colour of light-shot amber. Liquid fire.
"Indeed? Shall we see if that is so?"
She tried not to look at him.
"Of course it is so. The past is gone. What would you expect me to remember? Flight? Loss? Disaster?"
He walked toward her.
"Such things stick in my mind."
He kept moving. Power leached from him, from the broad shoulders and the thick warrior's hands, from a body that belonged to a hero from some bloodthirsty English saga. Its strength spoke the language of fear; the splendour that adorned it brought awe.
None of it mattered beside the fire in his eyes.
No one could hold the gaze of such eyes. There was a faint rustling noise around her like the sound of a dozen indrawn breaths. A dozen people shrinking back.
They must have been plastered against the wooden walls by now, the abbess, the priest, the nuns, the ser-vants, all the inhabitants of the southern Wessex abbey that had given her sanctuary. By the time the fire spirit reached her, he and she could have been the only two people on Middle Earth.
She took a breath that scorched her throat. She had no words left. Nothing to frame the truth that she still loved him, that that was why she had left him.
"Brand." It was all she could get out of her mouth, just his name, like someone repeating an enchantment that might be deadly. "Brand."
He stopped, almost touching her but not quite. She would never have that again, the wild frightening magic of his touch. Her body ached for it, even now, pierced through with longing. Everything, words, even the sound of his name, was burned away.
He was so tall that she had to look up at him. She remembered having to do that. Always. Her heart remembered everything, all that there was to know about him. She had stored it deep inside because the thought of him, the idea of his presence, had been the only thing that had stopped her from going mad in her self-imposed exile. That was how it was for her. His face, the first time she had seen it across the opulent palace hall at Bamburgh, her prison, had been like light.
It was so now. Light and fire. Except then the fire had warmed her, right through to the most secret hidden part of her being, to a place she had never believed existed in a creature like her.
Yet now that same heat burned her. It was so strong it ate up the very air around her so that there was none left to breathe.
That was why her mind dizzied, as though she would faint.
"We have naught left to say—"
Somewhere beyond her in the abbess's chamber she could hear feet shuffling in the thin covering of rushes on the earth floor. It made her turn. Faces, pale, fascinated, terrified, stared back at her. She wondered whether she looked like that in her borrowed clothes, chalk-faced, wild-eyed and desperate.
"Get out," yelled Athelbrand, Prince of Bernicia, at the crowded room. "Now. Leave me with the woman."
There was a moment when she thought either the priest or the man who had come to mend the sheep pen would not, that they would try and help her. That they did not realize it would be impossible.
She saw the jewelled hand tighten on the gilded, snake-patterned hilt. There was a sound like no other in the world: the sliding rasp of steel freed from wood lined with leather.
"Leave."
They went. No other choice existed. She watched the guilt in their faces. Their stiff backs. The latched door. Nothing.
Brand placed the gleaming feral length of the sword down on the rough-wood table. He did not need it with her. There was nothing she could do. He leaned one shoulder against the wall. He was still too close to her. She could see the rapid shallow movement of his breath, the deeper breath that meant he would speak.
"Welcome back, Alina."
The English, rough-smooth voice dropped into her language, Celtic. He spoke it beautifully, but not like a Pict or a Scot. Like a Briton. It was the kind of accent she had heard in the best part of her childhood. It was like a song. Enough to shatter all her resolve.
"I have come to take you back."
"Back…"
They were the words he said to her every night, in her dreams. But dreams had nothing to do with what was real.
"Alina. I have come for you. I will take you back."
She closed her mind against the shape and the sound of his voice, against a happiness that no longer existed. This was now. Her future was different.
She forced herself to concentrate on the words and their meaning.
"Back where?"
"Bernicia. Bamburgh."
You could not say those words in her language. They were English, just as he was. Like him they belonged to Northumbria.
The kingdom that warred so often with hers.
"I cannot go back." She spoke it in English. Because it was a Northumbrian catastrophe that divided them.
"There can be no going back. Not for—" Her voice stumbled over a word so filled with danger it had no right to be spoken, a word that had been drowned in bitterness. Us. "Not for me."
"You still believe you belong to that nithing your fool of a father betrothed you to. To Hun."
Alina stepped back. She could not help it. Her fingers, hidden in the patched folds of her borrowed skirts, twisted painfully into fists.
"My father made a lawful betrothal—"
"To a killer?"
Her nails dug into her palms.
"My betrothal to King Osred of Northumbria's kinsman was arranged to benefit my father—"
"So you did manage to work that much out—"
She flinched. "Maol is a prince of Pictland. He had a duty to protect his country. My—" her voice tripped on emptiness "—from yours. My land has always been beset with troubles, either from the Scots over the western border or from the English in the south. The duty was mine as well, to do what I could."
"Duty? So it was an attack of conscience that made you go back to Hun?"
She stared at eyes that had known loss more brutal than it seemed possible to survive. Such a thing should not happen again. Not through her.
One person was already dead.
There was no other decision.
"Yes," she said. "It was conscience."
The bright flame in the gold eyes turned savage.
Her heart beat and the floor beneath her feet shifted like something living.
The saints give her the strength she needed for this.
"But even if I had not seen my duty at last, I would still have gone back to Hun." She did not blink. "Not because that is my rightful place, but because I choose to."
She tilted her head. The walls seemed to close in.
"I was wrong to let you take me away from him, wrong to run away with you. That is why I left you. I let you think I was dead so that you would not follow me. What we did was a mistake, just a mad, foolish, impulsive mistake."
Brand was ruled by impulse. He would see—
"I came to my senses. I knew Hun would be ready enough to welcome me back. Just as you must have known that."
Her head was tilted at the same arrogant angle. So many years of practice. But her feet were walking backwards. To escape him. Or to escape the deadly bale of falseness that now poured out of her mouth. She did not know.
How could she explain why she was in Wessex?
His stride followed her stumbling footsteps, pace for pace, crowding her in the small space of the crude bower. The burning eyes were relentless.
"I know well enough what was."
"Then—" Her mind was reeling, both from the shock of his presence and the hunted desperation of her thoughts. "Why—" Her voice choked.
Why are you here ? How much do you know ? Have you…have you caught out any of my lies?
What was. The sense of that word penetrated the hell inside her head. Her gaze fell to the sword resting on the table: the tempered blade, the gold-chased hilt carved with twisted snakes to give protection. Deadly.
The laws of revenge.
"You found Hun…" Her voice cut off and her gaze sought his, wild, cornered, desperate to discern how much he knew.
"Aye. I found him. What was he thinking, Alina? That a diplomatic mission to the south would keep him from me? Did he truly believe I would not follow him here?"
"Here?"
"What a mask of surprise. Was that what you believ
ed, too, when you came to Wessex to be with him? That I would never find you here?"
Her mouth opened and shut, soundless, without a breath.
'It amazes me, what you and your lover must have believed. Hun did not even know King Osred of Northumbria was dead. He did not know his diplomatic mission in Wessex for his master was over. He was just as surprised as you look now."
But it was not surprise that made her look so, like a terrified madwoman. It was the rawness of shock. She had fled the length of Britain to be safe from Hun, and he had come south in her footsteps, without her knowing. Or him.
"Then—"
"You know the answer. There can be no other since I am here and Hun is not. The man you were betrothed to is dead. I killed him." The gold eyes flickered. "You must have been wondering why he was neglecting you."
The rawness swamped everything. But through it ran the twisting thread of another emotion: relief. It was wrong, a sin doubtless, especially in this place. But— Hun was dead. He would never be able to touch her again.
Her hands gripped the wall behind her to stop herself from falling.
Brand became quite still.
"You are truly shocked."
He did not understand why. She could see it in his face. Somehow he had failed to realize that Hun had had no idea where she was.
The luck was with her. All she had to do was keep her head. She would somehow come through. It looked so well. She had chosen to flee to Wessex and Hun had come south on some mission for his master, King Osred.
"I should have expected how you would feel."
The rough bitterness of Brand's voice seared her. Yet for all that, she could have fallen into his arms right then, just to hear his voice and feel his touch. Even if he killed her.
The nightmare of fear and loathing that had taken shape the day she had looked into the ice-coloured eyes of her lawful betrothed was over. Finished. Her breath shuddered.
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