“Have I been too cautious?” she whispered. Had her enemy intended to inspire this fear in her, in order to delay her? Or was it rather that he was too sure of himself and his power, too arrogant?
“Never fret!” It was a pleasure to use Magnus’s words and to toss the bundled leather cloak he had given her through the trapdoor into the second chamber, an advance warning and guard.
She followed it, clambering smoothly down the ladder into the apple-scented room. Apples were wholesome and food for man, beasts, and good spirits, and she took an armful with her. It was a sweet reminder to her that Magnus also loved apples.
And if anything lingers on the bottom floor, I can always throw apples at it, she thought, skimming down the final ladder and lifting the key to the tower from the deepest folds of her tunic.
Magnus told you to stay within the tower, her conscience pricked.
“Does a man wait?” she asked aloud. “If a man does not wait, why should I?”
She drew on the leather cloak and fiddled with her shoes. She had disrupted the magical work upstairs as completely as she knew how. The clay figure was intact, but everything else was gone—the evil spices were burned, the devilish names were burned, all trace of the inverted pentagram was gone. She had scattered salt to cleanse the evil. She had smeared garlic to repel and disgust demons. She had prayed to the forces of light and goodness.
“Please, great mother, forgive me if I have done anything amiss or forgotten any duty,” she said, her voice trembling with feeling.
I will not fear, she told herself. She was a warrior in magic even as Magnus was a warrior in arms.
So why does he not acknowledge me as such?
The thought was so disconcerting she fled from it, fumbling with the key and unlocking the tower, going straight out into the snow.
In moments she was thigh deep in a glittering mass of white, and more thick flakes were falling. She twisted round to orientate herself and realized that the tower was already only a blur, without color in this snowbound world. Above her head, the trees were thick with snow, and the sky was a dark gray-black, with no moon or stars showing.
Where is Magnus in this blinding murk? Is he lost?
She felt her heart rise in her throat, and the falling snow seemed to burn in her eyes. Compelling her limbs to be still, she listened in the seeping, gnawing cold. Castle Denzil was not so far away, so she should hear any approaching horses and men.
Is he imprisoned?
“Holy Mother, what should I do?” she asked through a jaw that was already beginning to chatter. Return to the tower, blunder through the snows to Castle Denzil, or go further north, deeper into the forest, to where she knew that Christina was ensnared, within a tower of stone?
She knew it was to the north because of the position of the moon and North Star, both of which she had spotted through a narrow gap in the casement of the stone tower. She knew it was an ancient tower, for in that precious glimpse of her sister in the dark mirror she had seen a rough inscription on one of the walls, a scratched text in Latin.
Valerius amat...the writing had read, or something similar. Valerius loves. Valerius was the name of a man of ancient Rome, not a modern, Christian name.
And where the Romans had been there were roads, always roads. Her father had once said that the old Romans, before they sailed back to their city of sin, had been wild for roads. So there must be a good, straight road, which she should be able to find, that would bring her right to the stone tower and to her sister.
She wallowed forward a few steps, glad she was not in a skirt as snow drenched through her tunic and braies and shoes. She watched the iron sky and the falling snow for a break in the clouds, hoping to spot the North Star.
But what then? Never had Magnus’s warning that she remain within the tower been more tempting. If he came and found her gone, he would be angry and fearful for her.
He would be right, too, Elfrida reflected, wading on, snow sticking to her hair, her arms, and legs, stinging her face, snow everywhere.
But if she stayed safe and he did not return?
“He loves me,” she whispered, her breath a brief puff of steam amidst the trailing curtain of falling snow. Believing that, she knew he must return. He would never abandon those he loved.
Unless Gregory Denzil had dishonored his role as host and now held Magnus prisoner.
Is that why I wait in vain, in the creeping night? But if Magnus is held and Christina is held, whom do I rescue first?
A throbbing rush of hot alarm stormed in her body, sucking the breath from her lungs as she kicked out wildly, trying to hurry in the drifts of snow. The raw pictures in her mind of Magnus being hurt and tormented were too much to stand. She had to reach him, save him, shelter him.
She was running down the wooded hillside by then, skidding and slipping, realizing as she lost her footing altogether that, even without meaning to, she had already chosen. She was not rushing north but back toward Castle Denzil instead.
And what of my sister? Christina!
“Christina!” she cried out in despair as she fell, and the world about her became entirely white, then gray.
I could die here, was her last conscious thought as the white-gray snow tumbled and spilled over her body and the night smothered her.
* * * *
Gregory Denzil rode in a cold, implacable fury, picking splinters of glass from his clothes and flinging them into the filthy snow. He loathed winter, the colorlessness of it, the boredom of it. Men became fat and idle in winter, when there were fewer travelers to rob and no peasants abroad to give good sport. His men had the insolence to moan about hunts, even wolf hunts, and worse yet, they started to think. He could hear a few of them now, grumbling between the grinding hoofbeats and the horses snorting and clanking in their harnesses, always grumbling. Soon that would change into outright questioning and he would face a challenge. He would have to pick one soon, one of the cocky, clever devils, and make a lesson of him, then reward the others quickly with more loot.
To be tossed from his own keep and by such a whiskery ruse! The old drink-them-under-the-tables, and he had swallowed it. Right now, half of the men were throwing up in the saddle, and most of the hounds were whimpering and splay legged, still as drunk as their masters. He would grab the castle back, of course, but that would take more trouble, more promises of treasure.
Joseph had promised him there would be no trouble. Joseph, another clever devil, always so learned, always so secret, always so proud and demanding, had gawped into that filthy mirror of his and told him that Magnus of Norton Mayfield was his for the taking. Just give him the girl, was what he had said several times.
And now the redheaded wench was missing.
Gregory Denzil hawked and spat into the snow, aware of riding without a purpose, of riding simply to spur on his men, to sober them up and give them balls enough to storm his own keep.
It would be best, too, if he could find the girl. Joseph had been insistent about her, and surely she could not have got far in this filthy snowstorm?
Whatever his fool protestations, Magnus of Norton Mayfield would not be seeking her. He had what he wanted now, the keep, the loot. “The only things that ugly bastard has ever cared for are himself and his sword,” Gregory Denzil muttered, hot to the ears at how he had been duped. Why should it be otherwise? “For him, the wench can freeze to death. He has what he wants.”
But Joseph would not see it in that hard, practical, sensible way. If Joseph learned that the redhead was lost in the woods—and somehow Joseph always learned—he would demand a search. Joseph wanted that redhead, and Gregory knew there would be hell to pay if he did not get her.
“Find me that girl!” he yelled as a wave of icy sweat broke out of him. “A bag of gold to whoever spots her! Find her! Find her now!”
Chapter 24
Elfrida lay in a stream of warmth, smooth as the oils she used to help the old of Top Yarr with their winter aches and pains. For the first
time in days, she was at peace. There was no need for haste or pain, no reason to struggle. She lay bathed in softness, surrounded by a soft, reflective light, milky as a pearl.
Her father strolled by in his holiday clothes of his best blue-and-scarlet tunic, blue shoes, and blue hat. He smiled and waved to her.
Her mother looked up to her from where she was kneeling in her garden plot, amidst lavender and sage and fat hen, and nodded.
Elfrida stroked the gold-coin amulet around her throat, the metal warm against her skin. She closed her eyes, feeling her breathing and her heartbeat slow. She was surprised she had not seen Magnus or Christina yet.
What am I dressed in? she wondered, and opened her eyes.
She glanced down but could not see her body, only the same misty white. Her father and mother were gone and when she looked up, so was the vault of heaven and the pale, watery-looking sun.
No, that should be the stars. It is nighttime.
She heard a long, deep crack, like a rending fissure in ice. The clay figure from the blue tower lay broken at her feet. Even as she tried to cross herself, one of the three smashed-in heads of the figure became Magnus’s, his face contorted in overwhelming pain.
“No!” she cried, reaching out to comfort him.
His face changed, growing longer and narrower, with dark-blue eyes and a slash of pale lips.
“Get away!” she yelled as the figure re-formed before her.
“I see my rival now, Snow Bride,” said the three heads, all of them wearing the same long, narrow face, each head fixing her with cold, dark-blue eyes. “He broke what is mine, now I break him and take what is his.”
The figure grew a second time, long and lanky, with thin, attenuated limbs and a single head. A graybeard, older than she was, Elfrida realized fiercely as she scrambled to her feet.
“You are weak, old man,” she challenged, hurling scorn like a knife.
He chuckled in return, turning her words into dust. “Still ranting, Snow Bride? You are mistaken in me and in that clod you wish for as a husband.”
Elfrida tried not to think of Magnus but failed. His strapping, muscular frame rose between them, but he had his back to her and would not turn round, even when she tugged with all her weight on his arm.
“He wearies of you already,” the graybeard went on, smiling his contempt.
“He does not.” The denial was out before she could stop it.
“A hulking brute. He will expect his commands to be followed. He will demand you follow him. He will not forgive you, if you do not.”
Elfrida said nothing. Terror of Magnus’s reasonable demands, which she had already flouted, and of her own memories—of her times in bed with him and her own dazzled submission—had her biting the inside of her lip, desperate to use pain as a distraction.
This graybeard must not see us together! That is ours, not his, no part of it is his.
She held her breath, raked her fingernails into her palms, stared at the sky without blinking. “I fear no evil,” she burst out, when her lungs were scalding in her chest.
“You should, Snow Bride.”
The graybeard put a hand onto her shoulder, and she could not stop him. Through a sickening haze of pain, she felt the bone beneath grate and grind as even her skin tried to escape.
“No more!” She chopped at his hand, throwing him off her, and punched through a blanket of snow.
“Ah! Ah.” Jolted by fresh pain out of her vision and into stark reality, she cradled her bleeding knuckles with her other hand. Her body felt stuck full of needles and pins. The icy cold rent at her, and it would have been easy, so comforting, to lie down again in the soft white snow and sleep.
Get up! she told herself and swayed onto her knees.
Get up! Magnus roared in her head, and she tottered to her feet.
Please do not be angry with me for disobeying you, she begged as she blundered on a few paces. She could not believe how chilled she was, how hard it seemed to drag her feet on, step after step. And for what did she strive? In falling, she had lost the path back to Castle Denzil.
She scrambled awkwardly up a slope, slithering back often and slipping, once pitching onto her already frozen hands. Slowly, painfully, she gained the summit, but once there, she moaned, choking on a fresh intake of flaying cold.
“I have gone backward!” She was no farther on and, worse, no wiser. She peered, half-blind, though the stunted trees and drizzling snow, a mean ice wind clawing at her face and breasts, and admitted she was lost.
Elfrida sank to her knees. I have failed Christina. I have failed Magnus. I should never have left the wooden tower, and this is my punishment.
She licked her sore, chapped lips, her throat dry and aching. The raw cold nipped spitefully at her nose and ears, and the snow gleefully filled her shoes. Everywhere far away was dark, everywhere closer a glinting blue-white. Had she been snug within her house, safe, watching the snow while drinking a blackberry tisane, she would have called it pretty.
It was terrible now. A breeze rippled along the tip of a long mound of snow, spinning dancing flakes into the air, tormenting her with more cold. Her feet were numb, her legs throbbing.
She forced her reluctant, shivering body to turn. A spray of mistletoe bobbed before her, then the wind whipped it away.
I must go away from the mistletoe woods. That is where the necromancer dwells. To return there is to go back into evil.
She turned again. At first she thought it was mist, then put out a hand and caught icy prickles along her arm. The snow was falling more steadily and was gaining on her, covering her tracks.
She saw a holly tree, recognized it by its shape and leaves and slogged a slow and wavering way toward it. The holly was a marker, and even those without magic knew it was a sacred tree. Bald Father John called it the crown of Christ.
She was partway across a bank, closing on the holly, when she heard the thumping of horses’ hooves along another forest track, and then the shouts of men.
They are hunting me!
Instinct compelled, and she obeyed it. Dropping to her belly, she coiled up tight like a hedgehog, dragging her cloak hood over her bright, revealing hair.
She knew, without questioning how she knew, that this was not Magnus who sought her. She lay in a lair of snow and broken branches, listening, praying these men had no dogs with them, or no scent of hers, and a terrifying question beat in her head like a moth around a lantern flame.
Has Magnus betrayed me in the end? Has he sent these hunters?
* * * *
Gregory Denzil spotted the fluttering shadow, shifting and flickering between the trees. He wheeled his horse round, prepared to spur it up the slope, then hesitated. Their search had brought them to the edge of the oak wood, which Joseph counted as part of his kingdom. Wanting to be sure, he batted the falling snow aside with his gloved hand and scowled up into the trees.
Yes, there it was, bunches of the filthy stuff. Seeing it, he drew rein, Joseph’s high, dark warning sparking along his veins and in his clearing head.
“The place of mistletoe is mine. No one enters those woods without my permission, or if they do go in, they will not come out.”
“Do we go on, sir?” called one of Gregory Denzil’s men, one of the clever grumblers, he noted.
“Go!” he bellowed, and why not? Joseph was not here, and that fluttering shape had a very womanly look. Better yet, it was a solitary flutter, a single, lost soul and certainly not Joseph, because it was small.
He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks, and the bay shied, rearing at some imagined danger in a flurry of snow and laying back its black-tipped ears. He smacked it hard across the neck and ignored its shiver, forcing it deeper into the woodland by force of will.
He pointed when he was sure the beast would not fling him into the fast-approaching holly tree. “Through there and past that ditch, over the bank! After her!”
“Ha!” yelled his men behind him as he cantered ahead, leaning l
ow over his nag’s neck to encourage the beast to gallop. He saw a flash of red amidst the dribbling snow and the gray tree trunks and rode on harder, grinning at the thrill of the chase.
It was almost too easy...
A bough of mistletoe smacked against his forehead, berries bursting against the bridge of his nose and juice tricking down his face. Gregory Denzil howled and reined in a little and spat, spat until his mouth was almost dry. He wanted no part of those filthy, off-white berries inside him. Those were Joseph’s, part of Joseph’s undead tricks, and he wanted none near him. He furiously mopped his face, ducked under an upcoming branch of oak and stared at the mess of tracks in the snow. He should slow or dismount to understand them properly, but he wanted to be out of this wood now, away from where the gnarled oaks poked you in the back or ribs, and ravens and magpies roosted, all birds of ill omen, all creatures of Joseph’s.
He saw the scrap of brown flutter again between the trees, lower than the height of a man, and recognized it as cloth. Joy exulted in him, hot and dizzying as a stew whore. “I have you!” he cried and rode the rag down, letting the horse leap the quivering body. He dismounted in a snow-spurting strut of triumph, gleeful in victory. Smiling, he extended his hand.
“Come now, my dainty, for you are ours—”
He ripped back the brown cloak from the patch of snow and discovered only more snow. The hounds, lolling in late, loose-tongued and still unsteady, wandered uselessly over the patch. The redheaded wench, if she had ever been there, was gone.
Chapter 25
Magnus hammered on the faded, blue door to the old wooden tower. Behind him his men and horses shifted and stamped, trying to keep warm. It had been a hard slog through bitter, piling snow, but he was here.
“Elfrida!” He rattled the door, fear clenching in his guts like poison. “Elfrida!”
He set his shoulder to the wood and gathered all his strength. He leaned into the door and punched as fiercely as he could, pushing and shoving. He felt a sweat break out over his body and redoubled his efforts, aiming his weight and force at the hinges. Panting, his head throbbing with the storm of his own blood, he heard a hinge creak a little. He stood back, panting, and before he regained all his breath, lunged hard.
Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) Page 21