by Janzen, Tara
“Damn,” she said under her breath. A bramble thorn caught in her gown, ripping the cloth, and she swore again. “Damn.”
“Child,” Moriath said, stopping on a small rise just past the thicket and reaching a hand back. For an instant Ceridwen thought she was going to be reprimanded for her language, maybe even boxed on the ears.
That was when she heard it, the distant clang of metal on metal and the popping and hissing of a great fire. She pushed forward and came to a sudden, horrified stop by the maid. Her heart started beating furiously. A flush of fear washed down her body.
Below them, Carn Merioneth was burning, its palisades, the keep, and all the life within being devoured by flames and war cries.
A Trace of Magic
’Tis written thus in the annals of time—
naught tempers a blade like chalice wine.
Chapter 1
March 1198
Wydehaw Castle,
South Wales
“Jesu. Sweet Mary.” The groom, Noll, crossed himself as he cowered in the darkness at the bottom of the tower stairs. He’d gotten through the bailey under the power of fear alone, but his legs would take him no farther. Rain-slickened stone supported his back. Nothing would support his knees—not muscle, nor sinew, not bone, nor his faith in the Virgin, Holy Mother of God.
His lord had said to fetch the sorcerer, but his lord had asked for too much. Noll tilted his head back and stared up at the malevolent shadows of darkness that deepened with each curved step into the tower. Rain ran in rivulets down his hair to his face, obscuring his vision and adding to the torment of the godforsaken night.
There! Where the gray stone changed to black! Was it a trick of the light, that bare flicker of movement and scratch of life? Or was it the sorcerer, Dain Lavrans, conjuring up demons out of the mists of fog and sending them down the stairs to greet him?
Noll’s heart stopped in a moment of terror, then his blood ran cold and fast on a track of pure fear. He could take no more and turned to run, or to crawl on trembling knees, if need be, back to the great hall where only minutes before he’d had the pleasure of pinching a comely maid with sprigs of lavender tied in her hair.
He paused in mid-retreat, the light from his lantern looming and diminishing with each gust of wind that swirled through the open arch leading to the barbican.
The baron would have him beaten if he failed, and what of the comely maid then, when he lay bloody and bruised in a heap by the hearth, nothing but meat for the dogs? What man would press his face into her fragrant bosom then?
Hugh, no doubt, the cur, a stable boy with no idea of the refinements needed to lay a kitchen wench. The maid deserved better, and hadn’t she smiled at Noll? A mite toothlessly, to be sure, but a smile nonetheless, and what man needed teeth in a woman when her bosom was soft and ripe like peaches in late summer?
Noll glanced again at the tower stairs running up into darkness, his fear and trembling growing to courage under the impetus of lust. His lord had said fetch, and no serf who valued his life would disobey a baron of the March, one of the land-hungry Norman freebooters who had seized territory in Wales and held it “by the power of their swords and by fortune.”
With his back to the outside wall, Noll slunk up the spiraling stairs of the Hart Tower, using his feet, his knees, and the one hand not holding the lantern to guide himself. A fainter shade of gloom and wet gusts of air denoted each arrowloop he passed. Halfway up the first full turn, the chiseled steps turned from gray to black. Noll crossed himself again and thought of buxom pleasures, the scent of lavender, and the sweetness of peaches. A quarter turn farther, a step shone creamily white in the lamplight. The next was black, and the one after it white, full warning that he was entering the sorcerer’s domain.
“Sweet Mary.” The prayer hissed from between his chattering teeth as an oak door set into Druid stone and banded with iron came into view. A gargoyle of the most hideous countenance barred the way, leering at him from the centermost plank with a bronze knocker hanging from its fangs. Rock crystal eyes glowed in the flickering lantern light, first blue, then gold and green.
Gods! Was nothing what it seemed in this corner of the keep?
Noll lifted his hand to grasp the knocker, and as he did, the hair rose all along his body, each tiny strand standing up to tremble alone. He knew it was the sorcerer’s power, and the moment his flesh touched metal, a great crack of lightning rent the air with a blaze of white fire and a concussion of thunder.
Noll sucked in a paralyzing last breath, clutched the knocker with a spastic grip, and fainted dead away.
Inside the tower, the resulting clang of bronze striking bronze reverberated like a pale echo of the lightning strike. Dain Lavrans turned at the sound, his fingers curling around the large chunk of cinnabar he held in his hand, a fortune in vermilion for scriptorium monks, and a source of mercury for those who—like himself—dabbled in a different faith.
Behind him, sleet and rain beat on a glazed window. The lightning had struck close, probably the ramparts and, if what he felt was true, one of the metal-headed minions patrolling there, sealing his helmet to his skull. The baron would call for him, as if he could unfry brains roasted in such a manner.
His upper lip curled in sullen humor. They expected too much, these Norman Marchers, from their Danish sorcerer.
He put the cinnabar on a high shelf, then crossed the chamber to answer the first summons of the evening, lifting the cowl of his cloak over his head to conceal his face with shadows. The clasp he adjusted to bring the cloak over his worn leather gambeson was his by right of plunder, a garnet-encrusted Celtic scroll with a cabochon of amber on either side. Deer-hide boots covered his feet and were laced to his knees with strips of leather.
Tonight he did not look like his Norman lord with silk hose, samite tunic, and ermine-trimmed mantle. Tonight Dain was a hunter—and he was not pleased to have his hunt delayed by some fool’s folly.
He pulled on the door, and when it did not open, bared his teeth and pulled again. The night was proving to be full of more than the normal discord and dissent of Wydehaw Castle.
Slowly, the banded door swung open, dragging the wretched summoner in its wake. The man’s bony fist was frozen around the knocker, while his body hung like a wet rag to the floor. His other hand still held a lantern, which threatened to spill flame into the rushes.
Cursing, Dain picked up the lantern and stomped on the cinders and the smoldering edge of the groom’s tunic, an act designed more to save his chambers than the man’s life. The Baron of Wydehaw valued not his servants. This man would not be missed, though it was apparent nothing short of Lord Soren D’Arbois’s own command would have brought this weak-boweled knave to the sorcerer’s door.
Dain ground the last ember into dust. He wouldn’t be thanked, and in truth, he’d done the man no favor, for he was leaving the clod where he hung on the door, a bold warning to any others who might think to disturb Wydehaw’s mage. By midnight every castle cretin would know the story of how Dain Lavrans had frozen Noll the groom to the gargoyle’s fangs, and how the magician’s powers had flowed through Noll’s body and singed his clothes. By morn, the whole village would know. The knowledge would seep into the forest, slide through the trees, into grottoes and glens, alerting every outlaw and saint of the black heart that lived within the keep’s tower.
The thought brought a smile to Dain’s mouth. His reputation was hard-won and most decidedly well deserved, though he would be the first to admit his debt to his predecessor in the tower. The magical deeds of Nemeton, a Brittany bard, were still whispered with awe and fear in the demesne. The most tangible proof of the man’s high standing in his time was the existence of the tower itself, with its parti-colored stairs, three tiers of rooms, and the near magical workings of what the castle populace called the “Druid Door.”
For many years, Dain had given no more credence to one religion than another and little enough to any, especially the dead and ancient
ones like Druidry. Still, he’d found much of interest behind the Druid Door and in the surrounding forest of Wroneu, enough to keep him at Wydehaw when it should have been no more than a night’s stay on a journey much farther north.
“Erlend,” he called to the servant hiding somewhere in the chaos of the workroom.
“Aye.” A wizened old man stuck his head out from behind a heavy damask curtain drawn across a crescent of the chamber. Smoke followed him in a halo around his sparsely haired head.
Service to the sorcerer was considered a sentence akin to death by most, but old Erlend seemed to have sinned apurpose to land himself in the comforts of the Hart Tower. He’d once told Dain that at three score and two he had nothing left to fear from God, the Devil, or anyone in between.
Dain had only smiled.
“Watch the brazier and don’t drink from the marked cask.” Dain issued the orders in the tone of someone accustomed to being obeyed.
“Aye,” Erlend answered in the manner of someone growing unaccustomed to obeying.
Dain arched a dark eyebrow, a warning better understood than ignored.
Erlend squinted through the gloom. “Poison, is it?”
Dain held the man’s gaze a second longer, then turned and stepped over Noll’s limp body. A hand gesture brought two sleek hounds loping out of the shadows of the chamber to join him. The old man would make of the evening what he would.
~ ~ ~
The great hall of Wydehaw Castle was filled to bursting with the feigned shrieks of maids and the roars and laughter of men-at-arms well into their cups. Chaos ruled the servants below the salt, scattering them this way and that, their hands gripping leather jacks and trenchers, their feet nimbly dodging disaster and the dogs.
Most of the assemblage had forgotten about the prisoner chained to the wall to the left of the dais, but not the red-haired knight. From beneath the veil of her lashes, Ceridwen ab Arawn watched his gaze rake her body, the intensity of his attention like that of a feral cat stalking prey, waiting for the right moment to reach out with an unsheathed claw and snag a morsel for its mouth.
She shivered, the sensation racking her from her head to her toes and awakening her pains. Never had she felt such an icy chill so deeply in her bones, yet if she could die from the cold this night, she would count herself blessed.
The knight shifted on the bench, a veritable mountain of iron-studded leather and concealed blades. A fresh infusion of panic quickened her already ragged breathing. Panting, her chest hurting, she fixed her gaze on the floor, seeing naught beyond the clay tiles flanking the hearth. Red-hot embers snapped and popped out of the fire, rolling onto the chased floor, and slowly it dawned on her that the designs etched into the squares of fired clay were of animals copulating.
Revulsion and nausea churned to life in her belly. One corpulent boar, beady-eyed and barrel-chested, leered at her in a perfect parody of the knight; and, even worse, in a frighteningly accurate depiction of the vile bridegroom she had desperately tried to escape. The abbess at Usk had oft warned her she would come to no good, but the lady could not have foreseen such a despicable end.
Ceridwen turned her face into the weak comfort of her shoulder, closing her eyes and praying the giant wouldn’t rise. The sound of wood scraping on stone and the accompanying grunt of a great weight lifting dashed her last feeble hope, and a wave of despair flooded through her body. He was coming for her.
Rape was the least she expected and more than she thought she could endure, especially at the hands of the red-haired knight. He had been the one to capture her in the forest. Through the scent of her own sweat and blood, she could still detect traces of the stench he’d left upon her clothes. She remembered the hotness of his breath upon her neck, the cruelty of his mouth when he’d marked her with his teeth—leaving a double crescent of bloody, bruised wounds on the shoulder he’d bared by tearing the sleeve of her gown and part of her chemise.
Her legs had given way hours ago, leaving her to hang from the iron cresset like a sacrificial lamb, but she forced herself to regain her footing for one last fight. Pain shot through her limbs and nearly put her to the floor again. The brute had wrenched her ankle past the breaking point when she’d tried to escape him at the river. He’d near drowned her in the turgid gray waters of the Llynfi, but her damned luck hadn’t held.
She grasped her chains with both hands and balanced on her good foot. Her nose was bloody from his fist. More blood ran down the side of her face from her temple. Her ribs ached from where he’d crushed her to him with his mailed arm on their mad ride to the castle.
He drew closer, and tears she’d been too frightened to let fall before now welled in her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks. She had failed to save herself, failed to reach her brother, Mychael, and the sanctuary of Strata Florida Monastery. All was lost. There was no going back, and a quick death was too much to hope for within the debauched halls she’d been brought to.
A dog snapped at the knight as he passed and received a swift, vicious kick to its flanks. Whimpering, the animal slunk away. Another cur snarled a warning over a prize bone, but stayed well out of foot range. The maneuver did him no good, for the knight sidestepped quickly and landed a blow with his boot. The meaty haunch fell to the floor and the rest of the pack descended on the bone, snapping and growling into a tumble at her feet.
With a strangled cry, Ceridwen drew back toward the wall. Jesu! If the knight didn’t tear her to shreds, the hounds surely would.
An alaunt, looking more wolf than dog, rushed forward and claimed the haunch with a blood-chilling growl, standing its ground not a hand’s span from her, hackles rising. Ceridwen pressed herself closer to the cold stone to no avail. The hunger-crazed mongrels circled, bringing her within the lines of battle. A raucous cheer rose from the lower tables at some fool’s antics—and the red knight kept coming, plowing a way through the cordon of teeth and mange.
All was truly lost, and in her heart she surrendered. Her knees buckled, allowing her to sink to the floor and pray for death among the dogs.
“Salvator mundi,” she whispered, her eyes closing. “Salva nos omnes. Kyrie, eleison; Christe, eleison; Christe, eleison—”
A sudden hush in the hall stole the supplication from her lips. She opened her eyes and peered through the tangled length of her hair. The knight halted in the strange silence, his eyebrows drawing together in momentary confusion. An undercurrent of anticipation—or was it apprehension?—snaked through the cavernous chamber, touching servants and diners alike. Scattered laughter was quickly quelled, calls for more ale ignored. The dogs tensed and grew still, then one by one padded away with their heads lowered, their tails tucked between their legs, making for hiding places under the tables.
Ceridwen watched the red giant’s confusion change to unease as he slowly turned toward the great oak doors at his back. Within the space of a breath his complexion grew waxen, and when she followed his gaze she felt the blood drain from her own face.
Two huge hounds stood on the threshold, one so black its coat glistened blue in the torchlight, the other so white it hurt her eyes to look upon its sleek hide. She shifted her attention to the space between the beasts, drawn by the merest hint of movement in the shadows, the briefest glint of eye and whisper of sound.
A new sense of dread, above and beyond the fear that had weakened her knees, filled her and brought panic in its wake. Though she trembled with the cold, sweat broke out on her brow. With a certainty that pierced her heart, she knew that whatever lurked in the gloom was the true terror of this place, a danger more lethal than the knight. Latent, primal instincts rushed to the fore, overriding her heart’s surrender. She stumbled to her one good foot and jerked at the chains leashing her to the wall. They rattled and clanged with the force of her desperation, but they held. She jerked again, her hysteria mounting—until the shadows parted.
A hooded figure disengaged itself from the darkness with the ease of an eclipsed dawn rising from the night. The s
hape within the black folds of cowl and cloak lifted a long, graceful hand in a fluid gesture, and the hounds loped forward, clearing a path for their master.
At that moment even hysteria seemed too pallid a name to put to the strange mix of terror and fascination rising in her.
Chapter 2
From within the concealing depths of his hood, Dain surveyed the people in the crowded hall. He knew many by name, though few dared to call him by his. The baron, Lord Soren D’Arbois, was one, and also his lovely whore-wife, the lady Vivienne.
Ragnor the Red was there, looking both fierce and frightened, a combination Dain knew only he could produce in Wydehaw’s most bestial knight. The man had atavistic tendencies, and Dain fully expected that one day the Norman would go berserk in the grand tradition of his Viking forefathers. For himself, Danish though he was, Dain had no such fears. The methods and mayhem of war had long since lost their hold on him.
He preferred a more academic life, if quick fingers and a vocation of turning lead into gold could be called academic. Some called it trickery. Some called it magic. He called it both decoy and dangerous, for the path led its followers far beyond riches.
His steps brought him abreast of Father Aric, and the priest near stumbled in his haste to avoid the shadows cast by the dogs and their master. Elixir and Numa continued on, aware but not offended. Dain claimed no such magnanimity. He paused and bowed, hands clasped at his breast, knowing well how many hours the young priest would spend on his knees to wash away such a black stain of acknowledgment.
Father Aric crossed himself again and again, his eyes squeezed shut, his hand a blur of devotion as it raced across the stations of the martyr’s tree. The church had raised superstition to the very apex of art, and Father Aric was one of its more skilled artisans, a disciplined practitioner of religious cant and canon.
Dain debated whether to hold the pose until the priest exhausted either his piety or his arm, and prudence won. The hour was not so late as to preclude his hunt. He lowered his hands and moved on, but got no farther than the corner of the hearth.