The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy)

by Janzen, Tara

  “Lavrans?” he called out, grimacing as he pulled on his boots. His jaw tightened against the old pain in his right leg.

  “Aye. Below the falls,” the young man said, coming to a stop in front of the tent, breathless from his sprint up the mountainside.

  “I asked to know of his coming before he reached the river.”

  The sentry fought to hide a grim smile. “Ye know as well as me that e’en in broad daylight he’s like a shadow in the night.”

  Morgan nodded. “And Ceridwen?” He reached for the wineskin he’d hung on the carved and tasseled tent pole and took a mouthful. He rinsed and spat the wine out onto the ground.

  “No sign beyond the ravine. She’s still on this side, and we’ll find her. Dafydd is scouting west of the camp.” Rhys used his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his brow. A shock of brown hair fell back over his forehead. “I’ve never seen a maid so skittish about marriage.”

  Morgan’s mouth tightened. “You haven’t met Caradoc.” He cinched his belt around his waist and reached for his bow.

  “Then why do you take her to him?”

  The sentry’s eyes revealed a disapproval he didn’t dare voice. It was a problem Morgan remembered well from his youth, the penchant to fall in love easily and usually where one shouldn’t. He understood Rhys’s attraction. Ceridwen ab Arawn was reasonably fair of face and had all her teeth. It took little more to get a boy’s blood running, yet Ceridwen had more—a sweet smile when she chose to use it, which wasn’t often, and a voice like cool water running through a forest glade. She also hadn’t used her voice often in the past sennight, except to accuse or plead.

  Her pleading was not his problem this morning, finding her was, the troublesome wench. He and his band of five men had combed the hills the whole night long, but neither luck nor skill had been enough to bring her safely back to camp.

  “She goes to Caradoc,” Morgan said in answer to Rhys, “because the most powerful prince in all of North Wales wills it, so she can bear her sons on the land of her ancestors. ’Tis the same reason Caradoc wants her, to be doubly bound by blood to the land he’s won.”

  “Won by treachery and betrayal, and God knows what else.” Rhys shuddered. “Some say ’twas his own blade that hewed Gwrnach from gullet to cock.”

  “Some say,” Morgan agreed. He’d heard the tales, and he knew the hatred Caradoc had nursed for his father, but he also knew how the smallest twist of the blade and the merest shift of intent could turn a killing into a mutilation. Two thousand seven hundred Moslems had been slain by the Lionheart’s Crusaders at Acre. Decapitation had been the order, but by the end of it, they’d all been hacking away at the hostages, slogging through blood and gore up to their knees. How many had he killed and how many mutilated? He would never know. Death was death, and by the sword ’twas never pretty.

  He slipped his quiver over his shoulder and took off with long strides toward where the horses were tied.

  Rhys followed alongside, his boy’s jaw jutting out. “Methinks she would have been happier remaining with the nuns at Usk.”

  If Rhys would rather protect her than bed her, Morgan thought, there was hope for him yet, for it was always the bedding that caused young men to completely lose their senses.

  “Have Rhodri and Drew cross the river, and send Owain to me,” Morgan ordered, ignoring Rhys’s summation of the situation. The boy was a good tracker, and with time he would become even better, but his feelings for the maid had clouded his judgment. Ceridwen was no nun, not yet. “She heads for Mychael and Strata Florida.”

  “Why?” the young sentry asked, surprised. “The monks won’t take her even if her brother is one of their order.”

  “She doesn’t go for sanctuary, but to rouse Mychael out of his monkish ways, to put a sword in his hand.”

  “She thinks Mychael will fight for Balor?” Rhys’s tone implied a hefty share of doubt.

  Morgan shared those doubts. He’d known Ceridwen’s brother since his birth, and Mychael was more likely to be sainted than knighted. The boy had taken to the monkish life with a fervor. “When her father had it,” he answered, “’twas called Carn Merioneth, and if Ceridwen could win it back, Mychael would no doubt let her have the castle and no lord a’tall, or mayhaps the lord of her choice.”

  “And has she chosen?” A betraying amount of hope crept into the young voice.

  Morgan stopped short of his destination and flashed the sentry a reproving grin. “She asked me, cub, but I don’t think her heart was in it.”

  Accusation glared from Rhys’s eyes. “Then why did she run?”

  Another knowing grin spread across Morgan’s face. “I told her I had more to offer a woman than my sword arm. Should she but care to notice and make me an offer with more... um, heat in it, she might gain what she hoped.”

  Rhys, no stranger to the bawdy inclinations of camp life, was plainly shocked by his lord’s brazen overture.

  “You could have wed Ceridwen ab Arawn, the most beautiful, sweet, and kindly maid in all of Christendom, and you offend her with lewd and—” He stopped abruptly, his gaze shifting to a place beyond Morgan’s right shoulder. A bright flush coursed over his cheeks. “I’ll give Owain and Drew your orders,” he said curtly, and turned on his heel, striding back to the camp.

  “You are a hopeless romantic,” a distinctive voice—one capable of mangling both French and Welsh with equal ease—said from behind him.

  “And you are a hopeless cynic,” Morgan said, slowly turning to face his friend.

  “Du kommer sent.” Dain pushed off the oak tree where he’d been waiting and listening. “You’re late. I expected you before St. Winnal.”

  The Welshman winced. “Every time you speak a saint’s name, I expect a bolt of lightning to strike nearby.”

  Dain laughed. “Lightning, Morgan? At dawn? For a mere heretic?”

  “You’re more than a heretic. You’re pagan. Maybe worse.”

  “An infidel?”

  “Easily, by anyone’s definition, Christian or Moslem.” A reluctant smile curved his mouth.

  The dark-robed Dane stepped out of the shadows into a shaft of sunlight, striding into the clearing with a natural elegance that some mistook for softness—until they’d seen the grace and power of it behind a blade. Morgan had seen it as such, more times than he cared to recall.

  “The forest is alive early this morn, mostly with your men,” Dain said, offering the wineskin he carried. A horse, fifteen hands of dappled white and gray, stood quietly in the trees behind him. “Mayhaps my wine will be more to your liking.”

  Morgan accepted the skin. “None of them sighted you,” he said. “It’s a wonder our throats aren’t slit in our sleep. Where are the hounds?”

  “Numa guards my chambers, and Elixir guards the Druid Door and the tower stairs.”

  “Stolen yourself a rich prize, have you?” Morgan asked, part of his humor returning. His sentries had missed only Dain and his horse, not Dain, his horse, and two dogs. It was small comfort, but still comfort. The horse, he noted, had not moved, yet even now seemed to be disappearing in the shifting shadows of the forest.

  “A rich prize? Mayhaps.” Dain gestured at the tasseled tent. “And what of you? Welsh war bands seldom travel in Saladin’s style.”

  Morgan ignored the reference to the desert king, the past being better forgotten, especially when the present was in such a tangle.

  “The tent was a gift from Llywelyn, Prince of Gwynedd, to another, a maid I was asked to fetch, a will-o’-the-wisp who escapes me with damning regularity.”

  “Have your charms worn so thin?” Dain lifted one rose-red tassel and turned it into the light.

  “No thinner than yours, I trow.” Morgan cocked a teasing eyebrow. “How is the dear Edmee?”

  “Thorough.” The word sat in the air with a thousand implications while fingers skilled in the arts of enchantment sifted through the silken cords, then let them fall back against the tent. “And your maid?”

>   The Welshman guffawed. “Not so thorough and not even mine, despite her wishes. She goes north.”

  “So she told me.” Dain watched as Morgan’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly before he controlled his surprise. Of the three of them, only Morgan had returned from the Holy Land with so much as a trace of innocence intact, but then, only Morgan—by far the youngest of the three—had taken much innocence with him.

  “You have Ceridwen ab Arawn in your tower?”

  “Aye. She was there all night.”

  More than one maid had been seduced by Morgan’s guileless manner and fair face, and his eyes as blue as a summer sky. Dain wasn’t surprised that Ceridwen was yet another, but he was annoyed. However had she kept her maidenhead intact when it seemed she propositioned every man she met? Strange woman.

  “Then I’m a dead man.” Morgan slapped a hand over his face, and a swath of dark hair fell across his brow. Just as suddenly, he jerked his head back up. “And you... no.” He paused, changing his mind. “Caradoc wouldn’t kill you, not over a woman.”

  “Not even a betrothed bride?”

  “Jesu, Dain,” Morgan swore. “She told you and you still debauched her? Have you no honor left at all?”

  The answer to that was so obvious as to make a reply redundant, yet Dain did reply.

  “I make my way in the world. Nothing more.”

  “It’s been four years since we left Jaffa, seven since Acre. Can’t you forget?”

  “Can you?”

  Morgan held his gaze, then swore again and took a long swallow of the wine.

  “It matters not,” he said, handing the skin to Dain. “I still want her back.”

  “And I am here to bargain”—Dain smiled—“for the return of a virgin.”

  After a moment of dumbstruck silence, Morgan returned the smile and called him something foul. “I should have known an unskilled maid would not rouse your interest.”

  “Had not so much to do with her lack of skill as her lack of consciousness.”

  The smile disappeared in a heartbeat. “She was hurt?”

  “Insensate. One of D’Arbois’s knights, Ragnor, caught her on the track and brought her to Wydehaw. He was not gentle.”

  “Then he’s the dead man in this. Owain!” Morgan turned and called out to his captain. A large, rough-looking man answered, rising immediately from his place by the fire. “Mount up the men. We go to Wydehaw.”

  “Wait.” Dain put a restraining hand on his friend’s arm. “Come alone. We’ll talk after you’ve seen her.”

  Wariness in his blue eyes, Morgan hesitated before he spoke. “You ask a lot, dear friend, for a Welsh prince, even a poor one, to enter a Marcher castle without his men at his back.”

  “If ’tis necessary, I’ll be at your back,” Dain promised. “But I rather doubt anyone will know you’re there, unless you make your way into the great hall and announce yourself at supper.”

  “What’s this then, conjurer?” An imp’s grin returned to Morgan’s face. “Do you spirit us inside your tower with the wave of a rowan wand?”

  “If I could but find the right switch, I would,” Dain said, one eyebrow arched in emphasis to the sincerity of his wish.

  Morgan lifted his hand to make a warding sign, then he caught himself and gave Dain a shamefaced smile.

  “Sometimes you frighten me, Lavrans. I wonder that you do not frighten yourself with all your dabbling and inquiry into things better left alone,” Morgan said, though he could no sooner judge what his friend had become than what his friend had once been. If not for Dain’s protection, he would have been as lost to God as his friend, his faith stripped from him by the mortal transgressions and dark arts of the Saracen.

  “Tell your men to keep camp,” was all Dain said. “You’ll be here at least until the morrow. And don’t worry, Morgan. The way into the tower isn’t by the casting of spells, though you may wish it were before we’re there.”

  “What’s this, then?”

  “I’ve found another entrance through the lower chamber.”

  Morgan grimaced. “That’s a rank place.”

  “’Tis the sulfurs I use for the alchemy.”

  “Very rank sulfurs,” Morgan grumbled, though he smiled in forgiveness. ’Twas what he always gave Dain, forgiveness, for deep in his heart he feared God never would—and deeper still, in a place he hardly dared to look himself, he feared he was to blame for the darkest of all the acts Dain had committed in the name of survival, those that had allowed the Saracen to reach deep into Dain’s core and change him from the stoic warrior he had been into the dangerously sly and clever mage he had become.

  No, he could not judge. He could only forgive and be grateful he hadn’t seen the half of what had transpired ’tween Dain and Jalal al-Kamam, for the half he had seen haunted his nights.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Christ’s blood.”

  “Don’t touch her,” Dain warned, and Morgan curled his fingers away from Ceridwen’s face into a fist.

  She lay on Dain’s bed, nestled into the pillows and quilts, the sunlight streaming down upon her slight form through the glazed window. Edmee’s gentle touch was apparent in the tidy braid she’d fashioned out of the maid’s thick mass of curls. Even so, separate strands floated cloudlike around the small face.

  “Where is the butcher who dies for this?”

  “’Tis not as bad as it looks, Morgan. She will be scarred, but most of what you see is physick, not blood. The bruises will fade.” Dain moved aside the neck of the clean chemise Edmee had put her in and checked the stitching on her shoulder. He sensed Morgan’s stance grow even more rigid as the ragged bite came into view. “This, too, will look better with time,” he said. His finger lightly traced the double crescent incised on the pale curve of skin. She was well and truly marked. The bite wound would heal, but would never be discreet. He dipped a cloth into a bowl of warm water.

  “And the rest?” Morgan asked.

  “You can assure her lord that with luck she will not be lame.”

  A low, guttural curse came from the man. “The Prince of Gwynedd may be appeased with so little, but I must take more than luck and assurances to Caradoc.”

  “More?”

  “Ragnor.” The name was spoken without mercy.

  Would ease the maid’s life too, if the beast was taken away, but Dain doubted D’Arbois would relinquish the knight. Other methods would have to be employed.

  “You are not called the Thief of Cardiff for naught, Morgan. Steal him if you want him.” Taking care not to awaken the maid, he drew the damp cloth across her shoulder, cleaning away the previous night’s dressing. A mouth, especially one as rotten as Ragnor’s, was more likely to leave a festering wound than a dagger. When the bite proved free from infection, he turned to the finer cut framing the side of her face.

  A shout arose from outside, the noise accompanied by the sound of many horses.

  “Better Ragnor’s head than mine,” Morgan said, stepping back to the window’s embrasure to stare down into the bailey.

  “Are you sure it needs be someone’s head?”

  “With Caradoc, nothing less than blood will suffice, the more the better.” Angry curses and the crack of a whip mixed with the sound of a horse’s scream.

  “Then what I’ve heard from the north is true?”

  “Most, if not all.” Morgan gestured to the window. “Who arrives with such a clatter?”

  “’Tis your man, Ragnor.” Dain didn’t need to see the knight to recognize his voice or his typical homecoming. He returned his attention to the maid. In the light of day, his stitchery looked good, a fine tracery of thread down the side of her face. ’Twould be a shame to have it all ground to dust between the Boar of Balor’s jaws, if such a thing were possible. “Tales have been told of Balor,” he said, “of strange happenings and harsh dealings reminiscent of Gwrnach.”

  “Caradoc is a hard man,” Morgan admitted. “Mayhaps he’s grown a little wild, but he is no worse than any
other.”

  “I heard the castle wall was a gift from the captain of Llywelyn’s war band.”

  Morgan chuckled. “I was there the night Llywelyn’s penteulu lost his fortune in Balor’s pit, wagering on a boar. Aye, more than one has said Caradoc built his keep with pig’s blood.”

  The ruckus outside caused the maid to stir, the barest fluttering of her lashes betraying her rise from the depths of a drugged sleep. Dain dipped his finger in a cup of weakly opiated wine and wet her lips. He was not ready for her to awaken, not with Morgan there. When her tongue licked, he lingered, letting her take the draught from his fingertip, even as he both studied and fought his desire to do the same.

  “Caradoc won’t thank you if you deliver him an opium-eater for a bride, Dain.” The words were spoken softly with a concern that went beyond the woman.

  “I am judicious,” Dain said, but stopped and passed his hand down over her eyes, willing her to sleep awhile longer. ’Twas not much as magic went, but he’d never been one to underestimate the power of a sincere thought, especially when accompanied by the appropriate simple. He lowered his hand and found her lashes to have done the same. Sometimes it seemed he had a knack for such things.

  “Will Ragnor hunt again on the morrow?” Morgan asked, returning his attention to the bailey.

  “Aye,” he said just as Ceridwen spoke his name on a sigh. Maybe not such a knack after all, he thought, touching her mouth with a thought for silence.

  “What?” Morgan asked.

  Ceridwen smiled beneath his caress, and Dain cleared his throat.

  “Aye,” he said louder, standing up and drawing the bed curtain behind him. He would see to the maid after Morgan left. “’Tis boar he’s after, and he will not rest until he slays one.”

  “What of his lord?”

  “D’Arbois hunts tamer game.”

  Morgan laughed softly, keeping his attention on the man outside. “I have never thought of you as tame, Lavrans.”