by Janzen, Tara
“Shit,” he muttered, and rolled onto his back, dropping a hand over his eyes. He did not want to remember those things, not when he lay next to a woman he wanted. Edmee was so perfect in her muteness, unable to ask questions, unable to ask her teacher the name of his. Jalal. Jalal al-Kamam. In every nuance. “Shit.”
Madron had skewed the whole of it out of kilter with her talk of locking the tower. He was too close to making his Philosopher’s Stone to risk exile, and even then he needed the tower. Though he could take the Stone with him, little good it would do him without the upper chamber to guide him through the cosmos in the final steps of drawing down the elixir and the pneuma.
Transformation.
Transformation was the key to putting his past behind him, to forgetting.
His chest tightened painfully. Bloody, sodding Madron. How much of his mind had she seen? Another spasm wracked him. He pulled his legs up and eased back over onto his side, facing Ceridwen. The witch had ruined him with her damned Druid sleep.
Behind him, the sun broke the horizon, sending the morn’s first true shafts of light streaming across the land, skimming treetops and pouring into meadows. The brightness touched Ceri’s eyelids first, then spread down across her cheeks, and farther still to her mouth. He reached for her again, unable to resist. They’d kissed in the grass across the river from Deri.
Some people believed in the transforming power of love. Looking upon the maid, he wished he dared to believe. She was so exquisite. Her skin absorbed the dawn and reflected it back with the radiance of her soul.
He feared he was in love, and in lust. The utter, godforsaken irony of it should have killed him on the spot. But no, there would be no instant annihilation. He was a survivor, praying every day to a god he’d foresworn that he would find the redemption he no longer believed existed—except, mayhaps, in nature herself, in the shape of the sky and the substance of the earth, in the metals and minerals and stones, if he was clever enough to find the key.
But then, cleverness and keys were his strong points. Hadn’t he opened the Druid Door, and hadn’t he unlocked the secret of Nemeton’s rotating spheres, that most strange contraption he’d found in the upper chamber, the source of Erlend’s worst nightmares?
All he needed awaited him in his tower, the planets above and Earth’s treasures below. He was too far down the road to chance a change in course, even for such a rare creature as lay by his side. He would give Madron no reason to lock him out of the Hart Tower.
Resigned, and somewhat steadied by reaching the only logical decision, he withdrew his fingers from Ceridwen’s hair. She wanted magic? He would give her what magic he knew. To ease some of the days of her life, he would teach her of women’s herbs, of yarrow and lady’s mantle, vervain, rue, and water pepper. And to assuage her fears of marriage, he would teach her how to use a knife. He would give her an advantage, the edge of a blade, for few things stopped a rutting man quicker than a dagger at his throat or his balls.
He would give her the Damascene, since she was already taken with it. The hilt fit her hand well enough. ’Twould be his wedding gift to her and let Caradoc make of it what he would. His old friend was in for a number of surprises with his bride.
A loud rustling in the brush announced the dogs, yet ’twas the Cypriot who reached him first. She nudged the back of his head with her soft muzzle, warming his skin with her breath. The dogs tumbled out of the woods after the horse.
“Aye,” he muttered as they bounded around and stuck their cold noses into his ear and licked his cheek. “I’m glad to see you too.”
With a gesture, he directed them both to sit. Numa disobeyed with typical predictability, trotting over to be next to the maid. She gave him a quizzical glance from across the rise of Ceridwen’s hip, as if asking permission for the done deed.
“Fie, bitch,” he grumbled, pushing himself to a sitting position.
The albino stretched her head down to lick Ceridwen on the cheek and nose, and Dain found himself sunk to another new low: being jealous of a damn dog.
“Ceri?” He shook her arm. “Ceridwen.” ’Twas time for them to be up and gone. He preferred not to be caught dallying in the woods in the light of day.
She mumbled a few words of protest, and he shook her again, then rose with an arm wrapped tightly around his ribs. Pale blue eyes squinted up at him through gold-tipped lashes.
“Come, chérie,” he said, forcing a smile and a lightness he did not feel. “Our adventure has lasted through to the morn, and we must find our beds.”
Adventure, aye, Ceridwen thought through the haze of sleep. They’d had an adventure, she and the sorcerer, a marvelous adventure full of strange people and stranger places.
There had been a wood with wild folk gathered around a mother oak of enormous girth. A waterfall had shimmered over their heads, revealing a secret trail. They’d found a cottage hidden in a pine forest, and inside the cottage she’d found a marvel. Her hand went to the pouch hanging from her girdle, and she smiled. The elf shot was safe. ’Twas a wondrous thing to have, but there had been something else in the cottage, something less tangible and far more strange than her prized elf shot. Her smile faded. Memories had been in the cottage, her own and those belonging to others, memories of a green-eyed maid from long ago, and dreams. They had come to her in a fog and must have slipped back into the selfsame cloud, for most of them were not clear in her mind now. Yet she remembered love, strong and pulsing with the heart of the earth, luring her into a dark abyss. She remembered the anguish and the fierceness of it, and she remembered the man, a warrior.
“Come. ’Tis not far,” Lavrans said, and when she looked up, ’twas him, with his flowing dark hair and broad shoulders silhouetted against the sky.
Denial quickly followed. Lavrans had kissed her, and the kissing had created confusion. He was no warrior; he was a beguiler. The man in her dream had wielded a sword, not a rowan wand.
But even the quickest of denials could not change what she’d seen, or what she’d felt. ’Twas him.
“Come, Ceri. We can be home before mid-morn.”
She followed the sweep of his hand as he gestured to the west and the last shadows of night. The stone walls of Wydehaw rose into a gray sky from a distant, rocky crag, its towers wreathed in garlands of dawn mist.
~ ~ ~
The great hall of the castle was in an uproar. Servants scurried this way and that, kicking sleeping dogs and snoring guardsmen out of their way with equal vigor. Wasn’t often they had the chance to get a swift foot on one of the mesnie without facing even swifter retaliation, but the overseeing black scowl of their lord, Soren D’Arbois, approved all means to his end. He wanted the hall cleared. He wanted hyssop strewn on the rushes. He wanted clean linen on the dais tables, and he wanted fresh bread and ale. The Boar of Balor was less than a league north of the Wye, bearing down on Wydehaw with a column of thirty men.
“Boar,” Soren muttered.
“Milord?” A fresh-faced squire stopped in his tracks, his arms full of bee balm, and looked up expectantly.
Soren eyed the boy, momentarily distracted from his grim musings. He liked dark boys, and this one was darker than most, with coal-black hair curling across his brow and ebony eyes shining bright and innocent.
Too innocent, he decided, and sent the squire off with a cuff to the ear. “Hyssop, boy. Hyssop, I said.”
Damn Vivienne. Where was she? Strewing herbs was her bailiwick, not his.
“Boar,” he muttered again. The man would want his bride and Ragnor, and Soren could lay claim to only one. Damn the red beast for bringing such as Caradoc down on his head and then disappearing without so much as a by-your-leave. Having Ragnor brought to the Boar in chains would have ameliorated some of the northern lord’s wrath at the treatment his betrothed had received in Soren’s demesne.
What was he to do?
He grabbed a passing kitchen maid by her arm and drew her up short. “Pies,” he said, sticking his face close to hers
. “Meat pies.”
“Aye, milord,” she said, her head bobbing, her eyes round and wide.
He released her with a shove that sent her stumbling. A guardsman caught her with a hearty guffaw and “Ho, wench,” but Soren would have none of that. He glared at the man until he released the maid. Ragnor’s lust for the swiving of women was what had caused the calamity about to be unleashed upon them all.
And Caradoc’s own carelessness, Soren thought uncharitably, and mayhaps the Prince of Gwynedd’s and his man’s, whoever that had been. One maid should not be so hard to hold that a fool could lose her in the woods and leave her easy prey for a hunting party. Lavrans kept her easily enough.
Of course, Ragnor had broken her ankle, an act that was bound to slow down even the quickest girl, which was certainly what the red knight had intended.
“Bah.” Soren made a dismissive gesture with his hand, and three servants ran into one another, trying to decipher the cryptic command. “Bah,” he growled again, giving them his evilest eye. “Bah!”
With much bumbling and mumbling, the three sorted themselves out and scattered. Fools. He was surrounded by fools, sans one, the captain of his guard, the beast Ragnor. Where had the man gone? And why? Humiliation was nothing new in Wydehaw’s hall. ’Twas almost guaranteed when Lavrans was a man’s opponent. Ragnor had lost to the sorcerer before without fleeing.
There was mischief in the man’s disappearance. Soren felt it. He knew it, but there was no proof, no clue that the man had done other than run off. But to where? No word had come back of him. The men who had been hunting with Ragnor that morn had reported finding boar sign and tracking the pig to its lair. There the party had split up, each circling within sight of the others, ready to cut off the swine should it try to escape, hounds yapping at their heels and the hole in anticipation of the bloodshed to come. But there had been no boar, only the scent of one to drive the dogs mad, and then there had been no Ragnor. Everyone had seen him, no one had seen him disappear, but neither he nor his destrier were to be found.
Mischief, to be sure, but by whom, Soren wondered, and to what end? There were those in the woods who were wild and particularly fond of mischief, the Quicken-tree, but they ever avoided the world of men, and they would find the rancid Ragnor particularly offensive.
Soren looked through the gloom of the hall to the iron cresset where the demoiselle had hung from her chains. Had it been magic? Mayhaps Lavrans’s spell had taken hold and even now Ragnor lay fast asleep in some secret grove. And mayhaps the spell did hold time at bay, and his captain would not awaken for a thousand years.
Now there was a thought worthy of his father’s great bard, Nemeton, who had dealt much with the wild ones. Nemeton, Soren thought. The Sanctuary in the bard’s own language, a strange name for a murdering bastard.
Spells, bah. His father had believed in the power of the unseen, and what had it gotten him besides a dead wife? Lavrans was no sorcerer except by design. ’Twas the reason Soren enjoyed him so, watching the man beguile everyone from the king’s sheriff to the lowliest scullery maid with no more than his wits. All except Soren himself trembled in the black-cowled demon’s presence. Vivienne trembled out of lust, true, but still she trembled.
Soren would have trembled for the wizard, on his knees if need be—or actually, preferably on his knees—if it would have gotten him into Lavrans’s bed, but all of his efforts had been futile. Yet he still held out hope, for there was something in Dain’s dark gaze, a near unconscious sensuality inherent in his demeanor that beckoned and incited Soren in a way no other man’s gaze ever had. Dain Lavrans was not innocent of any pleasure. Soren knew that truth down to his bones.
“Food or a man?” a woman asked.
“What?” He snapped out of his reverie and found his wife standing next to him by the hearth.
“Food or a man?” Lady Vivienne repeated with a bland smile. “Nothing else brings that sappy, glazed look to your eyes, Soren.”
Bitch.
“I’ve ordered meat pies made for the evening meal,” he said.
“If ’twas Ragnor’s meat ’twould be better for us. I’m afraid the Boar of Balor is going to be sorely disappointed not to have anybody to torture.”
Soren gave his wife a cool look. “Mayhaps I’ll find someone to sacrifice before he leaves.”
Vivienne did naught but return the threat with a smile. “Let us take his measure first, my love. Then we shall see who shall torture whom.”
“Milord.” A man came running up, breathless and pale, but moving under his own power and—a quick glance downward confirmed it—still dry in the front of his tunic. Noll had gained instant notoriety for surviving his mission to fetch the sorcerer on the night of the storm, having been retrieved singed and unconscious, struck down by a sizzling bolt of undiluted magic, a mighty bulwark overcome by the ungodly powers of bewitchment (this last being his own interpretation of events). He had become the hero of the scullery, with all its attendant benefits with the kitchen maids, and now insisted on his duty as messenger to the Hart Tower.
“Milord, I looked ev’rywhere, both up and down, right into the thick of the place, and she’s not to be found.”
“Who?” Vivienne asked, before Soren could fully absorb what the man had said.
“The demoiselle, lady. Neither she nor Lavrans is in the tower, or anywhere in the castle.” Noll paled even further under Lady Vivienne’s darkening gaze. His speech grew fainter, fading into a bare whisper of breath. “There is only old Erlend in the Hart. Not even the hell hounds are about.”
He’d lost the maid. Soren felt ill, a condition only worsened by his wife turning her fury on him.
“I think mayhaps you are right after all, my love. There can be no doubt of a sacrifice being made this day.”
~ ~ ~
With a bemused smile, Caradoc accepted another sugar-encrusted apple tartlet from the proffered tray. The Lady D’Arbois was putting him off, delaying him with charm, procrastinating with small talk, and treading the razor edge of his anger with a light step. She was nonetheless doomed. If Ceridwen ab Arawn was not soon brought before him, he would gut every living soul within the castle walls and burn Wydehaw to the ground.
He had asked for Lavrans with no more success. That the two of them should be missing at the same time did not bode well for his old friend. Yet Dain was no boy to be led about by his cock. The two hundred marks were with Caradoc’s captain, Dyfn, along with saffron and violet sugar, enough to reimburse Lavrans for his trouble. There were no oranges, in part because there were no oranges to be had, and in part because he would allow himself to be pushed only so far by either friendship or necessity. Past that point, he would simply take what was his.
“Did you have much rain on your journey?” Lady Vivienne asked, touching her fingers to his forearm in a gesture so coyly seductive that Caradoc wondered if there might be reason to keep her alive longer than the others. The green wool of her gown was embroidered round the neck and sleeves, which were short to reveal the yellow kirtle beneath. The girdle hanging about her hips repeated both colors edged in gold.
He let his gaze rise to her face. She was pretty enough in an insipid way others might find appealing. For himself, he preferred drama to prettiness in a face, though the cruel little twist that passed as her smile held promise.
“No rain that I noticed,” he said.
She laughed and touched him again, this time letting her fingers slide down his sleeve and over the bronze points on his arm guard, until they caressed the bare skin of his hand.
D’Arbois was married to a whore. How intriguing. “How long until your husband returns, lady?” he asked.
“Oh, not long,” she assured him, then, as if realizing a missed opportunity, she lowered her lashes. “Or should I say, not nearly long enough.”
’Twas his turn to laugh, and he did heartily. After he gutted her husband and burned her home, he’d take this one north with him.
Vivienne blushed on
cue, a well-practiced art, and wondered how much longer she could hold her guest’s attention without having to take her clothes off. Soren had put her in an impossible situation. Stave off the Boar, he’d said, as if she were a soldier wielding a sword and buckler.
The shame of it was, if they were unable to produce the chit, the Boar was likely to leave in a rage without giving Vivienne a chance to properly seduce him, and she so wanted to seduce him. The sorcerer paled in comparison to this man.
Caradoc was tall, broad, and muscular, without the gross excess of flesh that marred Ragnor. His hair was not the beast’s wiry red, or Lavrans’s silky chestnut, but was gold upon gold, thick and heavy like a royal lion’s mane. The similarity to the king’s heraldry made him seem even more the warrior, as did the studded leather guards on his forearms. He was no slave to fashion, but to battle.
Yet he was beautifully fashionable. His tunic was of the softest, warmest brown wool, the shirt beneath of the finest cream-colored linen. His chausses were dark brown, his boots fit him to mid-calf. No jewelry adorned him besides a simple brooch that held his cloak, but he needed none. His eyes were finery enough. A mysterious hazel they were, with flashes of green and gold—and even white, she would swear—within the blue-toned depths.
The only unsavory thing about him was the man he’d brought with him, a leech dressed in monk’s clothes with the odd name of Helebore. Fortunately, the man was not given to company. Shortly after their arrival, he had disappeared into the chambers assigned to Caradoc and had not been seen since.
“Mayhaps you would like to see the rosary,” she suggested to the Boar. “There are few blooms as of yet, but ’tis enclosed with a high wall.”
Caradoc leaned in close, and she saw that indeed, there were flecks of white in the irises of his eyes. “I have spent many a pleasant hour in ladies’ gardens,” he said, “and am sure that even without the sweetness of spring’s first blossoms, yours would prove to be as fragrant as any I have dallied in.”