Silas registered the name at once, and drew himself forward in his chair.
"A woman and her young son were killed in their keep some two months ago. This man seated beside you sent an army of demons to burn their home, to leave none living."
"Demons?" Baron de Moulton's question held a dubious tone. "What mean you, good woman?"
"Clearly, she's mad," Silas interjected, but it lacked conviction, and now that he was looking hard at the woman, he noted something disturbing about her.
Beneath her woolen cloak, she wore a bliaut that was anything but common. His vision was teased with flashes of diaphanous silk, frosty blue, pale green, creamy pearl.
That gown.
By the sudden roil of his own seething blood, he knew that gown!
In a burst of furious action, Silas shoved his chair back and vaulted over the table as agile as any stripling youth. His booted feet hit the floor of the dais with a heavy crack of sound, punctuating the flurry of gasps that went up from the lords and ladies who had since abandoned their feast of stuffed peacock. The woman took a fearful step back as he stalked up to her, but she did not flee.
"Who are you?" he demanded of her.
"My lord de Mortaine," cautioned the baron of the keep, "let the woman speak, if you will."
But Silas could not contain his growl of anger and disbelief. With a rough hand, he tossed the edge of her mantle over her shoulder, revealing more of the iridescent fabric beneath. He had seen the gown only once in his lifetime, but never would he forget it. The magic of its origin shimmered throughout each thread and bead. And as he stared at the royal Anavrin garment, a single name snarled through his recall.
Calandra.
"Where did you get this?" he hissed. "Answer me! Who the bloody hell are you?"
The young woman stared him down, defiant. "A better question might be, who are you--and how black is the magic at your command?"
"Witchcraft is a serious charge," de Moulton advised her. "You had best be certain, good woman, and have evidence to support your claim."
That she had gone suddenly mute pleased Silas de Mortaine. He saw the fear in her eyes and he reveled in it. The appearance of Calandra's gown was a vexation, however, and he would get to the bottom of that as soon as he dealt with this present inconvenience.
"Well. Evidently, the chit has reconsidered herself," Silas announced, pivoting back to the quiet dais in a flourish of charming bravado.
He started to walk away, confident that he had thwarted this unexpected trouble, for the moment at least. Before he could take the first step, he felt her lunge toward him.
The woman's sea-bright gaze locked on his. Then she reached out and wrapped her slender hand around his arm. Her fingers clamped down on him with uncanny strength and a queer warmth that seemed but a shade away from searing. But she was the one who winced as though stricken with sudden pain. Perspiration misted her forehead and put a sheen above her mouth. She looked like she might retch.
"This man..." Her voice trailed off, but she retrieved it, even squaring her shoulders when it seemed she might rather collapse. "This man is a criminal. He is a thief, and a liar. He is a murderer of innocent women and children. Most of all, he is a soulless creature who deals in the dark arts."
Silas chuckled, but his laughter was the only sound echoing in the suddenly silent great hall. He glanced around and saw worried faces, suspicious eyes, all of them fixed on him.
"My lord de Moulton," said the girl, "I have come to warn you--all of you here--that the devil walks among you tonight, and his name is Silas de Mortaine."
* * *
Serena knew not how she found the strength to speak.
Touching Silas de Mortaine, feeling the depth of his wickedness seep into her through the Knowing, was to plunge into frigid, fathomless black waters. Wave after wave assaulted her, nausea engulfing her, threatening to buckle her legs beneath her. But Serena held fast--to de Mortaine and to her own resolve. She would condemn him here, publicly, and when he was taken into custody for his crimes, all the pain she felt now would be worth it.
Faces faded in and out of her mind's eye--countless lives snuffed at de Mortaine's command, many at his own hand. She saw hideous deaths, heard the screams of tortured souls made to suffer prolonged anguish, all for his delight.
Let the truth of his own evil deeds be testimony against him, Serena thought, ruthless now in her loathing of him. She clasped him tighter, feeling the burn of his evil in every fiber of her body. Amid the storm of agony that wrenched her very soul, the Knowing grew clearer, pitiless in its reading of de Mortaine's black heart.
Faster and faster the visions came, one after the other. Serena absorbed the record of every sin he had committed, every heinous crime, every evil dream that lurked in his dead heart, and she began to recite them each in detail for the noble folk gathered in the castle's great hall.
--An elderly man called Delavet, garbed in white robes and sprawled on the tile floor of his church, his frail neck snapped by Silas's hands--
--Lara, shifter-born woman who dared betray Silas, paid with her life, consumed by a ball of otherworldly flame--
--A servile cleric ripped to bits by the gnashing teeth and brutal claws of two shifters, loosed on Silas's command--
--Silas himself, in a moonlit abbey courtyard, striding into the heart of a roaring blaze, only to emerge unscathed--
There was further proof of the sorcery he employed, and countless other innocent lives, smashed under the heel of Silas de Mortaine's black power. Serena told them all, until she could scarcely form the words. And still there were more.
"I have heard enough," Silas chuckled as she began to slump where she stood. He wrenched free of her loosened grasp and gestured to the gathering in the hall, his expression one of patronizing levity. "Have not we all heard enough of this filth and depravity?"
"Staggering accusations, sir," Baron de Moulton said from his place at the high table.
"Bald lies--delusions of a sickened mind," Silas countered hotly.
"Then you deny her claims?"
"Deny them? I reject them as madness! Nay, worse--this woman speaks of sorcery and evil like she knows it well. In truth, I am left to wonder if the actual danger might be here, in this pretty face."
He caught hold of her chin and squeezed his fingers deep into the flesh of her cheeks. Serena whimpered under his bruising hold, but she did not reach up to pry him off. She had no strength left beyond that which held her upright, and she could bear no more Knowing of the man whose rancid blood beat, even diluted through the generations, in her own veins.
"Look at her and tell me you do not scent the devil at work in her eyes. There is true evil here, and it can be found in this witch's heart!"
"Aye!" came a shout from somewhere in the hall. "Aye, I have seen it! I have witnessed the witch at work not a few days ago!"
Serena dragged her bleary gaze to where the call had issued. A man was standing on a bench at a trestle table, staring at her from across the wide expanse of the banquet hall.
"That woman came to my stall at market. She cheated me out of a fair price for a bauble I'd have gotten thrice for had it not been for her witchery!"
The goldsmith, Serena recalled now, dimly recognizing him.
He pointed a finger at her in accusation. "She took my hand in a searing grip and looked into my mind! Took my thoughts, she did--and my profit as well! She's a witch, I've no doubt!"
Serena coughed, doubling over to hold her stomach, which roiled from Silas's lingering touch. He reached down and grabbed her by the edge of her cloak, hauling her back up beside him. He pulled her toward the dais, where Baron de Moulton and his wife sat in anxious silence.
"A witch," Silas said, loud enough for all to hear. "She has been witnessed exercising her black arts by that good man, and now all of us in this room have seen for ourselves her attempt to corrupt my mind with her spells and devilspeak. My lord, my friend, here is evil."
The baron was quiet for a
moment, considering. His wife turned a pallid look on him, and from beneath her own drooping lashes, Serena saw the woman make the sign of the cross on her breast.
"No..." Serena's plea caught in her throat. "Do not...believe...him."
"There is but one way to purge such an abomination," Silas said, easily eclipsing her with the gravity of his silken voice. "The witch must die."
A gasp went up from the crowd, and very subtly, the baron gave an agreeing nod of his head.
"No!" Serena cried, panic swirling in her as the baron and his wife turned away from her and the guards who had shown her into the hall now advanced to seize her.
"Get her out of my sight," de Mortaine snarled to the castle sentries. "My garrison awaits me in town. Place her in their custody. I will deal with her anon, and in my own way."
Chapter 27
Egremont was crawling with shifters. Rand had realized it nearly the instant he set foot on the road into town. He felt it more and more as he carried the cup bearing the Calasaar and Vorimasaar stones toward the docks, where he hoped to procure immediate transport up the coast to Scotland. He had just begun to head that way when he spied yet another hulking shifter and a familiar face he loathed.
Standing on the wharf, Draec les Nantres and the Anavrin guard at his side were carefully watching the arrivals from a boat recently docked and unloading. Rand saw the shaggy head of the shifter go up like a hound on the sudden scent of fresh blood. The big man then began to pivot toward him. The beast had sensed the presence of the treasure; Rand was certain of it. With a curse, he ducked back around to the street, only narrowly missing detection.
The docks were out of the question now. And he could not linger in town with les Nantres and the shifters in close proximity. Rand was willing to wager that Silas de Mortaine was not likely far away either. He could be in Egremont as well, heading north, perhaps intending on much the same route as Rand himself. There was no time to waste. With part of the Chalice treasure on his person, Rand had to stay on the move or he was sure to be taken.
He switched back and walked with haste for the town stables. He had some coin now, what little he had taken in trade for Elspeth's pendant. Pray God it would be enough to procure a mount for the trek north. If not, he would hardly be the first in his line of scoundrel kin to thieve a horse from beneath a nobleman's arse, and for far lesser cause.
The stables were crammed, not surprisingly. Mounts of all qualities and colors filled the stalls. Those that had found no room stood in the center of the wide outbuilding, some being tended by four harried youths armed with brushes and blankets and buckets of water. Rand strode into the musty stables hardly noticed. He knew Draec and the shifter from the docks could be on him in little time; he would needs move quickly.
While the boys conversed about the celebration underway at the castle, grousing over added work for themselves when they weren't making ribald comparisons of some of the visiting maidens, Rand made a hasty appraisal of the horseflesh snuffling and stamping in the dust of the stable floor. He found a swift-looking palfrey--a messenger's mount, by the sleek lines of the beast--and was just about to bribe the lads into surrendering it when another boy skidded to a halt in the stable doorway.
"Hal! Jos! Where's Ned and Bren?" The last two lads came running with pitchforks in hand and reeking of dung and sweat. "All of ye, come--ye'll not believe what's happened!"
Rand's neck prickled with warning at the breathless alarm in the lad's voice. It did not bode well, and his hand immediately went to the linen-wrapped treasure beneath his cloak; the other hand drifted to the hilt of the shifter sword that rode at the ready on his hip. He hung back as the clamor of young male voices rose to an excited octave.
"I ran down as fast as I could to tell ye!"
"Out with it, Dag!"
"Aye, what's going on?"
"The castle! There was trouble at the feast--"
Rand's gut clenched in dark anticipation. He expected to hear that a large black wolf had been spotted up the hill, or even that a man named Silas de Mortaine was wreaking havoc in some manner. But what he heard next made even those dread notions pale.
"I saw it all with mine own eyes," the first boy shouted wildly. "Come with me--I'll show ye! They've gaoled a black-haired witch up at the castle!"
Sharp fear jabbed Rand hard in the chest. He did not want to think it, but his heart clenched tight around a single thought...
Serena.
With a combined whoop of boyish adventure, all four stablehands and the lad who had brought the news bolted from the building. Rand stood there for a moment, torn between the pressing matter of the Chalice he carried and the deadly shifters who would soon be on his trail, and the sudden sinking feeling that it was Serena and not some other hapless woman at the castle who had been captured and condemned as a witch as the boy reported.
He could not leave it to chance.
And he could not risk taking the Chalice up to the castle if Silas de Mortaine was there, as he fully suspected. He eyed the abandoned pitchforks, then the pile of dung the boys had raked up in the back of the stable. It seemed an unlikely place to look, and, as it was, his sole option.
Rand grabbed one of the forks and dug a deep hole in the ripe pile. Working quickly, he unfastened the knotted strap that held the bundled Chalice on his person, then concealed the treasure beneath the stench of the stable refuse.
"God's love, it cannot be her out there," he said, tossing down the pitchfork and running back to free one of the mounts. He led the sleek messenger's gelding around, then leaped up onto its back. "Jesu, let me be wrong."
He gave the beast his heels and sped out of the stables toward the long road leading up to the castle on the hill. He was not alone on the trek; a large mob of folk from town was headed up the road as well, a few on horseback, some running on foot, still others walking with grim purpose. From within their ranks, a shout went out for a hanging in the square.
With a curse hurled into the wind, Rand broke away from the pack of advancing villagers and sent his mount into a gallop.
He spied the object of their morbid interest at once.
From out of the castle portcullis came a small retinue of guards bearing the colors of the manor's lord. Behind them, pulled by two brawny steeds, was a wheelhouse made of wood and iron. The cage was dark, but in its center was a figure that glowed like pale blue flame in the gathering twilight. Rand's heart sank like a stone.
It was indeed his beloved.
"Serena!" he called, driving his mount harder up the narrow track of road.
"Stand down," one of her guards advised as Rand approached with fury in his eyes.
"Serena! I am here!"
He saw her fingers curled around the bars, lily-fair skin holding fast to the black metal. She strained to see him, then he heard her voice cry out, "Rand!"
He rode around the escort, wheeling his horse about to canter alongside the cage that held her. The castle guards gave up their warnings as more of the townsfolk gathered at the sides of the wheelhouse, peering at Serena in leering curiosity.
"Good God," Rand exclaimed, wishing it were just an awful dream to find Serena like this. She looked so helpless behind the thick bars of the cart. So frightened. "What happened? Why did you come here? God's love, Serena, what were you thinking?"
He reached out to her, taking her fingers through the bars. Her skin was cold. Her ocean blue eyes were bright with unshed tears.
"I had to find you," she said, clutching his hand as though never to let go. "You left without a word. I just wanted to help you."
"I left so you would be safe!" Rand's skittish mount tried to sidle away from the rolling conveyance but he brought it back with a vicious jerk of the reins. "I will get you out of this, my love, I swear it. I'll get you back to the cottage, where you belong--"
"No." Serena shook her head, her black hair sifting around her in agitation. Her fingers loosened on his, then fell away. "I won't go back there. I cannot. Everything
was a lie, Rand. She lied to me--all these years, I thought Calandra was my mother. I never dreamed those stories she told me as a child could have been real."
"The Chalice? What do you mean, you thought her your mother--what was a lie?"
"All of it!" she cried. "We are blood kin, Calandra and me, but she is not my mother. She is older than that. She is ageless, like him. Oh, Rand! You will hate me to know who I truly am--whose blood is in me."
"Tell me," he demanded, his mount startling near the cart as the conveyance lurched over a rut in the road. "Serena. There is no time--what is this about?"
"Silas de Mortaine," she whispered, her voice barely discernible above the groan and creak of the cart and the dull murmur of the trailing mob. "He was the man who first stole the Dragon Chalice from Anavrin."
"What--" Rand swore an oath. "How do you know this?"
"She told me. I started to put it together, but then she told me all of it. He is the Outsider who breached the veil between our world and Anavrin. And it was my moth--it was Calandra who gave him the drink from the sacred well that saved his life when he should have died of his wounds. She gave him immortality, Rand. She is the Anavrin princess who first gave Silas the Chalice so long ago."
"Jesu." Rand felt as if he had been struck with a crushing fist to the chest. "That would have to have been...hundreds of years ago."
"Yes."
A numb acceptance began to settle over him. "They bore children together, the Outsider and the princess."
"Yes." Serena nodded, torment swimming in her gaze. "I am the daughter of their daughters' daughters, Rand. I am a part of them. Calandra of Anavrin...and Silas de Mortaine as well."
He reeled back. He couldn't help it. The reaction was gut-deep, an elemental need to deny what he was hearing. But Serena's gaze was too grim, too shamed, to take this news as anything but the shattering, irrefutable truth.
Sweet Serena, the woman who had come to rule his heart, was the blood kin of his most hated enemy--a monster that Rand intended to send to the depths of hell at first chance.
Heart of the Dove Page 26