She hurried forward as the knight—Richard—dropped his shield and dismounted.
The fog retreated. Sunlight pierced the dreamscape with color. Grass sprouting with lightning speed transformed the fog-wrapped realm into a bright meadow, and a warm, refreshing breeze wafted the scent of lavender through the air. The nightmare realm had become a place of peace and sanctuary.
She met Richard and the stag beside the wounded boar, now lying oddly still on a mulberry and blue carpet embroidered with white sunburst roses. Was it dead?
For all the heed he paid her or the stag, Richard might as well have been alone. He dropped to his knees and stripped off his helm and gauntlets. His sweat-dampened hair, cropped in a warrior’s bowl cut, framed his strong features. Grief contorted his face.
He touched the boar’s wounded side gently. “My liege. I am come too late.” His low voice had lost its resonant power, and he frowned as though surprised at something.
Miranda’s breath caught. She’d never seen a man touch an animal with such care.
Nay, you are come in time, Sir Knight. The stag’s mental tone carried all the confidence the knight had lost. Watch.
The corpse glowed, softly and then more brightly. A shaft of sunlight touched it, and its battered hide became whole. The white coat took on a pure, silvery gleam. The boar rolled upright, facing them with its blue eyes solemn. You three bring balm to a wounded soul. May you one day have the same.
Richard set his jaw. Pain flared in his eyes before he masked it.
In a flash of brilliant light, the boar vanished. A rose bush laden with white blossoms stood in its place.
Hesitantly, Miranda reached toward a velvety flower.
Richard stood easily. “Allow me, my lady.”
He used his dagger to cut a rose from the bush and to strip its thorns. Bowing slightly, he offered it to her. “For you.”
She looked up at him, smiling, but the smile froze on her lips. The dark blue depths of his eyes held understanding of all the things she wanted but had stopped letting herself hope to have—home, companionship. Purpose. Longing such as her own lurked in his eyes, and pain.
“My thanks, Richard.” She wrapped her fingers around the stem.
He cupped her cheek in his palm, and a vision flashed over her sight—of the two of them, naked, in a bed. As she gasped, the vision changed again, to one of him sitting in his library, gazing at nothing. An old man bereft of hope, he babbled aimlessly as he awaited a solitary death. The sight stabbed her heart.
“Miranda?” Richard drew her against his armored chest. Frowning, he tipped her chin up. “What’s wrong, sweet? What did you See?”
“I don’t know—it was ... sad.” She swallowed hard. “Not part of this, I think.”
It must not be, for nothing about him hinted that he’d shared those flashes, those visions within the larger vision realm. Besides, Tessa had said the pool’s water couldn’t reveal the future. The things she’d Seen but he hadn’t must spring from her seer gift. What did they presage for him? For them?
Movement to one side caught her attention. He also turned to look. The stag pawed the ground. It tossed its great head as though in summons and bounded away.
Was it a signal that they should continue? Or a warning that they should stop? Feeling her way, she said, “I think we should follow.”
“If you say so.”
His mount pranced eagerly. He caught its reins, boosted her into the high saddle, and swung up behind her. They galloped after the bounding stag.
The meadow ended abruptly in shimmering fog. She clutched at his steel-clad arm, and he tightened his grip at her waist.
They stood atop a rise overlooking an open tract of land. In its center, reaching skyward like storm-blasted trees, stood the walls of a ruin. At one end stood a two-story wall, its arched openings empty and part of the upper story missing. A tall, pointed tower stood by the wall. Fallen stones lay here and there around the site. The overall pattern of the ruin formed a cross.
A leather folio lay at the ruin’s center.
“The Chronicle,” Richard said. “Somehow I know it even though I’ve never seen it. This must be Croyland. Perhaps this means we should go there.”
Fog quickly obscured the scene. He slid his arm around Miranda’s waist, drawing her closer, and the grip was comforting in the eerie, enshrouding vapors.
She shivered. “Richard, we should look for a way to undo these changes.”
“That means we need to know who changed the past, and how.”
Miranda concentrated on the means of the change, and the mists thinned.
A library came into view, books and scrolls jumbled on shelves and tables. “The library at Pendragon,” Richard murmured.
By one shelf stood a stocky man with tawny hair. Wyndon.
The earl rolled a scroll with ornate ends that had a red dragon embossed on them, and Richard said, “I found one identical to that in his house.”
“When you searched his house.”
“Yes, the night you dreamed I was in danger. Let’s watch.”
Wyndon tucked the scroll into his coat, and the fog deepened.
Richard cursed softly. “The library is warded. How did he pass through the wards?” Edmund couldn’t, or so he said. Why could Wyndon? Was it because he was still alive?
He winked out of sight, though the room remained visible. Fog again obscured everything but her. It shimmered faintly. The shimmer darkened, blotting out the eerie half-light of the scene. With it went all sense of time and place.
The disorientation lasted only a few moments. Then the darkness became eerie blue witchlight in the dank chill of the underground chamber, where she and Richard knelt together by the fountain, still hand in hand.
Chapter 18
Strange visions of experiences that seemed real, and yet not, swirled through Miranda’s mind. Caught between slumber and awakening, hours after the vision ritual, she couldn’t banish them.
When sleep at last claimed her, she fell deeper into the tide of images. They washed around and through her as though she looked at life through someone else’s eyes.
Wearing armor, she knelt before the altar of a deserted chapel. In Yorkshire, she somehow knew. Moonlight streaming through holes in the roof mottled the floor with irregular patches of silver. She clasped her bare hands around the cross at a sword’s hilt, the leather grip smooth under her fingers, and raised the sword, hilt upward, to the bare altar.
Hating the words but compelled by honor, she said, “By the blood of Morgan, on the sword of Hawkstowe, and into all the dawns to come, I swear.”
Lightning flashed in the clear summer sky and flooded the room with blinding white brilliance. Thunder boomed.
When the light faded, the chapel wavered. The room vanished, leaving her under an open sky.
The stone floor became icy water that dragged at her already sodden clothes. The sword became a jagged plank she clutched to stay afloat. A wave surged over it and slapped her face. Coughing and spluttering, she knew, in the way of dreams, that she had struggled in the water, in the English Channel, for a long time.
She managed a rasping breath. The shore looked so very far away, a dark shadow against the starry sky. Weary from a long battle against the waves, she fought to stay afloat.
Her legs were so tired. Her arms ached.
She must reach the beach. Failure meant doom beyond death. She sagged against the plank, but every moment she rested let the outgoing tide carry her farther from the shore. It would be so easy to let go, to slip below the water and rest.
Except that, for her, death promised no rest.
She took another deep breath. It came out as a sob, but she found the strength to kick. Closing her eyes to avoid seeing how far away safety lay, she kicked again.
The water and the plank vanished. Sunlight warmed her face. She opened her eyes to a grassy hillside covered in the bright, fragrant blossoms of spring. A short distance past the base of the hill stoo
d a manor with two towers inside crenellated walls, all of grey stone. The half-timbered upper stories on the end of the great hall and on the gatehouse stood out in contrast. The sight gave her a warm, pleasant sense of homecoming. She knew that castle. It was Hawkstowe, in Cumberland.
“There you are, dear,” a woman said.
Turning, she saw Arabella, a much younger Arabella whose black hair bore only faint threads of silvery gray. The dowager countess sat in the grass.
Love swelled in Miranda’s heart.
“I’ve been waiting,” the dowager countess said. “Your ride ran overlong today, Richard.”
Richard?
Miranda looked down at hands squarer and larger than her own. At legs encased in fine wool breeches and leather boots. But how? What was this?
Struggling to understand, she spun. The hillside wavered. Fog surrounded her. She tripped and shut her eyes against the impact.
She opened them and gasped. The hillside had vanished. She lay in a soft bed in a dark room. Her chamber at Hawkstowe House.
She raised one hand, a familiar hand. Her own. Blinking at it, she took a shuddering, relieved breath. What an odd dream, but was it only that?
From a ruined castle in the Yorkshire dales to a shipwreck in the Channel and thence to Cumberland she had gone. All of it seemed so real. Surely it wasn’t just a dream. It must be something more.
The idea made her shiver, but she dared not dismiss it. She pushed open the bedcurtains. The table by the bed held a candlestick with a beeswax taper, a ghostly blade in the dim light. She lit the candle magically, allowing herself a moment’s satisfaction that she could, and swung her bare feet to the floor.
Sleep had fled for now, but perhaps she could read. Arabella had shown her the hidden part of the library, where the books on Gifted history and traditions were kept. Mayhap something there would help her understand. She could write down the things she’d seen, too. There would be paper and ink in the library desk.
She donned the dressing gown Arabella had given her and padded barefoot down the cold corridor. As Miranda walked, the mental images grew clearer. They were not dreams. But they were not like her visions of power, either. So what were they?
She set the lighted candle on the library’s ornate mantel so she could stoke the banked fire. As the flames blazed anew, she sat back on her heels. Her mind drifted, and unbidden, the images appeared again.
Of course. Recognition stopped her breath. She sat upright in wonder.
Richard. In the dream, his grandmother had called her by his name. It had felt wrong, but Miranda had seen the weight of those memories in his eyes when he gave her the rose during their shared vision at the pool, and now she had dreamed his memories.
This must be a result of using the water from Morgan’s pool. If so, Tessa’s warnings made sense. Joining with Richard in the vision had felt ... intimate. And now she was privy to some of his memories.
He would hate that if he knew.
But how could he not? If she knew this about him, wouldn’t he—oh, no, did he see her as deeply? If so, what had he seen?
The library door opened. Richard walked in carrying a tray that bore two silver plates and tankards, a crusty loaf of bread, a long knife, and a block of pale yellow cheese. In the firelight, his eyes were grave.
She rearranged her skirts to cover her feet. Unbound hair might strain the proprieties, but there was no one else awake to know.
“I saw the light under the door as I walked by,” he said. “Although we ate after the rite, I’m hungry again. I thought you might want something too.”
“Now that you mention it, I think I could eat a side of beef.” Seeing him felt strange with these memories of his so fresh in her mind, especially as this was their first meeting since they’d parted after the rite.
He set the tray on the table by the hearth. “We’ve bread, cheese, and spiced cider.” Slicing cheese and breaking off chunks of bread, he said, “Sit still. I’ll bring it to you.”
“I can help.”
“It’s done.” He dropped a square of fine linen across her lap and handed her a plate of food.
“You do that very well. Of course, you have done it before. Not ... not only at the inns on our way here from Dover?” Bewildered by the strange certainty, she looked up at him.
Watching her intently, he said, “I have. At an inn in France, as a matter of fact. If you know that, the pool must have acted on you as it did on me.”
So he did know things about her. At the thought of her lonely years laid bare to him, Miranda’s face heated. Please let him not see it in the dim light.
Quietly, she said, “When you came in, I had just begun to realize that I knew things I couldn’t know about you.” How embarrassing, both to have such personal knowledge of him and to imagine what he might know of her. “I didn’t do it apurpose.”
“Of course not.”
Uncertain what to say next, she watched him move around the room. He set a tankard of cider on the floor by her chair.
She did have questions about something not so personal. Discussing it might ease the tension. “You said Morgan’s pool was named for the Morgan of legend? Was she as the old tales portray her?”
He served himself cheese. “Morgan le Fay? Yes and no. She had the power and strength of will but not the cruel nature ascribed to her in the tales.”
“I’ve never heard much about her.”
“We’ve books about her somewhere here, in the section on our history.” He frowned at the shelves. “As I told you, Merlin and his twin sister, Morgan, with others of our kind, served the man legend calls King Arthur. As the Saxon push gained strength, the Britons withdrew into Wales, and the twins found themselves increasingly at odds.”
“Over what?”
“The law of the Gifted, set down when we arrived here, forbids the use of magic for personal or tribal—national, if you will—gain. When matters grew desperate, Morgan advocated pulling back. Merlin believed England’s future depended on more open use of magic. She swore to oppose him, and Arthur agreed with Merlin. Rather than battle those she loved, she withdrew into the south of England, to Avalon.”
“Where is Avalon? I’ve often wondered.”
“At Glastonbury, yet not.” He smiled briefly. “That’s a different tale. In due time, Morgan’s fears came to pass. Arthur suffered a mortal wound, and the Britons lost all chance of retaking their lost realm.”
“That was just as the stories say, then.”
He nodded. “Both Merlin and Morgan had served their principles, so our people decided to honor them. Men of the line thus call themselves sons of Morgan, while our women style themselves daughters of Merlin. We do it in respect and gratitude and to remind ourselves of our kinship to one another.”
He took a sip of ale. “What else would you like to know?”
She pondered while she chewed crusty bread and tangy, smooth cheese. “You said the Gifted ‘arrived here.’ From where? Who were they?”
He shook his head. “No one knows any longer, save that they came from a far distant land.”
He didn’t seem inclined to add more, and she had run out of questions about history. The silence grew heavy.
He looked thoughtfully at her. “This new ... awareness, if you will, is strange.”
“Do you have questions to ask me, Richard?”
“Some.” He glanced down at his plate and then up at her. “Have you always been alone? Or only since your parents died?”
“When Mother told me about my Gifts, I began to stay away from other children. I was five, I think. She told me over and over that I mustn’t let anyone know what I could do, that discovery meant death, and I knew it would have. I couldn’t stop learning. I didn’t want to. So I avoided others instead.”
“After your parents died, you naturally felt more alone than ever.”
“I lived with my uncle and aunt for a few years. Once I was old enough, they tried to find a husband for me, but I couldn’t
bear the one man who offered. They had several children of their own, and their bakery couldn’t support me, too, so they found me the place at the inn.”
“It wasn’t a home to you.”
Miranda shook her head. “I had to keep my distance because of my magic. Besides, some of the other maids thought me haughty, especially for such a supposedly homely girl. I can see how they thought that. I had some education—I could read. And I came from London.”
“There’s more than you told me to your reasons for disguising yourself,” he said, his gaze intent. “If you’ll tell me, I’d rather hear the reasons from you than guess.”
“Men were looking at me, even before I left London, and in a way that made me uneasy. As though I hadn’t any clothes on.”
Remembering it made her insides churn, and she caught a flash of anger that seemed, strangely, to be from him. Miranda took a deep breath and finished, “I changed my appearance a bit at a time, so no one who saw me every day would notice. And no one who didn’t would look twice. I feared having anyone realize I was different from those around me.”
“But you had a friend or two at the inn,” he said.
“Oh, yes. Lucy always looked out for me. She looked out for everyone. Bess was my friend, too, but she married and moved away. I hoped to save enough money to someday leave the inn, perhaps find a position in a household. I know it must seem trivial to you, but—”
“Everyone needs a dream, some hope for the future.” His mouth turned down at the corners, as though in self-derision. “At least you had the sense to hope for something you might attain.”
She wanted to ask what he had not attained, but his stiff posture and shuttered features discouraged her. They ate in silence for a few minutes while she considered how to approach him.
At last, she said, “I find this awkward, Richard. I don’t know everything about you, but the things I do know, the images I saw in your eyes in the vision, showed me a life very different from my own.”
The Herald of Day Page 22