They were jamming up. As yet another pair came through the archway and quickly met their fate, Tristen found himself ruminating at the speed of the blink of an eye on one of the Commander’s favorite battles. In the years of their condottiere raiding against the English, du Guesclin frequently used Thermopylae as an example in their planning. During the ancient battle, a few hundred warriors had held off a vastly superior foe in some mountain pass somewhere, Tristen remembered. The larger host had tripped over themselves, their prodigious numbers working against them in such a small space.
Of course, the Commander would always wink – ending with Tristen’s favorite line – the heroes all died at Thermopylae. He grinned savagely. Felling one more of the Duke’s men, he prepared to jump over the tangled, bloody mass of dying men at his feet. Only to feel himself yanked back by the belt.
The Master! “Get her out of here!” he was roaring.
A bit sheepish, Tristen turned and, scooping up a very white-faced Phoebe in his arms carried her the several steps into the next room. And gagged. As a Guardsman rushed past him to help the Master, he spotted Katya backed into a corner, a firepoker in hands, viciously beating one of the troupe over the head, m’Lady and two ladies-in-waiting holding the babies to their breasts behind her. He spotted the other two Guardsmen on the floor, holding their armpits, expiring. Dead by the Brionde thrust, Tristen thought with brutal glee. Killed in their own style. du Guesclin must be right. The Duke of Normandy did know how to best prepare his men. God Tears, he loved battle!
Why was he gagging then, he wondered, as he threw Phoebe into Katya’s arms while viciously stabbing the Sauvage in the heart from the back. Oh. They were burning. Melting. Their flesh was quite literally melting off of their bones onto the floor. The room, the world, the Heavens stank with the fetid stench of burning meat and hair. All over the room, the performers were reduced to a squalid messy puddle of frantically stretched out arms and backs, chests, legs, hands, feet decorated in a hellish contortion of stained flax wands, gummy resin, soiled linen, piss, shit, blood, leaking fat and bodily goo. Seeing another Sauvage still writhing, he ripped off the man’s mask, feeling the skin come off with it, the man’s blackened teeth protruding from the head in a skull-like grin of death. He heard Phoebe start vomiting. Still, there was enough skin left around the eyes to see that he did not recognize the performer. He stabbed him. Then, he ripped the mask off another one, with the same result. And another. Where was Lamar?
“Lad!” Looking up, he saw that the Duke’s men had broken through the first limiting obstruction of the archway. The third Guardsman was just falling from the thrusts of fighting three men-at-arms at once. The Master was handily holding off another four, but Tristen could see at a glance that he was winded. Was slowing.
His heart swelling with delight, he stabbed one last Sauvage who had trembled and leapt into the fight. Now it became a true blur, the demonic lust – the passion – of combat. He lost himself completely, enveloped in the fugue of war, thrusting, parrying, cutting, slicing, slashing. Stepping back to let an opponent fall. Stepping forward to engage another. And another. And another. The stinking breath of one. The rotting teeth of another. The slimy drool of a third. The grimy locks of a fourth. The slashed eyes then slit throat of a fifth. Or was it sixth? Ninth?
A last one fell. He spotted a large presence in the door. The Duke himself, glittering in his brightly polished, dazzling armor – wrought in the latest Milanese style, Tristen noted, spotting the scalloped edges along the shoulders – complete with a lilac scarf about his neck. With the helm opened, a gaze stretched wide with the same lunatic euphoria. Behind him stood several more men-at-arms struggling to get in. To get to Tristen.
But, having learned his lesson, before he sprang, Tristen looked to the Master. The aged warrior was failing, was wounded several times now, his leathers pouring blood. His face streaked with several slices. Most important, he was surrounded by several more of the Duke’s men. Tristen stepped to him, dropping two of them with brutal stabs to the armpits in quick succession. The Duke was stepping into the room. He could sense it. Could feel it. Behind the glittering armor loomed even more.
For the first time in all his years of combat, Tristen asked whether they would lose this one.
He spun and dropped another with a slash to the throat, executed so quickly the man barely had time to raise his sword. Spinning back, he saw the cost. Two had thrown their bodies against the Master’s rapier, pinning it to the wall. Three more were rearing back to stab him through the heart.
The witch’s chuckle sounding in his ears, Tristen grasped in a lightning burst that while the Master alone might be able to save little Lela, Emma and Phoebe, he never could.
With a mighty thrust that penetrated through the throat of the nearest soldier, exiting the far side, continuing on to enter the throat of the second, and the third, forcing him to let go his rapier, Tristen threw himself chest to chest in front of the man who had denied Twig her protector so long ago.
He caught the Master’s flash of amazement.
And knew no more.
* 11 *
She awoke in a cavern. It was dark. A soft light glowed at the edges of this world, from what source she could not tell.
He was calling her. The first time that she had heard Tristen’s voice in aeons. It couldn’t be. That was impossible. It made her weep with vexation, anyway, and then a drop of something landed on her head. Looking up, she felt another. She barely saw it before it landed square on her forehead. It was dark. She touched it. Tasted it.
It was Tristen’s blood.
He was dying.
She was certain of that now.
And there was nothing she could do.
If only she had been stronger.
If only she had been braver.
If only she had been wiser.
If only she had been...
...a better student? Enchanteur would smile at that.
She had half-heartedly tried to fix the cauldron. Not because she wanted revenge on Enchanteur. For it was clear that Aluin did. For something. Or maybe he just craved more power, more influence, more...something. Perpetually empty inside, he would always and only know hunger. The need to consume.
Not because she thought that Enchanteur would help her, either. Because she already knew what he would say. Some cryptic merde such as “The fabric of the world reweaves around those who move through it. Where is your warp? Your weft?”
And he wondered why she turned her powers on him to reduce him from his summit of asceticism down to her private sex toy. It wasn’t about the fucking. It was about control. She was simultaneously drained and incensed. Exasperated. Fed up with being the student. Crazy to be the master.
No, she had tried to fix the cauldron, knowing that she hadn’t the understanding, because she wanted to see him again. To apologize. To make amends. She had gone too far. She comprehended that now. Would he forgive her?
It didn’t matter. She was a witch of moderate power in limited ways. Enchanteur was a warlock of extraordinary ability in universal terms. What she struggled to grasp over several Sundays, he intuitively apprehended in heartbeats.
Malefique – a charlatan of murderous power utilizing only a handful of methods – could never understand that. He could destroy. So what? Who couldn’t? But to create?
Of course, he would never understand that while, given time and patience, she could reset the stone shards, she could never fill it. She could pour water in it, true. But charm the water to act as a portal? Never. She herself knew that as soon as she had first destroyed it.
So she would die. Of thirst, of hunger, of shame, of degradation.
Of foolishness. A passion for one man above all else had blinded her.
She blinked at that.
What was passion, anyway? The analytical part of her mind kicked into gear. Did that necessarily follow?
Zeal? Energy? Life force? Spirit? Storms? Tantrums?
She chortle
d mirthlessly at the direction of her mind. She was dying. That much was obvious. And how did she spend her last moments? Escaping? Rescuing the object of her passion? Or trying to understand the baser ardors of her mind, her heart?
When did she become such an ascetic? She gurgled with silliness at that question.
May hap we all become ascetics at death’s door. Now, there was a thought.
She wondered what Enchanteur would have to say to that.
There was a soft wind blowing. A rough wind, but gentle. Feeble? Another drop hit her head. He was calling her. She was sure of that.
How, though?
She struggled to think. Forget about how Tristen was managing it, focus instead on how to answer him. Enchanteur would. He often used to marvel at the mysteries of the universe, discovered and undiscovered. It made her want to choke him.
Yet one more drop hit her head. She reached up, wiped it, and brought it down to taste. Him. She moaned. How was Tristen doing it?
Break it down, she thought. Analyze. Enchanteur may have been a source of extreme frustration but he was excellent when it came to logic. Break it down.
Communication. What did that take? Two communicants. A medium. Even if it was something as simple as shouting to one another in a field. Two communicants and a medium, the ether, through which the shout carried. In water, by contrasting example, it was much more difficult to convey sound.
Thus. Two communicants. A knight, her beloved Tristen. And her. The medium?
She frowned, growing dizzy from lack of water. The blood was salty. It made her thirsty. Think, she commanded herself! Stop getting distracted.
Tristen and Tempeste. Tristen and Tempeste. Tristen and Tempeste. Tristen calling out and Tempeste hearing him....
A dying Tristen calling out! The thought hit her with a slap. And a dying Tempeste to hear him. Splendide! She was getting somewhere.
Now, the medium. A cave. She looked around her. Wet. Another drop hit her. And another. The rocks were wet. The wheezing wind was still blowing. Regularly, yet fitfully. Feebly. Odd.
She stood up. She looked about her. Something about this cave seemed so familiar, yet she couldn’t put her finger on it. The drops were falling more regularly now, giving her a sense of urgency.
This couldn’t be one of Lucan’s caves. In the Orbis alias, or Otherworld, of his dreams. The ancient poet of Cordoba, writing about about Caesar’s struggle with Pompey for control of Rome. Imagining a world underground or in caves where the dead meet. She chuckled at the thought. In any case, she didn’t ever remember seeing an illustration of one, not in any of Enchanteur’s tomes.
More drops were falling. She swallowed nervously. What was wrong with her?
Looking up around her, she moved past some wet netting, almost a large spider’s web, and stepped into another chamber of the cave. Up the wall, she saw three clear, even slits, spaced irregularly, through which the light was coming. Ah. Well, that made sense. So, it was day. Day outside the cavern. So much for the Orbis alias! She grinned at herself.
But the slits were so even, so straight that they had to have been forged. Oh, well. Leave that aside for later.
Using the light, she turned around to better see this chamber, slipping on some muck. And gasped. The rock formation opposite the wall looked just like a lung. A human lung! She recognized it from the illustrations in Hippocrates’ Corpus. This lung had three almost uniform wounds in it, also crisp in delineation. That, spinning back, she saw immediately, lined up with the slits in the cave wall. And, reaching out to touch the rock formation she saw that it was wet. With slimy goo that reminded her of mucus and...she shook her head. She was so stupid! Blood. Raining down.
She was inside him. She was inside him and he was dying. Not truly, the analytical part of her mind carped. Where were the ribs? She shushed it. She had to heal those wounds in that lung. Clambering up some rocks that might well have worked for ribs, now that she thought of it, she slipped several times on the muck before she realized that she was slipping on blood. Of course! Idiot!
Eventually, she got there. Brushing the blood out of her eyes, as it was raining down now from the wounds, she could see that, yes, they were three wide, flat wounds. Yes, they were bleeding. And she now knew the source of the feebled wheezing. Tristen was struggling to breathe. She tried not to panic. Taking a deep breath herself, she forced herself into a calm. Thinking it over a few heartbeats, and reflecting on his profession, she thought they might well be broadsword wounds. How to heal something like that? She never had.
Start with what you do know, she told herself. Running through the spells she knew, she realized that she did not know a single healing one. Vexed, she chewed on her lip. Well, what if she adapted one? She quickly ran through the list, stopping at PiatsoNe, the shape-shifting spell. She wondered if she could use it to move the flesh over to cover itself. That wouldn’t heal the wound, but, she allowed, at least it would stop the bleeding. That must be worth something.
So, she did. It was surprisingly simple, now that she had thought it through. They were quickly covered over. She could see that she had left some sort of scarring, but that couldn’t be helped. Better to have a bit less breath than none at all. Besides, she had a sudden wicked thought: maybe it would slow him down a bit?
Regardless, the bleeding had stopped and the wheezing was a bit stronger. A bit more like breathing. Yet, there was still a note to it that she didn’t like. She stood there a while, just listening, her hands on the wounds, wondering.
Then it hit her. Fool! The wounds stretched all the way through the lung! Clambering down, as quickly as she could, even yelping when her ankle got caught on something, she slipped back into the other chamber and looked up. Yes, the light was more faint, but now that she knew what to look for, she spotted them easily. The wounds weren’t nearly quite as wide, which was why she had probably not noticed them. Presumably from the sword points. She climbed some “ribs” on this side and soon had them patched over.
Now, his breathing sounded more normal. Regular. In fact, she thought she heard it but wouldn’t dare trust her ears for several long heartbeats. Finally, with a happy sob, she allowed herself to believe it. He was snoring!
*****
Her happiness – the first she had felt in a very long time soon began to falter nonetheless. She remembered Enchanteur’s curse. That a man must be willing to give up everything to be with her in the Tower. She chuffed. If she weren’t the one being imprisoned by it – to any early death, no less – she would think it a silly curse. No one would be willing to give up everything for someone else.
Yet, part of her mind swore that she would. If only to hold him once more.
She wept for some time at that thought. Finally, she slept.
She awoke refreshed and with new hope. A part of her mind wondered just what her real body was up to now that she had clearly slipped over into some kind of dreamworld, but she shushed it.
If she could save him, maybe he could save her. That summed it up.
How to reach him, though? So, feeling a bit ridiculous, she tried calling his name. For some time. Yet, even if he could hear her outside of his chest – if she were even really in his chest – his snoring was drowning it out.
Then, too, the light was suddenly extinguished. Slipping, banging one knee, as she ran into the other chamber, she saw that the slits were now covered up. Fantastique! she groused. Well, at least it was a sign that whomever was taking care of him – and the thought that it might well be some bitch with large teats made her clench her fists in a rage. She had to calm down.
Even if it did give her a new zest for life. New energy.
She sat to think. In the dark. She forced her mind to return to the most poignant things that she knew about him. Well, that was easy, if no help right now: the endless fucking. She kept turning that over and over in her mind. Eventually, she shifted the question to the happiest moments – if one could call them that. She finally remembered their conversation
s about Paris. About how he had never been to the Il de la Cité. He had seen the island on which the Palais was sited but had never rowed across. She also remembered how much he liked to watch the artisans of Paris or walk through the Great Halls of the Guilds with all their decorations. All things he had never known while growing up. He did not pretend to understand them. But he did like them.
That memory made her smile. She wondered if it would make him smile, too. Then, she abruptly chuffed at herself. Who cares? It’s not like she would ever get to share that with him again. Or even remind him, for that matter.
But she kept returning to that...dream, she decided to call it. Since it was no more real to her at this point than the reality she was experiencing now.
And then it hit her. Maybe he was dreaming her. Right now. To heal him. An inner voice scoffed at that thought. When had Tristen ever known her as a healer? She shushed it. That wasn’t important. If he could dream her, could she dream him?
She thought about it for a very long time. Eventually, tiring of the question, the hard reality dashed her like cold water in the face. She was dying.
If she wanted to die dreaming of talking, reaching out to Tristen, who gave a damn? She certainly didn’t. It was far superior to sitting here in a dark cave and weeping.
So, how was she to dream him? He called her. With blood dripping on her face, drawing attention to his wounds. How should she call him?
Pondering that puzzle for some time, she finally decided that it should be something equally dramatic. Certainly dreamlike in quality, otherwise it wouldn’t get his attention. With recognizable notes, shared between them before, so he would immediately recognize it as her. But with its own particular flair to communicate her terror in terms he could understand...
He turned in his sleep, moaning. Damn the witch! He knew he was dreaming even as he sensed the coming torment.
Chateau of Passion Page 12