Fire Dance

by Delle Jacobs

  He found the panel easily. It was meant to resemble the remainder of the plastered wall, where it sat between exposed timbers. It slid and lifted, and left a small hole a few feet square, with blackness beyond. The torch lit a series of descending steps, hewn out of the stone.

  Alain crouched down and crawled through the tiny portal, onto the topmost step. Above him, a hard rock ceiling forced him to remain crouched until he descended several steps. Looking down, he saw no light ahead of him. Had she escaped him? He would deserve it. He had not even taken the time to learn where the bolt hole came out.

  Torn between a need for speed and caution, he felt his way down the steps to a sort of floor, where the cavern opened out. He looked about, saw nothing. Frustrated, he set the torch down on the step, and trained his eyes to the dark. To his far right he caught a glint of light, that then was gone.

  If he called out to her, she would flee. She would not trust him, now. He shuffled his feet along the irregular path, testing his footing on the tricky, unpredictable cavern, all the while searching for the candle's light.

  There it was. A little to his left. It meant climbing over a tall ledge. But there was a way around, to the right. He sidled that way and spotted a small footprint in the gritty cavern floor.

  That path came to an abrupt halt. He set down the torch to search for the light of her candle within the darkness. Ahead, he could see it, yet the path, seemed blocked in all ways. Turning around, he saw what he had missed, a narrow passage almost obscured by a huge pillar of stone. He slipped around it sideways.

  She moved on ahead of him, seeming to be oblivious to his presence. The candle's flame rose as if she climbed up steps. He followed, and came upon a series of natural terraces that led up to a strange rock that looked like it had grown there, merging with another that stretched down from the cavern's ceiling like a waterfall frozen into stone.

  Behind it a light flickered, then blazed into brightness. A torch glowed yellow and pink through the thinner surfaces of the rock curtain, as if the stone were no more than cloth.

  Quietly, he mounted the stone terraces as they swung around in an arc, and rising, came to an end at the edge of the stone curtain. He stood there, transfixed by what he saw.

  Through passageway hewn from the natural opaline rock, a room was formed within the stone. The floor was nearly flat and level, but the walls draped and oozed like body organs torn from a corpse. Stone pillars here and there, of odd sizes and shapes, or half-complete and dangling, seemed grown into their places.

  Two great, ancient tables dominated the chamber, and were littered with jars of glass or pottery, small and large. A small writing desk with a stool seemed almost lost against the complex jumble that formed the far wall.

  Melisande stood poised near one table, hands folded neatly before her, as if preparing for something. Her fiery gaze raked over the tables and their contents, assessing. Then her jaw set tightly. Her eyes narrowed to angry slits.

  With a fierce sweep, her arm swung over one table, dashing pots and jars, sending them tumbling, crashing, to the floor. Another swoop sent more flying smashing against the hard wall of obscenities in a chaos of color and acrid smells.

  "You're dead!" she shrieked. "You're dead! You can't hurt us anymore! You're dead! I killed you! Do you hear me? Dead!"

  She grabbed a glass vial and dashed it against the far wall. Then another. Streaks of thick yellow and brown oozed down the surface into crevices and over bulges.

  "You can't have him! I won't let you! You're dead, and you can't come back!"

  Pottery and glass, flung in fury, crashed against walls, floors, pitched one after another. She gave the table a great heave and threw it on its side.

  Her wrathful gaze descended on the writing desk, and she stalked it like a wolf after a hare, closing in like a killer.

  Her hands reached out to the great book atop it, ready to grasp, tear it to shreds.

  She froze. Her eyes grew huge.

  A quill pen lay atop the book, beside a fresh and ever-growing blot of ink.

  She shrieked and bolted backward against the far wall.

  Fyren stepped out of the shadows.

  CHAPTER 21

  Melisande shoved herself backward as if she might force herself into the stone, her eyes riveted on the man in the hooded cloak before her. His dark beard was heavily streaked with silver. His bright blue eyes, so much like Melisande's, glowed with malice. His mouth curled upward only on one side, an evil parody of a smile.

  "I heard you, girl."

  "You cannot be here! It is a dream!"

  "You have come to me, again. I told you, you would. But you betrayed me, girl. I am not sure if I will forgive you. Leave the Norman now, and we will take back what is ours."

  "Nay, I will not! You are dead!"

  "So you have said, but it is not so. Have you so easily forgotten who I am? Did you think you could kill the son of Satan? You belong to me, girl. You cannot escape."

  Melisande sidled along the toppled oak table, her back to the wall, toward the doorway where Alain stood. Alain put his hand on the hilt of his sword, praying for her to come closer.

  The evil smile broadened on Fyren's face, yet curiously tilted up only on one side. His left hand lunged for Melisande, and she sprang away with a desperate gasp.

  "You cannot escape me. You belong to me, not that pathetic Norman who dares usurp my place. He will die for taking you. You are mine. Satan gave you to me."

  "You will not kill him! I have told him all!"

  "You have told him naught. He would not let you live if he knew. Only I can save you. Come back, girl, and I will let you live. When I take the English throne, I will make you my queen."

  He could not mean– his own daughter? Black rage flooded through Alain. With a roar from the bottom of his gut, he drew his sword and hurled himself into the stone chamber. Startled, Fyren leaped back.

  "Behind me, Melisande. Hurry." Poised to strike, he menaced Fyren with the blade.

  She seemed stunned in her place.

  "Move!"

  Fyren grabbed for her, but Alain threw himself between them, his sword threatening Fyren's throat. Keeping her back to the stone wall, she shuffled sideways, came up beside him.

  "Behind me!" he demanded.

  But as she shifted, Fyren caught her arm and jerked her before him. Melisande screamed, clawed at Fyren. Alain slashed his blade at Fyren, but Melisande was too close. He limited his stroke for fear of hurting her.

  She must have remembered Lynet. She collapsed like a dropped rag to her knees before the dismayed Fyren could stop her. Alain swung, yet dared not swing hard. The blade barely grazed across the man's left arm.

  As blood oozed from the slash, Fyren dropped his prize. With a garbled curse, he hurled an object at the stone floor. A loud bang exploded in Alain's ears and caustic smoke and rock flew in all directions. Alain grabbed Melisande through the choking smoke. Despite her scream, she scrambled toward him.

  He could not see her, even beside him, fumbling through and choking in the same smoke as he. With a punishing grasp of her arm, he groped toward where he hoped the exit was.

  "Out of here. Run!" he shouted as he coughed.

  She pulled his arm, and he followed her lead. They touched the column of stone, probed with their hands and feet, worked their way around it. He stumbled at the first step she had already taken.

  "Watch your feet!" she screamed.

  How the bloody saints could he do that? He could not even see his feet.

  "Steps."

  Aye, steps. He struggled along the little terraces, trying to remember their shapes, feeling the edges before him, while she guided him by the arm he held. The acrid smoke thinned, air freshened. He could see only blackness. Without either candle or rush light, they were doomed in the darkness.

  "We're lost," he said.

  "Nay, I know the way." Her voice was little more than an excited whisper.

  "Without a torch?"

 
; "Aye. Hurry." She tugged at the arm that held her, urgently moving, he could not tell where, and his feet stumbled as he tried to find his footing. Sweet Jesus, he could be upside down and not know it!

  She grabbed his hand, placed it against a rock face, and led him by his arm as he groped with feet and hands for the pathway. She guided him through the nightmare of total darkness, creeping on hands and knees, squeezing through narrow spaces, tripping, falling, gasping. After an eternity of blindness, they reached the steps hewn into the stone.

  "Twenty-seven steps," she whispered.

  "Aye."

  "Duck your head at the top."

  He crawled up the steps, feeling for each one as it came, his only salvation the hard gasping of the terrified woman ahead of him. He almost forgot to count the steps.

  But she counted aloud.

  "Eleven, twelve, thirteen– "

  He let her count them. It would be less confusing. With each step, he reached out to touch her ahead of him, needing the reassurance that she had not vanished in that cloying blackness.

  "Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two– "

  Still there. Solid steps of stone, cool and damp, beneath his hands and knees. Melisande's precious foot ahead of him.

  "Duck your head. Twenty-six, Twenty-seven. Stop."

  He halted where he was, probed the limits of the stone and waited the duration of a millennium for her to manipulate the concealing panel that would lead them back into sanity.

  Painful bright light flooded his eyes. As the darkness receded, the chamber before him became slowly visible, and she crawled through the hole. He crawled behind her with all the speed he could muster.

  He stood up. Before him, she trembled, gasped as if she could not get air into her lungs, and her knees folded beneath her. He caught her, supporting her weight. Violent trembling racked her body.

  His lips found hers, forced her into a compelling kiss, deep and hard. He shook as badly as she did. He kissed again, again demanding all of her attention until at last she sighed and her body relaxed.

  "Don't think," he whispered, "don't think of anything." And again he kissed her, a gentle and tender caress on her lips, to her cheek, to the lids of blue eyes that closed in anticipation.

  Until the most crippling of the fear disintegrated.

  "Guard!" he yelled, as he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to her bed.

  The man stepped into the room, his mouth gaping.

  "I want Chretien, Thomas, and Gerard, immediately."

  The guard whirled around and sped out the door.

  Then he tightened his embrace once again, not wanting to release her for even the space of a breath. "Ah, love, forgive me. I was wrong not to trust you."

  "He cannot be alive!" she said, and her voice still trembled. "He said he was the Spawn of Satan. It must be true!"

  "He is but a man."

  "But he was dead! I killed him!"

  "How?"

  "With poison. He took an antidote every day, so that he could not be poisoned. I found one he knew not about, and put it in his antidote."

  "Mayhap it was not enough to do the job."

  "But he was dead. I waited until he died. Thomas found no pulse. And we buried him."

  "And I'll wager if we dug up the coffin, we would find it full of rocks. But we did leave the corpse alone overnight. The coffin was found nailed shut the next morning, but no one thought anything about it then. Mayhap he was so nearly dead that he appeared so."

  He could see she did not believe his wild conjectures. He did not really believe it himself. It left too many questions unanswered. But there had to be another answer.

  Chretien and Gerard raced into the chamber, and stood there, astonished to see him holding the lady from whom he had recently been estranged. Gerard's gaze flew to the corner of the chamber and the gaping hole in the wall.

  "What is that?"

  "That," he said, is the true Hole into Hell. Block it off, if you must use every stone block in the curtain wall."

  Thomas rushed in the door, gasping from a hard run.

  "Close the door."

  Thomas obeyed.

  "Fyren lives," he said simply.

  "Nay, it is impossible," replied Thomas. His gentle eyes widened as he gulped down fear.

  "He lives. He is in the cavern below us. I know not how, but it is so."

  "Then he is Satan's spawn, as he said."

  "I do not believe it. I sliced him with my sword, and he bled. But then he threw something at the ground, and it made a loud noise and much smoke. I have never seen the like."

  "I have," said Melisande, still taking deep breaths. "It is something I can do, except that I do not know how to make it work without fire. He would never let me learn that."

  "It is magic?"

  "No more magic than making bread. It is just ordinary things put together differently. He would not let me learn the remainder of the secret. If it were truly magic, he would not have bothered to keep the secret from me, for I would not be able to do it anyway. But he feared my learning all his tricks and becoming as powerful as he was."

  "But I do not understand how he could live, lord," said Thomas, shaking his head.

  "There is another thing he learned," Melisande said. "I had forgotten it. I read it in one of the ancient books, but I did not believe it was so. There is a way to make the heart beat so slowly it seems to stop. He must have learned it."

  "And his antidote might have affected the poison, so that it did not kill him. We can but speculate on that. But he is alive, and filled with rage."

  "I'm going after him," said Gerard, and he started toward the hole in the wall.

  "Nay!" cried Melisande. "You do not know the caverns. You could send a hundred men into them, and he would pick them off, one by one."

  "If he has any sense, he is long gone," said Chretien. "I do not see that he is any great threat to us, for Anwealda and Cyneric are both dead. He cannot raise an army now."

  "What if they are also not dead?" she asked.

  "They are dead, love. That I know," Alain responded. "But I want to know more. He had a small chamber, almost like a room carved into the stone, and an assortment of substances in jars. Lady, tell us what you know of it."

  She gulped, and he realized she was afraid to speak. What he had seen looked very much like witchcraft, and the more she said, the more she, also, looked like a witch.

  "Do not fear, love. I know you are no witch."

  She gave a tentative nod and worried at her lower lip. "Fyren dabbled in alchemy. I have been there but a few times. He did not want me to know what he did there, like the powder that makes the loud noise. I call it lightning powder. There were many things like it people do not know, yet the ancients must have known. Fyren wanted to learn them, and use them to gain power. He planned to rule all of the Isle, someday."

  Now she looked at him as if expecting a blow, knowing what she said would remind him of the rest of what Fyren had said. Aye, he remembered. He remembered his rage, as well.

  "Do not think I blame you for Fyren's evil," he said.

  "But you heard."

  "Aye. He used you in the most evil way."

  "You cannot want me, now. I am also to blame."

  "To blame. Is that why Fyren forced you into the pits?"

  Her head jerked as she nodded.

  "Then, how can you blame yourself?"

  "You do not understand. It is because I allowed it."

  CHAPTER 22

  "Allowed it?" He knew better. "You hate him too much. Chretien, fetch Father Hardouin."

  "Do not give me to them. You said you would not."

  "And I do not, love. But you must know what sin is yours, and what is not. This is not your doing."

  "He is in the hall," Chretien said, and sped away.

  The other two men stood as still as stone statues.

  "Thomas, I do not think she wants to share this matter," he said, and Thomas and Gerard turned to leave.

&nb
sp; "Nay, I am tired of secrets. I want no more of them. They also deserve to know, for they have defended me so blindly."

  "Not blindly, lady," said Gerard. The tenderness in his eyes made Alain's heart ache. "We have always known you to be worthy."

  "They will burn me," she said, in a sad, fatalistic tone.