by P. C. Cast
I know that, Blonwen.
“I asked you never to call me that.”
It is your true name.
“It’s not! It’s a made-up name for a made-up woman who would be dead for more than a thousand years if I had stayed. It can’t be my true name.”
Go back to him. Your soul won’t rest until you do.
“Oh, bullshit! I don’t buy all that soul mate stuff—not since mine told me he didn’t want me anymore. I’d be in his way there. He said so.”
For a smart woman you’re behaving rather stupidly about this.
Alex rounded on the ghost. “He doesn’t want me! And I’m not going to go back there just to be rejected by him again. I’m not stupid, Andred. I’m weak! I couldn’t take him sending me away again.”
Alex, the ghost began.
“He gets married!” she blurted, blinking back tears. “You think I didn’t want to believe he sent me back just because he was afraid for me? As soon as I was fully conscious, I asked Carswell who he was. Obviously, she’d found out that he’d survived the battle. If he hadn’t she wouldn’t have been able to heal him. She gave me the file on him.” Alex began to recite, almost by rote: “Caradoc, son of Eilwen, kinsman of Boudica, druid and warrior, survived the slaughter of the Celts to become king of the Iceni, but his life was not typical of a Celt. Historical evidence shows he lived in Rome for seven years in free custody. His trial was recorded in history, and is interesting in the fact that he was allowed to marry the widow of a Roman nobleman. Though he refused to sign a treaty with Rome, he did agree not to take up arms against them, and was eventually able to return to his people. It was through Caradoc that the royal blood of Briton survived.” Alex wiped her sleeve across her eyes, pissed that it could still make her cry. “What am I supposed to do—go back and be his mistress? He got rid of me and married a Roman woman.” She enunciated the words carefully, even though it broke her heart to say them.
Did you ask about this Roman woman?
“No. Why would I want to know about the woman he married?”
Stop allowing your hurt to blind you and think with your mind and not your broken heart.
“He had children with her!”
The ghost sighed. Had you done any research, you would have found out that two of those children, girls, were too old to have been the Roman widow’s daughters.
“Okay. Well. Then he did save Una and Malian.” Something bound tight within Alex began to release. “Good. I’m glad. I liked the girls. A lot.”
The widow must have liked the girls a lot, too. History reports she raised them as her own. Unusual, that, for a woman to raise the daughters of a queen her people conquered.
“Maybe she didn’t know that part. Maybe Caradoc didn’t tell her, to protect the girls.”
Andred scoffed. Do you really believe Boudica’s daughters would pretend to be any other woman’s children? The widow had to know their true identities.
Alex stared at the ghost. “You couldn’t mean you think that I…” Her words faded as her pulse suddenly kicked up. Alex started to pace. “No. I am definitely not the widow of a Roman nobleman. Impossible.”
Andred met her gaze. Time travel is impossible. Is it not?
“You really believe it could be me he marries?” Alex thought her heart was going to beat out of her chest.
Caradoc marries an obscure widow who suddenly appears in Rome, liberally sprinkling coins about, so much so that she bribes the government to allow her to marry a royal prisoner. Sounds like quite an unusual woman for her time. It seems almost as if she was dropped there from somewhere—or some when—else. She paused and added, Ask yourself this. Do you believe everything Caradoc said to you, and everything your goddess showed you, was a lie?
“No,” Alex said softly. “No, I don’t.”
Then why have you not returned to him?
“I—I have to call Carswell.”
The ghost nodded. That is an excellent starting place.
“Who are you?” Alex asked breathlessly.
Andred smiled and lifted her right hand, holding it palm out. Even semitransparent, the spiral circle, twin to the one that would decorate Alex’s palm for the rest of her life, was clearly visible. Do you not recognize me by now? I am just another face of your goddess, child. And I have been watching over you for many years. You are well healed. Don’t you think it’s time we both went home?
Sobbing with happiness, Alex dropped to her knees at the goddess’s feet.
They could shackle him, imprison him and torture him, but Caradoc would not bend to the Romans’ will. He would not sign a treaty with them, not after they’d butchered his people, burned his lands and slaughtered his queen. But he would pretend cooperation, up to a point. He would not strike out at them and kill them in their sleep, as he wished he could. If he did they would murder Una and Mirain. The fact that they held the girls hostage insured he wouldn’t sacrifice himself, after running through as many of them as he could take with him to the Otherworld. It insured the Romans could say they had the king of the Iceni in free custody, and parade him around so that his people believed he complied with them and would not revolt again.
Caradoc’s lip lifted in a sneer. But there was only so much they could force him to do. This new trick of theirs—selling him to a widow—went too far. His freedom was gone; his pride was not.
“Here, now, Caradoc, look lively. This is your new home.” The Roman officer had halted their march. Caradoc stood, expressionless, as the soldiers made coarse jokes about him as if he couldn’t hear them.
He almost didn’t. He’d heard it often enough in the past week to ignore them. It seemed a great deal of speculation was going on about whether he would be the widow’s rutting Celtic boar, or her prize bull stud.
Knowing the Roman debauchery he’d already witnessed, Caradoc had no doubt the woman had both in mind.
The great carved doors of the villa finally opened, and Caradoc was led within the opulent foyer. Though his shackles echoed garishly off the sea-blue walls, he could hear another sound even over the clanking iron. Water. The druid’s eyes widened as he entered the villa. There were fountains everywhere. He could even see through to the open-air courtyard, where a waterfall cascaded into a pond.
“Never seen so much water in one villa,” one of the soldiers said.
“Widow added it. A stoneworker told me she said she wanted to be surrounded by water.”
Caradoc’s stomach tightened. Could Condatis be at work? He’d felt his god had forsaken him since he’d left his homeland and begun living among his enemies. Though, were he honest with himself, he would admit that he hadn’t reached out to his god. Not since he’d sent her away.
Caradoc turned his face to the marble wall in the foyer of the opulent villa so that the guards who always shadowed him could not see the emotion he still could not hide when he let himself think of Blonwen.
Carswell had healed him and then sent him back, after what seemed far too long, to the hut where Blonwen had said she would meet him. He’d found only the girls there, newly arrived, as only hours had passed, rather than the months his recovery had truly taken.
Instead of panicking, Caradoc had turned to his god, calling on Condatis to lead him to his love, and the god had, indeed, shown the druid where to find Blonwen. She had been immersed in water, calling on Condatis’s aid herself.
It had been a simple thing to press the ESC cuff, return to Carswell, explain Blonwen’s new location, and then—finally—go to her.
What he’d seen when he’d pulled her from the stream had been the final nudge Caradoc had needed. After seeing the world in which Alex lived, and knowing the world to which he would take her—a world filled with violence and slavery and death—he knew he couldn’t allow her to return to him.
Goddess, how he missed her! Sending her away—hurting her—had been like cutting out a piece of his soul. And since then he’d been numb inside. He had no heart left to call on his god. Were it
not for the pledge he’d made to Boudica to care for her girls, he would have no heart left to live.
Yet the water of this villa soothed his soul.
“The lady will see him now,” a large dark man called, from outside a door that opened to a room nearer the pool. Another dark man, so similar to the other they might be twins, stood at the opposite side of the door. Both were heavily armed. They were obviously slaves, personal bodyguards Roman nobles bought to protect themselves.
Caradoc steeled himself. He was a prisoner, but he would not be used by this woman. He’d lost his heart, his love, his soul—but he still had his memories. In his mind, he and Blonwen were still handfasted. When Caradoc had broken the vow, he’d been careful to break it only with her future name. Blonwen would always be his wife, and he would not allow anything or anyone to sully that bond.
“Let’s go meet your new mistress!” A soldier prodded Caradoc with a spear.
But when they got to the doorway, one of the dark guards stepped forward, blocking the soldiers’ way. “Only the Celt enters. The rest of you are to leave.”
The soldier laughed and shrugged. “If the barbarian here rips her throat open with his hands, we won’t be held accountable.”
“The lady has already so noted your responsibility is finished,” said the guard.
Still laughing, the soldiers ambled out. When they were gone, the guard bent and, with a key he produced from a bag around his waist, unlocked Caradoc’s shackles.
Caradoc stepped out of the iron for the first time in his months of captivity.
Still expressionless, the guard said, “Our lady bids you enter.” His twin opened the door.
Released from the heavy shackles, Caradoc felt as if he flew into the room.
It was dark within, the space lit only by soft morning sunlight filtered through sheer linen curtains that billowed in the breeze from floor-to-ceiling windows. He could see a female figure, her back turned to him, silhouetted against the light. The room was big; its central feature was a huge bed. Caradoc drew a deep breath. The lack of shackles and the breeze that carried the scent of water into the room might have lightened his soul, but it would not change his resolve.
“Lady, I thank you for the kindness you have shown in removing my shackles, but I would that we begin this…” here he paused, searching for the right word “…this transaction with honesty. My body is not my own to give. I have given my oath in a handfast, made permanent,” he added. “I will serve you as a slave, but I will not break my oath.”
She turned around then. He could see that she was weeping silently. Her face was washed in tears, but she was smiling.
Her face!
“Then you didn’t really want to send me away?”
The sound of the sea rushed in his ears as he shook his head, not believing his eyes. “When I sent you away I lost myself.”
“Well, you’re found now,” she said.
They moved at the same moment, coming together with a great cry of joy. Caradoc kissed her and ran his hands over her face, saying her name over and over, trying to convince himself it wasn’t a dream.
“Ah, love! How I have ached for you!” He held her close and then at arm’s length, looking her up and down. “You are healed? Carswell worked her future magic on you?”
The woman wiped her eyes and smiled at him. “Now that I’m with you, yes, I’m really healed.”
“Will you stay? Here? With me?” Caradoc held his breath and waited for her answer.
Blonwen lifted her wrists, which were both completely free of an ESC cuff. “I am here, with you, forever.”
As Caradoc took her into his arms and their lips met, the sound of a goddess’s joyous laughter mingled with the rain that began to fall softly outside, making beautiful music.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4129-3
TIME RAIDERS: THE AVENGER
Copyright © 2009 by P.C. Cast, Lindsay McKenna and Merline Lovelace
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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