by Jacobs Delle
“What if it’s not just the border, but England in its entirety?” said Philippe.
“Why not Scotland, too?” Leonie asked. “We do not know what influence he might have on Malcolm Caenmore.”
“Haps ’tis so. Haps even more. A shade, as far as I know, must have once gone to the Summer Land or he would not fade. Fading for the Faeriekind is a different sort of thing, for they have the power to control it. But for one of mankind, there is no control. Even though returning to the Summer Land would mark the man’s death, there is a yearning to return that is almost unsurpassable. Could be Fulk means to destroy the Summer Land, or perhaps conquer it. That was what happened to the land of Annwyn. A vengeful sorcerer found a way to destroy it, and only those Annwyn who were in the world of man survived. Yet, nay, that would not work with Fulk. Surely he would have enough good sense never to enter there again.”
“If he knows Leonie’s secret, then haps that’s what he really wants from her.”
The Black Earl of Northumbria frowned in a pensive way and tugged at his dense black beard.
Leonie frowned and shook her head. “Nay, wait, there is something we’re missing.”
“What, lass?”
Her brow warped as she pressed a fist to her lips. “Something doesn’t make sense.” She held up two fingers on her right hand, and mirrored the gesture with her left. “Two sorcerers. Two wives. Each sorcerer wanted the same thing from each of Philippe’s wives. Is that not odd? And each used the same method to try to get it.”
“You mean to say the two sorcerers are the same?” Philippe asked. “I have never been convinced Clodomir was dead, for his body vanished after I killed him. Is this possible, de Mowbray?”
“A demon might resurrect. And a shade can live many generations, gathering new knowledge from others. A man is not a sorcerer born, but one who sells his soul to the devil for his powers.” De Mowbray rose and paced the room.
But Leonie frowned and shook her head. “I can see that they might attack Bosewood to capture it, but why attack us on the road and demand I be given over if it was Philippe they really wanted? Why not take him, especially since they would have had to kill both him and you to do it?”
“Is Fulk such a man who would tell the truth about what he really wants?” But then de Mowbray frowned back. “Still, you are right. Haps you have thwarted them several times, forcing them to change tactics.”
“Nay,” she countered. “It does not make sense. They did not kill me at Brodin when they could easily do it, nor did they attempt to keep me. Instead, they used me to set a trap for Philippe. Do you think Fulk could have known what decision Rufus would make, or did he expect Rufus to do something else, haps to kill him?”
“Hm, aye. Rufus is a hard one to guess. Haps something else. Haps he thought Rufus would defend his knight, and then Geoffrey would rise up in rebellion. But how would that help Fulk’s cause?”
“And we have already asked ourselves how Fulk could possibly have known of the events at Brodin in time to ride to the crossroads,” Philippe added. “A man would have to ride straight through the night to make it to Durham and return to the crossroads in time to catch us there.”
“But the gholin the lady saw took on your shape, Peregrine. He could also have taken the shape of someone in the castle. Or haps he was not a gholin, but a shade and a shifter. And that would make him Fulk, the sorcerer, for shades do not keep each other’s company. Who knows what ways a sorcerer might have to pass quickly from one place to another?”
The Black Earl sat in his chair, scratched his head, then rose again and paced. He put hands to his lips, paced some more, and pounded one fist into the other hand. Then he shook his head. “I am missing something. Something long ago.”
Again he shook his head and huffed.
“Another question, then,” Philippe said. “The one you’ve been avoiding. “What is an Annwyn King and how could I possibly be one? I am French and Norman for many generations and there is no royalty in my ancestry.”
“Well, ’tis not that I meant to ignore you, but we have too many questions at once. We have known since your birth of your Annwyn heritage. Such things are watched. But no Annwyn traits have surfaced in any descendant for many generations. A king is so called for his skills, and he would have no kingdom, nor subjects.”
Philippe’s eyebrows rose. “Long ago?”
“Aye.” De Mowbray narrowed his eyes. “Long. Hundreds of years, in man’s reckoning. There was something. Before that, even.” Then his bulbous black eyes widened as his jaw dropped. “The myths. Something in the myths of Annwyn. Lady Leonie, your Faerie skills have grown greatly in the last few weeks, is it not so? And you had few before? And you, Philippe, none of these traits came upon you before now?”
Leonie nodded.
“Not that I ever noticed,” Philippe said. “I’ve always had very sharp hearing, but naught else.”
“And all of these changes occurred after Rufus sent you to Brodin, where you met Lady Leonie for the first time as a grown woman.”
Leonie sidled a glance at Philippe, as he did to her.
De Mowbray sat again in his chair, his head shaking so hard both his thick curls and heavy beard bobbed with the movement. “It was only a myth from the distant past told around the fireside at night. The Alchemy of Spirits. I never thought it could be true.” And he sat, silent for once, his thick fist drawn up thoughtfully before his mouth.
“But perhaps you might take a moment to share it with us?” Philippe asked.
“Well, ’tis clear you are among those who need to know. The story was that in the old days, matings sometimes occurred that brought about a meshing of the souls, so that both grew in strength and skills beyond what any others have been. Neither one, alone, would have such talent, but together they had the power to rule kingdoms, to create and destroy as none other had done. Eventually the folk of the Faerie realm and the Annwyn planned such unions so that their rulers could protect their folk from the outside world.”
“And you think this is what happened for us?”
“’Tis said it could only be one of the Faeriekind and one of the Annwyn, and the Annwyn no longer exist. Yet here you are.”
“Clodomir must have known something about it when he took Joceline, then.”
“Haps I’m wrong. But a sorcerer, especially one who is also a shade, could be so ancient as to know those things. If he knew the truth, that your ancient blood had surfaced, he would want your talents, even those not yet seen.
“Another thing: a shade’s ordinary victim might be trapped at the moment of death. An Annwyn King might be too powerful for a shade, even though he be a sorcerer, to subdue. The victim would have to submit willingly. Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. And only to save your beloved could you be forced to submit. But this went untested when Joceline broke free and you caught the sorcerer unguarded. The body, you killed. But not the shade. And now he seeks to become an Annwyn King.”
Leonie shivered at the thought. “He might have known about me all along, too. Haps he meant to kill Philippe and take his body, then in that masquerade persuade me to marry him.”
“God protect us,” de Mowbray said. “God save us and save the people of this earth.”
“More than that.” Instinctively, Philippe touched the hilt of his sword. “You say a sorcerer destroyed Annwyn and scattered its people.”
“You are the last Annwyn King. And you have no idea of your powers. If the sorcerer had taken on your power, how many nations—how many worlds—could such a being destroy?” The Black Earl shoved himself away from the wall where he had been leaning. “Well, you wanted to find out how to break the curse. We need Herzeloyde.
“Come,” he said, and took off at a lope across the hall.
As if his retainers read his mind, they appeared quickly to arm him for battle. “Lady Leonie will need a sword,” he said to one of them. “The small Breton one will be right for her.”
“I have no training in
sword fighting, Lord Northumbria. I would not know how.”
“You’ll know, lass. ’Tis in your blood.”
Returning to his long-legged lope, de Mowbray headed out of the hall and across the bailey to the stable where they found both Tonerre and the brown palfrey, as well as the great black stallion de Mowbray rode. Quickly, they mounted.
“I thought you said you didn’t know where to find her.”
“I don’t. But Ilse does.” De Mowbray looked down at the grey hound that danced and whined at his feet. “What is’t, Ilse? Aye, girl, let’s go. On chase, my pretty hound!”
As de Mowbray climbed into his saddle, the hound leaped into the air, her big paws clawing. She rose as if running on the ground, yet there was naught beneath her but air. De Mowbray’s huge black stallion followed, and behind came Philippe on Tonerre. Leonie clung with tight fists to her palfrey’s mane, not daring to look down. The silent hooves pounded the air as they soared, rising above the oaks, which in the few days they had been gone in the wilderness had turned to rusty red.
CHAPTER THIRTY
IT TOOK PHILIPPE the mere blink of an eye to decide flying should be left to birds, bats, and dragons. Beside him, Leonie’s green eyes were round and huge as her lips moved silently in the rhythm of a chant. “Don’t look down. Don’t look down.”
“Aye. Don’t look down,” his thoughts answered. It was not enough to hold the reins, and like Leonie on the palfrey, he wove his fingers through Tonerre’s long mane for fear of toppling sideways and to the ground far below. He didn’t want to know what trees, hills, and becks looked like from above. But he caught a glimpse of grey-blue expanse in the distance and recognized the sea where it spread out from the brown edge of the cliffs and pale sand beaches. The jutting rocks of Lindesfarne dared poke through the waves far off to his left.
He chuckled and pointed the sea out to Leonie, who just shook her head and fixed her gaze on the palfrey’s mane and ears.
He smiled to himself, for he was quickly becoming at ease with the flight and began to look around, absorbing the wind blowing through his hair and whipping his clothes. The lines of grey clouds looked different, reflecting brilliant, sun-like pale mirrors and forming rolling curls far out to sea. The far distant land off his right side rose higher and higher, its color shifting from the aging green and brown of autumn to the stark black and grey of the mountains beyond. He recognized them by their shapes, yet he had never thought what they might look like from above. Haps he might like this riding through the clouds after all.
Ahead of him, de Mowbray sat high and forward in his deep Norman saddle, his bushy black curls blowing like the mane of his great black stallion. He spurred the black onward, though it was clear the stallion loved the flight as much as a lark climbing high into the sky on a summer morn.
“I don’t suppose you could explain this,” he said to de Mowbray.
The earl laughed, a wild, dark laugh that sent both chill and exhilaration through Philippe. “Ah, there’s nothing finer than to soar through the sky after my little hound, is there? ’Tis Ilse’s magic, not mine. I have none. But she was born to the Faerie and is built to chase the clouds.”
“But we seem to be doing the same.”
“We couldn’t, not even you, Annwyn King, were it not for Ilse. ’Tis much like the way you could take Leonie into a portal she couldn’t see. But Ilse has a dire task, or she wouldn’t take us with her. ’Tis to bring us to Herzeloyde, I’ll wager.”
Beside him, Leonie squeaked. If she had words to tell her thoughts, she neither said nor thought them. Philippe reached out across the air between them and squeezed her hand.
“You will not fall, my love. Ilse would not allow it.”
Leonie did not seem persuaded. Still, she raised her head high, and the magnificent curls of her golden hair flayed the wind. Courage, he knew, was facing the world with her kind of boldness. For her sake—no, now he realized the need went far beyond her and him—he had to find a way to block the curse, and more, he must destroy the sorcerer. Fulk was Clodomir, he knew now. And far more dangerous than he had ever imagined before.
He could not let the fiend take Leonie too. He would not let him take the world.
He felt the air growing warmer, and the wind stronger, as they dived through long, flat blankets of clouds. It seemed as if they flew through rain, or water, that hung in the midst of the thick, white substance. Then once again they emerged, now beneath the clouds that partially blocked the sun. Ahead of him, he saw Ilse still descending toward earth, and he began to wonder if they would collide, for they were falling now—in a way. Yet like birds they swooped low and slowed, and came to touch the ground on a rocky, gorse-covered slope.
He patted Tonerre’s neck, and the horse shook out his mane, now at a full gallop behind the giant black stallion. Had they been running over ground all this time, they would have been blown. Yet he felt no sweat on Tonerre, barely heard the horse’s steady whuffing.
The shaggy hound followed a path into a dark wood, her nose high in the air as if she had caught a scent, and she began to bay. She slowed in a wide glade, and for an instant wandered, the way a dog does when the scent is scattered. Her snuffling sound mixed with a faint whimper, then grew louder and more frantic as she whirled in a wide circle. The dog dashed about, turning to de Mowbray and barking, then went back to her odd, wild dashing about in a wide circle. She leaped into the air, barking, then ran in her wide circuit, as if chasing the air or enclosed in some invisible pen.
Philippe reined in his horse, and apiece with de Mowbray and Leonie, leaped down from the saddle.
One minute the forest beyond the glade had been cleanly sharp, black trunks and dark green branches of pines, with the gold and crimson limes and ash trees standing sharp against the thicket beyond. The next the edges of the glen hazed with a dirty fog, muting the trees as if in a heavy storm. Then, as if they all stood in a quiet, clear glen amid a deep, thick cloud, the world appeared to vanish. Philippe had the dread feeling that the cloud was circling them, yet he could see nothing that even looked like movement, it was so dense. All was silence, save that he could hear their putrid breath and smell the stench of their death-grey rotting flesh and decaying bones.
“Gholins,” he whispered.
“Aye.” Leonie’s fingers played impatiently at the grip on her bow.
“Prepare yourself, magnificent wife. We are going to need your skills.”
A thunk behind him. He spun around. A sword still quivered where it had struck into the soil, its gold- and garnet-inlaid scabbard flopped beside it.
“Rufus’s sword!” Philippe shouted as he yanked it out of the earth. Rufus would have never given it up without a fight.
Another thud, then another. Fallen from the sky, a crude wooden walking stick and a dark green peasant’s cloak. A bishop’s crosier, its golden crook gleaming in the bright sun flooding into the circle of the open glen. Clunk again, and a small dagger.
Leonie dashed up and bent to the dagger, not a man-sized blade, and roughly sheathed. “I gave it to Sigge,” she said, pulling it from the sheath.
And the walking stick was the one the old crone had carried. The bishop’s crook was obvious.
De Mowbray looked upward, then around, his nostrils flaring. The horses shied and whinnied with the fear of the unknown, as only horses could truly understand. But Philippe felt the same deep chill slide down his spine as he watched the earth-colored fog condense and tighten around them.
Philippe surveyed the ground around them for clues, his gaze expanding farther out toward the trees. Ilse whimpered as she sniffed the tufts of dry grass and lumps of hardened dirt.
“Somehow they’ve captured all of them. How could they snatch Rufus from inside Bosewood?”
“The bishop was easy, I’ll vow,” said de Mowbray. “He was already taken in. But Herzeloyde? How could they capture her?”
“Haps the same way he almost caught me,” Leonie replied. “I thought he was turning me to
stone.”
Thunks, screams, yelps, as more objects hit the earth, this time farther away.
The fog thinned. Greyed, faint shadows of human forms splattered before them, then began to rise to their knees. One by one, they took more shape and color.
“Sigge!” shouted Leonie.
Aye, ’twas the little boy, struggling to his knees.
“Leonie!” he shouted back. But with bound hands and feet, he could not stand.
Leonie stepped toward the boy, but pure gut instinct forced Philippe to take her arm and hold her back.
Next appeared Rufus, without his battle gear, similarly bound, fighting against his own rotund shape to right himself onto his knees despite his bonds. And the Bishop of Durham, who cried out, holding up his tied hands in supplication when he saw the group before him. Some unseen force shoved him back to his knees.
“Peregrine!” shouted the king. “By God, now we’ll slay these bloodless bastards!”
A club came out of the mist behind the king and struck him upside the jaw. Rufus wavered but stayed on his knees, stocky legs widespread, rage seething in his red-as-beef.
And there, bound like the others, not the crone, but a pale, beautiful woman, utterly the slenderest woman he’d ever seen, her thick, tightly curled hair almost white.
“Herzeloyde.” De Mowbray breathed the name, almost as silent as a gasp.
“Mother!”
It could be no other. Now Philippe understood what it was about the woman that held de Mowbray and the villagers in such thrall. But no time for that now.
“Don’t move,” he said beneath his breath. “The gholins are there, guarding them, so attacking could get them killed.”
“Where?” She drew four arrows to place in the hand that gripped her ivorywood bow.
“They’re there. I can hear them. A complete circle of them.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“SO CLEVER OF you, Peregrine.”
The voice reverberated through the glen, deep and ominous. The thick, dirty cloud turned to misty fog and began to swirl in bands first grey and white, then deepening into red, violet, and hazy blue, before the swirling bands slowed and became a mist. In a whoosh, the remains of the grimy mist swirled upward and vanished in the air, revealing an army of the gholins, with choking ropes on their captive’s necks.