Linnea whispered to him, “I am here, Marius.”
He trembled all over, dumbstruck. And terrified for her. Go away, he tried to whisper. Ravelle’s pitch held fast. His lips did not move and his dry tongue heaved inside his mouth.
She disappeared. Was she safely away?
When the hostlers backed him out, he saw nothing on either side of the cart but the glaring white stone of the houses and a flash of a bird, black and white, just before he was led into the mill.
So Esau was with her. How had they come to the land of men?
His mind racing with confusion, Marius allowed himself to be yoked in the circular yard inside. He was led beside two immense millstones, one atop the other, grinding, ever grinding. The blind oxen doing the work were taken off and he, put on without the massive stones stopping. He hardly cared. The fleeting sight of her brought him the wild joy of knowing that he could die, having seen her.
But it was not to last, that joy. His next glimpse of a living being made the centaur want to stop but the momentum of the grinding stones prevented it. His legs were still shackled, front and back, permitting him a measured stride but nothing else. The heavy yoke fastened to the wooden structure through which the stones turned prevented him from rearing.
Ravelle stepped back as Marius stepped forward, extending a claw. Dangling from it was the amulet. He held it in front of Marius, stepping back on cloven hooves so the centaur could see what he was about to do. Then he dropped the amulet to the stone floor of the mill and put his hoof upon it. The crack echoed through the mill.
“So,” he sneered, “you will die a beast. I wish I had more time to enjoy your torment here. The monotony will make you go mad in the end. Around and around and around. Beaten and—”
Marius interrupted him, making an unintelligible noise in his throat that almost burst his sealed mouth open.
“Let me finish, will you? Beaten and blind.” Ravelle gestured to a man to stop the millstones, but it took three revolutions before they did. It was almost with tenderness that he sealed Marius’s eyes shut, very quickly. “There. In a little while Linnea will be brought in. She too will be yoked but to other gigantic stones hard by.” He gestured to them but the centaur could no longer see. “She will witness your torment with every revolution of her wheel and you will be able to hear hers. A fitting revenge, I think.”
The centaur’s nostrils flared. He smelled her. She was nigh.
“Trying to find her?” Ravelle asked. He gestured for the stones to begin their ceaseless grinding once more and the centaur stumbled under the yoke. “We have captured her,” he lied, “but she is still under interrogation. Linnea will be dragged in only when she is close to death.”
Above him on a beam Linnea heard the centaur struggle to breathe. She dashed away her useless tears and unrolled the spell that Quercus had sent with Esau, along with—the old healer could not help himself—an explanation. It was now or never. She chanted the spell soundlessly.
The ancient words stirred the souls of trees and rocks in their natural form and more so after they had been cut and shaped by the hands of men. Its enchantment brought both back to what they once had been. She clung to the wide beam, feeling it vibrate. The supporting timbers vibrated too and the centaur felt it through his hooves. A low, booming sound reverberated through the mill and the man in charge of the wheels made them stop.
The great stones began to slide, the top one off the bottom, the moving weight of both cracking the giant pole at their center. Ravelle looked frantically around but the men of the mill had run outside, fearing an earthquake, screaming a warning.
Marius’s muscles tensed and bulged as he braced himself against the collapsing wood of the complicated yoke, snapping its heavy timbers. He scraped his mouth against the gritty millstone nearest him and unsealed his lips, roaring with inchoate rage. Ravelle stood aghast as the centaur charged directly at him, finding him by smell.
He went down under Marius’s slashing hooves, crying for mercy. Unseen in the dust near the demon, the pieces of the cracked amulet joined to become whole once more. It was forgotten in the melee. Again the centaur reared but came down to the side of the demon’s head when he heard Linnea’s soft gasp.
“Where are you?” he screamed, still blind, his wounded sides streaming blood from his mighty efforts to be free.
The sight broke her heart and steeled her resolve. There was a chance—the barest chance—that they might yet escape. She crept backward on the beam and down the timber that supported it, making an effort not to be seen by Ravelle.
He was struggling to his feet and he spied her instantly. Badly injured, he staggered toward, bloody froth dripping from his slack lips. The centaur made straight for him, guided by instinct and a hatred so feral that he was a true force of nature, a maddened beast bent on vengeance.
Head down, he slammed into Ravelle and threw him against the shifting stones with tremendous force. The top stone tipped and the demon slid off, barely alive. Linnea watched with horror as the massive stone came upright, wobbling.
Marius galloped around the obstacle, not seeing the precarious tilt of the stone. She gasped, calling to him over the demon’s shrieks and curses. He did not hear. Again he charged toward the foul odor that clung to Ravelle, broad siding the wounded demon as he staggered away, sending him straight through the hole in the center of the stone.
There Ravelle stuck, screaming for help.
Tipping, the gigantic stone wobbled and she ran to Marius, shoving him out of the way of the millstone and grabbing his mane to mount him. She clung fiercely to him, kicking his sides, riding him out the door to the astonishment of the people who’d gathered in the streets, expecting an earthquake.
Not five seconds later, they scattered in all directions as the rolling millstone burst through the wall of the mill, Ravelle still stuck in its center, his neck whip lashed as his head banged against the stone with every revolution. It gained speed on the steep lane that led to the harbor, rolling and rolling until the demon’s horrified howls became faint, rolling into the sea, rolling along the stone road that the sea had swallowed with the first town centuries ago. Deep underwater, it slowed and finally fell over in a ruined temple.
Sand rose in obscuring clouds around the stone and its passenger, smothering the cruel ruler of the Outer Darkness once and for all.
Linnea could only guess at that. For a time, she watched the spot in the sea where the stone had finally stopped, finding it by the rising discoloration in the water. She shaded her eyes to see the billows of sand…and then, black whorls of demon blood.
Beneath her, she felt Marius’s hide twitch from the flies that had come to suck at his wounds and she slid off, tending to him at once, brushing off the disgusting flies, leading him to water and giving him it in her upraised, cupped hands.
“My love, my love,” she murmured, filled with desperate fear. “I am here at last.”
Marius took great gulps of the water before he spoke. “Eyes,” he rasped. “Can’t see.” He rubbed at them but she pulled his hands away.
“He did the same to me once,” she said. “Wait. If he is dead, then his magic will dissolve. Just wait a little.”
Marius lifted his face to the sun. Its warm rays did the rest. Tears came from under his eyelids, and then they slowly opened. The centaur blinked and beheld the most beautiful sight in all creation.
The woman he loved, her face lit with joy.
“Linnea…” he said softly. They were lost in an embrace. Neither saw the magpie flutter down into the ruins of the mill a little distance away.
Curious as always, Esau picked up a glittering stone from the rubble, and dropped it. It was only mica and he would have to carry it back. He hopped to another spot. There he saw something that he vaguely remembered: a small piece of smooth stone, carved in the shape of a horse. The magpie picked it up in his beak, then flew up in the air, where he spied Marius and Linnea.
The centaur looked rather the wo
rse for wear, but he did have Linnea to take care of him. Esau decided to give him the small stone as a gift to cheer him up rather than fly back to the Arcan Islands with it.
Epilogue
Esau had delivered the wedding invitations and all of Arcan had responded, it seemed. They waited but the bride was nowhere to be seen as yet. Simeon and Gideon were chaffing a side-stepping Marius, whose mane and tail were woven with flowers sacred to the nuptial rites of the forest folk.
“Stop,” Megaleen chided them. “You are supposed to stand by the groom, and remember what he forgets, not make him nervous. Do you have the rings, Simeon?”
“Yes.” Simeon showed them in his palm.
Megaleen gave him a stern look and went off to join the women. A tiny baby girl peeked out from the gossamer sling around Rhiannon, who was helping Linnea to dress. A shift of pleated white linen adorned with colored ribbons flowed over her swelling belly, and the bride rested her bouquet upon it.
“How fares the babe within?” Megaleen asked. “And the blushing bride?”
“Both well,” Linnea laughed.
“This is a happy day in Arcan,” Rhiannon said, straightening. They moved to take their places to the left and right of Linnea, and led her with graceful steps through the crowd to her waiting groom.
It was Quercus who joined them in holy union, rambling on a bit about the meaning of it all, which gave Lord Vane a chance to conceal his late arrival and slip in to the back row of guests.
“Where there is true understanding, there is true happiness. And that is the basis for enduring love,” Quercus finished. Murmurs of gentle assent ran through the hushed crowd. “They are as one!” he cried. “Rejoice!”
Marius leaned down and kissed his bride. “For forever and a day,” he whispered.
“Yes,” Linnea whispered back, joy shining bright as the sun about her.
Lord of the Forest Page 23