Phoenix Ashes (The Landers Saga Book 3)

by Nilsen, Karen

  I gulped, my stomach heavy even though I had barely been able to choke down some toast and a boiled egg for breakfast. This was as bad as morning sickness. And it was all Merius's fault.

  I started as the door banged behind me. Mordric stalked to my side, his arms crossed like a shield over his chest. "So the ass is really going through with it?" he asked, a rhetorical question as he could clearly see Jared helping Merius tighten the straps around his upper arms and waist. I nodded, my hand over my mouth as the meager contents of my stomach roiled.

  "Where's Dominic?" Mordric demanded.

  "With Elsa in Eden's chambers," I managed.

  Mordric gripped my shoulder and twisted me toward him. His eyes, hard as slate, softened as he searched my face. "You're pale as a spirit. Damn him," he muttered before he shouted at Merius, "Look at your wife, you ass. Look what you're doing to her."

  "Good morn, Father," Merius said. "I didn't know you planned to join us." His aura expanded and surrounded the wings of the glider in a glittery cloud, so bright I could hardly look at him without wincing. A sheer exhilaration flowed from him, the same exhilaration he felt when we made love and flew together in our mutual fantasies. The only difference was that I shared his exhilaration in those moments. Not now, however. Now his excitement combined with my nerves in a sickening consummation. The wind slapped against the canvas, and the yew staves of the frame rasped against each other under the force. All I could see in my mind's eye were the straps holding Merius to this frail contraption breaking and him plunging to his death in the icy river. I pulled away from Mordric, worried I would retch on him. I lunged for the wall as my breakfast rose in my throat. My eyes squeezed shut so I couldn't see how far below the river ran, so I couldn't see just how far Merius would fall if the glider broke in midair, I vomited over the wall and into the roaring water, choking at the acid burning my tongue.

  Someone grasped my shoulders, cursing in my ear as he turned me away from the wall. I opened my eyes to find Mordric shaking me. "Are you all right?"

  "Just a little sick. I'm fine now." And I was better--my stomach no longer churned, and all my muscles relaxed, a peculiar limpness that refreshed me after all the tension leading up to me retching.

  "Here." Mordric shoved his hip flask in my hand, and I drank a long swig without protest. If nothing else, it would improve my breath.

  "Is she all right?" Merius asked.

  "No thanks to you," Mordric snarled.

  "Father, please. Why don't you take her below, to Eden's rooms perhaps . . ."

  "No, Merius," I screeched, surprising myself as much as the men. "If something happens, I need to be here." Despite the blinding silvery net of light around him and the glider, I finally met his gaze without blinking.

  *Fine then. But please, please, please quit visualizing all the ways you think this could kill me. All your predictions of disaster will set me up for certain failure.

  *Fine, as long as you promise never to imagine how childbirth could kill me again. You think I didn't sense all your awful visions the night Dominic was born?

  His eyes narrowed, the ropes of energy between us drawing firm with a crack, the sound of a hundred lightning bolts hitting at once. *Childbirth is more dangerous than this.

  *If that was meant to reassure me, it didn't. I clasped my arms together under my breasts, anger making my muscles tense again.

  "Oh, Safire," he groaned aloud. "Please go below."

  "No." I squared my shoulders, my spine straight as a poker. "But I will do my best to picture a good outcome, for your sake as well as mine. You've worked hard on this for months, and I want you to succeed, even if I believe it's the most off kilter thing you've ever done."

  "Thank you, sweetheart." He grinned, and I glimpsed the tousle-haired, knuckle-cracking, mischievous boy he had been.

  Mordric looked down at his boots and shook his head. "Thank God he's at least sired a healthy son," he said under his breath. His aura shimmered like obsidian. It put me in mind of touching quicksilver, a cold resistance I had to expend some effort to breach when I patted his arm. A tense flicker of a smile passed over his mouth, and he rested his hand on my shoulder, as much to support himself as me during the next few minutes.

  With Jared's assistance, Merius clambered up on the parapet wall. The glider creaked and swayed, its huge shadow looming over us, and I shut my eyes, forcing myself to picture Merius gliding smoothly down the river and landing safely on a sandbar or the bank after he passed through the town. He had demonstrated the steering mechanism to me last night after I raised concerns about him flying out to sea and having nowhere to land. It involved a length of rope attached to two flaps on the ends of the wings. But what if those flaps got torn off somehow? No, no, no, I couldn't do this. I had to visualize a good outcome . . .

  I drew a deep breath and opened my eyes, just in time to see Merius jump. One instant he was there, a tall silvery eagle with glistening wings outstretched against the blue, blue sky, a moment for me to paint when I returned home. Merius, the glider, and the sky were so bright that I could hardly look at them, small dots swimming in my field of vision like when I had looked at the sky after we made love up here. Then he was gone with a rush of wind and the snap of canvas. Gasping, I raced for the wall and peered over the edge, Mordric behind me.

  "He was right," Jared muttered. "Those flaps are strong enough against the gusts--he would have hit the wall already if they weren't. My lord above, look at him."

  Merius was a small dark shape under the huge pale wing of the glider--I could barely see him at this angle, only the blinding white of the canvas as he cleared the shadow of the palace walls and sunlight hit him. The silver cloud around him flashed like lightning, and I blinked.

  "What the God's name . . ." Mordric said behind me, his voice sounding faraway.

  I heard no more from Mordric and Jared then as I screamed. The glider floated in the river, no Merius to be seen. A gigantic, silvery-gray hawk soared over the water. Its wingspan was over half the width of the river. The hawk rose far above the rooftops with one flap of its powerful wings. Then it dipped at an angle and pivoted back toward the palace. The sound of its flight echoed against the stone walls like thunderclaps. It flew over us, a blanket of cool shadow, before swooping down to the river again.

  I stared after it as it grew small in the distance, heading toward the harbor. "Dear God, don't fly over the ships," Mordric muttered behind me, a nonsensical prayer. "If those sailors see him like this . . ."

  With long, slow waves of its wings, the hawk vanished around the bend in the river, its huge shadow trailing behind. What if it went out over the ocean? What if it never came back? How would I explain to Dominic when he was older that his father had turned into a hawk and flown away one day? At this thought, a giggle erupted from some dark place inside. And then another and another, harsh barks of laughter that had nothing to do with merriment and everything to do with insanity. Jared glanced at me with round eyes, his face white to the lips.

  Over the roar of the river, I suddenly heard the echo of rhythmic claps, like a giant applauding in the distance as the huge bird reappeared around the bend. The hawk beat its wings in a flurry of motion that made frothy waves across the water under it and propelled it forward at an alarming speed as it soared upwards. Suddenly it was over us again, droplets of river water falling on my face from the edges of its feathers.

  I huddled against Mordric, staring up at the bird. Its huge talons outstretched, it turned and drifted down toward the parapet in a graceful landing. I heard myself scream again, my lungs aflame. The hawk's pinion feathers, long as my arm, held every shade and tint of gray, shining silver in the sunlight. My scream faded with my vision of the hawk's fierce gray eyes boring into mine, Merius's eyes swallowed in blackness as I knew no more.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  "Safire? Safire! Father, what the hell?" Merius's voice rose.

  "You're asking me?" There came the trembling clank of thick glass.

&n
bsp; "Hmm," I murmured and turned on my side. All was soft warmth around me and under me, as if I slept on a cloud. Perhaps Merius the hawk had brought me up to a cloud--we had mated in stranger places. My sudden laugh held a faint maniacal edge, I thought, not precisely sane, my first hint something was amiss.

  My eyes fluttered open, and the sounds of glass became comprehensible. I looked across an expanse of dark blue satin to a table where Mordric poured several tumblers of amber liquor from a cut glass decanter. His hands shook, so much so that he even splattered some whiskey on the table. I had never seen him in such a state. My second hint something was amiss.

  "Safire?" Merius's face suddenly engulfed my field of vision. "Oh, thank God you're awake."

  "Where are we?"

  "Father's chamber. I would have taken you to Eden's but Father said we didn't need any questions yet. And I needed clothes," he added inexplicably as he glanced away toward Mordric.

  "Here, Jared," Mordric said, handing one of the tumblers out of sight past the bed curtains. Apparently Merius's steward sat there, though I didn't hear a peep from him, not even a murmured thank you. Jared had his faults, but he could usually speak and demonstrated basic courtesy, such as thanking someone when he was offered something. My third hint something was amiss.

  "I just had the wildest dream," I said.

  "Really?" Merius turned back to me, his lips parted, his eyes wide as he ran his hand so roughly over his scalp that his hair stood on end.

  "We were up on the parapet. You dove off with the glider and turned into a hawk."

  "Huh?" Merius exclaimed as there came the shatter of breaking glass.

  Jared's round, straggly-haired face appeared at the tasseled edge of the bed curtain, his skin grayish. "You saw it too, my lady?" he breathed.

  "Of course she saw it too--she's not blind," Mordric said, sounding unusually ornery even for him. "What do you think all that screaming was about anyway? Thank God it's a holy day--most everyone's at chapel or at home, not out on the streets. If some passer-by had witnessed that . . ."

  "Sorry about the glass, sir," Jared mumbled, his face vanishing as rapidly as it had appeared.

  "It's all right," Mordric responded. "You can clean it up after a bit, when you're more yourself."

  "So that wasn't a dream?" I whispered, turning my head to stare up at the shadows lurking under the bed tester. How could it not be a dream? How could it be real? My husband had turned into a giant hawk. I was a witch and had seen some pretty strange things, but a man transforming into a giant hawk? That wasn't even in any of the myths or fairy tales I'd heard or read. I stared blindly up at the shadows waiting to devour us. Good lord, I was starting to sound as fretful in my thoughts as Merius had on the night of Dominic's birth. "It wasn't a dream?" I repeated, swiveling my head toward my father-in-law, the most sensible man I knew.

  "No, sweet." Mordric's voice suddenly grew gentle, as if he were worried I would faint again. "It wasn't, not unless we all three had the same hallucination at the same time."

  "Excuse me, what the hell are you talking about?" Merius fumed as he strode from the door to the bed, weaving around all the furniture in between. "Damn it, Father, I've been patient long enough. I want to know how the hell I ended up back on the parapet with no glider, no clothes, and no memory of how I got there. Did I have an accident of some kind?" I noticed then that he wore one of Mordric's shirts, a black velvet one with metallic silver cloth winking through the fashionable slashes in the billowing sleeves. Eden had somehow coerced Mordric into wearing it to a court dinner, and that was the last I'd seen of it till today. All the clothes Merius wore belonged to Mordric, now that I had a good look at him, even the boots and distinctive pewter belt buckle of the Landers insignia.

  "What happened to your clothes? And how did you get here without them?" I asked.

  "I borrowed Father's cloak," Merius said shortly. "Father, answer my question. Please--I don't understand . . ."

  "Would you sit down first?" Mordric tipped his head back and downed a tumbler of whiskey, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Here." He held out the last tumbler after Merius sat on the bed beside me. "You'll need this."

  "All right." Merius shrugged and drained the liquor, his Adam's apple bobbing. Then he handed the tumbler back to his father and slid his arm around me, his fingers splayed against my shoulder. His confusion and fear weighed down on us like a blanket of lead, and I found each breath an effort. However, I didn't protest or pull away--we needed each other. I needed to feel him beside me, feel his familiar body. I needed to know he was still present and himself, not some giant bird. And at the moment, I honestly didn't mind our shared upset and bewilderment, the airless warmth that reminded me of an approaching summer storm. Perhaps it would make me faint again. I wouldn't mind fainting, if it meant I could escape this new madness for the time being.

  Mordric cleared his throat, then looked at us, his gaze unreadable. "What Safire said about her dream, about you turning into a goddamned hawk--that wasn't a dream."

  "Father?" Merius's voice held uncertain laughter. "Father, no. I know you like your jests, loath as you are to admit it, but this . . . what the hell have you been putting in your whiskey these days? Ergot? Ursula's Bane?"

  "I saw it too, sir." Jared's head popped around the bed curtain so suddenly I started. "I saw it. You turned into a huge bird and flew up to the parapet."

  "No, no." Merius shook his head, chuckling. "You enlisted my steward in the crazy charade? How much did he pay you, Jared?"

  "Damn it, it's not a jest, Merius." Mordric brought his fist down on the table, the decanter and tumblers knocking against each other and making me jump again. "You scared the hell out of us, all of us. Tell him, Safire."

  I knelt beside Merius and held his jaw between my hands so that I could look into his eyes. My beloved's eyes, his beautiful, expressive eyes that silently told me he adored me a hundred times a day. The same eyes I had seen looking at me from a hawk's untamed visage this morning, impossible as that was to understand. Concentrating so hard my mind felt tethered by ever tightening bonds that left me with a rope-burn headache, I showed Merius images of what I remembered. He began to shake his head, a slow back and forth that became more quick and violent with each memory I imparted to him.

  "No, no, no, Safire, no," he muttered, shutting his eyes finally as if he could block out the images that way. "That's impossible. That's like one of our shared fantasies, not reality. Sweetheart, you dreamed it."

  "Didn't Talus write something in his journals about a weirhawk? Perhaps . . ." I said.

  Merius's eyes opened. "But I don't remember any of this," he pleaded. "All I remember is jumping off the parapet, the jolt of the glider catching wind, and then the air rushing by me, the weightlessness, the blur of stones in the river walls . . . I felt close to God, like the bishop says we're supposed to feel when we pray. Then suddenly I was up on the parapet, naked and shivering, and . . ." A wild light flashed in his eyes, and he jerked his face from my grasp and sprang off the bed. "I don't believe this," he yelled, pacing again. "God damn it, quit lying to me, all of you."

  Mordric was around the foot of the bed so fast I didn't even see him move. He grasped Merius's arm and yanked him around. "Merius, son, listen to me--we're not lying to you." Mordric's voice was low, calm. "I wish we were, but we aren't. Use your considerable gift for logic. How else could you have ended up on the parapet so quickly, uninjured, in the state you were in, unless it was as we say it was? We know what we saw, whether you remember it or not. Now we have to figure out what to do about it."

  Merius stared at him for a tense, silent moment before he finally nodded. "All right, Father. All right." He clumsily patted Mordric's shoulder and then perched stiffly on the edge of the bed, his body hunched, his aura a barely visible wisp of pewter so dark it looked black. I crept up behind him and rubbed his tense muscles with tentative fingers. When he didn't protest, I kneaded his back with more force. Under my ministrations,
his aura slowly brightened and expanded again until he reached over his shoulder to squeeze my hand.

  "Where's the glider anyway?" he asked finally, his voice quiet. "Maybe we should start by retrieving that before someone else finds it."

  "Last I saw, it was floating down the river." Jared stood then and ambled around the bed until he faced Merius. "You want to go, sir, see if it's salvageable?"

  "All right." Merius clapped his palms on his knees and rose, my hands sliding from his shoulders.

  "Before you leave this chamber, Merius, I want you to promise me something," Mordric said. He was sitting in his desk chair, his hand over his eyes as if he had a headache.

  "What? If you think Jared or I intend to say a word of this to anyone, even Rankin . . ."

  "For God's sake, no. I know you better than that," Mordric spat as if he uttered an insult. He lowered his hand and glared at Merius. "Promise me you're never flying that infernal contraption again. First you fractured your arm and now you, you . . ." he broke off as he took a swig from his hip flask. "Just promise me, all right?"

  "Father, we're all a bit . . . unsettled. Perhaps we should discuss this later?" Merius's tone was smooth, his aura an opaque gray. I narrowed my eyes at him, my lips pursed. He pointedly ignored my expression, avoided my gaze. He had no intention of discussing anything later. He was already trying to stuff this incident away in the cellar of his mind--even though he thought he had me blocked, small chinks of his thoughts slipped through, enough that I kept picturing trunks with slamming lids and keys twisting in their locks.