Mystic Guardian

by Patricia Rice

  “I’d suggest you let Dylys intimidate you into keeping your mouth shut,” Trystan growled, bending near her ear to impart his message. “Or she’ll feed you to Aelynn without my consent. One does not argue with an Oracle.”

  “Then I shall hope your Oracle is far wiser than you and says sensible things with which I need not argue,” she retorted, hiding her fear by drifting toward the warmth and forcing a distance between them. Her foolish body might enjoy his strength, but she could not rely on a dangerous stranger who had vowed to hold her captive until she appeased his wishes.

  “You have argued with every sensible thing I said.” With that parting remark, her bridegroom left, slamming a wooden door in the rock wall behind her. A bolt grated across it from the outside.

  Iason had already disappeared, she noted with a hint of panic at being locked inside a mountain. She had held some brief hope that the possessor of such a compassionate voice might rescue her, but it seemed none questioned the authority of the old lady.

  She’d rested well, so she wasn’t tired, just very confused, and growing more than a little worried. How had Trystan known to come after her? Exactly what abilities did he possess?

  She studied the fire that had appeared from nowhere and seemed to burn without fuel. If she believed in magic, she’d declare herself bewitched and the whole island ensorcelled.

  She’d lived with the superstition of the villagers all her life and believed none of it. They made up stories to explain the inexplicable. She had heard fishermen talk of seeing an enormous green sea monster herding schools of fish beneath their boats to explain a particularly fine catch—one she’d driven into their nets. She’d been so insulted at the description that she’d refrained from helping them again for a long time. Green sea monster, indeed!

  She’d quit leaving oysters at the parish door after the priest threw her offering back into the ocean, exhorting the devil who had scratched at his door with the temptations of evil.

  Devils and sea monsters didn’t exist. They were just her.

  Somehow, she must outwit these monsters and escape.

  She studied the bowl on the table and chose the familiar cherries over an exotic unknown fruit. The fire quickly dried her sheer shift, but even in her dazed state, she recognized the need for more concealing garments. Locating a long white robe on a wardrobe shelf, she pulled it over her head and belted it with a strip of leather that lay next to it, offering a brief prayer of gratitude to Trystan’s gods—just in case.

  Warmth and food returned some of her energy. Perhaps the distance from her obstinate captor helped also. Her desire for him muted her need to flee. Physical desire was an earthly form of ensorcellment, and more frightening than magic since it was real. She did not wish to fall victim to either. She had to go home.

  She tried the door, but it would neither push nor pull. She opened more cabinets and ran her fingers over shelves in hopes of finding a key or a secret passage.

  She lifted a flaming taper from its holder. Munching on the bread and cheese she’d discovered in a cupboard, she studied the darkened back wall. A narrow aperture led into a Spartan cell with a single bed and a shelf of books. She was a nobleman’s daughter and had had tutors growing up. She could read, but these weren’t in a language she recognized.

  She began a thorough search of the walls, running her hands over rocks and shelves and hunting for any sign of exit. Excitement danced in Mariel’s middle when she slid her hand behind a tapestry and felt a place that was not solid rock. She knew the cliff caves of home well, used them to hide her unorthodox proclivities. Many of them had more than one entrance, if one was daring enough to brave the unknown.

  What did she have to lose?

  Pulling the tapestry back so she could see the wall, she still couldn’t see the opening that she felt. She ran her hand over the stone until her fingers sank into a substance that seemed thick and resilient, much like a jellyfish. For all their translucence, jellyfish were tough creatures, not easily permeable.

  She held up the torch and studied the wall closer. She could only feel the aperture where there seemed to be an outcropping of rock. Her hand did not want to go through, but when she pushed… She could feel normal air on the other side.

  Nothing ventured, nothing gained. She shoved her foot through the invisible aperture. Nothing ate it. The thick jelly-like air rippled up her bare leg beneath the robe when she pressed her knee through. She gritted her teeth against terror when she continued forward, and she felt it ripple across the place between her legs that had throbbed with need hours ago. But the substance did not penetrate. She squeezed through the barrier, holding her breath and letting the thick air touch her head last.

  In seconds, she had passed through to another chamber and lifted the taper on a musty storage room of oddities. Disappointed, she rummaged briefly, having no idea what she sought. It wasn’t as if she could wield a sword or wave a magic wand and escape.

  Odd metal chairs with cushions, and crates of strangely ornamented substances she did not recognize, mixed with dented candle sticks, pots with broken handles, and similar things a careful housekeeper might hope to mend someday. Did anyone even know the chamber existed?

  Examining the walls, Mariel glimpsed a pretty blue light winking at her from a cabinet in a shadowy corner. Climbing over the chairs covered in a material similar to leather, she studied the sealed cabinet with puzzlement. It held no blue on the outside.

  She ran her fingers over the graven metal of the door, looking for a handle and finding none. Just when she was about to turn away, the cabinet opened of its own accord.

  The blue winked again. This time, she could see the object through a crack in a wooden partition. She pushed aside a moldering scabbard, pressed along the old wood, and finally opened the back of the cupboard to examine a battered pewter vessel that did not seem valuable enough to have been deliberately hidden so much as forgotten.

  It possessed the bowl and pedestal of a chalice, but it was not formed like any chalice she had ever seen. The bowl was too wide for easy drinking, and the stem was too stubby for a man’s hand, although hers wrapped around it neatly. The foot of the chalice was smaller than the bowl. She couldn’t imagine it balanced well when filled.

  But the pretty blue stones winked merrily in the torch light, and it seemed a shame to hide them away in this dark hole. Perhaps she could use the bowl as a weapon of sorts. It wasn’t heavy enough to bash out a man’s brains, but the pewter would leave a nice dent in his head.

  With the partition closed up again and the vessel tucked in her belt, Mariel felt invincible. Somehow, she knew there was a door out of here, if she just looked in the right way.

  She lifted the torch to shine on the back wall, searching for the exit. She didn’t know how much time she had left.

  A breeze fluttered an old cloak lying over a chest in the far corner.

  There should be no breeze inside a mountain—unless there was an opening to the outside.

  Triumphant, Mariel tugged the chest away from the rocky wall. Using the torch, she examined every inch until she found a crack just along the bottom where rocks had shifted, perhaps in an earth tremor. She might very well get stuck in anything so narrow, and rot here until she was naught but bones. Or until she got hungry and cursed Trystan loudly enough to bring someone looking for her.

  Her luck had held thus far, and something beyond her normal common sense urged her on. She would question the urge later, when she was safe at home, preparing a hot meal for Francine. Then she might well go mad pondering her peculiar adventure.

  Propping the taper in an old lantern holder, she slid her feet through the crack first. A rush of chilly air caressed her toes. Excitement rippled beneath her skin, but she’d learned to be cautious exploring the winding channels carved by sea and wind. This crack could drop into a mile of nothingness. Or straight into the volcano’s maw.

  She pulled her feet back, found a rusted mug, and dropped it through the hole. She h
eard a splash almost instantly.

  Water. Perfect. She had reached the sea.

  Eager now, she poked her head through—salt air greeted her and she breathed deeply of that blessed scent. Freedom!

  Within minutes, she was standing knee deep in salt water in a crevasse jutting into the mountain from the sea. Remembering her borrowed clothing, she set the chalice aside, unfastened the leather belt, and tugged the confining robes over her head.

  Now what? Trystan had said the reefs would eat her alive. She’d arrived on the rope hanging from his ship. She couldn’t expect the same escape now.

  She debated leaving the old chalice behind, but the blue stones sparkled cheerfully, as if begging for the light of day after years of abandonment. Deciding she deserved some reward for being kidnapped, imprisoned, and threatened with death, she knotted the ugly thing into the leather belt and tied the belt to her waist.

  The torch light flared momentarily through the crevasse, as if caught by a wind. In that momentary flare, she saw a small dory.

  Perfect. She could row past the coral before swimming home.

  ***

  “Unless your mermaiden has a skill for invisibility and makes herself known shortly, you are in very deep trouble, young man.”

  Trystan’s heart froze at the tone of Dylys’s voice after she entered her sanctuary with the first light of dawn. She’d scolded him enough when he was a bold child who dared climb the peaks to explore Aelynn’s eagle nests. She’d punished him for a week when he’d led Iason to do the same. She had never sounded so coldly furious as this. What could he possibly have done to anger the island’s leader? He’d done everything she’d asked.

  He stepped past her into the room where he’d left Mariel. Last night, Iason had locked the outer door so even Trystan couldn’t enter. With the Oracle’s arrival, he’d been confident he would find Mariel peeling fruit for her breakfast and aiming murderous glares at him.

  He didn’t expect to find a cold and empty room. Even the fire in the hearth had gone out—leaving him cold all over.

  He rushed past the table to the back room where Dylys waited in a bedchamber that was also empty and untouched. Disasters like this did not happen to him! How could one wretched waif destroy all he had worked so hard to accomplish? “How could she leave with none knowing of it?” he shouted.

  “That is the purpose of this place,” Dylys explained as if to a dense student. “I come here for privacy from all your passing thoughts and to think my own without intrusion.”

  In other words, even Lissandra couldn’t hear Mariel’s thoughts in here. Or “see” her actions.

  “Even if there is some way out, she can’t escape the reefs and my shield!” Trystan hated the note of panic in his shout. He should be relieved that Mariel had decided her own fate and was no longer his problem.

  Except that she would always be his problem, a voice said in the back of his head.

  “I assume the gods wish you to find out if she can,” Dylys said dryly, speaking to both his thoughts and words. “Only people Aelynn trusts should be able to leave these rooms. Until you know her fate, there is naught you can do here.”

  Her statement tolled a death knell to his hopes if he’d ever heard one.

  Reluctant to believe Mariel could escape so easily, Trystan ran his hands over the back wall. If the room was protected as Dylys said, then there might be a force shield. It took him several minutes to locate the opening to the secret storage room, but he found a familiar barrier that allowed him to push through. The abandoned taper and billowing tapestry on the distant wall said it all—although how Mariel could have found a concealed entrance, much less passed Dylys’s barrier without a ring, was as mysterious as her survival of his shield.

  “She should never have been able to access this chamber,” Dylys complained. “She should never even have known of its existence.”

  “Now you know how I feel,” Trystan grumbled, glancing around to be certain there was no place she could have hidden. He was certain he would have sensed her if she were here, but he looked anyway. The torch revealed no more than a jumble of dusty junk. No one knew precisely where Dylys kept the island’s treasures—the chalice and the sword that were the reason for the island’s existence. The Oracle might even transport the sacred objects from place to place. But if they were in here, they would be disguised. Mariel wouldn’t know what they were. Besides, she wasn’t a thief. She hadn’t even taken their clothes last time she’d left.

  Dropping to his knees, he gazed into the dark crack revealed by the chest.

  A white robe waved in the breeze below, held down by a rock so it wouldn’t blow away. Again, she’d left behind everything given to her.

  Locked out, he’d slept in a hammock not yards from the cave until Dylys arrived at dawn. Mariel could have been gone for hours.

  Trystan felt the cold shock of Aelynn’s demands as he realized he was not master of his fate. Mariel’s escape was a threat to all he knew and loved, a breach of his duties as guardian.

  “I didn’t know your sanctuary led to the sea, or I’d not have left her alone,” he said bitterly, rising to his feet and striding toward an entrance more suited to his size. He’d known Mariel was slender, but only a slippery fish could have slid through that crack. Perhaps slippery fish could slide through all their impenetrable barriers. Shouldn’t Iason have known of the exit?

  If so, why had Iason betrayed him? Pondering the logic of an unfathomable mystic was beyond Trystan’s capability at the moment, as rage and doubt ravaged him.

  “I am sorry, Trystan,” Dylys said with grave regret, following him to the entrance of her sanctuary. “I can call a council if you ask it, but we both know what they will say.”

  They would say no one was allowed to leave Aelynn without a ring of silence. He had to fetch Mariel back, dead or alive.

  The empty altar in the temple gleamed in the dawn, mocking him. There would be no rites or consummation today. The ring he’d fetched from home burned a hole in his pocket.

  “If she’s alive, she will go straight to her home.” At least he knew where to find her. The big “if” was in whether she would survive the journey.

  He’d lived three decades without knowing the heights of passion or the depths of despair, until Mariel had come along. In the twenty-four hours he’d known her, she’d caused him more grief, hope, and frustration than he’d experienced in a lifetime. He wanted to strangle her and make love to her, get rid of her and have a child with her. He’d not understood that an amacara could affect more than his body, and he wasn’t at all certain that he wanted to spend the rest of his life in this emotional cyclone. Stoic Lissandra was far more his type.

  Standing there in the dawn’s light, fingers clenched into fists of frustration, Trystan tried telling himself that if he found Mariel’s body floating in the passage, he would be free to return to Lissandra and the stable future he’d always envisioned.

  He should be grateful that he might return to normal. But when he imagined seagulls pecking clean Mariel’s elegant bones, or sharks nibbling her vibrant entrails, his soul cried out in horror. Even without the vows, she had sunk her hooks into him.

  With a roar of futility, Trystan flung the ring that matched his own into the temple altar—the altar where he should be taking Mariel now, where he should be creating their child. He had spent this night picturing how he would take her, and how she would respond. That image had been all that had helped him through the night.

  The altar spit his ring back out. The band of gold and opal rattled across the stones.

  “You cannot come back without her or her body,” Dylys reminded him. “You have less than half a moon cycle before you must rebuild the shield or transfer your power to another.”

  But all Trystan could hear was the wail of a gull overhead and the haunting cry of a lost dolphin below.

  Smoke twisted from Aelynn’s peak. Rain pattered in the sand, creating ripples at his feet.

  “Sh
ould you fail at your task, you will be greatly missed,” Dylys said sadly. “Your nephew, Kerry, is young yet, but he has potential. We will have to transfer your guardian powers to him.”

  Banished, like Murdoch. Forbidden ever to walk the sands of his home again, to argue with his sister, play with his nieces and nephew, sail with his friends. Waylan would no doubt eat his goats.

  Worse yet, if he could not return with her before the full moon, his shield—all that he was—would be taken from him.

  Anguish howled through the emptiness within. The gods had surely turned their backs on him.

  Seven

  “I’ll need a smaller ship that won’t be missed if I must stay off Aelynn.” Trystan faced his friends with resignation. “I cannot involve anyone else in this journey. Is the sloop repaired? I’ll trade whatever you think will make a fair price for her.”

  Waylan owned the sloop. When he was not aboard a ship, he was mending or building one. His was a restless nature not given to leisure. Unlike most of the island’s other bachelors, he lived in the shack his Aelynn father had built for his Crossbreed mother near the sea. An amacara who produced a weathermaker had been too valuable to leave on the Outside.

  “Your ship is more than fair recompense,” Waylan agreed without inflection. “We’ll trade back when you return.”

  No one wished to estimate the chances of his returning. Those given to living in the Outside World seldom came back. The reasons were as varied as the seas, although death was often the final reason. Aelynners did not survive long in a primitive and violent world where their principles did not allow them to use their uncanny gifts, for good reason—witch hunts were unpleasant and often harmed the innocent, including the families they established there.

  “Don’t eat my goats,” Trystan warned. “They’re valuable for their milk and make lousy meat.”

  “Then come back for them,” Waylan growled, incapable of showing his feelings elsewise.