by Joy Nash
“Surely this is sorcery,” Igraine whispered.
“No. It is Light magic. Come. There is no time to lose.”
“Perhaps…perhaps I should not go. Perhaps it is wrong…”
Breena’s patience with the woman’s weakness of spirit had reached its end. “Would you rather remain,” she hissed, “and die?”
Whatever color was left in Igraine’s face drained away. “I—”
“Come. There is no time to argue. We are going.” Breena all but dragged the duchess the last few steps to the grass.
The crowd on the ground had pressed as close to the combatants as the soldiers guarding the edge of the field would allow. With her lookaway spell firmly in place, Breena ducked behind the spectators and urged Igraine to the far corner of the field. She tried desperately to ignore the gasps and groans of the crowd as she urged Igraine toward freedom. She did not see Rhys, but she had no doubt he was near.
She rounded the last of the standing spectators just as a collective roar erupted from the throng. She spun about, catching Igraine by the arm as the duchess fell against her. Gareth was down. Hugh loomed over him, sword raised.
A cry tore from her lips as Hugh’s arm slashed. Her heart missed a beat as Gareth rolled. Hugh’s sword thudded into the dirt, missing Gareth by a hairsbreadth. Gareth—his right arm limp, his tunic soaked with blood—staggered to his feet and faced his foe.
Dear Goddess. He was not going to surrender.
The crowd sensed it as well. “To the death!” a voice shouted.
Instantly, the throng took up the cry. “To the death!”
A hand caught her arm. “Breena.” Rhys suddenly loomed over her. “What are you doing? Run!”
She stared at him. “By the gods, Rhys! Why did you not tell Gareth of our plan?”
Rhys’s gaze cut to Igraine, then back to Breena. “I did tell him. He refused to withdraw from the tournament nonetheless. The idiot thought to protect you if I failed.”
“To the death!”
“He’s not going to surrender! He’s going to be killed.”
Rhys’s jaw clenched. “Then that is his choice.”
“No!” She resisted Rhys’s tug on her arm. “Rhys, we cannot let Gareth die because of me! Do something.”
His gray eyes bored into hers as the frenzied chants grew louder. “What, Breena? What would you have me do?”
“I don’t know. Cast another illusion. On the field. Give Gareth the advantage.”
“Illusions take time to weave, and concentration to maintain. The spell in the duke’s booth is difficult enough to hold. I can’t create another at the same time.”
Hugh slashed. Gareth leaped backward, too late. Hugh’s sword sliced Gareth’s tunic, gouging the mail shirt beneath.
Breena gripped Rhys’s shoulder. “You must do something. You must! Could you…could you use deep magic?”
Rhys spit out a curse that made Igraine flinch. “Are you insane? Dafyd will sense it.”
“And he will be distracted by it. You’ll save Gareth, and we will get away while Dafyd is trying to figure out what happened.”
“What about our escape? If I cast deep magic now, I will not be able to cover our flight.”
“I can do it,” Breena said. “My magic is strong enough. Please, Rhys! You cannot let Gareth die.”
“This is madness.” He dragged a hand down his face. “All right. I will try. If you go. Now.” He shoved her in the direction of the oaks. “Run. Stay with the horses and do not let your lookaway spell drop.”
“Thank you,” Breena breathed.
“Thank me when it is over,” Rhys muttered. “Now, go!”
Breena lurched toward the shelter of the trees. But Igraine, too long unused to activity, could not keep up the pace. Her slippered foot caught in a rut. Breena grabbed the duchess’s arm just in time to prevent a tumble into the mud.
She glanced back at the field. Hugh had dropped one weapon; he stood with his second sword aloft, both hands wrapped around the hilt. Gareth was on his knees before him, struggling to rise.
The crowd was wild. “To the death! To the death!”
“No!” Breena shouted. “Surrender, you idiot!”
Oh, where was Rhys? Breena could not see him. But the fine hairs on the back of her neck were tingling. His magic was gathering.
Igraine screamed as Hugh’s sword fell. Rhys’s spell struck in the same instant. Gareth slid to one side, as if a giant hand had moved him. Sir Hugh’s sword missed its mark. The blade plunged into the earth, sinking all the way to its crosspiece.
The spectators howled. Gareth staggered to his feet, sword in hand. A burst of unnatural energy renewed his charge. Hugh gripped the hilt of his buried sword. Muscles bulging, he tried to heave it from the ground.
It would not budge. Abandoning the weapon, Hugh lunged for another discarded sword, which lay on the ground nearby. Gareth reached the weapon first, and kicked it away. Hugh fell over backward. Gareth planted his boot on Hugh’s chest and would not let him rise.
The tip of Gareth’s spatha pressed at the base of Hugh’s throat.
“To the death! To the death!”
Hugh lay supine, chest heaving, arms spread in surrender. For one dreadful moment, Breena thought Gareth might run him through. Her breath left her lungs in a whoosh when Gareth lifted his sword and stepped back.
“I accept your surrender!” he shouted.
Breena heaved a sigh of relief. “Come,” she said, taking Igraine’s arm. “We must be off.”
A cool hand slipped under her elbow. Startled, she looked up, to find Morfen’s single eye looking down on her.
“Lady Antonia. What are you and Lady Igraine doing so far from the duke’s booth?”
Breena opened her mouth, but no sound emerged. Astonishingly, it was Igraine who answered first.
“The people…” she whispered. “The blood…it overwhelmed me. I wished to return to the castle.”
“The castle is in the other direction, my lady.”
Igraine laid the back of her hand to her forehead. “As are the crowds. I sought to avoid them. I became…disoriented. Lady Antonia came after me.”
Morfen offered his arm. “Then please, allow me to escort you to my lord Gerlois. He is frantic at your absence.” His eyes touched on Breena. “As for Lady Antonia, no doubt she will wish to join her champion on the field.”
Chapter Sixteen
So this was death.
A place beyond Light. Beyond hope. The knowledge that no matter how hard one tried, no matter how long one managed to stave off the inevitable, in the end, every fight was lost.
It was bitter knowledge.
Myrddin had so many regrets. So many things he had not done. So many failures. And yet, he did not know how he might have done anything in his life differently. He had always given all of his heart, and all of himself. If that had not been enough, perhaps the failure lay with his intrinsic human imperfection. Not with his choices, or his actions.
Perhaps.
When the light appeared, sparkling at the edges of his consciousness, at first he did not realize its significance. Then the magic flared, and the hope he had allowed to slip from his grasp came upon him like an avalanche.
Vivian.
He strained to reach her. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not drift closer. A rift separated them. Deep and unfathomable, it could not be crossed. Nor could they both enter. The fissure twisted like a river in a gorge, leading…away. Away from this place of despair.
And then he understood.
Only one soul would make the journey from this void to the human realm. And like so many decisions he had not wanted to make in his long life, the choice had been given into his hands alone.
He did not hesitate.
“Let it be she.”
Breena was to be married at midday. To Sir Hugh.
Gareth was to be executed at dawn.
For sorcery.
Bishop Dafyd had leveled the char
ge. Sir Hugh, upon accepting his defeat, had gone to retrieve the sword he’d sunk into the ground. He could not do it.
Neither could Gareth, nor any of the knights. Much confusion, and more than a few curses, followed. Finally, the master of the castle guards called for shovels and picks. A quartet of brawny men began to dig; dirt was taken away from the hole in buckets. What remained behind brought gasps, then frantic prayers, to the lips of every man and woman present.
The blade of Hugh’s spatha had sunk into the center of a large boulder.
The sword could not be moved. Not by any man, nor even by a team of horses. The iron had fused completely with the stone.
“Sorcery!” Dafyd had roared.
The bishop wasted no time in declaring Gareth the perpetrator of the heinous act. His victory in the contest was declared null, and Gareth was taken into captivity. Breena watched in horror as the young knight’s companions-in-arms stripped him of his weapons and armor. A series of well-placed kicks rendered him limp and groaning.
Two stakes were quickly pounded into the ground, and chains were brought. Breena clung to Igraine as two of Gerlois’s knights hauled Gareth to his feet and secured him between the posts. Duke Gerlois, upon grim consultation with his brother, announced Gareth’s sentence: forty lashes less one at dusk, execution by burning at the stake at dawn.
Numb with shock, Breena looked desperately for Rhys. He was nowhere to be seen. The spell he’d cast would have drained his magic. She hoped it had not done worse than that. Two soldiers bowed low to Igraine, and declared their orders to escort the duchess and her ladies back to the castle. There was nothing for Breena to do but go.
Guilt crushed down on her shoulders. This disaster was her fault! She knew how unpredictable deep magic was. She never should have begged Rhys to cast it. She’d wanted to save Gareth; she had doomed him instead.
Dusk approached. Breena, sick with dread, paced Igraine’s solar. The duchess herself stood at the window, gazing over the castle’s outer wall to the tournament field. Nesta brought the evening meal. Only Lady Bertrice sat down to partake of it.
“To think,” Gerlois’s sister said between bites. “A sorcerer lurking among the duke’s knights! God only knows what manner of evil the man has perpetrated without our knowledge.”
“Dermot says ’tis certain Sir Gareth is the cause of the soured wine he found in the cellars,” Nesta offered with an air of horrified awe. “And Cook insists he set maggots into the carcass of a pig that was slaughtered just yesterday.”
“No doubt the brute caused the fever that killed that stable boy three nights past,” Bertrice declared. “Dear Christos! My blood runs cold, Antonia! Just think of what hellish perversions the man would have forced on you as his wife.”
Distant cheers drifted through the tower windows. Nesta moved to Igraine’s side and peered out.
“They’ve begun the flogging, then,” Lady Bertrice said with satisfaction.
“Aye, they must have done,” Nesta said. “Though with the glare of the torches on the field, and the men crowded ’round the stakes, ’tis difficult to make out.”
Breena thought she would be ill. She wanted to turn away, but some horrible compulsion drove her to the window. Hugging herself tightly, she joined Igraine and Nesta. As the maid had noted, the distance and angle of their view hid the flogging. But the eager cheers of the crowd, as they counted off the blows, were all too audible.
When it was done, and the throng had thinned, Breena was left with a clear view of Gareth sagging in his bonds. Dear gods. He looked half dead already. She touched the window, as if she could make contact with him from a distance.
She cried out as a sharp crack split the glass under her finger. A jagged fissure shot across the pane. Breena snatched her hand back and stared. Another image from her nightmare.
She thought of the dawn, and shuddered.
“Tell me again,” Trent said seriously, “why this is a good idea.”
“Because you and Howell are two men,” Rhys explained patiently. Simple logic appealed best to a drunken sot. “And there are presently only two men guarding Sir Gareth.”
“Ah.” Then, “And tell me again what you will be doing whilst Howell and I distract the guards?”
“I will be freeing Sir Gareth.”
“And why might ye be doin’ that?” slurred Howell. “Damn me, but I’ve forgotten.”
Why? Because Rhys would never be able to face Breena again if he did not stop Gareth’s execution. That is, if the poor bastard was even still alive. He might not be. His flogging had been horrific, enough to curdle Rhys’s stomach with the memory of his own long-ago whipping.
“Because Sir Gareth is clearly innocent,” Rhys said. “It was Sir Hugh, after all, who sank the sword into the stone. Hugh is the sorcerer. Not Gareth.”
“But ’twas Sir Gareth who won the contest!” protested Trent. “Surely he is the sorcerer. Bishop Dafyd said as much.”
Rhys looked right and left and lowered his voice. “If Sir Gareth were truly a sorcerer, do you think he could be held with rusty chains and two half-witted guards?”
Howell thunked his mug on the table and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “‘Tis true, that. Dafyd is a fool. Rhys is right. Gareth is falsely accused. We canna let an innocent man die, Trent.”
“But what of Sir Hugh?” Trent demanded. “Is the man to go free? Or shall we catch him and chain him in Gareth’s place?” He grimaced. “With, perhaps, stronger chains and more guards?”
Rhys would have laughed at that, if the situation weren’t so grave. “Who is to say any magic was involved at all? Sir Hugh is a beast of a man. I’ve no doubt he could pull whole trees from the ground if he had a mind to. No doubt he could easily thrust a sword into rock.”
A sober Trent would have laughed this reasoning over the cliffs and into the sea. But drunk as he was, the small man greeted Rhys’s daft theory with hearty approval. “Aye, and consider ’twas Dafyd who accused the poor bastard. The bloody bishop sees demons under every rock and stone.”
Rhys stood. “So we are agreed, then.”
Howell blinked up at him. “Agreed to what, man?”
“To rescuing Sir Gareth.”
Trent’s brow furrowed. “Did we say we would do that?”
“Aye,” Rhys said, his patience growing thin. “We did.”
“Oh,” Trent said. “That’s all right, then.”
Howell heaved himself to his feet, and nearly lost his balance. He gripped the back of his chair. “Best get on with it, before I fall face-first in the mud.” He grinned. “Or sober up.”
At last. Rhys had waited all night for his magic to recover from his earlier deep magic spell. Dawn would be upon them soon. If they were to rescue Gareth before his execution, they had to act now.
Howell squinted down at Rhys. “Have we a plan?”
“We do,” Rhys confirmed.
“Ah.” He ruminated for a moment, then asked, “Is it a good one?”
“We shall see.”
Trent drained his mug and leaped to his feet. Even stinking drunk, the nimble acrobat had no trouble finding his balance. Howell was less steady. Rhys caught him by the arm. If the giant fell, he’d hit the ground with the force of an oak.
Rhys herded the pair onto the hill overlooking the tournament field. He shifted the strap of his pack while he considered his quarry below. Gareth’s arms were spread wide, his manacled wrists chained at shoulder height to twin posts. His naked back, a bloody mass of flayed skin, was enough to turn any man’s stomach. Gareth had lost consciousness during the flogging. He’d sagged in his bonds like a dead man most of the night. Now, two hours before dawn, his head had begun to roll from side to side.
A short distance in front of the wounded knight, a merry campfire, shielded by a leather windbreak, crackled. The two soldiers charged with guarding the prisoner crouched on the ground, throwing dice.
Trent peered around Rhys. Wincing, he brought his hand up to shie
ld his eyes. “The moon has set, but by God, that fire! It gives off too damn much light. We’ll be seen.”
“You want to be seen,” Rhys told him. “Don’t you remember? That’s part of the plan. You and Howell are to distract the guards, while I free Sir Gareth.”
“Oh,” Trent said. “I forgot.”
“Let’s get on with it, then,” Howell said, starting down the hill.
Trent grabbed the hem of Howell’s shirt. “Wait just a randy cock’s instant!” He looked at Rhys. “What are we to say to the brutes?”
“Anything. It does not matter. Just keep them occupied.”
Howell nodded sagely. “Just as I thought.”
“Go,” Rhys said.
The pair went without further protest, staggering down the hill into the wind. Rhys crept after them. Crouching just beyond the ring of torchlight, he turned his focus inward. He could not afford a mistake. Gareth’s life depended on the strength of the illusion he would cast.
Trent and Howell’s forms blurred. Howell’s hulking figure became slender, almost willowy. Trent’s body stretched taller. The gaits of both men smoothed. Their clothing changed. Their hips rounded.
The last detail Rhys added to his illusion was a pair of very large breasts for each man. He had to make absolutely sure the guards did not look away.
His lips twitched as his friends glided toward the guards. Howell murmured a greeting. Whatever remark he’d truly uttered fell on the guards’ ears as a suggestive purr. Rhys called a lookaway spell for himself and made his move.
The keys to Gareth’s chains were attached to one of the guards’ belts. He would have to pick the lock, then. A tricky business, but not impossible. He kept a shard of iron in his pack for just such emergencies. He palmed it as he approached Gareth from behind.
Meanwhile, a farce played out at the campfire.
“Well, well. What have we here?” The taller soldier smirked. His gaze raked Howell from head to toe and back again.
Gareth’s shredded back was a mess of dried blood and oozing fluids. A low moan issued from the knight’s throat. Rhys crouched in his shadow.