by Nora Roberts
The wharf appeared deserted when she finally reached it, the wind screaming in her ears. A lone ferryboat bobbed on the maddened water, tied with rope to the pier, and she eyed it warily.
It was widely known that wizards didn’t cross water well, and she suspected that witches wouldn’t fare much better.
Though she’d never traveled by sea before, the very sight of the roiling water, blue-black in the gloom and crested with foaming white, made her stomach surge and dip.
So engrossed was she in studying the sea that she didn’t sense someone approaching her from behind until a heavy hand clamped down upon her shoulder.
Startled, she spun around and gazed into the crafty eyes of a burly man. The ferrymaster.
He smelled of brine and the sea and his eyes were as pale and fierce as the cresting waves.
“How much to cross?” Gwynna shouted over the wind.
He shook his head.
“I must cross! What is the fee for passage?”
“You don’t want to cross tonight. Nor tomorrow night,” he yelled in a booming tone. “A month from now, she’ll calm a bit. No one crosses when she’s like this.”
“I can’t wait. I’ll pay you handsomely to take me now.”
“To Org? Or south to Alyngil?”
His eyes glinted. Whether it was with malice or greed or suspicion, she couldn’t say, but their expression sent a chill like an icicle scraping down her back.
“To Org. Now!” Gwynna shouted.
The ferrymaster smiled widely, showing broken teeth.
“Ten coins of gold and you’ll have me own boat for yourself,” he said, stretching out the open palm of a gnarled hand.
Peering over his shoulder, Gwynna saw a smaller boat tied to the planked wharf. It bobbed wildly on the water in a way that made her stomach jerk.
“I want payment first—you’ll drown before you reach the Valley of Org,” the ferrymaster said off-handedly. “Or you’ll be killed, a tender thing like you, before you even climb the rocks. There are Slegors in the water, and Rock Trolls at the other shore. So ten coins now and be off to yer death. Me, I’m ready for me supper.”
She gazed beyond him at the small mud hut, which looked like it would be washed away by the sea, if not blown apart by the wind. Wood smoke wisped from the chimney, only to be snatched across the sky.
“You won’t take me? I’ll offer twenty coins!”
His grin widened. She tried not to stare at those chipped and yellowed teeth.
“I want my supper and my ten coins. The Slegors will have me if I try to cross tonight. What’ll it be, miss?”
Gwynna hesitated. For a moment she wished herself back in the vast, sturdy confines of Blackthorne keep—even better, at her own beautiful Castle of Callemore, amidst the swans floating upon the placid lake, or the gardens where songbirds played amongst the branches of apricot trees.
But she had chosen this path and now she must follow it as quickly as may be. The longer the delay, the stronger chance that Lise would die. How long could she survive as an empty, decaying shell?
“I’ll have your boat. Here’s my ten coins and an extra one, as well, if you’ll give me a club or sword. I suspect I will need more than my dagger to fight off the . . . what did you call them?”
“Slegors.” He cocked an eyebrow, looking amused. “A little thing like you? Well, I’ve no sword, but you’ll have the oars for clubs, much good will they do you. And if you get to the other side, remember, the Rock Trolls lurk beneath. Not that even a sword would be worth spit against the likes of them.”
So much for encouragement, Gwynna thought. When she’d counted the coins into his broad, scarred hand, he set about untying the boat for her as she leaped down into it and grabbed the oars.
The pitching sea foamed around her as the ferrymaster released the last wet length of rope. The boat bucked like a wild horse and careened away from the wharf.
At first she tried to steer, rowing with the oars until the muscles in her arms and shoulders screamed with pain. But the sea had a mind of its own and it pulled her sideways, instead of across. A horrible sickness came over her, and Gwynna swallowed great gulps of salt air, trying to fight the convulsions of her stomach, even as she fought the waves and the lashing water and the cold.
Suddenly, a small, ferret-nosed creature lunged up from the water and tried to jump into the boat. Then another, and another, and a shrill shrieking pierced the air as they bared their teeth and smashed against the boat, trying to leap in, even as their snakelike tongues lashed out, dripping with venom.
“Get back!” Gwynna shouted, thrusting at them with an oar. She had lost all control of the boat, it bobbed with a mind of its own and she could no longer even see from which direction she’d come, nor determine which direction she was headed. She concentrated instead on fighting back the Slegors as they surrounded her, bobbing, hissing, springing toward her as she grew steadily more exhausted by the fight.
“Arameltor sumn purdonnte!” she gasped at last and saw a shield of smoke rise about the sides of the boat. The Slegors slammed against it and their fins dissolved.
One by one, they fell back, sinking into the sea in bits, their hissing disintegrating to a low and finally extinguished murmur.
But the boat still rocked violently, wrenching out of all control. Both oars were torn from her hands and she watched as they were carried away on the waves. Clinging to the sides of the boat, drenched and gasping, Gwynna used every ounce of her strength to keep from being flung from it.
But a moment later, as a gale swelled out of nowhere and the sea rose up in a fury, the boat smashed in two and she was flung with the wooden remnants into the sea.
She sank, pushed upward, kicking frantically, and then sank again. Waves washed over her, the sea sucked her down and she couldn’t find her way up . . . she was going to drown . . . the sea closed around her, a watery tomb, and the cold numbed her bones as she sank, struggled, sank in a desperate dance that could only end in death . . .
A hand grabbed her arm, wrenched. She was up, pain screaming in her lungs as the steely fingers of an unseen force hauled her up, up, up . . .
She lay numb and freezing, shivering violently on the floor of a vessel.
Gazing down at her was a dark hulking figure, blurry in the fog and damp.
But she recognized the voice that spoke above the roar of the sea.
His voice. Keir of Blackthorne.
“Damned idiot woman. I should have let you sink to the bottom and end up food for the Slegors. What kind of a foul spell have you put on me?”
Then she knew nothing but the cold hard kiss of darkness as the blackness rushed over her and swallowed her up.
Chapter 5
“DRINK this. All of it. Don’t fight me now, just drink it!”
Gwynna twisted her head from side to side, but couldn’t escape the warm liquid Keir poured between her lips. She choked a little, gasped and swallowed. Wine. It warmed her throat and woke her up all in the same instant.
“You.”
She gazed in shock at Keir of Blackthorne as memory rushed back—the Slegors, the boat, the icy water . . .
“You’re here; it wasn’t a dream,” she muttered. “You saved my life.”
His grim expression only deepened. He was shivering nearly as much as she was, and she quickly realized that both of their garments were soaking wet.
“Where are we?” she said, sitting up. But that was a mistake. The world spun, colors and shapes swirling in confusion.
“Easy.” His hands gripped her shoulders, steadying her. “You’re far too reckless and impulsive, Princess, for your own good.”
“So Antwa is forever telling me.”
The cold bit like a whip, and Gwynna’s lips trembled so much she could barely speak. “Where . . . are we? What is this place?”
“We are where you wished to be.” He sounded disgusted. “In Org. And this place is a tunnel. I need to find my way out though, find some more wood
or you’ll freeze to death—”
“Oh. Yes. We need fire.” Gwynna nodded, lifted an icy hand, and suddenly a tiny fire of twigs and sticks that glowed near the tunnel wall burst into a crackling bed of warmth and flame. The heat stretched out to them, seeping through wet clothes and chilled skin.
“That was quite useful of you,” Keir muttered. He released her then and Gwynna felt a sensation of loss. For a moment, with his big hands on her shoulders, she’d felt oddly comforted. It was strange, considering she’d nearly died and was about to venture into even greater danger, but Keir of Blackthorne’s presence was an unexpected gift, and his touch had felt oddly reassuring.
He saved your life, she told herself, glancing around her at the dank low walls of the tunnel. He scooped you from the sea. That is why.
Keir moved away to yank a thick wool blanket from a sack. He returned and draped it roughly around her.
“Get out of those clothes. They must dry by the fire before we go on. You can wrap yourself in this.”
“And you?”
He shrugged and began stripping off his sodden cloak, then his tunic and mail. He set his sword down, his muscles rippling in the firelight. Through the flickering glow, she tried not to stare at the broadness of his chest, dark with hair. From beneath her lashes, she noted the sinewy rope of muscles in his arms, and the white scar that cut in bright relief across his swarthy right shoulder.
Her gaze dipped lower and she saw that he was long-legged and lean, his body powerful beyond measure. He wore only his underhose, so much was revealed; certainly more than she had ever seen before of any man. She felt a purely feminine heat flood her cheeks, a heat that had nothing to do with the fire she had made. It came from a small fire that had caught flame inside of her.
Keir of Blackthorne came toward her. “Your turn.”
Her fingers fumbled at first, but she quickly recovered her composure, and when her cloak and gown and shift had been spread before the fire and she herself sat near it, wrapped in the blanket, she tried not to stare at the magnificent man sharing this tunnel and this fire with her.
But she may as well have tried not to breathe, for the rock-hard strength and masculinity emanating from him dominated the tunnel and filled her mind.
“We’ll hide here until morning, then go back. I forced the ferrymaster, under threat of death and mutilation, to swear he’d come for us tomorrow—”
“Come for us? I’m not going back. Not until I’ve found Ondrea.”
Those wolf-gray eyes narrowed on her. “How did I know you’d say that?” he bit out.
Seating himself beside her on the hard floor of the tunnel, he wasted no time commandeering some of the blanket. If he noticed her shock at sitting beneath the wool covering alongside him, both of them nearly naked, he didn’t give any sign of it.
“You want to die, don’t you?” he asked scornfully.
“Of course not. I want my sister to live.”
Keir was silent, staring into the fire. It showed him nothing, but it was better than staring into this temptresses’s face. With her midnight hair unbound, tumbling in damp curls down her back, her sensuous lips pink with life, and those exquisitely brilliant eyes a stark contrast to skin like fresh cream, she was everything lovely in a woman—and more. He was well aware of the lush curves of her body, of the sweet beauty of those breasts. But he told himself it was a spell that filled his mind with thoughts of her. A spell that had drawn him to leave his keep and fish her out of the sea, and to spend the night here back in Org, in a worm’s tunnel, waiting for any number of foul monsters to descend upon him—upon both of them.
“I suppose I should thank you for saving my life,” she said at last. “Why did you come after me?”
“You know damned well. But it’s wearing off. I won’t stay here with you once morning comes.”
“What are you talking about? What’s wearing off?”
“The spell. Tell the truth. You cast one before you left and it hit full power by midmorning. Don’t bother denying it.”
Her eyes widened. She shook her head, and those luxuriant curls flew about her face. “I cast no spell on you. I have no need of your help.”
“Yes, I could see that when you were sinking to the bottom of the sea.”
She burrowed her chin deeper into the blanket. “I don’t cross water well. And that sea was like nothing I’ve ever encountered before—”
“It’s only the beginning, Princess.” Keir turned toward her suddenly. Beneath the blanket she felt the shift of his body, and a spark seemed to jump through her veins.
“Worse will come,” he warned. “Much worse.”
She nodded at him, and moistened her lips with her tongue. “I know,” she whispered back. “Do you really think I don’t know?”
Keir sucked in his breath. She was afraid. He saw it in her eyes. The fear, the doubt, the cold dread that he too had known the first time he crossed into this evil land.
But she was persevering. As he had.
She doesn’t know what lies in wait . . .
“There’s nothing I can say to convince you to turn back, is there?”
He saw the answer in her eyes even before she shook her head.
“You were kind to fish me out of the sea, as you’ve so charmingly put it,” Gwynna said. “But you don’t need to accompany me any farther.”
Her teeth weren’t chattering quite as much now, and the warmth emanating from his body along with the thick blanket and the fire was easing the chill. She had to resist the urge to lean into him, against him, for comfort and warmth. “If you’d only tell me how you got out alive last time I’ll never ask a single thing more—”
“Do you really want to know?”
His face had changed. And his voice. They were harsh now, tight and bitter. And in his eyes she saw something that made her breath hitch.
Shame.
“I do want to know,” she whispered, and impulsively, beneath the blanket, she touched his arm.
He recoiled as if she’d scratched him, and his head jerked sideways, his eyes searing into hers.
“I crawled.”
“What?”
“You heard me, Princess. I crawled.” His lips twisted. “I’ve seen my share of dangers—I’ve faced a dozen armies on the battlefield, killed three soldiers at once with a single sweep of my sword, slain trolls and dragons from Weyre without a blink. But when I faced the evil assembled against me here in this cursed valley, I ran.”
Keir snorted. “Or tried to. It smote me, the darkness here, the utter blood-curdling evil. It seeped into me in ways you cannot yet imagine. And I crawled out on my belly, whimpering and blind, with soar-bats nipping at me, and Ondrea’s Black Knights mocking me. They let me go in the end,” he finished in a low tone. “Broken, vanquished. Knowing I’d failed. It was more painful by far than any death she could have concocted.”
His bleak eyes stared into hers and in their depths she saw pain, grief and the ravages of defeat.
“I swore to avenge my family, to make Ondrea pay for what she’d done, but instead I crawled out, a coward, too weak and lowly to withstand the power of this place, much less fight it.”
He turned and caught her shoulders beneath the blanket.
“If you don’t want to be broken in the same way, you’ll turn back now. You can’t succeed. No good can last here. The evil is too strong, don’t you see? Spare yourself the pain, the shame—”
“You have no cause for shame.” She was vibrantly aware of his strong hands on her shoulders, of their warmth and weight, and of his nearness. It seemed that they were cocooned somehow apart from the world, apart even from Org. All she felt beneath this blanket was the nearness of his body, the pain emanating from a beaten soul.
It must have been a dreadful manner of evil to bring down such a man, she knew, but even this knowledge didn’t shake her own resolve. It frightened her, it made her heart quicken and dread prickle her spine, but it did not alter her determination to do
what she had come to Org to do.
Yet, gazing into Keir’s eyes, into that hard-planed, handsome face so tormented with shame and regret, another emotion flowed through her.
Wonder. Wonder that such a man—a warrior, a duke, powerful and angry—could be made to feel such a failure. Wonder that he had yet, even after all that had befallen him, ventured across the Wild Sea to save her, help her, warn her.
“Some evil is too strong for mortals to fight.” She spoke softly. “To escape its snare is victory enough.”
“It was no victory—not for me.” His voice was sharp. “And not for you.”
His hands still gripped her shoulders. He couldn’t seem to let her go.
He had known before that she was brave, when she’d stolen into his keep, defied his knights. When she’d set out alone for this wretched place. But now his admiration hitched a notch higher. She understood the danger and still, she would go on.
“Do you think your magic will save you? It won’t.”
“Perhaps not.” Her words were quiet. “I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.”
Her gaze on his remained steady, unwavering. At last Keir’s hands fell away. He had failed. Failed to visit justice upon the enchantress who had slain his family and failed to convince this beautiful young witch to escape while there was still time.
“Then you’d best sleep while you may,” he said curtly. “Take the blanket. I’ll stand guard.”
“Wake me in a while and I’ll change places with you. You need sleep, too.”
He made no answer, but moved away from her, to sit on the opposite side of the fire, facing the tunnel entrance. He refused to look at her as she wrapped the blanket tightly around her and curled up on the tunnel floor.
Yet, after slumber had overtaken her, when the warmth of the fire had brought color back into her face, and she lay peacefully asleep, the sweep of her dark lashes startling against her fair cheeks, he watched her.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that this Princess of Callemore, an admitted enchantress, had cast a spell on him. Otherwise, how could he explain why he’d told her all that he had? He’d never spoken of what had happened in Org, of how he’d crawled like a worm from the valley. He’d never told a living soul.