by L. K. Rigel
“No, believe me, Sir Ross! We don’t have to talk.” He didn’t know what he was asking for. Talking about what had happened last night would force her to act. “If only you could forget—entirely—that I was here.”
“I could never—I will never—forget last night. Igraine, will you ride with me?”
« Chapter 19 »
Nine Hazel Lake
Exhausted and hungry, feeling like a ball of consternation wrapped in a blanket of conundrum, Igraine followed the fisher king through the castle gate, riding at full speed. Fisher king. She couldn’t think of him as Sir Ross—or as Lord Tintagos. That would make him too real, her task more pressing.
Not yet.
He headed east then north, to her relief, away from Igdrasil—away from Avalos. She was about to make the wrong decision, and she didn’t want Kaelyn or Zoelyn to push her to the right one.
Everything Igraine knew to be true screamed to her that it was imperative she wyrd away Sir Ross’s memory of her entrance into the baron’s chamber in the form of a pelican. He couldn’t be allowed to retain knowledge of her power of transmogrification. It wasn’t the sort of magic mundane humans could tolerate in another human.
That kind of knowledge sparked the fear that gave rise to words like witch and demon and put her to the fire!
Igraine knew exactly what Zoelyn would say—and Kaelyn would agree.
People like a wyrding woman to cure fevers and make crops grow more robust. In times of sorrow they want the wyrds’ prayers to Brother Sun and Sister Moon, and generally they enjoy the harmless naughtiness of buying a love potion they only partly disbelieve in.
A reality-bending spell like the Great Wyrding was acceptable, confined as it was to the distant past, to legend, no more threatening than the legendary Excalibur, kept safely hidden away by the Lady of Nine Hazel Lake.
But the ability to shape-shift was too much, impossible to comprehend with equanimity. Too threatening to the natural order of things. A mundane human couldn’t be expected to handle such knowledge well, especially a human with power.
And Sir Ross was now the baron of Tintagos.
He hadn’t spoken since he put her on her horse, and he didn’t slow his horse’s gallop until they reached Nine Hazel Lake. At the hunter’s cabin he dismounted and came to her, his arms outstretched. She automatically leaned into them, falling into his strength as he pulled her down and stood her on her feet.
She pretended to straighten her clothing and wriggled her fingers to set an obscuration boundary around them both. She was definitely not interested in putting on a show for nosey wyrding women with glimmer glasses.
He grabbed her by her cloak and pulled her close, his brow furrowed, his gaze fixed on her mouth. Her breath was coming in pants; she didn’t know if he wanted to hit her or kiss her.
“Was it you?” He was pleading now. Tears threatened to spill from his eyes.
He glanced at the hunter’s cabin, but she didn’t have to ask what he meant. It’s why he’d brought her here, to this lake, where he’d caught a fish and it had turned into a woman.
“It was me,” came out in a whisper.
He pursed his lips and fingered her cloak, then clasped the material in a bunch and held it up to her face, anguish on his. “Are you fae?”
“I am not.”
He let go, and she stepped back.
“Faeling, then.”
“I… I’m a daughter of the high gods.”
He turned away from her, as she had expected, and walked to the lake keeping his back to her. It was so beautiful here, even on this winter’s day. The lake surface, placid as a mirror, reflected the grays in the clouds overhead. The nine hazel trees swayed with the breeze like wood nymphs in a tableau. So beautiful, and so devastating. She had lost him before she’d ever had him.
“I don’t know who my parents were. I grew up on the…” Can’t tell. “I was raised by Kaelyn, who found me abandoned in the Small Wood, not far from here.”
“There were no clues?” he said over his shoulder. “A ring, perhaps, or cloth embroidered with a symbol?”
“Abandoned daughters don’t usually come with jewels and a family crest.” Igraine smiled at his naivety. “There was a note, but it only gave my name. When my power came in when I was eleven, Kaelyn said at least one of my parents must have been a wyrder.”
“And can all wyrders do… what you do?” He turned around and looked at her directly, no putting it delicately. There would be no pretending it didn’t happen. “Can they all change their shape? Become a bird… or a fish?”
“We call it transmogrification. And no. I know of no one else who can do it the way I do, transmogrify at will into an animal of my choosing. It’s generally a spell we use on someone else, and only the most capable student, as a training tool.”
“Training.” A dubious eyebrow shot up.
“I don’t merely take the shape of the animal. I become the animal. It can be dangerous. I can forget which I am.”
“Woman or fish?”
“Woman or fish. But believe me, I’ll never be a fish again. That was too… too far from human. An abbess of the wyrd transmogrified Artros when he was a boy. Turned him into a tortoise and a goose and a fox. Only for a few minutes, to teach him empathy.”
“King Artros—but that’s only a legend. You mean…?”
Sun and moon, Igraine. You did it again. Keep your mouth shut.
“I had no idea.” He cast a critical eye over her. “Can you turn into another person?”
This was a serious question, and she knew the right answer was no. She also knew that if she lied about such an essential thing, the mystical connection between them would die.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I wondered about it when I was young, but the very idea always felt wrong. I mean truly wrong. A sin against something holy.”
He nodded. “You said there was an abbess. I’ve never heard of any abbey or monastery of the wyrd. Even the great Frona of King Jowan’s time lived in a cottage at the edge of the faewood. What abbess do you speak of, Igraine? What abbey?”
This conversation had already gone too far, but she saw no way to stop his questions now. Thank the high gods she’d put up the boundary. Otherwise, she wouldn’t know how to explain her loose tongue to Zoelyn.
“Was there food in the bag your servant handed you in the keep?” she said.
He nodded. “I wasn’t sure how long we’d be gone.”
“I haven’t slept or eaten in at least twelve hours, and I promise you I’m very much human. Feed me, and I’ll tell you all you want to know.”
While Ross retrieved the bag from his horse, she wyrded a carpet and laid it out near the flat rock where Kaelyn liked to make glamour dust when the weather was fine. Behind her, Ross’s footsteps came to a stop. She looked up to see him eyeing the carpet suspiciously.
“It won’t bite,” she said. “But you can sit on the wet ground if you prefer it.”
He smiled then and plopped down beside her, dropping the bag on the carpet between them. He took out bread and cheese and wine, and as they ate she told him everything.
She could have wyrded the dangerous images of her transmogrification from Ross’s mind, as Zoelyn would expect. But then the other memories surrounding her transformations would be lost too, including his last moments with his father. To take them away would be too cruel. She would wait. She would watch. Maybe she could trust him.
She wanted to trust him.
She told him about Avalos. “The island is hidden within a perpetual mist created by fallen angels in the time before…”
Brother Sun and Sister Moon! That was it. Fallen. What had Kaelyn said? The wyrd live long but not forever, dear, not like the fae or the fallen. And Maxim had told her, I was born, not fallen.
Velyn was fallen! He lived with the colony at Fallen Bay. A colony of fallen angels! Was she the only one on Avalos who hadn’t known?
“In the time before what?” Ross said.
“You said the mist was created by fallen angels”—he gave her a dubious smile. And could she blame him?—“in the time before what?”
“History,” she said, still stunned by her realization that Velyn was an angel. It explained so much. “Avalos has existed since before history began. Wyrders first came there when fleeing persecution by the Romans. The angels welcomed them, helped them build an abbey. Ever since, it’s been a place of refuge to us.”
“A place of refuge not all wyrd know exists.”
“True, not all,” Igraine said. “The mist doesn’t let everyone through.”
“Only the cream of the wyrd, I take it?” He was teasing. She’d succeeded in diverting his mind from his sorrow.
“Something like that, but not only the wyrd. Mundane humans have come to Avalos. Artros lived there his entire twelfth year. A goblin lived there for several years.”
“A goblin. And I was just beginning to believe you.”
“The truth doesn’t need your belief to exist, Sir Know-All. The goblin’s name was Maxim. He invented glimmermist.”
“Fine, fine!” Ross laughed out loud, and it felt good to hear it. “If I knew what glimmermist was, I’m sure I would be impressed.”
They both laughed, and when their eyes met Igraine felt an electrical charge of desire. His gaze fell to her lips, and he leaned closer. Then he caught himself and pulled back and refilled their cups with wine.
“Why did you leave Tintagos to go to the holy land?” She moved the conversation to safer ground. Also, the more she knew about him, the easier it would be to convince Zoelyn he could keep their secrets.
“No one believes me when I tell them.”
“I will.”
“All right. When I was six years old, a knight came to the castle on his way to the holy land. He said he’d heard of men fighting a war for God, and he wanted to see what that looked like. I swear there was laughter in his eyes, as if he found the concept ridiculous. I waited for the priest to curse him, or Brother Sun and Sister Moon to smite him, but nothing happened.
“He was most wonderful-looking person I had ever seen until… well. His beauty ran deep and strong. He was perfect in speech and movement. He had white hair and dark eyebrows—like you. He wore exquisite silver armor, and yet he had no squire. My father offered to find him a squire but he refused. He said he wouldn’t subject another person to the horrors he expected to encounter.
“I thought he must be a fairy, so when he wasn’t looking, I put a holy cake on his plate.”
“I hear they hate that.” Igraine laughed. But then she remembered the goblin Maxim, who was fae, and she was ashamed of herself for laughing.
“He ate it with relish, so that theory was dashed,” Ross said. “Then he salted his venison heartily, all the while winking at me, as if he knew my purpose and thought it humorous that I would try to find him out… and at the same time, I felt he was acknowledging there was something to find out.”
“What was his name, do you remember?”
“I don’t. I asked my father once, years later. He didn’t even remember the man’s visit. He accused me of recalling a daydream as real. The next morning I searched everywhere, but he’d gone without so much as a by your leave. I was crushed. But the man was real. Everyone thought I was too young to remember, but I do.”
“So that’s why you went with Lord Sarumen all those years later?”
“It must have been. I don’t know what I expected—that after all those years and in such a big world I’d discover some sign of that mystical man?” Ross shook his head. “Of course there was nothing. Years on a fool’s errand. Years I could have spent with my father and working here for the people of Tintagos.”
“Did any good at all come of your adventure?”
“Ironically, my father thought so. I grew up, as they say. Became a man. And I developed an appreciation for the church, quite unexpected. I’m not saying men like Quinn, but the church itself. I’ll never turn my face from Brother Sun and Sister Moon, but I came to see Christ as a true prophet. If only his priests cared more about love and service and less about property and power.”
“You’re Lord Tintagos now,” Igraine said. “Will your banner eschew the dragon for the dove?”
“I hope so,” Ross said. “One day I hope so. With all my heart.”
“You’re a complex man,” Igraine said. “You believe in the church and in Brother Sun and Sister Moon, in the wyrd, and also the fae.”
“I don’t believe. I know.”
“And did you know or believe I was a fairy?”
Ross went silent and stared at the water. Then he lifted her hand and kissed her fingers one by one. “That, I didn’t want to believe,” he said. “I feared you were a fairy. It would have been a blow.”
“I don’t understand.” She didn’t want him to stop. Each kiss sent a shiver up her arm and through her being. But she wanted to know. “Why?”
“Fairies can’t love.” He caressed her cheek and searched her eyes. “Igraine, I want… I so very much hope that you can love… me.”
« Chapter 19 »
Entwined
The fisher king slipped his hand behind the glimmering girl’s neck. His smoldering look didn’t ask for permission; it only gave notice of his intentions. She laid her hand on his shoulder, and he paused.
“If you would refuse me, Igraine, do it now.” His voice was husky and tinged with desperation. He was in control, but only barely. “Soon I won’t be able to stop.”
“My mind says no,” Igraine said. “But my heart and my body say yes.”
He held her chin in his hand and his thumb played over her bottom lip. His gaze burned into her very depths, and he said, “Let your soul decide.”
“Oh!” She heard her moan as if it had come from somewhere else. Gladly, joyfully, she surrendered to him. “I do want you,” she said. “I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you.”
His mouth came crashing down on hers, and his tongue pushed in, insistent and strong. Sizzling vibration riddled her body, and she was on fire and pulsating for him.
His kisses traveled over the line of her jaw, to her ear, to her throat. She shrugged out of her cloak and mantle, and he lifted her tunic over her head. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “So lovely.” He bent down to kiss her breast and teased the nipple to a hard nub, and she groaned as he licked and sucked.
“I need you inside me,” she said, lying on her back on the carpet. He ripped open his breeches and slid them down over his hips, and he covered her with his body. She wrapped her legs around him and guided him inside. His thrusting filled her and bound her to him, and she shuddered and cried out his name until they both shattered, and all the pieces of her and all the pieces of him became entwined and inextricable.
The sky overhead was clear, and the day’s light was fading. Ross was awake and dressed, sitting beside Igraine on the carpet, one leg extended, his arm resting on the other bent knee. He was looking at the lake and the trees, but his thoughts seemed miles away until he looked down and saw that she too was awake.
“I love you,” he said.
“I’m so glad.” She smiled. She’d always thought she knew what happiness was. Not a bit of it.
He brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Come back to the castle with me. I want you to be my wife.”
She caught his hand and kissed his palm. “You know that can’t happen.”
“Who your parents were isn’t important. You are.”
“It isn’t only that. I’m a wyrder. How can your people accept me? How can you expect them to?”
“You’re Igraine who I love. Everything else about you is ornament, extra, including your wyrding ways.”
“I like my wyrding ways.”
“As do I. You can be everything you are as baroness of Tintagos. Even more so! Can’t you see you’d be more powerful in a castle than in a cave?”
“No wyrding woman has ever had the chance to find out before.”
; “Find out, Igraine. Marry me. Be my wife.”
“I don’t know…”
“I don’t know either,” he said. “But if we only ever act on what we know, nothing changes. There’s no progress. This is the time for the great leap of faith. You and I, Igraine. You and I. Lord and Lady Tintagos.”
“Lady Tintagos,” she said. “No, it sounds too strange on your lips—and mine. But to call you husband… that would give me more happiness than I could bear.”
He crushed her to his chest. “Then say yes and learn to bear it. The sweetest word. Say yes, Igraine.” He kissed her again. “We’ll make our own rules, our own world. Say yes.”
“Oh, yes, then. Yes!”
“Yes!” He jumped to his feet and pulled her up with him, kissing her forehead and both cheeks and laughing all the while. “Let’s go home, my love.”
My love. It sounded wonderful. Home.
Riding out of the Small Wood, they left the road to Nine Hazel Lake and turned onto the Ring. In the clear evening, the stars were blazing at the highest points overhead. In the west the bending, orange-red light of sunset glowed behind Igdrasil, making a stark black silhouette of the tree.
Igraine caught her breath. What would they say at Avalos? She’d have Kaelyn’s blessing, and Zoelyn’s disappointment, perhaps anger. What would Velyn think? Great gods… what would Velyn think?
And what of Wennie?
“What is this now?” Ross slowed his horse and moved beside her, concerned. “You spoke of banners. Oddly, the one flying over Tintagos at the moment isn’t mine.”
“What? Whose is it?”
“From this distance I can only see the colors are wrong.”
Igraine found the scoping glass in her mantle’s pocket. “Great gods.” Her heart leapt to her throat. “It… It must be royalty. There are two red lions. Look through this.”
She handed Ross the scoping glass, but instead of using it he reined in his horse and stopped altogether, his eyebrows drawn together.