But her thoughts were wandering again. She straggled to a halt, straining to see through the thickening dusk that shrouded the gnarled roots and moss-draped trunks.
No sun and no moon, just this miserable drizzle, so she couldn’t navigate by the heavens. She needed the stars to find the place—one of the ancient nodes of power from long before the Romans came to the land they’d called Britannia. A place where the old earth magick was strong enough for even a mixed blood Faerie like Rhiannon to summon the mists and cross the Veil.
No good. The old horse was balking again, and she lacked the stomach to force him. Wearily she dragged him up a hillock into the lee of a weathered oak, bent and twisted, and let him forage where he would. Digging into her bundle, she found the wineskin of cheap red and swallowed a mouthful of the raw vintage—tart as vinegar, but all she had to warm her. She dared not kindle a fire to hold her fear at bay.
A mournful cry echoed through the marsh, stopping her in her tracks. Wolves, was it? Bright Lady guard her, she’d never encountered a wild creature she couldn’t tame. Why was she suddenly so uneasy?
Another long howl soared over the gray waters, rising and falling, echoed dimly by the baying of the pack, already a little closer. Well, in the worst case, she could free the gelding and climb a tree. She needn’t fear being devoured in the wilderness—
Abruptly she froze, her blood turning to ice water. She hadn’t thought she could be any colder, but now she clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from knocking together. It wasn’t wolves she was hearing on the desolate moor.
It was hounds.
Hunting her.
An elemental fear brought her leaping to her feet. Terror arced through her, as though she’d been struck by lightning. Her white gasping breaths came hard and fast, just short of sobbing. The gelding shied, and she fought to hold him.
He was only a beast, yet he sensed the cruel malice of the men who stalked them.
Gripping her courage in both hands, she bound her bundle to the saddle. For a moment she listened in the slate-gray twilight, all her senses searching for the magickal pulse of the ancient earth.
What does it matter? she thought in despair. Even if somehow you find the place, there’s no mist tonight. She’d never been strong enough to summon it. She could only cross the Veil through fog that nature had already woven, and only from a place of power.
Mist or no mist, if she couldn’t find the node she was stranded—trapped on the mortal plane, at the mercy of those who hunted her.
“Lady of Light,” she whispered, trembling with resolve. “I’m a daughter of kings. I swear they shall not have me without the mother of all battles.”
Clutching her sodden garments, she urged the reluctant gelding deeper into the treacherous bog.
Chapter Fifteen
Beltran had never cared for hounds. The ones in his Yorkshire hovel had been vicious brutes, with an unpleasant penchant for turning on weaker members of the pack. He’d far rather have left the beasts behind when he rode out with this hunting party, twenty men strong—if not for one unfortunate fact.
Edmund Bonner had ridden out with them.
The bishop trotted purposefully beside him through the twilight, his sturdy cob plodding through muck to his hocks. Hardly an amiable companion, given the air of malice he exuded as he stalked Rhiannon—relentless as the Devil himself.
As far as Beltran knew, Rhiannon had never met him. But the moment the bishop laid eyes on her, harmlessly romping in the Banqueting House, he’d seemed to recognize a mortal enemy.
Driven by necessity, Beltran broke the silence of hours.
“It’ll be full dark soon, Lordship. We’ll never manage to track her through this slop at night. We’ll make camp on the high ground and resume the hunt at first light.”
“No,” Bonner said quietly, his hooded head turned forward, intent as the hounds that snarled and fought at his heels. “The witch is close, Vengeance. I can smell her. We’ll hunt her to ground like the foul vermin she is.”
Despite his grim resolve to see the wretched business through to its bitter end, Beltran’s hackles rose. “Christ, she’s only a harmless girl.”
“Harmless? She spreads the disease of heresy wherever she goes, even into the Queen’s very presence! She’s far too dangerous to remain at large.”
“I don’t advise pressing on by night,” Beltran said doggedly, fists clenching at the thought of Rhiannon roaming the wilderness alone. “The horses will trip on these damned roots and break a leg, or blunder into quicksand and send us all straight to Hell.”
“The hounds won’t lead us astray. We’re doing God’s work here, bringing the purifying fire of truth to scald England clean of heresy.” The bishop cast him a sidelong glance. “Have a little faith, Lord Beltran.”
“Faith or folly, I’m putting a stop to this madness! The safety of these men rests in my hands.”
Beltran hailed the fewterer, a sullen brute with a harelip, scarcely less bestial than the dogs he tended. “You there, man! Whistle down the hounds. We’ll make camp on dry ground—”
A high-pitched howl nearly dislodged him from the saddle. His white Serafin reared high, forelegs pawing the air. The rest of the pack took up the cry, the lymers with their keen noses surging ahead, the mastiffs growling and lunging on their leashes, horses snorting and plunging all around.
Thighs clamped around his saddle, Beltran settled his stallion and chivvied his men into order, a task grown more complicated by the worsening drizzle. At last, impatient, he ordered torches lit.
Gripping a flaming brand in one fist, he spurred ahead to survey the terrain. A low hillock rose above the surrounding wetlands. He urged Serafin to vault upward to its summit.
Now the savage belling of hounds filled the air, echoing over the silent waters and brooding reaches of the bog.
No doubt of it, they have the scent. Damn it to Hell! He’d hoped their eager noses had been confused by the wet ground. But that lout of a fewterer had given them Rhiannon’s scent, straight from her rose-red mantle. Just as the waterman who’d ferried her had scented a fugitive’s desperation. He’d taken her coin, wished her well, then sailed straight back to report where he’d left her. With the Devil’s own luck, the wretch had encountered Beltran’s party en route.
Before him the marsh spread, pink sun sinking behind a lowering mass of clouds. Its watery rays cast shadows behind the twisted trees, picked out every hillock and reed-choked shore and straggling spray of cattails—an utterly bleak and barren landscape.
Briefly he took heart. No force under Heaven could find a lone wanderer in all that vast wilderness, not even Edmund Bonner.
Brandishing his torch, Beltran cast a last glance over the landscape as he prepared to wheel away. A flicker of movement caught his eye, and an incongruous flash of silver. His chest tightened. One gauntleted fist clenched his reins.
Swinging the torch behind him so the light wouldn’t blind him, he peered intently into the setting sun. There, struggling along a distant tree-lined shore, a slim cloaked figure waded through the reeds, hauling a balking horse. If not for the tangle of silver curls cascading down her back, her drab garments would have concealed her.
Rhiannon.
It seemed God had intervened after all. Unless he wished to violate his oath outright, he’d have to lead the malevolent bishop and those slavering hound
s straight toward her.
* * *
Rhiannon sobbed as she struggled through the reeds, heart laboring, her lungs aching. Every muscle in her chilled body burned with fatigue. But the hounds—blessed Lady—they sounded so close! If they came upon her, how would she guard her precious flesh against savage teeth that could rend her limb from limb?
I must rest, just for a moment, must catch my breath.
Clinging to the gelding, she cast a wild glance backward. There rose the low tableland she’d slid and scrambled down an hour ago, dimly silhouetted against the dying light.
A tongue of fire blazed suddenly against the darkening sky. Her breath snared in her lungs. A mounted figure was etched against a canvas of brooding clouds, flaming torch brandished high, cloak swirling around his powerful frame like ink spilled from a bottle.
Though her pursuer was too distant to discern his features, she knew beyond doubt it was he.
Beltran.
His nearness squeezed her heart in a fist of despair and fury—the same painful tangle of emotions he always inspired. Couldn’t he merely have let her go? Breath catching painfully, she hoisted her muddy skirts around her knees and began to run.
Behind her, the hungry cry of the hounds arose.
Icy water swirled around her knees, stones turning underfoot as she waded desperately through the muck, racing parallel to the dark shore. She sensed the proximity of that pulsing nexus where powerful magick could be summoned; it called to her like a raised voice, a physical tug that pulled her forward. Overhead the moon was rising, a ghostly orb floating among the clouds. Near the shore, thin eddies of mist were rising.
Behind her, the frenzied barking rose in pitch. They’d seen their quarry, those starving beasts, raised to gorge their hunger on heretic flesh. Goddess save her, they were close enough now that she sensed their fierce craving for spurting blood to fill their aching bellies. Her own stomach knotted and heaved.
Of his own accord, the gelding plunged past her, as the hunters herded them away from the reed-choked shore where they might hide. The siren call of power pulsed and ebbed, still maddeningly out of reach, nothing she could grasp to pull them free.
Frantic, she glanced back. Fresh panic seized her in its grip.
A dozen dark shapes were hurtling toward her, water spraying around flying legs, all gleaming eyes and slavering mouths in the night. The huntsmen had loosed them. No force on earth could save her...except one.
Merciful Goddess, Mother, I beg you. Show me the way!
Like a miracle, the answer to a prayer, torchlight flared in the darkness behind them. A massive shape was bearing down on her like a juggernaut—white charger cantering through the waves, black rider on his back, firelight flashing on the sword of Judgment whirling overhead.
Beltran bellowed at the hounds, cursing when his commands fell upon deaf ears. She caught a wild glimpse of his chiseled face, contorted, desperate as he leaned from the saddle. Then he called upon his God, the words streaking like meteors through the darkness.
The night ignited with holy fire.
Above the laboring figures of horse and rider, the mighty shadow of wings unfolded, garnet-red and emerald-green in the torchlight.
Still too distant, just a few breaths too late, to reach Rhiannon in time.
The lead hound—a woolly mastiff half her size, eyes red with hunger and hate, was lunging at her. Desperately she raised her pack between them, anything to fend off the rending jaws.
Then Beltran roared a word—a hail of syllables in a tongue that knotted her stomach. Thunder shook the heavens as a coil of shining platinum light arced from his pointing finger. Divine fire seared into the foremost mastiff as it leaped for her throat.
Before her very eyes, the snarling beast charred black and shriveled into ash.
All around her hounds were lunging, savage growls filling the air. Rhiannon stumbled blindly back, swinging her bundle to keep them at bay. Another coil of silver light exploded from the mounted figure bearing down on her, seared across the surging pack. Mastiffs scattered left and right, yelping, to avoid the spray of fire.
Desperately Rhiannon reached for the earth magick that lay so close, hidden beneath the featureless waves, glimmering in the moonlight.
Almost upon her, the towering Presence unleashed a resonant roar. “Rhiannon—get down!”
Obeying by instinct, she crouched. Heat singed her hair as a brand swung through the air, too close. A hulking giant of a man afoot had somehow circled behind her, driving her toward the hounds. He loomed over her, face twisted—the hideous maw split by a harelip, rotting teeth bared like one of his hounds.
Then Serafin thundered past, sheets of water spraying from his hooves. The Blade of God hurtled from his saddle and collided with her assailant. A flailing arm clipped her shoulder as their tangled forms went flying. She lost her footing and slipped to one knee, plunged to her waist in icy water. Pain shafted through her ankle, wrenched violently as she landed.
Around her, the world was noise and chaos. Hounds growled and slavered, turning on their fellows, maddened by the white fire whose afterimage lingered pale in the air. A circle of men on horseback spread out from the shore, surrounding her, appearing and vanishing in the tendrils of mist that swirled over the water.
Beltran and the harelip thrashed in the water. Somehow he’d lost his sword, his prized blade, and he seemed unable to summon another bolt of the purifying fire.
Even the Christian God must have His limits, she thought wildly. Here in this place.
For the tide of magick was rising at last, strong and sweet as salvation, a sea of liquid light that turned the world cloudy and gray. Her pack tumbled heedless from her fingers as she straightened, face lifted gladly toward the rising moon.
Beside her, steel flashed—serrated blade smeared black with foulness, gripped in the harelip’s raised fist. As the two men grappled, the blade drove down...down...
The winged Presence roared in agony. The world shifted beneath her feet. Anguish flooded her healer’s senses, exploded between her shoulder blades, as though the blade plunged into her own tender flesh, where the mighty wings joined the muscle of back and shoulders.
Beltran. Mortally wounded.
Possibly dying.
Body and heart and soul, every particle of life that formed Rhiannon’s essence rose up in fierce denial. A surge of strength more potent than she’d ever known rolled through her, nearly lifting her feet from the earth. Soul fired by despair, her arms swept up and plunged into the heavens, head tilting back as she cried out the ancient words of power.
A curtain of mist fell like a blanket around them. With her last flicker of rational thought, she reached blindly to grip Beltran’s sinewed forearm. Even in extremis, that vital current of awareness arced between them. His calloused hand closed over hers, the hard band of his ring pressing her flesh.
Then the silver light of magick washed over them. The pale remnants of the mortal world faded. Dizzy with the rush of power, Rhiannon smelled the sudden sweetness of apple blossoms.
* * *
He was burning. He was freezing. The white heat of agony seared through him, swelling and receding like the tide. Yet his hands and feet were numb, as if plunged in icy water. The red inferno of pain between his shoulders was a swirling vortex that threatened to drag him into its hungry maw
and consume him.
Dimly, in the corner of his mind that remained his, Beltran knew what had befallen him.
Poison.
He’d been stabbed with a poisoned blade.
Sometimes the tide of pain receded. The swirling darkness parted to reveal a vision, pure and clear as redemption. A girl whose elfin features were sweet and grave, her face screened by curtains of silver hair, brows furrowed over leaf-green eyes that shimmered with tears.
And her gentle voice, begging him to rest quiet—please, they weren’t safe here, they mustn’t draw attention—was the essence of love.
She was desperately frightened of something—his healer, his angel, his heart. For her sake, he pushed back the darkness and lifted his heavy head. Briefly the world took shape. He glimpsed a low cubby warmed by ruddy coals, neat coils of herbs and roots hung to dry, mortar and pestle and a pile of red-stained linen on the trestle table, woven rugs adding flashes of warmth to the earthen floor. Around him, wooden walls bowed in a smooth curve that had never known axe or adze.
Somehow, he thought bemused, they were inside a tree.
“Please, Beltran,” his angel whispered, cradling his head, pressing a steaming cup to his lips. The bitter odor of willow bark curled in his nostrils.
He preferred the sweet fragrance of violets. Fretful, he pushed the cup away.
“Please. Thou art consumed with fever.”
“Good,” he rasped, the word scraping his tender throat. God’s body, his gullet felt as though he’d swallowed liquid fire. He must have been screaming.
He forced words past the pain. “Do God a favor, Rhiannon. Let me die. It’s what He wanted—when he cast me out.”
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