The Grail King

by Joy Nash

  WORTH MORE THAN JEWELS

  Barbarian. The thought rose sharply. She hadn’t realized she’d sent the word into his mind until she saw his eyes narrow. Again, they were joined. And just like before, she had no clear idea how the union had come about.

  His swift rage seared her. She withdrew as quickly as she could, heart pounding.

  He rose and stepped toward her, causing her to tip her head back. He towered over her, his blue eyes glittering. “Keep to yourself, lass,” he said evenly.

  “I … I didn’t mean to do it,” she whispered. “I’ll try not to let it happen again. Please. Let me go with you. I’ll be no trouble.”

  He stared at her for what seemed a long time. Then his expression turned calculating. “Perhaps I’ll take ye to the stones,” he said, “if ye agree to give me something first.”

  Tiny wings fluttered in her belly. “Coin? Gold?”

  “Nay. ’Tis something I’ve wanted since I first laid eyes on ye. Worth more, I am thinking, than all the jewels in your wee bag.”

  “What is it?” Clara whispered.

  His gaze dropped to her mouth. “A kiss, lass. I would have a kiss.”

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Copyright

  This book is dedicated to all the

  members of Bucks County Romance Writers,

  whose constant encouragement and enthusiasm

  never cease to inspire. A special thanks goes to my

  critique partners, Donna Birdsell and Anita Nolan,

  and BCRW’s goal-setting maven extraordinaire,

  Sally Stotter. This one’s for you, guys!

  Dear Reader,

  There are, perhaps, more Holy Grail legends than can be counted. And yet so few follow the Grail in the early years, before Arthur and his knights set out to find the elusive magical cup.

  The Grail King is the story of those early years.

  Some of you may remember The Grail King’s Druid hero, Owein, from my previous Love Spell release, Celtic Fire. In the thirteen years that have passed between the stories, war and brutality have transformed Owein from troubled adolescent to embittered hermit. To read more about the experiences that have shaped him, visit my cyber home at www.joynash.com. You’ll find three short stories—all free of charge—that tell of Owein’s life in the years between.

  Can Clara, the innocent daughter of Owein’s hated enemy, help Owein release the pain of his past? The stakes, as you will see, are high.

  For if Clara cannot prevail, a future king—Arthur—will never be born.

  All the best,

  Joy Nash

  Chapter One

  AD 130

  Blood.

  Why, in the name of all that was sacred, could he See naught but blood?

  Pain exploded behind Owein’s eyes, so vivid it sent him to his knees. By the might of the Horned God! The seasons had circled twice since last a vision had descended with such agony. Head bowed, he braced one rigid arm in the snow, waiting for the worst of the torture to pass. It was far better, he’d learned, to accept his gift than to fight it.

  His breath formed a white shroud in the air before him. It lingered but a heartbeat before thinning into nothingness. He might have expected the Horned God’s touch this day. Dawn winds had hurled sleet and snow into the mountains, unusual in Cambria, where the dark of the year passed more often in rain and fog. ’Twas a maelstrom born of magic.

  A Druid’s will drove the storm. Owein was certain of it. An intimate sense of the hidden one’s power crackled in the air. Hope—as sweet as it was unfamiliar—constricted his chest. For years he’d thought himself the last of the Druids in the western mountains.

  It seemed he was not.

  Was the unknown Druid bound to Kernunnos, the great Horned God, as Owein was? Owein had little time to wonder as his vision came full upon him. He struggled upright, one knee buried in the snow, the heel of his hand pressed to his forehead.

  After what seemed a bleak eternity, the solid hammering in his skull eased. With an effort he lifted his head, though its weight felt equal to a sack filled with stones. A vision wavered, vivid against the winter forest, yet at the same time distant, as if it belonged to a realm long vanished.

  Blood.

  A river of it. Thick and red, it streamed past his feet, a pulsing defilement of the virgin snow. Owein lurched upright and staggered along the crimson path, instinct driving him to its source.

  The blood flowed from a woman.

  A young woman, at that. The lass lay crumpled and pale, her long dark braids unpinned and tousled over the crystalline surface of the snow. Drifts claimed the lower portion of her body, wrapping her limbs and torso like a mantle of death. Blood—more than could possibly be contained in a score of human bodies—flowed from a jagged wound in her breast.

  Owein’s vision split. The image of the woman doubled and wavered. The ground seemed to fall from beneath him as a blinding spike of pain skewered his right eye. He gasped with the force of it, his knees crumpling. He went down hard, his hand scrabbling on a patch of ice.

  He bowed his head and squeezed his eyelids shut, waiting. Waiting. The attack receded slowly, much as winter bowed to spring in the northern hills Owein had once called home.

  His bunched muscles relaxed a bit. Though brutal, the vision had been brief. The pain was bearable now—no more than a dull throb inside his skull. Fatigue dragged his limbs, as it always did when his Sight faded. That was the price he paid for his magic.

  He murmured thanks to the Horned God for the favor of a vision. Then he muttered a second prayer—one of gratitude for a blessing so short-lived.

  He eased back into a crouch, feeling normal save for a slight tingling on his scalp and the heavier weakness in his arms and legs. Both would be gone by dawn. For now, he was thankful enough that when he opened his eyes, the world would once again appear as it should. Gray sky overhead, white snow underfoot. There would be no woman. No blood.

  He blinked, letting the dull light of the twilit sky filter into his vision. As he’d expected, the pristine snow on the path was marred only by his own footprints. The river of blood had vanished.

  The woman had not.

  Owein dragged a hand across his eyes, unwilling to lend full credence to his senses. But when he looked a second time, the figure lay as it had a moment before—pale and still as a corpse. This woman was no vision; she was real.

  No mortal wound pierced her breast, but the snow falling on her pale face was itself a kiss of death. Ice had rendered her sable-lined cloak as stiff as an untanned hide. White frost dusted her braids and the ringlets framing her heart-shaped face. Blue tinged her lips. By contrast, her cheekbones and the tip of her straight nose were colored a raw, angry red.

  Who could she be? Not one of his own kind. The last of the free Celts had been he
rded from the mountains by Roman spears. Resisters had been killed or taken as slaves, by order of the Second Legion’s iron-fisted commander, Sextus Sempronius Gracchus. Those who’d surrendered had been resettled in the Roman fortress city of Isca.

  Yet even if that grim history hadn’t emptied the mountains of human activity, Owein would never have mistaken the unconscious woman for a hardy Celt lass. She was too delicately formed. Too dark. Too richly garbed.

  She was Roman.

  Amazement overtook his loathing. A young Roman woman, wandering alone in the mountains, more than a full day’s journey from Isca? ’Twas pure insanity. He couldn’t imagine one of her kind straying half so far from the fortress.

  He reached out, his open hand hovering over her parted lips. Warm breath bathed his palm. Alive, then.

  Something in his chest eased. He frowned. He hadn’t even known he feared for the woman’s life. Now an unexpected urgency flooded his veins. If she weren’t warmed quickly, she would die.

  Bending, he gathered her limp figure in his arms. His weakened muscles screamed in protest. Teeth gritted, he heaved her upward, scattering a shower of snow.

  Shaking the stars from his vision, he shifted, distributing his burden more evenly. The lass started, then relaxed against his chest with a small sigh. As if Owein were a man to be trusted.

  Slowly, he retraced his path, his breath laboring with each step. In normal circumstances the lass’s small weight would have been as nothing. Now, in the aftermath of his vision, ’twas all he could do to place one foot before the other, trudging through lengthening shadows, whirlwinds of snow gusting before him. As he rounded a bend in the trail, the woman stirred in his arms. Her eyelids fluttered open.

  Her gaze sought his. Her chapped lips parted, the tip of her tongue snaking between them. She drew a breath.

  Instinctively, he dipped his head.

  Her words came in Latin. It was a language Owein hadn’t spoken willingly in many seasons, and it took him a moment to work out her meaning.

  Ego inveni te. I have found you.

  She blinked up at him. Pressed to describe her expression, Owein might have labeled it one of awe. He shook his head. She did not see him, not truly.

  She lifted a hand to touch the bare patch of cheek above his beard. Her fingertip was a cool blessing on his heated skin.

  She exhaled a whisper of misted breath. “You … are wreathed in light.”

  The reverence in her tone shook Owein to the core. Light? A harsh laugh stuck in his throat. Her words couldn’t have struck the target farther from the truth.

  He formed his reply carefully, the taste of the conquerors’ language bitter on his tongue.

  “Light? Nay, lady. Ye are mistaken. I live in darkness.”

  You are wreathed in light.

  An odd utterance, and not fitting, in any case. Owein wondered at it, but feared he’d not have the chance to ask the Roman lass her meaning. Her eyes had swept closed and the blue tinge of her lips had deepened. Her breath came in uneven spurts, its rhythm marred by the shuddering of her body.

  He tightened his arms around her. Was it his imagination, or did he detect the aroma of springtime?

  With steps as quick as he could manage, he threaded his way through the broken bones of what had once been a village. A charred bit of stubble was all that remained of the settlement’s encircling palisade wall. The cone roofs of the roundhouses, deprived of families to shelter, sagged like the faces of old women. In many cases, the thatching had scattered completely. Only one dwelling, on the fringe of the settlement, was not completely ruined.

  He shoved open its plank door. Winter swirled into the hut, spiraling along the curved wall before settling with a sigh near the center hearth. He ducked inside, the door slamming crookedly behind him.

  He’d left his fire smoldering. He’d meant to check his traps before they were completely lost in the snow. A task, he thought belatedly, he’d left undone.

  The Roman woman stirred in his arms, causing his weakened muscles to burn. Almost stumbling across the roundhouse’s single room, he laid her not on the grass-stuffed pallet that was his bed, but on the bare dirt nearest the hearth. His muscles kinked as they released her weight. Bracing his arms on either side of her body, Owein closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. His strength was returning, but slowly.

  Kneeling by the hearth, he used the last of his peat and deadwood to stoke a hot blaze. When he turned back to the Roman lass, the dust of ice crystals on her frozen cloak had already begun to melt. She’d soon be sopping wet if he left her wrapped in her icy garments. Gently, he lifted her shoulders and tugged at her cloak.

  The garment was finely made, of long, soft wool lined with sable, the stitching so precise as to be invisible. The clasp was a gold pin with an ingenious guard designed to prevent the point from pricking the wearer.

  She carried a small leather satchel. The front flap of the bag was decorated with the image of a prancing cat, of all things. He tried to ease it from her arms, only to find the strap threaded under her right arm and across her left shoulder. After a futile attempt to free the strap’s frozen buckle, Owein simply drew his knife and cut a clean slice through the leather. He placed the bag on top of the cloak.

  She wore a voluminous tunic of pale yellow wool with a geometric design embroidered in gold thread along the edges. Even wet, the garment was impossibly soft and fine. Unfortunately, it was also impossibly belted and pinned. The sleeves were fastened from shoulder to elbow with a series of tiny clasps. A gold-threaded girdle encircled her waist, cinching the tunic in multiple tiers of draped fabric at the bust and waist. Owein supposed the effect was meant to be alluring, and perhaps it might have been, if the dress were not wet, wrinkled, and spattered with mud.

  He fumbled at the girdle’s tiny clasps with blunt fingers, cursing under his breath. What idiocy prompted Roman women to bind their clothing so tightly? He managed to spring two buckles free, but the clasp of the third snapped in his hands. The sleeve pins were even smaller, and the lass’s shivering didn’t make his task any easier. Six pins on each sleeve; he broke three of the twelve.

  He swept the small pile of gold aside. Obviously, this woman’s family didn’t lack for coin. Which made her presence in the high country near to impossible. Had she been traveling the Roman road along the coast? If so, how could she have strayed so far from her companions? A woman of her status might even have had a military escort. Owein didn’t relish the thought of opening his door to a cohort of Sempronius Gracchus’s Legionaries.

  He lifted her small hand, chafing it in an effort to urge the blood to flow. She shivered, a small cry escaping her lips. He passed a hand over her brow, urging her expression to relax. Her lips parted again, and this time a softer, more feminine moan emerged.

  It was not unlike the sound made by a woman while coupling.

  Cursing under his breath, Owein pushed roughly to his feet. He was accustomed to solitude, not supple young lasses stretched before his hearth. The floral scent that clung to her skin was not an inducement to detachment. His body was responding, violently.

  He dragged his pallet and winter furs to the hearth, positioning them as close to the flames as he dared. Straightening, he frowned down at the woman. He would have to finish the task of removing her wet clothes.

  His loins stiffened further at the thought, even as his scowl deepened. How low he’d sunk, to lust after a Roman woman—and one not even conscious enough to curse him for it! But then, two twelvemonths had passed since he’d buried Eirwen. Perhaps the fact that his body could produce a cockstand this painful only proved he wasn’t yet as dead as his wife.

  Ignoring his discomfort, Owein crouched at the lass’s feet and tugged off her frozen footwear. She wore boots crafted of thin leather, finely tooled and decorated with pearls at the ankles and toes. He shook his head in disgust. Hardly suitable for a Roman town house, let alone a trek through the mountains in winter. At least she’d had the sense to don woolen
stockings beneath them. He peeled them off one by one. Her feet were like chunks of ice, and the tips of her toes were white.

  Her dress came next. Lifting her torso, he stripped the wet wool from the lass’s body. She wore a linen undertunic, devoid of decoration but so finely woven as to be translucent.

  Owein stared, his eyes drifting to the puckered circles in the center of the lass’s breasts, the dusky dark triangle between her thighs. Drawing a shaky breath, he crushed the hem of the undertunic in his fists. He drew the garment over slender legs. Her belly was flat, her hips slim, almost boyish. Her breasts were small enough to disappear into his hand.

  He’d always preferred delicate lasses. His palms itched to touch her.

  He resisted the impulse, easing the tunic over her shoulders with an efficient motion. Again, a heady floral scent teased his nostrils. In the dead of winter, this small Roman woman smelled of spring. A bead of perspiration slid between his shoulder blades. He wanted to look at all of her, drink her in, but he forced his gaze to her face as his arms slid beneath her naked body. For an instant she lay soft and yielding in his embrace. Then a shudder passed through her body.

  The chill from her skin penetrated his overloaded senses. He transferred her quickly to his pallet and drew up the furs, swaddling her from neck to toe. A foray into his oaken chest yielded the remainder of his inventory of bedcoverings—two thin woolen blankets. He covered her with those as well.

  He lifted her sodden hair from her neck, fanning it toward the fire. The long braids were snarled and wet, but the color was dark and shining. Beautiful, her tresses would be, once dry and combed free.

  Another tremor gripped her body. She moaned and clutched at her blankets, turning to one side, instinctively seeking the fire. Owein caught a glimpse of a small, rounded bottom as he adjusted the blankets. Easing to his feet, he watched the flickering light play across her face. Part of him wanted to reach out and run a finger along the outer curve of her cheek. The less foolish part of him wished he’d never laid eyes on her.