“Are you saying you can’t send me home?”
“I’m saying it would involve definite risk. But I had no right to make the decision for you.”
“Oh. Well.” If there was anything more frustrating than having the props of one’s anger kicked out from one . . . “Then . . .”
“At any rate,” Hauberin continued wearily, “I must return to your Realm. It seems that Serein’s curse really has outlived him.”
“The . . . ah . . . recurring dream?”
“Oh, yes. I must go kin-hunting once more.” His gaze was steady. “I give you your choice, lady. If you wish to stay and make a new life here, I will deed you the late Charailis’ estates. You shall not want.”
“And if I go back?”
The prince shook his head. “I can make no promises.”
Matilde clenched her teeth, fighting the urge to burst into tears. I can’t decide, how can I decide . . . ? Now I know what Lady Eve felt when she and Lord Adam were cast out of Eden . . . “I . . . can’t stay,” she said at last. “I can’t. Hauberin, while I was bespelled, I didn’t need to remember who and what I was. I didn’t need to be afraid of magic, or witch-burnings. I only just barely remembered I’m a married woman. I don’t want to go back—”
“Why then, stay and—”
“No. I am married. And the last thing I recall from human lands is that my husband is missing. How could I possibly stay here and never know if I was wife or widow?” She took a deep, steadying breath. “Gilbert’s been kind to me. I can’t abandon him now.”
“So be it. I’ll just gather Alliar, and some more . . . ah . . . human clothing for us. And then . . .” Hauberin paused, then reached out to quickly touch her cheek. “And then, my brave Matilde, we shall leave.”
To her shock, the quick caress sent shivers running through her. She stared deeply into the dark, weary, bemused eyes and thought, Oh dear God, no, I can’t, this can’t . . .
As though aware of her confusion, Hauberin turned sharply away. “My word on it, I will do my best to return us to your rightful time and place.”
Whatever that may be, Matilde added in despair.
XXIV
RETURN
Hauberin staggered, dazed by the sudden transition, the sudden loss of Power and—as in his first crossing of Realms—equally sudden rush of strength, feeling free from fatigue for the first time since his wounding. Matilde and Alliar, clad in Faerie approximations of human clothing, had safely made the crossing, too, every bit as dazed, the prince felt, as he. Hauberin glanced warily about, seeing bushes, grass, the dim gray light of early day in a mortal Realm—and directly ahead, the massive bulk of a castle . . .
Baron Gilbert’s castle.
Ae, Matilde! Suddenly totally aware, terrified of what he might see, Hauberin turned to stare at her so fiercely she stared back at him in horror, stammering, “W-What? What is it?”
Giddy with relief, Hauberin grinned. “Nothing. There’s not been the slightest change in you. This is your own home Realm and time.”
She laughed, stopped, laughed again. “I knew you could do it. I didn’t doubt for a moment.”
“Now, that,” teased Alliar, once more in human-male guise, “is as blatant an example of human falsehood as I’ve heard.”
The being had spoken in the Faerie tongue. Matilde blinked in confusion.
“I—I can’t understand you,” she said in the human tongue, alarm sharpening her voice. “And I feel . . . odd.”
“Ah, don’t worry,” Hauberin soothed. “The language-spell can only work in Faerie. And the ‘odd’ sensation is this magic-weak Realm’s way of squelching any Power not its own.”
He saw from her lonely eyes that she already rued the need to leave Faerie. Honor and necessity, he thought, twin flails to drive us on. “Come. We’ve landed close to your husband’s castle.” Amazingly close; I probably couldn’t do it again in a hundred tries.
Alliar grinned. “It’s nearly morning, too. How charming. We can be the baron’s first callers of the day.”
But as they neared the castle in the gradually brightening light, Matilde stopped, eyes widening with shock. “That’s not Gilbert’s standard, it’s Raimond’s! No, I’m not mistaken; see, the field is very instead of azure, green instead of blue. Dear God, where is my husband . . . ?”
The portcullis had not yet been raised. Alliar, hands on hips, bellowed up to the guards in the twin watchtowers, “Ho, you, I know you see us! Let us in!”
Matilde stepped out of shadow. “You know me,” she called. “I am Baron Gilbert’s wife. Enough of this! Let us enter.”
Hauberin could hear the amazed murmurings from where he stood. Now, what . . . ? There was a long, long pause, and then the portcullis went clanking up. “About time,” Matilde muttered, and strode boldly forward. Hauberin and Alliar followed more slowly, the prince no more comfortable passing under the spiked gate than he had been the first time, half-healed iron-wounds throbbing in response to all that iron.
But then Matilde’s brave steps faltered and stopped, and the prince hurried to her side.
Two men stood in the courtyard. One, tall and blond, could only be Raimond . . . but a Raimond strangely changed. The childish wildness was gone from him, and a new maturity was evident in body, stance and eyes. The man beside him was younger, stocky and broad-shouldered, his freckled face pleasant rather than handsome, somehow familiar, yet not quite—
“Aimery!” Hauberin gasped, even as Aimery returned, “My Lord Hauberin! But how—”
“—could you have grown to manhood and—”
“—how,” Matilde asked Raimond weakly, “could you have changed so much in only a few days . . . ?”
“A few days!” Raimond echoed. “Matilde, I don’t know where you’ve been and how it is you don’t look a moment older, but you weren’t vanished for only ‘a few days’.”
“You’ve been gone for ten full years.”
###
“. . . and that,” Raimond concluded, “was the last time I ever saw my brother, that night when all hell literally seemed to tear loose.”
They were sitting in the room that had once been Baron Gilbert’s solar, all save the visiting Aimery, who had politely excused himself. Matilde leaned forward to stare at Raimond, eyes fierce. “You can’t just have given up!”
“I searched for Gilbert for two years. Two years, Matilde! But the air might as well have swallowed him up for all the traces we found.” Raimond gestured helplessly. “A man can only live on hope so long. I can only guess that Thibault, in his madness, murdered my brother.”
“Ah, Thibault,” Hauberin murmured. “How is he?”
Raimond’s brows raised. “Why, dead, my lord, for nearly these ten years. He died quite insane, they say—”
“Ah.”
“—and his lands reverted to Duke Alain.”
“Who was quick to cede you your brother’s lands,” Matilde snapped.
“Whom I did not even ask for my brother’s lands,” Raimond corrected, eyes grim, “till after those two years were past. Dammit, Matilde—your pardon, gentles—I might have been a young idiot back then, but I loved my brother! It . . . wasn’t until after I’d lost him that I realized how much I loved him.”
“But you don’t know Gilbert’s dead,” Matilde insisted. “You have no proof.”
“It’s been ten years, Matilde,” Raimond said gently. “Ten years without a word. Surely that’s proof enough, even in the eyes of the Church.”
“Meaning that I’m a widow by default? Because my husband’s somehow been—misplaced? I can’t accept that.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else I can say. Look you, you needn’t worry; my wife and I—”
“Wife?”
“Ah, you wouldn’t know. Margit, Lady Margit of—”
“Duke Alain’s cousin?” Matilde asked wryly. ‘You have done well for yourself, haven’t you?”
“Yes—no—never mind that. Matilde, there will always be
a place for you here with us.”
“As what? A curiosity, not-widow, not-wife? A pensioner, like some poor, witless old crone? No, thank you.” But then Matilde’s voice softened. “I know you’re trying to be kind. But I won’t take your charity.”
“Well then, if you’d rather enter a nunnery, I could—”
“Oh, please. We both know I don’t have the temperament for that.”
“But what else is there? You can’t just go wandering the roads! Matilde, as your husband’s brother I’m responsible for you.”
“No. Raimond, don’t ask me where I’ve been, because I won’t answer you.” The man’s glance flicked from her to, disapprovingly, Hauberin and Alliar and back again. “But this I will say: after all I’ve done and seen, I’m not the woman I was. I’ve learned no one is responsible for me but me.”
“But . . . where will you go?”
Matilde turned to Hauberin and Alliar. “My lords, I imagine you are still heading towards Touranne? Yes? Then, if you will have me, I’ll go with you.” Don’t turn me down, her eyes pleaded, I have no other hope. “Perhaps there I can learn my husband’s fate.”
Following her formal lead, Hauberin bowed in his chair. “Of course you are welcome, lady.”
“But—but you can’t!” Raimond stammered. “It isn’t right, it isn’t proper . . .” The prince glanced his way but said nothing, and after an awkward moment, the man began carefully, “My Lord Hauberin, when first we met we weren’t exactly on amicable terms. If I offended you back then, pray forgive me. I . . . wasn’t always myself.”
Because Serein had been controlling him? Or was it that Serein’s mysterious ally had been controlling him through Serein, supposing that mysterious ally existed—Ach, nonsense, this train of thought was getting far too complicated. Hauberin glanced at Raimond, reminding himself that as far as the human was concerned, it really had been ten years, and dipped his head courteously. “I take it you . . . are yourself these days?” he asked, wryly mimicking the man’s voice. “Yes? Then let there be peace between us.”
Raimond leaned forward in his seat, murmuring so only Hauberin could hear. “Then you . . . won’t really let her go with you?”
“Why, my Lord Raimond.” Hauberin sat back with a smile. ‘You heard the lady: I am most certainly not her keeper.”
###
“I hardly expected this,” Hauberin murmured to Matilde as they and Alliar rode along the forest road, trailed by half a dozen mounted soldiers.
“I didn’t either,” she whispered. “The old Raimond would have thrown you into prison and me into a nunnery and tossed the key away. He really has changed in . . . can it really be ten years . . . ?”
But Hauberin turned in the saddle at the sound of rapidly approaching hoofbeats. “Ah, Aimery. And his own escort.”
The young man reined his horse in beside them, saluting them cheerfully. “I must follow this road myself if I’m to get home. I didn’t think you’d mind if we rode together for a bit.”
Hauberin smiled, seeing traces of the friendly boy beneath the man. “Of course not.” He glanced at the patently expensive clothing, and added, “No more Squire Aimery, I take it.”
“No, my lord. I earned my knighthood some years back, in service to good Duke Alain after . . . after Baron Gilbert . . . disappeared. I’m sorry, my lady.”
“So am I,” she murmured.
Aimery glanced warily at Hauberin. “I suspect I know where you’ve been sheltering,” he said softly. “In your homeland, am I right? Ha, I am! That’s the only way ten years could have passed by without touching you. Don’t worry; I shan’t tell anyone. Ah well,” Aimery added, a little too loudly, “here’s the fork in the road that leads to my own estate. I must say farewell.”
But he leaned forward in the saddle as though to adjust a stirrup and murmured, “Be careful, my lord. Baron Raimond isn’t ready to give up. The guards are meant to overwhelm you while you sleep and bring you back to his castle as abductors of the lady. He thinks you . . . ah . . . bespelled Baroness Matilde.”
“Does he now? How very discourteous of him.”
Aimery hesitated. “You . . . didn’t . . .” He glanced from Hauberin to the wryly amused Matilde and shook his head. “No. Of course you didn’t. My lords, my lady, I must leave now. All will be well with you?”
He looked so much like the earnest boy he’d been that Hauberin said with genuine warmth, “Yes, thanks to you. Aimery, you are something I never thought to find in these lands: a friend. Powers go with you.
“And . . . uh . . . with you.”
With a wave of his hand, Aimery and his men rode off.
Hauberin and Alliar exchanged sly glances, touching minds, the same idea occurring to both of them.
“It seems that our dear Raimond hasn’t changed all that much,” the prince said.
“And here I was wondering why the guards kept eyeing you nervously, oh great and fearsome sorcerer.” Alliar laughed. “What a pity Power is so restricted here; how wonderfully we could entertain them.”
“Tsk, Li, you don’t want to terrify the poor things; they’re only hirelings.”
“A shame we must leave them so soon.”
“Indeed.”
“You’re sure you can . . . ?”
“Oh, yes.”
As they rode into the heart of the day, the air warm and soft about them, resonant with the thrumming of insects, six bemused guards found themselves, one by one, overwhelmed by the urge to sleep.
“The weather is so mild,” the prince purred, “just right for a nap. Perhaps,” he suggested smoothly, “we should stop for a rest.”
Yes,” a man murmured. “Rest.”
The guards slipped from the saddles, just barely remembering to tie up their horses. As the last of the men drifted off into slumber, Hauberin leaned back against a tree, worn but grinning. Persuasion spells were simple things to manage, even in this Realm—he’d proved that on his last visit—but they did take energy, particularly when they were worked one right after another. Absently rubbing his healing arm over the protective bandages (it must be healing; it itched enough for that), the prince watched as Matilde and Alliar moved softly from horse to horse, cutting the lead ropes.
The guards woke with a start at the sound of hoofbeats. But there wasn’t much they could do save watch and swear at the sight of their quarry—and all the horses—galloping off towards Touranne.
###
Hauberin awoke with a jolt, sitting bolt upright, heart pounding with terror. But after a time it came to him that he was awake, safe for the moment, and buried his face in his hands. Powers, Powers, with each repetition of the dream he came just a little closer to the end of that corridor, to that final, terrible revelation. And he knew, with a quiet, dreadful certainty, that if he reached it, he would die.
If he didn’t died of exhaustion first. Or frustration. If only there was some swift way to travel in this cursedly magickless Realm! But no, they were limited to a horse’s pace. And you couldn’t push a horse too hard, or the poor beast would die, and your journey would be even longer—
Oh, Powers!
They had been travelling now towards Touranne for five days, eating whatever small game the predator-quick Alliar could catch and whatever berries the foraging-wise Matilde could find, camping each night around the small fire Hauberin would light with his will. It should have, the prince thought wearily, been a peaceful, almost idyllic time.
At least the dream didn’t come every night. Oh no, that would be too simple. Lately, as though a master torturer had devised the curse (too subtle a thing for Serein, surely?), there had been days among the five when he was quite nightmare-free—but anticipation of horror was leaving his sleep increasingly broken and unrefreshing, and his nerves so tight Hauberin thought he would almost have welcomed an attack by tangible foes.
A faint, repetitive sound made him tense. Alliar? No. The being was off somewhere in the forest, hunting or just listening to the wind. Mat
ilde, though, was weeping in her sleep, quietly and hopelessly, and a little pang stabbed through Hauberin. Ah, the poor, brave woman! The prince didn’t waste time in self-blame; he knew there hadn’t been any way to make the Realm-crossing spell more precise. It was a marvel they’d come as close to time and place as they had, and a mystery still unsolved why Matilde hadn’t seemed to age even slightly. But she had lost everything: husband, home, even her proper time . . .
He crouched at her side, looking down at her helplessly, aching to comfort her but not knowing how, aching to stroke the long, flame-beautiful hair, aching to touch her . . .
Ae, Matilde, Hauberin thought hopelessly. Why do you have to be human?
###
Riding on the sixth day at the standard gentle walk, trot, canter (Hauberin with his still sore arm tucked into his belt for support), they gradually left the forest behind, coming out into gentle rolling countryside dotted with farms. As the day wore down, they crested one last hill and saw a city in the open valley below, an impressive sight there in the twilight, ringed round by tall stone walls broken at regular intervals by watchtowers and bisected by the swift-flowing river that had been the downfall of the late Rogier. Most of the city was hidden behind the stone defenses, but Hauberin, standing in the stirrups, saw the dark mass of the ducal palace rising above the walls and, not too distant from it, the square tops of towers that, he realized with a thrill of excitement, must surely belong to the cathedral.
“Touranne,” Matilde said, unnecessarily.
“We’d better get down there before they shut the gates for the night,” Hauberin muttered, and kneed his horse forward.
As they neared the city, the walls looming up above them, they passed a collection of ramshackle buildings pressed up against the stones—taverns, the prince guessed, for the poorest or most desperate—and cantered through the deep gateway even as thick, iron-reinforced gates crashed closed behind them, shutting them into Touranne.
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