Shana Abe (13 page)

Then the world split apart in front of her. Like the arm of God, a bolt of lightning exploded the mighty oak next to them, an encompassing wave of violence and sound and light that seemed to Avalon to be the end of everything.

She felt herself flung through the air, weightless, and
then landed on her side in the mud. There were no sounds left in the world. Everything was black and silent.

It was a relief.

But it turned out she couldn’t breathe in the mud, and her body made her rise to her elbows, gulping in the singed air around her. Still she couldn’t hear, but she could see, and what she saw was terrifying.

It was a dim glow to her at first, but her vision cleared until she could see a series of pictures, flashes of blue light against the darkness, intermittent lightning crackling though the thunderheads. Chaos everywhere, men mounted and on foot running together, horses rearing and circling. The glow was the fragmented remains of the oak, laid open and on fire despite the rain.

Right in front of it Marcus lay in the mud, motionless. A horse screamed over him, bounding up on two legs, boxing the air with his forelegs in a panic. The reins were caught on a smoldering log that would not let him run. The stallion went up and down again and again over the fallen body of her captor, missing the man by inches each time he landed.

She was up before she knew she was moving, still stranded in her silence and slipping through the mire with no thought except getting to that horse.

It was Marcus’s stallion, the one they had both ridden, and the whites of his eyes made a visible circle around his pupils. His lips were pulled back as he screamed, and though she could not hear the sound, she felt his overwhelming terror.

Calm.
Avalon sent the thought with all her might, struggling to get closer.
Calm, peace, calm …

The stallion turned his head to her, still kicking. Marcus was a blurred outline beneath him in the rain.

Peace!

The corners of her vision held diversions she could not afford to think about, men coming toward her. Someone tried to take her arm. She blocked the move without pausing, but then he grabbed her shoulder. Avalon twisted to the side and kicked her foot out, tripping whoever it was.

The stallion suffered during her momentary distraction. She felt him scream again, coming down to the ground, barely missing Marcus before rearing again. Mud splashed up in angry spurts beneath the sharp hooves.

No harm, no harm, peace
, she thought, capturing his attention again. Almost there.

Two more men were to her left. She felt their intent to restrain her and it infuriated her, that they would dare to stop her now when their laird was about to be trampled to death. She began to run, risking a fall in the slick mud.

The men came close but then fell back. The wizard had materialized from the rain, and he had stopped them. The wizard was allowing her to go on.

Ho
, called Avalon with her mind to the horse.
Here, here, over here!

The stallion threw her his terrified look but did as she commanded, turning his body to her before landing on his forelegs again. Marcus was now exactly between the powerful legs. Before the horse could rise once more she was there. Only one of her hands seemed to work but it was enough; she used her fingers to pinch the flesh of his
upper lip and deaden the pain in him until the whites around his eyes receded to normal.

Thank you
, she thought, and didn’t know if she was addressing the horse or God or both.

The wizard and some of the other men were pulling Marcus away from where he had fallen, taking him to the side of the path. Someone came up to her and the beast where they stood eye to eye. It was all right now. The stallion was quieted.

She didn’t know the man talking to her, red haired and bearded, freeing the reins from the log. He was insistent about something, talking to her, and at last she let go of the horse and shook her head at him, tapping one of her ears to indicate she couldn’t hear.

The man paused, comprehending. He turned away from her and addressed the others. The wizard approached Avalon, gave her a look more subtle than a smile. She followed him back to the side of the road, beneath the shelter of a pine.

Marcus was awake, sitting up. He tried to stand as she drew near, and she threw him a disgusted look.

Her ribs were in agony. She had just now noticed it. The shoulder she had landed on felt as if it had been torn from its socket, and that arm was useless. She was covered from head to toe in leaves and filth; the tartan was a cold, slopping mess on her; and all of this was his fault. If he had not ordered them out in this storm, she might be warm and dry and free of pain now.

For that matter, if he had not stolen her at all, she might have been living the fulfillment of her dreams, tucked away in an obscure little nun’s cell right now, clean and happy and counting her blessings and making
her plans for the future. In fact, if he had not come home from his crusade—

Everything,
everything
was his fault. She had no idea why she had bothered to save him.

Marcus winced as he hobbled over to her, both of them slightly hunched over beneath the branches. He tried to take her hand and she jerked away from him, but she must have made a sound from the pain that shot through her. Marcus scowled and Balthazar was at her shoulder, exploring it with light fingers.

She let him, but then he said something to Marcus and the other men who had trickled in and clustered tightly near. She heard his words from very far away, as if he were at one end of an enormous tunnel and she at the other.

“… dislocated. It should be set.”

Something shifted in the crowd, pity and intent and determination. They thought she was going to fight this, and they were correct. The wizard touched her again but she shook him off, biting back the wave of nausea that rose at the movement. She took a step away but they were behind her, too, and she had only one good arm.

Marcus put himself directly in front of her, shaping his words very clearly so that she could read them. “It must be done. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t touch me,” she said, and heard her own words in that tunnel.

His glance moved to someone behind her, and she felt herself taken firmly on both sides. The pain shrieked from her shoulder to her ribs, making her weak.

Marcus had one hand around her injured shoulder,
the other on her arm, and—after one quick, cold look at her face—began to pull.

Black dots exploded in her vision, her knees gave out, and still he didn’t stop, keeping up the pressure, harder now. Avalon bit her lip to stop from screaming until she felt the blood running from her mouth, and then there was a sickening pop and she didn’t know what happened next.

She was on her knees in the pine needles and mud. They were supporting her and pressing something to her lips, something that burned. Whiskey.

It inflamed the cut she had given herself on her lower lip, and she spat the mix of alcohol and blood on the ground.

“I hate you,” she said, knowing it was Marcus in front of her.

He stood up and walked away from her, taking most of the men out into the chilly rain again, gathering the horses. She was left with Balthazar.

When Marcus came to fetch her she had nothing more to say to him. The wizard had produced a long sash of fine, diaphanous material from somewhere within his robes, bright orange with a yellow sun embroidered on it, and he had fashioned it into a support for her injured arm. Marcus noted the sash, but all he did was gesture for her to walk with him to his stallion. Two men helped her up into the saddle.

The worst of the storm had passed; by the time they rode up to Sauveur Castle three hours later, the rain had lightened to a drizzle and the sky had turned dull gray. The road was nothing but thick slime, the horses skidding and fighting the muck with each step. Avalon held
on to the mane of the stallion with her good hand to keep her balance. She would not look up at the castle.

The scouts had alerted the inhabitants already and a crowd greeted them, people pouring out in spite of the rain and cold to see at long last the arrival of the laird and the bride.

There were so many of them, Marcus thought, filled with pride and secret awe. There were so many, here and scattered like stones over the mountains, all of them loyal and brave and fierce and hungry. They were his responsibility. They looked to him with shining faces and all Marcus ever saw there was hope, and a faith so deep it scared him to his bones.

He could not fail them.

The group of warriors came up to the edge of the castle wall, the horses at last on even ground, and his men spread out behind him. All of them faced the expectant throng of people.

Marcus carefully pushed Avalon forward a bit so he had room, then stood up in his saddle, keeping her in place.

“Clan Kincardine,” he called out to them, his words frosting in the air, “I bring you your lass. I bring you the bride!”

Avalon looked up at last, cold and wet, still covered in golden leaves and streaks of dirt. “Go to the devil,” she said to him, loud and clear.

The entire crowd erupted into cheers.

Chapter Five
 

S
he had refused to undress in front of the women sent to attend her.

There were six of them. They had set up a tub of steaming water for her; they had placed sprigs of lavender and mint in it. They had clucked over her and brought her barley broth with gentle, blurring words.

Avalon wanted none of it. She wanted to be alone in this small room. She didn’t want to succumb to the kindness of these women, because they were still her enemy, no matter how much lavender they had to offer.

But it seemed that even after everything she had been through last night and this morning, when her body was trembling with exhaustion and her mind kept fizzing to blankness, she could not be cruel to them.

She thanked them for the broth and the bath. She used the most normal voice she could muster when she told them she wanted to wash in privacy. When they had given each other bewildered frowns and tried to dismiss her words, she sharpened her tone, backing up and away until they had no choice but to leave.

As she was exiting, one of them picked up the tartan Avalon had discarded on the floor.

“I’ll just rinse this for ye and set it to dry, mistress,” the woman said, carrying it over her arm.

Oh well. It had been too wet to burn anyway.

The black gown was tight. It took a good while and several spells of sitting to clear her head before she had it off completely. Her shoulder throbbed from her efforts. But worse than that, she now saw, were her ribs. This was the real reason she had wanted the women to leave.

One look at the bruised, vivid mess of her side and they would have gone screeching to the laird, Avalon was sure. And she did not want the laird to know about this. God knew what he would want to do about it, and she still had some pride left.

She settled into the short tub of water slowly, allowing the heat to sink into her skin as she went, until her knees were up by her chin and the water to her neck. Fragrant steam reached up and tickled her nose, helping the blankness in her head to expand. Avalon’s eyes slowly closed. Her head leaned back against the tin edge. Everything faded away.

When she woke up the water was considerably cooler, so she found the cake of scented soap they had left her and began to scrub, starting with her hair and working down, until all the dirt was gone. She stood up, took the pitcher of clean water that had been placed beside the tub, and poured it over her head.

There was a white woolen nightgown on the pallet, sturdy and warm, a tiny embroidered collar rimming the neck. She got it on just as the women returned with beaming smiles and a mug of something hot and delicious for her to drink.

Avalon took it from them, and only after she had finished the buttered ale did they tell her it was from the Moor, and that he had wished her a pleasant sleep.

Dammit. The room began to lose its shape. The women led her to the pallet and laid her down as carefully as they could manage, touching her side only twice. But the pain seemed distant now, Balthazar’s drug smothering it.

There was nothing she could do but give in to it. As the sun began to break free of the clouds and saturate the room with gradual light, Avalon surrendered to sleep, letting out only the smallest of sighs at the end of her long journey.