Shana Abe (16 page)

Tegan, the castle cook, wanted to know what the bride might like for her meals.

Hew, Sean, Nathan, and David—all in Marcus’s guard—loitered their way around the room before gathering enough courage to ask her how she had escaped the giant Tarroth that terrible night in the storm, and then spent the next hour practicing her elemental combination of moves in front of her until each of them had it right.

Tarroth himself, come to ask the same question without the companionship of his peers, frowning down at her, repeating her moves until she relented and showed him a way to counter it.

Ilka, chatelaine of Sauveur, and her three daughters—who stayed in a row and stared up at Avalon with identical pansy eyes—making certain she had enough furs on her pallet, that the hearth was well swept, that the black gown beneath the tartan was not uncomfortable.

And many more, all of them deferring to her as if she were a queen and not the injured captive of their laird. The one overwhelming emotion Avalon caught from them, the one common link that each shared, was excitement bordering on joy. It bubbled up around them as they spoke to her in respectful tones. It glimmered in the room after they left. Even Tarroth had bowed to her with respect, feeling no resentment toward the woman who had defeated him with seeming simplicity. He was proud, in fact, that he had been the one chosen for the display of her battle skills.

They all believed in this story of the laird and the wife and the devil, Avalon realized. They believed it with every ounce of their being, just as much as Hanoch had, this silly superstition, this impossible fable.

The women became more forward over the course of the days. They sat beside her and asked her opinion on hundreds of things, why a husband would do this, how to best punish a child about that. Did my lady think the pigs would breed again this season? There was one sow with a gleam in her eye.…

Someone’s husband had strained his back before the harvest. He had been unable to do his share of the work.
Would my lady grant the family an extra measure of oats for pity?

Half the grain in the northern fields had spoiled due to some mysterious black growth on the stems. Did my lady think it the work of the devil? Would my lady be able to change the crop for them? Would she bring them new grain from her bounty?

The salmon this year had been scarcer than ever. Would my lady bring up her own sheep from England, to last them through this winter?

She was terrified, she was appalled. What to say to them? Avalon tried to tell them she was not qualified to give them answers, but it was as if her apologetic denial was an expected reply; so they would wait for it to subside and then begin the tale again, this time hoping for a different response.

Avalon wavered between laughter and tears, unable to reconcile the image of herself she saw in the eyes of these fine people to the person she knew she was.

She was no icon. She was no queen, no living symbol to end their curse. It petrified her even to think about what they might expect of her. All she could do for them was offer a very material solution—her wealth—and Marcus had rejected even that.

When Balthazar arrived there were about twenty women in the little room, all clustered around the pallet Avalon had moved directly beneath the window. They had formed their own order of rank, from most important to least, and they took their turns seeking an audience with her ladyship, who sat on the furs and kept her hands together in a clasp not coincidentally resembling the supplication of prayer.

As the Moor stood in the doorway each face turned to him, each quickly looked to the others, then the women gathered their skirts and their entreaties and curtsied their way out.

“Already see how they love you,” he said, coming forward and granting her a graceful bow.

“It’s not me they love,” Avalon said, rising from the pallet. “It’s an idea. It has almost nothing to do with me.”

Behind Bal appeared another man, taller, broader of shoulder. She knew who it was before he stepped into the room. She felt his presence with a delicious shudder, a secret pleasure followed by quick denial.

“Is she well enough to leave the room?” Marcus asked of Balthazar.

Bal raised his eyebrows at Avalon. “Is she?” he asked her, wry.

She didn’t know what to say. She wanted to go out so badly that the need was a painful knot in her throat, and yet if she seemed too eager, would they back away? Avalon gazed at the Moor in torment, unable to reply.

Marcus walked over to her, looked down at her with eyes that reminded her abruptly of a caged wolf she had seen long ago: intense and glowing and untamed.

“Come,” he said, and offered his arm.

She took it because the knot insisted that she did. The walls of the room had been steadily growing closer over the course of the last two days, the narrow window had not been enough to spare her from the old feelings of spiraling suffocation. She would have done almost anything to escape it.

They walked down the hallway and out to the great hall of Sauveur, enormous and cold, with black and gray
pillars of stone holding up the mighty arches above, a fire roaring in each of the four fireplaces set back in the walls. There were tables and benches of smooth, dark wood. There were colorful tapestries and heraldry hanging from high above.

Scattered autumn leaves clung to the floor by the main entrance. A crisp breeze blew in, pushed back the wisps of hair by her face.

Beside her, Avalon felt something in Marcus pause, lost in a memory, though he kept their pace steady.

People who saw them stopped whatever they were doing and stared at the couple, most of them breaking into broad smiles, a few of the women dabbing tears away.

Terrifying, what they were thinking. Infeasible. Avalon couldn’t believe it, the reckless hope the mere sight of her engendered.

Our bride
, they all thought, and with it came a crushing realization. She was everything bright to them now. She was one half of the magic ending of the bitterness of their lives, and the other half was the new laird, home at last. Against her will she began to understand some of what Marcus must be feeling, why he took the risk of abducting her.

Outside, the sky had that particular hue that came only with the precious few weeks between summer and winter. Deepest blue, pure and infinite, with occasional hints of snow-white clouds gliding over the horizon. The air was cool and lively, smelling of leaves and smoke and faraway waters.

It felt refreshing and welcome, like an old friend who had been away too long. It was so familiar to her. It felt like … home.

Of course it was familiar, Avalon chided herself. It was the same as every other autumn she had spent up in the Highlands. She had not needed to be at Sauveur itself to experience a Scottish turn of seasons. That was all it was.

She had tried to rest her hand lightly on Marcus’s arm, but it was so much easier just to relax and let him take her meager weight, to release the stiffness of her shoulder to him, allowing their movements to flow together. She had nothing to lose with this small concession, Avalon thought.

The land around Sauveur was wild at the edges, the pastures and fields that had been cleared of trees and boulders were hemmed on all sides with heavy forest, mountain grass, and chunks of white quartz.

Marcus led her down a well-trod path, gathering people behind him on the way. The wizard was keeping a respectful distance, followed by a growing tail of others, mostly children, drawn to the spectacle.

He had to hear the whispers, Avalon thought, looking up at Marcus only once. He had to hear the voices behind them, saying their names. But he kept his face even, his steps firm and unbroken. He seemed a man with a purpose. Avalon knew this was more than just a leisurely stroll for her benefit.

He was showing her off—as sure as a man would display a prized new steed, he was offering her to his people.

Avalon tried to summon anger. But what came instead was a reluctant kind of approval. If she had been him, she would have done this as well. She would have taken whatever steps were necessary to encourage those
depending upon her. She would have taken the figment of a legend and made it real herself, if she could have. And even this admission to herself made her afraid, for approving of the laird’s actions was only a step away from willfully participating in them. And then Hanoch would have won.

They went to a glen, a sheltered place with a rolling pasture of wild grass and even a few white and yellow flowers, still clinging to life through the coming cold. The green grass waved with the illusion of silver outlines; it seemed to flow from a place of blue mist and dappled lands down a great mountainside, to spill into the circle of the small valley below. There were artfully tangled clusters of brambles in the valley. There were young girls with long hair and woven baskets collecting wool from the thorns of the bushes.

And on the side of the mountain, though Avalon had never seen it before, was the end of that wicked faerie of the legend, an incredibly humanlike formation of black rock amid the green and silver.

Avalon’s steps slowed to a halt. She stared up at the figure.

It was easy to see why a legend might shape itself around these rocks. It would have been a giant faerie, thrice as big as a person if it were a fleshly form instead of stone. But otherwise, it indeed resembled a twisted, broken man, albeit one with the black wings of a crow spreading up and out from behind him. The shape of the head was clear, two arms—outflung—two legs. The wings. The green and silver grass not growing over any of the black stone body.

Avalon was clenching her jaw but was unaware of it
until she looked away and saw Marcus doing the same thing. The glen was silent. No birds, no insects. Even the breeze had settled to nothing. All the people around them were still.

Suddenly it seemed like truth to her. There really had been an evil faerie. The laird’s wife was no myth but an actual woman, dishonored in this field. There was a vengeful laird. There was a devil. The curse was genuine.

The world took on a sickening curve. Outlines became distorted, blurred. A noise filled her ears, the sound of a man weeping. A terrible smell surrounded her, a stench so foul it made her want to retch. The air was unbearably hot and humid.

The man would not stop weeping, and he was saying words now, too:
Treuluf, my life, don’t leave me.…

Avalon sucked in her breath and the glen came spinning back to normal. The man was gone, his tragic voice—the smell that lingered was only the mountain air. Nothing seemed to have changed in that moment, everyone stood as before, looking at either the mark on the mountain or at the laird and his bride.

She was astonished. It had been so real! Yet no one else looked odd, no one else glanced around and back up to the black stone. Only Marcus gave her a hint that she might not have imagined it all. He took a deep breath and frowned, as if he too had caught the foul stench of something not right.

His look met hers.

“Sulphur,” he said.

Her refusal was strong and immediate. It could not have been real.

“No.”

His voice was low, meant only for her. “Another lie, Avalon?”

“It was an illusion.” She matched his pitch. “Not real.”

Now she got his chilly smile. “We have our ghosts everywhere up here, my lady, whether you believe in them or not.”

The young girls in the glen had ventured closer, pale and hollow faced, and Avalon felt their wonder, their admiration, the soreness of their fingers, the wetness of their feet from the holes in their shoes.

She wanted to weep with the ghost laird she had heard. She wanted to weep for these children, who could not remember a night without feeling the pain from work, who had never even conceived of a bliaut with fine jewels scattered on it, much less dreamt of owning one. She wanted to weep for the scarce salmon, the ruined grain in the fields. Dear God, what would become of them?

Marcus released her arm, walked away from her to the collection of people behind them. He blended in right away, one tartan fading into the next, a sea of likeness filled with the unhesitant acceptance of its own.

The wool-gathering girls watched him go, adoration clear on each face.

Avalon was left to stand alone in the silver-green grass, the black faerie overlooking them all.

The wizard approached her, the two outsiders in this scene now standing together. He contemplated the glen, the brambles, the shaped rocks above them.

“A strange country,” he finally said.

Avalon crossed her good arm over her stomach.

“Savage lands and brave people,” he continued. “Mountaintops that seem to speak to God, should He will it. Magic and legends and strong liquor. It is a heady mix.”

The breeze returned, whispering through the grass at their feet, turning the young girls back to their tasks at the brambles, though they did not stop looking from Marcus to Avalon.

Balthazar bent down and plucked a flower with bluish-white petals. “I have a question for you, lady. Will you answer it?”

Avalon watched his fingers amid the petals, dark against the light. “If I can,” she said.

The wizard smiled. “A wise answer from an old soul. My question is this: What do you remember of this place?”

His words were already baffling. Avalon looked around, uncertain, then tried to explain. “Nothing. I never came here. Hanoch placed me in a village far to the north. I spent my time there.”

“No, no,” the wizard said, waving his hand in front of him as if to chase away her words. “Not from this lifetime. From before. What do you remember?”

“Not from this lifetime?” she echoed, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“Some people believe we come back to these bodies again and again. They say that each lifetime is a lesson to advance the soul to God.”

She grasped the thought, considered the heretical content. “No heaven? No hell?”

The wizard smiled again; this time it was smaller, the
ends of his mouth almost tucked down with amusement. “That is a matter of fantastic debate. However, I would think that the hell would be to continue to return without learning the lessons.”