Shana Abe (25 page)

She was fortunate to have a private room at all, and she knew it. But lately she had been thinking of another room in this castle, one she had not yet seen. Lately, as in the past five days.

What did the room where Marcus slept look like? What view did it have? What colors were the blankets on his bed?

Avalon stood up, disgusted at herself. Impossible thoughts, crazed dreams, to consider these things—

As she pushed away from the desk her sleeve brushed against a stack of papers, toppling them in a whoosh, an avalanche of flutters down to the carpeted floor.

“Splendid,” she muttered, and bent down to gather them up.

Her hands scooped up the pages on top, pushed them together in a pile and left them on the floor, too tired suddenly to sort them out. Then she picked up the odd bits and pieces that had drifted off to the corners. The last one was almost in the fireplace, now thankfully nothing more than embers.

Avalon studied it—a leaf torn from one of the books, she thought—and brushed loose the ash on it as she walked through a patch of moonlight. The silver light glanced over the words written there, slanting black handwriting, sloppy, broad strokes. Hanoch’s writing, she knew it well now. Hanoch’s words:

Avalon stared down at the words, reading them again until their meaning penetrated.

Hanoch had discovered who bought the Picts. Hanoch had known. He had found this MacFarland person and got the information and here was the proof, finally, that Bryce had killed her father. Proof!

“Awake, lady?”

Avalon jumped and clutched the paper to her chest, whirling around as her other arm swung out, ready to defend or attack. Balthazar stood right behind her. He lifted up his hands and took a step back.

“Easy, lady, you are safe.”

She stared up at him, still holding the paper against her pounding heart, her other hand a fist.

“I beg you not to harm me,” said the wizard, bowing low. “I implore your forgiveness for arriving so.”

It was a gentle teasing, designed to ease her, and it worked, letting her fingers loosen, bringing her hand down to her side.

“You startled me,” she reproached him.

“Alack. I am unworthy of your forgiveness, you know me clearly.”

“You walk like a cat,” Avalon grumbled.

“A lowly cat, a stray, a mongrel, I grovel before you, lady—”

“Do stop.” She walked away from him, over to the desk, slipping Hanoch’s note into the folds of the tartan at her waist when her back was to him. She turned around to find him motionless, watching her, a wraith in robes in the moonlight.

“You do have such a flair to you, for a monk,” she said to him.

“I am not a monk. I beg your pardon.”

She stared at him, baffled. “But you said you were, to those men, the emissaries.”

“Wise lady, I urge you to think back. What I said was that I joined the Monastery of Saint Simeon.”

“To be a monk,” she concluded.

“No longer. I am no longer a monk. I renounced my vows before I came here.”

Avalon laughed a little in spite of herself, marveling. “You might have lied to them, but you didn’t, did you? You told them the truth, and let them draw their own conclusions.”

The wizard folded his hands inside his sleeves and gave her a look from twinkling eyes.

“And you carry the image of the crucifixion on you, but you have renounced your vows.…”

It struck her suddenly that this was not funny, that it was a grave thing for a man to go back on his word, for a man of God to turn his back on his order. She knew then that the wizard had not done this with a light heart, that it had taken something devastating to change him.

“I’m sorry,” she began, mortified, “it’s none of my concern. I hope you can—”

“Shhh!” The wizard interrupted her, put his finger to his lips. “Listen, lady! Do you hear?”

Avalon froze, became as still as she knew how to be, but all she heard were crickets and a slow breeze through the trees outside. And the smallest, smallest sound of the embers dying in the grate.

“What?” she whispered, locked in place. “I don’t hear—”

“A dream, lady. It is with us.”

“A dream?”

Balthazar spread his arms wide; the robes opened up like the wings of a bat in the darkness, his fingers splayed. “Oh, he has dreams, do you hear them?”

Her fear was back, worse than when he had startled her, sending the blood rushing to her head. “No, how could I—”

“Listen!” commanded the wizard, and the bat wings grew wider, engulfing the room, engulfing her.

She was hot, terribly hot, and thirsty. The thirst was killing her, like nothing she had felt before; it was a hideous beast, a monster in her that dwarfed even the
chimera. The thirst was all of her, it plucked the desert sun from the sky and lodged it in her throat. Her tongue was parched to the roof of her mouth, her lungs were sand, bags of sand, like the ones the nomads carried, but loose, punctured, and the sand ran all through her, soaked up her blood and turned it bleached gold, the color of old bones.

She labored to breathe through the sand, but each breath sucked in the dry air and strengthened the monster thirst. There was nothing else around her, only this, an enduring agony, where even the thought of water made the monster howl and dig in deeper, clawing her, shredding her.

Oh God, what was happening to her? Avalon put her hand up to her eyes to shield them from the bright sun, but that wasn’t right, because it was night outside, she knew this, it was nighttime and the moonlight had been so shallow. But the sun burned her hand, unprotected where it left the sleeve of her robes, even for that short moment it scorched her skin and she had to bring her hand down, feeling in front of her for the table in the solar—but it was not here.

Listen!
shouted the wizard and the chimera together, and now she heard the wind outside, a sandstorm pounding the walls, seeping into the room, crisping her lungs further.

She stumbled forward, ducking her head; she had to leave this place, she had to escape, she had to find water.

The buttery. There would be water there. No, better yet, her room—it was closer. There was a pitcher of it waiting for her there.

She fell against the wall of the hallway. The sandstorm
was louder now and she was still blinded, feeling her way along the stone wall. The stones were hot from the sun, they could not be cool as they should be because the sun never stopped here, the sun would burn them all to ashes, even the stone. All the water in the world had boiled away by now, there was nothing left.

Avalon folded both hands over her face, heedless of the pain of her burned skin, and tried to run, to find shelter. There was no water, what was her recourse? Why couldn’t she die? Why didn’t they just kill her?

When she lifted her hands from her face she was lost, somewhere she did not know, a cramped room with layers of sand on the floor, and there was a man tied down to a table. He was red and brown and black, his lips were the monster of thirst, even the blood had dried to a crust on them. His hair was matted and dirty, a wild beard covered his chin.

She couldn’t move from the table, the ropes were too tight on her, she had no more strength to fight them so why didn’t they just kill her? Why suffer like this?

Death was paradise, denied to her.

A drop of something hit her lips, trickled back to her tongue, and was gone before she could taste it, soaked into her mouth.

“More?” asked a gentle voice in a language she didn’t know, but she knew what it meant, that one word. It meant water.

Yes!
she tried to scream, but nothing came out, not a word, not a whimper. She couldn’t even move her head, her forehead was tied down to the table. The ropes cut into her, more bleeding.

“Yes!” called out Marcus on the huge bed, tossing
and turning where she could not, becoming tangled in the furs, the blankets.

Sand blew through the chinks in the white walls. Sand embellished the dark wood of the crucifix hanging over the table, obscuring the crown of thorns on Christ’s head.

“Renounce,” said the same strange, gentle voice in its own language, and if she could have freed her tongue from the desert dryness Avalon would have babbled her agreement,
Yes, yes, I will, whatever you say, only give me more water.…

Marcus flung his hands out, moaned in his sleep. The moonlight fell only across his face, showing her his scowl, his hair not matted, no beard. There was no sand in this room.

Avalon looked around again, closer. There was no sand. There was no sun. No voice, no crucifix. It was still nighttime. She was at Sauveur, and this must be, had to be the rooms of the laird.

“My God,” whispered Marcus in his sleep, and his body was almost bowed up, arching in torment or pain from the nightmare that gripped him.

Avalon stood with her hand braced on the wall by the door—cold stone, no heat—heaving for air, still trying to accept where she was.

There was a pitcher on the table across the room. The pitcher would have water.

She let go of the wall and almost ran to it, almost cried at the sight of the still reflection of the moon on the surface of the blessed water.

With shaking hands she poured some into a mug, and she had never heard a happier sound: the liquid splashing
into the bottom of the glazed mug. She put the pitcher down and drained the mug at once, letting it spill down the sides of her face, joyous water.

She filled the mug again to the brim and went over to Marcus, taking the pitcher in her other hand, and knelt by his bed.

Sweat poured off him, the blankets were soaked in it; she could feel the heat of him all the way from here, the thirst.

He tossed away from her, arms still outstretched, as if they were tied down.

She lifted the mug but he was facing the wrong way, and when she touched his cheek he flinched and wouldn’t come back to her.

“Water,” she whispered, and he moaned again, unmoving.

Avalon dipped her fingers in the liquid and moved her hand until it touched his lips. The meager drops bled into him, he followed her hand as she moved it back toward the mug.

“Water,” she said again, and now put her hand behind his head, supporting him.

“God,” he cried, a catch in his voice, and she knew now what that unbearable hope felt like.

She touched the brim of the mug to his lips, tilted it so the water slid to him.

“Drink. It’s for you.”

He did. He opened his mouth and drank all of it, and she refilled the mug and offered it again, making him take it slower now, still asleep, the burning beginning to recede, the monster diminished.

She let his head back down carefully, smoothed his hair from his forehead, damp and clinging.

“Thank you, God,” he sighed, and his arms moved back to his sides, and peace settled upon his features.

The nightmare was gone.

Avalon sat back on the floor and let out an extended breath. There was a moisture on her own face, not from the water. Tears. She had not even noticed them, but salty tears had fallen from her eyes at some point. She had cried during the nightmare. She had cried for her own death.

And yet it wasn’t her death. It wasn’t her nightmare. Marcus was the tormented dreamer.

Under the influence of the moon she could see that the colors of his blankets were dull and indistinct, perhaps deep blue or forest green. She couldn’t tell. She shouldn’t stay.

But she found herself lingering by him, drawing solace from the sight of him lax amid his covers, his breathing now even and relaxed. A dark angel at slumber. But no, not an angel, something more vulnerable than that. Just a man, a gorgeous man with troubled dreams.

She took a corner of her tartan and touched it to the water in the pitcher. It seemed a good remedy to wipe away the salt on her face, so she very lightly used it on him the same way. He did not stir as she brushed the coolness over his features, a small ritual of motion to follow the clarity of his beauty. At rest, with those winter eyes closed, he could have been a fallen angel, in need of her care.

His eyes opened then, caught her right as she was about to wipe his cheek, tartan in hand as she bent over him.

Avalon was stunned to immobility. She could only stare back at him, hovering, aware of how it looked for her to be here at all, much less in the middle of the night, spying on him.

His eyes matched the moonlight, he was a creature of mystery and he saw her, he looked right up at her with no astonishment at all.

“An angel,” he said, whisking the word from her thoughts. “Am I dead?”

Avalon, still motionless, licked her lips. “No.”

His eyes drifted closed again. “I wanted to …” He rolled over, away from her, clutching a pillow. His words became a mumble. “I wanted to die.…”

She backed away, lowering her hand, and stood. He was asleep again.

The pitcher and mug were at her feet. She refilled the mug and left it close to him on the table nearest the bed, then went back and put the pitcher there, too, so it wouldn’t be underfoot. With one last look at him, Avalon crossed the expanse of the room—his windows had a view of the bailey, overlooking gracious valleys reaching up to Highland peaks—to the door.

Although she had no memory of how she got to the laird’s rooms, it didn’t take much time to find a hallway that was familiar, and from there to make her way back to her own chamber. But it was a long while before she could find the comfort of sleep herself.