The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (26 page)

And he remembered something else, something that had no part of Ceridwen, something he wished had no part of him, except he had been part of it, those dark games in desert tents, when a man wanted only what another man, or a boy, could give. He had heard of such in his youth, had even eluded a few amorous advances. But in the desert—ah, in the desert, ’twas so much different from the hasty couplings he’d imagined he would have to endure if his knife hand had not been quick and his feet even quicker.

In the desert there was heat, languorous heat, and incense filling the air and teasing the senses; and there was
kif
to inhale, to fill up your lungs and numb your mind. And there was wine, to ease the lies into truth; and the seduction of opium to put a blessed haze over your perceptions and mask the most unbearable loathing, leaving only your disgust to be dealt with later. And disgust, he’d learned, was no deterrent to survival, not after the first few times.

“Shit,” he muttered, and rolled onto his back, dropping a hand over his eyes. He did not want to remember those things, not when he lay next to a woman he wanted. Edmee was so perfect in her muteness, unable to ask questions, unable to ask her teacher the name of his.
Jalal. Jalal al-Kamam
. In every nuance. “Shit.”

Madron had skewed the whole of it out of kilter with her talk of locking the tower. He was too close to making his Philosopher’s Stone to risk exile, and even then he needed the tower. Though he could take the Stone with him, little good it would do him without the upper chamber to guide him through the cosmos in the final steps of drawing down the elixir and the pneuma.

Transformation.

Transformation was the key to putting his past behind him, to forgetting.

His chest tightened painfully. Bloody, sodding Madron. How much of his mind had she seen? Another spasm wracked him. He pulled his legs up and eased back over onto his side, facing Ceridwen. The witch had ruined him with her damned Druid sleep.

Behind him, the sun broke the horizon, sending the morn’s first true shafts of light streaming across the land, skimming treetops and pouring into meadows. The brightness touched Ceri’s eyelids first, then spread down across her cheeks, and farther still to her mouth. He reached for her again, unable to resist. They’d kissed in the grass across the river from Deri.

Some people believed in the transforming power of love. Looking upon the maid, he wished he dared to believe. She was so exquisite. Her skin absorbed the dawn and reflected it back with the radiance of her soul.

He feared he was in love, and in lust. The utter, godforsaken irony of it should have killed him on the spot. But no, there would be no instant annihilation. He was a survivor, praying every day to a god he’d foresworn that he would find the redemption he no longer believed existed—except, mayhaps, in nature herself, in the shape of the sky and the substance of the earth, in the metals and minerals and stones, if he was clever enough to find the key.

But then, cleverness and keys were his strong points. Hadn’t he opened the Druid Door, and hadn’t he unlocked the secret of Nemeton’s rotating spheres, that most strange contraption he’d found in the upper chamber, the source of Erlend’s worst nightmares?

All he needed awaited him in his tower, the planets above and Earth’s treasures below. He was too far down the road to chance a change in course, even for such a rare creature as lay by his side. He would give Madron no reason to lock him out of the Hart Tower.

Resigned, and somewhat steadied by reaching the only logical decision, he withdrew his fingers from Ceridwen’s hair. She wanted magic? He would give her what magic he knew. To ease some of the days of her life, he would teach her of women’s herbs, of yarrow and lady’s mantle, vervain, rue, and water pepper. And to assuage her fears of marriage, he would teach her how to use a knife. He would give her an advantage, the edge of a blade, for few things stopped a rutting man quicker than a dagger at his throat or his balls.

He would give her the Damascene, since she was already taken with it. The hilt fit her hand well enough. ’Twould be his wedding gift to her and let Caradoc make of it what he would. His old friend was in for a number of surprises with his bride.

A loud rustling in the brush announced the dogs, yet ’twas the Cypriot who reached him first. She nudged the back of his head with her soft muzzle, warming his skin with her breath. The dogs tumbled out of the woods after the horse.

“Aye,” he muttered as they bounded around and stuck their cold noses into his ear and licked his cheek. “I’m glad to see you too.”

With a gesture, he directed them both to sit. Numa disobeyed with typical predictability, trotting over to be next to the maid. She gave him a quizzical glance from across the rise of Ceridwen’s hip, as if asking permission for the done deed.

“Fie, bitch,” he grumbled, pushing himself to a sitting position.

The albino stretched her head down to lick Ceridwen on the cheek and nose, and Dain found himself sunk to another new low: being jealous of a damn dog.

“Ceri?” He shook her arm. “Ceridwen.” ’Twas time for them to be up and gone. He preferred not to be caught dallying in the woods in the light of day.

She mumbled a few words of protest, and he shook her again, then rose with an arm wrapped tightly around his ribs. Pale blue eyes squinted up at him through gold-tipped lashes.

“Come,
chérie
,” he said, forcing a smile and a lightness he did not feel. “Our adventure has lasted through to the morn, and we must find our beds.”

Adventure, aye, Ceridwen thought through the haze of sleep. They’d had an adventure, she and the sorcerer, a marvelous adventure full of strange people and stranger places.

There had been a wood with wild folk gathered around a mother oak of enormous girth. A waterfall had shimmered over their heads, revealing a secret trail. They’d found a cottage hidden in a pine forest, and inside the cottage she’d found a marvel. Her hand went to the pouch hanging from her girdle, and she smiled. The elf shot was safe. ’Twas a wondrous thing to have, but there had been something else in the cottage, something less tangible and far more strange than her prized elf shot. Her smile faded. Memories had been in the cottage, her own and those belonging to others, memories of a green-eyed maid from long ago, and dreams. They had come to her in a fog and must have slipped back into the selfsame cloud, for most of them were not clear in her mind now. Yet she remembered love, strong and pulsing with the heart of the earth, luring her into a dark abyss. She remembered the anguish and the fierceness of it, and she remembered the man, a warrior.

“Come. ’Tis not far,” Lavrans said, and when she looked up, ’twas him, with his flowing dark hair and broad shoulders silhouetted against the sky.

Denial quickly followed. Lavrans had kissed her, and the kissing had created confusion. He was no warrior; he was a beguiler. The man in her dream had wielded a sword, not a rowan wand.

But even the quickest of denials could not change what she’d seen, or what she’d felt. ’Twas him.

“Come, Ceri. We can be home before mid-morn.”

She followed the sweep of his hand as he gestured to the west and the last shadows of night. The stone walls of Wydehaw rose into a gray sky from a distant, rocky crag, its towers wreathed in garlands of dawn mist.

~ ~ ~

The great hall of the castle was in an uproar. Servants scurried this way and that, kicking sleeping dogs and snoring guardsmen out of their way with equal vigor. Wasn’t often they had the chance to get a swift foot on one of the mesnie without facing even swifter retaliation, but the overseeing black scowl of their lord, Soren D’Arbois, approved all means to his end. He wanted the hall cleared. He wanted hyssop strewn on the rushes. He wanted clean linen on the dais tables, and he wanted fresh bread and ale. The Boar of Balor was less than a league north of the Wye, bearing down on Wydehaw with a column of thirty men.

“Boar,” Soren muttered.

“Milord?” A fresh-faced squire stopped in his tracks, his arms full of bee balm, and looked up expectantly.

Soren eyed the boy, momentarily distracted from his grim musings. He liked dark boys, and this one was darker than most, with coal-black hair curling across his brow and ebony eyes shining bright and innocent.

Too innocent, he decided, and sent the squire off with a cuff to the ear. “Hyssop, boy. Hyssop, I said.”

Damn Vivienne. Where was she? Strewing herbs was her bailiwick, not his.

“Boar,” he muttered again. The man would want his bride and Ragnor, and Soren could lay claim to only one. Damn the red beast for bringing such as Caradoc down on his head and then disappearing without so much as a by-your-leave. Having Ragnor brought to the Boar in chains would have ameliorated some of the northern lord’s wrath at the treatment his betrothed had received in Soren’s demesne.

What was he to do?

He grabbed a passing kitchen maid by her arm and drew her up short. “Pies,” he said, sticking his face close to hers. “Meat pies.”

“Aye, milord,” she said, her head bobbing, her eyes round and wide.

He released her with a shove that sent her stumbling. A guardsman caught her with a hearty guffaw and “Ho, wench,” but Soren would have none of that. He glared at the man until he released the maid. Ragnor’s lust for the swiving of women was what had caused the calamity about to be unleashed upon them all.

And Caradoc’s own carelessness, Soren thought uncharitably, and mayhaps the Prince of Gwynedd’s and his man’s, whoever that had been. One maid should not be so hard to hold that a fool could lose her in the woods and leave her easy prey for a hunting party. Lavrans kept her easily enough.

Of course, Ragnor had broken her ankle, an act that was bound to slow down even the quickest girl, which was certainly what the red knight had intended.

“Bah.” Soren made a dismissive gesture with his hand, and three servants ran into one another, trying to decipher the cryptic command. “Bah,” he growled again, giving them his evilest eye. “Bah!”

With much bumbling and mumbling, the three sorted themselves out and scattered. Fools. He was surrounded by fools, sans one, the captain of his guard, the beast Ragnor. Where had the man gone? And why? Humiliation was nothing new in Wydehaw’s hall. ’Twas almost guaranteed when Lavrans was a man’s opponent. Ragnor had lost to the sorcerer before without fleeing.

There was mischief in the man’s disappearance. Soren felt it. He knew it, but there was no proof, no clue that the man had done other than run off. But to where? No word had come back of him. The men who had been hunting with Ragnor that morn had reported finding boar sign and tracking the pig to its lair. There the party had split up, each circling within sight of the others, ready to cut off the swine should it try to escape, hounds yapping at their heels and the hole in anticipation of the bloodshed to come. But there had been no boar, only the scent of one to drive the dogs mad, and then there had been no Ragnor. Everyone had seen him, no one had seen him disappear, but neither he nor his destrier were to be found.

Mischief, to be sure, but by whom, Soren wondered, and to what end? There were those in the woods who were wild and particularly fond of mischief, the Quicken-tree, but they ever avoided the world of men, and they would find the rancid Ragnor particularly offensive.

Soren looked through the gloom of the hall to the iron cresset where the demoiselle had hung from her chains. Had it been magic? Mayhaps Lavrans’s spell had taken hold and even now Ragnor lay fast asleep in some secret grove. And mayhaps the spell did hold time at bay, and his captain would not awaken for a thousand years.

Now there was a thought worthy of his father’s great bard, Nemeton, who had dealt much with the wild ones. Nemeton, Soren thought.
The Sanctuary
in the bard’s own language, a strange name for a murdering bastard.

Spells, bah. His father had believed in the power of the unseen, and what had it gotten him besides a dead wife? Lavrans was no sorcerer except by design. ’Twas the reason Soren enjoyed him so, watching the man beguile everyone from the king’s sheriff to the lowliest scullery maid with no more than his wits. All except Soren himself trembled in the black-cowled demon’s presence. Vivienne trembled out of lust, true, but still she trembled.

Soren would have trembled for the wizard, on his knees if need be—or actually, preferably on his knees—if it would have gotten him into Lavrans’s bed, but all of his efforts had been futile. Yet he still held out hope, for there was something in Dain’s dark gaze, a near unconscious sensuality inherent in his demeanor that beckoned and incited Soren in a way no other man’s gaze ever had. Dain Lavrans was not innocent of any pleasure. Soren knew that truth down to his bones.

“Food or a man?” a woman asked.

“What?” He snapped out of his reverie and found his wife standing next to him by the hearth.

“Food or a man?” Lady Vivienne repeated with a bland smile. “Nothing else brings that sappy, glazed look to your eyes, Soren.”

Bitch.

“I’ve ordered meat pies made for the evening meal,” he said.

“If ’twas Ragnor’s meat ’twould be better for us. I’m afraid the Boar of Balor is going to be sorely disappointed not to have anybody to torture.”

Soren gave his wife a cool look. “Mayhaps I’ll find someone to sacrifice before he leaves.”

Vivienne did naught but return the threat with a smile. “Let us take his measure first, my love. Then we shall see who shall torture whom.”

“Milord.” A man came running up, breathless and pale, but moving under his own power and—a quick glance downward confirmed it—still dry in the front of his tunic. Noll had gained instant notoriety for surviving his mission to fetch the sorcerer on the night of the storm, having been retrieved singed and unconscious, struck down by a sizzling bolt of undiluted magic, a mighty bulwark overcome by the ungodly powers of bewitchment (this last being his own interpretation of events). He had become the hero of the scullery, with all its attendant benefits with the kitchen maids, and now insisted on his duty as messenger to the Hart Tower.