The Swan Maiden (24 page)

Wreathed in thin gray clouds, the sun made a crimson disk on the horizon when Jaume reached the approach to the bridge.

“You, old man.” An armsman blocked his way. “Halt.”

Several bees detached themselves to investigate the nearby campsite. Men dressed in chain mail and leather sat by a cook fire, warming their hands and eyeing the progress of their meal. Om Toumas laid a string of trout on the fire. When a bee alit and danced on his nose, he scolded gently. “You're out late, little sister. Best get along home.”

Behind the fire, the white pavilion's canvas sides were closed. The smell of horses not far away and grilled fish, closer, drifted into the chilly air.

“We seek a shepherd without a flock,” the armsman said to Jaume. “And a young woman with light hair. Have you seen such a couple?”

“Me, Sieur?” Jaume's toothless gums slurred the words.

The tent flap lifted and Lady Sarpine emerged. The comtesse's cloak and riding skirts were creased, her white coif smudged. In her hard, pale face, her blue eyes burned as fiercely as the fire. “Who is it, Renod, travels at the cusp of dark?”

“An oldster. Harmless.” The armsman's voice sharpened. “But the lady asked you a question, man. What rogue's business brings you here at this hour?”

Jaume turned so the man could see the straw hive on his back. “Can't travel before the bees are abed.”

“Shall he pass, Lady?” Renod asked.

“Bees!” Lady Sarpine drew her cloak close to her and retreated partway into her tent. “Send him along.”

Jaume touched his fist to his breast. “Aye, Lady,” he quavered. “Be kind to the bees that you find on your way.”

The armsman waved him on. A commotion at the fire had attracted his attention. “What's amiss there?”

Jaume walked toward the bridge.

“Om Toumas dropped the biggest trout in the fire!” an aggrieved voice was saying. “Clumsy fool!”

“Your pardon.” The servant turned his face from the firelight.

“What about my dinner? It's cinders!”

The servant wiped his hands on his leather apron. “I'll cook you another,” he said, fumbling as he turned the fish. The whole string fell into the coals, raising a shower of sparks. Men sprang back, swearing.

“Hellfire.” One armsman's irritation turned to disgust. “What's the matter with you, Toumas?”

Lady Sarpine paused with her hand on the tent flap. She stared at Om Toumas, then hissed under her breath. “The cousin.” Long skirts flapping, Doucette's mother ran after the old man. “Wait, you!” she shouted. “Renod! Fools! To me!”

The armsmen ran after the comtesse.

The old man kept walking. Five steps to the bridge. Four. Three.

Lady Sarpine reached Jaume first and spun him around by the elbow. “Steal my daughter, would you, knave? Your wretched life is forfeit,” she panted. “She'll be longer a widow than a wife.”

A bee lifted from the old man's sleeve and hummed in warning. Jaume was hers. How dare her mother threaten him?

Jaume turned, his toothless mouth turned down in a sorrowful expression. “Doucette's her own woman, not your property to dispose, Lady,” he said. “That was ever your mistake.”

“Insolence!” As the comtesse's free hand clawed for his face, bees boiled out of the hive and swarmed around her head. She screamed but kept her grip on Jaume's arm.

Insects landed on her eyelids and loosed their stings.

“Help!” Lady Sarpine swatted at her face. “I can't see!”

Doucette wondered whether Jaume could feel the magic crackling in the air around him. As some of her bee selves stung and died, the rest flew more swiftly, thrummed more loudly, attacked more viciously. She felt like a cloud of sparks, or a host of tiny, vengeful lightning bolts. The sensation frightened and exhilarated, both at once.

Jaume had spoken the truth. Doucette's mother could no longer order her daughter to do her bidding. No one commanded a sorceress.

When her mother fell back, tears of pain and rage squeezing out from under her swollen eyelids, Doucette attacked the armsmen.

They tried to protect their faces and catch hold of the old beekeeper at the same time, but the bees crawled inside their helmets and stung the exposed skin around eyes and noses. The men had to retreat, shouting and cursing, as their faces swelled grotesquely.

Haloed in bees, Jaume set foot on the bridge. Once he had crossed to the Donsatrelle side, he whispered Doucette's name.

This time, Doucette's dizziness passed quickly. She seized her pack and was on her feet and waving to Om Toumas while Jaume still sat on the ground collecting his wits.

“That will teach them to interfere with a sorceress,” Doucette said. Relief and glee bubbled up in equal measure, spilling out of her mouth in giddy laughter. “Did you see their faces? We're safe, Jaume!” She spun in a tight circle. “I can't imagine why I was so worried. If they come after us again, they'll not get off so easy!”

“No?” Jaume said in a low voice. “The armsmen looked bad, and your mother—”

“They deserved it for trying to stop us,” Doucette said. Her chastelaine's training surfaced, and she continued in a more reasonable tone. “If Om Toumas packs mud around their stings, the swelling will go down overnight. What do you care?” She tugged Jaume to his feet, tossed him his pack. “Let's go.”

He caught it, barely.

She grinned at his expression. “That spell didn't leave me a bit tired, you know. I could walk all night! We could fly!”

He opened his mouth, closed it, and slung the pack over his shoulder. “Rather walk.”

Doucette charged forward. Why had it taken her so long to claim her freedom? Only a few steps separated Beloc from Donsatrelle, after all.

“Are you sure?” With a wave of her hand, Doucette Transformed herself into a bat and swooped playfully over Jaume. She tugged on his hair, then, swift and silent, landed behind him and reclaimed her girl shape.

He made such a comical sight, standing with his elbows over his head and staring wildly around, that Doucette laughed out loud. “Let's fly to your home, Jaume. We'd get there in no time,” she coaxed.

“Doucette. It's not like you to tease me.”

“Oh, very well.” As she marched down the road, her lips turned down in a Cecilia-like pout. What had happened to his sense of adventure? She loved night flying!

When the river fell away into darkness, Jaume insisted they stop and rest. He dropped his pack in a sheltered spot, under a pine tree. “I am tired, even if you are not,” he said when Doucette complained.

They made camp in silence.

Jaume slept beside her, while Doucette lay awake for a long while, staring at the stars and thinking.

When she arose in the morning, she had reached a decision.

Chapter Twenty-seven

After she and Jaume had broken their fast, Doucette sat on a rock and teased pine needles out of her hair. If she turned her head, she could just see Vent'roux town in the distance, tucked under a giant crag. “You should go first and tell them,” she said.

Jaume spooned millet gruel from the little pot. “Why?”

Doucette jerked on the comb. “My hair's sticky, and my clothes are filthy. I want to wash.”

“We've a big tub at home. Flower soap, all that.”

“It would be more polite to give your family some warning.”

Jaume licked the spoon. “Why the delay, when we're so close? It's silly.”

“Silly or not, you can't make me go.” Doucette's voice faltered. Couldn't the man understand that a person might want to be clean on such an occasion?

Abandoning the millet, Jaume squatted next to her. He tugged a lock of her hair and wound it around his finger. “You look beautiful, as always. What's the matter, love?”

“I don't know,” Doucette lied. “Go on and tell them. When you return, I'll be ready.” One way or another. What had seemed so clear under the distant stars was less so in the morning light. Especially when Jaume studied her like she was a present he couldn't wait to unwrap.

He released her hair and watched it coil against her cheek. “If that's what you want. I hate to leave you alone.”

“I'll be fine.” Now that Doucette had persuaded him to leave, she found herself reluctant to say good-bye. This journey had proved such a magical interlude between the hostility of her family and the unknown quantity of his. Just the two of them walking hand in hand through wild country, speaking or silent, content together. To ease his worried look, Doucette wagged her finger. “And don't go kissing all the pretty girls of Vent'roux town, or you'll forget about me.”

“Never.”

As she had intended, he reached for her. Doucette dropped feather-light kisses on Jaume's nose, his eyebrows, his chin, then met his seeking lips with her own.

“No town girls for me.” His arms tightened around her. “You're the only one I'm kissing.”

“Promise?” She said it teasingly, then buried her face in his shoulder, afraid he would see the tears that had sprung to her eyes. Silly to be crying
before
she had lost him.

Whether it came from the new closeness between them or the kindness he had always shown her, Jaume seemed to understand that she needed a serious answer. He took her hand and put it over his heart. “I swear it.”

Doucette made herself wave cheerfully as Jaume left the hollow where they had spent the night. But her pretense faded as she tended the fire and boiled water in the little pot, then stripped and bathed. After heating more water, she washed her hair and her clothes, then fanned them dry by the fire. She completed each action from force of habit, her head too full of conflicting thoughts to pay much attention to the work of her hands.

Once clean and dressed, Doucette tidied up: dousing the fire, putting the empty pot into her pack, braiding her hair. A bird drilled its beak against a cedar branch. The rapid tapping sounded like a summons.

Which call would she heed? Marriage or freedom? Jaume or magic? The choice might tear her in two, but it had to be made.

Doucette retied the leather strap that closed her pack and reminded her aching heart of the reasons she must go on alone. She loved Jaume. Sending him away was one of the most difficult things she had ever done. Even now, she felt the increasing distance between them like a physical wound, draining her strength.

Her sorceress self stirred. Wasn't that very pain a sign she had made the right decision? If love required she give up her magic, what would remain? An exiled chastelaine, a powerless girl with dove-colored hair and no fear of bees.

The girl Jaume loved,
her heart mourned.
The girl who loved him in return.

Of course she did, the sorceress responded impatiently. Jaume had helped her complete the Rassemblement and escape her family's control, and for that she would always be grateful. But she was just coming into her powers, and she refused to be ashamed of them. Would she let passion blind her to the fact that throughout their journey, Jaume had fussed over her casting the tiniest spell?

Oh, he had said what she wanted to hear, promised he wouldn't be afraid. But his resistance the previous afternoon, when it was clear that only her magic would get them past her mother's guards … it showed how little he understood.

He was afraid for you,
Doucette's heart told her.

Afraid
of
you, her head replied. Afraid of magic—he had admitted it! What if she hadn't been secretly practicing? What if she hadn't known how to wield her new powers and win their freedom? He would have been killed, and she dragged home like a runaway heifer, bawling and struggling to no purpose. Instead of a powerful sorceress, Jaume was treating Doucette like one of his flock, to be herded here and there, and then safely penned. He meant to be kind, but a shepherd didn't appreciate sorcery's demands. He couldn't comprehend that the magic running through her had to be expressed.

You don't know that,
her heart countered.
Why don't you trust him?

Trust. Who could she trust, if not herself? All her life, other people had decided what was best for her. Unless she seized this chance to explore her gift, she would never know what she might have accomplished.

“Enough!” Doucette said aloud. She clapped her hands to her buzzing head, as if that would still the arguing voices within.

At least she wasn't married, her mind contributed, slyly. Betrothals had been broken for less cause. And in this case, a clean break was best. No ugly confrontation, no recriminations. If she could, she would take the pain upon herself rather than hurt Jaume for an instant. But as Cecilia had once warned her, a sorceress did what she must to keep her freedom. As much as she loved Jaume—
because
she loved him—Doucette shouldn't bind him to a woman who didn't really know who she was.

The time had come to find out.

Magic thrummed through her, its siren call muting the grief that hollowed her chest. Relieved of the burden of decision, Doucette focused her mind on the complicated spell. She rested her hand on the pack.

Be thou a golden chain,

slight as fairy silk,

strong as dwarven steel,

thy links endowed with further charm,

thus:

while clasped around my neck,

lend me crow form:

black-winged,

hoarse-voiced,

impertinent.

With a shiver of anticipation, she fastened the necklace around her neck.

The Transformation into bird shape felt smoothly, perfectly familiar. Magic surged over her skin and left glossy feathers in its wake. Her legs shrank, her arms lengthened, and she reached for the heavens with a crow's black wings.