Fire Song

by Crosby, Tanya Anne

  But even then, her fingers wrenched at his sherte, clutching him desperately. Tears stung his eyes as her pale eyes beseeched him. It was that piteous look that nearly unmanned him. “Please,” she begged, and he was nearly undone.

  He hadn’t wept that day while burying their dead, nor any day since, but he longed to weep with her now. His own grief throttled his words, and he swallowed with difficulty, assaulted by the image of Ayleth of Bamburgh’s body lying scorched before him. But this was not Lady Ayleth weeping. This was Seren Pendragon. Nor was she dead. She was alive. She was only broken as Wilhelm was broken.

  In that instant Wilhelm felt a communion with Seren unlike any he’d ever experienced with anyone—not even with Lady Ayleth of Bamburgh. He’d pitied Lady Ayleth, in truth, much as he pitied Seren Pendragon, but this was not what rendered him speechless as he gazed into Seren’s shimmering blue eyes—eyes that were so pale a shade they reminded him of the silvery hue of a winter sea.

  And… unlike Lady Ayleth, who’s fingers were so rigid in death that he’d had to break them to rest them in repose, Seren Pendragon’s hands were clutching him in desperation, pleading with him to return her to the harbor… but he couldn’t. No, he wouldn’t.

  For the longest time, she clung to him—or perhaps Wilhelm clung to her. He didn’t know, precisely. But he swore in that instant he would do all in his power to aid her—not only because he’d promised her sister. He would champion Seren Pendragon because they were one and the same. He would protect her, not because she was his sweet lady’s sister, but because there was a small boy inside him longing to do what she was doing right now… a boy as lost to the world as she was lost. “Shhhh,” he said. “Only think,” he begged. “Wouldst your sister wish you to put yourself at risk?”

  Wrenching herself away, Seren shoved at his chest. “What can you possibly know of my sister?”

  What in the name of the Goddess could he know about anything?

  Her face twisted with anger, and in that moment, she couldn’t have cared less if she looked like a demon possessed. If, in truth, men wept with longing o’er her beauty, there was naught in her countenance now that would lend truth to this tale. She felt as hideous as Morfran of legend—Morfran whose countenance was so hideous that his mother had pledged herself to the worst hud du. Filled with anguish, Seren let loose a scream at the top of her lungs.

  “Seren,” he said softly. “Seren, please listen to me.” He gripped her by the shoulders and shook her gently. “It was your sister who sent me.”

  Confused, Seren blinked at him. “Arwyn?”

  “Nay, your sister Rosalynde. I am Wilhelm Fitz Rich—”

  It was so cruel to give hope, only to rip it away. So cruel! Once again, she flew at him, this time pounding his chest with all her fury. “I heard you the first time, my lord!”

  A flash of irritation ignited behind his dark eyes as he caught her wrists once again, saving himself from the assault. Bewildered, Seren stilled, only because she was too confused to do aught else.

  Who was this man? What was she supposed to do? Where should she go? Arwyn—oh, Arwyn, oh, nay.

  “I’m no lord,” he explained. “I am baseborn son to Richard de Vere.”

  De Vere?

  De Vere!

  “Giles?” she said, blinking with sudden comprehension.

  He nodded. “Your betrothed,” he said, and when she did not respond at once, he prompted again, “Lady Seren?”

  Seren’s jaw went slack. After everything that had transpired now, Giles de Vere would still force her to wed? Sweet mercy, in the wake of her sister’s death, marriage was the least of her concerns. Words failed her; grief caught in her throat like a sticky pit. And once again she wrenched herself away, this time, rubbing at her wrists. “He is not my intended,” she professed. “I repudiate him!”

  The man coughed, looking askance, then scratching the back of his head. “Aye, well,” he said. “As to that… whatever lies between you and my brother lies between you and my brother. ’Tis none of my concern. Rather, I was tasked to find you and return you safely to Warkworth and this I will do.”

  He lifted his face to Seren’s and for an instant she was lost in his dark, fathomless gaze—eyes that were so profound they left her confused. But there was something in his expression that calmed her, because even despite that she was still furious with him, he was looking at her as though he somehow understood… and more… as though he felt her pain. For a long, long instant, she couldn’t avert her gaze.

  Baseborn, so he’d claimed. Giles was his brother. Wide-shouldered, brawny and swarthy, Seren had little trouble believing the man could be lowborn. But something in her expression must have revealed misgivings, because he said, “Hold me in contempt, if you will… I am only here to help.”

  Normally, Seren was not an angry soul. If the truth be known, she had the least temper of all her sisters, but it was so much easier to be angry with this behemoth—this beast of a man who seemed so intent upon forcing her to acknowledge the truth. “How can you help me?” she asked, lifting her chin defiantly. “Can you resurrect my sister?”

  His jaw grew taut, and he pursed his lips, displacing a long, dark curl from his forehead as he shook his head. At one time, his hair might have been shorn in the Norman fashion, but it was overgrown now, and disheveled. His beard was sorely unkempt. “I am sorry,” he said. “Your sister cannot possibly have survived the blaze. She is gone, Seren, and you must return to Warkworth with me.”

  Crying out in pain, Seren pressed her hands to her ears, refusing to hear, even knowing he spoke true. She simply could not accept it. Arwyn died on her birth anniversary, no less—alone!

  Goddess, please, she begged.

  Let it not be true.

  How could she face Rose and Elspeth?

  How could she look her sisters in the eyes and confess how miserably she’d failed Arwyn?

  Perhaps sensing her distress, Wilhelm stepped forward, and all Seren’s years of careful aplomb shattered like Merlin’s Stone. White hot intensity surged through her veins, and she felt a tempest rising in her soul, manifesting a wind that spun between them and eddied into the tree tops, shivering the boughs. Witchwind. It seemed as though all her twenty-one years of careful restraint loosed at once, and the potency of it changed the weather.

  Seren herself might have been startled, except that fury held her in its throes. She surrendered to the feeling, allowing her spirit to unfurl into the aether, hoping for the first time in all her life that her demeanor could be frightening.

  She wanted to frighten this man. She wanted to scream. She wanted to send trees toppling. She wanted to shout obscenities at the heavens and drive a silver blade into her palm to cast the most hideous hud du. For the first time in all her living days she welcomed rage, and intuitively understood how the feeling could drive her mother to dark magik.

  Fury, hot and savage twisted through her like a maelstrom, and something deep inside her snapped, like a twig. Something broke. Something Seren was sorely afraid she could never repair.

  Somehow, she managed to recover herself, crossing her arms to keep from trembling, and after a long, long moment, the witchwind settled, but she could spy through the treetops that the sky was no longer blue. The storms that had plagued the city for more than a sennight had returned, and the air held a new chill.

  5

  She was doing this.

  Somehow, she was causing the change in the weather.

  It took Wilhelm a full moment to realize what precisely was transpiring, and if he hadn’t understood intrinsically who and what she was… he might never have believed what he was witnessing. His skin prickled as he watched storm clouds form overhead. In scant seconds the air went from balmy to blustery, and every tree without substantial girth shivered against the onslaught. The occurrence was enough to make a grown man piss his breeches, and nevertheless, he wasn’t afraid. He understood intuitively what she was going through. She was taking refuge in her an
ger—as had he. No matter what he’d wished to believe of the lady his brother was once betrothed to, he recognized a gentle soul when he met one, and realizing he was only making matters worse, he stepped back, giving her space to breathe.

  The wind calmed when she calmed, but Wilhelm was more ashamed than he was relieved. He’d never once manhandled a woman, and if she still had eyes to see, Lady Ayleth would have been mortified by his rudeness. He took meager comfort in the fact that if he’d not taken Seren out of that city, she too would be lying six feet under, like Ayleth.

  For his own part, the scent of smoke clinging to his leathers was enough to make him empty his guts, but he swallowed the bile that rose again and held his aplomb for the lady’s sake. Desperate to have her heed him, he said very gently, “M’lady?”

  Seren peered up, blinking.

  Her face, though filled with outrage, was as beautiful as he remembered. But, as livid as she might be, he recognized the sorrow nestled in her wintry eyes, and God’s bones… the sight of her suddenly discomfited him, because, in contrast, he was nothing more than a lumbering beast.

  Even as far as Warkworth, he’d heard tales of men who were driven to duel over the Beauty of Blackwood, and he could easily see why. It was this aspect of her that he’d been so afraid would blind his brother. He’d been sorely afraid Giles would turn his heart against Warkworth and against vengeance if only for the grace of her smile, because, in truth, hers was a face that could inspire men to war.

  Standing here, now, regarding her, he couldn’t help but remember the day they’d arrived in London so Giles could claim her as his bride—was that only three months ago? On that day Wilhelm had vowed to keep Lady Seren as far away from Warkworth as humanly possible. He’d called her a witch and he’d promised to thwart Giles at every turn, certain as he was that she was a spy for the king. And for all that ado about nothing, he stood here now, fully prepared to see the lady home. Only now that he’d witnessed her untempered emotion, he knew in his heart that she was innocent of her mother’s treachery. These sisters were all blameless, and one had lost her life to prove it.

  Seren, too, might have met that fate. Now it was his duty to keep her safe. And yet, what a tricky web they’d spun. For, even now, he was certain King Stephen had no inkling his brother had forsaken Seren to wed her younger sister; and he doubted Seren knew it either.

  How could she possibly? Rosalynde and Giles were wed in secret, and even if their vassals suspected, none would defy their lord to divulge it. For better or worse, Seren must still believe she was betrothed to Giles, and Wilhelm wasn’t sure how much to reveal. “M’lady,” he said when she was calm enough to listen. “I swore an oath to find you and return you to Warkworth; this is what I must do.”

  Her brows slanted. “To my intended?” she asked, and it took Wilhelm a full moment to respond. Though, in the end he decided it would be best if she thought he acted with authority.

  “Aye,” he said gravely. “To your… intended.” But he cursed even the sound of that lie on his lips.

  Seren’s brows collided.

  On the day her sister quit London, she and Arwyn had spied Rosalynde in their mother’s crystal traveling with two men. She was so certain it was Giles de Vere, and some part of her had dared to believe Giles must be her sister’s champion. But it would seem Lord Giles still intended to honor his vows. But what if, after Seren denied him, he would feel compelled to return her to her mother? Or, worse. What if he were the very one her mother had sent to retrieve her?

  Plainly, Giles couldn’t care one whit about her, else he’d have come to find her himself, instead of sending his bastard brother in his stead.

  But, of course, he must have delivered Rose to Aldergh. Her sister would never have trusted him. Rosalynde would have kept her glamour spell and she would have allowed the king’s lackeys to continue believing her a hapless nun. Only then could she have avoided their lechery and rest assured of their compliance. Men were generally faithless, were they not? Even her own father had discarded them so easily. But she remembered the undisguised look of hatred on Giles’s face as he’d regarded her mother in the King’s Hall and hope flared in her breast. “You said you were sent by my sister, Rose? Where is she?”

  He made some frustrated sound, then, once again scratched at the back of his neck. “Warkworth,” he said, and, before Seren could speak another word to question him, he reached out to place a hand on her shoulder, looking her straight in the eyes. It was impossible to think clearly while he gazed at her so compassionately, and to make matters worse, she found his voice, soft as a whisper, equally as disconcerting. Perhaps under different circumstances, Seren might have even considered him handsome, except for that razor-thin scar that parted his left brow.

  “As God is my witness,” he said. “I am your servant.”

  When she said naught, he continued. “I will see you safely to Warkworth. And once there, reunited with Rosalynde, you may decide for yourself where else you might go. I warrant my brother will not keep you against your will.”

  Seren lifted a brow. It was not her experience that any man should ever behave so honorably. In fact, over the past year she’d endured much at the hands of “honorable men”—a grope as she passed in the hall, a wandering eye, a crude gesture when it was certain no one was looking. Even Father Ersinius had cornered her inside the chapel at Llanthony, where God’s eyes were said to keep their keenest vigil. And yet, her sister Elspeth had, indeed, found herself a champion. If there was one, perhaps there could be two… and where there were two, might there be three?

  It was as though Wilhelm read her mind. “There is no love lost betwixt my brother and your mother,” Wilhelm said.

  Seren considered the verity of his words. “What about you?”

  A hint of a cruel smile turned his lips. “I cannot lie. I wouldst put my hands around her throat if ever I could,” he confessed.

  Seren sensed he spoke true, and if she’d also sensed he understood her grief, she now remembered why. He, too, had suffered a devastating loss—perhaps, even worse than hers, if only by measure, because his entire family was burned alive. And yet… she could not bring herself to trust him so blindly—nor was she prepared to dismiss his initial rudeness, tossing her willy-nilly over his horse.

  Unfortunately, he was thrice her size. He didn’t have to win her consent. Nor, by the same token, must he say sweet things to sway her, she realized. If he were so inclined, there was naught she could do to prevent him from sweeping her away—not even magik could stop him. It didn’t work quite that way, and considering how little time she’d had to study the grimoire, the witchwind had come as a surprise.

  Reminded of that, she peered up into the sky, noting the darkened horizon—lingering evidence of her temper. But, truly, never before in her life had she experienced such a tempest. She only knew about such things after reading the Book of Secrets. Tied to emotions, a witchwind was essentially the inspiration of the world, inexorably linked to the soul of a witch. Just as some dewines could use fire or water, a stormwitch could harness the wind, making use of its energies in much the same manner some dewines used crystals, sunlight or moonlight. It was a powerful tool she had never anticipated using, and be that as it may, she didn’t know how to control it. And now that it was gone, he was still here… waiting patiently for her to speak.

  “What say you? Will you come willingly?”

  Willingly?

  Nay. But neither would she fight him. Seren could scarce consider anything at the moment, much less where to go or what to do. As for Warkworth and its odious lord, she had no intention of wedding that poppet, but the closer she ventured to Aldergh, the easier would be her journey to Aldergh. And, perhaps after all, if Wilhelm spoke true, Giles might be persuaded to escort her a little further north.

  With canny eyes, she studied the giant who’d spirited her out of the harbor. Wilhelm Fitz Richard was easily the brawniest fellow she’d ever laid eyes upon, and yet for all his size,
he hadn’t actually harmed her, nor did she sense he was inclined to. His face, scarred though it might be, betrayed not a trace of enmity or even disgust for her witchery, and now that they were away from the harbor and she was calmer, he made no additional attempt to restrain her. Alas, she wouldn’t call him a champion, but in the end he might do. And yet, be that as it may, she couldn’t leave Jack in that city, not when she knew he hadn’t any place to go. His mother lived in Calais; and thanks to her mother, his father was dead.

  “Aye,” she said. “I will go.” And the tension in the warrior’s shoulders seemed to ease before her eyes. However, before he could rest too easily, she added, “I’ll not leave without Jack.”

  His head cocked backward. “Jack?”

  “Captain Airard’s son.”

  Wilhelm frowned.

  She would have him return to the city?

  Now?

  Even as they’d fled, the king’s guard had come rushing into the vicinity. By now, every last soul in the city was bound to be watching that ship burn to its bowels. It was the last place he should take Seren. He didn’t even have to think about it; he shook his head. “’Tis unwise to return, m’lady.”

  “And will you endeavor to stop me?”

  As he sometimes felt with Giles, Wilhelm felt cowed by the marked intelligence in her gaze. And nevertheless, despite that he’d never learned to read like his brother, he could read people well enough, and he knew her question was a trick. If he answered nay, she would test him, and then he would be forced to stop her for her own good. If he said aye, her ire would no doubt return—and so might the storm.

  By God, he’d suffered enough witchery these past few months to know he didn’t wish to challenge another Pendragon. That witch storm alone was alarming. He scratched his head, again, for it seemed there was no proper answer. And still he tried, answering her question with a question of his own. “Wouldst you truly have me betray an oath to your sister?”