Forbidden

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “I take it your touch doesn’t wound her,” Meg murmured.

  “Nay.”

  “Odd,” Meg said.

  “Aye. The people of Stone Ring Keep were much surprised.”

  Meg sensed Dominic’s sudden, intense interest at Duncan’s mention of the contested keep.

  “Is Amber from Stone Ring Keep?” Meg asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Vassal to Erik, called the Undefeated?”

  Duncan smiled strangely. “Aye. They were childhood friends, much as you and I were. He and a Learned witch called Cassandra are Amber’s closest friends.”

  A gust of wind blew through the camp, stirring Meg’s robes and setting hidden golden bells to crying. The sound caught Duncan’s attention.

  “You never used to wear such jewelry,” he said. “Did you?”

  “No. They were my husband’s gift. Golden jesses for his small falcon.”

  Duncan looked back down at Amber’s face. He stroked her cheek tenderly. It was warm beneath his touch.

  The icy fist that had squeezed Duncan’s heart eased somewhat. With a silent prayer of thanks, he pulled Amber even closer to his own warmth.

  “What do you remember of the time before you came to the Disputed Lands?” Meg asked.

  “Very little. Not even my true name.”

  “Duncan is your true name.”

  “Nay. Duncan is the name Amber gave me when I awakened with no more memory than a babe has.” He brushed his lips over Amber’s eyelids. “She touched me, knew me, and named me dark warrior. Duncan.”

  A single black eyebrow rose, emphasizing Dominic’s skepticism. But a quick warning look from Meg ensured his silence.

  “How did you find Amber?” Meg asked.

  “I didn’t. Erik discovered me inside Stone Ring, at the foot of the sacred rowan.”

  Meg became very still.

  “I was naked,” Duncan said, “senseless, and had nothing of my possessions with me but an amber talisman.”

  His head snapped up suddenly.

  “You gave it to me,” he said to Meg.

  “Yes.”

  “I remembered that as in a misty dream, the color of your hair and eyes, but not your name or where you were or why you would give something so valuable to me.”

  “Are you certain you were found inside the Stone Ring?” Meg asked, ignoring Duncan’s implied question.

  “Yes. That—and the talisman—was why Erik brought me to Amber. All things amber belong to her.”

  “Is she the one called Untouched?”

  “Yes,” Duncan said huskily. “Until I came to her.”

  “And then?”

  “She burned at my touch, but there was no pain. I burned at her touch and found Paradise.”

  Duncan looked up at Meg, wanting her to understand what he himself was still discovering.

  “There has never been another woman like Amber for me,” he said slowly. “There never will be. It is as though God made her solely for me, and me solely for her.”

  Simon and Dominic exchanged a look, but neither man spoke. There was nothing they could say to parry the certainty in Duncan’s voice.

  “So Erik brought you to Amber,” Meg said carefully, “because all things amber belong to her.”

  “Yes. I lay senseless in her cottage for two days.”

  “Dear God,” Meg whispered.

  “Somehow Amber called me from the fell darkness that had taken me. Without her I would have never wakened.”

  “So you married her out of gratitude,” Dominic said in a low voice.

  Duncan shook his head. “I vowed if I took her, I would marry her.”

  “So she seduced you,” Dominic muttered.

  “Nay. She was a virgin when we lay together beneath the sacred rowan in Stone Ring.”

  Delicate chills coursed down Meg’s spine. She, too, had once lain as a virgin with a warrior in a sacred place. She, too, had arisen no longer a maid. She, too, had been a participant in a destiny whose choices were not always obvious.

  And not always her own.

  “What is your memory like now?” Meg asked.

  “Leaves scattered by a dark wind,” Duncan said bitterly.

  “Has there been no improvement since you first awakened?”

  Duncan let out a harsh breath he hadn’t been aware of holding.

  “Instants of understanding, no more,” he said. “Just enough to tantalize me.”

  “Do these memories come at any special time or place?”

  “When I first saw Simon at Sea Home,” Duncan said, “I had a memory of candles burning, chants, and a knife blade cold between my thighs.”

  Duncan turned to look at Simon.

  “Did that happen?” Duncan asked. “Did I stand in a church with a woman’s silver shoe in my hand and a knife blade between my thighs?”

  Simon looked swiftly at Meg. She nodded.

  “Yes,” Simon said. “It was my blade.”

  Memory shivered and bright fragments wove together, giving Duncan more of the past.

  “It was your shoe,” Duncan said to Meg.

  “Yes.”

  “John was too ill to take part in the ritual, so I stood in his place,” Duncan said slowly.

  “Yes.”

  “And I…and I…”

  Shades of darkness descended, baffling Duncan’s efforts to recall his lost past.

  “I am so close to remembering it all,” he said harshly. “I know it! Yet something holds me back. God, let me remember!”

  Amber stirred as though called by Duncan’s anguish. Golden eyes opened. She had no need to ask what was wrong. She sensed the thinning shadows very clearly, the siren lure of memory glittering through the shades of darkness.

  Just as clearly she sensed Duncan’s fear of knowing. It was a fear she shared.

  Yet there was no choice but to confront that fear. She could no longer leave Duncan torn between past and future, bleeding invisibly, edging relentlessly toward madness.

  As I feared, it is destroying him.

  And as I feared, it will destroy me.

  It is too soon, my dark warrior, my love, heart of my heart…too soon.

  And it is too late.

  Slowly Amber looked past Duncan to the three warriors watching silently, held in check by no more than the upraised hand of a Glendruid witch.

  When Amber saw the silver pin glittering on one man’s mantle, she knew she had lost her gamble. The past had overtaken Duncan.

  And the name of the past was Dominic le Sabre.

  “Let go of me,” Amber whispered.

  It took Duncan a moment to realize that Amber had spoken to him. When he would have answered, her hand lifted, sealing his lips.

  “If you would remember the past,” Amber said shakily, “you must first let go of me.”

  Why?

  The demand was silent, but as clear as a spoken word to Amber.

  “Because you can’t have both,” she said simply.

  Why?

  Amber closed her eyes against the pain coiling more tightly through her with each breath. She had suspected the truth even before she had given herself to Duncan beneath the sacred rowan. Suspected, but not known.

  She knew now.

  Too late.

  “Because you can’t truly love me until the shadows are gone,” Amber whispered, “and when the shadows are gone, you won’t love me at all.”

  Her hand dropped from his lips. Knowing she shouldn’t, unable to resist, she brushed her mouth over his.

  “You make no sense,” Duncan said, searching Amber’s shadowed eyes. “Your fall addled you.”

  “Nay. It made me see clearly how I have wronged you in the name of protecting you.”

  “Wronged me? What nonsense. You called me from a terrible darkness.”

  Shaking her head slowly, ignoring the slow fall of her own tears, Amber forced herself to give Duncan what no longer could be denied.

  “Let go of me, dark warrior. Your
past is all around you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let go of me,” she whispered.

  Puzzled, Duncan opened his arms, releasing Amber. She sat up and would have stood, but knew her legs would refuse to take her weight.

  Like Duncan, she was at war with herself, knowing what must be and rejecting it at one and the same moment.

  “Now that we aren’t touching, do you see?” Amber asked starkly.

  “I see only your tears.”

  “Then hear my words. The Glendruid witch is your childhood friend.”

  “I know. Meggie.”

  “The fair-haired, black-eyed knight who hates me so—do you know him?”

  Duncan glanced at Simon.

  “Aye. He is Simon, called…the Loyal!” Duncan finished, triumph clear in his voice. “Aye! I know him!”

  “And to whom is he loyal?” Amber asked softly.

  “His brother.”

  “Who is the brother of Simon the Loyal?”

  Abruptly Duncan came to his feet and faced the tall, powerful knight who was watching him with sword half drawn and eyes the color of winter rain.

  “Dominic le Sabre,” Duncan said.

  The knight nodded.

  “And who are you, dark warrior?” Amber whispered raggedly. “What is your true name?”

  Duncan closed his eyes and tried to speak. Shadows writhed as they fought against the bright memories flowing together, weaving a tapestry of knowledge fragment by shimmering fragment, until even a thousand shades of darkness could no longer conceal the burning pattern of the truth.

  When Duncan’s eyes opened once more, Amber was grateful not to be touching him.

  “I am Duncan of Maxwell, the Scots Hammer,” he said savagely.

  Again Dominic nodded.

  “I am Duncan of Maxwell, steward to Erik the Sorcerer in the very keep that you, my rightful lord, gave me to hold in fief for you.”

  Dominic would have spoken, but there was no chance. Duncan’s words were still falling like bitter rain. The pride, humiliation, and rage in him were strong enough to taste.

  “I am Duncan of Maxwell, a man brought to ruin by a witch with golden eyes and a lying tongue.

  “I am Duncan of Maxwell, the Forsworn.”

  18

  WITHDRAWN, silent, Amber watched while the last of the rude camp was loaded onto horses.

  “Can you mount unaided?” Meg asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. We wouldn’t want to hurt you again.”

  “And Duncan can no longer bear to touch me,” Amber said with outward calm.

  Reluctantly, Meg nodded. Her intent glance missed neither the pallor of Amber’s face nor the dark brackets of pain on either side of her mouth.

  “I have lived without touch before,” Amber said. “I will do so again.”

  “Before, you didn’t know…” Meg’s voice died.

  “Aye. Knowledge is my punishment.”

  The bleakness of Amber’s voice made Meg flinch in silent sympathy.

  “I’m sorry,” Meg said.

  “Don’t be. Better that I live untouched than be touched by Duncan now.”

  “He would never lift a hand to you,” Meg said quickly.

  “He wouldn’t have to. I can feel his fury like black wings beating against my soul.”

  Instinctively Meg held out her hand in a gesture of comfort, then remembered that pain rather than ease would flow from her touch. Her hand dropped to her side.

  “Duncan will soften,” Meg said. “I’ve never seen him so tender with anyone as he was with you before he knew that…”

  “That I was less than I seemed and he was far more?” Amber’s mouth turned down in a sad curve.

  “His temper is like a summer storm,” Meg said, “loud and even frightening, but it passes quickly.”

  “The rocky fells will melt and run like honey before the Scots Hammer forgives me for tarnishing his honor,” Amber said. “Such forgiveness would require great love. Duncan loves me not.”

  The combination of anguish and acceptance in Amber’s voice told Meg more than words could have.

  “You knew this would happen, didn’t you?” Meg whispered.

  “I knew it might. I hoped it wouldn’t.” Amber closed her eyes. “I wagered…everything. I lost.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “Duncan came to me in shades of darkness…and touching him taught me that the darkness was mine, not his.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Amber smiled oddly. “I doubt that anyone could unless they were cursed with my ‘gift.’”

  Motionless, Meg waited, seeing Amber’s truth and sorrow with Glendruid eyes.

  “Mine was a lifetime of night,” Amber said simply. “Duncan was my dawn. How could I let Erik hang him?”

  “Hang Duncan?” Meg asked, appalled.

  “Aye.”

  As though chilled, Amber wrapped her arms around herself and whispered, “‘Death will surely flow.’”

  Coolness coursed down Meg’s spine. “What was that?”

  “Cassandra’s prophecy, the one I hoped to evade.”

  “What prophecy?”

  Amber’s laugh was a cry of throttled pain.

  “More fool I,” Amber said bleakly. “Rich life was the lure, death is the truth. Better that I had never been born.”

  “What prophecy?” Meg asked again, sharply.

  The tone of her voice brought Dominic immediately to his wife’s side.

  “What is it, small falcon?”

  “I don’t know. I know only that something is wrong, black wings beating…”

  The echo of her own words brought Amber’s attention back to Meg. The compassion in the Glendruid healer’s eyes was as clear as it was unexpected.

  “A prophecy attended my birth,” Amber said. “‘A man with no name may you claim, heart and body and soul. Then rich life might grow, but death will surely flow.’”

  Dominic’s eyes narrowed into slivers of beaten silver as he listened. He would have dismissed the words, but his own marriage had taught him that some prophecies were as real, and as deadly, as a drawn sword.

  “‘In shades of darkness he will come to you. If you touch him, you will know life that might or death that will.

  “‘Be therefore as sunlight, hidden in amber, untouched by man, not touching.

  “‘Forbidden.’”

  When Amber finished speaking, there was a silence unbroken by even the wind. She turned around and found what she had feared she would—Duncan standing behind her, watching her with wintry contempt in his eyes.

  “You came to me in shades of darkness,” Amber said,” a man with no name. And I touched you. You claimed my heart and my body. We had better pray that my soul is still unclaimed, or death will surely flow.”

  “Then we are lost, witch. Your soul was sold to the devil a long time ago.”

  “Duncan!” Meg said, appalled.

  “Don’t let your soft heart lead you astray, Meggie,” Duncan said. “There is naught but hell’s own calculations in that sweet-faced witch.”

  “You are wrong. I have seen her.”

  “So have I,” he retorted sardonically. “I have seen her bend to me and whisper of love at the very instant she most deeply betrayed me.”

  Amber’s head came up. She watched him with a falcon’s proud eyes.

  “I have never betrayed you,” she said distinctly.

  “You didn’t tell me my own name. I call that a betrayal.”

  “I didn’t know who you were until you fought the outlaws with such lethal skill.”

  Duncan said nothing.

  “And even then I wasn’t certain beyond all doubt,” Amber said. “It made no sense. You had flashes of Learning, yet Duncan of Maxwell wasn’t Learned.”

  Meg looked curiously at Duncan, as though seeing a side of him that she hadn’t known existed before.

  “There could have been other warriors,” Amber said, her
voice subtly pleading, “men whose names I didn’t know, men who had a strong hand with the hammer, men who were Learned.”

  “Did you know who I was before we married?” Duncan asked bitterly.

  Amber’s spine straightened and her chin came up. “Yes.”

  “Did you know I was betrothed to another, a marriage arranged by my true lord, Dominic le Sabre?”

  “Erik…told me.”

  “Before we were married?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you say you never betrayed me. Such fine calculations they must teach the Learned, all the ways to split hairs until nothing remains but dishonor.”

  The contempt in Duncan’s voice made Amber feel as though she were being flayed with a thin whip.

  “I had to marry you,” she said desperately. “It was either that or watch you hanged!”

  “Better I had been hanged than live to know myself an ill-begotten bastard whose vows are worth less than sheep dung.”

  Dominic stepped up to Duncan and put both hands on his broad shoulders.

  “I don’t consider you a man without honor,” Dominic said. “You, and your oath, are much valued by your lord.”

  Duncan became very still. Then a visible shudder went through him. He went down on one knee in silent reaffirmation of his oath of fealty to Dominic le Sabre.

  “You are generous, lord,” Duncan said in a strained voice.

  “I hope Lord Erik thinks so,” Dominic said ironically, “when he returns from Winterlance and discovers that I have taken Stone Ring Keep.”

  DUNCAN rode alone over the lowered drawbridge and into Stone Ring Keep’s bailey. His shout brought the keep’s men-at-arms running.

  “Go to Amber’s cottage,” Duncan ordered them. “She has much to bring to the keep.”

  The men obeyed quickly, leaving the bailey at a trot. The remaining guardians of the keep were more boys than men, squires who dreamed of someday being knights.

  “I will take the gatehouse watch,” Duncan said to Egbert. “If either of you sees aught amiss, don’t cry out. Come to me swiftly and silently. Do you understand?”

  “Aye,” the two boys said as one.

  As the squires trotted off to their posts, Duncan went quickly to the armory. The weapons that remained there after Erik’s departure were ill-assorted but quite sufficient for the keep’s defense.

  Duncan locked the armory door and kept the key. Then he went to the gatehouse to wait for the Glendruid Wolf.