“I see auras quite easily,” he answered. “I saw the ridge in your abdomen. It was created by one of my kind.”
“I want a cure too!” another woman abruptly shouted. She stepped to the fore. “One of them hit me when I was running out of Lordun. I’ve had aching feet since.”
Herfod laughed. “That’s because you’ve walked all the way here.”
The tension broke. Everyone laughed. Grinning, Herfod stepped up and cured the woman’s aches all the same. She blushed and smiled a thank-you.
“Me, too!” another said.
He refused with a smile. “Go see one of that lot,” he responded, pointing back at his gang. “They can do what needs to be done as well as I can.”
“Not fair! You’re prettier,” a teasing voice cried.
“Oh, now,” Herfod said. “None of that. You’ll make them jealous.” Forestalling any further teasing, he looked at the dumpling. “I don’t suppose someone will introduce me to the spokeswoman?”
“That’s Uma,” Zini told him. Uma smiled up at him. She was somewhat shorter than he was.
“Well, Uma,” he greeted. “Have you paper?”
She shook her head.
“If I get some, can any of your lot write on it?”
“Yes. I can.”
“Then I’ll have some sent. I would like a list of all the curses and spells this coven could possibly cast on Marun’s army. I need to know how widely the caster can inflict each spell, and I need to know how many witches can cast each type.”
“All right,” she agreed. “And what will you do with this information?”
“What you suggested,” he answered. “I’m going to team up your witches with my monks.”
“I still don’t see what that would accomplish,” Brother Keth interjected from the doorway. “Aside from protecting the white witches from spells cast by the opposing dark witches, that is.”
Herfod looked at Keth thoughtfully. After a moment, he spoke again. “I need volunteers,” he said, but it wasn’t a request. A number of faces turned wry with foreknowledge, but even so, every one of the gang stepped into the open, prepared to suffer whatever test their leader was about to carry out. Herfod grinned at their knowing faces. “Zini,” he called.
“What?” she snapped.
“Think you could cast that boil curse for me on cue?”
“Yes.” She stepped to his side, looking down at him curiously. Zini was taller than Herfod.
“I’m going to start a chant. Don’t cast your end of this until I lower my arm. All right?”
She nodded.
“Right. You hold my hand,” he instructed, putting his out. After a second, she gave hers to him. “It’s going to tingle,” he warned her.
A brow lowered suspiciously.
“Oh, come on! I just cured you!”
“Fine! Just get on with whatever this is.”
Brother Herfod raised their arms and began the chant. The women couldn’t quite hear the words he uttered, but the monks could. They grew tense with expectancy. It was a healing prayer, but slightly altered. They knew they were in for it.
And they got it. Herfod lowered his joined hand, and Zini called her curse.
“Gods!” Keth cried.
“Oh!” a second monk gasped.
“Ah haf boees ung ma tunk!” another blubbered.
“Quick!” a fourth said urgently. “Start the healing chant!”
“Ah cank!” the tongue-crippled monk protested.
The room full of women roared with victory and laughter. Grinning over the successful trial of witchery and prayer, Herfod released Zini’s hand and went to assist his gang. They were in terrible shape, worse than Zini had been. Some of them didn’t dare move, it hurt so badly.
Zini smiled a very superior smile. “That’s just more like it,” she said. She turned to Uma. “We have to call the other witches to Ulmenir. We can do more than we thought.”
Uma nodded. “We’ll form a circle of summoning tonight.”
“Tonight? With Virginal Sisters spying on us?” Pell spat. “The leader will pray something and ruin it.”
“They have no power,” Zini said scathingly. “The gods never listen to women.”
“She and the others could still distract us,” Pell pointed out. She pinned the dish with an accusing stare. Previously participating in a group chant of healing, he had turned to listen. “Why did you put those spies in with us?” Pell demanded.
“Spies? I wanted chaperones,” he protested. “They aren’t spies.”
“Chaperones?” Zini snapped. “We can take care of our virtue ourselves. Witches don’t want men. They’re nothing but bothersome drains on our power.”
“I know that, but I didn’t want the rumours in the city to start including ones about monks being charmed and seduced by witches.”
“Oh,” Pell said. Actually, she’d been thinking to do just that. With him.
“We have proponents of the Heavenly Light sect in Durgven,” Herfod continued. “They’ve already stirred up some bad feeling with the less educated citizens.”
“You mean the poor and stupid,” Zini said.
“I mean just the stupid,” Brother Herfod amended. “The stupid are everywhere.” Zini flushed. Herfod grinned at her. “You didn’t think I meant you, did you? A woman of your advanced age and wisdom?”
“Age! I still look young.” She frowned. “How did you know I was old?”
He laughed. “I see auras!” he repeated. “Where are the Virginal Sisters, then? I’ll go talk to them about piping down tonight.”
“Wait! How do you teach your brethren to see auras?” Uma asked. “Usually a person can or he can never, no matter how much you try to explain it, but the monk I met at the city gate said you showed him how.”
“Uh ….” The young man blinked, opened his mouth, shut it, blinked again. “I … uh ….”
“He doesn’t know,” Keth said. He and the others had just finished their group chant and only a few dried scabs and bruises remained to show where angry boils had swelled their skin.
Herfod cast a surly look back. “Shut up, Keth.”
“Well, you don’t,” Keth said with a mulish scowl.
“How could you not know?” Uma asked.
Keth spoke before red-faced Herfod did. “When he woke up my eyes, he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and said, ‘Here! Look at it this way, dolt!’ And then my eyes woke up, so to speak.”
“You learned to see auras because he called you a dolt?” Zini said, a derisive smile forming on her face. Keth’s lips thinned. Before he answered with rudeness, the monk named Henrel replied.
“No, it woke because Herfod touched him. Some of us acquired the gift when we took our holy vows, but the rest needed coaching and eventually received the gift while conducting prayer with Herfod. Except for Keth. Keth was a dolt.”
“I’m not a dolt!”
“And Herfod got impatient with him,” Henrel went on.
“I’m not a dolt!”
“And yanked his scruff like a rude puppy,” Henrel said, grinning at Keth, whose gaze narrowed with irritation. “He hasn’t called anyone a dolt since, but if someone is particularly stubborn about learning the trick through divine intervention, he’s tried grabbing the scruff again.”
“I’m not stubborn,” said Keth.
“Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t,” Henrel ended. “We’ve a theory it only works if Herfod grabs a dolt.”
“I’m not a dolt!”
“Perhaps I should see the holy sisters now?” Herfod suggested quickly.
“Yes, of course,” Uma said.
“And the rest of you lot, heal anyone who needs healing while I’m occupied. You too, Keth.”
Still glowering, Keth spread out with his brethren to offer assistance to those who needed it, but as far from Henrel as he could get. Uma led Herfod upstairs to where the sisters had currently barricaded themselves. After a half hour of reassurances and promises, Her
fod and Uma managed to calm the Virginal Sisters into co-operating for the sake of the war effort.
“This has been a very successful conference, Brother Herfod,” Uma said on the way back down the stairs, to which he smiled and nodded. He departed shortly afterward, promising a return visit on the morrow to discuss the list. Outside the farmhouse, Uma watched the gang surround him until he disappeared within it again. The holy brothers walked en masse around a hedge and out of view.
Despite having met the mysterious Brother Herfod, Uma’s curiosity over him had not been satisfied. He was nothing at all like she’d expected. He’d been a teasing rogue to begin with, not the least a reverent monk, but with the Virginal Sisters, he had been as gentle as a light breeze. The sisters had treated him like a venerable old man, and he had acted like one.
Brother Herfod, in Uma’s, mind was a very strange creature that would bear more observation, and not just because he was nice to look at.
***
Nicky squirmed beneath him. He almost lost it then, but just managed to contain himself. “Oh! Not fair! I’ve waited days! Be still a moment.”
She giggled and turned her head to see him. He bit her cheek lightly. Of course, she squirmed again in retribution.
“Oh!” he cried. In retaliation, he nipped the back of her bare shoulder.
Once more they were in her darkened bedroom. Herfod pressed up against her back while she lay on the bed face down. He’d found her sleeping that way. He had only just begun to steal kisses. He was almost too eager to continue, and he hadn’t even touched her where it counted.
Ugoth had been forced away from his mistress for the night. He was incarcerated in the castle with his wife and children. The younger royalty had demanded the king’s attention. Quite vigorously. Little Prince Uthel was feeling mightily put out with his father. The king seemed to be absent constantly. Uthel had insisted he must sleep in his father’s bed that night, to be certain the Shadow Master himself wasn’t conjuring His Majesty away.
Of course, Princess Emelle had to be present to assist, and little sister Minelly decided she must be on first watch. The other two sisters were too young to understand their father’s dire circumstance and were carted off to their cribs as usual. But the older three siblings, they intended to see that their father was in his proper bed the following morning. Ugoth had sent a message to Nicky indicating he was under house arrest, and Herfod had shown up to take advantage of his absence.
“How do you always know?” Nicky asked her secret lover.
“Know what?” he whispered back. He lifted off, but only to get his pants down. He pressed on her again and nudged her legs apart with a knee. She didn’t resist.
“When he isn’t going to be here,” she answered. “How do you know?”
“I check every night.”
She gasped for two reasons, one of them physical pleasure, the other surprise over his answer. “Oh! Every night?” His only response was to make her gasp once more. She recovered from the second delicious thrust before he did. “Kehfrey! You come to check every night?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
He was too stiff on top of her, on the verge but endeavouring not to cross over. Nicky didn’t want to start off with a quick one, not tonight. “Every night?” she repeated.
“Nicky! I’ve just said so!”
“When do you sleep?” Her distraction was working. The tension left the muscles of his abdomen, his arms.
“I go back if I see he’s here,” he said.
She twisted to look at him. “Do you watch?” She asked not because this possibility bothered her personally, but from concern that seeing her in the act with Ugoth might provoke resentment.
“I did a few times.” He’d gone very still above her.
“And? Were you bothered by the sight?”
“Oh, yes!” He lifted and thrust in hard. She cried out softly. “I was so bothered, I almost fell off the roof trying to stay in sight of the finish.” He plunged again. “You two move about so much it’s a nuisance to spy on you.”
She laughed in relief. “You aren’t jealous?”
“Of course, I’m jealous! I don’t want to be the spy. If I didn’t think Ugoth would kill me, I’d make him the spy.” He kissed her neck and then bit it tenderly.
She shivered. “Kehfrey?”
“No more questions!” he pleaded. He was beginning to quake with tension.
“Kehfrey! I heard something!”
He leapt off.
Nicky rolled and pulled up the covers just as the door of the chamber opened. “Ugoth! You frightened me!”
He said nothing, only stepped in and shut the door.
“I didn’t hear your knock!” Nicky was terrified. She couldn’t see Kehfrey. She had no idea if he’d escaped in time. She was amazed at how fast he’d disappeared. But where? “Did the butler let you in?”
“Yes.” Ugoth’s shadowy figure walked closer to the bed. He paused before her wardrobe. His head turned toward it. Doubly terrified, Nicky realized Kehfrey hid within in it.
“I thought your children insisted you must be found in your bed this morning?” she called to Ugoth.
His attention reverted back to her. Was he smiling? Was that a malevolent grin? He moved out of the faint beam of light he’d been in. She squinted in the darkness and wondered if she’d imagined that cruel expression.
“I’ll leave just after,” he promised and approached the bed. At her side, he pulled the covers completely off. She stared at him uncertainly. He seemed so cold. Did he know?
“You’re very beautiful.”
The way he said it felt fresh, as if he’d never seen her before. She remained silent and still under his scrutiny. She felt very strange, frightened, not for Kehfrey, but for herself. There was no sense of soft emotion emanating from Ugoth. He was … predatory.
He was on her! She gasped beneath him. Cruel fingers wound in her dark hair. He pulled her head back by a shank and kissed her. She clutched at his arms in fright. For a moment, a very brief moment, she felt something odd about his left arm, a disfigurement, a huge scar that shouldn’t have been there, but then he wrenched her hands off and thrust them above her head. He didn’t undress. He shoved his breeches down just enough and took her like a stranger. She shivered beneath him and felt no pleasure, only fear.
It was over quickly, but he didn’t withdraw. His eyes fixed on hers. He was hypnotic, his gaze intent. He stared and he waited, and she stared back, helpless to do otherwise. She couldn’t tell how long they remained locked like that.
After what seemed forever, he blinked. She was reminded of a bird of prey as his head turned away. His hand reached between them to touch her abdomen, and he smiled as if satisfied. He withdrew abruptly and walked to the door. He looked toward the wardrobe as he went by. She thought she saw the vicious, contemptuous smile again, and then the door shut firmly behind him.
She continued to shiver, doing nothing as Kehfrey crept out of the wardrobe and stared at the door. After many long minutes of tense silence, he finally turned and went to her. She was still in the same position, shaking uncontrollably.
“Nicky?” he whispered.
“Oh, Kehfrey! It was like a rape!”
“I know. I never thought he’d be like that.” He hovered near the bed, ashamed that he had done nothing when it had happened, uncertain whether he should touch her or not, undecided that he shouldn’t hunt Ugoth down and kill him.
It was a choice Nicky saved him from. He could not hurt Ugoth. He just couldn’t.
“Kehfrey,” she whispered up to him. “I’m so cold.”
He grabbed the blankets and pulled them up. “I’ll stay and keep you company,” he said. “I won’t press you for … well, you know.”
“I know. But you could hold me.” He was there instantly, a warm comforting presence she could hide inside. “It wasn’t like him at all,” she said, curled inside his arms. “It was like he was someone else.”
In the after
math of the rape, she didn’t remember the fleeting moment in which her fingers had touched a lengthy, thick scar, but she would long into the future from the traumatic now, long after she’d borne her last child. She would realize just how important her overlooked discovery had been, but at that moment, she could think of nothing but how wrong Ugoth had seemed.
“I’ll see if he had a bad evening with his wife,” Herfod said. An argument with Eshaia may have been the reason for the strange behaviour. He wished he’d seen Ugoth more clearly. With only a crack to peek from, he’d been able to do little more than know that Ugoth was in the room and on Nicky. He’d caught a faint glow of the man’s aura. It had been oddly brighter. Tomorrow he would check for spells or curses. This night’s behaviour just wasn’t like his king.
He jumped as Nicky touched him intimately. “What are you doing?”
“Forgetting Ugoth!” she hissed. “Make me forget!”
“Nicky!”
She grabbed more firmly and tugged. He gasped. That had been painful!
“Do it!” she ordered.
“Oh!” he breathed. She needed to punish someone. It was going to be him. He began to stiffen with need again. The next time she pulled, he groaned from a better sort of agony.
Chapter Two
Herfod was late. He cursed beneath his breath. He’d bloody fallen asleep. The sun was a blush on the horizon. The monks had already been to mass and breakfasted. Herfod leapt from Nicky’s bed, pulled his black suit on and strapped on his weaponry quicker than he had ever done.
“Kehfrey,” Nicky murmured. He glanced at her. She still slept. He hoped she never whispered his name like that in Ugoth’s presence.
He was just slipping out the window when he noticed the change. Taking a last look at Nicky, he froze for a second. Even in the dimness, the altered aura was clear. Ugoth’s rape had accomplished what gentleness and exuberance had not. The seed had finally taken. Nicky was with child.
As he stared in surprise, he heard the sound of someone walking the street below, but still somewhat in the distance. He pulled his head out and climbed onto the roof. Above on the slanted tiles, he coiled his rope and tucked in the grappling hook he had wedged into a chimney corner. Slinging the loops over his shoulder, he raced across the southern slope, climbing higher at an angle. He leapt to the next building along the street and continued on. He fairly flew across the housetops, snatching at the peeks upon landing and then sprinting along the pinnacles as if on a series of tightropes.
Bound in Stone 3 Page 4
