The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy)

by Janzen, Tara

  He saw the light of understanding and hope flicker in her eyes. With all due haste, she worked her way out of her kirtle, pulling it up over her head and leaving him to stare at the soft curves of her body as revealed through the fine linen chemise.

  “And if that does not sway your betrothed,” he continued, “I will make you tremble and jerk upon the bed like a woman possessed, all the while assuring the Boar that I nearly have your demons banished and will soon have you aright.”

  The billowing of her clothes filled the air with her scent. He inhaled the fragrant, feminine redolence, all thoughts of shaking her vanishing like so much ether in the wind, and replaced with imaginings of a much gentler ilk. His gaze caressed each flowing curve, from her throat to the arch of her foot, up the length of her arms bared by her chemise, and down again to linger in the shadows between her breasts and lower still to the beckoning mystery between her thighs.

  And if that does not sway your betrothed, I will possess you myself. I will slip into your mind, into your breath, into your body. I will give myself to you in a way you cannot resist, sweetly, so sweetly, with trickery and wiles, and if needs be, with the truth.

  He was mad. His mind had finally broken. He had lost all reason in his yearning. What Jalal had failed to accomplish with his exquisite tortures and opiated kif, with his subtle games and degradations, one small maid had managed by the mere taking off of her kirtle. A bartering ram was at his door. His hand was bleeding onto the floor. And he could do naught but stand and stare at the cause of it all and think of her kiss.

  “No potion,” she said, as if she were in charge. “I can make my own delirium and will have no trouble trembling in fear with the Boar in the room. No vomiting, but I will gag and spit if you wish.”

  Aye, he thought, befuddled and bemused. ’Twas his fondest desire to have her gagging and spitting while in his bed.

  “I cannot abide the runs.”

  Neither could he, but desperate situations required desperate measures.

  “Wet me down, if you must. Water will do for sweat. All I ask is that you do not let him touch me.” She threw the kirtle onto the bed and turned to face him. “I cannot bear for the Boar to touch me.”

  Neither could he. “’Tis his right.”

  The delicate lines of her jaw tightened and an angry glint sparked in her eyes, both good signs. “If the time comes, let it be one he will die for.”

  “You cannot kill him with magic, Ceri.”

  “Then mayhaps I’ll use a knife.”

  Her audacity was a worthy, foolish, frustrating thing. If a man died every time a woman said no, the kingdom would be knee-deep in dead men before the month was out. ’Twas not how the world worked.

  “Mayhaps I’ll teach you how,” he said for the sake of convenience, “but only if we live through the day.” He lifted his hand toward the bed, trying to hurry her along. The ram hit again, making him wince and convincing her to comply.

  With his pots and cup of water, he dabbed and smeared her face and neck, putting most of what he’d wanted inside her on her instead. She bound her hair up and used the bloody bandages to best advantage around her forehead. ’Twas a slapdash job at best, finished off with a rotting salve to give her a putrid air.

  Were he Caradoc, he would not touch her with that smell upon her. He doused her again for good measure, then put his finger to her lips and leaned very close over the bed.

  He stared at her long and hard, very hard, keeping all expression from his face, watching her eyes widen in expectation and then narrow in unease, then finally make the transition into confusion with a hint of fear. That was where he wanted her, cowed and vulnerable. The battering ram kept up its pounding, and still he continued his silent staring. He knew her, knew her stubborn courage could be the end of their game, and so he waited. When he felt a tremor run through her, when her eyes slowly widened again in greater fear, he leaned even closer.

  “Not one word will you speak,” he whispered, putting menace in his gaze and solemn threat in his voice. “Not one move will you make, or I will give you to him myself and be done with it. Do you understand?”

  She made the slightest motion with her head, acquiescence from a woman of her word, yet he would rather have had time to get a sturdy sleeping draught into her, whether she said yea or nay.

  As long as she was awake, though, he planned on putting her to good use. Reaching above her, he unwound the end of a rope and placed it in her hand.

  “When I light the candle on the table, pull this and do not stop until it is done, then hide it back behind the curtain.”

  With her final nod, he pulled a swath of bandage down to cover her eyes and left the bed, drawing the damask drapes behind him.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Out of my way. Out of my way, man,” Vivienne shouted from down in the bailey, sending a ripple of anxiety up the tower stairs.

  On the landing in front of the Druid Door, Soren blanched at the sound of his wife’s voice.

  “’Twill be your head on a pike, you lice-ridden lout,” she threatened one of his men.

  With Vivienne bullying her way into the Hart Tower, could the Boar of Balor be far behind? Soren worried. How dare she leave her assigned post.

  He looked to his newly elevated captain of the guard, Vachel, but the man refused to meet his gaze, let alone seize the moment and do something about Vivienne.

  “Back, you cur. Get back.” She drew nearer, causing confusion in the lower ranks.

  A general milling about and breaking of the line announced her arrival on the landing. Men jostled one another, trying to make a path that would lead her straight to their lord. Soren would have them all whipped and beaten.

  “Milord,” she said testily, when she drew abreast of him. “What goes on here? Where is the maid?”

  “The question, milady,” he said under his breath, glaring at her through the shadowy gloom, “is, where is the Boar?”

  “In the hall, where I left him.”

  “To wander at his will? To poke and pry, or mayhaps rally his men to pillage and plunder?”

  She gave him a look both disgusted and priggish. “I left him in no condition to walk, let alone wander at will, and the only thing he is likely to plunder is me.”

  With some surprise, Soren felt the spark of his anger flicker and die. He’d thought he’d long lost his last speck of husbandly pride. Yet there he was, about to be cuckolded again and feeling the loss of it.

  He could do naught but make light of the impending infidelity. “So you left him straining at his braies, did you?”

  “Straining mightily,” she assured him, her eyes alight with satisfaction and anticipation.

  He had loved her once. She was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but her heart had grown cold over the years. He had done that to her, with his strange needs, with the desires that coursed through him for what no bride could give, and for that he had regrets. She had been young and willing to please, if not quite innocent, when her father had given her to him. She had been ardent and loving, if somewhat naively confused by her husband, up until she’d found him with a boy.

  So he lived with his regrets and a wife who strayed. “But I cannot appease him indefinitely,” she went on. “He will have the chit or he will have us and all of Wydehaw, Soren. I guarantee there is no compromise in the man.”

  He knew that much for himself.

  Soren turned to his captain. “Vachel, begin again.” He jerked his head toward the door.

  “No,” Vivienne ordered, pushing the captain aside before he could start his count for the men to swing the ram in unison. “Have you not a thought in your head? We may need Lavrans before this day is done, and the breaking of his door is unlikely to further our cause.”

  She strode straight to the gargoyle and stared the beast down, glowing eyes and all, for the span of a dozen heartbeats before sharply rapping on the door. Soren had to admire her courage. He’d avoided looking at the frightful thing with
its bronze fangs and wicked, leering countenance.

  “Lavrans,” she called out, her voice ringing with authority. “Lord and Lady D’Arbois seek an audience. Allow us entry.”

  With no more fuss than that, the door opened, swinging wide and slow, granting entrance into the hallowed chamber where Soren had found some gold and little more than a few baubles of dubious worth for all his trouble and hundred marks

  Vivienne tossed him an exasperated, superior glance over her shoulder.

  There was scarce more light in the solar than there was in the stairwell. A candle flickered on the table. The fire smoldered in the hearth. Tapestries had been drawn across all the embrasures, adding to the darkness.

  Soren felt a general retreat taking place around him as his men backed away. He wanted to do the same, but did not. ’Twas the damn door that affected them so. It opened on its own in a manner he had not witnessed in many years, with nary a living soul on the other side. A bad start to the business at hand.

  Lavrans could be seen—thank God—a shadow within the darkness, standing next to the table. Noll had probably not gotten any farther than the skirts of the nearest serving wench on his morning mission. He’d be beaten for that. The old man, Erlend, could be somewhere about, but he was not about the door. Damn thing. Soren remembered coming to the Hart as a child, trembling by his father’s side and praying he did not wet himself in front of Nemeton, watching the door open of its own accord and praying the door to his sleeping chamber would not learn the trick and start an eerie, unpredictable life of its own.

  Vivienne revealed no such superstitions. She crossed the threshold of the sorcerer’s chambers without giving the door a glance.

  “Dain,” she cooed, sounding much her old self. “We have waited all the long morning to see you.”

  “My apologies for the delay, lady.” Lavrans’s voice came out of the darkness. “I was administering a delicate physick and dared not stop halfway.”

  “Of course.” Vivienne forgave him with a smile. “It has been days since you came into our hall, and—Ah!” She gasped and drew back as the logs in the grate burst into green-and-blue flame and threw Lavrans’s shadow across the floor and up the wall.

  The men around Soren forsook all subtleness in their rush down the stairs. Vachel tried the same, but Soren grabbed his captain’s arm and jerked him to a stop.

  “Let the others spread tales to Caradoc’s men,” he said. “Your place is by my side.” The day’s unfolding didn’t suit him, and if the sorcerer was going to go berserk, charlatan or not, Soren preferred the company of even a coward to none.

  “Aye, milord,” Vachel answered, sounding none too happy.

  Vivienne’s tittering laugh added to the tension.

  “Where is the maid, Lavrans?” Soren asked. The quicker his business was over, the better.

  A desultory gesture from the mage directed him to the bed. Soren wished the man would move from in front of the hearth. His face could scarce be seen with the fire at his back, and without seeing Lavrans more clearly, Soren could not discern his thoughts. Lavrans gave away little under the best of circumstances, but what little he did give came from the subtle movements of the muscles in his face, a lovely, dangerous landscape Soren studied at every opportunity.

  “Vivienne.” He waved his wife toward the bed. He preferred not to look upon sick women, especially if they were promised to lords with reputations for brutality. The Boar of Balor had at least that and was ofttimes said to be a bit mad in the bargain.

  With the regalness of a queen, Vivienne glided over to the bed and threw back the drapes. Another gasp followed. She stumbled back with her hand clasped over her mouth and nose and turned a wild eye on her husband.

  Soren wasted no time in hurrying to the bed. What he saw there made the blood drain out of his face. What he smelled there made it curdle.

  “Jesu!” he exclaimed. “What has happened to her?” He looked to Lavrans for an explanation. “She was on the mend not five days past.”

  “Evil vapors have entered her body, drawn by the festering wound she received from Ragnor’s rotten teeth.”

  “Evil?” Soren repeated, backing away from the bed.

  “Vapors?” Vivienne followed his retreat, waving her hand in front of her face.

  “Can she be cured?” Soren asked from a safe distance.

  “Yes. Cured,” Vivienne parroted.

  “I have not lost hope,” Lavrans said. The blue-and-green flames died down behind him, dropping the room back into colorless shadow. “Yet I put a warning upon the wind for her betrothed, telling him he should not delay, but come quickly if he wishes to see his bride alive.”

  “And he is here. Now,” Soren said, startled. Mayhaps he’d underestimated Lavrans’s abilities. God knew his father had underestimated Nemeton’s, who had cast the baroness into a sleeping death and weeks later poisoned her from halfway across Wales.

  “Good,” the sorcerer said. “Bring him to the tower.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Here was danger, Dain thought. Deadly danger in the guise of a man named Helebore with his sunken eyes and hairless head. His brown robes were held to him with a soft rope tied in the knot of a Culdee monk, but Caradoc’s leech was no saint.

  “Evil vapors, yes, yes.” The emaciated man sniffed the air above Ceridwen, moving his head from one spot to the next as if there were a difference in how she smelled from her cheek to her shoulder, from her breasts to her waist. “Women draw evil vapors to them from the very ground they walk upon, from the air they breathe. ’Tis not necessarily from a wound, though I have known it to happen thus.”

  Caradoc sat in a chair pulled a discreet distance away, taking in all that Helebore said. Dain had seen the dagger sheathed in his old friend’s right boot and the blades concealed in his arm guards, and told himself that all men armed themselves for travel. He had noted the sallowness of Caradoc’s face where once there had been a robust ruddiness and decided it was naught but the lingering touch of winter. He had watched Caradoc’s gaze skitter and shift from bed to door, from hearth to Helebore, and back all over again in a haphazard fashion, searching, searching, and finding no respite or rest except for those moments when he looked upon Ceridwen’s face—and Dain had told himself to take heed, for ’twas not a look of love or even mortal lust the Boar leveled upon the maid, but something of a more treacherous nature.

  “The medicus,” he said to Caradoc. “I do not remember him from our last meeting. Was he one of your father’s retainers?”

  “No,” Caradoc replied, accepting a goblet of warmed wine from Vivienne’s serving maid. A smile graced his mouth. “He is my man.”

  “A Culdee?”

  “Excommunicated a year past, another victim of the vagaries of religion, not so unlike ourselves.”

  The maid blushed, returning the smile, and would have dallied, if not for Vivienne snapping at her to get back to work.

  “He is learned in a variety of disciplines,” Caradoc continued to Dain, though his gaze followed the girl. “But he lacks your far-reaching reputation.”

  “We have all come by reputations in the last few years,” Dain said.

  “Ah, but yours is the most mysterious, Lavrans.” Caradoc turned his attention full upon Dain. “I am the Boar, he who can slay a man with a single stroke.” He made a mock demonstration, his arm slashing down as if he held a sword, then shrugged. “There is no mystery in strength. Morgan steals, our Thief of Cardiff. Be it the heart of a maid or an earl from his bed, the mystery is in the how of it, not in the deed. But you...” His look became speculative. “No one knows exactly what it is you do, good friend, if ’tis skill or sorcery. Why even Helebore, cloistered all those years on Ynys Enlli, has heard of Wydehaw’s mage and the opening of the Druid Door.”

  “A rare trick, nothing more.” Dain downplayed the compliment. No one other than Jalal could have appreciated the complexity or, paradoxically, the simplicity of the achievement, and the Saracen was unlikely to ever k
now.

  “Helebore would give much to learn such a trick. ’Tis the reason he made this journey.”

  “Then his trouble has been for naught.” Dain gave the blond man a wry grin. “Though I’m glad to know his journey wasn’t made solely out of your concern for the maid, for I fear he likes her not.”

  “Vile, horrid,” the leech was muttering. He had carefully raised the coverlet with the tips of his fingers and was examining Ceridwen where she lay stretched between the sheets. He did not touch her with his hands, but used a notched silver key that hung from a chain on his belt. His voice was low and sibilant. “Sad, pitiful creatures.” He laid the key on her wrist, and Dain saw her flinch. “She lives, hmmm.”

  Caradoc made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Helebore but harbors a cleric’s disdain for the fairer sex.”

  A mild summation of the disgust Dain saw on the leech’s face. Helebore didn’t disdain women; he hated them, a not uncommon phenomenon among men denied their sexual pleasures.

  Dain saw him take note of the Quicken-tree cloth where it had come out of its folds and spread across the end of the bed. A look of curiosity lent the bald man a near comical countenance, then he reached for the cloth. Curiosity was quickly replaced with horror. The medicus let out a short screech followed by a gasp as he dropped the cloth. With all the commotion already in the tower, no one seemed to notice the incident, but Dain would swear to smelling burned flesh, and the leech had stuck his fingers in his mouth.

  Behind him, Dain could hear Vivienne giving orders to the army of servants she’d had sent up: sweep this, tidy that, fresh rushes here, new candles there. Soren stood with his back to the room, staring through the green glass of the glazed window, ignoring as much of what was going on as he could. A guard was posted on either side of the Druid Door.

  The Hart had been invaded, and Dain felt held at bay. He also stood, but unlike Soren he wasn’t about to turn his back on either Helebore or Caradoc, friend or nay.