"A gift," he muttered, staring at the strange beauty with the power of the devil's own eyes. "If this be a gift, then Serena must be favored by a dark lord, indeed."
"No!" Her mother held up her hands as if to stay his accusation. "Never say that, I beg you! There is no evil here. To speak such--especially to anyone outside these woods--would be to call for her death. Do you understand? My child is no witch. Never say it!"
She went to her daughter and tried to bring Serena into her embrace, but she was rebuffed. Serena was frantically pulling off her gloves, a look of anguish on her face.
"The blood...it is...everywhere." With a cry, she threw down the leather that had encased her hands--hands that Rand could not help noticing were not scarred or deformed as he had initially guessed. Her pale, pristine palms and slender fingers were flawless, as tender as a noblewoman's. She stared down at them, clearly horrified by what she saw.
Rand understood, as much as he wanted to deny it. He knew what she saw. God's truth, but he remembered it as if it were only yesterday.
"Their blood is on my hands!" She rubbed at invisible stains, growing panicked and helpless in her distress. "Mercy...I cannot...it won't come off!"
"See what you have done!" her mother railed at him. "Serena, child, 'tis all right now. Hush...let it pass."
But Serena could not be consoled. Her gaze wild, breath heaving, she tore away from her mother's outstretched arms and bolted for the cottage door. She ran out, disappearing into the woods outside.
When her mother moved to follow her, Rand held the woman back with a meaningful glare. "You will stay here, woman. This matter is mine to handle."
He did not wait for argument.
Chasing after Serena, Rand navigated the narrow, winding trail toward the beach, following the tremble of ferns and underbrush that stirred in her wake. He found her there at the end of the path, where the forest left off and the golden sand of the shore stretched on to the sea. Serena was sitting on her knees, rocking back and forth, holding herself in utter silence. Her long dark hair sifted all around her, a veil of black silk that caught the sunlight and fractured it like a thousand dark diamonds. She looked as small as a child, as breakable as glass.
He knew that fragility; he had seen it often enough in Elspeth.
Rand came up slowly, careful not to frighten her despite the misgivings and thundering questions that battered him from all sides. What the hell had possessed her back there in the cottage? The question--nay, the demand--perched on the very tip of his tongue. He only barely held it back.
"Serena. Tell me what this about. It is impossible that you could have been at Greycliff that night. So, how is it you can know what you do about my family?"
He got only silence in reply.
"I will not harm you, but I need to know what happened to you just then. Do you hear me?"
She turned and saw him there, clearly stricken. Her eyes were awash with tears but she seemed too deeply affected to give voice to her sorrow. "No," she groaned. With a cry low in her throat, she put her hands out onto the sand, then pushed to her feet. "Please...leave me alone."
Rand let her take only a couple of steps before he was at her side, reaching for her arm. She pulled it away before he could take hold of her.
"Easy," he advised, soothing her as he might a startled mount. "Peace now...I only want to talk to you."
The gaze she turned on him was still distant, still glittering with tears. She blinked them away, letting twin tracks skim a wet path down her bloodless cheeks.
"Do not touch me," she whispered, desperation edging her voice as it swam in her wild eyes. A profound anguish reflected from deep within the placid blue-green hue, so wrenching he felt it pierce him where he stood. "I can bear no more of your pain."
"My pain?" Rand shook his head, even though a part of him knew she spoke the truth.
My daughter does not lie! She is incapable of speaking untruths!
That was Serena's mother's claim back in the cottage just a short while ago. Now Rand was beginning to see what she meant. Despite the madness of it, he was only now beginning to understand.
"My pain," he said, letting his hand fall back down to his side. "You know what I feel?"
Serena's chin dipped in a weak nod.
"Impossible," he scoffed. "No one can know that."
His denial seemed to bring her close to reason. She frowned at him, shaking her head. Her face yet lacked normal color, but her gaze was focusing again, coming back from whatever spell had held it.
"I know what you feel, and I have seen the atrocity of what haunts you." When he swore a dubious oath, she went on with more conviction, merciless in her effort to convince him of what she claimed. "I know that your wife--Elspeth--screamed for you to help her in the moment before an assailant's bolt pierced her heart."
"Enough."
Rand did not wish to hear another word, true or not. But Serena would not, or mayhap she could not, stop recounting the brutal facts of that night.
"She fell down the tower stairs, dying, cursing you...with your young son in her arms." She paused, watching him too closely, seeing too much. "I know that you survived only for them. That's why you are here, for retribution. You have murder on your mind, and I know that you will let nothing stand between you and your vengeance."
"Jesu," he hissed through a clenched jaw. "You weren't there. You couldn't have been. There is no way you could know--"
"I touched you. I saw what happened. I felt all of it, just as you did." She glanced up at him, her eyes mournful beneath long black lashes spiked with moisture. "I still feel it, as you do now, Rand."
He absorbed her soft confession with no small amount of incredulity. He did not want to think about what happened to Elspeth and Tod when raiders descended on his keep in the dead of night. He did not want to relive the hours of brutality that played out in agonizing detail every time he closed his eyes to sleep.
He did not want to be made to admit any of what he felt since that terrible event, least of all to this woman, who might yet prove to be his enemy.
"How?" he asked at length. "How can you possibly--"
"It is called the Knowing. It comes to me on touch--an instant glimpse into the heart of whomever I lay my hands on."
Those pale, delicate hands were clenched in tight fists now, held rigidly at her sides. She had left her ubiquitous gloves in the cottage, stripped off in the midst of her panicked vision. Their significance was suddenly dawning on Rand.
"Touch causes you distress, and so you keep your hands protected to avoid contact."
"Yes. But there are times when the gloves I wear are of little help against the Knowing."
"As was the case back there, in the cottage? You did not shed them until after you had touched me," Rand said. "You were able to read what I was feeling, even through the leather barrier?"
She nodded. "As I said, there are times when nothing can withstand the Knowing."
"How long have you been like this?"
"How long have I been so afflicted?" Her soft exhale was vaguely wry. "It has always been this way for me. I cannot stop it."
"And your mother, too?"
"Nay. She does not have the touch, but my brother and sister both did. They are dead because of the Knowing."
"This" --Rand hesitated to call it a gift-- "This...thing you speak of, do you mean to say that it can kill you?"
Serena's expression, while still shadowed by pain, took on a placid acceptance. "If what we experience is too strong, too evil, then yes. The Knowing of it can be deadly. But so are those people who do not understand. They fear. They persecute. They kill."
She held him in her silence, unblinking as she stared up at him.
"What of you, Randwulf of Greycliff?"
That she knew the name of his demesne when he deliberately had not spoken it aloud in the days he had been in her presence did not surprise Rand now. But neither did it give him any measure of comfort to know that this woman had been
able to read his thoughts--his deepest pain--so inexplicably. How much could she see? How far did her insight reach in those moments she had laid her hands upon him in the cottage? More to the point, could she wield this skill at will, if it suited her purpose?
Such a skill could be dangerous indeed, should Serena be willing--or persuaded--to turn it against him. Rand's enemies were not above torture, and he had seen firsthand how effectively such tactics could render even a strong warrior into a weakened slave.
"What of me?" he mused aloud, his mind continuing to assess the many risks she might pose to his goals.
"Aye," she said. "I have seen your secrets today, and now you know mine. So, the question is, what will you do? Will you betray me to those beyond the woods, whose fear and misunderstanding could destroy me...or will you instead do it yourself?"
"I won't pretend to like all that I am hearing today--God's blood, I can hardly begin to credit any of it--but you have given me no reason to bring you harm, Serena."
She raised her chin slightly, perhaps to better discern his veracity, but it seemed defiant to a degree. "Then you believe me now, that I know nothing about the cup you claim to have brought ashore with you when I found you?"
"I believe you," he said, truthfully, beginning to wonder if mayhap he had lost the treasure at sea after all.
The satchel could have been empty, as she claimed. The cup's linen wrapping simply could have washed ashore like he had. It could have been carried into the woods by an animal, or by a foraging bird. But Serena did not have the missing goblet, nor had she seen it on his person when she came upon him on the beach that day. Of that much, he was certain now. He could only pray that the sea might reject the cup and bring it to him on an incoming tide.
Until then--and until he could figure another weapon to use against Silas de Mortaine--Rand would have to exercise patience, something he had precious little of lately.
"Good. I am glad you are satisfied," Serena said, her frank voice breaking into his thoughts.
"I am," he said, "for now."
She tilted her head in a nod of acknowledgment that was anything but meek, then started to walk past him onto the path.
"Serena. Where are you going?"
Steady seagreen eyes met his gaze over her shoulder. "Back to the cottage, to help my mother to clean up the mess you made of our home."
Rand did not stop her, nor did he offer comment as she pivoted back around and set off through the woods.
* * *
Serena managed to keep her stride calm, collected. A miracle, for inside she was screaming, shredded by the battery of violent images--by the very real experience of everything Rand had endured the night his home was attacked. She did not know how he could carry so much pain with him every moment of every day. It had been her burden only a few long moments but already it was clawing at her from within, scraping her with talons of grief and anger.
And guilt.
She felt that emotion as strongly as the others, perhaps more so. Rand blamed himself for what had happened to his beloved family. Blame for the raid, and something...more. He bore the responsibility of their deaths--Elspeth's in particular, as if her blood stained his own hands. The wracking anguish of it rose up like bitter bile in Serena's throat.
Why had he lied to her about them? He had pretended his wife and child were alive, waiting for him to return home, and all the while he knew they slept in cold graves, buried by his own hands amid the ruin of his sacked keep.
Shame, hissed the Knowing. The cruel whisper sifted through the echoing agony of the torment she now shared with Rand. His shame cut deep, a festering wound.
Serena stumbled, her hand at her heart, trying to hold back the hurt, and a budding dread she was only beginning to understand.
At last she reached the cottage. She heard her mother sweeping up broken pottery, muttering curses for Rand and his barbarous lineage. Serena paused at the door, but could not find the strength to enter just yet.
Something else haunted her from that instant when she had touched Randwulf of Greycliff. In the melee of the raid, through the smoke and swirling ash that stung her eyes even now, with the benefit of distance, Serena had glimpsed something astonishing and utterly terrifying.
She had seen the faces of Greycliff's attackers.
They were not men, but wolves.
Shapeshifters, so said the Knowing.
The word was foreign to her, not something she had ever heard. But she understood its meaning as clearly as Rand did himself. She saw the snapping jaws and thrashing, razor talons as the black-furred beasts lunged at Rand through the smoke. It seemed so unreal--even to her, who had come to accept that there were many unexplainable things in this world, good and evil. This, she knew without doubt, was an evil no one should understand.
But Randwulf of Greycliff had lived it. He had survived it. And like the Knowing told her, he survived for one reason alone: retribution on the man who had unleashed such an unholy terror on innocent people. The very man Rand meant to kill.
Nothing would keep him from that goal, so said the Knowing, reading the truth from the depths of Rand's embittered heart.
He would not be stopped...least of all by a witchy maiden and her devil's gift of sight.
His unspoken words ringing in her ears, her limbs still weak from the darkness of his thoughts, Serena opened the door. She gave her mother soft assurances that all was well, then knelt down beside her to begin picking up the pieces of their old life, most of it lying shattered and upheaved on the floor of the cottage.
Chapter 8
The morning passed, and still the lingering pall of the Knowing remained Serena's uneasy companion. To her relief, Rand had busied himself outside the cottage most of the time. He did not apologize for the damage he had wrought in his anger, but then, given all that Serena had been told of man-kind, she had expected no such concession. She had not expected him to fetch water unasked, as he had, when the floor had been cleared of debris and ruined rushes and was then ready for a thorough swabbing. Calandra had accepted the bucket with muttered gratitude, but Rand's gaze had been rooted on Serena, as though he offered this boon, such as it was, to her.
Serena did not want to acknowledge his paltry gift, or his paltry gesture of remorse, but she found it next to impossible to ignore Rand altogether. Particularly when he was a constant presence around the cottage, watching her, waiting for her to reveal herself as the condemnable witch he no doubt thought she was. She could not find a full breath, or think a clear thought, until he had taken his leave of the confining place once more.
She rejoiced in his absence, however short it might be. Surreptitious glances out the cottage window told her that he had departed the yard, likely gone down to the beach to search the sand for further traces of the cup he had lost. Serena only hoped it would keep him occupied the rest of the day. He was having a queer effect on her that had to do with something more than merely the Knowing.
Randwulf of Greycliff was a man of war, all that she had been raised to fear. He was a tortured soul, probably beyond redemption. But yet the Knowing whispered to her in a beckoning hush, urging her to look closer, to reach past his pain to glimpse the man in full. Serena did not dare, not after what she had endured that morning. The echoes of that experience still chilled her to the bone, she did not reckon she could bear any more of his secrets. Surely she could bear no more of his pain.
She worked in a troubled silence, putting the cottage to right with her mother. One last pottery shard was tossed into a bucket that contained more of the same.
"I'll bring the rubbish out to the garden," she told her mother, eager to finish, but more desirous of the open spaces of the yard outside. She picked up the collected pail of earthenware and debris and carried it to the door. "I think I may take a walk as well."
Calandra paused and looked up from her mopping. "Do not go too far, child."
"Of course, Mother." Serena hesitated only a moment, her hand on the latch as she
slowly closed the door on the familiar warning. "I never do."
* * *
At the heart of the forest, nestled in a forgotten corner that was shadowed by towering pine and leafy ash, lay the fallen rubble of an ancient chapel. It had never been lavish, only a small pocket shelter of rough-hewn wood taken from its surroundings, and smooth salt-crusted stone, retrieved from the shore by the first of Serena's people who had made the forest their home. They had worshipped here, wed here, seen their children named here, and, eventually, one by one, they had been shriven here and laid to rest.
No markers staked their scattered graves, but in an old leather-bound book secreted in the forgotten chapel, their names had been meticulously recorded down through the ages. It was Serena's only link to her past, and the lives that had come before her own. Generations filled the pages of thinning, yellowed parchment. Too many names for Serena to remember them all, some of them odd and foreign-looking, others common, all of them beautiful to her reverent eyes.
Some days, she sat in the tumbledown sanctuary and paged through the sheaves of lives, wondering where they came from, how they met one another, why some left the forest, and where they might have gone. Why others stayed and stayed and stayed, like her mother. Like Serena herself.
On still other days, such as this, she merely appreciated the solitude of the place, sacred and secluded, sun-warmed stone and aged brown wood. Nothing but stretching trees and open sky where the thatched roof of the nave had long since crumbled to dust.
Serena had been there for hours, seated on the weathered, ivy-laced stone slab of the altar, her arms wrapped tight about her knees. She was weeping, and had been nearly since she arrived. She could not stop her tears. Her breast heaved with the depth of her sobs, great wracking tremors like naught she had ever known.
She mourned, though not for any of the souls who had once trod this same corner of the woods. She wept for Randwulf of Greycliff. For his wife and child, who had perished so violently. Her sadness was his, drawn by the Knowing, and now a part of her as well.
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