Not for any shifter. To touch the Dragon Chalice, in whole or in part, was, for them, instant--and excruciating--death. Silas had demonstrated this law on another occasion not so long ago, when a foolish female of their race attempted to steal Avosaar from him. Silas had forced her to hold the cup, then watched gleefully as she met her just demise.
"Do you know what happens when shifter skin gets too close to Chalice gold?" he mused, holding the cup out before him as he approached the kneeling guard.
"P-please," he sputtered, glancing anxiously from Silas to the terrible beauty of the gleaming goblet. "My lord, please--"
The shifter's clansmen did not rise to his aid, despite their number. What would be the point in it? What Silas wanted, he claimed. There was none to gainsay him; in the end, he would outlast them all.
Already Silas could see beads of perspiration forming on the heavy brow, a flush of discomfort in the swarthy face. He strode closer, nearly touching the shifter now. Ugly blisters began to rise on the thick neck and on the hairy backs of the beast's hands. The shifter began to cough, his lungs surely baking. And still Silas drew closer, prolonging the suffering.
"You can end it," he offered. "Just reach out your hand."
The shifter would not budge. Mayhap he thought he could survive the torture. Mayhap he thought this show of strength would earn him some scrap of mercy. But this was not strength to Silas's way of thinking. It was weakness, fear of death.
"Jesu." The oath came from les Nantres, somewhere behind Silas now. "Be done with it, man."
Silas knew not whether the bold knight spoke to him or the shifter, but in that next instant, the Anavrin guard surrendered. With a howl that shook the tent, the shifter thrust out both hands and grasped the golden bowl of the Chalice treasure. Flames erupted as though breathed from the mouth of a dragon in truth. Raging orange fire engulfed the shifter, incinerating him on contact.
Silas stepped back, shielding his eyes against the swift conflagration. It was over too quickly for his liking. All that remained was cinder and smoke. One more Anavrin sentry than he wished to forfeit, but the example had to be made.
With a casual flick of his hand, Silas motioned some of the observing guards to come forth and dispense of the smoldering ashes of their comrade while he retrieved Avosaar from the pyre. He cradled the treasure to his chest, marveling at the warmth that yet thrummed in it, the vibration of power he held at his command.
"Shall I assemble a party and ride north to see what I can find?"
Draec les Nantres turned a flat stare on him from his position near the tent's entrance. The flames of two flanking torches threw stark light on the mercenary's ebony hair and striking features. Eyes as green as a serpent and as brittle as priceless emerald held Silas's gaze unflinching. Too bold. There was a kingly air about the man, even when it seemed he had gone several nights without sleep. Dark circles smudged the bronze skin beneath his eyes, and did he not mistake it, the lean face and angular jaw held a trace of gauntness, although none would ever look upon Draec les Nantres and call him weak. Troubled, perhaps; haunted, no doubt. But never weak. Silas de Mortaine suffered no weakness in his ranks.
"No," he answered after a long moment's consideration. "I think I should prefer to ride along this time. Unless you have cause to wish I stay behind?"
"Not at all, my lord."
Les Nantres's reply was immediate and utterly devoid of expression. Silas did not trust it. More and more, he was beginning to doubt the man's allegiance.
"How long do you expect it will take to make the trip?" Silas asked him.
"A sennight, I would guess. If we travel light and ride hard."
"I want to be there in no more than six days' time," Silas announced. "We'll leave on the morrow."
Les Nantres inclined his head. "As you wish, my lord."
Silas waited until les Nantres was several paces out of earshot, then he beckoned one of his consorts to him with a crook of his finger. She came up off a pile of furs and cushions and glided toward him with practiced feline grace, half dressed, like the four others who awaited his every carnal whim.
"Go, see to him--whatever he wishes of you."
The whore nodded enthusiastically.
"Work him well. Once he's asleep, search his quarters."
"But, my lord," she said, uncertainty in her voice, "that one ne'er sleeps. And he permits none to stay with him all night. He'll toss me out."
"Convince him to let you stay," Silas instructed. "Do not leave him until he sleeps, however long that might be. You will search his things, and report back to me anything you find."
She nodded again, slowly this time, a note of wariness dimming her jaded gaze.
"Do not fail," he warned.
Silas de Mortaine smiled a threatening smile, and watched the woman's fear deepen to stark understanding. In that moment, she was as loyal as a hound staring at the whip in hand.
She would obey.
They always did.
* * *
It rained that evening, a fierce downpour that dashed Rand's plan to sleep another night outdoors, and away from the close confines of the cottage. After the kiss he and Serena had shared that day, Rand did not relish the idea of spending another several hours in her company. It was pure torture to watch her moving about the cottage, helping her mother prepare the supper meal of fish Rand had caught that afternoon, her cheeks flushing sweetly every time her eyes chanced to meet his.
They ate in virtual silence, the three of them, Calandra brooding into her fish soup, her slim shoulders slumped as though weighted down with a hundred-stone burden. Serena attempted conversation, but Rand was no good in making idle chatter across the table from her. Not when his body yet thrummed with hot need.
After they finished the meal, which Rand could not even recall eating, Serena cleared the table and her mother took up a chair beside the hearthfire. Rand stoked the small blaze and added more wood, all the while his attention straying to Serena across the small abode. More than once, Calandra's shrewd gaze flicked to him, but she said nothing, contemplative in her silence.
"Mother," Serena called as she set the last cup in place on its shelf. "Will you tell us one of your tales to pass the time?"
Calandra pulled her blanket a bit higher on her lap, eyeing Rand as he stood up from the fire and offered Serena the remaining chair. "Not tonight, child. I am weary. You know them all--some better than I. You tell one instead."
Rand watched, fairly charmed, as Serena tilted her head and pondered which story she wanted to recite. She settled on a tale of fantastical proportions, about a withering golden kingdom that needed a hero to save it from doom. It was clear she loved the story, for she told it with great excitement and wonder, her tone switching animatedly from the dread whisper of dragons and daring battles, to the dreamy sighs reserved for feats of marvelous heroics that won the hero his princess's devoted heart.
When she was finished and proclaimed the end of the tale, Serena grew shy, looking to him for reaction. She turned a quick glance toward her mother, who had fallen into a soft slumber in her chair. "I don't tell them as well as she does. I hope I didn't bore you."
"Not at all." Rand smiled at her. "It was very good. The way you told it, 'twould make a fine song. I can almost hear it set to music in my head as we speak."
"Truly? Sing it for me."
"No," he scoffed lightly. "I am no bard."
"Do you think I'll laugh?" she prodded, her gaze going bright in the flickering glow of the fire. "Does so fearsome a warrior cower at so simple a task?"
"Aye," he replied, but he was half tempted to rise to her challenge. "And I'd not want to wake your mother--or all the hounds from Egremont to Liverpool."
Serena laughed softly, but the sound was enough to stir Calandra a bit. Still snuffling and asleep, the older woman shifted in her chair and lost part of her coverlet. Serena was up at once to adjust it. She tucked her in with caring hands, then pivoted to come back to her own seat next t
o Rand at the fire.
As she neared, he was unable to resist the urge to touch her--if briefly.
He reached up and their fingers brushed. She stilled, frozen where she stood beside him. He traced her warm palm, filled with a need so strong he nearly grasped her tight and pulled her down into his lap. It would be so easy, all he wanted to do in that moment.
Serena trembled, letting out a shaky breath of air. She was touching him as well, and her Knowing would not mistake the force of his desire.
She looked down at him, her dusky lips parted and moist. She did not refuse him, though well she should have. She remained there, her fingers curled around his, her lithe body mere inches from him. Naught but a few fragile moments from being drawn down atop him, and her sleeping mother be damned.
Her aqua eyes were a deep ocean blue now, calling to the storm that was rising within him. Rand caressed his finger along the delicate bones of her wrist. Her pulse was pounding, her skin warm as fire.
Deny me, he thought fiercely. Pull away, I beg you.
She would not, although he could see that in her Knowing, she understood his torment. She, too, was lost, holding on to him with like intensity.
It was only the sudden pop of a sapling log on the hearth that saved him. The sharp sound echoed in the cottage like a thunderclap. Rand released Serena's hand at once, though not without a keen reluctance.
He looked away, shamed by his need for her. But Serena would not permit it. She touched his shoulder as she turned to take her chair by the fire. It was a sweet brush of her fingertips, but even that enflamed him further, and Rand sank into a deeper pit of misery.
They sat together, not daring to touch again, watching the fire slowly fade. When it was time, Rand took the pallet that was Serena's before his arrival, and she took her mother's, little more than an arm's length away from him.
They lay on their sides, facing each other through the dark, neither one of them expecting to find much rest that night.
Chapter 14
Her world was steadily shrinking. Or perhaps it was just that when Rand was around, the sun and sky, the trees and flowers--all the splendor of her once vast and intriguing world--seemed naught but a spectacular backdrop for the man who inhabited Serena's every waking thought.
He invaded her dreams as well.
In the few hours' sleep she had managed the night before, she relived the thrill of Rand's intense gaze as she told her feeble tale by the fire. She relived his impulsive touch as well, when he boldly took her hand while her mother slept only a few feet away. She had wanted so badly to kiss him. She truly would have, a thought that put a shamed heat in her cheeks just to recall it now.
All the while they lay across from each other in the darkened cottage, Serena had yearned to be in his arms. To know his kiss once more.
He had denied her that as the night spun on toward morning, but in her dreams, there was no space or circumstance to separate them, and she was his.
She looked at him now, striding along beside her as they headed into the forest the next morning, and it took all her effort not to allow her hand to brush his. Instead she held fast to her berry basket and marched through the bramble toward the knot of bushes that hung heavy with fruit. She had yet to gather the whortleberries for her mother's favorite tart, a task inadvertently thwarted by Serena's rescue of the snared dove the day before, and prevented by rains until now.
"Calandra arose early this morn," Rand commented as they navigated the dewy greenery of the woods. "Where did she go?"
"To worship, I expect. She has a favored niche in the forest that is hers alone. She goes there every morning to pray and reflect."
Rand grunted in acknowledgment as they arrived at their destination. A small brook trickled in front of them, originating at the falls and ambling past rock and trees to disappear deep into the grove. The berry bushes were nestled into an elbow of that little stream, which created a fertile patch of ground for the dark beads of fruit that clustered in abundance in the bushes.
"I may be at this a while," she told Rand, setting down her basket and watching as he strode to the edge of the brook and stared out into the woods beyond. "I'm sure there is no danger here. You don't have to stay with me."
He crouched down, catching a handful of water in his hand. He drank some, then spread the rest over his face. "I'm where I want to be," he said, regarding her over his shoulder only briefly before sluicing another handful of water over his bearded jaw and into his tousled dark hair.
She dared not think he would choose to be with her, but a hopeful part of her quickened with elation. Serena knelt in the soft moss below the berry bushes and began to pluck the ripe fruit into her basket.
She could not keep from slanting quick looks in his direction, curious now, as he withdrew the dagger from the belt at his hip and cleaned it in the stream. He looked at his reflection in the water, studying each side of his face. Then he brought the blade up to his cheek.
"What are you doing?" Serena asked, alarmed and confused.
"I am removing my beard."
She dropped back onto her heels to regard him fully. "Why would you do that?"
"Because in a couple of days, I will be going to Egremont," he said, pausing to face her now. "If trouble lurks in town, I'd rather it not come looking for me before I am ready to meet it on my own terms. Few know my face without these whiskers. My enemies, in particular."
"You're leaving, then?" She forced a casualness to her query that she didn't fully feel.
"Yes. Soon," he said. "I need supplies, a weapon that will serve me better in combat than this small blade. With any luck, I'll also find a boat in Egremont willing to take me on to Scotland."
"Scotland?" Serena asked, wondering at the unfamiliar name and his purpose in going there. "Is this place--Scotland--far from here?"
He shrugged, then bent down to wet his face again. "Not more than a fortnight, I expect. Faster to go up the coast than travel overland, especially on foot."
Serena noted the subtle stiffness of his movements. His wounds were improving but not yet healed. "Are you sure you are hale enough to make the trip?"
"I'll make it," he said, water dripping from his bearded jaw as he slanted a determined glance at her.
That brief, steely glance said it all: he would drag himself to Scotland regardless of his fitness, for the thirst for vengeance would wait no longer to be sated. "This place you wish to reach--this is where you were heading when you wrecked in the storm?"
He was silent a moment, then gave her a curt nod.
"Does your enemy await you there?"
"He might. My hope is to get there before he does." Rand smoothed the flat of the dagger's blade over the top of his thigh, then lifted the edge to his cheek. "It is my only hope."
Serena watched him scrape the dagger down along the side of his face, from the base of his ear to halfway down the corded column of his neck. The dark whiskers gathered on the blade, clearing a path of bare skin beneath. He sluiced off the blade, rinsed it, then raised it again, using his reflection in the stream as a visual guide.
"Why did this man kill your family, Rand?"
The knife skidded ever so slightly against his cheek, drawing a thin line of blood. Rand hardly reacted. He righted the blade's angle and slid it down the remainder of its path, shaving clean another patch of his tawny skin. The crimson tendril snaked a tiny rivulet along the slope of his face. Serena stared at that elongating stain as silence stretched to awkward lengths.
At last, although he did not look at her, Rand spoke. "He wanted something I possessed--something of great worth, which I pledged to a friend that I would guard with my life."
"The cup you lost," Serena guessed.
"Nay, but a key that would have led him to it."
"You didn't give it to him?"
"I had made a vow," he said, not quite an answer, his voice deadly quiet. "I was bound by my word."
Too calmly, he tilted his chin and began to shave t
he other side of his face. The glistening blade of the dagger scraped downward in unerring motion. Rand drew water from the rushing trickle of the brook, wetting what was left of his beard. He paused then, his head hung low between his shoulders in heavy reflection.
"In the end, it mattered for naught what I did. The raiders who came to my keep that night had no intention of letting any of us live. Their orders were plain to me as soon as they arrived and the fires began."
Serena closed her eyes, feeling the emotion of that terrible, smoke-drenched night race through her on the merciless current of the Knowing.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
Her heart ached for him. She wanted to reach out to Rand in that moment, but cowardice stilled her hand. She dared not absorb any more of his pain, but more than that even, she feared he would rebuff her sympathy as he had her every other attempt at understanding and friendship.
"There are days," he said, harshly now, "when I pray this existence I am left with is but a dream. I should have perished that night along with my wife and child and the servants who depended on me to protect them. It isn't right that I am here now, save to deliver my own justice to the man responsible for so much destruction."
"You have more worth than that, Rand. Don't you know that? I am certain there is more for you than just this vengeance that drives you."
"Jesu." He looked up now and chuckled around an oath that held little bite. "Do you seek to save every godforsaken creature that washes up on your shore, Serena?"
There was a jesting humor in his voice, but Serena sat back, stung. It was too hard to hold his mocking gaze, so she dropped hers at once, feigning a sudden, total interest her work. She carefully plucked the berries and set them into her basket. At the brook, water raced and sloshed as he continued with his shaving. She heard the blade rasp over his skin several more times, then silence as he set down his dagger and dried his face with the hem of his tunic.
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