“If she isn’t, no one will be.”
Her hand rested against his chest. Beneath the linen, his heart beat steadily with a pain that racked both their souls. Suddenly, hope flashed through him, resonating in the bond.
“Your confession,” he said to Edmund. “It burned in the early 1600s. Saving it wouldn’t change anything, especially if we don’t produce it until the present time. It’ll end the curse, but that won’t affect anyone living.”
“An excellent notion.” Edmund beamed at him. “You’ll find it in a leather case beneath the hearthstone in the Hawkstowe muniments room.”
“Muniments?” Miranda asked.
Richard replied, “Important family documents. Other valuables tend to wind up there, too.” He slid an arm around her. “We’ve mischief to undo, my lady.”
“I’ve been thinking about that missing book,” she said. “Where could you put something so no one could ever return it to its rightful owner?”
“You’d need a place no one knew about. Or could reach if they did.” His eyes lit. “Edmund, pray excuse us.”
Richard held out his hand to her. When she grasped it, the grip felt warm and firm and alive. She smiled at him. At least they had each other for a little longer, even though they were in this nasty place.
They walked together into the mists. “Where are we going?” Miranda asked.
“I hope, to the Chronicle. Once the dead arrive here, they don’t care about anything in the world behind, and the living, in theory, can’t enter this realm. If they did, they’d have no reason to find the place I seek.”
“You were destined to come here, and Wyndon knew it.”
“I couldn’t leave if I were dead, and he thought no one else living could come. Once I arrived, I’d hardly seek out the place that symbolizes what the curse denies me.”
Miranda raised an eyebrow. “That portal of judgment you mentioned? The one the curse blocks you from entering?”
“Yes. It’s the passage from this world to the last. If reaching it’s like seeking anything else here, we have only to think of it and we’ll find ourselves heading toward it. If Wyndon put the Chronicle there, the portal is a landmark that would help him find it faster.”
He walked a few steps in silence. “Besides, it’s time I faced all of this fully. I need to see the portal.”
Through the mists ahead, something glowed. The portal? They hurried forward.
The glow brightened. The sulphurous vapors dispersed, revealing a tall, pointed arch three times the thickness of her body. Twice Richard’s height, the plain golden structure cast a sunny light on their faces. Golden mist shimmering within it obscured any view beyond the arch. The dank, purple-gray vapors of the afterworld wafted around and above it.
Richard stopped, staring at it. Disappointment shadowed his eyes and whispered in their bond. “I hoped to see past it,” he said, “even if I can never go.”
“One day, you will,” she insisted. “Once we retrieve that confession, there’s nothing to stop you.”
He brushed his fingers against the shimmering surface, but they didn’t pass through. “I hear a bell. I feel it ... in my soul. And a voice, saying, ‘For you, not yet.’”
“That might mean we’ll succeed, the ‘yet’ part.”
“It may say that because I’m not dead yet. Touch it, love. It won’t hurt.”
She poked carefully. The fog in the archway looked misty but felt deceptively firm. How strange, but the words resonating in her heart brought no comfort. “It said, ‘For you, not yet.’ Mayhap that doesn’t mean anything except that we’re alive.”
“Ah, well. As you say, perhaps that’s a good sign.” He turned away, and she felt the effort he made to keep his spirits up. “Let’s see if there’s a ‘behind’ to it.”
He tripped over something and knelt, groping in the fog. “Something leathery. A big book. Ah-ha.”
Standing, he held the object clear of the fog. The reeking vapors had spotted the leather folio but otherwise not hurt it. He unbuckled the straps and opened it. Ornate script covered the parchment within.
He leafed through the pages, then stopped abruptly. “It’s a listing of the Croyland abbots. Then it picks up with events of 1453.” When he raised his head, triumph shone in his eyes. “This is the missing volume of the Chronicle. Let’s see if it holds the clues Kit mentioned.”
Miranda peered over his shoulder, but the cramped, ornate writing was difficult to read.
“Here it is,” he said, “Sixteenth February, 1463, the date Wyndon had jotted down, and the heresy trial of one Brother Ignatius of Croyland.”
His eyes skimmed over the page. “Interesting. Listen to this. When past and future are rent in twain, you cannot weave them whole again. To restore the future that should be true, you must rend the fabric of time anew. Or so poor Ignatius claimed.”
“That seems to confirm that we’re right to take the scroll before Wyndon finds it. That’s making another change, rending time again.”
“Indeed.” Glancing over the page, Richard said, “Looks like some of them were trying to say he was insane, but he claimed to have walked the path of death with a foot in life on either side. That’s the same description I saw in an old scroll about theories of traveling time at Pendragon.”
“Do you think this monk actually traveled time?”
“I don’t know. He certainly seems to think he did, looking at this.”
“Is there anything else useful?”
“Let’s see. There’s a bit about making a gateway, but it doesn’t explain how.” He skimmed further. “Hmm. This is strange, another excerpt from his heretical writings. If one alive twice in a time should meet himself, only one surviveth. The one belonging in that time absorbeth the other as a cloth doth draw water.”
“So if we go to past eras to fix things, we’d best not meet ourselves?” Miranda guessed.
“It seems so. If Wyndon went back to kill Richard Cromwell, he must not have encountered his younger self.”
“Is there anything about necromancy or wraiths?”
He read further before answering. “There doesn’t seem to be anything here that explains how to cross the barrier or trap a wraith. Nothing on necromancy. So the Chronicle won’t lead anyone here without that scroll on necromancy. It’s safe to put the Chronicle back.”
Richard ran a hand through his hair. “Let’s see how Jeremy and the others are doing.”
They walked through the sulphurous fog until the sanctuary of the abbey appeared. Its walls still glowed with warding.
Miranda said, “Our friends are still trapped, but now without Wyndon as a hostage.”
“Their enemies don’t know that. Still, we’d best hurry to put things right,” Richard said. “I don’t want to risk their deaths, even deaths that will soon come undone.”
“Nor do I,” Miranda agreed. Even though that meant bringing their precious time together to an end that much faster.
Richard kissed her. The arm not holding the book whipped around her and drew her close. Miranda slid her arms around his waist and tightened her hold. When he raised his head, he cupped her cheek gently.
“Some part of me,” he said quietly, “will always belong to you.”
“As I will to you,” she promised, brushing his hair off his face.
“We don’t need to put this book back,” he said quietly. “Taking the necromancy scroll will do that. Until then, it’ll be safe here.”
When she nodded, he set the leather volume down beside the portal and grasped her hand. They took one step together before he stumbled.
Miranda pulled him to a stop. The burst of energy he’d gotten from discovering the Chronicle had faded. His face looked drawn with fatigue.
“How many times will you need to enter and leave this place to put things right? Once out and back in to take that scroll, and the same for Edmund’s confession? Can you do all that?”
He hesitated. Grudgingly, he said, “I doubt it. Not w
ithout food and rest. I also need to find an anchor, since we’ll eventually have to leave here separately, step into the world and let our other selves absorb us, I suppose. Unless the time changes rolling forward take care of that for us. If they do, we’ll simply disappear from here.”
Perhaps never to meet again. Or know they ever had met. Fighting despair, she leaned into him.
Miranda had never realized the sound of another person’s breathing could be painful. She lay in the darkness of a curtained bed and the warmth of Richard’s embrace. They were safe. For now. But every breath he drew reminded her that those she would hear him draw were numbered.
They had no money to pay for food or a place to stay in the living world, so Richard had brought her to a place where he owned everything, Hawkstowe Manor. Because he wasn’t in residence, there were few servants in the house, all of them asleep in the gatehouse.
His time in the shadowland and the effort of returning from it had left him weary and almost dazed. They had raided the larder, sharing the makeshift meal of meat, cheese, bread, and wine in his chamber, and then he’d brought her to his bed.
“This is where the Earl and Countess of Hawkstowe belong,” he’d said sleepily.
It was also, she realized, the bed she’d Seen them share in the vision. Did that mean they’d share it again? Or was this the only time?
She lifted her head to peer through the bed curtains, and Richard’s arms tightened possessively in his sleep.
Nestling into his side again, she tried to memorize the way his bare body felt, the bay scent of his skin with faint hints of sweat, and the rhythm of his breathing. If only she could keep the memory of this closeness, even if she didn’t remember him, it would comfort her.
Surely she would have that. The two of them deserved that much.
But what people deserved usually had little to do with what they got.
Richard sighed. His hand moved down her arm, and his growing awareness prickled across their bond. “Mmm, you’re so warm,” he murmured.
“So are you,” she whispered. She kissed his chest.
With a groan, he rolled above her and claimed her mouth in a deep, passionate kiss. She ran her hands over his broad shoulders, down his back to his taut buttocks. The thought of losing him hurt so that she couldn’t breathe.
“Don’t,” he said softly against her neck. Pain that matched hers vibrated between them. “Don’t think of it now, wife. For now, just know how much I love you.”
Tears welled in her eyes, but she held him closer. “And how much I love you. How right you feel above me. How complete I feel when you join with me.”
He raised his head to wipe her tears away, and his eyes were suspiciously bright in the dim light. His lips brushed gently over hers. “We must go, sweet. Much as I’d rather stay here with you, people are suffering. We’ve a duty to perform.”
“I know.” She kissed him quickly and made herself climb out of bed. Together, they dressed in silence.
A short time later, Miranda and Richard stepped into the afterworld, heading for Pendragon Manor. The wraiths attacked but couldn’t even begin to penetrate the magical shielding she and Richard created together. The creatures soon gave up and sought easier prey.
First, Richard guided her to the day Wyndon stole the necromancy scroll. Going back from there to the day he first found it, then to the day before, was simple.
Richard slipped into the library and brought the scroll back to the shadowland. “Such an innocent-looking thing,” he said, “to be the source of so much trouble.”
“I hate to destroy any source of magical knowledge,” Miranda said, “but that scroll is simply too dangerous.”
“I agree.” In a burst of purple-tinted, magical flame, he destroyed the scroll. Flecks of ash drifted into the knee-high fog that hid the shadowy ground.
“It’s odd,” Richard said, “that Wyndon and Edmund were both watching the Golden Swan’s yard from the afterworld but Edmund didn’t see Wyndon. Nor did Wyndon and I see each other in the afterworld when I watched him take the scroll. But he entered the library from here.”
“Maybe it’s something to do with traveling time. But that wouldn’t explain the inn yard.”
“We’ll ask Edmund,” Richard said. “I wonder, though, if it has to do with something Kit mentioned, about traveling currents in time.”
Miranda nodded, “Let’s go find Edmund.”
“There is a chance,” Richard said, clasping her hand as they walked. “If we’re outside time when the change ripples through, we might remember.”
“But won’t staying here longer change things, too?”
“Not if we make certain we return to the world before we met. I hope.” He kissed her brow.
“I hope so, too.”
“Will Edmund forgive you—or me—for not saving the boys in the Tower?” she asked.
“In time, perhaps he’ll realize one wrong cannot make up for another. At least Kit and Cabot and Grandmère should be alive. If we successfully undid everything, Wyndon should be alive, too.”
Miranda nodded. There was no way to be certain what would happen. They’d done what they believed was right, at least.
Richard said, “Now let’s see to the confession. It burned in a fire on November second, 1605, at Hawkstowe. We’ll go to the fire and then the day before it.”
They walked through the stinking fog until he said, “This should be it.”
They emerged in a round room with walls of plastered stone and a narrow window. Wooden chests of various sizes, gold and silver plate and goblets, and miscellaneous axes, daggers and swords lay around the room.
Richard grabbed a dagger from a nearby table to pry up the hearthstone. He set the stone aside and raised stricken eyes to her. The space underneath it was empty.
Unfortunately, Edmund knew nothing about why his confession had vanished. Miranda and Richard looked back in time for it but found no trace. As though it had never been written.
“Perhaps someone screened magically stole it,” Richard said, “even before you ever placed it there. Would that block your sight?”
“It could. But I wrote it. I know I did.”
Quietly, Richard said, “Yet we cannot find it. Perhaps you only meant to write it, Edmund, or even thought you did. But if all else failed, we should be able to find it on the day you wrote it. Yet even that is beyond us.”
“Hellfire,” Edmund muttered. He scrubbed a hand over his face.
Richard asked, “Do you know how you or I could be in the shadowland, in the same place as Wyndon, and not see him, nor he, us?”
Edmund shook his head. “I watched you talk by the welling Dover. If Wyndon was in the yard, mayhap if he traveled time, he and I would not have been ... in the same current of time. Nor he and you when you went back to see the results of his earlier trip back to the library because you started from different places, as men may travel two smaller rivers to reach the Thames.”
Richard frowned. “That’s all confusing.”
“I’m only guessing,” Edmund said. “We may never know for certain.”
“I can live with that,” Richard replied. He turned to Miranda. “Based on what the Chronicle said, if we step into the real world and meet ourselves, the versions of us who belong at that point in time will absorb us. With our memories of what’s happened, if we’re fortunate.”
Edmund embraced each of them and kissed Miranda’s forehead. “I hope you find each other again.”
They bade him farewell and turned away.
“I want to see if the Chronicle is gone,” Richard said.
He refused to admit to any hope of a change in the portal’s message, but that had to be his reason for going again. That was fine with her. She too wanted to hear something different.
“I don’t understand,” Miranda admitted as they walked to the judgment portal. “How can something like the confession be gone, and we can’t find it? Edmund can’t? This place touches all times and places.
”
“There’s much about it we don’t know.”
The portal glowed in the darkness, drawing them. When they reached it, Richard knelt beside it and felt in the fog. “No Chronicle. We’ll check on it to be sure, but I believe it must be where it belongs. If I think of it, the magic here will lead me to it, no matter which realm it’s in.”
“So the corrections are rolling forward.”
Sadness vibrated between them. Richard said, “But you’ve given me hope. As Jeremy tried to. I wonder ... ”
He turned from her and ran a hand slowly down the portal. And froze. His eyes widened.
Miranda reached for him. Wild-eyed, he caught her to him.
“Richard? What—”
“Miranda—oh, love—touch it.” Disbelief covered his face, but he tugged her hand, leading her toward the glowing arch.
A vision flashed through her mind—of Richard, older but recognizable, standing before the portal. The mists inside the archway parted before him, and she stood within its frame.
She brushed her fingertips over the golden surface. Choose your fate said a voice in her head.
Stunned, she turned to him. “Richard?”
“It said I could choose,” he told her, looking dazed. “I saw that I could pass through. Not be trapped here. But no one else could.” Their gazes met, and his firmed. “I can’t—if I—we have sons, I can’t abandon them.”
“Nor can I.” She swallowed hard. “Richard, it said I could choose, too. At least, I think that’s what it meant.” Looking up at him, she said, “I’ll help you, before death or after, if I can—if I can only remember—”
The odds against that threatened to choke her. She buried her face in his shoulder, and his heartache rippled into her.
But they’d both been in the vision she’d Seen during the rite at his house. And in her dream with the baby. Was there hope? Or did those visions depend on the altered timeline?
“If we’re outside time when the change ripples through,” he said again, “we might remember. I hope.” He kissed her brow.
“So do I.”
The Herald of Day Page 37
