Sword of Elements Series Boxed Set 2: Bound In Blue, Caught In Crimson & To Make A Witch

by Heather Hamilton-Senter

  A cross on a broken chain.

  I put it away in the pocket of my jeans, not for faith, but in remembrance of a good man who made flowers grow.

  Shrugging out of my coat and rubbing my arms to warm them, I settled myself on the blanket, but it was no barrier against the freezing ground. For a moment, I regretted leaving the warmth of my home, but this was a place with no proper name to bind it; the spell I was going to cast needed all the help it could get. Unsheathing Excalibur, I used the scabbard to prop the sword blade side up. I was shivering violently now and it took a few tries to balance it properly. As I reached the point where cold is indistinguishable from heat, I closed my eyes.

  The fire at the heart of the world.

  The words were the key that turned the lock on my memory. I was on the Path of Time and the trees were as strange and menacing as I’d experienced before. If they were the ghosts of the forests of the world, they resented all of us. Strong arms carried me and I imagined I felt in them the desire to keep me and protect me. Perhaps it wasn’t possible to do both. I looked up and saw Tynan following us. With his long, dark hair and pale skin, he was as haunted looking as the trees.

  Who are we running from?

  The golden-haired woman stopped and turned to speak to him. “We must separate now and hope that Merlin is confused by our trails. He has no power to pass this way, but he has the patience of a spider. If he discovers what times we have fled to, he will wait for us in them even if it takes countless years. I have taken steps to conceal my daughter. The best I can do for you is to take away the memory of your former life and give you a chance at a new one. Merlin has no interest in you beyond a means to strike at Morgan and will not exert himself overmuch to find you.”

  Tynan’s face was stricken. “Must I leave my mother?”

  “If you value your life you must. Your greatest peril is if Arthur survives the wound you gave him and seeks his revenge. You will be safe in the future.”

  There was a flash and Tynan jumped back into the gloom. I looked around to see Viviane stepping out of a bright light.

  The golden-haired woman put me down and looked at me intently. “Rhiannon, you bear a power in your blood from both your parents that cannot be denied. Blood is life. Blood is everything. It is the magic of water, fire, and air combined within the earth of your flesh. When the time is right, Excalibur must be reborn. All our hope rests in you.”

  The place around my heart hurt; I was too young to understand that it was breaking. I threw my arms around the woman and buried my face in her skirts, but she disengaged me firmly. Kneeling down to face me, she put her hands on my shoulders. “I know it is difficult to understand why I must leave you. I do not want to. But someday you will know what to do with the power you are heir to. Perhaps then we will find each other again.”

  Viviane stepped forward. “What the child knows, others may divine. What even I know may be forced from me.”

  “I trust you will take means to never let that happen.” There was danger in the woman’s voice and Viviane bowed her head in response. “But you are right, as always.” Pulling out a small knife from the pocket of her robe, she nicked her finger and blood welled up from the spot. When she touched my forehead, her blood burned and I began to cry.

  “When the time is right, remember this and what it means: the fire at the heart of the world.”

  “Blood magic is the most powerful magic of all,” Viviane murmured, taking my hand and pulling me away.

  “Blood magic is the most powerful magic of all,” my mother agreed. “Pray she need not spill it all to save us.”

  The memory had been waiting all these years to reveal itself at the right time and place, triggered by the key phrase. Almost losing my nerve, I said a quick prayer to whatever god might exist outside of a world that was lousy with them.

  In one swift movement, I slammed my right wrist onto the razor-sharp blade and dragged my arm back.

  A deep parallel cut began to stream hot blood. Trying not to focus on what I’d done to myself, I leaned over and slit the other wrist. Because of the awkward angle, that cut ran diagonally across the scar the Wheel of Taranis had left behind.

  I’m the child of blood. It flows out like the sea.

  Falling back, I pulled Excalibur onto my chest with difficulty—my hands didn’t work right anymore. I wanted to cry, to regret what I’d done, but then the pain was replaced by a sweet lethargy. As my blood flowed over Excalibur, I couldn’t remember why I was there and I was too moved by the beauty of the cold stars above me to care. Even Peter’s alarm running through our bond or the distant sense of Tynan’s own heart faltering as mine slowed couldn’t reach me.

  It took much longer to die than I expected.

  Hovering above myself, I examined my body, amazed at how much blood could come from two small, well-placed cuts. Without vanity, I decided the dead girl on the ground was quite lovely even with the vacant eyes and moon-pale skin—beautiful dead things again. The thought reminded me of what was supposed to happen next, but I was surrounded by a pale rope that slowly dragged me towards a far off darkness.

  I was disappointed to realize I was wrong.

  A sudden shimmer, a breath of warm air, and Thomas Redcap appeared. “Rhiannon!” He dropped to his knees and gathered my corpse in his arms, burying his face in my hair and not caring that Excalibur sliced into his chest. “What have you done? What have you done, mo leanabh?” Holding me, he raised my bloody wrist to his lips—capturing me in the strange and unique way of his kind—and the pale rope fell away.

  I could take care of the rest.

  “I’m not a child,” I whispered, back in my body.

  Redcap’s eyes widened and flame engulfed the amber. “Rhiannon?”

  I tried to smile. “I didn’t know any other way to call you.”

  Excalibur flared to life between us, awakened by my blood sacrifice, but it was no longer just the gold of good earth and wheat sheaves. It was also the shimmering, changing blue of a sun-lit sea and the translucent white of racing clouds. Encompassing them all was crimson and scarlet, alizarin and flame.

  Earth, water, air, and the spark of life: fire. The blade seared its brand on my flesh and then healed all my wounds as it claimed me with the elements of the earth power.

  Redcap kissed me and I fell unresisting into the fire at the heart of the world.

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX

  Peter was sitting at the end of my bed. It was his anger humming through our bond that woke me up.

  “Good. You’re awake. Now what the hell were you thinking? Do you know what it was like to feel you slit your wrists and to know I was too far away to get to you in time? Do you? Do you even care? Do you get that you actually died? That I felt it? And then to see you covered in blood . . .”

  “And Thomas Redcap?” I joked weakly.

  Peter’s mouth opened and closed for a moment before he found his voice again. “If you hadn’t already died once tonight, I think I’d kill you. I was almost out of my mind and poor Seolan was so freaked that I had to put him in your mom’s room.”

  I pushed myself upright with shaking arms. “Excalibur?”

  He snorted. “Alive and practically purring like a kitten. I can feel it through my bond with you. You wouldn’t let it go until we got you back here, but then it let me take it. I’m guessing all this was for its benefit?”

  I nodded. “Redcap told you about Viviane?” That’s what she was to me now. She would never be Mom again.

  “Yup.” Leaning forward, he turned my arms over and exposed the pink scars on my wrists. The round bisected one almost looked like the hilt of a sword. “How did you know it would work?”

  “I remembered something important my birth mother told me. She hid it in my mind until the time was right. The rest was intuition, but I knew Thomas Redcap would come at my death and capture my spirit before it went too far.”

  Peter’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

  I shook my head. “I
t’s a redcap thing. Excalibur is mine now and I was pretty sure it would heal me, just like it sent Arthur into an enchanted sleep instead of letting him die.”

  Peter snorted again. “Pretty sure?”

  “Mostly sure,” I amended with a grin that Peter couldn’t resist returning, even though I could still feel his anger. He had a right to it. It had all seemed so logical at the time. Maybe the fact I was still alive was proof I knew what I was doing. As I got out of bed, the dried blood on my t-shirt crackled and reddish flakes fell to the floor.

  Or maybe I’m just lucky.

  “Excalibur showed me how it was made. An asteroid fell into a lake. Viviane found it and the metal from it was forged in fire and quenched in earth. My birth mother awakened the sword with her blood. When I was little, she told me what I would need to do, but I didn’t remember. She told me that blood magic is the most powerful magic of all.” I also knew she’d only had to give a small amount of her blood to bring the sword to life. Healing the terrible damage done to it had taken a lot more of mine. Almost too much.

  “You remember her?”

  “A little.” I took a deep breath. “Could you grab me a clean top?”

  Peter dug a clean t-shirt out of my closet and turned his back as I changed. Throwing the ruined one across the room at the small mountain of dirty clothes surrounding the hamper, I realized I’d probably end up burning them and going on a shopping spree before I ever managed to wash all of them. The movement pulled on my sore wrists, but otherwise, I felt great.

  “Where is he?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

  “Redcap? I don’t know. You were out of it for hours. I wanted to take you to the hospital, but he showed me your wrists healing so there didn’t seem to be much point. He wouldn’t leave your side at first, but once it seemed like you were going to be OK, he left.”

  “Oh.” I forced myself to push any thoughts of Thomas Redcap and that hot, confusing kiss aside.

  As I pulled the new shirt over my head, I looked down at myself in dismay. It was truly desperate if the only clean thing Peter could find was a t-shirt with a flavor of the month boy band on it from when I was twelve. At least I hadn’t gone up too many sizes in the bra department since then.

  Let’s hope anyone who sees me in this thinks I’m being ironic.

  “You can turn around, but don’t laugh.”

  I expected him to make a joke, but he just stared at me blankly. Concentrating on our bond, I finally caught the undercurrent of an anger running through it that had nothing to do with me.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You’ve got a couple of visitors. I’ve been holding them off until you woke up, but they’re getting pretty impatient.”

  “Who?”

  “Nope. You gave me the shock of my life. Think of this as payback.”

  I looked at myself in the mirror over the dresser and the face staring back at me from the mirror was now definitely a Rhiannon, not just a Rhi. Redcap’s scratch down my cheek and the marks on my wrists couldn’t be helped, so I gave up on the idea of making myself presentable and went into the living room.

  I was expecting Daley and Tynan, or even Taliesin waiting to tell me off for taking such a stupid risk. I didn’t expect my father sitting on the couch twirling Goodfellow’s sprig of holly in his fingers. Boudica stood at attention by his side.

  Holding my gaze, the Lord of the Grey Lands held the holly up. I watched in horror as the power and life in it was drained until it was a blackened husk.

  Just like I did with the Dobhar-chú.

  Crumbling what was left of the holly in his fist and tossing the fragments on the coffee table, he rose to greet me. “Daughter,” he said, inclining his head.

  “Dad,” I replied, hoping my voice wouldn’t betray my fear.

  I was rewarded with a wintry smile. “I suppose you know that I have been searching for you for a very long time.”

  “Yes. How did you find me now?”

  Cernunnos wandered around the room, inspecting my belongings with interest and picking up an item here and there to examine more closely. I half expected him to put on some white gloves and check for dust. “I knew that when Viviane died, I would eventually be able to break through the spell she used to shield you, but then you revealed yourself to Boudica and saved me the trouble. Sending the Dobhar-chú was a little test to make sure. But since then, you’ve been a busy girl—raising the dead, killing yourself—I could have found you blindfolded after that.”

  Was it wrong that my heart lifted at the thought that he wanted me? Was it so strange that I responded to the unfamiliar and yet somehow familiar sound of his voice? His pattern of speech was more natural than his sisters’. In fact, I couldn’t see any similarity between him and Viviane or Morgan at all. I crossed my arms to hide my shaking hands and the idiotic smiling boys printed across my chest.

  Peter moved to my side and Cernunnos laughed softly. “Relax, Protector. Viviane stole Rhiannon from me for her own purposes; I only wish to claim what is mine.”

  A flash of crimson cut through me. I’d claimed myself when I quickened Excalibur. “I don’t belong to you.”

  “Do you not?” His smile was wider now. “And if I tried to take you, do you think you could stop me?”

  I was reminded of Daley saying almost the same thing to Goodfellow and grey doubt clouded my vision. I forced myself to smile back. “Maybe not, but Excalibur could.”

  His face didn’t change, but I could feel the menace in him. “So you have the earth totem? I had assumed that when Arthur was awakened, it was by Excalibur’s power.”

  “No. Morgan murdering her own son is what woke Arthur up.”

  His eyebrows arched. “Ah, I see. How fitting. And this was the same boy you resurrected, I gather.” Cernunnos pursed his lips. “Mordred is mad, but of the four of us, only Morgan and I have produced children.” I tried not to flinch as he stepped towards me and lifted cold fingers to trace the scratch on my cheek. “You have no idea how important you are.” His eyes were black with flecks of pure white.

  “And yet Morgan stuck a knife in her son’s heart. I don’t suppose you would do any different.”

  Dropping his hand, Cernunnos turned to Boudica and laughed. “Did I not tell you, my queen? Is she not my daughter to the very core?”

  “Yes, my lord,” she murmured.

  Through our bond, I could feel Peter’s fury grow. He was poised to attack, but we were outmatched and I needed to deflect his attention quickly. “So are you two an item then? I wouldn’t put a ring on it if I were you, Daddy. Bo has a habit of killing off her husbands.”

  Cernunnos’ raised eyebrows were curiously fine and dark, as if they were drawn on. “And what does it matter to me that she dispatched the mewling druid?”

  Closing my eyes, I concentrated on the woman. It had only been a guess sparked by quick flashes of the warm brown of good earth and the emerald green of leaves at the height of summer surrounding her, but I was shocked to discover I was right. Remembering the deep cuts that had almost severed Rowan’s head from his body, I struggled against a surge of nausea.

  Opening my eyes and forcing a smile, I drawled, “Because your girlfriend is haunted by her past, Daddy. Literally.”

  Cernunnos examined Boudica closely and then shuddered delicately. “Nasty creatures, ghosts. You know how much I despise the parasites, my dear.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Boudica said meekly, but she glared at me. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Do not return to my presence until you do.” With the barest flick of his wrist, the woman was banished into nothingness.

  I let out my breath in a startled whoosh. “Where did she go?”

  Cernunnos sat back down on the couch and crossed his legs elegantly. “Somewhere she can deal with her little problem. The woman has her uses, but I like my concubines clean and free of disease.” His smile was the definition of wicked.

  I was appalled, even for Boudica. “She
thinks you’re going to make her a queen again. She betrayed everyone for you.”

  He shrugged. “And I may keep that promise if it suits me. Now, enough about the Icenian, what are we going to do about our little problem?” He motioned for me to sit, but I remained standing. His mouth twitched as if he found my stubbornness amusing.

  “What problem?”

  He picked off an imaginary piece of dust from his knife-pleated pants. “Don’t pretend to be a half-wit—Arthur, of course. Neither of us wants him to ascend to his power and we certainly don’t want him to get his hands on that pig-sticker your young man is trying to hide.” Peter flushed but didn’t move from his position blocking the chest of drawers in the corner.

  Cernunnos laughed again. “Really, my dear, is this the best you can do for a Protector? Once I knew you had Excalibur, it was a matter of moments to find it in the room.” He paused. “How did you quicken it, by the way? I had thought it was dead and useless.”

  I didn’t answer and when he stood, I took a step backward in response. “Good,” he said, surveying me with satisfaction. “Don’t underestimate my power or my lack of patience for stupid children. Because of the Wall, my time here is short, so listen well. We share the same goal: to stop Arthur before he takes action against either of our worlds.”

  I decided to play along. “What do you want from me?”

  Cernunnos’ smile was a thin line. “Nothing more than what you were already intending. Our purpose at this moment is the same.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Finding your mother, of course.”

  My heart lurched. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that of course my father would know the identity of the woman he’d impregnated.

  “My mother?” I asked, pretending not to care.

  But the Lord of the Grey Lands wasn’t fooled and his smile widened. “Yes, your mother—the earth witch Guinevere.”

  I couldn’t speak. Not in a million years would I have guessed my birth mother was Arthur’s spurned wife.

  Merlin and Guinevere—boy did the storybooks get that one wrong.