Shana Abe

by The Truelove Bride

  In the dream Avalon felt the faint, heavy beating of her husband’s heart behind her, almost inaudible, only a flush of awareness. He was not dead. She could accept this in her dream state; it formed a new purpose for her now. It was up to her to ensure that he did not die.

  I am yours, came a distant voice, very familiar, very far away. Not the chimera, not this, but what?

  “Aren’t you the dutiful one?” Claudia was saying. “I knew you would come. He said nay, it was too plain a ruse, but I said you would. I knew you had a weakness that way, just like a man, ready to throw yourself to the rescue. How odd. And he was so desperate to see you, he would have agreed to anything, I think. Now here you are, and I cannot be less than happy at your strange-minded devotion to a family that wanted you dead.”

  There was nothing between her and her enemy, there was nothing to throw, nothing to hide behind, nothing to aid her. There was only her bleeding husband and the corpse on the bed and the twisted ropes of black curtain around her ankles. And there was that last thing, owner of that voice, a note out of step with this piece, something Avalon could not quite hear well enough to understand.…

  “If you are not yet ready to kill me, why would you shoot an arrow at my back?” she asked, and her own voice was slow to her, trapped in the dream.

  “I didn’t shoot at you. I shot at your husband. I hit him, in fact. I’m a rather excellent shot.”

  “As Bryce discovered,” said Avalon, still removed from surprise.

  Now Avalon could see the curling smile Claudia favored, a mixture of satisfaction and pride.

  “I thought,” said Claudia, around her smile, “that before you died I should allow you to suffer. It seems only fitting. You certainly made me suffer enough. I am going to kill you slowly. I am going to shoot you apart, bit by bit. But Bryce—my dear, stupid Bryce—was more of an inconvenience than anything else. Therefore I made certain my shot to him was clean. He never knew what happened.”

  “How kind of you.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  There were muffled thumps coming from beyond the latched door; men’s voices filtered through, growing rougher as the thumps grew louder. Claudia took a few languid steps to the side of the door, moving away from the sound, never changing her aim, fixed on Avalon.

  “I used to lament, cousin Avalon, that you had survived my otherwise excellent raid. I used to cry out to myself, ‘Oh, why could she not have died when she should have?’ It was a great pain to me, you understand, to have you alive. It really did spoil so many of my greatest plans.”

  In her dream Avalon could feel Marcus’s heartbeat grow stronger and stronger; he must be awake now. He must be listening. That made her situation even more delicate, for she had to control both him and Claudia, a strain on her senses.

  Use me, whispered the new voice, a little nearer now.

  “At least your father died. That was a great goal of mine. Bryce inherited the castle, the lands, the manors. Well, until you showed up again. Everything was so perfect, until you showed up again.”

  The door was visibly shaking from the force of the blows to it; if it weren’t for the thick slab of lumber firm across its middle, surely it would have buckled by now.

  “But you loved Warner,” said Avalon above the noise, keeping Claudia’s attention with her, not on the door, not on Marcus.

  “There was no rush in killing Bryce while you yet lived,” said Claudia reasonably. “At least that’s what I thought for years. Warner and I could carry on with Bryce being none the wiser. Warner was here often enough. And Bryce was such a convenient scapegoat for the raid, actually. I needed him alive in case a serious inquiry ever began. Anyone could easily have believed he was behind it. Even the villagers were terrified of him!”

  Avalon pictured Elfrieda at the inn, whimpering at the sound of the baron’s name. Mistress Herndon. All of them so misled. Claudia, breathless and smiling, was gathering speed with her story, the words beginning to tumble across each other. Avalon had to concentrate to follow them.

  “Warner and I had managed our liaison for a long while. Within a year of the discovery of your survival, I had planned to kill Bryce, anyway. You ruined that—reclaiming the lands, all that income. I can’t forgive you for it. I actually preferred to eliminate you as soon as you came back to England, but Warner persuaded me against it. You were too well known, he said. A death then would be certain to cause unpleasant talk. He believed we should wait to kill you. I listened to him; he had always been so clever before. I told Bryce to send you to Gatting. It was really too much to expect me to take you in here.”

  The smile had vanished, something else sparked across her face, something well matched to the blackness of the room.

  “And I certainly would have had you dead before your marriage to your savage Scot. But then Bryce decided to wed you to Warner! Can you believe it? After all I had done for him, he turned on me like that, was prepared to wed my love to yon!”

  “He didn’t know you were his brother’s lover,” Avalon said softly.

  “Of course he didn’t. But that is hardly the point. Everything I had done, everything I had so carefully planned, was for Warner. For Warner and I to be married, to be together. But how ungrateful he turned out to be.”

  Marcus moved, very slowly, very cautiously, against Avalon. She felt it and a cold sweat came over her, penetrating the dream. Marcus was going to take action sooner rather than later. He would have to, it was his nature. And then Claudia would shoot him dead without a qualm.

  The voice came again, louder.

  Use me, I am yours.

  “Laird!” shouted someone on the far side of the door, prompting Claudia to find her smile again.

  “Well, anyway. Enough of this,” she said, and aimed the crossbow higher.

  “Why did you kill Warner?” Avalon asked, louder than the voice outside. “If you loved him?”

  “I loved him, yes! But who could have guessed, dear, fair cousin Avalon, that he would fall in love with you? In that one night!” Claudia laughed out loud, incredulous. “Yet he said he had. He would abandon me after all I had done for him, after I had handed him the title and this castle myself. He had fabricated the papers to claim your hand, he was ready to deliver them, sweet Mary, because he vowed he loved you. Love!” she scoffed. “I have a better name for it. You bewitched him.”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Avalon, and Marcus was moving more openly now. He wouldn’t be able to see Claudia from behind Avalon’s skirts, but Avalon knew Claudia could see him. The black curtain whispered as he shifted against it, and she wondered if the covers on the bed trembled as well.

  “Kincardine! Laird!” came the calls from the door, and the thumping became more vigorous, causing the slab of wood to moan just a little.

  “You did!” shouted Claudia above the noise. “You must have bewitched him! He was mine for years before you came! But he was weak, and he deserved to die for his betrayal of me, witchcraft or no. My dagger was his penitence! Every cut, every drop of blood from him was a pledge to me, his sorrow for his betrayal of me! And in the end he ate the poison I fed him as easily as all the others did, all the serfs, all the servants. They all had to die! My loss is theirs! I am the mistress here!”

  I am …

  “Claudia, you will die if you kill us,” said Avalon. “You must know this. There is no other way out of this room but past the men of my clan. You will be slaughtered for this.”

  “Oh, death,” said Claudia, sounding strangely wistful, the beating of the door emphasizing her words. “Of course I will die. I plan to join my love. I do still love him. But you will die first, cousin. That is enough for me.”

  … yours.

  Marcus leapt up, prompting Claudia to lurch as she shifted her aim, and Avalon scrambled to follow him, to block the shot, but there was too much happening at once and her feet were wrapped in material still. She fell to her hands and knees on the floor with a cry she couldn’t help as she heard the arrow sin
g close and land again in Marcus’s body. He was tossed back against the bed with a grunt, and then down, limp and silent amid the tangled cloth.

  In the seconds that followed there was only one refrain in Avalon’s mind: No, no, oh God, please no, a silent cry of denial. But he was hit, and he was hurt, and this time he would not have to pretend to lie still.

  Avalon crawled over to him and shielded his body with hers. She felt only a cold, stinging numbness all over.

  Marcus was still breathing, shallow and rapid.

  “Avalon.” It was less than a sigh, so scarce she hardly heard it, but there was another power coming from him, only barely stronger than his voice.

  Avalon, I love you. Run away.…

  And then nothing else. She felt him slump away into mists and shadows.

  She couldn’t see here, it was so dark, the torch was too far away to aid her, and death was too close. The danger here was so strong it would overpower her, it would draw out all her blood and leave her empty, alone, as dead as Marcus might be. She could not leave him. Oh God, he was hurt so badly now, he was bleeding so much, she could feel the hot wetness of it on him, pumping out of him, how could she halt it—

  Over the shouts outside Avalon heard Claudia move in the black gloom, remounting an arrow in the crossbow, brisk and efficient, even though there was no light. The arrow notched into place with a faint click, further chilling Avalon’s skin. It was the sound of the end of her life.

  Her hands had found the new arrow in Marcus, a wild shot to his chest, too high to hit his heart but enough for this font of blood to pour forth. She knew better than to remove the arrow. Instead she pressed down around it, staunching the flow, waiting for the next shot to pin her. But she could not leave Marcus to die.

  I am yours.

  It was Claudia who was the danger and death; the shadows were her masking. Avalon could not fight her, could not stop her, would never reach her in time to save her husband, who was slowly bleeding to death all over her if he was not already dead. All her training, all her skills, useless in this final moment, with her enemy too far away to tackle, too swift with the arrow. Nowhere to hide. Marcus was going to die, and it would be her fault, only hers—

  Use me! commanded the voice.

  There was a storm of sound in this darkness, there were unthinkable noises from the blackness, furious shouts from behind the door, the wood crying out from the blows, and—she could hear it so clearly—laughter. Claudia laughing, joined by other voices, deep and rich and bubbling with malevolence.

  I am yours!

  Goblins, blood, danger, cold stone, the room was too wide, Avalon couldn’t hide from it, she would die now, just as her father had, and Ona and all the rest, and all the blood would never erase her loss, sticky sweet blood, her own death a half second away, laughing at her—

  There were footsteps approaching her. A curious, hushed gait around the rustle of skirts, the laughter closer, clearer, all the voices rising and blending together in a long, babbling scream.

  But for one.

  Not the voice of the chimera, no more.

  Use me, I am yours, said this single voice, and at last Avalon understood who it was.

  I am you.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Against the coldness of the floor and Marcus’s fading heat, Avalon found herself leaning forward on her knees, hands still steady on his wound, head bowed down. Her fingers were warm with his blood. But all of that seemed to be happening to someone else right now, another woman caught in a nightmare; a woman with hair as bright as a beacon in the darkness, kneeling before her dying lover.

  Right now, what preoccupied Avalon was a dream, a specific dream. The one about the goblins.

  Force, Avalon thought, testing the strength of her new voice in this dream state. Touch. Try to douse the light.

  Something crashed on the far side of the room. The torch, falling from its hold on the wall, taking its wretched glow with it.

  Yes. Like that.

  The ominous sound of Claudia’s skirts moving closer stopped, held in place by the unexpected noise. If she focused, if she tried, Avalon could see Claudia within the vision of her dream, pausing with her crossbow, throwing a startled look to her left.

  The fire, Avalon thought now. Remember that, the black burning, the choking smell …

  Billows of smoke began to curl up against the walls, at the seams of the floor, pungent, black on black.

  Speak! Say her name, let her hear what the moments before death sounded like.

  “Claaa-dia …”

  It wasn’t truly her name, not the way they said it, with their rough inflections and different tongue. But it was clear enough to be recognized for what it was.

  “Claaa-dia …” From the right. No, the left.

  Claudia, frozen, exhaled sharply. The crossbow sagged in her grip.

  “Who’s there?” she called, managing—very nearly, Avalon thought—to hide her fear.

  Show her. Come! Show her your faces.

  The goblins had red eyes. Wild, glaring red eyes that glowed through the darkness, eating it up, devouring it.

  Avalon knew this so well, how such eyes could burn through her, could find her no matter where she hid. They had done it so many times. And now they had found Claudia, who was beginning to see them as well.

  From the direction of the torch came a slow shuffling sound, feet on stone, dragging. There were eyes over there, those hungry red eyes.

  “What is this?” Claudia said, breathless and much less certain than before.

  Tell her.

  “You know us,” hissed a voice from the other side of the room, a new direction.

  Another crash, this one louder, closer.

  The room was beginning to smell of something new, smoke and coppery blood laced together. Panic. The goblins approached. They carried this stench, their own special horror.

  “Claaa-dia.”

  Claudia held up the bow and fired at the voice, the arrow streaking away to clatter against the wall.

  They were laughing at this, stronger, closer still, the chilling laugh Avalon had never escaped. The smell of blood wafted around them, terrifying, real and not real, inescapable.

  “Witchcraft!” whimpered Claudia, and began to struggle to remount the bow.

  “No,” they laughed together.

  “No …”

  “No …”

  “Vengeance!”

  The strut was slipping from Claudia’s hands, which were shaking too much to hold the arrow still. To the myriad sounds a new one crept through: crackling heat. Fire, feeding the smoke.

  Burn the room. Show her what she did here, let her feel the terror she gave to so many others.

  The chamber was growing lighter, the flames were licking at the walls, at the floor. The smoke swirled heavy and black in clouds up to the ceiling.

  Let her hear them. Let her hear them die as I did.

  There were echoes of screams coming from beyond the room, horrible screams. War cries, death cries.

  Claudia dropped the crossbow. It landed at her feet and was engulfed in flames, gold and blue with silver-green tips, fantasy fire. She stood alone amid it, clutching the useless arrow, staring around her in disbelief.

  The goblins stretched tall, streaked with blood and sweat and blue paint, laughing with their red eyes and gaping, grinning mouths. They carried axes and swords dripping with death. All the shades of red converged, became greater flames, long, bloody arms reaching for the woman in the middle of the room.

  “No!” Claudia screamed, one more sound among the many. She brandished the useless arrow in front of her, swinging it in half circles at the air.

  “We burned it, Claaa-dia, we burned it for you,” the goblins shrieked. “We killed them for you.…”

  Claudia slapped her hands over her ears, dropping the arrow, crying. Underneath all the noise came the thumping of the door being battered down, distant yet steady.

  Now remind her of what she will
suffer for.

  “One gold shilling per head,” chanted the goblins in their foreign tongue, yet it was so clear what they said. “One gold shilling. Per head. Fifty for the baron—”

  Claudia sank to her knees, then jumped up again, hysterically slapping out the blue and green flames on her.

  “Twenty for the girl.”

  “No! No, get away from me—”

  “Per head. We took their heads! Burned them. Killed them all. For you, Claaa-dia!”

  The screaming was unbearable, the sounds of the tortured, the dying, the helpless. The smoke was choking, foul, smelling of the end of life. Of the end of the world.

  Claudia dropped to the floor once more, sobbing, pounding the stone with her hands.

  “Vengeance!” came the screams, dozens of voices, a hundred, echoing the call of the blood and smoke and the wicked light of the fire.

  Avalon came to her feet and ran to where the woman had fallen, still sobbing. She kicked the crossbow away and yanked Claudia up.

  “Help me,” Claudia wailed, clutching at her.

  Avalon leaned back and slapped her, silencing the sobs.

  In that instant, everything—the goblins, the smoke, the licking flames—spiraled away to nothing, killing the dream. The silence rang around them.

  “If my husband dies, you die,” Avalon said, cold. “You had better pray now for his life.”

  She had left a smeared red handprint on Claudia’s cheek, a stain of Marcus’s blood. It barely registered through her urge to hurry. He was still bleeding, she had no time.…

  Without pausing she dragged the woman across the dim room to the badly battered door, calling out for the men to stop, she was opening it.

  Stay for me, truelove, don’t die—

  Next to her huddled Claudia, emitting small, broken whimpers, back pressed against the wall, still looking wildly around the room.

  Avalon managed to lift the warped board from its slat, letting it crash to the floor. The door swept open, a river of men springing through.