by Kate Pearce
“Very well. Will I see you for the reading of the will? I suppose it’s not necessary, now.”
Gryff paused. “I don’t know.”
“Well, then, just in case, let me say it was a pleasure doing business with you.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Hunt.”
Gryff left the study, his mind busy. Now, at least, Tamsyn’s father should be safe. Gryff might not know exactly what they were dealing with, but he was better armed than Lord Banfield.
He hesitated at the end of the passageway. He wanted to see Tamsyn. Wanted to see her bright smile, touch her soft skin, kiss her eager mouth. And he wanted to ease her fears about her father and assure her that whatever came—they would face it together.
He let his feet carry him toward the front of the house. A footman found him at the entry hall and Gryff asked after Lady Tamsyn.
“She’s likely at breakfast with the family, sir. Would you like me to announce you?”
Paul appeared on the stairwell behind him. “Rowancourt has her!” he called. “Her father too.”
Gryff froze. “Where?”
“In the dining room, sir,” the servant answered, looking at him like he was mad.
“He’s taken them outside. I think they are heading for the barrow. If you hurry, you can catch them!”
The footman stared as Gryff turned and ran.
Chapter 7
Every fiber of her being recoiled from what was happening to her. Her skin crawled. Still, she walked on, following her father and Rowancourt.
Her mind was her own, though, thank goodness, and though she fought as they made their way through the gardens, past the oak and into the forest, it took until they reached the stream before she regained control of her tongue.
“You will not harm my father,” she bit out.
“Stars, but you are strong.” Rowancourt seemed almost delighted. “No, my dear. I will not harm your father. He has no taint of pixie magic, which means he is still of use to me. You on the other hand . . .” He let his words trail away.
She would have closed her eyes, if she would not likely have fallen on her face.
“You’ll have to believe me when I tell you that I am conferring an honor on you. Never, in all of these years, have I chosen a woman as a substitute. I have been curious, to be sure, but my reluctance always won out. It wouldn’t be wise to choose an inferior sacrifice and how might it affect my regeneration? No way to know.” He cast an appraising glance over his shoulder. “But here you are, strong of will and mind, supple of body and already touched by magic.” He shrugged. “It seems time to experiment, if only to keep you from hounding me over the next years.”
Crossing the fallen log was terrifying, with no control over the placement of her feet. And when she reached the end, she did slip, landing with one foot in the stream.
Rowancourt looked back and smirked. “Stop there,” he commanded as she struggled up onto solid ground. “Stay until you are called.” He beckoned her father. “You come with me, but hold a moment while I prepare.” He waved his hands in the air and a rich cloak of grey appeared between them, flared high and settled over her shoulders. He moved to face the tangled snarl that hid the barrow and said something low to the earl.
She jumped when Paul popped in next to her. She had to strain to see him from the corner of her eye.
“Thank heavens,” she breathed. “Help me! Is there anything you can do?”
“I don’t think so,” he said miserably.
“Please.” She struggled against Rowancourt’s hold. “Can you get Gryff?”
“He’s already coming!”
She breathed a sigh of relief. Across the meadow, Rowancourt raised his hands and spoke something she didn’t understand. The complicated twist of foliage shuddered, then parted like a curtain, exposing the barrow and the small clearing before it.
Tuft stood in the middle.
“Who is that?” her father asked affably and Tamsyn groaned. Now he believed?
Tuft’s expression lit up. He raised his hand but Rowancourt drew something from his cloak and tossed it at the pixie. It bounced high off of his hat, shining like a coin and then sprouted quicker than the eye could follow, becoming a metal cage that completely surrounded Tuft.
“Oh, ho!” Rowancourt crowed. “So long have I waited to use that! So much work to perfect it!” He sighed in dramatic fashion. “And every effort well worth it.”
Tuft struggled. He clapped his hands, but nothing happened. He touched a bar and recoiled at once.
“It’s iron, of course, you old fool. Your magic is nulled.”
“You call me an old fool? You are the one who has committed atrocities in your quest for more years on this earth—and accomplished nothing with them.” Tuft shook his head. “That is beyond foolish. It is tragic.”
“Wait. Paul!” Tamsyn exclaimed softly. “I think I have it! I need you to call me!”
“What?”
“Stay until you are called, that’s what he said. It might work! Go back—back to the woods behind us, and call me—quietly!”
“I’ll try.” He popped out.
“We cannot let this continue,” Tuft was saying. “You pollute our home with your evil deeds, warp our magic with your dark sorcery. We will find a way to stop you.”
Rowancourt laughed.
“Tamsyn!” Paul’s voice floated softly from the forest. “Tamsyn!”
Watching Rowancourt carefully, she struggled against the spell. The call came again, her name on the wind and—there! She moved her head, just the smallest bit.
“Did it work?” Paul was back, and this time she could turn her head to look at him.
“Yes! It’s draining away, but slowly.” She tucked her head down, but couldn’t yet move her arms.
“Enough!” Rowancourt declared, across the way. “You are powerless, imp. I will continue on as I have before.” He beckoned. “Lord Banfield, come here to me now.”
Her father obeyed.
“Here is where your help is needed. The pixie has blocked me, you see. I cannot enter the clearing. See the doorway, there?” He pointed to the barrow.
Her father nodded.
“Your daughter and I need to enter there, together.”
“No! He’ll kill her!” Tuft called. “Do not grant him access! He’ll take her in there, leave her dead body in his own place and live out her years—and as far past as magic can stretch them!”
Tamsyn gasped and her father shook his head.
But Rowancourt gestured and the tension eased from her father again.
“Only the holder of this land can grant me permission to go in there,” the old man said. “It’s a bit of ancient lore that the sprite forgot, when he tried to banish me.”
“How interesting,” her father said.
“Lord Banfield,” Rowancourt said.
“Yes?”
“You are the land holder. You must grant me permission.”
“I’d rather not.” Her father’s expression grew strained again.
“But you will.” Rowancourt’s words rang with command.
“Oh, I will? Well, then.” He waved a hand. “Go ahead.”
“No!” Tuft slumped down in his cage.
Rowancourt grinned. He raised his hands and stepped forward.
And drew up short, bumping into an invisible wall.
He let out a curse that made several of the small pixies at the opening squeak and withdraw. “What is this, old one?” he rasped. “What have you done?”
Tuft looked up, big eyes hopeful.
Rowancourt cried out in anger. He shouted to the sky and called down a ball of blue fire. Snarling, he launched it at Tuft, but it bounced harmlessly off of the cage.
The sorcerer’s face reddened. He called again and this time he threw his sphere of anger and destruction at her father.
Tamsyn screamed as the blast knocked her father back and into the underbrush.
“Come here!” Rowancourt yelled at her. Her legs a
nd feet, still under his spell, carried her over, though she fought each step. He pulled her close, whipped a knife out from beneath his cloak and held it to her throat.
“Remember your power,” Tuft told her softly.
“Now,” he said, breathing heavily. “You will say the words.” He addressed her father, who lay dazed on the ground. “Grant me access with the precise words, you blubbering dolt. Do you understand?”
“It won’t work.”
Tamsyn gasped. She knew that voice. Gryff! Rowancourt whirled around to face him, taking her with him.
“Who are you?” the sorcerer asked.
“Cardew.” Gryff met her gaze. “Let the girl go.”
“Cardew? But he sold—” Rowancourt’s grip on her tightened. “Ah, you are the younger? And you took possession of the land early.” He shook his head. “I would think you clever, had you any chance of benefitting from the move.”
“Let the girl go. Let her father go, as well. We’ll settle this between us.”
“Gryff! No!”
“Ah, like that is it?” Rowancourt laughed. The blade pressed closer and she felt a trickle of blood run down her neck. “Let me in there. Do it now or they will both die.”
“I’ll let you in, provided you do one thing.”
The sorcerer snorted and rolled his eyes. “What is it you want?”
“Take me in there instead. Let them both go.”
He meant it, she knew. There was no image forming over his head.
“Agreed,” Rowancourt said at once.
She also knew that the sorcerer did not mean to keep his word. “He’s lying,” she shouted. “He means to kill us all,” she said on a sob. “Tuft, too!”
“How do I make him keep his promise?” Gryff asked Tuft.
“A blood vow,” the pixie answered. “He’ll have to fulfill his promise.”
“Then we’ll do it. You’ll make a blood vow with me, or you’ll never get in there,” Gryff told the villain.
Rowancourt sighed. “Agreed.” He thrust her away and she fell to her hands and knees in front of him.
“You can stop him,” Tuft whispered from his nearby cage. “Remember the power of the truth.”
She didn’t understand. In despair, she looked up—and saw what the sorcerer intended. “No!”
Gryff had bent to pull his knife from his boot, but Rowancourt held his at the ready. Before he could launch it, she lurched to her feet and fell on his arm, knocking them both to the ground.
“Interfering she-devil!” the sorcerer spat. He rolled her over and held his blade just below her eye. And at last she felt a flicker of understanding. So close—and facing him—she realized what she had missed before. His rich cloak. It was held closed at the shoulder by a brooch—an intricately carved piece with a raised hawk’s head in the middle.
“Say the words,” he shouted to Gryff. “Let me in or I will start carving and not let up until you do!”
Gryff dove at him and they rolled away together. She scrambled to sit up, her mind racing. He was the same man. So many hundreds of years. The boy from the mine. The old man from the painting. The sorcerer tormenting them today. All the same man!
“Truth has power,” Tuft shouted. “Recognize his truth and you can elevate or destroy! Who is he, Lady? Name him!”
What was the name? The butler had spoken it. The brooch, the carving . . . a child named . . .
“Grindan!” she shouted. “Your name is Grindan!”
The sorcerer gasped and froze atop Gryff, his knife held high.
“Now, command him!” Tuft ordered.
“You belong in that barrow, Grindan. You and no other! Now take your place . . . and go to hell!”
Rowancourt’s head dropped back. His mouth opened. A horrendous rumble came from out of him. The knife dropped. His fingers, where they reached toward the sky, turned black, then melted to ash. In an instant he was crumbling, from his finger downward—and the ash was rising up and riding a swirl into the barrow. When the last of it disappeared inside, a crash sounded like a gong—and at the same moment the iron cage disappeared—and she felt the last of the hold on her legs drain away.
“Gryff? Gryff?” She crawled over to him and kissed his forehead, his nose, and his neck. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” He sat up, then groaned and grabbed his shoulder.
“Oh, good heavens, you’re bleeding! He got you.”
“I think the knife got me, when it fell,” he grumbled.
She clapped a hand over her mouth, feeling more than slightly hysterical.
He drew back, indignant, and then groaned again. “Are you laughing? You think it’s funny?”
“No.” She pressed her lips together. “Of course not!”
“No?” Tuft stood beside them with a grin. “Well, I do!”
And he threw back his head and laughed.
Chapter 8
The castle corridors were empty. Everyone had gathered for the reading of the will. Tamsyn lingered behind, waiting until her mother’s attention had shifted, then she slipped away and snuck out into the gardens.
It was a glorious, sunny day and Gryff waited for her by the rose garden. They took the long way around the castle again, talking and laughing, hearts beating in anticipation as they aimed for the cliffs.
Just before they started to climb, Tuft stepped out of nowhere.
“Oh!” She stopped. “Good day, Tuft.” She hadn’t seen him since they’d collected her poor, dazed father and come home to Keyvnor. She’d wondered, in fact, if she’d ever see him again.
The old pixie inclined his head. “Good day. I’d hoped for a word.”
“Of course.” Gryff indicated a nearby pile of rough granite and they all perched, settling comfortably.
“You did well,” Tuft told her, and Tamsyn flushed.
“We all did well, I think.”
“I was beginning to fear we’d never get the best of that wicked boy,” the pixie sighed. “But I suppose we were waiting for you.”
“I . . . Well, I’m glad I could help.”
“Now, we owe you, and I can tell you, it’s like an itch I can’t scratch, to be owing a human. So I thought perhaps we could settle the debt.”
She’d actually given this some thought.
“I was wondering if you’d like me to call back my gift, and leave you in peace, without the Sight to disturb you.”
“Actually, I had a different idea,” she said with a raised brow. “I wonder if you would hear me out?”
He crossed his arms. “Go ahead.”
She explained and he gave her a warm look of approval. “Agreed,” he said simply. He stood. “Paul,” he called.
The ghostly boy appeared before them. “That’s a surprise,” he said, nodding to them all. “You don’t usually leave the wild places, Tuft.”
“The girl has no further need of her gift. She’s passing it to you.”
“To me? But I don’t need—”
“She’s asked that I make it so that your poor mother will see you—and be comforted by your presence. So you can spend some quiet time together of an evening, and her tortured mind will rest easier.”
“Oh,” he breathed.
“Will you accept this gift?”
“Yes.” He turned to Tamsyn. “Thank you!”
“Then so it is.”
And just like that, both of them were gone.
“Well.” Gryff said. “That set me down a peg or two.”
She stood up and whirled about, stopping before him. “What? Why? What do you mean?”
“I had a surprise planned for you, but I’m not sure I can measure up to what just happened.”
She threw herself in his arms. “Oh, I’m sure you can. And if not, we could have quite a bit of fun trying.”
He laughed and they continued on. They were nearly to the top when she saw what he’d done—and she gasped in delight.
“How long have you been working at this?” Her hands were clasped a
t her bosom in delight.
“A day or so,” he confessed.
“I love it,” she breathed.
“I love you,” he answered. “I want to show you.”
He led her over and she marveled at the rough shelter, its back one of the rocky protuberances scattered over the cliff tops, its sides constructed of branches, leaves and tough sea grasses, and its front opened to the sight and sound of the sun on the water and the pounding of the surf below.
“Come and see.”
She did, surprised to see tiny ribbons and flowers entwined with the foliage.
“How beautiful,” she whispered.
He looked sheepish. “I confess, that bit was not me.”
“Who, then? Does someone else know about this?” she found that more than a bit alarming.
“The pixies do, I gather.”
“Oh, how lovely.”
He led her around to the front and she saw blankets spread out and wine cooling in a rough bucket and a huge picnic basket waiting in the shade.
He took her hand and kissed it, then he reached for the other and held them both as he gazed at her, his expression tender.
“The longer I worked on this, the more enamored of it I became,” he told her. “Look around, Tamsyn. This place, it is us. Me, you, the wind and the sky and the richness of the earth. A veneer of civilization, a touch of magic and an abundance of love.”
She sighed, so deeply touched, and blinked away tears.
“It’s everything I’d like us to be. Will you join with me, Tamsyn? Marry me and turn this perfect day into a lifetime?”
She threw herself at him again, reveling in the height and breadth of him, in the strength of his arms and the beauty of his soul.
“Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.”
His expression was solemn as he laid her back on the blankets. The heft and weight of the moment felt as vast, as important and satisfying as his bulk pressing her to the earth.
She helped him remove his coat and kissed his bandaged shoulder, and then buried her fingers in his sun-warmed hair. He worshiped her and she accepted it as her due—and gave him the same in exchange. And when he eased her back and his shoulders blocked the sky, she moved her legs, opening wide and welcoming him home.
