Catherine Coulter the Sherbrooke Series Novels 6-10 (9781101562123)

by Coulter, Catherine

  It was madness.

  Nicholas instinctively grabbed the bedpost against the incredible pull of the vortex.

  Rosalind said in a calm voice, “No, Nicholas, it is all right. Let go.”

  He released the bedpost and the vortex swooped them up, slapped them together, whirled them about so fast they couldn’t see or hear anything except the deafening roar. She felt his hand squeeze hers as they were both spun into the huge column of blue flame that roared and shrieked around them. Her hair whipped into their faces, blinding them. And Rosalind thought to herself, It is the Cretan light. There was a tremendous crashing sound.

  Then they heard nothing at all.

  46

  Rosalind slowly raised her head. Her brain was clear, her mouth dry, her hair tangled in her face, and she wasn’t afraid. She was lying on top of Nicholas, who was now blinking his eyes, and he felt very good indeed.

  His hand was on her cheek. “What happened?”

  “I think that vortex of flame somehow deposited us in the Pale. It was the Cretan light written of by Captain Jared. Remember?”

  He said nothing, merely lifted her off him and set her next to him. “It appears we’re in some sort of cave. Look at the sandy floor, and the opening, just over there. I can’t see the back of the cave—it’s black as a pit back there. I wonder how big it is.”

  Rosalind didn’t care how big the cave was; she’d have to be forced at knifepoint to go exploring.

  They rose slowly and walked to the opening and looked out. Three bloodred moons shone bright overhead.

  “Oh, my, it is beautiful.”

  Alien and unnatural was what it was, Nicholas thought, but the utter strangeness of it didn’t concern him at the moment. He cursed, smacked his palm against his forehead. “Blast me, I’m a fool. Here we are in cloaks and boots, ready for cold weather and a hike into the mountains, yet I forgot to bring a weapon.”

  “Sarimund didn’t say anything about needing one,” she said, and moved closer to his side, and wondered if somehow Nicholas had been blocked from thinking of a weapon.

  “He didn’t say anything about wearing cloaks either,” he said, and cursed again. “Well, no hope for it. All right, I know we aren’t to build a fire because that will bring the fire creatures in to devour it. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m wondering how anyone ever cooked anything if these fire creatures always flew by to kill the flame.”

  “We will ask the red Lasis when we find it. We’ve got to make friends with it, so it will protect us from the Tiber. I hope Sarimund comes to us soon. Remember, he said he was waiting for me.”

  He said, “I cannot imagine meeting someone three hundred years dead. Well, yes, I can—Captain Jared. Do you think Sarimund will be only spirit and song?”

  “I saw him across from the huge kettle he was stirring. He looked very real.”

  Nicholas said, as he looked out over the land, “Hopefully we are in the Vale of Augur and that is Mount Olyvan at the end of the plain beyond that skinny snake of river. If Sarimund doesn’t come, if we can’t find a Dragon of the Sallas Pond to fly us over it, then we will have to cross it. If I remember aright, we can’t cross the river until the three bloodred moons are full, and rise together over Mount Olyvan. I wonder why that restriction? The river doesn’t look deep at all, its surface appears calm, and over there, it doesn’t appear to be more than fifteen feet wide.”

  Rosalind said, “If you stick even your toe in that river before the three bloodred moons are full, I shall kick you.”

  He didn’t know where it came from, but he grinned down at her. “The moons aren’t quite full, are they?”

  “No. Tomorrow night.”

  A black eyebrow shot up. “You seem very sure about that.”

  She looked momentarily surprised. “Yes, I do, don’t I?”

  He eyed her a moment, then said, “Perhaps there is another way to get to Blood Rock, besides crossing the river or finding a Dragon of the Sallas Pond to fly us there.”

  She turned away from him suddenly and began to walk toward a single tree that stood on a small mound some twenty feet away. Nicholas called out, “Rosalind, no, we must remain together. Come back here.”

  She kept walking straight toward that tree, at least he thought it was a tree. Of all things, it was a bright yellow and had very long bare branches sticking out from the trunk, moving lazily about like thin waving arms. The only thing was, there wasn’t any wind, not even a slight breeze to make those branches move and sway the way they did.

  He yelled her name again, but still she didn’t turn. Then he called out, “Isabella! Come back here.”

  She turned then and smiled at him, a mysterious smile.

  He said, “I want you to sing to me.”

  He saw that her hair shined as violent a red as the three bloodred moons above her head, and her face was washed of color, not as white as the whiteness that had shrouded them and their bedchambers the previous night, but her pallor was marked. Had it only been last night? It seemed like eons ago. He stared at her as she walked toward him. The thing was, she was Rosalind, yet, somehow, she wasn’t. He would swear red sparks flew outward from her head, forming a crimson halo—or a blood halo. Her cloak and gown were gone and in their place, a long white robe, a narrow golden rope at her waist. He felt a spurt of fear and quashed it. “Please, Isabella, sing to me.”

  She took another couple of steps toward him, the hem of her gown brushing against some spindly bushes that didn’t appear to have any color to them at all. She sang:

  I dream of beauty and sightless night

  I dream of strength and fevered might

  I dream I’m not alone again

  But I know of his death and her grievous sin.

  She lowered her head and he heard her sigh, deep and broken, as if wrenched from her very soul. “She wants to kill him, badly. He’s only a little boy, no bad in him, none at all, yet she is afraid of him, afraid that when he reaches manhood he will smite her down and exile all the other wizards and witches to a place beyond death.”

  He walked slowly to her. She didn’t move. He reached her, but didn’t touch her. “What little boy?” His heart began to pound in hard, slow strokes.

  “His name is Prince Egan. He is Epona’s son, hers and Sarimund’s. I must protect him. I must save him.”

  “How do you know his name?”

  In the turn of a second she looked at him out of Rosalind’s clear blue eyes, not Isabella’s. “The final page of Sarimund’s book—neither you nor I saw anything save a stark white page, but you see, there was something written there. I can see his name very clearly now. I must hurry. Epona will know I’m here, and she will kill him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sarimund’s spell, it’s stayed her hand. She cannot kill him until I am here.”

  “But how?”

  “I don’t know. He must come soon to tell me what I must do to save Egan.”

  It had to be asked. “If you do not save Prince Egan, will I die as well? Or will I never exist?”

  There, it was said.

  Suddenly her red hair bristled as if lightning had whipped through it. “If I don’t stop her then she will kill Egan. Then it won’t matter, will it?”

  A terrifying roar rent the silence from directly behind Nicholas. He whirled about to face a monster that looked a cross between a lion and one of those strange beasts that roamed the western plains in America. The beast roared again, its huge mouth open wide, showing knife-sharp fangs. This creature had to be the Tiber. He barely had time to thrust up his arm before the Tiber leapt on him, going for his throat, its fangs glistening beneath the red moonlight.

  He yelled, “Run, Isabella, run!”

  She picked up her skirts and ran to the lone yellow tree. She jerked off one of the long naked yellow branches, and ran toward the man and the beast atop him, raising the branch high over her head. Suddenly, Nicholas was on top of the beast
, his hands around its throat. She would hit Nicholas if she struck the branch down now. The Tiber grunted with rage, globs of white liquid flew out of its great mouth, its hooves and legs flailed wildly. The Tiber shrieked and Rosalind saw its fangs were as yellow as the tree, and those sharp fangs strained upward, toward Nicholas’s throat.

  “Nicholas, pull him over on top of you!”

  He arched his back, gained leverage with his legs, and kicked his feet with all his strength into the Tiber’s belly. It howled and he rolled over and whipped his legs up and closed them around the beast’s neck and hauled it down over him. She swung with all her might at the Tiber’s head, a blow so powerful the branch shuddered in her hands and her arms trembled with the force of it. The Tiber twisted its head about to look up at her and she hit its head again, even harder this time. The branch split apart in her hands and yellow sand gushed out.

  The Tiber said, “Nay, mistress, do not kill me. I saw the man reach out to you and believed he would hurt you. Do not kill me, mistress. A branch from the yellow Sillow tree is a mighty weapon, no human before has known to use it.”

  Now this was a shock, Nicholas thought, and released his legs from about the Tiber’s neck. The Tiber slowly rolled off him and came to its four feet, shaking its shaggy brown coat. No, not entirely brown, there were dark blue stripes across his back. Then it stood there, head down, panting.

  Rosalind dropped the stick, watched more yellow sand spill out of it. “I’m sorry,” she said to the branch. “I’m sorry.”

  Nicholas came up to his feet. He stared from her to the Tiber, now rubbing its head against some outcropping rocks. “Look at me, Tiber. Sarimund did not write that you could speak. He wrote only that you were our enemy. How can you speak? How can we understand you?”

  The beast raised its ugly head. “The Tiber is the enemy to everything, man included, but not your enemy, my lord.”

  My lord?

  “I do not understand this,” Nicholas said. “Sarimund wrote we were to make friends with the red Lasis so we would be protected from you. Why do you call her mistress? Why do you call me lord? Why aren’t you our enemy? We are human. I am a man.”

  “You will find that all things are possible here in the Pale, my lord,” said the Tiber, and Nicholas was certain he heard a snicker in the beast’s voice. Before their eyes, the Tiber began to shimmer. Slowly, it turned into a dragon, and they both knew to their boots that this was a Dragon of the Sallas Pond that Sarimund had described. His snout was gold, his eyes bright emeralds, and on his back were huge triangular scales, studded with diamonds. The dragon rolled its emerald eyes at them. “Behold, I am not a Tiber. This is the first time I have taken its shape. A nasty creature, the Tiber, all rage inside, only eating and killing on its tiny mind. I had no idea. I won’t do that again, no matter the possible sport of it.”

  The dragon slewed its mighty head toward Rosalind and its tail thumped, making the earth shudder. “You have great strength in your arm, mistress. Forgive me, my lord, I honestly thought you were an attacker. Now I see clearly that you are not. And the mistress, she knew to strike me with a branch from the yellow Sillow tree. It is an amazing thing.” The dragon bowed to her, folding its huge wings briefly over its head. Then it looked up and stared upward at the three bloodred moons.

  “You are no god,” Nicholas said, and stared at the dragon in its whirling emerald eyes.

  The dragon slewed its head back toward Nicholas. “Of course I am.”

  “No, you cannot be, otherwise you would have realized exactly who I was immediately. You would have known I wasn’t going to hurt her. You would not have attacked me.” He shrugged, “Or, if you are a god, then you must be very new at it.”

  Rosalind said, “Taranis only sings, at least that is what I have read. You are speaking to us.”

  “No, I am thinking to you. I don’t sing well.”

  The dragon stretched out his formidable wings and rose straight up, a dozen feet into the air, and hovered there, wings barely moving, dramatically silhouetted against the three bloodred moons, a fearsome sight, but Nicholas wasn’t impressed; he was angry. He waved his fist upward. “Stop your games, dragon, I am not afraid of you. Is your name Taranis? Stop your posing and your pathetic efforts at intimidation. If you wish lessons in that fine art, ask me to teach you. Now, I command you to come here and tell us what is going on.”

  “I know who you are,” the dragon said as his mighty wings flapped and he rose higher, whipping up the yellow sand that had fallen from the Sillow branch. A lick of flame snaked out of his mouth, and he quickly swallowed it, his massive neck rippling with the effort. “Yes, I know well who you are, my lord. I had flecks of desert sand in my eyes and did not see you properly.” Then he winged higher and higher, until he was as large as the middle bloodred moon. He paused a moment, on purpose, of course, posing again, and they saw his black silhouette against the bloodred moon and he looked like a mad painting in a storybook. They heard a voice so close it sounded right behind them, “Beware the Tiber. He is more vicious than one of those Blood Rock wizards. Seek out the red Lasis. As for Sarimund, who knows what that human wizard will do?”

  Both Nicholas and Rosalind whirled about but there was nothing there.

  Nicholas shook his head. “Imagine, that damnable dragon only thought that advice to us, curse him.” He paused, lightly touched his fingers to Rosalind’s hair.

  Rosalind said, “The dragon, he called you lord and me mistress. I wonder why. If he is a Dragon of the Sallas Pond, then why all the games? Oh, yes, I forgot—a rule of magic.”

  “The next time he flies near us, I wish to know if being ‘my lord’ grants me special favors in the Pale.”

  He brought her close against him, felt the pounding of her heart against his. He said against her cheek, “How did you know to break off a branch from the yellow Sillow tree and strike the Tiber’s head with it?”

  She said. “I didn’t think, I simply did it. Oh, dear, I believe the tree groaned.”

  Nicholas began to rub his hands up and down her back. She hadn’t seemed to notice she was wearing a gown that a medieval lady might wear, or a lady from further back than that, a lady who tended altars at Stonehenge. “It’s all right. You saved me and I thank you. I hope you gave that bloody dragon a powerful headache, it would serve him right.” He stared down at her a moment, streaked his hand through her hair, twisted a red curl around his finger. “Rosalind, before the Tiber attacked, you became someone else, or rather, perhaps you shifted toward someone else. You realize that, don’t you?”

  Slowly, she nodded against his shoulder. “I know only that I am different here in the Pale, both how I look and my clothes. Where is Sarimund?”

  She drew back in his arms. She looked away from him, out over the vast barren plain between the Vale of Augur and Mount Olyvan.

  “Rosalind?” He tightened his hold on her and whispered against her ear, “Isabella?”

  “I must stop her, Nicholas. I told you, now that I’m here, her hand is no longer stayed. She is evil, she will kill him.”

  He asked, “Is Epona also a seer? Did she look into the future and foresee her own death if she allowed her son, this Prince Egan, to grow to manhood?”

  Rosalind spoke, but her voice was deeper, with an odd lilt to it. “I believe it was Latobius, the god of the mountains and the sky, who saw the devastation of Blood Rock come to pass. He is both a god and a magician, you know. He feels so very much. He is oftentimes in pain because of others’ actions. Were Egan to die, it would distress him unutterably.” She looked down. “My belt is gold, all thin threads twisted together. And my hair is longer.”

  “You look like a princess, or perhaps a priestess.”

  He sounded calm and accepting, but he didn’t know what was happening to Rosalind, he knew only that he couldn’t let it matter now. He heard a soft blowing noise and looked down. He took her hand and together, they watched the yellow sand blow over the two halves of the Sillow branch,
though there was not the slightest wind to whip the sand up. He watched as the two branch halves came back together, their fit perfect. They watched the blowing yellow sand move over the branch, slowly disappear into it. Sealing it?

  Without thinking, Nicholas picked up the branch. He walked back to the yellow Sillow tree and set the branch carefully against the jagged hole in the tree. It settled in instantly. He stepped back, heard a sigh of pleasure, and knew he should be surprised, but he wasn’t. “I am a powerful mender of trees,” he called back to Rosalind. “I did not even require a needle or thread.”

  “It is because you are a wizard,” she said matter-of-factly, and came up beside him. She touched the branch, bent it a bit, and nodded. It was again firmly attached.

  Nicholas heard a loud popping sound off to his left, like a gun’s report, and pulled her behind him as he whirled about.

  47

  There was another popping sound, and another, louder and louder.

  Nicholas threw back his head and yelled, “Stop that infernal noise, do you hear me? It is not frightening, merely annoying. Stop it, I command you!”

  The wild cannon shots stopped.

  Silence fell around them.

  “That was the dragon,” Nicholas said. “I won’t put up with such nonsense.” His voice sounded cold and impatient. And now, like her, he looked different—his hair longer, framing his face in a wild black tangle, making him look barbaric, an ancient warrior primed for violence. He was no longer wearing his black cloak. He was now dressed in black breeches, a billowing white shirt, and black boots to his knees. He looked both dangerous and violent. She reached out her hand to touch his forearm. “Are you all right?”