by L. K. Rigel
“What are you doing?” Zoelyn said.
“Put the strap in my mouth after I’ve changed.” Igraine handed the abbess the bag. “I said I would stop, but this will be faster.”
The world twisted and Igraine rolled into a new shape, one she’d never tried, but one with a big beak. She stretched her white wings to the fullest and flew out of the veranda, up over the island and toward Tintagos Castle, the bag of potions dangling from her mouth.
Ross sat with his father by the crackling fire. Propped up in his favorite rosewood captain’s chair, the baron alternated between coughing, staring at the flames, and periodically stealing glances at his chamber door.
“Kaelyn’s never failed me, son, but this time I may fail her.” His face was sickly pale and his voice weak, like that of someone ancient. “My fire dims, son. Help me to my bed before I fall to the floor.”
A candle burned on the baron’s bedside table like the one he’d lit all those years ago at the hunter’s cabin when the knife had sliced through Ross’s cheek. A summoning candle. But the old wyrding woman couldn’t possibly arrive in time to help his father now.
“This is Quinn’s doing.” Ross pulled a blanket up over his father’s chest. “When I see the bastard again, I’ll run a blade through his black heart.”
“Good.” The baron sat up abruptly and lurched forward, retching. He coughed up blood and foam, soaking his handkerchief. “Rid the world of that snake. But he’s not the end of it. Quinn wouldn’t murder a baron on his own whim.”
On the hearth lay the shattered remains of the goblet that had held the baron’s wine. Too late, Ross had noticed the black rose, symbol of the house of Sarumen, etched into the blown glass. Too late, he’d made the connection to Quinn. Too late, he’d snatched the goblet from his father and thrown it against the stone fireplace.
Too late, too late.
Either Quinn had been brazenly taunting them, putting poisoned wine in such a cup, or the man was a fool. Either way, the outcome was the same: Ross’s father was going to die, and no wyrding woman could stop it from happening.
Ross went to the door to listen for sounds of Kaelyn’s coming, but there was no one in the corridor. Indeed, as if already in mourning, the entire castle was eerily silent. Grief twisted Ross’s heart.
“I don’t want to believe it,” he said.
“But you do,” the baron said.
“I do. Quinn must have been acting on his uncle’s orders.”
“Kill Quinn; it won’t matter. But don’t break with Sarumen, Ross. I swore fealty to Mathilde, but you did not. If it comes to it, you must support Stephen for the good of Dumnos. He has too much strength behind him, not only Lord Sarumen, but the church.” The baron fell into another spasm of coughing.
“I would have agreed with you yesterday,” Ross said under his breath. As he’d sent all the servants away, he looked for a clean handkerchief. “Now I’m not so sure.”
“Sun and moon.” The baron’s eyes widened. He continued coughing and motioned toward the window.
A pelican—carrying something in its beak—flew in through the unshuttered opening. It now dropped the thing, a satchel, and landed on the floor.
“What…?” Ross stepped toward the bird.
It squawked at him, a loud, ugly screetch which he could swear formed a word.
“No!”
“Don’t touch it,” his father said.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Ross stepped back.
The bird squawked again and flapped its wings, fast and faster. A blur of white shimmering light surrounded the pelican, obscuring it from sight. Flecks of silver and gold sparkled in the light, and then the light was gone.
All that remained was her. The glimmering girl with the apple blossoms in her hair.
“You.” Ross merely thought the word. He couldn’t speak. His heart was pounding, and he was caught up in some kind of rapture. She was as lovely as when he first saw her. And just as naked.
“You’re not Kaelyn,” the baron said, weak but his voice charged with humor.
“Lord Tintagos.” She spoke haltingly at first, still more squawk than human voice. Then again, “Lord Tintagos,” the graceful voice of a lady.
Jealousy and woe danced through Ross, taunting him. That his glimmering girl would speak, but to someone else!
She smiled then, at the baron, but her delightful blue eyes were sad. She went to Ross’s father and touched his forehead. As if by the magic of her touch—who is she?—the creases in the baron’s brow smoothed.
“Kaelyn sent me, my lord,” she said.
The bag the pelican had carried lay open on the floor, and she was dressed in pink and green silk embroidered with silver and and gold thread, as light and gossamer as herself. Her hair fell about her shoulders in gentle caresses, and scattered throughout those white-blond tresses were the delicate jewels he remembered in the shape of apple blossoms, tinged with silver and gold.
“My lord?” She meant him.
“Me, lord?” Ross said stupidly. Sun and Moon, more! Talk to me. See me. Fix me in your gaze and never let me go.
“Could you bring my…?”
“Of course.” He fetched her bag as if he were her servant. Her slave. She accepted it, and when their fingers touched, such happiness coursed through his body—followed on hard by exquisite longing.
The feeling was so tender, so sweet, so clean and real and pure that he had to suppress the tears that welled up inside. She was beautiful, but it was far more than that. He felt that she was good and kindhearted. An oasis of calm in a world spinning toward chaos. Everything that he was cried out with wanting, wanting, to be with her, bound to her, utterly and forever.
“Who are you? What is your name? Tell me… please.”
Horrible, wondrous, terrifying question. Dangerous—or salvific.
“I’m Igraine of Kaelyn’s cave.”
“And a choir…”
“Eh?” Ross had forgotten his father. The man’s pallor told all. He was fading and trying to speak. Ross went to the bedside and bent down close.
“A choir of angels exalts from on high.” The old man struggled for breath to speak. “Igraine… I like that. Another Igraine at Tintagos Castle.”
« Chapter 18 »
Ride With Me
It was him.
He was the baron’s son.
Rozenwyn’s absent lover.
Wennie’s unaware father.
The man Igraine wanted to hate, at least to dislike. At the very least to disapprove of. He was her fisher king. And she felt sure he recognized her too. He appeared to be full of questions.
“Thank you for coming.” His voice was as compelling as she remembered. Deep, strong, and with a hint of weariness that tugged at her nurturing instincts.
In a few strides, he was at her side. She braced for another electrical jolt of desire, but this time his muscular grasp surrounded her hand with gentle pressure. There was no overwhelming spark, only yearning for the simple comfort of human contact.
It was difficult to hate a man whose heart was breaking before her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I fear I’m too late to save your father.” She should be thinking of the baron, but her mind was filled with the awareness of Sir Ross.
How decent he seemed, though he was a man who’d left home and family for the chimera of glory in a foreign campaign.
How safe and alive he made her feel, his hand covering hers, welcoming her as if she’d truly come home for the first time in her life.
“He was poisoned. Nothing could have saved him.”
“Then I can help to ease his passing.” With regret, Igraine withdrew her hand. She fetched her infusions bowl and a rosemary decoction from her bag and indicated the kettle hanging over the fire. “If there’s boiled water, I’d like some here beside Lord Tintagos’s bed.”
“I’ll get it.” Pain shadowed Sir Ross’s face. “He had a moment of terror, and I sent the servants away. I co
uldn’t bear to let them see him like that.”
Igraine nodded her understanding as she rubbed a wyrded potion over the baron’s chest. “This ointment will ease his breathing, and the vapors from the infused water will soothe his mind, though he’s unconscious.”
Sir Ross brought the kettle to the table beside the baron’s bed and poured steaming water into the ceramic bowl Igraine had taken from her bag. She liked to use her own things in her work, even to bowls and spoons. One never knew how clean a patient’s plate would be, even when he was a baron.
“You already have,” Sir Ross said. “Helped to ease his passing. When he saw you, his eyes softened. He saw something in you that made him content and… happy.”
“I can’t think what.”
“I can.” A trace of a smile played over Sir Ross’s lips. He spoke more to himself than to her, looking at his father. “You made him think of someone he loved.”
She prepared the infusion of sage and rosemary, mentally chanting the wyrding words. Sir Ross returned to the other side of the bed and held his father’s hand while she pressed a cloth soaked in the wyrded water to the baron’s face and forehead.
“You make a good steward, Sir Ross.”
“I lived rough for years on the Crusade,” he said. “It was learn to care for myself or starve.”
“You had no squire? An important knight like you, I’m surprised. And somewhat insulted, when I think about it.”
“Insulted. What…”
“Consider the honor of Tintagos! What did the world think of our own baron’s son riding to the holy land, and at Lord Sarumen’s side, with no squire? Highly improper, sir.” She was only teasing him, distracting the poor man from his distress.
“Then I confess I did have a squire, and a very good one. A young lad called Braedon of Bodmin. But I did learn to boil water in my travels, and picked up a few other skills as well.”
Igraine’s capricious brain brought up the image of Velyn making love to her in the guise of the fisher king, and she speculated on the sort of skills Sir Ross might have.
“Where is Braedon of Bodmin now?” She jumped to a more appropriate and safer topic. “A good squire doesn’t leave his master in a time of crisis.”
“In Bodmin, as a matter of fact, gone to see his family,” Sir Ross said. “There was no advance warning my father would be poisoned.”
“Of course not.” Igraine, you ass. You wanted him to forget his troubles. “Do you know when it happened?”
“Earlier tonight, here in this room and before my very eyes.” He nodded at the fire where shattered glass covered the hearth and the surrounding floor. “I can’t prove anything, now that I’ve destroyed the evidence, but the goblet bore a black rose, symbol of House Sarumen. At first I thought Quinn had been sloppy or arrogant, but he’s no fool. It wasn’t a mistake. He used the goblet on purpose, to send me a message.”
“Quinn…” Igraine abruptly stood—and forgot what she was going to say.
She hadn’t seen the man in years. Well, except for taunting him in falcon form. This fear was irrational. Nonetheless, the castle suddenly felt like a cage, and like a wild animal, she went to the open window. No, no. She couldn’t transmogrify again in front of Sir Ross, but at some point she’d find her way to the roof and escape the castle in peregrine. Better that than seeing Quinn again.
“The blackguard is gone.”
Magic words. She let out breath she didn’t know she was holding, and her whole body relaxed.
Sir Ross was behind her, so close she felt the calming vibration of his voice. “He fled Tintagos hours ago, apparently after sending up the poisoned wine. Of course no one knows which servant brought it.”
Igraine turned from the window and was faced with Sir Ross’s chest. She looked up and felt as if she could fall into his deep brown gaze.
“Is there nothing else to prove he did this?” Rozenwyn had been right. Despite worry and sadness, his scar did make him handsome. Igraine suppressed the urge to trace it with her finger, from his weary eye to his full, soft lips. “Surely running off in the night shows guilt.”
“Normally it would, but Quinn had cause to leave immediately for London.” Sir Ross’s gaze traveled over her, moving from her eyes, lingering on her lips. He lifted a lock of her hair and smiled at the apple blossoms. For a minute, it seemed he would press one to his lips, but he moved away. “At the end of tonight’s banquet, word came that King Henry has died.”
“The king is dead.” Better to let Sir Ross think this was the first she’d heard of it. Very probably he didn’t know what a glimmer glass was, and it was bad enough he’d seen her change from animal to human shape. Twice. “I remember hearing that the bishop was here as his envoy.”
“Yes. To secure my father’s oath of fealty to Mathilde in the event of Henry’s death.”
“Because of the White Lady, and Aethelos drowning,” Igraine said. “To ensure a smooth succession.”
“Just so,” Sir Ross said. “I’m impressed a wyrding woman cares about politics.”
“Only when politics might harm the wyrd,” Igraine said. “I know that—” She stopped from saying Quinn hated the wyrd. She didn’t want to have to explain how she had met him. “I know the bishops in the east would like to see us all disappear.”
“Quinn in particular seems to hate your kind,” Sir Ross said. He raised an eyebrow. “A wyrding woman must have once rejected his advances.”
“You may be right. And does… does Tintagos support Mathilde?” Igraine didn’t want to talk about Quinn any longer. She might as well find out what Zoelyn would want to know. In fact, the abbess might have her glimmer glass focused on them even now.
Igraine returned to the baron and checked his forehead—it was hot—and took his hand in hers. It was clammy. His lips were turning blue. It didn’t matter anymore what the baron wanted. There would be a new baron by tomorrow.
Sir Ross sat down on the other side of the bed. He seemed ready to talk, and Igraine wished she could put a thought in his mind. Please. Say nothing about the pelican. Nothing about the pelican… or the fish! If Zoelyn heard him acknowledge her shapeshifting, Igraine would be faced with a terrible task.
As it was, she might have to do it anyway.
“During the banquet, before all his knights, my father swore fealty to Mathilde,” he said.
Igraine exhaled. There, Zoelyn. You can relax.
“But with the king in fact dead, he saw it would be better for Tintagos, for the people of Tintagos, to side with Stephen—for the very reason that the church is behind him.”
“And do you agree?”
“I understand the reasoning,” Sir Ross said. “But Lord Tintagos did swear fealty to Mathilde in front of witnesses, so that way lies the honorable path. And she’s Henry’s daughter. Stephen is but his nephew.”
“They’re both grandchildren of the Conqueror,” Igraine said. “They both have sons who would continue the dynasty.”
“Mathilde would continue with Henry’s reforms. Let matters spiritual be subject to the church and her bishops, and leave matters material to the monarch and his, or her, lords. I’ve seen far too much of a church’s meddling into the affairs of state. Christian or otherwise, it generally leads to crucifixions, heads on pikes, and a new generation hell-bent on revenge.”
Sir Ross shuttered the window, put more wood on the fire, and opened a cask of wonderful wine he’d brought back from Normandum. They talked through the night, the topics drifting drifted away from politics and to more homely things. Ross’s hopes for the people of Tintagos, Igraine’s commitment to be their wyrding woman.
“But don’t you want to marry, have a home, children?” Sir Ross said. “I thought all women wanted that.”
“I’m a daughter of the high gods, Sir Ross. No decent man would want me, and I’d take no less than a decent man.”
The knight blushed, and she knew he agreed with her assessment of her situation.
“I’m happy with
my life,” she said. And she had been—until now.
The first light of sunrise slipped in through spaces in the window shutter, and Sir Ross got up to put more wood on the fire. Igraine went to open the window for fresh air when there was a knock at the chamber door.
“I told them all to leave us alone,” Sir Ross said, but he opened the door.
“Sir, Prior Marrek has come,” said the servant outside.
“Very well.” Sir Ross’s shoulders slumped, as if he’d truly accepted the inevitable for the first time. “Come in, prior. It was good of you to return so quickly.”
“Of course,” Marrek said. “Nothing at the priory was so important.”
Igraine’s old friend looked surprised to see her in the baron’s chamber, but he made no remark. He went straight to the dying man’s side and began administering the unction.
Sounds of the baron’s final breath brought Sir Ross to the bed. He kissed the baron’s forehead and said quietly, “Farewell, sweet and good father.”
Igraine wanted to go to Ross, to comfort him and kiss away the tear running down his cheek. But with Prior Marrek’s arrival she suddenly felt like the outsider she was.
Worse, she was sick with indecision. She knew what she had to do, and she couldn’t do it.
She offered a silent prayer, Igdrasil, ease the baron’s way. Brother Sun and Sister Moon, please accept him into heaven. Then, as she had done before and would again—for this was her life—she hoisted the potions bag over her shoulder and quietly slipped out of the room, leaving the normal people to their personal and private grief.
Outside the baron’s room, the castle was freezing cold. Halfway down the stairs, she called out a wyrd for a thick cloak and warmer shoes. Halfway through the entry hall, Sir Ross caught up with her.
“You’re leaving me?” He looked stricken, as if she had betrayed him.
It isn’t like that. “I think I must.”
“Prior Marrek has sent for the nuns.” Again pain flitted over his face. The women would wash the baron’s body and wrap it in a winding sheet for burial. “I need to get out of here for a while and clear my head, and… and we have to talk.”
