As she wheeled her mare to face their attackers, her companions spread protectively before her—the guardsman Caedmon putting his back to the rocks, Lady Linnet slipping toward the thicket, her foster-father braced for battle ahead.
“Goddess protect us.” Rhiannon gripped the leafy branch until her fingers ached. At her belt, the unsigned treaty in its pouch pulsed warm with enchantment. She doubted the bandits would deliver it for her, nor even be able to read it after she’d perished.
The clash of steel on silver rang out; both Ansgar and Caedmon had engaged the foe. Rhiannon searched the darkness, every sense straining. She smelled the metallic tang of blood, the musky scent of wet horse, the faint stench of rotting earth. The looming Convergence sickened the very soil itself, as the twin realms of mortal and Faerie drew toward their fateful collision.
Yet beneath the smell of death, like a flicker of dying hope, she nosed the fresh green aroma of shoots and buds sleeping beneath the cold spring rains, waiting patiently for rebirth.
Caedmon toppled with an axe buried in his skull—two thousand years of wisdom and beauty crushed into fragments like an eggshell. Lady Linnet’s small cry sounded like a stricken rabbit. No help to be had from that quarter. Now Ansgar fought alone, saber whirling through the darkness, punctuated by the grunts and curses of the two-legged predators—a pack of snarling jackals around the lone knight.
You are a daughter of kings! Help him, she ordered her shaking limbs. Or he will perish defending you. You know what they’ll do to Linnet—what they’ll do to you. Even if we all die here, anything is better than waiting meekly for the slaughter.
But what could Rhiannon do? She, a healer who believed all life was sacred, had never wielded a weapon.
She heard the low evil thrum of a bowstring as someone loosed another wicked shaft. The sound curled her into herself, flesh shrinking. But it was Ansgar whose pain-filled cry pierced the night.
Silent lightning flashed through the clearing. Illuminated for an instant, a dozen brigands fanned across the muddy ground. Two crouched before Caedmon’s crumpled form, already pillaging though the man was not yet cold. More struggled to subdue Ansgar’s coal-black stallion, his saddle empty. The stallion reared, forelegs slashing the air, with a trumpeting scream of rage.
Lady Linnet was a slender struggling figure, tangled in saffron skirts, slipping and scrambling across the river’s moss-slick stones. Rhiannon caught a glimpse of her white face, those gentle eyes wild with terror. Water foamed around the girl as she fled—and who could blame her? The Fae had kept her against her will, a half-Scottish noblewoman who’d blundered through the Veil by mischance, with her precious knowledge of the Tudor court. The Fae had beguiled her to spill Tudor secrets while her family grieved and months stretched into years in the mortal world. What loyalty did Linnet owe them?
On the earth, Ansgar the divine spear lay thrashing, a clothyard shaft jutting from his shoulder. A dark tide of blood spilled over his silver hauberk. Two human wolves circled him, eyes gleaming through matted hair, wary of the saber still flashing bravely in the fallen knight’s fist.
Rhiannon stared at the stricken form, the world spinning to a halt around her.
Directly before her, close enough to touch, reared an ogre of a brigand. Rotted black teeth showed through a thicket of dripping beard. Clutching her improvised weapon, she bared her teeth and hissed at him like a wildcat.
“Here be the girl,” he growled. “Kill her—and catch t’other one, ye half-wits.”
“Damn you for a pack of spineless huddipicks!” Ansgar’s furious voice rang over the howling wind as he struggled to rise. “Attack me, blast you!”
To Rhiannon’s heightened senses, outlaws seemed to rise like demons from fissures in the ground. At last, her nerve failed her.
“Blessed Mother,” she whispered to the Faerie Queene and the Goddess herself. “Protect Ansgar, save your champion. Hide Linnet from their gaze, for she is innocent of all. As for myself, forgive me...”
As if indeed she’d summoned forth a spell, though her half-mortal blood held no such power, the rain-lashed night went still around her. The forest held its breath. Falling rain shimmered in the dusky air.
From the forest a figure strode—a solitary man, storm-winds lashing the black cloak around him, advancing sure-footed across the treacherous ground. He gripped a cross-guarded broadsword in both hands, blazing gold like a cross of fire. To human eyes, he was a lone mortal. Still, Rhiannon knew at once he was more than human.
Her Faerie Sight discerned a fiery halo around that striding figure as he swept through the carnage. Superimposed over that mortal frame blazed a warrior clad in shining white-gold mail, a banner of silver hair streaming around features stern and fearless. Rising from his mighty shoulders, the shadow of iridescent wings spread wide: a shimmer of opal and turquoise and garnet feathers. Cold fire spilled from burning cobalt eyes to illuminate the clearing.
As this vision of divine wrath strode toward them, his mouth opened and he roared like a lion. On the ground, Ansgar dropped his sword and covered his ears—the stricken ears of a mortal who’d dwelled too long among the godless Fae.
The outlaws gaped at the fury bearing down on them as though their God himself had blown his trumpet. She could hardly guess what they saw—perhaps only the glimmer of an aura. Yet the man nearest that shining figure fell to his knees, crossing himself and babbling. The form of fire roared again, blazing sword sweeping around to cleave the air. When it struck the outlaw’s head from his shoulders, a blinding flash of white made Rhiannon cover her eyes. Sparks danced against the blackness of her closed lids.
When her vision cleared, the bandits were cowering on the earth. The bravest scrambled for fallen weapons. The bearded ogre who’d threatened her roared his own challenge and waded through the mud toward that dreadful apparition, hefting a blacksmith’s hammer baptized with Faerie blood.
Rhiannon sat frozen to her saddle as the outlaw’s brawny arm whirled his hammer overhead. Again that flaming sword carved the air and parted the fabric of night. When the sword smote, thunder shook the heavens. The smith’s hammer tumbled in two pieces from a nerveless grip. The outlaw himself fell screaming, legs cloven from his body.
Now the beast who’d slaughtered Caedmon rushed forward, his murdering axe dripping with gore. “God damn ye!”
The Name of God doubled Rhiannon over in the saddle. Though she held nothing against the Christian God, her mixed blood gave her all the Fair Folk’s vulnerabilities, and few of their strengths. Still on the ground, Ansgar moaned and covered his eyes.
As for the winged fury, he seemed to swell until that streaming hair brushed the wind-lashed branches overhead. The light that spilled from his eyes burned blue as the heart of flame, stabbing Rhiannon’s vision until she was nearly blinded.
Roaring like an avalanche, the fiery warrior extended an arm to point at the blasphemer. Before that accusing finger, the bearded face went blank with terror. Dropping the axe, the bandit fell stricken to the earth and covered his head with his arms.
The remaining outlaws required no further urging. Babbling with fright, they scattered in all directions. Some splashed into the river, lost their footing in the tumbling waters and vanished. Some flung themselves headlong into the thorny brambles, plunging into the thicket on foot when their horses balked. Thei
r abandoned steeds veered away.
Rhiannon found herself alone in the clearing with that vengeful vision—alone save for Ansgar who lay like a dead man, arrow jutting from his shoulder.
Scarcely daring to breathe, she groped for the moonstone pendant that hung at her throat: the charm that disguised her Fae fairness from mortal eyes. But she feared no makeshift magick could deceive the godlike creature before her.
Indeed, her movement drew its gaze. Slowly, those burning cobalt eyes turned toward her. When their eyes met, a tingle swept through her, prickling her skin into gooseflesh. A breeze stirred her rose-red mantle, lifted her tumbled ringlets and tossed them around her shoulders.
For the first time since she’d ridden through the Veil into the mortal realm, she was warm, even burning. A scent like cherry-blossoms drenched the air. Somewhere music was playing, and she was drowning in the cerulean fire of those unearthly eyes...
“Lord of Light,” she whispered. “What are you?”
The fiery figure opened his mouth and spoke a word that sounded like the blast of trumpets. Sudden dizziness rushed through her; the earth seemed to shift beneath her feet. On the ground, Ansgar cried out and half rose as though lifted by an invisible hand. Then a silent flash of lightning washed the world white.
When the painful brightness faded, the wrathful angel had vanished. Around her, the storm had gentled, the wind gone still, rain soft as mist bathing the battle-churned soil.
In place of that fiery vision knelt the man himself, head lowered, weight braced on spread arms. Just a man in stark black garments, not even armored, with a cross-hilted broadsword strapped to his back.
Rhiannon fought to collect her scattered senses, make sense of what she’d seen. Ears ringing, the afterimage of that burning figure still seared into her eyes, she slipped from her saddle. When her legs buckled beneath her, she clung to the mare and braced her shaking limbs. As Astolat sidled, she stroked the damp silk coat and whispered reassurance—a comfort she herself badly needed.
Night had fallen, creeping through the clearing like fog. Overhead, pale clouds parted to reveal a lavender moon. By its unearthly glow, she fumbled for her basket of healing herbs and simples.
Ansgar’s plight compelled her immediate attention, though he’d wadded his cloak against the wound to slow the bleeding. At least he was still conscious and capable of rational thought, which was nearly more than she could manage herself. She started toward him and encountered the newcomer, still kneeling on hands and knees in the mud.
At her very feet he panted, head bowed, each exhalation a low groan of pain.
He saved our lives—he or whatever appeared through him. Duty and decency obliged her to aid him if she could. Yet she hesitated, curiosity mingling with caution, and stared down at his bent head.
Rain had soaked close-cropped golden hair in tawny spikes around his head. Massive shoulders bunched beneath a doublet of stark black velvet, broadsword strapped across his back, a scene of the Christian Day of Judgment stitched in gold and silver on the scabbard. The stiff white lace of a nobleman’s ruff framed his neck like a halo, stark against a sinewed column of sun-browned skin.
Though she understood poorly the sumptuary laws that governed how a man might attire himself in England, clearly this one possessed his share of wealth.
She stared at those capable hands spread in the mud, blunt-fingered, rough-knuckled—no lordling’s pampered paws, whatever his clothing might suggest. A heavy gold ring weighed one finger to the knuckle: the Scales of Justice stamped there like an accusation, smeared with what appeared to be fresh blood. That decided her.
Laying a gentle hand on his shoulder, she summoned her antiquated English. “Sir, thou art wounded?”
Without raising his head, he flung out an arm to thrust her away. Through the wet velvet beneath her fingers, the tensile flex of muscle bespoke strength. But his powerful frame was shuddering—too subtle for eye to discern, but she felt it.
Impressions flooded her healer’s senses, the floodgates opened by her tentative touch. Exhaustion burned in each trembling muscle. Every nerve in his body was raw, seared by the divine fire channeled through him.
He knelt in the soil because he lacked the strength to rise.
Still, miraculously, he seemed uninjured. Neither blade nor axe had so much as grazed his skin. The blood must belong to the men he’d slain, the tumbled corpses strewn around him like discarded dolls.
“Stand back.” Barely audible, a weary voice scraped from his throat. “It could happen again.”
Startled to hear a mortal voice rumbling from his throat, she dropped her hand and stepped back. Fresh alarm sparked through her. If that monstrous form of fire came roaring back, would this tortured figure be unable to control it?
Yet the man was in agony. And mortal dread, if she read him right.
“Let me help thee,” she breathed. “I’m a healer.”
He uttered a harsh noise, somewhere between derision and a groan of pain. “No power under Heaven can heal this. If you love life, stand back.”
To this, she found nothing to say. She could not help the man if he refused to let her touch him, no matter his obvious torment. When her foster-father groaned, Rhiannon started and hurried to his side.
“Ansgar!” She dropped to her knees beside him, the fragile cage of her unfamiliar farthingale bunching beneath her skirts. She paused to wrestle with the accursed thing, the stiff point of the stomacher jabbing her belly like a dagger.
“Now why did you remove the arrow?” she said softly in the Roman tongue. “Do you want to bleed to death here in the mud?”
A bitter smile creased his pain-worn features. “If only I thought I might.”
Lord and Lady grant me patience! ’Tis my day for difficult patients.
Clearly seeing her distress, the knight sighed and yielded to her careful fingers as she examined the wound. “Never mind, child. With Queene Maeve’s own blessing on these old bones, I’ll be striding the English isle until Christ’s second Coming.”
By that slip alone, he betrayed his own exhaustion. Half-mortal as she was, the Name of Christ caused her no lasting harm, but the word made her flinch like a shout in her ear.
“Forgive me,” Ansgar murmured. “I am—not myself.”
“Hush, dear heart.” Swiftly she sorted through her healing basket for ground comfrey to knit the torn flesh. “No major vessel was severed, but this wound is wide. Lose enough blood, and the loss will kill you, whether you be blessed or nay. Once we stop the bleeding and I bind it up, you’re going to need rest.”
“No time for that. Those wretched curs could return at any moment. I can’t understand what—” Sudden alarm flashed in his gray eyes, and he struggled to lever himself up. “Where’s Linnet?”
“Be still now.” Firmly Rhiannon eased him back to the ground, though fear for the hapless girl tightened her own chest. “She fled across the river. She is mortal, don’t forget, and lost a year or two of mortal time in Faerie—or so we hope.” Time seemed to flow ever faster in the mortal realm, though she’d thought just a few days passed while Linnet dwelled among the Fae. “Perhaps she’ll return to us. If not, she’ll seek shelter with her own kind, and manage well enough.”
Either way, Linnet stands a better chance of surviving these benighted mortal lands than we do. One grievi
ng knight who last strode these shores a thousand years past, and a misfit princess who’d rather die than lift a weapon in her own defense. How long are we likely to last?
Like most warriors, Ansgar made a poor patient. His chivalrous nature wouldn’t allow him to rest while a lady might require his aid, and his stubborn struggles reopened the wound. His efforts ceased only when his eyes fluttered closed. Concerned, Rhiannon bent over him, pressing hard to stop the bleeding.
He was going to require true healing. Never mind that the enormous expenditure of healing energy would render her, too, helpless.
Uneasily she glanced toward the stranger, still hunched in the mud. Still breathing heavily, but no longer groaning with each breath. He’d managed to push to his feet, hands braced on knees as he fought for breath. Darkness obscured the rugged lines of his face. She glimpsed a strong jaw scraped free of whiskers, the wary flash of eyes, but could not read him. Still, undoubtedly, he was watching her.
Well, there was nothing to be done. Ansgar had nearly died, and could die still if she didn’t stop the bleeding, or fever set in.
Shaking her head, she bent over the unconscious knight and laid both hands against the mangled shoulder, fingers light as butterfly wings. Through the contact, she sensed the sluggish seep of blood, the raw pain of torn muscle and something else—the cruel cold touch of an evil wish, the tingle of dark enchantment, the taste of rust and iron in her throat.
It was as she’d suspected. Those brigands who’d hunted them so doggedly had been bewitched. Impossible to say who’d done it, with the long-buried magic of this ancient isle welling like blood from the war-torn lands as the two realms drew toward their fatal coupling. But Rhiannon had her suspicions.
Magick by Moonrise Page 2
