Closing her eyes, she silenced the clamor of worry and focused on the evil wound. She gathered her strength like hanks of rough wool twisted into a spindle, spun the raw energy into a spool of smooth thread, woven of her own life force. Hands moving as though she drew needle through fabric, she used that pulsing thread of light to stitch the wound.
The dark spell evaded her, twisting and coiling like smoke around her fingers. Ansgar mumbled and tossed in his sleep as she clipped and knotted the thread. She fretted lest she’d sewn some trace of that vile sorcery into his flesh. Already the wound felt over-warm to her touch, but that might be no more than her own healing energy.
Weak as though she’d spilled her own blood, she swayed, almost fainting. For that was the price of her healing magick. The energy she consumed must be borrowed from her own body. And if she borrowed too much...
“A healer, are you?” The man’s gruff voice at her shoulder nearly made her leap from her skin. Startled as a flushed hare, she whirled toward him too quickly. The world blurred and revolved around her.
“More like a witch, if you ask me,” he rumbled. A trained orator’s voice, speaking the new English with an accent she could not place. Beneath the mortal words, she heard the clarion ring of distant trumpets.
“Nay, I’m a healer,” she murmured, hand raising to her brow to clear her head. He stood before her, flesh and blood, yet she could almost see that shining warrior with his flaming sword looming over her—at rest, but watchful, translucent hands folded over the cross-shaped hilt.
“The witch is my sister,” she said absently.
This made him pause. Eyes narrowing, the man stepped back and surveyed the carnage. For a man of his bulk, he moved lightly, lithe in high boots and traveling hose. A wicked-looking dagger swung at his belt, sinuous dragon twining around the hilt.
“She is far from here.” Hardly knowing what she said, Rhiannon clung to consciousness with both hands. She needed food, fire and a bracing cup of wine—none of which she was likely to get. “Thou cannot see her, unless she wishes to be seen. For which blessing thou should be thankful.”
“It’s not your sister who concerns me.” Intent, he studied her. “When you laid hands upon this fellow, your form and his were rimmed with unholy fire. What is that if not witchcraft?”
Uneasy with the threat of him looming over her, the sudden sense of danger, she deemed it wise to change the subject. “That fiery being who came to our aid—was it thou, or thy demon?”
“Demon?” He reared back as though she’d struck him, that proud tawny head coming up. Behind him, the angel’s eyes glowed like banked coals.
Respectfully, she gestured to the Presence, though now she could barely discern its fading form. “I see thy wings like a shadow looming over thee.”
The mortal frowned, jaw clenching with unease and impatience. “You speak nonsense, healer. You’re in shock, asleep on your feet or mad.”
“I know what I saw, sir.” Stubborn, she struggled to rise. The effort brought another surge of dizziness. Suddenly she found herself sitting on the ground again, crushing a carpet of pale snowdrops that had pushed too early from the soil. Ivory skirts spilled around her as she stared up at him.
Whatever had ailed the man, he towered over her fully recovered, swirling black cape pinned carelessly back, greatsword jutting above one broad shoulder. Austere and unadorned, but for the ring with the Scales of Justice and the gold-and-steel medallion swinging over his heart: an inverted sword wide as her palm, cross-shaped, wreathed in flames.
“This must be what thou mortals call irony,” she said faintly, eyeing the holy symbol and his somber attire. “I am saved by a Catholic priest.”
Senses dulled by exhaustion, vision swimming with black fog, still Rhiannon found the wit to appreciate her dilemma. It was this very collision—between the Romish influence that guided devout Mary Tudor’s every step, and the wild Faerie magic bursting its boundaries as the two lands approached their thousand-year conjunction—that caused the looming crisis Rhiannon must prevent.
“Thou should have let them kill me,” she murmured. “Thou wilt not appreciate this quest of mine.”
“Quest, is it?” The man frowned, tawny brows knitting above cold eyes whose color she couldn’t discern by moonlight. “Why do you ride with only this man and his slain comrade for escort, if your need is so dire? Surely you know these English roads are plagued with cutthroats and thieves, displaced tenants and lesser rogues. These are no easy times for England.”
He spoke as though this realm weren’t his own, though he seemed easy as a native with the English tongue. With furrowed brow he studied her, as though puzzling her out.
For a moment she lost herself looking at him. He was the first mortal man she’d ever beheld, except for Ansgar—and of course her father, in the vault where he’d slept since his mortal life ended—and both had dwelled too long among the Fair Folk not to be marked by it. But this priest was mortal to the marrow of his bones: earthy and formidable, pensive brow furrowed beneath close-cropped hair sparkling with rain, a raptor’s nose, firm lips pressed together. Droplets of mist clung to a stern jaw glittering with tawny stubble.
He was nothing beautiful or refined, despite his elegant cloth. The Fae would find him alarming and uncouth. Physical strength shouted from the muscled form beneath his stark attire.
To say nothing of the form of fire, though that unsettling image was thankfully fading.
She must think how to deal with him. Should she confide in him, beseech his assistance for her mission, when a Catholic priest must surely oppose it? Or should she lie, when she did it so poorly?
Uneasy with her vulnerable placement, spilled across the soil with only an unconscious knight for protection, Rhiannon scrambled to her feet—too quickly. The world darkened around her.
Suddenly the priest loomed over her, one muscled arm closing around her waist to hold her upright. The rich dark aroma of frankincense seeped from his cloak as the heavy fur-lined garment swirled around her, making her head spin. Worse was the sharp clean scent of steel from his blades—anathema to any Faerie.
If not for the ensorcelled rings that banded her little fingers, and the half-mortal blood that blunted the deadly aversion to steel, she could never have borne his touch.
“Stand back, I pray thee,” she gasped, even while her weakened body leaned into his thrumming heat. She gripped the hard calloused hand at her waist, a tingle like magick seeping through her blood. “Thy steel...”
“Frightens you, does it?” His gaze narrowed, grew thoughtful. “I mean you no harm in this place.”
“Only in this place?” She meant it for a jest, but she was weary and frightened, and her voice too plaintive. “I tell thee I cannot bear it. I command thee, release me!”
He stepped back as she demanded, but gripped her hand in his warm hard fingers, so she couldn’t flee. “Madam, no more of this evasion. What manner of creature are you?”
Oh, she could show him evasion with a right good will; no mortal creature could evade like a Faerie. Yet the notion repulsed her—she, the daughter of Arthur of Camelot and the Faerie Queene, was proud of her honor as any knight. She was not her half-sister Morrigan, a full-blooded Fae who lied by instinct as well as inclination—the very rival who’d sworn on her own blood to undo Rhiannon’s plan for peace.
Nay, Morrigan might be heir to the Queene’s throne, but Rhiannon had inherited their mother’s gentle spirit and her father’s fabled fai
rness.
Clearly, this priest was a man of wealth and probable influence. She and Ansgar, and Linnet if she lived, desperately needed help from some quarter. Perhaps this man could be prevailed upon to bring her to the Tudor Queen. She couldn’t think it through, weigh risks and advantage, with him standing so near. The presence of his steel prickled her skin like an allergy. Any proper Fae would be screaming by now.
If she looked with her Sight, one of the few minor magicks aside from healing she could summon, a halo of fire still burned around him.
Through the desperate exhaustion swirling through her, she seized upon a strategy.
Chin tilting up, she summoned the pride of a king’s daughter. “I am Rhiannon le Fay, daughter of Queene Maeve and the Dreaming King Arthur, dispatched to the English court as a royal ambassador by the Faerie Queene herself. If thou art loyal to the Tudors, I command thy aid.”
When she spoke her name and titles, harsh breath hissed from his lungs. His free hand sliced through the air, signing himself with the Cross. A fresh wave of weakness rolled through her. On the soil at her feet, the half-conscious Ansgar cried out.
“Woman, you must be a witch, a madwoman or a fool.” The stranger’s jaw hardened. “Don’t you know this symbol?”
Uncomprehending, she blinked at the flaming cross on its chain over his heart. “’Tis the symbol of the Christian God, inverted, so it does not pain me to look.”
He released her suddenly, with a flicker of distaste, as though he could no longer tolerate her nearness. Fired by a lifetime of survival instinct, she stepped quickly back—too late. His sword-calloused hand closed like a manacle around the fragile bones of her wrist: not cruel, but unavoidable as destiny.
“Peace, Father,” she whispered, frightened pulse fluttering like a trapped moth against the hollow of her throat. “I mean thee no harm, and I’ve no true claim upon thy service. Betimes the habit of command is too strong in me, I fear.”
“I’m no priest,” he said abruptly. “I proved unworthy of that honor long ago, God pity me.”
After her terrifying flight and the dreadful drain of healing, the holy Name proved to be too much. With a despairing cry, she felt her knees turn to water beneath her, vision narrowed to a pinprick of feeble moonlight. Then even that much was gone. He was lifting her into his arms, handling her weight in her sodden skirts effortlessly as a feather. The dangerous aromas of steel and incense were filling her nose. Dizziness swirled through her. Floating, barely conscious, she sagged against him.
“Merely let us pass, I beseech thee.” Her faint voice sounded insubstantial as a spirit’s in her ears.
“Let you pass?” His voice rumbled through his chest, mighty heart thumping like a hammer against her cheek. “A witch and alleged Faerie—a self-proclaimed princess, no less? It’s God’s doing that I’ve found you, and God’s will that I keep you.”
“Keep me? What does that mean?” A shaft of fear pierced her heart.
“I mean, you foolish, misguided girl, that I’m a witch-hunter and inquisitor,” he said flatly. “In the name of His Holiness the Pope, by my authority as a Blade of God, I’m placing you under arrest.”
Chapter Two
Deep in the wood, someone was watching him. Lord Beltran Nemesto felt the weight of hostile eyes like an itch between his shoulders. He’d pushed hard to clear the scene of slaughter, avoiding hidden roots and branches by instinct as the darkness thickened.
His strength was dangerously depleted. Bad news that. Coming two full years after the last such episode, he’d begun to think himself cured. Now he dragged his reluctant cavalcade through the thicket by raw determination—three horses, that strange girl and her wounded paramour bound witless to their saddles.
When his strength finally failed, taxed by weeks of fasting and hardship, he found a cave. Beltran made camp there—a makeshift citadel of tumbled rocks to guard his back from whatever stalked them. Patiently he coaxed a fire from damp wood to ward off the wolves and wild dogs who’d be drawn by the rich scent of blood.
Moving slowly as an old man, groaning with effort, he fought the dragging weight of exhaustion, the burn of overused muscles and sinews stretched beyond human bearing.
Clearly, despite his prayers and fasting, his grueling penance during this dolorous Lent, another fit of holy madness had seized him. He’d heard the unmistakable clamor of combat in the woods, an instant of warning as his blood ignited in his veins, then the burning darkness had fallen. He recalled none of what followed, nor why he was afflicted with these unsettling gaps in memory. Beltran knew only that when his vision cleared, he’d found himself panting on hands and knees, blood on his hands and slaughtered men tossed about him like kindling.
And that uncanny girl with her silver-gilt hair and archaic speech, this girl dressed richly as a princess whose flawless skin glowed like moonlight, had babbled about wings and a form of fire.
He clenched his fists against the frustration that chewed through him, perilously close to despair. Despair meant turning his back on God.
For the moment, he’d work to do. He stripped the blood-soaked tunic from the graying knight who tossed and mumbled in a stupor, buried the garment far from their camp, hauled water from the spring he hoped led to the Queen’s Highway.
He tethered the horses close—the girl’s mist-gray mare tame as a kitten, the knight’s skittish black barely tolerating him, his own white Serafin stalwart as a rock. The strangers’ bulging panniers he didn’t touch, unenthusiastic about riffling through others’ possessions, no matter what his duty required. He unrolled a damp bearskin and eased the wounded knight into it, though the man muttered fretfully and brushed his hands away.
Then, steeling himself against the sin of intimate contact, he lifted the girl’s slight weight and carried her to safety in the moss-lined hollow.
She lay in his arms, fragile as a newborn foal beneath the spill of ivory skirts, slashed sleeves lined with a fortune in silver cloth. Well, she styled herself a princess, didn’t she? And dressed to play the part. Her beauty was so ethereal, her weight so feather-light in his arms, he could almost believe her some enchanted creature, some wood-nymph or dryad, if the Church didn’t forbid such heathen nonsense.
As he bore her to shelter, a torrent of gilded curls cascaded over his arm nearly to the forest floor. Her lids fluttered, a fringe of dark lashes kissing porcelain skin. Slim black brows arched like bird’s wings against her brow, lending her an air of mischief, even unconscious. When he knelt to lower her, the faint sweetness of violets rose like smoke from her garments.
He gritted his teeth against it. The scent of a woman, enough to make flesh harden and blood quicken, even after a lifetime of hard-fought denial.
Breath rasping in his lungs, Beltran settled her and spread her rose-red mantle to dry. A filigreed belt clasped her slender hips, holding a jeweled knife and an elegant sealskin pouch. Those he removed for caution’s sake, and for later examination.
Though he strove to keep distance between them as he worked, inevitably his fingers brushed the warm silk of the girl’s white throat, where the crescent-shaped moonstone glimmered. The gentle swell of her breasts, perfectly formed and no larger than ripe apples, rose against the square neck of her bodice.
Cursing softly, Beltran turned away. Women were his besetting sin, the weakness that had kept him from the priesthood. Despite a lifetime of guilt and grim denial, his all-too-human flesh still betrayed him—most recently
with that fetching and quite willing widow who’d shared his ship during the Channel crossing.
Another sin to confess before the Cardinal when he returned to Rome. Another lashing for a penance, until the blood ran down his back for it.
As he rummaged in his saddlebags for brown bread and a wheel of sharp English cheese, stomach growling from the day’s Lenten fast, his neck prickled again. He doubted those brigands would follow him, if he’d left any alive, for he recalled nothing of the battle when the madness took him. By what he’d gathered from those who witnessed these strange and vexing episodes, though the tales verged upon the hysterical, he was a holy terror when the killing rage seized him.
He was God’s Vengeance.
Gripping the loaf of barley bread in a sword-hardened hand, he loosened the broadsword in its sheath. From the dark heart of the forest, a throaty chuckle sounded.
Beltran pivoted toward that wicked mirth, bread tossed aside, his sword hissing free. Wrapping both fists around the hilt, back to those he defended, he slanted the blade across his body. Firelight blazed down the honed blade, gilding the etched figure of St. Michael driving the Devil into Hell.
Deep in the forest, at the very edge of hearing, a woman whispered, “Your mortal blade cannot slay me, Vengeance.”
The evil voice raised his skin into gooseflesh, even as holy fire made his blood burn. Christ’s Blood, don’t let the madness take me. I must know what evil hunts me.
Jaw knotting, he gripped his blade before him and strode boldly into the forest, bellowing, “In the Name of Christ whose power compels you, be gone!”
A shriek of pain tore the darkness. The cloying sweetness of apple-blossoms suddenly filled his head. From the cave, the wounded knight cried out hoarsely. Beltran pivoted and charged back to the camp, the red heat of madness searing through him until his skin seemed to smoke.
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