For now, he’d no wish to hasten His judgment. Self-slaughter was a mortal sin that would send his soul plummeting straight to Hell. And he had unfinished business on the mortal plane.
Wrapped in a shroud of angry memories, he didn’t see the gnarled root until he stumbled over it and measured his length in the shallows. Murky water seeped through his garments and closed over his head. Sputtering, he reeled upright and stood panting, breath raw and rasping in the unnatural silence.
God’s body, I need to take hold of myself. I could wander lost forever here, until this mortal body dies and my soul lies at Heaven’s mercy once more. First I need to find Rhiannon, ensure her safety, do what I should have done long before.
His gut twisted and his heart seized at the thought of losing her. Somehow he’d become entwined body and soul with the ethereal beauty, enthralled by her core of shining valor and hidden steel, beguiled by her compassion and capacity to love. But the best way to help her was to set her free.
Then I’ll return to the Church and start anew, be the fairest enforcer the Inquisition has ever seen. I’ll show Him I’ve taken whatever lesson He wanted me to learn, that I’ve changed, that I can grant mercy as well as punishment.
Christ, what was happening to Rhiannon?
Fighting to clear his head, he took stock grimly—his hose and doublet drenched, boots fouled with mud, his prized stallion God alone knew where. He hadn’t seen Serafin since the night he’d been stabbed. No provisions, not even a water-skin.
At least he was wearing his thick hooded cloak and his good boots. He could walk to Jerusalem in these boots if he had to. His dagger was strapped to his belt, the sheath across his back still empty. For the loss of the sword called Judgment, given him by the Cardinal when he took his oath, he grieved.
Still, his body was sound—no injuries beyond the debilitating fatigue caused by his madness, the understandable protest of a mortal body unsuited to provide a vessel for his angelic form. His belly rumbled with hunger, but he’d endured worse. He could forage for something, berries or mushrooms, set snares for waterfowl or fashion a throwing stick.
He glanced around, taking his bearings, seeking stars or moon to steer his course. But the mist shrouded everything. The black trees stood wet and gleaming in the twilight, boughs draped with curtains of moss, and everywhere the glimmering gray water.
Beltran chose a direction at random and strode forward, planting each foot with care on the uncertain ground. If he blundered into a quagmire or tripped and broke a leg, he’d be no good to anyone—neither the Church nor Rhiannon.
There.
Dimly through the trees, the moon was rising, its silver glow pouring through the marsh. It turned the mist to pearl and painted a shimmering path across the water to his feet. With renewed vigor, he waded toward the light. If he emerged from the fen near where he’d entered with the bishop, he could find a boat and make for London. He’d meet first with the Archbishop, Reginald Pole, to set matters right.
But it wasn’t the moonrise that was the source of the light. Instead the uncanny glow emanated from the surface of a still pool, from beneath the surface. Raising an arm to shield his eyes, he vaulted onto a hillock of solid earth and dropped to his knees. Leaning forward, he peered down into the water.
An exclamation burst from his lips. There, beneath the mirrored surface, wavered an image not reflected from above—a floating figure, hands clasped on her still breast, slim as a moonbeam and fair as starlight, pale draperies drifting like mist around her. A banner of nut-brown hair streamed around her, rippling as the water rippled. A ring flashed like the star of evening on her pale hand.
The Lady’s face shone with light, so bright it burned his eyes, yet somehow she bore the look of Rhiannon—pointed chin, high cheekbones, brows winging from tilted eyes to lend her a mischievous air. Her lashes lay against her cheeks though she slept.
Then her eyes flashed open, blue as the Virgin’s mantle, or the heart of heaven. Beltran gazed into their depths and was lost. The world around him vanished behind a curtain of swirling fog. He saw nothing and heard nothing but the words inside his heart.
“Why have you turned your back on your heart’s desire?”
He jerked back in surprise, sensing no mortal ear could discern the rich, resonant voice that echoed through his thoughts. But her gaze held him like a net.
“Who are you?” he said hoarsely, half convinced he was dreaming the entire encounter. But he’d just learned to believe in dreams, hadn’t he, and the truths they could reveal?
Her serene blue eyes smiled. “I am the Lady of the Lake.”
Once Beltran would have snorted to hear this woman name herself the mainstay of Arthurian legend: the high priestess of Avalon in Arthur’s time, who’d placed Excalibur in his hand and ushered in the dawn of his kingship. Now, he was surprised at nothing.
Firmly he applied himself to her question.
“I haven’t turned my back on anything. I’m trying to find my way home.”
“You have no home, you who are Prince of Lights and Regent of the Sun. No home in the mortal realm like other men. Yet your heart found a home-in-exile, a hearth to warm you from your lonely journey.”
An image of Rhiannon as he’d first seen her flickered in his memory. Her beauty glowing through travel-stained finery, kneeling gracefully over her wounded comrade, elfin features alight with compassion as healing energy poured from her fingers. Her proud and angry eyes as she rode with wrists bound before her, every inch the princess even in captivity, blazing with undaunted spirit. The grave vulnerability in her leaf-green eyes the first time he’d kissed her.
And God, the way she’d felt trembling with passion beneath him, the sound of his name on her lips when she cried out her climax
Oh, my love...my love...!
What the hell am I doing? he wondered suddenly, in a moment of crystalline clarity. I’m headed the wrong way, away from the woman I...the woman I love. His place was at Rhiannon’s side, then and always, not pursuing some misguided campaign against a country that had suffered more than enough under the lash of religious persecution.
“So then.” Beneath the waves, the Lady smiled. “You recognize your soul’s destiny. Will you embrace love at last?”
He gripped the wet soil under his hands and leaned forward. “Show me the way back to Avalon.”
Her smile dimmed. “What you seek is no longer there.”
His thoughts flew to the little coracle they’d left on the shore. Had Rhiannon gone already?
“Damnation! How much time has passed in the world outside while I blundered about here? A week? A month?”
“Beyond the Veil, two years and more have fled. On the sacred isle of Avalon, moments only. Still, your absence was long enough for M
orrigan.”
“Rhiannon’s sister?” His gut clenched, cold sweat breaking out on his brow.
“She sees very far, Uriel. Part of her gift is prophecy. Long ago Morrigan foresaw that you and Rhiannon, united in love, would bring about her downfall. Thus, all her efforts are bent upon keeping you apart. Only adrift and alone is Rhiannon vulnerable—as your rage left her on the holy isle.”
“Rhiannon.” He cursed his failure of discipline, the heedless fury that had left her undefended. A fist of dread squeezed his throat. “Is she taken?”
“Taken and delivered into the hands of her enemies, where she does Morrigan and her cause the most good. For Morrigan’s Sight has shown her the Convergence will begin in London. And it must begin through Rhiannon.”
“Through her? Rhiannon would die rather than open the door to that!”
The Lady nodded sadly. “That is why she will confess to the litany of so-called sins the Roman Church has charged her with. Her grief and fear for you left her helpless against Morrigan’s witchcraft. Rhiannon is now convinced the Convergence can only be averted through sacrifice—the sacrifice of a woman who walks both realms, mortal and Fae, who carries the blood of both races. A woman whose womb even now carries the seed of both races. Rhiannon believes she has become the door through which the Convergence must occur.
“But Morrigan has bewitched her to believe this lie. In truth, the crisis will not be averted by Rhiannon’s sacrifice, but commenced. When Rhiannon dies, the Veil will tear, and her sister’s hordes will pour through to the mortal realm.”
Beltran had long since pushed past his sense of unreality at finding himself crouched in the mud, passionately conversing with a mirage. Still he fisted his eyes, shaking his head hard to clear it. If he gave in to the mounting panic that scrabbled at him like rats in a sewer, he would never be able to help Rhiannon.
Only the cold and heartless logic of God’s Vengeance could save her.
“Lady, tell me, where is she?” he said hoarsely.
“She is held in the dungeon beneath the cathedral of your Roman saint—the one who was stricken blind and later beheaded by Nero.”
Horror twisted his gut. “St. Paul’s? That means the bishop has her.”
He leaped to his feet, ready to charge through Hell itself to save her.
“Hear me, Vengeance. The Veil cannot part on consecrated ground. You must go to the burning ground on the day of Samhain and arrive before Tierce, or you shall arrive too late.”
The burning ground—Christ, she must mean Smithfield. Bloody Bonner’s favorite place for a public burning.
Wildly he searched the mist-wreathed heavens. The moon rode high and round overhead, but the constellations were none he’d ever seen.
“How can I get there in time?” he cried, fists clenching as he battled despair. “We must be days from London!”
If only he could summon his divine form, the wings that punched through his mortal flesh, rending and tearing until he screamed with anguish, he would launch into the half-recalled rapture of flight.
But he’d never been able to summon the killing rage at will. It was God’s impenetrable will that governed the change.
“On that count, you need not fear. You shall be given a token.”
Beneath the mirrored surface, the Lady’s head turned as though she viewed some distant vision, nut-brown hair swirling around her. The silver light intensified, piercing his skull like white-hot daggers. The evening star flashed like the eye of God on her finger.
Some blind instinct made him stumble back from the pool as the light poured from it. Something pierced the surface, a pale meteor of blinding metal, curlicues of fire etched on its flat surface and sparking along its fine-honed edge. The water rippled as a hilt broke the surface, gripped in a woman’s hand that glittered, as though scaled with diamonds.
A pure high note hummed through Beltran’s brain. It pierced him like a sword. The scent of apple blossoms flooded his senses.
Beneath the onslaught of sound and impossible beauty, he fell heavily to his knees.
“Uriel,” the Lady said gently, inside his pulsating skull. “Someone wants you to have this.”
Chapter Eighteen
The rat was back again. Rhiannon thought it the same one who’d been making these nightly forays from the sewer into her cell over the fortnight she’d been kept here. But she couldn’t be certain.
Once she would have relied on magick to befriend the creature. He was the only living thing beyond her odious jailer who ever visited, and she valued the company. But she’d learned the dismal truth when she woke in this cell with Morrigan’s mocking laughter echoing in her ears.
Her wild Faerie magick had deserted her. When she traded her immortality for Beltran’s life, she must have forfeited that too.
“Come along now, Finnegan,” she coaxed. The rat perched on its hind legs in the filthy straw to observe her, whiskers twitching. “I know thou art hungry. I’ve saved this crust especially for thee. ’Tisn’t much, but I won’t be needing bread after tomorrow.”
A black gulf of panic yawned before her. They would burn her tomorrow, so the jailer had warned her. She thought he’d meant it as a twisted sort of kindness, believing she’d welcome the chance to prepare her soul before they came for her.
The important thing now was not to think of it. Just as she’d avoided thinking of it since she’d returned to the mortal realm and known what her fate would be.
Indeed, she was fortunate, blessed by the Goddess with both knowledge and means to avert the Convergence and save the Faerie Queene. She was utterly certain of it, beyond any doubt or hesitation, the firm decision made to sacrifice herself for that worthy end.
Although in truth, she could not quite recall how she knew it. Someone on Avalon, she thought, must have told her...
She’d avoided the rack with her ready confession—another blessing to be thankful for. With her signed confession of witchcraft in hand, the Church’s macabre machine had ground toward judgment and sentence more briskly than she’d dared to hope.
Still, she went to her death barely in time. For time indeed had flown here while she lingered in Faerie—spring evidently leaped to autumn in a day. Tomorrow was Samhain, the day the dead walked. Tomorrow at midnight the Veil would fall, and her sister’s howling hordes would break into the mortal realm. Rhiannon’s sacrifice would avert that fate for all of them.
All except me.
“Come, Finnegan, thou blessed beast!” she whispered. If only
she weren’t so terrified. Nostrils quivering, the rat crept toward her outstretched hand.
Praise the Lady for this whiskered visitant and his stubborn reluctance to yield to her overtures! How she dreaded these lonely vigils as she waited for the end, shivering and quietly sobbing her way through the dreadful nights.
But worse, far worse, were the nights she dreamed of Beltran.
In her dreams he was her protector once more, planting himself and his sword between her and the outlaws, pitting his strength against the slavering hounds, his wits against the grief-stricken Tudor Queen and her fanatical henchmen. His unflinching valor had been her shield. He’d never abandoned her, even when his faith demanded it.
Until the day he was torn apart by his savage rage toward the God who betrayed him.
Then he’d taken wing—fashioned of mortal clay no more, but limned by the divine fire of Heaven. And so, she presumed, returned to his Maker for a reckoning.
She prayed for his contentment through the slow eons of eternity, prayed to her Gods and his. He’d been the best of men. Despite his harsh and loveless upbringing, he’d shown her what it meant to love. She would never cease blessing him for that.
The heavy tramp of boots jerked her from her reverie. Beyond the filth-crusted bars of her cell, the red glow of torchlight was approaching. Reflexively she shrank from the light, her pupils constricting painfully, and dashed away the tears that streaked her face.
The low murmur of men echoed from the damp stone walls, punctuated by jingling keys. A smothering blanket of dread fell over the cells around her. When they came for these prisoners, holed up in the bowels of St. Paul’s, it meant either torture or execution.
Perhaps tonight they were coming for her.
In the straw at her feet, Finnegan squeaked and scurried back to his hole. Trembling, she watched him go and felt her only friend had abandoned her.
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