by Jenny Brown
“No. I’m not. So let her go and I’ll trouble you no longer.”
The Dark Lord’s thin lips twisted up into a sordid equivalent of a smile. “You won’t trouble me any longer—you can be sure of that. But I still need the girl. I need her life force.”
“Take mine instead.”
“You’d offer up your life to save hers?”
“I do. My life is yours, if only you’ll let her go free.”
The Dark Lord sneered. “You are such a Pisces, with all the Piscean hunger for self-destruction. But such gestures, like so much that is associated with your sign, are effective only in the imagination. You couldn’t give me a fraction of the energy I will get from her. Even if mating with her doesn’t heal me, she still holds the life force I once gave to her. I shall drain her of it and then, when I’ve rejuvenated myself, I’ll extract your life energy from you, too, exquisitely slowly, as the Ancients decreed should be the fate of a failed heir. Your youth, too, will invigorate me and give me the strength I’ll need to survive now that I have no heir.”
There was only one hope left. Adam launched himself at the Dark Lord and wrestled him to the ground, choking with the stench of him. The guards would be here any moment, but perhaps Adam could kill him first.
But even as he felt his hands closing in on bones of the old man’s sinewy neck, strong arms pulled Adam off and pinioned his arms behind his back. He twisted and jabbed with his knees, but it was no use. The guards were bigger and stronger.
As one of them helped the Dark Lord to his feet, the old man rasped, “Put him in the dungeon.” His hand clutched at his throat. “But don’t kill him yet. I want to do it myself, after I’m done with the girl.”
It had all happened so fast Zoe hadn’t been able to help him. She’d still been lying paralyzed, with her eyes closed, afraid to give any sign she wasn’t entranced, when Adam had spoken his fierce words of love and flung himself at the Dark Lord. At his scream, she’d struggled up on one elbow, fighting her way back into her body, so she could help him, but it had been too late. The guards were already in the chamber, too many of them. Now she heard only the sound of his body being dragged down the corridor. Her Adam. Who loved her. Who’d offered his life for hers out of that love.
His words still rang in her heart. She is my life. My one true love. Her vision had not been a lie. Adam loved her. Though that was little comfort when her husband lay in the Dark Lord’s dungeon where a painful death awaited him. He’d not been able to kill her hell-born father, and there was no one left to stop the Dark Lord from carrying out his madman’s plan.
A thudding sound told her that her father was limping back toward her. She froze. Would he attempt to take her now? Inflamed as he must be with bloodlust after Adam’s ill-fated attack, would he invoke the Word of Power that would render her will useless? Would he force himself on her?
Or would he wait as he’d said he would, for tomorrow’s eclipse. She tensed in preparation for his approach. If he thrust himself upon her, she would do all she could to take him with her before the guards who surrounded him now finished her off.
But Adam’s attack seemed to have drained the old man’s energy. He was breathing unevenly as he chanted the incantations meant to bring her out of the trance, taking deep gasps of air, and breaking in midphrase, even as he reminded her that she was his and bid her forget all that had happened in the trance. As if she ever could!
With an eerie whistle he summoned a wiry hag as muscular as his bodyguards. He muttered to her in an unknown tongue, and the woman grasped Zoe by the wrists, as the Dark Lord hobbled away, leaning heavily on the shoulder of his bodyguard. The hag pushed Zoe through the open door and led her down the musty passageway, motioning her into a small cell. After mumbling a few incomprehensible words, she left, slamming the door shut behind her. A key squealed in the heavy lock, then Zoe was alone in the silence.
Alone and doomed.
And yet, her heart swelled with the certainty that Adam loved her. He’d always loved her. He loved her enough to give his life for hers. She’d given her love where it had been wanted, after all. She would go to her death treasuring that knowledge.
But then it struck her. Not only did Adam love her, but she still loved him. And that meant the old man’s magic hadn’t worked. He hadn’t been able to break the spell or replace it with his own. Nor, in that terrifying period when Adam had been playing the role of his devoted heir to try to get his teacher to let her go, had the Dark Lord seen into Adam’s heart any better than she had.
The Dark Lord had no more power than she did. Perhaps less. For her soul swelled now with a new power all her own, the power of her love—made invincible by Adam’s sacrifice.
Chapter 22
The dungeon was a dark pit carved out in the earth. The only way in was the trapdoor that gaped, twelve impossible feet above his head. There was no escape.
Adam lay in the muck, checking his body for broken bones. Though he was bruised and battered, everything still seemed to work. For now. It mattered little. Through his blindness and stupidity he’d delivered Zoe to a madman. Back when they’d been safe in Strathrimmon, she’d waved off his warning about the Ramsay curse. But she must believe in it now, and she’d die hating him for leading her to so terrible an end.
Had he been able to hold off the guard for only another moment he might have killed the old man and prevented some of the horror in store for her. But he’d failed. The Dark Lord lived, and tomorrow the eclipse would come. Had he more strength, he would bash his head against the damp stone walls of his prison and silence the voice that told him how utterly he’d failed to protect the woman he loved. But he couldn’t even succeed at that.
How blind he’d been, to put his faith in a man who would rape and kill his own child to prolong his life—a man who served only himself, and prided himself on his inhumanity. It was only now that Adam could see the truth: The source of the Dark Lord’s strength had been his inability to feel the pain of others.
He shifted his bruised body on the damp floor. He’d been prepared to sacrifice all that he had to earn the Final Teaching that he’d believed would make him superhuman like his master. Now, in this foul dungeon, he’d been given that Final Teaching: That it was better to be human than a god. That even the greatest of happiness could disappear in the flicker of an eyelid, so one must love with a full heart and revel in whatever joy one found.
But of course, he had learned it all too late.
He lay in the darkness, as the hours crawled by, measured by the dripping moisture coursing down the walls of his dungeon and by the inflow and outflow of his breath. The next thing he knew, he felt a woman’s touch.
He must be dreaming. He cursed himself that his last dream should be so unworthy. For he wanted no woman’s touch but Zoe’s, and this was not her hand. It was too small and rounded, and it wouldn’t stop tugging at his battered shoulder, sending jolts of pain up into his neck. But even as the pain dragged him back to wakefulness, the woman was still there.
“Wake yourself, Lord Ramsay,” she hissed in a husky whisper. “This isn’t the time for sleep!” Then her slap stung his cheek, and his eyes flew open. Though even now, he knew he must still be dreaming because the woman who hovered over him, her golden curls illuminated by the light that streamed through the open trapdoor, while her frilly gown soaked up fetid water from the muddy floor, couldn’t be real. But real or not, when she raised her small white hand to deliver another slap, he sat up, protesting, “I’m awake! Don’t strike me!”
“Merci á le bon Dieu!” exclaimed his mother-in-law. “I was so scared. You slept like one who was already in the grave. But now all will be well. Here, stand up!”
Still unable to trust the evidence of his senses, Adam drew himself up, painfully, to a standing position. Only then did he see the rope ladder that dangled from the edge of the trapdoor. Without a word, Isabelle grasped it, gathered her ruined skirts with one hand, and began to climb. Dazed, he followed her.
Isabelle had rescued him. The woman he gladly would have fed to the ravens in small pieces with his own hand.
When he reached the top of the ladder, Isabelle pulled it up and motioned him to be silent. “The guard will give me an hour before he raises the alarm. We must move swiftly.”
“Did you bribe him? If so, we’re still in danger. He’ll get more from his master for turning us in.”
“Do you think me a fool? He gets his reward only when I’m satisfied he’s done what he promised.”
“But I thought you had no money.”
“I am La Belle Isabelle,” she said with satisfaction, “and though I’m not as young as I once was, I still need no money to get a normal man to do my bidding. But there’s no time for talk. You must come away with me. There’s a boat hidden by the landing.”
“You take it. I can’t leave Zoe alone with that monster.”
“Zoe will be safe. MacMinn followed me to Strathrimmon, and when he heard where you and my daughter had gone, he set out after you. He will bring help in from the mainland.”
“But what if he fails? We must get Zoe out of the castle before the Dark Lord can do what he has planned for her.”
“She is no longer in the castle. The guard told me they’d already taken her away. But you’re as bad as my daughter with all your worrying. Everything will work out well. It always does. MacMinn will think of something.”
The sun was setting when the old woman came for Zoe. She brought with her a scarlet robe of rough woven homespun and gestured to Zoe to remove her gown and dress herself in it. The woman spoke with a lilting accent that suggested English was not her native language. For one wild moment, Zoe thought of begging the woman to help her escape, but she quickly dismissed the idea. The woman served the Dark Lord. He wouldn’t have entrusted his prize to anyone he believed capable of treachery.
Before undoing her bodice, Zoe turned away out of modesty. As she unfastened it, her fingers encountered Charlotte’s knife hanging between her breasts on its chain. Her attendant hadn’t seen it. Carefully, she draped the rough homespun robe over her shoulders to hide it. When she was done, she turned around, lowering her head as if she’d lost all hope.
“Come,” the woman said. “It is time.”
“They go to the place he called the Dragon’s Cave—a barrow,” Isabelle explained as Adam led her to a copse of trees not far from the dungeon, large enough to hide them. “That’s what he told me, this guard. He pointed that way.” She waved her hand vaguely in a direction away from the castle. “But where it might be, this Dragon’s Cave, I do not know.”
Adam’s heart sank. There was no time to canvass the entire island looking for the place where the Dark Lord would perform his abomination. But before he had time to begin his search, the castle gate creaked open and an unearthly keening sound rose into the air like the cry of a dead soul. The hairs rose on his neck. A moment later a lone piper emerged from the gateway, his ancient instrument the source of the haunting skirl. A few elderly women followed in his train, robed in long black gowns like nuns’ habits.
Zoe followed, dressed in a gown the red of flowing blood. She was flanked on each side by three burly guards. Adam struggled to keep himself from rushing to her. It wouldn’t save her, but it took all the strength he had to stay rooted where he stood. She walked slowly, as if dazed. Had the Dark Lord given her some drug to make her passive?
He yearned to give her some sign that he was there, to let her know that if she were to die, she wouldn’t die alone, and that, if nothing else, they would enter the next life together. But he held back. With how she must hate him now, he couldn’t bear it if his last vision of her before the guards got to him was of her face filled with the loathing she must now feel for him. So he kept silent, drinking in every detail of the procession, waiting for that one moment when he might make his move.
It wouldn’t be easy. The guards who flanked her were dressed in what must be ancient armor—thick plates of hardened leather that completely covered their broad chests. Each bore a bronze short sword made in the ancient manner, but the gleam of their weapons’ edges showed they were sharp and ready for hard use.
He sighed. How he had treasured his own bronze knife. The antiquity of the Dark Lord’s ways had meant so much to him. It hadn’t occurred to him that evil, too, might be passed on from generation to generation.
Now he must confront it, unarmed. When he did, he would die, one more sacrifice to the Dark Lord’s dark gods. It didn’t trouble him. He was more than ready to die, as long as he brought the Dark Lord down to hell with him.
The Dark Lord followed Zoe in the procession. He was preceded by two elderly men carrying torches and was garbed in a richly bordered robe of the same blood red color as the one that clothed Zoe. On his head he wore a shining golden diadem made in the shape of twined serpents. He moved slowly but steadily and in his upraised arms he bore a gleaming sickle.
More guards followed him and a few more women. The gate swung closed behind the last of the procession as it crept slowly down the dirt track that led away from the castle, in time with the wild keening call of the piper.
A shadow crept across the face of the morning sun. The eclipse. Birds began to twitter, as the sky took on the color of twilight, not at the horizon, but in midsky.
Adam gestured to Isabelle to remain hidden until the last of the trailing guards were almost out of sight. Then he motioned her to follow as he moved forward, staying in the shadows, but keeping the procession in sight.
The birds fell silent as the indigo sky devoured the last of the sun and turned to night. The procession had reached an earthen mound that rose at the edge of a steep cliff overlooking the gray Irish Sea. The piper halted and, after letting forth one last wavering blast like the cry of a wounded seabird, he let the pipes fall silent. The Dark Lord raised his arms and, turning to face the sea, called out an invocation in the ancient tongue.
The hair prickled on the back of Adam’s neck. But he edged closer, taking advantage of the way all attention was turned toward the old man. There must be some way to save Zoe. Hidden as he was by the shadows, he was able to come within a few yards of the procession, close enough to see that there was an opening in the mound that in the eclipse-light looked like the black mouth of a cave.
When the old man’s last words had vanished into the stiffening wind, two guards took positions on either side of the mouth and raised their swords. Then the Dark Lord limped toward Zoe and muttered something. Her shoulders slumped, then, like an automaton, she extended one thin hand toward her destroyer.
It must be the Word of Power.
Cold sweat broke out on Adam’s brow. He fought down nausea. He’d used one on her, too, fool that he’d been; had he not, she wouldn’t be here now. Had he not given in to his selfish desires, she wouldn’t have wed him and come to this cursed place to end her life in horror.
As the Dark Lord prepared to take her into the barrow, Adam eyed the flanking guards. If he were to make his move, it must be now. In another moment, it would be too late. He tensed his muscles to spring. The bruises from the guards’ beating protested, but he ignored them. He wouldn’t be needing this body much longer. His death was only a breath away, or two, but he would make it a good one.
But just as he was about to hurl himself toward the old man, he was grasped from behind.
“No!” Isabelle’s nails dug into his shoulder. “Would you commit self-murder? Wait!”
“I’ll kill him. My life doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t be a fool. You may wish to die, but I don’t! You can’t get to her with all those big men around her, but if you try, they will find me and kill me, too.”
He froze. She was right, but there was no help for it. She must sacrifice her life to save her daughter. He twisted around to tell her. She stood silhouetted against the purple sky—Isabelle with her golden curls and tawdry magnificence. The woman he had hated for a decade. Who had just risked her life to save
his.
He stopped. He couldn’t make her die against her will. Not unless he would become as heartless as the man he wished to kill.
“Be patient,” Isabelle implored. “MacMinn will come. He’ll save her.”
“It’s too late for that.”
But it was also too late for him. Isabelle’s appeal had robbed him of his opportunity. During the moments he’d wasted debating with her, the Dark Lord had drawn Zoe into the barrow. Only the last bit of her scarlet robe was visible now, trailing on the ground. Her six guards, their swords crossed, stood impassively, blocking the opening.
The piper began his damned skirling again, and any cries his beloved might have made as she confronted her fate deep within the earth were drowned out by the tormented pipes.
Zoe fought for air, choking on the smell of damp. The Dark Lord was leading her down a long passageway dug into the mounded earth of the barrow. In the uncertain light of the burning brand he’d brought with him, she could just make out the ancient inscriptions incised into the walls in some barbaric script. She shivered. The air inside the cave was much colder than it had been outside.
The silence was broken by the sound of rustling wings. The old man’s fingers dug into hers as a flight of bats rushed past them. As his clawlike grip tightened, she tried to hide her revulsion. He believed she was under his spell. She must let him continue to believe it. If only it didn’t become true.
