Enchanted (11 page)

B
rightly colored fleets of leaves
sailed toward the distant sea on creeks the color of battle swords.
Tawny weeds and grasses bent low to the ground beneath the wind,
their heads heavy with the weight of next year’s life. Oak,
beech, and rowan trees bowed leaf-stripped branches as an invisible
river of air rushed by. Wind sent ragged white cloud banners flying
from the distant peaks. The sky between the clouds was a blue as
deep as the treasured lapis lazuli brought back from the Saracen
lands.

But it was the sun that ruled the day. The sun was
an incandescent golden disk that burned with angelic purity.

Covertly, Simon studied his wife in the rich autumn
light. She sat her mare with the elegance and ease that had
beguiled him on the hard ride from Blackthorne to Stone Ring Keep.
To his surprise, her Learned dress had proved to be quite suited
for riding. It didn’t flap or fly or climb or hinder.

If it hadn’t been made of cloth, Simon would
have called the dress well behaved.

The fabric fascinated him. The longer he looked at
it, the more he thought he saw…
something
…woven into the very warp and
weft.

A woman
.

Her hair is darkest midnight,
her head is thrown back in abandon, her body is drawn on
passion’s sweet rack
.

With a soft sound, Simon looked more closely.

Her mouth calls a man’s
name, pleading that he lie within her and share the wild
ecstasy
.

Then the woman’s head turned and amethyst
eyes looked out at Simon.

Ariane
.

Suddenly the cloth shifted, revealing another facet
of the weaving.

A shape that could be a man.
He is bending down to Ariane, drinking her passion, flowing over
her
….

Yes. A man
.

But who
?

The shape changed, becoming more dense, more real,
almost tangible. The man’s head began to turn toward
Simon.

“What is that?” Ariane asked, pointing
to her left. “There, where the hill rises most steeply and
clouds come and go.”

Reluctantly Simon looked away from the fey cloth
that changed before his very eyes, weaving light and shadow until
they intertwined like lovers.

When he saw where Ariane was pointing, he
frowned.

“That is Stone Ring,” he said.

Ariane gave him a questioning look.

Simon ignored it. He disliked talking about Stone
Ring, for it was a place with at least two faces—and only one
of them could be weighed and measured.

But what truly rankled Simon was the suspicion that
it was the less important face of Stone Ring that he could see.

“
The
Stone
Ring?” Ariane asked. “Where the sacred rowan blooms no
matter the season?”

Without answering, Simon straightened one of his
gyrfalcon’s jesses, which had become tangled on the saddle
perch. Hooded, eager, beak slightly parted, Skylance clung and
shifted restlessly on the T-shaped wooden perch, waiting for the
instant of release into the untamed autumn sky.

“I have been to the ring of stones,”
Simon said finally. “I didn’t see a rowan tree, much
less blossoms.”

“Do you want to try now?”

“No.”

“Why? Is there not time?”

“I don’t care to see the rowan
bloom,” Simon said. “The price is too high.”

“The price?”

“Love,” he said succinctly.

“Ah, that. Does Duncan know how you
feel?”

“’Tis hardly a secret. Any man of
common sense feels as I do.”

“Any woman, too.”

Ariane’s cool agreement shouldn’t have
irritated Simon, but it did. It would be very nice to be looked at
with wonder and warmth, as Meg and Amber looked at their
husbands.

Eyes narrowed, Ariane stared through the ragged
cloud streamers to the hill where stone monoliths lifted ancient
faces to the sky.

“Then why did Duncan toast us as he did on
our wedding?” Ariane asked.

May you see the sacred rowan
bloom
.

“Ask Duncan,” Simon said. “I
claim no understanding of what passes for thought in the mind of a
man in love.”

Simon’s tone of voice didn’t encourage
further pursuit of the topic of Stone Ring, but Ariane found it
impossible not to do just that.

“What happened when you followed
Amber’s trail to the Stone Ring?” Ariane asked.

“Not one thing.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Simon slanted Ariane a black glance.

“You were at Stone Ring Keep,” he said
curtly. “Surely you heard the gossip.”

“Only pieces,” she said. “I
barely listened in any case.”

“Too busy playing sad songs on your
harp?”

“Yes,” she retorted. “I prefer
its music to the clatter of idle tongues. Besides, the ride from
Blackthorne to Stone Ring Keep, coming on the heels of a trip from
leaving my home in Normandy—a trip during which my knights
sickened and I lost all but my handmaiden—”

“And your dowry,” Simon put in
dryly.

“—left me too exhausted to care what
went on in either keep,” Ariane finished. “Now,
however, I am quite recovered.”

“And curious to sample the gossip you
missed?”

“These are my people now. Have I not the
right to know about them?” Ariane asked evenly.

“We will be living at Blackthorne Keep, not
at Stone Ring Keep.”

“Lords Erik and Duncan are joined to your
lord, the Glendruid Wolf. You, as your lord’s right hand,
will often be among Erik’s and Duncan’s
people.”

Ariane said no more.

Nor did she have to. As Simon’s wife she had
not only the right, but the duty, to understand the temper of the
allies who were important to her husband’s lord. In short,
Simon was being unreasonable, and both of them knew it.

Silently Simon tightened the rein on his temper.
Talking about Stone Ring’s maddening mysteries irritated
him.

The place was not reasonable.

“Stagkiller coursed Amber’s trail to
the edge of Stone Ring,” Simon said neutrally, “then
stopped as though he had run into a keep wall.”

“Did he find her trail out of the
ring?”

“No.”

“But Amber wasn’t anywhere inside the
ring, was she?” Ariane asked.

“No.”

“Then why wasn’t there a trail
out?”

“Cassandra said that Amber took the Druid
way,” Simon said.

“What does that mean?”

“Ask Cassandra. She is the Learned one, not
I.”

This time Ariane heeded the curt tone of
Simon’s voice. For a while there was silence. Yet despite her
husband’s displeasure, Ariane couldn’t help watching
the ancient ring of stones with increasing intensity as they rode
around the base of the hill.

There was something odd about the lichen-etched
stones, as though they cast shadows even when there was no sun. Or
perhaps it was something else she was seeing, a second ring
wavering like a reflection in disturbed water….

For his part, Simon looked everywhere except at the
timeworn stone monoliths.

“Simon?”

He grunted.

“Is there more than one ring of
stones?”

He gave Ariane a long, cool look.

“What makes you ask?” Simon said
finally. “Do you see another ring?”

Amethyst eyes narrowed. Ariane stood in the
stirrups and leaned forward as though a handspan closer to the
stones would make a difference in the clarity of her view.

“I don’t think I see another
ring,” she said slowly. “There is something odd about
it all, though.”

“Such as?”

“Such as shadows standing upright instead of
on the ground. Or a second ring inside the first, a ring made of
shadow stones that ripple as though seen through mist or troubled
water,” Ariane said slowly. “Is that
possible?”

“What does gossip say?”

“Ask the maids in the buttery,”
retorted Ariane.

Simon smiled faintly.

“The Learned,” he said, “believe
that there is a second, inner ring. It is there the sacred rowan is
said to bloom.”

“Then you have to be Learned to see the
sacred rowan?”

Slowly Simon shook his head. “Duncan
isn’t Learned, yet he has seen the blossoms. At least, that
is what he says.”

“Don’t you believe him?”

Simon’s jaw flexed beneath the short pelt of
golden beard. This was the crux of the matter. As it had no
reasonable solution, Simon would have preferred to ignore it
entirely.

Ariane, however, had the look of a cat that had
just spotted movement in the hay. She wasn’t going to turn
aside of her quarry short of an argument.
An
unreasonable
argument. And Simon was nothing if not
reasonable. He had learned the terrible price of letting emotion
rule his actions.

Worse still, it had been his brother who had paid
the price, not Simon himself. It had made Simon’s lesson all
the more savagely complete.

“I don’t doubt Duncan’s honor for
even the space of a breath,” Simon said flatly.

“But you don’t believe there’s a
second ring?”

“I see none.”

“Then how did Duncan see it?” Ariane
asked.

“You have more curiosity than a
cat.”

“But less fur,” she retorted.

Simon cursed softly, yet could not entirely conceal
his amusement. The longer he was with Ariane the more he enjoyed
her quick tongue.

Unfortunately, thinking about that selfsame tongue
had an annoying habit of making him harden like a boy in the first
rush of understanding why God made men one way and women
another.

“How can Duncan see what we cannot?”
Ariane persisted.

Simon bit back a scorching curse.

“Legend has it,” he said tightly,
“that only those who truly love one another can see the
sacred rowan’s bloom.”

The leashed sarcasm in Simon’s voice was as
clear as the first ring of stones silhouetted against the windswept
autumn sky.

“And the second ring of stones?” Ariane
asked. “Is love required to see them too?”

Simon blew out an impatient breath. “No. Erik
and Cassandra say they see the second ring, and neither of them has
been foolish enough to become enchanted by love.”

“So they don’t see the sacred
rowan?”

“God’s teeth,” muttered Simon,
“is there no end?”

Ariane waited, watching him with eyes that were
more beautiful than the silver and amethyst circlet she wore about
her head.

“They see the rowan,” Simon said
grimly, “but its branches are always barren for
them.”

“So…” Ariane’s fingers
drummed thoughtfully on her saddle. “One must be Learned to
see the second ring and truly in love to see the rowan
bloom?”

A tight shrug was Simon’s only answer.

“Then Duncan must be Learned,” Ariane
concluded.

“I suspect the bolt of lightning that felled
him simply muddled his wits,” muttered Simon. “God
knows it took his memories for a time.”

Ariane tilted her head thoughtfully. Simon was
certain that if she had been holding her harp, a questioning rill
of notes would have come forth.

“What happened in Ghost Glen?” she
asked.

Simon all but smacked his forehead in frustration.
After Stone Ring itself, Ghost Glen was his least favorite topic.
It was another of the incidents that reason could not fully
explain.

It was also the primary reason that Duncan’s
quest for Amber was rapidly becoming a legend in the Disputed
Lands.

“Ask Amber or Duncan,” Simon said.
“I wasn’t there. They were.”

“Yet Duncan left the keep with you, Erik and
Cassandra, didn’t he?”

Simon’s mouth tightened.

“Our horses refused the trail to Ghost
Glen,” Simon said neutrally. “Duncan switched to the
mare we had brought for Amber to ride back. The mare took the trail
without difficulty.”

Ariane watched her husband’s face, sensing
that there was a great deal of emotion beneath his dispassionate
words.

“Duncan went into Ghost Glen,” Simon
said. “We did not. In time he rode out of the mist with Amber
in his arms.”

“Odd that your horses refused.”

Shrugging, Simon said, “The mare had been
over the trail before. The mist didn’t confuse
her.”

“Hadn’t Cassandra and Erik been to the
glen before? It’s part of Sea Home’s lands, isn’t
it?”

“No, they hadn’t. Yes, it
is.”

“Why hadn’t they gone? It sounds as
though it’s a rich and wonderful place, able to support at
least one keep, probably more.”

“God’s
blood
,” muttered Simon.

Watching her husband rather warily, Ariane waited
for the answer with an urgency that she herself didn’t
understand. She only knew that somehow, in some unknowable way,
Stone Ring and its attendant mysteries were important to her.

It was the same kind of uncanny certainty she had
once had when she envisioned the location of items that had been
lost.

“Simon?” Ariane coaxed, wanting the
rest of the story.

Needing it
.

“Cassandra said that the sacred places accept
or reject people as they will,” Simon said tightly.
“She said that Ghost Glen rejected her, and Erik as
well.”

“Did you try?”

He nodded curtly.

“And it rejected you?” she
whispered.

Simon made a disgusted sound. “Nay, nothing
rejected
me. The cursed mist was
impenetrable.”

Simon’s tone said more. Much more. It
revealed how maddening it had been for Simon to know there was a
trail ahead that could be coursed by neither hound nor
hunter…unless some incomprehensible, impossible, illogical
force permitted his presence.

“But Duncan was accepted,” Ariane said.
“And Amber.”

“Accepted?” Simon shrugged. “The
mist was lesser then, ’tis all.”

“Is the mist there all the time?”