Fortress of Mist (23 page)

Katherine whimpered, something she had learned to do well over the years. “Thomas … the humiliation. How can you force me to—”

“I shall count to three. Then I call the guards.”

He stared at her, cold and serious.

Katherine firmed her chin. “I shall do it myself.”

It seemed a dream, to be within Magnus and finally removing the hated mask. Wrap by wrap, she removed the cloth around her face. When she finished, she shook her hair free. And waited, defiant.

“It … It …” He found his voice. “It is
you
.”

Y
ou did that in the moonlight, once,” Thomas said with wonder in his voice. “You loosed your hair and gazed at me directly thus. I shall never forget.”

Confusion.
Do I feel anger or relief?
Katherine showed neither. Merely waited.

“Please,” Thomas said gently. “Sit and talk. I need to make sense of this. I was convinced you were Isabelle beneath the mask.”

“You had seen the two of us together before you conquered Magnus.”

“It would have been easy for her to hire someone to briefly wear the mask when she was not wearing it. At least that’s what I told myself.”

She remained standing. “How long did you know I was not who I pretended to be?”

He shook his head. “How long did I suspect? Since you arrived back as Katherine beneath those bandages. That is your name? Katherine?”

She nodded. He smiled.

He is not raging at the deception?

“Were you the herbalist in my camp?”

“Yes,” she said. “But only with your best interests in mind. I was there to protect you.”

“And the old man who spoke to me at night. The other herbalist?”

She nodded. He thought about it, then spoke again.

“Your disappearance the night after I conquered Magnus,” Thomas began. “At first, I thought the soldiers had killed you and hidden the body. There could be no other explanation. After all, I had promised you anything if Magnus was won.”

I remember that well
, Katherine thought.
I remember wishing for something you could never give to a freak behind bandages—the love between a man and woman
.

“When you returned, unharmed, so much later, I could not think of a reason why you would remain away from Magnus so long, knowing I had conquered it. But I did not want to ask.”

“Yes,” Katherine said, “you cut me short when I tried to explain.”

“I had been lied to already,” Thomas said, “by someone whose beauty nearly matches yours.”

“Isabelle. You thought of her often while waiting in the dungeon.”

“I did,” Thomas said. “She was a lesson well learned. Mere admiration of beauty does not make love. Mere beauty does not make a person whole. I confess, however, to have learned feelings for you as the Katherine behind the mask—” He stopped himself and his voice hardened slightly. “Yet you are as deceptive as she.”

“Thomas—”

He did not let her finish. “And there was your unexplained entrance into Magnus. Since the night you disappeared, all guards at the drawbridge had instructions to watch for one whose face was hidden by bandages. I hoped always for your return. Yet, when you finally arrived, no guard noticed. Thus, I was forced to conclude you had entered as you are now. Unmasked.”

Katherine did not protest. Better that he did not know the truth.

“So,” Thomas said, “I pretended trust. I wanted to learn more about you, and playing the fool seemed the best way. I thought honey would work better than vinegar.”

He held up a hand to forestall her reply. “Finally,” Thomas said, “you were able to appear within Magnus, even during a siege.

Since it would be impossible for you to leave or enter with an army camped around us, I decided you had been here before the siege began. As, of course, Katherine.”

Once again, she managed not to betray her thoughts.
He cannot know the truth about my escape, or my visit, then, to Hawkwood during the siege
.

So she said, “You are not filled with anger at my deception?”

Thomas smiled. “Not yet.”

Katherine felt a skip in her chest.
Not yet
.

Sadness and joy tinged his smile as he spoke again.

“Katherine,” he said, “I learned to know you before you spellbound me beneath a midnight moon. And you brought me instructions that saved Magnus. It is much easier to believe you are not an enemy.”

“I am not,” she said quickly. “How can I convince you of that?”

“Tell me about the old man. Tell me about the mission he has placed upon my shoulders. Tell me why you endured endless years in the horror of disguise.”

She said nothing.

“In my bedchamber,” he said, “I have found threads at the rough edge of the fireplace, threads of the material of clothing from an intruder who entered and escaped at will. I know that, somehow, there is a secret way in and out of this chamber. But I cannot find it. Is this fortress of mist riddled with chambers?”

She maintained her level gaze and hoped nothing on her face gave him any sense of whether she knew of the passages.

His voice grew urgent, almost passionate. “Tell me the secret of Magnus!”

Many more long moments of silence. Many long moments of wanting to trust, wanting to tell him everything.

But she could not. There was Hawkwood and his instructions.
“The stakes are far too great.… Love cannot cloud your judgment of the situation.”

Finally, and very slowly, she shook her head. “I cannot.”

Thomas sighed. “As I thought. But even now, I cannot find anger.”

She moved toward him and placed a hand on his arm. “Please …”

“No,” he said with sadness. “I know so little. All I can cling to is the memory of someone who gave me the key to Magnus, and the reason to conquer. More important to Sarah than winning Magnus was a treasure of … of …”

Books
, Katherine thought.
Knowledge in an age of darkness
.

“I now regret even hinting at my secret,” Thomas said, “when I told you what I did the night I conquered Magnus. You will not learn about this treasure. For how I am to know you are not one of the Druids? Perhaps, by appearing to help save me from the earl, you deceive me into revealing what the Druids want most.”

“Thomas, no!”

There was still sadness in his voice as he spoke. “How is it, then, that you know what the Druids do? You know the same potion to make it look as though someone is dead, just as Isabelle knows. Even astronomy, as the old man proved with his trickery at the gallows. If you are not Druids, who are you?”

That was the question she wanted to answer more than she wanted anything else in her life. But she could not.

Tears streamed shiny paths down her cheeks as she shook her head again.

“I am sorry, m’lady,” Thomas said. He lifted her hand from his arm, then took some of her hair and wiped her face free of tears. “I cannot trust you. This battle—whatever it might be—I fight alone.”

His touch
, she thought achingly.
His eyes, now distant
.

He lifted her chin with a finger. “Remember this. I shall not forget the Katherine—the real Katherine—who comforted me in the depths of a dungeon and told me of God. Because of her, I cannot and shall not hold you, the deceiving Katherine, here against your will.”

He turned away from her as he spoke his final words. “Please depart Magnus.”

More great Young Adult fiction
from
Sigmund

Before Magnus, Thomas was an orphan with a destiny. Catch the beginning of his journey in
The Orphan King
, book 1 of Merlin’s Immortals.

When Caitlyn and her companions find themselves the prey of a terrifying enemy, they must escape from Appalachia—the nation carved from the heart of the United States after years of war—in a frantic search to understand the dark secrets behind Caitlyn’s existence and her father’s cruel betrayal.

A genetically gifted teen must navigate the dangerous waters of the caste-system of a future America in search for the truth about her purpose. Meanwhile, a bloodthirsty killer is bent on revenge against her.

Read an excerpt from these books and more at
www.WaterBrookMultnomah.com
!