Paladin's Prize (Age of Heroes, Book 1) (13 page)

Returning with a grin, she took over the task of holding the Aladdin stretcher steady. “All right! Get on.”

“Get on?” he echoed.

“Fine, shall I show you how it’s done? Here.” She put the walking stick in his hands. “You’re in charge of punting.”

“What in the world…?” he uttered, then he laughed, watching her ease carefully onto the floating cloth.

“See? It’s very simple. Come on, let’s go! Our candles are about to spill over the edge of the pool, Thaydor, hurry!”

“I’m not getting on that thing,” he retorted.

“Oh, yes, you are.”

“Can it even hold me?”

“Thaydor. You’ve been on it before,” she chided. “It’s how I brought you up from the battlefield. Now, come on, it’s fun! Let’s go for a ride.”

“My lady, with all due respect, we need to reexamine your definition of the word
fun
. Weeding? Now this?”

“Have you got something better to do? Come
on
!”

He snorted and shook his head at her. But finally he gave in, laughing, and slung his leg over the long cloth as if it were a horse. “If we end up in the water…”

“Oh, don’t be a baby. We’re not going to end up in the water!”

“So you say.” He steadied himself, his feet dangling off both sides, while Wrynne sat cross-legged between his sprawled thighs.

“Get settled already! Are you on?” she asked.

“I’m on. What do I do?”

“Whoa!” she cried as the whole thing lurched to the side.

“Sorry! Don’t move around so much,” he scolded.

“I didn’t! That was you.” They were both laughing like children. “Just push off the ground with the stick, you big dolt. Don’t worry, it doesn’t go very fast. It just glides, nice and gentle. I promise, you’ll be perfectly safe.”

“It’s not like I’m afraid, you little loon.” He settled more comfortably into his seat. “So I take it you’ve done this before?”

She looked over her shoulder at him and grinned. “A few times. Oh, I admit it, you were right. It
does
get a wee bit boring out here sometimes. One has to amuse oneself somehow.”

“Apparently.” He shook his head. “You’re mad.”

“Would you get going? We have to keep up with our candles!”

He harrumphed. “This is the silliest thing I’ve ever done.”

“You need more silliness in your life, Clank. Now let’s go!”

“Aye aye, cap’n,” he said affably. Then he pushed off with the walking stick and the Aladdin stretcher glided out across the waterfall pool.

He quickly used the stick to push them several inches higher above the water’s surface to avoid getting his feet wet.

Wrynne laughed in madcap delight as he straightened out their course and headed for the brook. “You’re doing great!”

At that moment, the candles on their little green rafts spilled over the edge of the pool and began traveling swiftly down the winding brook.

The two of them followed.

* * *

Feeling as though she had put him under a spell, Thaydor pursued the tiny lights, using the meandering path of the stream as their silvered road.

A few feet over the water’s surface, they floated along through the fairy woods, laughing, joking, teasing each other—and a strange thing happened.

In trying to keep up with the candles, he forgot all about his earlier sorrow and somehow escaped his grief, unable to resist the dreamy enchantment of the starry night with her.

How can I leave this girl tomorrow?
he wondered.
I know we only just met, but I feel as if I’ve found my other self.
He had never experienced such a deep and instantaneous bond to anyone before.

When the candles eventually winked out of sight far ahead of them, they turned around and floated back the way they had come, docking at last at the same landing.

Tired as they both were after the incredibly difficult day, they stayed up talking half the night on the rock where they had picnicked, lying side by side near the top of the waterfall, and watching the constellations rotate round the sky.

She asked how he had been chosen as the paladin, and he told her about the final test the Sons of Might had to endure after all their training—forty days and nights of silence and fasting in the Scythe Valley.

“Ooh, that sounds painful! Daughters of the Rose only have to fast for ten days as our final test, and I hated it. I kept dreaming of cake.”

“Well, near the end of our trial,” Thaydor said, “an elderly shepherd came hobbling down into the valley, asking all the knights if we had seen his lost sheep. We hadn’t, but of course, by that time, we were all hallucinating from hunger so badly that my brethren probably would have eaten the poor thing raw if it had wandered into our midst. We were all so starved, exhausted, and demoralized that nobody wanted to help the old man. But for some reason, I felt sorry for him, so I scraped up what little strength I had left and set out to help him search for the thing.”

“Did you find it?” she asked, rolling onto her side next to him. She leaned her elbow on the rock and propped her head on her hand.

“We did. It was stuck by its little white fluff in some brambles. I got it out and put it in the old shepherd’s arms.”

“So you didn’t eat it?” she asked, eyes twinkling.

“No,” he retorted, “though that was a near thing. When I led the old man back past our camp to see him off, I had to hold some of my fellow knights at bay. They screamed at me. Some of them wanted to fight me just so they could tear the little animal apart.”

She grimaced.

He shook his head. “They were ready to throw aside all the progress they had made, but I prevented them, and fortunately, the shepherd and his lamb escaped the valley unscathed.”

“Thanks to you,” she said with a smile.

“Well, as it turned out, the old shepherd hadn’t been a man at all, but a celestial emissary of the Light in disguise.”

Wrynne gasped. “An angel?”

Thaydor nodded slowly, still amazed at the encounter. “His true mission was the find the next Paladin of Ilios, and for this, he came cloaked as a mortal.” He paused. “In the morning, I awoke to find Hallowsmite lying on the ground beside me.”

Just like many paladins before him had.

“The magical sword of the Light.” Wrynne searched his face with a mystified gaze. “What does it do, exactly?”

“I’m not really supposed to discuss it. But I think I can trust you with some of its secrets,” he added with a wink.

“Oh, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t—”

“No, I want to. Just keep it to yourself.”

“You have my word.”

He could tell she was pleased that he was confiding in her. “One of my favorite features is the percussion wave Hallowsmite can produce when I drive it tip-first into the ground. It works a little like this. Watch.” He reached for a nearby stone and sat up. “You’ll notice at the moment that the rock strikes the surface of the water, a wave of energy flies out in a perfect circle all around it from the point of impact.”

He tossed the rock into the water to demonstrate.

She looked askance at him. “Yes, I am familiar with this phenomenon,” she said rather wryly.

“Well, my sword can do that—only with energy. Whoosh! It just flies out in all directions from my blade, strong enough to knock every enemy around me off his feet.”

“How very handy.”

“It’s saved my life more than once.” He hesitated, not sure how much he should say, but she looked impressed, and he was only human. Shrugging off his wariness, he gave her a confidential smile. “Sometimes, when my enemies get me really angry, and the percussion wave doesn’t seem quite enough, I can make it send out a ring of fire. I don’t like to use that, though, unless I have to. Burning to death…” He shook his head. “That’s a bad way for anyone to go.”

“You have mercy even on your enemies.”

“Some,” he said with a prudent nod.

“Well, I think it’s marvelous you were chosen for who you are as a person, not what you can do as a warrior,” she said as he reclined again on his elbows, watching a bat go flapping by overhead.

“It’s a great responsibility, being Paladin,” he admitted. “But I always knew something like this would happen to me, even when I was a boy.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know… I always felt a bit different from others.” He watched a firefly that landed on her knee and glowed there for a moment before it flew away again. “Even as a lad, I was always very serious. My mother was the one who put the notion in my head, I think. She told me a man must be good before he can be great, and she was very fond of saying we only get one chance at this life, so make it count.”

“Ah, very true.”

“She was beautiful and wise and I adored her. We all did. I didn’t have much time with her, but I know she made me what I am. What she said to me on her deathbed is what set me on my path.”

She touched his shoulder with a comforting caress. “What happened to her, Thaydor?”

“She caught a wasting fever while caring for the poor the winter I turned twelve. Before she died, she made me promise to take care of everyone and always try my hardest to do what’s right. I gave her my word, and here I am.”

She made a soft sound of sympathy. “Poor boy. I’m so sorry you lost her. I wish I could’ve been there to heal her for you and your family.”

He smiled at her. “That’s kind of you. There aren’t many people with your abilities, to be sure, but back then, you’d have only been a child.”

“I could heal when I was little.”

“Could you?” He smiled at her in kinship. “I could fight.”

She chuckled. “I guess we were born to be what we are, then.”

He sighed. “It would seem so.”

“How did it start for you?” she asked, gazing warmly at him.

“Well, I was always meant to be a knight because of my father. An earl has military duties, so he made sure to start my training very early. I think Father realized something was different about me, though, when I was eight and thrashed a bully twice my age for picking on my little sister. What about you?”

“I healed a bird’s hurt wing by accident when I was six.”

“Six!”

“It couldn’t fly when I found it in the garden. I picked it up and petted it for a while to comfort it, and didn’t realize until years later that my touch was what had enabled it to fly away. I thought it just got better on its own.”

“That’s adorable,” Thaydor informed her.

She grinned and blushed a bit, and they chatted a while longer. But as the night sounds of the woods surrounded them, Wrynne eventually dozed off with her head resting on his chest.

Smiling to himself, he kept his arm around her to prevent her from rolling off the boulder into the brook. He was rather astonished, himself, at how he’d opened up to her. She had a soothing presence and was so easy to talk to. She made the world seem right again after all the darkness he had faced of late.

“Thaydor?” she mumbled sometime after he’d thought she was asleep.

“Yes, demoiselle?”

Her starry eyes opened to slits, and her voice came out as a drowsy purr. “Could I at least ride with you in your wagon tomorrow as far as Toad Hollow?”

“What’s a Toad Hollow?” he murmured in amusement.

“Market town. It’s on your way, and I need to purchase some supplies.”

“Of course you may. Certainly,” he said, relieved that she wasn’t asking to come with him in a general sense, given the danger. “The longer I can enjoy your company, the better.”

She smiled dreamily and snuggled closer to him. “Thank you.”

“Does this town have a decent travelers’ inn?”

“Mmm, the Blind Badger. Why?”

“You must let me buy you supper before we part ways. A token of my thanks for your hospitality here and the small matter of your saving my life.”

“I’d like that.” She tilted her head up to see his face. “Our last meal together?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” he whispered.

Her eyes opened wider as she looked at him in question.

He kissed the tip of her nose. “What if I promised to come back and see you again soon?”

She pushed up onto her elbow beside him. “Would you?”

He nodded, unable to take his eyes off her. The river kept flowing all around their rock, but Thaydor was quite sure that time stopped, at least for a heartbeat.

“I’d like that,” she breathed.

“Then consider it done.”

Whose idea it was, or if they both decided mutually, he could not say, but inch by inch, their faces drew closer. The next thing he knew, his lips were pressed to hers with aching sweetness; his hand cupped her nape in a gentle hold.

His heart thundered against the quiet, musical babbling of the brook that wrapped around them while the stars looked on.

How can this be?
he wondered in amazement.
Is this what falling in love feels like?

As he ended the kiss, she looked into his eyes with complete trust. He stroked her cheek and marveled at the silken beauty of her skin, but neither of them made a move to take it any further than this one exquisite moment.

Not when they both knew that tomorrow they must part.

He flinched at the thought and dropped his gaze, capturing her hand to press another light kiss to her knuckles. “We should probably say good night,” he whispered.

Even the Golden Knight had limits to his chivalry, after all, and it took all he possessed to fight the fire that burned in him for her.

She nodded, and he helped her up, then walked her back to her pavilion with his arm around her waist. He tucked her into her strange little hanging nest of a chair and covered her over with the quilt lying there.

“Good night, you,” he whispered.

She laughed, half-asleep already, and brushed his knee with a clumsy parting caress as he stepped away from her and took off his gambeson as he returned to her bed.

With a sigh, he lay down, folded his arms beneath his head, and refused to look again in her direction, for every fiber of his being told him she would have come willingly to him if he had asked her to.