Sorceress (41 page)

He glared at her, looked up at the sky, then said, “You just don’t want to pay your debt, wife.”

“Oh, that’s not it.”

“Bryanna, this is the wrong spot. Whatever Isa said to you, it was wrong.” He yanked his sword from the ground and started for the horses.

“No, wait!” she shouted. “It’s here. We just haven’t found it yet.”

“Woman, what do you expect me to do? Dig up the entire damned field? Or perhaps I should topple that huge stone?” He was already at Harry’s side, and she was left standing in the rain.

She’d been so certain, so sure this was Kambria’s second hiding place.

Ignoring Gavyn for the moment, she stooped over the small mounds of dirt, digging around the base of the monolith. Although the wind and rain lashed at her, she tried to remain calm, to reason it out.
Think, Bryanna, think!
What was it Isa had said?
Where would Kambria have hidden the gem?

“Well?” Gavyn called, his words tinged with impatience. He’d already taken the reins of Harry’s bridle into one hand and was standing next to Rhi.

“I don’t know. I thought it would be here. I
knew
it would be!” Rain washed down her face and neck, soaking her to the skin. Her clothes were heavy, the smell of wet wool adding to the scent of mud.

“We need to find shelter.”

She turned from him and stared up at the sky. “Isa, what did you mean?” she demanded, holding her arms wide. She couldn’t give up! Wouldn’t. Looking at the threatening heavens, she remembered Isa’s words:

Once more, she ran them through her mind.

Through the curtain of rain she stared at the stark monolith. There was the cross and the circle. That part was correct!

“Bryanna, come,” Gavyn insisted.

She would not heed him. Not yet. “Forestall . . . danger abounds,” Bryanna said, the words swirling through her mind like a chant. “Cross, circle, forestall, danger abounds.” Faster and faster the words spun until they blended and she whispered them and . . .

With a rolling peal of thunder, she understood.
Oh, for the love of Morrigu
, she thought, piecing Isa’s cryptic instructions together. “Wait! Gavyn, please.” Turning, she saw him already astride his big steed. “No . . . we have to try one more thing,” she pleaded.

“Bryanna, no. We came. We tried. It’s not here.”

“Please!” Bryanna insisted. “I think it’s on the east side, but . . . but we were too close to the statue. I think Isa meant it’s buried four leaps to the east.”

“What?” He stared at her as if she’d finally gone stark, raving mad. Rain plastered his hair to his head and dripped from the tip of his nose. “Leap? Like a toad?”

“That’s what she meant by
fore
stall and a
bound
ing.”

“You can’t be serious. Come on! You’re soaked to the skin, and so am I. If we ride now, we can make the next town by nightfall.”

“Not until we search one last time.” Spinning so hard she nearly slipped on the wet grass, Bryanna strode back to the monolith and took four long jumps to the east. This was right. She was certain. “Oh, Isa, do not fail me,” she whispered. “Here.” She jabbed a finger at the wet ground, blinking against the rain. “This is where we need to dig.”

He didn’t move. What was wrong with him?

“Come on!” When he didn’t move to help her, she muttered,“Very well,” under her breath. She marked the spot by yanking a tuft of grass out by its roots, then marched to Harry and began untying the shovel.

“No,” Gavyn said, but she ignored him, pulling her gloves off with her teeth so she could untie the laces securing the shovel to Harry’s harness. “Bryanna—”

The laces came free, the shovel falling into her waiting hands. With one dark scowl at Gavyn, she strode back to the spot where the grass was uprooted.

“For the love of St. Peter,” Gavyn said as lightning forked across the sky. “Bryanna . . . oh, bloody hell!” He dismounted quickly.

As she started slamming the shovel into the ground, he reached her and dragged the handle from her hands.

“I can do it,” she insisted.

“It’ll take all day.”

“Really, Gavyn,” she argued, “I can do it.”

“And I can do it faster.” And to prove his point, he jabbed the shovel’s blade into the ground and began turning the earth, digging and tossing mounds of mud all around the spot where Bryanna had pulled up the grass. One hole two feet deep, then another.

“You know,” he said, tossing another dripping shovelful of dirt to one side, “’Twould really help if that voice in your mind was a little more precise.” Again he thrust the shovel deep, the blade cutting into the grass and soft loam. “I mean, if Isa’s going to all the trouble to talk to you from the grave, the least she could do is speak so that you could understand her.” He glanced over his sodden shoulder at Bryanna as he discarded another shovelful of mud and grass.

“That’s not how it works.”

“How it works isn’t very well,” he grumbled.

“We have three pieces of the map, don’t we? And one jewel.” Why she was defending Isa, she didn’t know. But it wasn’t any more ridiculous than digging around an ancient statue in a downpour.

“Well, this time we need more instructions. So why don’t you see if you can talk to her and tell her to bloody well let us know what she means?” He rammed the shovel into the earth angrily.

And the blade struck something that sounded like metal.

They stared at each other for a split second.

“Holy Jesus,” Gavyn whispered. He redoubled his efforts, kicking out more dirt with his shovel and exposing the top of a small hammered tin box.

Bryanna held her breath as she knelt beside the hole and lifted the rusting box from the ground. She could barely trust her trembling hands to unlatch the lid.

With a creak, the lid opened.

Inside, winking upon a bed of doeskin that was being peppered with raindrops, was a perfectly cut emerald.

“So, husband Cain,” she said, a note of triumph in her voice as she blinked against the rain. “It seems as if you just lost your bet.”

Gavyn never thought he would be a believer. Not in a million years. But too many unexplained occurrences had happened on this trip for him to doubt Bryanna. Standing in the rain in this field, with lightning sizzling from the sky and thunder resounding, she’d pointed him to the very spot where the gem had been hidden.

It was not mere happenstance.

Something unworldly was happening here.

Something that made him rethink all of his previous beliefs.

Just as she’d predicted, they’d found the emerald, which, of course, was nestled upon the next piece of the map.

When they spread the ragged, torn bit of leather and, blinking against the rain, fit it into the existing pieces of the map, it indicated that they were to travel south.

“A topaz for the southern tip,” she said.

But what bothered him was the map itself. It was etched on a much larger piece of deerskin, and upon its crude surface was a rudimentary drawing of the sea.

“Does that mean the
southern tip
of the dagger . . . or of Wales?” he asked.

Bryanna looked at him with eyes that were only slightly bluer than the brilliant green stone they’d found in the rusted box.

“Both,” she said with what appeared to be newfound conviction and strength. Lightning flashed again, and raindrops drizzled down her face. “I fear, Gavyn, we’re in for a very long journey.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

M
orwenna stripped out of her riding clothes, though the fresh scent of spring still clung to her mantle. This morning, with the sun shining upon rooftops and fields, she had not been able to stay within the keep. So she’d ridden upon a little bay gelding and seen the signs of the changing season. Farmers had been plowing their fields and sowing oats and wheat and rye. Frisky spindly-legged foals had frolicked at their mothers’ sides. The river had been swollen from the melting snow and days of rain, and she’d even spied a fox with kits.

Renewed, she’d asked her serving woman to send for her husband. After changing and combing her hair, she now waited for him in the solar at Calon. Outside the window swallows and wrens sang, while inside the fire burned cheerily.

Her stomach was in knots.

“I have something to tell you,” she announced as he strode into the room. Wearing a black tunic with leather and silver tooling, he was certainly the most handsome man in all of Wales. His hair was thick and dark, with the hint of a curl, his eyes intense and clear as he studied her, his jaw angular and strong.

Morwenna wanted to wring her hands. How she wished she’d spoken up earlier! She stiffened her spine, squared her shoulders, and took a deep breath.

“You’re pregnant,” he said before she could utter a word.

“You knew?”

“I can count, Morwenna, and we do sleep together. We do make love.” He walked to the fire, where he warmed the backs of his long legs. “Your time of the month has not come for a long while. Three? Mayhap four months? I have seen how you devour food, then often throw it up. Other times you are weepy, still others extremely tired. How would you think I could not know?”

She sat on the chair near the wheel where she was supposed to take pleasure in spinning, which she did not. She’d always been more interested in riding and hunting, any activity in which she could compete with a man. Tending herbs, spinning, keeping track of the castle accounts, and even, aye, taking alms to the poor, though all worthwhile, did not fill her with the same sense of excitement as riding through a winter forest at a full gallop or chasing down quarry.

Slowly she turned the spinning wheel, hearing it hum. “I tried to speak with you about it earlier, but it never seemed the right time. You were preoccupied with learning the ways of this keep, of ruling it and making alliances, and I . . . I admit it, I’ve been worried about Bryanna.” She nodded, as if finally acknowledging a fact she’d tried to deny. A stupid spate of tears burned the back of her eyelids. Again! Damn it all. She’d never been a weepy woman, never had such strange feelings, but with the coming of the child, she seemed forever either uproariously happy or unspeakably sad.

“This should be a time of joy for us,” he said as he left the fire to come to her.

“It is! Oh, husband. I want nothing more than to bear this child and as many more as you would like.” She was sincere, smiling up at him through eyes wet with tears. “The babe is due soon after the new year dawns. Aye, not even half a year away, and I care not whether it be a son or daughter, just as long as it’s healthy and strong.”

“And so our child shall be.”

“And, of course,” she said, sniffing back her infantile tears as she took his hands and stood, “if it is a girl, I am hoping for a strong one, like those of Penbrooke.”

“Like Bryanna,” he said.

She nodded, for it was true. Of all of her brothers and sisters, Bryanna was the least like the others, both in spirit and in looks. But Morwenna would not be saddened at thinking about her sister at this moment, not when she and her husband were close again.

“You may have a son.”

“We,” she said, “
we
may have a son, and would that he not be as strong-willed as his father.”

“
Or
his mother.”

She laughed and felt as if a cloud that had settled over them had been lifted. “I am sorry for hiring your brother to work as our mercenary. He has wronged both of us in so many ways, and—”

“Carrick is a black mark upon the House of Wybren,” her husband interrupted. “He’s a consummate actor, skilled in the art of half-truths and lies. A rogue and a violent blackheart. And yet this is the man you hire to find your sister?”

“He’s also an excellent tracker, and if truth be told, he seemed eager to gain some modicum of forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?” His lips curled in a sardonic smile. “That does not sound like my brother.”

“Husband, I was just out riding past a farmer sowing oats into his field. A field that was barren and overgrown last summer. But just because a field has been fallow does not mean it cannot be turned over to reap a plentiful harvest.”

“I married a lady of wisdom,” he said, his hand sliding over her belly to find the slight swell of their baby. “You’ll be a fine mother, Morwenna.”

“I will never do anything behind your back again. I swear it on my life.” She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him hard on the lips. His arms wrapped around her body, holding her close in that perfect fit that she’d always found so magickal. “I love you with all my heart,” she vowed.

He squeezed her close. “As I love you.” His voice was rough and raw—nearly cracked—and she felt new tears fill her eyes again. “And, wife, I trust you with everything I own, as well as my life.”

She nearly sobbed as she clung to him, grateful for the relief that washed away her guilt. She kissed him again and her knees went weak. Then, suddenly releasing him, she stepped back a pace, grabbed his hand, and placed it upon her abdomen again.

He smiled. “Thank you,” he said, and his eyes seemed to shine.

She shook her head. “Thank you for”—she lifted a hand to indicate all that surrounded her—“everything.”

“I have a gift for you,” he said, “though not as great as this—” He flattened his hand over her belly. “’Tis something you’ve been waiting for.”

“What?”

From within his tunic, he withdrew a scroll. “This came by messenger today, from Tarth. ’Tis, I think, from your sister.”

With a cry, Morwenna took the scroll, untied it, and scanned the short message. “Aye,” she said, her voice cracking. “She is safe! And on a quest.” Finally she let the tears roll down her cheeks as her husband’s strong arms surrounded her.