Sorceress (5 page)

Nothing.

Bryanna and Alabaster had traveled far this day, riding through fields where the grass was dry and yellow.

“ ’Tis a good girl you are,” she said to the horse.

For the past few nights they had taken refuge in inns along the way. Though many an innkeeper’s eyebrows raised as she’d approached alone and asked for a room, she’d always found lodging, a bowl of warm water to wash with, and a meal of beans, meat, and dry bread. No one had asked why she was unescorted, a woman whose clothes and manner spoke of nobility, nor had any thief stolen into her room at night, attempting to rob her.

The first night, as she wrapped herself in the inn’s rough blanket and fell into an exhausted sleep, she had heard the sound of musical notes, a backdrop for Isa’s voice as clear as the rain pounding upon the roof. Isa told her she would meet a lone minstrel traveling in the opposite direction. She was to veer right over a bridge after the meeting.

Of course she’d thought the dream was nothing more than a silly enchantment. But at midday, when the heavens threatened to open with more cold rain, she came upon a musician riding upon a donkey, his long hornpipe slung across his back. At the next crossroads, she turned right and soon crossed a short bridge spanning a rushing creek.

The next night, Isa came to her dreams again, and this time her instructions were less clear, but she mentioned a hawk and the turn of his wing.

Rot and rubbish,
Bryanna thought the following morning. After a breakfast of tasteless porridge, she collected Alabaster from the stable and again rode north. Although there was no rain peppering the ground, the wind was fierce, keening down from the mountains and whistling through the canyons. The countryside was more rugged than she’d seen, the towns and castles spaced far apart. As the day wore on not only was she hungry, but lonely as well, and as she spied a hawk in the cloudy sky, she silently cursed Isa and the visions.

Yet as she guided Alabaster into the woods, she kept her eye on the hawk soaring overhead, his speckled breast hardly discernible. With no other guide, she followed the hawk, which flew above a little-used path that cut deeper into the gathering gloom of the forest.

Little more than a deer trail, it seemed a ridiculous course. Bryanna told herself she should turn around, go back to Calon, admit that she was in love with Morwenna’s husband and suffer being banished to Penbrooke again. Would it be so bad to be under her brother Kelan’s rule?

Oh, Morrigu, surely Kelan wouldn’t be so unkind.

And yet, what would he want with her and her visions, her dreams of dead women speaking to her? Even Kiera, his wife, would think Bryanna was addled.

Nay, she could not return to Penbrooke.

Nor Calon.

As the horse walked steadily through the twilight, her thoughts turned again to her sister’s husband. Dear Lord, why could she not stop thinking of him? Why did she have to suffer these torturous feelings? Why, in all of God’s kingdom, was she chasing this lunatic dream when she could so easily turn around and return to her home? Her stomach rumbled and she thought of the cook’s pheasant pyes, and jellied eggs, and roasted eel. Her mouth watered and she considered the laughter and gaiety of the Christmas Revels, the dancing and singing and her large chamber with its warm, glowing fire and soft, canopied bed. She should return. In the daylight, she should forget this fool’s mission and turn back to Calon, head south and—

“Nay, Bryanna, fail me not. You must save the child,”
Isa’s voice said, reverberating in Bryanna’s head and stilling her heart.

So now it was a child.

’Twas nonsense.

“What child?” she said aloud, her own voice ricocheting off the canyon walls. Why had she followed the hawk, anyway? She’d just followed a bird down an overgrown, little-used path. Had her senses completely abandoned her? “I asked you what child, Isa!”

But, of course, Isa chose not to answer and Bryanna’s question bounced back to her again. Alabaster snorted and the wind picked up, as if the old nursemaid had ordered it to slap at Bryanna’s face and ruffle her hair.

Her pride had stopped her from seeking the shelter of other keeps and imposing upon family friends. Nay, she was on a mission that many might construe as pure folly. How could she explain herself if she were to show up without a guard or companion at a friendly keep? The lord would be suspicious, the lady posing questions, the servants listening at keyholes.

“Fie and feathers,” she grumbled, as she spied what had once been a woodsman’s hut and was now falling into ruin, the roof collapsed, one wall missing. ’Twas a pitiful shelter, but it would provide some protection against the sleet that had begun to pepper the ground.

She dismounted, yanked off the saddle, the horse’s blanket, and her own rolled blanket. Then she untied the leather bags she’d bound to the saddle before tending to the mare. The grass here at the edge of the woods was sparse, but Bryanna carried with her a little grain from the stores at Calon and had bought a small satchel at the stable.

She offered Alabaster water from the stream that passed near the dilapidated hut, as well as a ration of feed that would last until the morrow, when she would find more sustenance for them both. She was not destitute. In truth, she carried far more coin with her than was safe, but she would be careful with it, for when it ran out, she would have nothing.

Oh, this was a bad idea, one born of a dead woman.

“Stop!” she shouted at herself.

Alabaster nickered softly from the spot where she was tethered, inside the small hut.

The wind raged as Bryanna found some dead moss and dry twigs and made a pathetic little fire in the pit within the hut. Then she walked to the stream, splashed some icy water upon her face and hands, all the while wondering what it would feel like if she were truly losing her mind. Would she even know it? Could it be any worse than the last few weeks of madness?

Upon returning to the hut, she poked at her meager fire. Watching shadows play upon the weathered, sagging walls, she heard Isa’s voice as clearly as if she were standing beside her.

“Fear not, Bryanna,”
the old woman said.

“Humph. Easy for you to say. You’re already dead.”

Bryanna pulled a piece of dry meat from her leather pouch. “How do I know to trust you?”

“But you’re dead. I saw you myself. I touched your cold body. Stared into your sightless eyes.” Bryanna shivered, remembering the night she’d viewed the old nursemaid lying upon the physician’s table. Isa’s pale eyes had stared upward to the rafters. ’Twas then the voice had first spoken to Bryanna, instructing her to take the items Isa had secreted away.

“Take them—they are yours,”
Isa had told her, though, of course, the dead woman’s lips hadn’t moved and the voice had whispered only within Bryanna’s mind.

Isa had been wearing a pouch around her waist and a necklace with her own special talisman around her neck. The voice had instructed Bryanna to remove those items from Isa’s dead body and keep them as her own.

Within the pouch had been vials of herbs, bits of candles, and pieces of colored string. Bryanna had taken them all, along with the things she’d found secreted in Isa’s hut. Isa’s voice had directed her to prop a ladder against the post supporting the roof, and there, on the top of a crossbeam, invisible to the room below, was a false panel. Behind the panel, cut into the heavy wood, was a private little alcove. In this secret niche, Bryanna had discovered the dagger wrapped tightly in deer hide and tied with a leather thong. The knife was little more than a dull, cast-iron blade, the hilt tainted and rusting with empty holes where there had once been jewels.

Now, as the night wind seeped through the thin slats of the walls, she recalled how she’d first feared the old woman’s words, how she’d recoiled at touching Isa’s cold flesh, how she’d only done Isa’s bidding out of curiosity, and how that curiosity had become this journey.

By the light of the fire, she opened one of the bags she carried with her and dug inside. Her fingers touched the pouch of coins, but she pushed it aside, searching further until she found the soft doeskin she sought. Seated on a smooth stone, she pulled out the rolled piece of hide and unlaced its tie. Within the folds of the doeskin was a dagger, ugly and small, with a wicked curved blade. If her dreams were to be believed, this weapon had once been beautiful, with precious gems embedded upon its bone handle.

She held the hilt in one hand as if testing its weight. Then, swiftly, she thrust the little weapon out, as if attacking someone or something. Aye, she’d seen this dagger often enough in the dream that came to her night after night. But in her imaginings the blade had always been polished and smooth, the handle decorated with gems that glittered brilliantly.

Enticingly.

Not so now.

When Bryanna was but a child, Isa used to tell her stories of a magickal dagger, a weapon mentioned in a prophecy of the old ones. How did it go? “Sired by Darkness, born of Light . . .” Something like that.

Vexed as always by the blade, Bryanna set the knife aside and smoothed the doeskin open to stare at the faded markings upon it. Her brow furrowed as she concentrated, for she was certain the etchings upon the odd-shaped piece of hide were a map, but one she could not decipher aside from the point marking a way north. She bit her lip and tried to make sense of the squiggles and marks. A river, perhaps, here in the eastern edge? Mountains to the northwest? It was impossible to tell.

But somehow, this flap of doeskin was her confounded destiny.

CHAPTER THREE

M
orwenna felt like a traitor.

Nay, she
was
a traitor.

Biting her lip, she stared down at her sleeping husband, then eased out of the bed. ’Twas long before dawn and the man she married was sleeping deeply, snoring gently, unaware that she was about to go against his word.

Mort, her dog, rose to follow her, but she shushed him and pointed back to the bed, where he reluctantly curled up again. The mutt’s dark eyes followed her every move, and she prayed that he wouldn’t bark or stir again. It was imperative that her husband not waken.

Mayhap there was something inherently wrong with her that she could not meekly accept a man’s authority. Mayhap she’d been mistress of Calon, this very keep, too long, for though she loved her husband with all her heart, in this instance he was wrong. Perhaps dead wrong.

Morwenna wasn’t going to take a chance with her sister’s life. She slid into an old woolen tunic and dark mantle, then grabbed the pouch she’d tucked into a pocket earlier in the day. The coins within clinked a bit and she froze, certain that her husband would awaken. Hardly daring to breathe, she waited until his even snores assured her that even Pwyll, god of the underworld, could not waken him. Then, with a silent but stern order for the dog to remain upon the bed, Morwenna slipped out to the corridor.

A few candles smelling of tallow and sheep fat still burned in their sconces. They flickered as she passed, her movement disturbing the thin streams of black smoke that curled toward the ceiling. Stuffing her arms into her mantle, she crept down the stairs to the great hall, where one of the speckled dogs lifted his head before spying Morwenna and settling back with his mate near the dying fire.

She didn’t have much time.

Soon the laborers would be rising, the servants drawing water, tending the fires, replacing the candles, and gathering eggs.

Pulling her hood over her head, she crept down a long hallway and past the kitchen to a door leading out to the garden. Outside a fine mist was falling, the winter air cool and wet, and she was careful to step on the flagstones leading past the dirt, where, in the spring, flowers and herbs would abound. Now the wet ground had only thorny remembrances of last year’s roses and the scent of rain-washed rosemary as she brushed against the overgrown shrub’s stiff branches.

Glancing skyward, she saw dark forms upon the curtain wall, the sentries guarding the keep. Their eyes were trained to the exterior of the castle walls and rarely would they search the bailey. Clutching her cloak, she hurried past through the garden gate to the chapel, which was still dark, the priest not yet risen for his morning prayers.

She slipped inside and hastily made the sign of the cross over her chest. Her prayers were fragmented and filled with doubt. Oh, that she was doing the right thing. Oh, that she wasn’t lying. Oh, that she would learn to be an obedient wife.

’Twas never to be, of course.

In all her years she had never been able to accept authority without reason, forever unable to bend to any man’s will, be that man her father or brother. She had spent all of her life trying to be equal to Kelan and Tadd, proving herself as a huntswoman, a swordswoman, and eventually ruler of her own keep. And now . . . now she was married to a man who loved her with all his heart, who listened to her counsel as if she were a wise woman, who would die for her without thinking twice.

And yet she was going against his will.

“God help me.”

Sadness seeped into her soul.

She thought of Bryanna and wondered where she was. What was it that had driven her away? Bryanna had been so evasive about the real reason she was leaving but she’d been adamant. There had been no stopping her.