Sorceress (7 page)

“Bloody hell,” he growled and picked up the jug of blood that had been left in his chamber.

He pushed open the door to stride quickly down the long corridor, where the few candles still burning amid lingering smoke were not bright enough to hurt his eyes. His boot heels rang loudly as he made his way to the south staircase, where the steps spiraled downward five full flights from his chamber on the third floor. Down he hurried, not stopping at the solar on the second floor, nor the great hall on the first, where he heard servants setting up the trestle tables.

Instead he continued downward to the levels belowground, past the dungeons and vaults to the lowest tier, where darknessreigned and, he was certain, madness dwelled. No light from above ever reached these shadowy chambers. Water dripped from the ceilings to run down the inside walls and smoke from the candles curled upward to blacken the walls and ceiling. The sounds of the castle above were muted, as if from a distant land.

’Twas fitting, he thought as he walked along a narrow hallway that wound through a dungeon and several crypts. He descended the short flight of stairs that led downward to the chamber he sought, one that was forbidden to most.

Withdrawing a key, he unlocked the door to a private room where no one else was allowed. Hence the key and dead bolt. ’Twas not to keep the inhabitant locked within, for that was an impossible, laughable task, but rather to keep anyone else out, the contents of this chamber secret and sealed.

The room was lit by a few candles. At the northern end of the chamber was a table that served as an altar. A circle had been painted with lime around the table, and upon the plank top were candles, a chalice, a bell, and a wooden knife with a blackened hilt.

“You come for answers,” an old voice said, and he saw her then, lying upon her small cot on the far side of the room. She looked to be a hundred years old, mayhap even a hundred and twenty. Her tiny body appeared even more withered than the last time he’d seen her, but that, he supposed, was to be expected. Her skin was wrinkled and thin as parchment over the bones of her face. Yet she rejected living anywhere but this cavern she called home and refused any attention from the physician. When Hallyd had last suggested it, she’d laughed, exposing her few snags of teeth.

“Ha! Have that idiot Cedrik study my body as if he can see what disease I carry? Would you have him read my piss? Or stick his hungry leeches upon my skin? Or purge my body with figs so that my insides would cramp for days?”

She’d snorted in derision at the thought and wagged a bony finger at Hallyd’s face. “The most that fool will do is pull at his beard and frown and suggest that I’m dying, which, of course, I am. For the love of Cerridwyn, even the woodcutter’s half-wit of a son could see that my days are short! Humph. Nay, do not call the physician.
Ever.
”

“You’re wasting away,” he’d protested.

“ ’Tis this body’s time,” she’d said without regret, and he’d wondered at her simple acceptance of her fate. Were he the one about to step over the threshold to the next world, he doubted he would go so willingly.

But then she had powers he did not.

She understood the separation of spirit and carcass.

She breathed and lived without the need of bones and flesh. Perhaps her time was not as near as she predicted, for, though she seemed dedicated to him, how much could he really trust her? Wasn’t she, like so many of the others, using him for her own gain?

Mayhap even this vision of her desiccated body was a trick of the mind.

“Ah, there you go doubting me again,” she said with far more clarity than he thought possible. From beneath the folds of skin that were her eyelids, her pale gaze followed his movements as he skirted the altar and approached her cot. “You are here to see the future,” she said.

“Aye.”

“Always.” She lifted a frail hand. “You’ve never learned to accept your fate.”

He didn’t respond. ’Twas true.

“You know that she, the Light, is coming.”

He nodded, and though the old crone was near blind, living in this cave by her own desire, he knew she could see him. Until her dying breath, and mayhap even afterward, she would see more than a hundred men combined. Oh, that he had her vision. Her power. Aye, it had dwindled over time, but it was still stronger than most.

“I have felt it, yes. The disturbance.”

“Mmm. And yet, you’re impatient.” She levered up on one elbow, the bedding falling away to expose her emaciated body even more. Though she wore a chemise, the linen did little to conceal the shriveling of her flesh, the sunken breasts where his own grandmother had nursed.

“I’ve waited a long time, Vannora.”

She cackled, her laughter dry. “Not nearly as long as I have, Hallyd. Nay. And you will wait some more. She is on her way. There is no hurrying her. She has much to learn before you meet.”

“You talk in circles.”

“Hmm.” She didn’t argue, just pinned him with her odd, whitish eyes. They had always made him wary, and he’d often wondered, if Kambria’s curse wasn’t lifted soon, would his own lenses turn the color of thin milk? Or again, was her appearance but a trick of the mind? He’d never seen her drink the blood, but thought she might find vitality within the cup.

“You must be patient, Hallyd, for no curse can be lifted before ’tis time. Yours is soon.” She crumpled the edge of her coverlet in her fingers and glanced at the ceiling. “As is mine. Now, pour.” A smile flitted across her lips, as if she were thinking about her youth.

He did as he was bid, walking to the altar and, without crossing the white line with his feet, pouring the goat’s blood he’d brought her. The servants never asked why, when an animal was slaughtered, he insisted upon two cups of blood before the cook claimed it for pudding. And he always brought it here to this altar, where he poured it into the empty bowl. Aside from her daily bit of wastel bread and a gruel made from oats and honey, ’twas all she asked for. Pages were instructed to bring the gruel and water to her door each day, and to leave a clean bucket after removing the bucket of excrement.

Everyone in the keep thought she was a prisoner.

Only he knew the truth, that he was more of a captive than she.

“Aside from honing your patience, you must also be wary,” she advised, as if she were, indeed, witnessing events that had not yet occurred. “There are others who are waiting for her, wanting her, following her. They are as eager as you are, and mayhap more determined and deadly.”

He didn’t believe her. No one could want her more than he. No one could have been as patient as he. No one had been as cursed as he.

Except for her.

CHAPTER FOUR

B
ryanna sat at the edge of a stream. Twilight had nestled into the woods and the wind had died. For the past three nights, she’d slept on her own, with the forest and night surrounding her. And she’d waited.

For Isa.

For a vision.

For words of encouragement.

And she’d heard nothing but the soft sough of the wind rattling through brittle branches.

’Twas as if she’d made a horrendous mistake.

“Warts and wattle,” she muttered. She leaned into the darkness and used the small net she’d brought along to forage for unsuspecting fish, frogs, and eels that she could gut and roast on a spit over the fire. Her stomach rumbled and she tried not to think of the cook’s roast pheasant or custards or mincemeat on wastel bread thick with butter as she dragged her net through the dark, rippling waters.

She’d made no sense of the doeskin map for the past week, and yet she was certain if she were to figure it out, she would understand her mission.

But what of a child?

She managed to catch a couple of fat toads and a small trout. She killed them quickly, scraping out the innards and roasting them over the small fire. Alabaster stood nearby, a hind hoof cocked as she slept tethered to an old withered tree.

Tomorrow she would ride again.

But to where?

Bryanna stretched the map upon a smooth stone, turning it this way and that, trying to read the symbols upon the ragged deerskin as grease from the fish and frog legs sizzled against the hot coals.

Where was Calon on this pathetic map? None of the jagged lines resembled the place she’d lived with her sister for the past few months. What of her home at Penbrooke?

Where was Wybren, the keep not far from Calon, where a horrid fire had swept through the castle at night, taking the lives of the lord’s family? Bryanna knew it well, for Morwenna had wed one lucky enough to have escaped the deadly flames that night, and yet she could not find it on this map.

Where was any other place she might recognize?

“ ’Tis a mystery,” she said to Alabaster, though the horse didn’t so much as twitch her gray tail in response. “Aye, not much do you care.”

Still considering the etchings upon the piece of deer hide, she ate her fill, then walked out to the night again, pausing to take in the utter stillness. No breath of wind whooshing through the canyon, no flap of a night owl’s wing.

Bryanna shuddered as she thought of it.

“Do not trust the great tranquillity,” Isa had said as she’d undone the knots of Bryanna’s pathetic attempts at embroidery when she was but a child at Penbrooke. While her brothers were outside practicing their huntsmanship with targets set up against piles of straw, Bryanna was inside, forced to do embroidery or learn about healing herbs.

Her mother had been forever scolding Bryanna for her many transgressions. There was the time she’d been seen riding astride her brother’s favorite steed with “a ruffian” of a stable boy. On another occasion she’d been caught stealing the tarts cook had set on the windowsill to cool. Once her older sister had discovered her hiding in the apothecary’s hut, spying upon the man as he mixed his herbs. But mayhap her worst crime was when she’d donned the priest’s robes and pretended to baptize her younger sister, Daylynn, which sent her mother to her bed and Father Barton into finding a multitude of ways for Bryanna to perform penance.

Bryanna knew her punishments could have been far worse. The stable boy had been whipped in front of her, taking lashes upon his bare back without so much as crying out. Bryanna had cried out for the stable master to halt, but he’d simply paused to glare at her while Morwenna tugged her arm and bade her be quiet.

After that Bryanna cringed with each crack of the man’s snakelike whip. Red welts formed on the lad’s muscular back, and, she noted, they were not the first. Other scars told of previous floggings. The miscreant, three years older than she, sent her a triumphant look as he’d been led away, his gray eyes red and shining, but no tears drizzling down a face still devoid of whiskers. He’d been banished from Penbrooke forever, sent away with nothing but the clothes upon his ravaged back.

Bryanna had felt a semblance of gratitude that she was not subjected to such severe punishments, though her mother always lamented that “willful Bryanna” needed to be reared with a strong hand. Already worried because of Bryanna’s invisible friends, Lenore had been mortified at her daughter’s unladylike actions.

Eventually, it was decided that the troublesome child would be relegated to Isa’s care. This suited the old nursemaid well, for she was always telling Bryanna she was special, that someday her gift would be known. That is, if she quit flirting with boys of all stations, for Isa had been concerned that her young charge, soon to bud into a woman, was developing too keen an interest in the opposite sex.

At the time, Bryanna refused to believe her nursemaid. She stewed on the edge of her bed, watching in boredom as Isa’s old hands worked relentlessly, cutting out the twists and pulling at the threads of her wretched and halfhearted attempt at embroidery.

“What’s the great tranquillity?” she’d asked, pulling at the twists of wool appearing through the worn coverlet.

“The calm, ’tis but a ruse of Arawn, a way to set you at ease, make you forget your wariness.” Isa had snapped the embroidery thread with her teeth, then turned away from her work to stare Bryanna straight in the eye. “ ’Tis the time when you should be most vigilant. Trust me.”

Now, with Isa’s words reverberating through her brain, Bryanna felt an icy cold deep as a winter snow seep into her soul. She walked to the stream and washed the grease from her hands. There in the darkness, with the water rippling beneath her fingers, she heard Isa’s voice.

Bryanna looked up at the night sky. “Who, Isa? Who comes for me?”

“My child? But, Isa, I have borne no babe,” Bryanna said, shaking her head. Why was Isa talking in such strange riddles? “You are mistaken.”

“Be ever watchful,”
Isa said as clearly as if she were standing next to Bryanna.

“Of whom? Why?”

But Isa’s voice said no more, and Bryanna felt as if ghostly fingers had played upon the back of her neck. She turned quickly, peering into the shadowy thickets where she sensed unseen eyes watching her, waiting in the dark.

’Tis nothing
, she tried to tell herself. And yet, the dead woman’s words had shaken her. Whether it was truly a voice or her own madness, from this point forward Bryanna would be looking over her shoulder.

Gavyn could continue the ruse no longer.

Too many times the woman, Vala, had nearly caught him watching her, watching and waiting for his moment to escape. And then there was the difficulty of lying so still his muscles ached and cramped all the more.

Nay, he had to escape this night, after the man and woman had finished with their mating and were fast asleep. He could no longer chance that the couple would decide to cart him to his father’s castle.

Escape would be difficult, as the woman was forever nearby. She never went far without leaving her husband in the hut as, Gavyn decided, some kind of guard. His ribs still ached as if a mule had kicked him hard in the side, but he felt the welts and bruises upon his body healing, just as the woman had said.