The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (11 page)

The look, so at odds with the animal’s usual aloofness, aroused Dain’s suspicions. He slowly turned back to face Numa and had his wildest conjecture confirmed: The bitch was growling at him.

“
Kom
.” His command was harsh, demanding. The situation with the maid had gotten completely out of hand.

Looking thoroughly chastised, the albino began to slink off the bed. Another voice coming from deep within the quilts and coverlets stopped her.

“Numa, stay.”

And the bitch did.

Anarchy was a novelty within the curved walls of the Hart Tower. As a diversion, it was not welcome.

Dain set the bundle on the table and walked toward the bed, tilting his head to see past the partially drawn curtains. He didn’t call the dog again. The battle lines being drawn were beyond her ken.

Ceridwen clutched the sheets and quilts to her chest, her fingers digging into the thick sable fur lining the topmost coverlet. Fear pounded through her heart on every breath, telling her to flee, but flight was no option. Her head ached to near blindness, and her senses were not sharp. Her ankle was broken and weighted down with splint and bandages too heavy to lift.

She had no choice but to face the demon. She had naught but her wits and Numa to save her.

Damn the dog for drawing his attention.

“She eats the throats of men who come too near,” she warned, and was dismayed by the tremulousness of the words. She needed better from herself to save this day, but like flight, better appeared out of her reach.

“In the manner her master taught her,” the shrouded figure replied, and continued his soundless approach. Backlit by the flames from the fire, he cast his shadow across the end of the bed.

Ceridwen strained her eyes to follow his movements through the slitted opening of the curtains. “Numa has a mistress now,” she said, willing strength into a voice that in sad truth still had none.

The figure disappeared at the corner of the bed, melting behind the lengths of cloth swagged from the canopy posts, and her heart began to race. Seconds slowed into small eternities, flowing from one to the next with painful silence. He was out there, she knew it, stalking her with evil intent, but she couldn’t detect his position—until the curtains at the side of the bed were swept open.

“And now the mistress also has a master,” he said, looming over her, darkness and death personified. A cry strangled in her throat. “Take care,
chérie
, and do not put your trust where in the end it must be betrayed. The bitch is mine.” The voice came from deep within the cowl, frightful in its conviction, yet also faintly—surprisingly—familiar, reminiscent of a pleasanter interlude, of gentleness.

Gentleness? From such as he? Had her instincts, always so true in the past, verily her greatest strength, also deserted her in her hour of need? Confused by the fleeting sensation, she dropped her gaze from the dreadful, featureless chasm of the hood and looked instead at the clasp on his shoulder that held his cloak. ’Twas large and rich in gold, a noble piece.

Candlelight danced across it, bringing garnets and amber to warm, pulsing life and licking through the intricate knots of a dragon’s tail. No invincible specter this, no all-powerful demon, she thought, for beneath the cloak he wore a gambeson of thick boiled bullhide, dyed green. The color ran darker around the iron studs that fanned out across his chest in a series of arcane symbols, proving him in need of much protection, both in heavy leather and charms.

She gave him a discreet, measuring look, wondering what manner of man she now dealt with for her life. He was tall, though not nearly as tall as the devil-beast from the forest. More to the point, he hadn’t struck her dead, which meant he must have use of her.

Aye. She lowered her lashes, giving in to a fresh round of pain in her head. That was always the way of it, a man had use of a woman whether she had a use for him or not. She took a deep breath and tried to let it out carefully. A ragged sigh was what she got for her trouble, and a throbbing ache she felt clear through her brain.

What a God-cursed sennight it had been since Llywelyn’s summons. She had thought herself long forgotten, which she would have preferred over being remembered by one such as Caradoc. Twice she’d slipped through Morgan’s guard, only to be caught. The third attempt at freedom had been her undoing, leaving her physically wrecked, helpless in the hands of the dark-cloaked man who had saved her for ends of which she knew naught.

Eyes closed, she bent her head down and made the best of a shallow breath. She felt so many different agonies, none of them too much to bear alone, but the sheer number of wounds she’d suffered overwhelmed her. The pain would be the death of her. She needed weapons and the spirit to wield them, not weakness.

A hand touched her face, light and strangely soothing, surprising her by proving her memory of gentleness. “Do you need more of the poppy?”

“Nay,” she whispered, suddenly disconsolate. Kindness from an enemy was a sure sign of his impending victory. “I have taken too much as it is. I cannot think when—”

“Shh.” He stopped her with the soft sound and stroked a single tear off her cheek. “’Tis no sin,
cariad
, to ease your pain. I will make a weak draught.”

He didn’t know, she thought as he walked back across the chamber. What she wished was a sin, to give up the fight, to be returned not to Usk, but to the Otherworld she’d glimpsed through the stone. Another man awaited her there, a man of dark, brilliant light, a man who would keep her forever free. She had been a prisoner for too long, fifteen years in a nunnery and seven days in the world of mortal men. It seemed a woman could not escape the politics and prophesy of a profane marriage with any more ease than a child could escape convent walls.

She looked up, watching her captor, and wondered if he could send her to the heavens again; and if he could, did she dare go?

He stopped between the table and the hearth, and in a single sweeping motion removed his cloak. He had a way about him of moving, so fluid. She remembered how he’d made the serpent stone appear in his fingers. She’d seen others with the skill, but none as fine as his. He dropped the cloak onto a carved oak chair and turned to a row of shelves. For less than the space of a heartbeat his face was revealed by the firelight, and her breath caught in her throat.

’Twas Dain, sweet prince of the
tylwyth teg
.

His hair was not black, as she’d thought, but a deep chestnut-brown and even silkier than it had looked in the night, a long mane swept off his forehead and falling to the middle of his back. The line from his brow to his chin was long and angular, but still artful enough to rival a more conventional beauty. And his mouth, it was as she remembered, full in the lower lip and expressive in the upper, with a mocking sensuality hovering in the deep crease bracketing one side.

He glanced over and caught her staring. Brown his eyes were, and bright with intensity, his eyebrows angling up like unfurled wings. One arched in a knowing gesture, and a hundred realizations washed through her, leaving her with nothing but humiliation and regrets.

“’Twas you all along.” She didn’t even attempt to keep the dismay out of her voice, and she couldn’t hold back the tears welling in her eyes. There was no help for them when life grew bleaker at every turn.

“
Ja
, it was I,” he admitted, slipping deeper into the strange melody of speech she now remembered clearly. He was not Welsh, nor Norman, but neither was he what she had dreamed.

“There was no prince of paradise.” A tear spilled over, and she wiped at her cheek with the back of her hand. An intolerable weariness took the last of her strength. She had told him everything, of Morgan and the Boar, of Mychael, her one hope, and God only knew what else. ’Twas all too much, so much failure at once.

Dain watched as she looked down at the bed, searching for something and coming up with his serpent stone.

“And this?” she asked, her voice taking on a nervous edge be didn’t think boded well for either of them. “Brochan’s Great Charm?”

“Italian glass.”

He could have lied, but he didn’t, and he wasn’t sure why. Like the recent bout of anarchy and insurrection, he hoped the thoughtless telling of truth wasn’t the way of things to come.

She made a small sound of distress at his answer.

Mayhaps a tonic of betony and vervain would suit her better, he mused. She was becoming overwrought, something he had hoped to avoid for her sake, but the condition was predictable. She had been beaten and tortured, captured, chained, and had awakened in a strange place with only him for company. Stronger hearts than hers would have trembled at the thought.

“The kiss?” she asked.

Ah, she would have done better not to have asked him of kisses, but the maid obviously did not know when to leave something alone.

“Real enough,” he said, telling the truth when again a lie would have served them both better.

A much larger sound of distress reached him upon that announcement. She slipped down into the pillows, crying—nay, sobbing—about being doomed to be cheated and ruled by men and kissed by demons, lumping him together, by name no less, with Ragnor and the Boar of Balor Keep. Normally he wouldn’t have thought anything of such a misassociation, especially when made by one so naive, but his more refined sensibilities insisted on taking offense.

“Ragnor is far too much of an idiot to make a worthy demon,” he said, pitching his voice to carry above the sound of her weeping, “and what he did to you was not kissing. As for Caradoc, as I recall, he knows his way around a maid well enough to make any contact a pleasant one.” Betony and vervain, and honey for taste, he told himself, taking the jars off the shelf. She was beside herself with nervous affliction.

“What of you?” Though still full of tears, her tone took on a sudden intensity.

Him? He stopped halfway to the table and turned his gaze upon her. What of him? She had a rare talent for surprising him, he knew that much.

“More than bright enough to be a demon,” he said, hoping to God she wasn’t asking him about knowing his way around a maid, as he’d been rather free with finding his way around her, “and quicker and more learned than most I’ve met.”

“You’ve met many?” A sniffle accompanied the question, and she used one of the bandages by the bedside to wipe her nose. Even with her hair braided, she was a mess, bruised and swollen, her skin discolored by his red powder. Had he really thought her pretty?

“A few,” he corrected her, continuing on to the table where he set down the ceramic jars.

“The Boar of Balor? You know him?”

“Aye.” He looked up to the hundreds of dried and drying plants hanging from racks suspended from the rafters. A few steps brought him to the one he sought, and he broke off a portion of stem.

“Then help me,” she begged, the intensity in her voice turning to pure desperation. “Or let me go that I may help myself.”

“You cannot walk,” he pointed out with no pleasure. Ragnor would begin paying for his violent manners upon the morn.

“Do you keep me for yourself, then?”

“No.” The vervain went into the mortar to be ground into powder. “When you are healed, Caradoc will come. Your cousin, Morgan, goes to him on the morrow to carry the news of your delay.”

“Better to kill me now.” Her desperation slipped into despair, then into anger. “And Ragnor too, for the Boar will not go light with him.”

He gave her a brief, discerning glance, then added another piece of vervain to the mortar, a short piece to help lift her spirits an extra notch.

“Ragnor will meet his just fate, while ’tis only marriage you face, little one,” he said, trying to improve her perspective. “Most women like it well enough.”

“I am not most women.”

He tended to agree, but kept the opinion to himself and dipped a measure of water into the pan on the brazier.

“And if you believe all I face is marriage, you are a fool, the more so for speaking of what you know naught.”

Some of the water splashed into the brazier. He’d never heard sarcasm and despondency blended together so neatly, in such a tight package of condemnation. She’d called him a fool.

He struck flint to tinder and started the water heating for the infusion.

“You cannot hold me,” she continued, adding a good portion of resolve to her despair, proving herself to be a rare, multifaceted chit. Even so, the novelty of her presence was wearing thin. He would send a courier to Morgan, letting him know the price had gone to two hundred marks.

She’d called him a fool.

“I will hold you,
chérie
.” He arched an eyebrow in her direction. “I will hold you until I have a mind to let you go.”

Only silence greeted his pronouncement, which was as it should have been. Or so he thought.

“Beast.” The word came at him from the depths of the bed.

His jaw tightened, but he didn’t deign to give her another look. “If needs be, I can play the beast.”

Her answer, for he was sure she had one, no doubt tart, was arrested by the clomping sound of Erlend climbing the stairs, cursing on every step. The hatch was pushed open, followed by the old man.

“Yer goin’ to make yerself sick, what with all yer bathin’.” He hauled a pot of water up after him, holding the hot handle with a folded rag.

“Fill the tub and bother me no more,” Dain ordered impatiently, pouring the ground herbs into the brazier pan.

Erlend stomped around the room, emptying the pot he’d brought as well as the cauldron of boiling water on the hearth into the wooden tub, grumbling beneath his breath about some people’s ideas. Dain busied himself with putting honey into a cup and fighting the temptation to silence Ceridwen’s tongue with a stronger sleeping draught. She was the foolish one, provoking him with her misplaced rebelliousness.

A soft, rhythmic tapping at the door stopped both men. Erlend looked up at Dain with a wicked, toothless grin.

“That one, eh?”

Dain ignored him and went to the door. Edmee, at least, could be counted on as a calming, noncombative addition to the evening.