The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (6 page)

He could be assuming too much.

Numa whined behind him, so like a woman, but to have his bitch tear out the knight’s throat wouldn’t leave much room for his own personal glory—and he was more than a trainer of hounds, much more.

A low hum snaked around the perimeter of the great hall, as wagering took place with lightning speed. Ragnor was near seventeen stone in weight, but Dain had no intention of letting the exhibition disintegrate into a physical ordeal, not when the knight’s mind was as weak as his arm was strong, and not for a mere maid. Finesse and timing were the keys, and an invocation to turn Ragnor’s guts into a churning, knotted mass of fear.

A smile flitted across his mouth. He knew just the thing.

He moved forward with slow, measured steps, giving Ragnor enough time to contemplate his immediate future and all of eternity should he be defeated by Wydehaw’s mage, but not enough time to steal the opening gambit. At five paces away, he palmed a bit of miscellanea out of a pocket in his cloak. A quick glance proved it to be a black stone. He slipped it back and tried again. Draconite had its purposes, but felling giants wasn’t one of them.

A chunk of petrified snake’s tongue came next, but he always needed more snake’s tongue than he had. Pieces of mermaid’s purse, wren’s teeth... he found naught he could use until the end, and a costly trick it would be besting Ragnor if the green bauble was broken or lost in the bargain.

Just out of striking distance, Dain stopped. His nose twitched in distaste; the knight stank more than would seem humanly possible. He turned his attention to the girl and let his gaze drift over her, noting the depth of her head wound, the glazed look in her eyes, and the circle of bloody marks on her shoulder.

The last gave him pause. A flame of anger sparked to life in his breast, irritating him no small measure. The knight didn’t smell human because he wasn’t, but ’twas none of Dain’s concern. The urchin’s fate was incidental, as nothing. He looked again at the ragged bite, and much to his disgust his anger flamed high enough to singe his reason.

“There are better ways to eat a maid, Ragnor,” he chided, shifting his gaze to the knight. He took a step closer and bowed his head to whisper for Ragnor’s hearing alone. “Shall I have D’Arbois chain thee to a wall in my tower so that I may teach you the tender placement of teeth and the gentler uses of thy two tongues?”

The knight stumbled in a brief retreat, hissing a name that caused Dain to laugh aloud. If he could claim buggery as his only sin and be done with it, a better man he’d be than the one he was.

He advanced a step, his laughter softening to menace in the stillness of the hall. “You rutting whoreson. I could eat thine balls to break mine fast and know nothing but the pleasure of having food in my belly.”

“S-sodding bastard.” Ragnor edged closer to the wall, hauling the maid and her chains with him. The metal links jingled against the iron cresset and scraped along the wall.

“You repeat yourself, lackwit,” Dain said, following him. “If ’tis name-calling we come to, I will need a mightier foe... but, for mortal combat, we are a fair enough match. Be still, valorous knight, and I will reveal my weapon.” With a wave of his hand, the green bauble appeared in fingertips that only a second before had been empty.

Ragnor flinched, pulling back as far as the girl’s chains allowed. Torchlight shot through the transparent ball no bigger than a small hen’s egg, setting it afire to burn hot and green in Dain’s hand.

“Do you know of serpent’s stones, dear fool?” Dain rolled the ball across his fingers and down the back of his hand as if it floated on his skin, a droplet of water going home to the sea, smoothly, without a ripple. He stopped the green orb on his wrist and smiled at Ragnor. “Ah, yes. I see that you do.” The ball slipped into the vee between his index finger and his thumb, balanced for the space of a breath, and dropped into his open palm.

“I give you Brochan’s Great Charm!” he called out, lifting the orb high and letting his voice rise to fill the hall. “Born of the froth of a thousand serpents tangled in a frenzy beneath the stones of Domh-ringr, laced with their venom and blood and hardened by their fiery breath!”

A gratifying gasp sounded around him. He leaned forward and extended the gift on the tips of his fingers. “Leave the maid, Ragnor, or take her and the stone. You may have both or neither. These are the terms I offer.”

In answer, the knight drew a blade. A nervous tic jumped at the corner of his right eye, causing the whole side of his face to twitch and jerk. “This is my term, w-wizard. Take your cursed stone or I’ll p-prick thy heart.”

“Upon the peril of your soul, Sir Squint.” Dain glided forward, his attention focused on the dagger, and began chanting under his breath. “With this stone, whether you take it or nay, I impose upon thee that thou mayst wander to and fro through a land of faerie dreams. That small dwarf, whose power could steep the king’s host in deathlike sleep...”

The dark melody of the sorcerer’s voice drew Ceridwen like a moth to flame, entrancing her with a promise of sweet oblivion. Death it would be, she thought, a faerie’s death to escape the devil named Ragnor, a faerie’s death to put her forever beyond her accursed betrothed’s reach. A more fitting fate Abbess Edith herself could not have foretold. Indeed, she had foretold Ceridwen’s fate as such: that a troublesome maid who delved too deeply into the mysteries and heresies found in the discards of the ecclesiastical scriptoria would no doubt, and most deservedly, come to her end by way of evil enchantment.

What the pious lady had not known was that evil enchantment would appear as the path of salvation compared to the damnable heresies and prophecies Ceridwen had read in those discarded manuscripts. Written upon timeworn parchment bound in red leather had been her name, and below her name, her destiny, and below her destiny, her fate.

A shudder passed through her. She would not be led like a lamb to slaughter, not by ancient prophecy. She’d said as much, whispered in silence from her heart to God’s ear, at every office of every day, until she’d convinced herself the damning passages referred not to her, but to the same-named goddess of the old religion. And wasn’t every word of the old stories heresy anyway? And what was heresy if not the most despicable lies?

Then, not a fortnight past, the despicable lies had become truth. A princely summons had come to the abbey, betrothing her to the son of Carn Merioneth’s destroyer, returning her to the very place she had sworn to avoid at all costs, for fear she was the wretched Ceridwen of the red book. She’d been torn between despair, denial, and anger ever since.

A sob rose in her throat. Death it would be before more of Ragnor’s degradation, death before she accepted the eternal damnation of her proposed marriage.

“... and let it be known”—the sorcerer’s voice lured her back—“that whosoever tries to unbind the dire enchanting art of the spell, before the thousand years are done, shall join thee in an everlasting hell...”

A thousand years of sleep and grace? Ceridwen thought. ’Twas more than she could have dreamed for. Thus emboldened, she lunged for the deadly serpent stone and caught it. Instant warmth pulsed across her palm and up her fingers, bringing painful life to frozen limbs, until with a gasped cry, she clutched the talisman to her breast and succumbed to the promised, enchanted sleep.

Dain watched, stunned, as the maid crumpled to the floor with his ball of green glass locked in her grimy fingers. He had sorely miscalculated the sternness of her stuff. None other would have stolen his bauble from beneath his very nose.

Rapid footfalls sounded Ragnor’s retreat. The coward had dropped her the moment she had touched the stone, letting out an unmanly scream of fright.

Sighing, Dain looked around. It was done, for better or for worse. He spotted the seneschal and beckoned. “Unchain the maid.”

The man bustled forward to do as he was bid. A snap of Dain’s fingers brought Elixir and Numa to his side, for a moment anyway. Numa soon deserted him for the girl receiving the seneschal’s ministrations.

Strange chit, Dain mused. Who would have thought she had enough fight left in her to grab the charm and save herself from the beast of Wydehaw? Now if only she had enough fight in her to vanquish the screams sure to rise in her throat when he stitched her together.

~ ~ ~

A small smile played about Lady Vivienne’s mouth as she watched Dain advance on Ragnor, watched Ragnor pale with fear. ’Twas always a pleasure to see the sorcerer, just to watch him move, such a lovely, dangerous man. Elusive. He hadn’t come to the hall for weeks, and she’d long since run out of excuses for sending for him. Lying could be so tiresome, especially when it didn’t get her what she wanted.

It took a true crisis to bring Lavrans forth anymore, though how one small beggar constituted a crisis was beyond Vivienne’s comprehension. Yet she was grateful for the opportunity, and for the break in the drudgery of her evenings. Had she known that marriage to a March lord would amount to little more than exile in a heathen land, she would have fought her father harder on the match. Had she known that marriage to Soren would so quickly turn platonic, she would have refused altogether, no matter her initial attraction or the alternative of scandal.

As a younger maid, she had dabbled in amorous yet innocent liaisons—a whisper, a caress, a kiss, mayhaps another caress—then had delighted in tantalizing her priestly confessors with the most highly detailed and, in the beginning, embellished accounts of her sins, revealing the deeds with all the breathless fervor and subtle hesitations of a king’s courtesan. More than one priest had sought her out in the dark recesses of the church after giving her absolution and penance. All but one had found her impossible to bully and difficult to seduce, but then, the one to whom she had succumbed had been young and beautiful, and had approached her with naught but an ingenuously eager smile. For two weeks she had confessed to him night and day, so sweet had been their love. In the end, impetuosity had proven to be no friend of discretion, and they’d been caught in flagrante delicto.

The young priest’s punishment had been three years’ exile from Paris to be spent contemplating his sins in a Benedictine abbey. Hers had been life imprisonment in the March of Wales.

No man had pleased her since, except for Soren when they had first been wed. If he pleased his men and boys half as well as he had pleased his wife, they were lucky indeed. ’Twas not unheard of this affliction of her husband’s, but it was damned frustrating in a place as isolated as Wydehaw, where the most interesting possible replacement was a recluse living in a tower whose only entrance was a door that could not be breached.

She’d tried drugging Lavrans once, so she could have him brought to her bed, but he’d no sooner lifted the cup of wine to his mouth than he’d smiled his most charming smile and poured the drink into the rushes. She’d been told the draught was imperceptible. The damned leech who had sold it to her had paid for his mistake with a bout of her fury he had not soon forgotten, not with his simples smashed all over the floor and her refusing to pay for the damage. She’d heard he was still suffering from the setback. Fair enough. She was suffering too, suffering from love, or mayhaps lust. Sometimes it was difficult to tell the two apart.

Dain’s voice rose in the hall, and Vivienne leaned forward in her chair, her smile fading in anticipation of his next move. The crowd gasped as he lifted a charm into the air. A serpent stone, rich magic indeed to save a beggar girl.

Ragnor drew a blade, holding it in a manner better suited for protection than attack, but Vivienne was reluctant to take a chance. She reached for her husband and bent her head near.

“Ragnor’s prize is not worth the sorcerer’s blood. Stop your beast before he goes too far.”

“No.” The Baron of Wydehaw’s gaze did not waver from the torchlit circle.

“I would not have him marked,” she insisted, staring at her husband until he was forced to acknowledge her with a shift of his gaze.

“Have you no faith in the man?” he asked.

“Only faith that one day he will be mine, and when that day comes, I do not want him scarred with Ragnor’s rage,” she said through her teeth, her irritation growing with the delay. “Stop the beast.”

A strange scream rent the air, jerking both their attentions back to the drama taking place by the hearth. Ragnor had dropped the dirty beggar and was beating a hasty retreat from the hall.

Soren burst into laughter, a hearty chuckle unlike what she’d heard from him in some time.

“So much for the beast, my dear,” he said. “I think our
sorcier
has won the day and the girl, while Ragnor proves to have the balls of a newt.”

Vivienne sank back into her chair, partially relieved and yet even more discontent. Her husband’s wording did little to improve her mood, as the statement wasn’t exactly correct. Out of desperation, she’d taken Ragnor to her bed once, and a more miserable experience she’d never had, coarse and brutish, like the stupid man himself, worse even than her nights with the seneschal, who had merely bored her to death. The cook, at least, had smelled like fresh bread when she’d had him. The squire didn’t bear remembering at all.

’Twas Dain Lavrans she wanted.

“Aye,” she murmured to herself, watching him with a narrowed gaze. ’Twas the sorcerer she wanted.

D
ain threw home the bolt on the Druid Door, locking out the servants who had carried the maid into the tower and then taken Noll away, and anyone else who might think to seek him out that night. Ragnor would be lying in wait for the girl throughout the keep, but braver men than the red giant had sweated out the last of their courage in the northern tower of the upper bailey. Dain knew the knight would not press so much as the toe of his boot on a black or white stair. The maid was safe from Ragnor the Red whilst she was in the Hart Tower. Mayhaps she was safe even from Wydehaw’s mage. Dain hadn’t decided yet.

He turned and passed her where she lay on a pallet next to the fire. She looked deathly pale, but his cursory examination had shown the bleeding to have stopped and her breath to be warm and even. The bastard had broken her ankle, but Dain had set a good share of bones. After he got the swelling down, he could do this one better than most.