The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) (7 page)

Perhaps it was because Samhain was less than a week hence—the beginning of the time of darkness.

Or perhaps Rhys himself had driven all life away.

She leaned against a lichen–covered stone and paused. He wore nothing but a sweat–stained shirt, a loose–fitting pair of
braies,
and the mask. Wasn’t he rich enough to wear a good pair of hose? And didn’t he have any shame at all, standing out here near naked and acting as if he wore a king’s robes? She forced her gaze away from him to watch a goshawk descend from the sky and stretch its talons toward Rhys’s gloved arm. Rhys swung around in one swift motion while the goshawk landed. The bells of the bird’s jesses fell silent.

Rhys murmured to the bird and stroked its golden breast with a strip of feathered leather. He stroked and murmured, stroked and murmured, dangerously close to that lethal beak, meeting the bird of prey’s golden eyes with the same steady, unyielding, unemotional stare. Suddenly he flashed the leather over the bird’s head and with his teeth pulled two strips of leather tight on either side, and it was as if he were kissing the bird once on either cheek, only now the bird was as masked as he.

“I see,” Rhys said suddenly, without turning, “that you, too, are free of your jesses.”

Da had always warned her to handle a wild thing with great and patient care. A pity she didn’t always have the patience to mind Da’s words. “Pardon my interruption, my lord, though I’m thinking it’s you who should be asking pardon of me.” There was not even a flicker of remorse on his face. “I’ve come here out of the goodness of my Christian heart to tell you this. I’ll give you the help you need.”

His fingers paused on the goshawk’s tawny chest. His gaze skimmed down the slope, to where Dafydd put his gelding through its paces in the valley.

“Don’t be setting your ire on your brother,” she said. “I’m quick witted enough to have figured it out myself.”

“Why now?”

“Why not now?” she countered. “It’s a mystery to me why you didn’t tell me on the shores of Inishmaan. I would have healed you then, if I had the things I needed. If not, I’d have brought you to my house and seen to it. As it was, you left me guessing as to what you wanted—too puffed up with pride to ask me, even when you had me caught as surely as that bird—and then had me thinking you needed sorcery.”

“It’s the sorcery I need, woman.”

“Cock’s feathers you do. Why a man insists on calling a woman’s healing ‘sorcery,’ and a man’s healing ‘skill,’ I’ll never know.” She crossed her arms and muttered, “All this trouble, for a man’s vanity.”

The falcon flapped its wings and screeched as Rhys stiffened.

“Aye, vanity,” she repeated, forcing herself not to quiver. “I’d hope it was shame that kept you silent, shame at what you did. But I know now it is vanity—vanity and pride. Just take off that wretched mask and let me see the thing. I’ll concoct some sort of salve to be rid of the affliction, then you and I shall be done with one another—and I can be home to Inishmaan.”

Chapter Four

V
anity.

Anger swelled from that ugly place deep inside him, seething a fury so thick that a haze of blood fogged his vision.

So she thought it was vanity that had driven him to the physicians of Myddfai and the charlatans of Troyes. So she thought it was vanity that made him suffer having his skin slopped with salves that burned, with unguents that all but froze his face. For vanity’s sake he’d lain strapped to tables while men worked their knives and leeches upon him, for vanity’s sake he’d allowed himself to be bled almost to the last drop of his life. He’d genuflected at every shrine from St. Dafydd’s to Compostela, washed his skin raw in innumerable sacred wells, bowed his head to every saint who’d listen, felt the sting of utter humiliation.

All for vanity’s sake.

He’d laugh, if he could drag the sound up through the gall clogging his throat.

“Don’t speak to me of medicines.” The goshawk tightened its claws deep into the leather glove. “Do you think I stole you here for
that?”

The word snapped like a whip between them. The girl started while those maddening all–knowing eyes widened. Setting his jaw, Rhys stepped away and swept the bird onto a perch he’d driven deep into the ground.

“My father,” she insisted, “is the greatest healer that lives. And there is more medicine in the world than can be found in Wales—”

“There are none unknown to me.” No, none at all, not a single one. Five years was a long time for a man to be educated in indignity. “It’s your sorcery I need.” He flung off his glove and threw it to the ground. “It’s
these
I want.”

He strode to her and seized her hands. She tried to yank them free. He dug his thumbs over her palms to feel the rough surface of her skin, to ripple over the islands of calluses. He squeezed those hands as if he could milk them of the sorcery that visitor had spoken of. Ragged nails, hardened from work. A peasant’s hands, as common as heather and just as tough.

“You’re hurting me.”

“Healing hands.” He spread apart her long fingers with his own. “Like to be a saint, he said.”

Some part of him realized that he’d not touched a woman’s hands since…since a thousand years ago, in that vaguely remembered life before the affliction. Now he felt the knobs of each knuckle and squeezed harder, searching for something, for anything, for some frisson of magic, a spark, a tingling, to show that these were more than just another peasant woman’s hands, better fit for wielding a scythe than conjuring demons.

He hated himself even as he yanked her closer, close enough for the wind to sweep the wiry ends of her hair against his cheek. Close enough to hear her breath soughing in her throat. Close enough to count the freckles splattering her nose and cheeks. She smelled of mist, but more than mist. A salt–sea fragrance steamed off her skin, mingled with the perfume of something else, something elusive, and it came to him on a filet of memory. It was the smell of woman, the fragrance he’d denied himself for so long, that potent feminine scent that even now caused his cock to thicken.

His grip tightened on her hands. His nostrils flared as he drank in more of that forbidden scent, hating himself even as he sucked it in like a man starved. Look at her, a broomstick of a woman, all snarled hair and flatness. He’d felt this way the first day he’d seen her, when she’d looked as untamed as the goshawk that now spread its wings behind him. He told himself that she was a witch, for no one but a witch would tempt death so fearlessly with her defiance. No one but a witch could have him thinking nonsense. No one but a witch could dig up these dead yearnings of a youth long passed.

“There’s nothing here, is there, Aileen the Red?” he said. “There’s nothing here but a peasant’s hands—no magic, no sorcery.”

No hope.
A man should know better—a man should learn.

Dafydd had insisted that there must be a reason for that Midsummer Night’s visit. Dafydd said that only a fool would ignore it. This was Rhys’s chance, Dafydd had said, mayhap Rhys’s last. Now Rhys understood. Who else but a demon could trick Rhys into seeking out this witch woman, full of spirit, full of contempt and mockery? Surely, this was the demon’s most potent weapon. A girl just unworldly enough to give him hope that she could change everything back to the way it once was.

“You’re part of it, aren’t you?” he heard himself say. “You’re part of the curse.”

“Listen to you,” she said softly, as if to an unbroken colt. “You’re babbling on about nothing.”

“Madness is a fine language, I’ve learned it well.”

“Let me go and have done with this.”

He released her so abruptly that she stumbled back.

“Be off, Aileen the Red. Go. Go back to that rock whence you came, and take your secrets with you.” Blinded, he strode back to his falcon. “As long as I live, I won’t listen to the false voice of hope again.”

He’d said too much. He nudged the falcon upon his arm, marched out into an open space, under an open sky. There, with his teeth, he tore the mask off the falcon and spit it to the ground.

Then he launched the bird skyward to glide high and free.

***

The morning mist had dissipated by the time the procession of horses lumbered its way down from the
llys.
A flaxen stubble gleamed in the valley below, the golden remains of the harvest. The lowing of cattle echoed off the hills as bondsmen nudged the beasts down the slopes to the winter grazing grounds. Aileen swayed on the back of a donkey, huddled deep in her cloak. By the end of the day she would shake her nostrils free of the stench of earth and wood–smoke, she thought. By the end of the day she would smell the brine of the sea again.

She took a deep breath and buried her nose in the wool. Aye, it would be the sea again, and then the sea–voyage, and then . . . Inishmaan. Her gaze passed over a cluster of peasants threshing some hay just beyond a rock–pile fence. Ma and the girls would have long finished the threshing by now. They would be hand–grinding the rye into flour and brewing it into the fresh ale Da liked so much. The boys would be off to the mainland, filling their skin–covered boats with small wild apples for Ma and Cairenn to press into cider. That was where she should be, she told herself, home helping Ma and Da through the harvest. That was where she belonged, she thought, even as her gaze strayed, for the hundredth time, to the straight–backed figure leading the procession.

She tore her gaze away and fixed it on the narrow path that wandered toward the next mountain pass. Dafydd rode on a fine horse just in front of her, his purple cloak flapping free as if the wind’s chill couldn’t pierce the chain mail draping his body. She saw the resemblance between Dafydd and Rhys much more starkly now. Since yesterday, when Rhys had ordered her back to Inishmaan, Dafydd had been as sullen and heavy–browed as his brother.

Good riddance to both of them. And good riddance to this barren, lifeless place, too. She wanted to feel the faery–breath on her face and the thrum of magic beneath her feet. Yes, cattle aplenty grazed on these softer slopes, and aye, there were homesteads here and there scattered about, smoke curling from their chimneys and chickens pecking in their gardens, and aye, there were deer enough, she supposed, hiding in these woods. But for all the life around her, she couldn’t shake the sensation that she was riding across graves.

Once home, she could pretend that a man had never grasped her hands in a fury of passion, speaking to her in a voice as anguished as any she’d ever heard. Yes, she admitted, he’d looked for one moment like a man in torment. What reason did she have to take pity on a warrior–chieftain who’d caused her nothing but grief? It was not as if the man was in physical pain. He was healthy enough, she’d seen that whilst he flexed his bare arms upon the burial–mound, wearing nothing but a bit of cloth around his loins.

Her Da would say that her soft spot was showing.

So she forced her mind on the ale–brewing and the cider–pressing as the procession followed the winding path. The hard blue–gray rock pressed in on either side of them, opening only to reveal a steep crag or a rushing torrent of water, or a stretch of heath or valley. Late in the day they marched single–file through a thicket of oak, the clack–clack of the horses’ hooves dulled. Lulled by the rhythmic plodding of her donkey and the gentle ringing of harness and chain mail, Aileen jerked out of her dozing at the sound of the first cry.

It was an odd sound, like the whelp of wounded dog.

Dafydd scraped his sword out of its scabbard. His horse pranced, frightening her donkey into skittering aside. Dafydd cried something out in his babbling Welsh, and then pointed his sword forward. She strained to see around his horse through the thicket, but all she saw was faint movement ahead.

Then the woods erupted.

The creatures burst from the forest in a rush of sound, hurling their javelins with a whirr, and then flashing knives out from their belts. They hurtled toward the line of horses and men so suddenly that she simply sat upon the donkey transfixed, not feeling fear, not at first, for surely these were but furies of some sort, ripped from the Otherworld. Such faces as these she had never seen. She recognized them as human, but barely so. The hardness in those eyes . . . like chips of the slate mountains themselves.