Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) (7 page)

“Christina!” she called in her mind, but the vision faded even as she strained to reach for her sister and for an instant felt as if she flew, as she could when she ate the secret mushroom of the birchwood. She blinked and was looking down from the treetops, east into a gray sky at a hillside of oak trees, and within the oak trees were three strong towers.

She lunged forward like a hawk, dropping to the tower with the blue door...

“Elfrida? Elfrida! Are you with us again?”

She sighed, pinching the top of her nose, forcing her spirit back within herself. It was mildly disconcerting to discover that she was half on Magnus’s lap, her body propped against his barrel chest and her head snug in the crook of his arm—his arm with the stump, she realized.

“Are you well?” he asked again, touching her forehead with his good hand. “Your eyes rolled back into your head, and you were twitching like a hunting dog on the scent.”

“I was hunting,” she replied. Deciding she was too comfortable to stir from where she was, she talked quickly as the scene vanished into the whiteness of the snow. “He has them bewitched in some way, perhaps with a love philter, perhaps with a handsome, pleasing familiar.”

“Have you a familiar?”

She scowled at the interruption, conscious again of the itching in her hair and across her face and arms. “I do not need one,” she said sharply. “But listen to me now, for once the sight leaves me, I do not always remember it well.”

Magnus nodded and brought a finger to his lips, his promise of silence.

“To the east of here, within the forest, there is an oak wood set on a high hill. His lair is there, within three strong towers, three towers, one with a painted blue door.”

She heard Magnus’s breath catch, but he did not interrupt.

“I saw my sister, laughing, and another girl, playing a pipe. They were dancing. I do not know if they were together, or if they danced alone, for the beast. They seemed unharmed. I did not see the third, but they were safe and even happy.”

She felt Magnus’s gasp of relief, and his reaction inspired hers. Overwhelmed to know that Christina was safe, she sobbed aloud as tears burst out of her.

“Aye, aye, I wondered when it would come to this.” Magnus gathered her closer still, ignoring her fever and spots. When her weeping subsided, he gave her a clean rag to wipe her face.

* * * *

He believed her. He had seen magic in Outremer, where men had put themselves into trances and driven nails into hands without pain or blood. He shouted to Mark, a single order, “Stop!” and listened as Mark blew his horn to signal to the rest of his men.

“Does the monster hunt alone?” he asked Elfrida. She was rubbing at her forehead with the rag, and he took it from her to stop her bursting her spots. She frowned but not because of the itching pox.

“I do not know,” she admitted.

“No matter,” he said easily, glad she had sense enough not to claim more than she did and not wanting her to blame herself. That was the failing and limit of magic, he knew—it never showed everything.

She squirmed on his lap and rolled off him into the snow.

“I must set a charm to find this oak hill.” She rose to her feet, seemingly unaware of how she swayed in the still, crisp air like a sapling in bad weather. “All oaks, and very ancient, with lichens hanging from them. And mistletoe!” She brightened at remembering, the glow in her small, narrow face showing how pretty she was, without spots.

She checked the position of the sun and began to walk southeast, tramping stiffly through the snow. Then she turned back.

“Your men know to let me pass?”

“They would not dare delay a witch.”

She smiled. “No, only you would.” She turned, took another step, and stopped.

Magnus did not want her to leave, either. He told himself it was because his men were even now calling back through the trees, “Nothing!” “No track!” “Nothing here!”

I need her skills, and though she will not admit it, she needs mine.

He limped toward her and offered her his good arm. “May I escort you? I have seen a mage’s house in the East, but never a witch’s home.”

He caught a glitter of interest in her eyes, quickly suppressed as she jerked her head at his horse and gathering men. “Do they come, too?”

“It will be quicker,” Magnus said easily. “Once we know where to seek your sister, we can set out on horseback.”

“I do not have a bathhouse nearby.”

“A barrel of water and hot stones will do as well.”

“And food and hay? I cannot magic those.”

“My men have brought both, even oats.”

She glanced at the gray skies and shook her head. “There will be more snow tonight. More! I have no spells against that amount of evil weather!”

“And your sister is indoors.” He waited a moment, for her to see the good in that, then added, “If we cannot hunt in more snow, neither can the beast.”

She nodded and took his arm, saying quietly, “Thank you.”

They walked forward together.

Chapter 4

Elfrida was weary, with aching eyes and limbs, by the time she had slogged through the snow to her hut. Longing for a drink and rest, for a warm barrel bath with hot stones and a long sleep in her own bed, she thought of Christina. That was enough to compel her to keep going, to straighten her spine and to step inside, warning the ever-solicitous Magnus to remain outside, for some magic has to be secret to work.

Perhaps she spoke a little harshly, for Mark muttered something and rubbed fiercely at his red nose, but Magnus was as sanguine as ever, merely instructing his followers to set up camp. Closing and barring her door, she could hear them shifting things and listened to the hum of chatter as the villagers came out of their homes to find out what was happening. As the scent of baking salted fish stole through her small hut, she fought down hunger and other earthly distractions by making a lengthy invocation to the Virgin. When the sounds outside became muffled, she knew that it was time to begin.

First she swept her floor and dragged the stone quern she used as an altar into the middle of the hut. Around the altar she made a circle of precious salt and purified herself with sprigs of rosemary and melted snow water so cold it made her gasp. She dared not complete her magic naked, lest one of Magnus’s men was peeping at her through her thatch, but she put on a clean, plain robe and combed the worst tangles from her hair. She set a small fire going in the center of the salt circle, scattered more rosemary upon the altar, and was fully ready.

She placed the monster’s cup outside the salt circle, to the north where demons dwelled, and stepped within the circle. Taking a honeycomb, she broke it in half, placing half in the monster’s cup and wrapping half in another clean cloth as an offering to the saint of the forest. She raised her hands in prayer and said aloud,

“Forest beast and forest saint, keep my sister safe and bright,

Let no harm come to her through day or night.”

After that she took wax and began to carve and shape it with a silver knife—an old knife, and the most magical and precious thing she owned.

She chanted as she carved and shaped, allowing her fingers to fashion a thin, long-limbed figure. Briefly she wished for a lock of his hair, or a piece of claw, to add to the figure, but then she lost herself in her chanting.

“As the wax will burn, so the snow will burn,

As the wax will burn, so the heart of the monster will burn,

As the wax will burn, so the snow will melt,

As the wax will burn, so the monster will melt,

The wax will make a path to his door,

Within a time of three he will release my sister, and the others,

His heart will be glad, and they will be glad,

All will be well.”

Swiftly she dropped the wax figure into her fire, repeating her chant until all was lost in the flames. Then she left the fire to burn down to ashes and stumbled outside, limping slightly because she was light-headed from the fumes and the power of her magic.

“It is done,” she called out to Magnus in the old speech. “We shall find Christina and the others within a time of three.”

“Three? Three hours, days, weeks, months? Three years?”

Elfrida shuddered at the thought of three years. “That is as the magic wills it. For me, it would be better if it were three hours, but then it would be dark, and snowing. The spell needs time to build.”

* * * *

Magnus stopped digging out a section of ditch and rested his arms on top of the shovel, not because he needed to rest but because he wanted to look at her. She was as pale as the snow, with great shadows under her eyes. One of the itching spots on her forehead had burst, and she looked as weary and determined as an old warhorse.

“Good,” he said. “You have done all that needs to be done and that can be done.”

Digging in another part of the growing ditch, Mark mumbled and pointed at her with his spade.

“He hopes you have magicked your itching pox onto the beast and so save us all some trouble,” Magnus translated, not adding that Mark had also said that she looked like a withered doll with woodworm.

“I am a healer, a good witch, and my powers come from God,” she replied at once, frowning at Mark. “It is not wise to work in that way, and curses can rebound.”

Magnus nodded, thinking that a few ill wishes and curses would have been useful, all the same.

She glanced at the half-finished ditch. “You are doing well here.”

“It will keep wolves out, at least. We shall finish tomorrow.”

She turned in a half circle. “I heard the villagers earlier.”

“They vanished once we started to work at the digging, Walter included. He is going out into the forest again tonight to keep looking for your sister.”

“But it will be night soon.”

“And did nightfall stop you from looking?” Magnus asked mildly. Taking advantage of her silence, he went on, “There will be hot water soon, for your bath.”

Just in time, he stopped himself from adding that the barrel was large enough for both of them. His legs and back were aching, and to share a warm tub with a warm, young female—even one covered with spots—would be no hardship.

She touched her forehead with her fingers, a gesture he now recognized as a sign of anxiety. “I should search the woods with Walter. I know the paths better than he does.”

“The beast has been cunning and careful so far,” Magnus pointed out. “I do not think he wastes his evenings in a snowy forest.”

“No, not when he has my sister as a plaything!”

Magnus ignored her temper, hearing the raw fear beneath, and he responded to that. “Bathe for her,” he said, trying another tactic to settle the jumpy lass. “Soothe yourself and send your peace to her.”

It sounded good to him, a magic of sympathy, and from the look of brief longing that shadowed across Elfrida’s face, she clearly thought so, too.

“I could do that,” she said slowly. “But comfort and a knowledge of tenderness comes largely through touch. I must stroke her veil and think of her. It would be excellent if Walter could handle her veil as well.”

Her face suddenly flooded with color. Mark, pausing in his digging again, stared at her with obvious interest until Magnus spat an order at him to get on. “What is it?” he asked.