Keeper of the Dream (57 page)

He stared at the toy, unmoving and very still. He lifted his head and looked at her and there was a bewilderment, a sort of panic in his eyes. “I cannot fight,” he said.

She now stood as motionless as he, waiting … waiting.

His hand tightened around the toy lamb. “I will answer Henry’s summons, but I’ll take no army with me. Nor will I lend him my own sword for this God-cursed war of his.”

“But if you arrive without your men he will be furious. He could charge you with treason, Raine. He could—”

“Nay, love, odd as it seems, he oft listens to me. Perhaps if I see him, speak reason to him, I can convince him to abandon this fool endeavor. Aye, and I will go under a flag of truce to your father as well. Perhaps I can bring about a compromise between the pair of them.”

She looked from his face to the toy lamb in his hands. “You would do this for me?”

“I do it for me as well, and for our babes. But I think I do it most for Rhuddlan, because no matter who wins, be it Henry or your father, it is inevitable that this land will
once again become a prize of war. It is the people who till the fields and herd the cattle, and who are even now building us a new castle to make us strong—they will be the ones to suffer. They are my people, Arianna.
Our
people, be they Welsh or English. It is my duty as their lord to protect them.”

She came to stand before him. Slowly she fell to her knees, a vassal giving obeisance to her liege lord. “I love you so much.”

He drew her up, brushed her cheek, then let his fingers drift down, following the curve of her throat. “And I shall always love you, sweet wife, through all your hours, all your days. Always, always …”

Her mouth trembled into a smile. “I didn’t know there was such poetry in you, Norman.”

“My lord, take me with you!”

Startled, they turned to see Rhodri hovering just inside the door. They had both forgotten him.

“I go alone, lad,” Raine said, “but I thank you.”

“But you’ll still need a squire to carry your shield and lance. Take me in the place of Taliesin. I can speak to my father. I can convince him to trust you.”

Arianna saw the yearning on Rhodri’s face, the desperate hurry he was in to prove himself a man, to show himself brave enough to take a man’s risks. “He speaks sense, husband,” she said.

Raine, intent now on buckling his sword belt, looked up. “Very well … since your lady sister has given her permission.”

“I’ll go see to your armor and your horse, my lord,” Rhodri said and ran out of the room.

And then Raine was before her, drawing her to him, and they held each other in silence, before his mouth took hers in a kiss that was filled with all the things they could not say to one another, because words were not enough.

She smoothed the front of his bliaut, which she had
twisted with her fists as she clung to him. “Promise me you won’t risk your life.”

His smile was wry and gentle. “No fear of that,
cariad.
I’ve turned into a very careful man since I wedded you.”

He kissed her once more, hard and fierce and fast, and then he let her go.

But when he got to the door, she stopped him. “Raine …”

He turned, and she drank in the sight of his beloved face one last time just in case … just in case…. Fear clung to her, smothered her, like oily smoke, so that she couldn’t breathe. If
lose him,
she thought,
if I lose him, I will die.

“My heart is not divided, my lord. I said once that I have chosen you. Whatever happens, that will never change. Not for all eternity.”

He said nothing, he didn’t smile. But she saw the love in his eyes.

“I will wait for you to come back to me, Raine. No matter how long it takes, I will wait for you.”

Arianna stood on the castle ramparts as a hot dry wind blew across the empty tilting field, filling her with its restlessness.

It was from this very spot that she had seen Raine for the first time. He had looked so fierce, mounted on his enormous war-horse, his black dragon pennon snapping against a storm-tossed sky. He had stood in the middle of the field, unmoving, almost taunting them with his reckless bravery. And then a jagged lightning bolt had scarred the gray clouds, and thunder had cracked open the sky, and his charger had reared. Her heart had recognized him even then for what he was, though it had taken her thick head much longer—he was the black knight of her vision, her destiny.

She hadn’t thought about the vision of Raine charging her with his lance in a long time. Or that other vision
she’d had shortly afterward—of a hot, flower-carpeted hillside and a golden-headed knight awaiting her with outstretched arms. On her wedding day that vision had brought her joy and hope, but now she feared it. She didn’t want to think that there would be another love in her life. She couldn’t imagine that this would be so, she belonged to Raine so utterly and completely. There could never be another man for her.

Scarce an hour had passed since Raine had ridden out the gate, yet already she felt the emptiness he’d left. By this time tomorrow he would have caught up with Henry’s army. In her few meetings with the English king, Henry had not struck her as a man easily led off a course once he’d set his rudder to it. But then Raine’s personality was equally forceful. His whole life was a testimony to the fact that when he wanted something, he eventually got it.

A movement below caught her eye, and she leaned over the crenelated wall for a closer look. Taliesin was striding out onto the tilting field. His black mantle snapped and billowed in the wind and his helmet shone bright under the sun. She was about to call out to him, to demand to know what he was doing, when he stopped and lifted his arms to the heavens.

The wind died.

A hush fell over the earth.

It became so quiet, Arianna could hear the buzz of the flies in the moat below. And in the far, far distance, the faint wash of the surf.

For a moment he simply stood there, arms raised above his head like a chapel painting she had seen once of Moses parting the Red Sea. A blue light began to pulse around him, a shimmering light striated with bands of silver. Grass and leaves swirled around his feet, towering upward, as if he stood in the middle of a wind spout.

It began with a great rustling, like the beating wings of a thousand birds. And then she felt it—the wind had come up again. But there was a fire in this wind, it crack
led and sizzled, tingling her skin, and she could taste brimstone in the air.

On the horizon, out to sea, a cloud began to form. Small at first, but then it was joined by another and then another, until the sea seemed to be spewing up clouds. The clouds became hills, then mountains, swallowing the sky and the sun as they came, rolling toward her. A darkness settled over the land, and a heaviness, and she felt the first splatters of rain.

A storm, she thought. He’s making a storm!

The aura surrounding the squire was red now. His face glowed as if he stood before a great furnace. He reached higher, embracing the lowering clouds, and from the tips of his outstretched fingers spun multicolored fireballs. Lightning snaked across the sky, flash after flash, and the thunder was deafening.

Above, the skies turned so black they rivaled the pits of hell. Lightning flared again, so bright the trees stood out starkly against the dark clouds, their skeletal fingers clawing at the sky. The wind sent the rain in slashing swirls and great sheets of water that slammed against the earth with a force that drove Arianna to her knees.

She bowed before the force of the storm, awed and frightened by its power. Trees crashed and splintered and the wind screamed. The rain was like a great mouth of the sea, swallowing her.

She covered her eyes with her hands, curling into a ball on the wall-walk—and the world began to spin, turning into a sucking, whirling pool of mist and light and blue fire….

Tendrils of a bloody mist rose, spread, and dissipated, became a soft white light Images flashed, whipping in and out of the mist and light like the dots on the cubes of dice as they rolled. King Henry, his mouth twisted in rage, screaming about eyes. Rhodri, his face bled white and stark with terror, held fast by grim-visaged men. And Raine.
Raine, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl, thrusting a sword through a man’s hand.

And then, as if the dice had come to rest, the last image burned clearly through the mist—a man hanging on a gibbet The rope creaked as he swayed, the still air smelled of death and rot The ravens came. At first only one or two, then a few more, and then they descended on the hill in a cloud of black, flapping wings, loud as the wind. They landed on the barren ground and on the nearby skeletal trees and on the arms of the gibbet. One rose up and came to rest on the head of the hanging man. Slowly, the hanging man began to turn, swinging, swinging toward her.

She screamed.

The image shattered, cracking like ice beneath a mallet. A quiet whiteness came, a searing whiteness, bright and cold. Too cold to breathe. She tried to suck air into her pinched, tight chest. But the light was too cold, too bright. She began to drift, drift away into the nothingness of the cold, white light….

She opened her eyes onto slick gray stones, her face in a puddle. Everything dripped, and she was soaked through her skin to her bones. Groaning, she started to push herself to her knees.

Nausea rose in her throat, and she tried to fight it off, closing her eyes. But the image of the hanging man was there, waiting. His face … she had screamed and shattered the image before she had seen his face.

But she knew, she knew, oh God, she knew. The visions never lied.

Fear rose up within her, burning her chest and throat.
Raine.
Her mind screamed his name. He had gone to try to bring peace between their people.

But he had ridden to his death instead.

She would go to him, warn him. She would get Taliesin. The squire was
magi,
yes, she was sure of it. He could make it storm and travel through the circle of time and be
in two places at once. He could get to Raine and warn him in time.

She made it up to her knees, grabbing at the stone parapet and dragging herself to her feet. She brushed the wet hair from her eyes and looked across a field of mud and soggy grass. On the horizon the blue of the sky met the turquoise of the sea. A few fluffy clouds, like tufts of lamb’s wool, drifted lazily overhead. She had to squint, for the brightness of the sun hurt her eyes. If everything weren’t so dripping wet, it would have been hard to believe it had ever rained.

For the storm was gone, as if it had never been.

And so was Taliesin.

The hot August sun beat down through scraggly pines, causing Raine to itch and swelter beneath his black armor.

He was all the more uncomfortable because he had become soaked in a freakish and unseasonable storm the afternoon before, and he hadn’t been able to dry out. I’ll be sprouting mold like month-old cheese soon, he thought with a grim laugh. He was getting too old for this.

Rhodri rode beside him in silence, probably feeling as miserable as he looked. With his hair plastered to his head and mud streaking his face, he looked like a moat rat. “How are you holding up, boy?” Raine asked.

Rhodri straightened in his saddle. “Well, my lord…. My lord, do you love my sister?”

“Aye. I love her.”

“Why?”

“Why?” The question took Raine by surprise.

“I mean, what makes a fellow prefer one girl over another? They all seem alike to me.” He made a face. “In truth, I’ve little use for the lot of them. Mewling, emotional creatures. Always nattering and frittering and weeping over something.”

“When the right girl comes along, you’ll know it. Hell,
you won’t be able to help yourself, so you might as well surrender right from the start and save yourself a lot of grief,” Raine said, and then he laughed. He’d practically had to be hit over the head with a battering ram before he was man enough to accept that Arianna had conquered him. In truth, she had brought him to his knees.

Their horses’ hooves made loud sucking noises as they fought through the mud. He had never known a storm like yesterday’s. The wind had uprooted trees the size of keeps, and it seemed as if the heavens had emptied all the leftover rain stored up there for the last millennium.

They rode along the broken ribs of the barren hills. It was a desolate land, and soggy because of the storm. Raine saw his charger’s ears prick up and then he heard the sounds himself—the wild neighing of horses, the mournful wail of a war horn, and the pitiful screams of men wounded unto death.

He spurred his horse into a gallop, shouting at Rhodri to follow. He topped a rise and looked down into the gorge below, where ran the river Ceiriog.

Rhodri reined up beside him, sucking in a sharp breath. “God’s death …”

The Ceiriog had overflowed its banks, washing away the encampment of Henry’s great army. Broken lances and riven shields lay scattered in the tough moor grass. Horses and sumpter mules floundered in the bog. What nature had not managed to destroy, the Welsh had finished off. Encumbered by heavy chain mail, the English had been no match for the fleet-footed Welsh with their deadly longbows.

The river ran red with their blood.

The royal campaign tent lay, a twisted and ripped pile of silk, in the mud. The king’s fox pennon hung limply from the branch of a thick oak tree. Henry paced beneath the tree, kicking at tufts of grass and stones. They could hear his ravings long before they reached him.

Raine dismounted and walked, with Rhodri at his
heels, along the river toward the lone oak and the pacing, raging king. Here, the destruction showed worse, with the dead piled up on the bank like faggots of wood, smelling already of rot and river slime. Many, he noticed, suffered no wounds … they had drowned.

Raine thought with despair of Arianna’s hope for peace between England and her father. Henry would never listen to reason now.

The king was surrounded by his nobles, though they all stood at a safe distance from his infamous temper. One, Raine saw, was his brother Hugh, though for once that elegant figure looked the worse for wear. His silvered mail was dull and battered like a beggar’s tin cup. He had lost his helm somewhere and his golden hair had gotten matted and tangled, and lost its curl. The black mud of Wales streaked his handsome, pouting features, so that he looked more the mountebank than an earl.