Air: Merlin's Chalice (The Children of Avalon Book 1) (12 page)

But as I stood there fuming, Dylan’s voice filtered through the closed door. “It’s getting harder to find people to claim to have lost a child, sir. I had to pay this one.”

“I’ll give you the money. That girl works too hard, I—” His words were interrupted by a coughing fit. I had to force myself to stand my ground until it subsided. “She needs the break. You just keep doing as you have been,” Sir Dagonet finished.

“Yes, sir,” I heard Dylan respond as I began to move down the hall as silently as I could. I just couldn’t believe how quietly caring those two men were. All of my muscles were tired and aching as I went down the stairs. But there was no one at the corner table of the other inn down the street, where Dylan said I would find the man he had spoken with.

I asked a bar maid, but she just shrugged and went back to her work. She had seen the man, I ‘heard’ in my mind, and she had seen Dylan hand him some money. She hadn’t thought anything of it when the man had left soon after Dylan. Shaking my head sadly at the dishonesty of these city people, I turned to go back to the inn and Sir Dagonet.

It may have worried me to leave the knight alone with Dylan, who certainly didn’t care for him nearly as well as I, but I had to admit it did feel good to get some fresh air and a little exercise. Despite the fine day, though, my heart ached with concern. Sir Dagonet had had a bad night. After so many days of fever, I just didn’t know how much longer…

No!/p>

Nothing was going to happen to him. Sir Dagonet was going to be all right. If only Dylan would concentrate on finding a healer. I picked up my pace and returned to the inn.

I had paused to allow my eyes to adjust to the gloom of the inn just inside the door when I saw him. Dylan was sitting at the bar with a glass of ale in his hand, laughing at something the fellow next to him had said. He must have come down just after I had left, for his glass was half empty and I hadn’t been gone long.

A fury like I had never experienced before exploded inside of me. The door to the inn smashed open behind me and a gust of cold wind swept through the taproom.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, my voice low with pent up rage. I stood right next to Dylan, practically whispering into his ear.

He jumped, spilling his drink all over his hand and the bar. I had no memory of walking toward him, but I shoved the momentary confusion out of my mind. I just wanted my question answered.

Dylan looked nervous for a moment, but then took on a defensive stance. “When I left, Sir Dagonet was sound asleep. He doesn’t need me hovering over him like a…”

But I didn’t wait to listen to the rest of Dylan’s excuse. I turned and ran up the stairs.

My heart pounded in my chest. How could he have just left Sir Dagonet all alone? The old knight was very sick. His fever was high; he was restless and had been hallucinating during the night—calling out to someone, promising to find “them.” I didn’t know who “they” were, but it had taken all of my strength to keep him in his bed.

Honestly, I didn’t know how much longer I could last with him like this.

I stopped outside of his room to wipe away the tears that had started to slip down my cheeks. I couldn’t allow him to see how worried I was.

I took a deep breath to calm myself. The last thing I wanted to do was disturb the old knight if he was finally getting some much–needed rest.

Another breath was abruptly stopped when I heard voices coming from his room. And laughter? That was definitely laughter.

I turned around and took a step closer to the door on the other side of the corridor, thinking it must be coming from the room opposite. I stood listening outside of the other room, but there was nothing. I walked back to Sir Dagonet’s room—laughter! It
was
coming from here. But how could that be?

I opened the door a crack and peered in.

Chapter Sixteen

S
ir Dagonet was sitting up in bed, a glass of ale in his hand, a laugh on his lips. “Ah, Scai, come in, come in, wot?” the old knight said. His voice was still raspy with congestion but otherwise sounded remarkably energetic.

I did as I was bade. But it just didn’t make sense. How could this be? When I’d left he had practically been on his deathbed, and now…

“Scai, I’d like you to meet Bridget. She’s a healer, don’t you know? Heard we were looking for one, and she found me just like that. Remarkable ability, wot?”

For the first time, I noticed the young woman sitting in my chair. Closing the door behind me, I advanced into the room as the woman stood up.

She was younger than me, and yet she had such a strong presence that I could hardly believe that I hadn’t seen her right away. Her hair was bright red, her eyes a brilliant blue, and the freckles that were splattered over her nose and cheeks gave her a childlike glow even though she had to be in her late teens.

“I’m so happy to meet you, Scai. Sir Dagonet was just telling me about you. Oh, but…” She paused and cocked her head a little to the side, staring wide–eyed at me like a little sparrow. “Have we met? No, that could not possibly be. I certainly would have remembered you. I’ve got an excellent memory for faces. Names I sometimes have a problem with, but faces I always remember.” She stopped and took a breath. “Yours looks extraordinarily familiar.”

If I’d wanted to say something, I couldn’t, for her rapid–fire delivery. There
was
something niggling in the back of my mind, but it slipped away as I struggled not to laugh at this girl. I finally got a hold of myself and said, “No. I’m certain we haven’t met. And please excuse me for being so straightforward, but you’re just so…familiar and well, vibrant. There’s no other word for it.”

And it was true: I’d never met anyone like Bridget before. Everything about her was bright and filled with energy. But what was it about her that seemed so familiar? It wasn’t possible that we’d ever met before.

“Vibrant.” Bridget giggled. “That’s a good word for it. I like that. No one’s ever called me vibrant before.”

“Bridget is strongly tied to the element of fire, don’t you know?” Sir Dagonet croaked out.

“Fire? Yes, that makes perfect sense!”

Bridget giggled again. “It’s how I heal the sick. Although my brothers say that I’m too full of fire, too impetuous. I like to think of myself as enthusiastic. Now you, on the other hand…” She leaned back and contemplated me for a moment. “You must be tied to the element of air.”

“Yes, but how did you know?” I asked. A jolt of fear hit me as if Bridget had just struck me with lightning.

Bridget waved away my worry with a laugh. “Sir Dagonet told me. He was telling me all about your journey here, how it rained and rained for days. You poor things! You must have been so cold and absolutely drenched. I just hate the rain. I won’t go out when it’s raining if I can help it. My brothers laugh. Of course, it’s because I can’t stand water or being wet—you know, fire and water just don’t mix. Well, but you are…” She closed her eyes for a moment, and took in a deep breath through her nose as if she was smelling something wonderful. “You are like a cool breeze on a hot summer’s day. So refreshing.”

That made me laugh. “Refreshing? And no one’s ever called me
that
before.”

“An excellent description!” Sir Dagonet agreed wholeheartedly.

“But I wish I knew where I’ve seen you. It’s just not like me at all not to be able to place a face,” Bridget began, but the door opened and Dylan came into the room, soundly dousing all of the good feelings flowing back and forth between me and Bridget.

“Scai… Oh! I beg your pardon,” he said, coming to a stop in front of Bridget.

I turned, forcing the smile to stay put on my face. It was so tempting to scowl at Dylan when I wanted so much to give him a piece of my mind. But we had a guest, so I held my tongue. It was also a little difficult to dredge up my earlier anger with him when Bridget was right next to me and Sir Dagonet had a broad smile of his face.

“Dylan, this is Bridget,” I said. “She’s a healer.”

“Oh, excellent! How did you find her?” he asked.

“I didn’t.
She
found Sir Dagonet.” And suddenly what had been teasing the back of my mind popped into the forefront—how
had
Bridget found Sir Dagonet? He said that she’d just found him on her own. Was that part of her magic?

“I heard you were looking for a healer. You did ask around, did you not?” Bridget asked. “I speak to people all the time, and someone mentioned to me that some strangers were looking for a healer, so I came looking. You know,” she said, turning back to me, “I may talk a lot—and don’t feel bad for laughing at me, I assure you, everyone does—but I do always listen as well.” She turned back to Dylan and raised her arms out to the side saying, “And so, here I am!”

“Ah, I see,” he said, frowning at her. “Well, excellent. Then I did find you a healer after all.” He turned to Sir Dagonet and straightened his shoulders, as if he was going to take all of the credit for bringing Bridget there.

Bridget and my eyes met, and we both just burst out laughing. How ridiculous men were! Dylan hadn’t truly found her. She’d come all on her own, and yet, without a moment’s hesitation, here he was puffing himself up like anything.

Dylan didn’t seem to understand the joke, but Sir Dagonet was chuckling as he drank some more of his ale.

“Sir, I am glad to see you so well recovered,” Dylan said, taking a step toward the foot of the bed.

“Owe it all to Bridget, don’t you know?”

Dylan gave Bridget a cold, if polite, smile. Turning to me, he asked, “And how did your meeting with Jonah go? Is he related?”

I shook my head. I didn’t reveal what I had overheard through the door before I’d left. I was certain it would anger Dylan if he knew I had been eavesdropping. Instead, I said, “I didn’t meet him. He was gone by the time I got to the other inn. But I’m certain that he would have been another dead end.”

“He was gone?” Anger flashed onto Dylan’s face. “Well, perhaps I could…”

“No. Really, that’s all right,” I said, perhaps a touch too quickly.

“What’s this?” Bridget asked.

“Dylan has been helping me search for my lost family.” I explained my search very briefly. “But so far none have been successful,” I concluded.

“Well, of course not. He’s not looking in the right places. You’re Vallen. You should be looking within our community,” Bridget said, as if it were obvious.

“There’s a community of Vallen?” I asked, taking a step forward. Could such a thing actually exist?

“Oh, well, I, er, wasn’t certain…” Dylan stumbled over his words.

Bridget cocked her head, looking at him. “Didn’t I see you last spring at the Beltane festival? At the jousting?”

“Oh, er, did you see me? Um, I was there with my foster brother.”

“I thought so,” Bridget said, nodding. She turned back to me. “I told you, I’m good with faces.” She turned back to Dylan. “You’re a squire? Or were then, right?”

“Yes,” he mumbled, suddenly very interested in his shoes.

“You were here before?” I asked Dylan. I could feel my anger beginning to stir inside me like a leaf caught in the wind.

“Er, yes, but you know, it was busy. A festival,” Dylan explained, “I was working. Squiring for my foster brother, who was participating in the jousts.”

“We have a wonderful festival every spring. It’s so much fun! We have jousting and jugglers and the most wonderful food you can imagine. The locals call it May Day, but in the Vallen community, we all know and celebrate it as Beltane. It’s almost the same thing—a celebration of the coming planting season. We pray for a good and fruitful summer and harvest, full of rain and sunshine. And then the real fun begins,” Bridget said, enthusiasm leaping from her eyes.

I couldn’t help but respond to Bridget’s excitement. “We do something similar where I come from, only we do it at Easter, and, of course, we don’t have jousting.”

Sir Dagonet laughed. “No jousting? Where’s the fun then, wot, wot?”

I couldn’t help but laugh, even though I was really annoyed with Dylan. All this time he had known there was a Vallen community here in Gloucester, and yet he kept bringing me ordinary people and saying that they could be my parents. He should have known to look among the Vallen! And why hadn’t he looked there to find a healer for Sir Dagonet, instead of asking at the inn and the grocer’s? We were lucky that word had gotten to Bridget anyway.

“The funny thing is,” Bridget was saying, “if you had gone to the Vallen community, you would have found me. Well, me and my family.”

I turned to her. “What do you mean?” I felt as if I had missed something important.

“Well, I know that my parents had another daughter before they had me,” she explained. “But they gave her away. Something about a prophecy? I don’t know. I just know that my oldest brother mentioned it to me once when I was complaining about being the only girl in our family. I have five brothers!” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Ha!” Dylan chuckled. “And I thought having two foster–brothers was bad.”

Somehow I didn’t find this at all funny. In fact, my mind was whirling with possibilities. “When did your parents have this other child?” I asked.

Bridget shrugged. “A year or two before I was born.”

I was beginning to get anxious and little impatient. For once Bridget wasn’t going on, adding more information. “And when was that? How old are you?” I asked, feeling like I was prying the information out of her.

“I’m eighteen. My sister would be about twenty. My next older brother, Matthias, is twenty–two and…”

“But I’m twenty!” I said as the excitement mounted inside of me. “You don’t know what they did with the child?” I asked.

Bridget thought about that for a minute, but then shook her head. “I think they went away with her. I know my oldest brother said that they left him in charge of our brothers and went away. That might have been when they went to Wales.”

“To Wales?” Sir Dagonet and I said in unison. Even Dylan’s eyes had gone wide.

“Er, yes,” Bridget said, her eyes shifting among us. “But I’m really not certain. All I know is that they returned more than a month later. Can you imagine, leaving a nine–year–old boy in charge of four younger brothers for over a month? Anyway, I’m sure Thomas could tell you more.”