Fortress of Mist (2 page)

The woman who had blurted those words before dying now stood before him, holding a candle, speaking his name.

Impossible.

His tongue felt fat and sandy in his mouth. “Who are you?”

“You know.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“You know who I am. I am your Isabelle.”

His head was clearing, and as it did, an idea came. He had known very little about the young woman who had beguiled him on the journey to conquering Magnus. While it didn’t explain how the woman in front of him had made it past the soldiers outside his bedchamber, perhaps there was an explanation for why it appeared Isabelle was now alive.

“Tell me too,” Thomas said, “about the time I fell into a stream and you helped me out of the water. How did I thank you for it?”

“On our journey to Magnus from the gallows?”

Thomas nodded and tried to lean forward. She was about to fail his test. He was certain. There could be no explanation other than she was a fraud. Surely this was Isabelle’s secret twin sister, trying to deceive him.

She smiled. “Your memory fails you,” she said. “It was not you, but I who fell into the stream.”

No, his memory had not failed him. He could still picture her clearly, how she looked after he had pulled her from the water, how their eyes had met with much unspoken between them.

“So you did not thank me,” she said, her voice hypnotic and low. “I thanked you. I kissed the tips of my fingers, like this.” She lifted her hand to her mouth. “And then I touched them to your mouth, like this.” She softly brushed her fingers across his lips, sending a jolt of
warmth and awareness through the foggy weight that held him. “I remember clearly, because it was the first time I realized that I could pledge my heart to you.”

Only Isabelle could have known about that quiet moment at the stream, and it was beyond likelihood that she would have reason to share it, even with her twin.

Which meant there was no twin.

Which meant the woman in front of him truly must be Isabelle.

Y
ou are dead,” Thomas told the woman with the candle.

He felt the first shiver of fear. This seemed too real to be a dream, yet he hardly dared trust his senses.

Only an apparition could have entered this heavily guarded room with its solid stone walls in the upper reaches of the castle. Only an apparition could explain that which he saw in front of him.

But could a ghost hold a solid object like a candle? Or could the candle, too, be part of the figment?

“Come closer,” Thomas said. “Let me hold your hand.”

If this specter meant him harm, it would have done so while he slept. If she was of flesh and bone, he would learn the truth as soon as he could grab hold. Then he would call for his soldiers.

“I will keep my distance,” Isabelle said. “My heart is yours, but trust for you is another matter. I believe you were about to have me arrested when I made my confession to you. Before …”

“Before what?”

“You know as well as I do. Before Geoffrey rushed in and clubbed me.”

“I will say it then. You died in my arms.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Then you cannot be you.” The words sounded foolish in his own ears, yet what else could he say? The dead did not rise to live again.

“You see me standing in front of you and know who I am. Isabelle. Daughter of Lord Richard Mewburn, the lord of this castle until you conquered it.”

“Reclaimed it,” Thomas said. “He destroyed my family to take it from them and left me an orphan.”

“I cannot change the past. The future depends on the choices you will make as the new lord.”

Her earlier words echoed in his mind.
“Haven’t you wondered why this castle is set so securely, so far away from the outer world? Why would anyone bother attacking a village here? Yet an impenetrable castle was founded. And by no less a wizard than Merlin.”

“You had been ready to tell me more of Magnus. How it was founded, why it is so secure and isolated, and why the king of England puts no direct authority upon it. You have these answers?”

“Yes,” she said. “But I will not give them to you. Not yet.”

He wanted to leap from his bed and hold her and shake the answers loose. But his body would not obey him. It felt as though he were bound by an invisible rope.

“Then when?” he asked.

“Soon, you will be given a chance to show allegiance to the symbol.”

“Symbol?”

“Don’t pretend ignorance, Thomas. It doesn’t suit you.” She reached inside her cloak and lifted the medallion with the peculiar cross. “You see that I am here. You must believe how much power we have. Join us.” She knelt beside his bed, her face close to his. “You and I. Together. We can have it all. We can be the next generation.”

Much of what Isabelle said reflected what his own mother had told him all through his childhood. Yet he quickly pushed the thought
away. He would not accept that Isabelle and his mother were part of the same mysterious alliance.

“If you know the answers, begin there,” Thomas said. “Then I’ll decide.”

“I am here, in front of you, alive. Isn’t that enough? Doesn’t that show you the power we have?”

“How would I show allegiance? What will be asked of me?”

“You have something we want.”

“Tell me what it is you think I have,” he said.

“Don’t play childish games. Deliver it, and this kingdom will never be taken from you. Withhold it, and it shall surely be taken away.”

His secret library. Books of knowledge, unknown to most of the world. Used correctly, this knowledge was like wizardry. But how could she know that he possessed them?

She rose. “Join us. Join me.”

“Not without answers.”

“You cannot be given the answers until your allegiance is certain. It was no different for me. Once I showed my loyalty, I was given all.”

“Guards!” Thomas croaked. He found his voice and shouted louder. “Guards!”

Both heard the lifting of the outside latch of the door.

Isabelle frowned, and Thomas could not tell if it conveyed anger or sadness. “You disappoint me.” Isabelle flung her arm, and the bedchamber seemed to explode into sunlight. He closed his eyes against the unexpected brightness. When he opened them again, it was dark.

The guards finally opened the door, carrying torches that again filled the bedchamber with light. Traces of smoke drifted through the air, but Isabelle was gone.

In one of the castle’s prison cells, far below Thomas’s bedchamber, Geoffrey, the village candle maker, gorged himself on cold chicken.

Isabelle had to suppress her urge to vomit. How could he eat in such a disgusting setting? But the small man had always been given to filth—in appearance and habit and thoughts. The squalor of life in the prison cell had only worsened his usual foulness to a point where she could barely breathe. He belched and reached for a goblet of mead to wash down the chicken, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

“His answer?” he asked Isabelle. The flame of a small candle enclosed them in a globe of soft light, and she hated the intimacy here as much as she’d enjoyed it earlier with Thomas.

“He called for his guards.”

Geoffrey gave her a smug grin. “He refused you. Again. It must be humiliating to learn that your charms won’t turn every head.”

Isabelle wished—and not for the first time—that she had been the one to club Geoffrey across his bald head, instead of receiving the blow from him.

As much as it galled her, Geoffrey was a shrewd man and a discerning judge of human nature. He seemed to especially enjoy her humiliation. She had not expected to find herself yearning for Thomas, and it had taken her awhile to recognize the sensation of want. Nothing before had been withheld from her in her privileged life as daughter of the previous lord of Magnus.

Indeed, a half hour earlier, in the chamber near the top of the castle while she had been waiting for an answer from Thomas, she had found herself nearly trembling and giddy with anticipation. After a lifetime of being indulged in every whim, when she had wanted one thing more
than anything else, it had been denied to her. She could appreciate the irony.

“Shall we simply arrange to have Thomas murdered?” Geoffrey asked. “Would that be a balm to your wounded pride?”

“It is not your decision or mine.”

“Interesting,” Geoffrey said. She felt as if he were a cat and she an injured mouse in his paws. “I thought that once you were spurned, you would want to see him dead.”

“We have been taught, have we not, to set our emotions aside for the greater good of our cause?”

The answer was deflective, of course, and she saw by the widening of his smug grin that Geoffrey understood.

“After all,” she continued, “when I told my father I would hang myself if he gave you my hand in secret marriage, you set aside your own humiliation and continued to serve him.”

Geoffrey’s grin became savage, and for a moment, she wondered if he would leap forward. Truth be told, she hoped for it. She never met with him unless she had a dagger ready and hidden in her sleeve, tipped with poison. If she killed Geoffrey here and now to protect herself, the others of the symbol would understand.

With a visible effort, Geoffrey calmed himself. “Yes,” he said. “We both must serve.” Then came his turn to lash out. “A shame I needed to nearly kill you for you to learn to reveal nothing about us to the world.”

Yes, Isabelle had been on the verge of telling Thomas too much. She didn’t know then what she knew now. Of the listening posts hidden in the walls. Of the vastness of the power belonging to those she now served. Of the boundless rewards that came with that power.

“Such a man of sacrifice too,” she countered. “Providing the lesson and paying the price for it in prison.”

They both knew that Geoffrey could escape at any time. All he had to do was leave the same way that Isabelle would leave with the chicken bones and goblet she had delivered. Those of the symbol knew all the secret passages in the castle. But their enemies knew the passages too.

“When the kingdom is returned to us,” he snarled, “you will regret your impertinence. And now that you understand who we are—who I am—I doubt you will choose a rope over my bed next time.”

Isabelle fought an outward show of revulsion. “Thomas will choose us. He will choose me.” And in so choosing, she would have Thomas for a husband, not this repulsive beast in front of her.

Geoffrey snorted. “This is a man still searching his kingdom for that hideous, worthless freak.”

They both knew that Geoffrey meant a girl who had been his servant, whose face had been destroyed by a fire. Katherine. The one, they suspected, who had helped Thomas in his most crucial moment of danger to conquer Magnus.

Isabelle shrugged. “She is of no consequence.” Yet her emotions roiled within her. Thomas could have Isabelle at any time, yet the one he sought was a mere beggar with a face too gruesome to be seen. It was because of loyalty, of course, not desire. But still, she hated that another woman should claim any part of Thomas’s attention.

“This is a man who lets a sense of justice rule him,” Geoffrey said. “Men such as this are dangerous. And we have learned the only way to stop them is to destroy them.”