Keeper of the Dream (7 page)

The boy sighed. “I am called Taliesin, but if you must have my pedigree it would take me all day and night to list it. Would it suffice you to know that the first sight my eyes saw upon my birth was the snow-capped peak of Yr Wyddfa Fawr? I am,” he added with obvious pride, “a bard.”

Arianna was impressed in spite of herself, for Welsh bards were of a chosen few and almost always of noble blood. But she was also suspicious. “Then why do you dress as a Norman squire?”

“Why are you dressed like a kitchen wench?”

Arianna acceded his point. She took his hand and let him help her to her feet. She was only a little dizzy now,
and she was relieved to discover she would not have to throw up after all. “You are a child of Gwynedd then?”

“Did I not just say so?” he snapped irritably. “Now are you coming, or no?”

“Do you know my father? Are you taking me to him? Where are you taking me?”

He rolled his eyes heavenward, muttering something that sounded oddly like
“Goddess, preserve me.”
Then he sighed. “I’m leading you to safety, my lady.”

But at the door he paused, snapped his fingers and muttered a curse before turning back. When he emerged again from the recesses of the vault, he carried the golden mazer. He had the bowl cradled in his hands and for a moment Arianna was sure it pulsed and glowed. But when he pressed it into her hands and she touched the metal it felt cool and ordinary. There was a new dent in the rim, where it had struck the wall.

She glanced at his face. His jet eyes shimmered brightly, then dulled.

“Are you quite ready to leave now, my lady?” he asked, irritated, impatient, as if she had been the one to send him back for the bowl.

He led her up the narrow mural stairs and behind the passage screen that opened into the great hall. She looked with trepidation within, where a great fire burned, and men crowded around the trestle tables, drinking and eating. A jongleur, wearing a gaudily striped tunic, moved among the raucous warriors, strumming a gittern and singing a raunchy song. Arianna was sure the man looked right at them as they passed, but he sounded no alarm and his voice didn’t miss a single note.

They passed through the heavy iron-banded door of the tower. The gate to the shell keep was wedged partly open by a stone, though it was guarded by a pair of spearmen. The men leaned against the wall and passed a cannikin of wine back and forth as they shared a naughty tale about a monk tupping a burgess’s wife. Arianna and the boy
walked practically beneath their noses, but the guards appeared not to see them.

It’s as if they
can’t
see us, Arianna thought, and felt an awe tinged with fear.

A second later, she was smiling over her foolishness when a knight, who climbed toward them up the motte steps, casually nodded his head and called a greeting to the boy. No one had sounded the alarm simply because they all knew Taliesin and trusted that he had the authority to be taking her … wherever he was taking her.

Arianna followed the golden helmet as it descended the timber stairs. She debated the wisdom of placing her own trust in this strange boy. But as promised, he was leading her safely out of the keep. Once free of the castle she could always break away from him; for, in truth, she was more than a little afraid of him. The image of that wraith in the doorway haunted her. He had been like an angel of vengeance, blue fire leaping from his finger to …

But, no,
she
had been the one to knock out the knight, she had struck the man down with the stone quern. The rest had all been only a dream, brought on by the blow to her head.

She studied the slender back that moved in front of her, the thin waist, narrow hips, and lanky legs. He was all too real, a mere boy, and an irritating, cocky one at that. He wasn’t an angel. He was too much like one of her brothers.

They crossed the drawbridge and entered the bailey, and walked into an enshrouding whiteness. Never had Arianna seen mist so thick. It was as if she were looking at the world through a winding sheet. The mist had a strange density to it, but it wasn’t damp. Rather it glimmered and glinted like millions of ice crystals, though it wasn’t cold either, and it glowed as if lit from within. She could hardly see two inches in front of her, yet the boy forged ahead, his long legs covering so much ground that she had to run to keep up with him.

Though Arianna saw no one else, she heard others moving about within the bailey. Sounds echoed around her—the whinny of horses, the curses of men, someone whistling a drinking song. Occasionally she caught the glimpse of a shadow. Yet she had the strangest impression that she and the boy were the only ones enclosed within the impenetrable mist, that just beyond them the sun shone warmly in a blue sky.

They passed through the gatehouse, again without challenge. The mist was less thick here, though tendrils of it curled up from the river bank. The boy picked up his pace after they crossed the drawbridge. Arianna cast a quick glance over her shoulder at the castle. A low-lying, foggy cloud hugged the keep and tower, explaining the origin of the mysterious mist. God’s eyes, but she was starting to let her imagination run away with her.

Taliesin led her at a quick trot down the rutted road toward the town. The gate swung, moaning, on its battered hinges. Within the walls the streets were deserted, for those still left alive had long since fled into the forest. But though empty of people, the way before them was littered with water-logged loaves of bread, ripped tunics, stoved-in buckets, and other things the Normans had thought too useless to steal.

The stink of wet, burnt timber hung in the air. But as they neared the market square, Arianna saw that the narrow wooden shops and houses belonging to the well-to-do burgesses had been spared. The Black Dragon was no fool; the new Lord of Rhuddlan would need the tax revenue produced by the draper, the miller, the saddler, and their ilk.

A squealing pig darted out of an alley, trailing saliva from its snout, and startling Arianna into an embarrassing scream by nearly colliding with her legs. She tried to sidestep out of its way and tripped over a scattered pile of faggots. She would have gone sprawling, except that the boy was suddenly there to catch her. Though he was slender
of build, there was a strength to his grip that was oddly comforting.

“Mind your step,” he said in his mellifluous voice. They were the first words he had spoken since leaving the wine vault.

“Shouldn’t we have set off through the forest?” Arianna asked, her voice betraying her uncertainty.

“Nay. We’d do better to go by boat.”

Arianna nodded. They could sail out the river estuary and up the straits. Within hours they would make landfall in Gwynedd—a trip that would take days traveling overland on foot.

They walked in tense silence the rest of the way to the river wharfs. A grainy powder dusted the gray weathered boards of the dock, flour from the looted mill house nearby. It was eerily silent but for the slap of water against the pilings. Taliesin went immediately to a skiff and began untying the mooring lines. He helped Arianna into the small boat, settling her down in the bow, then climbed in after her. He expertly hoisted the single sail.

Arianna felt a sudden surge as wind filled the canvas. He flashed her a bright smile as he pulled off his beautiful helmet, carelessly tossing it toward the stern. As he adjusted the tiller to allow for the current, the wind caught his long hair, billowing it around his head. It was a bright, orange-red color, like the fur of a fox.

They sailed up the long tidal estuary of the river Clwyd. The land here was flat, sandy beaches and wild marsh grass, stretching to the variegated green sea. Arianna breathed deeply of the heavy, salty air. Shore birds dipped and soared, riding the wind currents, and in spite of all that had happened on this day, she felt suddenly carefree, as if she flew with them.

They slid out the mouth of the estuary and into the open sea. The storm had left the water frothed with while caps. Arianna stood at the bow, looking toward home, enjoying the feel of the sea spray on her face as the skiff
cleaved the waves. Then she heard the sail flap behind her, and the boat heeled suddenly as it took on a new tack. She whipped around, gripped by fury, and fear….

For they sailed now not toward Gwynedd, but England.

The boy was not at the tiller. He was right before her, staring at her with those shimmering jet-black eyes.
Where are you taking me?
she asked, except that she had used no words, for they had only just formed in her mind. But he, it seemed, answered with a thought as well.

Forgive me, my lady,
he said. He pressed a dripping sponge to her lips and nose. Panicked, suffocating, she opened her mouth and sucked in the reeking fumes of the narcotic henbane plant.

It was the last thing she remembered before darkness overwhelmed her.

She smelled bean potage cooking over an open fire, heard laughter and the cheerful lilt of a reed pipe. Arianna opened her eyes. The flame of a brass oil lamp winked back at her.

She stirred, and pain shot up her legs. She lay, she discovered, on a densely packed straw pallet that would have been comfortable if her feet had not been bound to her hands with leather thongs that cut into her flesh. Her mouth felt dry and cottony, as if it were stuffed with a rag. It
was
stuffed with a rag, she realized an instant later; there was a gag across her mouth. She swallowed, and almost retched over a bitter metallic taste, as if she had just bitten down on a sword.

She lifted her head, trying to see her surroundings. She was in a campaign tent sparsely furnished with an iron-studded war chest, a leather coffer, a brazier filled with cold ashes, a padded stool … and something odd—a treelike object made of woven straw and shaped like a man’s upper torso. She stared at it, trying to puzzle out what it was, and then it came to her. It was what a knight would hang his coat of mail on, when he wasn’t armored.

She was trussed up and lying in a knight’s tent. A Norman knight’s tent by the look of it. And as if in confirmation she heard footsteps passing by and the clipped, nasal intonations of French.

Arianna squeezed her eyes shut. She had trusted that wretched, hateful boy, and he had betrayed her by delivering her into the hands of her enemies. Tears trickled out from beneath clenched lids to run down her cheeks, soaking into the gag. She didn’t know why, but the pain of this betrayal made her weep when Ceidro’s death and all that had followed afterward had not.

After a long time she opened her eyes onto the conical canvas roof. Gold-tinted clouds scudded across the smoke hole above her. It felt too early to still be today, so it must already be tomorrow, and she must have slept unconscious through the night. The boy must have bathed her, too, for she was no longer covered with mud. Even her hair had been cleaned and she’d been dressed in a new tunic that didn’t stink of the stables. He had kept her magic mazer for himself though, for it wasn’t with her and she didn’t see it lying about.

Her duty now was to plan an escape, but the task of getting loose from her bindings and making her way through an enemy camp bristling with knights and men-at-arms seemed insurmountable. Besides, she had no idea where she was, for all she knew she could be in the black heart of England itself.

She jerked at the sudden sound of laughter that came from right outside the tent. She caught snatches of words:
king, battle,
and something that sounded like
accursed Welsh bastards.
But then the voices dwindled. Far in the distance a trumpet sounded.

The wind came up, rippling the canvas. The flaps that covered the entrance were tied shut, but there was a gap that let in a welcome breath of fresh air. A lance had been stuck into the ground beside the entrance, its bright iron
point buried deep into the soft earth. The pennon that hung from the shaft stirred in the sudden draft, and Arianna gasped.

It was a black dragon on a bloodred field.

I’m getting too old for this, Raine thought, wincing at the stiffness in his legs as he walked along the banks of the river Dee, searching for his tent.

Deep in his bones, he felt the hours of a night spent in the saddle. But it was more than that, he knew. He had wasted his youth in tournaments and war, hunting and carousing, drinking and wenching, and he was tired of it all.

Tired unto death.

Gaudily colored tents and pavilions were spread in a rainbow array over rolling meadows and among groves of sycamore. They had ridden through the night and most of that morning to arrive here at the main encampment of Henry’s army near Basingwerk Abbey.

The war-horses and pack animals corralled by the river had churned the ground into mud, and Raine had to sidestep around a particularly noisome puddle. The camp sprawled before him. Sergeants and squires bustled to and fro. Strolling minstrels sang love songs, followed by strolling strumpets ready to satisfy the itch inspired by those same songs. Mountebanks and peddlers relieved new recruits of their hard-earned coppers. Shouts of dismay
and triumph mingled with the aroma of simmering soups and potages carried by the breeze from the cooking fires, where men had gathered to drink and gamble at nine-men’s morris and dice.