Now and for Never (21 page)

As Marcus finished his translation, Clare saw the governor's fist clench on his swagger stick. But then Paulinus turned and nodded tersely to Junius, who double-time marshalled the dozen or so Celts in chains up from the hold onto the deck and across the gangplank onto Mallora's vessel. In return, Mallora told her scathach to help back to Paulinus's vessel any Romans still aboard—there were several, most of them wounded— along with the sailors she'd press-ganged into sailing her ship when they'd first captured it. The exchange was swift and accomplished almost wordlessly. The large vessel now felt practically deserted.

The only legionnaire left on Mallora's ship was Marcus.

Suetonius Paulinus turned to glare expectantly at him.

Marcus shook his head. “I will not join you.”

“That's mutiny, legionnaire.”

“I don't consider it so. My loyalty and service to the Legion ended when Quintus Phoenius Postumus died. At your hand.” He inclined his head. “Sir.”

Paulinus stood rigid for a moment and then shrugged a shoulder. Whatever else he was, the man was a pragmatist. The most he could do was save face.

“Suit yourself,” he said with airy dismissal. “I'll even let you keep those two meddlesome girls as company. That one”—he pointed with his swagger stick across the gap at Clare—“was starting to get on my nerves.”

Clare flipped him an impolite gesture that probably
wouldn't translate. Judging from his expression, Paulinus guessed her meaning all the same.

Morholt, still on the Roman ship—
not
having been invited on board Mallora's vessel—began to sputter and fume. “What about the gold?” he squawked in awkward Latin that swiftly devolved into ranty English. “You can't possibly be thinking of leaving it with them, you Roman dolt! You can't! I need that booty to fix my Bentley! That's my retirement fund! I won't have—”

At the flick of Paulinus's wrist, Junius stepped up behind Morholt and thumped him soundly over the head with the butt of his sword. Morholt's eyes rolled up and he slumped to the deck, out cold. Clare thought it was lucky for him that Junius hadn't thrown him overboard.

“Cut the ropes,” Paulinus ordered his men.

“Wait!” Comorra shouted from below, a tense edge to her voice.

The governor slowly turned back, a calculating gleam in his eye. He waited for Marcus to translate the single word.

“Yes?” he asked politely. “Was there something else?”

“The smith,” Comorra said. “You have a blacksmith on your ship.”

“Have I?” Paulinus did a pretty good job of keeping a poker face.

“I want him, too.”

“Surely one man isn't worth the slaves and gold I've just given up,” Paulinus argued genially. “Or is he? Perhaps I'll let you think about that and we might renegotiate at another time. For now, I am done with this bartering. Cut the ropes!”

“No!” Comorra shouted.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you want him,” Paulinus said coldly. “Therefore
he must be of great value to you. And if I keep him here with me, I reckon there's far less chance you'll set fire to my ship the minute you get what you want.” He turned to Junius again. “Cut the damned ropes. Release their vessel.”

Mallora had gone rigid, her hands white-knuckled on the ship's rail. But she kept silent, avoiding, Clare figured, either undermining Comorra's authority or reinforcing Paulinus's suspicions.

The Roman governor turned his back on Comorra, but then paused and spun back around. “I will not leave. Not yet. We will moor on the far side of those cliffs.” He pointed to the soaring purple rock formations just to the north. “I will not break peace whilst I ponder my next actions, and I expect you won't either. Not if you want your metalworker back, and with all his clever fingers still attached. We both know my ship cannot return the way it came without supplies, or even with them. But do not make the mistake of thinking we are in any way diminished. We are Rome. We are the essence of strength and survival. And the survival of your friend depends on you remembering that.”

15

A
s the governor's ship grew smaller in the distance, Mallora ordered the landing skiffs lowered into the water on the port side. (At least, Clare thought it was the port side. Why didn't sailors just call things “left” and “right” like every other normal human on the planet?) With impressive efficiency, Mallora had the slave chains struck from the group of silent, stoic Celts. They, in turn, hauled the Druiddyn treasure up out of the hold and lowered it into one of the larger rowboats to be taken to the island.

Clare, Al, and Marcus followed in another boat.

“They're pretty freaked out that Llassar is still prisoner,” Clare murmured as the wiry Celt who guided the little craft pulled easily at the oars.

“I know.” Al tugged Mallora's feathered cloak closer around her shoulders. “I'm not sure I get it. I mean, don't get me wrong, he's a really nice guy and totally worth rescuing, but Mallora looked like she was about to blow a gasket. She doesn't strike me as the type to care deeply about others. She didn't even bat an eye when Junius clocked Morholt. And he's … y'know. Her baby d—”

“Don't!” Clare clapped her hands over her ears. “Don't say it.”

“Those two seem to have something of a … complicated relationship,” Marcus said, his lip quirking upward in a
bemused grimace. “Her connection to Llassar is much simpler, I think. He's clearly important to her. To all the Celts, I've noticed. They treat him with such respect that Paulinus would have had to be obtuse not to have seen it. And it makes sense if you think about it. The ancients revered their smiths almost as gods. Men who knew the secrets to taking lumps of rock and transforming them into metal, fashioning weapons and tools and precious things? It was like a kind of magic. Only, with your guy Llassar, it sounds as though he's taken that one step further.”

“At least one,” Clare said. “More like one thousand. Llassar's the real deal. And he's something more than even your average magical Druid smith. He and Connal both.”

“Who's Connal?”

Clare gave Marcus a potted summary of her earlier encounter with the young Druid prince. That she managed to do so without an inordinate amount of stammering and blushing spoke of newfound depths of self-control.

“Llassar's the one who taught Connal blood magic,” she concluded. “Just as he taught Boudicca and, I'm guessing, Mallora.”

“And you're sure that was Connal in the longboat with Comorra?” Al asked.

Clare nodded and said dryly, “Pretty sure.”

The thought of seeing Connal again had awoken a strange, sparkly-winged butterfly in the pit of her stomach. Which was unexpected and kind of disconcerting. He had, after all, tried to violently oust Milo's soul from his body so that he could take over and be with Clare forever. Sure, it had been in a fit of madness prompted by the death and destruction of all he held dear, but seriously. Even now Clare could almost feel Milo's Connal-possessed lips on hers and the searing heat of his kiss.

Aaaand … so much for my newfound depths of self-control.

She shook her head and reached over the side of the launch to splash icy-cold seawater on her suddenly burning cheeks. Sometimes it was hard to remember that
that
Connal didn't actually exist in this timeline. Because Clare had gone back and fixed things. She'd found the handsome fiery prince in time to help him save the beautiful fiery princess, and together he and Comorra had ridden off into, Clare had always assumed, a picturesque fiery sunset together. How on earth they'd wound up on this strange island in the middle of nowhere, Clare had no idea.

She was about to find out.

The flat bottom of the landing skiff grated along the narrow strip of beach beneath the island's cliff face. Just beyond an outcropping was a series of cave mouths, camouflaged by the rocks' striations and contours. A steep pathway, little more than hand- and footholds carved in the stone, led to the top of the bluffs. The beach showed evidence of occupation, but not, Clare thought, permanent habitation. This was, she figured, a sort of base camp.

Al stepped out of the boat with the help of Marcus's steadying hands and Clare scrambled out after her, silently cursing her own lack of manly-man support. Her legs felt like overcooked spaghetti after all that time on the high seas. The sudden appearance of Connal running down the beach to wrap her in a rib-cracking embrace didn't help matters.

“Clarinet!” he exclaimed into her hair. “Well met, my dear friend!”

Well, there's your manly-man support. Hoo boy ….

When he set her back down on her feet she was gasping for air, and probably flushed and bulgy-eyed, too. Al's snort of amusement pretty much confirmed it. Clare looked up into Connal's face, at once so familiar and so unexpected, reacquainting herself with his green eyes and windblown auburn hair and chiselled features. She realized, after a
long moment, that she was staring and had yet to return his greeting.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Hi! Hey, I mean. Um. Hello …”

He grinned, obviously enjoying her discombobulation.

“Connal … wow. Um. Long time no see! Literally. Y'know. The ‘time' thing …”

You're an idiot. A babbling idiot.

“So … um …” She winced inwardly. “How've you been?”

“Well. Free. Alive …” His grin turned into that slow, inscrutable smile of his. “I have you to thank for that, Clarinet. We both do.” He turned to glance over his shoulder at where Comorra was directing the unloading of the skiff carrying the treasure. The bags of loot disappeared one by one into a narrow cave opening—barely more than a fissure in the stone.

“Oh, hey. No biggie.” Clare kicked at the beach sand with one toe.

The handsome Druid put a hand up to gently touch her face. Only for a moment, though. “Welcome to Ynysoedd Bendigedig,” he said and grinned in a way that had always flipped Clare's stomach. Then he turned to extend the greeting to Al and Marcus. “Welcome, all of you.”

Clare's brain somersaulted through the mystic linguistics to translate
“Ynysoedd Bendigedig”
as
“the Blessed Isles,”
but it still didn't do a whole lot to clarify things. “And that would be where, exactly?”

Connal shrugged. “West. The Druiddyn have been travelling to this place for a very long time. The most accomplished, the highest ranking among the Druiddyn, would come here to learn certain magics from the guardians of this place. Others made the journey when they were ready to leave the world of men.”

“Ooh,” Al breathed. “It's like the elves in
Lord of the Rings,
going into the West …”

Connal shook his head. “I don't know what that means.”

Clare shot Al a look.

“Sorry.” Al grimaced. “Switching Geek Mode to ‘silent.'”

“
I
understood,” Marcus murmured.

“Yeah?” Clare raised an eyebrow at him. “
You
probably speak elf.”

“Elv
ish,
” Marcus corrected. “And yes. I do.”

“Wow. Seriously.”

“What? I was easily bored as a child. I read a lot of Tolkien. He invented a language. I learned it.”

Al gazed at him as if he were some kind of demigod descending from Mount Nerd.

“Elvish has left the building,” Clare muttered.

“Hey!”Al admonished. “No punning, remember?”

Clare turned back to Connal, who'd been standing patiently by. “Sorry,” she said. “Go on, Connal. You were saying? This place …?”

“It is sacred. A place of power. Of magic and ritual. Like Ynys Wyddryn back home.”

“Right.” Clare nodded. Ynys Wyddryn. Glastonbury Tor. Not necessarily a comforting thought, considering everything she and Al had experienced on that hill.

“When Comorra and I fled into the west after the Roman decimation of the Iceni, we sought out the High Druidess Mallora, herself displaced after the siege of Mona. We tried to convince her to come with us into the mountains to seek refuge with my tribe, the Dyfnient. She told us to go even farther west, and taught me how. Mallora had been brought here by Llassar the Druid smith when she was younger, and knew this place could be a haven for us. The Romans, she said, would not leave
our
land any time soon.”

“She had a valid point.”

He looked at Clare with those ridiculously green eyes and she saw the shadow of a memory floating behind them. “You had once told me something similar,” he said. “We gathered
as many of the Iceni and Dyfnient as would come with us, and borrowed—stole, really—a longboat from some northern traders. Mallora taught me how to use blood magic to open a path across the water, and along with as many of the small boats we could muster and as many of our folk as would sail in them, we came here.”