Shana Abe (39 page)

Burn the room. Show her what she did here, let her feel the terror she gave to so many others.

The chamber was growing lighter, the flames were licking at the walls, at the floor. The smoke swirled heavy and black in clouds up to the ceiling.

Let her hear them. Let her hear them die as I did.

There were echoes of screams coming from beyond the room, horrible screams. War cries, death cries.

Claudia dropped the crossbow. It landed at her feet and was engulfed in flames, gold and blue with silver-green tips, fantasy fire. She stood alone amid it, clutching the useless arrow, staring around her in disbelief.

The goblins stretched tall, streaked with blood and
sweat and blue paint, laughing with their red eyes and gaping, grinning mouths. They carried axes and swords dripping with death. All the shades of red converged, became greater flames, long, bloody arms reaching for the woman in the middle of the room.

“No!” Claudia screamed, one more sound among the many. She brandished the useless arrow in front of her, swinging it in half circles at the air.

“We burned it, Claaa-dia, we burned it for you,” the goblins shrieked. “We killed them for you.…”

Claudia slapped her hands over her ears, dropping the arrow, crying. Underneath all the noise came the thumping of the door being battered down, distant yet steady.

Now remind her of what she will suffer for.

“One gold shilling per head,” chanted the goblins in their foreign tongue, yet it was so clear what they said. “One gold shilling. Per head. Fifty for the baron—”

Claudia sank to her knees, then jumped up again, hysterically slapping out the blue and green flames on her.

“Twenty for the girl.”

“No! No, get away from me—”

“Per head. We took their heads! Burned them. Killed them all. For you, Claaa-dia!”

The screaming was unbearable, the sounds of the tortured, the dying, the helpless. The smoke was choking, foul, smelling of the end of life. Of the end of the world.

Claudia dropped to the floor once more, sobbing, pounding the stone with her hands.

“Vengeance!”
came the screams, dozens of voices, a
hundred, echoing the call of the blood and smoke and the wicked light of the fire.

Avalon came to her feet and ran to where the woman had fallen, still sobbing. She kicked the crossbow away and yanked Claudia up.

“Help me,” Claudia wailed, clutching at her.

Avalon leaned back and slapped her, silencing the sobs.

In that instant, everything—the goblins, the smoke, the licking flames—spiraled away to nothing, killing the dream. The silence rang around them.

“If my husband dies, you die,” Avalon said, cold. “You had better pray now for his life.”

She had left a smeared red handprint on Claudia’s cheek, a stain of Marcus’s blood. It barely registered through her urge to hurry. He was still bleeding, she had no time.…

Without pausing she dragged the woman across the dim room to the badly battered door, calling out for the men to stop, she was opening it.

Stay for me, truelove, don’t die—

Next to her huddled Claudia, emitting small, broken whimpers, back pressed against the wall, still looking wildly around the room.

Avalon managed to lift the warped board from its slat, letting it crash to the floor. The door swept open, a river of men springing through.

“There!” she cried, pointing to Marcus on the floor, almost pushing the wizard toward him in her anxiety.

“A torch,” bellowed the wizard, and men rushed to comply, carrying the flames over their heads.

Claudia let out a fresh wail, cringing, prompting several of the men to turn to her, assessing.

“It was her,” said Avalon to the man nearest her, she couldn’t see who, perhaps Sean. “She did it. Hold her.”

She didn’t wait to see that her order was followed. In the next second she was running to Marcus, the wizard, the other men crouched in a circle, pushing her way through until she could see Marcus clearly.

His eyes were open. He was looking for her, trying to sit up against all the others who were trying to hold him down.

“Marcus,” she said, and had to smile so she wouldn’t cry in front of him. She was so suddenly exhausted that she almost collapsed onto the floor beside him, but that was all right, because he was still alive, and that was all that mattered.

He relaxed when he saw her, going back down to the ground, supported by his men. Avalon took his nearest hand in her own, holding it tightly, trying to maintain her smile even though her eyes were blurring.

The wizard was muttering something under his breath, examining both arrow strikes, his hands clever and deft. Almost everyone was saying something, drowning out each other, putting together the story, though Avalon and Marcus remained locked on each other, ignoring the questions.

In the background, Claudia’s wailing grew louder.

At last Balthazar looked up at Marcus and shook his head with a reluctant grin. “I knew you were a lucky man, Kincardine. But perhaps it is time to give luck a respite. You push the limits of even the most patient.”

Marcus matched his grin, though it was not so strong, and said something to the wizard in that flowing language that went too fast to comprehend.

The wizard laughed, then turned to Avalon.

“Your husband will live, lady. But you will have to loan him a sling. I think the pink would look best on him, don’t you?”

H
e wore a sling of gray, not pink, sturdy wool cut from someone’s tunic, and still he chafed at it, obviously annoyed at the inconvenience of recovering from near death.

The pink sash remained safe at Sauveur, because they would not be leaving to return there for at least another week, in order to give Marcus time to begin healing.

A day, Marcus had countered.

A week, repeated the wizard firmly.

Two weeks, Avalon threw in, just to make clear she was serious about him staying.

They settled on one week, Marcus giving in with much grumbling, but she felt no remorse at his fidgeting. He had been shot twice with a crossbow at relatively close range and yet lived, perhaps a testament to the wizard’s suggestion that luck favored a rogue.

And he did look like a rogue, Avalon admitted to herself, walking alone through her mother’s winter garden. She had awakened early today and watched him sleep for close to two hours in the room that used to be her own, the frosted branches of the old birch tree clearly visible from the window. His hair was long and loose, never releasing the waves of beauty that framed his face. The stubble on his cheeks gave his skin a blue-gray cast, but
the rest of him looked hale, and his breathing was normal. He had no fever.

In the three days that had passed since they arrived at this abandoned place, much had been restored. It was a relief to her, watching Trayleigh reclaim the polish it used to have, though the process was slow and far from finished.

Claudia had lied. Most of the people had not died from her poisoning but had fled, leaving her to her madness. The villagers were steadily returning to their homes; most had not gone far. Elfrieda, in fact, had been the first to arrive at the castle, searching out Avalon to reveal the rest of the tale.

Lady Claudia had been descending slowly into her strange state, prone to fits after her husband died, frightening the serfs. When the new baron arrived, Elfrieda reported, no one had wanted to come to the castle. It had been cursed, it was said, and the woman was a danger to them all. No one even saw the new baron after the second week following the death of his brother. By then Claudia had ordered almost everyone from the castle, from gentry to serfs. That was nine days ago.

Today, Avalon supposed, Claudia would be well into the first day of her journey to London, accompanied by a contingent of soldiers. She had not spoken a coherent word since Avalon opened the battered door to the baron’s chamber, only now and again weeping of fire and devils, strange nonsense that sealed the truth of her madness in the eyes of everyone as surely as anything. Like the wicked faerie, Avalon supposed, Claudia was now locked in her punishment. But instead of sinking
away into the stone of a mountain, Claudia would stay in a tower of stone in London, a lifelong ending to her crimes.

Someday, probably soon, Avalon would have to follow her to that city and give her own account to the king, a careful screening of the events that had taken place in the baron’s chamber. There were many witnesses, thank goodness, who would verify Avalon’s story and Claudia’s madness. But there was time enough to think about that in the future.

Today was bright and fair, warmer here than in Scotland, and her mother’s garden had not yet fully succumbed to the seasonal slumber that was on its way. Stubborn leaves of red and orange and gold clung to branches, echoes of autumn.

Today her husband slept, lost in the woven softness of blankets on a feather bed, looking somehow exactly in place in her old room, she thought. Avalon had chosen that one for him because it was clean, first of all, and also because she didn’t want to linger in the bleakness of the main chamber, even after Warner’s body had been removed, and the whole room had been scrubbed and brightened.

So she had placed her husband in the room where she used to live. There in that corner chamber, with its fine views of the giant birch and the backdrop of piney forest. It was there that she had played, and there that she had dreamed, and there that her life had been happiest. Until she met Marcus.

Perhaps tomorrow she would take him down to see that old birch. Perhaps she would steal a kiss while underneath its great branches.

She had been idly walking down the white stone path, seeking the hidden marble bench she had not had the chance to see the last time she was in this garden. And yet when she found it, somehow she was not surprised to see the man who was supposed to be sleeping sitting there, waiting for her, wrapped in his tartan and a cape, watching her approach with bright eyes.

“Sweet Rosalind,” he greeted her. “You are even more lovely than when I found you here last.”

“You shouldn’t be out yet,” she chided, but her heart wasn’t in it, and he knew it.

“Come over here and I’ll show you how feeble I am,” Marcus invited, teasing.

She smiled at him, stopping just short of where he rested on the bench.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“I feel as if I could sleep a thousand years.”

“Really? Where have I heard that before?”

“Now you’re supposed to tell me I’ve slept enough already, and it’s time for more interesting pastimes. I have one in mind, in fact.”

The cave of honeysuckle surrounding the bench was on this day more of a weaving of golden brown twigs, buried tight among themselves, framing him in dramatic lines. Avalon leaned forward to touch his cheek with her fingertips. He caught her hand there with his own, dragged her fingers down to his lips, his breath warm and welcome.

“Avalon.” He made her name a caress, sending that enraptured thrill streaming up her hand, into her heart. “Sometime soon, truelove, we are going to have to find the day when both of us are uninjured at the same time.”

“That would be nice.”

“Nicer than nice,” he growled, low and wanting, and began to pull her closer to him, down to him, his intent as clear as the blue of his eyes.

Avalon pulled away, shaking her head, smiling again, though it wasn’t easy, and she would rather have allowed him his way. But there was something she needed to say to him, and this was the first peace they had had between them, she thought, since the nightmare ended. Now seemed fitting enough, in this garden, underneath the clean sky.

“We must talk,” she said, gently pulling back her hand.

“Later.” His look was shining warmth.

She gave a little laugh now, fighting the urge to let him win. “You’re not well enough, my lord. And I care for you too much to sap your strength.”

He hesitated, finding her emphasis as she knew he would.

“Do you?” he asked, brilliant and aware, focused only on her. “Care for me?”

She looked down to the pebbled ground, at her clasped hands. It was so difficult for her to say this, even now.

“I’ve been afraid,” she said to her hands. “I didn’t even know how much, until we came here. I’ve spent so much time fighting fear that I didn’t even realize how tightly it held me, how deeply it ran in me. I was a puppet to it, you could say, blind and hapless and controlled.”

“Truelove—” he began, but she wouldn’t let him finish.

“No, please, listen to me now.” She managed to meet his eyes again, and again felt the flooding gratitude that
she could do this, that she could be here and talk to him, her dark angel, this glorious man.

“It was fear that kept me locked out of my own heart, Marcus Kincardine. It was fear that kept me alone and always fighting, always struggling against all that I didn’t understand. I am ashamed of that. I wish it were untrue, but it is so, and I am ashamed.”

He said nothing, but took her hand again and began to pull her down to the bench, and this time she let him, settling beside him underneath the cave of honeysuckle vines before continuing, speaking softly.