The Penwyth Curse (11 page)

11

Sometime Else

H
E AWOKE SLOWLY TO A
still and heavy darkness, a darkness that blanketed him, that held him snug within it. He didn't want to open his eyes, he really didn't, but finally, slowly, he did, and saw that the darkness was more pervasive than he'd imagined. Nothing but darkness, all around him, and surely that was beyond odd. He felt the weight of it all the way to his soul—solid, heavy. It was hard to breathe. He knew, somehow, that if he didn't move, he would soon have that darkness inside him. But he didn't move just yet; he sucked in what air he could.

Something was very strange here.

He rolled over. He'd been lying outside, asleep and alone, and there were no stars overhead, nothing but this thick blackness. He heard a man's voice, close and coming closer. By all the gods, an enemy was nearby—it had to be Mawdoor. Somehow Mawdoor had brought him here and surrounded him with this darkness. But how?

Had he been unconscious, not sleeping? How was that
possible? He drew a deep breath. If it was Mawdoor lurking close by, then so be it. Both knew there would someday be a reckoning between them. Would it be now? He called out, his own voice scratchy as a rusted blade—and that startled him—“Who goes there?”

A man was suddenly standing over him, looking down at him, speaking. He nearly pitched over, he was so startled. By all the ancient gods, it wasn't Mawdoor, it was rheumy old Callas in his dirty robe, his scraggly gray beard hanging in tangles to his sunken groin. Wretched-looking old relic.

Not Mawdoor, thank the gods. He felt appallingly weak, as if his wits were scattered like the stars behind that black, black sky.

Then he remembered, but it was a memory that didn't make any sense. He remembered that he'd finally found Brecia's sacred oak forest, had known to his marrow that it was hers. He'd felt it, let the knowledge seep into him, and he'd been more pleased than ever before in his life. He also knew he would search that dark forest until he dropped dead from exhaustion or she somehow managed to smite him down. Aye, he would search until he found her, the damned witch.

And now here was Callas, one of her ancient priests, outside the forest, standing over him. This was interesting indeed.

Why was he lying here on the ground? Had he been somehow caught in a dream, its images woven around him, freezing his brain? It was odd, these residual feelings snaking through him. He felt himself, knew that it was indeed himself, and yet—and yet, there also seemed to be the shadow of another, close by, nay, even deep inside him—but no, it was gone. No, no, he was only himself, none other. That sort of thinking was madness. All of it was enough to make a man's head pound off his neck.

Callas laughed, deep and thick with pleasure, waving his gnarly old stick around.

He cocked his eyebrow at the old sot, came up to a sitting position and wrapped his arms around his knees.

“Are you comfortable now, prince? Sitting there on the ground, so alone I can hear your heart beat. So what say you, you damnable black wizard who claims to know everything? I saw you lying on your back, helpless as a wingless sparrow. Did some being greater than you dash you down? Was it Mawdoor? You know that Mawdoor lives near. Did he bring you here?”

The prince watched Callas laugh again, louder this time, meanness and triumph heavy and hard in that ancient laugh of his.

Slowly, he unclasped his hands and got to his feet. He shook himself, frowned. No one had bound him, no, nothing like that. He'd simply been lying on the ground on his back. And now he was awake, Callas standing over him. He'd been vulnerable. If Callas weren't such a gutless coward, he just might have been dead.

Or perhaps he'd fallen asleep and this was a dream spun out of another wizard's spells and heaped upon his head. Maybe it was one of Mawdoor's dreams. The prince still felt the echo of another's presence. But no matter. Mawdoor wasn't here, old Callas was.

Callas hadn't carved out his heart, and now the prince wouldn't allow him to.

“What is this, prince? You won't claim to strike me down? You're as silent as that stone beside your left foot.”

The prince leaned back against a spear of stone, one of a small circle of stones that soared some eight feet into the air and had probably stood here since just after time started up. He looked insolent and languid, and said, his voice calm and deep as the night darkness surrounding them, “Why would I strike you down, old man? You are nothing to me. You are barely a speck of dirt on the bottom of my foot, a runny blister on the butt of an ass.”

Callas drew himself up as straight as he could. “I do not like the sound of either of those things. Listen, prince. I am Brecia's first counsel. You knew of me through your
mother's heart before you were born, you knew me since the moment that small boy wove his first spell. But look at you now. Standing against one of the Divas so you won't fall over—ah, you cannot harm me, aye, one of the ghosts just felt it to me. Aye, you're helpless, just leaning against that damned heathen stone, all alone, your power sucked dead as a hollow reed.”

“Have you been drinking too much earth wine, you old buzzard? You think I'm helpless? I could turn you into a red-tongued toadstool like this—” The prince snapped his fingers, and Callas jumped a foot off the ground and yelled.

“Be quiet, Callas.”

The old man was panting. The prince started to tell him that he preferred him the way he was—old and gnarly—when suddenly he felt something strange hovering just at the edge of his vision. If he turned his head quickly, he knew he would see something, someone. He turned. There was nothing, of course. He nodded. He understood now. That strange something was a leftover dream from the last full moon, when he'd meted out punishment to the wretched mortal cowards who'd sought to kill a witch they'd found, unconscious from her own potion. The prince shook his head, let it go.

He had a witch of his own to find. She'd escaped him, but he'd hunted her down, exactly how he wasn't certain at this moment, but it didn't matter. He would worry about all of it later. He knew in his wizard's bones that Brecia was somewhere in that sacred oak forest, knew she had to be—it was, after all, her forest.

He continued to ignore Callas. The ancient collection of beard and bones wasn't panting anymore, nor did he seem at all anxious to open his black-lined mouth.

It occurred to him suddenly that of course Callas was afraid of him. He had every reason to be. The prince was one of the greatest wizards of all time. The old man was an idiot, but he wasn't stupid.

The prince walked to Callas, towered over him, then
stepped closer, nearly to his nose so he could intimidate him even more. Aye, let the old man's teeth chatter, although he had so few left there wouldn't be much sound to it.

The prince lightly touched his fingers to Callas's mouth, skimming the flesh, the beard tickling his fingers. “Did you bring other priests with you, Callas? Are they awaiting your signal to attack me? It doesn't matter if there are ten, nay, even a hundred ancient graybeards, even a hundred of your ghosts. I will cut off their heads, weave their dirty beards into leads for my dogs. Or I will turn them into black rocks to be pounded by the waves for all time. What do you think, Callas?”

“I think that something is wrong, prince. Just look at you. You pretend to arrogance, yet there is something strange going on here, something I don't understand. Do you?

“No, prince, don't threaten me. I mean you no harm. Aye, just look at you—you look more dangerous than your father looked when he blew the tide into that pitiful town called Londinium that lies toward the east.”

“My father is rarely capricious. A mob was stoning an old man, someone accused of witchcraft. He stopped it.”

“Why didn't your father simply smite them all?”

The prince shrugged. “He was trying to keep his temper, and he began blowing out to calm himself. Instead, his breath became a mighty gale, washing the water over all the land.”

“Aye, and that old man he saved drowned like the rest of the mob. Like your father, you would rather slice a man into two parts with your sword than simply lock your fingers together and turn him into acrid blue smoke or a tarantula.”

The prince stroked his chin. “Hmmm, I haven't thought of spiders in a long time. Now, you are here alone, are you not, Callas?”

“As you see, prince, as you see.”

“Why?”

Callas cocked his old head at that question, he frowned,
he pulled on his beard, but in the end he just shook his head. “I don't remember. This is all very strange. Don't you believe it's stranger than a ghost who wishes to copulate with a mortal?”

“Aye, everything is passing strange.” So neither of them knew how he'd gotten here.

The prince said, “I will not kill you. That is not why I am here. This is Brecia's oak forest, isn't it?”

“No, it is not. You must leave, prince.”

The prince raised a dark eyebrow at him. “Leave? I don't think so. I will tell you the truth, Callas. I have looked and looked but could never see where Brecia was. She is good at concealment, I admit it. But now I am here, how I don't exactly know, but this is the very edge of her oak forest. I feel it to the very core of my being. Now I finally realize why you are here, Callas. You are here to guide me into her fortress. The gods sent you here, just as they sent me. It is time, and Brecia knows it.”

His heart began to pound. Soon he would see Brecia. It had been too long since that first time they'd stood beneath a sarsen stone lintel at the vast sacred stone circle.

“You weave a silly tale. Why would Brecia want to see you, prince? You're a black wizard. You want to own her, control her.”

“Only that?”

“Listen to me, you black prince of Balanth. Brecia is the soul of the body. If she is taken, coerced, controlled, then she will die, then we all die.”

“You think that is true, Callas? That this is what I want?”

The old priest snarled like a cornered wolf. “That's what she thinks. She came to realize that you lied to her, that you were not to be trusted. She found out that after you saw her at the sacred stone circle, after you told her you wanted her above all others, you disappeared and you took that witch from across the sea as your wife.”

The prince shrugged. “I did not lie, not really. The fact is, I had no choice but to wed Lillian. I did not even know
of it until my parents and the council told me. It was my duty.” He paused a moment, felt a quivering of regret in the silent air. “Lillian died birthing my child.”

“How is such a thing possible?”

“She was flying at the time. I told her not to, that it was too close to her time, but she must always do the opposite of what I counseled her to do. At least the representatives of the Spanish Karelia agreed to keep to our treaty, since her death was a natural thing and not my fault.”

“Did you tell them what you told me? That she disobeyed you?”

“No, I did not.”

Callas shook his head. “They would have kept the treaty anyway. They knew what your family could do—you would commit random acts of wizardry that would explode their innards.”

The prince smiled. “Mayhap. But the Spanish Karelia are a powerful lot, not easy to discount. The treaty serves all, keeps all passions at a simmer. Now, enough talk, old man. I wish to see Brecia. I will walk with you or I will kill you and go by myself. You may decide.”

Suddenly the prince had that sensation again—someone, something, just to his side, perhaps a bit behind him, just beyond what he could touch and hear and see. He turned quickly, but there was nothing, no one there. Had something happened whilst he was asleep? He controlled the strange feelings, furious with himself for allowing them to overwhelm him for even a moment.

“I will take you, prince, but I don't wish to. We will see what Brecia decides to do with you.”

The prince's eyebrow shot up. “
What she will do with me?
Come now, Callas. You're here to take me to her. Or did you intend to try to kill me whilst I slept?”

The old man shook his head back and forth. No, Callas was more likely to wave his priest's stick at some poor ass and turn him into a roach or a dung beetle. He looked like all his brethren, thin, hollow-chested, wrapped in a
dirty white wool robe tied with a frayed rope that was as old as he was. His sandals were held to his bony feet with thin strips of leather. For as long as the prince could remember, Callas had worn these same clothes, or ones just as dirty. He wondered if when a priest departed the mortal plane, he left his robe for a younger priest. Mayhap this robe was as old as the forest itself.