The three of them made a changeless tableau—Martin stretched on his litter, looking like a dead god with his fair hair all tousled and his wounded arms thrown out; Madlyn with her simples and her visible fear that her skills would not suffice; Wren—
Sparrow’s heart faltered within him as he observed her. She glowed. The same light he had seen around her in the forecourt at Nottingham now surrounded her and burned steadily, extending to and fully enfolding Martin.
Ah, so that was what love looked like to eyes that could see it. And Sparrow, linked closely to the two of them as he was, could see.
By the god’s horns, how could he be so selfish as to mind? But he did—he did, for he loved her with a depth that terrified him. It surpassed the mere physical, though that did not keep him from aching for her moment after moment. He longed for her touch even in passing, and suffered from being deprived of it. He perished for the taste of her. It might have been better had he never known her at all.
No, not that. He cherished every memory of what they had shared together, alone in the forest—that which he feared he might never know again. For he could not rid himself of the belief that Wren had now given herself, in some inexplicable, incomprehensible way, to Martin instead.
But she chose me
, he whined to himself piteously, yet again. Could it happen? Could Wren choose him and then change her heart? Could it be changed by Martin’s need?
Disgusted with himself, he spun on his heel and nearly collided with Sally, who stood at his elbow.
“What is it, love?” As if he need ask. Sally’s grief and desperation nearly matched his own.
“Sparrow, I think I should tell him.”
“Eh?” Fully distracted, Sparrow did not at once grasp her meaning.
“I wish to tell Martin I carry his child. He should know, in case—” Sally’s throat spasmed and her voice died.
“Lass, I do not know that he can hear you, or will understand. He is far beyond our reach.” But not beyond Wren’s—for she held him fast. Kindly, he added to Sally, “And just as well. It shelters him from some of the pain.”
And such pain it must be. Sparrow’s very spirit flinched from it. He had to admit only Martin’s great strength could so endure.
Two more tears coursed down Sally’s face. “Will he die, Sparrow?”
“Not if Wren has aught to say about it.”
Sally gazed at the group of three. Sparrow wondered if she could sense what he felt, if she minded, but then she burst, “I would do anything for her—anything—could she but save him.”
And there, Sparrow thought, was love at its finest—no selfish emotion. He caught Sally’s hand. “Come.”
They approached the threesome quietly. Wren glanced up, and Sparrow felt her attention slide over him and away again.
“How fares he?” Sparrow addressed Madlyn instead of Wren.
New, deep lines furrowed Madlyn’s face. She looked exhausted. “He weakens.” She waved her hands helplessly. “So many wounds.”
“He will endure, Mother—you know how strong he is.”
Madlyn’s head drooped, her only reply.
Sparrow spoke. “Might we have a moment alone with him, Sally and I?”
Wren’s head lifted sharply. Her nostrils flared, and her fingers, clasped around Martin’s, turned white. “Why?” Her voice sounded rough, that of a defensive she-wolf.
Mine
, it said.
Sparrow summoned a painful smile. “We would give him something to live for.” A child was that, at least to Sparrow’s mind. What would he not give for one of his own? If the news could reach Martin—
Wren’s eyes narrowed with caution. “I do not know that he will hear anything you say. I have been calling him. It becomes more difficult.” She considered Sally, and her demeanor softened almost imperceptibly. “But if you think you can tell him aught that will help—”
Sally sank to her knees beside Martin, and Wren surrendered Martin’s hand to her. Sally would not have her moment alone, but it seemed she cared little for any listening ears.
“Oh, my love, my dear love,” she began. “Can you ever forgive me? This is my fault, all of it. You went seeking revenge because of what I said, the lie I told.”
Wren’s face once more tightened. Sparrow ached to touch her but dared not—she, like Sally, fought hard for control.
Sally’s agony continued to pour off her. “Perhaps I do not deserve your forgiveness. But should my lie cost your life, should you pass from this world, you need to go knowing the truth: I do not carry Lambert’s child. He never waylaid me nor touched me. That was a tale I told. My child is yours, my love—yours.”
She collapsed in tears, Martin’s hand clutched to her cheek.
Sparrow felt Wren recoil from the display. She got to her feet and stepped to his side. Her eyes, merciless as those of a hawk, raked his face. “She blames herself, but this is your fault as much as hers. You knew the truth, Sparrow. You knew, and yet you let him go seeking his revenge. You could have kept him from spending himself for a lie.”
Sparrow sucked in a breath and winced as if she had slapped him. “No one in this world can keep Martin from spending himself, once his mind is set.”
Her eyes narrowed, “Yet you could have said—”
“No.” Sparrow clenched his jaw. “The secret was not mine. Had it been, I say to you again, it would surely have been told. But not even my feelings for you, Wren, will make me break my word given in good faith.”
Her brows flew up and her look cooled still further. “So, for the sake of a foolish girl’s secret, you have risked everything.”
“No, Wren—for the sake of my honor.”
“Your honor?” she burst. “And what is that, if we lose him? What happens to the cause, if the circle shatters? You might at least have confided in me. I thought we shared everything.”
“As did I.” His gaze touched Martin. “But I perceive I was wrong.” He moved to turn away, and Wren seized his shoulder, her touch far from gentle. He had longed so for her to touch him, even a simple brush of her hand, but now the contact only served to emphasize the distance between them.
“What do you mean by that?”
Sparrow stared at her, mute. A muscle jumped in his cheek.
Her eyes widened suddenly. “You do not begrudge my time with him? He lies dying!”
The hard honesty inside Sparrow made him reply, “I begrudge not your time nor even your caring. But I saw—felt—what happened between the two of you at Nottingham—”
“What? I upheld him. I sustained him!”
“You love him.” Sparrow was ashamed of the words that followed but could no more hold them than stop his breath. “More than me?”
She, in turn, looked as if he had struck her. She actually reared back, and her hand fell from his shoulder. He saw the thoughts move in her beautiful eyes: doubt, anger, scorn.
She seethed. “I was not aware that we meted out amounts of love the way Lil once measured her simples. And I did not know I had lain with a mere boy. I thought you a man full grown, wise and deep of spirit.”
Sparrow felt her barb enter him, an arrow to the heart.
“Is this, then, your love?” she challenged. “This narrow, ugly, and spiteful thing?”
Sparrow’s throat worked before he spoke. Never had he been accused of selfishness. All the years of his growing, he had been the giver who considered the feelings of others, even while Martin did as he chose without regard. Aye, he felt jealousy now, but for Wren to denounce him for it went beyond bearing. Hoarsely, he said, “You do not understand.”
“You are right. I do not.”
“I need you.”
Her eyes flashed. “
He
needs me. Be gone from my sight.”
“By the god’s mercy, Wren, do not ask that.”
“I do not want to look at you—I cannot bear it.”
Sparrow shrank into himself as her disdain found its deeper mark. He stood, frozen, as she began to turn away from him, back toward Martin. Only then did he call, not with his voice but with his mind,
Wren, I love you.
She made no reply.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“I fear we are being trailed,” Sparrow told Rennie, a new, guarded expression on his face. “I think we need to break camp and move on once more.”
“Who could follow us, here? Who would have the ability?” Rennie asked. Exhausted to the bone, she could barely face the prospect of picking up and pushing on.
Sparrow swept her with one intense glance before looking away again, and his emotions assaulted her: hurt, grief, and need as great as her own. She ached from the rift between them. It yawned inside her, a deep gulf she had no idea how to fill. These many days past, while they fled ever deeper into Sherwood, she had poured so much strength into Martin, trying to keep him alive; she feared she had very little left for enduring her own agony.
“I hoped we might linger here a while. It is unwise to keep moving Martin. He burns with fever.” Wearily, she added, “Perhaps you are mistaken.”
“Perhaps.” But Sparrow did not sound uncertain. He hesitated and then said, “It is possible Lambert has intercepted one of the other parties that lit out from camp when we did. Micah or Trent would have the skill to track us. Or one of the woodsmen from Oakham—”
Rennie struggled to think; her mind moved as slowly as a spoon through treacle. “Surely none of them would betray us.”
“Who knows what a man may do under threat of torture to himself or to those he loves?”
Rennie rubbed her forehead, where a constant pain dogged her. Another pain lodged near her heart, a burning weight. “If we move on, will they not just continue to follow? We cannot move very quickly.”
“I have been thinking about that.” Sparrow glanced round at the trees. “I suggest we gain some distance and then sue the assistance of an ally upon whom we have not yet called.”
“Ally?” Rennie lifted her brows at him.
“Aye. Sherwood itself. The magic of Sherwood is at the center of our triad, after all. Should we not take advantage of that?”
Rennie felt a rush of surprise, and a stirring of awe. This was the Sparrow she so admired, he who now felt so far from her. Suddenly her need to have him back again was so great she nearly staggered. But she said only, “How?”
“It will take the three of us together, I think—joined.”
“But Martin—”
Sparrow shook his head. “It does not matter. Wherever he is, surely he rests closer to the god than we.”
“Very well. It is worth the attempt. When?”
“We will move on a ways. You set the pace and let the forest lead you, Wren. When we stop, we will ask for protection.”
Rennie gave another nod, even though the idea of again gathering their few possessions together made her long to lie down and weep. They were all spent; Simon, pressed into helping Sparrow carry Martin’s litter, usually fell down in a stupor whenever they stopped walking. He had paid a significant price for his betrayal.
She resisted the impulse to reach out and take Sparrow’s arm merely for the sake of touching him. “Aye,” she whispered, “we will go where Sherwood leads us.”
****
The sun disappeared into a haze of clouds and green branches, and shadows came down. Rennie could not be sure if the resultant soft gloom heralded rain or merely a deepening of the forest. Few folk could ever have trod where they now went. These trees, haunted by birds and animals, soared like great pillars in a cathedral and were alive with awareness that teased all Rennie’s senses.
Despite her weariness, she did as Sparrow asked and chose their way by pure instinct, called by the flash of a bird’s wing, a glint of light or a fancied whisper. Silence settled round them as they went, and when she stopped moving at last, it was with knowing in her heart.
“Here,” she said, her voice hushed.
The place was a sheltered dell among the towering trees, formed where one had fallen long ago, steeped in deep green light. The remains of the giant beech still lay like a moldering corpse, and to one side ran a trickle of stream, clear and pure.
All the trees whispered to Rennie’s mind, “Welcome.”
Simon lowered his end of Martin’s litter to the ground, and Madlyn hurried to tend her son. Rennie just stood, drinking in the stillness.
Eyes half closed, she felt Sparrow take his place at her side. Every impulse in her leaped toward him. Whatever she was feeling included him, somehow.
“A wise choice,” he murmured. “There is power here.”
“Aye. He is near—the Green Man.”
Sparrow gave her a sharp look. She returned it, seeming to see him—really see him—for the first time in days. “Were we followed?”
He shook his head. “We lost the pursuers halfway here; I can feel them no more.”
She held her hand out to him. “Then let us do what we can.”
****
When first Lil had brought Rennie to the forest, she had spoken of magic. Real magic, she had called it—the sort connected to life itself. Rennie, battered and overwhelmed, had not understood what that meant then, but the knowledge had come to her slowly, perhaps the most important lesson she would ever learn.
Since then she had felt the magic when she listened to the wind in the trees, when she looked into Martin’s eyes, and whenever she touched Sparrow. But here, at the very heart of Sherwood, it beat at her, a veritable wall of power. A presence.
For all that, though, Martin’s condition had worsened. Passed from fever, he now lay waxen and far too still, his skin almost cold to the touch. Despite all Madlyn’s care, some of his wounds had poisoned. If he survived, he would be marked by many scars, no longer so beautiful.
No matter, Rennie told the trees, speaking to the source of that power—he must survive.
She sat with her eyes closed, one of her hands clutching Martin’s cold fingers, the other clasped tight in Sparrow’s. So did they form a rough circle, there beneath the trees. Their three companions rested at some distance, Simon already asleep, Sally face down, and Madlyn working over yet another batch of herbs.
Rennie could feel Martin. Even though he seemed so far beyond her reach, when she sat touching him this way she connected with his spirit, the one she knew—fiery and heedless. Her heart rose on a surge of gladness.
With her eyes closed, she could also feel Sparrow, even more clearly—all the gentle strength she loved in him, backed by a wall of hurt.
Oh, Sparrow
, she thought in sudden longing. Her compassion flowed to him as well as to Martin. Pure love, combined with the light of Sherwood, gathered itself and rose.