“Oh, there you are! I told Father I’d likely find you here. He’s looking for you, Marcus.”
“What does he want?”
Gwen was astonished at how calm Marcus sounded. If she were to attempt speech, she knew her voice would fail.
“Some problem with one of the plows,” Breena told her brother. “He’s in the west field.”
“I’ll go to him,” Marcus said, tucking his oilcloth bundle under his arm. He sent a meaningful glance toward Gwen. “We’ll continue our discussion later.”
She watched him stride away. Breena turned to her, her eyes bright with curiosity. “What were you speaking of? The sword Marcus is to make for you? No doubt he already has a good idea of how to proceed.”
“Aye. He does.” She had no idea if it were true.
“Ah, well,” Breena replied. “If that’s the case, you’re assured of success. Marcus never fails once he’s set a goal.”
That, Gwen thought grimly, was precisely what she was afraid of.
The smithy door was open. Intent on his drawing, Marcus was not aware of Gwen’s presence until she stood almost at his elbow. He jerked, his head whipping around. The back of his hand smacked the ink jar, knocking it over.
“Hades!” He righted the jar, but not before the ink spattered across the table.
“Oh! I’m sorry.”
“No matter,” Marcus mumbled, grabbing a rag he kept nearby for just this purpose. He sopped up the mess, scrubbing across his worktable as Gwen snatched several drawings out of the path of the spreading ink. “You can tell from the stains on the table I’ve spilled ink before,” he muttered under his breath.
He was a bumbling fool. And he’d proven it by nearly assaulting Gwen in the forest, spilling his seed at her feet, then insulting her by insinuating she was needy enough to fall into his bed. Even if she were inclined to take a lover before sacrificing her life to her grandfather’s whims, what possessed him to think she would choose
him?
She hadn’t even appeared at dinner afterward, pleading a headache. It had been plain enough to discern what
that
meant. He’d disgusted her with his crudity. He’d retreated to his smithy and spent half the night trying not to think about it.
But he’d known sooner or later he would have to face her. She needed him to forge her sword.
“Did ye not hear me enter?” she asked, laying his drawings on a clean spot on the table.
He straightened and looked at her. Her front teeth worried her lower lip, and her eyes avoided his gaze. Her cheeks were pink. She was nervous, he realized. Perhaps even as nervous as he. His mood abruptly improved. “I get very absorbed in my work,” he told her. “Breena knows to bang loudly on the door.”
“I’ll remember that trick in the future.”
Marcus felt her eyes on him as he crossed the room to dispose of the soiled rag in the barrel by the door. He was a disheveled mess, he knew. He’d slept in his clothes, and he had ink stains on his sleeves. He’d meant to bathe at dawn …
He glanced out the door. “Why, it must be near noon,” he said with some surprise. Last night, contemplating the problem of Gwen’s sword, inspiration had struck. Once he’d put pen to paper, he’d completely lost track of the time.
“Past midday.” Reluctant amusement threaded her voice. “Do not tell me ye were up all night again.”
“No, I dropped like a stone right after dinner. I woke just after midnight, with a dream of a sword vivid in my mind. I started drawing …” he spread his hands. “It’s often like this for me. I don’t keep regular hours. Sometimes I get days and night completely switched around, arriving at dinner as if it were the morning meal. Other times I forget to eat at all.” For the first time, he noticed the basket on her arm. His stomach rumbled in sudden hope. “Is that food?”
She laughed. The sound went right to his groin. He half-turned back to the table, not wanting her to notice his burgeoning erection.
“When ye did not appear to break your fast, nor to eat the midday meal, Rhiannon asked me to bring ye a bite. Meat and bread, and some cheese and apples.”
Marcus had already uncovered the basket and downed his first mouthful. “Thank you. I’m half-starved.” He finished off a hunk of cheese and rooted around for an apple. He eyed her. “You look a little tired. Did you spend the night with Breena? Did she have another one of her dreams?”
“I stayed with Breena, but she had no dreams.”
“Because of a spell you taught her?”
“Nay. She had no cause to try it. No vision came. She slept peacefully till morn.”
“But you didn’t?”
She blushed and looked away. “ ’Tis nothing new. I told ye, I have difficulty sleeping.”
He set his half-eaten apple aside. “I could help with that,” he said softly.
The flush on her cheeks intensified. “I do not know what you mean.”
“Let me do for you what you did for me in the woods yesterday. Believe me, I’d make sure you could do nothing but sleep afterward. I’d leave you as boneless as a cream pudding.”
Her embarrassment warred with her laughter, as he knew it would. He smiled. She wasn’t used to being teased.
“A cream pudding? Do ye think of nothing but food, then?”
“I’m a growing lad. I need nourishment. I need …” He caught her gaze. “I need
you,
Gwen. Let me love you. You won’t regret it.”
The laughter evaporated from her eyes.
“Ye
would regret it, Marcus.”
“Never.”
She shook her head. “Let us speak of it no more. I came to discuss the sword, that is all.” Reaching around him, she picked up one of his rejected drawings.
He sighed. “Not that one.” He eased it from her hand and located the correct one. Ink had splattered in one corner, but luckily, it hadn’t obliterated any crucial lines.
He waved the papyrus in the air to dry it, then placed it in her hands. “What do you think?”
He waited while she examined the intricate drawing. The blade of the sword he’d drawn was long and sleek, with Celtic tracework on the flat. An intricate design decorated the wide crosspiece. At the opposite end of the hilt, to balance the weight of the long blade, Marcus had set a round pommel embossed with the mark of the Druids of Avalon.
She examined the drawing for a long time, without comment. The odd expression on her face worried him, until she looked up and he saw that her eyes were filled with wonder.
“ ’Tis beautiful, Marcus. ’Tis the sword of my dream. How could ye know?”
He shrugged, taken aback. “It just came to me. In my own dream.” The thought was unsettling.
Gwen seemed pleased with the explanation, though. “The Great Mother sent you this inspiration, I am sure.” For the first time since she’d entered the smithy, she bestowed him upon a wide, generous smile. “When shall we begin?”
“Today, if you’d like.” He propped his hip against the table and nodded toward the furnace, trying to project a sense of nonchalance. In truth, he’d avoided thinking of how close he’d have to work with Gwen’s magic. But now, to his surprise, he realized the prospect of experiencing her Light didn’t unsettle him nearly as much as it should have. All he could think of was that it would take a fortnight or more to forge her sword, and for much of that time, she would be here beside him. Alone. Hour after hour, bathed by the heat and solitude of the smithy.
She was Rhys’s sister, and all but promised to another man, but when he looked at her, he could not seem to remember his honor. All logic and reason were blotted out by the fierce urge to possess her. A blunt voice in his brain ordered him to claim her. Conquer her. Mark her as his own.
The sheer violence of his feelings shocked him to the bone. This was not at all what he had felt for Clara.
That
emotion had been tender. Protective. He would not have dared to touch Clara before wedding her. Perhaps that was why he had managed to step aside and let Owein have her. In contrast, whenever Marcus thought of Gwen’s betrothed, a murderous rage overtook him.
The faceless Druid would not be the first man to love Gwen—Marcus meant to claim that prize himself. His and Gwen’s physical joining was inevitable. He knew it, as she did, even if she hadn’t yet acknowledged it. There was nothing, save abandoning the sword, that would stop it.
Gwen looked at the furnace, then back at him. He was still leaning against the table; their eyes were on a level.
“The ore I purchased yesterday will be delivered this afternoon,” he said steadily. “We can smelt it tonight. Then we will see what my skill, and your magic, can create.”
“The mist is thinning.”
“I know that,” Rhys snapped.
He did not turn toward Owein, nor rise from his seated position on Avalon’s shore. Owein, approaching from behind, came to stand beside him. Rhys continued his brooding, gazing out over the swamp in silence. He was weary with a fatigue that went far beyond the effort of holding the mist, beyond the sleepless nights he spent at Cyric’s bedside, though those trials were bad enough.
Cyric’s nightmares were turbulent. When he woke, he could not say what they had been, but Rhys had a good idea.
Tamar,
Cyric sobbed over and over in his sleep.
Tamar.
Rhys’s mother.
Rhys had been visited with his own nightmares of his mother’s death. During the day, when Mared or one of the other Druids sat with Cyric, Rhys had tried to sleep. Though spells of Light surrounded his pallet, he could not close his eyes without seeing the waxen face of Mama’s corpse. Now he did all he could to stay awake, so the nightmares could not reach him. But it was impossible for a man to eschew sleep entirely.
He shredded a willow frond in his fingers. His gaze was fixed on the faint glow of torchlight that had sprung up on the hills beyond the swamp as dusk fell. The Romans had returned to their camp for the night. The thought did not calm Rhys. He should not be able to see the camp at all through the mist.
Despite his best effort to hold the mist, it was thinning. Strabo’s Deep Magic was taunting him, as it taunted Cyric. Gods. If only Gwen were here, they could combine their power and face the threat together. But she would not answer him.
Putting aside his pride, he tried once more.
“Gwen. Please. I need ye here. Strabo’s Deep Magic has strengthened. I do not know if I can guard Avalon without your help.”
He held his breath, listening for Gwen’s response. He sensed nothing but the faint hum of the spell she’d erected to block him. Where was she? Why did she persist in maintaining this silence between them? Did she not realize how much she was needed?
Owein, fortunately, did not speak for a long time. He lowered his large frame to the ground at Rhys’s side and joined him in gazing out over the swamp.
“How is Clara?” Rhys asked at last.
“Her belly tightens and relaxes, but Mared says it will be a sennight or more before the babe comes.” He paused. “I wish very much that Rhiannon were here.”
Rhys heard the worry in the older man’s voice. Owein’s mother had died birthing him; Rhiannon was more mother than sister to him.
“It does no good to worry,” Rhys told him. When had he become so hypocritical? “Mared will see Clara through her time safely.”
“Mared’s healing skills are stretched thin. Cyric commands much of her attention. The Darkness covering him grows stronger.”
“Aye. He sobs my mother’s name. He speaks of leaving Isca and traveling to Avalon—a journey he took long ago.”
“He is lost in the past.”
Rhys grimaced. “My own dreams are mired in the past as well.”
“As are mine,” Owein admitted.
Rhys looked up in surprise. With Owein’s gift of Sight, he was sometimes visited by dreams that were something more. “Have ye received a vision, then? Guidance from the Great Mother?”
“Nay. I see only memories I thought long dead. Memories I do not wish to revive. It has been the same for Clara, and I suspect for Trevor and many of the other villagers as well.”
Rhys shredded the last of the willow frond. “Strabo’s Deep Magic affects us all.”
“He is a dreamcaster.”
“Aye. ’Tis very likely.” Cyric had once told Rhys of dreamcasting—the talent of forming images from a person’s most intense memories. It was a rare gift. Rhys had never encountered it on his travels, and no one on Avalon claimed that talent. Rhys did not know how to fight it.
“Gwen should be here to face this with us.” Rhys couldn’t keep the bitter edge from his tone. “She insults us all by staying away.”
“If I have learned anything about your sister in the past year, ’tis that Gwen doesna easily dismiss her duties. If anything, she feels them too keenly.”
“She’s never accepted Cyric’s authority. She’s always done as she wished, even as a child.”
“While ye have never done as ye wished.”
“You make me sound churlish in my obedience.” Though his obedience, Rhys reflected, was far from untarnished. The memory of his leap into the forbidden—flying as a merlin—was a weight on his conscience. He’d berated Gwen for succumbing to the lure of Deep Magic when in truth he was no better than she. Pride had kept him from confiding in his twin. He
wanted
her to believe he was perfect. That he was better than she.
No wonder she would not answer him.
Owein’s voice cut through Rhys’s dark thoughts. “Ye dinna take my meaning. Of course I dinna think ill of ye for obeying Cyric. He is a powerful Seer, and has his reasons for what he commands. Ye live a hard life without complaint, and Avalon is strong because of it. I only mean to suggest that though ye and Gwen shared your mother’s womb, ye are different people.”
“I know that only too well.”
“I’ve come to admire Gwen very much in the past year. Her skill in crafting new spells from the sacred Words of the Old Ones is unique. She’s helped me banish much of the pain my visions bring, relieving Clara of that burden. She ever has the good of Avalon at heart.”
“Mared says …”
“Mared is too close to Gwen. She sees only her faults. Not the war Gwen wages within her own soul. If Gwen is gone, if she doesna answer your calls, there is a good reason. Trust her, Rhys.”
Trust? Gwen had asked him to do the same, but Rhys wasn’t sure he could. Or should. He had, after all, known Gwen far longer than Owein had. True, Owein had reminded Rhys of Gwen’s loyalty, but Rhys knew his twin’s recklessness was just as strong.