Knight of Darkness (12 page)

“He adopted me when I was barely more than a hatchling, and he raised me. I know him like the back of my claw. Now take us to him.”

The brothers still looked hesitant. It was as if they knew a secret they didn’t want to let the others in on.

Merrick moved to stand beside his brother. He wrapped his arm around his shoulders so that he could whisper in his ear without their overhearing it.

Derrick stared intently at them while he listened.

Blaise ground his teeth at the actions. “You know, V, one well-placed skewer would nail them both in that position.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

Merewyn was a little more rational. “Perhaps
we should whisper amongst ourselves and make them wonder what we speak of?”

Blaise wagged his eyebrows at her before he pulled her into his arms. “Works well for me. Put your arms around my neck, and I’ll breathe in your ear.”

Varian put the blade of his sword between them. “You can whisper from there.”

Blaise appeared appalled. “What are you? An old maid?”

“I promised her my protection.”

The mandrake shook his head. “You’re gay, aren’t you?” Varian raised the blade to rest against Blaise’s Adam’s apple. He carefully pressed it close. Not so much that it drew blood, but enough to let him know that he wasn’t amused. “Or not.”

Varian used the blade to push him away from Merewyn. His gaze met hers, and he felt the heat of his desire for her all the way through his body. At the moment, he wished he were gay. Then she wouldn’t tempt him so. “Or not. Definitely
or not
.”

Merewyn felt a strange flutter at Varian’s protection of her, and she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the novelty of it. As a crone, no man had ever cared what befell her.

Now she was standing in a circle of handsome men, none of whom was belittling her or insulting her. It was such a strange moment. Even though Merrick and Derrick had offended her with their actions, there was a tiny, tiny part of her flattered by their failed abduction.

But there was a bigger part of her highly offended that if she were in her haggish form, they’d have run in the opposite direction.

The brothers broke apart finally. Merrick moved forward to address them. “Very well. We shall take you to Merlin.”

“Why do I have a feeling this isn’t a good thing?” Blaise said under his breath.

She didn’t know, but she concurred. There was something very strange about these men. She didn’t trust them at all.

“Follow us.” Merrick headed deeper into the woods.

Merewyn and her companions hesitated before they followed.

“How far is it?” she asked, as they caught up to him.

Derrick stopped to pick up Erik from the ground and place him on his shoulder. The ferret wrapped itself around his neck and eyed them coldly. “It’s a day and half from here. We’ll get as far as the bridge by day’s end, then camp on this side of it. On the morrow, we’ll cross over to the valley proper. Then it’s only a small way to Merlin’s.”

That didn’t make sense to her. Why pause there? “Why don’t we cross the bridge tonight?”

The brothers laughed even though she didn’t find anything funny about her question. “No one crosses the bridge at dusk.”

“Why?” Blaise asked. “Is Tim the Enchanter going to get us, or is it the killer bunny we have to fear?”

Varian frowned at him. “Whoever let you see that movie?”

“It wasn’t the movie that hooked me. It was the
Spamalot
play.” Blaise winked at him. “I’m surprised you don’t love it. Both your father and your brother come off as morons. And in the play, Lancelot’s gay.”

“I should have been so fortunate.” Then louder Varian said to him, “Stop your taunting, you English kanigit.”

Merewyn shook her head. “I think I definitely need to see this play.”

“Trust me,” Blaise said, “you’ll love it.”

“It does sound amusing.”

Varian didn’t speak while Blaise told Merewyn all about the
Spamalot
play and
Holy Grail
movie while they walked through the forest. But what enchanted him most was the sound of her laughter. It was so gentle and pleasant.

And when Blaise began teaching her the songs, and he heard the beauty of her voice, he was absolutely beguiled by it. Sara Ramirez had nothing on Merewyn. The cadence of her tone actually sent a shiver down his spine. One that went straight to his groin and made him heavy and aching for her. He didn’t know why, but he’d always loved the sound of a woman singing.

And by the awkward way the brothers were now walking, he could tell they were equally drawn to the sound of her voice.

But the most amazing part was her capacity to learn each song. Blaise only had to sing it once, and she had it committed to memory.

When she began to sing “Find Your Grail,” he actually got a lump in his throat.

“Good God, I’ve become maudlin,” he said under his breath. What was wrong with him?

“Come on, Varian,” Blaise said with his usual cheerful mien. “Why don’t you join us? I know you know the words.”

Yeah, right. He didn’t really think for one minute that public humiliation suited him, did he? “I don’t sing in public. Private either, for that matter.”

“Oh come on, Varian,” Merewyn said with a smile. “Join us for a bit of merriment.”

He so didn’t understand this woman. “How can you be happy? We’re stuck in a—”

“Dark and very expensive forest?”

“Cease the
Spamalot
quotes, Blaise.” He softened his tone as he addressed Merewyn again. “As I was saying, we’re stuck in a hellhole with exploding water and trees. We don’t know if we’ll ever get out of this, and the two of you are back there singing show tunes. How can you do that?”

She shrugged. “That’s because I’m so thrilled to be away from your mother for even one day
that to me it is worth celebrating. And what better way than to sing?”

“Always look on the bright side of life—”

“Blaise!” Varian snapped.

“I can’t help myself. I’m addicted.”

He growled at the incorrigible mandrake. “I can’t believe Kerrigan never cut your head off for irritating him.”

“I’m too entertaining to die.”

“Don’t wager me on that. I’d dearly like to put you out of my misery.”

“We’ll join you for singing, my lady,” Merrick said, interrupting them. “Won’t we, Derrick?”

Even Erik chattered in agreement.

Varian groaned as the whole company of them started singing “I’m Not Dead Yet.” If only he were dead, then he’d be spared. While Merewyn’s voice was lovely, Blaise’s was passable, but the other two…

They wouldn’t know a key if someone put it in their hands. It was absolute torture to be subjected to the lot of them.

“Isn’t there something fierce in this forest that your singing could lure out of hiding?”

The triplet beside him paused in his singing. “Well, there are a few things now that you mention it.”

Varian stopped dead in his tracks to look at Merrick, or maybe it was Derrick. He couldn’t really tell them apart. “Then why are you singing?”

“The lady wanted to, and we thought it would be a way to woo her to our bed.”

Merewyn swallowed as she looked about nervously. “Is there really something that could attack us?”

“Of course,” the one with the ferret around his neck said. “We’re in the Forest of Woe. It’s aptly named.”

Merewyn became even more nervous.

Wanting to console her, he reached out to touch her soft hand, which only served to remind him of how good that hand had felt on his face as she caressed him.

“Don’t worry,” one of the triplets assured her. “We won’t let anything happen to you, dearest Merewyn. We’re too desperate to seduce you to let you die.”

She scoffed at him. “Am I supposed to be flattered by that?”

“Of course you are. We were legendary in our time.”

Varian scoffed. “Legends in their own minds, he means.”

“You’re just jealous Morgen never chose you.”

“Please. I wouldn’t touch that…” Varian paused as he realized what an imbecilic argument they were having. Was there even a point to it? “Why am I having this discussion with you?”

“Because you know we’re right.”

Varian looked at Merewyn. “You can’t argue with lunatics. Why do I even try?”

She shrugged. “I have no idea. Perhaps you like banging your head against the wall?”

He shook his head as she flounced off in front of him.

Two seconds later, she vanished.

“Merewyn!” Varian sprinted after her, only to have
Merrick stop him. She’d fallen into a small hole of some kind, but Merrick wouldn’t let Varian pull her out. Every time he tried to get around him, Merrick forced him back.

“You can’t reach for her.”

He shoved at Merrick, who somehow managed to stay in his path. “The hell I can’t. Get out of my way.”

“No!” He put his hands on Varian’s arms as he insisted Varian calm down. “Listen to me. She’s fallen into a pit of despair. Getting her out isn’t as easy as you think it is.”

Those words caught him off guard. Was the man serious? “
A pit of what?
”

“Pit of despair.” Merrick released him and gestured toward the hole. “Just listen to her for a second.”

He did as Merrick said, then felt his jaw slacken at her mindless tirade.

“Oh, good grief, look at me. I’m worthless. It’s hopeless. Life is rotten. My life in particular is rotten. It’s awful. Horrid. Miserable. Why should I even bother? I should just lie here in this hole and die. Aye, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll just lie down and die. No one even cares. They’d all be happy if I were gone…”

It was Merewyn’s voice, but the tone was incredibly pathetic and filled with doom. “I don’t understand why all of this is happening to me. What did I do to deserve this life? Why oh why…oh why? Is it too much to ask that my life have one minute of easiness? Of joy? Of mediocre relief? No. First I’m tortured by an evil bitch and her minions. Then I try to make myself pretty so that others will at least look at me without cringing and what happens? I get stuck with a lunatic good guy/bad guy who is so boring I can’t stand it and a mandrake who is just plain odd. Neither of them has a brain. Neither of them gives two spits for me. Now we’re being led along by three freaks of nature, and the smartest one of them is the ferret! Oh how did this happen? How?”

Varian was stunned by her tirade.

“Ah, close your mouth,” Derrick snapped at Varian as he adjusted Erik on his shoulders. “She doesn’t mean any of it. It’s just the pit talking.”

Blaise duplicated Varian’s frown as they looked down into the hole where Merewyn was sitting
in the middle of it, on the ground, wringing her hands and rocking back and forth as if oblivious to the fact she was trapped.

Varian glanced to Merrick. “What do you mean ‘the pit talking’?”

Moving to the edge of the path, Derrick reached up to cut a stout vine away from a nearby ash tree where it was wrapped. Varian ended up having to help him cut it with his sword.

“There’s some kind of gas that collects in the bottom of the pits. Anyone who inhales it becomes weepy and depressed.”

“But unfortunately not suicidal,” Merrick interrupted as he helped them loosen the vine from the tree. “Those infected just carry on until everyone around them wants to cut their own wrists or cut out their tongue for the babbling.”

Derrick nodded. “You start spouting off all kinds of things. It’ll wear off after a few hours once we get her out of there.”

A few hours? Oh that just sounded wrong to him.

“Why did this happen to me?” Merewyn moaned from her pit. “Why, Lord, why? Can’t I have one day free of strife? One day just for me? No. It’s my lot in life to suffer. Suffering is all I’ll ever have…And pain. Lots and lots of pain. Why did you give me this life? Why did you put me in the company of such boring people? Why couldn’t I be with friends? Someone who loves me? Someone who wouldn’t leave me here all alone? I don’t
want to be with a mutant knight and a half-wit dragon.”

“I don’t know,” Blaise said drolly. “I’m thinking we ought to leave her in there. I’m getting a little tired of being bashed. You know if anyone has a right to complain, it should be me. I was just minding my own business when
she
dragged me into all this.”

“Really,” Merrick insisted, “she doesn’t mean anything she says right now.”

“She better not.”

Varian lowered the vine into the pit and dangled the end of it right in front of her. “Merewyn!” he said sternly. “Wrap this around yourself, and we’ll pull you up.”

“Why bother?” she asked forlornly. “You might as well leave me here. Trapped. Alone. Suffering. It’s no use anyway. Everything is awful. Life is meaningless and pointless. We’re all meant to suffer without end. I should just cut my wrists and end it all, rather than have one more minute of undeserved misery.”

Thank the gods she wasn’t like this normally. He really would have to kill her if she were. “Come on, Merewyn,” he said, trying to take the agitation out of his voice. “Put the vine around your waist and let us help you up.”

Complaining every step of the way, she finally started wrapping it around her waist. “It’s never going to work. You’re just going to drop me. I know it. I’m sure I’ll break something when I fall,
then you’ll leave me for dead or worse, you’ll leave me with the sex fiends to use as their plaything.”

Merrick gave him a hopeful look. “Would you?”

Varian snorted. “I’d kill her first.”

Derrick thought about that for a second. “You know that wouldn’t be so bad as long as her body wasn’t cold or stiff.”

That disturbed him on a level he didn’t even want to contemplate. “You’re disgusting.”

“Three. Hundred. Years,” Merrick said each word slowly. “No sex. Think about it.”

Very well, he might have a point with that. Any man would be rather desperate after that amount of time…

Unwilling to stay on that course of thought, Varian pulled the vine and hoisted her out of the hole, which sealed up as soon as she was clear of it.

Merewyn lay on the ground in a heap as she bemoaned every minute and misfortune of her life. “Can you imagine being stuck here? With you? Can you?”

Varian untied the vine from her waist. “Sorry I’m such a chore.”

“Oh, you’ve no idea,” she said breathlessly as she sat up to confront him. “The burden of you men. Why couldn’t women be left alone without you and your cockfighting and your cocks…”

Varian choked. “Our what?”

“Your cocks.” Her tone was completely rational and yet he found it hard to believe she knew what
she was saying. “You know, the way you walk like all of you own the world, and we women are nothing but your servants. And me, I am a servant. Ugly and twisted. Why? Why did I make such a bargain? What was I thinking?”

Derrick plugged his ears. “Can we knock her out until this wears off?”

Blaise laughed as he tossed the vine into the forest. “I don’t know. Now she’s becoming entertaining. Let’s go revisit the whole cock thing.”

“Let’s not, Blaise.” Varian tried to help her to her feet, but she sank back to the ground.

“Why bother getting up? We’re just going to die here. All of us. One by one, until we’re nothing but dust. Dust under someone else’s feet. Dust blowing aimlessly through the woods and into lakes and food. We’re nothing. None of us. Just sacks of bones moving from cradle to grave with no purpose except to die after living long, miserable lives of pointless endeavoring to quantify our worthless existence.”

Blaise laughed again at her morbid tirade. “Good thing this isn’t the twentieth century and she doesn’t work for the suicide hot line, huh?”

Derrick scoffed. “Much more of the cradle-to-grave, useless bit, and we might become it ourselves.”

Varian rubbed at the sudden pain in his skull. “Yeah, Camus has nothing on her.”

Still Blaise appeared amused by her bitter musings. “Yes, but curiosity is riding me hard. Let me
take a tumble in the pit and see what comes out, shall we?”

Varian was still trying to get Merewyn up from the ground, but she was actually fighting him. For a small slip, she was strong when she wanted to be. “You’re not cute enough to tolerate like this, Blaise. You, we
would
kill.”

“That just hurts my feelings.”

“You’ll get over it.” Giving up on her walking on her own, Varian picked her up.

“See!” she snapped at him. “You men are all brutish. You force your strength and will on us as if we matter for naught and then you wonder why we don’t
like
”—she spat the word at him—“you. Really? Is it any wonder? Why would any woman want to subject herself to the male ego? Why?”

She looked down at his body as a sudden heat came into her gaze that made him instantly nervous. “Sure, you’re a handsome beastie with kissable lips when they’re not bleeding. You’re fair in form with big, bulging—” He actually cringed in fear of the word “cock” coming out of her mouth again, but luckily she averted her thoughts as her gaze met his.

For the first time the despair left her voice. “Your eyes are so beautiful.” She ran one finger over his brow, making him instantly hard for her. “Did you know that?” Then the gloomy tone returned as she dropped her hand from his face. “Of course you do. You’re a worthless man. Just like all the others.”

“Yeah,” Blaise teased. “You’re worthless, Varian. And what on him bulges again, Merewyn?”

Varian glared at the mandrake, who merely continued to laugh at him.

“Everything. His arms, his legs, his—”

“Enough, Merewyn,” Varian said from between clenched teeth.

“Well, you do bulge. I’ve seen it.”

“We’ve all seen it,” Merrick said, his voice filled with humor, “And it’s sickening.”

Varian glared at the triplets, especially the ferret, who was laughing and rolling around his brother’s neck. “When she is over this, I’m going to kill all of you.”

Merewyn let out a long-suffering sigh. “Of course you will. That’s what men do. They destroy everything. Everything. Because you’re all worthless whoremongers.”

Varian winced at her choice of words.

“Whoremongers?” Blaise repeated with a laugh.

“Yes. You all go out with your giant lances, spearing anything you can find. Nailing your targets against trees and walls, while you gallop from field to field, bragging over your conquests, uncaring of who you’ve hurt while you quest for more glory.”

“Good gods,” Merrick said, his face horrified. “Is she speaking of what I think she is?”

“Do you mean warmongers?” Varian asked her.

“No! Whoremongers. All of you.” She looked over at the triplets. “Especially
them.
”

Laughing uproariously, Blaise took a step back, only to have Merrick grab him and haul him forward again. “Remember, the pit is right there.”

Blaise sobered as he scanned the ground around him. “Where?”

“There!” Merrick scooted closer to it to show him. “You can tell the pits by the small grayish outline around their parameters and the tufts of grass over them.”

Varian didn’t see the line of demarcation that seemed to be clear to Merrick.

Blaise looked up at him. “Am I totally stupid, or do you not see it either?”

“Yes,” Varian said in a dry tone, “you are totally stupid. Seeing the pit has nothing to do with that.”

Blaise actually picked up and lobbed a clump of dirt at him, which he ducked, while Merewyn cursed the mandrake.

“Do you see the damn hole or not?” Blaise demanded.

Varian tilted his head and squinted at the ground. “Sort of. How you would see it while walking, beats me. I’m surprised we haven’t fallen into one before now.”

“It’s all so hopeless,” Merewyn lamented. “You, me, Blaise, we’re all going to die. Die!”

Varian let out a sound of exasperation. “We’re not going to die today unless I really do kill someone, which, to my chagrin, isn’t looking likely, so don’t worry.”

“How can you say that?” she asked with a note
of hysteria in her voice. “Can’t you feel your life just ticking away? Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick…tick. We’re heading toward our deaths. Every second, we’re getting closer and closer. The end is coming for us, and we’re powerless to stop it.”

Frustrated, he turned toward Derrick and the ferret. “Is there an antidote for this?”

“No. But you can look on the bright side. You weren’t here when we first discovered it. The only saving grace was that Erik was the one who fell in. So we locked him in a cage and left him in the woods until he got over it.”

How he wished they could do that to Merewyn.

Erik chattered at them.

“I don’t want to hear it,” his brother snapped. “You’re lucky we didn’t turn you into trim the way you carried on.”

“So how do we avoid these things in the future?” Blaise asked, interrupting them.

“Look for the gray tuft.” Merrick tossed a rock onto said tuft, which immediately disintegrated into a pit.

So it was pressure-released. That was nice, and at the same time, scary to know.

“Just out of curiosity, why are those pits here?”

Merrick shrugged. “Merlin made them one day when Nimue had angered him. She made the exploding water to get back at him for the pits. I think she was hoping to blow his head off, but it failed. He may still be limping from the experience though.”

Derrick nodded. “Most of the things here are from the two of them warring with each other. There are the lava rocks you don’t want to touch…they’re yellow and extremely hot, but the worst part is they make you stink for days on end. Then there’s the boiling water that’s ice-cold to touch.”

“The stinging lizards and of course,” Merrick said, “my personal favorite…the Tourista Shrub.”

Blaise scowled. “The what?”

Varian curled his lip at the thought of making contact with said shrub. “Think about it, Blaise. What happens to tourists when they visit a new place? Montezuma’s revenge ring a bell?”

The mandrake screwed his face up in distaste. “That’s so sick.”

Merrick laughed. “That’s the idea. Merlin and Nimue were really angry people for the first few hundred years they were trapped here together. Since then, they’ve mellowed.”

“Somewhat,” Derrick qualified.

“My brother does have a point. Sometimes they still erupt at each other, and the rest of us have to take cover from the ensuing battle it causes.”

“Doomed!” Merewyn threw back her head against his shoulder. “We’re all doomed.”

Varian groaned. “All right. We’re doomed, but before we die horrible deaths after living a horrible life, I think we need to keep moving while we can.”