Shana Abe (17 page)

The ghost had wept. His words had been tearing at her, an unwilling participant in his anguish. The smell of sulphur had been choking.

“What would be my lesson?” Avalon asked slowly, half-believing as she looked down at the flower he held.

“Only you may say,” Balthazar replied. “Only you will ever know. It is in your heart of hearts. Look there for your answer.”

He gave her a small salute, placing his hands to his forehead as he bowed, and then presented her with the flower.

She took it, stared down at the symmetrical petals, the velvet green stem. When she looked up again the wizard was gone, making great strides down the hill back to Sauveur. Marcus watched her from his crowd.

She turned from him to see the girls staring at her, talking to each other without taking their eyes away.

Without warning Avalon found herself desperately lonely, lonely in such a way as she had not experienced since she was a child. Loneliness was her enemy, and she had fought to banish it as fiercely as she had fought all things that had wanted to quell her, from Hanoch on down. Having it surround her now was not a welcome experience.

There was a bramble bush nearby. She meandered over to it, noting the fluffs of wool caught inside and out, token remembrances of a careless ewe grazing nearby.

Her hand reached out for the nearest tuft. It came
loose from its thorn with ease, soft and light between her fingers. There was a bigger one just behind where it had been. She reached for it, as well. The thorn snagged her finger.

Avalon yanked her hand back and looked at the droplet of blood the thorn had drawn, irrationally close to tears.

“Oh, milady,” said a girlish voice at her shoulder. “Ye must have a care with these. They will bite every time.”

The girl clutched her basketful of fleece under her arm, then took Avalon’s hand in her own, examining the scratch. The other girls abandoned their jobs, gathered near.

“Not so bad,” pronounced one.

“Press out the bane,” advised another.

“Aye,” agreed the girl with Avalon’s hand, and began to squeeze her finger until a full, round drop of scarlet was balanced on the wound.

“If ye leave it be, the nettle will sting awful,” said the girl.

Avalon looked at her hand held firm in the smaller ones, noticed each of the other girls had cloth wrapped around their palms and down their fingers. Each of them bore scratches, many of them.

“I suppose I am not so gentle as to make the thorns bend back for me,” she said, a feeble jest, and then regretted making light of their legend. But the girls took her seriously, shaking their heads and offering fast reassurances that she was surely as gentle as that first wife, but since the curse the thorns would have changed as well, no longer so pliant and kind.

It was a painful moment, knowing these trusting girls believed her to be a literal truth come to life, knowing that there was nothing she could do for them that would ever be truly worthy of their faith.

“What happened?” It was Marcus, come to see the reason for the crowd of girls.

“Nothing,” said Avalon, gently disengaging her hand and placing the wool she had managed to gather in the first girl’s basket.

They scattered like a flock of startled starlings, off into the bushes again.

Marcus’s form blocked out the mountain, the black rock. He took her hand, solemn, and examined the scratch, the smeared droplet of blood.

“You must get the poison out,” he said, lifting her finger to his mouth.

“I know,” she began, but then his lips closed over her finger and he began to suckle the scratch gently.

She stood before him, spellbound, feeling the wild beating of her heart, the shocking, strange sensation of this man, his tongue against her finger, his lips soft and warm on her. His eyes were lowered, masking the winter blue with black, deepening their color.

There was no pain, only a heated pressure. The uniqueness of this intimate act quaked through her, stilling all thoughts until the only thing she could feel was his touch, the only thing she could see was his face.

He unmasked his eyes, locking her there in front of him, captivating her as surely as if he held her in chains. Avalon felt something shift inside of her, a reawakening of that liquid pleasure only he knew how to give to her.
It was matched in his eyes, a flame in the blue, masculine and powerful with shades of something she didn’t want to think about. Something like possession.

“Better?” He spoke against her finger, still holding it close to his lips. He didn’t wait for her to reply, but unfolded the rest of her fingers and opened her palm, bringing it back up to place a kiss there.

Her hand was burning, and a deep, shadowed thrill raced down her arm to the rest of her, making her lean even closer to him, to his magnetic heat.

Marcus watched her do it, holding her hand there, trailing kisses down to her wrist, over, letting go of her hand to cup her neck and bring her all the way to him.

The kiss was sweet and light, only an invitation to greater things, because they were there in the glen, and there were many who watched them, and because Marcus could not do what he really wanted, which was to lay her down on the meadow grass and love her completely. So he contented himself with that one kiss, a promise of what would come, before pulling away from her.

“Truelove,” he murmured.

Avalon jolted back. “What?” she asked, stricken.

“Truelove,” he repeated, than shook his head. “It is merely an endearment, my lady.”

He had no idea where the word had come from. He had never used it before. He had never even heard anyone else use it, that he recalled. But it seemed a word made for her, fitting her just exactly, even if he had made it up. And it had had a definite effect on her—unfortunately, the wrong one. She roused out of that
place where he had wanted her, came back to the facts of the glen and her own situation.

“It is
not
real,” she said, looking past him to the faerie.

“Why not?” asked Marcus, following her look. “Why not, Lady Avalon? Surely stranger things have happened. It is a tragic tale, but rich in romance, don’t you think? That’s the redeeming quality of it. The highborn wife, wed for love—”

“Yes, and look where it got her,” Avalon said darkly.

He began to escort her back down the meadow. “Aye, well,” he conceded. “Mayhap not the happiest of endings, true. At least, not for the clan.”

“Nor for her or her laird,” Avalon said, thinking of the wizard’s concept of returning to these bodies. If it were true, were the laird and his wife among them now? Would they find happiness now in completing their lessons?

Treuluf
, the laird had called his dead wife.

“And what of this curse, my lord?” She interrupted her own line of thought. “Your people have not prospered, perhaps, but I would not say you were destitute. Clan Kincardine has power, I know it well. You have the ear of the king. You have connections in royalty. It took your King Malcolm a full year to capitulate to Henry for my return to my homeland. A whole year of defying another king, merely to please your family. I would not call that a curse.”

He stopped her abruptly with a look that made her want to take back her words.

“Do you think this is an easy life, Avalon?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “Would you wish this upon yourself? There is barely enough food for winter. There is
barely enough wool to trade out. Even Hanoch could not manage a fortune that did not exist.”

“Take my income,” she said to him again, ashamed and then angry that she should feel so. She was not heartless. She felt for them all, the wool gatherers, the thin women, the proud men. She hated that they lived so close to want. She hated that he would think so poorly of her, think that she did not notice. “I offer it to you freely.”

“I will, when we wed.”

Beneath the hulk of the stone faerie Avalon at last lost her temper.

“I cannot marry you!” she shouted. “Don’t you understand? I can’t! You may have all but that!”

The people in the meadow grew still. A raven circled above them, landed in a tree and watched them all, cocking its head.

Marcus started to laugh.

It was slow at first, a deep chuckle that grew into an unmistakable sound, louder and louder until he was joined by others, a wave of mirth that buffeted her.

Avalon felt the heat rise in her cheeks. He was laughing because he was genuinely amused, she felt it clearly. And the others joined in from relief, that the laird would shrug off the temper of the willful bride, either from the ease of his own temperament or his acceptance of her place in the legend, that she was
supposed
to resist joining the family.

She marched off, heading back to Sauveur because she knew if she went in any other direction she would be forcibly halted, and she had had about enough embarrassment for one day.

He let her go. She felt him watch her all the way down the path, still chuckling.

People goggled at her. She saw a trace of pity in some of them, especially the women. A few of the faces looked too familiar.

Hanoch had kept the cottage household to a very few people. A chatelaine. A cook. Eight men who doubled as servants and guards. And Ian, of course. Even when Hanoch went back to Sauveur, Avalon had been unable to escape Ian.

Ian MacLochlan was not of the family, not really. He was the son of the third cousin of a Kincardine, from an allied clan, but the real reason Hanoch had so readily accepted him—indeed, welcomed him—was that Ian had a way of fighting that no man had been able to defeat. And Ian had become Avalon’s tutor.

Where he learned his odd moves he would never say. All that was known was that he had traveled a great deal out of Scotland, had been to distant lands with names no one could pronounce. Many people claimed he made up the tales. That Ian was touched, that he had never been beyond even England. But no one could dispute his skill in hand-to-hand combat.

He was gray and cantankerous by the time the child Avalon had met him. Time had only increased these attributes. He had been a merciless instructor, as hard as Hanoch in his own way, the two of them sharing a pact to make this female into a prodigy of their own, to chisel out from the soft child the warrior maiden that the people needed.

Ian was dead. He had died just before she left Scotland, in fact, so she knew it to be true. Otherwise she
might still have cringed at the sound of anything like his voice. Ian and Hanoch had been the ones to watch for. The guards had been constantly rotated, so she never became too close to them. The cook had not stayed in the cottage, having her own hut in the same village and her own family to care for.

The chatelaine had been her only companion, really. Zeva had been her name. Among the rows of faces Avalon saw now—all of them studying her so intently—no one resembled Zeva. Perhaps she was dead as well.

Only Zeva had shown her any compassion at all, secretly unlocking the stifling pantry when the men were not about, passing in food and water for the child trapped within. Only Zeva had shed a tear when Avalon left at fourteen, had bade her well and hoped to see her soon.

And Avalon, seasoned by then, had not responded to that wish. She knew better; indifference was her main defense, and she would not let go of it even for Zeva.

No, Zeva was not here, not in the meadow behind her, nor in the mass of people before her.

She didn’t know what to feel about that. Would Zeva have laughed in the glen with the others? Or would she have stayed still, remembering the little girl with the blackened eyes and bruised body who hated the dark? Perhaps only Zeva could have understood her.

As she walked back to her castle prison, Avalon thought about how ironic it was that she had managed to carry her careful impassivity with her into her new life—until now. Until Marcus Kincardine: the one person she most needed her armor of indifference for had turned out to be the only one able to breach it.

A man on horseback was galloping toward her along the road to Sauveur. He was a Kincardine, his tartan waved straight out behind him like a marker.

He carried excitement, and the sight of him generated a new ripple through the crowd. He was one of the scouts, Avalon understood, piecing together the jumbled thoughts around her. If he was riding up to the castle this fast, there would be urgent news.

About her.

The scout was aware of the attention he garnered and part of him gloried in it, but most of him was absorbed in his duty. He had to find the laird. He had to tell him of the party of men approaching.

The chimera blinked and showed her a glimpse of what the scout had seen, about ten riders, three different standards between them, including Malcolm’s own, which would protect them. The other two flags were unfamiliar to the watch, but not to Avalon. The royal crest of King Henry. The red cross of the papacy.

She felt the excitement of everyone else combined with her own, soaring up now for different reasons.

She would be saved! The kings and the church meant to save her!

Marcus had come down from the meadow. With a small gesture he had placed a guard around her where she stood, large men forming a tight circle.

The scout dismounted, bowed to Marcus, and began to talk. Around them clustered more people, men and women both. As the watch continued his tale the women gasped and looked at Avalon, and she felt their fear. The men were less demonstrative but equally worried.

Only Marcus seemed composed. He listened without
interrupting, nodding his head at the right times. When the scout had finished he said something to him and walked away, coming over to where Avalon stood in the middle of the circle of men.

“Take her back inside,” he ordered, and then moved on.

Chapter Seven