The Forest Lord (38 page)

But as long as the enemy remained within the dale, Hartley could find him. And discover his purpose.

"You must go back to the house at once," he said, turning to her. "I will accompany you as far as the garden wall."

She frowned at him, all the softness of their loving gone from her eyes. "And then? Do you intend to seek this person? Why are you so sure that he meant to—
"

"I know."

"Even if what you say is true, and someone wishes to kill us"—she shook her head in disbelief—"surely this is a matter for the constable. I shall—"

"
No
." He took her arms and forced her to look at him. "Do as I say,
Eden. Go back to the house and remain there. Speak of this to no one. Do not let Donal leave the house for any reason. When it is safe, I will tell you."

"Donal?" Her body grew rigid. "Is he in danger?"

"That is what I intend to learn."

"By placing yourself in danger as well?
This person must be a madman." She twisted her arms so that she could grip his. "Please, Hartley. Do not risk your life."

He swallowed the sudden thickness in his throat. "I promise you that I will come to no harm."

"You know more of this than you are telling me. Hartley, is it something from your past? Have you enemies?"

His laugh remained safely within his chest. "I cannot speak of it now." Without further warning, he picked her up and began to run toward the edge of the wood.

"I can walk,"
Eden protested.

"Not fast enough." He increased his pace, flying over obstacles and through impenetrable thickets. If
Eden was afraid of this precipitous flight or wondered at his ability to move so swiftly in the dark, she did not reveal it. She merely clung to his neck and let him keep his breath for the run.

At the edge of the wood, where moonlight made a silver ocean of the sloping pasture, the hunter tried again. This time the arrow went wide and buried itself in the tall summer grass.
Eden gasped. Hartley never paused, but leaped the rock wall and hurtled down the fell to the park and then to the border of the garden.

He set
Eden down. "Go inside," he commanded. "Do not speak of this until I return.
".

"No. I shall send for the constable—"

"What if this poacher is a madman, bent on killing any within his reach?"

The lie was convincing, for it was what
Eden was most inclined to believe. She touched his face with anxious fingers.

"If you do not return quickly, safe and sound, I shall be forced at last to discharge you."

He
smiled,
his heart too full to admit fear. "You cannot expect me to begin obeying your commands at this late date." He drew her into the shadows of the wall and kissed her deeply and passionately. "Give Donal my love."

Her body stiffened and then relaxed. "I shall." She stepped back, her expression almost invisible even to his keen sight. "Take care, my… dear friend."

She slipped through the gate before he could answer. He had no time to ponder her final words. Wheeling about, he ran across the park and pasture and onto the fell, searching for a scent and a sign of passage.

Come to me, my brethren
, he called to the beasts pursing their nocturnal business.
Find the one who dared to enter our sanctuary with the weapons of man's violence. Find him, and hold him
.

From all about came the rustlings of many tiny feet, the brush of fur on grass, the puffing of breath low to the ground. Stoats, foxes, weasels, badgers, hares—all that could run—set out in pursuit. Hartley did the same. Rage and hatred, born of
Eden's danger, fueled him as nothing else could. He let go all restraint and became the stag, covering many human paces in a single leap.

The man was clever. He knew the wood and the field and how to hide his track. But he was still mortal, and in his foolishness he had run higher up the fell, away from his own kind. Hartley traced him to a narrow cleft between two great boulders, barely wide enough to permit him passage.

None of the other beasts had caught up with him. He could smell the enemy beyond the cleft. Shedding his stag's form, he prepared to enter.

"No!"

Tod appeared before his face, the hob's expression twisted in terror. "Cold Iron, Cold Iron!"

Almost too late, Hartley smelled the bitter tang. Far more Cold Iron than existed in a single arrowhead or a dozen.

A trap.
He leaped back, and Tod began to spiral out of the air. Hartley caught the hob as he fell.

An arrow's broken shaft was buried in Tod's shoulder.

Hartley howled. He ran far from the cleft and his quarry, cradling his servant in arms grown numb. The beasts he had called ran beside him. He found a hollow in the center of a thicket and set Tod down, closing the shrubbery about them like a fortress.

"Go," he said to the beasts. "Follow the man when he leaves the cleft, but do not let yourselves be seen. Tell me where he runs. I shall find him."

The beasts left again. He knelt over Tod. The small Fane's body was slack as the poison worked its way into his blood. The longer the arrowhead remained in his body, the less his chance of survival. It might already be too late.

Hartley summoned all his power. He set his hand on the broken shaft and imagined the poison at the farthest points of Tod's body, imagined
himself
drawing it out and up the shaft and into his own hand.

It came, and with it pain almost beyond bearing. Hartley did not stop. The shaft burned his hand, and fire moved up his arm. Still the poison flowed. After an eternity of torment, Hartley's agonized nerves felt the change in Tod's being. The shaft jerked in his grip as the wound began to close, forcing the arrowhead up and out.

He flung the arrow away with all his remaining strength and
collapsed,
lungs afire. He was so weak that should the hunter come upon him now, he would be helpless to fight back.

But no one came. Some beasts had remained to guard him, and the normal forest sounds had resumed, signaling peace.

And the likely escape of the enemy.

Hartley lay still until his body demanded a deeper rest. The pain faded into an oblivion that passed for sleep.

"My lord?"

The whispered voice wakened him. Tod crouched over him, hand hovering above his face. Tears filled the hob's eyes.

Tears.
Like a mortal.

That shock alone roused Hartley. His body still hurt, but the pain might linger for days as he cast off the effects of the Cold Iron he'd absorbed.

"My lord?"
Tod repeated. "You saved Tod."

Hartley winced. "I merely repaid you for saving me. You warned me of the trap."

Tod shivered.
"A cage, with great teeth of Iron.
The man was waiting."

A cage.
A trap.
Hartley fought to his knees. "We must find a way to destroy it."

"It is gone. The man took it, so the beasts say."

Hartley listened, and he heard what Tod had already learned. The man had indeed gone and taken his trap with him.

Renewed sickness washed over him. "I must… speak to
Eden," he said.
"Rest."

Tod's hand brushed his arm with a feather touch. "Do not go to the man place, my lord."

"I must." Using the support of the shrubbery about him, he pulled himself to his feet and staggered from the hollow. Tod moaned behind him.

With but half his usual energy, Hartley crept toward the house. His muscles were flimsy flower stems, and his heartbeat the tap of a dead leaf against a branch. Now he knew how mortals felt in their frail, short-lived bodies.

But he knew more than the feel of a mortal body. As he walked, reeling from tree to tree, he relived the moment when the arrow had nearly buried itself in
Eden's head. The thud of the point hitting the tree had seemed like the wail of the world's ending.

Eden
had nearly died.

Eden
.
Dead.
Because of him.

He stopped and flung back his head and gave a cry that set the leaves to showering about him and the ground to trembling under his feet.

If
Eden had died, his world
would
have ended. It mattered not if he lived a thousand thousand years, here or in Tir-na-nog.

Without
Eden, endless life would become endless torment.

He moved again, blindly. But with each step, his vision grew
more clear
, and he saw the path before him.

He must tell her.

The rightness of it filled him, even as he trembled with the realization of what it meant.

Eden
must be told the complete truth of who he was. Only then could he know if the things he contemplated were possible.

If he could forgo his homecoming, and Donal's.

If he could give up everything for
Eden.

If she could… love him.

Fear choked him as it had not when he had been so near his own death. When
Eden learned the truth, she might hate him. Hate him for the past, for his deception, for his very inhuman nature.

He might lose her forever.

The thought was too monstrous to hold. He continued down the fell and cloaked himself in shadow as he reached the garden gate.

She would know, tonight, or he would give himself to the hunter's Iron.

The fool.
The wretched, bird-witted fool
.
Claudia looked at the clock once more. It was well past midnight, and still he had not come with proof of her enemy's death.

She turned from the window and paced the length of the drawing room and back again. All the time Eden had believed her to be visiting friends in London she had been seeking—painstakingly and with much frustration—for a certain man. She did not know his name, or even his everyday occupation. Her search began in blindness. But she knew she must find him: a hunter skilled and intelligent enough to kill the monster of Hartsmere.

Such men were uncommon in
England, where game laws and land ownership were so restricted. A mere poacher would not do. And the man she hired must also follow her instructions to the letter… and believe the wild tales she told without question.

Miraculously, she had found the perfect candidate. In the intervals between her searches, she had attended a few parties held by friends. At one such event she had spoken to a clergyman with whom she was somewhat acquainted, and they had fallen into a curious conversation.

The clergyman had told her of a very strange man, a near savage from the former colonies of
America, who had come to him asking about "demons" and "wendigos." He had insisted upon the existence of such supernatural creatures and said that he had forged paths across the trackless wastes of forest and plain in pursuit of them. He had not been shy of boasting about his God-given calling to destroy them wherever they nested. He had come to
England because he had heard that these "wendigos" still survived in the island's hidden corners.

When the clergyman mentioned that the American was skilled with a bow such as the red Indians used, Claudia knew that she had found the man she sought.

Obtaining an introduction to him had been easy. Convincing him to help her, for a very generous fee—and by emphasizing the evil nature of the beast he must hunt—hadn't been much more difficult. The creature she described was much like the demons he pursued in his own land. In the end he had agreed, eager for the challenge and the chance to save a maiden in distress.

So he had come to Hartsmere in secret. And she had given him his instructions and all the warnings she could think of. The arrows he would use were swift, silent, and armed with deadly tips of iron. All he need do was find Hartley Shaw, slay him, and return to collect the second half of his reward.

But he had not come. Claudia had kept
Eden with her as long as possible tonight, well aware of her niece's intended meeting with her lover. She would not risk
Eden's life. But there had been no way to keep her in the house save telling her the truth, and that was out of the question.

When
Eden had returned only an hour later, disheveled and distraught, Claudia guessed what had happened even before her niece spoke of the unseen intruder.