C
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29
J
ulianne forced her eyes open and stared up at the high coved ceiling. A watermark snaked down one smooth stone wall. She was lying on a narrow string bed, strung so tight there was no softness to the mattress at all. She didn’t recognize the austere furnishings and had no idea where she was. Even wondering made her feel as if her head were about to explode. She loosed a deep sigh.
“Welcome back, Lady Cambourne.” The silky bass voice slid over her like a serpent gliding over a garden wall. “I began to fear I’d overdosed you. So nice of you to finally rejoin me.”
She struggled to sit up and discovered she was shackled with heavy manacles at the wrists and ankles. Snippets of memory sliced into her mind—a cloying scent, a nightmarish ride slung over a saddle bow as if she were a sack of potatoes, and the tattoo of horse hooves on hard turf. The hooves still pounded at her temple. The rest was nothing but blackness, deep and brooding, an oblivion from which no light escaped.
She lifted one hand to her head and the clank of her chains sounded unnaturally loud. “It doesn’t appear you gave me much choice.”
“None at all.” His laughter was even more disturbing than his voice. The sound danced on her last nerve and made her stomach roil.
She shielded her eyes against the light filtering through the window behind him. Dozens of green glass panes filled the opening. The colored glass, stone walls, and general draftiness meant she was probably in some sort of medieval solar. There was only one door leading from the circular room.
“Where am I?”
“At the country estate of one of my followers. I apologize for the inadequacy of your accommodations, countess.” Sir Malcolm was seated at an escritoire before the window, poring over an old book. “But if you think this room is deficient, you should see the dungeon.”
A foul metallic taste coated her tongue. He’d drugged her with something vile. She fought the urge to shudder and glared at him instead. “May I ask why you’ve done this?”
“You may ask, but I should think it would be obvious,” he said, closing the volume and setting it aside. “I require the cooperation of Jacob Preston. Taking you prisoner is just the incentive he needs to accomplish his task. Would you care to see what progress he’s made?”
Her heart leaped to her throat. If he was planning to take her out of the room, she might find a way to escape. But she didn’t want to seem too eager, so she merely shrugged.
“Not curious? You astound me.” He reached under the escritoire and pulled a round object from the leather bag.
She blinked hard, thinking whatever he’d used to drug her was making her imagine things. The man seemed to have an honest-to-goodness crystal ball.
He positioned it on the small desk, so the green light hit it just so. From deep within the orb, swirls of color coalesced into figures. Gingerly, Julianne eased off the bed and, though her ankle shackles were attached to the frame, she advanced as far as her bonds allowed.
The image in the ball came into sharp focus. She sucked her breath in over her teeth. She could see Jacob clearly in the crystal, encircled by flame and steam. Worse, he was also surrounded by metal objects of all sorts, knives and pitchfork tines and plowshares. She touched the iron amulet that rested over her heart.
Jacob was wearing an identical talisman. His jaw was set like granite, but he gave no outward sign the amulet hurt him. Julia knew better. She felt his agony as if it were her own.
“Jacob will do whatever you bid simply because you have me. There is no need to force him to wear that iron,” she said, shaking with fury. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because it amuses me.” Sir Malcolm smiled at her, like a cobra smiling at a caged mongoose. “You should be pleased. His willingness to bear pain on your account shows a depth of feeling I’d not suspected he possessed. But the truth is, there is another reason for him to wear the talisman.”
“You hope it will make one of the daggers kill him as it did my husband.”
“You wrong me, milady. I hoped when I sent the amulet to Lord Cambourne that he would be the one who possessed enough magecraft to find and reunite the daggers into the staff of Merlin. Sadly, your late husband was judged unworthy for such a task.” Ravenwood leaned forward to peer into the ball. “I only hope Preston fares better. For your sake.”
“I’m telling ye, guv, no matter what I try, there’s no way to melt them daggers into an alloy I can work. The magnetism is all gone too.” Gershom Flagg met Jacob at the open door to his forge with a bucket in his hands. Heat poured around the soot-covered, half-naked smith in waves. “For the life of me, I don’t know how anyone fashioned ’em in the first place.”
Jacob looked down at the smelting bucket filled with half-melted ore. “It’s the iridium. I feared this would be the case. You’ll have to raise the temperature of your forge.”
Mr. Flagg shook his head sorrowfully. “I’ve done all I know to do. Ye’ve paid me better than a king and no mistake—all them gems from the hilts will set me and the missus up for the rest of our lives and our children’s lives too, like as not—but I reckon I’ll have to give ’em all back now. It just can’t be done.”
The song of the dagger metal curved around Jacob’s ear. He expected it to taunt him, but instead the ore’s voice beckoned him on, tempering its usual belligerence with soft persuasion. If he didn’t know better, he’d suspect it was trying to tell him not to abandon hope. The amulet at his chest began to join in the song.
“There must be a way,” Jacob said, stepping past the smith into his metal-filled shop, something he’d never have dreamed of doing, in response to the metals’ chorus.
“Preston, wait.” George put a hand to his shoulder, trying to stop him. “There’s no need for you to—”
“No, I’m all right.” Jacob appreciated his friend’s concern, but he felt compelled to go forward despite any pain he might suffer for it. He grasped the platinum head of his walking stick in a white-knuckled grip and continued to advance toward the forge.
Since he’d been wearing the iron amulet, indeed since Julianne had slipped its mate over her head, he’d been in constant pain, but amazingly enough, it was bearable. He was almost coming to embrace the discomfort because it meant he was still alive, still conscious and yet in close contact with metal for longer than he’d ever attempted before.
Granted, the thin lawn of his shirt separated his skin from the iron amulet, but all it protected him from was any vision the metal might try to crowd into his mind. It was no shield from the iron’s voice or the scraping of its little ferrous talons.
The fire leaped higher at his approach and then subsided to a white-hot glow. The amulet grew warm on his chest and his pain level ticked down several notches. The tension in his shoulders relaxed visibly.
“Fascinating,” George mumbled. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that amulet is acting just like a vaccine.”
The doctor was right. Jacob was able to bear more proximity to metal than ever in his life, but he sensed there was something more the amulet was trying to share with him. So he slipped it down his collar and inside his shirt. The metal radiated heat over his bare skin. All his senses went on high alert.
The brightness of the forge fire made him stagger back a step and he felt an instant connection between the circle of iron on his chest and the metal of the daggers. Colors brightened and he could actually see waves of magnetism return and grow. Power washed over him, pulled from every scrap of metal in the shop. It flowed through his body and out his fingertips.
“Hold there!” Gershom Flagg cried. The smelting bucket tried to pull itself from the smith’s strong hands, and he struggled to keep it from floating across the space toward Jacob.
Jacob lifted a forbidding hand and the metal in the bucket settled. Then without adding a particle of heat to the container, chunks of unmelted ore began to sweat drops and slide into the rest of the liquid. The forge fire flared behind Jacob and then simmered to glow with shimmering heat. The metal whispered secrets, in a language of flashing images and ancient music, but Jacob’s vision didn’t tunnel, and he was able to bear up under the ore’s message without succumbing to either pain or weakness. Instead, strength gathered in his limbs.
He wasn’t sure yet what it meant, but his way ahead seemed a bit less murky. Instead of fighting the ore or surrendering to its ravaging power, for the first time in his life, Jacob was in control of it. With one hand extended toward the smith and the dagger ore, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the contents of the smelting bucket. When he opened them again, the metal bubbled in completely liquid form.
Jacob met the wide-eyed gaze of the smith. “Try to cast the staff again now, Mr. Flagg.”
The crystal orb nearly shattered with blinding light, then went completely dark. No amount of fiddling or adjusting its position would bring it back to a state of receptivity.
Malcolm barely resisted the urge to send it crashing to the stone floor. The amulet had been working perfectly. He’d been able to follow Preston’s movements from the instant he’d slipped the pewter chain over his head. Now the gazing ball was a cipher. One moment he was able to see Jacob Preston in minute detail and the next, his ability to view anything was completely obliterated.
“What happened?” Lady Cambourne asked, her lovely face drawn with concern. “Is Jacob all right?”
Malcolm cocked a brow. Preston was playing with power beyond the dreams of mortal man. There was every possibility it had sucked him out of this world completely. Yet another reason Malcolm decided to let the metal mage handle this delicate and dangerous undertaking.
But he didn’t need to let Lady Cambourne guess that he’d lost the ability to keep watch over Preston.
“I decided you’ve seen enough,” he said as he packed the blackened sphere back in its bag. “You’ll learn soon whether or not he’s been successful.” He cast a dark glare at her. “I have no idea if you are of a religious bent, Lady Cambourne, but I advise you to pray to whatever Deity you hold dear that he was.”
C
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30
“H
ere we are, Lady Cambourne,” Sir Malcolm’s voice rumbled next to her ear. He removed the blindfold, but when she looked out the coach window, all she saw was a wind-swept, snow-covered plain. “Just a brief walk now and your journey will be done.”
She was still shackled, so he had to lift her down from the coach. He wore his red hooded robe and golden domino over his heavy greatcoat. Julianne would have been grateful for the extra layer of warmth, but she was given no such consideration.
A long row of carriages was stopped along the country lane, the horses’ heads down and tails tucked against the wind. Wherever they were bound, she would have witnesses. Someone would surely object to seeing a countess in chains.
Sir Malcolm propelled her over the frozen ground with one hand to her elbow and the other on the small of her back. She was forced to mince along due to the leg irons, and she kept her eyes cast down to avoid tripping. The ground sloped upward and when they crested the small rise, she finally looked up.
Gray obelisks rose three times a man’s height in the remnant of a circle.
“Stonehenge,” she said softly.
“Ah, you know of it then,” Sir Malcolm said. “I keep forgetting your late husband was something of an antiquarian.”
“I know enough to know it probably wasn’t built by Druids,” she said, her teeth chattering when she paused for a frosty breath. “According to the earl, their rites were held in groves.”
“Astute, as always. You’re right, but our land is dotted with stone rings, all acknowledged places of power,” Sir Malcolm said. “It’s fitting to make use of the largest of them for this particular rite. The staff of Merlin is being bonded to its new master. Nothing less than the most auspicious place will do.”
Her heart sank. The carriages along the road must have brought his trusted followers. The likelihood that any would object to her ill treatment dwindled with each step.
Snow crunched underfoot as they passed through the broken outer ring of megaliths and around the circle of smaller blue stones sprouting from the wintry earth. A horseshoe of trilithons curved around the inner portion of the space, brooding over a rather ominous-looking slab of granite. The sinking sun sent long shadows cutting across the ground. A dozen of Sir Malcolm’s black robed, masked minions crowded within the horseshoe, their breaths rising in the crisp cold like a conclave of dragons.
“On this shortest of all days, the dying sun heralds the death of the old order of things,” Sir Malcolm said, his voice echoing against the granite giants. “We hail the new power rising, the power we will wield.”
And by “we,” he means “he,”
Julianne thought. He wasn’t the sort to share.
“But for power given, payment is required. And the only currency the spirits accept is blood.” Ravenwood turned to the two nearest, and largest, of his followers. “Bind the lady to the altar stone.”
A cold lump of terror lodged in her belly. She’d played Jeanne d’Arc once and theatre critics said Julianne True went to the stake with a saint’s fortitude and dignity. But this was no play. And Julianne was no saint.
She fought. She screamed. She tore at her captor’s iron-fisted grips.
In the end, someone cuffed her across the temple and the world went black. When she came to herself, her spine was pressed against cold granite. Her shackles had been removed and replaced by leather straps, but she was still bound, hand and foot, unable to move, barely able to draw a deep breath.
Oh, Jacob.
She’d never hold him, never see him again. All the days of loving that might have been marched before her, their unfulfilled promise gnawing at her insides like a cancer. Then her anguish was overwhelmed as fear smothered all hope.
Jacob advanced through the circle of stones, following the crushed down snow. His nostril hairs froze with each breath, but his heart was hammering so hard, he didn’t feel the cold. He’d glimpsed Julianne, bound to the slab of granite inside the innermost ring of stones. Every fiber of his being urged him to run to her, but he forced himself to walk around the henge to enter as the others had. Ravenwood’s lot was chanting, a low drone that made the iron amulet at his chest throb in sympathy.
Jacob had come alone, as he’d been ordered. If he tried to burst into the circle and free Julianne now, he’d be overwhelmed by numbers. To even the odds, he’d have to force Sir Malcolm’s hand somehow.
The deep shadow cast by the standing stones sent a shiver over his soul. In a snippet of memory, he heard his old vicar intoning, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death ...” The Psalmist claimed to be unafraid, but Jacob doubted King David had faced this sort of evil. Given a choice, Jacob would rather have faced a giant with nothing but a slingshot if it meant Julianne wouldn’t be threatened by the outcome.
His gaze cut between two of the sarcens to where Julianne lay helpless. Her face was strained with terror, but she bit her lip to keep from crying out. Anger and fear warred with each other in his gut and heated his neck, but he bridled himself. It wouldn’t help her if he lost his head. This was about power, and right now, the only power he possessed was self-control.
He entered the inner horseshoe, stopping in the center where the last ray of sunlight shot between two stones and across the space. The chanting stopped.
“Jacob!” Julianne cried out. At a signal from Sir Malcolm, one of his followers gagged her.
A muscle ticked in Jacob’s jaw, but he forced himself to stand still. Much as he wanted to, he couldn’t run to Julianne. He had to make Ravenwood come to him. Alone.
Jacob twisted off the head of his walking stick and pocketed the platinum sphere, a last touch of beneficent metal. Once the staff had been cast from the daggers, he’d had his rapier removed and the cane’s hollow core expanded to fit the new rod of metal. He drew it out and held it up for all to see.
“The Staff of Merlin,” Sir Malcolm said with reverence. Then he fisted his hands at his waist. “The skin of animals is not fit to touch it. Remove your gloves.”
Jacob swallowed hard. Damn Ravenwood for using the metal against him.
When he curled his bare fingers around the staff, a current of power surged through his body, centering hotly around the iron amulet on his chest. Strangely, he didn’t feel as diminished by the metal’s touch as he expected. At least, he wasn’t sucked into another vision. He remained firmly anchored in his present reality. The lance of pain to his brain was still as sharp, but he was able to bear it.
He’d bear anything for Julianne.
His jaw set in a ridged line, Jacob staggered a step. His shoulders sagged.“Ah, I see your pain,” Sir Malcolm said. “Give me the staff, and I promise you will very shortly feel no more.”
“If you want it, come and claim it.”
Sir Malcolm laughed. “We are many. You are one. Why should I?”
“How else will you know if you deserve to have it?” The man couldn’t very well ignore that kind of challenge before his followers, so Jacob pressed his luck to add, “And be sure to wear the other iron amulet as well, just to make it fair.”
Ravenwood glared at him for a moment, then raised his hand in a forbidding gesture.
“Everyone stay back.” Sir Malcolm ordered. His dark eyes glittered in the slits of his domino. He stooped, removed the talisman from Julianne’s neck and slipped it over his own.
Jacob barely contained his relief. Now if the staff got away from them, there was little chance it would target Julianne as one of the daggers had targeted her husband through the iron amulet. Though that was cold comfort so long as she was strapped to a stone altar.
Malcolm stomped to Jacob and grabbed the rod. The man’s eyes flared.
“So,” Jacob said softly, “you feel it too. Quite a rush of power, isn’t it?”
Sir Malcolm tried to jerk the staff away, but he couldn’t pull it free. “Let go, damn you.”
“I can’t,” Jacob said. “And you can’t either.”
Sir Malcolm tried to force his fingers open, but couldn’t.
“My friend deciphered more from the manuscript, and he says when two claim the rod’s power, the staff has to choose.” Jacob gave the length of metal a hard yank, but Sir Malcolm and he were both stuck fast. “You and I are bound to it, till the staff makes its choice.”
“Then I’ll help it along.”
Sir Malcolm grasped the staff with his other hand as well and began trying to whack Jacob with one end. Jacob held him off and began shoving, but neither of them could gain much traction in the snow. Jacob threw himself sideways to the ground and they rolled in a tangle of kicking legs.
They came to a stop with Sir Malcolm astraddle Jacob’s chest. He bore down on the staff against Jacob’s windpipe.
Stars wheeled across his vision. Darkness gathered at the edges, but if he let himself slip into oblivion, Julianne was done for. Jacob fought for a breath. Then he bucked and struggled and managed to toss Ravenwood aside, though they were both still bound to the staff. Coughing and sucking air, Jacob staggered back to his feet. Neither man gave ground. Light faded around them as the sun began to slip beyond the curve of the earth.
Then suddenly, Jacob felt the staff quicken. A low thrum vibrated up his arms. The staff turned of its own accord, the length stretched between them. The tip of the rod nearest Sir Malcolm slipped through the iron circlet on his chest. Jacob felt the rod moving inexorably toward his foe, but he was unable to either shove it forward or hold it back.
“No!” Ravenwood shouted and began trying to push the rod away. Malcolm staggered back till he was flush against the stone illuminated by the last ray of the sunset. The tip of the staff wasn’t sharp, but it pressed against his sternum with enough force that Jacob heard the bone crack.
“Help me, Preston,” he cried. “You can have the damn thing.”
A ripple of disapproving murmurs rose from Malcolm’s followers. Evidently even Druids scorned bald-faced panic.
Jacob braced a foot against the sarcen and pulled with all his might, but he lost his grip as the staff released him. He sprawled backward into the snow, then scrambled to his feet. The staff glowed red gold for a moment, then it flared to white.
Beams shot from the end facing away from Malcolm. The bolt of light careened across the center of the circle like horizontal lightning. Jacob dove back down as the energy crackled over his head and singed his jacket. The acrid smell of scorched wool invaded his nostrils.
Screams jerked Jacob’s head around. The fiery bolt had engulfed the black robe of one of Ravenwood’s followers. The man writhed on the ground while another beat him to extinguish the flames. The rest of Ravenwood’s crew ran shrieking back to their waiting coaches. Once the fire was out, the final two of Malcolm’s sect deserted him, peeling off their tattered robes as they ran. Playing at power was one thing. Actually experiencing it was quite another.
Sir Malcolm struggled with the rod whose tip was still pressed against his sternum. “I don’t want it,” he screamed. “Take it back.”
When the sun sank completely, the tip of the staff fell into shadow. Sir Malcolm was able to wrench it away from his breastbone. He reared back and threw the staff like a javelin at Jacob. It roared in a tone so low Jacob felt, rather than heard, it rattling inside his chest. The iron amulet on his chest burned. The staff flew straight for him.
In that slice of a moment, Jacob was acutely aware of myriad things—the puff of his last exhaled breath hovering in the air, the blood pounding in his ears, the piteous sound of Julianne’s muffled sobs. He was going to die and there was no help for it.
And Julie would die with him.
“No,” he bellowed and pulled the platinum head of his walking stick from his pocket. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had. He hurled it toward the oncoming staff with every ounce of will in his heart and force in his body.
The two airborne objects connected with a ringing smack.
Then the rod flipped in midair and streaked back to Sir Malcolm. It rammed through the center of his amulet, through his body and buried itself in one of the sarsen uprights so deeply there was no sign of its passage but the small pockmark opening.
A look of utter surprise lifted Malcolm’s features, then the light went out of his eyes and his body crumpled to the snow. As Jacob watched disbelievingly, Ravenwood’s body froze solid. Then, from deep inside the stone, the staff began to sing. The song increased its vibrations till Jacob was forced to his knees, hands clapped over his ears. Sir Malcolm’s corpse shattered into snowflake-sized particles and fluttered away to the east in a driving wind.
“Looks like the Staff of Merlin chose you,” Jacob murmured. Then he sprinted to Julianne and removed her gag. “Are you injured, love?”
“No, I’m all right. Oh, Jacob,” she sobbed. “You came for me. Again.”
“More than that, I’ll stay for you,” he said as he unbound her and took her into his arms. “If you’ll have me ...”