The Penwyth Curse

  “Two days, mayhap more, since we’re sharing Fearless.”

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  “Turn around and face me.”

  She did.

  He said, eyeing her from not more than two inches away, “I’m glad you combed your hair. You looked like a witch.”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing, I wonder?” She turned again, facing the rutted road in front of them. She began whistling.

  Bishop laughed. “No,” he said, leaning close to her ear, “you won’t die a virgin.”

  “Is that what you’re going to do with me? Force me?”

  “Oh, no, I would never force a woman.” He began whistling again, loudly.

  Bishop called a halt just as the sun was setting behind them. He hadn’t stopped sooner simply because Dienwald had given them enough food to last a week. He didn’t have to hunt their dinner.

  It was a hidden spot, in the shadow of a small maple forest, safe enough. He set a fire going while she laid out the food.

  “I hope it doesn’t rain,” she said, looking skyward.

  “If it does, we know the tent won’t collapse,” he said. He sniffed the air, smiled even as the certain knowledge filled him. “No rain.”

  “Do you think it’s still raining at Penwyth?”

  He thought about it a moment, then turned his head and looked back—why, he didn’t know. He felt just a very slight quiver in the air. And he knew, just knew. “The rain stopped.” And then he knew even more.

  “You said it wouldn’t stop. You said it would be a flood. You said you’d tie me down and let me drown in it.”

  He grinned as he gnawed on a rib of beef. “I thought that had a nice frightening sound to it.”

  “You made that up?”

  “I did. Did I tell you I think it’s very nice that you don’t want me dead like the other four?”

  She broke off a piece of bread and shrugged. “I don’t want you dead. I’m probably a fool. Will it rain again?”

  “Aye, it will. The drought is over.”

  “How can you know that?”

  He shrugged, frowned into the fire. “I just do.”

  “I wonder why,” she said, sat cross-legged, handed him another broiled rib of beef. “Do you think it’s because you came?”

  He said without thinking, “No, I don’t think so. There is activity in the far reaches of—” He stopped dead in his tracks. Those strange words had just flowed from his mouth without his brain’s permission.

  She was sitting forward, all her attention on him, not on the fresh peas from Philippa’s garden that she was chewing. “Far reaches of what?”

  He stared into the small fire he’d built, listening to his own voice and wondering at the words that came so easily out of his mouth. “There are ripples leavening the air. Mayhap they portend ancient conflicts, violent quarrels, in the oak groves. There is confusion, strife.” He stopped talking, his eyes closed.

  “Bishop, what’s the matter? What oak groves? What sort of ancient conflicts? What quarrels? What are you seeing?”

  “I’m not seeing anything,” he said, and he looked both baffled and angry. “I don’t like this, I really don’t.” He knew deep down that things were changing, churning up mysteries, dredging out long-buried secrets, like muck from a swamp, secrets that weren’t even necessarily his. He rose, dusted off his trousers. “I am going to rub down Fearless,” and he left her to stare after him.

  She sat there and wondered what he had meant about her not dying a virgin. Her life was suddenly out of control, but oddly, she wasn’t at all afraid. Did he really know she wouldn’t be cursed with virginity until she died?

  14

  WHEN SHE WAS SETTLED against him, her warm breath on his neck, Bishop said, “It’s a balmy night. A night that makes a man think of things other than sharpening his sword or splitting an enemy’s head open.”

  She wondered what those things were, but she said, “I’ve never seen heads split open, since my grandfather and all his soldiers were already old when I was a little girl. I’ll never forget he told me that since his strength was failing, he would learn other ways to survive. He is always weaving his plots, arguing with all the other graybeards. They have a fine time of it. When my father died with no male heir, they all knew that there would be trouble. As long as there were covetous men, they said, there would be endless trouble. But they weren’t worried because there was the curse.”

  “Aye—that bespeaks a great deal of luck.”

  He waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. What was she keeping from him? Her fingers touched his neck, trailed down to his shoulder, paused, then continued, over and over, her touch light, smooth.

  Was he, he wondered, nothing more than a big dog for her to pet and use for warmth?

  Didn’t she realize he was a man? More than that, didn’t she realize that he was a young man and a young man could easily be harder than the tent pole in the flick of an eyelid? Evidently not.

  He reached up and took her hand and brought it down to his belly. He smoothed her palm open. His muscles tensed. He felt awareness streak through her and grinned into the darkness. If he’d been a dog before, he wasn’t one now.

  Her fingers moved, just a bit.

  “Lower,” he said.

  “What do you mean, ‘lower’?”

  “Move your fingers lower.”

  “You mean like this?” He gritted his teeth and held his breath as those fingers of hers slowly stretched downward. She actually squeaked when she touched him. As for Bishop, he shuddered like a palsied man. He wanted her fingers on his naked flesh.

  “Yes, like that.” Oh, God, not really, not just like that. He wanted more. He nearly rose straight off the ground when her fingers traced over him, so light was her touch. He couldn’t help himself. He grabbed her hand and laid it on him, held it there.

  “Bishop? Are you all right?”

  By all the saints’ gnawed knuckles, no, he wasn’t all right. He was nearly ready to spill his seed on his clothes, and that would be humiliating. He could barely breathe, and she now wanted him to speak as well? He felt her fingers curve around him, his own hand holding hers there. All he could think about was her fingers. “What did you say?”

  “You sound like you’re in pain. Should I move my hand?”

  He groaned behind his teeth. “I’m all right,” he said, and almost bit his own tongue straight through.

  “You are very different from me. At least you are by the feel of you.”

  “I know,” he said, and nearly exploded when her fingers tightened.

  “Just what do you do with all this?”

  He laughed, just couldn’t help himself. It brought him a moment of sanity. He said, “I would come inside you with all this.”

  He felt her legs move against his, knew her knees were locked together. Oh, yes, she knew what he meant. Only if she’d been raised in a convent was there a chance she wouldn’t understand what a man did to a woman.

  “My grandmother occasionally bathed male guests when she was younger. She once told me that men were just men, some gnarlier than others, and when they were naked in the bathing tub, you just hummed, perhaps whistled, and stroked them down with the sponge. She said the trick was never to dwell on it.”

  He laughed. He’d never been an important enough guest in someone’s keep to warrant the lady scrubbing him in his bath. “Would you scrub my back, Merryn?”

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly, and stroked him again. “It would have to mean that we were married and you didn’t die from the curse. That, or you would visit my keep once the king makes me the baroness of Penwyth and I would do just as my grandmother told me to do.”

  “You would whistle?”

  “I don’t know,” she said again, and he could just see her frowning even though it was dark in the shadowed canopy of the maple trees. “Perhaps you are worth more than just a whistle. Mayhap a rhymed song like Crooky sings.”

&nbs
p; Her hand left him and he wanted to weep. She moved restlessly against him. He didn’t know if she realized she was petting him, like a dog again, his belly up to his chest, his shoulders to his neck. He felt her shake her head against his shoulder, heard her sigh. “I don’t want you to die.”

  Something moved deep inside him at her words, something that scared him witless. No, he wouldn’t think about it. “If I take your virginity, I won’t die.”

  That got her attention. She reared up and stared at him. “My virginity?”

  “Aye, we could just get that part over with. I wouldn’t be your husband yet. Am I safe from the curse?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, then shook and shuddered at what had come out of her mouth. He laughed. Why not? He was lying here, she was plastered against his side, and his sex was harder than the pebble that had worked its way into his boot. Why not? Suddenly, he felt something else tugging at him, tugging him away from her and her virginity. But wasn’t a virginity a wondrous sort of thing that a man shouldn’t ever be tugged away from? But now, somehow, he was. He didn’t understand it. Something was just there, nearly touching his face, or mayhap that something was inside him, and his brain went inward, toward it.

  He heard his own voice say, “No, I won’t take your virginity. Go to sleep, Merryn, go to sleep.” Maybe he’d spoken those words for himself, because in just moments he fell into a sleep deeper than a sword thrust into a man’s belly.

  Sometime Else

  The prince followed Callas into the oak forest. On and on they walked, at least a mile into that deep, dark tangle of trees that swallowed the sound of their footfalls and hunkered over them, the leaves twitching and blowing, from no wind that he could feel. There were no shadows in this forest, no room for them. There were just scores upon scores of oak trees, like sentinels in place since the dawn of time, huddled so closely together that all vegetation falling to the earth soon became fetid and quickly rotted into nothingness.

  Finally, after it seemed that eons had passed, they came to a large clearing. The prince saw that in the middle of the clearing was a rise. It wasn’t a natural rise, but one that looked as if men had piled mud and stones and straw there, high and higher yet, wanting this prominence, wanting it to dominate.

  Or magic had made the prominence. Aye, magic was more likely. Why waste energy piling up muck when you could just roll your eyes and snap your fingers? He looked up to see the moon, still a thin sickle, but light was pouring off it, making the clearing nearly as bright as day. The heaven was filled with stars, so bright that they made the leaves on the oak trees shimmer and glow. A very interesting effect the witch had wrought.

  “Callas.”

  The old man turned. For an instant the prince saw a spasm of fear cross his face. It pleased him. Puking ancient priest, so knowledgeable about things that interested the prince not a whit. Fear became the old varmint. He wondered idly just how old the old relic really was.

  “What is it you wish, prince?”

  The fear was gone. Was there smugness in the old man’s voice now? Did he believe him cowed at the unnatural brightness pouring onto this clearing? The prince said, waving his hand, “What is this place?”

  Callas cocked his head to one side, his filthy hair tangling down over his shoulder and arm. “You are blind, aren’t you, prince? I did wonder, you know, and now I am certain that your powers don’t extend into our magical forest.” He laughed. “You are in our stronghold now, prince. Even though you see no one, many are watching, wondering why you are here, ready to kill you if you so much as whisper a violent thought.”

  The prince laughed, felt a hank of hair fall into his face, and pushed it back into the club at the back of his neck. He said very softly, “Let any of your kind come to me, Callas. Let us see how much harm they can do me. I will tell you true, I see nothing at all but this naked prominence your people built. Why did you build this place?”

  Callas raised his kesha. The tip glowed madly, pulsing with power. He pointed it directly at the large mound of earth.

  “What are you doing?”

  Callas said nothing, merely continued to point the kesha. What was the old relic up to? The prince grabbed Callas’s arm, careful not to touch his priest’s stick. The old man was so startled, he would have fallen if Bishop hadn’t held him up. Bishop shook him. Suddenly, Callas seemed boneless, not real, a figure stuffed with feathers. Had he killed him so easily?

  “You black-blooded bastard, leave him alone.”

  It was Brecia. His heart nearly burst in his chest.

  At last.

  He was smiling so widely a ghost could have flown into his mouth when suddenly a wooden fortress appeared atop the prominence. Narrow wooden poles, at least eight feet high, were lashed together with ropes. The tops of the poles were whittled to sharp points. And behind that wall stood a wooden tower, at least forty feet high, mayhap higher.

  A damned tower, a big one. Worthy of a witch, a very important witch. Where was Brecia?

  The prince didn’t like this. He was used to controlling everything around him. He’d seen the man-made or witch-made prominence, nothing more. And now there was a large fortress atop it. He felt a jolt of raw fear all the way to his feet, something very rare for him.

  Why hadn’t he seen the fortress? Was Callas right? Did he lose power here in her oak forest?

  Where was that damned witch who’d called him a bastard? His damned witch.

  He dropped Callas’s arm, watched the old man stagger. Suddenly there were a dozen, nay, two dozen faces, maybe more, close, all staring at him from the trees lining the clearing. He heard her yell again, “Don’t you dare kill him!”

  The prince couldn’t stand this. Where had her voice come from? He whirled about, but the fortress looked inviolate. It could be an illusion conjured from a witch’s brain that wasn’t really there, that didn’t really exist. But it was here.

  He drew a deep breath. This was nonsense. He was a wizard; nothing before had ever been closed to him. What was this?

  The prince threw back his head and yelled, “Brecia! You damned witch, come here this instant or I will crush this foul old man.” Then he smiled. “Nay, I won’t do that. I will create a pond just for him, nice and deep and clean, and force him to bathe himself and his filthy clothes. Show yourself, or it is done.”

  Nothing.

  The prince pulled his wizard’s wand from his sleeve and pointed it at Callas.

  “Don’t you dare humiliate him, you wretched excuse for a wizard.”

  He smiled even as he watched Callas scamper away, more agile than an ancient old priest should be. The gates to the fortress were slowly swinging outward. The prince settled his wizard’s wand back into his sleeve, felt it warm against his flesh, part of him really, and he walked forward through the wide gates.

  They seemed to be wider now that he was walking through them than they’d appeared but moments before.

  He heard voices, knew the ghosts that hid behind the trees were wondering what to do. He called over his shoulder, “Callas, reassure your people. Tell them that my business is with the witch. I won’t kill them if they leave me alone.”

  He was inside the fortress. He heard the huge wooden gates close behind him. A dozen small campfires were dotted around inside the compound, a huge area, surely much larger than the fortress he’d seen when he’d stood outside that gate. She was doing this, he knew, and somewhere deep inside him he appreciated her efforts to provide him such a charming and confounding illusion. It showed skill, and he admired that. Aye, she would suit him quite nicely.

  He looked more closely at the fires and saw at least fifty ghosts, all of them hovering just a few inches off the ground, so pale they were nearly transparent, but he could see their feet dangling, and their feet had more substance. Their feet were bare. They made absolutely no sound at all, just hovered, the air humming around them. They were there, yet he couldn’t feel their presence, and that was odd, but he could see their damned bare feet
, long, narrow feet with the toes too long.

  Was Brecia somehow shielding the very feel of them from him? No, he was too powerful for her to do that. He knew they were ghosts, but he simply couldn’t sense them. But why? Mayhap they weren’t really ghosts, but shadows from another realm. Unreal beings Brecia had called up to frighten him? Simply props like those the mummers used in their plays? He shook his head. What they were didn’t matter. She could have conjured up mad dogs flapping around him, snarling, and he wouldn’t have been bothered. But all in all, the ghosts with their long, naked toes were a nice touch.

  He had never before been to Brecia’s sacred place. He let himself settle into it, and soon he could feel the power pulse around him, though the feel of it wasn’t familiar to him. It was like a lover’s lips, light, nipping, flowing over his flesh, coming close to him, but never touching, a lover he’d never yet had. He would swear that that power dipped quite near him, almost alighted on his shoulder, on the back of his hand, then flowed softly away. A power he didn’t recognize, that was something new to him. What would happen if it did touch him? If it went into his mouth, his eyes, his nostrils, and he breathed it in? He felt his wizard’s wand grow warmer against his forearm.

  He realized then that the lazy orange threads of fire from all those small campfires seemed to connect, entwining, dancing through each other, then soaring higher and higher. They warmed the entire space inside the fortress.

  He smiled. He pulled out his wizard’s wand and flicked it at one of the small fires. It blasted upward, threads of orange scattering, sending sparks leaping up at least fifty feet. The ghosts soared, seeming to dissolve into each other, all heads craning upward to watch the sparks burst high over their heads. He would swear that their feet became even clearer. Well, he’d announced himself, given Brecia warning. He smiled. He wanted very much to see the witch.