The Penwyth Curse

  26

  BISHOP LEANED OVER THE black hole, waiting to be slapped again, waiting to hear that laugh again.

  Nothing. There was no movement in the air, no sense that something else was near, something that he should understand, should be able to see, or sense, or at least feel.

  He had a torch with him. He raised it high over the hole. He saw only blackness. He held it down in the hole. Nothing but darkness—no ladder, nothing.

  He was ready to believe he was mad, when suddenly the torch went out with a bang, as if someone had slammed it between two hands. Bishop was standing in the pitch black. He took a step back and stumbled over something. He landed on the sand floor of the cave.

  Then, just as suddenly, the torch flamed up again, even though it was lying there in the sand. It was burning as brightly as it had been before those invisible hands had slammed together. Invisible hands? He’d surely been tossed into a witch’s pot of madness. Aye, he’d been gaining in madness since he first saw Penwyth. Slowly he eased himself up, picked up the torch, and looked at what he’d tripped over.

  He saw a stick half buried in the sand. A stick? Why hadn’t he seen it before? Had he knocked it free of the sand when he’d tripped on it? It made sense, yet it didn’t, not at all. Fear nibbling around the edges of his consciousness, Bishop studied the stick before he planted the torch in the sand, feeling it sink down a good six inches—and surely that was strange, for there was nothing beneath the sand save rock, was there? But it didn’t matter. He reached for the stick, gently shoved away the rest of the sand, and lifted it.

  His hand burned, suddenly, fiercely, as if he’d stuck it into a flame. He dropped the stick, rubbed his fingers, and just as suddenly the pain was gone. Without thinking, without pause, he reached out his right hand for it and lifted it. It was warm, that damned stick was warm against the skin of his hand. There was no burning, nothing but steady, pulsing warmth. It seemed that the stick was settling in, that it was made for his hand and no other’s, and it fit his hand perfectly. It was perhaps a foot long, no longer. It felt like nothing he’d ever touched in his life. By all the saints’ muttered prayers, he thought, he could tell it was old by the very feel of it. No, it wasn’t just old—“old” was a word that didn’t apply to it. No, it was beyond old, it was something from before anything a man could understand. He knew it, deep inside.

  Nor was it just a simple stick, torn from a tree limb. He held it close to the torch. No, it was finely carved, indentations all around it where there had been stones, perhaps. Precious stones? He didn’t know. He wasn’t at all certain that it was wood. But it wasn’t metal, he knew that. But then, what was it?

  “Bishop?”

  He looked up to see her standing not three feet away, watching him.

  “Look, Merryn, I found it.”

  “What did you find?”

  “My torch went out and I stumbled over it. It looks like a stick, but it’s not. See, there were possibly precious stones worked into it.” He reached toward her with it. “Tell me what you feel when you touch it.”

  Merryn reached out her hand.

  “That’s it, your right hand.”

  “Why?” she said as she took the stick.

  “I don’t know. I first picked it up with my left hand and it burned me. How does it feel to you?”

  “Warm. The wood feels almost soft.”

  “Aye,” he said. “That’s it.”

  She sat down beside him, the stick still in her right hand. She touched it with the fingers of her left hand, and her fingers felt scalded, like she’d just dipped them in boiling water.

  “Be careful. For whatever reason, it won’t accept your left hand.”

  “I wonder what it is,” she said, holding it so gently, as if it were something very precious, something very fragile.

  “It’s the reason I came here,” he said, and in that instant he knew it was true.

  “There’s something strange at work here, isn’t there, Bishop? Something we don’t understand.”

  “Yes, and it has something to do with the damned curse. We will figure it out. It’s why we’re here.”

  Merryn stared at the stick, turning it in her right hand, feeling the warmth of it against her palm. It was so strange, so very strange. Then she said, “Once when I was a little girl, my grandfather showed me a drawing in a very old parchment. I’ll never forget the drawing, it was so vivid, the inks so bright. It was so real, as if someone had pressed it there, an exact image of real life.”

  His heart began to pound slow, deep strokes. He sat forward, not touching the stick, but watching her turn it slowly on her palm, caress it. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me about the drawing.”

  “There were three old men, all with long gray beards, smooth, like they’d just been combed, coming nearly to their waists. All of them wore long white robes with lovely worked-leather belts, studded with gems. One of the old men held a stick like this, and the stick looked very new. It was shining and shooting off sparks, as if from a fire. He was pointing the stick outward as if at the person looking at the drawing. My grandfather leaned over my shoulder and said in his rolling, deep voice, “These are wizards, young Merryn, from long ago. The one in the middle, he is holding his wand.”

  “Was he holding the wand in his right hand?”

  She closed her eyes, tried to remember that wonderful drawing. “Yes,” she said after several moments. “He was.”

  “This is very interesting,” Bishop said. “You think this is a wizard’s wand? It’s like the one in the drawing?”

  “I don’t know, Bishop, but you came here because something pushed you to come here. You found this stick. It must have something to do with the curse.”

  He said, still looking at that wand in her palm, “It wasn’t on the ground when I came in here before. I am very certain of that.”

  She felt fear prickle her skin. “How can you be certain?”

  “I just am. Now, the question is what to do with this—this wand.”

  She rolled it back and forth in her right hand, and let the warmth of it sink into the sleeve of her gown, touch the skin of her forearm, warm it, and she felt good. Deep down, it made her feel very good.

  He said, never looking away from the wand, “I know that Penwyth has stood where it stands now.”

  She looked at him, her head cocked to one side. “Not longer than a hundred years.”

  “Oh, no, Penwyth was there long before then. Aye, it was there, all right—not the castle, not the moat, something else—but it was there and it had that name.”

  “How do you know this?”

  He started to say, I was there, then he realized how mad that sounded. But he saw it now. By all that was holy, he saw Mawdoor—saw himself as well, only he was the prince and Brecia was with him. He saw all of it very clearly. He looked at the wand in Merryn’s right hand, and he saw it all even more clearly. He saw the flecks of gold in Brecia’s eyes.

  Bishop blinked, shook his head to clear it. He’d touched that wand, and now everything was as clear as if it had all occurred but moments ago. Was it the prince’s wand? Brecia’s wand? A witch’s wand, not a wizard’s? “So very long ago,” he said. “It all happened so very long ago.”

  “How do you know this, Bishop? Are you a wizard?”

  “No, I’m not a wizard,” he said and knew down to his bones that he wasn’t, only—“but the past is coming through to me. Don’t be afraid, Merryn. I’m not, at least not anymore.”

  She swallowed. “I’m not afraid.”

  He looked at her, that red hair of hers braided in a tight circle around her head, the green eyes, alert and dreamy at the same time. He looked at that wand in her right hand and felt a lurching in his heart.

  She looked like Brecia, that witch who’d lived in a time far distant, the witch who’d mated with the prince. And just who was the prince?

  He realized in that instant that he was glad she wasn’t Brecia. Brecia was a very long time ago. M
erryn was here, with him, right now. His seed was in her belly. He shuddered with the knowledge of it.

  Bishop carefully took the wand from her in his right hand, and rose. He had to learn more.

  He stood there, in the shadows, holding that wand, the torch flame wreathing his face in darkness and a glowing red light, and he wasn’t himself in that moment. She knew it, but she wasn’t frightened. She sat staring up at him, wondering what was happening.

  She watched him raise the stick high above his head. But surely the cave ceiling hadn’t been that much higher than Bishop’s head was. Surely. But now it seemed to go up and up, no ceiling at all in sight. And Bishop, he seemed somehow larger, shadows and light and the flame from the torch making him look like a demon called from the bowels of hell.

  She said, her voice as thin as the grains of sand that fell through her fingers, “Bishop, come back.”

  The moment ended.

  Bishop looked white. Slowly, he came down onto his knees. He gently laid the stick on a small stone ledge that protruded a few inches from the cave wall. That ledge had been there all along—it had to have been—she knew that, but now she saw that it was there because it held the wand. She reached out her hand to touch it, drew it back.

  “I must think about this,” Bishop said. He raised his head and looked at Merryn, and she saw the blast of hunger in his eyes, eyes focused completely on her. It was the same lust she’d seen in him the night before, the utter loss of control. She picked up her skirts and ran.

  Sometime Else

  Brecia was brooding, worrying the golden chain at her waist as she brooded. She said, “Mawdoor sent those men. The women were with them because Mawdoor knew they would lull you, just in case.”

  “Aye, he did.” The prince took another bite of a partridge leg, roasted to perfection over one of the ghost fires. He knew that her people were throughout the oak forest, close if they were needed. It was the ghosts who stayed in the courtyard, near their fires, and watched. She handed him a wooden bowl of soup, filled with carrots and cabbage and garden cress.

  “Will you eat until the next full moon comes?”

  He swallowed and smiled up at her. “You exhausted me, Brecia. I am only a wizard. I must rebuild my strength.”

  She threw a plum at him, which he caught and brought to his mouth. “Ah, the smell. Sweet plums.”

  “We must beat him, prince. We cannot let him continue to terrorize the countryside. He might succeed in destroying you, maybe even in taking me.”

  “I am thinking about this, Brecia.”

  “No, you are not. You are thinking about me being naked. I know because just look at how you’re licking that wretched plum.”

  He took a final lick, the final bite, and tossed the plum pip to her. “You should eat something as well,” he said.

  She took some sloe berries out of a beautiful old glass bowl that was filled with red and green shadows and popped them in her mouth as she paced back and forth in front of him. She stopped suddenly, in midstep.

  “I know what to do,” she said, and she drew in a big breath. “I know what we will do.”

  He suddenly heard a soft sibilant sound coming from outside. It was different levels of voices, and they were humming, in harmony. It was a gentle sound, and it pulsed through him.

  “My ghosts,” she said, her head cocked to the side, her incredible red hair falling halfway to the ground. “They are pleased. Isn’t that strange? I believed they wanted me to remain as I was, but I was wrong. They are pleased with you, pleased with what has happened.”

  “Are they also pleased that my son grows within you?”

  “Aye,” she said, “they are.”

  He smiled, nodded. “Now will you tell me what you think we should do about Mawdoor?”

  She ate some more sloe berries, then said, “We will leave at first light.”

  “Should I take off my clothes?”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “If you already know what we’re to do to Mawdoor, then I don’t have to think about it. I can have you again.”

  She whirled about, fisted her hands, then opened them with her fingers splayed in front of her face. She grinned at him through them.

  He was naked.

  She began to laugh when he realized that he was sitting in the midst of huge platters of food—deer, squirrel, hedgehog, hare—wearing only his knife sheathed on his forearm.

  “Replenish yourself first, prince. I can now judge how the meat improves you,” she said, and laughed when he settled his perfect naked self cross-legged on the floor in the middle of all those platters of meat. He spent a few moments making his selection, then picked up a small bit of hedgehog. He never looked away from her face as he ate it. She looked at his strong, beautiful body and stepped toward him, such a powerful urge it was, and she didn’t deny it. He gave her a slow smile—blinked once, then twice at her—and she too was naked. He made room for her between the woodcock and the quail.

  “I’m a demanding wizard,” he said. “You need to keep your strength up as well.” He fed her, caressed her just as she was caressing him between bites, and the air was pungent with the smell of the blue smoke and the roasted meat rising above their heads.

  And outside in the courtyard, the smell of sweet wood-smoke filling the air, the ghosts sat by their small fires and sang their blessing, their sweet harmony rising and dipping, floating through the branches of the oak trees, and into a night that was warm and soft, and all knew that no enemies were in the oak forest that night.

  27

  Sometime Else

  MAWDOOR HADN’T LAUGHED so hard since the time fifteen years before when his vicious grandmother had granted him two wishes because he’d cut out the heart of one of her enemies. He would never forget the look on the old witch’s face when his second wish was to have her walk into the sacred oak forest blindfolded, and stay there.

  Aye, the look on her face had made him feel very clever indeed. He’d waited, his own cleverness pumping through him, to see what his grandmother would say. She hadn’t said anything, nor had she gone into the forest. What she’d done was to cover his face with a soggy red rash for a full three months. Still, even with a face that brought scores of averted eyes, he’d believed it worth it.

  Mawdoor was looking at the men he’d sent to kill the prince. They were all tangled together, one man’s leg twisted through another’s clasped hands, another man’s head sticking between yet another’s legs, eye level to his behind, and Mawdoor couldn’t stop laughing. And Branneck—just look at Branneck, hanging there, as if by invisible cords from the heavens, screaming his head off, still holding the bloody knife that, Mawdoor hoped, had indeed slain the damned prince of Balanth.

  Such a short time ago Mawdoor had been willing to live and let live, a philosophical stance he’d had no choice but to adopt when he realized it wouldn’t be at all an easy thing to kill the prince of Balanth.

  But all that had changed when he’d seen Brecia, that witch of the oak forest, who with one look made him as hard as the rune diamond that blinked like spun light, and whose symbols meant nothing he knew of. And he’d found out very quickly that the prince wanted her too.

  He wanted the prince dead.

  And now Mawdoor knew that Brecia had taken the prince, alive or dead, to her fortress deep in the oak forest, a place he’d never seen. He’d only heard whispered tales about it in the deep of the night.

  In hindsight, Mawdoor realized he should have given the men more than just a dash of power. As soon as he thought it, he dismissed it. No, that wouldn’t ever be a smart thing to do. Mortals fast became monsters when given even the simplest of powers. All had seen over the years how mortals, given even a dash of a wizard’s power, enthusiastically tried to tear the earth apart in a very short amount of time, and each other with it. Mortals were a distrustful, lame lot, worth about as much as demon piss.

  Branneck hadn’t stopped yelling that he’d stabbed the prince in the chest—k
illed the arrogant bastard—until Mawdoor had taken that same knife and stuck it cleanly through the man’s neck, just to shut him up. And since it wasn’t smart to leave people around who very possibly had failed in their mission, he killed the other three men as well.

  Before Mawdoor killed him, Branneck had sworn that the prince couldn’t have survived the knife stuck in his chest, that Mawdoor’s magic poison that Branneck had pierced deep into the prince’s chest had to have done the trick. He claimed that damned woman had tangled them all up and hung him in the air as if he were naught but a buzzing fly. And as for the damned women, they’d been no help at all. They’d just stood there pointing and laughing. One of them had even waved her fingers at Brecia, as if in thanks. If he could have, Branneck would have slain all three of them himself.

  Had she somehow managed to save the prince? Mawdoor stood there, rubbing his hand over his jaw as he looked at the dead mortals, knowing in his gut that this was a witch’s work, not a wizard’s.

  Mawdoor took the three women to Penwyth and gave them to the old men, who unfortunately had no memory of what to do with the splendid gift, but knew they should be pleased. They’d sighed, knowing there had to be some memory of pleasure in their ancient brains.

  By nightfall, the old sots were waiting hand and foot on the women, out of breath with all the demands but relentlessly eager. The old women watched and laughed. The young women preened and demanded endless favors.

  As for Mawdoor, he realized he would have to wait to learn if the prince was dead. He couldn’t enter the oak forest. He knew in his wizard’s bones that very bad things would happen to him if he tried. Everyone knew about the ghosts, the ancient ones who had gone beyond, yet who had elected to remain in the forest. Mawdoor wondered if the ghosts knew what became of those who decided not to remain deep within the forest when their time ran out.