Shana Abe Read online

  Scattered autumn leaves clung to the floor by the main entrance. A crisp breeze blew in, pushed back the wisps of hair by her face.

  Beside her, Avalon felt something in Marcus pause, lost in a memory, though he kept their pace steady.

  People who saw them stopped whatever they were doing and stared at the couple, most of them breaking into broad smiles, a few of the women dabbing tears away.

  Terrifying, what they were thinking. Infeasible. Avalon couldn’t believe it, the reckless hope the mere sight of her engendered.

  Our bride, they all thought, and with it came a crushing realization. She was everything bright to them now. She was one half of the magic ending of the bitterness of their lives, and the other half was the new laird, home at last. Against her will she began to understand some of what Marcus must be feeling, why he took the risk of abducting her.

  Outside, the sky had that particular hue that came only with the precious few weeks between summer and winter. Deepest blue, pure and infinite, with occasional hints of snow-white clouds gliding over the horizon. The air was cool and lively, smelling of leaves and smoke and faraway waters.

  It felt refreshing and welcome, like an old friend who had been away too long. It was so familiar to her. It felt like … home.

  Of course it was familiar, Avalon chided herself. It was the same as every other autumn she had spent up in the Highlands. She had not needed to be at Sauveur itself to experience a Scottish turn of seasons. That was all it was.

  She had tried to rest her hand lightly on Marcus’s arm, but it was so much easier just to relax and let him take her meager weight, to release the stiffness of her shoulder to him, allowing their movements to flow together. She had nothing to lose with this small concession, Avalon thought.

  The land around Sauveur was wild at the edges, the pastures and fields that had been cleared of trees and boulders were hemmed on all sides with heavy forest, mountain grass, and chunks of white quartz.

  Marcus led her down a well-trod path, gathering people behind him on the way. The wizard was keeping a respectful distance, followed by a growing tail of others, mostly children, drawn to the spectacle.

  He had to hear the whispers, Avalon thought, looking up at Marcus only once. He had to hear the voices behind them, saying their names. But he kept his face even, his steps firm and unbroken. He seemed a man with a purpose. Avalon knew this was more than just a leisurely stroll for her benefit.

  He was showing her off—as sure as a man would display a prized new steed, he was offering her to his people.

  Avalon tried to summon anger. But what came instead was a reluctant kind of approval. If she had been him, she would have done this as well. She would have taken whatever steps were necessary to encourage those depending upon her. She would have taken the figment of a legend and made it real herself, if she could have. And even this admission to herself made her afraid, for approving of the laird’s actions was only a step away from willfully participating in them. And then Hanoch would have won.

  They went to a glen, a sheltered place with a rolling pasture of wild grass and even a few white and yellow flowers, still clinging to life through the coming cold. The green grass waved with the illusion of silver outlines; it seemed to flow from a place of blue mist and dappled lands down a great mountainside, to spill into the circle of the small valley below. There were artfully tangled clusters of brambles in the valley. There were young girls with long hair and woven baskets collecting wool from the thorns of the bushes.

  And on the side of the mountain, though Avalon had never seen it before, was the end of that wicked faerie of the legend, an incredibly humanlike formation of black rock amid the green and silver.

  Avalon’s steps slowed to a halt. She stared up at the figure.

  It was easy to see why a legend might shape itself around these rocks. It would have been a giant faerie, thrice as big as a person if it were a fleshly form instead of stone. But otherwise, it indeed resembled a twisted, broken man, albeit one with the black wings of a crow spreading up and out from behind him. The shape of the head was clear, two arms—outflung—two legs. The wings. The green and silver grass not growing over any of the black stone body.

  Avalon was clenching her jaw but was unaware of it until she looked away and saw Marcus doing the same thing. The glen was silent. No birds, no insects. Even the breeze had settled to nothing. All the people around them were still.

  Suddenly it seemed like truth to her. There really had been an evil faerie. The laird’s wife was no myth but an actual woman, dishonored in this field. There was a vengeful laird. There was a devil. The curse was genuine.

  The world took on a sickening curve. Outlines became distorted, blurred. A noise filled her ears, the sound of a man weeping. A terrible smell surrounded her, a stench so foul it made her want to retch. The air was unbearably hot and humid.

  The man would not stop weeping, and he was saying words now, too: Treuluf, my life, don’t leave me.…

  Avalon sucked in her breath and the glen came spinning back to normal. The man was gone, his tragic voice—the smell that lingered was only the mountain air. Nothing seemed to have changed in that moment, everyone stood as before, looking at either the mark on the mountain or at the laird and his bride.

  She was astonished. It had been so real! Yet no one else looked odd, no one else glanced around and back up to the black stone. Only Marcus gave her a hint that she might not have imagined it all. He took a deep breath and frowned, as if he too had caught the foul stench of something not right.

  His look met hers.

  “Sulphur,” he said.

  Her refusal was strong and immediate. It could not have been real.

  “No.”

  His voice was low, meant only for her. “Another lie, Avalon?”

  “It was an illusion.” She matched his pitch. “Not real.”

  Now she got his chilly smile. “We have our ghosts everywhere up here, my lady, whether you believe in them or not.”

  The young girls in the glen had ventured closer, pale and hollow faced, and Avalon felt their wonder, their admiration, the soreness of their fingers, the wetness of their feet from the holes in their shoes.

  She wanted to weep with the ghost laird she had heard. She wanted to weep for these children, who could not remember a night without feeling the pain from work, who had never even conceived of a bliaut with fine jewels scattered on it, much less dreamt of owning one. She wanted to weep for the scarce salmon, the ruined grain in the fields. Dear God, what would become of them?

  Marcus released her arm, walked away from her to the collection of people behind them. He blended in right away, one tartan fading into the next, a sea of likeness filled with the unhesitant acceptance of its own.

  The wool-gathering girls watched him go, adoration clear on each face.

  Avalon was left to stand alone in the silver-green grass, the black faerie overlooking them all.

  The wizard approached her, the two outsiders in this scene now standing together. He contemplated the glen, the brambles, the shaped rocks above them.

  “A strange country,” he finally said.

  Avalon crossed her good arm over her stomach.

  “Savage lands and brave people,” he continued. “Mountaintops that seem to speak to God, should He will it. Magic and legends and strong liquor. It is a heady mix.”

  The breeze returned, whispering through the grass at their feet, turning the young girls back to their tasks at the brambles, though they did not stop looking from Marcus to Avalon.

  Balthazar bent down and plucked a flower with bluish-white petals. “I have a question for you, lady. Will you answer it?”

  Avalon watched his fingers amid the petals, dark against the light. “If I can,” she said.

  The wizard smiled. “A wise answer from an old soul. My question is this: What do you remember of this place?”

  His words were already baffling. Avalon looked around, uncertain, then tried to exp
lain. “Nothing. I never came here. Hanoch placed me in a village far to the north. I spent my time there.”

  “No, no,” the wizard said, waving his hand in front of him as if to chase away her words. “Not from this lifetime. From before. What do you remember?”

  “Not from this lifetime?” she echoed, confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “Some people believe we come back to these bodies again and again. They say that each lifetime is a lesson to advance the soul to God.”

  She grasped the thought, considered the heretical content. “No heaven? No hell?”

  The wizard smiled again; this time it was smaller, the ends of his mouth almost tucked down with amusement. “That is a matter of fantastic debate. However, I would think that the hell would be to continue to return without learning the lessons.”

  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 abrupt
ly 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.