The Penwyth Curse Part 18

She shook her head again, this time at herself. Her hair danced like flames around her head. He wanted very badly to rub his face in her hair.

He said, shrugging, "My wand will return to me, if it is able. It would take a very strong wizard to keep it from me. And you believe it is Mawdoor?" He spit and laughed. His arrogancea"it s.h.i.+mmered off him. He recognized no limits, no beings more powerful than himself, no weaknesses within himself. And most saw him as he saw himself. Strong and invincible. She had always admired that even as she hated him for his specific arrogance, his inborn conceit, for all that was unbending in hima"directed at her. Once, he'd repelled her more than he attracted her. But nowa"because she wasn't a foola"she recognized that he was the more powerful and she always had to go carefully around him.

She said slowly, "It seems to me that your wand is not with you because Mawdoor came upon you here in the forest and took it. And took mine as well."

"Aye. I wonder why he didn't try to kill me? He's always wanted to."

"You were sleeping. Isn't there a long-unwritten code that two opposing wizards must face each other?"

"Aye, the code has existed almost since the beginning of time, its purpose to ensure that the winner of any fight wins only through his skills and nothing else."

"Would Mawdoor stand by that code?"

The prince shrugged. "I don't think he would. Mawdoor has always gone his own way, and that means that he didn't kill me because he wants something else, wants something more from me. A battle on his land? The chance to kill me and have you admire him, accept him?" At her silence, he said, "He knows that you and I will mate; therefore he must rid himself of me."

"And he mustn't make me too angry in the process," she said.

The prince nodded. He saw Mawdoor's dark, fierce face clearly in his mind, even though it had been at least a year since he'd seen him. At the stone circlea"that was where he'd last seen Mawdoor. He was not a nice wizard. He was vicious and vile, stronger than he should be because of his d.a.m.ned demon blood, and the most l.u.s.tful wizard in many a long year. The prince said to Brecia, "You will never wed Mawdoor."

"No," she said and looked down at her sandals, straightened the golden chain around her waist. "Of course I will not wed him. Neither of you has anything to say about that. Prince, I know that you can do magic without your wand, but can you truly protect yourself without it?"

He frowned at that. "I don't know. It has never been a question until now."

The words came out of her mouth, startling her more than him. "I can teach you magic to protect yourself, magic that doesn't require a wand."

He could but stare at her. "You don't want to see me kicked off the edge of the earth? You don't want to see me crushed beneath a mountain of black stone that will hold me in darkness forever and beyond? What is this, Brecia? Why would you want to teach me magic? Why would you want to help me?"

Because this is the first time you have ever needed me, that's why. But she said nothing. She turned away from him, and he watched her long fingers stroke the white wool gown.

He said, "You could stroke me like that."

"What?"

"Your fingers. You're stroking your gown."

To his surprise and delight, she looked like a maid caught up in a man's words, not a witch who with just a wink and a tap of her fingertips could send him to his knees, eating dirt.

Could she do that to him since he didn't have his wand? He didn't know.

She said, "Forget my fingers, prince. You are not acting the waya""

"I'm me, Brecia, none other. Come, what's wrong with you?"

"You should be furious, screaming curses to any G.o.d who will listen to you, blasting incantations all over my sacred grove, exerting every sort of power you possess to locate your wand. Why are you talking about my fingers stroking you, when your very existence is at stake?"

"I suppose because I don't think it is," he said. "Is that odd of me? Perhaps. Would you really show me magic, Brecia?"

"You don't trust me, do you, prince? You believe my offer of help is somehow a trick."

He gave her a look of great hunger, nothing else, no threat, no struggle between them, just hunger. "I have wanted you since the first moment I beheld you at the sacred meeting place. I have admired you since that first moment. I will trust you to my dying breath."

"Stop this, do you hear me? Just stop this. You are not behaving like yourself, like you always act when you are around me, and I won't have it."

He looked at her face, at the faint line of freckles over her nose, and wondered for the hundredth time if her hair would feel warm against his skin. "Did you come looking for me, Brecia?"

"I just wanted to make certain you were out of my forest. Aye, and I hoped you had my wand, but you didn't. You were simply sleeping."

"Did you see either of our wands disappear from my hands?"

She shook her head. "At first I thought Callas had managed somehow to steal my wand back. But he hasn't the strength. He fears you more than hates you, and he believes you will destroy all that I am, that I might forget what I owe to my heritage, to my people, to my sacred oak grove."

The prince said thoughtfully as he brushed leaves from his legs, "Maybe I should have killed the little sot."

She laughed. That was the prince she knew and understood, the prince she'd like to kick off the Balanth promontory to sink into the depths of the sea below.

He realized that he'd heard her laugh only once before, at the sacred meeting place. She'd hummed with pleasure and laughter until he'd had to wed Lillian and Brecia had just disappeared.

"Callas is my man. If the need ever arises, why, then I will deal with him in my own way."

"Brecia, I don't need my wand. I can move a mountain without my wand. Perhaps, though, I would need my wand if I wished to move the earth."

"Yes, buta""

"But even with my wand, I cannot change a woman's mind." Then he smiled and waved his left hand in a wide fan in front of her. A wind came up and blew her hair into her face. He waved his left hand in the opposite direction, and the wind stopped.

"Aye, that is a clever trick, prince, but the wind isn't a mortal enemy or another wizard. The wind comes when you command it to come because it has no will of its own. But because the wizard who holds your wanda"Mawdoora"is very likely now more powerful than you, you need my help."

"How very odd it is," he said, stroking his jaw. "You seem to like me better now that you see me as weak."

"You, weak? Ah, prince, you make sport with me. It's just thata""

He took a step toward her. "What, Brecia?"

She smiled, raised both her hands, and trickled her fingers downward. In an instant he was naked.

He didn't move, just stood there, hands at his sides, smiling at her. He made no move to leap upon her. And surely that was odd. He said, "That is clever, Brecia. Do you like what you see?"

She studied him, and he knew it, and he also knew that he pleased her. If she continued, even hea"a very powerful wizard with or without his wanda"would become harder than a sa.r.s.en stone.

She trickled her fingers upward, and his clothes were back in place.

"Perhaps you are at my mercy now, prince. Do I have more skills without needing my wand than you, a powerful wizard?"

"Oh, no," he said. "Oh, no." He smiled at her, touched his thumbs together even as he spread his fingers wide, and raised his chin perhaps an inch. Suddenly, her hands and feet were bound. She toppled over onto the ground.

"You can't fan your d.a.m.ned fingers now, Brecia."

"I had thought you more reasonable," she said. "A mistake, I see now." She wanted to ram his head into one of her oak trees. He held her easily, and he knew it. She'd been a fool to feel any lessening fear or honest misgivings of him. "What will you do now, prince? Force me? Make me bow to you, kiss your feet?"

He cursed, clenched his fingers into fists, lowered his chin, and she was free. She rose, brushed off the white woolen skirt, and knew more surprise than she'd felt in a very long time.

"So," she said, her voice as flat as the sacred ale he'd had to drink at the meeting place, "you have no need of me at all. It is merely a compet.i.tion with you, prince. A matter of proving that you are more powerful than I. It is nothing else at all."

He laughed at that. "Whisk away my clothes again, Brecia, and you will see how there is a lot more to it than that."

"You are a man withal you're a wizard," she said in that same flat voice. "A man's body changes with a thought, a glimpse of a woman's ear or the sound of her voice. Show him a naked woman and he becomes crazed."

"I would not be crazed with you."

"Perhaps not," she said. "But you would demand that I give you everything."

He didn't say anything, just smiled at her, and felt his blood thrum heavy in his veins, bright and fast, his wizard's blood.

He said, "If you were with me, we would have a better chance of finding our wands. What do you think, Brecia?"

She said slowly, "You mean something like a partners.h.i.+p? We would work together?"

"Yes."

It seemed at that moment that the forest became as still as Brecia. There wasn't a single oak branch rustling, no sound at all from any bird or insect. If her ghosts were hidden amongst the trees, they were more silent than the air itself.

He felt deadened with it. "Now you don't trust me, Brecia?"

"I know that if I trusted you, you would try to bind me to you, or, mayhap you would even use me to barter for your wand."

The earth shook beneath his feet, and both of them felt it. His rage was that great. "d.a.m.n you, you obstinate, blind witch, I would die before I let anyone harm you!"

His words hung in the air, hard and heavy between them, the air undulating as if unseen fingers were sweeping through it.

She stared at him for a very long time before she said, "There is much between us, prince." He knew she could see the s.h.i.+mmering air, knew she was using her own breath to warm it, sending her soft breath to him, to stroke his face, to calm him. "I will believe you until you become again as you once were."

"Whatever that was," he said, blowing that warm air back into her face.

"Mawdoor is dangerous," she said, and it was true. His fortress was too near her oak grove for her peace of mind. Her people, even the ghosts so old they could see into the future as easily as they could the past, spoke very quietly when Mawdoor was the subject. All feared him.

"Mawdoor has never tried to harm either me or my people. He's never come into my forest as far as I know." She paused a moment, and he saw a flash of fear on her face. "I remember late one night, several years ago, Mawdoora"just to remind me of his power, I supposea"sent a powerful bolt of lightning down to strike not a foot away from my fortress. A huge plume of smoke rose high above the forest, and I knew he'd sent it."

"Not much of a warning," the prince said. "What did you do?"

"I? I did nothing. I have heard stories of his power, of the devastation he brings when he is displeased."

He frowned at that. "He knows where you live, where your fortress stands."

"Oh, yes."

"Somehow he must have divined that I was there also."

"And he was surprised," Brecia said slowly. "And then enraged. You're right, he must be planning something quite spectacular since he didn't kill you right here."

"He could not divine that I was with you. Even I could not divine that. Perhaps one of your ghosts is his spy."

The ground shook.

He smiled. "Well done, Brecia. Do you really wish to help me fetch our wands?"

The ground stilled. He heard a bird flying overhead, actually heard it, and the march of an insect near his foot.

"Aye," she said, "I'll help you. There is something else you must know, prince."

"I don't think I'm going to like this, am I?"

She merely shrugged. "Mawdoor sent one of his advocates into the forest to see me. Three months ago, at the time of the full moon."

He waited.

"It was his offer of marriage. But it was much, much more. It was also a threat if I refused him."

"What did you do to his advocate?"

"I did nothing, merely told him that I had vowed celibacy until the third millennium."

"What did he say to that?"

"The advocate suggested I rethink the millennium."

"Did you turn him into a snail and step on him?"

"I wanted to mix him into my blue smoke and have him meander out the top of my fortress, but I feared Mawdoor's retribution. I sent him on his way with blessings and kind words. I am not a fool, prince."

"No," he said, "you are not. And no, you will never wed Mawdoor."

"You know this for a fact?"

"Oh, yes. You will be mine."

20.

MAWDOOR'S FORTRESS WAS stark black and forbidding. It was the kind of forbidding that made a man's toenails fall off, as grim as a Druid priest's altar ready for sacrifice. It was an immense circular black wooden tower standing on a hillock that he himself had created, a thick black spear aimed some fifty feet toward the heavens. A ten-foot wooden walla"a perfect trianglea"surrounded the tower, with other towers at each of the three corners. The wood was blacker now than when it first appeared, because, it was said, every time a mortal saw it and fear sank deep into his heart, the wood became blacker. No one knew how much darker the darkest black could get.

This was true. Local tribes avoided the fortress; indeed, they walked carefully, eyes on their feet, when they were within a mile of Mawdoor's lands.

Mawdoor had named his fortress and all its lands Penwyth, a name that had come to him in a dream, he'd said to his acolytes, a name that meant nothing really, but it sang softly in his brain. His dream was of a not-so-different future with his fortress still here, just changed a bit, perhaps not so very black. It pleased him.