The Penwyth Curse Part 13

Dienwald didn't like such bald talk that smacked of things unknown and powers that could easily plow down a mortal man. He sighed as he laid his hand on Bishop's shoulder. "Aye," he said. "I believe that, but I don't like it."

Bishop closed his eyes a moment, shadowy images racing through his brain through a haze of red. Why red? He said, "Why do you believe it?"

"When you saved Philippa," Dienwald said slowly, still looking out over the great hall, "she told me there was simply no way you could have known that the leader of those bandits was holding a dagger against her side. No way at all. Yet, somehow, you did know."

Bishop had forgotten that. It was true that sometimes he simply knew things, saw them in his mind's eye, but that wasn't unusual. That was just a warrior's training based on what he knew of other men and how they fought.

He said, "Mayhap it wasn't really like that, mayhap it was something as simple as realizing that I had to go very carefully, that if I didn't slit the man's throat quickly he'd have warning, and then he woulda"" Bishop shrugged.

"You knew something bad would happen, is that it, Bishop?"

"Aye."

Dienwald turned to face him. "This has happened to you before, hasn't it? You have this sense, this awareness, when something isn't right?"

"There's nothing mysterious about it. You know that in battle you simply know what to do. Don't a.s.sign such mystical knowledge to me. My wizard role for Penwytha"that's all it was, as you well know, a role, so I could intimidate and frighten off anyone who would try to kill me. I'm nothing more than a man, just a man, just like all other men."

"Aye, sometimes that's true," Dienwald said slowly, then gave him a long look. He grabbed Bishop's forearm, shook him. "Listen to me. This d.a.m.nable curse. There are forces at work here, forces neither you nor I can begin to understand. I will be honest with you. I had firmly believed a poisoner was at work at Penwyth, probably Lord Vellan, the villainous old sod, and that's why I thought your wizard role was a good one. As for Lord Vellan, by G.o.d, you wouldn't believe the things he's done over the years. Well, not that I've seen anya"I was too young. Ah, but the stories that still float about. Lord Vellan is and was ruthless, without mercy. It is said that the only one who could ever control him was his mother-in-law. I don't understand that, but there it is. Did the old man poison the four husbands? I don't know.

"Listen, Bishop, whatever you are planning to do with the girl, you must not trust her."

"No," Bishop said slowly, "you are right. It isn't poison. It is quite something else, and that something else is somehow pus.h.i.+ng me to go. And do what? I don't know, but I must go and I must have her with me. No, I don't trust Merryn. I'm not that great a fool. There are not more than three females I would ever trust."

"I am afraid to ask you their names."

"Good, just know that Philippa is one of them. She is full-hearted, Dienwald. A joy."

"Aye, full-hearted." He grinned, a laugh rumbled deep in his chest. "Aye, that's my wench."

An hour later, fed, clean, and garbed in their hosts' clothes, Bishop and Merryn rode out on Fearless.

The sun was lowering in the afternoon sky, the air was cooler now, but just as sweet.

Merryn said, "I've decided that Fearless is an excellent horse. I will let him mate with Lockley."

"He will doubtless be pleased."

"Where are we going, Bishop?"

He said nothing, merely looked between Fearless's ears. He started whistling.

"It is already late. Why did you not wish to remain at St. Erth for the night?"

He whistled louder.

She slumped back against him. The silence stretched long between them. She heard birds in the yew bushes as they rode past, some taking flight, fanning black across the blue sky. She saw a single huge stone sitting in the middle of a field. "How long will it take us to get where we're going?"

"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 backa"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 ofa"" 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."

"Ayea"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, G.o.d, 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."

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 s.e.x 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 pa.s.sed, 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 s.h.i.+mmer 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 c.o.c.ked 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?"