Daughter of Fire (49 page)

“What is happening?” she demanded.

Vivian released her, for it was not her own power that gripped the woman, but the power of another. Judith gasped, her features twisting in pain. She stared down at her hands. Both were suddenly heavily wrinkled and painfully gnarled.

“No!” Judith cried out, her voice no longer young, but the rasping wheeze of an old woman.

It was brutal to watch, as her body slowly withered, no longer beautiful but unrecognizable with the passage of decades in only moments, until she lay curled on the floor, misshapen and bent with the cruel punishment of the price she had paid for her own ambitions. And then she crumbled to dust, scattered into the rushes at the floor.

The adjoining door opened and Meg stood in the doorway.

“Quickly,” Vivian told her, “bring my healing potions. Judith is dead and I fear the queen may die as well.”

She worked quickly, throwing back the bedcovers, giving instructions for Poladouras to build up the fire at the hearth and light every candle. By the time he had finished, Meg had brought her medicines.

“She has been given a poison. Even now the child dies within her and she will surely die as well if I cannot stop it.”

There was no time to waste. She sat beside Matilda at the bed. Turning her thoughts inward once more, she focused on the power of the Light as she placed one hand over the queen’s heart and another over the child that lay within her.

Drawing on the power, she quickly found the darkness of poison that flowed through the queen to her unborn child. As if it were a tangible thing, Vivian seized it, closing her thoughts around it, then drawing the poison within herself. On a painful gasp, she released her connection with Matilda.

She felt the poison within her. Its strength was gone, leaving only a lethargy that she fought to control. She must not give in to it, for Mally was in grave danger.

“You must give her a cleansing tea,” she instructed Meg. “Then she will sleep.”

“And the child?”

“Both will live.” But her unspoken thoughts were less certain. None of them would survive if she was unable to stop the evil of Darkness that had caused this.

“What will you do now?” Meg asked worriedly.

“The queen must be protected against any further danger.” Going to the fire on the hearth that now burned bright and steady, she passed her hand through the flames, building the energy that had been drained by the purging bond that removed the poison from the queen’s body.

She spoke the ancient words in the language of her ancestors, drawing on their power to join hers. Then, she returned to the bed where the queen lay. In the way of the ancient ones, handed down through generations of sorcerers and their daughters, she touched her fingers to five points, forming a protective shield about the queen,  that no darkness could reach as long as Vivian lived.

“You must remain here,” she told Meg and Poladouras. “Stay with her.”

Poladouras shook his head. “I will not let you go, alone.”

Vivian laid a hand at his shoulder. “Where I go, you cannot. For there are things that will pass that are not of this world, nor of your God.  I must do this. It is me that the Darkness waits for. If you are here, then I know the queen will be safe, for the powers of Darkness cannot match the courage of your true faith.” She saw the doubt in his sad expression and prayed that what she said was true, for there was much at stake.

“Do not, my child!” Meg cried out, her blind eyes filling with tears. “Send me in your place. Transform me as the Darkness transformed that miserable creature.”

Vivian shook her head. “It would do no good. The deception would be found out and the consequences unimaginable. I need you to remain here, for I rely on your strength as well.”

There was no dissuading her and when Vivian had gone, the old woman wept bitterly, and no amount of comfort Poladouras offer could ease her fears.

“You do not understand,” she cried. “She cannot protect herself and the queen at the same time. If she protects the queen with her power, then she will be destroyed. She goes to her death to save us.”

~ ~ ~

The catacombs were the ruins of the Roman fortress that had once stood in London five hundred years before. In their quest for power, succeeding generations of invaders and their kings had built over them until now the opening lay beneath the royal chapel.

William’s soldiers had spoken of it. Some said Arthur’s knights were buried there, for the catacombs contained ancient burial crypts. She took a torch with her as she began the descent at the stairs behind the altar stone, down into ancient Roman ruins.

The torch cast fingers of light across dark, damp walls like threads of gold in the darkness of a vision at a tapestry. She was the weaver she had envisioned in her dreams. Only she could alter what would be. The kingdom and the fate of all those she held dear depended on her doing this.

She found Mally in a dark, crumbling chamber, her hands bound before her, the skin raw from the coarse rope. Vivian sensed the ancient dead souls that surrounded them, and far more.

“He’s dead, mistress!” Mally cried out, as the light from the torch fell across her terrified expression.

“They killed him!”

Turning, Vivian recognized Conal.  He’d been horribly beaten, no doubt caught that day in the market by the bishop’s men. But why?

The truth of it whispered across the stones. The bishop had been after her, and Conal had died protecting her.

“Dear friend,” she whispered, laying a hand against his cheek.

She untied Mally, and encountered no resistance. It did not surprise her for the girl had served her purpose, as a lure to bring her down here. Once that was accomplished, the girl was no longer needed. Mally wept with relief and clung to her.

“He said you had sent for me, that your healer’s skills were needed in this dreadful place.” The girl shivered. “Then he left me here. What is happening, mistress? I don’t understand.”

Lies woven into yet more lies, deception and death, handmaidens of the Darkness. There was no need to ask of whom she spoke. As though a portent of the battle that was to come, she felt the darkness moving through her with increased heaviness in her arms and legs, her thoughts coming less quickly, and knew this, too, was all part of it.

“You must go, now,” she told Mally. “Take the torch, follow the stairs, and whatever happens, do not look back.”

Mally looked at her incredulously. “You can’t stay here, mistress. You must come with me.”

“I will follow,” Vivian told her, pulling the girl to her feet. With a comforting touch at Mally’s shoulder, she sensed the girl was well enough, as was the child she carried. She gently pushed her toward the entrance of the chamber, sensing the Darkness that waited for her.

“Go now!” she told the girl. “And do not turn back. When you reach the hall, go to Meg. She is with the queen.” Mally hesitated, glancing fearfully about the chamber.

“Go!” Vivian repeated fiercely and the girl turned and fled. As soon as Mally had gone, she felt the Darkness closing in, seeping from the corners of the chamber, spilling over the stones at the walls. Even if she attempted it, she knew she would not escape for as soon as Mally was through the opening she had felt an invisible portal closing behind her.

“I knew you would come
.”

Vivian slowly turned, recognizing his voice. No light reached in this deep dark place, but she had no need of it. Her senses reached out, moving across the walls, the fire within her glistening in a million tiny crystals in the stones, formed long ago when the earth was new and fire ruled the land, cooled through the millennia, then carved by ancient craftsmen when the catacombs were built.

“Yes,” she acknowledged. “I had to come. To stop you.”

He stood before her, dressed in black, darkness upon darkness. Even his eyes were as black as night with the darkness of his soul., and he no longer wore the silver cross, for it would have burned him at a single touch.

“You cannot stop me,” he told her. “Merlin tried over five hundred years ago and I destroyed him. Now, I will destroy you, and the kingdom will be mine.”

“Never.  I cannot allow it.” But even as she spoke, Vivian felt his evil working through her, robbing her of much-needed strength and concentration. She sensed as well that any weakness gave him access to her thoughts. And so she closed her thoughts to him, focusing them on images the Darkness could not penetrate—her memories of Rorke.

The bishop’s expression sharpened. “Very clever, mistress, more clever than your father. Having never experienced the mortal pleasures of which you have partaken, he could not shield his intentions with thoughts of happiness and love as you have. But it will do you no good. In time, my power will weaken your thoughts. The time is already at hand in the north country, even as we speak.”

With sudden clarity, she realized the full extent of his treachery. He had planned all of it! Beyond any doubt she knew that the attack in the north country was not from Danish raiders, but the count’s own men, no doubt led by his heel hound, Vachel.

“Ah, you see the way of it,” he acknowledged. “Then you know there is nothing that can prevent it. It is already done.”

The Darkness had altered time to its own purpose. It was also possible it might serve her. But only if Rorke lived.

“You cannot stop it,” the count told her as he raised a gloved hand and swept it before him. “No more than your father could.”

The meager light in the chamber seemed to be swallowed up within the bishop’s grasp. Her instinct was to counter his move, to seize back the light, but Vivian hesitated. The Bishop knew her powers and would anticipate any move.  Instead of focusing her power in the light that glittered across the walls, she pulled the light deep within, channeling it into every part of her being, and plunging the chamber into complete darkness. There was no door by which she might escape. Instead, she fled through the stone.

Coldness wrapped around her. She felt as if her flesh was being stripped from her bones. Then it was as if she had no bones at all, no flesh, only thought, memory, and strength of will. As though she were being born, slipping from one world into the next, she emerged on the other side of the wall into another chamber. Yet, even as she fought to gather her strength once more, she felt the Darkness following her, closing in again.

“
You are no match for me,”
the stones whispered his evil thoughts. “
You cannot stop me
.”

She pushed to her feet, the passageway uneven beneath her feet.

“
You will be destroyed as your father was destroyed
.” The words whispered after her.

She sent a single thought into the gathering darkness.

“Never!
”

Twenty-five

R
orke took his most trusted knights with him, men who had fought battles at his side, carried scars from old wounds, and had pledged their lives on those battlefields.

They removed all battle armor and the heavy shields that might weight them down, carrying only their swords and lances. Though William was determined to ride with them, he was weak  from the long ride into the north country and knew he would only hold them back. He watched, grim faced, as they prepared to leave.

“My brother has betrayed me,” William solemnly told Rorke. “He would have me slain to fulfill his ambitions. I should have known that he would not be content with what he was given, but wanted more. He wanted England, and the price may be more than I can bear.”

Both knew he spoke of his queen and his unborn child. Rorke knew, but did not say, that it might have cost far more than that.

“I pray we will be in time,” he replied, his thoughts of Vivian with memories of the encounter in the forest and the creature that almost killed her.

“If you are in time and the queen lives, then I will deal with my brother,” William told him in a tone that allowed no argument. “You will not deny me this!”

But what lay unspoken, was that the queen might already be dead and as Rorke well knew, it would mean that Vivian was dead as well, for in his heart he knew she would do all to protect even at the price of her own life. And in that event neither the God nor the king could save the Bishop.

He passed the command to his men and they set off at a dangerous pace that spared neither man nor horse, trailing extra mounts taken from Vachel’s men. They stopped only long enough to change horses then continued the torturous pace. In the last hours before dawn, the morning of the fourth day, the fires of London could be seen on the horizon. Though both horses and men were exhausted, they pressed on.

Word was sent out as they entered the city. He saw the surprise at the faces of the guards at the gates and knew that those loyal to the bishop were stunned to see them return. A brief  skirmish at the gate was quickly ended, and Rorke and his men stormed the royal residence.

He vaulted from the back of his trembling mount, his own warhorse left behind on the long ride from the north country. With battle sword drawn and flanked by Tarek and Gavin, he kicked open the doors of the main hall.

Stephen met them at the top of the stone steps that led to the royal chamber. He clutched a battle sword in one hand, his wounded arm hanging all but useless at his side. Blood stained the bandage at his head, but the look in his eyes was fierce.

“Hold!” Rorke ordered his men, and as he reached the young knight and was finally recognized in the flickering light of the torches, Stephen collapsed.

“I tried to stop him,” he whispered as Rorke eased him to the floor, his knights gathered round.

“Aye. Rest easy my young friend, for you have served your father well.”

“The queen is safe,” Stephen assured him. “The old woman and the monk protect her.”

“Vivian?” Rorke asked anxiously, for Stephen had not spoken of her.

“She saved my life,” Stephen said incredulously. “Death was upon me. I felt it as I have heard the old warriors speak of it. Your lady gave me back my life.”

“Where is she?”