Daughter of Fire (52 page)

He left the chamber, descending down another passage, and into the next, and the next, until he found a connecting passage. Several paces into the passage he found what he was looking for—more traces of light that glistened at the stones and knew she had also passed this way.

The catacombs were like a maze, an underground warren of chambers and sub chambers that had once been a military post that housed the ancient army of Rome as long as a thousand years ago.

The sounds of water and stale air moving about were like whispered voices as he ran down one passage after another with a sense that he was being drawn deeper and deeper below the fortress, guided by a flicker of glowing light at a stone here, another there, until he made a turn and discovered yet another wall blocking his way.

He doubled back, looking for other traces that she had passed that way as she, too was driven deeper and deeper into the catacombs and with a purpose that made itself increasingly clear. Here, there was only the light of the torch he carried. The Light was her source of strength and power. She was renewed and strengthened by it. Without it... she would die.

If the Light was life, then the Darkness—void of all light—would be as death to her.

He continued to search for some other trace that she had passed some other way, but there was none and with growing frustration found himself returning to the wall that had blocked his way. He held the torch higher, scanning the wall.

Faint traces of light glimmered on the adjacent wall at the side of the chamber and then suddenly disappeared. Had she had passed through the stones as she had in the first chamber?

With sword in hand, Rorke cursed as he searched for some other sign of her. As he searched first one wall then the next, the light from the torch gleamed at the blue crystal in the hilt of Excalibur, and reflected off tiny fragments in the stones of the walls—but not at the wall that blocked the passage.

Rorke passed the hilt of the sword before the wall several times, angling it so that it might catch the light of the torch, but there was no reflection. On a sudden thought he thrust one hand against the wall. To his amazement his hand passed through the wall.

Vivian possessed the power to move through stone walls. It was the means by which she had escaped the fortress that morning she had gone into the forest. But he possessed no such powers. Still his hand passed freely through the wall into a clear space beyond. Uncertain what he might find on the other side, Rorke took a deep breath and walked forward.

Unlike his journey through the standing stone, he experienced nothing at all. It was if he had merely walked a pace further down the passage. It was an illusion!

“The Darkness will try to deceive you,”
Meg’s words came back to him. At the wall to his left he saw fleeting traces that Vivian had passed that way—the illusion of the wall had been intended to deceive him into turning back!  The Darkness knew he followed.

Holding Excalibur before him, Rorke continued down the passage, moving with no more sound than the air and water that surrounded him.

“
You will never find her, warrior
,” the walls seemed to whisper as he passed by. “
She is lost to you. She will be entombed in the darkness, her powers lost forever.”

As the words seeped from the walls, taunting him, Rorke realized that the Darkness indeed knew his thoughts, and he closed them to all thoughts of her, all memory, every emotion and desire. He would not give in to it. It must not know what he was thinking even if it could sense his presence.

Then he heard other voices, mingled with the sound of feminine laughter that he recognized. The sound caressed the walls of the passage, drawing him on with a breathlessness of passion that echoed the passion as she once lay beneath him before the hearth in his chamber. He rounded the corner in a passage and suddenly stopped. There in a chamber before him, he saw her as beautiful as she had ever been.

She lay on a pallet, head thrown back, her body naked and spread beneath a man as they coupled with a violence of passion that tore through him like the blade of a sword. A rage of jealously welled within him. His hands clasped over the sword as he raised it high over his head to strike.

Then the man turned his head toward Rorke and the face he saw was his own. And with a sudden awareness Rorke realized that had he brought the blade down he would have caused his own death.

Vivian turned her head as well to stare at him. But in spite of the naked perfection of her body, the eyes that looked back at him were not filled with brilliant blue fire, but were as bleak and dark as death.

He swore an oath, lowering Excalibur abruptly as he realized the deadly illusion before him. Light from a torch at the wall, glinted off the stone in the hilt and the illusion shattered and disappeared in a burst of ear-piercing sound that could only be described as an explosion of rage. Dark shadows crawled the walls and scattered to the far corners, seeming to seep out of the chamber as the light from the stone in the hilt of the sword played across the walls as if it chased them.

“The Light of the sword!” Rorke whispered with a new awareness as he realized the Darkness fled before the Light of Excalibur!

“So, you are not invincible,” he exclaimed at this newfound knowledge.

He left the chamber with a new confidence. There was a way to fight the Darkness. But to find where it had taken her, he had to be as cunning as the Darkness.

He moved on relentlessly even as the flame at the torch began to gutter and die. Still he moved on, following the glimmers of light at the wall, knowing that the Darkness could not have made them for light was like death to that evil force.

“
I am here!
” the sound of her voice stopped him. He turned and saw her standing in an adjoining passage only a few feet away from him. Wary at first, he glanced to the walls and saw the traces of light that she had passed this way.

“
It is over
,” she said, as she slowly walked toward him. “
He was no match for me.”

“Where is the bishop?” Rorke asked, doubtful that it was over so easily after Merlin and Meg’s warnings, yet with an overwhelming relief that she stood safe before him.

“
He is dead
,” she answered as she reached a hand to him. “
It is over now. The Darkness is gone,
” she moved into his arms, her body soft and yielding.

“
I was afraid
,” she whispered, pressing close so that her breasts thrust against him. Rorke frowned. He had never known her to fear anything. And yet she felt like magic against his body, his own fear mingling with a growing desire for her.

His hand moved through her hair as hers stroked down the length of his sword arm. She raised her face to his, so close that he could almost taste the sweetness of her waiting lips. His hand closed over the thickness of her hair that hung loose at her back, angling her head back beneath the waiting hunger of his mouth. Her hand closed over his wrist, then glided downward to his fingers clasped around the handle of the sword.

“
Tis over
,” she whispered again, her mouth so close that he could taste the blatant sexual arousal. But where was her sweet fire of innocence?

“
There is no more need of the sword
.” Her fingers loosened his from the handle of Excalibur.

Just as her lips met his, Rorke’s fingers twisted in her hair, at the same time his other hand tightened over the hilt of Excalibur, and swung the sword beyond her grasp. The eyes that looked back at him were dark and bleak.

“Do you wish the sword?” Rorke asked with a fierce snarl, hurling the creature away from him. She fell to the stone floor, shimmered, and then disappeared as surely as the other images had disappeared.

“You may not have it!” he shouted to the Darkness. “For I will not be betrayed by your illusions! I will find her, no matter what form you take. I will find her!”

Once more the shadows ran the walls of the passage, like dark, ghostly figures fleeing before the light. This time, Rorke pursued the shadows as they drew him onward to a final confrontation.

The passage ended, opening into a large circular chamber. Here there were several torches set in brackets along the walls, revealing the dark openings of several other passageways, all meeting in that place like the spokes of a wheel.

The chamber was large with stone seating that fanned out from the center between those passage openings like the concentric ripples in a pool of water. Here the spectators would have sat, watching whatever event might have taken place for their enjoyment so far from Rome. Feats of wrestling perhaps, jousting, and swordplay, as ancient combatants met to test their prowess and ability much as his knights practiced with lance and sword.

He knew he had been deliberately drawn to this place. The Darkness had brought him here.

“Let it begin,” Rorke said to himself, for he much preferred the open battlefield for which he’d trained his entire life. His fingers flexed about the handle of the sword as his gaze slowly scanned each entrance.

“
So it shall begin and end, warrior
,” came the answer. And as Rorke spun about in the direction of that voice, his gaze rested on his opponent.

He was formidable, standing as tall as Rorke and dressed in the finest chain mail raiment. His tunic was jet black as were his leggings. Even his mail-covered armor was black, as was the sword he carried, his gloved hands that closed over it, and the helm he wore.

He bore no crest, nor would any have been discernible, for his colors were black on black. The Darkness was his crest. He struck the first blow, swinging at Rorke’s head. He ducked and lunged out of reach of the second blow he knew would follow, striking a blow against a mail-covered arm. Parry, lunge, thrust. Blows rained down as they both struck, quickly repositioned themselves, and then struck again. The sound of steel on steel rang out across the arena.

Rorke returned blow after blow, the steel of Excalibur as solid in his hands as the determination that drove each blow, until his blows began to take their toll. Then another blow and his opponent’s stance not quite adjusted to fend off the next, until he began to give ground, on the defensive. Still, Rorke drove him back.

He drove past the point of exhaustion, past muscles that burned with fatigue, then lifted the sword for another blow as a darkness of purpose took hold and drove him onward, consuming every thought, giving him strength for another blow and another when he was certain none remained.

His opponent could only muster the strength to block Excalibur. Then, even those weak efforts began to falter, his opponent’s blade barely raised as Excalibur sliced closer to the warrior’s helm with each driving blow until the warrior’s sword fell from stunned fingers.  He fell back against the stone half wall that encircled the arena, his weapon gone, vulnerable, his helm thrown back. Rorke raised Excalibur for the death blow.

Kill! The thought rose like a dark specter, blinding him to everything except the need to destroy. In that moment as he raised Excalibur to strike the final blow, Rorke looked down at his opponent. He wanted to see death in the face of the dark warrior. He wanted to feel it beneath his blade and know the exact moment when his life ended.

But the gaze that looked back at him from the visor was not the bleak, black visage of the Darkness that he’d seen before. The gaze that looked back at him now was brilliant blue, with the last dying color found at the heart of a golden flame. Not the bleak, flat color of the Darkness, but the fiery blue gaze of a daughter of the Light.

He sensed the Darkness all around him, invading his thoughts, wrapping around his heart, whispering at his shoulder, closing over his hands as though it stood beside him, driving the blade down. He felt it, as real as living flesh and blood.

“Never! You spawn of Satan!” He swore with a fierce battle cry. He pulled free of that evil grasp, pivoted, and though he could not clearly see its shape, he knew it was there. With all his strength, Rorke brought Excalibur down through the shifting Darkness that hovered where he had stood only moments before.

An agonized cry filled the air.

Rorke felt the blade slicing through thick garments, then the soft-as-butter yielding of flesh, the dull scrape of bone, and finally the dragging weight that pulled the tip of the blade down.

Leaning heavily on the blade, he forced himself back to his feet. Staring down at the body that lay before him, blood seeping through the bishop’s fine raiment, Rorke withdrew the tip of the blade. The bishop moaned, but did not rise. Rorke staggered as he turned about.

The Darkness was gone. Gone too was the illusion of the warrior Rorke had battled. Instead, Vivian lay at the bottom of the wall where the warrior had fallen. Her long hair fell forward about her shoulders. She turned toward him, the light from a nearby torch falling across pale features, glowing brilliantly in fiery red hair and gleaming like a blue flame at her eyes.

He went to her, pulling her into his arms as he went down on both knees.

“Rorke,” she cried, slender arms closing around his neck. She sobbed as tears spilled from her eyes and she clung to him.

“You came for me.”

His hands framed her face, looking into the shimmering depths of her eyes as if finding himself again in the fiery light of her gaze. His hands stroked back through her hair, down the length of her body, and then back to cradle her face, reassuring himself that she was indeed flesh and blood, and not some illusion of his mind.

“How could I not?” he whispered, tears melting the icy gray of his eyes.

Shadows fled before the radiant light of the fierce warrior and his lady of fire, protected by a legendary sword.

Her breath was sweet and at the same time tasted of tears. She glowed with the warmth of life, her eyes with the fire that burned within them both.

He kissed her fiercely. “I would die for you.”

Epilogue

“W
aes hael!”