Keeper of the Dream (6 page)

A pulsating, glowing light suddenly filled the open
doorway in front of her. A lambent mist rose from the ground, swirling upward.

“No …” Arianna shook her head hard, trying to clear it of the swirling mists. God help her, she couldn’t be having a vision now. There wasn’t even a pool of water.

But the glowing mist remained and within it a slender figure began to take form, a wraith, floating in the air on a sea of luminescence. Light shot up in rays around its head, like the halos of the saints painted on the chapel walls.

The Norman lord didn’t see the flickering wraith in the doorway. He had pushed himself to his knees, his hand groping up her leg. Hysterical laughter bubbled in Arianna’s throat. Of course he didn’t see it. It was her vision, her dream. She inched forward, stretching out her arm, and her fingers curled around the mill….

The mist swirled and eddied and darkened to the color of blood. But the sea of light around the wraith glimmered, brightened. He lifted his arm and pointed … pointed right at the knight.

The light pulsed, throbbed. It was so intense now, it burned Arianna’s eyes; all she saw was a piercing whiteness. She felt the knight’s hand close around her breast, and with the last visages of her conscious control, she swung the quern, aiming for the place where she hoped his head would be, though she could see nothing but the cold, white light.

The quern thudded into something soft and she heard a grunt and a curse. “You’ll pay for that, you bitch.”

Fingers tore at her clothes, kneading her breasts. The light shimmered, flared, she saw the figure of the vision so clearly she thought he must surely be real. A blue-white flame shot from the end of his pointing finger, a bolt of fire that leapt across the room to strike the knight, engulfing him in a sudden flash like lightning.

In the second before darkness swallowed her, Arianna thought she heard the knight scream.

It was the closest he had been to home in six years.

If he could call it home. It was, at least, the place where he had been born, where he had lived the first fifteen years of his life. They had been years spent in the Earl of Chester’s stables, shoveling dung and dodging the marshal’s fists.

He had been back only once since he had left. And on that day, that single day out of all the days of his life, he had been full of such hope that anything, even love and happily-ever-after, could come true if only you believed. It had been the same month as this, July. The sun had risen in a sky that was the exact lavender-blue of her eyes and the air had smelled of primroses and the sea, and …

But, no, it was wiser, safer, not to remember at all.

The man they called the Black Dragon rode with half his company of knights, moving at the fast pace of a good war-horse and well ahead of the main body of his army. Henry’s summons had not sounded urgent, but it was never politic to keep a king waiting.

They traveled through the thick of the Coed Euloe, a forest of mountain ash, pine, and tangled oak thickets.
The storm had blown away and the sun was out, but the world beneath the dense leafy bower was the dim gray of twilight. The air smelled of the damp earth, and their chargers’ hooves made no sound as they padded across a ground mulchy with leaves and rotting cones. The trill of a blackbird was the only thing to break the soft silence. Amid this quiet and peace, the knight tried not to think, because on the other side of these wooded hills lay the English border, and just across the border was Chester … and home.

He could go there now. Now that his father was dead.

If he went home now, Sybil would be there. She would greet him at the gate of the castle, and her face would light with joy, for it had been so very long. “Oh, Raine …” she would say. Just that.
Raine.
But the sound of his name falling from those lips would be sweeter than the song of an angel.

She would send servants for food and drink, and she would lead him into the great hall. There, she would play and sing for him, just as she had when they were children. He would feast his eyes upon her—but only on her pale blond head as she bent over her psaltery, for then she couldn’t catch him looking at her and see the pain in his eyes. She would ask him what he had done, the sights he had witnessed these last six years. She would laugh in all the right places, and tears would form in those lavender-blue eyes when he spoke of the sad times.

But eventually the evening would end. Then he would watch as the girl he had once loved climbed the stairs without him, to enter her bedchamber. The chamber where she had spent every night of the last six years … sharing his brother’s bed.

Raine cursed savagely beneath his breath. He should have had the sense to stay away from this corner of England. Maybe he shouldn’t ask the king for the Honor of Rhuddlan. It was a marcher lordship, true enough, and like the other borderland fiefs it could be parlayed, if its
lord was ambitious enough, into one of the more powerful baronies in England. It was all he wanted now, all he needed, but for one thing—it was too damned close to Chester.

The silence was suddenly shattered by the sound of a large animal in panic crashing through the trees, and Raine pulled up just as a riderless war-horse burst through the underbrush in front of him. Blood spurted from a wound in the charger’s neck. It wheeled, rearing, tossing back a head that was all flaring nostrils and red, burning eyes. Close on its heels followed another horse, this one with a man in chain mail on its back.

The knight thundered by Raine and his men. “Ambush!” he shouted over his shoulder. “The Welsh have attacked and the king is down!”

Raine spun around to take his shield and lance from his squire. “Taliesin, ride back—” The order stopped midway out Raine’s mouth as he stared into the frightened fawn eyes and thin, freckled face of Sir Odo’s ten-year-old page. “What in hellfire are you doing here, and where is my squire?”

The boy quailed beneath Raine’s fury. “B-back at Rhuddlan where you l-left him, sire. He said there was something there you w-wanted to keep from falling into the earl’s hands.”

There was nothing at Rhuddlan that Raine wanted to keep from Hugh, beyond the castle itself. More likely Taliesin had spotted that green-eyed wench he fancied. Women would be the death of that boy.
He
would be the death of the boy, when next he got his hands on him.

Raine sent one of the other squires back to alert the rest of his army. He had started to touch his spurs to his destrier, when he spotted Sir Odo’s page hunched over his cob, trying to blend inconspicuously into the middle of the pack of knights. He glared and pointed at the boy. “And you, lad … you keep away from the fighting. If I
catch you trying to be a hero, I’ll blister your backside with my sword belt afterward. Is that clear?”

They rapidly pressed single file along the path created by the fleeing horses. Before long they could hear muted sounds of fighting—neighing horses, screams and curses, the hysterical bleat of a trumpet. They emerged into a clearing atop a small rise, and Raine took in the flux of the battle at a glance.

Below them King Henry and a small band of knights were trapped in a narrow wooded defile. The way ahead was blocked by felled trees, their retreat cut off by the enemy, who sniped at them from the protection of the forest. The knights in their cumbersome armor were no match for the fleet-footed Welsh and the deadly, mail-piercing arrows of their longbows. Already the narrow path and stream were clogged with the bodies of men and horses.

“The king is dead!” someone screamed, and at that moment the king’s men broke, running for the dubious safety of the forest. Raine saw the royal standard fall.
“A moi, le Raine!”
He shouted his battle cry and spurred his horse down the rise.

Bellowing like a man possessed, Raine rallied the fleeing royal troop. He paid no attention to the arrows that came at him from all sides, fighting his way toward the place where he had last seen the king. He found Henry on one knee trying to fend off a battle-ax with a shattered shield. Raine leaned from his horse and slashed backhanded with his long sword, striking the attacking Welshman in the chest with a blow that rattled Raine’s teeth and nearly cut the man in half.

Raine leapt from his horse and hauled the dazed king to his feet with one hand, while with the other he snatched up the royal standard from where it lay, trampled in the mud. He waved the banner with its distinctive fox device high over his head and his voice carried clearly over the tumult of battle.

“A Henri, le roi!”

Within moments it was over. A Welsh olifant blared a retreat as the enemy melted back into the thickly wooded hills.

Raine blinked the battle fog from his eyes. Wiping his bloody sword on the hem of his bliaut, he turned to his king. The young monarch’s freckles stood out like ink marks above his red beard. His protruding gray eyes were wide with fear. Raine realized it was the first time Henry had ever truly been close to death.

“You look in fine fettle, sire,” Raine said with a lazy smile, “for a man who’s supposed to be dead. Owain of Gwynedd will be sorely disappointed.”

“Aye, he will.” Henry’s voice cracked, and he had to clear his throat. Then he threw back his head and barked a laugh. “He will at that!”

The king’s normally ruddy color started to come back into his face. His large, coarse hands clasped Raine’s shoulders. “You saved my life.” He fixed Raine with his eyes and his voice grew rough with genuine emotion. “Be thinking what you want most, my dear friend and bravest knight, for if it is in my power, be sure that I will grant it.”

“Your Grace. I ask only that I might serve you.”

The king’s fingers tightened and he shook Raine gently. “It was more than a man’s life you saved on this day. You saved a kingdom.”

Aye,
I
did.
Raine lowered the lids over his eyes to hide the surge of hope he felt.
And you, my lord king, are going to give me Rhuddlan for it

“Now is no time to be taking a nap, my lady.”

Arianna opened her eyes and looked at the face of a boy. He had the palest skin she had ever seen, which made the dark red brows on his forehead look like cuts. The brows arched above sloe-black eyes that glinted with a strange, shimmering light. He blinked and the light
faded. His mouth quirked into a mischievous smile that was all boy.

Arianna tried to sit up and the world reeled. The boy slipped a firm hand beneath her arm, steadying her. “Whoa, careful,” he said. “Don’t sit up too fast.”

When the earth stopped tilting she looked around her. She was still inside the wine vault. The blond Norman who had tried to rape her lay sprawled among split sacks of the illegal flour. His head was laid open with a bloody gash, and she thought he was dead until a drunken snore puffed out his lips.

Her temples throbbed and nausea cramped her stomach. She closed her eyes for a moment. “What happened?”

“You must have struck your head and passed out for a minute,” the boy said. He had a strange voice. The words he spoke were ordinary Welsh, but he almost sang them.

Arianna’s eyes opened and her glance flickered back to the knight. The boy flashed a knowing grin, pointing to the stone quern that lay beside the snoring Norman. “He seems to have struck his head, as well.”

“I didn’t …” She faltered. She remembered swinging the quern at the Norman’s head, but she had landed only a glancing blow, for he had cursed her afterward, and pawed at her breasts. There had been something else … a figure in a vision that had seemed real living, breathing flesh. And a flash of blue fire …

The stone walls of the vault suddenly tipped again and Arianna groaned. She thought she might have to vomit. She took several deep breaths and touched the swelling lump on her forehead.

The boy rose to his feet with a smooth, athletic grace. He was dressed as a Norman squire, but he wore on his head a battered helmet gilded gold, a relic from the time of the ancient ones. Arianna had seen such a helmet only once before—in the hands of the bard who had given her the magic mazer. But the bard had been an old man, and
the face below this helmet belonged to a youth who couldn’t have been older than seventeen.

He held out his hand to her. “I don’t mean to rush you, my Lady Arianna, but we really should be getting the hell out of here.”

She stared up at him; she did not take the proffered hand. “You know who I am?”

“Know you, my lady? How could I not know you, when your beauty, your wit, and your charm are so legendary. There isn’t a red-blooded man in all of Wales who would fail to recognize you.”

He gave her such a delightful, teasing smile that Arianna couldn’t help smiling back. “What nonsense,” she said.

“Aye, isn’t it.” He held out his hand again. “Now, if you will, my lady …”

She waited for him to enlighten her with his identity, but he did not.

“I’m not leaving with you until I know who you are.”

He cocked his head at the blond knight snoring among the flour sacks. “You’d rather stay here with him?”

Arianna’s pointed chin took on a stubborn tilt her brothers would have recognized.