Chapter Ten
Sephie had been sitting by the window. Her fears about what was going to happen when the enchanter arrived had kept her from sleeping, and she had been staring out at the grounds, trying not to panic and practicing different explanations in her head so she would know what to say in the morning, after she knew Mr. Barberry was safe.
When she saw him coming toward her window, she had at first thought it was one of the guards. They had been strolling around the house at regular intervals, though come to think of it, she had not seen one for a while.
And this wasn’t a guard. Sephie didn’t know how she had recognized Mr. Barberry in the dark and from above, but she was confident it was him. A confidence that turned to certainty when he had put his hands on the trunk of the tree that faced her window.
She hadn’t been able to hear him sing, but she felt it, somehow. And when she had realized he was magicking the branches to grow toward her, she had joined her voice to his, singing softly so as not to be heard, but pouring her intent into Mr. Barberry’s magic, to support what he was doing.
And it had worked.
She passed the bag she had hurriedly packed to Mr. Barberry and squeezed out of the gap between the window and the frame.
It was tight, and she stuck. She pushed harder and there was the sound of a tear.
She suddenly broke free, and would have tumbled from the windowsill if Mr. Barberry’s hands had not caught her by the waist and pulled her against his body to keep her from falling.
As far back as she could remember, Sephie had never been in a man’s arms, and Mr. Barberry was not just any man. She already liked and admired him, and suddenly she was aware of his muscular torso, his strong hands.
Her cheeks heated. When she looked up into his face, his cheeks, too, were coloring and his gray eyes wide. The Adam’s apple in his throat moved convulsively as he swallowed. “I beg your pardon, Miss Thornton,” he said. “If you have your balance…?”
This is no time to be admiring a handsome man, or to be enjoying his hands on my waist. “Yes, of course,” said Sephie, and grabbed the branch near her head. “We should move,” she prompted.
“Follow me,” he said, and began walking back along one branch while holding a higher one, her bag slung over his shoulder.
Sephie copied him. Walking along the branch was simple enough, but once he began clambering down toward the ground, her gown made following him more difficult. She stopped to pull the back hem through between her legs and to tuck it into her ribbon sash at the front.
Mr. Barberry would get a good view of her ankles and calves.
It couldn’t be helped. What would he think of them?
She was too embarrassed to glance toward him to try and guess his thoughts, until she had reached the ground and freed the skirts to fall back around her ankles.
He had turned away and was staring across the garden.
How… polite. It was gentlemanly, Sephie, not disappointing, she scolded herself.
“I am down,” Sephie said.
He turned and offered his arm, for all the world as if they were going in to dinner. “I have a boat ready for us. We shall float down the river so we’re harder to follow. Then I thought we’d head for Wales.”
“I cannot translocate,” Sephie told him. He was striding across the garden, and she was having to run to catch up. “Even if I knew how, Lord Baradine has put a force around me that is meant to prevent translocation.”
He glanced at her. “I am not good at translocation,” he admitted. “Even if I tried it, I wouldn’t do it with anything living. But we’ll think of something else, Miss Thornton.”
“Sephie,” she said. “Persephone, really, but my friends call me Sephie.” Or they would have if she’d had any, or so she had always imagined.
This time, his glance came with a warm smile. “Taz. Taliesin, really. But my friends call me Taz.” After a moment, he added, “And my surname is Ddraennen. We need to take a punt across the lake to confuse the trail, and then, on the other side, we’ll make our way to the river.”
The punt was waiting, Sephie stepped into it, and Taz swiftly poled them diagonally across the lake. He helped Sephie ashore, grabbed her satchel, and led the way along a path through a screen of trees.
“Here we are. The boat is just along here.”
They had reached the river. The path went over a bridge, and so did they, and then Taz turned them to the right, and down uneven steps to the river’s edge.
The boat waited underneath the bridge. Taz tossed her bag into it, held out a hand to help her aboard, then scrambled in behind her. “If you sit on that bench, Sephie, I’ll just set us free and we’ll be off.”
First, he set the oars into their rowlocks, then he released the downstream rope.
Rather than climb over Sephie to release the upstream rope, he took his seat on the rower’s bench and grasped the oars, setting them ready to steer them into the current while saying to Sephie, “There is a rope behind you tethering us to the shore. If you pull the free end—yes, that’s it, and we’re away. ”
And just as well, too, for they were running out of time.
However, even if the dragon lord was able to track them to the river, he would probably get no further.
The current was swift, and water did not easily take a magical trace.
Besides, in any case, there’d be no magic to trace.
Sephie had noticed that Taz was not using magic and had done the same.
As for dogs or other natural trackers, if Cousin Jasper tried them, the water would foil them, too.
Taz began to ply the oars, speeding them still further, watching over his shoulder to ensure he stayed clear of the banks.
He began to sing and the boat suddenly went faster.
Could Sephie help again? She joined Taz’s voice in the song, feeling her power flowing from within her with her voice, weaving itself around Taz’s power to aid their escape.
She did what Taz had suggested—let the words and the harmonies come, and come they did.
The banks began to rush past. They must be traveling three or even four times faster than the current.
With luck, they would be well downriver before the new shift of guards called the alarm.
Sephie had never felt so alive, so effective. She felt as if she could sing forever, and certainly hours must have passed as they rushed down the river, passing fields, villages shrouded in sleep, even canal boats moored up for the night.
It was still night, though the moon gave sufficient light for steering, when Taz stopped singing for long enough to tell Sephie that he was going to turn up into the next tributary they came across.
“We will be going against the current, but there’s an ancient forest stretching across these parts, and I think this will lead us there.
If we can reach the cover of the trees, I shall try to persuade the forest to hide us. ”
Sephie was puzzled. Taz spoke as if the forest was a conscious being, but it was just a lot of trees, wasn’t it? He had picked up the tune again, so she did not interrupt to ask, but just continued harmonizing.
Ahead was a break in the scrub and brambles that lined the river.
Was it the tributary? Yes, and Taz bent himself to turning the boat and heading up into the fast-flowing water, more stream than river.
With the current opposing them rather than assisting, the boat was slower, but their joint magic ensured they made good progress.
The moon had set by the time they reached the forest, but the dawn was coming. The sky had lightened enough that only the brightest of stars still shone, even in the west, and the landscape around her had enough light that Sephie could see more than graduated shadows and shapes.
The transition from farmland to forest was abrupt. At one moment, they shot past a couple of drowsing cows and at the next, trees crowded around them on both sides, hanging over the stream so they nearly blocked out the sky.
“We had better go more slowly and look for a place we can land,” said Taz, and he changed his tempo to something less urgent.
Sephie matched him with her own voice. They continued to glide against the current, the slower pace allowing her to look around.
High banks on both sides, but was that a dip up ahead?
“On the right,” she told Taz, and he looked over his right shoulder and nodded.
The bank dropped away, and the ground sloped down into the water. Taz aimed for the slope, brought the oars back to prop them inside, beached the front of the boat, and leapt over the side into the water to grab the rope at the front and pull.
When he held out his hand to her, Sephie found she could step onto the ground, dry shod.
With her weight removed, the boat was light enough for Taz to pull it all the way up out of the water. Sephie helped as best she could. Taz fetched Sephie’s satchel and two more that must have been his own.
The larger of the two was flat and rigid. It had straps to go over his shoulders, and Taz shrugged into it. He then put the strap of his own satchel over one shoulder and picked hers up by the handle. “Let’s get away from the stream,” he said.
“I’ll carry my satchel,” insisted Sephie, and he handed it over without argument, and led the way along a barely discernible path that would take them deeper into the trees.
“Taz, what did you mean about persuading the forest. Can trees understand us?” Almost, she could believe it. Now that she was under the shade of the trees, she had the impression of some large being just beyond the edge of her senses.
“Not individual trees,” Taz said. “The forest. And I’m not certain that ‘understand’ is the right word.
How can I explain it?” The last must be addressed at himself, for he stood silently for a long moment, his brows furrowed.
“It happens to some forests—the old ones. They become aware—not of humans, perhaps, except as irritants. But of the seasons, the weather, of everything that belongs in the forest. The trees and other plants that are part of the… being, is the best word, I think. And though the animals are not part of the being, the forest makes room for them and uses them to keep itself well and whole.”
Sephie felt the presence around her, and was aware of a shiver down her spine. “You want to talk to this being?” she asked. “But we don’t belong here, Taz.” She felt that, too. The sense the presence could easily turn hostile if it thought them dangerous.
Taz nodded as if he had heard her thought and agreed with her.
“I met someone once inside a forest much like this one. Derwen was a bard mage like you and me—he sang his magic. He taught me how to let the music flow, it was him who discovered my affinity for plants, and it was him who told me about the forests. They don’t understand our words, or—at least—I do not think so. But they do understand our intent.”
He shrugged. “Derwen thinks they might see the pictures that bard mages make in their minds. I do not know how to explain it better than that. He told me stories about the bard mages of the past, and the forests sometimes helped them and sometimes not. I think they’re our best chance of disappearing from the reach of the dragon lord. ”
He startled Sephie by stopping suddenly and turning to catch up both her hands. “Sephie, when you sing with me, my magic works. I have more power than I have ever had, and I can control it. My gift doesn’t twist as it always has before. It does what I intend.”
Distracted by another sort of shiver altogether, this one tingling from where her hands were cupped in his, up her arms and into her chest, stealing her breath, so she could only stammer, “Me, too.”
“It is the same for you? Then I am right. We are a bard pair.” He was grinning, delight so strong in his expression that she smiled back, though she had no idea what a bard pair was, except it had to do with them singing magic together.
Come to think of it, that was reason enough to grin.
She could do real magic! At least, when she sang with Taz.
“I do not know what a bard pair is,” she told him.
“It is a legend among our kind, apparently. When Derwen discovered how imperfect my control was, he told me I might be part of a bard pair, and it turns out he was right!” He ducked his head and, before she had time to register his intent, Taz kissed her.
Right on the lips, but so swiftly she could not respond before he had straightened again.