Chapter Eleven
“Sorry,” Taz said after the kiss. “I should have asked, but I am just so thrilled, Sephie.”
Too thrilled to make sense, apparently. Sephie was struggling to be properly annoyed as a well-bred maiden should, being distracted by the way the tingle from her hands had been joined by an even stronger one shivering through her from her lips to her core.
“Explain,” she said, refusing to be seduced by the tingle into kissing him back.
“A bard pair comprises two bard mages who are rubbish on their own, but who together have the strength of ten. That’s what Derwen said.
It is rare. No, that’s not correct. Perhaps defective bard mages are common enough, but it is rare for them to find the one person who completes them, unless they are father and daughter, or brother and sister, in which case the blood tie is a natural one and their magic flows from the beginning.
He could tell me about six instances, all of them in the old ballads, spread out through the centuries.
A couple, both bards, either tied by blood or partner in every way. And with powerful magic.”
A couple? Did Taz mean an actual couple? “P-p-partners in… in every w-way?”
“In every way,” Taz confirmed. “If they are not blood relatives, they must become lovers.
Partners in every way. This time, when his lips touched hers, they lingered, and Sephie melted against him, reveling in the sensations he aroused in her.
Like the way she felt when her magic worked.
The tingle. No, more of a glow, a sense of power.
The best kind of power. If this was one of the ways he wanted to partner with her, Sephie was all for it.
She had never been kissed by a man before. Or anyone other than her mother, for that matter. She had rarely been touched since Mama died, and being held firmly in Taz’s strong arms, against Taz’s hard-muscled body, was nothing like being hugged by her soft and pillowy mother.
As for how her mother had kissed her—a peck on the cheek or, when Mama was excited or happy, a dozen swift pecks all over her face—it was not at all the same sort of kiss that Taz was teaching her with his lips, his tongue, even his teeth, rasping against her lips so that the tingling sensation set her private woman’s place…
not aching, exactly, but yearning for more.
When Taz pulled away, she tried to tug him closer, but he said, “I mustn’t, Sephie, or I shall lose control.
Besides, we must not forget that we are being pursued.
We need to ask the forest to hide us. Please believe me.
It’s not that I want to stop. I like kissing you, Sephie.
In fact, I want to marry you so we can do more than kiss. ”
Marrying Taz was not a terrible idea if it came with kisses like that. Though Sephie did not know what he meant by “more than kiss,” she liked Taz’s kiss. She liked Taz.
Some modicum of sense surfaced and she corrected herself.
I like what I know of Taz. But kisses were not a good enough reason to marry, and nor was she about to hand herself over to someone who wanted her for her magic, and for no other reason.
She had only just finished being her father’s pawn, left in a corner of the board for later use.
She wasn’t going to hand herself over to another mage with ulterior motives, even if she did like his kisses.
“I want to know you better,” she said cautiously. “Marriage is for a lifetime, Taz.”
“Bard pairings are for a lifetime,” Taz replied. “We are made to be together, Sephie.”
Sephie would not be pressured into anything.
She had had quite enough of other people rearranging her life.
Taz, sweeping her along with his plans, was just the last in a long succession of people who thought he knew what was best for her, and she supposed she was being ungrateful to think so, for she had needed rescuing.
But that did not give him the right to demand marriage.
She was about to tell him so, in no uncertain terms, but perhaps he guessed her thoughts from her expression, because he spoke before she could.
“But it is rude of me to press you. May I at least court you, Sephie, while we are getting to know one another?”
There was no good reason to say no, and actually, now that her irritation at his high-handedness was subsiding, every reason to agree. After all, who else was going to want to marry her after she had been caught spying?
“No more kisses like that,” she warned. They affected her brain until—it appeared—that she forgot herself and her own best interests.
“Not yet, anyway,” Taz agreed. “Not until we have decided to marry. You are too tempting, Sephie.”
She was pleased. After all, it was her first time kissing, but she could not have been too awful at it if he desired more. She felt like preening, but she didn’t want him to see her doing so, so she changed the subject instead. “How do we make our request to the forest?”
He accepted the diversion. “Let us make ourselves comfortable. The forest won’t understand our words, as I said, so we need to clearly picture what we want and send out that picture, using our music. We both need to be sending similar images, so let’s decide.”
He spread his cloak on a bank that was backed by a fallen log and sang a quick spell to discourage crawling things from crawling on them. Then they sat side by side, leaning against the log, to discuss what the pair of them being kept safe and protected might look like.
They eventually agreed to a series of images of them living peacefully in the forest—sleeping, eating, laughing, singing—while a dragon and angry mages hunted overhead and around.
In the picture story they were developing, the trees arched over them, protecting them, hiding them from view, keeping them safe, and eventually their pursuers went away.
By the time they reached that point, the sun had risen far enough that stray beams of sunlight shafted down through the trees. Taz fetched his large flat satchel, opened it, withdrew a lap harp, and began to play.
He began singing—not loudly, but he projected as a trained singer can—and Sephie joined in, repeating some of his words and adding some of her own. Whatever the music demanded. Whatever helped her to hold their images in her mind and send them out on the wings of the music.
*
As best as Jasper could figure it, the relief shift of guards had separated at the guard hall, and each individual had moved to his assigned post and been overcome by the same perfume that had felled his predecessor.
It was not until the house woke, and people began moving around, that someone noticed a couple of bodies and went to investigate.
When they, too, were knocked out, their collapse was witnessed, and it was only then that someone kept their head for long enough to sound the alarm, and to send word to Jasper.
The spell on the potted plants was easy enough to reverse, and once they were no longer putting rescuers to sleep, Jasper could send people to retrieve the felled guards.
They proved to be unharmed, and Jasper’s healer gift estimated they would wake on their own in thirty minutes or so.
Jasper didn’t have time to expend on waking them early.
They were unlikely to have noticed anything, or one or more of them would have surely have avoided the trap.
The purpose of the floral ambush was obvious, and required his immediate attention.
The mage who’d worked the trick was presumably the same one who’d magicked the tree close to the bedchamber occupied by his cousin.
Mage traces lingered on the tree. Sephie’s trace appeared in the overgrown branches that had broken through Jasper’s imprisoning spells, and Sephie’s companion proved to be the gardener they’d interviewed yesterday.
The one who had sworn he had not picked the pink roses for Sephie.
His trace was all over the branches. A small talent for garden magic, my foot.
Sephie was gone, of course. Long gone, if she’d broken out during the first shift’s watch.
With some difficulty and the use of dogs, Jasper followed their tracks to the ornamental lake.
A punt floated out in the middle of it. “They’ve used a punt to cross the water and confuse the hounds,” Jasper told the dog handlers. “Search the edges to find their trail.”
They found it eventually, though the mage with Sephie had made an effort to dissolve any evidence of their passing.
The new trail ended at the river. Jasper sighed.
It was going to be a long day. In his mind, he spoke to Delia.
“They’ve gone downriver, darling. By now, they’ll be in hiding, I imagine, but I’m going to follow in dragon form and see if I can find them. ”
“You have not had breakfast, Jasper, and it is now nearly noon,” replied his wonderful, practical wife.
“I am on my way with bread rolls and a coffee,” and, indeed, a gig with Delia driving came into view along the carriage way from the house before he could even remind her that time might be of the essence.
Come to think of it, he was hungry. And coffee sounded like a wonderful idea.
He was having a second cup from the flask his wife had brought with her when it happened. From many miles away, magic rose in a great plume and flowered, flooding the sky with scarlet and gold. And even at this distance, to Jasper’s mage sense, it smelled like Sephie and the gardener.
*
Magic blossomed and flourished with the music, strong, pure, powerful, and completely under control. Taz had felt something similar in the past, when riding one of the Hawk’s fierce horses at maximum speed over wild country, all that power responding to his every movement.
Never, in all his years, had magic been like this for him. It was Sephie. It was the pair of them together. It was exhilarating and magnificent. The joy of it filled him with wonder.
The images they had chosen rode the music out into the forest, and slowly—how long it took Taz could not have said—slowly, the forest became aware of these small humans begging for refuge.
That was what Taz felt. An awareness. A vast green presence that gradually sharpened its focus on Taz, Sephie, and their message. It loomed for uncounted minutes. Taz had the sense… or was it just that he hoped… it was considering the two humans who dared to ask for a safe haven.
His fingers continued to move on the harp strings, his voice and Sephie’s never ceased their plea in song, and the two of them kept sending their images of solace and protection into the great awareness that surrounded them. And the forest pondered.
Then suddenly, it was done. The weight of its awareness lightened. It had reached a conclusion, and firm in Taz’s mind was the conviction it had agreed. They could stay. The forest would keep them hidden.
He changed the tune and his words, singing thanks to the forest, and Sephie effortlessly kept up with him. Taz smiled as he sang. She was, in every way, his partner. Now he just needed to convince her of that.
And there. They were done. Together, they sang the final note and Taz’s fingers stilled on the strings of his telyn, his harp.
“They agreed,” said Sephie.
He nodded. “The forest agreed. We can rest here, anwyl, until the pursuit dies down.”
“If you are hiding,” said another voice, “why send up a huge signal flare with your magic?” It was English, but in a lyrical accent that was reminiscent of, but not quite like, Cymraeg.
Taz’s head jerked around in the direction of the voice, but he could see nothing.
Sephie stared in the same direction, and demanded, “Who are you? Show yourself.”
And out of nowhere, a man appeared, slowly materializing until he stood before them. He was dressed like someone from an old tapestry, in a tunic and hose, with a cloak that was flung back from his shoulders.
Some prince from an old tapestry, actually, for his garments were finely woven and richly embroidered with flowers and magical beasts. The buckle of his belt, the amulet he wore, and his cloak brooches looked to be of gold and set with precious stones.
“You may call me Druisten, if you wish,” he offered.
“You are fae,” Sephie declared, and now that Taz looked, he could see the tell-tale, slanted green eyes, and the pointed ears dividing the fair hair that was held in place by a gold circlet but otherwise hung free to his shoulders.
“And you are?” Druisten enquired, with exaggerated politeness.
“I am Owl, and this is Rose,” said Taz, since all the legends insisted that giving one’s true names to the fae was to give them power.
“You are a bard,” said Druisten, as if confirming a fact he already knew. “A bard pair, in fact, though yet unbonded. How interesting. I was barely a man when the last bard pair lived in these isles.”
As far as Taz knew, the last bard pair in the British Isles had been the brother and sister William and Barbara Byrd, and they had died two centuries ago.
So how old was Druisten? Three hundred? More?
The fae were rumored to be long lived, but since they were rare and kept to themselves, it was all hearsay and speculation.
“We have only just discovered one another,” Sephie said. “And now my cousin is after us, and we need to hide.”
The fae raised an eyebrow in an elegant arch. “Your cousin disapproves of your pairing?”
Never lie to the fae. Taz tried to think the old adage strongly enough to pass it from his head to Sephie’s.
Either he succeeded or Sephie had been schooled in the same stories, for she said, “He does not know of it. He is after us because he caught us spying on a meeting, and believes we have passed information about it to his enemies.”
Druisten shrugged. “Your world’s politics are nothing to the fae. Silly squabbles over things that will not last.” He grimaced in distaste, then his expression changed again. He grinned, cheerfully. “But the forest has chosen to protect you, and you are, after all, a bard pair. I will have to—”
He broke off at a roar from high overhead. “What, in the name of all that is holy, was that?”
“A dragon.” The person who spoke came swinging from branch to branch down out of the trees.
Another of his kind, this one a woman, she was dressed, like Druisten, in tunic and hose.
“By the size and color, the dragon lord of the English. He tried to see into the forest with his magic, and the forest repelled him. Who are these to draw the ire of the dragon lord?”
Two pairs of slanted green eyes considered Taz and Sephie.
“My cousin,” Sephie admitted.
The glance Druisten cast at his friend was amused. “She was caught spying on the dragon lord,” he said. “The forest has promised to hide them, but I don’t suppose it reckoned with the dragon lord.”
“Shall I give them to him?” asked the woman, making a casual gesture with one hand that materialized a silver cord of force. In a moment, Taz was bound, hand and feet, and so, a glance confirmed, was Sephie.