1 #2
“…I am balanced on a cliff’s edge and have only to spread my wings to fly.”
Erik smiled with a combination of memory and anticipation.
“A fine feeling, is it not?” he asked softly.
“Only for those who have wings,” Amber retorted. “I have none. I have only a long fall and a harsh landing.”
Erik’s laughter filled the small cottage.
“Ah, little one,” he said finally, “if it wouldn’t hurt you, I would hug and pat you like a child.”
Amber smiled. “You are a dear friend. Come. Take this man to my bed until Cassandra can care for him.”
An odd look was Erik’s only answer.
“I would hate to lose to simple cold a man who can walk between the sacred stones,” she explained.
“Perhaps. But on the whole, I think it would be easier for me to order his death if he weren’t a guest in your cottage. And your bed.”
Shocked, Amber stared at Erik.
The smile he gave her was as cold as the wind prowling beyond the cottage.
“Why would you condemn a stranger found in the sacred grove?” she asked.
“I suspect that he is one of Duncan of Maxwell’s knights come to spy out the land.”
“Then the rumor is true? A Norman granted his Saxon enemy the right to rule Stone Ring Keep?”
“Aye,” Erik said bitterly. “But Duncan is no longer Dominic’s enemy. The Scots Hammer swore fealty to Dominic at the point of a sword.”
Amber looked away from Erik. She didn’t have to touch him to gauge the extent of his leashed rage.
Duncan of Maxwell, the Scots Hammer, was both bastard and landless.
Nothing could change his bastardy, but Duncan had been given control of Stone Ring Keep and its surrounding land by Dominic le Sabre.
Yet Stone Ring Keep was part of Erik’s estates.
Erik had fought outlaws, bastards, and ambitious cousins for the right to rule Lord Robert’s various estates in the Disputed Lands. There was little doubt that he would have to fight again. It was the nature of the Disputed Lands to belong only to the strong.
“What clothes did you find with the stranger?” Amber asked.
“I found him as you saw him. Naked.”
“Then he isn’t a knight.”
“Not all knights returned from the Saracen with caskets of gold and gems.”
“Even the poorest knight has armor, arms, a horse, clothing,” she protested. “Something.”
“He has something.”
“What?”
“The pendant. Do you recognize it?”
Amber shook her head, making her hair burn as though it were the sun itself.
“Have you ever seen or heard of its like?” he persisted.
“Nay.”
Erik let out an explosive sigh that was also a curse.
“Perhaps Cassandra?” Amber offered.
“Doubtful.”
The room seemed cold despite the cheerful fire, for Amber felt the jaws of a trap both delicate and insatiable closing around her.
Erik had come to her as he had many times before, seeking the truth about a man who could not or would not speak the truth for himself. In the past, Amber had learned what she could in whatever way she could.
Even touching.
The pain of touching was a small repayment to the son of the great lord who had been so generous to her. Touching hadn’t frightened Amber before.
Yet she was frightened now.
The prophecy that had attended her birth quivered in the room like a bowstring just released…and Amber feared the death that would be launched on the invisible, deadly arrow.
But at the same time, a need to touch the stranger was growing inside her, pressing at her, barely leaving her room to breathe. She needed to know him as she had never needed to know anything, even her own true name, her own lost parents, her own hidden heritage.
The ravenous need frightened Amber most of all. The stranger called to her in his silence, sung to her in a voice unheard, compelled her in a way she could not deny.
“Cassandra knows more than both of us together,” Amber said tightly. “We must wait for her.”
“At your birth, Cassandra named you Amber. Do you think it was a whim?”
“No,” she whispered.
“You were born to things amber in a way that Cassandra recognized but could not hope to equal.”
Amber looked away from Erik’s intent eyes.
“Do you deny that this stranger wears your sign?” Erik demanded.
Amber said nothing.
“God’s blood,” Erik muttered, “why are you being so difficult?”
“God’s blood, why are you being so dense!”
Shocked by Amber’s unaccustomed anger, he simply stared at her.
“Do you know this man’s name?” she demanded.
“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have to—”
“Have you forgotten Cassandra’s prophecy?” Amber interrupted.
“Which one?” he retorted. “Cassandra sheds bits of prophecy like an oak sheds leaves hard kissed by frost.”
“Spoken like a man who has never seen beyond his own hands.”
“The sword master praised the length of my reach,” Erik countered, smiling thinly.
Amber made a frustrated sound. “Arguing with you is like wrestling shadows.”
“Cassandra used to mention that even more often than she mentioned casting pearls before swine. Her wisdom, my swine, of course.”
For once Amber wasn’t swayed by Erik’s quick wit and wry tongue.
“Hear me,” she said urgently. “Listen to what Cassandra saw for me at my birth.”
“I’ve heard what—”
But Amber was already speaking, words tumbling out, retelling the prophecy that had been born with her, casting a shadow across her life.
“’A man with no name may you claim, heart and body and soul. Then rich life might grow, but death will surely flow.
“’In shades of darkness he will come to you. If you touch him, you will know life that might or death that will.
“’Be therefore as sunlight, hidden in amber, untouched by man, not touching.
“‘Forbidden.’”
Erik glanced broodingly at the stranger and then at the girl who was indeed like sunlight captured within amber, colors of golden brightness defined by a single dark truth: simple touch could cause her great pain.
Yet he was going to ask her to touch the stranger. He had no choice.
“I’m sorry,” Erik said, “but if spies of Dominic le Sabre or the Scots Hammer are abroad in Stone Ring Keep’s land, I must know it.”
Slowly Amber nodded.
“But most of all, I must know where the Scots Hammer himself is,” Erik continued. “The sooner Duncan of Maxwell is dead, the safer Lord Robert’s holdings in the Disputed Lands will be.”
Again Amber nodded, yet she made no move to touch the man who lay senseless at her feet.
“No man gets to this stranger’s age without having a name of some sort,” Erik said reasonably. “Even slaves, serfs, and villeins have names. ’Tis foolish to fear Cassandra’s prophecy.”
The pendant on Amber’s palm burned like trapped flames. She stared at it, yet saw only what she had seen before. Sacred ring. Sacred rowan.
Shades of darkness.
“So be it,” Amber whispered.
Clenching her teeth against the pain to come, she sank to her knees by the fire and laid her palm against the stranger’s cheek.
The pleasure was so sharp Amber cried out and snatched her hand back. Then, realizing what she had done, she slowly reached for the stranger again.
Involuntarily, Erik moved as though to protect Amber from more pain. Then he controlled himself and stood watching, his mouth flattened into a thin line beneath his short, tawny beard. He disliked causing Amber any discomfort, but he disliked the thought of killing a stranger needlessly even more.
The second time Amber’s hand touched the stranger, she didn’t flinch. With a soft sound she settled more closely to him. Closing her eyes, shutting out the rest of the world, she savored the purest pleasure she had ever known.
It was like being suspended in a pool of sweet fire, caressed by warmth, knowing the heart of light.
And beyond the golden warmth of the pool, knowledge lay in shades of darkness.
Waiting.
Amber gave a low cry. She could think of few men who would have such a certainty of their own prowess in battle. Dominic le Sabre and Duncan of Maxwell! were two. A third was Erik.
A great warrior lies beneath my hand, light and darkness, pleasure and pain, soul mate and deadly foe in one.
“Amber.”