10
“YOU sent them alone to the sacred Stone Ring?” Cassandra asked, horrified.
“Yes,” Erik said. “Duncan wants to find his memory before he finds himself lying between Amber’s legs. I would rather the reverse were true.”
“You take too much upon yourself!”
“As you taught me,” Erik said softly, “without risk there is no gain.”
“This isn’t risk. This is madness!”
Erik turned away from Cassandra and looked out over Hidden Lake and its wild fens where myriad waterfowl glided and fed. A lid of clouds concealed the highest reaches of the fells. Below the clouds, the glen was tawny and black, evergreen and bronze, a painted bowl waiting to be filled with winter.
Though Erik couldn’t see the top of Stormhold, he knew that the high peak would soon be veiled with glittering snow. The geese and Cassandra had been right. Winter was bearing down on them, wearing a cloak of icy wind.
The peregrine on Erik’s wrist moved uneasily, disturbed by the currents of emotion seething beneath the man’s calm surface. Warily Cassandra eyed the falcon, knowing that only his wolfhounds were more sensitive to Erik’s emotions.
“This ‘madness,’ as you call it,” he said quietly, “is my best chance of keeping the southern estates until I can find more good knights to take service with me.”
“Your father has many other holdings,” Cassandra countered. “Tend them instead.”
“What are you suggesting, Learned? That I cede Stone Ring Keep to Dominic le Sabre without a battle?”
“Yes.”
The peregrine flared its wings and uttered a sharp cry.
“What of Sea Home?” Erik asked gently. “Shall I give that to the Norman bastard as well? And Winterlance?”
“There is no need. Stone Ring was the only keep mentioned by the English king—and agreed to by the Scottish king, I might add.”
“For the moment, yes.”
“The moment is all we have.”
The falcon shifted restlessly against the leather gauntlet Erik wore. Wind tugged Erik’s rich bronze mantle, sending cloth swirling, revealing the indigo wool tunic he wore beneath. The pommel of his sword gleamed like silver lightning.
“If I hand over Sea Home like a woman’s shoe at a marriage ceremony,” Erik said finally, “then every outlaw in the Disputed Lands will descend in hope of spoils.”
Cassandra shook her head. “I’ve had no vision of such a thing.”
“Nor will you,” Erik retorted. “I will fight to the last drop of blood before I hand Stone Ring Keep over to Dominic le Sabre!”
Unhappily Cassandra looked down at her hands, which were all but hidden by long, full scarlet sleeves. Rich embroidery in blue and green glistened like water threading through fire.
“I have dreamed,” she said simply.
Impatience showed in Erik’s glance.
“Of what?” he asked in curt tones. “Battles and blood and keeps falling stone by stone?”
“Nay.”
Erik waited.
Cassandra looked at her long, carefully tended fingers. A large ring set with three gems shone as brightly as the embroidery. Sapphire for water. Emerald for living things. Ruby for blood.
“Tell me,” Erik commanded.
“A red bud. A green island. A blue lake. Together as one. And in the distance, a potent storm waiting.”
The peregrine opened its beak as though the day were too hot rather than decidedly chill. Absently Erik soothed the bird without taking his eyes from Cassandra’s ageless face.
“The storm swirled out and touched the red bud,” she said. “It bloomed with great beauty…but it bloomed within the storm.”
Erik’s eyes narrowed.
“The green island was next to be touched,” Cassandra said. “The storm surrounded it, caressed it, possessed it.”
Tawny eyebrows lifted, but Erik said nothing. He simply continued stroking the restless falcon with slow, calming sweeps of his hand.
“Only the deep blue water of the lake remained untouched,” Cassandra said. “But it yearned toward the storm, where the flower bloomed in scarlet riches and the island glowed in shades of green.”
The wind flexed, tugging at Erik’s mantle and the long red folds of Cassandra’s clothes. The falcon whistled and resettled its wings, watching the sky with hungry eyes.
“Is that all?” Erik asked.
“Is that not enough?” Cassandra retorted. “Where the heart and body go, the soul will soon follow. Then rich life might come, but death certainly will flow!”
“The amber prophecy,” Erik said beneath his breath. “Always that cursed prophecy.”
“You should have left Duncan to die in the Stone Ring.”
“Then the bud would never have bloomed and the island would never have glowed in shades of green. Of life.”
“But that’s not—”
“Your dream describes rich life, not death,” Erik continued ruthlessly. “Is that not worth a few risks?”
“You are risking catastrophe.”
“Nay,” Erik said savagely. “Catastrophe is already upon me! My father is so tangled in clan rivalries that he refuses to spare warriors for his outlying estates.”
“It was ever thus.”
“I must have warriors,” Erik said. “Powerful warriors. Duncan is such a man. With him I can hold Stone Ring Keep. Without him, it is lost.”
“Then let it go, and Duncan with it!”
“Whoever holds those estates holds the key to the Disputed Lands.”
“But—”
“Whoever holds the Disputed Lands,” Erik continued without pause, “holds a sword at the throat of the northern lords from here to Dun Eideann’s stony knobs.”
“I have dreamed of no such war.”
“Excellent,” Erik said softly. “That means great risk will indeed be rewarded by great gain.”
“Or great death,” Cassandra retorted.
“It takes no prophetic gift to see death. ’Tis the common end of living things.”
“Stubborn lordling,” she said angrily. “Why can’t you see the danger of what you’re doing?”
“For the same reason that you can’t see the danger of doing nothing!”
With a muscular thrust of his arm, Erik launched the falcon. Her painted jesses gleamed and her elegant wings beat rapidly. She mounted the wind with breathtaking ease, riding the wild, transparent beast higher and higher into the sky.
“If I do nothing,” Erik said, “I will surely lose Stone Ring Keep. If I lose Stone Ring Keep, Sea Home becomes as exposed and naked as a newly hatched chick.”
Silently Cassandra watched the peregrine.
“Winterlance will be little better off,” Erik continued relentlessly. “What the outlaws don’t seize, my cousins or the Norsemen will take. Do you deny this?”
Cassandra let out a sigh. “No.”
“A weapon has been given to me.”
“Double-edged.”
“Aye. The weapon requires careful handling. But better it be in my hands than in Dominic le Sabre’s.”
“Better you had left Duncan to die.”
“Hindsight or prophecy?” Erik asked sardonically.
Cassandra said nothing.
“He wore an amber talisman and slept at the foot of the sacred rowan,” Erik said after a moment. “Would you have left him to die?”
Again Cassandra sighed. “No.”
Erik narrowed his eyes against the brilliant silver of a cloud-chasm where the sun threatened to burn through. The peregrine was well up into the sky, scouting the marshy edges of the lake with matchless eyes, questing for waterfowl.
“But what if he remembers before he marries?” Cassandra asked quietly.
“That isn’t likely. The storm is as hungry for the possession as the bud, the island, and the lake put together. He will have her before the week is out.”
Scarlet sleeves whipped in a burst of wind, revealing Cassandra’s tightly clenched hands.
“It won’t be rape,” Erik said. “In Duncan’s presence, Amber burns as though lit from within.”
For a time the only sound that came was the muted rattle of marsh grasses combed by the wind.
“But if Duncan remembers first?” Cassandra repeated.
“Then he will try his strength against my quickness. And he will lose, as he lost to Simon. But with a difference.”
“Duncan will die.”
Erik nodded slowly. “It is the only defeat he would accept.”
“What, then, of Amber?”
A falcon’s wild, mournful cry keened through the wind, answering Cassandra before Erik could. She turned, saw his face, and knew why the falcon had screamed.
Cassandra’s eyes closed. For long moments she listened to the inner silence that spoke most clearly of crossroads and coming storms.
“There is another possibility,” she said.
“Aye. My own death. Having seen how Duncan fared against Simon, I don’t hold it likely.”
“Would that I had met this Simon,” Cassandra said. “Any man who could defeat Duncan easily would be a warrior worth knowing.”
“It wasn’t an easy victory. Despite Simon’s catlike speed, Duncan nearly caught him twice.”
Cassandra’s eyes darkened, but she said nothing.
Erik drew his bronze mantle more closely around his shoulders. Through long habit, he made certain that the folds of cloth didn’t foul the sword he wore along his left side.
“If truth be known,” Erik said, smiling slightly, “I’m hoping not to face Duncan over drawn swords. He can be devilish quick for a man his size.”
“You’re hardly smaller. Nor was Simon.”
Erik said nothing.
“If you die on Duncan’s sword, you won’t go into the darkness alone,” Cassandra said softly. “I will send Duncan after you with my own hands.”
Startled, Erik looked at the serene face of the woman he thought he knew.
“Nay,” he said. “That would bring a war Lord Robert couldn’t win.”
“So be it. It was Lord Robert’s arrogance that caused much of what might come. He is overdue to sleep on a bed of thorns and regrets.”
“He wanted only what all men want. A male heir to hold his lands undivided.”
“Aye. And he would have set aside my sister to achieve it.”
For a moment Erik was too surprised to speak.
“Your sister?” he asked.
“Aye. Emma the Barren.”
“Why wasn’t I told?”
“That I’m your aunt?” Cassandra said.
Erik nodded curtly.
“It was part of the bargain Emma and I struck,” she said. “Lord Robert fears the Learned.”
Erik wasn’t surprised. The breach with his father that had come over Erik’s pursuit of Learning had never been healed.
“Once Emma married Robert,” Cassandra said, “he barred me from her presence. He lifted the ban only once, when she came to me as Emma the Barren.”
“And went home to conceive soon after,” Erik said dryly.