20 #2
Silence stretched and stretched.
Then Ariane turned to Duncan with contempt flashing in her narrowed eyes.
“You have forced me to share what I have hidden even from myself,” she said. “You have forced her to endure what she never earned.”
“I have a right to know the truth of our betrothal,” Duncan said.
Ariane made a cutting gesture with one hand.
“You have diminished my honor and the honor of the one you call your ‘weapon,’” she said tersely.
Duncan’s open hand slammed down on the arm of the chair.
“I have been betrayed by those I trusted,” he said in a clipped voice. “This is my way of being certain it doesn’t happen again.”
“Betrayed,” Ariane repeated tonelessly.
“Aye.”
“We have that in common.” She shrugged. “But is it enough for marriage?”
“We have no choice but to marry.”
Duncan leaned forward, his eyes hard as stones.
“Will you be a faithful wife,” he asked coldly, “loyal to your husband rather than to your Norman father?”
Ariane studied Duncan’s fierce expression for a long moment before she turned to Amber.
And held out her hand.
“Yes,” Ariane said.
“Yes,” Amber echoed.
“Will that change if I take Amber as my leman, living in my keep and sharing my bed whenever I wish it?”
Amber’s Learned discipline shattered. Even as Ariane’s relief and hope soared, Amber’s emotions all but overwhelmed the truth of what she was learning by touch.
“Not at all,” Ariane said clearly. “I would welcome it.”
Duncan looked surprised.
“I will do my duty,” Ariane said in her cool voice, “but I am repelled by the prospect of the marriage bed.”
“Does your heart belong to another?” Duncan asked.
“I have no heart.”
Dark brown eyebrows lifted, but Duncan said only, “Amber?”
Silence was Amber’s answer. She was too busy trying to control her own seething emotions to speak.
Leman.
Whore.
Day after day, darkness condensing, destroying…
Everything.
“Well, witch?” Duncan asked.
Amber forced air into her rigid body.
“She tells the truth,” Amber said hoarsely. “All of it.”
Duncan settled back with a curt nod and an expression that was as bleak as winter itself.
“Then it is done,” he said. “We will be married on the morrow.”
As though in answer, a wolf’s savage howl echoed from just beyond the keep’s wall.
Amber and Cassandra spun toward the sound.
Even as they turned, another cry came, the scream of an outraged peregrine. Before the cry had faded, Erik walked into the great hall. He was alone but for the sword sheathed at his side. Beneath his long crimson cape he wore chain mail. A battle helm hid all but his dark gold beard.
Duncan came to his feet in a fierce movement. With one hand he swept up his battle helm from the back of the chair. The hammer that was never far from his reach appeared in his other hand. Smoothly he put the helm on.
Like Erik, Duncan now was dressed from head to feet in links of steel.
“Greetings, Duncan of Maxwell,” Erik said gently. “How is your wife?”
“I have no true wife.”
“Does the Church agree?”
“Aye,” Dominic said from the doorway behind Erik.
Erik didn’t turn around. He watched Duncan with the unflinching stare of a falcon.
“Is it done, then?” Erik asked.
The gentleness of his voice made Amber long to scream a warning to everyone within the room.
“I have only to fix my seal to the document,” Dominic said.
Again Erik didn’t look away from Duncan.
“And you, Duncan,” Erik said. “Do you agree to this?”
“Yes.”
The wolf called again, and was answered by the peregrine’s high scream. Erik smiled savagely.
“I demand blood right,” he said. “Single combat.”
“You have no kin here,” Duncan said.
“You are wrong, bastard. Amber is my sister.”
A shocked silence spread in the wake of Erik’s words. Amber was the most stunned of all.
Erik looked at her for the first time since he had walked into the great hall. Smiling almost sadly, he held out his hand.
“Touch me, sister. Know the truth. Finally.”
In a daze, Amber walked to Erik and placed her fingers on his hand.
“You are the daughter of Lord Robert of the North and Emma the Barren,” Erik said distinctly. “You were born minutes after I was. We are twins, Amber.”
The truth of what Erik was saying went through Amber like thunder through a narrow glen, shaking everything.
“But why…?” whispered Amber.
Then she could say no more.
“Why were you denied your birthright?” Erik asked.
She nodded.
“I don’t know,” Erik said. “But I suspect that it was the price of my conception.”
“That I be denied?” Amber asked.
“That you be given to the Learned woman who would suffer no man long enough to quicken with her own babe.”
Cassandra made a stifled sound.
Erik looked at her for a moment only. Then he looked back at the girl whose true paternity he had discovered when he first had regarded the problem with Learned eyes.
“Is that true?” Amber asked, turning to Cassandra.
“When you were born…” Cassandra’s voice thinned into silence.
“The prophecy,” Amber said.
Death will surely flow.
“Aye. The amber prophecy,” Cassandra said, sighing. “Emma feared it, and you. She refused to nurse you.”
Amber closed her eyes. Tears glittered among the lashes that rested against her pale cheeks.
“But I loved you from your first breath,” Cassandra said fiercely. “You were so tiny, so perfect. I believed if I could teach you enough Learning, rich life might flow.”
Amber’s laugh was sadder than her tears.
Better you had left me for the wolves.
Yet the words were never spoken aloud, for Amber had no wish to wound the woman who had taken an unwanted babe and raised her as her own.
“In the end, my lack of talent for Learning doomed your hopes,” Amber said.
“The fault was in my lack of teaching,” Cassandra said.
Amber simply shook her head.
After a moment she opened her eyes, looked at Erik…and saw her brother for the first time. Tears came again, but differently. She touched his cheek, his hair, his lips, letting the truth of him sink into her.
“The river always runs down to the sea,” Amber said, “no matter how you try to stay its true course. Let it go, my brother. Let it go.”
Before Erik’s answer came, the peregrine flew at the partially opened shutters that kept her from her master. The falcon’s shriek was as shrill as Erik’s voice was gentle.
“Never,” Erik said.
“I don’t want you to do this!”
“I know. But it must be done.”
“Nay!” Amber cried, gripping Erik’s arm with one hand.
“A gentle, sheltered girl called Duncan’s soul from darkness,” Erik said.
Abruptly links of metal chain began to chant of death, sliding one over another as the hammer moved restlessly in Duncan’s grasp.
“And then,” Erik said gently, implacably, “the girl gave Duncan her own soul to fill the emptiness in his. For this priceless gift, he would make her a whore.”
Steel links clicked and writhed as though alive with the rage that was pouring through Duncan.
Erik lifted the cold fingers that gripped his arm, kissed them, and stepped back from Amber. For the first time he turned around and confronted Dominic le Sabre. The pin that held Dominic’s mantle in place glittered fiercely.
“As you see, Wolf of Glendruid,” Erik said, “the blood relationship is clear.”
“Yes.”
“Then you will grant leave for your vassal to meet me in single combat.”
“Duncan is my equal, not my vassal.”
“Ah, so that, too, is true. I wondered.” Erik smiled sardonically. “You are indeed a formidable tactician, Dominic le Sabre.”
“As are you. No one less could have held three large estates in the Disputed Lands with a handful of knights and the reputation of being a sorcerer,” Dominic said.
Erik began to turn toward Duncan, only to be stopped by Dominic’s dry words.
“Your penchant for entering keeps through bolt-holes unknown to others is no doubt useful to your reputation,” Dominic said.
“No doubt,” Erik said gently.
“But there will be no problem in the future.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Your shrewdness didn’t extend to letting Duncan challenge you to single combat. You are a dead man, Erik, son of Robert.”
Dominic looked past Erik to the Scots Hammer.
“Insomuch as you once were my vassal,” Dominic said, “I entreat you to choose the hammer for your coming battle.”
Cassandra’s body jerked as though she had been whipped.
Absently, Duncan glanced down at the weapon that was quivering and twisting at the end of its steel leash, eager for the combat to come. Until that moment, he hadn’t really been aware of holding the hammer.
“Erik is undefeated with the sword,” Dominic said, “but he isn’t known for any extraordinary skill with the hammer. And I need you alive.”
Surprised, Duncan looked at Dominic.
“Without you holding Stone Ring Keep,” Dominic said simply, “there is little chance for Blackthorne’s survival in the coming years. Grant this favor to one who was once your lord.”
Duncan looked at the hammer that waited within his grasp, as much a part of him as his own arms.
Then he looked at Amber.
Her eyes were wide, wild, and her hands were pressed against her mouth as though to hold back a scream. No matter who won the coming battle, she lost.
Duncan knew it as well as she.
“While you are considering the matter,” Dominic added, “remember that Erik is the highborn lord who thought a man born a bastard had so little honor he wouldn’t notice being forsworn.”
Metal links snapped and snarled as Duncan played with the hammer. The people in the great hall were so still that each movement of the chain carried throughout.
“So be it,” Duncan said. “I will fight with the hammer.”
Amber closed her eyes.
Erik nodded, unsurprised.
“Have a hammer brought for me from the armory,” Erik said.
“If you wish,” Duncan said carelessly. “But if you choose to fight with sword and dagger instead, then you may do so.”
A howl lifted beyond the walls, a wolf’s throat crying Erik’s pleasure.
“Sword and dagger,” Erik said succinctly.
Duncan smiled with feral anticipation.
“Simon,” Duncan said, “bring shields from the armory.”