Chapter Eighteen
The
Hollow
Talon
The girl stood in the
river. A young girl with side braids who smiled at Talon, warming
him from the inside out. He tried to go to her, but a gripping pain
in his side stopped him. His side and his leg were on fire, his
head pounded, and his mouth tasted of dirt.
“Water.”
Something cool and wet
touched his mouth. He gaped like a baby bird, and a slaking ease
slid down his throat as he swallowed.
“Sleep,” a voice
said.
A woman’s amorphous face
crowned with auburn curls floated above him. Eyes of green and gold
peered down at him from where her long, willowy body sprawled out
along the branch of an ancient oak. She stood, her naked body
glistening wet, and gazed at him with a longing that made his gut
grip and his manhood throb. He reached out for her, but she was
gone, her voice of smoked honey laughing up at him from the river
below as she was swept away. He dove into the freezing river and
swam after her, stroking and kicking with all his might, struggling
against the swirling water until his arms burned and his legs were
as heavy as soggy logs. Still, he fought on. He had to get to her.
To hold her safe in his arms. To tell her… something.
He gave one last heaving
surge forward, and pain ripped through him. He cried
out.
“Shush, love. It’s all
right. I’ve got you.”
He was treading water in
front of the oak, its gnarled roots holding her pale, listless
body. Her waist-length hair swirled around her like dancing flames,
then blanched to white, and her skin aged from smooth and fair to
wrinkled and wizened. He reached out to touch her cheek, and her
eyes flew open. Changeling eyes that seared his very
soul.
“Lara?”
“Aye, love.”
From close by, his mother
sang lullabies. He ran down an empty hall searching for her, his
footsteps echoing off the cold floors and stone walls. Walls
without doors. Walls without end. He ran and ran, his footsteps
echoing, his mother calling to him from beyond the cavernous
maw.
“Mother,” he cried out.
“Mother. Don’t go.”
“Shush,” a breath
whispered. “I’m here.”
“Sing?” he
pleaded.
“Sleep,” the voice
sang.
***
Talon opened his eyes and tried to get
his bearings. He lay beneath a ceiling of thatch over sturdy
crossbeams of wood, a ceiling he’d never seen before. It wasn’t
unusual for him to wake in a strange place, but he’d always
remembered how he’d gotten there. He tried to swallow. His tongue
felt like it was three times its usual size and as dry as the
Spanish plains. His head throbbed and his body was as weak and
helpless as a swaddling babe’s.
He turned his head to the side and a
pull came from his neck to his shoulders. Lara slept in a chair
beside the bed he lay in, her hair a wild tangle of auburn curls,
her usually rosy cheeks wan and hollowed. She wore a linen
nightshift and shawl of wool he didn’t recall seeing before, nor
did he recognize the small table next to her chair. He did
recognize the waist belt and knife she wore and tried to think why
she would be wearing them over her nightshift, then he remembered:
chasing after her and fighting Lothair and the count’s men; the
arrows in his side and thigh, how Lara had pulled them out and
cauterized his wounds. Then the searing pain, floating in and out
of consciousness, floating in and out of strange dreams, vague
images of sky and trees and horses swaying and bobbing above him,
his body burning up with fever—then nothing.
His instincts told him she’d dragged
him up the mountain to the place she and Sophie called the Hollow
and that he’d have left his life’s blood on that meadow were it not
for her. Of course, it was because of her that his blood had been
spilt there in the first place, but then that seemed to be his
fate: to bleed for his thorny beauty.
He moved his left hand under the
bedcovers and brushed the bandage wrapped around his waist and the
one wrapping his thigh. He was naked except for his breechcloth. He
tried to shift his body, and a ripping pain tore through his right
side from his toes to his shoulder. He gritted his teeth so as not
to cry out and wake Lara, taking slow, labored breaths in and out.
The air smelled of rosemary and lavender, easing his chest and
throat, and two cups and several tubs and vials sat on the little
table by Lara.
He coughed, and his belly gripped. He
shut his eyes with a grimace and opened them to Wolf’s face in his,
tongue lolling and tail wagging. He lifted a hand to pat the dog’s
head, causing his side to grip again, and dropped it.
“Welcome back.” Lara
smiled at him, the one true tonic that would cure him of any ill.
Then her expression grew strained and somber. “I thought I’d lost
you a few times there.”
“Not a chance.” He tried
to smile, but his lips were dry and caught on his teeth. He swiped
his only slightly damper tongue across them. “How long have I been
out?”
She shifted in her chair and picked up
one of the cups and held it to his mouth. “It’s been three days
since you took your wounds,” she said as he sipped the cool,
slaking water. “You’ve been wandering between this world and the
next ever since.”
Her voice caught, and the same fear
he’d seen in her eyes when she’d woken from her dreams clouded
them.
“Tell me, Lara. Tell me
what you dreamt of me that night by the river, after we made
love.”
Color rose to her cheeks, then paled.
“I saw you pierced by an arrow, slumped over the Black’s neck,” she
said, her voice breaking. “Then you fell and lay in a pool of your
own blood, your eyes dulled and unseeing.” She held his gaze, and
what Talon saw in hers pained him more than the prick in his side.
“I thought I saw you die.” Her voice was a raw whisper. “I couldn’t
bear to love you more, only to lose you.”
Talon swallowed past the stone-size
lump in his throat. “You should know by now I’m too stubborn to die
simply because you’ve seen it in a dream.”
Her eyes welled with tears and her
body was trembling, much as Talon’s had after a few especially
harrowing battles.
“Come here.” He patted the
bed beside him, threw the covers aside, and shifted over to make
room for her, wincing and grimacing as his leg throbbed and his
side clenched. Lara was eyeing him closely, going nursemaid on him:
the last thing he wanted her to do right now. “You won’t hurt me.”
He reached for her hand with more difficulty than he let on and
pulled her toward him. “I promise.” Still she hesitated, and Talon
put his bullheaded, stubborn pride that’d gotten him nothing but a
cold, lonely bed aside. “Please, my rose. I’ve more need of you
than all the medicines in this world or the next.”
She smiled and swiped her tears away
and climbed into the bed, one long, lovely leg at a time,
stretching them out alongside his. She leaned her head on his
shoulder, then ran her fingers back through his hair. He pressed a
chaste kiss to her forehead and reached his good arm around her
shoulders, coaxing her tighter into his chest, kissing her mop of
curls.
“This is the only place
I’ve ever felt completely safe.” She nestled in closer.
“Are you referring to
being in my arms or here in the Hollow?”
“Both.” She gave a
contented sigh.
A peace settled somewhere in Talon’s
chest. In his soul.
She craned her head and eyed him.
“How’d you know this was the Hollow? I don’t remember speaking of
it to you. Or anybody, ever, other than Sophie.”
“It was Sophie who first
spoke of it. Your first morning as prisoner in my chamber, when you
plotted to escape from the bathhouse. ‘We have to get you to the
Hollow,’ were her very words, as I recall. I also recall her
warning you to stay out of my bed.” He gave her his best leer. “You
listened to her about as well as you listened to me when I told you
to ride.”
“A good thing too,” she
said. “Else I’d be in this bed all alone and you’d be carrion for
the vultures.”
Talon tucked Lara closer and placed a
kiss on top of her head. “I take it nobody else knows of this
place?”
“It was a secret Sophie
and I kept from all others. She said it must stay so, so that we’d
have a haven to hide from the rest of the world if we
needed.”
“What of
Lothair?”
“Wolf chased him off and
came back with his horse and a bloody muzzle. I don’t know if he
lives or not. If he was able to make it back to the count or not.
That’s why I brought you here rather than try to get you back to
the keep. I didn’t want to chance running into him.”
Talon nodded. “Smart thinking.” If
Lothair did make it back to Oloron, what story would he tell of
their encounter? Would he admit Lara or Talon still lived, or
declare them both dead? Talon needed to let his men know he was
alive, but even he knew he was in no condition to ride yet. “We
need to get a message to the keep. Preferably without letting the
count know.”
“How?”
“I’m not…” Wolf lumbered
over and plopped down next to the bed and Talon and Lara looked to
each other at the same moment. “Can he do it?”
“He’s been here and back
several times a year every four years of his life.” Lara patted
Wolf on the head as he rested his muzzle on the mattress. “Sophie
was pretty sure he came up here looking for me when I was away with
the army. I’m almost certain he’d go home if I sent him.” She
kissed Talon’s cheek and slid out of the bed. “I have parchment and
ink. We can write a message and tie it in a kerchief around his
neck. Wolf knows Denys. He’ll let him take the kerchief off, and
Denys will figure out to take the message to Phillipe or
Anglbert.”
She gathered the parchment and ink and
sat at the table that looked to be used for both preparing and
eating meals at.
“What do you want it to
say?” She held the quill tip over the bottle of ink.
“What phase is the moon
in?”
“It’s a new moon
tonight.”
Talon calculated the time he figured
it would take his body to heal enough to travel and added several
days for the purely selfish purpose of having Lara to himself.
“Write, Eyes only. T injured. L safe. Watch Ms. Return and draw a
waxing half-moon.”
***
Lara
Lara stacked wood under the roasting
pit outside of the cabin. After putting the pheasant she’d trapped