Deep Magic (21 page)

His eyes widened as he clutched at Da’s hair. He had to see everything, no matter how large or small, so he could describe it to Gwen. She’d been very angry to be stuck at home, helping Mared with the weaving.

It was her own fault, Rhys reflected. She shouldn’t have run off into the fields last night after supper. For once, he hadn’t let her talk him into joining her in disobeying Mama. But he had worried about her the entire time she’d been gone. Especially after Da had gone looking for her.

Da had whipped Gwen’s arse soundly, but she hadn’t cried even one tear. Rhys didn’t know whether to be proud or envious. He would have bawled.

It was market day in Isca, and the merchant stalls were piled high with wares. Fruits and vegetables, cookware and pottery, livestock and clothing, fabric and jewelry. The market, a jumble of stalls squeezed between the fortress gates and the amphitheater, was packed to overflowing.

“Two Roman soldiers are shopping for boots,”
Rhys told Gwen in his mind.

“I hate soldiers,”
his sister replied.

“A Roman matron is frowning over some blue glassware,”
he reported. Glass was very costly. He’d never touched it. Was it cold, like the ice it resembled?

“How many slaves does the matron have with her?”
Gwen wanted to know.

“Two. A maid and a lad to carry packages.”

He told Gwen about two patricians coming out of the barber’s shop, their chins scraped clean. They were wearing short white togas and their limbs looked like chicken legs. Gwen giggled.

Rhys thought the Celt women, in their colorful plaid and checkered tunics, were much prettier than the Roman women in their pale
stolae.
Gwen agreed.

Da turned down the aisle leading to the stall where Mama sold the blankets she and Mared and Aunt Carys wove. Rhys loved climbing the piles of soft, colorful wool. But it was more fun climbing with Gwen. Everything was more fun with Gwen.

“I wish ye were here,”
he told her.

“Me, too,”
she sighed.

They were nearly at Mama’s stall when Da stopped so abruptly Rhys nearly pitched over his head. He clutched Da’s ears, suddenly pierced with fear. Da had gone still, the muscles in his shoulders tensing until they were hard as rocks.

Angry. Da was angry.

Had Rhys done something wrong? Or maybe forgotten to do something he was supposed to do? He racked his brain, but could not think of a single thing. And Da seemed to have forgotten all about him, so it was probably not Rhys who had angered him.

Nay, not Rhys—but just as bad. Da was staring at Mama. A Roman soldier had stopped at her stall. Mama stood with her hands on her hips and her head tilted to one side, smiling up at her visitor. The Roman reached out and brushed a lock of blond hair from Mama’s forehead. Mama laughed, her eyes sparkling.

Da made a low, growling sound, deep in his throat. Gripping Rhys about the waist, he jerked him off his shoulders and set him roughly on the ground. Without a word, without even glancing down, Da strode away.

Rhys darted after him, only to run into the legs of a portly middle-aged merchant. The man grunted and cursed, landing a sound kick to Rhys’s ribs. “Little rat.”

Rhys sprawled on the ground, tasting dust. He coughed and spit, then rolled once and jumped to his feet to dash after Da. By the time he reached Mama’s stall, the soldier had gone. The leather flap that separated the rear of the stall from the front was down. The barrier did little to mute the voices behind it. Da’s was deep and angry, Mama’s soft and pleading.

There was a loud thump and a sharp, feminine cry. Rhys yanked on the flap. It did not open. Da had tied it down.

“Mama!”

The voices stopped, but no answer came. Rhys’s chest squeezed so tight he could not breathe.

“Rhys? What’s wrong?”

“Gwen … Da is beating Mama. Again.”

His twin’s frightened silence joined his own. Tears squeezed past Rhys’s closed eyelids. He wished with all his might that his twin were there beside him.

Cyric’s low moan dragged Rhys from his nightmare. He rolled from his pallet into a crouch in one smooth motion. The peat fire in the hearth smoldered, sending herb-laden smoke into his lungs. Cyric thrashed on his pallet, his thin limbs flailing.

“Tamar … nay …”

Should he wake his grandfather from his private torment? He wasn’t sure. He hunkered by the old man’s bed, tensed and ready to intervene should the nightmare turn violent. But Cyric’s sobs remained muted until he shuddered and slipped back into sleep.

Rhys exhaled a long sigh. The dread of his own nightmare still clung to him like sodden swamp grass. The horror of that long-ago day remained vivid in his mind, no less so because it had marked the beginning of a long, dark slide into misery.

It hadn’t been long after that fateful argument and beating that his father had been found lying facedown in a ditch.

Dead.

The face was familiar to Gwen, yet not.

“ ’Tis not Mama,” she told Rhys. “ ’Tis not!”

Mama’s skin was soft and warm, not white and waxy and cold. She always had a hug ready for Gwen. Often, she would whisper stories about the Lost Grail of Avalon, and what it meant to be a Daughter of the Lady. Or at least she had until the start of the summer. Since then, it had seemed, Mama had always been crying. After Da’s death, she had cried even more.

Gwen did not understand that. Gwen had not cried at all when Da died.

But Gwen
had
tried to be good, so that Mama would be happy again. It was hard. It was so tempting to slip outside the hut and run toward town, or in the opposite direction into the fields. So she had not made Mama happy, and Mama was still and white, and Grandfather was sobbing.

Gwen thought she should remember how it had happened, but whenever she tried to find the memory in her head, she came up against a wall of darkness. It was the same for Rhys. There was a blank hole where the memory should have been.

Mared knelt beside Grandfather, her arm around his shoulders, murmuring soft words in his ear. Aunt Carys was pacing, trying to quiet little Blodwen, who seemed to enjoy wailing more than any other activity. Uncle Padrig stood by the doorway, stiff with anger.

“Ye should not have faced the bastard alone,” he said to Grandfather.

Mared hushed him. “Your advice does no good now.”

“He should have told me,” Padrig muttered. He opened the door a crack and peered out into the night.

Grandfather did not reply, except with another sob. Gwen did not like it. Grandfather had never cried before! The sound made her chest hurt so badly she could hardly breathe.

She held onto Rhys and looked at Mama’s face. Rhys squeezed her hand; she thought her fingers might break.

“She’s dead, Gwen.”

“Dead.”
Dead.

Gwen’s brain poked at the hideous word as her dirty fingernails might have picked at a scab on her knee. Her stomach lurched. She thought she might throw up.

“Rhys, do people ever stop being dead?”

“Nay. When someone is dead, they stay that way. Always.”

Her brother’s eyes were rimmed in red. A large tear escaped and rolled down his cheek. Rhys cried more easily than Gwen, and sometimes she envied him for it. Her own hurts lodged painfully in her chest and throat.

She tried to swallow around the swelling. It burned.

“Always?”

Rhys nodded. His sob emerged as a gasp, and he started shaking. Gwen put her arms around his waist, and his own thin arms wrapped her in return. She clung to her twin, the other half of herself. She had Rhys. As long as he was here with her, she could bear anything.

Dead, dead, dead.

Gwen clung to her brother for a long time, the words beating a gruesome rhythm in her skull.

Dead, dead, dead.

Gwen woke with a shudder, her heart pounding so hard she thought it might leap from her chest.

Dead, dead, dead.

Her throat was raw; unshed tears burned her eyes. The pain her seven-year-old self had endured—pain she had thought long buried—was suddenly fresh and raw. Her heart was bleeding.

The wolf raised its head.

Quickly, Gwen pushed the emotions of her childhood back into the black depths from which they had risen. Closing her eyes, she whispered a spell to calm the wolf.

The beast growled.

She threw off her blanket, suddenly hot. The room was too small; the walls too rigid. Her sleeping tunic was unbearably heavy on her skin. Rising shakily, she was careful to make no noise that might disturb Breena. The lass was sleeping peacefully. If a vision had come, she had banished it without waking Gwen.

A vibration strummed deep inside her. The wolf. The nightmare had roused it; she did not know if she could hold it back. She had to get out, away from the farm and into the woods.

Her bare feet hurried down the passageway. She let herself out one of the doors leading from the entrance gallery to the rear terrace. Once free of the house, she ran, past the kitchen gardens and into the orchard. The north gate was not far. Surely she could reach it before the change came upon her! But when she drew up short before the iron bars, she realized the gate had been locked for the night, and she did not have the key.

She sank to the ground. The wolf inside clamored for release, but she could not shift here, inside the farm compound, so near to the sheep and pig barns. Within sight of the servants’ huts.

Great Mother, help me.

Fighting the urge to rip off her clothes, she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms tightly around them. She pressed her forehead to her knees, chanting her most powerful spell of Light, interspersing the Words with desperate prayers to the Goddess.

A shudder wracked her body. She braced herself for the pain. It never came.

The wolf receded.

Gwen stayed motionless for a long time afterward, sobbing.

Later, after she’d crept back to her bed, her head aching and her throat raw, she felt the familiar stirring in her mind.

“Gwen. Sister, are ye there?”

She squeezed her eyes closed and focused all her power into blocking Rhys’s call. It was no use. His thoughts vibrated in her mind. But she did not answer. She couldn’t, not with her emotions in such turmoil.

“I am trying to hold the mist, but I haven’t your power. Avalon needs ye, Gwen. Cyric … he cannot resist Strabo’s Deep Magic. Owein believes the Roman is a dreamcaster, Gwen. His spells reach into each soul, into its darkest corners, and rip open wounds of the past. Cyric is the most affected, but all of Avalon feels Strabo’s spell.

“The worst dream was tonight, Gwen. I saw the day Da beat Mama in the market.”

Oh, Rhys.

She wanted so much to comfort him, but she didn’t dare. The wolf was so close to the surface. She would not be able to banish it a second time.

Rhys’s call faded. She rolled over in her bed, replaying his words in her mind. Rhys had dreamed of Mama’s death, and so had Gwen. It could not be a coincidence.

Had Strabo’s dreamcaster magic found Gwen here, in Isca? It did not seem possible. More likely, Rhys had unwittingly channeled Strabo’s magic to Gwen through their mental link. And the Deep Magic had stirred the wolf.

Unsettled, she rose from the bed. Breena still slept peacefully, a slight smile on her young face. Cautiously, Gwen opened the shutters, letting in the predawn breeze.

Rhys needed her. Strabo’s Deep Magic was thinning the mist, putting Avalon in grave danger. It was Gwen’s duty to defend her people, but now, more than ever, she believed her Light would not be enough. She needed the Lady’s sword.

Exchalybur was Gwen’s best hope. It was almost complete; she would press Marcus to work more quickly. She pushed away the pain the thought of leaving him brought. She’d given him her body, and her heart. She would stay with him forever if the choice were her own. It was not.

She prayed Rhys could hold the mists without her just a little while longer.

Breena woke to a clear dawn. Her head did not hurt and her lungs were clear. There was a dim memory of a vision, silver silence into which she had spoken Words of Deep Magic. Once the spell had been cast, the vision had faded away.

She stretched her arms overhead and grinned. It had been almost two months since she’d felt so well in the morning. There was none of the fatigue Gwen had warned her of—on the contrary, exuberant energy infused her limbs. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, eager to begin the day.

Gwen had already risen. She didn’t seem to have rested as well as Breena had. She stood by the window, staring out at the garden, her shoulders hunched, her hair hanging in tangles. When Breena greeted her, she did not immediately respond.

Breena rose and went to her. “You did not sleep well?”

“Well enough, for a few hours.” She turned and straightened, and Breena could see the effort she made to hide whatever troubled her. Her expression smoothed into a smile that did not reach her eyes. “You look fine this morn.”

“I feel wonderful.”

“Did the vision not come last night?”

Breena couldn’t suppress a grin. “Yes, it came—that’s what’s so wonderful! I used the Deep Magic spell. Once I said the words, the vision disappeared.”

Gwen frowned. “The vision and pain disappeared, yet ye feel no effect of the Deep Magic now?”

“None at all.” Breena’s smile faded. “Is that not good?”

“ ’Tis … unexpected. I’d hoped the Great Mother’s message to ye would become clearer, not vanish completely. But perhaps it is not a bad turn of events. Your body and spirit have been strained. Some nights of rest can only do ye good. When the Great Mother’s favor returns, ye will be more receptive to it.”