Legend of the Sorcerer (28 page)

“Alfred is Welsh. And Dilys is … well, I haven’t a clue, but at least part Welsh anyway.”

“Okay, okay, but any visitors at this time of year have to be a bit unusual. It won’t hurt to ask.”

Cai nodded, and they went downstairs.

Mrs. Evans was very nice, but not very helpful. She was attending some local women’s club meeting that night in Conwy and said she’d ask around. Jordy didn’t want to admit that she wasn’t much more hopeful than Cai.

They were at the door when Mrs. Evans said, “You say you’re heading to the old Morgan property?”

Something in her tone had them both nodding warily.

“Was rumored to be a llys on that site in ancient times, but they never dug there as it’s still owned by the family.”

“Llys?”

“An ancient palace of sorts. A noble house.” She shrugged. “They’re just starting to dig for them, made a great discovery in Rhosyr. Great sand blow buried most of them well back as I understand it. The Morgan place survived better, being up in the mountains and all. A shame they won’t let them excavate it.”

“How long ago was it buried?” Jordy asked.

“Oh my, well, we’re talking back in the late thirteenth century or thereabouts at least. I’m not good on dates.”

She tried not to show her disappointment. “Is there a house there now?” Jordy asked. “A family residence?”

“No, no. Just the ruins as I understand it. Never been up there myself.”

Cai swore under his breath, as Jordy thanked her for her help.

“I don’t know what connection you have to the Morgans,” Mrs. Evans went on, “but I suppose you know the current holder is none other than Isolde Morgan herself. Not that she’s come around these parts.”

“Yes, we heard that.”

She smiled. “Lovely, then. Perhaps you know of its curse as well?”

“Curse?” they said simultaneously.

“Yes.” She laughed. “We Welsh can be a superstitious lot. The story has been passed down for years, supposedly started way back in the Dark Ages. It is said that anyone other than a Morgan descendant who has tried to make a home on that land has either gone mad or disappeared.” In the uncomfortable silence that immediately followed, Mrs. Evans waved her hand and chattered on. “Of course, no one has lived there for hundreds of years.”

“Of course,” Jordy said weakly. Mrs. Evans continued to smile brightly, only now it was beginning to creep Jordy out. Suddenly magic pearls and ancient curses weren’t sounding quite so unreal.

Using the map Mrs. Evans had kindly drawn for them, Cai turned on the dirt track that wound up into the mountains and slowed to a crawl. Heavy rains and snow runoff had left the narrow lane deeply rutted. With the coming dusk, it felt more than a little ominous. He thought about Mrs. Evans’ tale, told in her irritatingly chirpy little voice. Cursed. Just what he needed. Along with a magic Pearl and a grandfather claiming to be a … a sorcerer or … something.

“I don’t know what to look for,” Jordy said.

“I have a feeling we’ll know it when we see it.”

They bumped up another hillock, then went around a sharp turn. Cai brought the car to a jarring stop.

“Damn,” Jordy whispered.

“Yeah.” Cai said. “Damn.”

Mrs. Evans hadn’t been kidding about there being a ruin. All that was left were the outlines of a few walls and the remains of a stone fence that rambled all across the hills.

Cai jammed the car in reverse. “This was a waste of time.”

“Wait. Why don’t we get out and look around. There’s enough daylight left.”

“Look around for what? Do you think Isolde is hiding under a rock? Or maybe she can turn herself into a toad.” She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m just saying we should look around. This is the only property we have a record of her owning in Wales.”

“The place
is
cursed then,” Cai said. “Because you’re nuts if you think we’re going to find anything out here.”

“Fine. Nutty me will go by myself.”

“Jordy—”

She ignored him and climbed out of the car, then began picking her way up the rocky hillside.

Cai watched her trip and almost fall before he slammed out of the car. “Jordy, come on. It’s too dark too see anything anyway.” He was walking up the hill after her.

“Cai, come here!” Jordy knelt in front of the stones that once had formed part of the doorway or entrance. “Look!”

He made his way there and stood over her. “What is it?” The heavy sense of foreboding hanging over him had only grown worse the closer he got to the ruins. “Back out of there, Jordy.”

She looked back over her shoulder at him. “What? Look, there are symbols carved in this stone.”

He leaned forward and grabbed her shoulders just as she went to run her fingers over the badly worn symbols. The air seemed to shimmer around them for a second. Cai blinked, thinking his vision had blurred, knowing it hadn’t. “Come on. Now!” He didn’t wait for her to argue, but grabbed her hand and all but dragged her downhill to the car.

“Get in.” He opened the door and shoved her inside, then climbed in his side.

“What in the hell has come over you?”

Cai didn’t answer, he was too busy trying to back down the godforsaken mountain onto the main road.

“Cai, I think those symbols are like the one she sent to you. We need that book of Alfred’s. Dammit.”

Once he was on the main road back to Mrs. Evans’ he thought he’d feel better. Safer. But his foot pressed even heavier on the gas pedal.

“When you put your hand near that symbol, did you … you know, feel anything? Anything unusual?” He’d meant to keep it to himself, but found he couldn’t.

Jordy shifted in her seat. “Unusual how?”

He hesitated, then spoke. “Something’s not right about that place. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

“Maybe it was just Mrs. Evans’ talk about the curse. She was even creeping me out there toward the end.”

“Yeah, maybe.” He sure as hell wanted to believe that.

“You know, now that I think about it, something did strike me a little weird. The symbols were definitely not new, they were well worn, but you’d think, with all that wind and rain and being exposed to all the harsh elements, that they wouldn’t still be readable at all hundreds of years later. And being in the entrance, wouldn’t they have been even more worn down by the inhabitants treading over them every day?” She sat back and stared out the window. “I’m surprised they’re still there.”

Cai had thought the very same thing. But the possible explanations for that, and for that odd sensation he’d had, were in the realm of things he badly wanted to leave unexplored. “I’ll get a call out to Crystal Key and see if they’ve called in. Maybe Mrs. Evans will have found out something at her meeting.”

He felt her eyes on him. She wasn’t going to let this slide. But she said nothing. Instead she slid the map book from the visor and dug a pencil out of her purse. She
turned on the overhead light and made a quick sketch on the inside cover.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m making a sketch of the symbols while I can still remember most of them.”

It didn’t make any sense, but he didn’t like the idea of even a sketched representation of those symbols riding around in the car with them. But short of ripping the map book from her hands and tossing it out the window, there wasn’t much he could do. He’d already alarmed her with his behavior back there. Hell, he’d alarmed himself.

She flicked off the light as they pulled up to the small white stone house. In the sudden silence after he cut the engine, she said, “We’re going to have to talk about this you know.”

“Jordy—”

“You said we were in this together. Don’t shut me out now. What happened to you back there?”

He hesitated, then said, “You’re a lot more willing to jump headfirst into all this magic mumbo jumbo.”

“Does that mean you’re beginning to believe in some of what Alfred said?”

He turned to her then. His eyes were adjusted to the dark now. She was beautiful in the patchy moonlight. Shadows shifted suddenly across her face, casting her features in a wash of deathly white. He felt a sudden chill, as if something portentous was about to happen. He had this insane urge to grab her and hold on as tight as he could, as if some unseen forces were about to rip her away from him.

“Let’s get inside.” He didn’t explain—couldn’t—he just knew they shouldn’t be out here, in the car. Out in the open. “We’ll talk inside.”

Mrs. Evans was still out. Cai added a chunk of coal to the stove she’d left burning, wondering if there was a heat
pervasive enough to ward off the cold that seemed to have taken up residence inside his very bones.

He sat on the small couch and Jordy sat beside him. He kept his gaze on the fire as he spoke. “When you went to touch that stone it was as if the air almost, I don’t know, shifted or something. I felt this dark sense of dread, like something bad, something irrevocably bad, would happen if you touched those symbols.” He finally looked at her. “I had to get you out of there.”

She rubbed her arms and he pulled her into his lap, giving in to the need to hold her close. To keep her safe.

“I’m worried, Jordy. About Alfred, about Dilys. About you. About all of this.” She tried to look up at him, but he didn’t want her to see what was in his eyes. His fear was deeper than worry, more pervasive than concern. He was scared. He was feeling things that made no sense. And yet, the feelings were undeniably there.

He stroked her short hair, weaving his fingers through the wisps that framed her face. The power of his feelings for her washed over him once again. If anything happened to her …

He tilted her mouth up to his then and took it, pouring in everything he felt, but could not say.

When he lifted his head, he found her staring deeply into his eyes. “Cai, what can I do to help you?”

“Stay here. Right here.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

They sat like that, for a long time, until the coal had almost burned down to nothing.

“You know,” he said into the shadows. “For someone who makes his living with words, I can’t seem to find the right ones to tell you how I feel about you.”

Obviously surprised, she leaned back and looked up at him.

He smiled a little and pulled her head back to his chest. “And it’s even harder when you look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

He heard the smile in her voice, and relaxed slightly. “Like you see all the way down inside me.”

She rubbed her cheek against his chest. “Well, isn’t that interesting. I’ve felt the same way about you. I chalked it up to all that people analyzing thing you do for your writing.”

“This has nothing to do with that.”

“Yeah. I didn’t buy it either.”

He pressed his lips against her hair. “Jordy, when this is all over, whatever happens, I—”

Just then, the front door banged open and Mrs. Evans bustled in, her arm full of bags. Cai and Jordy moved off the couch and relieved her of some of the heavy ones.

“So, did you enjoy your trip to the ruins? I see you made it back in one piece,” she said, bubbly as ever. “No word on your friends, I’m sorry to say. But I thought you might find it an odd coincidence that Isolde Morgan made the evening news. Apparently she collapsed in some restaurant near her apartment in Paris and has been taken to the hospital there for observation.” She lowered her voice. “The same one where they took Princess Di. I hope they do better by Ms. Morgan, if you know what I mean.” She tsked. “Such a tragedy that.” She shifted her parcels and smiled brightly again. “Well, I’ll ring when dinner is ready.” She bustled out, leaving Jordy and Cai dumbfounded.

“I
don’t see any of them listed in here.” Jordy tossed the map book on the nightstand. Dinner was over and Mrs. Evans was out for the evening, leaving Cai and Jordy alone.

Cai stood and paced to the window and back. “Isolde is in a Paris hospital.” They’d seen the reports themselves now. “The places in Alfred’s notes appear to be nonexistent.” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m not certain he ever really had a clue about what was going on, with the kidnappings, the whole thing.”

She walked over to him and tugged him around. “You don’t want to believe in this. No rational person would.”

“But?”

“But you felt something on that mountain this afternoon.”

“Nerves. Exhaustion. Jordy, there are a million explanations for what I thought I felt.”

“And Dilys? She believes him.”

“What are you saying? That you believe he’s lived as some Keeper of a magic pearl for over a thousand years?” He stepped back. “Do you honestly believe that?”

“Rationally? No. In here?” She tapped her forehead. “No. But here?” She laid her hand on her heart. “Here, I’m not so sure what I believe. Your grandfather is a powerful
storyteller, Cai. He makes me want to believe.” She looked past him, outside, into the dark. “And here, in this country, a place so old, so filled with history that I almost can’t comprehend it. Anything seems possible here.”

“I just want to find my grandfather and Dilys and take them safely home.”

“What about those two women? Do you not believe in them, either?”