The Dark Thorn (46 page)

It made no sense that she would want him.

But mostly Richard hated how she made him feel wanted when he deserved nothing from anyone ever again. Not after Elizabeth. Not after her death.

He focused on the moment, growling inwardly at the whole situation.

“What are you thinking?” Bran inquired beside him.

“Mind your business,” Richard said, more harshly than he intended.

“About the kiss, right?”

Richard stopped and turned to Bran. Even in the failing light he could see the jealousy burning in the boy’s eyes.

“That’s right, I saw it,” Bran said defiantly. “Sent me to pack our things just to get some free time with her? How noble,
knight
.”

In a rush of anger, Richard stepped before Bran, desiring nothing more than to bloody the idiot. It had been long in coming. When Bran didn’t back down, the passion in his eyes not diminishing and almost pushing for a fight, Richard shoved him sharply aside and continued onward.

“I will only say this
once
,” Richard snarled, striding away. “I am not interested in Deirdre. Not now, not ever. I am here to do a job. As you should be. Not to find a wife. Not to find a girlfriend. Not to make a new friend. Bring this up again and we are going to have a go of it. Seriously.” He stopped and looked deep into Bran’s eyes. “Understand?”

“Then stay away from her,” Bran said with conviction.

Richard stalked away. “Youth knows all follies,” he said under his breath.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing,” he replied, shaking his head, as the boy followed. “Just ensure you are focused on what is to come. Thinking about her will not aid us this night. Philip Plantagenet does
not
care about her, and he certainly doesn’t care about your feelings. Or about how you feel about me. One distraction can lead to our deaths. Make sure that does not happen.”

After several tense minutes where neither of them spoke, Richard stopped. Caer Llion loomed before him, the outline of the enormous castle blacker than the sky around it. Richard felt impossibly close, exposed, the reality of his plan all too near and far too real. The bustle from the army camped to the north drifted to him, a thousand different sounds more than willing to end his life. If Bran kept his head about him and Richard could keep them hidden long enough, the chance that they would succeed increased from dismal to marginal.

“How are we going to get into Caer Llion?” Bran asked, breaking the silence.

“There are many ways into a fortress. Now is as good a time as any to find one,” Richard said, stopping to call the Dark Thorn. “I might as well learn how to do this. We know Philip has some kind of seeing glass that aided him in going after you. I will focus on that.”

“A glass, huh?”

“Yes, likely a mirror. Very powerful though.”

“And finding it will show you where Philip is?”

“I don’t know what I will do if face to face with him,” Richard admitted. “Now be quiet. Let me do this.”

Richard gripped the wood of the Dark Thorn, assured by its warmth. He had no idea what he was doing but failing to try would lead them nowhere. He drove the staff into the grassland and, with both hands wrapped about its might, Richard closed his eyes and concentrated on what he knew, bringing forth images of a nebulous reflective surface bearing awesome power. He focused on it to sense what was hidden. It didn’t take long. As he did so, a part of the staff’s magic met him halfway and tugged at him, answering his call, aiding his need. Richard trusted it, went willingly, and flowed out of his body. The magic carried him away from Bran. Drawn like a lodestone, he zoomed over the land in silence, speeding toward the western side of Caer Llion.

With the path discovered, Richard let the magic die and came back to himself.

“There,” he said, pointing. “Some kind of opening into the castle, into its depths. Water. And a tunnel near the back of the castle. That’s all I saw.”

“What? Now?” Bran said. “But it’s night!”

“Best time for us to attempt this.”

“But we can’t see!”

“Yet,” Richard said. “Ready to learn a bit of magic?”

“Are you serious?”

“Focus on the ground and what you
cannot
see there,” Richard ordered. “Just like you call Arondight into being, believe you can see what is there.”

Bran concentrated. “I am.”

“Stay focused on that and repeat after me—
yn argel
.”

“
Yn argel
,” Bran said once.

A flush of heat passed through Richard just as he knew it did Bran. It was gone just as quickly. The darkness drew back, as if a bright full moon had suddenly risen to highlight the world in silver. Every detail of the night sprang into sharp relief. When he looked at Caer Llion, even the darkest areas were in view.

“See now?” Richard asked.

“Wow,” Bran murmured.

“You just called your first spell into being,” Richard said, already striding toward the castle in the distance. “Simple but effective. Now let’s get this over with, boy.”

Richard hurried forward with Bran chasing behind, the new vision etching the night in relief. Caer Llion loomed and grew larger the closer they got, the walls stretching toward the stars as if trying to encase them. The sounds of drunken revelry, the clinking of armor, and the smells of cooking meat grew stronger, all too close for comfort. But no guards met them; no warning shattered the night. A rhythmic pounding reverberated through the air and ground, and Richard realized it was the crashing of waves against the rock of Annwn.

As they grew nearer the castle, the ground softened and muck sucked at their boots. A rivulet of trickling water soaked the sod, disappearing over the cliff edge.

“We follow this?” Bran whispered.

“Look.”

A small half-circle opened in the castle wall where a grate emitted the sluice of water from Caer Llion.

“In we go,” Richard directed.

After looking for security spells or curse tablets created explicitly to keep people out, Richard tore the grate off, flung it aside in distaste, and crawled inside the gaping hole. Bran climbed in after him. The ceiling was low, the wall of Caer Llion thick. Water cascaded over his feet, icy as it soaked into his boots; their sloshing footfalls made the only sound. After a few steps they broke through the wall into a shallow subterranean cave, worn down by water, the air chilly after the long day of humidity. They pulled themselves carefully upward over a gently rising slope of damp, slippery rock and moss, the grade simple but the way difficult. Richard repressed a shiver. With the star shine absent, the darkness was far more complete. Without the spell, they would not have been able to see anything, let alone a way in.

The cavern meandered into the bowels of Caer Llion, twisting as Richard and Bran ventured deeper. The knight was unrelenting, moving ahead with a purpose that left Bran struggling to keep up.

Gaining the slope from where the water trickled, Richard froze.

The chamber he peered into was enormous. Stretching in a circle, a flat lake of black water spread like an ice rink made of obsidian, the bottom lost beneath its reflective surface. No ripple broke its stillness. The only interruption to the placid plane was a pyramid of stone in the middle of the cavern, erupting from the depths. Yellow light from a breach opposite where they stood flickered sentience, a promise of guards or worse.

An object of some kind glimmered from the pyramid of stones in the lake, too far away for Richard to discern it fully.

Richard shot Bran a raised eyebrow before moving on. He kept next to the wall where footing still seemed available, the water soaking through his boots. Bran followed. As they grew closer, Richard could make out a shore littered with worn boulders beneath torchlight and, past them, a passage vanishing upward into Caer Llion.

On their right, another tunnel disappeared from the lake, one that had been carved deep into the rock of the world.

Having circumvented the lake, Richard stepped to the gravelly shore on cat’s paws.

He yearned to call the Dark Thorn.

“Where to now?” Bran whispered.

Richard searched the gloom, perplexed. The vision from the Dark Thorn had been completed and yet he saw no mirror or other device in the cavern. He was about to express as much when faint breathing stopped him.

“Who…is there?” a ragged voice croaked.

Richard suppressed calling the staff and lashing out as the lump of rock at his feet moved. An emaciated face camouflaged in grime shakily lifted toward him, eye sockets deep pits, their orbs removed forcibly at some point. The figure reached blindly for him, as if asking for aid.

“Get back!” Bran roared, spinning around.

Before Richard could even respond, a flurry of steel ringing to life screeched through the cavern as four soldiers detached from the shadows, confronting them with weapons drawn. They wore Templar Knight garb and sneers of hatred. A leather bag hung like a backpack from each set of shoulders, a tube running from the pouch to within inches of the warriors’ mouths.

The Dark Thorn flamed to life in his hand, sudden light flooding the chamber even as Bran called Arondight.

“Surrender. There is nowhere for you to go,” a grizzled soldier ordered.

Richard gave his answer. The fire of the Dark Thorn exploded into the midst of the Templars, white hot and angry. The magic burned like an animal unleashed, casting three of the warriors aside like a battering ram as their leader leapt away. The men flew through the air to crash against the cavern. Bones snapped. Screams of pain followed. The leader shielded his face with his forearms as he rolled to bring his sword against the knight.

Angry that they had been discovered so easily, Richard parried the blade, and with the deft motion of someone who has warred for a lifetime, he spun and jabbed the end of the Dark Thorn into the guard’s throat, shattering his larynx. The man toppled over backward, clutching at his neck and at a tube that lead into the leather bag on his back.

“Where do we go?” Bran hissed.

“This is where my vision told us to go!”

“Well, try again! Now! Before more guards come!”

Just as Richard was about to drive the staff into the shore, the soldier he had just bested regained his feet, sucking on the tube. Surprise filled the knight. The man should have been dead but instead he appeared whole once more, his throat healed.

A tight grin spread across his face. He raised his sword and charged again, screaming hate. The other warriors who Richard thought were shattered against the stone of the cavern also struggled to their feet, their bodies working as though no damage had been done to them, each man sucking down the contents of the bags on their backs.

Putting it all together far too late, it dawned on Richard suddenly what the glimmer in the center of the lake had been.

They were in great danger.

As were two worlds.

“What have you done, Plantagenet?” Richard breathed.

Bewildered, Bran sent the fire of Arondight into the soldier ranks. It burned at their clothing, but the men beneath were untouched, fighting through the hot affront as though the flames were merely a warm wind. Still sucking on the tubes, they raised their weapons to attack.

Within moments, Richard and Bran were put on the defensive, fighting for their lives.

“My pretties,” a voice cackled loudly. “Ye’ve returned to me.”

The Cailleach emerged into the cavern from the glowing passage, covered in filth. “Came back to me, ye did,” she laughed and made a lewd gesture. “Want what dat wife could not give ye, eh knight?”

Richard maintained the Dark Thorn despite the guilty memories rising to greet him.

“Best ye stay put,” the Cailleach intoned, her hands weaving.

Richard found he couldn’t take a step to confront the witch. Ice crawled from the damp shore up and into the waterlogged boots about his feet, crystallizing him into stasis. The same happened to Bran.

“Richard!” Bran screamed.

“Now, now, younglin’, no need to worry,” the Cailleach purred. “I want ye alive!”

As Bran fought to free himself, Richard sent the fire of the Dark Thorn over his boots, hoping to free himself, but the ice of the witch barely melted. The warriors bore down on the two companions, surrounding them with steel. Both Richard and Bran sent their magic into the soldiers but they weren’t fazed by it, the flames washing over them as the contents of the bags kept the Templar Knights from any harm.

Two of them fought Richard to the ground, binding him with sheer strength, punching the breath from his lungs and leaving him gasping.

The Dark Thorn disappeared from his fingers.

As the knight struggled, he watched the boy fight like a tiger. Bran sent fire into the faces of the warriors, slashing at them with his rune-encrusted blade. It did no good. The soldiers grabbed at him, also bearing him down to the cavern floor, but he didn’t stop fighting, stabbing. Snarling rage, the youngest of the soldiers who had been impaled by Arondight brought his broadsword down on the prostate Bran.

“No!” Richard screamed.

The boy howled in pain, his left hand severed at the wrist. Arondight vanished instantly.

The soldiers swarmed Bran to the hard rock of the cavern then, the young knight gone mostly limp, sobbing and cradling his ruined arm.

“Do not damage them much, me pretties,” the witch said gleefully. “The play-king will owe me a few children for dis.”

“Leave the boy be!”

A sharp cuff on the back of his head sent Richard spinning.

He could not believe what he had discovered. What Philip Plantagenet had done. It no longer mattered though. Darkness wrapped its nets over him, tightening about his awareness as it pulled him down, stealing every care he ever had, until even the fact he had failed fled him.

“Dis will be over soon, cully,” the Cailleach crowed.

Unwilling to believe what Philip had done with the most important relic in the history of mankind, Richard fought his slide into the unknown.

Until he became one with it.