The Penwyth Curse (18 page)

“And why not? You are so arrogant, so above all mortals and immortals alike, you wouldn't believe any wild animal would dare come near you. As for your enemies, why, they are as nothing to you. You could whistle at them and they would sink into swamp mud.”

He gave her a quizzical smile. “You believe I am that good?”

“Don't toy with me, prince. I am not one of your women, eager to fall at your feet, praising your skills.”

“I can see you at my feet,” he said. “I can see my hands sifting through your hair whilst you are there before me.” He could also see her coming up on her knees, see her hands touching him, see himself in her mouth, and he nearly expired on the spot. By all the ancient gods who ate men's flesh, he would spill his seed right here in front of her if he didn't get himself under control. He focused on her, on that exquisite face of hers, and realized he didn't want to look away. He'd wanted her for so very long, perhaps even forever. Such wild red hair she had, long down her back, braided in the front with white ribbons. Hair red enough to burst into flames. He smiled at that, and said, “Would you like to?”

“Like to what?”

“Fall at my feet and praise my skills? Perhaps you could also vow eternal devotion to me? Mayhap do other things as well?”

“I am your equal, prince. I do whatever I wish to do. But you refuse to accept that, don't you? I must be your slave, bow deep to you. Let you put your foot on my neck.”

“My equal? Well, you did get away from me, Brecia. You were lying there on the altar I created for you. Such
a beautiful slab of stone. You looked remarkably beautiful lying on it. I would have liked to whisk away your clothes and have you stretched out there on the bluestone and I would come over you—”

Brecia's eyes nearly crossed. “You arrogant son of a witch's cursed alliance! Think you I would ever willingly mate with you?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Oh, yes. You know that we are meant to mate, Brecia. Why do you fight me? I don't wish to make you my slave. Actually, I believe I should prefer your foot on my neck. You have lovely feet, Brecia, not like the ghosts, whose toes are far too long.”

He was not acting the way he should. He was different. She was tempted to blink at this idiocy from a powerful wizard's mouth, but she didn't. She held firm. He was probably playing a game with her. Since she didn't have her wand, it could lead to bad things. On the other hand, he didn't have his wand, either. Were they equal in power? She didn't know. She said, “I don't like you, prince. I wish you to leave my forest. I don't know how you managed to find me, but it doesn't matter. Leave. I don't wish to see you again.”

He laughed, held out his hand to her. “You will never bore me. Never. Come, Brecia, it is just the two of us. A man and a woman. Forget our skills, our magic, our sense of what is of this world and what is not. Come with me.”

He was different, she thought yet again, staring at him, staring at that hand of his, and she didn't know what to do. She'd believed he was the most beautiful man in all the earth until she'd realized what he really was, what he really wanted, and that had been to take her and to take a wife as well. He was a wizard who wanted a son by her—and not just another wizard, but the most powerful wizard the world had ever seen. He would destroy her and her sacred grove and all her people in his quest to mate with her, if he deemed it necessary.

But then again, he seemed different. It knocked her off balance. When she'd come across him sleeping as soundly
as if he'd still been in his mother's womb, she'd stared down at him, not really wanting to look away, but then he'd awakened. She'd expected him to try to enchain her immediately, to overwhelm her. But he hadn't. She still didn't move. “Where do you want me to come with you?”

He looked thoughtful at that. “I suppose I must retrieve my wand first, yours as well, then we will go to my fortress atop the Balanth promontory.”

“I have never been there before. I hear it is frightening, so tall that if a mortal falls, he dies.”

“No, it is merely my home. It's true that the fortress stretches not only to the heavens, but also to the shadows deep in the earth beneath the promontory, but it is for protection. You would be safe there forever, with me. I haven't yet had a mortal fall into the lower reaches.” He paused a moment, frowned. “I cannot remember if a mortal has ever even seen Balanth. It was not designed for a mortal's eyes.”

“No.”

“Neither is your fortress. I didn't see it until you unveiled it to me.”

She waved that away. “How came you to be here?”

He frowned a moment, scratched his head. Ah, she loved that black, black hair of his, thick and long. The bastard. “I suppose I must have been searching for you. As you know, when you disappeared, I was nearly beyond anger.” He raised his hand. “Nay, listen to me. You know I didn't roast any of your ancient ghosts over their campfires. I didn't send them hurtling into an uncertain pocket of space to gasp out their breaths and wiggle their naked toes.”

“No,” she said slowly, frowning. “You did not even try to do that. I saw you turn away from the bluestone and yell, yell very loudly, your voice so strong that the blue smoke dissolved and re-formed like clouds in a mortal sky over your head. And then you walked out of my fortress. My people and I watched you go, watched your
anger simmer in the very air, turning it red as a human heart.”

“You believe that I merely became tired and lay down here, built no fire to warm me, and fell asleep?”

“It would seem so. But your wand is gone, prince. No wizard is safe when his wand is gone.”

19

S
HE SEEMED DISTURBED
that his wand was gone. And why was that? He said easily, “Your wand is gone as well, Brecia. Surely you can feel by now that I don't have it.”

She withdrew into deep silence, and he knew she was worried, about both their wands. It meant an enemy. It meant Mawdoor. Finally she said, “I know you don't have it, damn you to demon's hell. You slept while Mawdoor took both our wands. That bespeaks a fine mind and a keen awareness.”

He looked thoughtful, then shrugged. “At first I thought you had somehow gotten it back from me yourself. But I see that you haven't. Is that why you searched for me, Brecia? You wanted your wand back?”

She turned her head a bit, and red hair curtained her cheek as she nodded. “Perhaps that was part of it. I must have my wand back, as you must have yours. Do you know where they are?”

He didn't say anything.

“Without his wand, a wizard is in very big trouble.”

“As is a witch,” he said, but he didn't seem all that concerned.

“A witch has more tools, I've discovered, than a wizard.”

He said without hesitation, “That is nonsense, Brecia.”

She said nothing to that, surely that was another strangeness. He would swear she was looking at him differently, as if he were somehow not himself, but another, and that damned other found more favor with her.

She shook her head at him, not understanding why he was acting so differently, why he hadn't tried to tie her to a tree and force her to mate with him, why he hadn't told her she would do exactly what he wanted—she knew he didn't need his wand to do that, did he? She'd been a fool to come to him and look down at him whilst he slept. A fool to believe he somehow still had her wand, when she'd known, all the way to the soles of her sandals, that he didn't have his own.

She said, “Mawdoor has our wands.”

He nodded. “Ah, so you have dealings with that wizard.”

“He lives close by. It's impossible not to have dealings with him. And there's more.”

“What? What more?”

She shook her fist toward an oak tree, and the prince would swear that the tree shuddered. “Say it or you'll choke,” he said.

“He wants to wed me.”

The prince threw back his head and laughed loud and deep. He sobered quickly, gave her an insolent grin. “I don't think that will happen.”

She shook her head again, this time at herself. Her hair danced like flames around her head. He wanted very badly to rub his face in her hair.

He said, shrugging, “My wand will return to me, if it is able. It would take a very strong wizard to keep it from me. And you believe it is Mawdoor?” He spit and laughed. His arrogance—it shimmered off him. He recognized no limits, no beings more powerful than himself, no weaknesses within himself. And most saw him as he
saw himself. Strong and invincible. She had always admired that even as she hated him for his specific arrogance, his inborn conceit, for all that was unbending in him—directed at her. Once, he'd repelled her more than he attracted her. But now—because she wasn't a fool—she recognized that he was the more powerful and she always had to go carefully around him.

She said slowly, “It seems to me that your wand is not with you because Mawdoor came upon you here in the forest and took it. And took mine as well.”

“Aye. I wonder why he didn't try to kill me? He's always wanted to.”

“You were sleeping. Isn't there a long-unwritten code that two opposing wizards must face each other?”

“Aye, the code has existed almost since the beginning of time, its purpose to ensure that the winner of any fight wins only through his skills and nothing else.”

“Would Mawdoor stand by that code?”

The prince shrugged. “I don't think he would. Mawdoor has always gone his own way, and that means that he didn't kill me because he wants something else, wants something more from me. A battle on his land? The chance to kill me and have you admire him, accept him?” At her silence, he said, “He knows that you and I will mate; therefore he must rid himself of me.”

“And he mustn't make me too angry in the process,” she said.

The prince nodded. He saw Mawdoor's dark, fierce face clearly in his mind, even though it had been at least a year since he'd seen him. At the stone circle—that was where he'd last seen Mawdoor. He was not a nice wizard. He was vicious and vile, stronger than he should be because of his damned demon blood, and the most lustful wizard in many a long year. The prince said to Brecia, “You will never wed Mawdoor.”

“No,” she said and looked down at her sandals, straightened the golden chain around her waist. “Of course I will not wed him. Neither of you has anything to say about
that. Prince, I know that you can do magic without your wand, but can you truly protect yourself without it?”

He frowned at that. “I don't know. It has never been a question until now.”

The words came out of her mouth, startling her more than him. “I can teach you magic to protect yourself, magic that doesn't require a wand.”

He could but stare at her. “You don't want to see me kicked off the edge of the earth? You don't want to see me crushed beneath a mountain of black stone that will hold me in darkness forever and beyond? What is this, Brecia? Why would you want to teach me magic? Why would you want to help me?”

Because this is the first time you have ever needed me, that's why.
But she said nothing. She turned away from him, and he watched her long fingers stroke the white wool gown.

He said, “You could stroke me like that.”

“What?”

“Your fingers. You're stroking your gown.”

To his surprise and delight, she looked like a maid caught up in a man's words, not a witch who with just a wink and a tap of her fingertips could send him to his knees, eating dirt.

Could she do that to him since he didn't have his wand? He didn't know.

She said, “Forget my fingers, prince. You are not acting the way—”

“I'm me, Brecia, none other. Come, what's wrong with you?”

“You should be furious, screaming curses to any god who will listen to you, blasting incantations all over my sacred grove, exerting every sort of power you possess to locate your wand. Why are you talking about my fingers stroking you, when your very existence is at stake?”

“I suppose because I don't think it is,” he said. “Is that odd of me? Perhaps. Would you really show me magic, Brecia?”

“You don't trust me, do you, prince? You believe my offer of help is somehow a trick.”

He gave her a look of great hunger, nothing else, no threat, no struggle between them, just hunger. “I have wanted you since the first moment I beheld you at the sacred meeting place. I have admired you since that first moment. I will trust you to my dying breath.”

“Stop this, do you hear me? Just stop this. You are not behaving like yourself, like you always act when you are around me, and I won't have it.”

He looked at her face, at the faint line of freckles over her nose, and wondered for the hundredth time if her hair would feel warm against his skin. “Did you come looking for me, Brecia?”

“I just wanted to make certain you were out of my forest. Aye, and I hoped you had my wand, but you didn't. You were simply sleeping.”

“Did you see either of our wands disappear from my hands?”

She shook her head. “At first I thought Callas had managed somehow to steal my wand back. But he hasn't the strength. He fears you more than hates you, and he believes you will destroy all that I am, that I might forget what I owe to my heritage, to my people, to my sacred oak grove.”

The prince said thoughtfully as he brushed leaves from his legs, “Maybe I should have killed the little sot.”

She laughed. That was the prince she knew and understood, the prince she'd like to kick off the Balanth promontory to sink into the depths of the sea below.

He realized that he'd heard her laugh only once before, at the sacred meeting place. She'd hummed with pleasure and laughter until he'd had to wed Lillian and Brecia had just disappeared.

“Callas is my man. If the need ever arises, why, then I will deal with him in my own way.”

“Brecia, I don't need my wand. I can move a mountain
without my wand. Perhaps, though, I would need my wand if I wished to move the earth.”

“Yes, but—”

“But even with my wand, I cannot change a woman's mind.” Then he smiled and waved his left hand in a wide fan in front of her. A wind came up and blew her hair into her face. He waved his left hand in the opposite direction, and the wind stopped.

“Aye, that is a clever trick, prince, but the wind isn't a mortal enemy or another wizard. The wind comes when you command it to come because it has no will of its own. But because the wizard who holds your wand—Mawdoor—is very likely now more powerful than you, you need my help.”

“How very odd it is,” he said, stroking his jaw. “You seem to like me better now that you see me as weak.”

“You, weak? Ah, prince, you make sport with me. It's just that—”

He took a step toward her. “What, Brecia?”

She smiled, raised both her hands, and trickled her fingers downward. In an instant he was naked.

He didn't move, just stood there, hands at his sides, smiling at her. He made no move to leap upon her. And surely that was odd. He said, “That is clever, Brecia. Do you like what you see?”

She studied him, and he knew it, and he also knew that he pleased her. If she continued, even he—a very powerful wizard with or without his wand—would become harder than a sarsen stone.

She trickled her fingers upward, and his clothes were back in place.

“Perhaps you are at my mercy now, prince. Do I have more skills without needing my wand than you, a powerful wizard?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “Oh, no.” He smiled at her, touched his thumbs together even as he spread his fingers wide, and raised his chin perhaps an inch. Suddenly, her hands and feet were bound. She toppled over onto the ground.

“You can't fan your damned fingers now, Brecia.”

“I had thought you more reasonable,” she said. “A mistake, I see now.” She wanted to ram his head into one of her oak trees. He held her easily, and he knew it. She'd been a fool to feel any lessening fear or honest misgivings of him. “What will you do now, prince? Force me? Make me bow to you, kiss your feet?”

He cursed, clenched his fingers into fists, lowered his chin, and she was free. She rose, brushed off the white woolen skirt, and knew more surprise than she'd felt in a very long time.

“So,” she said, her voice as flat as the sacred ale he'd had to drink at the meeting place, “you have no need of me at all. It is merely a competition with you, prince. A matter of proving that you are more powerful than I. It is nothing else at all.”

He laughed at that. “Whisk away my clothes again, Brecia, and you will see how there is a lot more to it than that.”

“You are a man withal you're a wizard,” she said in that same flat voice. “A man's body changes with a thought, a glimpse of a woman's ear or the sound of her voice. Show him a naked woman and he becomes crazed.”

“I would not be crazed with you.”

“Perhaps not,” she said. “But you would demand that I give you everything.”

He didn't say anything, just smiled at her, and felt his blood thrum heavy in his veins, bright and fast, his wizard's blood.

He said, “If you were with me, we would have a better chance of finding our wands. What do you think, Brecia?”

She said slowly, “You mean something like a partnership? We would work together?”

“Yes.”

It seemed at that moment that the forest became as still as Brecia. There wasn't a single oak branch rustling, no sound at all from any bird or insect. If her ghosts were
hidden amongst the trees, they were more silent than the air itself.