The Penwyth Curse (20 page)

21

B
RECIA WHIRLED ABOUT
. In a voice no louder than a whisper, she said, “Did the wretched prince of Balanth somehow manage to slip in with me? But how?”

“Oh, no, but—” Mawdoor took two steps back. He stilled, closed his eyes a moment. She could feel him searching in the air around her, poking, prodding, and she held herself very still. She couldn't hear the prince breathing, wondered if he'd managed to shield himself in yet another layer of invisibility. Without his wand? If so, that was impressive indeed.

When Mawdoor opened his eyes, the air was still and flat again, sweet-smelling from the lavender he'd sprinkled on the stone floor, probably in the last few moments. He smiled. “No. I must have simply picked up the trace of him on you. Take off your cloak, Brecia. Let me see you.”

She was a witch, she had her wand, but she wasn't a fool. A witch who wasn't a fool was always cautious. There was a darkness in him that bespoke thoughts and dreams that were powerful and crude. Heinous dreams he reveled in, and dominated every act in them. She knew
he was not many years older than the prince, but still he looked much older, maybe because of black thoughts, blacker deeds that had to take a toll, even on a wizard. But still he was a man in his prime, fit, not so tall now as he'd first appeared but strong, thick with muscle. His eyes were bright green, perhaps another affectation, she didn't know, but they just didn't look natural.

Slowly she slipped her cloak off her shoulders, shook back the hood, and handed it to him. She watched as he brought it to his face and rubbed it against his cheek. “It smells like you,” he said. “Make the cloak disappear, Brecia.”

She lifted her wand, her lips moved, and the cloak was gone.

“Is it in limbo or did you destroy it?”

“It is in limbo. It is a lovely cloak, woven long ago by a ghost with great talent and flair. Why would I want to destroy it?”

He shrugged. “Because the prince touched it, perhaps. But it wouldn't matter, would it? You would just fashion another for yourself.”

“I was not taught to do that. The cloak belonged to my mother and her mother before her. When I touch it, I touch them. I would be distraught if something were to happen to it.”

“If the prince saw it, knew it was precious to you, he would shred it like wheat in a miller's wheel.”

She cocked her head to one side in question.

“Come, Brecia, all know that the prince saw you at the sacred meeting place, in the shadow of a mighty trilithon, and he wanted you. Not to wed and cherish you like I would, but to force you to bow to his will, to render you helpless, to make you his slave.”

“I have not heard this, Mawdoor.”

He shrugged. “Oh, the prince wanted you all right, but it doesn't matter now since you are here, in my fortress, my honored guest. Now, I have returned your wand to you. You owe me a great deal for that, do you not?”

“You did not tell me how you got my wand. Did you take it from the prince?”

“Aye. One of my acolytes found him on the edge of your oak forest, sleeping like one of the heavenly angels, which he isn't. He was afraid the prince would awaken and smite him. He then decided that if he didn't try to take both wands, I would smite him.”

“I can see that would give him courage.”

“Aye, it did. Unfortunately, it also killed him before I could contain the prince's wand in a special place.”

Mawdoor walked away from her to a small golden chest that sat atop a rich malachite table. He flicked his fingers and black leather gloves covered his hands. He took a key from his hand, slid it into a small, strangely wrought lock, and watched the lid of the chest fling itself open.

She saw pulsing light within the small chest.

Mawdoor stuck his hand inside, and she saw him grimace. But he set his teeth and pulled out the prince's wand. The wand was straining to get away from him, but Mawdoor was expecting that. He was using a great deal of force to keep control of it and to keep it from touching his flesh as well. What would happen if the prince's wand did touch his naked hand?

He said over his shoulder, “Do you think the prince will come here, Brecia?”

The prince stood very still. He could have reached out his hand and touched Mawdoor's left shoulder. He could feel his wand trying to escape Mawdoor's hand to get to him, but Mawdoor's hold was too strong. The prince concentrated on the wand, spoke ancient words to it, stroked it with his mind, called it again and again. His wand began to vibrate, sending pulses of warmth into the silent air.

“It is strong, this damned wand,” Mawdoor said. “Stronger now than it was when it first came to me. But my grandmother's chest held it, and so can I.”

Brecia said, shrugging her shoulders, “I don't care if he comes here if I am already gone. Why do you think that
I would? I came here only to fetch my own wand. Where is the prince? I don't know.” Her voice dropped, and she leaned toward him. “The prince is dangerous, Mawdoor. I have witnessed his magic. He is the strongest wizard I have ever seen. It is said that his sire and his mother were more powerful than any in Britain, and thus their seed formed a being even stronger than they.”

“Nonsense,” said Mawdoor, “all nonsense. It is a tale he himself has spread about the land. I laugh at his claim. I spit upon the idea that he could be the strongest wizard in this land.” He turned and spat onto the bare stone floor. “I am the strongest wizard of all time. I will prove it to you. I can even control the prince's wand.” His green eyes were even greener now, the thick hair on his head now blacker than the blackest night. He smiled and nodded at his spit on the stone floor. A blood-red carpet suddenly appeared. She didn't know if the carpet was real or not. He pointed the prince's wand at her, again careful not to touch its tip to his bare skin. He was smiling. “Ah, Brecia, you came to me, just as I wished you to. I wish you to remain here, with me. Aye, you will stay here at Penwyth and wed me.”

Brecia was tempted to turn his head into a mushroom, but she wasn't certain she could do it. By all the gods, time was growing short, too short. Any moment now the prince would be visible and Mawdoor could scatter pieces of him throughout the earth, using his own wand against him. Was that possible? Why couldn't Mawdoor feel the prince's presence?

“No, Mawdoor,” she said finally. “I will not remain here and wed you.”
Now—she had to do it now
. Brecia felt the prince's breath on her cheek. She whipped up her arm, wand in hand, and mind-trapped the prince's wand even as it rose in Mawdoor's hand.

It was in his left hand. Oh, no, oh, no. How did it get in his left hand?
There was nothing she could do. She was frozen to the spot.

Suddenly the prince was so close to her that it seemed he was covering her with himself.

He laughed and rubbed his fingertips together and watched his wand heave and jerk against Mawdoor's hand. “Just a bit more,” he said. “Come to me, you can do it.”

Mawdoor yelled, “Why can I not sense you, you evil spawn of a witch's seed? I know you are here. You're trying to get your wand, but I won't let you.”

The prince laughed again, and for a instant he let himself be heard and seen. He stood there in front of Mawdoor, glittering in gold cloth, a gold crown on his head, and he laughed even as he drew in his breath sharply, then blew it out. His wand rose straight up, pulling Mawdoor's arm with it, up, up, at least twenty feet into the air. Mawdoor hung on. He shouted words unknown to either of them. The wand stopped rising. It held him there, twenty feet off the floor, swinging back and forth like a clock pendulum.

“Let it go, Mawdoor, or you will remain there for the rest of time.”

“No,” Mawdoor yelled, swinging over their heads, a gentle arc, back and forth. “No, damn you, you wretched creature.”

Brecia realized then that Mawdoor couldn't get to his own wand; it would be his downfall.

The prince laughed again, raised his arms, and clapped his hands over his head. The wand simply disappeared from Mawdoor's left hand. Mawdoor hung there, cursing, and the prince blew him a kiss. A cage came around him, wooden bars, blacker than the black of his hair.

“Only a mad fool takes another wizard's wand, Mawdoor,” the prince said. In the next instant, the prince, his wand now safely in his own hand, flicked it, and both he and Brecia were gone.

Mawdoor whacked his left hand at the bars. The cage fell apart, spilling him out. He got to his feet, still breathing hard, wondering how the prince could have
gotten the wand away from him, not that it mattered where he'd sent the prince and Brecia. Still, he'd held it in his left hand, fought with it but managed to hold it firm. His left hand had put a powerful drugging hold on the wand, kept it safe from Brecia, but not from the prince.

But losing the wand was only a moment of humiliation; hanging in the air, then being slammed into a damned cage, that was only another moment of humiliation. Even as he'd hated it, he smiled.

He rubbed his hands together, smiling in triumph. He threw back his head and shouted, “You believe me stupid, prince? You are trapped, you abominable creature. I have both of you, and you will stay here until I call you forth.”

He saw his splendid prison. His magnificent brain had plotted out every last detail. Now that he was able, he pulled out his wand, closed his eyes, and chanted a prayer of thanksgiving to his antecedents.

22

T
HE PRINCE SAID
,
HIS
voice disbelieving, “We can't get out. I will kick myself for my conceit, for believing that Mawdoor would be crude and violent in his plans to kill me. But look what he has managed, Brecia. We're trapped.” He then cursed loud and long, remarkable curses really, come from all over the land, and from all over time, enriched by wizard curses from faraway Bulgar and Byzantium. He stopped, got hold of himself. “Look, Brecia, the bastard has created a lock on the very air that flows over his fortress. I wanted to be impressed, and I surely am.”

She nodded. “You were too arrogant,” she said, and looked at the nothingness that held them. She couldn't see a trace of the trap, couldn't feel it either.

“I am not arrogant,” he said. “I was overconfident and I confessed it.”

“Ha. You showed yourself all garbed in gold with a crown. You wanted to enrage him, and look what it has brought us, and—”

“He would have done this had I appeared to him in rags.”

“—then you put him in a black wooden cage.”

“He would have done this even if I'd set him on a golden throne.”

“Humph.”

The prince wanted to throw back his head and howl his anger, his fear, but he knew he couldn't. She was watching him. He had to stay in control, had to figure a way out of this. “Very well. You're right, I was arrogant. I wanted to flatten him with my power. I should have known it was too easy. I should have known he had some complexity in him.”

She said, “Good. You finally admit it. That gold crown, though, it was really quite magnificent. Do you know, prince, your arrogance is something so deep inside you that you cannot control it.”

“I can control anything, dammit. Maybe I was arrogant on purpose.”

“Whatever the reason, it doesn't matter. We are in this together.”

“Stop arguing with me. It does no good. We will get out of here.”

Brecia knew no one could see them because now that he had his wand, the prince could keep both of them invisible from everyone, Mawdoor included. Unless the prince got distracted—in which case they would suddenly appear and everyone would be able to see them.

“Prince, we are invisible.”

“Yes.”

“But I can't see any of the old mortals. I don't see anyone at all. Oh, God, the heat. It's getting hot! What's happening?”

Then she knew what was happening to him. She grabbed his hands, cupped them in both of hers. They were suddenly visible. No matter. She had to stop this.

The prince's golden cloak was glistening strangely—no, now she saw the shadow of glowing flames billowing behind the rich golden cloth. The cloak was shimmering in the still air, and it was giving up great blasts of heat.
The golden crown was gone, as was his wizard cap. If he still wore it, it would probably be burning on his head.

“Stop!” she yelled right in his face. “You must be calm, prince. You are turning this space into a fire.” She dropped his hands and slapped him, hard. Once, then again, and a third time. “Get hold of your rage! Listen to me. You must quiet down or we will die. We can figure this out.”

He quivered where he stood. He gulped in great quantities of air. He forced himself to step back from the edge. The heat grew less. His cloak hung loose again, cool to the touch. The air calmed, cooled.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm very sorry I lost control like that.”

“I probably would have lost control if you hadn't,” she said, and lightly touched her fingertips to his sleeve. “We must find a way out of this bubble.”

They moved about their invisible prison, probing for weaknesses, plying their wands, but they could find nothing. The prince spoke incantations, old ones from before the early fires, chants so old they made her skin skitter with cold. Nothing happened. He fell silent. He looked at her.

It was her turn. She spoke every old incantation she knew, searched out ancient spells and balms, but nothing worked. The air didn't move. They were still trapped.

Brecia watched his golden cloak fade into nothingness, and he was again garbed as he had been, in a tunic and leggings, clothes any mortal would wear.

She waited, but he fell silent again, and she knew he was not happy with his thoughts.

She said, “I want to try something.” She raised her wand, spoke softly, and there it was, her beautiful green cloak, inside the space with them. “I did it. I called the cloak, but I wasn't sure it could come through the bubble.”

He said slowly, testing yet again the space that seemed clear as the open air but wasn't, “Your cloak is filled with ancient magic, woven in through the millennia.” He
ruminated on that a moment, then said, “There is something to this, Brecia. That was well done. A weakness, there is a weakness in this prison, and we must find a way to use it before Mawdoor burns us to ashes.”

“He doesn't want to burn me to ashes, just you. He wants to wed me.”

“That seems to please you.”

She just shook her head at him, ignoring him, something he wasn't at all used to. She was evidently thinking about something more important than his words to her. Before he could tell her what he thought they should do, she said, “His eyes, he'd done something to his eyes. That green—it was like an emerald with the life leached out of it.”

“Aye,” the prince said. “That is something I have never tried. My father told me that if you changed your eyes, all that you saw changed as well. Thus what you saw was either an illusion or it was real. You wouldn't know which and that would lead you to make mistakes.”

“Do you think that is the reason he couldn't sense you? He'd changed his eyes and they didn't see what they should have seen?”

“It makes sense. Do you want to live in that black tower?”

She actually shuddered. “I would never stop fighting to get out of that black fortress of his.”

He snorted at that. “Good. You have some sense, at least enough for a witch. Don't forget, though, that you're here with me, and you know what that could mean.”

“Aye, ashes to ashes, both of us.”

“That didn't amuse me at all. Now, the cloak you brought in here to you. I want you to try to send it back out.”

Brecia drew in a deep breath. She cleared her mind as she'd been taught by her mother, her mother's mother, and all the ghosts who had lived with all of them.

Then it became clear to her. They were inside a small hole of space, a bubble, although it wasn't round. Rather,
it stretched upward to curve over the highest point of Mawdoor's black fortress. Now that she saw their prison, she began her search. Time passed. She found nothing.

“I can see our prison,” she said.

“Send your cloak through. Watch where it goes.”

She raised her wand, closed her eyes just a moment, and her cloak was gone.

He said, “Now call it back.”

She did. Her cloak fell into her hands. “But it just seemed to appear. I can't find a weakness, a seam, nothing. It seems impenetrable.”

The prince sniffed the airless air. “It makes no sense. I have decided what we must do, Brecia. There is no choice. Mawdoor could destroy us at his whim. We must risk it.” He drew a deep breath. “You will touch the tip of your wand to mine.”

She whirled around, appalled. “Oh, no, we cannot do that. I have heard it could destroy the earth, it could bind me to you forever.”

“There are certainly worse things than being bound to me.”

“Of course there are worse things, you fool. That is just the beginning of the things it could do to us. I have also heard it could make us mortal. No, we cannot take the chance.”

“All old witch's tales. Wizards never take any of that nonsense seriously. End of the world? That is absurd, Brecia. Make us mortal? Beyond absurd.”

“What about binding me to you?”

“Ah, now that doesn't seem at all absurd. Enough, Brecia. I don't know how much time we have left to us. I know to my very core that it would give us the power to break through this ridiculous bubble.”

She thought about it, hard.

“You're carrying on like a witch looped in her own curses.”

“Stop with your infernal insults against witches.
Without a witch you wouldn't exist, you miserable fool who got us trapped in this wretched invisible bubble.”

“I think it is more of a dome. Look at the shape. Listen to me. If you were alone, he would force you to mate with him. At least since I am here, you have a chance to escape him. We won't know what happens when wands touch until we do it.”

“No, not yet. There has to be another way.”

He was silent. He let the idea slide away. She was right, it was a huge risk. There had to be another way. But the curved dome over their heads seemed impenetrable. He touched his palm to it and kept it there as he rose, tracing its outline until it curved high over his head and began to curve downward again.

A perfect dome, seamless. He stayed at the highest point of the dome, and touched his fingertips to it again. He felt it pulse, but it wasn't warm. He pressed his palm hard against it and felt it turn icy cold. Nothing there, he thought, there was really nothing at all there. Now he could see the graybeards far below going about their tasks. But they hadn't seen them before. What had happened? Couldn't Mawdoor hold the illusion together?

He called out. They didn't hear him. What had he expected, anyway?

If he and Brecia couldn't get out of this miserable fortress, then it made sense that the old people couldn't get in, either. They probably didn't even realize they were here.

He came back down to stand in front of Brecia. “Let me ask you a question. Why are there no young people here? No animals?”

“You said he sucked the hope out of people.”

“I was guessing. What do you think?”

“Perhaps Mawdoor fears them.”

“Why?”

She shrugged as she fingered her beautiful cloak. “The young are vibrant. They believe themselves invincible, and that is indeed what saves them many times from
catastrophe. Mayhap the young keep Mawdoor from using his full powers because in some way they drain him. I am not at all certain about that, prince; don't think that I am.”

He thought about it. “I wonder if I can make some changes down there at Penwyth.”

“Prince,” she said, seeing that he'd retreated deep inside his head, where the most ancient curses and chants and incantations resided—wizard's curses, ancient gods' curses—all wanting to burst into this world and wreak havoc. “Prince, listen to me,” she said, drawing him back to her. “I have an idea. Focus your mind and your wand on this one spot. I will do the same. Let us just see what we can do with our combined powers.”

The prince looked at her, frowned, then forced calm to flow over him, through him. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe.” He didn't hold out much hope, but who knew? He looked at the exact spot, stroked his fingers over his wand, speaking to it in its own tongue with his mind, and then he pointed it directly at the same spot to which Brecia's wand pointed.

Nothing happened. Brecia wanted to yell with the failure, but then, suddenly, the air itself began to tremble. Her wand shook in her hand. It took both hands to hold it steady. It grew cold, becoming colder still with each passing second. It was if they'd somehow managed to open the doors to the ice world that was far to the north. “Keep your thoughts right here,” she said. “Keep pointing, right there, that's it.”

Wind whistled, tangling their hair about their heads. The bubble began to tremble with the power that blasted against it. The invisible point at which their wands pointed began to breathe. They could hear it, like a giant breathing fast, then faster still, then suddenly there was utter silence. It was if they were held suspended.

Next came incredible grinding sounds, as if an underground mountain were being shoved up through the earth by a giant's magic fist.