The Penwyth Curse (28 page)

“You are a wizard. You can go days without resting.”

He tore off another bite of boar meat, closed his eyes at the wonderful taste, and leaned back against a wall. “All right, we will meld our powers and prowl the fortress.”

It was nearly dawn when Brecia's hand started vibrating. She was standing near the jakes, where an old man was sitting, his frayed old leggings down around his knees, speaking to another old man who was waiting his turn.

“Aye,” the old man was saying, “ 'twas I who brought the maid some warm bread dripping with butter and honey. But what is her gratitude? She goes off with Lord Mawdoor, a skip in her walk, the faithless maid.”

“If she went off with you, what would you do?”

“I would think of something between journeys to the jakes.”

The old men laughed.

She moved her hand a bit to the right and it vibrated more. Then she moved her palm a bit to the left. Her hand vibrated so hard it flew up. “Ah,” she said, and smiled. Slowly, very slowly, she moved her fingers over the surface of the wood until she found something that shouldn't be there. It was a small button. She pressed it. The wooden planks slid to the side. Inside was a space not much larger than her head, and shaped just about the same, long and narrow. And there was the vision chest that had belonged to Mawdoor's demon father.

She was suddenly very afraid. She thought what she'd found to the prince, witch's mind to wizard's. In the next instant, he was standing beside her, looking at that strange gold chest.

“There are incredible diamonds here,” he said. “Call off your powers, Brecia. No reason to take any more chances now that we've found the chest.” He stared down at it,
then very slowly, he stretched out his fingers and lightly tapped them against the top of the chest.

It was as cold as an ice floe in the northern seas.

He jerked his hand back.

Brecia touched her fingers to it as well. She blinked as she jerked her hand away from the gleaming metal lid. No, not just metal—it was solid gold.

“The key is in the lock.”

“Aye,” he said, “just as it should be. Just as the ghosts told you. Once we have the key, once it opens, we will have him.”

Suddenly the key jerked out of the lock and vanished in the next heartbeat. “Oh, no,” Brecia said, whirling about. “Mawdoor built in a protection. We weren't fast enough.”

They heard a mighty roar. They knew it was Mawdoor and that the key had gone to him, but the noise sounded like a thousand hungry lions, very angry, very hungry lions, and they were loose in the castle, headed for the jakes.

“He can't realize it's us,” Brecia said, grabbing the prince's sleeve.

“He would be beyond stupid if he didn't suspect.”

The cask began to glow, growing larger and larger until it burst out of the hidey-hole.

“By all the gods' mortal sacrifices, it's a wondrous spell Mawdoor has placed upon it.” He raised his wand and yelled at the top of his lungs, “
Sostram Denesici avrat
.”

The damned cask just kept growing larger and larger.

The prince looked shocked.

Brecia shook his sleeve. “Leave it be. Come, quickly.” In the next instant, they were pressed against the backs of two very old snoring men. They settled in and began snoring themselves. When the old men jerked up at the awful noise, they jerked up as well.

Mawdoor stood over them. He held his wand in his left hand, and he was raising it high.

30

Present

B
ISHOP CLOSED HIS EYES
a moment, and felt again Merryn's mouth on his mouth, her tongue licking his chest, his belly, until at last she brought him to her mouth and licked him. He'd nearly heaved off the ground. He shuddered, opened his eyes to see her looking at him. He said, “When you ran away from me, it was like a blow to my belly. I couldn't bear it, Merryn. Then you jumped on my back and brought me down.”

She laughed. “I jumped on your back because I didn't think you'd catch me, you fool.” She touched her fingertips to his mouth and let him nibble. “That was all very exciting, Bishop.”

He smiled at her, very pleased that he was Bishop and she was Merryn, not some long ago wizard and witch. They would wed and she would be his wife and bear his children; he would protect her and their children with his life. If they were lucky, life would stretch out an ample number of years and bring them more joy than otherwise.

It was a very nice thought. Bishop was content.

It wasn't long until he became serious. He knew they had to act, and act in just the right way or—he didn't know what would happen. He said, “We must find something to help us break that curse.”

She stood up and wiped her hands on her soiled gown. She looked very young, very dirty, and very well loved, given the quite satisfied look in her eyes.

He said, looking over at her, “You are carrying my babe.”

She was utterly still for a moment before she said finally, “You said that before. Why do you say it again?”

“It sounds very nice to my ears. Now I must go back to that black hole. There must be something there, something hidden from us.”

She walked beside him until they reached the hole. She said, after she'd stared down into the impenetrable darkness, “You want to go down inside the hole?”

“Aye, if I can figure out a way to do it. I don't have a rope, and even if I did, there isn't anything to tie it to here in the cave. Do you have an idea how I can get down there?”

“Why, yes,” she said, and handed him the wand. “It is here for you. Use it, Bishop.”

He took it, his eyes never leaving her face. “I don't know what to do with it.”

“You will tell it what you want.”

Tell a stupid old stick that he wanted to go down in a black hole? Suddenly he felt it growing even warmer in his hand. He wasn't imagining it. The thing was pulsing warmth through him. He swallowed, realizing for the first time that he held something he shouldn't be holding, something that was powerful and beyond what any mortal could or should know.

He closed his eyes for a moment, saw clearly the gleaming wand in the prince's hand, saw the lighter, glowing wand in Brecia's hand, both radiating such power that it made him tremble inside.

And now there was a wand in his own hand.

Bishop said nothing more. He walked to the edge of the black hole and looked down into the pure black pit.

He pointed the wand directly into the hole and said, feeling both foolish and hopeful, “Give me light so that I may see to the bottom of the hole.”

To their utter astonishment, the black hole became instantly filled with stark white light. He looked down, blinked, then began to laugh. He turned back to look at Merryn, who was staring into the white light. “I still can't see,” he said. “The white is just as strong as the black.” Someone, something, was playing tricks on him.

“Let me see to the bottom, damn you!”

He waved the wand into the hole, and instantly the light, the darkness, were no more. The light was perfectly clear now. Bishop knelt beside the edge and looked down. He saw that the hole went down only about twenty feet, not all that deep. And at the bottom he saw something else, something that seemed to shimmer, something small, casting out a golden light that made the very air quiver.

“No, Bishop, don't.”

“I must,” he said, and poked the wand into the hole. “Take me there.”

He was standing at the bottom in an instant, looking up at Merryn's face staring down at him over the side. “Don't fall in.”

“Bring me down there with you.”

Bishop said as he waved the wand up toward her, “Bring Merryn down here with me.”

She was standing right in front of him, breathing hard because she was so excited and so afraid that she was nearly ready to puke with it.

She whispered, her voice sounding like fine dust in the air, “By all the saints' knobbled knees, Bishop, what does this mean?”

“It means,” he said, drawing her against him, “that we have found something we were meant to find. At last. And it was the wand that brought us here.”

“This is very frightening,” she said into his tunic, which smelled of male sweat and thus of him. “Nothing is as it should be. You actually waved that wand at me, and suddenly I was here with you.”

“I know,” he said. “I know, but it will be all right.” Then, as one, with no more words between them, both of them turned to see a gleaming golden cask on the floor. Its surface wasn't dulled or covered with millennium-old dirt. It looked as fresh and clean as it had been when it had been sent here. Sent here by whom?

Bishop studied the cask. It was longer than it was wide, maybe the length from his fingertips to his elbow, and maybe a hand's height high. Its lid looked to be solid gold. It was encrusted with diamonds and rubies and emeralds, on the top and on the sides, some of the gems larger than anything he'd ever seen or heard of.

They went down on their knees. Bishop gently laid the wand on the ground beside him. He reached out his hand and lightly touched his fingertips to the top of the small chest.

He jerked his hand back. The lid was colder to the touch than the ice that had covered London and the Thames the past February.

Merryn frowned, touched it herself. It was so burning cold that she yelped and fell back on her bottom, holding her fingers.

“This is very curious,” she said, crawling back up. “The instant I moved my fingers, the pain was gone.”

Bishop pulled Merryn close, took the hem of her gown, and wrapped it round and round his fingers. He drew in a deep breath and touched the cask again. It was icy cold, but he could bear it. He saw the keyhole, felt its outline. He felt the key, tried to turn it. He thought his fingers would freeze off his hands.

He wrapped his fingers even more, and tried to turn the small key. But it didn't move. He sat back on his haunches and stared at the damned thing.

He'd been led here, given the wand, the cask, but—
Bishop picked up the wand and aimed it at the cask. “Open the cask.”

The key turned and the cask lid flew open. A hellacious noise sprang up, like a thousand maddened animals were all around them, charging, drawing closer and closer until it seemed they were right on top of them, closing over them, suffocating then, wanting to destroy them, swallow them.

Bishop tried to see what was in the cask, but all he could make out was billowing clouds, the color of gold, turbulent, whipping around and around. The racket was nearly unbearable now. Bishop picked up the wand and yelled over the racket, “Stop it!”

The noise stopped. It was quiet again—no, it was more than quiet, it was as silent as death itself. It was as if all life had been sucked out of this hole.

Bishop raised his hand and laid his palm over Merryn's left breast. He felt her heart.

She said, “I'm still alive, I think. Is your heart beating as well?”

“Aye, it is, thank the saints and all their countless sacred bones.”

“I don't like this,” Merryn said, and pressed herself closer to Bishop's side. “Look inside the cask, Bishop. All those racing clouds inside. I don't see anything else, no animals, all of them wanting to kill us. This is very frightening, Bishop.”

“I know,” Bishop said. “What does it have to do with the curse?” He looked at the wand, turned it over and over in his hand. “The cask is open, yet we can't see anything.”

Suddenly, with no warning, the cask lid slammed down. Both Bishop and Merryn could have sworn that the key turned itself in the lock.

Merryn straightened, rose to her feet. She looked down at the beautiful, barbaric cask. She felt the dead silence recede, felt the life of air filling her lungs again, filling the hole, making things seem normal again, though, of
course, nothing that had happened to them had been normal. All had been strange, beyond strange. She looked at that cask again. “Let me try, Bishop.”

He handed her the wand. Merryn felt the precious warmth that pulsed from the wood against her palm. “Open the cask,” she said, and pointed the wand at the key hole.

They heard a faint rumbling sound, animals running toward them, wild, out of control, but it was still distant, not right on top of them. Slowly, the rumbling grew louder and louder.

Merryn was ready to yell for it to stop because she could swear that those maddened animals were nearly upon them.

She said again, “Open the cask.”

The key turned very slowly. They stared at the cask, watching the lid come open, very slowly.

Sometime Else

The prince breathed out loud, fleshy snores, and his ancient limbs twitched and jerked. Brecia's long, narrow nose pressed hard against his bony shoulder blade.

Mawdoor looked down at the pathetic ancient pair and slowly lowered his wand. He was sure they were the ones who'd found his demon father's chest, but now, just looking at them—how could it be? The miserable ugly sots—just look at the woman's narrow head and the old man's bony chin. By all the gore-hungry gods, if that old crone had ever had any magic to even get near his chest, he would spit up peach pips. It was absurd to believe she could bring Brecia out to him.

He sighed. He would give her a chance, just until midnight tonight, and then he would know whether the old crone would die at the sacred stone circle, dashed down
by ancient magic that knew no reason and no end, or die by his hand for her failure.

Slowly, Mawdoor took a step back, then another. He whispered, “Until tonight. If you do not bring her here then you will both die. And I will make them very unpleasant, your deaths.”

He sucked in a deep breath, then blew it out. He did this three times. Soon, all the old people asleep in the big room woke up and stared at him, standing there, sucking in great breaths, sucking deeper and deeper. Then he seemed to go round and round until he was moving so fast he was a whipping funnel, faster still, until he was only a blur. He whooshed upward to the very top of the big hall. To everyone's astonishment and fear, he streaked out into the dawn sky through a long, narrow window, a window surely too narrow for a man's body.

Brecia wanted to laugh at the very showy trick he'd just performed, but she didn't want to draw any attention to herself and the prince. She pressed herself harder against the prince's shoulder and whispered against his smelly old shirt, “What did you think of that? He wanted to kill us, but he held off. We have until midnight tonight beneath the full moon. No longer. So, what do you think?”

The prince snored. The damned wizard wasn't pretending sleep, either—his snores were quite real, obnoxious and loud. He'd slept through Mawdoor's performance. Brecia looked up to see one of the young women Mawdoor had brought to Penwyth standing in the middle of the room, staring upward to that narrow window.

She said, “How did he get through that small space?”

“He be a wizard, ye young beautiful maid,” said a gravelly old voice. “Have ye not two wits in yer head?”

The young woman slowly shook her head. “I guess I haven't even a single one.”

A chorus of ancient voices rose. “Get ye to sleep, young'un! Think ye he will spin ye more of his tricks? Nay, he won't. The master likes his sleep, he does.”

Apparently all wizards liked their sleep. Brecia pressed
herself against the prince's back again, his twisted old bones rattling with his snores.

Just after dawn on the morning of the full moon, Mawdoor looked at the two ancient, very ugly old people and said, “I trust both of you slept well throughout the night?”