The Penwyth Curse (Medieval Song 6)

Nothing.

The prince pulled his wizard’s wand from his sleeve and pointed it at Callas.

“Don’t you dare humiliate him, you wretched excuse for a wizard.”

He smiled even as he watched Callas scamper away, more agile than an ancient old priest should be. The gates to the fortress were slowly swinging outward. The prince settled his wizard’s wand back into his sleeve, felt it warm against his flesh, part of him really, and he walked forward through the wide gates.

They seemed to be wider now that he was walking through them than they’d appeared but moments before.

He heard voices, knew the ghosts that hid behind the trees were wondering what to do. He called over his shoulder, “Callas, reassure your people. Tell them that my business is with the witch. I won’t kill them if they leave me alone.”

He was inside the fortress. He heard the huge wooden gates close behind him. A dozen small campfires were dotted around inside the compound, a huge area, surely much larger than the fortress he’d seen when he’d stood outside that gate. She was doing this, he knew, and somewhere deep inside him he appreciated her efforts to provide him such a charming and confounding illusion. It showed skill, and he admired that. Aye, she would suit him quite nicely.

He looked more closely at the fires and saw at least fifty ghosts, all of them hovering just a few inches off the ground, so pale they were nearly transparent, but he could see their feet dangling, and their feet had more substance. Their feet were bare. They made absolutely no sound at all, just hovered, the air humming around them. They were there, yet he couldn’t feel their presence, and that was odd, but he could see their damned bare feet

, long, narrow feet with the toes too long.

Was Brecia somehow shielding the very feel of them from him? No, he was too powerful for her to do that. He knew they were ghosts, but he simply couldn’t sense them. But why? Mayhap they weren’t really ghosts, but shadows from another realm. Unreal beings Brecia had called up to frighten him? Simply props like those the mummers used in their plays? He shook his head. What they were didn’t matter. She could have conjured up mad dogs flapping around him, snarling, and he wouldn’t have been bothered. But all in all, the ghosts with their long, naked toes were a nice touch.

He had never before been to Brecia’s sacred place. He let himself settle into it, and soon he could feel the power pulse around him, though the feel of it wasn’t familiar to him. It was like a lover’s lips, light, nipping, flowing over his flesh, coming close to him, but never touching, a lover he’d never yet had. He would swear that that power dipped quite near him, almost alighted on his shoulder, on the back of his hand, then flowed softly away. A power he didn’t recognize, that was something new to him. What would happen if it did touch him? If it went into his mouth, his eyes, his nostrils, and he breathed it in? He felt his wizard’s wand grow warmer against his forearm.

He realized then that the lazy orange threads of fire from all those small campfires seemed to connect, entwining, dancing through each other, then soaring higher and higher. They warmed the entire space inside the fortress.

He smiled. He pulled out his wizard’s wand and flicked it at one of the small fires. It blasted upward, threads of orange scattering, sending sparks leaping up at least fifty feet. The ghosts soared, seeming to dissolve into each other, all heads craning upward to watch the sparks burst high over their heads. He would swear that their feet became even clearer. Well, he’d announced himself, given Brecia warning. He smiled. He wanted very much to see the witch.

He slipped the wand back into his sleeve and walked forward to the tower.

Bedamned, the fortress was bigger now than it had been just a minute before. He would say that it was now more than forty feet high.

He threw back his head and yelled, “Brecia! Where are you?”

“I am in here, prince,” she said, and he wondered for a moment how her voice could be so clear when she was inside the tower. Clever witch. He saw random small windows, all cut in geometric shapes—triangles, circles, squares—and each shape seemed to glow in the night darkness.

Clever magic from the clever witch, he thought, but nothing more than that. Nothing compared to what he could do. He wouldn’t let himself forget that.

The prince pushed open the door to the tower and walked in. The floor was bound wooden planks, smooth, stretching endlessly. He smelled lavender, and other fragrances he didn’t recognize, saw that their leaves were scattered over the wooden floor. A huge fire burning in the middle of the large chamber went all the way to the roof, escaping through a wide hole in the top. The air was faintly blue with the smoke.

Then he saw her.

Brecia.

Three years since he’d first seen her, at the ancient sacred gathering place where representatives from all known tribes had traveled to the flat plains in Britain to speak within the great sarsen circle of stones and look at the rising sun balance for a few precious moments atop the great sloping stone. All knew it was the moment of the summer solstice.

She’d been so beautiful then that just to look at her made his tongue dry in his mouth. She was even more beautiful now, standing on that immense dais, looking down at him, her arms crossed over her breasts. Her effect on him was even more dramatic now after three long years. He swallowed. The damnable witch, she’d escaped him, nearly cursed him into oblivion, but at last he’d won.

He’d managed to find her—only the thing was, he still had no idea how he’d come so close to her sacred forest or why he’d been lying there alone on the ground with that old man Callas standing over him. He remembered Callas had been with her at the great stone circle, standing beneath one of the huge lintels, staring at him, and he’d seen fear and hatred in the old man’s rheumy eyes.

Like Callas and all those damnable ghosts outside, she was wearing a white wool robe. Hers, however, was so white, it shone like pure light. He could have read ancient parchments in the light cast from her gown. No dirty rope around her waist, rather a thin golden chain that pulled the gown snug, made a graceful knot, then hung down nearly to her knees.

No one else seemed to be in the chamber.

Were there indoor ghosts? He walked closer.

She had the same incredible hair, longer now, perhaps. So very red, a pure red, pure as a flame fed by magic. It hung down her back, nearly touching her hips, and because his vision was excellent even without magic, he could see her mysterious green eyes, and knew they hid her secrets and skills more dangerous than a curse ripe with vengeance. Her skin was pale, smooth. She smiled at him, showing very white teeth. That smile—it was a smile of triumph, a smile that told him she’d bested him and was savoring the knowledge at this very moment. He wanted to take out his wizard’s wand and force her to her knees in front of him. Perhaps before that, he would make her fall to her knees and crawl to him, kiss his feet. Aye, he liked that image. Then she could pull off that white wool gown and show herself to him, and then he would—

“So, prince, why in the name of all the evil demons that surely created you did you come here? How did you find me?”

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