The Penwyth Curse (Medieval Song 6)

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 he

ld 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.

He felt deadened with it. “Now you don’t trust me, Brecia?”

“I know that if I trusted you, you would try to bind me to you, or, mayhap you would even use me to barter for your wand.”

The earth shook beneath his feet, and both of them felt it. His rage was that great. “Damn you, you obstinate, blind witch, I would die before I let anyone harm you!”

His words hung in the air, hard and heavy between them, the air undulating as if unseen fingers were sweeping through it.

She stared at him for a very long time before she said, “There is much between us, prince.” He knew she could see the shimmering air, knew she was using her own breath to warm it, sending her soft breath to him, to stroke his face, to calm him. “I will believe you until you become again as you once were.”

“Whatever that was,” he said, blowing that warm air back into her face.

“Mawdoor is dangerous,” she said, and it was true. His fortress was too near her oak grove for her peace of mind. Her people, even the ghosts so old they could see into the future as easily as they could the past, spoke very quietly when Mawdoor was the subject. All feared him.

“Mawdoor has never tried to harm either me or my people. He’s never come into my forest as far as I know.” She paused a moment, and he saw a flash of fear on her face. “I remember late one night, several years ago, Mawdoor—just to remind me of his power, I suppose—sent a powerful bolt of lightning down to strike not a foot away from my fortress. A huge plume of smoke rose high above the forest, and I knew he’d sent it.”

“Not much of a warning,” the prince said. “What did you do?”