The Penwyth Curse (Medieval Song 6)

She felt fear prickle her skin. “How can you be certain?”

“I just am. Now, the question is what to do with this—this wand.”

She rolled it back and forth in her right hand, and let the warmth of it sink into the sleeve of her gown, touch the skin of her forearm, warm it, and she felt good. Deep down, it made her feel very good.

He said, never looking away from the wand, “I know that Penwyth has stood where it stands now.”

She looked at him, her head cocked to one side. “Not longer than a hundred years.”

“Oh, no, Penwyth was there long before then. Aye, it was there, all right—not the castle, not the moat, something else—but it was there and it had that name.”

“How do you know this?”

He started to say, I was there, then he realized how mad that sounded. But he saw it now. By all that was holy, he saw Mawdoor—saw himself as well, only he was the prince and Brecia was with him. He saw all of it very clearly. He looked at the wand in Merryn’s right hand, and he saw it all even more clearly. He saw the flecks of gold in Brecia’s eyes.

Bishop blinked, shook his head to clear it. He’d touched that wand, and now everything was as clear as if it had all occurred but moments ago. Was it the prince’s wand? Brecia’s wand? A witch’s wand, not a wizard’s? “So very long ago,” he said. “It all happened so very long ago.”

“How do you know this, Bishop? Are you a wizard?”

“No, I’m not a wizard,” he said and knew down to his bones that he wasn’t, only—“but the past is coming through to me. Don’t be afraid, Merryn. I’m not, at least not anymore.”

She swallowed. “I’m not afraid.”

He looked at her, that red hair of hers braided in a tight circle around her head, the green eyes, alert and dreamy at the same time. He looked at that wand in her right hand and felt a lurching in his heart.

She looked like Brecia, that witch who’d lived in a time far distant, the witch who’d mated with the prince. And just who was the prince?

He realized in that instant that he was glad she wasn’t Brecia. Brecia was a very long time ago. M

erryn was here, with him, right now. His seed was in her belly. He shuddered with the knowledge of it.

Bishop carefully took the wand from her in his right hand, and rose. He had to learn more.

He stood there, in the shadows, holding that wand, the torch flame wreathing his face in darkness and a glowing red light, and he wasn’t himself in that moment. She knew it, but she wasn’t frightened. She sat staring up at him, wondering what was happening.

She watched him raise the stick high above his head. But surely the cave ceiling hadn’t been that much higher than Bishop’s head was. Surely. But now it seemed to go up and up, no ceiling at all in sight. And Bishop, he seemed somehow larger, shadows and light and the flame from the torch making him look like a demon called from the bowels of hell.

She said, her voice as thin as the grains of sand that fell through her fingers, “Bishop, come back.”

The moment ended.

Bishop looked white. Slowly, he came down onto his knees. He gently laid the stick on a small stone ledge that protruded a few inches from the cave wall. That ledge had been there all along—it had to have been—she knew that, but now she saw that it was there because it held the wand. She reached out her hand to touch it, drew it back.

“I must think about this,” Bishop said. He raised his head and looked at Merryn, and she saw the blast of hunger in his eyes, eyes focused completely on her. It was the same lust she’d seen in him the night before, the utter loss of control. She picked up her skirts and ran.

Sometime Else

Brecia was brooding, worrying the golden chain at her waist as she brooded. She said, “Mawdoor sent those men. The women were with them because Mawdoor knew they would lull you, just in case.”

“Aye, he did.” The prince took another bite of a partridge leg, roasted to perfection over one of the ghost fires. He knew that her people were throughout the oak forest, close if they were needed. It was the ghosts who stayed in the courtyard, near their fires, and watched. She handed him a wooden bowl of soup, filled with carrots and cabbage and garden cress.

“Will you eat until the next full moon comes?”

He swallowed and smiled up at her. “You exhausted me, Brecia. I am only a wizard. I must rebuild my strength.”

She threw a plum at him, which he caught and brought to his mouth. “Ah, the smell. Sweet plums.”

“We must beat him, prince. We cannot let him continue to terrorize the countryside. He might succeed in destroying you, maybe even in taking me.”