The Penwyth Curse (Medieval Song 6)

Brecia was shaking her head. “Think about Mawdoor. Think of what he is like. He would scoop up all the power he could get, no matter the risk. Aye, he has the cask, and he’s hidden it well, because his very being is bound up in it.”

“His very being, Brecia? That makes no sense,” the prince said.

“Your father isn’t a demon. They are a different matter, prince. Demons hiss and brood and find wrongness in every corner of their world, and this wrongness is all directed at them, and thus to survive, to flourish, they must destroy anything they perceive to be a threat to them. This vision chest or cask, the ghosts also said that it could, if he were careless, draw Mawdoor into it and hold him there forever.”

“Yes,” the prince said. “You told me that. How to get him into the cask?”

She frowned, and rubbed her very narrow, very long nose. “Maybe if you squeeze my head I’ll think of something.”

He laughed, said, “By all the gods, you’re ugly. I must tell you, Brecia, when we were on the steps before—I had to close my eyes so I could find my pleasure in you. It was difficult, but I wished to prove my constancy to you. Did you realize my eyes were closed? Did you comprehend and appreciate my constancy?”

She laughed. She hadn’t laughed as much in the past year as she had in the past two days. “Constancy, from a wizard?”

“Aye, Brecia, from a wizard. You wound me.”

“I did notice that your balance wasn’t very good since you had your eyes closed. As for me, I had no problem since you had that sack over your head.”

Even with the jests, she felt something move deep inside her. Warm and true, those feelings that were filling her now. She touched his ugly old face, smiled. “Let’s find that wretched chest.”

“I prefer to think of it as a cask.”

Late that night, when the fortress slept, all the old people stacked like cords of wood around the great central hall in the fortress, snores filling the air, Brecia pictured the cookhouse in her mind’s eye, saw some succulent roasted boar and some well-milled white bread. She brought it to them with one shake of her right fist.

“If we don’t find the chest,” he said between bites, “then we must have another plan.”

“I have one,” she said, and sank her teeth into the very nicely roasted boar.

He rolled his eyes. “You’re a witch. A witch always has plans for this, for that, but I don’t believe many of them work. You know the chest is hidden, well hidden. We’ve searched the fortress. What is your plan?”

“We must raise our power to find it.”

“Aye, and if we do that, Mawdoor will realize something is very wrong. I don’t want to escape from his damned bubble again. I don’t want your hands burned again. It was bad, Brecia, your pain.”

“It was. Now, listen. I saw him take one of the women upstairs, and there were carnal thoughts in the wizard’s mind. He is distracted. Soon he will sleep soundly.”

“It’s good that you don’t wish to marry him. He is not worthy of you. He has proven that he has no constancy, taking another woman with you close by.”

She laughed, heard an old man jerk away not far away, and smothered the laugh behind her hand. “I also put a sleeping potion in the wine the woman is giving to him. They will sleep like babes until morning.”

“Ah, now you smirk with your cleverness. You want me to search this damned fortress all night?”

“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.