The Penwyth Curse (Medieval Song 6)

Then it was utterly quiet. Too quiet, as if the air itself had been swallowed, sucked into something deep and black, something he couldn’t see, but he could feel it.

Then just as suddenly the light was gone, swallowed by the blackness, only now the blackness was heavy and thick. He felt light-headed with the weight of it.

There was another explosion, but this one wasn’t the sound of a rock blasted apart by thunder outside the tent.

This explosion was inside his head.

He fell over her.

11

Sometime Else

HE AWOKE SLOWLY TO A still and heavy darkness, a darkness that blanketed him, that held him snug within it. He didn’t want to open his eyes, he really didn’t, but finally, slowly, he did, and saw that the darkness was more pervasive than he’d imagined. Nothing but darkness, all around him, and surely that was beyond odd. He felt the weight of it all the way to his soul—solid, heavy. It was hard to breathe. He knew, somehow, that if he didn’t move, he would soon have that darkness inside him. But he didn’t move just yet; he sucked in what air he could.

Something was very strange here.

He rolled over. He’d been lying outside, asleep and alone, and there were no stars overhead, nothing but this thick blackness. He heard a man’s voice, close and coming closer. By all the gods, an enemy was nearby—it had to be Mawdoor. Somehow Mawdoor had brought him here and surrounded him with this darkness. But how?

Had he been unconscious, not sleeping? How was that possible? He drew a deep breath. If it was Mawdoor lurking close by, then so be it. Both knew there would someday be a reckoning between them. Would it be now? He called out, his own voice scratchy as a rusted blade—and that startled him—“Who goes there?”

A man was suddenly standing over him, looking down at him, speaking. He nearly pitched over, he was so startled. By all the ancient gods, it wasn’t Mawdoor, it was rheumy old Callas in his dirty robe, his scraggly gray beard hanging in tangles to his sunken groin. Wretched-looking old relic.

Not Mawdoor, thank the gods. He felt appallingly weak, as if his wits were scattered like the stars behind that black, black sky.

Then he remembered, but it was a memory that didn’t make any sense. He remembered that he’d finally found Brecia’s sacred oak forest, had known to his marrow that it was hers. He’d felt it, let the knowledge seep into him, and he’d been more pleased than ever before in his life. He also knew he would search that dark forest until he dropped dead from exhaustion or she somehow managed to smite him down. Aye, he would search until he found her, the damned witch.

And now here was Callas, one of her ancient priests, outside the forest, standing over him. This was interesting indeed.

Why was he lying here on the ground? Had he been somehow caught in a dream, its images woven around him, freezing his brain? It was odd, these residual feelings snaking through him. He felt himself, knew that it was indeed himself, and yet—and yet, there also seemed to be the shadow of another, close by, nay, even deep inside him—but no, it was gone. No, no, he was only himself, none other. That sort of thinking was madness. All of it was enough to make a man’s head pound off his neck.

Callas laughed, deep and thick with pleasure, waving his gnarly old stick around.

He cocked his eyebrow at the old sot, came up to a sitting position and wrapped his arms around his knees.

“Are you comfortable now, prince? Sitting there on the ground, so alone I can hear your heart beat. So what say you, you damnable black wizard who claims to know everything? I saw you lying on your back, helpless as a wingless sparrow. Did some being greater than you dash you down? Was it Mawdoor? You know that Mawdoor lives near. Did he bring you here?”

The prince watched Callas laugh again, louder this time, meanness and triumph heavy and hard in that ancient laugh of his.

Slowly, he unclasped his hands and got to his feet. He shook himself, frowned. No one had bound him, no, nothing like that. He’d simply been lying on the ground on his back. And now he was awake, Callas standing over him. He’d been vulnerable. If Callas weren’t such a gutless coward, he just might have been dead.

Or perhaps he’d fallen asleep and this was a dream spun out of another wizard’s spells and heaped upon his head. Maybe it was one of Mawdoor’s dreams. The prince still felt the echo of another’s presence. But no matter. Mawdoor wasn’t here, old Callas was.

Callas hadn’t carved out his heart, and now the prince wouldn’t allow him to.

“What is this, prince? You won’t claim to strike me down? You’re as silent as that stone beside your left foot.”

The prince leaned back against a spear of stone, one of a small circle of stones that soared some eight feet into the air and had probably stood here since just after time started up. He looked insolent and languid, and said, his voice calm and deep as the night darkness surrounding them, “Why would I strike you down, old man? You are nothing to me. You are barely a speck of dirt on the bottom of my foot, a runny blister on the butt of an ass.”

Callas drew himself up as straight as he could. “I do not like the sound of either of those things. Listen, prince. I am Brecia’s first counsel. You knew of me through your mother’s heart before you were born, you knew me since the moment that small boy wove his first spell. But look at you now. Standing against one of the Divas so you won’t fall over—ah, you cannot harm me, aye, one of the ghosts just felt it to me. Aye, you’re helpless, just leaning against that damned heathen stone, all alone, your power sucked dead as a hollow reed.”

“Have you been drinking too much earth wine, you old buzzard? You think I’m helpless? I could turn you into a red-tongued toadstool like this—” The prince snapped his fingers, and Callas jumped a foot off the ground and yelled.

“Be quiet, Callas.”

The old man was panting. The prince started to tell him that he preferred him the way he was—old and gnarly—when suddenly he felt something strange hovering just at the edge of his vision. If he turned his head quickly, he knew he would see something, someone. He turned. There was nothing, of course. He nodded. He understood now. That strange something was a leftover dream from the last full moon, when he’d meted out punishment to the wretched mortal cowards who’d sought to kill a witch they’d found, unconscious from her own potion. The prince shook his head, let it go.

He had a witch of his own to find. She’d escaped him, but he’d hunted her down, exactly how he wasn’t certain at this moment, but it didn’t matter. He would worry about all of it later. He knew in his wizard’s bones that Brecia was somewhere in that sacred oak forest, knew she had to be—it was, after all, her forest.