The Penwyth Curse (Medieval Song 6)

He frowned at that. “I don’t know. It has never been a question until now.”

The words came out of her mouth, startling her more than him. “I can teach you magic to protect yourself, magic that doesn’t require a wand.”

He could but stare at her. “You don’t want to see me kicked off the edge of the earth? You don’t want to see me crushed beneath a mountain of black stone that will hold me in darkness forever and beyond? What is this, Brecia? Why would you want to teach me magic? Why would you want to help me?”

Because this is the first time you have ever needed me, that’s why. But she said nothing. She turned away from him, and he watched her long fingers stroke the white wool gown.

He said, “You could stroke me like that.”

“What?”

“Your fingers. You’re stroking your gown.”

To his surprise and delight, she looked like a maid caught up in a man’s words, not a witch who with just a wink and a tap of her fingertips could send him to his knees, eating dirt.

Could she do that to him since he didn’t have his wand? He didn’t know.

She said, “Forget my fingers, prince. You are not acting the way—”

“I’m me, Brecia, none other. Come, what’s wrong with you?”

“You should be furious, screaming curses to any god who will listen to you, blasting incantations all over my sacred grove, exerting every sort of power you possess to locate your wand. Why are you talking about my fingers stroking you, when your very existence is at stake?”

“I suppose because I don’t think it is,” he said. “Is that odd of me? Perhaps. Would you really show me magic, Brecia?”

“You don’t trust me, do you, prince? You believe my offer of help is somehow a trick.”

He gave her a look of great hunger, nothing else, no threat, no struggle between them, just hunger. “I have wanted you since the first moment I beheld you at the sacred meeting place. I have admired you since that first moment. I will trust you to my dying breath.”

“Stop this, do you hear me? Just stop this. You are not behaving like yourself, like you always act when you are around me, and I won’t have it.”

He looked at her face, at the faint line of freckles over her nose, and wondered for the hundredth time if her hair would feel warm against his skin. “Did you come looking for me, Brecia?”

“I just wanted to make certain you were out of my forest. Aye, and I hoped you had my wand, but you didn’t. You were simply sleeping.”

“Did you see either of our wands disappear from my hands?”

She shook her head. “At first I thought Callas had managed somehow to steal my wand back. But he hasn’t the strength. He fears you more than hates you, and he believes you will destroy all that I am, that I might forget what I owe to my heritage, to my people, to my sacred oak grove.”

The prince said thoughtfully as he brushed leaves from his legs, “Maybe I should have killed the little sot.”

She laughed. That was the prince she knew and understood, the prince she’d like to kick off the Balanth promontory to sink into the depths of the sea below.

He realized that he’d heard her laugh only once before, at the sacred meeting place. She’d hummed with pleasure and laughter until he’d had to wed Lillian and Brecia had just disappeared.

“Callas is my man. If the need ever arises, why, then I will deal with him in my own way.”

“Brecia, I don’t need my wand. I can move a mountain without my wand. Perhaps, though, I would need my wand if I wished to move the earth.”

“Yes, but—”

“But even with my wand, I cannot change a woman’s mind.” Then he smiled and waved his left hand in a wide fan in front of her. A wind came up and blew her hair into her face. He waved his left hand in the opposite direction, and the wind stopped.

“Aye, that is a clever trick, prince, but the wind isn’t a mortal enemy or another wizard. The wind comes when you command it to come because it has no will of its own. But because the wizard who holds your wand—Mawdoor—is very likely now more powerful than you, you need my help.”

“How very odd it is,” he said, stroking his jaw. “You seem to like me better now that you see me as weak.”

“You, weak? Ah, prince, you make sport with me. It’s just that—”