Branneck hadn’t stopped yelling that he’d stabbed the prince in the chest—k
illed the arrogant bastard—until Mawdoor had taken that same knife and stuck it cleanly through the man’s neck, just to shut him up. And since it wasn’t smart to leave people around who very possibly had failed in their mission, he killed the other three men as well.
Before Mawdoor killed him, Branneck had sworn that the prince couldn’t have survived the knife stuck in his chest, that Mawdoor’s magic poison that Branneck had pierced deep into the prince’s chest had to have done the trick. He claimed that damned woman had tangled them all up and hung him in the air as if he were naught but a buzzing fly. And as for the damned women, they’d been no help at all. They’d just stood there pointing and laughing. One of them had even waved her fingers at Brecia, as if in thanks. If he could have, Branneck would have slain all three of them himself.
Had she somehow managed to save the prince? Mawdoor stood there, rubbing his hand over his jaw as he looked at the dead mortals, knowing in his gut that this was a witch’s work, not a wizard’s.
Mawdoor took the three women to Penwyth and gave them to the old men, who unfortunately had no memory of what to do with the splendid gift, but knew they should be pleased. They’d sighed, knowing there had to be some memory of pleasure in their ancient brains.
By nightfall, the old sots were waiting hand and foot on the women, out of breath with all the demands but relentlessly eager. The old women watched and laughed. The young women preened and demanded endless favors.
As for Mawdoor, he realized he would have to wait to learn if the prince was dead. He couldn’t enter the oak forest. He knew in his wizard’s bones that very bad things would happen to him if he tried. Everyone knew about the ghosts, the ancient ones who had gone beyond, yet who had elected to remain in the forest. Mawdoor wondered if the ghosts knew what became of those who decided not to remain deep within the forest when their time ran out.
It was said that most ghosts remained because all knew that they drew strength from the soul of the trees that encircled them, drew their haunting songs from the rustle of the oak leaves in a light night breeze, drew their substance from the rays of the moon that speared through the leaves onto the forest floor.
And they protected Brecia, even from a powerful wizard who had wanted her since—it had only been one spring ago, he remembered, at the sacred meeting stones. Odd how it seemed longer. He’d listened to stories of when she’d been just a small witch, unsure of her powers, learning from the ghosts, learning from the very powers that resided in the great stone circle on the plain of southern Britain. And she’d turned a local chieftain who’d murdered a child who happened to wander into his path into a two-headed goat—a female goat who had been milked for the next ten years. All laughed at that story, he as well.
And then he’d seen her. She wasn’t a small witch anymore.
He bellowed out several full-bodied curses, and it made him feel better. The prince. The bastard had to be dead. He realized he didn’t even know the prince’s real name. Anyone who spoke of him simply said “prince,” and they said it with admiration, with liking, with awe, and with fear. When the prince had been newly born, his mother standing over him, she had said to Mawdoor, “Ah, say hello to my little prince, Mawdoor. Is he not perfect?”
And Mawdoor had looked down at that wizard scrap and hated him to the depths of his soul. Aye, and now the prince was treated with great respect, and that was perhaps the worst of it. It grated in his belly.
Mawdoor of Penwyth—now his was a good name, a solid name, one that would carry on far into the future. Mawdoor, the name given him by his mother, a witch of excellent parts, not his father, who’d been a rank and dangerous demon, he’d been told often by his teachers, a demon whose teeth were always wet with human blood. He himself didn’t care for human blood, and truth be told, that relieved him. His father had come to a bad end. Aye, thankfully, he was more like his witch mother—powerful, determined, and patient.
He would wait now. In truth, he could do nothing else. If the prince were indeed dead from Branneck’s knife, would Brecia know it was he who had paid the assassins to kill him? If she did know, what would she do? Did she love the prince?
No, he would never accept that, never. Brecia was fated for him and him alone. He had to prepare his fortress for her. Penwyth was waiting to enfold her in its great seamless darkness, and he would keep her here with him, breeding great sons, until time itself rusted with age and collapsed under its own feeble muscle and dissolved into the very air that hung about it. No one would take Brecia away from him once he had her. No one.
As for her powers, he knew she could not compare to him. He found, however, in odd moments, when he prayed to whoever listened to wizards, that this was true, that she would be his and his alone forever.
But the two of them had escaped him before, and that was a worm in his innards. He didn’t know how they’d shattered the bubble he’d fashioned, but they’d managed it.
Was the damned prince dead?
The damned prince leaned close to her ear, his breath perhaps warmer than it had been the night before when he’d traced his tongue over that lovely little shell, and made her start singing with the ghosts. She knew even without looking at him that he’d felt the lovely desire that whistled softly through her blood at just the touch of his tongue, the whisper of his breath, the light stroke of his fingers on her flesh. He was smiling, so sure of himself, the damned wizard.
“Say what you will say and don’t play with me,” she said, drawing away from him, just a bit, just enough to get her brain under control again. How had this happened?
“You love me, Brecia,” he said with great satisfaction, still too close to her ear, and she started tapping her foot, to distract herself.
She said, “You have the brain of a toad. You don’t know anything.”
“I know that you had but to save my life to realize you love me, to recognize it deep within yourself, to surrender to it and to me. When my parents hear that I nearly gave my life to win you, they will be awed by my resolve, by my perseverance. They will believe me remarkable.” He frowned at that. “Well, they already believe me remarkable.”
“That is not what happened at all, you fool.”
He just shook his head at her and looked at her closely. It was difficult, nearly painful, but he continued looking. He said, “You are excessively ugly, Brecia, more ugly than you perhaps had to make yourself. Your head, it looks powerful strange.”
“I have disguised the two of us quite well. Mawdoor will not recognize us, you’ll see. You think I’m ugly? Ha, if there is a pool of water, look at yourself and fall over dead with horror.”
He only smiled as his fingertip traced her ear again, and he felt the jump of her heart as he said, “This adventure I will tell beyond the time of our children’s children. How the witch Brecia made herself so remarkably repulsive that it took all the prince’s guts to keep him from looking in the opposite direction.”
“We are standing outside Penwyth and you are speaking about our grandchildren. You must pay attention, prince. You must stop your play.”
He looked to be in pain, then he smiled, this wizard prince who looked like an ancient, gnarly sot, and she wanted him—despite filthy tangled gray hair, lines as thick as a gown’s seams dug in his face. It was amazing, this wanting, something no one had ever before explained to her.
He said, “All right. Tell me what you have planned for Mawdoor, Brecia. Is it bloody? So painful that all the ghosts’ fires will leap into the air, filling the sky with orange flames?” He sighed. “No, you haven’t the finesse. You want me to stomp his wizard’s guts into the ground, don’t you?”