He smiled. "You haven"t guessed?" he said, obviously as glad as she was to let the other matter drop. "It"s built on the old druid"s mound."
Her eyes went wide. "You jest."
"In faith, I do not." He seemed to find this sacrilege amusing. "Silas said that when they first cleared the land for the castle, they were quite pleased to find a natural hill in just the spot DuMaine wished to place his motte. Taking down the old ruin on top of it was no great matter at all-they did it in a week."
"They took down the druid"s tower?" In her father"s day, most of the common folk would not even approach the tower for fear of the power it contained. No wonder they had been so eager to see DuMaine defeated.
"To the ground," Sean agreed. "Then paved over the floor and built their tower over it."
"Holy Christ," she murmured, a rather incongruous oath for such a crime. "Sean, we cannot stay here-"
"Don"t be ridiculous." He cut her off. "Our blood is safe here, whatever DuMaine might have done."
"Not if we shame the ancient places," she protested. "You know what Mother always said-"
"Mother"s superst.i.tions did not save her husband, did they?" The angry light that drove her brother ever onward in his quest flashed for a moment in his eyes. Then he smiled. "Tomorrow I want to start moving your things into the tower."
"What? Sean, no-"
"The manor house is overrun with soldiers," he said, cutting her off. "It isn"t safe there for your little Lady Clare and her nursemaid. Soon it may not be safe even for you."
"I can take care of myself," she said.
"I know." He laid a hand on her head, so like Papa for a moment she could have cried. "But you are all the world to me, Siobhan.
I need you to be safe. And we need the child as well." He let her go, taking a step back as another patrol emerged from the manor house. "I will put my quarters in the ground floor, with Silas"s office above and you and the women on top."
"I have to sleep in the room with the brat?" she protested.
"No, no," he promised, smiling and shaking his head. "There are two rooms on the topmost floor. They are already well furnished for a lady, I think. DuMaine must have been planning to take himself a wife."
The smile she was learning to conjure on her face whenever Tristan"s name was mentioned twisted her mouth without her thinking, a bitter, reckless smile. "And so he did," she answered.
"And so he did," Sean agreed. He gave her braid a gentle tug. "Are you done soldiering tonight? Will you come inside and sleep now?"
"In a moment." She wasn"t sleepy, just tired, and the thought of the manor house"s crowded, smoky hall just made her feel more so. "Go on, brother. I will follow you."
He nodded, barely touching her cheek one last time. "You fret too much, Siobhan." Before she could think of an answer, he had gone inside.She looked back at Tristan"s folly, the inner fortress he had thought would keep him and his little girl safe, built on the mound of ancient magic. When she was a little girl herself, her mother had told her stories about the druids, how they had come to the people of this forest and joined their blood with theirs, giving them a portion of their power. Their magic had saved the old ones from the Saxons in the time of Arthur, magic from Merlin, the last of their race. She and Sean were the last descendants of this ancient line; their blood was tied to the mound and the tower that had stood upon it.
She drew the short sword she still carried from her belt. The blade of her first kill. She could have managed a much longer weapon now and had more than once. But this sword was a gift from the druids, or so she believed, no matter how much Sean might tease her.
"What is that?" a small voice said from so close beside her, she nearly jumped out of her skin. Looking down, she found little Clare, dressed in her nightgown.
"What does it look like?" she asked, irritated. The child had a nursemaid; why was she wandering the courtyard in the middle of the night?
"A sword," Clare answered, unperturbed. "But it"s too small."
"It is too small," Siobhan agreed. She stuck the sword back into her belt. "Why aren"t you asleep?"
"Because I am not sleepy." By all rights, the child should have been terrified of her, but she didn"t seem to be. In truth, after her first fit of grief, she had betrayed no fear of any of them. Her father"s daughter, Siobhan could not but think.
"Where is Emma?" The child shrugged, spreading her hands, but her guilty look told the true tale. Emma had a sweetheart among the soldiers. "I see," Siobhan said with a sigh.
"She thinks I am asleep." Clare looked off in the direction of the tower just as Siobhan had done. "Sean Lebuin said we were going to the tower."
"Yes." The little one called Sean by both his names, like a priest might say Jesus Christ. Or Lucifer the d.a.m.ned. "He thinks you will be safer there."
"My papa said I would be safe inside the tower." Siobhan hid her flinch. If the child should ask again about her father, she wasn"t certain she could lie. She had sworn to Tristan to protect his daughter, a simple oath to make. She had no desire to hurt an innocent child or to allow anyone else to do it. But how would she protect her from the truth?
"He was right," she answered. She squatted down beside the little girl, putting their faces level. "You see the drawbridge?" she said, pointing. "We will be able to pull it up if anyone attacks, so they can"t climb the cliffs to reach us. And if they try, our men will be able to shoot arrows down at them and kill them. Do you understand?"
"I understand." The wide green eyes were serious and clear as they took in the drawbridge.
"No one will be able to hurt us," Siobhan promised.
The child turned her gaze back on her. "You did," she answered. "You and Sean Lebuin came inside the castle."
"Yes, but we didn"t reach the tower, did we?" Siobhan answered. "If you and your papa had been inside the tower, we would never have been able to reach you." Clare nodded, her eyes clouding as she thought this over. "You see this sword," Siobhan went on, drawing it again. "Do you know where I found it?"
"You know I don"t," the child answered.
"I found it in those cliffs," Siobhan said, smiling. "When I was just a little girl myself, not very much older than you." She held the hilt out to the child. "Go on and touch it." Clare obeyed, her fingers barely making contact with the leather cover of the hilt. "When you are old enough, I will give it to you." The child"s eyes widened in shock. "Yes, I will," Siobhan promised. "I will teach you how to use it." She stood up again.
The little girl stared up at her, obviously puzzled. "Why would you do that?"
"Because you are my stepdaughter," she answered. "I am sworn to keep you safe." She slid the sword back into her belt. "I will teach you how to use this sword so the next time your enemy comes, you can fight him." She thought of the way Clare said "Sean Lebuin," thought of her own hatred for the Normans who had killed her mother and father. "Whoever he might be."
Understanding broke over Clare"s face like sudden sunlight. "You are sworn," she echoed. "You are sworn to Papa."
The strange, unwelcome pain Siobhan had been fighting twisted in her chest, and she wanted to do something hateful and selfish to push it away, something to prove she didn"t care. But Clare was innocent. She didn"t deserve the fate she had been given, and Siobhan was all she had left. "Yes," she answered, making herself smile. "I am sworn to your papa." She held out a hand to the child. "Come. Let us go inside and go to sleep."
Clare hesitated for a moment, chewing her bottom lip. Then she put her hand into Siobhan"s. Feeling another shiver of guilt, Siobhan led her back into the manor.
CHAPTER 6
Over the next few nights as he moved north, Tristan discovered that being a demon could be d.a.m.ned inconvenient. His new aversion to sunlight gave him only the short midsummer nights for travel, and he had to feed first. Finding prey was not quite so difficult as he might have imagined. Every settlement he came to seemed to have its own villain who needed to be sent to h.e.l.l for the good of the righteous, and the woods were full of bandits and thieves. But if for some reason he couldn"t find a suitable victim, he found he could put off his hunger for a single night only. Any longer and he found himself in the same dire distress that had driven him to his first kill, a desperate desire that overwhelmed every other thought.
It was in this state that he discovered he could change his shape. He had been riding without feeding all night long in hopes of getting out of a knot of towns and villages where his face might be known, and had finally reached a thick, unbroken forest. He tethered his horse in a tiny clearing near a cave where he could sleep through the day-another function of his new world that he found most irritating. "Wait here," he murmured pointlessly to Daimon. That was another problem, he thought. He had never been known for his charm, but he was still accustomed to fairly constant company. In truth, he had been alone more in the past week than he ever had in his life before. Much longer, and he might run mad as well as cursed.
Putting this happy thought aside, he went out into the woods to hunt, moving silently along the narrow paths in search of some other lone traveler whose life would not be missed. For hours he searched, his demon hearing straining for the drum of a human heartbeat, but he heard nothing, and his body had begun to sense the coming of the dawn. If he did not feed that night, he feared he truly would wake up a madman at the next sunset, so far beyond reason he might slaughter any creature that came near him, even his own horse. Then how would he ever get home?
Any creature, he thought, his mind drifting as he started to run. Could the blood of any animal sustain him? As if in answer to his thoughts, a heartbeat rumbled back to him, low and powerful as distant thunder. Following the sound, he ran faster, and his vision blurred and changed. The stag sprang up from a thicket, his great head turning to look back for barely a moment before he fled.
To Tristan"s eyes, the beast was nothing but a blur of light, a shape in flame with a burning, scarlet heart. He followed, his reason whispering the chase"s folly-no man could catch a stag on foot. But he was not a man. In a single, fluid moment, his perspective changed. He was running low to the ground, faster than a man could ever have dreamed, and all sense of weight or constriction from his clothes and the weapons he carried was gone.
He overtook the stag and took it down, leaping up to reach the animal"s thickly muscled throat. Holding the beast beneath him with ma.s.sive paws, he drank deeply, the blood less rich than that of men but sweeter-mead instead of wine. The creature shuddered, and he felt a vibration inside his own chest, heard his own low, thrilling growl. But as his hunger lessened, he felt a new sensation, a sense of pity he had never felt as a demon. The stag was innocent, his brother in the wild. Why must he die in fear?
He lifted his head from the animal"s throat, licking the blood from his mouth. He was a dog, he realized, some huge, square- headed breed like a mastiff, with golden fur the color of his hair. The stag struggled, weaker but still strong. "Go," Tristan ordered, the word coming out as a yelp. The creature twisted, looking back at him, its eyes still wild with terror, paralyzed within the demon"s gaze.
Gathering his reason, Tristan stood, his body changing, melting back into the shape of a man. He stepped back from his prey and turned his head away. "Go," he repeated, still hoa.r.s.e but with a man"s voice. The stag struggled to his feet, its antlers tearing at the loamy ground. In an instant, it was gone, thundering into the forest.
The wind was rising around him, the beginnings of a summer storm. Suddenly he seemed to feel a presence just behind him, some dark spirit watching his kill. He turned quickly, his hand on his sword. "Who is there?" he shouted into the night. But he saw nothing, only the empty forest. He turned back, and he heard a voice, a whisper behind the rustle of the leaves. "My son," it breathed. But his father was long dead and rotted to dust, had been since he was a boy.
The other demon, he thought. Surely it must be the demon who had made him, pursuing him in secret. Now that he thought about it, it only made sense; he had tried to stop him that first night. But why did he not show himself? He hadn"t seemed particularly shy before. "Come out!" he shouted, brandishing his weapon. But no one came to confront him, and the voice died away with the wind. He stood there for several more minutes until the storm broke and the rain began. But still he saw no one.
Over the next few nights, he felt the presence often, always after a kill. But no one ever came.
At last he reached the edge of the northern woods that separated his own estate from that of the baron of Callard, a minor n.o.ble whose father had done some dark service for Henry"s father and who Tristan himself had never met. He had fed well just at sunset on a thief who had tried to rob him as he slept; with luck, he might reach his own borders that night. Whistling a little under his breath with satisfaction at the thought of bringing his quest to an end, he decided to risk being seen for the sake of speed, turning Daimon off the narrow forest path and onto the broader road.
A mistake, as it turned out. He had been riding for less than an hour when he came upon a carriage, leaning precariously to one side, one of its two lead horses lying on its side, panting in the mud. As Tristan reined in, a man in livery and two armed soldiers came around the carriage and blocked his path.
"You there," the coachman ordered. "Climb down and a.s.sist us."
"I am no healer of horses," Tristan answered. In truth, even if he had been, he doubted he could have been much help. The beast on the ground had a broken leg, the bone protruding from the flesh, and a long, jagged wound down one side. The idiot had apparently tried to drive the carriage straight through a pile of deadfall and brush blocking the road.
"Did I ask your occupation?" the man said in a fury. "Who is your master?" He was looking frantically from side to side as he spoke, like a rat trapped in a corner.
Tristan almost said "Henry of England" without thinking; then he remembered his costume. "I serve no one," he answered instead.
"A brigand," one of the soldiers said, drawing his sword. "We might have guessed as much." The coachman blanched and retreated as the soldiers moved forward. "Give us the horse, villain," the soldier said.
"Never, by my life," Tristan answered, smiling a little at the joke. He was fairly certain he could dispatch all three if he had to, but he was worried about his horse. Daimon"s loyalty had already been tested to all reasonable limits by his own condition; putting him in the midst of such a fight might frighten him away for good. "But I will climb down and have a look at yours."
The soldiers smiled, exchanging a look. "Very well," the first one said, taking a step back.
Tristan moved quickly to the poor beast on the ground. "Idiot," he muttered, fixing the coachman with a glare. "There now, dear,"
he spoke softly to the fallen horse, stroking her foam-specked muzzle. "The worst is over now." With his sword, he quickly cut the suffering animal"s throat.
"You will pay for that!" the second soldier said. "No." Tristan straightened up, his sword still drawn. "You will."
They both rushed him, obviously expecting he would fight like a brigand berserker, but of course he did not. He crouched slightly, waiting, then cleaved the first one"s head from his shoulders with a single, graceful arc of his sword. The second one slashed at his back as he turned, cutting his flesh to the bone in a strike that would have dropped a mortal man. But Tristan barely flinched.
Whirling like the fiend he was, he brought his sword up, point-first, into the soldier"s belly.
"No," the coachman protested, breathless with fear. "You cannot...we are the baron of Callard"s men, you fool!"
"What of it?" Tristan said, moving toward him. He was not hungry, but something in the coachman"s look of horror brought out the demon"s killing rage inside him even so.
"Lebuin will hear of this," he warned, stumbling backward. "The baron will see you hang."
"In faith, sirrah, I doubt it." The wind whispered softly through the trees, and for a moment Tristan thought he heard a laugh. He jerked his head around to look, but there was no one.
"Doubt if you will," the coachman said as Tristan turned back to him. His throat worked nervously as his hand went to his own sword, the jerky reflex of a man unaccustomed to battle. "But your captain will not save you."
"I have no captain." Again, he scanned the woods on every side for some sign of someone else. But there was nothing; no other heartbeat whispered to him from the dark. In the instant that his gaze was turned away, the coachman attacked. Almost by reflex, Tristan caught him, dropping his sword as he went for his throat.
Straightening up from the kill, he again felt the presence of another, the same p.r.i.c.kle of foreboding on his skin. He whirled around, taking up his sword. "Show yourself!" But just as before, there was no one.
He looked down at the dead man at his feet. He knew he should bury him and his companions, or better yet, burn them. This was a main road; someone would find them. But he didn"t have the heart. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he turned away. He released the second horse from its harness and gave it a gentle swat, sending it trotting down the road. "Daimon, come." His own horse trotted to him, head lowered as if in salute. Tristan sheathed his sword and swung into the saddle. Turning aside from the broad road again, he galloped toward Castle DuMaine.
All was quiet for a long, still moment. Then the corpse of the coachman shuddered, the flesh of the face contorting as if at some new horror. The eyes snapped shut, then open, once, then again. The mouth twisted into a smile. "My son..." The voice seemed to echo through the clearing on the wind, swirling through the trees, until it came again. "My son." This time the dead thing"s mouth formed the words, and the voice came from the ruined throat.
He sat up awkwardly, a puppet on a string. He lifted the sword, a clumsy arc so wide he nearly cut his throat before he stopped.
He let it fall, then lifted it again, more slowly this time, and the set of his shoulders was softer, more natural. More alive. He smiled again, a gruesome, clownish leer. Leaning on the sword, he staggered to his feet. Using the sword as a crutch, he limped away into the forest.
Tristan found a shelter in the forest, a man-made cavern dug into a hillside, probably made by Lebuin and his bandits in the days when they were still a minor annoyance and he was still a man. He slept fitfully throughout the day, his rest tortured by dreams of his daughter and Siobhan, the beautiful demon who called herself his wife.
Sometime near sunset, the dream turned darker and more familiar. He was standing in a golden hall, dazzled by torchlight dancing on jewel-studded columns. The floor was strewn with corpses, pale men in English armor, their throats all torn open. He saw the demon who had made him, the young knight with long black hair, standing near the dais of the hall, his b.l.o.o.d.y sword in hand. A dark-haired woman crouched before him on her knees, her hands raised up, entreating him for death. "No!" a little man cried out, rushing between them.
"My son." He heard the voice from behind him just as he did when he was awake, a whisper on the wind. He turned as quickly as he could, his body heavy and sluggish in the dream, and this time he saw the man who spoke. He was tall and thin, dressed in a robe of gold embroidered all over in scarlet, queer symbols like nothing Tristan had ever seen. His pale red hair was long and lank over his shoulders, and his mustache and beard trailed to his chest. "My son," he repeated, opening his arms as if he thought Tristan would embrace him. "You are magnificent."
"Who are you?" Tristan demanded. Behind him he could hear the others speaking, but he could not make out what they said. He reached for his sword but found he had none, no weapons of any kind. "What am I?"
The tall man in the robe just smiled. "I will come to you," he promised. The shape of his body began to change, shrinking shorter and broadening at the shoulders. The long, pale hair turned darker and short, the face clean-shaven and young. Something about this new figure was familiar, as if he might have seen him in pa.s.sing in a crowd. "You will understand."
"Tell me!" He tried to take a step toward the men, but his feet wouldn"t move. "Tell me now!" But the dream was fading, dissolving into mist.
He opened his eyes to find the young demon who had made him looking down on him, holding a stake of wood. "You!" he roared, lunging up to seize him, the two of them rolling as one across the earthen floor of the bunker. His maker tried to drive the stake into his chest, but Tristan grabbed his wrist and twisted, wrenching the weapon away. "Who are you?" He raised the stake himself and saw a flicker of fear in the other creature"s eyes. "What did you do to me?"
Moving fast as lightning, the demon struck the stake aside with enough force to knock it from Tristan"s grasp. "What did I do to you?" he echoed with a laugh. "Idiot!" Tristan reached for his throat, and he grabbed his arms and tried to pin him to the floor, sending them rolling again. "I tried to release you-"
"To kill me, you mean." Yanking free, Tristan punched him, making his head snap back. But before he could press this advantage, the demon recovered, baring fangs like Tristan"s own and lunging for him again.
"You were already dead," he said, rising to his feet and dragging Tristan by the tunic with him. Standing, he was half a head shorter than Tristan and much more slight of build, but in strength he was apparently his match.
"Not quite," Tristan retorted. He drew the dagger from his belt and slashed the other demon across the face.
"b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" the demon swore, his Irish accent more p.r.o.nounced as he drew back in pain. The wound was deep, but it barely bled before it began to heal itself.
"Likewise," Tristan snarled, grabbing his opponent by the shoulders and shoving with all his strength until he pinned him to the wall. "Who are you?"
"Your brother, idiot." The Irishman made a token effort to free himself, but he seemed more amused now than angry. "Whether either of us likes it or not."
"I told you," a voice said from the shadows. The small, bearded man Tristan had seen in his dream stepped into the pool of moonlight falling through the narrow door. "I knew you couldn"t just destroy him."
Tristan was fast losing patience. "I have no brothers," he answered, yanking the other demon toward him, then bashing him against the wall again. "Who are you?"