Fourteen

Turning southeast, they soon found themselves approaching the coast. The road wound through rocky hillsides, with pale ash and trembling aspens beginning to show green leaves on one side, while on the other the cliffs fell away to blue-gray waves below. Salt was strong in the air; Madoc smelled it and thought of home.

Now and again they shared the road with other travelers: mostly merchants, one minstrel, and once a small group of pilgrims bound for Saint Margaret’s chapel now that war and climate alike permitted such a journey. None shared the road for more than a few hours before their own business called them away, leaving Madoc and Moiread alone again.

Madoc was more conscious of that solitude than he’d been during any of the days before Hallfield, even during the endless hours they’d spent together at the inn. As he rode south beside Moiread, both of them hale, well, and in their right minds, he found it difficult not to think of kissing her in the stables, nor of how she’d spoken afterward—not quite a promise of more, but more than a hint. Even with others nearby, he glanced sideways at her frequently, observing her seat in the saddle and the way her hair blew back from her face.

Magical vision was no help. Madoc rode with his sight in the world of auras and magic that Moiread had showed him how to invoke. The brightness of all living things, and the colored haze around many of them, was itself distracting. More, Moiread was herself in that sight, and while her illusion hadn’t kept Madoc from wanting her, seeing her as a woman heightened his desire, while the play of lights in her aura and her dragon-shaped shadow were a constant source of fascination.

For most of the first part of the journey, he could think of nothing to say. He felt stupid for it, calflike and all of sixteen, but if Moiread resented his silence, she gave no sign of it. Madoc thought she might attribute it—and his frequent moments of staring at her—to the mystical sight itself, and he would gladly let her believe that.

Flirting had been easier in Hallfield’s stables. Riding in solitude, Madoc was too aware of how much he’d enjoyed it, but also of how closely and for how long he and Moiread would be companions. Finding aught to say that took both things into consideration was far from easy.

“Was it as you remembered?” he finally asked.

Moiread looked briefly startled, then confused, then comprehending. “Hallfield? Aye… Well, as much as anywhere ever is. Uisdean was different, poor man, but I canna’ say that was such a shock. Threescore and ten, or a time for every purpose, or whatever verse you’d like.”

Her shadow stretched long and winged over the road behind them.

“It must be hard for you,” Madoc said.

“It is,” Moiread replied and sighed, shaking her head, “and then in a while it isna’, and that’s sad too in its way. We get accustomed. As we all do, in our way. It’s not as though all that many see old age, is it? Especially of late.”

War and pestilence, Madoc thought, childbed and storm, not to mention accidents. One of his childhood friends had gotten drunk and fallen in the river when he was twenty. A miller had found his body in the lake two days later. Children had grown up hearing of his ghost.

He nodded. “There’s truth in that. I’m not sure these days are any more violent than others, save for this war in particular. Though there are those who insist that the world is getting worse.”

Moiread laughed, amused and scornful. “Always are, aye? The year I was born, the world was due to end by Christmastide. Even the pope said as much. My sister, Agnes, was right nervous about it, she always told me. When we were fighting, she’d say having me as a sister was nigh as bad.”

“Quite a tongue on her, your sister.”

“Oh, she may have been right. The Kingdom of Heaven is supposed to be quite a pleasant place, ye ken, and I wasn’t often pleasant as a child. You,” she added, with a twitch of her lips, “will kindly refrain from any comment on that.”

Madoc bowed as well as he could from the saddle. “Do you not believe in the end of the world, then?”

“Everything ends,” Moiread said cheerfully enough, given the subject, “and Saint John may well be right about the way of it. But in my life, I’ve heard of enough antichrists to get up a decent festival dance, if not an army, and yet I sit on this horse and talk with you, so I’m no’ inclined to believe in any new one to come along.”

“Like splinters of the True Cross or the bones of saints, only the opposite,” Madoc said, and then whistled as a notion struck him.

“Mmm?”

“Wouldn’t it be terrifying if they all were real? One son of the devil born in each generation, all hiding away until the moment was right? Or each one having his chance and failing, but with another one coming along who might well succeed?”

Moiread gave him a long, considering look. “Should you ever decide to set up as a prophet,” she said finally, “you could probably start a fair-sized riot or two.”

* * *

“It does wear on us after a while,” Moiread said when the silence had crept up once again and the tension grown too thick, when watchfulness couldn’t occupy her enough to keep her from stealing glances at Madoc. “Seeing time pass for others, that is. None of my generation have felt it too keenly, or at least we’ve none of us spoken of it, but Artair has once or twice, and my grandfather did.”

Madoc made a sympathetic mmm sound. “Have they any counsel for it?”

“Drink. God. Duty. Endurance.” Moiread shrugged, chuckling wryly. “The same cure as for all else they can’t solve by force or trickery.”

“And so it is with all men. We all apply the same poultices to different wounds, according to our nature…and a better man than me would say that God’s the most reliable of the three, in all cases.”

“A better woman than me would believe it. And I’ll not say no, only that He works more slowly, when he does. Sometimes you need a quicker sort of balm, and it matters not that it’s no cure in the end. But my father’s brother was a monk for a while,” she added.

“Did it help?”

“Might have, for a while. He said nothing of it to me one way or another, but we were never close. And he left a hundred years ago.”

“Left the monastery?”

“Left the world,” Moiread said, and smiled to see Madoc’s eyes widen. “I don’t know how, or where for… I suspect likely to a place akin to our next stop. Artair says we know how when it’s time, though he’s stayed longer than most of us ever do. They say the Old Ones could move back and forth like you go in and out of a house, but that was far in the past, and it’s not like they ever had much to do with us.”

Madoc stared at her for a little while, then broke into laughter. “In the future, if you’re going to amaze me, could you do it more gradually?” he asked, shaking his head, his eyes alight with amusement and curiosity. “I’m almost struck dumb for not knowing what question to ask first.”

“I’ll try to contain myself,” said Moiread, meaning that in more than one sense.

The memory of their kiss still filled her with warmth, especially when she watched Madoc’s dark hair fall over his brow, or observed the clean lines of his body while he mounted his horse. Satisfying that lust, however, would take a while, and not just in a pleasurable sense. She looked like a man, and this wasn’t the battlefield, where priests and commanders alike could overlook what happened in a tent. She and Madoc would have to wait until they had a private room, and God alone knew when that was likely to be.

She bit back a sigh.

Meeting her gaze, Madoc looked swiftly away and cleared his throat. “The Old Ones, then.”

“Our ancestors. Not human, nor even partly so. They wore man’s form as you’d put on a cloak. I don’t know if all shapes were alike to them, or if they were dragons in truth. It’d make their tastes a bit suspect, perhaps, if they were.”

“Shall I joke about carrying off virgins now?” Madoc asked, but before Moiread could answer, he stiffened, and the humor faded from his face. “Wait. I thought I saw—” His eyes narrowed, and he peered off to the side of the road, into a thick clump of trees and brush.

They didn’t stop then. Stopping would have let any watchers know they knew, and Moiread was briefly glad to see that Madoc didn’t suggest it. “What does it look like?” she asked quietly.

“An…unraveling. A blurring. A—damn.”

On the last word, he spurred his mare forward. The motion might have saved his life. One crossbow bolt sang through the air right behind him. Another punched into the flank of his mare, who screamed and reared up, beating the air with her hooves. Madoc clung to the saddle.

The men in the brush knew a target when they saw one. Two more bolts took the mare in the chest.

Moiread didn’t even have breath to swear.