~ 20 ~

The snow floated to the ground like large, lazy feathers. Accumulating rapidly, it soon formed a white blanket that covered fields, roofs, and trees with equal thickness. There was not a breath of wind. The world was cocooned in silence. The familiar view from the solar window now seemed foreign, otherworldly. At another time, Anlin would have enjoyed the beauty of the first snowfall. Today, however, it brought only worry.

Anlin did not need to be a tactician to know that snow would hamper an invading army while it would favor those already in place. And her heart rode on a gray horse with an army of invasion.

No, not invasion, she told herself, an army of rescue, for the forces with which Faulk rode were attempting to rescue a king, perhaps a whole kingdom, from madness. Noble intentions did not guarantee success, however, and she feared the snow would hamper the Lords who went to restore Fallucia to its rightful path.

She closed the shutters against the cold and the eerie light of white snow reflecting gray sky. The solar was at once darker and friendlier, the glow of the candles and the flickering of the fire making her feel sheltered and secure. Was this the day when the forces would meet? Would blood stain the pristine snow?

She would not think of that. She would remember Faulk in the courtyard, mounted and strong, the knight who had claimed her with his prowess. She could see again his face, bright in the light from the torches, turned toward her, his arm raised in farewell. Did he hunger for battle? Did he delight in the company of men and the opportunity to use the skills for which he’d been trained? She had watched him until long after the group had been lost in the darkness.

He had worn his new surcoat, her gift of time and effort. If the embroidery was less neatly done than that on his old one, if the image of the nightpiper had not turned out exactly as she had hoped, he’d still seemed pleased. While it was true that Hilmar had done most of the assembly of the garment, the design and the embroidery had been all hers.

She’d drawn the pattern of the nightpiper with all the skill she’d used in making maps, but she was never completely satisfied with the results. Perhaps if she’d had more time, she could have produced a finished product she found more perfect, but once King Fremmor had rejected all overtures, the need for action had become immediate.

Anlin wished she’d had the magic of some of the women in the ancient tales who could weave protection spells into their stitches. But a bird with a slightly crooked wing was all she could manage. She hoped the love that had motivated every stitch would have some effect.

Anlin was quite sure she loved Faulk. At least that emotion seemed best to describe what she felt. She cared for his happiness and wanted only what was the good for him. She delighted in his touch, a revelation, since earlier, she couldn’t have imagined she would desire any man. And desire him she did—the touch of his hands as they roamed her most secret places, the feel of his lips as they wandered over her body, the way his thrusts cast her into a world of sparkling beauty, the sound of her name on his lips as he too found his release.

She missed him. Sweet Cheelum, how she missed him. The bed seemed empty, although his scent still lingered on the sheets, tantalizing her with memory. This was all so new to her, such a momentous surprise. She wondered if their physical unions were as special for Faulk as they were for her. Her talks with Hilmar, as they worked on the surcoat together, had not been reassuring.

Anlin had been surprised at how freely Hilmar talked of bed matters, but from what her maid said, it seemed that such discussions were frequent among women. Since Anlin had never participated in this type of conversation, the topics covered were both fascinating and uncomfortable.

“Faulk looks good in this color,” Hilmar had said, “but I imagine he looks even better in nothing at all.”

Anlin was not pleased to think her maid imagined Faulk naked. She found this ironic since when they had first married, she’d thought Faulk might find Hilmar pleasing and actually hoped he would gratify his base needs with her maid and leave Anlin unmolested. Her attitude had certainly changed. But she was not going to tell Hilmar just how wonderful Faulk appeared when he wore nothing at all. Anlin wasn’t going to admit that the sight made her mouth dry and the place between her legs wet.

Hilmar was not loath to have such a discussion, however. Over measuring and cutting and stitching, Hilmar had blithely compared the attributes and prowess of both Kevin and Waylon, obviously enjoying her bouts abed with both men.

“I’ve settled on Waylon,” Hilmar announced. “He’s not so good looking as Kevin, but he cares more for my gratification than his own. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Cheelum granted him the equipment to see the job done well. Not that Kevin is lacking, mind you, but there’s just something to be said about a giving man like Waylon. Kevin seems to be mostly pound, pound, snuggle, snore.”

Anlin listened in fascination, although afterwards she found it difficult to look at either of the men-at-arms without blushing. She probably knew more about them than she wanted to know. But it also made her wonder about Faulk. Could he make just any woman he was with feel like he made her feel? Was her experience unique? And more importantly, could Faulk have been equally satisfied with someone else?

The insecurity, which her newfound happiness had kept at bay, took on greater immediacy now that Faulk was gone. She worried that she only filled the Fallucian version of night comfort for Faulk. She had no way of telling if his heart, as well as his wonderfully hard body, was engaged. And if he never returned, she would never know. The emptiness she felt because of his absence would become permanent.

But she would not think of that. She would erase that worry from her mind. She would keep busy. It had snowed. She would go play with Telm in the snow. All children loved to build snow castles and throw snowballs, and Telm seemed to spend too little time being a child.

Her relationship with her son had improved, although it could not be described as close. In honesty, it probably never would be. Telm had become someone very different from her little boy in the four years they’d been separated.

Anlin now realized it was impossible to go back and retrieve the past. Telm looked to Callip for support, understanding, and even discipline. Telm saw Anlin as someone extraneous and unimportant. At least enough progress had been made that he now acknowledged she was his mother and no longer seemed upset by the fact.

But there was nothing that either she or Faulk could do to make Telm fit into the pattern of White Ford. Not that Faulk hadn’t tried. Bless the man; he certainly had tried.

Faulk had produced a horse, a graceful bay mare with a narrow white stripe down her nose and three white stockings, that he said was to be Telm’s very own. He took the boy riding with him, making gentle corrections, so that Telm no longer looked like a stiff poker jutting from the back of a horse. Telm seemed to enjoy these times. Faulk’s only comment was that the boy was not a born horseman but took good care of his mare.

Three boys were brought to the manor from the village to play with Telm. Faulk deposited the boys, Telm, a number of wooden games, and a puppy in the hall and had dragged a hovering Anlin away, stating that boys had to find their own method of getting along.

A rather nice chessboard had been broken. The boys had left, one with a split lip and another with a bloody nose. Telm, rather proudly sporting a blackening eye, would only say that he had not liked what the boys said and that Faulk had told him he didn’t have to put up with any disrespect. Only the puppy, now strangely named Dragon, had remained.

Telm spent several hours each day closeted with Callip, their doings secret and mysterious. Once Telm had brought her a now-dented silver cup that Faulk had won in a tournament, apologizing for the dent, saying only that he hadn’t been able to sustain the levitation.

She realized Telm was more Callip’s than hers, and she knew of no way to change this.

But playing in the snow was something any boy would enjoy, even with Anlin, whom he now at least called Lady to her face and the Lady Anlin when speaking to others. It was an improvement over “that woman.” She suspected there had initially been some terms that were even less complimentary. Faulk would never say, although there was a time when Telm had first arrived that she had seen the normally mild-mannered Faulk hit the boy hard enough for the blow to knock him to the ground.

The idea of playing in the pristine whiteness appealed to Anlin as well. She found her steps as she descended the stairs were lighter than they had been since Faulk had left. Telm had been at loose ends with Callip gone and should welcome a diversion. Anlin also enjoyed the fact that she would have to compete with neither Faulk nor Callip for her son’s time.

Telm wasn’t in the hall or in his room, however. Anlin wondered if he had found some haunts with which she was unfamiliar. She was relieved when one of the serving women told her that she’d seen Telm and the puppy going in the direction of the barn. Telm had probably gone to check on his horse, responsibility sitting rather heavily on one so young.

It was no surprise he had taken Dragon with him. Telm and the puppy were seldom parted. The young, lop-eared hound tended to jump up and snag the bottom of Anlin’s tunics with his sharp little claws. He also had an unfortunate habit of piddling on her feet in his excitement, but Anlin appreciated the beast because he made Telm laugh. It was a sound too seldom heard. Smiling, Anlin put on her heavy boots and wrapped up well, adding her cloak as a final layer against what she envisioned as an assault of snowballs.

The footsteps of her son and the leaping pattern of the puppy’s feet were evident in the fresh snow. She wished there were some way to preserve them, so she could take them out and look at them whenever she wanted once Telm was gone. But she would just have to compile good memories against that bleak day.

She reached down and packed a snowball. She smiled. Nothing would draw out an opponent faster than an attack. Telm would be unable to resist.

She entered the barn and stopped just inside the door while she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness of the interior after the brilliance of the snow. The place smelled of horses and cows and hay, a not unpleasant scent that tickled the nose. “Telm,” she called.

There was a rustling sound from the area where the horses were kept, but Telm didn’t answer her. Had he seen her stop and make the snowball? Was he hiding and waiting to pounce before she could loose her white weapon? If she could catch him unawares skulking behind a stall, her missile couldn’t miss. She moved stealthily through the gloom in the direction of the sound.

Her foot nudged something on the ground. Looking down, she saw the puppy, lying on its side, its continual motion stilled. She reached down and touched him. “Dragon,” she said softly as if she feared waking him. The dog still lived, his heartbeat rapid under her hand, but he did not move.

Her head came up in alarm, glad the interior seemed less dark and she could make out what lay around her. Thankfully, the boy was not similarly felled, but she did not see him. She suddenly remembered the dented silver cup, but she could not imagine Telm would have tried any magic on his beloved hound.

“Telm, where are you?” Her voice was more strident.

“He’s here.” A man-sized shape appeared from one of the stalls and moved toward her. She finally recognized her brother Roland hauling a struggling Telm toward her from the gloom.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. With effort, she managed not to back away from Roland’s approach. She had not seen him since they had taken his amulet from him and had hoped his sanity would return. The wild look in his eyes would indicate otherwise.

“I’ve come to retrieve a bitch’s mongrel pup,” he said, dropping the wiggling Telm at his feet and stilling him by placing a foot on his chest. Anlin realized the boy was gagged and bound. “I’d planned to take him back to Giffard’s Crest and then send you a note that you could come and get him. But you’ve saved me the effort by your timely arrival.”

“What do you want, Roland?” She carefully kept her voice level.

“Why, I simply want my due. I want our father to realize that I’m the important one. I’m sick of constantly hearing the praises of either a dead sister or the husband of the sluttish living one. I can vanquish a ghost over time, so I thought I might arrange for you to join our sister. Without you, your irritating husband has no claim to White Ford and will tumble back into the mire from whence he came.”

“If your complaint is with me, then there is no need for you to hold the boy.”

“Ah, yes, the boy.” He smiled without humor. “I do have the boy, don’t I? And since you’ve pointed out that I really don’t need him, I might as well lean forward and see how long it takes his ribs to snap. You haven’t whelped a very sturdy pup, Anlin, but that’s what comes from indiscriminate breeding with all those scar-faced Rennish.”

He leaned forward, as if to put his full weight on Telm’s narrow chest, and Anlin reacted. She launched herself across the prone boy and jammed the snowball clutched in her hand into Roland’s face. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was all that she had.

It was probably surprise alone that drove the big man backwards, away from his captive. Anlin’s momentum carried her by him and into the edge of the stall, driving the air from her lungs. He was on her in a second.

Holding her hair, he jerked her upright and toward him. Anlin didn’t resist his pull. Instead she came toward him, arms windmilling, willing to strike him anywhere she could. In the process she tried to push him farther from Telm. Her hand caught Roland’s face, her finger nails digging grooves in his cheeks and seeking his eyes. She wished she had her knife, lost in Rennic. The narrow, flexible blade had dispatched one hateful man and could have done so again. But Anlin hadn’t thought she needed any knife in a snowball fight.

Roland grunted and, with his hand fisted, struck her in the face. She tried to stay on her feet, her vision edged with black. She tasted blood in her mouth. Her legs felt unsteady, but she went toward him once again, not running from a man anymore. She knew his greater weight and strength gave him the advantage, but she would not run.

Despite her intentions, Roland knocked her to the ground with a blow to her mid-section. He knelt on her hips and grabbed her around the neck, choking her and banging her head on the floor in time with his words. “I’ll have what is mine. I’ll have what is mine.”

She flailed her hands at him in an effort to reach his face, but he straightened his arms and she could not get to him. She struggled, trying to throw him from her body, trying to loosen his hands from her neck. She couldn’t breathe. Panic filled her. She did not want to die. Now that she had something to live for, she did not want to die.

Then he suddenly released her, jerking back and screaming as if he were in pain, hitting at his tunic that was inexplicably smoldering. The most she could do was try to scoot away from him on the floor, the scene before her making no sense. Telm appeared behind Roland, his face a mask of concentration. His eyes were squinted; his brows were drawn together.

Roland’s tunic burst into flames, licking up around his face, igniting his hair. He screamed, the sound high and wavering, and stumbled toward the door. He looked like a living torch. When he exited the barn, he lurched into a wobbly run, but did not get very far before collapsing into the snow. The flames extinguished and steam rose around him.

The intense expression disappeared from Telm’s face. He shook his head as if awakening from a nightmare, and he suddenly looked like a frightened boy. He rushed to where Anlin partially sat on the floor.

“Mother, are you all right?” he frantically asked.

“Yes,” she said, her voice sounding strange and raspy. Her throat had been injured and she had difficulty speaking. She was also choked with emotion. Telm had called her mother.

“We should get back to the manor,” Telm said. “It’s possible there are others.” He extended his hands to help Anlin to her feet. She doubted he could actually aid her to rise, but she gave him her hands. Rope still encircled his wrists, the ends charred and dangling.

Anlin got to her feet. “How did you do that? Burn the rope and set Sir Roland’s clothing afire?”

Telm looked embarrassed, as if he’d been caught doing something he’d been forbidden to do. “I can call fire. Anyone who has earned his first mark can do that. I can just do it better than most.”

Anlin should have known that magic was involved, but Telm was so often just a normal little boy that it was easy to forget he had phenomenal ability. “Dragon has been hurt,” she said, walking to where the little dog lay. “Can you help him?”

The boy’s face fell, and he squatted next to the puppy. He ran a hand over the hound’s tan hide and fondled one his floppy ears. He looked at Anlin with tears in his eyes. “I can do nothing,” he said, stricken. “I haven’t this Talent.”

Anlin knelt next to her son. She too placed a hand on the puppy’s warm side. She could feel the pup’s heart beating erratically, but it was beating.

“The man kicked him,” Telm said.

“I guessed as much.” She continued to stroke the little animal. “I’m not sure I can make him well, but if we take him back to the hall, I’ll do what I can. When I was very young, I used to take injured birds and small animals to my nurse to be healed. I watched what she did, which was mostly to keep the animals warm and to dribble water into their mouths. Some of them lived. But, you have to know, Telm, that some of them did not. I have no magic.”

“I know,” said the boy, “but I trust you to do what is right regardless.”

His confidence buoyed her, and she gently picked up the little hound. He made a slight whimper when she cradled him against her.

She briefly detoured on their journey to the manor to stop where her brother lay in the snow. His face was a blackened crust. It looked like a piece of meat left too long on the spit. Strange mewing sounds came from his ruined mouth. His raw hands clutched the air over and over. She did not imagine he could live and thought it would be the best if he did not.

“I hope he dies,” Telm said, almost echoing her thought, but with a darker intent.

“I suspect he will. But we must send people back to get him and bring him into the hall. I’ll treat him as well as I know how. To not help him in any way that I can would be immoral. Then it will be up to Cheelum’s mercy whether he lives or dies, but we must do all we can.”

“He’s evil,” Telm said.

“No, he’s mad.”

Her son looked directly at her, his eyes suddenly very, very old. “I suspect that it’s the same thing.”

They hurried back to the hall. Their arrival and brief description of what had happened stirred up an ant’s nest of activity. Some ran to the village and others went to bring Roland in on a sheet. They laid her brother on one of the trestle tables. If any noticed that Anlin’s first concern was the puppy, none commented.

When she made her way to Roland, he was surrounded by white-faced people, but none had touched him. He was the heir to the Lord of Giffard’s Crest. He was to have been one of the Lords of High Places. But now he was only part man and part crisped meat. Hettle had arrived in his position as reeve, but he was no help. Rather he was part of the problem having deposited his breakfast on the hall’s floor.

The cook was the most efficient, wisely bringing a jar of the ointment that was used on burns from the kitchen fire. Anlin surveyed the wreck of flesh that had been her brother and didn’t know where to start. Besides his blackened and blistered face, his torso was a mass of burns, many of which had charred pieces of his tunic attached. Anlin was sure the material should be removed, but her first attempt at pulling one of the pieces free changed Roland’s mewing to a ghostly wail. She decided to cause him no more pain than he already felt.

Anlin knew of no true cure; she suspected the most talented healer would know of none. Some degree of comfort was all she could provide. She spread the cook’s ointment over the burned area and covered him lightly with a roll of fine linen from which she had planned to make some chemises. She told one of the sturdier serving women to try to wring water from a cloth into his mouth and then walked away to sit on a bench, asking for ale to sooth the pain in her own throat.

Roland was her brother. She recalled him running after her, chubby legs pumping, wanting to be part of whatever activity she was involved in. But, as a child, she had wanted to tag after her older sister Sibyl. When she and Sibyl had gone to Hannon Heights for fostering, they’d left Roland behind without a thought, to do whatever little boys were supposed to do. Anlin had not seen Roland again until her return from Rennic, and then she had been too absorbed in her own bitterness and anger to take much note of him except in irritation.

She should feel a greater sadness that her brother lay dying, but all she could summon was a dull regret.

“How did this happen?” Hettle asked, coming to stand before her. He was still pale but otherwise improved.

“Roland tried to kill me, and he would have succeeded had Telm not acted and saved me.”

“But how was Sir Roland so badly burned?” the reeve persisted. “Nothing in the barn has been burned.”

“Suffice it to say that Telm saved me. That is enough.” Anlin felt very tired.

“Was it magic?”

She just nodded. Whatever was said would only cause people to fear Telm. She was not sure that even now Hettle did not ease away from the boy. “Come up to my solar,” she said to Telm. “There is nothing more we can do here.”

Her son fell into step next to her. As they walked across the hall, she ruffled the boy’s hair and he looked up at her with liquid eyes. No matter what horrors this day had encompassed, Telm had called her mother. To her mind, there had been more gain than loss.