Medieval 02 - Forbidden

growing very thick coats, yet the birds still call from the trees. The sun is still warm,yet joints and old wounds ache. The good priests pray and dream their dreams, yet none agree as to God’s answer.”
    “Signs. Prophecies. Priests. Dreams.” Duncan grimaced. “It’s enough to make a warrior’s head ache. Give me a sword and a shield and I’ll make my own way, come what will—or what has .”
    The open wound of Duncan’s lost memory drew harsh brackets on either side of his mouth. Amber traced the lines with a fingertip, but she was unable to reach past Duncan’s pain and anger.
    Unhappily she turned away, facing the wild green glen once more. On both sides of the path, rowan trees clung to gray rock cliffs like fallen angels. The few berries that had been overlooked by birds glowed in ruby bursts at the ends of branches. Ghostly birches thronged in creases and crowded ridge lines. Their leafless branches lifted to the autumn sky in silent query about the lost summer and the winter to come.
    Ahead and to the right, a low circle of reclining stones marked an ancient place. A larger, more ragged circle of standing stones loomed on an oddly flattened ridge line.
    An eagle’s high, untamed cry pierced the silence. The call was repeated one, twice, thrice.
    Duncan tilted back his head and returned the wild whistle with uncanny accuracy.
    The bird of prey wheeled aside as though reassured of Duncan’s and Amber’s right to be within the fey glen. As they watched, the eagle rode a transparent torrent of air to the far side of the ridge and disappeared.
    “Who taught you to answer the eagle’s question?” Amber asked softly.
    “My mother’s mother.”
    “She was Learned.”
    “I doubt it,” Duncan said. “We had none we called Learned.”
    “Sometimes, in some places, it is safer to have no name.”
    Neither Duncan nor Amber spoke again until they had followed the hurtling silver creek into a small dale and down to the restless sea. The grasses of the marsh were equally alive, combed by a fairy wind.
    For the man and woman poised on a low rise above the fen, the sound of wind and marsh was that of score upon score of people whispering, murmuring, sighing, confiding…a thousand hushed breaths stirring the air.
    “I know now why it is called Whispering Fen,” Duncan said quietly.
    “Until the winter geese come, yes. Then the air resounds with their honking and whistling, and the fen whispers only in the smallest hours of the night.”
    “I’m glad to know it this way, with the sun turning the tips of marsh grass into candles. ’Tis like a church in the instants before the mass is chanted.”
    “Yes,” Amber whispered. “It is exactly that. Filled with imminence.”
    For a few moments Duncan and Amber sat in silence, absorbing the special peace of the fen. Then Whitefoot stretched her neck and tugged at the bit, wanting the freedom to graze.
    “Will she wander if we dismount?” Duncan asked.
    “Nay. Whitefoot is almost as lazy as Egbert.”
    “Then we will rest her for a time before we start back.”
    Duncan dismounted and lifted Amber from the horse’s back. When he set her on her feet, her fingers caressed his cheek and the thick, dark silk of his mustache. He turned his head and kissed her hand with a tender, lingering heat that shortened her breath.
    When Amber looked up into Duncan’s eyes, sheknew she should draw away. She didn’t have to be touching him to be certain that he wanted her with a wildness that equaled the eagle’s cry.
    “We should start back very soon,” she said.
    “Aye. But first…”
    “First?”
    “First I will teach you not to fear my desire.”

8
    “T HAT —that wouldn’t be wise,” Amber said raggedly.
    “On the contrary, precious Amber. It would be the wisest thing I have ever done.”
    “But we shouldn’t—we can’t—”
    The slow drawing of Duncan’s fingertips over Amber’s lips scattered her words and her thoughts. She could sense his desire so clearly that it made her tremble.
    And even more clearly she sensed his restraint.
    “Duncan?” Amber asked, confused.
    “I won’t take you,” he said simply. “I don’t know what I did to you in the past that you fear my desire now, but I do know that you fear it.”
    “It is not—what you—dear God—you must not take me!”
    “Hush, precious Amber.” Duncan sealed her lips with a gentle pressure of his thumb. “I won’t take you. Do you believe me?”
    Amber felt the truth in