Medieval 02 - Forbidden

Cassandra watched the peregrine.
    “Winterlance will be little better off,” Erik continued relentlessly. “What the outlaws don’t seize, my cousins or the Norsemen will take. Do you deny this?”
    Cassandra let out a sigh. “No.”
    “A weapon has been given to me.”
    “Double-edged.”
    “Aye. The weapon requires careful handling. But better it be in my hands than in Dominic le Sabre’s.”
    “Better you had left Duncan to die.”
    “Hindsight or prophecy?” Erik asked sardonically.
    Cassandra said nothing.
    “He wore an amber talisman and slept at the foot of the sacred rowan,” Erik said after a moment. “Would you have left him to die?”
    Again Cassandra sighed. “No.”
    Erik narrowed his eyes against the brilliant silver of a cloud-chasm where the sun threatened to burn through. The peregrine was well up into the sky, scouting the marshy edges of the lake with matchless eyes, questing for waterfowl.
    “But what if he remembers before he marries?” Cassandra asked quietly.
    “That isn’t likely. The storm is as hungry for the possession as the bud, the island, and the lake puttogether. He will have her before the week is out.”
    Scarlet sleeves whipped in a burst of wind, revealing Cassandra’s tightly clenched hands.
    “It won’t be rape,” Erik said. “In Duncan’s presence, Amber burns as though lit from within.”
    For a time the only sound that came was the muted rattle of marsh grasses combed by the wind.
    “But if Duncan remembers first?” Cassandra repeated.
    “Then he will try his strength against my quickness. And he will lose, as he lost to Simon. But with a difference.”
    “Duncan will die.”
    Erik nodded slowly. “It is the only defeat he would accept.”
    “What, then, of Amber?”
    A falcon’s wild, mournful cry keened through the wind, answering Cassandra before Erik could. She turned, saw his face, and knew why the falcon had screamed.
    Cassandra’s eyes closed. For long moments she listened to the inner silence that spoke most clearly of crossroads and coming storms.
    “There is another possibility,” she said.
    “Aye. My own death. Having seen how Duncan fared against Simon, I don’t hold it likely.”
    “Would that I had met this Simon,” Cassandra said. “Any man who could defeat Duncan easily would be a warrior worth knowing.”
    “It wasn’t an easy victory. Despite Simon’s catlike speed, Duncan nearly caught him twice.”
    Cassandra’s eyes darkened, but she said nothing.
    Erik drew his bronze mantle more closely around his shoulders. Through long habit, he made certain that the folds of cloth didn’t foul the sword he wore along his left side.
    “If truth be known,” Erik said, smiling slightly, “I’m hoping not to face Duncan over drawn swords. He can be devilish quick for a man his size.”
    “You’re hardly smaller. Nor was Simon.”
    Erik said nothing.
    “If you die on Duncan’s sword, you won’t go into the darkness alone,” Cassandra said softly. “I will send Duncan after you with my own hands.”
    Startled, Erik looked at the serene face of the woman he thought he knew.
    “Nay,” he said. “That would bring a war Lord Robert couldn’t win.”
    “So be it. It was Lord Robert’s arrogance that caused much of what might come. He is overdue to sleep on a bed of thorns and regrets.”
    “He wanted only what all men want. A male heir to hold his lands undivided.”
    “Aye. And he would have set aside my sister to achieve it.”
    For a moment Erik was too surprised to speak.
    “Your sister ?” he asked.
    “Aye. Emma the Barren.”
    “Why wasn’t I told?”
    “That I’m your aunt?” Cassandra said.
    Erik nodded curtly.
    “It was part of the bargain Emma and I struck,” she said. “Lord Robert fears the Learned.”
    Erik wasn’t surprised. The breach with his father that had come over Erik’s pursuit of Learning had never been healed.
    “Once Emma married Robert,” Cassandra said, “he barred me from her presence. He lifted the ban only once, when she came to me as Emma the Barren.”
    “And went home to conceive soon after,” Erik said dryly.
    “Yes.” Cassandra’s smile was as chilly as the day. “It was my great pleasure to give Robert the Ignorant a Learned sorcerer for a son and heir.”
    The smile changed as Cassandra looked at Erik, permitting herself to show the love she always felt and rarely revealed.
    “Emma is dead,” she said quietly. “I owe nothing to Robert but my contempt.