Medieval 02 - Forbidden

not.”
    The combination of anguish and acceptance in Amber’s voice told Meg more than words could have.
    “You knew this would happen, didn’t you?” Meg whispered.
    “I knew it might. I hoped it wouldn’t.” Amber closed her eyes. “I wagered…everything. I lost.”
    “Why did you do it?”
    “Duncan came to me in shades of darkness…and touching him taught me that the darkness was mine, not his.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    Amber smiled oddly. “I doubt that anyone could unless they were cursed with my ‘gift.’”
    Motionless, Meg waited, seeing Amber’s truth and sorrow with Glendruid eyes.
    “Mine was a lifetime of night,” Amber said simply. “Duncan was my dawn. How could I let Erik hang him?”
    “Hang Duncan?” Meg asked, appalled.
    “Aye.”
    As though chilled, Amber wrapped her arms around herself and whispered, “‘ Death will surely flow .’”
    Coolness coursed down Meg’s spine. “What was that?”
    “Cassandra’s prophecy, the one I hoped to evade.”
    “What prophecy?”
    Amber’s laugh was a cry of throttled pain.
    “More fool I,” Amber said bleakly. “Rich life was the lure, death is the truth. Better that I had never been born.”
    “What prophecy?” Meg asked again, sharply.
    The tone of her voice brought Dominic immediately to his wife’s side.
    “What is it, small falcon?”
    “I don’t know. I know only that something is wrong, black wings beating…”
    The echo of her own words brought Amber’s attention back to Meg. The compassion in the Glendruid healer’s eyes was as clear as it was unexpected.
    “A prophecy attended my birth,” Amber said. “‘ A man with no name may you claim, heart and body and soul. Then rich life might grow, but death will surely flow .’”
    Dominic’s eyes narrowed into slivers of beaten silver as he listened. He would have dismissed the words, but his own marriage had taught him that some prophecies were as real, and as deadly, as a drawn sword.
    “‘ In shades of darkness he will come to you. If you touch him, you will know life that might or death that will .
    “‘ Be therefore as sunlight, hidden in amber, untouched by man, not touching .
    “‘ Forbidden .’”
    When Amber finished speaking, there was a silence unbroken by even the wind. She turned around and found what she had feared she would—Duncan standing behind her, watching her with wintry contempt in his eyes.
    “You came to me in shades of darkness,” Amber said,” a man with no name. And I touched you. Youclaimed my heart and my body. We had better pray that my soul is still unclaimed, or death will surely flow.”
    “Then we are lost, witch. Your soul was sold to the devil a long time ago.”
    “ Duncan !” Meg said, appalled.
    “Don’t let your soft heart lead you astray, Meggie,” Duncan said. “There is naught but hell’s own calculations in that sweet-faced witch.”
    “You are wrong. I have seen her.”
    “So have I,” he retorted sardonically. “I have seen her bend to me and whisper of love at the very instant she most deeply betrayed me.”
    Amber’s head came up. She watched him with a falcon’s proud eyes.
    “I have never betrayed you,” she said distinctly.
    “You didn’t tell me my own name. I call that a betrayal.”
    “I didn’t know who you were until you fought the outlaws with such lethal skill.”
    Duncan said nothing.
    “And even then I wasn’t certain beyond all doubt,” Amber said. “It made no sense. You had flashes of Learning, yet Duncan of Maxwell wasn’t Learned.”
    Meg looked curiously at Duncan, as though seeing a side of him that she hadn’t known existed before.
    “There could have been other warriors,” Amber said, her voice subtly pleading, “men whose names I didn’t know, men who had a strong hand with the hammer, men who were Learned.”
    “Did you know who I was before we married?” Duncan asked bitterly.
    Amber’s spine straightened and her chin came up. “Yes.”
    “Did you know I was betrothed to another, a marriage arranged by my true lord, Dominic le Sabre?”
    “Erik…told me.”
    “Before we were married?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you say you never betrayed me. Such fine calculations they must teach the Learned, all the ways to split hairs until nothing remains but dishonor.”
    The contempt in Duncan’s voice made Amber feel as though she were being flayed with a thin whip.
    “I had to marry you,” she said desperately. “It was either that or watch