Medieval 03 - Enchanted

increasingly rowdy toasts had
commenced, she had come to stand just behind her former pupil.
Silently she had watched while he lifted his goblet and responded
to toasts with a gracious smile that revealed nothing of his
thoughts.
    “Tell me, Learned,” Erik said without
interrupting his study of Ariane, “what did the dress think
of our Norman heiress?”
    “Serena’s weaving is like Serena
herself,” Cassandra said.
    “And what might that be like?” Erik
retorted. “I’ve never seen the old crone.”
    “She isn’t old.”
    Erik made an impatient sound. This was his first
opportunity to have a private conversation with Cassandra since the
nuptial dress had arrived at the keep. Curiosity—and the far
more urgent needs of a lord who must defend a keep within the
Disputed Lands’ turbulent borders—made him unusually
abrupt.
    With a rather fierce smile, Erik lifted his goblet
in response to a toast asking that the union be as fertile as there
were stars in the sky.
    “I don’t care if Serena is freshly
hatched or so old she rattles like sticks when she walks,”
Erik muttered as he set down the goblet with a thump.
    Cassandra’s mouth formed into a line that was
suspiciously close to a smile.
    “God’s teeth,” Erik said without
looking up. “Tell me what I must know and spare me the
embroidery!”
    The Learned woman’s lips were frankly smiling
now. The quicksilver grey of her eyes gleamed with amusement. It
was rare to have Erik rise so easily to the bait.
    “Be at rest,” she murmured.
“’Tis not your wedding night.”
    “Be grateful,” he said through his
teeth. “I’m in no humor to seduce an ice queen tonight,
no matter how much wealth she brought across the sea to lay at my
feet.”
    “Ah, but Ariane isn’t a goddess of
ice.”
    A subtle change went over Erik. Though he made no
move, he was somehow more alive, more alert, a predator on a fresh
scent.
    At Erik’s other side, Stagkiller rose to his
feet in a surge of power. He watched his master’s golden eyes
with eyes that were no less gold.
    “The dress accepted Ariane!” Erik said
in a low voice.
    “After a fashion.”
    “Speak clearly.”
    “A Learned speak clearly? What would become
of tradition?”
    Belatedly, Erik understood that he was being deftly
teased by the woman whom he loved like a mother.
    “Speak how you would, but do so
quickly,” Erik said. “Stagkiller is eager to course the
night. And so am I.”
    “‘Course the night.’”
Cassandra smiled. “It suits you to have the unLearned think
of you as a sorcerer who changes shape between wolf and man,
doesn’t it?”
    Erik’s teeth showed in a swift, feral grin.
“It has saved many a tedious negotiation with greedy cousins,
outlaws, and rogue knights.”
    Cassandra laughed and gave in.
    “Ariane saw something within the
cloth,” said the Learned woman.
    “What was it?”
    “She didn’t say.”
    The humor vanished from Erik’s face.
    “Then how do you know the dress accepted
her?” he asked.
    “She held and stroked the cloth as though it
were a puppy nuzzling for comfort. She took pleasure in
it.”
    Erik grunted. “Then Ariane isn’t dead
all the way to her soul, despite what Amber felt when she touched
her.”
    “It seems not.”
    “There is no ‘seems’ about
it,” he retorted. “Arianesaw
something in the dress. It felt pleasant to her touch. It is hers
and she is its. Passion exists in her, thank God.”
    “Aye. But will that passion be for Simon, or
will Serena’s gift be a kind of armor against him?”
    For a time Erik looked broodingly out on the great
hall of Stone Ring Keep.
    “I don’t know,” he said finally.

“What of you?”
    “The rune stones are silent on the
subject.”
    “Even the silver stones?”
    “Yes.”
    Erik muttered an oath under his breath.
Cassandra’s ability to foresee future crossroads was useful,
but not reliable. Prophecy came to her as it willed, rather than as she willed. Often what she saw was
enigmatic, without easy interpretation, even by Learned and priests
combined.
    Silently Erik resumed watching the assembled lords,
ladies, knights, squires, and a scattering of gently born maidens
who filled the great hall with shouts and laughter. When it was
appropriate to respond to a toast, he did so, but his expression
held the people of the keep at bay.
    From his position at the raised table, seated to
the right of Duncan, lord of Stone Ring Keep, Erik could see and
name each knight who drank