Medieval 03 - Enchanted

and
clouds come and go.”
    Reluctantly Simon looked away from the fey cloth
that changed before his very eyes, weaving light and shadow until
they intertwined like lovers.
    When he saw where Ariane was pointing, he
frowned.
    “That is Stone Ring,” he said.
    Ariane gave him a questioning look.
    Simon ignored it. He disliked talking about Stone
Ring, for it was a place with at least two faces—and only one
of them could be weighed and measured.
    But what truly rankled Simon was the suspicion that
it was the less important face of Stone Ring that he could see.
    “ The Stone
Ring?” Ariane asked. “Where the sacred rowan blooms no
matter the season?”
    Without answering, Simon straightened one of his
gyrfalcon’s jesses, which had become tangled on the saddle
perch. Hooded, eager, beak slightly parted, Skylance clung and
shifted restlessly on the T-shaped wooden perch, waiting for the
instant of release into the untamed autumn sky.
    “I have been to the ring of stones,”

Simon said finally. “I didn’t see a rowan tree, much
less blossoms.”
    “Do you want to try now?”
    “No.”
    “Why? Is there not time?”
    “I don’t care to see the rowan
bloom,” Simon said. “The price is too high.”
    “The price?”
    “Love,” he said succinctly.
    “Ah, that. Does Duncan know how you
feel?”
    “’Tis hardly a secret. Any man of
common sense feels as I do.”
    “Any woman, too.”
    Ariane’s cool agreement shouldn’t have
irritated Simon, but it did. It would be very nice to be looked at
with wonder and warmth, as Meg and Amber looked at their
husbands.
    Eyes narrowed, Ariane stared through the ragged
cloud streamers to the hill where stone monoliths lifted ancient
faces to the sky.
    “Then why did Duncan toast us as he did on
our wedding?” Ariane asked.
    May you see the sacred rowan
bloom .
    “Ask Duncan,” Simon said. “I
claim no understanding of what passes for thought in the mind of a
man in love.”
    Simon’s tone of voice didn’t encourage
further pursuit of the topic of Stone Ring, but Ariane found it
impossible not to do just that.
    “What happened when you followed
Amber’s trail to the Stone Ring?” Ariane asked.
    “Not one thing.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    Simon slanted Ariane a black glance.
    “You were at Stone Ring Keep,” he said
curtly. “Surely you heard the gossip.”
    “Only pieces,” she said. “I
barely listened in any case.”
    “Too busy playing sad songs on your
harp?”
    “Yes,” she retorted. “I prefer
its music to the clatter of idle tongues. Besides, the ride from
Blackthorne to Stone Ring Keep, coming on the heels of a trip from
leaving my home in Normandy—a trip during which my knights
sickened and I lost all but my handmaiden—”
    “And your dowry,” Simon put in
dryly.
    “—left me too exhausted to care what
went on in either keep,” Ariane finished. “Now,
however, I am quite recovered.”
    “And curious to sample the gossip you
missed?”
    “These are my people now. Have I not the
right to know about them?” Ariane asked evenly.
    “We will be living at Blackthorne Keep, not
at Stone Ring Keep.”
    “Lords Erik and Duncan are joined to your
lord, the Glendruid Wolf. You, as your lord’s right hand,
will often be among Erik’s and Duncan’s
people.”
    Ariane said no more.
    Nor did she have to. As Simon’s wife she had
not only the right, but the duty, to understand the temper of the
allies who were important to her husband’s lord. In short,
Simon was being unreasonable, and both of them knew it.
    Silently Simon tightened the rein on his temper.
Talking about Stone Ring’s maddening mysteries irritated
him.
    The place was not reasonable.
    “Stagkiller coursed Amber’s trail to
the edge of Stone Ring,” Simon said neutrally, “then
stopped as though he had run into a keep wall.”
    “Did he find her trail out of the
ring?”
    “No.”
    “But Amber wasn’t anywhere inside the
ring, was she?” Ariane asked.
    “No.”
    “Then why wasn’t there a trail
out?”
    “Cassandra said that Amber took the Druid
way,” Simon said.
    “What does that mean?”
    “Ask Cassandra. She is the Learned one, not
I.”
    This time Ariane heeded the curt tone of
Simon’s voice. For a while there was silence. Yet despite her
husband’s displeasure, Ariane couldn’t help watching
the ancient ring of stones with increasing intensity as they rode
around the base of the hill.
    There was something odd about the