Medieval 03 - Enchanted

cuts your sword has left on my hauberk in the past week,”
Erik said dryly.
    Simon’s eyes narrowed. With startling speed
he bent and dragged the amethyst fabric across Erik’s
chausses. Cloth slid like sunlight over metal. There was no
hesitation, no catching, no holding.
    “By the Cross,” Simon said,
straightening.
    He looked at the cloth in his fist, then at Erik.
Without a word Simon released the cloth. It slid as far down as his
own thigh.
    And stuck.
    Simon stepped back as though burned. The amethyst
cloth followed until Ariane grabbed it and shook it down into place
around her ankles.
    “You see?” Erik asked Simon.
    Ariane and Simon exchanged a dismayed glance.
    “That’s why you could rip a bandage
from the dress,” Erik explained. “Anyone else would
have had to fight the cloth, and his own distaste for handling it,
to make a bandage. And even then, it would have required a knife to
sever the threads.”
    “I don’t understand,” Ariane
said.
    Simon wasn’t sure he wanted to.
    “The weavings of the Silverfell clan can be a
kind of armor,” Erik said. “Whoever the fabric’s
wearer trusts may do anything to the cloth, including tear it.
Ariane trusts you.”
    A black glance was Simon’s only answer.
    “The cloth pleases you,” Erik said.
    It wasn’t quite a question, but Simon nodded,
compelled by the intensity that burned just beneath Erik’s
calm surface.
    “Yes. The cloth pleases me. Very much.”
The words came from Simon as though dragged.
“Witchery.”
    But there was no heat in his voice, for the cloth
had saved Ariane’s life.
    “Learning, not witchery,” Erik
corrected. “You have a gift for it, no matter how you fight
and deny. And so does Ariane . Were she
not Norman, I would swear she had the blood of ancient Druids in
her veins.”
    “I do,” Ariane said.
    Her voice was so soft that it took a moment for
both men to realize that she had spoken.
    “What did you say?” Erik asked, pinning
her with eyes that could have belonged to a falcon.
    “My mother’s people were whispered to
be witches,” Ariane said simply. “It wasn’t true.
If you cut them, they bled the same as anyone. If you put a knife
in their heart, they died. They cast no spells. Nor did they
consort with the Dark Prince. They wore the holy cross and spoke
God’s prayers without difficulty or fault.”
    “But some of your ancestors were different
nonetheless,” Erik said.
    Again, it wasn’t quite a question.
    “Different, not evil,” Ariane said
instantly.
    “Aye,” Erik agreed. “’Tis a
hard thing for some men to accept, that difference isn’t
evil.”
    Simon said nothing at all. The quality of his
silence was chilling.
    “You need not fear,” Ariane said,
turning to Simon. “My gift of finding things didn’t
survive my…illness.”
    “Your knife wound?” Simon asked.
    “Nay. An illness that came to me in
Normandy.”
    Erik looked at Ariane coolly as his mind sorted
through the various possibilities and patterns that would fit what
he knew of Ariane. No pattern emerged save one.
    And that one made him fear for the peace of the
Disputed Lands.
    “Illness?” Erik asked softly.
“When?”
    In an instant Simon’s body came to battle
readiness. The softness of Erik’s voice was more dangerous
than the sound of a sword being drawn.
    Ariane, too, heard the change in Erik’s
voice. He was every inch the heir of Lord Robert of the North, a
man whose wealth rivaled that of the king of the Scots.
    “I fell ill shortly before I left
Normandy,” Ariane said to Erik.
    “What kind of illness.”
    Not a question. A demand.
    Ariane flushed to the roots of her hair, then went
quite pale, wishing she had never brought up the subject. She had
no intention of telling Erik the circumstances that had resulted in
the loss of her gift.
    “My wife,” Simon said distinctly,

“answers only to her husband, to her king, and to
God.”
    For an instant it seemed that Erik would disregard
the challenge in Simon’s words. Then the Learned man changed,
intensity fading until he was once more an entertaining companion
for the hunt and the hearth.
    “Forgive me,” Erik murmured to Ariane.
“I meant no rudeness.”
    She nodded, relieved.
    “But if ever you would like to regain your
gift,” he said softly to her, “come to Cassandra. Or to
me.”
    Before Simon could speak, Ariane did. “My
gift can never be regained.”
    The flatness of her voice closed the subject with
the finality of a door