Mercedes Lackey - Wintermoon

“Nothing supercedes my will in this keep!” Ferson roared, rising to his feet, although Massid placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Forget that, my girl, and you will learn the truth of it to your sorrow—”

“Sorrow!” She uttered a brittle laugh. “If that is all you can threaten me with—I have rights, my lord, and not even you can take those from me, and I say I will not agree to this treasonous marriage!”

By now every eye was on the dais. There would be no keeping this secret from even the lowest scullery boy, and by the looks on the nearest faces, Ferson’s words were not going down well. One did not threaten the Keep Lady; she embodied the Luck of the Keep. When she was contented, the storms were few, and the storm harvest rich. Moira could tell that people were beginning to think about the too-early and too-frequent storms of this winter.

They were also thinking that Ferson was talking about marrying the Luck of the Keep to an enemy, and that when the King got wind of it, there would be hell to pay. Her father was oblivious to the sideways glances, the unease in the hall. He was too consumed with rage, his face nearly purple.

“I tell you,” she continued passionately, in the words Kedric had chosen for her to speak, “I would rather wed your fool than allow this Massid, this foreigner, to touch the smallest finger of my hand!”

For one moment she was afraid she had overreached herself—that she had gone just a little too far, that her father, who was so much more practiced in deception than she, would see through her.

But her father seized the bait like a ravenous shark. His head came up, and his eyes flashed with rage. “Oh you would, would you?” He turned to the rest of the room and thrust his fist in the air. “You have heard it! You are all my witnesses! She will not take my choice of husband, but wishes to marry the fool!”

He turned back toward her and seized her hand. Expecting this, she did not resist him as he dragged her to where Kedric sat on a stool at the back of the dais. With a wrench, he flung her at Kedric’s feet. Kedric moved with amazing swiftness, somehow managing to put his lute aside and catch her before she fell.

“Take the ungrateful wretch, Fool!” her father bellowed. “She would rather be wed to you! Well, I declare it, here and now, and before witnesses!”

In an ugly parody of the peasant fisherfolk’s wedding rite, he pulled off his own belt and bound their right hands together, then poured the remains of his wine on the floor in front of them, following that with the entire contents of the saltcellar. “Wed and bound I declare you! Wed and bound you two are, by fruit of the land and the fruit of the sea, and the power of the lord of the keep!”

Even though this was exactly what she had wanted, Moira felt her knees start to buckle, and with surprising strength, Kedric held her up.

“And know that if you dare to touch her carnally, Fool,” Ferson growled under his breath, “I’ll have your stones for fish bait.”

“I understand, my lord,” Kedric murmured back.

“Now take her away from my sight, and keep her out of it until she’s ready to obey!” Ferson shouted. “Take her and teach her, curse you both!”

Kedric stopped only long enough to pull Ferson’s belt from their joined hands, and scoop up his lute. Then with one hand cupped under her elbow, he hurried her off the dais and across the now-silent Great Hall. Moira felt the eyes of every person there on the two of them—and with a prickling of her skin, she looked back over her shoulder to see that Massid’s eyes, black and cold, bored across the expanse of the hall with that same terrible, inhuman anger she had glimpsed once before.

She was glad to have Kedric’s hand at her arm, and gladder still to slip into the shadowed hallway, where Massid could no longer see her.

“You’ll have to keep out of his sight for now,” Kedric murmured, as they hurried down the hall to the Keep Lady’s rooms. A cold draft chased them down the hall, blowing out lamps in their wake. “I’ll have food brought to you.”

He opened the door to her rooms, and they stumbled inside, as the last of the lamps blew out in the hall behind them.

“And if you want to avoid accident, I think that you had better stay out of sight of Massid,” she retorted, feeling her spirits return as she closed the door of her rooms behind him hurriedly.

“I know. I felt his eyes burning into my back, and it was not just with rage,” Kedric replied, catching hold of both her arms. “My lady—Moira—those words your father said—I did not plan for a marriage—”

She laughed weakly. “We plotted better than we knew. We are well and truly wedded, my dear Fool, not merely betrothed as was the intention. It is no sham. That is a legal and binding ceremony by the traditions of the fishing folk hereabouts. It will take the King himself to undo the knot. Although I do not think my father intends you to enjoy your wedded state. I think he means for you to berate me, torment me with your sharp tongue, and humiliate me until I would take even Massid to get away from you.”

“I believe you.” He put his back to the door and looked at her soberly. “My lady, I fear I may have overstepped myself with my own so-called cleverness. If Massid is indeed the magician here, as you think—”

“Then he is still at dinner, trying to undo the damage my father has done, and very much occupied with repairing the situation,” she replied. “Which means that you are free to speak to your master. I very much doubt that my servant will return here before morning, so we will not be disturbed.”

His somber gaze brightened. “So I am. And perhaps he will have some better news.”

Fishing in the bag hanging from his belt, he brought out a piece of chalk from one of the cliffs, and bent to mark out a diagram on her hearth. It seemed to consist of six interlocking triangles, and when he had finished it, the thing seemed to pull at her eyes in a way that made her feel very uneasy. She didn’t have to look at it for long, however. No sooner had he finished it than he slapped his right hand, palm down, into the middle of it, obscuring the center.

The chalked lines suddenly flared with light. She looked away for a moment, and when she looked back, she had to stifle a little scream of alarm.

There was a disembodied head made entirely of fire suspended above the flames of her hearth. It was the head of a balding man with a thick fringe of hair at about ear level encircling his pate, and a pointed chin. The eyes looked like holes in the flames of the face.

“Master!” Kedric began.

“Be still!” the head said, “I haven’t much time! Have you learned Massid’s purpose there?”

“Not the chief purpose, though Ferson attempted to push through a marriage to his daughter tonight—” Kedric said. “But I have learned that someone here is performing magic to create a false beacon during storms that will decoy ships onto the rocks!”

The head interrupted him. “The beacon! Have you countered the magic that is changing the beacon? Have you even discovered what it is?”

Kedric shook his head, and the head in the fireplace swore.

“Listen! The King has been forced by a crisis to sail this very day for Linessa with most of the fleet. His convoy must pass by Highclere to reach it. You must make certain no one there learns of this! If the beacon is wrong—”

“Master! You must warn him!”

“Impossible. No birds could reach him from the shore, and there are no magicians with him that can speak at a distance—it is combative magics he needs, and those are the magicians he took. Kedric, at all costs, you must see to it that no one learns that the fleet has sailed, and if a storm comes up, you must counter the false beacon at all costs!” The head turned, as if looking elsewhere. “I must go! Heed me! Counter that magic!”