Miles Cameron - The Dread Wyrm

“I got your note,” he said.

“And it lightened your mood?” Amicia said, emerging from the shadows with a palfrey’s reins in her right hand. “Shall we delight your lady mother by riding out into the spring sun?”

“Only if we come back with our clothes all muddy,” Ser Gabriel said. His breathing was coming short, as if he’d been in a fight. “I’m sorry that she used you for the griffon.” That wasn’t what he’d meant to say.

Amicia mounted, throwing her leg over the saddle like a man. It was neither ladylike nor elegant, although it did show a fine flash of leg. It reminded Ser Gabriel that Sister Amicia had not been raised a gentle, and was largely self-taught. At everything. Including the casting of complex sorceries.

“People will talk,” he said, trying to find a light-hearted note. “If we ride without an escort.”

“ Honi soit qui mal y pense ,” she said in passable Gallish.

They rode out into a brisk day, with a hint of old winter in every shadow and a kiss of spring in the bright sunshine. She wore her hood up until they were clear of the gates of the town, and then she threw it back, and her rich brown hair was blown free of her wimple in seconds by the stiff north wind. She caught the wimple before it whipped free, like a flag in a storm, and tucked it into her bosom.

She smiled. “Do you know how long those things take to sew?” she asked. “I can’t lose one.”

Ser Gabriel could not fail to meet her smile. “I see you are learning to embroider,” he said. “La Belle Soeur de Forêt Sauvage . Doesn’t it bore you?”

“Oh, no!” she said, with delight. “No, I relish it. It is like going to mass. So-calming. Time to think. I have done a great deal of thinking this winter-since I met your mother.”

Gabriel sighed. “Yes?” he asked. He noted, at some remove, that his hands were shaking.

She looked at him. “And you?”

He pursed his lips. “I have thought a great deal,” he said.

She laughed. “It is easy to plot and devise other people’s lives, is it not? So much easier than working on your own.” She turned her horse at a side road short of the bridge. “Come, Gabriel. We are going to talk about the rest of our lives.”

Gabriel reined in his horse. “Amicia,” he said. His voice rose in pitch.

She looked back. “Gabriel. Let us get this done.”

He sat, his horse unmoving. He was silent for so long that she had to wonder where his head was, and then he said, his voice strained, “I think you should just say it. I don’t need to ride off into the copse of woods to hear it.”

“On the highway?” she asked.

“Amicia,” he said, and he paused. He looked away.

She turned her horse back. “I don’t want to be interrupted,” she said.

Slowly, as if against his will, his horse followed hers.

They rode another league, until they came to a small chapel. It was not quite a ruin-the stones were green with moss, the roof of slate was still supported by its ancient wooden beams, but it sagged in the middle. The altar stone was still solid, and there were bunches of snowdrops on it. Inside, it was pleasant enough-brisk, but not wintry, and the odour of incense mixed with a flat mossy smell.

Gabriel saw to their horses and followed the nun into the chapel. At the door, he paused.

“I’m gathering that you are not bringing me here to succumb to my worldly advances,” he said.

“That sounds more like the man I knew at the siege,” she said. She went to the altar and kindled a small fire, lit two candles and placed them on the altar. Almost instantly, the candles made the small space seem dryer and more homey.

Then she drew a stool from behind the altar and sat. “I come here often,” she said. “The light is good.”

“And it is full of power,” he said.

“And God’s light,” she said.

Their eyes met. Hers were brown, and his were green, and each looked far too long, so that the silence grew uncomfortable, and then stretched to a flinching unease and through it.

In the aethereal , they stood on her bridge, with the clear waters of the Wild flowing under it and the golden light of the sun pouring down through a clearing in the trees. In her palace, the trees had the full and dusty green leaves of late summer.

“We didn’t need to ride out of the fortress to do this,” he said.

Amicia did not wear a robe and gown in the palace, but a tight green kirtle. “I wanted you to have time,” she said. “Everyone has ambushed you this week. I was not going to be one of them.”

Gabriel was in red; he leaned on her bridge. “I think you have brought me here to break off,” he said. “And I think the ambush is of some duration.”

She smiled. “Love-love, what break can there be between two sorcerous mortals who can walk in and out of each other’s minds?”

Gabriel smiled as if she’d said something very different. “So linked that their ops pass back and forth without volition?” He didn’t look at her. “Why didn’t you come with me, Amicia?”

“I had other duties. I made a different decision.” Her ambiguity was redoubled in the aethereal .

“Amicia.” He turned and met her look-in the aethereal . “I’m pretty sure that you agreed to come with me and be my wife.”

She shrugged. “I did. And I was wrong to, and I wronged you. But in taking my vows, I was true to myself. And I do not regret my vows.” She smiled sadly. “I will never be your wife. Nor your leman. There, it is said. Again.”

“Did I have to come here to have you say it?” he asked. “Or are you just one of those people who needs to be convinced?”

He stepped forward, his eyes hungry, and she stopped him. His reaching arms caught nothing.

“In the real,” she said, “you can overcome both my body and my will. Here, I am your peer.”

Baulked, his eyes flashed red and his rage was writ plain.

And then he stepped back and all but hissed.

“Love,” she said. “Do you need my body? Is this a matter of love, or mastery? Is it that my Jesus blocks your mighty will? Why can you not be satisfied with this? How many mighty powers stand in each other’s heads and talk? It is more intimate than any lovemaking.”

Gabriel leaned back against the railing of the bridge.

“I wondered if you would allow me into your palace,” he said.

“Why would I not?” she asked.

“Because of what you would hide from me,” he said. “It’s obvious here, is it not?” As he spoke, he pointed to his feet.

A tiny tendril, like a wisp of hair, tailed away from his right heel and fell away into the rushing water below.

Amicia put a hand to her neck.

Gabriel nodded. “At least twice, when I should have died-should absolutely, unequivocally have been dead-I have not died. The most recent occasion was so obvious that I had to know the cause.” He smiled. “I knew we were linked by the ring. But the ring merely covers something, doesn’t it?”

Amicia found it difficult to avoid his eyes. In fact, no matter where she turned, he seemed to be standing with his arms crossed.

“Why have you ensorcelled me?” he asked.

Amicia raised her head. “I cannot speak of it. What is done, is done.”

“There speaks the language of love.” He snorted.

She coloured.

He left her for the real.

“I brought you here,” she said icily, “to tell you some things.”

He smiled at her. Even in his current state, just to look at her warmed him. But he held up his hand. “I don’t think I want to hear them. Amicia-for whatever reason we are joined-you know me better than many. Or at least, I imagine you know me well. And I have to tell you that just now, I’m at my limit. I don’t need to know any more. I need to deal with my mother, and go to Harndon. In a week, or a month, or a year, if we are both alive, I would ask that we have this conversation again. And that you release me from your spell. But not, I hope, your love.” He smiled. “You needed no spell to hold me.”