Mage Resolution (Book 2) Page 4

  “I don’t want you to hold me.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Sea-draggled old mage. I sniffled all the way across the neat, spotless room, and sat scrunched in Anders’s arms, weeping, until he rocked me gently to sleep. No different from when I’d first discovered, a year ago, that my father was still alive and had abandoned me, blaming me, or so I thought, for surviving childbirth.

  * * * *

  Huge brown eyes under a rebellious lock of deep brown hair poked through the half-open doorway. The building held only one bright chamber where they’d kept us fed, clothed, and comfortable. Prisoners, despite the healer’s indignant insistence. Startled, because every single Glynnswood person I encountered was stealthy, I stared at the apprehensive head to see what the rest of the boy looked like, unwilling to be civil just yet.

  “Mage Champion?” He edged into the healing chamber, eyes wide, darting a glance at Anders snuggled under covers in the far corner, sound asleep.

  Well, it wasn’t his fault either. “That’s me.” I sat up gingerly against the bed’s headboard, careful of my shoulder. “Though I’d rather you use my name.”

  A quick nod. “Mistress Keltie.”

  Keltie wasn’t what I had in mind either. “Alex.”

  Consternation flashed in his huge brown eyes. The boy couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve seasons. “That is not proper.”

  “Then don’t call me anything!” I snapped, wishing Anders would hurry and heal, and Jules come to rescue us from this hell, though it was only hell to me.

  “I have offended you.” A quick blink over shamed eyes, he edged closer, dressed like Sernyn in forest-hued tunic and trousers.

  Idiotic child. “You haven’t offended me. I’m just tired and my shoulder hurts and I want to go home. I’m cranky and rude,” I added, as he darted a cautious glance from under exquisite long eyelashes.

  “No. You are simply not where you want to be.” He managed a shy grin. “But, Alex,” he tried out my name, found it inoffensive, judging from the smile that appeared, “it is not such a horrible place to be.”

  Lords of the sea, if Sernyn flameblasted Keltie had sent this child to charm me, he was succeeding. “Where precisely is this not so horrible place?”

  I was rewarded with a broad grin. “Hartswood village at the center of the forest.”

  “I see. And who are you? My guard?”

  “Guard?” The boy flushed with the identical indignation that had so colored the healer’s face. “You are not our prisoner. Did they not explain that? I will tell them to apologize.”

  I kept my face neutral, certain he’d be devastated and insulted if I laughed aloud. “I didn’t believe them.”

  “But it is true. My name is Gwynn. Bretta asked if I would take you outside.”

  “Bretta?”

  A brisk nod. “The healer.”

  “Ah.” I studied Gwynn with open curiosity. “Well, all right. I’m dressed and have nowhere to go. Were you planning to take me far? Perhaps Port Alain?”

  Gwynn’s smile was disarming. “I wish I could take you home, Alex, but I am not permitted. And you are not strong enough. No.” He shook his head. “We are only going outside and maybe through the village a little if you are strong enough. And want to,” he added quickly.

  “Pity.” I sighed, struggling to get up. “We’ll have to see how far I can go. But I won’t get anywhere without those.” I pointed at my boots, polished and gleaming, in better condition than I’d ever seen them.

  “Wait.” Gwynn pounced on my boots and came toward the bed. When I tensed, waiting for him to shove them on my bare feet, he slanted a reproachful look my way beneath those long eyelashes. “I will not hurt you.”

  Caught off guard, I stammered something unintelligible that he dismissed, easing the boots onto my feet. “Thanks.”

  Another disarming grin revealed clean, even white teeth. He held out his arm. “Ready?”

  “I suppose.” I glanced at my cloak, but he shook his head. So I inched off the bed, grabbing the boy’s outstretched arm gratefully until I caught my balance. At the doorway, I stopped, blinking against the brilliant sunlight, enjoying the warmth on my face. Then I caught sight of the villagers, going about their business, and stiffened in alarm and hesitation.

  “No one will trouble you.” Gwynn’s voice was soft beside me. “Elder Keltie has given strict orders.” As I scurried outside to avoid discussion of Elder Keltie, Gwynn trailed behind, helping me settle down on the wooden bench alongside the building’s wall. “I have offended you again.” Head bowed, eyes downcast, Gwynn looked dejected. “I will ask Bretta to send someone else to keep you company.”

  You’ll do no such thing.” I tugged at his coarse woolen sleeve, yanking him down beside me. “Idiot. Sit down. If Sernyn Keltie gave strict orders, and Bretta asked you to stay with me, then both of them must have warned you about me.”

  “Yes.” He studied his feet, swinging lazily back and forth. “But not why.”

  “Well, hell, I won’t tell you that either, but I’d rather you didn’t speak of Elder Keltie. What’s an elder, anyway?”

  Gwynn settled back, leaning against the cool wood of the guesthouse. “An elder guides the people of a village. In Hartswood—” He stopped, flushed brightly, and looked away in confusion.

  “I assume Elder Keltie is elder of Hartswood,” I said dryly. At his nod, I poked his arm playfully. “Go on.”

  “It is simple really.” Tugging at the unruly lock of thick brown hair that refused to behave, Gwynn shrugged skinny shoulders. “The elder settles disputes, guides the gathering of clan chiefs, makes decisions that affect the village. All such things, Alex.”

  “How does an elder get to be an elder?”

  As a schoolmistress, responsible for teaching the children of Port Alain, I wondered idly if these gaps in my knowledge related to the fact that Sernyn Keltie came from Glynnswood. I’d never taught the children the least bit about this independent region within Elena’s kingdom but its name and the fact that it had forests. Evidently, there was much to learn about Glynnswood and its polite people. The village itself was as spotless as the guesthouse, with buildings all low and constructed of wood, surrounded on most sides by the encroaching forest. Everyone I saw milled about with an air of busy good nature. Was I the only one with hostile intent?

  Gwynn’s voice had an easy, pleasant quality as he rattled on, oblivious to my wandering thoughts. “The villagers choose the man or woman they believe most capable of acting as elder. If the villagers do not believe the elder should remain as elder, they will petition to have the elder step down.”

  “I see.” Surely someone had a grievance against Elder Keltie in all these years. And how long had he been so honored? One year? Two? “How long has Elder Keltie been elder of Hartswood?”

  Gwynn shot me a curious glance. “Almost twenty years.”

  Twenty years? Almost my entire life. I cleared my throat. “Who does the elder go to with problems?” I shut my eyes, content to feel the warmth on my face.

  “There is a gathering every summer in Hartswood. All elders come. No one is held higher than any other.” I opened my eyes to find Gwynn studying me from the corner of his eye as I yawned politely. “We are taught as children we owe allegiance to the crown in Ardenna, but we do not have one chief elder to represent Glynnswood should the queen demand it. We would have to choose an elder then.”

  At least they were theoretically loyal to Elena. I twisted to face Gwynn. “You’re rather intelligent for a boy. Maybe they’d send you. I’m sure her majesty would enjoy your company.”

  “I am not a boy! At least,” he stammered in embarrassment at the outburst, “not according to Glynnswood traditions.”

  “Now I have offended you.”

  “No.” He rushed to my rescue. “You do not know our ways. How could you think anything else? But Alex, I am fourteen and do not play with children any longer, and Elder—” He blinked rapidly, fumbling over hi
s words. “And I am a scout for the village and keep watch in the forests and do other things that men do.”

  An involuntary smile tugged at my mouth. “Is one of your manly tasks to keep a hostile guest content and out of trouble?”

  An unreadable expression flashed across his face, and then, “It is an honorable task.” A very shy grin transformed his face so that he looked of an age with the twins.

  “All right, if you say so. Then let’s walk, very slowly, through the village, and tell me what there is to know so that I will stay out of trouble and not offend anyone. I wouldn’t have you fail at your honorable task, and I’d rather not be considered by the village to be rude and hostile.”

  * * * *

  “I see you’ve made a friend.” Anders sat up in bed, eyes finally free of the feverish glaze. “There’s hope for you yet.”

  “This is Gwynn, my, ah, guide.”

  “Indeed.” Anders graced the boy with a polite bow from his reclining position, bundled under the coarse sweet-smelling blankets. “I hope you’ve succeeded in keeping Alex out of trouble.”

  “She has been safe with me, Mage Perrin.”

  “Well, yes. I didn’t doubt that. But have you been safe with her?”

  I tossed a pillow at Anders’s head, cursing as pain flared in my shoulder. “I’ve been a perfect guest. Most of the time, anyway. You’d have been proud of me.”

  Gwynn listened to our affectionate bickering, brown eyes darting back and forth. “I did not feel threatened at all, Mage Perrin.”

  “Call me Anders, please. You make me feel old.”

  “You are.”

  Bretta came in before Anders could reply to my sarcasm. “The fever is finally gone.” She smiled at her patient. “You are much better.” Pleased, she turned to me, a hesitant look in her eyes.

  “Thanks to your skill.”

  With a grateful, though pensive nod, she changed the dressing on Anders’s wound. “Word has come from Duke Barlow. If you are both well enough to travel,”— she glanced over Anders’s shoulder at me— “an escort will bring you to the inn tomorrow where he will be waiting to take you back to Port Alain.”

  “Are you ready to travel?” With great restraint, I managed to not sound urgent.

  “I think so.”

  As Bretta tucked Anders back under the blankets, I caught Gwynn staring at me in a peculiar way, tugging at his unruly lock of hair. Taking a chance, I asked, “Would Gwynn be allowed to accompany us to the inn? I understand he’s a scout, and such tasks might be part of his duty.” An unreadable look passed between our hosts. “Forgive me, if it would be a problem—”

  “No.” Bretta turned curious eyes my way. “No. Not at all. And Gwynn, I think, would be honored.”

  I chose to interpret the nervous tug on his hair as agreement.

  * * * *

  “Thank the lords of the sea you’re all right.”

  “I didn’t think you cared, Jules.”

  “I don’t. But mother, Lauryn, and the twins do.” Green eyes mocked me with old affection as the duke helped me struggle onto a horse, taking great care not to strain my shoulder.

  “And Khrista, too,” Kerrie, the Barlows’ steward who was madly in love with Jules’s younger sister, added with a smile as he held my horse steady. “If we didn’t come after you ourselves, Khrista threatened to call the wedding off.”

  “They were worried about me,” Anders pronounced as he tried to mount his horse without help. “Not you, Alex. Ah, damn.”

  I laughed as he slipped and fell forward onto the horse’s neck. “Serves you right for being so independent.” Settling myself in the saddle, I looked beyond Jules to the small escort he’d brought. Shivering in the cool morning breeze, I turned to Gwynn and the Glynnswoodsmen waiting at the forest’s edge. “We’re grateful for your help.”

  The head scout bowed from his half-hidden spot beneath the gnarled oak. “You are Sernyn Keltie’s daughter. There is no need to be grateful.”

  Flameblast Sernyn Keltie. He never even came to say goodbye. I nodded in confusion as the woodsmen started to vanish. All but Gwynn.

  “Thanks for keeping me out of trouble.”

  The boy smiled shyly, glancing at Jules and the Port Alain escort. “Alex? If you ever visit Hartswood again, I would be happy to keep you out of trouble.” With a strange expression on his face, he waved and vanished before I could reply.

  Maybe it was for the best that Gwynn didn’t hear my reply. I didn’t plan ever again to set foot in Glynnswood.

  Anders edged his horse close to mine. “Are you all right?”

  I tugged at the reins of my horse, and turned south. “Let’s go home.”

  * * * *

  Impatient and curious, I rapped more than once at the door to Rosanna’s study the next afternoon, waiting for the older woman’s voice.

  “Come in, Alex.”

  Wretched old witch. How did she know it was me? I opened the heavy oak door to find solemn eyes watching as I settled on the window ledge overlooking her precious gardens. “I’ve been greeted and hugged and fretted over by everyone, including the squirrels and your ducks…” I paused for dramatic effect. “But you.”

  “You were so busy with the others, I didn’t want to intrude.”

  “Did you have time to see Anders and make sure he was all right?” Guilty, as I knew she would be, the old woman turned away. “Rosanna, I don’t hold you responsible for our little misadventure,” —I smiled at her averted head and added dryly— “although it did occur to me that you might have engineered the attack to finally be rid of me.”

  Rosanna’s graying head spun around. “You ungrateful, malicious child.” When I grinned, her expression softened. “I was frantic with worry for both of you. If anything had happened—” She clenched her fists and settled down in her rocking chair, plumping pillows behind her so I wouldn’t see the tears.

  “Well, I survived. And here I am, a perfect target once again.”

  “Do you think it was Erich?”

  “It has to be someone who knows Sernyn Keltie’s alive and how I feel, or don’t feel,” I added like a spiteful child, “about the man. And, I suppose, that I’d go to Glynnswood despite those feelings if I knew he was at death’s door. Elena knows.”

  “Elena would never—”

  “Of course not. But she’s so utterly in love with Duke Harwoode she might tell him anything without thinking there was harm in it. And if he expressed curiosity about her Mage Champion’s odd talent…” I shrugged, wincing at the sudden pain in my shoulder.

  “Oh dear.”

  “Precisely.”

  “So you’re a threat to him.”

  “Maybe. But why?” I asked in frustration, tapping a restless finger against the window pane. “Because I support Elena? If he loves her, and, frankly, Rosanna, I don’t think he understands the word. Lust, no doubt. But love? Anyway,” I continued, thinking out loud, “if he loves her, wouldn’t he want to see her protected?” I turned to look out over the lush gardens, which Rosanna never let me near when she was working there, since I didn’t know the difference, in her eyes, between a weed and a rose.

  “Maybe he doesn’t want her protected.”

  “And maybe Elena’s safe only until the wedding. But after that—” I sighed unhappily. “Has Brendan’s man returned from Barrow’s Pass?”

  “Not yet. But speaking of Barrow’s Pass, Elena sent my daughter a note. She may not be able to attend Khrista and Kerrie’s wedding. It’s only a few days away, and Erich” —she bit her lip—”may be delayed in Barrow’s Pass.”

  “I wonder why.”

  Rosanna sent an anxious look my way. “Please be careful.”

  “I really didn’t think you cared.”

  “I pretend to care.” She waited a beat, and then, “Rather like you pretend not to care in the least about your father.”

  My leg stopped in mid-swing. “He never came to see us on our way home,” I said, suddenly angry. “Why should I
care if he doesn’t care?”

  “From what Anders told me,” —Rosanna didn’t blink— “if I were your father, I’d keep my distance, too. Sernyn may be many things, but he’s not a stupid man.”

  “I apologized for accusing him of the attack.”

  “Generous of you, under the circumstances.”

  I stood away from the window and headed for the door. “Yes, it was.”

  “You’ve come back with a number of unhealed wounds.”

  “And you delight in rubbing salt in them.”

  The only answer I got was a sigh.

  Chapter Six

  “The happy couple seemed happy enough,” Anders remarked some days later. He threw one arm lightly around my uninjured shoulder as we sauntered back to the cottage in the middle of the night after hours of unaccustomed celebrating.

  “They’re made for each other.” I laughed, snuggling closer under his arm. “Poor Kerrie. I don’t think he realizes just how much his new bride resembles Jules.”

  “He’ll know soon enough. Always happens with a brand new unsuspecting husband. Too bad Elena couldn’t make it in time. It’s always a pleasure—” Anders stumbled over a fallen log, muttering a vile oath I didn’t quite catch.

  “Pardon?”

  “Flameblasted log got in my way.”

  “Ah.”

  “Don’t be smug, Alex. Listen.” He wrapped his arm tighter around me and pulled me close. “Why don’t we get married?” When I stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the narrow road, Anders peered at me, squinting to see my face in the moonlight.

  I swallowed uneasily. “I don’t want to talk about this now.”

  “Why not?” He planted a very uncoordinated hand on his hip.

  “For one thing, you’re drunk.”

  “Crownmages don’t get drunk. I know perfectly well what I’m saying.” When I turned and started walking toward the cottage, Anders grabbed my arm and held me back. “Should I take this personally?”

  “No. Lords of the sea,” I said in frustration, “of course not.” I tried without success to pull away from his solid grip.

  “Then why won’t you even discuss it?”