Alain’s moan was halfway to a mew.
Instantly Cordelia was three feet away from him, eyes downcast, the very picture of the chaste and demure maiden. “I shall not taunt you, then. Nay, it is wrong of me to tease you.” She looked up, meeting his eyes again. “And wrong of me to withhold you from your duties. Go assure yourself that all is well with your people, and that Gregory’s . . . betrothed . . . is only beset by megrims.”
“Take heart, my love,” Alain said softly. “If you do not yet trust Allouette, be sure that I do not either.”
“It had crossed my mind that she was enticing you both away at a most inopportune time,” Cordelia admitted, “but it is an unworthy suspicion. Go, my love. Chase phantasms for a fortnight—but do not dare be a single day longer, or you shall face a far more terrible monster than ever my brother could dream!”
Quicksilver was practicing jousting, riding at the quintain with a blunted lance. She knocked it spinning, turned her horse to trot back for another pass—and saw her true love riding toward her with bulging saddlebags and simmering anger in his eyes. Her heart dropped and she kicked her horse to a canter, rushing to meet him. “Geoffrey! What troubles you?”
“My idiot brother,” he said, fuming. “He and Allouette have endured a waking nightmare, seeing monsters come ravening out of some fantastic whirlpool of fog to despoil all of Gramarye. Now they have ridden to discover its whereabouts and have left me with a warning to be on guard.”
“Gone on a quest?” Quicksilver cried. “But it is only a month until Cordelia’s wedding!”
“All the more reason, says Gregory, to rid the land of whatever menace seeks to disrupt their nuptials,” Geoffrey said grimly.
Quicksilver caught his undertone and frowned. “You suspect something.”
Geoffrey went still, then nodded sheepishly. “It is wrong, I know, but it did occur to me that this might be some stratagem of Allouette’s to avoid having to face the whole family at the wedding.”
Quicksilver frowned, reviewing what she knew of Allouette and assessing it in a flash.
“Surely we shall have riddled out this muddle in a fortnight! And if we fail to, fear not, sweet one.” Geoffrey leaned forward and kissed her, then assured her, “I shall haul Alain home in good time for the wedding if I have to knock him senseless to do it—not that he is showing overmuch sense as it is. Farewell!”
With that, he turned and rode through the gatehouse, leaving Quicksilver staring behind him, trying to decide whether to laugh or to shout in anger. She bit her lip in uncertainty, not willing to admit a lingering fear that Geoffrey might have wearied of her. Nonetheless, the feeling nudged at her, and to quell it, she kicked her horse to a canter, pulled him up at the door of the keep, tossed the reins to a groom, and strode up the steps to rally Cordelia.
Rally? She came into Cordelia’s room to find her in a sturdy traveling gown, packing her saddlebags. “How now, sister-to-be! What will your prince say if he finds you on his trail?”
“Naught, for I shall make certain he does not find me,” Cordelia said, thin-lipped, “until he has need of me.”
“Sound enough,” said Quicksilver, “but what if he does not?”
Cordelia shrugged. “Then he will be none the worse.” She looked up. “This is no surprise to you. Has Geoffrey, then, already bade you au revoir?”
“He has,” Quicksilver said grimly, “and in so swift a fashion that I could scarcely protest—especially if the common folk are in danger.” She was herself the daughter of a squire and had grown up learning to care deeply about the land and the people. The common folk had repaid her by joining her outlaw band when the only choices left her were to go to her lord’s bed as she was bidden, or to rebel.
“Well, Alain is certainly not going into danger without me to ward him,” Cordelia avowed, “whether he knows it or not.”
“Indeed,” the reformed outlaw captain agreed. “Why should we stay at home and wring our hands?” She pursed her lips. “Nonetheless, it might be wiser to let the boys go ahead of us.”
“Yes,” Cordelia sighed. “They will take it ill if they see us trailing after them.”
“They would be affronted to know we doubt their abilities to deal with whatsoever danger they may find,” Quicksilver pointed out. “Then, too, if they fall into disaster, they may welcome others who follow to aid them in fighting off the enemy.”
“Not if those ‘others’ are their fiancées, I suppose,” Cordelia said sourly. “I will chance that, though, rather than chance their dying.”
It never occurred to either of the ladies that they might run into a predicament that the four of them together might not be able to solve.
“But with only a month till your wedding!” Quicksilver protested. “Will not the ceremony fall apart if you do not keep the arrangements in train?”
“It will fall apart even more if my fiancé does not come back,” Cordelia said sharply. “If I wish to be sure of a wedding, I must see to it that my groom stays alive!” She leaned closer and confided, “And truthfully, I am nearly driven to distraction by all this fuss about the church and the food and the gown and the guests! My wedding will proceed just as well for a week gone, and I shall be far more likely to emerge sane and cheerful.”
“But your lady mother—”
“My mother was once a bride, too, and I have no doubt she will cheer my leaving.” Cordelia gazed off into space a moment.
Quicksilver knew she was telepathically discussing the issue with her mother. It still gave her the megrims, to see mind reading used so casually.
Cordelia nodded briskly and finished folding a spare bodice. “She applauds my going and will keep all the preparations in progress while I am gone.” She looked up at Quicksilver, eyebrows raised. “You will accompany me, will you not?”
Quicksilver felt her lips curving into a smile. She chuckled and said, “Of course. What else is a sister-in-law for?”
So the Gallowglass Heirs set off on a quest, Gregory and Allouette forging ahead, blithely unaware that Alain and Geoffrey were half a day behind them, and Cordelia and Quicksilver half a day behind them.
None of them could know that Diarmid followed with half a dozen hand-picked men-at-arms, all very loyal to him—so loyal that none of them had breathed a word as to where they were going to anyone except their knight, and had told him only that the Duke of Loguire had summoned them. The knight would therefore not be able to tell the king and queen that both their sons were playing the knight-errant.
Of course, Diarmid was quite sure that they would learn that little detail—when he failed to appear at breakfast the next day, and his valet found Alain’s note. In fact, he was counting on their parents’ reaction. It gave him a certain sense of security to know that his father would be a day’s march behind him with a small army.
CHAPTER 2
On the morning of the second day, Allouette and Gregory climbed into some high and rugged hills. The trees grew more and more stunted, the roadside grass shorter and browner, until they were riding through rock and hardened clay bearing only scrub brush and dried grass. By that time, the path had grown so steep that they had to dismount and lead their horses—so as they neared the crest, they were not in the best position to have an ogre step out from a behind a boulder to block their path.
Its bandy legs looked more like the roots of hundred-year-old oaks; its shoulders seemed like kegs set on either side of a neckless head that was all lumps and slashes with a matted thatch of dun-colored hair. Two-inch fangs protruded from the corners of the bottom-most slash—presumably its mouth—and tiny eyes gleamed from two more, higher up. Its log-thick arms were so long that its ham-handed fingers drummed on a knee, and for clothing it wore only a tattered tunic and moth-eaten hose. It roared, swinging high a huge cudgel, and waddled down the slope toward them, pig-eyes ablaze with bloodlust.