And then he brought his head around quickly, and opened his eyes. The chambermaid was there again, looking down at him with the same smile that had been on his wife’s face a moment before.
“Why are you here, Portia?” he asked brokenly. “What do you want of me?”
“Whatever you want of me.” The tone of her voice was almost magically inviting, stirring all of the nerves in his body to life.
Ashe slammed the chair back and brought his hands down on the table before him. “What are you doing?” he shouted. “Why do you always manage to be around me when my mind is fragmented—or is it that my mind is fragmented because you’re around me?” The Lord Cymrian seized the hair of his own head and clawed at it. “What sort of insidious game are you playing with me, Portia?”
The young woman’s eyes brimmed with tears.
“M’lord, I—”
The dragon within his blood exploded in rage.
“Enough! Enough!” Ashe shouted. He swept the papers before him off the desk angrily, splattering the contents of the ink well across the thick carpet. “Leave this place; go back to Bethany or wherever it is that you came from. Go work your evil wiles on Tristan Steward; climb into his bed. Perhaps he will succumb to your seduction, but I never will. Do you not think I would know you from my own wife? Did you think you could seduce me in my misery, cause me to betray all that I hold holy? You damnable beast.” Even as the dragon in his blood rampaged, his words and the voice that spoke them sounded mad to his own ears. The chambermaid broke into tears and shuddering sobs.
“M’lord, I never—”
But the dragon in Ashe’s soul was raging, rampaging through his blood, leaving it burning in his veins.
“Silence!” he snarled, his voice more the roar of an animal than the words of a man. “Silence! Get out of my house. I want you out of here tonight; this moment! Take whatever you have and get out of here; leave my presence and do not return. I do not wish to ever see you or behold you in any way again. I do not know what trickery of the mind you are employing, but if you do not leave at once I cannot guarantee your safety here. Take whatever you brought with you; I want this entire keep purged of your presence, your essence, and anything to do with you. Go. Get out of my sight. Get out of here!” He stumbled blindly to the speaking tubes and shouted for the chamberlain.
“Gerald! Gerald Owen! Come at once and rid me of this monster!”
The chambermaid stared wildly at him for a moment longer, then buried her face in her hands and ran from the room, weeping loudly.
As she departed, something in the air of the room around Ashe seemed to shatter; the Lord Cymrian could not be certain it was a spell of some sort, a twisted snare like an invisible spider’s web that has been woven from evil power to deprive him of his sanity. Or if it was the shattering of his sanity itself.
Ashe felt every clattering step as she bounded down the stairs, absorbed the slamming of every door in the course of her exit in the nerves of his skin. He was oddly grateful that her mourning appeared to cease very quickly; her calm returned almost immediately, judging by the beating of her heart in a normal rhythm, the slowing tides of her breath, and the deliberation with which she hurriedly packed her belongings and dashed out into the night by the back door, not even waiting to be shown out by the chamberlain. He closed his eyes, hoping for the same return to calm himself, and monitored her leaving until he could no longer feel her presence within his lands, no longer smelled the scent of vanilla and sweet soap, wood smoke and meadow flowers in the upper reaches of his sinuses. He did not realize how badly his hands were shaking, or how rapidly his heart was thundering against his chest, or how, when the chamberlain came to him in a calmer moment, he would reconsider his tantrum, be swallowed by remorse, and need to rectify his actions. He did realize, however, how close he had come to a mistake that would have cost him more than the whole world.
Portia ran out into the night, her heart pounding, but with calm of one who had survived many such evictions. She wandered the cold paths of the forest under the moon until she came to a shady glen, where the budding leaves cast black lacy shadows on the ground in the ghostiy radiance all around her.
She shivered from the cold; her body had never been well padded, and the chill of the night air sank into her skin, leaving her trembling.
He will come for me, she thought. Already he regrets what he has done, and when the remorse takes over, he will come out into the night for me.
And bring me home with him again.
Tonight it will finally be consummated, she thought in delight, rubbing her hands quickly up and down her arms to warm them with the friction of it. Tonight he will finally take me in his arms, and to his bed. I will have all of him; I will ride him to the ends of the cliffs of pleasure, and as he drives himself into me, I will drive myself into his soul as well. I may not be able to evict the shadow of his wife, but she will find mine within him when she returns. And then it will all begin. It only took a few moments for the remorse to set in and take hold. Ashe stood up from the table and went to the speaking tube again. “Come, Owen,” he said, summoning the chamberlain. “I’ve been an ass. I didn’t mean to drive her out into the night, alone and without protection. Saddle up; we have to find her and bring her back. And then Tristan can make certain to take her with him when he returns to Bethany tomorrow.”
42
As Ashe had predicted, the nightmares did return.
All the while they were traveling, Rhapsody had not really noticed them. There was too much occupying her mind as she, Achmed, and Grunthor made their way in haste out of the west and into the desert. When she had left the security of her husband’s arms with the baby in tow, the fear she felt at the thought of eyes above and below the earth searching for her child was nightmarish enough. Bad dreams were hardly noticeable in that time; reality was worse. When they were encamped, she and Meridion had slept on Grunthor’s massive chest, much as she had when traveling along the Root through the belly of the earth itself. The bad dreams had been especially strong then, and while Grunthor had not been able to chase them completely away, in the manner that Ashe and Elynsynos had, he had provided a large, gruff, and wide surface on which to sleep that proved to be surprisingly warm and comforting. He had also gotten good at jostling her from her dreams, talking her through the night terrors, and providing distracting conversation should he decide what she actually needed was to waken. He had not lost the knack, and especially had enjoyed cradling the tiny baby, curling up with the infant near his neck.
But the baby was gone, and now they were back in Ylorc among the Firbolg, who looked at her suspiciously as someone who had gone away and left them, the king’s harlot, or just a source of food.
Rhapsody was alone again.
She shifted in the linen sheets that dressed her large bed in her quiet chamber within the inner hallways of Canrif. She’d never particularly liked staying within the cold mountains, and in her time in the Bolglands, she had always chosen to remain in Elysian, alone, in the tiny cottage Gwylliam had once built for Anwyn in the days when they were in love, or at least pretending to be.
Rhapsody rolled over in her sleep and sighed brokenly. She missed the little house on the island in the center of the grotto’s lake, a place of hidden magic where she had first felt safe upon coming to the new world. She and Ashe had fallen in love there, or at least had admitted that they had for the first time. They had spent a short but sweet spring there, exploring the purple crystalline caves, swimming in the dark water where filaments of stone formations and underwater stalagmites formed lazy cathedrals of beautiful muted colors beneath the surface. The firmament of the cave had been carefully bored through with dozens of holes, allowing spots of sunlight to shine down upon it, making gardens possible. Rhapsody had passed many happy hours tending to the baby trees, planting flowers and herbs, and generally reliving her childhood, in a simpler time on a farm in the middle of the Wide Meadows of Serendair.