Keeper of the Dream Read online

  Brother and sister stared at one another a moment longer, each lost in thought. Then Arianna flashed a sudden grin and punched her brother on the arm hard enough to make him wince. “Now go see to your army, my lord. Before the battle is won without you.”

  Though she kept her smile in place until her brother was out the door, Arianna didn’t feel nearly so brave now that she was alone. She found herself going again and again to the window, but except for sputtering and intermittent flames swirling up against the black sky, it had grown too dark to see anything. In between trips to the window, her gaze kept falling on the golden mazer. She told herself it was only tension and fear that made her feel as if the useless bowl was beckoning her. She didn’t want to know the future anyway, not if it was going to be bad. She didn’t want to know, didn’t want to …

  The bowl, when she touched it, felt warm against her palms. For a moment she thought it glowed with a strange, pulsating light, but in the next instant she decided it must be an illusion—a draft causing the flames of the torches in the brackets on the wall to sputter and flicker, bouncing off the bowl’s shiny surface. And yet not wanting to, she lifted the bowl and looked … and knew this time the vision would come.

  She made one final, desperate effort to resist, turning her head aside. But the force of the vision, so ancient and so powerful, was too strong for her. She looked down, down into the bowl’s glimmering depths …

  And the water swirled and eddied, darkening into a pool of blood.

  The bloody pool whirled faster, sucking her in. She clenched the bowl with a white-knuckled grip. A blinding mist rose up from the vortex of the spinning liquid, searing her eyes with its brightness. A final mewl of protest pushed through her lips, as the clang of sword against sword battered her ears … and death screams carried on a howling wind. She smelled the tang of hot metal, the acrid sweat of fear….

  A mailed knight burst out of the swirling mists. His horse reared, pawing the air, and for a moment he was silhouetted, large and menacing, against a slate sky. He raised his mighty lance and a gust of wind snapped at the pennon, unfurling it against leaden clouds—a black dragon on a bloodred field. With a cry of triumph he whirled and charged.

  The hooves of his black steed shook the ground. Closer he came, close enough for her to see the fury in his flint-gray eyes, the set of ruthless determination on his hard mouth. He lowered his lance, pointing it at her heart, and her mouth opened on a silent scream, as if she could already feel the sharp tip piercing her.

  Thunder cracked in her ears. A lightning bolt slashed across the lowering clouds, striking the burnished spearpoint, and in the second before the steel tip impaled her, shattering the vision into a thousand shards of light….

  The smell of sweet rosemary filled her nose and something tickled her cheek. She opened her eyes and saw straw and the three bronze clawed feet of the brazier. For a moment she felt drugged and bemused, and she pushed herself to her knees, swaying dizzily. She waited for the room to stop spinning, then groped for a stool, dragging herself to her feet. White-hot flashes of pain sizzled across her eyes and vomit rose in her throat. She barely made it into the garderobe before she was violently sick.

  She retched and heaved until she thought she would pass out again. She had always felt slightly dizzy and nauseated after one of her visions, but it had never been this bad. The image of the charging knight kept flashing across her mind in staccato bursts, like sparks from a blacksmith’s anvil. Groaning, she pressed her fingers against her throbbing temples and stumbled to the bed.

  The painted walls with their floral motif spun and whirled. Vines, petals, tendrils curled and undulated, reaching out for her. She shut her eyes on a moan, then immediately opened them again to stare at the blue sendal canopy overhead. The marten-fur coverlet felt cool against her fevered skin. Her stomach clenched and for a moment she thought she would be sick again.

  Slowly the nausea receded, but the fierce hammering in her head remained. After a moment, when she was sure she could stand without fainting, she arose on quaking legs to prepare a quick poultice of peony root mixed with rose oil. She soaked a linen rag in the mixture and pressed it against her head. The pounding subsided to a dull ache.

  She lay back on the bed. Below in the bailey the watch man’s horn was answered by the trumpeter of the guard. All was well, or as well as things could be with an enemy army camped outside the gate. Yet she was afraid to shut her eyes, afraid the image of the knight would return.

  That vision … it had been unlike any that had come before. The others had been of distant, shadowy figures reflected in pools of water, some so vague she had been unable afterward to interpret what she had seen. But this one … she had been in this one. She had smelled the hot metal, heard the pounding hooves, and felt the lance tip piercing … oh God, but it had seemed so real. She had been there.

  Turning her head, she stared at the tall wax candle beside the bed. It was supposed to burn all night, to keep away evil spirits. She almost laughed at the irony. Imagine the Black Dragon, that limb of hell, being kept at bay by the light of a solitary candle. Still, though the candle’s flame stabbed at her eyes, she did not draw the curtains around the bed.

  The wind, which had been buffeting the keep all night, suddenly ceased. The promised storm had blown itself out, which was a pity, for the God-cursed Normans would not get wet after all. She wondered if she should tell her brother about the vision, but it would avail him nothing and only add to his anxiety. Besides, the threat presented by the charging knight was to her, not Ceidro. She pressed her hand to her heart, as if she could feel the lance point piercing her.

  Her legs jerked and she twisted onto her side, burying her face in the bolster. But behind her clenched lids she saw a knight in black armor charging with lowered lance. And a long time later, after she finally slept, she dreamt of a black dragon with gray eyes.

  Arianna awoke to the sickly light of a cloudy dawn and the wail of a bagpipe. The mournful notes drifted from the great hall below, where the men broke their fast and sang of past glories.

  For a moment she couldn’t think where she was, and she sat up with a start, making herself dizzy. She pressed her fingertips against her closed lids, and then realized it was not a headache that caused the dull throbbing echo within her skull. It came from outside the keep, an incessant rumble like distant thunder. The enemy had started the siege. They were pounding the curtain wall with rocks and boulders hurled from their war machines.

  Arianna had slept fully dressed on top of the bedcovers, but she hurried now to change out of her rich noblewoman’s clothes. She had borrowed a tunic and boots from a dairy maid yesterday, for if by some ill fate the Normans did manage to storm the castle, she would do better to pass as a villein girl. As the Prince of Gwynedd’s daughter she was worth triple her weight in silver pennies as ransom.

  She kept on her fine, pleated linen chainse, but over that she donned the loose, rough tunic, and on her feet she pulled a pair of gray felt boots. She laced the dun-colored tunic tightly around her neck to hide her torque, then cinched it around the waist with a plain leather belt. Using her fingers, she unplaited her dark brown hair and combed it loose about her face.

  Through a loop in her belt she attached a small scabbard for a quillon dagger. She pondered the dagger a moment before sheathing it. This was no peasant’s clumsy weapon, but it was important that she be well armed. It was long, shaped like a miniature sword, made of the finest metal. She ran her thumb along the edge of the honed blade. She would use it if she must, to defend her honor, for no man would pay a cowyll, the virgin-price, for a tainted bride. No, the loss of her virginity would bring shame not only on herself but on all her kindred.

  “My honor …” she whispered, and her fist tightened around the dagger’s embossed silver hilt.

  The knight.

  His image haunted her mind just as she had seen him in the vision—his black horse rearing, his eyes and mouth so hard and so ruthless. And h
is lance … pointed at her heart.

  She stared for a long time at the golden mazer. The thing seemed dully ordinary in the day’s light, yet still it frightened her. She would leave it behind; it would only hamper her flight if she had to make a quick escape. No, she was lying to herself. She feared the awful power of the visions that came from the bowl, but she could never give it up. She couldn’t bear to think of it falling into Norman hands. Not if it truly had belonged to the great magician Myrddin.

  She touched the mazer and was relieved to feel the metal cool against her fingertips. She attached it by one of its handles to her belt, then covered her whole drab ensemble with a mantle trimmed in cheap, spotted-yellow civet fur.

  Arianna sucked in a breath through her mouth, wrinkling her nose. These clothes she had borrowed were none too clean, but then their barnyard-like odor would only enhance her disguise. For good measure she took some ashes from the brazier and dirtied her face.

  The tower stairway was dark, for the rushlights had burned down, and she groped her way, running her palms along the rough stones. A guard on the battlements called out as she left the tower and dashed through the gate of the keep. Ignoring him, she descended the steep timber stairs that led down the side of the motte. Her boots were slightly too big for her feet and their thick leather soles slapped against the wood, sounding like sheets flapping in the wind. She crossed the drawbridge that spanned a dry, narrow ditch and entered the bailey.

  The morning air was still and humid. Leaden clouds the color of slate pressed down and the air felt thick and damp against her face. In spite of the wet rawhides that had been draped over all the bailey’s wooden roofs, a flaming pitch arrow had managed to set the hay grange alight. Now a raging fire crackled and choking gray smoke blanketed the yard. The burning hides stank so vilely that Arianna’s stomach heaved.

  A pair of ravens swooped down low over her head and Arianna swiftly made the sign of the cross. They were called corpse-geese, these scavengers of the battlefield, and she hated them. They were harbingers of death.

  The ravens wheeled across the gray sky, their caws mixing with the coos coming from the dovecote and the shrill screeches from the hawks in the mews. The bailey was a tumult of sounds—the lowing of the cows in the byre, crying out to be milked; the clang of the blacksmith’s hammer as he banged out one last spear; the baying of the excited dogs in the kennels. And the steady, pounding thud of the missiles from the catapults as they struck the outer wall.

  She found her brother on the eastern parapet, standing with Madog behind the square, toothlike protection of a merlon. The men dissected the enemy’s next move, for the Normans had abandoned the town and marched to the edge of the great forest that lay to the east of the castle. Arianna’s step disturbed a roosting pigeon into flight, and both men whirled.

  Ceidro’s face registered instant anger. “What in hellfire are you doing out here? You should be back within the keep where it’s—” His brows came together and he sniffed loudly. “God’s bones. What have you done to yourself? You stink worse than a butcher’s midden.”

  Arianna started to open her mouth.

  “Never mind about that,” her brother snapped, waving an imperious hand in her face. “Just get yourself back to the keep this instant.”

  Arianna decided to ignore him. The men in her family were always ordering her about, and she was always ignoring them. Ceidro must have come to terms with his fear sometime during the night. A light of excitement blazed in his eyes. It was a light she had seen often in the eyes of her father and brothers before they set out on a fight or a raid. He wore his gambeson, and at his thigh hung his sword and a buckler.

  “Arianna …” Ceidro growled.

  Arianna stepped around her brother, intending to sneak a look at the besieging army through a crenel in the parapet. Ceidro seized her arm, yanking her away from the wall.

  “Curse you, girl! Are you trying to get yourself—” He stopped abruptly, as if someone had clamped a hand over his mouth. It took Arianna a moment to realize what had happened. The barrage from the catapults had ceased.

  Ceidro dropped her arm and looked cautiously over the parapet. Arianna moved in beside him, standing up on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder.

  Rows of knights and arbalesters were lined up at the edge of the woods, just out of bowshot. They stood in a splendid, colorful array: gaudy pennons fluttering from blue-painted lances, kite-shaped shields decorated in all the hues of a peacock’s tail, helms and mail polished to a shine. Against the backdrop of black forest and gray clouds soggy with rain, it was a sight to dazzle the eyes.

  “Pretty, are they not?” Ceidro said with a scornful twist of his mouth. The Welsh thought it cowardly to fight, as the Normans did, in chain-mail armor.

  After the constant pounding the silence was unnerving. Even the castle dogs had stopped their yapping. It was so quiet, Arianna could hear a frog croaking in the algae-covered moat below. A pall of smoke drifted over them from the burning hay grange, and behind her Madog coughed. They were the only sounds to shatter the silence.

  “Do they mean to attack?” Arianna asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “Splendor of God,” Madog exclaimed softly. “I think they’re withdrawing.” And, indeed, as they watched, first the men-at-arms and then the knights turned about and disappeared up the high road, toward England. The war machines were left behind, abandoned and silent.

  The Welsh burst into loud jeers and a hail of javelins and arrows flew from the battlements. A few of the enemy shouted a return barrage of insults, but they didn’t fire back. Like a patch of ice on a sunny winter morning, the Norman army melted away….

  Until only one knight remained.

  He stood within the shadow of a tall pine. The tree was black and withered, with a lightning scar down its side, and it seemed a part of the knight somehow, for his armor was burnished to a dull black and he was mounted on an enormous soot-colored war-horse. Then slowly, man and horse separated from the tree, coming forward until they stopped fully exposed in the middle of the cleared field below the castle walls.

  Lightning flared across the sky, followed almost immediately by a crack of thunder. The black horse reared. A sudden gust flattened the pennon on the knight’s lance—a black dragon on a bloodred field.

  Fear knocked Arianna in the chest, as fierce as the sudden wind. “Oh, God, no …” Her hand fluttered up to her heart.

  But unlike in her vision, the knight didn’t charge. Instead he regained control of his skittish mount and stood there as the wind whipped around him, and the first drops of rain began to fall. Stood there as if waiting for something.

  “Don’t move, ye bastard. Don’t move,” Madog muttered, snatching up his longbow. He took an arrow from the quiver at his feet, knocking it over in his haste. Arrows spilled from the leather case with a clatter and rolled across the uneven paving stones.

  In one swift movement Madog nocked the arrow, lifted the bow, and pushed it forward, stretching the taut string. His eyes narrowed and his arm tensed, the muscles bulging around his leather arm-guard….

  “No!” Arianna cried.

  Ceidro whipped around, his mouth agape. But Madog kept his sight on the knight, the bow steady. He released the string, the arrow hissed, cleaving the air … to bury itself in the rough marsh grass inches from the destrier’s hooves.

  For one poised second more the knight stood motionless, then he whirled his horse around and cantered off into the forest.

  “Damn it, Arianna!” Ceidro raged. “What in Christ’s name possessed you to bleat like a poked sheep? You spoiled his aim.”

  Arianna could only stare at the place where the knight had been, bewildered by herself, over what had made her do such a thing. She had wanted the man dead. She did.

  “I thought—” Her voice cracked. She tried again. “He was out of range.” But he wasn’t. Not for a Welsh longbow. And not for an expert shot like Madog.

  “It wasn’t milady’s fault,” Madog said
. “I missed, that’s all. Ye’re forgetting the bastard’s got the devil for a guardian angel.”

  “Sound the horn!” Ceidro cried. “We’re going after him. We’ll make the man swallow his own blood before this day is through!” He brushed past Arianna, his sword knocking against the parapet.

  “Wait, lad, it could be a trap,” Madog called after him.

  But Ceidro’s back was already vanishing down the battlement stairs. “Hurry, Madog. Else the whoresons will be halfway to England ere we can catch them.”

  Madog hesitated a moment longer, then, cursing, he scooped up his longbow and arrows and lumbered after the younger man. “Ceidro, for the love of Christ, let’s think on this minute. I don’t like the looks of this …”

  Arianna looked across the field at the silent and empty forest. Another bolt of lightning flashed, thunder rumbled. A raven circled, black wings against a black sky.

  She whipped around, crying her brother’s name, but in that moment the shrill blast of a trysting horn rent the air. The rain, which had started with scattered drops, suddenly pattered down hard on the walls and packed dirt of the bailey. The wind shrieked, seizing Arianna’s mantle and swirling it around her head.

  Ceidro’s small war-band poured out the sally-port with a bloodcurdling cacophony of battle cries, and still the field and forest were empty.

  Once, their ancestors had fought naked except for a helmet and a torque. Today the men of Gwynedd rode forth wearing leather gambesons and carrying longbows and war clubs. But many still painted their faces blue in the old way and went to battle laughing and bellowing the ancient songs. They were brave and valiant and strong, these men of Cymru, and Arianna’s heart beat hard with a fierce pride at the sight of them.

  And then her pride turned to horror.

  The enemy erupted from the forest, as if trees and brush had suddenly metamorphosed into men and horses. Within seconds they enveloped Ceidro’s pitiful band. Suddenly thunder crackled and rain spewed down as if pouring from the mouths of a thousand gargoyles. Arianna clung to the parapet, squinting through the curtain of water, her hands pressing so hard into the rough stone that the skin tore, leaving smears of blood. Lightning flared, giving her a brief glimpse of flashing blades and flying hooves. Then she saw nothing again, though the air quivered with the sound of clashing swords, whinnying horses and the wails of the dying, and a sharp metallic smell floated to her on the wind.