Heart of the Flame Page 28

  Her small hand came up to frame his jaw. "And you and Rand will be killed if I go."

  He was scowling at her, furious that she would defy him when her very life hung in the balance. But her gaze was so serious, so courageously accepting of what she was saying, that he could hardly hold his anger.

  "The Dragon Chalice is more important than any of us, Kenrick. Anavrin's survival depends on its return. Perhaps the survival of your world--the Outside world--depends on it, too."

  Kenrick's oath hissed through his teeth.

  "Too many have paid the price for that accursed cup. There is no certainty that any of us will walk away from this hill today."

  "No," she said, "there is not that certainty. But together we at least stand a chance."

  For a moment, one insane moment, Kenrick considered possible strategies for the three of them to combat the four shifters riding in for the attack. One by one, he discarded each plan. All were too risky to work, putting the Chalice treasure--and Haven--in too great of peril.

  He was not sure there would be a way out this time.

  And over Haven's shoulder now, he watched as the light from the Anavrin portal was beginning to dim. It was closing, and she remained firmly rooted before him, her eyes flashing with fiery determination. Too soon, the light was extinguished entirely, sealing off the gate to her homeland.

  As the portal closed, the wall of flames at their backs shrank down, snuffed by an unseen magic. Only thin puffs of smoke and ash-covered stone remained.

  "Together," Haven said, barely a whisper. "Trust in me. It is our only chance."

  Before he could argue any further, before he realized what she was about, Haven rose up on her toes and kissed him. It was a fleeting contact that he wanted to savor, but as quickly as the sweet pressure of her lips had come, it was gone.

  And so was she.

  Moving so fast he could scarcely credit it, Haven withdrew from his arms and whirled away, striding like a warrior queen across the smoldering embers of the chapel floor. She marched past Rand and on, heading for the entryway and the coming retinue of her Anavrin clansmen.

  Clutched tightly in her hands--to Kenrick's infinite bewilderment and furious disbelief--she held his sword.

  Chapter 33

  The answer had come to Haven in a flash of instinct, all her shifter senses training on a single, risky thought. In her compromised state--a queer suspension between the magic she had been born with, and what, through love of an Outsider, she had since become--she could not be sure her plan would work.

  But it was their only hope.

  She sensed the malevolent intent of the riders coming up the tor. Her ear picked up the ring of metal riding gear and chain mail armor. Her nostrils filled with the scent of the slaughter to come. There would be much blood spilled today. Not only hers, as the hunted betrayer to her clan, but Kenrick's and Rand's as well.

  Anger seethed within her at the thought. Her fury stirred like a tempest, mingling with the waking power of her glamour. She called it forth, summoning all she had as she stalked the torchlit corridor of the chapel.

  She was shifter born, descended from a long line of Anavrin kings and sorcerers.

  More than that, she was a woman with a heart full of determination, and that made her dangerous.

  Haven gripped Kenrick's sword in tight hands before her, while she honed her senses on transformation.

  She gathered the images in her mind, cobbling them, sculpting them as from clay, until she had a clear vision of the glamour she sought. Her skin tingled with the coming of the change. She felt her body shimmer toward illusion--the mirroring of another human form.

  It was one of the most difficult things for a shifter to accomplish, perhaps impossible now that she was Shadow. Haven pushed aside her doubt and concentrated on the face and form that would become hers. The image began to slide over her, molding to her like a veil.

  It took all her strength to hold the illusion in place as she neared the chapel door and heard it bang open as the shifters who hunted her forced their way into the small stone structure.

  Behind her all of a sudden, she heard a vivid curse, and the hard clip of boots on the slate floor of the corridor.

  Kenrick.

  He had followed her out, with Rand directly behind him.

  Before either man could utter a word of surprise at what greeted their eyes, Haven whirled on Kenrick with his own sword, stopping him with the deadly point of the blade at his throat.

  "Don't move," she warned him in a low voice not at all like her own, and watched as his logical, mortal mind grappled with what he was seeing. "You'll want to do as I tell you. Trust me."

  His keen gaze lit with recognition as he glanced at the length of steel poised beneath his chin. He knew it as his own sword, and when his friend took a nearly imperceptible move toward his defense, Kenrick held him off with a slantwise look of denial. Rand edged back into the gloom of the corridor, concealing himself from view.

  "Excellent work, ladies," Haven drawled, swiveling her head to fix a caustic glare on the four shifter guards who lumbered toward her in the corridor. "Had you been any slower to arrive, Clairmont here would have made off with the Chalice treasure and your shifter quarry."

  "Le Nantres," said the larger of the four, his dark eyes fixed on the illusion Haven struggled to maintain. "Did you come here alone?"

  "I had two of your kind with me--for all the good they did me."

  "What happened?"

  The image of Draec le Nantres shrugged nonchalantly. "They got careless. Amazing what the mere touch of a Chalice stone can do to a shifter. You'll find their cinders inside."

  One of the four approaching shifters lifted his nose to the still air of the chapel and breathed in deeply. The sensitive nostrils flared and twitched. "There is something else inside this place as well. Shadow," he said, advising the others. "I can smell her."

  A frisson of fear snaked its way up Haven's scalp. How long could she hope to maintain this ruse? Her apprehension made it hard to hold onto her glamour. She felt her skin tingle with the first ebb of transformation, the slightest waver of retreating power. It was all she could do to train her senses back on her illusion.

  And her silence put a note of doubt in the larger shifter's narrowing gaze.

  "Aye, I can smell the traitorous little bitch as well, and she's still breathing. Where is she?"

  Haven parted her lips to speak, but it was Kenrick's voice that met her ears first.

  "Le Nantres stabbed her," he said, growling the words with a good deal of venom and glaring at Haven's illusion with a hatred she nearly believed herself. "The bastard cut her down without mercy and left her for dead back there."

  The shifter leader still seemed skeptical, but the hand that now rested on his sword relaxed somewhat. "Show me. My men will guard your prisoner."

  He turned his head to motion to the three others, and Haven knew it might be her only chance to strike.

  She pivoted away from Kenrick and, with a cry of desperation and fury, swung the long steel blade into the shifter leader's side. He was dead before he hit the floor, blood and life draining onto the slate tiles at her feet.

  Kenrick's sword was a leaded weight in her hands, the action of wielding it requiring too much of her precious strength. Haven felt her precarious grasp loosen on both the weapon and the illusion she had fought so hard to manufacture.

  Like a pebble tossed into a tranquil pool, her glamour rippled away in waves, shedding Draec le Nantres' image and revealing her true form.

  "Bloody hell!" bellowed one of the three remaining shifters, his eyes black and feral with the fever of the hunt. "It's her!"

  A chaos of shouts and steel and deadly rage erupted all around her. In a blink, Kenrick had seized his weapon from Haven's trembling hands and moved her out of the path of the carnage he would wreak. Rand joined the fray, roaring a bloodcurdling curse as he brandished his own blade and leaped in to fight at Kenrick's side.

 
; Haven dared not shelter her eyes, regardless of the hellish scene playing out before her. She feared for Kenrick and Rand, knowing how viciously the shifters would fight, armed with weapons and magic and the black hunting rage that had led them to the chapel on the tor. She sought shelter in a darkened corner of wall, out of striking distance, yet near enough that she might step back in if she could be useful.

  The three shifters fought hard, but they stood little chance against the seasoned men who fought like two halves of a deadly whole.

  The first went down with a howl of animal pain, cleaved apart by Kenrick's punishing sword.

  A second had transformed to a snarling beast, its wolfish jaws snapping and slavering as it leaped at Rand's throat. The knight's blade was a flashing bolt of bloodied steel, plunging into the shifter's big body. It, too, was dead soon enough, stuck through like a pig on a spit, while Kenrick slew the third shifter and threw it to the floor like so much offal.

  As quickly as the battle had begun, it ended.

  Haven ran to Kenrick, unable to stanch her tears as he caught her in his arms. She wept with hardly a measure of control, relief and fear and joy buffeting her all at once. She felt drained of everything, unable to do aught but cling to him as he lifted her into his arms and gently carried her out of the chapel and into the sunlight outside.

  "Hush, love," he whispered fiercely against her brow as she drew in a sobbing breath. "I'm here. It's all right now."

  "Were you hurt?" she asked, managing at last to speak. "Did they hurt you?"

  "Nay, my lady. Thanks in no small part to you. That was some trick you managed, mirroring Draec le Nantres. I won't question how you did it, but I'll thank you never to show me that blackguard's face again. Or any other man's, for that matter."

  He was jesting, she realized dimly. Ever her protector, he was trying to cheer her when his heart was still beating like a drum against her, his muscles yet bunched and tense from the deadly battle he had just fought.

  "I wasn't sure if I could do it. I feel so tired...I am so weak, Kenrick."

  "You can rest now, Haven." He brought her to where their mounts waited, grazing in the shade of the small chapel on the tor. "Will you be all right for a moment out here?"

  She lifted her head with a measure of alarm. "Where are you going?"

  "To retrieve the treasure we came for," he said, gently stroking her cheek, "and to help Rand with the mess we made back there."

  "Oh. Of course," she said, nodding.

  Slowly her wits were returning, if not her strength. Her conscience issued a warning as she gazed into Kenrick's earnest blue gaze. Her trial was not over, despite their victory today. They may have vanquished the shifters who had come for her this time, but they would not be the last. There would be another and another, so long as there were shifters working with Silas de Mortaine. And so long as she was Shadowed by her love for this man.

  Kenrick knelt down beside her in the soft grass of the chapel hill. "Are you sure you are all right? You look as pale as frost."

  Haven dismissed his concern with a smile and forced a firmness into her spine as she sat up. This too was a trick of her glamour, for inside she was as weak as pudding, scarcely able to remain upright on the ground. "I am fine, really. The illusion was difficult. It has tired me a bit, that's all."

  He was frowning at her, not appearing overly convinced. "I will be but a moment. Wait for me here."

  She nodded, then watched in mingled sorrow and relief as he strode away and disappeared into the chapel.

  Chapter 34

  He had expected to find Rand removing the dead shifters from where they had fallen, for it would be foolhardy to leave such evidence for anyone to happen upon once they were gone from the tor. But as Kenrick walked the darkened passage through the heart of the little chapel, the bodies remained where they had fallen, and his friend was nowhere to be seen.

  He was about to call out to him when Rand suddenly came out of the chancel antechamber. In his hands, he cradled the golden bowl of the Chalice treasure. Abruptly he noticed Kenrick standing before him, and his head snapped up.

  "You left it back there," he said, a note of accusation in his voice. "Calasaar was remarkable on its own, but together with this second cup--"

  "Vorimasaar," Kenrick said, his eyes holding steady on his old friend. "The one we found today is called Vorimasaar--Stone of Faith."

  "The two cups melded together into this one?"

  Kenrick nodded. "They were drawn toward one another with a force no man could contain. The power of the Dragon Chalice will increase with the recovery of each stone."

  "Amazing," Rand mused, "Goddamn bloody amazing."

  He held the cup out before him, turning it to and fro, and watching as the stones caught the scant light of the torches bracketed on the walls. Prisms of red and white reflected back in his face, illuminating an expression that was more bitter than bedazzled. When he spoke, his voice was grim with purpose.

  "If we push the horses, ride all night, we should make the western coast by sunrise. It will be faster to sail than travel on land, so we'll hire a boat once we get there. We'll put in for Scotland before either le Nantres or de Mortaine catches wind that we've been here today." He paused in his careful admiration of the mated cup that was both Calasaar and Vorimasaar, and turned a gauging look on Kenrick. "What say you, Saint?"

  "It's a good plan," Kenrick agreed. "Save for one thing."

  "What's that?"

  "Haven."

  A scowl darkened Rand's brow. "What of her?"

  "She's too weak from this ordeal today--from much of what she's been through of late. She is putting on a brave front, but that's all it is. She will never make the trip."

  Rand grunted. "I wasn't aware that she was part of this." His gaze was hard, unforgiving. "She is a shifter, my friend. You have seen the treachery of her kind, just as I have. Nothing will change what she is. For Christ's sake, it is unnatural what she is--inhuman."

  Kenrick balked internally at the assertion that Haven was less real, less human, than he himself. "She is flesh and blood, the same as you and I. She feels natural enough in my arms. Her heart beats the same as any other."

  "She has bewitched you into thinking so. Cut her loose while you can, Saint. She has bound you to her with her shifter's magic."

  "Yes," Kenrick admitted. "Perhaps she has."

  Rand stared at him incredulously. "I do not believe what I am hearing now! Nor can I credit the looks I have seen pass between the both of you. God's wounds, Saint--tell me you don't love her."

  The swift denial he grasped for could not be summoned to his tongue. His feelings for Haven went deep, far deeper than he wanted to acknowledge. To Rand or to himself.

  But love?

  There was no logic at all in the idea that he might be in love with Haven. They had passion together, but there could be no future for them. She was a shifter, forbidden to be with him and by her own account a fugitive from her clan. He had to think of Clairmont, and the recovery of the Dragon Chalice. The least sensible thing he could do was surrender his heart to Haven.

  And yet....

  "You and I are standing here now because of her," he told his old friend, neither confirming or refuting the stunning realization. "If not for Haven's help, we would be the ones lying bloodied out there, not those shifter guards. We owe Haven our lives today."

  "Today, yes, I'll grant you she proved more than useful. But she is a hindrance to your quest for the Chalice and you know it," Rand countered. "She will slow you down, make you careless. You will never get close to the Dragon Chalice so long as you are torn between protecting her and seeing this thing through."

  He was right, of course. There was no arguing the logic in Rand's assertion. But to Kenrick the alternative hardly seemed fair, let alone palatable, particularly after all he and Haven had shared.

  "What would you have me do, leave her here?"

  The fact that Rand did not immediately reply was answer enough.
"You have spent much of your life reaching for this prize. You must do what is right. One piece of the Dragon Chalice remains--perhaps no more than a fortnight's travel out of your grasp, by your own guess. You want the Chalice; I want de Mortaine's head. We can both win, Saint."

  "Are you sure this is about doing what is right?" At Rand's rigid look, Kenrick let out a sharp exhalation. "The only way to ensure that Silas de Mortaine never gets the Dragon Chalice is to destroy it. That is all that will stop him--and the beasts who ride at his command. If we take that cup from this hill, then we should take it out to sea as far as we can and drop it to the very bottom. Where no one will ever find it."

  Rand twisted the cup between his fingers. "I would sooner see de Mortaine choke on it as I shove it down his throat."

  Hearing the fury in his old friend's voice, Kenrick understood the depth of Rand's ruthless drive. "Having your revenge means that much to you?"

  "It's all I have left. It's all de Mortaine left me with." Rand lifted a bleak gaze on him, his broad jaw set with firm resolve. "I'm taking this cup, and I'm heading north to find the final piece. And when I do, I will use it to lead the blackguard to me, and I will have my revenge."

  Kenrick nodded, unable to hide his resignation. "You have thought this over for some time."

  "I have," he admitted soberly. "Every waking moment of every endless day, I have thought of nothing else. My decision is made, Saint. All that's left is yours."

  * * *

  Haven's arms felt leaden, her body drained and wrung out. It was all she could do to grip the reins of her stolen shifter's mount and hold herself in the saddle as the palfrey galloped through the marshy field that spread out at the base of the Tor's labyrinth mound.

  Her heart ached for the way she had left Kenrick. Not even a word of farewell, but she knew that had she lingered any longer, she would not have had the will to leave at all.

  And she had to leave.

  Her own safety meant little, but now that she was turned Shadow, there would be no sanctuary for her or those for whom she cared. Finding her--destroying her--would be the goal of every Chalice Seeker who prowled the cities and sleepy bergs in league with Silas de Mortaine.