“I am now the highest priest, prince.”
The prince snorted through his laugh. “I hope this means you know the right direction. Let us go, Callas. Take me to Brecia.” Just saying her name made him hard. It was an excellent feeling, this instant, overwhelming lust he felt just saying her name. Soon he would have her. At last.
Callas stroked his long, dirty beard, plaiting it in his fingers, then smoothing out the plaits. A long-standing habit, the prince knew. “Brecia won’t have you, even though she wants you. She said if you come near here again she would kill you.”
The prince gave him an evil grin, filled with white teeth and infinite malice. “I tremble with fear at that threat. Now, let us go, or I will slit your ancient throat. Then I just might turn you into blue smoke and send you back to puff out of one of Brecia’s witch’s pots.”
Callas extended his kesha closer, but the prince just laughed and shoved it away with his hand. “Old man, don’t even try any of your dismal magic with me.” He smiled, sheathed the knife, and pulled out his narrow, beautifully worked wand, not much longer than his forearm. “Or,” he said, grinning now as his fingers caressed the length of the wand, “I will make you itch.”
The prince flicked his wand, nothing more, just flicked it in Callas’s direction. The old man leapt back, then yelled. “No, don’t, prince, no! Damn you, prince, no!”
The prince watched for a moment while Callas tried to scratch all the places on his body that were itching so badly he was nearly dancing with it.
“Make it stop. Please, make it stop!”
“Will you take me to Brecia?”
Callas yelled, “Aye, I will take you to her. Let her destroy you with her magic. She is strong now and—yaagh, make it stop!”
The prince flicked his wand once again, still smiling. Callas shook himself down, scratched violently at his left knee, then paused, blinked, and looked immensely relieved. “I wish I could do that. Will you teach me? It really is a stupid curse, but it is very effective.”
“I will consider teaching you if you take me to Brecia.”
Callas turned his long kesha in his hands, watching the tip glow. “A dark wizard such as you should not come into the forest. Your darkness destroys the holiness of our sacred oak groves.”
“Leave go, Callas. I promise I will destroy nothing. Take me to Brecia. I am sure the witch will see me.” So close, he was now so close to her. He laughed. “Perhaps I will cast a spell on her. Not itching, no. I will make her desire me above all men. I will make her want to strip me down to my hide and caress me. Aye, I would like to have that witch in my power. Do you think she would like that?”
The prince thought Callas would fall over in a faint. “Brecia would not do that, even under a spell. She is inviolate. You should not make sport with us, prince.”
“All right,” the prince said agreeably. “Since I am a wizard, I can snap my fingers—” And he snapped his fingers right in Callas’s face. The old man yelped and jumped back. The prince laughed. “Aye, I can snap my fingers and we will be there, at your most sacred shrine, right in front of Brecia.” If only he really could do that, he thought, glad Callas didn’t realize he couldn’t. “Is that what you wish me to do? Only the gods know what shifts and changes that would bring.”
Callas groaned, then swallowed it as if realizing that a priest should not show weakness, particularly to the dark prince. “No, no. You will not do your evil magic on me. No, stay away from me. Follow me. It is not far, only as far as Brecia deems it to be.”
That sounded ridiculous to the prince, but he would be the first to admit that Brecia was cunning, mayhap just that clever. He fell into step closely behind Callas, who was walking as nimbly as a mountain goat. The floor of the forest was soft with rotted leaves and pulpy vegetation beneath his boots. It was still darker than not, and he stumbled several times.
He wanted Brecia, and he fully intended to have her this time. No more treaties to dictate his mate. He was free to follow his own way. He began whistling in the darkness, and Callas looked ready to spit with fear.
The prince smiled.
12
Present
BISHOP LAY STILL, WAVES of pain crashing through his head, the stark image in his brain of a filthy old man and a young man—no, the young man was more than that, aye, the young man was a prince, by all the saints, he was magic, he was a wizard, he had a damned wand and he could use it. It was impossible, but there they were, alive in his brain, their faces as clear as if they were standing right in front of him. But even in the next instant, they were fading into the mist that covered that thick, ancient oak forest. For an instant he swore he heard the young prince’s laughter, and he thought, He is going to get Brecia.
Then there was nothing. Just nothing.
Bishop didn’t move, perhaps afraid to move. A dream, he thought. He’d dreamed—a vivid, very strange dream, nothing more than that, no matter the rich, detailed colors, the strange speech they’d spoken, which he’d understood.
He drew a deep breath, shook his head. The images were gone.
But there was one thing he was very sure of in that moment.
There was no oak forest near where he and Merryn had lain in that tent beneath the drowning sky. “Wake up, Bishop. Come on, wake up.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Good, you’re alive. In the single day I’ve known you, I’ve learned a lot about you. Now I’m seeing that you’re also selfish. Just listen to you—I don’t want to—” She’d mimicked him quite well, actually. “Well, I don’t care what you want. Get up before the tent collapses.”