“You saved me. How did you do it?”
She heard his unspoken words in her mind: My father is a great wizard. I am a greater wizard, and you and I will birth a wizard who will be known throughout the ages, for all time, forever and beyond.
She stared down at her hands, flexed her fingers, felt the smoothness of her flesh, felt the blood flowing easily. It was as if she’d never been burned. Her cloak was soft and warm around her shoulders.
“We’re sitting on a beach.” She tasted the salty air, inhaled it deeply.
The prince came to his feet and stretched. She wondered if he was testing all his parts, making certain that he’d not left anything of himself at Mawdoor’s fortress.
“I touched our wands together once more. This is where they sent us. I’m very pleased you’re all right, Brecia.”
She had no choice, and it didn’t seem at all difficult to say. “I thank you, prince.”
“I believe it is time we left Penwyth—aye, we’re still close to the fortress, I recognize this beach at the western end of Penwyth—before Mawdoor finds us and thinks of another challenge.”
He took her hand and pulled her quickly up and against him. She felt her cloak spreading out, as if under a spell, enclosing him against her, making them one, and then they were gone from the beach, gone from Penwyth. Only an instant passed, she knew it, felt it, but still it seemed a very long time before her feet were on solid ground and she knew herself to be home.
He’d actually brought her home, despite being close to Penwyth and Mawdoor. She breathed in the very being of her oak forest, felt it comfort her, enclose her.
They were still pressed together inside her cloak. She said against his throat, “We’re home,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, and she felt his mouth against her temple. “I brought you home.”
23
THEY STOOD AT THE EDGE of the dark, ancient oak forest and felt the brilliant noonday sun, full and hot overhead, beating down on their faces. “It doesn’t seem that any time has passed,” she said.
“Time has passed,” he said. “It is another day.”
He started to say something else, but stopped when they saw seven travelers, four men and three women, some walking, some riding mules, coming toward them.
Mortals.
An older man walked at the head of the small group, a gnarly stick in his hand. He saw them, stopped, leaned on his big stick, and said, “We saw you coming from the dark forest. There’s danger in there, you know. Are you all right?”
The prince, Brecia realized, was garbed just like the mortals, as was she. She hadn’t noticed that he’d whisked away her white robe. She looked down at the long green woolen gown, at the soft leather slippers on her feet. She fingered the delicate gold chain at her waist. He hadn’t done away with that.
“Oh, aye,” the prince said to the man, nodding to the rest of the travelers. “There is nothing in that forest save very old trees that block out the sunlight, nothing menacing.”
The man said, “My name is Branneck, and these are my people. We are traveling to the plain to see the sacred stone circle.”
“You are a religious group, sir?” Brecia asked, aware that the women riding the mules were all studying her. Why? She fingered the gold chain at her waist. The women’s eyes followed her fingers. They wanted her gold belt. Why couldn’t the pr
ince have put a leather belt around her waist?
“Aye,” Branneck said. “We come from Caledonia, to pour the Loch Ness monster’s tears on the stones.”
There was no end to human foolishness, the prince thought. He smiled at them and said, “My wife and I are returning home. We spent a week deep in the oak forest. It is said a woman will conceive a child if she is taken standing up, her back against one of the ancient oak trees.”
“Ah,” Branneck said, staring now at Brecia, at her golden belt. “That is an interesting notion. Think you that you are now with child?”
Brecia closed the distance to the prince’s side. She took his arm and leaned into him, smiling up at him. “Mayhap I could be with child if only my husband could have brought himself to a proper size to accomplish it.”
The seven men and women stared at her. The men blinked, looked toward the prince to see if he would cuff this disrespectful woman, but the prince threw back his head and laughed.
Branneck said, his fingers tightening around his walking stick, “It seems that you are alone.”
“One wants to be alone when one is bent on impregnating one’s wife,” the prince said. Then he withdrew a golden disk from beneath his tunic, a beautiful creation fashioned during the time of the Romans, and set it just so that it gleamed beneath the brilliant sun. Brecia wondered if he’d gone mad. The men were eyeing that gold disk just as the women were eyeing her golden chain.