Mystic Rider (21 page)

Sending up a prayer, he opened the door without knocking. To
his enormous relief, Chantal sat on the window seat with the chalice cradled to
her breasts. She smiled sleepily at him as he entered.

He was fortunate she did not heave the chalice at him. Ian
was envious of the damned thing. He doubted she would hold him so lovingly if
she guessed that he’d assisted the king.

He understood now why she and the chalice disappeared
together. They apparently nullified each other’s vibrations. Odd, but not
extraordinary. Very useful, actually. When he returned home, he ought to test
whether his mother had the same effect on the chalice. If so, it might explain
why the gods had left it to the inhabitants of Aelynn to conceal.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked.

“No, just more in control. Did I have a fit of some sort?”
she asked.

“From all reports, it appears so.” He’d like to linger and
explore the fascinating aspects she presented, but he couldn’t ignore Murdoch’s
menace. Ian had hoped they could outrace Murdoch, but Alain’s illness ended
that possibility.

Murdoch was apparently still able to sense the presence of
the chalice. Could he do so when Chantal held it? Ian would not underestimate
the renegade’s determination and imperil innocents. He had to place himself
between the chalice and danger.

“Your father claims you’re never angry.”

She wrinkled her nose in thought. “I’m no angel. I get
angry. I just usually find some way of diverting my temper into music. I like
the tone of your bell. Chalice.” Remembering who had held it last, she narrowed
her gaze. “You helped arrange the king’s freedom in exchange for this, didn’t
you? Do you have any inkling of what you’ve done?”

“Your queen lives in dire fear of poisoning, and your king
is a prisoner, unable to even worship with his own priests. Their children are under
constant threat of maniacs who despise the monarchy. I doubt that I have
exposed them to more risk by offering them a choice.”

“You have made it impossible for my father and me to return
home.” Cradling the chalice, she stared out the window to the street below.
“Paris is not so large that our departure wasn’t noticed. Two and two will add
up eventually. We’ll be arrested as soon as we return.”

“You will go home with me,” he assured her. “You will like
it there.”

She threw a pillow from the window seat at him. “I like
my
home!”

He caught the pillow. “You will not like it so well a year
from now, when the streets run with blood. Think on what you would like most in
this world, and I will provide it for you.”

“I want my home and my life back!” she said angrily, before
stopping to think of what he’d just said. Her eyes grew wide and apprehensive.
“You did this deliberately so I could not go back. Who are you and where are
you taking us? And more importantly, why?”

“I did not mean to permanently separate you from your home.”
Actually, he’d given it no thought at all. He’d simply done what needed to be
done. But he assumed she was in no humor to hear that. “And I am taking you
north, to the Netherlands, as you asked. We will discuss what you wish to do
after that. I still must find my countryman before we can head in that
direction. Will you kiss me before I leave?”

She shot him a glare. “In these last few years, I have lost
my husband, my mother, and my grandparents. Now you separate me from what
little family I have left, and you expect me to be grateful?”

“I brought your family with us,” he reminded her. “And your
father’s horses. I cannot move houses, but I can provide any house you desire.”

She stared at him. “Do you really think I will follow you
anywhere simply because of what we’ve done in bed?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “That is how it is with amacara
matches. The current circumstances are unfortunate, but we will adapt over
time.”

“Never! You cannot kidnap me and expect me to be grateful.”

“I don’t ask for your gratitude. Right now, all I ask is a
kiss.” And he didn’t know why he was adamant about that. Reason said she was
angry and would not comply.

His newly discovered desires insisted that she feel the same
as he. Foolish, even he must admit.

“Maybe I will kiss you if you come back alive,” she said
with a shrug. “I have lost all I’ve ever loved, so it’s much simpler if I hate
you.”

Her words flayed Ian as sharply as any whip. This wasn’t how
he wanted it to be between them. But for the sake of his people, he must bear
her scorn and anguish. And possibly, her hatred. Amacara matches were physical
for the sake of heirs, so he held no illusion beyond that — although there was an
odd longing in his chest for her understanding, at least.

“I am trusting you with my chalice,” he said without
inflection, hiding how her words hurt. “In your hands, it is invisible to me, so
I trust it will be invisible to others like me. Guard it well. I cannot begin
to describe what might happen if it should fall into the hands of the wrong
people.”

“Others like you?
Are
there others like you? How extraordinary.”

“You have no idea,” he said, grateful that she listened to
reason, however sarcastically. “Perhaps all happens for a purpose. You will be
safer here than with me. Rest. I hope to return in a few hours.”

“And if you don’t? What do we do then?”

An excellent question, one he wasn’t equipped to answer. He
had been prepared to die fighting Murdoch, but he could no longer afford that
luxury.

Shaking his head at that conundrum, Ian bowed out of the
room.

The Chalice of Plenty was now invisible and safe in his
mate’s keeping. He had only to conquer a man who once had the unique ability to
affect all four of the earth’s powers, with strengths equal to Ian’s own or
better.

Perhaps he should test how much strength Murdoch still
retained before he attempted to truss him like a pig and bring him back to
Aelynn.

If excitement was what he craved, the journey home with an
unwilling mate and a dangerous hostage ought to be the highlight of his life.

Even before Ian reached Rapscallion, he sensed troubled
vibrations.

He would have to hope the heavens showed him the way.
Thanking Aelynn for the gift of the horse’s motion to focus his energies, he
climbed back in the saddle and struck out for the road the king’s berlin had
taken.

He had met the royal party long enough to recognize their
thought threads among the hundreds of others around him. Letting the stallion
have his head on the open road, Ian collected the threads carried on the winds.
He recognized the queen’s unease but not the reason for it.

More disturbing was the fury building in the minds of
thousands in Paris — a cloud of rage so enormous that he could sense it even from
a day’s journey away.

It was late afternoon. The palace guards would have had time
to discover the royal family’s escape. The alarm would have been sounded. The
Assembly would be forced to send out their National Guard, if only to stop the
rioting, but more to the point — to prevent the king and his loyal troops from
raising arms against them. There would be messengers racing down every road.
The overloaded berlin barely covered a few miles an hour. Horses under saddle
could travel three or four times that speed.

If the duc’s loyal soldiers were in place…the berlin might
reach safety before the National Guard learned their direction and sent an army
to stop them.

Where was Murdoch as the world teetered at a cosmic
crossroads?

Ian knew he had no more excuses to interfere in the Other
World by saving the royal party. He had the chalice. Chantal was safe. Fate
would have to deal the cards of the royals.

His only purpose now could be to stop Murdoch from
interfering. Murdoch would not be so close to such momentous events if he did
not have a scheme in mind to further his ambition. Whether the chalice was part
of that scheme, Ian couldn’t discern.

Knowing that Murdoch, with his Olympian strengths, had once
hoped to be Aelynn’s leader, Ian couldn’t help fearing that his banished
countryman had deliberately found a country on the brink of self-destruction so
he could use the turmoil to his own advantage. To conquer an entire nation would
require taming armies with terror, easily done should Murdoch unleash
earthquakes or hurricanes or fire. Except — even if he meant well — Murdoch had
never been able to reliably control these forces. People would die by the
thousands.

As Ian drew closer to the village where the duc’s forty
hussars were to meet the royal party, he sensed as much confusion as anger
ahead. The populace seemed to be puzzled and resentful about the duc’s soldiers
lingering where they didn’t belong. Their greatest fear seemed to be that the
soldiers meant to collect the rents that hadn’t been, and couldn’t be, paid.
And there was relief that the hussars had abruptly departed.

Yet Ian still sensed the presence of soldiers somewhere in
the distance. The days were at their longest now, and even past the dinner
hour, there was sufficient daylight to see no sign of the berlin or the troops
along the road as planned. The berlin had been scheduled to arrive hours ago,
but the broken wheel had delayed them. Had the duc’s troops not waited?

Opening his mind to accept all the energy generated in the
area, Ian urged Rapscallion faster and let his surroundings flow through him,
capturing the thought threads and analyzing them as best he could in his haste.

There, some miles from the road, a mass of men and horses
wandered in confusion in the shadows of a forest — the duc’s hussars. Retreating
from the angry villagers after hours of waiting for a royal coach that hadn’t
arrived as promised, they’d become lost looking for a route through the trees
to the next outpost. There was concern that the king had failed to escape.

Some miles farther down the road toward the border, Ian
sensed a few familiar threads from the royal party exhibiting fear and
bewilderment at the failure of their escort to appear. They’d decided to drive
on to the next outpost, where more soldiers should be waiting.

Not far ahead of Ian, weary from long travel, scared, and
excited, was the messenger from Paris, riding to notify the countryside of the
king’s escape, carrying an order to the National Guard in each town to halt the
berlin and arrest the occupants on sight.

And there, right before the village where the hussars were
supposed to be waiting, before Ian could act on the disaster in the making —
Murdoch
. Ian grasped Rapscallion’s reins
and tugged him to a prancing, protesting halt.

If he could sense Murdoch, then Murdoch knew Ian was here.

It had been more than two years since he’d seen his old
friend. More than two years since Murdoch had called down lightning, exploded a
barrel of fireworks, and killed Ian’s father, Aelynn’s Chosen Leader.

Ian had nothing but mixed feelings about the man Murdoch had
become. As youngsters, they’d been raised together  — Ian, the heir to the most
powerful family on Aelynn, and Murdoch, the baseborn child of a mere hearth
witch, a woman who was little more than a housekeeper.

Normally, a child of Murdoch’s background would be left to
find his place among the island’s laborers, but Murdoch had exhibited such
astounding abilities that his talents couldn’t be wasted. Ian’s parents had
taken Murdoch in and tutored him along with their own offspring.

Except Murdoch’s erratic abilities had resisted training. If
the lesson was in moving rock, he would shatter hillsides. If asked to fill a
well, he would flood a town. He had a rage inside him that drove all his
energies beyond the limits of others.

Most Aelynners had one strong ability that they cultivated
and, if they were lucky, a minor one to complement it. As the son of an Oracle
and Council Leader, Ian had many abilities. He’d been expected to develop his
gift for Seeing, but even as a child, Murdoch had been competitive in the same
area. He and Murdoch had inevitably foreseen different outcomes for every
event. At best, they’d each been half right in their interpretations.

They’d shared long philosophical discussions over the
reasons for this and many other things, including Murdoch’s inability to direct
his gifts — which was why Ian doubted that Murdoch was guilty of more than
accident by rage. Though, for all anyone knew, in the heat of anger Murdoch could
very well have wished his leader dead, and the gods had answered.

Ian missed the friend Murdoch had been. He did not know the
man who had killed the Council Leader or used Greek fire in an attempt to kill the
island’s Guardian — or the man who waited somewhere in the shadows on the outskirts
of the village just ahead.

Ian saw no sign of the king’s berlin or the duc’s troops as
he approached the village. More people than was normal roamed the street, whispering
and arguing. He scarcely needed his extra senses to know that the messenger
with the news of the king’s escape had just arrived.

One lone officer in royal blue and scarlet waited, hidden
from the setting sun by a pergola outside a rose garden filled with vibrant
blooms. The rich scent engulfed Ian as he swung down from his mount. If there
was to be combat, he wanted the horse clear of it. The tension of challenge
shimmered in the air as he approached on foot.

“You have grown wiser since I saw you last,” the soldier
said without inflection. “Up until an hour ago, I felt the chalice, and now I
can’t. Concealing it from me is a gift worthy of an Oracle. Did you bring the
old crone with you?”

“Dylys is your mother as well as mine, in all ways but one,”
Ian replied. If Murdoch meant to insult him into losing control, he’d forgotten
the differences between them. “You owe her respect, if naught else.”

“She nearly killed me,” Murdoch replied conversationally.
“She tried to steal my soul and turn me into a husk.”