Winter Rose - Once Upon A Rose Part 9

"I would rather face a battle without sword or shield than leave you."

"We've been given these weeks. If I ask you for one more night, will you turn me away?"

"No." He reached for her hand. "I won't turn you away."

He loved her tenderly, then fiercely. And at last, when dawn trembled to life, he loved her desperately. When the night was over, she didn't cling, nor did she weep. A part of him wished she would do both. But the woman he loved was strong, and helped him prepare for his journey without tears.

"There are rations for two weeks." She prayed it would be enough.

"Take whatever you need from the forest." As he cinched the saddle on his horse, Deirdre slipped a hand under his cloak, laid it on his side.

And he moved away. "No." More than once during the night, she'd tried to explore his healing wound. "If I have pain, it's mine. I won't have it be yours. Not again."

"You're stubborn."

"I bow before you, my lady. The queen of willful."

She managed a smile and laid a hand on the arm of the man she'd chosen to guide the prince. "Dilys. You are Prince Kylar's man now."

He was young, tall as a tree and broad of shoulder. "My lady, I am the queen's man."

This time she touched his face. They had grown up together, and once had romped as children. "Your queen asks that you pledge now your loyalty, your fealty, and your life to Prince Kylar."

He knelt in the deep and crusted snow. "If it is your wish, my queen, I so pledge."

She drew a ring from her finger, pressed it into his hand. "Live." She bent to kiss both his cheeks. "And if you cannot return-"

"My lady."

"If you cannot," she continued, lifting his head so their gazes met, "know you have my blessing, and my wish for your happiness. Keep the prince safe," she whispered. "Do not leave him until he's safe. It is the last I will ever ask of you."

She stepped back. "Kylar, prince of Mrydon, we wish you safe journey."

He took the hand she offered. "Deirdre, queen of the Sea of Ice, my thanks for your hospitality, and my good wishes to you and your people." But he didn't release her hand. Instead, he took a ring of his own and slid it onto her finger. "I pledge to you my heart."

"Kylar-"

"I pledge to you my life." And before the people gathered in the courtyard, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, long and deep.

"Ask me now, one thing. Anything."

"I will ask you this. When you're safe again, when you find summer, pluck the first rose you see. And think of me. I will know, and be content."

Even now, he thought, she would not ask him to come back for her. He touched a hand to the brooch pinned to his cloak. "Every rose I see is you." He vaulted onto his horse. "I will come back."

He spurred his horse toward the archway with Dilys trotting beside him. The crowd rushed after them, calling, cheering. Unable to resist, Deirdre climbed to the battlements, stood in the slow drift of snow and watched him ride away from her.

His mount's hooves rang on the ice, and his black cloak snapped in the frigid wind. Then he whirled his horse, and reared high.

"I will come back!" he shouted.

When his voice echoed back to her, over her, she nearly believed it. She stood, her red cloak drawn tight, until he disappeared into the forest.

Alone, her legs trembling, she made her way down to the rose garden.

There was a burning inside her chest, and an ache deep, deep within her belly. When her vision blurred, she stopped to catch her breath. With a kind of dull surprise she reached up to touch her cheeks and found them wet.

Tears, she thought. After so many years. The burning inside her chest became a throbbing. So. She closed her eyes and stumbled forward. So, the frozen chamber that trapped her heart could melt after all. And, melting, bring tears.

Bring a pain that was like what came with healing.

She collapsed at the foot of the great ice rose, buried her face in her hands.

"I love." She sobbed now, rocking herself for comfort. "I love him with all I am or will ever be. And it hurts. How cruel to show me this, to bring me this. How bitter your heart must have been to drape cold over what should be warmth. But you did not love. I know that now."

Steadying as best she could, she turned her face up to the dull sky. "Even my mother did not love, for she willed him back with every breath. I love, and I wish the one who has my heart safe, and whole and warm.

For I would not wish this barren life on him. I'll know when he feels the sun and plucks the rose. And I will be content."

She laid a hand on her heart, on her belly. "Your cold magic can't touch what's inside me now."

And drawing herself up, turning away, she didn't see the delicate leaf struggling to live on a tiny green bud.

The world was wild, and the air itself roared like wolves. The storm sprang up like a demon, hurling ice and snow like frozen arrows. Night fell so fast that there was barely time to gather branches for fuel.

Wrapped in his cloak, Kylar brooded into the fire. The trees were thick here, tall as giants, dead as stones. They had gone beyond where Deirdre harvested trees and into what was called the Forgotten.

"When the storm pa.s.ses, can you find your way back from here?" Kylar demanded. Though they sat close to warm each other, he was forced to shout to be heard over the screaming storm.

Dilys's eyes, all that showed beneath the cloak and hood, blinked once.

"Yes, my lord."

"Then when travel is possible again, you'll go back to Rose Castle."

"No, my lord."

It took Kylar a moment. "You will do as I bid. You have pledged your obedience to me."

"My queen charged me to see you safe. It was the last she said to me. I will see you safe, my lord."

"I'll travel more quickly without you."

"I don't think this is so," Dilys said in his slow and thoughtful way. "I will see you home, my lord. You cannot go back to her until you have reached home. My lady needs you to come back to her."

"She doesn't believe I will. Why do you?"

"Because you are meant to. You must sleep now. The road ahead is longer than the road behind."

The storm raged for hours. It was still dark, still brutal when Kylar awoke. Snow covered him, turning his hair and cloak white, and even the fur did little to fight the canny cold.

He moved silently to his horse. It would take, he knew, minutes only to move far enough from camp that his trail would be lost. In such a h.e.l.lish world, you could stand all but shoulder to shoulder with another and not see him beside you.

The man Dilys would have no choice but to return home when he woke and found himself alone.

But though he walked his horse soundlessly through the deep snow, he'd gone no more than fifty yards when Dilys was once more trudging beside him.

Brave of heart and loyal to the bone, Kylar thought. Deirdre had chosen her man well.

"You have ears like a bat," Kylar said, resigned now.

Dilys grinned. "I do."

Kylar stopped, jumped down from the horse. "Mount," he ordered. "If we're traveling through h.e.l.l together, we'll take turns riding." When Dilys only stood and stared, Kylar swore. "Will you argue with me over everything or do as your lady commanded and I now bid?"

"I would not argue, my lord. But I don't know how to mount the horse."

Kylar stood in the swirling snow, cold to the marrow of his bones, and laughed until he thought he would burst from it.

Chapter 10

On the fourth day of the journey, the wind rose so fierce that they walked in blindness. Hoods, cloaks, even Cathmor's dark hide were white now. Snow coated Dilys's eyebrows and the stubble of his beard, making him look like an old man rather than a youth not yet twenty.

Color, Kylar thought, was a stranger to this terrible world. Warmth was only a dim memory in the Forgotten.

When Dilys rode, Kylar waded through snow that reached his waist. At times he wondered if it would soon simply bury them both.

Fatigue stole through him and with it a driving urge just to lie down, to sleep his way to a quiet death. But each time he stumbled, he pulled himself upright again.

He had given her a pledge, and he would keep it. She had willed him to live, through pain and through magic. So he would live. And he would go back to her.

Walking or riding, he slipped into dreams. In dreams he sat with Deirdre on a jeweled bench in a garden alive with roses, brilliant with sunlight.

Her hands were warm in his.

So they traveled a full week, step by painful step, through ice and wind, through cold and dark.

"Do you have a sweetheart, Dilys?"

"Sir?" "A sweetheart?" Taking his turn in the saddle, Kylar rode on a tiring Cathmor with his chin on his chest. "A girl you love."

"I do. Her name is Wynne. She works in the kitchens. We'll wed when I return."

Kylar smiled, drifted. The man never lost hope, he thought, nor wavered in his steady faith. "I will give you a hundred gold coins as a marriage gift."

"My thanks, my lord. What is gold coins?"

Kylar managed a weak chuckle. "As useless just now as a bull with teats. And what is a bull, you'd ask," Kylar continued, antic.i.p.ating his man. "For surely you've seen a teat in your day."

"I have, my lord, and a wonder of nature they are to a man. A bull I have heard of. It is a beast, is it not? I read a story once-" Dilys broke off, raising his head sharply at the sound overhead. With a shout, he snagged the horse's reins, dragged at them roughly. Cathmor screamed and stumbled. Only instinct and a spurt of will kept Kylar in the saddle as the great tree fell inches from Cathmor's rearing hooves.

"Ears like a bat," Kylar said a second time while his heart thundered in his ears. The tree was fully six feet across, more than a hundred in length. One more step in its path and they would have been crushed. "It is a sign."

The shock roused Kylar enough to clear his mind. "It is a dead tree broken by the weight of snow and ice."

"It is a sign," Dilys said stubbornly. "Its branches point there." He gestured, and still holding the reins, he began to lead the horse to the left.

"You would follow the branches of a dead tree?" Kylar shook his head, shrugged. "Very well, then. How could it matter?"

He dozed and dreamed for an hour. Walked blind and stiff for another.

But when they stopped for midday rations from their dwindling supply, Dilys held up a hand.

"What is that sound?"

"The b.l.o.o.d.y wind. Is it never silent?"

"No, my lord. Beneath the wind. Listen." He closed his eyes. "It is like... music." "I hear nothing, and certainly no music."

"There."

When Dilys went off at a stumbling run, Kylar shouted after him.

Furious that the man would lose himself without food or horse, he mounted as quickly as he could manage and hurried after.

He found Dilys standing knee-deep in snow, one hand lifted, and trembling. "What is it? My lord, what is this thing?"

"It's only a stream." Concerned that the man's mind had snapped, Kylar leaped down from the horse. "It's just a... a stream," he whispered as the import raced through him. "Running water. Not ice, but running water.

The snow." He turned a quick circle. "It's not so deep here. And the air.

Is it warmer?"

"It's beautiful." Dilys was hypnotized by the clear water rushing and bubbling over rock. "It sings."

"Yes, by the blood, it is, and it does. Come. Quick now. We follow the stream."

The wind still blew, but the snow was thinning. He could see clearly now, the shape of the trees, and tracks from game. He had only to find the strength to draw his bow, and they would have meat.