Page 100 of Forbidden

“Why?”

No answer came.

Amber looked up at the sky. What had once been wildly threatening and riven by lightning was now the pearly gray of a dove’s breast.

“Look,” Amber said wonderingly. “The storm is fled!”

Duncan gave the sky a single, savage glance. Broodingly he turned and looked at the rowan that stood guard over the mound’s eternal sleep.

Are you pleased, rowan?

Better that you had let me die than live to become a warrior with no self-control, a defiler of virgins.

The bitterness of Duncan’s thought wasn’t lessened by the realization that he would have to endure Erik’s displeasure that his vassal was a virgin no longer.

Duncan had taken that which was clearly forbidden. Now he must bear the consequences.

And he must pray that in keeping one vow, he would not forswear another, unremembered vow.

“Come,” Duncan said flatly, starting toward the horses. “There is a wedding to be arranged.”

12

“LORD, a weasel-eyed pilgrim demands to see you,” Alfred said.

Erik looked up from his contemplation of a manuscript that consisted largely of enigmatic, elegant runes. The large, rough-coated wolfhounds at his feet looked up as well. The orange flicker of hearth fire leaped redoubled in their eyes.

“A pilgrim,” Erik said neutrally.

“Aye. So he says.”

If the knight’s words hadn’t made his contempt clear enough, his voice and posture did. He fairly vibrated with disdain.

With a last, lingering glance, Erik set aside the parchment he had been studying.

“To what purpose does he wish to see me?” Erik asked.

“He claims to have knowledge of the Scots Hammer.”

The falcon above Erik’s chair sent a sharp cry through the room.

“Does he really,” Erik murmured. “How intriguing.”

Alfred looked sour rather than intrigued.

“Where?” asked Erik. “When? Under what circumstances? And is he certain the man was indeed the Scots Hammer?”

“The churl said only that he must speak to you alone, in a privacy greater than that of the confessional.”

Erik leaned back in his riven oak chair, picked up his silver dagger, and began running his fingertips over the flowing runes inscribed on the blade.

“How odd,” Erik said.

Alfred grunted.

The falcon’s hooked beak followed each motion of Erik’s fingers, as though in expectation of blood sport at any moment.

“Bring him.”