Page 111 of Forbidden

“It is wrong,” Amber said. “Duncan came to the Disputed Lands a knight with wealth of his own, a promise of an estate, and a noble wife to bear him heirs.”

“Not so,” Erik countered savagely. “Duncan came to Stone Ring Keep more dead than alive, with no more memory than a babe, and you saved his life. He is newly born, and he ismine.”

“His memory is returning,” Amber said unhappily. “Piece by bright piece, the shadows are diminished.”

“Aye.” Erik’s smile was grim. “That is why you will marry by midnight.”

“Nay. The prophecy—”

“Hammer the prophecy,” Erik said harshly. “You’ve made your bed, now you will lie in it as Duncan’s wife.”

“Cassandra will—”

“Accept what she can’t alter,” Erik said ruthlessly, cutting across Amber’s protests again.

“Two parts of the prophecy have been fulfilled. Does that mean nothing to you?”

“It means you had better guard your soul most carefully.”

There was a taut silence before Amber shook her head.

“I cannot,” she said. “I cannot betray my dark warrior thus.”

Erik’s face changed, all softness gone. The topaz blaze of his eyes was colder than a winter sunset.

“You will marry the Scots Hammer at midnight—”

“Nay!”

“—or before the twelfth hour is struck,you will see Duncan hanged.”

13

“YOUlook downcast for a maid who just became her lover’s wife,” Cassandra said, pitching her voice to be heard above the feast’s noise.

Amber said nothing. Her golden eyes were fixed on Duncan, who stood on Erik’s right, receiving the congratulations of the assembled knights. Even among fighting men, Duncan stood out, taller than most, harder, yet with a laugh that no one could hear without laughing in return.

Many toasts had been drunk, many stories told, and much food eaten. Now jugglers and rhymers moved among the people, entertaining them with clever hands and ribald verses on the subject of wedding and bedding.

Erik’s wolfhounds foraged in a furry, toothed turmoil beneath tables that were all but swaybacked from the burden of food, silver and gold plates, and goblets set with precious stones. Prized hawks sat above the party on wall perches, watching every motion with unnerving interest.

Cassandra watched Amber with the same kind of interest. No sooner had the wise woman returned from a birthing than she discovered a keep seething with excitement. A man hanged. A maid to be wed. Norse raiders rumored at Winterlance.

And, perhaps, the memory of a great warrior stirring, waking, looking around at a world with the eyes of a bird of prey.

There had been no time for Cassandra to protest, to agree, or to do anything except witness a marriage that never should have taken place.

There certainly had been no opportunity to talk to Amber in private, to ask her why she was risking so much when the gain was so unlikely, to ask her why she had allowed her body to follow her reckless heart, given over to a man who had come to her in shades of darkness.

Would that he remained that way.

But Cassandra’s rune stones said that he would not. Duncan would awaken and then death rather than life would flow.

“Have you told Duncan yet?” she asked.

There was no need for Amber to ask what Cassandra meant. Amber knew. She had spent the hours before her marriage in solitude, asking questions of her amber pendant.

The answers that came back to her were always the same.