Page 196 of Forbidden

“What are you saying?” Erik interrupted roughly.

“—removed herself from your masculine equations of pride and power and death.”

“What has she done?” Erik demanded.

“She gave her amber pendant to Duncan.”

The peregrine shrieked as though its blood had turned to fire.

But even the falcon’s scream couldn’t drown the chilling scream of masculine rage that came echoing down the keep’s great hall from above.

Cassandra tilted her head as though savoring the sound. Her smile was as cruel as winter.

“Duncan’s suffering has begun,” she said softly. “Amber’s soon will end.”

Dominic looked from the Learned woman to Erik.

“What is she talking about?” Dominic demanded.

Erik simply shook his head, unable either to speak or to calm his falcon’s wild cries. He looked as though he had been struck by a mailed fist.

Another scream of anger echoed. Before it ended there were horrible sounds of smashing and clashing and rending, as though a battle were being fought in the lord’s bedchamber.

“Simon,” Dominic said, coming swiftly to his feet.

“Aye!”

Side by side, the two brothers raced up the stone stairway to Duncan’s bedchamber. What they saw there made them pull up short in the doorway.

Duncan was a man possessed. Naked but for two amber talismans, he stood with the battle hammer in one hand. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a grimace of pain or rage or both in unholy communion.

With a lunge, he ripped covers from the bed and flung them into the hearth. Smoke bloomed sullenly, then burst into savage flames, burning even higher than before.

The hammer whistled and hummed in a deadly blur, driven by the mad power of Duncan’s arm. The hammer descended, a wooden table exploded, and he kicked the pieces into the fire. Then the hammer sang again, cutting circles around Duncan’s head, its moan in ghastly duet with his scream of fury. The bed frame was smashed to kindling and fed to the ravening fire.

Dominic had seen men like this before, in the heat of battle, when the leash was slipped on all that was human and only rage remained.

“There will be no reasoning with him,” Dominic said softly to Simon.

“Aye.”

“We have to take him before he turns on the people of the keep.”

“I’ll get some rope from the armory.”

Dominic drew his sword. “Don’t be long, brother.”

He was talking to himself. Simon already was sprinting toward the staircase.

Very quickly Simon reappeared with a coil of rope in his hand. Dominic was waiting in the doorway, his heavy black mantle in one hand and his sword in the other. As soon as he saw Simon, he sheathed the sword.

“When I tangle the hammer in my mantle,” Dominic said, “get enough rope on Duncan to hold a bear.”

Just as Dominic started forward, he sensed Meg coming up behind him. His arm shot out, barring her from the room.

“Stay back,” Dominic said in a low voice. “Duncan is in a berserker’s rage. He doesn’t know anyone right now, least of all himself.”

The hammer moaned and whipped through the air. Wood shattered like pottery. The chest was destroyed in a single blow and kicked into the fire. All that remained was a smaller chest and a wardrobe.