She lay rigid between the chains, panting. Tears streamed from her eyes and matted the tangled hair across her face. Something blurry hung over her head, dark and calm and sleek.
"You'll only damage yourself, love," the blur said, with Sean's voice. "Dougal would be most upset if you scarred your pretty face. And those magnificent breasts of yours, so small yet womanly, so firm, so perfectly proportioned to your chest: you must protect them for the children you will suckle. You'll be a mother within a year, love."
Cold clarity struck through Maureen like a flash of lightning. "And you'll be dead before the full moon shines upon your face. Your own treachery will kill you."
"Ah, 'tis prophecy she's giving to us, Dougal. The witch blood speaks. You'll notice she even calls upon the sacred goddess of the night to witness her revenge. Do you have a fate to offer Dougal, love? Care to bring the heaven's wrath down on our unhappy Padric?"
Her throat made words, without her will; they echoed strangely. "Padric will bring his own fate upon himself. As for Dougal, if he dares to taste my body, its fires will burn his body into ash. Beware."
"The oracle speaks," Sean mocked her. "Maybe you should sell this lovely wench to a whorehouse, Dougal, her favors are so dangerous. That's an absurdly high price for a piece of ass. Find yourself another bitch to breed your bloodlines."
The chains pulled tighter. Maureen grunted, gritting her teeth against another scream. She wouldn't give them the pleasure of it.
"A week," Dougal said, yanking again, "two weeks at the most. No bird or beast has ever taken more. She'll dine at my table when there's no food elsewhere; she'll wear the clothes of a proper woman when her choice is to go naked. She'll sleep with me, willingly, when that's the only sleep she'll get. What woman has the fierce will of a hawk or hunting cat?"
Father Oak, she prayed, protect me. That was your limb they strung the chain across. Drop it on Sean's head. Trip his feet with your roots, burn him with the acid of your bark and acorns, smother him in the litter of your last-year's leaves. Call on the forest to lash thorns across his eyes, raise up the rotted dead to clasp his ankles, breathe poison from the flowers and fruits. Father Oak, protect me.
Iron burned at her throat and swallowed her words. Her wrists and ankles caught an icy fire separate from the scrape of tension in the chains.
Iron.
Morgan had feared iron in White's tale of Arthur--the cold iron which had replaced the Old One's flint and bronze. Iron defeated magic. The shackles bound spirit as well as body.
So Brian had been right. She bore Power, the Power of the Blood, and the bastards trapped her Power as neatly as they'd trapped her body. They knew her better than she knew herself.
Brian, forgive me. I've done this to you, led you to a trap. I've led you to your death.
The chains slackened again, and she curled in upon herself. Her bladder burned with the pressure of her fear. She fought against adding that to her humiliation.
Dougal looked down on her, his form made even more lumpish by the blurring of her tears. "You can walk and have some dignity, or we can carry you on a game-pole like a gutted pig. It's your choice."
"Carry me, you bastard!" Then words formed again in her throat, words that seemed to rise up out of the dirt pressing against her bare skin, words that were not truly hers but belonged to the land and to all women. Even the burning iron at her throat couldn't freeze her voice.
"May the axe turn in your hands when you go to cut the tree, may the falling trunk drive branches through your skull, may the bark blister your hands at the touching of it. May the sap poison you, may the splinters of the tree's flesh drive into your own flesh and fester there." She gasped for breath.
"I curse you by the forest, I curse you by the meadow, I curse you by the mountain and the river. I curse you by the bog and by the well and by the roof-beam of your fucking house!"
"Such a lovely tongue the lass has in her head," mocked Sean. "And I was thinking the Celtic blood ran thin in her."
Dougal spat, just missing her bare belly. "Padric, cut a pole."
She saw Padric hesitate before tying her ankle-leash to a tree, with a glance at her that might have been fear if she could read his face clearly through her tears. He moved slowly and carefully, selecting a slim tree well free of any others. So a curse could truly bite, in this world?
Sean stepped away with a negligent wave of his hand. Frown-wrinkles ringed his eyes, though, as if even his mockery was troubled by the words using her throat. Suddenly, she saw blood in his eyes and strangling green fingers wrapped around his throat. His vision-mouth screamed in agony.
The vision faded even as she drank it in.
"Dougal, my friend, I will leave you to your lady-love. I must prepare a greeting for my beloved brother. You will remember to tell your pets to let me pass?"
The gnome chuckled. "If you are such a mighty mage, friend, none of my pets should be a threat."
"Oh, I just don't want to hurt them. You might be angry with me. Some of them would be so hard to replace."
Padric returned with a thick pole, stripped of limbs. No matter how she thrashed against the jerking chains, she couldn't fight them as they slipped the pole between her wrists, between her ankles. And then she was swaying, hanging, bumping against rocks and tree-trunks and clawing thorns, with the cold iron rings gouging fiery pain into the skin of her wrists and ankles.
Warm blood trickled down her wrists, and she concentrated on
