An irritated grimace tightened his mouth. Hapless victims of marauding knights were not his responsibility, but were there a reason to do so, he could save her from Ragnor. The knight was easily swayed by the casting of magical spells and dark incantations. Yet in the end 'twould prove futile. If not the red beast, another with more lust than superstition would claim her. Dain only hated to see good work and physick go for naught.

He lifted his hand to the shelves of storage jars lining the curved wall of his chambers. Clay vessels held most of his desiccatedmateria medica: herbs, simples, and less pleasant concoctions. Receipts requiring days of steeping were kept in glass containers. Dried herbs, flowers, and other plants hung from the rafters. He had his own collection of relics displayed on the mantel, but to date, none of the small bones had revealed any saintly powers.

The truly powerful artifacts and fossils he had col-lected over the years were kept in an iron chest chained to the foot of his bed. Much of his past and most of his heritage were nestled in the folds of crimson wool contained therein. Many of his secrets and a few of his regrets shared the cloth.

He glided his fingers across the letters marked on each container and chose what he needed for the making ofpudre ruge. By twos, he carried the vessels over to the table holding his mortar and pestles.

From the highest shelf, he gathered henbane and white poppy for a sleeping draught. If the maid awoke from her faint before he started, he would render her insensible again, or at least as insensible as he deemed reasonable. Too much of the draught accomplished what his green serpent stone could not-a true death-sleep. The chit still had the bauble clutched to her breast, which suited him fine for the moment. He had a generous tolerance for those who believed in his wily magic.

Bandages came next, set out on the table in neat piles. He filled the cauldron with water and swung it over the fire. A leather spice pouch was laid close to the brazier. Most of the castle folk went to the village leech or the witch, Madron, who lived on the forest edge of the demesne, to have their ills cured and their wounds stitched, which also suited Dain fine. He had no desire to see his days filled up with puking and mewling varlets; and in truth, he went to Madron himself when in need. He and the witch had much in common with their simples and their tricks, and with the deference given them both by the wilder folk in the forests.

A frantic clanging of the bronze knocker announced Erlend's * return. No one else would choose to make such a racket with the gargoyle staring them down.

"Milord, milord." The old man's voice cracked with a hint of desperation. "Open 'er up, milord."

Milord? Dain stopped in the middle of reaching for the marked wine cask. The graybeard must have brought more than eggs and asked for none of it.

Dain strode over and opened the door, and the old man stumbled inside, his hands full of booty, his beard flecked with pastry crumbs. Below him, down in the darkness of the stairwell, a man cursed loudly.

"The devil take ye, ye swivin' bread-bandit!"

"Bread?" Dain asked, eyeing the load of foodstuffs.

"Aye." Erlend's rheumy eyes nearly twinkled. "Good wastel and some little fig pies I ate on the way. I'm most sorry I am, jongleur, but me mouth got away from me and they're all gone, every one."

"The Devil, ye hear!" the man called up. "Aye, and methinks he's already in yer company, ye soddin' old bastard."

"And the eggs?" Dain asked, ignoring the insult echoing up the stairs.

"Enough for all." Erlend hobbled over to the table and emptied his hands of the rain-splashed bread, except for a pasty he tucked under his arm.

Dain bolted the door and walked back to his shelves. "How many is enough?"

"Seven."

"Let's have them, then." He pulled down a copper bowl and set it before the old man. Patting pouches and the roll of tunic above his belt, Erlend managed to locate and retrieve five eggs. Dain looked down at them in the bowl. "And the rest?"

"That's all of 'em. All seven of 'em." The old man beamed.

"Of course," Dain said, chiding himself for expecting a truer count. "Will you be needin' me for anything else?" Erlend asked, doing a poor job of trying to hide the pasty with his sleeve.

"I'll call for you, if I want you."

"She's a bit o' a wee thing, ain't she," the old man said, looking down where the maid lay on the pallet.

"I's'pose I could help ye with gettin' her gown off."

Dain felt a muscle tighten in his jaw. "I think not." He concealed his irritation with as little success as Erlend concealed his pasty. "Go eat your filched supper and find a bed elsewhere."

"Elsewhere? I'd not be safe elsewhere, not with me..." He stopped himself, his thin mouth tightening in a stubborn line.

"Pasty." Dain provided the missing word with impatience. Nothing about the night had gone according to plan.

"Aye," the servant confessed, albeit grudgingly. "It's a pasty." He pulled the loaf-sized pie from beneath his arm. "But not much of one, I'd swear it on me old mother's heart."

"No need," Dain said, ready for the man to be off. "I've eaten Renaud's pasties." What did it matter to him if Erlend wanted to peek up the maid's skirts? Nothing. Nothing was what it mattered, yet he wasn't going to allow it. "You may use the room below stairs tonight."

Erlend opened his mouth, then hesitated, his lips working silently before he spoke up.

"It stinks like the Devil's own fiery pits down below, what with all yer mixin' and fixin.' Ye know it as well as yer standin' there."

"The upstairs chamber then?" Dain asked, one dark eyebrow arched in false innocence. He could tolerate only so much insurrection in an evening. Fortunately, his words had the desired effect, saving him from the bother of a more vile threat.

"Yer a wicked, selfish man, bard-boy," the old man grumbled, heading for the stairs that led to the room below. " 'Twouldn't be no fat off yer calf for me to have a look up 'er skirts. Nothin' there I ain't seen afore. Nothin' worth spendin' the night in yer strange damned eyrie."

Dain had thought not.

Erlend disappeared below the hatch in the floor, mumbling and grouching. Dain turned back to the wine cask he'd been reaching for, a small cask of D'Arbois's best, compliments of the ever-hopeful Lady Vivienne. The seal was intact. A smile crossed his face. 'Twas good to know therewerea few things the old man didn't dare.

He put some wine on the brazier to warm, adding a portion of water and spice. A mighty clap of thunder boomed and rolled across the heavens. Wind rattled the shutters. With a careful hand, he tapped measures of henbane and poppy into his mortar. The Wye and Llynfi rivers, which flowed on either side ofWydehawCastle , would be rising higher with each hour of rain. Mayhaps the maid had saved him from a useless foray. The renegade he sought had no doubt watched the weather and the rivers and long since moved to higher ground. When the draught was mixed, he poured a cup and knelt by the maid. Sad and bedraggled thing. Lost and alone. He dipped warm water out of the cauldron into a basin. All manner of evil and misfortune befell women who found themselves in such dire straits, and she seemed to be faring worse than most, having ended up in the Hart Tower of Wydehaw with only himself to keep her safe. He wet a cloth and carefully wiped it across her brow. Mud and blood came away, revealing skin as tender as a seraph's smile.

He drew the cloth down the center of her nose, then under each eye. She had been sorely abused.

Besides the wound on her temple-a hand's-span length of torn flesh he would have to mend-she had dark bruises on her cheeks and a deep red mark on her neck where Ragnor must have sucked hard on her, no doubt in preparation for the bite on her shoulder.

Dain let his gaze drift downward. There would be the mess of the rape to clean up. Ragnor was brutal with a maid. He should have thought before to check her there for bleeding. He had enough irony in his nights without the girl's life see-ping out from between her legs as he so carefully tended her head.

He reached down and pulled up the hem of her coarse woolen gown and kirtle, modesty being beyond his means or his inclinations. The poor quality of the gray cloth was enough to prove her lack of worth, except that the chemise beneath the outer garments was of fine linen trimmed with silk riband-a mystery, indeed-and below the chemise another mystery. Her naked limbs were smooth and clean, the hair of her mons softly curled. She had not been touched, not by Ragnor, not by anyone within the last few hours.

May haps never?

Something about her pristine mound put the question in his mind, and once there, it demanded an answer. He straightened from where he knelt at her side and went to his shelves again. Tucked into a corner between the wall and a corbel he found a small vial of rose oil, a gift to him from the maid Edmee.

It was a simple enough examination, performed with a gentle and fragrant hand. When he was finished, he sat back on his heels and pulled down her gown. Aye, she'd been sorely abused, but she was virgin still.

He'd needed a reason to save her, and he'd been given two. There could be a rich ransom for a virgin wearing a linen-and-silk chemise, providing he could keep her out of the baron's clutches and Ragnor's bed, and providing he could track down the one willing to pay.

A low moan shuddered from her lips, sounding of pain and distress. He reached for the sleeping draught.

"Mychael." She spoke the name in an agonized whisper, giving him pause. He shifted his gaze to her face. She was bruised and swollen, yet there was a delicacy about her features that he found appealing.

He would do his best not to scar her overly much.

Unbidden by intent, he reached out and stroked the side of her face, using much the same manner as he used to soothe Numa. It would be easy enough to arrange to keep her in the tower with him. If Soren wanted her whole, he could be convinced to wait until Dain pronounced her healed. Ragnor could be put on a short leash, or sent away to maraud farther afield in Elfael. The favor to her and her lord would cost Dain little and possibly bring him much gain. Such was life in Wydehaw.

He traced the curve of her cheek with his fingers. Aye, he would keep her...and keep her virgin? His thumb glided across her full lower lip, his skin warming with the sigh of her breath. The night was not what it should have been. Had things gone according to plan, he would be in Morgan's camp, feasting on stolen D'Arbois cattle and digesting the latest news from the north. Wine would have been passed and stories told, and no doubt they would have gotten around to the curious tales whispered of Caradoc. Patricide was not unheard of, and there had been no love lost 'tween father and son, but 'twas the manner of the rumored murder Dain found disturbing and thus hard to believe.

On the morrow he would search out Morgan and learn how far Caradoc had wandered from the straight and narrow path that had led three boys to take the cross and follow Richard the Lionheart into hell. For they had been boys on the Crusade, he and Caradoc and Morgan, and not the men they had thought themselves to be, a fact proven on the bloody sands of Palestine; and proven for Dain again as a captive in the tents of the Saracen trader Jalal al-Kamam.

Some, though, need not go so far from home to find their virtue hanging in the balance. Dain lifted a handful of the maid's pale hair and remembered the startling light blue of her eyes. She stirred, releasing a breathy groan, and he let the white-gold strands fall back to her side.

She was pretty.

Hours later, Dain washed the last of the girl's blood from his hands. A dozen candles blazed on the floor surrounding the pallet and in the torcheres he'd set at his side for more light. Never had he taken so many stitches in so small a space, both on her face and her shoulder. He'd given her a portion of the sleeping draught before he'd put the needle to her flesh, knowing he was in no mood for screaming and crying.

Now a sound or two, or a tear, would be welcome. She was too quiet, and becoming more intriguing all the time. He'd found a book in the folds of her ragged cloak, bound in red leather and marked on the cover with gold, a rare thing to be carting around the wilderness.

He finished dressing her wound with his concoction ofpudre rugeand sealed the whole with albumen.

Ragnor had cut her deliberately; the wound followed her hairline too closely for it to have been an accident. With time, the scar would barely be noticeable, but he wouldn't be complimenting the knight on the accuracy of his torture. Damascene steel was required for truly subtle blade work. Compared to what Dain could inflict, Ragnor's neat slice looked like butchery. Mayhaps one day he would give the red beast a personal lesson with his Syrian dagger.

He returned to the foot of the pallet and removed the cold compress from her ankle. The swelling was finally down. He felt carefully along the bone, probing with his fingertips to determine which way the break lay. When he knew as much as he would, he braced himself and, taking her foot in his hands, pulled.

Her pained cry brought the flicker of a smile to his lips. He had never yet killed anyone with henbane, an omission on his list of sins he had hoped not to remedy with the maid.

After splinting and wrapping her ankle, and listening to her cry and sniffle through the whole procedure, he moved to her side. He could do nothing more for her, except wipe her tears.

He leaned across her for a cloth, and the sniffling stopped with a soft inhalation. The contact he'd made was chest to breast, a position already proven to be rare in her life. Without moving away, he looked to her face and found her eyes open, huge and glazed from the poppy, her irises milky-blue rims of luminosity around the dark abysses of her pupils. Her lashes were long and wet and tipped in gold.

He held her gaze, curious about this woman he had labored over so mightily. To his surprise, she stared at him with equal intensity.

"Cherie," he murmured. The Norman term of en-dearment was not one he used often, but it came easily when looking at his mystery maiden.

He used his palm to smooth the hair back off her brow. She was warm, but not fevered. Her skin was soft, like a child's, but she was no child.

"Are you awake, lady?" he asked.

Awake? Ceridwen thought hazily. How did one awaken into death? And who would choose not to be awake when Death's messenger was so achingly beautiful?

She gazed up at him, taking him in piece by exquisite piece and putting him together into a dreamlike whole. She faintly remembered that she had stolen a green charm cursed with a faerie's death-sleep, stolen it from an ominous, black-cowled demon flanked by spectral hounds.

Or maybe not a demon. His charm had brought her to this new land of death, where her limbs felt heavy, but her thoughts and her heart were too light to hold; where a creature of unsurpassed comeliness beckoned to her with a gentle touch and the sweet, dark melody of his voice.

A sigh swelled in her chest. She would not have expected glittering black eyes from a faerie prince, yet his eyes were darker and brighter than a night full of the moon and stars, an onyx color to match the sleek, flowing length of hair that framed his face, streamed down his chest, and pooled on her breasts in a loose, silky confluence.

Ah, and his face. She lifted her hand and lightly traced the near perfect symmetry of his features. His was the kind of strange beauty no mortal man embodied and no mortal woman could resist. Truly, he was a magical being, for only magic could have created such an artful line from brow to chin-she caressed his cheek and let her fingers trail to the long, masculine curve of his jaw. Or create such a mouth as to make even a maid think of a kiss. Her fingertips brushed his lips.

He smiled, and she felt color suffuse her face. Amazing, that she could blush even in death. Clear as night, his eyes teased her, sparkling with an inner light like the stars sparkling around his head. Never had she seen such stars. The cosmic orbs danced both high and low in flaming shades of yellow, red, and blue, leaving trails of fire in their wakes. The sheer dazzle of him in his heavenly firmament left her breathless with awe.

"Sweet prince of thetylwyth teg," she whispered, thoroughly taken with him. Death had been the choice of wisdom, after all, and not the final act of a coward.

Dain's smile turned wry. Silly chit, to mistake him for something even half so pure and noble as a prince of the faerie folk. Though had he been elfin, he was sure he could have found salvation in the adoration shining in her eyes, for the old stories said elves lived in hope of gaining a human's love.

He had long since abandoned any such aspirations himself, but he knew he engendered lust with ease,and he saw that, too, in her eyes. Poor, untried virgin. He would do his best to return her untouched to her Mychael and spare her the more interesting pastimes available to those with adventurous natures.

"What's thy name,cherie?" he asked in his most mellifluous voice, honey sweetening his words to draw her out.

"Ceridwen," she whispered. "Ceridwen ab Arawn. And yours?"

He hesitated for only a moment. "Dain."

"Dain." She repeated his name on a soulful sigh, and Dain couldn't help himself; he grinned. Vivienne could take lessons from this one.

"Where is your Mychael, little one?"

"StrataFlorida ."

His grin faded. Just his luck. He'd been given the keeping of a Welsh maid with the name of a white monk rather than a rich lord on her lips. Then again, hadn't a prince of Powys, Rhys ap Gruffudd, granted the Cistercian monks large tracks of upland grazing all the way to Rhayader? Surely over the years even the most ascetic of orders had managed to accumulate some profit on such bounty.

But would they part with it for a woman?

He mulled over an answer to that for more than a minute and couldn't quite turn it to his liking. Women and holy men didn't mix nearly as well as they had before Gregory VII had cleansed the church of "fornicating priests."

"Dain." She spoke his name again in a dreamy voice, infusing it with a good deal of wonder, and wonder she might. What was he going to do with her?

"Is Mychael your uncle?" he asked, hoping for an abbot.

"Brother," she answered.

Worse and worse. The brother of one as young as she could hardly have had time to advance in the church-and yet there was the chemise. Someone coddled the girl.

"Wherever did Ragnor find you,cherie?" he asked, absently caressing her from her cheek to her ear and letting his fingers slide into the softness of her hair. He didn't really expect an answer to his question, and he certainly didn't expect the one she gave.

"On the Coit Wroneu." She sighed and turned her face into his hand. "Running for my veriest life."

His gaze narrowed, and his fingers stopped their aimless, sensual wanderings. "From whom?"

"Mine own cousin." Her tone became distressed and angry. She lifted her face to him. "The Thief of Cardiff, Morgan ab Kynan. May God curse his knave's soul for the hypocrisy of his sins." Her voice broke with a sob, and she closed her eyes to hold back a fresh round of tears.

Anyone with a heart or a care would not have bothered her further. Dain had neither, not when she'dspoken Morgan's name. Here was a story too rich to miss, of how a Welsh prince and thief of unsurpassed skill had lost this rare jewel, and even more intriguing, how much he'd be willing to pay to get her back.

"Aye, Morgan's a sinner." He commiserated with her, knowing his words were far from the truth. The only sin he could lay at his friend's door was that he'd never told Dain of his precious cousin, not that their meeting would have been more opportune under different circumstances. Dain had forsaken good opportunity with highborn virgins when he'd put down his sword and taken up more esoteric apparatuses.

"With no heart," she added, the tears running freely down her face.

"Aye, no heart, not a trace," he agreed, then added in an offhand tone, "What do you believe to be his most heartless deed?"

Her lips trembled, so sweetly it took an act of will not to lower his own to still their fluttering. "The deed that would leave me ground to dust between the Boar of Balor's jaws."

"Carado-"

Her eyes flashed open. "Shh," she admonished him, pressing her fingertips to his lips. "Don't speak his name. 'Tis said the sound alone is enough to call him forth."

Dain refrained from laughing aloud, even though he remembered many a morn when yelling at the top of his lungs had not been enough to call Caradoc forth from a night of drink. If the maid believed such was possible, she had heard rumors he had missed.

"Sweet Ceridwen, why would the Lord of Balor want to hurt you?" He couldn't bring himself to call his old friend "Boar."