Page 64 of The Daughters of Avalon
“My father called his horse ‘horse.’”
There was a strange quality to his tone—not quite bitterness, though not affection either. “Your father, the king, do you mean?”
“Aye,” Elspeth said, noting the condescension. But she didn’t believe it was directed at her. It seemed more that he didn’t like Henry. “Did you ever meet my father?”
“Nay,” he said curtly, and Elspeth wanted to ask him why he loathed a man he’d never met. But now wasn’t the time, and she didn’t wish to take any chance to lose the only champion she had left in this mad, mad world. After a while, he said, softening perhaps, “If you must know, I named her after a dog. What is a horse, after all, but a big loyal dog?”
“Hmm,” Elspeth said. “I suppose ’tis true.” And she wanted to tell him that this, too, was a form of magic—the imbuing of a trait from one beast to another, although Malcom didn’t encourage any more conversation, so she resigned herself to his brooding silence.
Later in the day, when they stopped to water the horse at a small burn and Elspeth stretched her legs, she tried not to think about the bear growling in her belly or the bruises forming on her bottom.
It was too early to stop for the day, so they were again on the road after doing the necessary, and Malcom traded places with her, letting her ride behind him, so that she was forced to put her arms about his chest. She didn’t mind this; she rather liked laying her head on his back and listening to the calmingthump thumpof his heart.
“I have a question,” he said very soberly after they were well on the way, and Elspeth’s stomach roiled at his tone.
“What question?”
It took him a long, long while to respond again, and it seemed to Elspeth as though he were searching for the proper words—or perhaps preparing to say something she might not wish to hear. The muscles in her shoulders tightened as she waited. Had the time finally arrived for regrets? She held her breath, waiting…
“How much of my thoughts can you read, Elspeth?”
Elspeth blinked in surprise. “Me?”
“Aye, lass, I wasn’t talking about Rhiannon. Iknowwhat she can do.”
And now, at last, Elspeth understood his long hours of brooding silence. “Not so much as Rhiannon,” she reassured him.
“How much?” he persisted.
Elspeth was forced to think about the question a long moment. “In truth, I have never been able to dothatwith anyperson save Rhiannon. I always assumed it was her, not me. The most I’ve ever been able to do is commune with animals, and, of course, they cannot answer me, save by their actions.”
“Not with your other sisters?”
Elspeth shook her head, even though he couldn’t see her. “Nay,” she said. “And neither have they done any such thing with me. It was only Rhiannon who could ever do it—and in, truth, not even Morwen ever pervaded my thoughts.”
“Never?”
“Nay. Never,” she said, only now realizing the truth of the matter. She couldn’t remember a single time her mother had ever spoken through thoughts, and she would have known it because she would havefelther prying.
Elspeth considered this revelation curiously, wondering why it should be so. Her grandmother had had the ability as far as she could remember. With all the tools of their Craft at her disposal—the familygrimoireand the scrying stone—it would seem that Morwen should have so much more inherent power. And yet it was only Rhiannon who could do so much without rites. In fact, so far as Elspeth knew, Rhiannon herself had never even cracked the spine of the grimoire. To do so meant pricking a finger for a drop ofdewineblood, and all of her sisters had been too young to subject them to such a ritual. Elspeth was the only one her grandmother ever taught to open the Book of Secrets.
“Interesting,” he said. “Though it doesn’t answer my question, Elspeth. How much?”
Elspeth resisted the urge to reach up and fiddle with the small curls at the back of his nape. She tilted her head, and asked playfully, “Have you been keeping secrets from me, Malcom?”
He was silent a long moment, and Elspeth feared she’d angered him, but he finally said. “Did you not hear me?”
Elspeth frowned, perhaps not understanding. “Well, I did. You asked how much I could glean of your thoughts, and Ianswered you. Then I asked if you had been keeping secrets from me—and you did not answer.”
“I see,” he said, seemingly satisfied.
But, of course, he must be worried that she could read everything that passed through his head, so now she explained more soberly. “I can only hear what you wish me to hear, Malcom, the same as with you. If I will it to be so, and you have a reception to me, this is how it goes.”
He remained silent, listening.
“In this world, we are bound to one another—all of us. Simple beasts have far less guile and are not so different now from the day they were created. Have you never wondered why during a forest fire, animals flee together, even when the fire is miles away?”
Still, he listened without responding.
