AllFreeNovel
Share Us
From the center of the room, an enormous serpent took shape. A rippling, reptilian monster.
Fangs bared, it lunged for its closest prey. Daigh.
The fog smothered her in its damp, cloying folds. The trees and the holding and the path and the weeping left behind. Word had come. The men were dead. Word had come of the death of a prince and the slaughter of his companions.
Keening filled the air. Rose like the thick, black smoke of the cook fires. Sabrina had stayed as long as she dared. But word had come, and there was no more reason to hold fast to this time and this world.
Her life here had been full, the memories precious. But her lover was dead, and she was released to return to her home and her time while he slept the passing centuries in a grave, awaiting the odious spell that would summon him to a new existence among the living.
The fog thinned to silver strands, the enormous, sheltering woods contracting to the dingy walls of a cottage, the prickle of a straw mattress beneath her cheek. Years for her shrinking down to mere minutes for them.
He stood with his back to her. Sword-straight. Shoulders braced for battle.
She reached with her mind, touching the heat and love and strength of a man she’d parted with in tears and pleading long months previous. But nothing else.
She had beaten Máelodor. Saved Daigh.
Word had come. And though she had lost him in one life, she had gained him in another.
The great snake undulated from side to side as if assessing the easiest target. Winded and heart pounding, Daigh backed against the edge of the pallet. Weakness buckled his legs while sweat poured between his shoulder blades. Streamed into his face. He wiped it with the back of a sleeve.
The snake took that moment to strike.
Its tail whipped St. John’s legs from under him as it lunged at Douglas, still lying prone upon the floor.
Daigh shoved the man out of the way, taking the fangs deep into his own arm.
With his free hand, he slammed the billhook down and down again until the snake released him. Blood poured green from its wounds, burning Daigh where it spattered his bare flesh.
The snake struck again, but this time St. John used the moment to launch his own attack.
Daigh parried the snake, but was too slow to thwart St. John’s thrusting knife, which caught him a raking slash across the collarbone.
The Amhas-draoi sought to follow up one success with another, his dagger flashing against the growing darkness, his gaze alive with a diamond’s icy fire, full lips parted in a ruthless grimace.
Daigh’s stomach tightened with nausea, acid eating its way up his throat, but he evaded St. John’s assault by a hair-breadth, though he knew it would only be a matter of time.
“Dreheveth hesh distruot,” Máelodor’s voice rasped low and venomous. “Ladhesh esh’a peuth. Kummyaa nagonaa byest.”
“He’s escaping,” Brendan cried.
Daigh dared take his eyes from St. John for long enough to see Máelodor duck out into the passage. He tore after him, but St. John stepped in his path, dagger at the ready.
“He leaves you to die,” Daigh uttered from a jaw clenched tight against the pain in his arm. Already his fingers tingled and his vision sparkled with bursts of white light.
St. John drew himself up. “I’m Lancelot. The battle hand of Arthur himself. Máelodor knows my worth.”
The curse he unleashed cut into Daigh like hot knives, every breath a new horror. Then just as suddenly, the spell dissolved as the snake struck at St. John. And again.
His focus interrupted, the Amhas-draoi bellowed, “Máelodor! Your beast. Call it off!”
Daigh raced for the stairs, but the snake threw its coils beneath his feet. He stumbled, throwing an arm out to catch himself. Something snapped in his wrist, agony shooting to his shoulder until he almost passed out from the pain.
The worn grip of the billhook met his throbbing fingers. “Daigh.” A whispered voice. Rejuvenating as a plunge in a snowy mountain-fed stream.
He forced his fingers to close around the handle. Adjusting his grip, he took difficult aim. Waited for an opening though every nerve screamed for vengeance and his arm grew heavier with each passing second.
St. John’s golden features bloodied and streaked with gore, his breathing fast, his body quivering, he bellowed curses at Máelodor while dodging the snake’s frenzied attacks. Swinging under the snake’s guard, he stunned it with a brutal crack to the skull, thrusting up into the snake’s throat, blood pouring over his arm in a blistering, green, noxious wave.
