Celtic Fire(79)

“Marcus,” she whispered. Then, when he didn’t seem to hear her, “Marcus. ’Tis Rhiannon.”

His swollen lids lifted, but it was a long moment before his eyes seemed to focus. “Rhiannon?”

She entwined her fingers with his. “Yes, love. I’m here.”

“Stay.” His eyes closed again.

She murmured a healing spell and sought the lad’s soul with her own. When she found it, she held it tightly, appalled by how weak the spark of his essence was.

“Raise his head,” Demetrius said, lifting the cup he had carried from the kitchens. “He needs to drink the purge.”

“He is so weak. ’Twould be better to let him rest. Some cool air would help.”

“Such a thing would surely kill him,” Demetrius replied. He advanced toward the bed, bearing the purge. Rhiannon slipped onto the cushions and cradled Marcus in her arms, lifting his head so he could take the healer’s remedy. Dear Briga, but he was hot! His head lolled to one side and he seemed hardly to know what was happening.

Demetrius coaxed the liquid down his patient’s throat. Marcus sputtered but managed to swallow most of the vile brew. He slumped against Rhiannon, his breathing so shallow she had to bend her head to hear it.

She stroked the curls from his forehead. Demetrius located an empty bucket. A moment later, Marcus groaned, then went rigid. Vomit spewed from his mouth, soaking the coverlet. A second stream, tinged with blood, landed in the bucket.

The lad retched until Rhiannon feared for his life; then he lay back, exhausted, muscles twitching, face a vivid scarlet. Demetrius sank heavily onto the stool as Rhiannon began clearing the soiled linens.

“Now we wait,” he said. “Zeus knows there is little more I can do.”



Lucius’s hand lay motionless on his bedchamber door for a long while before he found the courage to shove it open. When at last he did, the rank odor of vomit washed over him like a vengeful tide. Outside, the night sentry called the last hour before cockcrow.

Marcus’s whimpering sounded from the bed. The piteous sound filled Lucius with relief. By some small favor of the gods, the boy had stayed alive during the long hours that his father had feigned industry in the fort headquarters, unable to face the sight of his only son lying on his deathbed. Lucius’s steps dragged into the chamber. Aulus, naked and battered, limped to the threshold and disappeared.

Rhiannon half rose from the stool by the bed, then dropped down again as if Lucius’s sudden appearance had weakened her legs. Her fair skin was deathly pale save for the dark smudges under her eyes. Her hair was disheveled, her tunic soiled. The sight of her sent a fierce pain crashing through his chest.

Her fingers were entwined with his son’s. The boy’s dog lay at her feet. As Lucius stepped forward, the ragged beast raised its head and thumped its tail once against the floor.

“Why are you here?” he asked her. Before she could open her mouth to reply, Marcus cried out and wrenched his hand from Rhiannon’s grasp. He thrashed against his blankets, tangling them about his legs and arms as if wrestling a Fury.

Lucius strode to the bed and quickly loosened Marcus’s limbs from their restraints. “Marcus. Lie still.”

He began to shake. “Cold.” He opened his eyes and looked wildly about the chamber, his teeth clashing so violently Lucius thought they would shatter. “So cold.”

Rhiannon retrieved the blanket from the floor and tucked it over the bed, though with the boy’s skin so hot it seemed a ludicrous thing to do. “Why are you here?” he asked again.

“Marcus asked for me.”

“Where is Demetrius?”

“I told him to seek his bed, lest he collapse on the floor.”

“But you stayed.”

“Yes.”

Lucius rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Leave now. Send another woman to tend my son.”

She hesitated, then said, “None will come. They are too afraid.”

Another moan drifted from the bed. Hercules’s head came up. Lucius bent over Marcus. By the gods. The boy’s face was as red as if he’d been stranded in the Eastern desert. His cracked lips parted, revealing a bloated tongue covered with a white sheen. His breath came shallow and rasping. A thick lump rose in Lucius’s throat. His son was dying.

Rhiannon took a clean linen and dipped it in a bowl of water. She wrung it out and gently wiped Marcus’s face, murmuring in her native tongue as she worked. Then she drew back the blankets and repeated the procedure on his chest. The boy seemed to relax under her ministrations.

She left the cloth draped on his forehead. Lucius sank onto the stool and without thinking caught Marcus’s hand in his own. He stared at the boy’s long fingers, so unlike his own blunt digits. He’d longed for a son who would be a warrior and a scholar. He’d gotten one who was an artist and a dreamer.