Gwyneth...

The dream had roused him from fitful sleep, sent him rushing headlong through slanting yellow sunlight to the water's edge -- only to find that his nightmare had become reality.

A frail and broken thing, she lay in pooling blood upon the rocks, her eyes open to an uncaring sky.

Nicholas fell beside her, cried her name, gathered her limp form into his arms. He willed life to return to her, sent the sobbing entreaty first to his one God and then to her many.

But the gods -- all of them -- denied him.

Denied her.

He raised his head to scream imprecations at those silent heavens, but in that moment, many looming shapes obliterated the sun.

A pitchfork struck him edge on, a glancing blow to the forehead. Strong hands grasped him, tore Gwyneth from his arms and wrenched him to his feet.

"Lladdwyr!"

"Bwystfil!"

He knew not a word of their Celtic tongue, but their meaning came clear soon enough, when the bite of coarse rope cut into his wrists and lashed his hands behind him.

"No..."

"Budr llofruddion!"

"No! It wasn't... I didn't..."

The pitchfork jabbed him blade-first in the shoulder, drawing blood this time. Fists, stones and cudgels followed. They drowned him in pain and more blood, until the last of the waning sunlight finally surrendered to darkness.

Pain woke him, though the dark remained.

Hands no longer bound, he lay awkwardly on a damp stone floor that reeked of fetid straw and...  He fought to quell a wretching stomach when he recognized the odor of blood.

His blood.

The suffocating taste of it filled his mouth. Nicholas coughed and spat into the straw, then struggled to maneuver himself upright. Every muscle and sinew burned fire with the effort. He fell backward, gasping, and met the solid resistance of a wall. Dizzy, sick and blind, he leaned against the welcome support and concentrated on forcing breath into his tortured lungs.

An eternity seemed to creep by before he could breathe with any semblance of normalcy. Only then did he persuade his painfully swollen eyes to open far enough to see his stone-walled prison.

Moonlight streamed through a grated trapdoor far above, blue-tinting wine kegs, root bins, piles of straw, and...

Nicholas started.

He had sensed nothing, heard nothing. But the moonlight distinctly showed him a tall, black-clad figure standing motionless against the opposite wall. It watched him with deathly pale eyes, and its thin lips wore a cruel smile.

"Li mors!"  A frightened Nicholas nearly choked on the words.

And Death responded in a most peculiar fashion.

It laughed.

"So very true," it said in flawless French, and its voice, far from deathly, was soft, sibilant, deceptively gentle. "But tonight -- just for tonight -- I have chosen to be life. Your life."

"I..." Nicholas had to manipulate his words past a swollen tongue. "I don't understand."

"You will. In time. You do wish to live, do you not?"

"Who are you?" a suddenly wary Nicholas demanded. "How came you here?" Were this creature truly Death, it had a most peculiar attitude about it.

"I am your life," it repeated, and again, the thin-lipped smile. "I came hither in my own way. And now you really must answer my question. Do you wish to live?"

A fever dream. An apparition. Some phantom conjured by his battered mind, perhaps. But whatever this visitor may be, Nicholas felt oddly compelled to answer it.

"But of course," he said.

"I thought as much." Death stepped into an azure beam of moonlight that dyed its pale hair silver. "And now, think carefully before you answer. If it is indeed better to live than to die, would it not be better still to live... eternally?"

What trickery was this? An angel of death who spoke in riddles?

"We will all live eternally," a confused Nicholas replied, "in the Kingdom of God hereafter, if we are shriven, and if we have..."

"I speak of this life," Death interrupted him. "This kingdom. Would you not give any ransom, any lands or gold or precious gems you owned, in order to keep the life you have on this Earth -- forever?"

Nicholas stared into the icy depths of those terrible eyes. "I have no wealth to give," he said.

"Quite so," the angel of death agreed. "Your father's lands accrue only to his firstborn son. Thus are you, the second, squired here to Lord DeLabarre in his most zealous quest to convert -- or annihilate -- the last vestiges of Paganism in the land.  St. Patrick, I fear, would be less than impressed with this liege lord's methods of persuasion."

Nicholas wondered how Death came to know so much about his life. "We are not..." he started to say, but a fit of coughing seized him, spraying the moldy straw surrounding him with blood-tainted spittle. When he raised his head again, Death's eyes had changed from frost to flame.

"You will choose," it commanded. "Pledge your life to me, or forfeit it to these Celts you sought so foolishly to save." Those eyes bored with searing fire straight into Nicholas' soul. "You are condemned for the songmaker's murder," the soft voice proclaimed. "And these Pagans of yours mean to drape you in wicker at first light, then set the rushes ablaze and dance themselves into a worshipful frenzy while you go to meet your God. Plainly one of their more charming rituals, wouldn't you agree?"

At these words, a new horror clutched at Nicholas' heart, and was at once reflected in Death's flaming eyes.

"Ah, but I mispeak," it said. "You cannot go thus to meet your God, can you? I do believe that to perish on the heathens' wicker pyre, unshriven, would consign your immortal soul to the rather more permanent fires of hell. A pitiful waste, to say the least."

"No..."

"Of course, Lord DeLabarre might be... shall we say, persuaded... to purchase your release. Gold, it seems, may commute even the harshest of sentences."

The burning eyes faded once again to blue, though they continued to hold Nicholas under their spell. He could not look away.

"Why?" he asked in a voice that trembled shamefully. "Why should you help me? I can pay you nothing."

"Not now, perhaps. But in time, I will have my due. Tonight, I need only your word. A single word. Consent, freely given, as it were. What say you, Nicholas? Will you die here, in the Pagans' bonfire, or become my liege and live for an eternity of nights to come?"

Death's gaze showed him the horror of his own writhing form, imprisoned in a cage of woven straw while black smoke roiled up to engulf him. Nicholas shuddered. Over the crackle of illusory flames, Death's soothing voice whispered, "Pledge your life to me. One word, Nicholas. Say it."

He heard his avatar's death scream as the lapping fire consumed it, cage, flesh and soul. With a cry, Nicholas fell further into the depths of those all-possessing eyes. Surely no mere pledge of fealty could be worse than enduring the fires of hell?

"Your word, Nicholas. Give me your word."

"Yes!" He succumbed to a fit of trembling then, and coughed more blood onto the straw. "Yes, please... anything you ask. I want to live."

"And so you shall." The voice grew benevolent now, paternally consoling. But the eyes still held Nicholas in their sway. "Your present liege lord will soon come to offer you deliverance from your would-be executioners. Accept his terms. Do as he bids. Go where he may send you, for wherever that may be, I will be watching. Waiting. When you wake this night, you will remember nothing of this vision, this conversation. But when the time has come to fulfill our bargain, rest assured that we will meet again. Then, Nicholas, your life will be eternal. And it will be mine."

The moonlight swallowed Death then, drawing him up into itself with a rush of chill air and the whisper of a cold night wind.  The moment it had gone, impossibly heavy eyelids bade the darkness return.

By the time Lord DeLabarre came to offer him his hard-bargained freedom, Nicholas remembered Death's visit -- and Death's promises -- not at all.
 

--End--