Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) by Lindsay Townsend Read Free Book Online Page B

with the stump, she realized.
    “Are you well?” he asked again, touching her forehead with his good hand. “Your eyes rolled back into your head, and you were twitching like a hunting dog on the scent.”
    “I was hunting,” she replied. Deciding she was too comfortable to stir from where she was, she talked quickly as the scene vanished into the whiteness of the snow. “He has them bewitched in some way, perhaps with a love philter, perhaps with a handsome, pleasing familiar.”
    “Have you a familiar?”
    She scowled at the interruption, conscious again of the itching in her hair and across her face and arms. “I do not need one,” she said sharply. “But listen to me now, for once the sight leaves me, I do not always remember it well.”
    Magnus nodded and brought a finger to his lips, his promise of silence.
    “To the east of here, within the forest, there is an oak wood set on a high hill. His lair is there, within three strong towers, three towers, one with a painted blue door.”
    She heard Magnus’s breath catch, but he did not interrupt.
    “I saw my sister, laughing, and another girl, playing a pipe. They were dancing. I do not know if they were together, or if they danced alone, for the beast. They seemed unharmed. I did not see the third, but they were safe and even happy.”
    She felt Magnus’s gasp of relief, and his reaction inspired hers. Overwhelmed to know that Christina was safe, she sobbed aloud as tears burst out of her.
    “Aye, aye, I wondered when it would come to this.” Magnus gathered her closer still, ignoring her fever and spots. When her weeping subsided, he gave her a clean rag to wipe her face.

    * * * *

    He believed her. He had seen magic in Outremer, where men had put themselves into trances and driven nails into hands without pain or blood. He shouted to Mark, a single order, “Stop!” and listened as Mark blew his horn to signal to the rest of his men.
    “Does the monster hunt alone?” he asked Elfrida. She was rubbing at her forehead with the rag, and he took it from her to stop her bursting her spots. She frowned but not because of the itching pox.
    “I do not know,” she admitted.
    “No matter,” he said easily, glad she had sense enough not to claim more than she did and not wanting her to blame herself. That was the failing and limit of magic, he knew—it never showed everything.
    She squirmed on his lap and rolled off him into the snow.
    “I must set a charm to find this oak hill.” She rose to her feet, seemingly unaware of how she swayed in the still, crisp air like a sapling in bad weather. “All oaks, and very ancient, with lichens hanging from them. And mistletoe!” She brightened at remembering, the glow in her small, narrow face showing how pretty she was, without spots.
    She checked the position of the sun and began to walk southeast, tramping stiffly through the snow. Then she turned back.
    “Your men know to let me pass?”
    “They would not dare delay a witch.”
    She smiled. “No, only you would.” She turned, took another step, and stopped.
    Magnus did not want her to leave, either. He told himself it was because his men were even now calling back through the trees, “Nothing!” “No track!” “Nothing here!”
    I need her skills, and though she will not admit it, she needs mine.
    He limped toward her and offered her his good arm. “May I escort you? I have seen a mage’s house in the East, but never a witch’s home.”
    He caught a glitter of interest in her eyes, quickly suppressed as she jerked her head at his horse and gathering men. “Do they come, too?”
    “It will be quicker,” Magnus said easily. “Once we know where to seek your sister, we can set out on horseback.”
    “I do not have a bathhouse nearby.”
    “A barrel of water and hot stones will do as well.”
    “And food and hay? I cannot magic those.”
    “My men have brought both, even oats.”
    She glanced at the gray skies and shook her head. “There will