< previous page page_144 next page >

Page 144
Here Madog hesitated and turned his maimed head toward Simon. "You are ensorceled," he whispered. "That is how you know what I did and why you did not hear her curse me. You were right there beside her in the cove. Do you not remember?"
Simon burst into bitter laughter. "Idiot! Dolt! How could she curse you even if she was a witch? Neither of us knew who was there. My horse scented you. I tell you Lady Rhiannon has no power of cursing. She was afraid, that was all, and cried out what she thought would protect us. And I knew what you had done because I heard you talking with Mallt. Now go ahead."
Madog did not dare disobey and started to move off the path in the direction he had carried Rhiannon, but he whimpered, "She did curse me. I felt it. I could not eat and my breath choked in my throat. . . ."
"You are twenty times a fool," Simon raged. "You feared the effect of a curse and felt the effect of your fear." He prodded Madog harder. "Ouick, before I lose my patience and give you a reason to move more swiftly."
The grimness of Simon's voice warned Madog to hesitate no longer, and Simon's conviction made Madog begin to wonder whether he had not jumped too fast to a conclusion about Rhiannon, misled by Mallt. He was not sure; he still felt Rhiannon was a witchshe was so strangebut perhaps she had not cursed him. In any case, his fate at Simon's hands seemed far more certain than his fate at Rhiannon's, and he hurried along the way he had carried her. He was terrified that he would lose his way, for he had been careful not to break branches or step on soft ground, but his hunter's eye had unconsciously marked a lightning-riven tree here and a dead, oddly gnarled one there, as when he cached a kill too heavy to carry back alone. Spurred by panic, he found his way almost without a single hesitation to the great fallen log.

 
< previous page page_144 next page >