Medieval 02 - Forbidden

had been so generous to her. Touching hadn’t frightened Amber before.
    Yet she was frightened now.
    The prophecy that had attended her birth quivered in the room like a bowstring just released…and Amber feared the death that would be launched on the invisible, deadly arrow.
    But at the same time, a need to touch the stranger was growing inside her, pressing at her, barely leaving her room to breathe. She needed to know him as she had never needed to know anything,even her own true name, her own lost parents, her own hidden heritage.
    The ravenous need frightened Amber most of all. The stranger called to her in his silence, sung to her in a voice unheard, compelled her in a way she could not deny.
    “Cassandra knows more than both of us together,” Amber said tightly. “We must wait for her.”
    “At your birth, Cassandra named you Amber. Do you think it was a whim?”
    “No,” she whispered.
    “You were born to things amber in a way that Cassandra recognized but could not hope to equal.”
    Amber looked away from Erik’s intent eyes.
    “Do you deny that this stranger wears your sign?” Erik demanded.
    Amber said nothing.
    “God’s blood,” Erik muttered, “why are you being so difficult?”
    “God’s blood, why are you being so dense!”
    Shocked by Amber’s unaccustomed anger, he simply stared at her.
    “Do you know this man’s name?” she demanded.
    “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have to—”
    “Have you forgotten Cassandra’s prophecy?” Amber interrupted.
    “Which one?” he retorted. “Cassandra sheds bits of prophecy like an oak sheds leaves hard kissed by frost.”
    “Spoken like a man who has never seen beyond his own hands.”
    “The sword master praised the length of my reach,” Erik countered, smiling thinly.
    Amber made a frustrated sound. “Arguing with you is like wrestling shadows.”
    “Cassandra used to mention that even more often than she mentioned casting pearls before swine. Her wisdom, my swine, of course.”
    For once Amber wasn’t swayed by Erik’s quick wit and wry tongue.
    “Hear me,” she said urgently. “Listen to what Cassandra saw for me at my birth.”
    “I’ve heard what—”
    But Amber was already speaking, words tumbling out, retelling the prophecy that had been born with her, casting a shadow across her life.
    “’ A man with no name may you claim, heart and body and soul. Then rich life might grow, but death will surely flow .
    “’ In shades of darkness he will come to you. If you touch him, you will know life that might or death that will .
    “’ Be therefore as sunlight, hidden in amber, untouched by man, not touching .
    “‘ Forbidden .’”
    Erik glanced broodingly at the stranger and then at the girl who was indeed like sunlight captured within amber, colors of golden brightness defined by a single dark truth: simple touch could cause her great pain.
    Yet he was going to ask her to touch the stranger. He had no choice.
    “I’m sorry,” Erik said, “but if spies of Dominic le Sabre or the Scots Hammer are abroad in Stone Ring Keep’s land, I must know it.”
    Slowly Amber nodded.
    “But most of all, I must know where the Scots Hammer himself is,” Erik continued. “The sooner Duncan of Maxwell is dead, the safer Lord Robert’s holdings in the Disputed Lands will be.”
    Again Amber nodded, yet she made no move to touch the man who lay senseless at her feet.
    “No man gets to this stranger’s age without having a name of some sort,” Erik said reasonably. “Even slaves, serfs, and villeins have names. ’Tis foolish to fear Cassandra’s prophecy.”
    The pendant on Amber’s palm burned like trapped flames. She stared at it, yet saw only what she had seen before. Sacred ring. Sacred rowan.
    Shades of darkness.
    “So be it,” Amber whispered.
    Clenching her teeth against the pain to come, she sank to her knees by the fire and laid her palm against the stranger’s cheek.
    The pleasure was so sharp Amber cried out and snatched her hand back. Then, realizing what she had done, she slowly reached for the stranger again.
    Involuntarily, Erik moved as though to protect Amber from more pain. Then he controlled himself and stood watching, his mouth flattened into a thin line beneath his short, tawny beard. He disliked causing Amber any discomfort, but he disliked the thought of killing a stranger needlessly even more.
    The second time Amber’s hand touched the stranger, she didn’t flinch. With a soft sound she