Free The Crimson Chalice by Victor Canning

herself. Silently she cursed herself for her weakness and her selfishness, for she knew that the strongest desire in her was to get safely to Aquae Sulis. If she could have been magically spirited there now, leaving Baradoc to whatever was to be, what would she have decided? she wondered. She escaped answer by cursing, stringing together all the old army oaths she could remember—and finding a strong comfort in them.
    She stopped twice to drink at small streams and to rest herself. Her arm ached from tugging and leading Sunset, who faced some of the thickets reluctantly, and there was now a persistent nagging pain in her right thigh where she had slipped and twisted her leg.
    The sun was treetop low in the sky when Aesc, who had disappeared ahead, came back and lay down on the track before her, panting, her long tongue lolling over the side of her jaws. She waved the dog on, but Aesc refused to move.
    Puzzled, Tia looked ahead along the narrow trail they were following. The trees had begun to thin a little. Twenty or thirty paces ahead the track disappeared over a thicket-crested outcrop of stony ground. Looking up, Tia realized that the tall plume of smoke which now and again she had glimpsed in her march was very close. As her eyes came back from the smoke, Lerg, who had never gone more than a couple of paces ahead of her so far, slowly began to walk away on his own. When he reached the bottom of the rocky rise, he stopped and sat back on his haunches.
    Tia hitched Sunset’s halter around a branch and walked forward. Neither Aesc nor Cuna made any move to follow her. The behaviour of the dogs puzzled her, yet at the same time there was a strange comfort in it. She had a feeling that they knew—even Cuna—what lay ahead and, by their actions, obeyed some sure instinct. When she was with Lerg she stopped and looked back. Aesc and Cuna lay on the ground close to Sunset, who was cropping at the low leafy branches of a tree. Bran, who had shown himself only now and again during the march, dropped through the trees and settled on the ground near the dogs and began to peck at the grit of the narrow track.
    Tia had an uncanny feeling that the dogs and Bran now waited on her, that in some way they were all linked in an understanding into which she could and must enter. Between them and Baradoc, she knew, there was always a silent flow of knowledge and command which linked them magically even when they were not in sight of one another.
    At this moment from beyond the outcrop there came a high half groan, half scream of pain that was followed by a burst of almost demoniac, giggling laughter. Lerg’s hackles stiffened and the long ridge of his back was furrowed with the slow rise of his pelt.
    As fresh laughter and a cackling of voices came from beyond the ridge, Tia, full of fear, but refusing to let it hold her, began to move forward.

4. The Keeper Of The Shrine
    Baradoc lay on the ground on his side. A few feet behind him were the nearest trees. His hands were still tied behind him but now, too, his legs were bound at the ankles. Before him, sloping in a shallow bowl, was a clearing which rose on the far side to a crescent-shaped ridge with large rock outcrops showing through a growth of brooms, gorse, and brier tangles. At the foot of this ridge, and cut into it, was a narrow doorway framed on either side by upright slabs of stone with a thick wooden crosspiece at the top. In the center of the clearing a large patch of ground had been cleared and cultivated, the dark earth now marked with new bean growth, rows of young cabbages, a line of vines, a patch of young barley and a bed of glossy green-spiked spring onions. Beyond the garden an apple and a fig tree stood close to a low-roofed, long wooden-framed hut, the roof and sides thatched with rush bundles. At one end of the hut was a small wattle enclosure in which a cock and half a dozen hens foraged. Nearer Baradoc a small spring welled from the ground and ran