Forbidden Read Online Free PDF Page B

Duncan to look at her with superstition or fear, as some of the simple folk did.
    “Many Learned are related by blood, but not all,” Amber said slowly. “It is a kind of discipline, like a school, but all those who attempt to learn aren't equally apt.”
    “Like hounds or horses or knights?” Duncan asked after a time.
    She looked puzzled.
    “Some are always better than others at what they do,” he said simply. “A few, a very few, are far better than any.”
    “Yes,” Amber said, relieved that Duncan understood. 'Those who can't be taught say that those who can learn are cursed or blessed. Usually cursed."
    Duncan smiled wryly.
    “But we aren't,” she said. “We are simply what God made us to be. Different.”
    “Aye. I have met a few people like that. Different.”
    Absently, Duncan flexed his right hand as though to grasp a sword. It was a movement made without forethought, as much a part of him as breathing. He didn't even notice the act.
    Amber did.
    She remembered what she had heard about the Scots Hammer, a warrior who had been defeated in battle only once, and that by the hated Norman usurper, Dominic le Sabre. In exchange for his own life, Duncan had sworn fealty to the enemy.
    It was rumored that Dominic had defeated Duncan with the help of his Glendruid witch-wife.
    Amber remembered the face she had glimpsed through Duncan's thick veil of forgetfulness—hair of flame and eyes of an unusually intense green.
    Glendruid green.
    Dear God, could he be Dominic le Sabre, Erik's sworn enemy?
    Staring at Duncan's eyes. Amber tried to see them as gray, but honestly could not. Green, perhaps. Or blue. Or brown. But not gray.
    Amber let out a long sigh and prayed she wasn't deluding herself.
    “Where did you meet these unusual men?” she asked. “Or were they women?”
    Duncan opened his mouth, but no words came. He grimaced at the fresh evidence of his lack of memory.
    “I don't know,” he said flatly. “But I know that I have met them.”
    Amber went to Duncan and put her fingers over his restless sword hand.
    “Their names?” Amber asked in a soft voice.
    Silence answered her, followed by a curse.
    She sensed Duncan's raw frustration and growing anger but no faces, no names, nothing to call forth memories.
    “Were they friend or foe?” she asked quietly.
    “Both,” he said hoarsely. “But not… not quite.”
    Duncan's hand clenched into a heavy fist. Gently Amber tried to soothe the fingers into relaxation. He jerked his hand away and pounded on his thigh.
    “God's blood!” he snarled. “What kind of dishonorable cur can't remember friend or foe or sacred vows?”
    Pain twisted through Amber, pain that was both Duncan's and, eerily, her own.
    “Have you made any such vows?” she asked in a low voice.
    “I—don't—know!” The words were almost a shout.
    “Gently, my warrior,” Amber said.
    While she spoke, she stroked Duncan's hair and face as she had through the long hours when he had been lost in an odd kind of sleep. At the first touch, Duncan flinched. When he looked into Amber's troubled golden eyes, he groaned and unclenched his hands, allowing her gentle caresses to soothe him.
    “Sleep, Duncan. I can feel your exhaustion.”
    “No,” he said grimly.
    “You must let yourself heal.”
    “I don't want to go into that fell darkness again.”
    “You won't.”
    “And if I do?”
    “I'll call you forth again.”
    “Why?” he asked. “Who am I to you?”
    Amber hesitated at the blunt question, then smiled an odd, bittersweet smile as Cassandra's prophecy echoed like distant thunder. He will come to you in shades of darkness. And he had. She had touched a man with no name and he had claimed her heart.
    Amber didn't know if she could bend events so that life as well as death flowed from her reckless action. She knew only one thing, and she knew it with a certainty greater than that of the sun's burning progress across the sky.
    “Come heaven, come hell,” Amber said in a low